born & died - date close
List activity
352 views
• 2 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
184 people
- Sherwood Bailey was born on 6 August 1923 in Long Beach, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Choo-Choo! (1932), Readin' and Writin' (1932) and The Pooch (1932). He was married to Ruth. He died on 6 August 1987 in Newport Beach, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
The daughter of a retired sea captain and his much-younger wife, actress Norma Varden was born and raised in turn-of-the-century London. A piano prodigy, she studied in Paris and appeared in concert in England during her teenage years. Acting, however, became her career of choice, studying at the Guildhall School of Music. She took her very first stage bow in a production of Peter Pan. In the adult role of Mrs. Darling, she was actually younger than the actors playing her children. In years to come, Norma would play a number of mature, lady-like roles that were much older than she was.
She performed Shakespeare in repertory and was at first cast in dramatic plays such as The Wandering Jew (1920-her West End debut) and Hamlet (1925) as the Player Queen. In various acting companies, she eventually found a flair for comedy and became the resident character comedienne for the famous Aldwych Theatre farce-ers from 1929 to 1933 à la Marx Bros. foil Margaret Dumont. Finding success there in the comedies A Night Like This and Turkey Time, she later recreated both roles on British film a couple of years later. She went on to prove herself a minor but avid scene-stealer in such movies as Evergreen (1934), The Iron Duke (1934), Stormy Weather (1935) and East Meets West (1936), quickly finding an amusing niche as a haughty society maven. She played both benevolent and supercilious with equal ease -- her height (5'7-1/2"), elongated oval face, vacant manner, plummy voice and slightly drowsy eyes adding immensely to the look and amusement of her characters.
In the early 1940s, the veteran actress visited California, accompanied by her ailing, widowed mother, for a take on the warmer climate and decided to permanently settle. Again, she found herself in demand as a now silvery-haired duchess, queen or Lady something, albeit in less meaty, sometimes even unbilled parts. Although she could dress down when called upon as a bar maid, nurse and landlady, she usually was asked to provide the requisite atmosphere for glossy, opulent settings. Her more noticeable roles came as lecherous Robert Benchley's wealthy, put-upon wife in The Major and the Minor (1942); the vile Lady Abbott in Forever Amber (1947); the giddy socialite nearly strangled by Robert Walker in Hitchcock's classic Strangers on a Train (1951); the impressively bejeweled wife of Charles Coburn, whom Marilyn Monroe fawns over in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953); and the Von Trapp housekeeper Frau Schmidt in The Sound of Music (1965).
Norma became a steadfast radio and TV comedy foil during the 40s, 50s and 60s, often at the mercy of a Lucille Ball or Jack Benny. Her longest radio part was as Basil Rathbone's housekeeper on his Sherlock Holmes radio series. On TV, she appeared in such shows as Mister Ed (1961), The Beverly Hillbillies (1962), Bewitched (1964) and Batman (1966) She had recurring roles as Betty Hutton's aunt on The Betty Hutton Show (1959) and as Shirley Booth's neighbor on Hazel (1961). Never married, Norma's mother passed away in 1969, and the actress retired shortly after. She died of heart failure in 1989, a day before her 91st birthday.- Music Artist
- Actor
- Composer
David Bowie was one of the most influential and prolific writers and performers of popular music, but he was much more than that; he was also an accomplished actor, a mime and an intellectual, as well as an art lover whose appreciation and knowledge of it had led to him amassing one of the biggest collections of 20th century art.
Born David Jones, he changed his name to Bowie in the 1960s, to avoid confusion with the then well-known Davy Jones (lead singer of The Monkees). The 1960s were not a happy period for Bowie, who remained a struggling artist, awaiting his breakthrough. He dabbled in many different styles of music (without commercial success), and other art forms such as acting, mime, painting, and play-writing. He finally achieved his commercial breakthrough in 1969 with the song "Space Oddity", which was released at the time of the moon landing. Despite the fact that the literal meaning of the lyrics relates to an astronaut who is lost in space, this song was used by the BBC in their coverage of the moon landing, and this helped it become such a success. The album, which followed "Space Oddity", and the two, which followed (one of which included the song "The Man Who Sold The World", covered by Lulu and Nirvana) failed to produce another hit single, and Bowie's career appeared to be in decline.
However, he made the first of many successful "comebacks" in 1972 with "Ziggy Stardust", a concept album about a space-age rock star. This album was followed by others in a similar vein, rock albums built around a central character and concerned with futuristic themes of Armageddon, gender dysfunction/confusion, as well as more contemporary themes such as the destructiveness of success and fame, and the dangers inherent in star worship. In the mid-1970s, Bowie was a heavy cocaine abuser and sometime heroin user.
In 1975, he changed tack. Musically, he released "Young Americans", a soul (or plastic soul as he later referred to it) album. This produced his first number one hit in the US, "Fame". He also appeared in his first major film, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). With a permanently-dilated pupil and skeletal frame, he certainly looked the part of an alien. The following year, he released "Station to Station," containing some of the material he had written for the soundtrack to this film (which was not used). As his drug problem heightened, his behavior became more erratic. Reports of his insanity started to appear, and he continued to waste away physically. He fled back to Europe, finally settling in Berlin, where he changed musical direction again and recorded three of the most influential albums of all time, an electronic trilogy with Brian Eno "Low, Heroes and Lodger". Towards the end of the 1970s, he finally kicked his drug habit, and recorded the album many of his fans consider his best, the Japanese-influenced "Scary Monsters". Around this time, he appeared in the title role of the Broadway drama The Elephant Man, and to considerable acclaim.
The next few years saw something of a drop-off in his musical output as his acting career flourished, culminating in his acclaimed performance in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983). In 1983, he released "Let's Dance," an album which proved an unexpected massive commercial success, and produced his second #1 hit single in the United States. According to producer Nile Rodgers, the album was made in just 17 days and was "the easiest album" he'd ever made in his life. The tour which followed, "Serious Moonlight", was his most successful ever. Faced with this success on a massive scale, Bowie apparently attempted to "repeat the formula" in the next two albums, with less success (and to critical scorn). Finally, in the late 1980s, he turned his back on commercial success and his solo career, forming the hard rock band, Tin Machine, who had a deliberate limited appeal. By now, his acting career was in decline. After the comparative failure of Labyrinth (1986), the movie industry appears to have decided that Bowie was not a sufficient name to be a lead actor in a major movie, and since that date, most of his roles have been cameos or glorified cameos. Tin Machine toured extensively and released two albums, with little critical or commercial success.
In 1992, Bowie again changed direction and re-launched his solo career with "Black Tie White Noise", a wedding album inspired by his recent marriage to Iman. He released three albums to considerable critical acclaim and reasonable commercial success. In 1995, he renewed his working relationship with Brian Eno to record "Outside." After an initial hostile reaction from the critics, this album has now taken its place with his classic albums. In 2003, Bowie released an album entitled 'Reality.' The Reality Tour began in November 2003 and, after great commercial success, was extended into July 2004. In June 2004, Bowie suffered a heart attack and the tour did not finish its scheduled run.
After recovering, Bowie gave what turned out to be his final live performance in a three-song set with Alicia Keys at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York in November 2006. He also returned to acting. He played Tesla in The Prestige (2006) and had a small cameo in the comedy David Bowie (2006) for fan Ricky Gervais. In 2007, he did a cartoon voice in SpongeBob SquarePants (1999) playing Lord Royal Highness. He had a brief cameo in the movie ''Bandslam'' released in 2009; after a ten year hiatus from recording, he released a new album called 'The Next Day', featuring a homage cover to his earlier work ''Heroes''. The music video of ''Stars are Out Tonight'' premiered on 25 February 2013. It consists of other songs like ''Where Are We Now?", "Valentine's Day", "Love is Lost", "The Next Day", etc.
In 2014, Bowie won British Male Solo Artist at the 2014 Brit Awards, 30 years since last winning it, and became the oldest ever Brit winner. Bowie wrote and recorded the opening title song to the television miniseries The Last Panthers (2015), which aired in November 2015. The theme used for The Last Panthers (2015) was also the title track for his January 2016 release, ''Blackstar" (released on 8 January 2016, Bowie's 69th birthday) was met with critical acclaim. Following Bowie's death two days later, on 10 January 2016, producer Tony Visconti revealed Bowie had planned the album to be his swan song, and a "parting gift" for his fans before his death. An EP, No Plan, was released on 8 January 2017, which would have been Bowie's 70th birthday. The day following his death, online viewing of Bowie's music skyrocketed, breaking the record for Vevo's most viewed artist in a single day.
On 15 January, "Blackstar" debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart; nineteen of his albums were in the UK Top 100 Albums Chart, and thirteen singles were in the UK Top 100 Singles Chart. The song also debuted at #1 on album charts around the world, including Australia, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the US Billboard 200. At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, Bowie won all five nominated awards: Best Rock Performance; Best Alternative Music Album; Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Recording Package; and Best Rock Song. The wins marked Bowie's first ever in musical categories. David Bowie influenced the course of popular music several times and had an effect on several generations of musicians.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Gavin Gordon was born on 7 April 1901 in Chicora, Mississippi [now Buckatunna, Wayne County, Mississippi], USA. He was an actor, known for Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) and The Scarlet Empress (1934). He died on 7 April 1983 in Canoga Park, Los Angeles County, California, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
The highly versatile character actress Lee Patrick could readily play a tough, scrapping, hard-bitten dame as she did in the gritty women's prison drama Caged (1950), or a meek and twittery wife as exemplified by her uppity socialite Doris Upson in the freewheeling farce Auntie Mame (1958). She would have plenty of places to show off her range from the late 1930's on for over five decades.
She was born in New York City on November 22, 1901, the daughter of an editor of a trade paper who initially prompted her interest in theater. Lee started off on the stock stage as a teen and debuted on Broadway as part of the ensemble of the musical "The Bunch and Judy" with the dancing Astaires in 1922. She continued regularly on Broadway, despite many short runs, in more visible roles with "The Green Beetle" (1924), "Bachelor Brides" (1925), "The Matrimonial Bed" (1927), "June Moon" (1929), "Little Women" (as Meg) (1931), "Blessed Event" (1932), "Knock on Wood" (1935), "Stage Door" (1936) and "Michael Drops In" (1938).
Lee's film career began at the advent of sound. Making her debut as the star of the drama Strange Cargo (1929), she focused thereafter on theatre work until returning to the big screen with a vengeance in 1937 when she was featured in the RKO western Border Cafe (1937) starring Harry Carey. Appearing in scores of films, Lee made strong impressions as a stock player in such Warner Bros. films as Law of the Underworld (1938), The Sisters (1938), Invisible Stripes (1939), Saturday's Children (1940), City for Conquest (1940), Ladies Must Live (1940), Dangerously They Live (1941), Footsteps in the Dark (1941), Million Dollar Baby (1941), Kisses for Breakfast (1941), Now, Voyager (1942), In This Our Life (1942), and Mildred Pierce (1945), as well as other studio pictures of quality, including A Night to Remember (1942), Larceny with Music (1943), Mrs. Parkington (1944) and See My Lawyer (1945). Lee's most fondly-remembered role of that period would be that of Effie, the wry, altruistic Girl Friday to Humphrey Bogart' 's Sam Spade in the Warner film noir classic The Maltese Falcon (1941).
Lee also found time to do radio with a running part on the family drama "The O'Neils." She later appeared in the 50's detective drama "Let George Do It" and in "Suspense." She continued in post-WWII filming with roles including The Walls Came Tumbling Down (1946), Mother Wore Tights (1947), The Snake Pit (1948), The Fuller Brush Girl (1950) and Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951). During her potboiler run at Warner Bros., she seemed to play everything with a biting, cynical edge, from nurses to floozies, but in the mid-1950's, the more matronly actress suddenly seemed to blossom into a dithery and obtuse Billie Burke-like delight.
As she geared herself towards these comedy eccentrics, TV got a heads up on this delightful angle and signed her to play society doyenne Henrietta Topper, the flighty, quivery-voiced wife of Leo G. Carroll on the popular ghostly sitcom Topper (1953) which ran from 1953 to 1955. Henrietta was initially played on late 1930's film by none other than Billie Burke.
There would be other fun and fluttery film turns as snooty patricians or gossipy types in such films as Pillow Talk (1959), Wives and Lovers (1963) and 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964), to name a couple, in addition to standard dramas like Vertigo (1958), Summer and Smoke (1961) and A Girl Named Tamiko (1962). TV guest appearances would include "Circus Boy," "The Lineup," "Wagon Train," "Lawman," "Hawaiian Eye," "77 Sunset Strip," "The Real McCoys," "The Farmer's Daughter," "The Donna Reed Show" and "Hazel." She also had a recurring role on Mr. Adams and Eve (1957) and occasionally lent her voice to animated projects ("The Alvin Show").
In the mid-1960s Lee retired to travel and paint, but was coaxed back one more time to revive her role of Effie in the Maltese Falcon spoof The Black Bird (1975) starring George Segal as Sam Spade, Jr. The only one to join her from the original cast was Elisha Cook Jr.. Long and happily married to newsman-writer H. Thomas ("Tom") Wood of the book "The Lighter Side of Billy Wilder," Lee was plagued by health problems (heart disease) in later years. Following a New York trip with her husband and a guest appearance on a live segment of Good Morning America (1975) honoring her Topper (1953) TV series, the couple returned to their Laguna Hills, California home. She died just days later of a coronary occlusion on November 25, 1982, three days after her 81st birthday. Many references list the date of her death as November 21st, but her death certificate confirms the date of November 25th. The couple had no children.- Actor
- Soundtrack
One of the movies' most memorable tough guys, Simon Oakland actually began his career as a concert violinist, turning to acting in the late 1940s. After a long string of roles in Broadway hits, including "Light Up the Sky," "The Shrike" and "Inherit the Wind," Oakland made his film debut as the tough but compassionate journalist who speaks up for Susan Hayward's "Barbara Graham" in I Want to Live! (1958). He would go on to play a long series of tough guy types, albeit usually on the right side of the law, in such films as The Sand Pebbles (1966), Tony Rome (1967), Psycho (1960), and, most notably, nasty Lieutenant Schrank in West Side Story (1961). He was also a frequently seen face on TV, at one point serving as a regular or semi-regular on four different series at once. Much respected by his co-workers as a total professional, he died, after a long battle with cancer, one day after his 68th birthday.- Sheila Ryan was born on 17 September 1952 in Franklin Park, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for Road House (1989), Fertilize the Blaspheming Bombshell (1990) and Hunter (1984). She was married to James Caan. She died on 18 September 2012 in Canoga Park, California, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Lew Parker was born on 29 October 1907 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Are You with It? (1948), That Girl (1966) and The Kaiser Aluminum Hour (1956). He was married to Betty Kean. He died on 27 October 1972 in New York City, New York, USA.- Patrick Troughton was born in Mill Hill, London and was educated at Mill Hill School. He trained as an actor at the Embassy School of Acting in the UK and at Leighton Rollin's Studio for for Actors at Long Island, New York in the USA. During World War II he served in the Royal Navy and after the war ended he joined the Old Vic and became a Shakespearean actor. He won his most famous role as the second Doctor in Doctor Who (1963), in 1966 and played the role for three years. His hobbies included golf, sailing and fishing. He was a father of six (David, Jane, Joanna, Mark, Michael and Peter), a stepfather to Gill and Graham and a grandfather to Harry Melling, Jamie and Sam Troughton.
- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Clifford Parker Robertson III became a fairly successful leading man through most of his career without ever becoming a major star. Following strong stage and television experience, he made an interesting film debut in a supporting role in Picnic (1955). He then played Joan Crawford's deranged young husband in Autumn Leaves (1956) and was given leads in films of fair quality such as The Naked and the Dead (1958), Gidget (1959) and The Big Show (1961).
He was born to Clifford Parker Robertson Jr. and Audrey Olga (nee Willingham) Robertson. Robertson Jr. was described as "the idle heir to a tidy sum of ranching money". They have divorced when he was a year old, and his mother died of peritonitis a year later in El Paso, Texas. Young Cliff was raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Eleanor Willingham as well as an aunt and uncle.
He supplemented his somewhat unsatisfactory big-screen work with interesting appearances on television, including the lead role in Days of Wine and Roses (1958). Robertson was effective playing a chilling petty criminal obsessed with avenging his father in the B-feature Underworld U.S.A. (1961) or a pleasant doctor in the popular hospital melodrama The Interns (1962). However, significant public notice eluded him until he was picked by President John F. Kennedy to play the young JFK during the latter's World War II experience in PT 109 (1963).
Moving into slightly better pictures, Robertson gave some of his best performances: a ruthless presidential candidate in The Best Man (1964), a modern-day Mosca in an updated version of Ben Jonson's "Volpone", The Honey Pot (1967), and most memorably as a mentally retarded man in Charly (1968), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor. His critical success with Charly (1968) allowed him to continue starring in some good films in the 1970s, including Too Late the Hero (1970), The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972), and Obsession (1976).
He starred in, directed and co-produced the fine rodeo drama J W Coop (1971) and, less interestingly, The Pilot (1980). He remained active mostly in supporting roles, notably playing Hugh Hefner in Star 80 (1983). More recently, he had supporting parts in Escape from L.A. (1996) and Spider-Man (2002).
Robertson died on September 10, 2011, just one day after his 88th birthday in Stony Brook, New York.- Actor
- Director
Harry Landers was born on 3 September 1921 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Ben Casey (1961), Star Trek (1966) and Phantom from Space (1953). He was married to Jeanne Vaughn. He died on 9 September 2017 in Woodland Hills, California, USA.- Lovable, laid-back Jesse White made acting seem fun and easy. He was born Jesse Marc Weidenfeld in Buffalo, New York, and was raised in Akron, Ohio. He made his first amateur appearance on the local stage at age 15. Before breaking into professional theater in the 1940s, he held many different jobs, including selling beauty supplies and lingerie. Jesse got his start in vaudeville and burlesque, and eventually reached Broadway in 1943. The following year, he played the rascally, gruff-mannered asylum attendant in Harvey, starring Frank Fay. This role made him famous and he went on to appear with James Stewart in the movie version (Harvey (1950)). The 1950s was a decade of transition to the new medium of television. As a television regular, he did something that had never been done before - he appeared regularly in two series at the same time. In Private Secretary (1953) and The Danny Thomas Show (1953). This record stood for 13 years until Leo G. Carroll appeared simultaneously on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. (1966)).
One of Jesse's earliest television appearances is a 1961 episode of the sci-fi series Once Upon a Time (1961) in which he played, prophetically enough, The Repairman. Jesse would make guest appearances on dozens of television series, and appear in 60 movies, almost always playing a lovable rascal. Some of his last movie appearances were in the sci-fi movies Pajama Party (1964) and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966). Then the 50-year-old Jesse seized a terrific career opportunity. From 1968-1989, he would be television's second and longest running Maytag Repairman in a long series of commercials. For this, he made several hundred thousand dollars a year, for just a few days filming. Even though he was semi-retired during this time, Jesse appeared in a dozen movies, his last film being Matinee (1993), which was an homage to some of the 1950s-1960s sci-fi films of which he had been a part. Jesse always seemed to be having as much fun acting as the fans did watching him.
Jesse White died of a heart attack on January 9, 1997, only six days after his 80th birthday. He was interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California. - Costume Designer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Marianna Elliott was born on 23 June 1930 in China Grove, North Carolina, USA. She was a costume designer, known for Blue Thunder (1983), CBS Summer Playhouse (1987) and The Big Bus (1976). She was married to Alan Oppenheimer. She died on 21 June 2003 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Lew graduated from Ithaca College in 1951 and was a member of Delta Kappa fraternity. He attended graduate school at Columbia University from 1954-1955. He received Ithaca College's Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 2001. He founded the golf tournament for the Entertainment Industry Foundation and served as a member of the foundation's board. Lew began golf tournaments for St. John of God Care Center and Villa Scallabrini Retirement Home. In 1998 he was named man of the year by the Los Angeles Italian American Golf Association.- Priscilla Bonner was born on 17 February 1899 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA. She was an actress, known for Charley's Aunt (1925), 3 Bad Men (1926) and The False Alarm (1926). She was married to Dr. E. Bertrand Woolfan and Allen Wynes Alexander. She died on 21 February 1996 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Editor
- Editorial Department
- Production Manager
David Berlatsky was born on 21 July 1933 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an editor and production manager, known for The Farmer (1977), The Deep (1977) and King (1978). He died on 12 July 2018 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Ken Renard was born on 19 November 1905 in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He was an actor, known for True Grit (1969), Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) and Something of Value (1957). He died on 16 November 1993 in Los Angeles County, California, USA.
- Barbara Read was born on 29 December 1917 in Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada. She was an actress, known for Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), Three Smart Girls (1936) and The Spellbinder (1939). She was married to William Talman, Willard Edward Josephy, John Pershing Crawford and William Paul III. She died on 11 December 1963 in Laguna Beach, California, USA.
- Actress
Shirin Devrim was born on 3 March 1926 in Istanbul, Turkey. She was an actress, known for Wolf (1994). She was married to Robert Browning Trainer and Wesley Lau. She died on 6 March 2011 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
A minor prototype of the "Runyon-esque" character for more than three decades, Polish-born actor George E. Stone (né Gerschon Lichtenstein, on May 18, 1903) was, in actuality, a close friend of writer Damon Runyan and would play scores of colorful "dees, dem and dos" cronies throughout the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. With great names such as Johnnie the Shiek, Boots Burnett, Ice Box Hamilton, Wires Kagel, Ropes McGonigle, Society Max, and Toothpick Charlie, Stone delighted audiences in scores of crimers for decades.
A vaudeville and Broadway hoofer in the interim, the runt-sized Stone (5'3") finally scored in his first "grownup" part as the Sewer Rat in the silent drama 7th Heaven (1927) starring the once-popular romantic pair Charles Farrell and (Academy Award winner) Janet Gaynor. As "Georgie" sounded too child-like, he began billing himself as "George E. Stone." From there he was featured in a number of "tough guy" potboilers, particularly for Warner Bros. So typed was he as a henchman or thug, that he found few films outside the genre. His gunsels often possessed a yellow streak and could be both broadly comic or threatening in nature, with more than a few of them ending up on a morgue slab before film's end, including his Earl Williams on The Front Page (1931) and Otero in the classic gangster flick Little Caesar (1931).
Included in George's many films were a number of Oscar-quality pictures , including The Racket (1928), Cimarron (1931), Five Star Final (1931), 42nd Street (1933), Viva Villa! (1934), Anthony Adverse (1936), North West Mounted Police (1940), Pickup on South Street (1953), The Robe (1953), Broken Lance (1954), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Guys and Dolls (1955), Some Came Running (1958), Some Like It Hot (1959), Pocketful of Miracles (1961). Arguably, Stone's most popular, if not prolific, role was when he replaced Charles Wagenheim as The Runt in the second of the "Boston Blackie" film series, Confessions of Boston Blackie (1941) that starred Chester Morris as the title detective. The series lasted eight years.
Suffering from failing eyesight in later years, George was virtually blind by the late 1950s but, thanks to friends, managed to secure sporadic film and TV work. From 1958 on, Stone could be glimpsed in a recurring role on the popular courtroom series Perry Mason (1957) as a court clerk. Married to second wife Marjorie Ramey in 1946, 64-year-old George died following a stroke on May 26, 1967 in Woodland Hills, California, and was survived by two sisters.- Actress
- Music Department
- Additional Crew
Annie Ross was born on 25 July 1930 in Mitcham, Surrey, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Short Cuts (1993), Superman III (1983) and Throw Momma from the Train (1987). She was married to Sean Lynch. She died on 21 July 2020 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Lucille Meredith was born on 8 May 1916 in Elyria, Ohio, USA. She was an actress, known for They Live (1988), Matlock (1986) and Banning (1967). She was married to Roland Kibbee. She died on 1 May 2004 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Director
Del Close was born and raised in Manhattan, Kansas, and attended Kansas State University, after touring with a sideshow act for a period of time in his teenage years. In 1957, at the age of 23, he became a member of the St. Louis branch of "The Compass Players", the direct precursor of "The Second City", which opened in December, 1959. Most of the St. Louis cast went to Chicago, but Close chose New York and a budding career as a hip, young stand-up comic in competition with Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Bob Newhart, etc. That same year, he also appeared in the off-Broadway musical, "The Nervous Set", of which an original cast album exists. Close came to Chicago in 1960 and, more or less, made it his home for the rest of his life, always gravitating back there after a few months or even years elsewhere. Perhaps he understood instinctively the advice Paul Sills gave Stuart Gordon some years later: "Come to Chicago", they Close directed and performed at "The Second City", until he was fired (major substance abuse problems) in 1965.
He spent the next five years in San Francisco eating acid and touring with the "Merry Pranksters" on their famous psychedelic bus, creating light images for Grateful Dead, and working with The Committee, a North Beach equivalent of "Second City", which Close helped organize. It was at "The Committee" that he first began seriously to develop his ideas and techniques of long-form improvisation, although "Second City" had experimented with long-form as early as 1962. Close returned to Chicago in 1970 and set up a free, open-to-all workshop at the Kingston Mines Company Store, the café attached to the Kingston Mines Theatre Company on Lincoln Avenue (where the parking garage of Children's Memorial Medical Center now stands). He drilled his students -- everyone from acid-dropping love children to a vice-president of the Foote, Cone and Belding advertising agency -- in the basic principals of improv and theatre games, and in the specifics of "The Harold", a long-form improv technique developed by Close. At a time when most improvisation mainly focused on creating single scenes, Del devised "The Harold" as something not unlike a sonata form. Several themes would be established, a community of characters would be introduced, and then the resulting scenes would play off each other in comedic counterpoint -- characters from one environment moving to another and phrases and images recurring, each time accruing new meaning. Going to this from conventional sketches was like going from arithmetic to calculus. (Why was it called "The Harold"? When he introduced it, one of his students said, "Del, you've invented something, you get to name it". Del said, "Well, the Beatles called their haircut "Arthur", so I'll call this Harold". He later regretted the flipness. "Probably my most significant contribution and it's got that stupid name").
The weekly public performances at Kingston Mines sometimes had as many as 20 performers participating. After a few months, Close hand-picked a dozen of his best, and moved operations down the block to the Body Politic for twice-weekly workshops and Sunday night performances. He named the company "The Chicago Extension Improv Company", as an extension of his San Francisco work. The best-known players to emerge from the troupe were "Broadway" Betty Thomas, Dan Ziskie, Brian Hickey and Jonathan Abarbanel.
Before leaving Chicago, again, in 1972 to perform for Paul Sills in a Story Theatre production at the Mark Taper Forum in LA, Close and "The Chicago Extension" had begun to explore scenario improvs based on dreams. The techniques the "Extension" developed after Close left became Dream Theatre, which continued at the Body Politic over the next five years, although with different personnel. Close returned to Chicago in 1973 as resident director at "The Second City", a position he kept until 1982. It was during this decade that he taught and directed a long list of TV and film comedy greats, including John Belushi, Bill Murray, John Candy, Don DePollo, George Wendt, Audrie Neenan, Eugenie Ross-Leming, David Rasche, Shelley Long, Ann Ryerson, etc.
Upon leaving the troupe, Close pursued legitimate acting opportunities with a number of theatres, including Wisdom Bridge, Remains, Goodman and Steppenwolf. He won his Joseph Jefferson Award in 1985 in a radical "Hamlet", directed by Robert Falls at Wisdom Bridge. Close also did TV and film work, appearing in The Untouchables (1987) and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), among others. It was during this period that Close finally beat his long heroin addiction (although he continued to smoke cigarettes and marijuana), in part truly shocked by the excesses and death of John Belushi, and, in part, because, as he told Jonathan Abarbanel, "I've decided I want to live".
Close was enjoying his new theatrical vistas, as well as a successful professional partnership with Charna Halpern and ImprovOlympic, which allowed him to concentrate on further development of "The Harold", and on team improv. Close was 64 when he died of complications due to emphysema the evening of March 4, 1999, just five days shy of his birthday. He left no survivors, although he claimed to have fathered an illegitimate child by a woman in Minneapolis sometime in the late 1950s. Close requested in his will that his skull be given to the Goodman Theatre so that he could play Yorick in the company's next "Hamlet". However, Halpern, his executor, was unable to persuade doctors to remove Close's skull, and it was cremated along with the rest of his body.
Close was one of three titans of improvisational theatre who put it on the map, refined it, and turned it into the fixture of comedic and acting technique which it has become. The first was Viola Spolin, who started the work in the 1930s with her development of theatre games -- originally for children -- as exercises in imagination. She didn't utilize them for public performance. It was her son, Paul Sills, who was able to take theatre games and use them as the basis for development of satirical revue comedy. Sills and a group of brilliant cohorts, including Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Shelley Berman, Sheldon Patinkin and others made this work the focus of various company experiments in the mid-1950s, including the Compass Players in Chicago and St. Louis. In 1959, The Second City opened, co-founded by Sills, Howard Alk and Bernard Sahlins. Close arrived on the scene a year later. Within three years, both Sills and Alk had left the troupe to pursue other ventures. Alk continued to work in the improv field, but died young. Sills has retained improv and theatre games within his artistic repertory -- it is part of the basis of his Story Theatre -- but has not devoted his career to it. Close, then, became the third titan of improvisation after Spolin and Sills, and the only one to devote his artistic life and best theoretical thinking to it. He fully understood pain and suffering as a basis for comedy, as well as the nature and limitations of the comedic form. The Harold, the scenario, long-form improv -- call it what you will -- is his personal legacy to the field; while his own boundless, sometimes manic drive as a charismatic teacher and director have done more to establish improvisational theatre around the world than anything or anyone else. The explosion of improv troupes and teams and classes (the Museum of Contemporary Art offers an improv class, for example), and the inclusion of theatre games and improv exercises in standard acting curricula, are the result of the work of Spolin and Sills and Close. With specific regard to long-form improv and Close's own contribution, that legacy will grow even greater through the next generation, as his students and acolytes inherit the world of comedy.- Joe George was born on 30 July 1927 in Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Day by Day (1988), Across 110th Street (1972) and Rollercoaster (1977). He was married to Eleanor Ross. He died on 31 July 1992 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Al Checco was born on 21 July 1921 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for Bullitt (1968), The Party (1968) and Helter Skelter (1976). He died on 19 July 2015 in Studio City, California, USA.- In 1957, seven-year-old Stanley Fafara's mother took him to an open casting call for a new television series about a suburban family entitled "Leave It To Beaver." He had been working in commercials and television westerns since the age of four, and was somewhat of an old hand at auditions. He earned the part of "Whitey" Whitney, one of the lead character's best buddies. The show quickly became a hit, giving the young actor a dazzling taste of Hollywood fame and money which he would never forget.
Stanley enjoyed six years on the sitcom, and after the cancellation of "Leave It To Beaver" in 1963, Stanley attended North Hollywood High School. While there, he developed a liking for alcohol and soon learned how to use his fame to his best advantage. He became friendly with the pop-rock band Paul Revere and the Raiders, and reportedly moved in with the band for a time. He discovered hard drugs in the mid-1960s, an unfortunate obsession that would dog him for many years to come.
For a while, at his parents' insistence, he attempted living with his sister in Jamaica, where he tried his hand at painting. But he couldn't abstain from drug use. He returned to Los Angeles at age 22, where he was married briefly. Then, to support himself, he started dealing illegal drugs. Even worse, later he was convicted of breaking into pharmacies, and was sentenced to a year in jail.
After being incarcerated, Stanley tried his hand at being a roofer, waiter and janitor before descending back into drug use, particularly heroin. He was in and out of rehab centers for many years, eventually getting sober in 1995. He managed to turn his life around, and finally conquered his addictions, without any relapses. But, unfortunately, he had already contracted hepatitis C.
Eventually Stanley re-established a relationship with a daughter who he hadn't seen in twenty years, and became close to his nephew, Dez Fafara, of the rock band Coal Chamber. He also kept in contact with other child actors who were in recovery, and helped fellow addicts stay clean and sober. He started a business designing web sites, and was beginning to have some success. At the time of his death he had a flat in Portland's Mark Harfield Building, an apartment complex created for people in recovery from addiction.
Stanley Fafara was given two well-attended funerals. - Frank Bank was born on 12 April 1942 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Leave It to Beaver (1957), The New Leave It to Beaver (1983) and Life with Archie (1962). He was married to Rebecca Fink, Jeri Lynn Handelman and Marlene Kay Blau. He died on 13 April 2013 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Sue Randall was an actress who was born in 1935. Her primary roles were television instead of motion pictures with Desk Set (1957) being her only silver screen appearance. Sue's TV appearances were mostly guest roles in programs such as The Twilight Zone (1959), The Fugitive (1963), Bonanza (1959) and Gunsmoke (1955). Perhaps Sue is best remembered as the grade school teacher "Miss Landers" in Leave It to Beaver (1957). She appeared on the series, occasionally, from 1958-1962. This beautiful actress contracted lung cancer and died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on October 26, 1984. Sue was 49 years old.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Lew Ayres was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and raised in San Diego, California. A college dropout, he was found by a talent scout in the Coconut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles and entered Hollywood as a bit player. He was leading man to Greta Garbo in The Kiss (1929), but it was the role of Paul Baumer in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) that was his big break. He was profoundly affected by the anti-war message of that film, and when, in 1942, the popular star of Young Dr. Kildare (1938) and subsequent Dr. Kildare films was drafted, he was a conscientious objector. America was outraged, and theaters vowed never to show his films again, but quietly he achieved the Medical Corps status he had requested, serving as a medic under fire in the South Pacific and as a chaplain's aid in New Guinea and the Phillipines. His return to film after the war was undistinguished until Johnny Belinda (1948) - his role as the sympathetic physician treating the deaf-mute Jane Wyman won him an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. Subsequent movie roles were scarce; an opportunity to play Dr. Kildare in television was aborted when the network refused to honor his request for no cigarette sponsorship. He continued to act, but in the 1970s put his long experience into a project to bring to the west the philosophy of the East - the resulting film, Altars of the World (1976), while not a box-office success, won critical acclaim and a Golden Globe Award. Lew Ayres died in Los Angeles, California on December 30, 1996, just two days after his 88th birthday.- The brother of actress Tamara Shayne, he was to join the Moscow Arts Theatre, but World War I intervened, and then he fought with General Pyotr Wrangel and the White Armies. Although he received few significant roles, he was outstanding in None But the Lonely Heart (1944) as Ike Weber, and in The Stranger (1946) as Gen. Meinike, where his character dominates the first 15 minutes of the film. His performance in Danny Kaye's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) is also highly regarded. His performance in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) was considered outstanding, but was cut from the release print. Not an ambitious actor, Shayne was dedicated to his family, including his second wife, Marjorie.
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Hume Cronyn was a Canadian actor with a lengthy career. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in "The Seventh Cross" (1944).
Cronyn was born to a prominent family. His father was politician Hume Blake Cronyn (1864-1933), Member of Parliament for London, Ontario (term 1917-1921). The elder Cronyn was a grandson of both Benjamin Cronyn, first bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Huron (1802-1871) and politician William Hume Blake (1809-1870), first Chancellor of Upper Canada.
Cronyn's mother was Frances Amelia Labatt, heiress of the Labatt Brewing Company. Labatt remains the largest brewing company of Canada. Frances' father was businessman John Labatt (1838-1915), and her grandfather was company founder John Kinder Labatt (1803-1866). The Labatts were a prominent Irish-Canadian family, claiming descent from a French Huguenot family which settled in Ireland.
Cronyn was sent to a boarding school in Ottawa, where he studied from 1917 to 1921. The school was at the time called "Rockliffe Preparatory School", but has since been renamed to Elmwood School. Elmwood has become a school for girls. Cronyn attended first Ridley College in St. Catharines, and then McGill University in Montreal.
During his university years, Cronyn was a featherweight boxer. He was nominated for Canada's Olympic Boxing team for the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Cronyn was studying pre-law in the University, but switched his major to acting. He then enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he studied under theatrical director Max Reinhardt (1873-1943).
Cronyn made his Broadway debut in 1934, in the play "Hipper's Holiday". He had the minor role of a janitor. After a decade as a theatrical actor, Cronyn made his film debut in the psychological thriller "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943). He played crime fiction buff Herbie Hawkins. This was Cronyn's first collaboration with director Alfred Hitchcock. Cronyn later acted in "Lifeboat" (1944), and served as a screenwriter for both "Rope" (1948) and "Under Capricorn" (1949).
Cronyn was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Paul Roeder in the concentration camp themed film "The Seventh Cross" (1942). Roeder is a common factory worker in Nazi Germany, who risks his life and family to assist his old friend George Heisler (played by Spencer Tracy) to flee the country. While Cronyn's role was well-received, the award was instead won by rival actor Barry Fitzgerald (1888-1961).
In 1942, Cronyn married actress Jessica Tandy, and for many years they appeared together in theatre, film and television. The duo headlined the radio series "The Marriage" (1953-1954), depicting the difficulties of a professional woman in transitioning to the roles of housewife and mother. The duo also appeared in a television adaptation of the radio series, but it only lasted for 8 episodes.
Cronyn acting career mostly included supporting roles, but he found himself in the spotlight for the role of Joe Finley in the science fiction film "Cocoon". It became a surprise box office hit, and Cronyn was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actor. The award was instead won by a much younger actor, Michael J. Fox (1961-).
Cronyn returned to the role of Joe Finley in the sequel "Cocoon: The Return" (1988). While less successful than its predecessor, Cronyn's role was well-received. He was again nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actor, but again lost to a younger actor. The award was won by Tom Hanks (1956-).
Jessica Tandy died in 1994, and the widowed Cronyn married writer Susan Cooper in 1996. Cronyn had one of his last prominent roles in the film "Marvin's Room" (1996). He played the incapacitated and bed-ridden Marvin Wakefield, who has to be taken care of by his adult daughters. The cast of the film was collectively nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
Cronyn's last film role was the role of con-artist Sam Clausner in the television film "Off Season" (2001). Cronyn died in 2003 from prostate cancer. He was 91-years-old.- Jane Hoffman was born on 24 July 1911 in Seattle, Washington, USA. She was an actress, known for Deconstructing Harry (1997), *batteries not included (1987) and In & Out (1997). She was married to Richard McMurray, Billy Friedberg and James William McGlone Jr.. She died on 26 July 2004 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Lesley Woods was born on 22 August 1910 in Berwick, Iowa, USA. She was an actress, known for Nurse Betty (2000), Battlestar Galactica (1978) and Young Dr. Malone (1958). She was married to Richard McMurray. She died on 2 August 2003 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Terri DeMarco was born on 30 September 1930. She was an actress, known for Skirts Ahoy! (1952). She was married to Murray Hamilton. She died on 3 September 1999 in Washington, North Carolina, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Suzanne Pleshette achieved television immortality in her role as Bob Newhart's wife in the 1970s classic situation comedy, The Bob Newhart Show (1972). For her role as "Emily Hartley," wife of psychologist "Bob Hartley" (played by Bob Newhart), Pleshette was nominated for the Emmy Award twice, in 1977 and 1978. She was also nominated for an Emmy in 1962 for a guest appearance on the TV series, Dr. Kildare (1961) and, in 1991, for playing the title role in Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean (1990) in a 1990 TV movie. Her acting career lasted almost 50 years.
Suzanne Pleshette was born on January 31, 1937, in New York, New York, to Gene Pleshette, a TV network executive who had managed the Paramount Theaters in Manhattan and Brooklyn during the Big Band era, and the former Geraldine Kaplan, a dancer who performed under the pseudonym Geraldine Rivers. Pleshette claims that she was not an acting natural, but just "found" herself attending New York City's High School of the Performing Arts. After graduating high school, she attended Syracuse University for a semester before returning to NYC to go to Finch College, an elite finishing school for well-to-do young ladies. After a semester at Finch, Pleshette dropped out of college to take lessons from famed acting teacher Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
She made her Broadway debut in 1957 as part of the supporting cast for the play Compulsion (1959). Initially cast as "The Fourth Girl," she eventually took over the ingénue role during the play's run.
Blessed with beauty, a fine figure, and a husky voice that made her seem older than her years, she quickly achieved success on both the small and big screens. She made her TV debut, at age 20, in Harbourmaster (1957), then was chosen as the female lead opposite superstar Jerry Lewis in his 1958 comedy, The Geisha Boy (1958). On Broadway, she replaced Anne Bancroft in the Broadway hit The Miracle Worker (1962).
Once Pleshette started acting, her career never lagged until she was afflicted with cancer.
Her most famous cinematic role was in Alfred Hitchcock's classic, The Birds (1963), as the brunette schoolteacher jilted by the hero of the film, "Mitch Brenner" (played by Rod Taylor). Pleshette's warm, earthy character was a perfect contrast to the icy blonde beauty, "Melanie Daniels" (Tippi Hedren).
Frankly, it is hard to understand how Taylor's Mitch would jilt Pleshette's Annie, other than to work out Hitchcock's dark vision of society and psychosexual relations between the sexes, in which amoral blondes triumph for aesthetic rather than moral reasons.
Still, it is for Emily Hartley she will always be remembered, for both the original show and her part in another show that had the most clever sign-off episode in TV series history. Bob Newhart had enjoyed a second success during the 1980s with his TV sitcom Newhart (1982), and when he decided to end that series, he asked Suzanne Pleshette to come back. She did, reprising her tole of Emily in a final episode of Newhart, where Newhart woke up as Bob Hartley from "The Bob Newhart Show" in the bedroom of the Hartley's Chicago apartment, Pleshette's Emily at his side. Bob Hartley then told his wife Emily of a crazy dream he'd just had, where he was the proprietor of a Vermont inn overrun with eccentrics, the premise of the second show.
After "The Bob Newhart Show" ceased production, Suzanne Pleshette worked regularly on television, mostly in TV movies. Although she was a talented dramatic actress, she had a flair for comedy and, in 1984, she headlined her own series at CBS. She helped develop the half-hour sitcom, and even had the rare honor of having her name in the title. Suzanne Pleshette Is Maggie Briggs (1984), however, was not a success. She co-starred with Hal Linden in another short-lived CBS TV series, The Boys Are Back (1994), in the 1994-95 season, then had recurring roles in the TV series Good Morning, Miami (2002) and 8 Simple Rules (2002).
Pleshette was married three times: In 1964, she wed teen idol Troy Donahue, her co-star in the 1962 film Rome Adventure (1962) and in 1964's A Distant Trumpet (1964), but the marriage lasted less than a year. She was far more successful in her 1968 nuptials to Texas oil millionaire Tommy Gallagher, whom she remained married to until his death in 2000. After becoming a widow, she and widower Tom Poston (a Newhart regular) rekindled an old romance they had enjoyed when appearing together in "The Golden Fleecing," a 1959 Broadway comedy. They were married from 2001 until Poston's death, in April 2007.
Pleshette was diagnosed with lung cancer and underwent chemotherapy in the summer of 2006; she rallied, but in late 2007, she barely survived a bout of pneumonia. She died of respiratory failure on January 19, 2008, a few days shy of her 71st birthday.
Suzanne Pleshette was remembered as a gregarious, down-to-earth person who loved to talk and often would regale her co-stars with a naughty story. Newhart and his producers had picked her for the role of Emily in "The Bob Newhart Show" after watching her appearances with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), where she showed herself to be a first-rate raconteuse. Because she could hold her own with Newhart's friend Carson, it was felt she would be a perfect foil as Newhart's TV wife.
She accepted the part, and TV history was made.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Rough-and-tumble character actor Ross Hagen was born Leland Lando Lilly on May 21, 1938, in Williams, AZ, the son of Lando Irvin Lilly and Mary Alice Johnson. Handsome and rugged, with a highly distinctive deep gravelly voice and a commandingly raw masculine screen presence, Ross was frequently cast as charming and likable tough guys on both sides of the law in a colorful and eclectic array of films and TV shows.
Hagen began his acting career in the mid-'60s doing guest spots on various television programs before crossing over into exploitation theatrical features with leading roles in the biker flicks The Hellcats (1968), The Mini-Skirt Mob (1968) and Five the Hard Way (1969). Hagen's most memorable movie roles include smooth insurance agent Mike Harber in Wonder Women (1973), bumbling former coal miner turned wannabe mobster Charlie Jacobs in Bad Charleston Charlie (1973), vicious hitman Ray Mitchell in Avenging Angel (1985), backstabbing con artist Cory Thorton in Armed Response (1986), all-girl baseball team owner Midnight in Blood Games (1990), hard-nosed Army Capt. Jason Briggs in _Dinosaur Island (1989)_ (qv_, a skeptical sheriff in _Sideshow (1988)_ and private investigator Elwood Dick in Murder on the Yellow Brick Road (2005). Among the TV series he has guest-starred on are The Virginian (1962), The Big Valley (1965), The Fugitive (1963), The Invaders (1967), Daktari (1966) Bonanza (1959), Gunsmoke (1955), Mannix (1967), Kung Fu (1972), Mission: Impossible (1966), Cannon (1971), The Wild Wild West (1965) and The Fall Guy (1981). He acted in almost 20 pictures for director Fred Olen Ray. His wife Claire Polan acted in a few movies with Hagen (the couple also briefly ran an acting school). In addition to acting, Hagen directed seven films (which include the immensely enjoyable action oddity The Glove (1979) and the not half bad medical thriller B.O.R.N. (1989)), and he either co-produced and/or co-wrote a handful of features.
Ross died from cancer at age 72 on May 7, 2011.- Actress
- Producer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Claire Polan was born on 31 December 1937. She was an actress and producer, known for Wonder Women (1973), Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds (1995) and The Media Madman (1992). She was married to Ross Hagen. She died on 3 December 2003 in Woodland Hills, California, USA.- Paul Keenan was born on 10 December 1955 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Dynasty (1981), Honky Tonk Freeway (1981) and Days of Our Lives (1965). He died on 11 December 1986 in Canton, Massachusetts, USA.
- Michael Bryant was born on 5 April 1928 in London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971) and The Ruling Class (1972). He was married to Judith Coke and Josephine Martin. He died on 25 April 2002 in Richmond, London, England, UK.
- Actress
- Writer
Best known as Hammer Films' most seductive female vampire of the early 1970s, the Polish-born Pitt possessed dark, alluring features and a sexy figure that made her just right for Gothic horror! Ingrid Pitt (born Ingoushka Petrov) survived World War II and became a well-known actress on the East Berlin stage, however, she did not appear on screen until well into her twenties. She appeared in several minor roles in Spanish films in the mid 1960s, mostly uncredited, before landing the supporting role of undercover agent "Heidi", assisting Clint Eastwood and Richard Burton defeat the Third Reich in Where Eagles Dare (1968).
Her exotic looks and eastern European accent came to the notice of Hammer executives who cast Pitt as vampiress "Mircalla" in the sensual horror thriller The Vampire Lovers (1970). The film was a box office success with its blend of horror and sexual overtones, and Pitt was a beautiful, yet ferocious bloodsucker. Next up, Pitt was cast by Amicus Productions as another gorgeous vampire in the episode entitled "The Cloak" in the superb The House That Dripped Blood (1971). This time, Ingrid played an actress appearing in horror films alongside screen vampire Jon Pertwee, but then later reveals herself to be a real vampire keen on recruiting fresh blood.
Ingrid donned the fangs for her third vampire film in a row, Countess Dracula (1971) which was loosely based around the legend of the 16th century bloodthirsty Countess Elizabeth Bathory. Whilst not as successful, as the two prior outings, Ingrid Pitt had firmly established herself as one of the key ladies of British horror of the 1970s. She then appeared in the underrated at the time - now widely regarded as a classic - The Wicker Man (1973) as an uncooperative civil servant annoying Edward Woodward in his search for a missing child. Further work followed in The Final Option (1982), as "Elvira" in the adaptation of the John le Carré Cold War thriller Smiley's People (1982), Wild Geese II (1985) and The Asylum (2000).
Ingrid Pitt made regular appearances at horror conventions and fan gatherings, had penned several books on her horror career, and she relished talking to fans about her on screen vampiric exploits. Ingrid's fan club is known as the "Pitt of Horror"! A much loved and genuine cult figure of modern horror cinema, she died on November 23, 2010, just two days after her 73rd birthday.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Frank Albertson entered the film industry in 1922 as a prop boy, but soon graduated into acting. He was a prolific and reliable character actor who occasionally played the lead in a "B" picture, but was used mainly as a supporting actor in scores of films, often cast as a wisecracking cab driver, a cop or a reporter.- Claude Johnson was born on 17 May 1938 in Lassen County, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Adam-12 (1968), The Magical World of Disney (1954) and Space Raiders (1983). He died on 18 May 2009 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Jed Allan was born on 1 March 1935 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for General Hospital (1963), Days of Our Lives (1965) and Port Charles (1997). He was married to Janice Toby Druger. He died on 9 March 2019 in Palm Desert, California, USA.
- Actor
- Writer
Big, burly character actor, one of the toughest of screen heavies. New York-born Leo Gordon's combination of a powerful physique, deep, menacing voice and icy, withering glare was guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of even the bravest screen hero. Director Don Siegel, who used Gordon in his prison film Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), once said that "Leo Gordon was the scariest man I have ever met"--this coming from a man who had directed John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Bette Midler! Siegel wasn't talking about just Gordon's screen presence. As a "heavy", Gordon was the real deal--before becoming an actor (he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts), Gordon served five years in San Quentin State Prison for armed robbery (during which he was shot several times point-blank by police--and survived). "Riot in Cell Block 11" was filmed at Folsom State Prison--where Gordon also served time--and the Folsom warden remembered him as a troublemaker.At first he refused to allow the film to be shot there if Gordon was to be in it, but Siegel was able to convince him that Gordon was no threat to the prison.
Contrary to his image, though, Gordon was not just a one-note villain. He did play sympathetic parts on occasion, notably in the western Black Patch (1957)--which he also wrote--and in Roger Corman's civil rights drama The Intruder (1962), and turned in first-rate performances, especially in the latter film. Gordon was also a screenwriter, turning out several screenplays for Corman. He wasn't just limited to writing low-budget sci-fi films, either; he penned the screenplay for the WWII epic Tobruk (1967), writing in a meaty part for himself as Kruger, a tough sergeant in a platoon of German Jews masquerading as Nazi soldiers to help blow up a German oil storage facility.
Leo Gordon died in Los Angeles, CA, in 2000 at age 78 of heart failure.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
A movie-crazy kid in his native Oklahoma City, Robert Clarke decided at an early age that he wanted to be an actor, but nevertheless suffered from stage fright in his first school productions. He acted in University of Oklahoma radio plays and on stage at the University of Wisconsin before hitching a ride to California to try to break into the picture business. After screen tests at 20th Century-Fox and Columbia, Clarke landed a berth as a contract player at RKO. When RKO dropped his option three years later, he began freelancing. Clarke married Alyce King of the singing The King Sisters in 1956 and, a decade later, began appearing on TV and on tour with The King Family. His autobiography, To "B" or Not to "B": A Film Actor's Odyssey, was published in 1996.- Actress
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Soundtrack
Alyce King was born on 14 August 1915 in Payson, Utah, USA. She was an actress, known for On Stage Everybody (1945), Cuban Pete (1946) and Larceny with Music (1943). She was married to Robert Clarke and Sydney de Azevedo. She died on 21 August 1996 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Rance Howard was born on 17 November 1928 in Duncan, Oklahoma, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Nebraska (2013), Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) and Universal Soldier (1992). He was married to Judy Howard and Jean Speegle Howard. He died on 25 November 2017 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Robert Prosky was born on 13 December 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for Thief (1981), Broadcast News (1987) and Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). He was married to Ida Hove. He died on 8 December 2008 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Niall Toibin was born in Cork, Ireland in 1929. Married Judy Kenny (1931-2001) in 1957. Five children and six grand-children. He has had an illustrious acting career spanning over four decades. On October 29 2002 he received the CFT Excellence Award for Best Actor.- Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
Peter Graves was born Peter Duesler Aurness on March 18, 1926 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. While growing up in Minnesota, he excelled at sports and music (as a saxophonist), and by age 16, he was a radio announcer at WMIN in Minneapolis. After two years in the United States Army Air Force, he studied drama at the University of Minnesota and then headed to Hollywood, where he first appeared on television and later made his film debut in Rogue River (1951). Numerous film appearances followed, especially in Westerns. However, Graves is primarily recognized for his television work, particularly as Jim Phelps in Mission: Impossible (1966). Peter Graves died of a heart attack on March 14, 2010, just four days before his 84th birthday.- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Robert Archibald Shaw was born on August 9, 1927, in Westhoughton, Lancashire, England, the eldest son of Doreen Nora (Avery), a nurse, and Thomas Archibald Shaw, a doctor. His paternal grandfather was Scottish, from Argyll. Shaw's mother, who was born in Piggs Peak, Swaziland, met his father while she was a nurse at a hospital in Truro, Cornwall. His father was an alcoholic and a manic depressive; he committed suicide when Robert was only 12. He had three sisters--Elisabeth, Joanna and Wendy--and one brother, Alexander.
As a boy, he attended school in Truro and was quite an athlete, competing in rugby, squash and track events but turned down an offer for a scholarship at 17 to go to London, with further education in Cambridge, as he did not want a career in medicine but, luckily for the rest of us, in acting. He was also inspired by one of the schoolmasters, Cyril Wilkes, who got him to read just about everything, including all of the classics. Wilkes would take three or four of the boys to London to see plays. The first play Robert would ever see was "Hamlet" in 1944 with Sir John Gielgud at the Haymarket. Robert went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts with a £1,000 inheritance from his grandmother. He went on from the Academy, after two years (1946-1948) to Stratford-on-Avon, where he was directed by Gielgud, who said to Shaw, "I do admire you and think you've got a lot of ability, and I'd like to help you, but you make me so nervous." He then went on to make his professional stage debut in 1949 and tour Australia in the same year with the Old Vic.
He had joined the Old Vic at the invitation of Tyrone Guthrie, who had directed him as the Duke of Suffolk in "Henry VIII" at Stratford. He played nothing but lesser Shakespearean roles, Cassio in "Othello" and Lysander in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and toured Europe and South Africa with the company. Shaw was sold on Shakespeare and thought that it would be his theatrical life at that stage. He was discovered while performing in "Much Ado About Nothing" in 1950 at Stratford by Sir Alec Guinness, who suggested he come to London to do Hamlet with him. He then went on to his first film role, a very small part in the classic The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) with Guinness but a start nonetheless. It was also at this time that he married his first wife, Jennifer Bourne, an actress he had met while working at the Old Vic, and married her in Sallsbury, South Rhodesia, on August 1, 1952. Together they would have four daughters: Deborah, Penny, Rachel and Katherine.
He would also appear briefly in The Dam Busters (1955) and did the London production of "Tiger at the Gates" in June 1955 as Topman. He would also make "Hill in Korea" around that time and then, after taking on several jobs as a struggling actor and to support his growing family, he would be cast as Dan Tempest in The Buccaneers (1956). Shaw did not take his role seriously but made £10,000 for eight months' work. It was around that time that he wrote his first novel, "The Hiding Place." It was a success, selling 12,000 copies in England and about the same in France and in the United States. He also wrote a dramatization of it that was produced on commercial television in England, and Playhouse 90 (1956) aired a different dramatization in America. Around 1959, he became involved with well-known actress Mary Ure, who was married to actor John Osborne at the time. He slipped her his telephone number one night at 3 a.m. while visiting the couple, and she called him the next day. It was around then, in 1960, that Robert Shaw became a reporter for England's Queen magazine and covered the Olympics in Rome. Shaw and Ure acted together in Middleton's The Changeling at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1961. He was playing the part of an ugly servant in love with the mistress of the house, who persuades him to murder her fiance. Shaw and Ure had a child on August 31 even though they were still married to their other spouses. His wife, Jennifer, and Ure had children of his only weeks apart from each other. Ure divorced Osborne and married Shaw in April 1963. The couple was often quoted by the press as being "very much in love," and they would have four children together: Colin, Elizabeth, Hannah and Ian. That same year, after making the next two films, The Valiant (1962) and The Guest (1963), he made From Russia with Love (1963) and was unforgettable as blond assassin, Donald 'Red' Grant.
He also made Tomorrow at Ten (1963), as well as a TV version of Hamlet as Claudius. He would then film The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964) with Ure and then star in Battle of the Bulge (1965) as German Panzer commander Hessler. He wrote "The Flag" on the set of the film. He was nominated for his next role, as Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons (1966), an outstanding, unequal lead performance. He would write his fourth novel "The Man in the Glass Booth," which was later made into a play with Donald Pleasence and later into a film with Maximilian Schell. In 1967, he again starred with his wife in Custer of the West (1967) and went on to The Birthday Party (1969) and Battle of Britain (1969). One of his best performances of this decade was also as Spanish conqueror Pizarro in The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969). His last published novel, "A Card from Morocco," was also a big success and he went on to make Figures in a Landscape (1970) with Malcolm McDowell as two escaped convicts in a Latin American country. As the father of Churchill in Young Winston (1972), he was once again his brilliant self, stealing the scene from John Mills, Patrick Magee, Anthony Hopkins and Ian Holm. After his portrayal of Lord Randolph Churchill, he made A Reflection of Fear (1972), a horror movie with Ure, Sondra Locke and Sally Kellerman. As chauffeur Steven Ledbetter in The Hireling (1973), he falls in love with Sarah Miles, an aristocratic widow he helps recover from a nervous breakdown. The film took the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was quite a thought-provoking film.
It was his performances in the following two films--USA-produced The Sting (1973) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)--that Shaw became familiar once again to American audiences, but it was his portrayal as a grizzled Irish shark hunter named Quint, in Jaws (1975), that everyone remembers--even to this day. Hard to believe that Shaw wasn't that impressed with the script and even confided to a friend, Hector Elizondo: "They want me to do a movie about this big fish. I don't know if I should do it or not." When Elizondo asked why Shaw had reservations, Shaw said he'd never heard of the director and didn't like the title, "JAWS." It's also incredible that as the biggest box office film at the time, which was the first to gross more than $100 million worldwide and that he had ever been part of, he didn't make a cent from it because of the taxes he had to pay from working in the United States, Canada and Ireland. It was also during that time that he became a depressed recluse following the death of his wife, who had taken an accidental overdose of barbiturates and alcohol. Some have speculated throughout the years that her death was suicidal, but there was no evidence of that, and so it is mere sensationalism. Following Diamonds (1975), he made End of the Game (1975) and then delivered another brilliant performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin and Marian (1976). During the same year, he also made Swashbuckler (1976) with Geneviève Bujold and James Earl Jones, a very lighthearted pirate adventure.
His next film, Black Sunday (1977), with Shaw playing an Israeli counterterrorist agent trying to stop a terrorist organization called Black September, which is plotting an attack at the Super Bowl, was a big success both with critics and at the box office. I wasn't surprised, considering the depth to which he was also involved in writing the script, although he didn't receive billing for it. Shaw was very happy with the success of his acting career but remained a depressed recluse in his personal life until he finished Black Sunday (1977), when he found himself in love with his secretary of 15 years, Virginia Dewitt Jansen (Jay). They were wed on July 29, 1976, in Hamilton, Bermuda. He adopted her son, Charles, and the couple also had one son, Thomas. During his stay in Bermuda, Shaw began work on his next movie, The Deep (1977), which teamed him and writer Peter Benchley once again, which may have been a mistake in that everyone expected another Jaws (1975). At one point, discussing how bad the film was going, Shaw could be quoted as saying to Nick Nolte, "It's a treasure picture Nick; it's a treasure picture." It did well at the box office but not with critics, although they did hail Shaw as the saving grace. He had done it for the money, as he was to do with his next film, for he had decided when Ure died that life was short and he needed to provide for his 10 children.
In 1977, Shaw traveled to Yugoslavia, where he starred in Force 10 from Navarone (1978), a sequel to The Guns of Navarone (1961). He revived the lead role of British MI6 agent Mallory, originally played by Gregory Peck. He was a big box office draw, and some producers were willing to pay top wages for his work, but he felt restricted by the parts he was being offered. "I have it in mind to stop making these big-budget extravaganzas, to change my pattern of life. I wanted to prove, I think, that I could be an international movie star. Now that I've done it, I see the valuelessness of it." In early 1978, Shaw appeared in Avalanche Express (1979) which was to be his last film; in which he played General Marenkov, a senior Russian official who decides to defect to the West and reveals to a CIA agent, played by Lee Marvin, that the Russians are trying to develop biological weapons. An alcoholic most of his life, Shaw died--before the film was completed--of a heart attack at the age of 51 on August 28, 1978. In poor health due to alcoholism during most of the filming, he in fact completed over 90% of his scenes before the death of director Mark Robson two months earlier, in June 1978, brought production to a halt.
While living in Ireland and taking a hiatus from work, Shaw was driving from Castlebar to his home in Tourmakeady, Ireland, with wife, Virginia, and young son, Thomas, after spending the day playing golf with friends on a local course as well as shopping with Virginia in the town. As they approached their cottage, he felt chest pains which he claimed to Virginia had started earlier that day while he was playing golf but whose pains subsided. He pulled the car over a few hundred yards from his cottage and told her he would get out and walk the pains off. After taking four or five steps from the parked car, he collapsed by the side of the road, and his wife ran to the cottage to phone for help. An ambulance arrived 15 minutes later, and Shaw was taken to Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.- Actor
- Soundtrack
One of stage, screen and TV's finest transatlantic talents, slight, gravel-voiced, pasty-looking John Vincent Hurt was born on January 22, 1940, in Shirebrook, a coal mining village, in Derbyshire, England. The youngest child of Phyllis (Massey), an engineer and one-time actress, and Reverend Arnould Herbert Hurt, an Anglican clergyman and mathematician, his quiet shyness betrayed an early passion for acting. First enrolled at the Grimsby Art School and St. Martin's School of Art, his focus invariably turned from painting to acting.
Accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1960, John made his stage debut in "Infanticide in the House of Fred Ginger" followed by "The Dwarfs." Elsewhere, he continued to build upon his 60's theatrical career with theatre roles in "Chips with Everything" at the Vaudeville, the title role in "Hamp" at the Edinburgh Festival, "Inadmissible Evidence" at Wyndham's and "Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs" at the Garrick. His movie debut occurred that same year with a supporting role in the "angry young man" British drama Young and Willing (1962), followed by small roles in Appuntamento in Riviera (1962), A Man for All Seasons (1966) and The Sailor from Gibraltar (1967).
A somber, freckled, ravaged-looking gent, Hurt found his more compelling early work in offbeat theatrical characterizations with notable roles such as Malcolm in "Macbeth" (1967), Octavius in "Man and Superman" (1969), Peter in "Ride a Cock Horse" (1972), Mike in '"The Caretaker" (1972) and Ben in "The Dumb Waiter" (1973). At the same time he gained more prominence in a spray of film and support roles such as a junior officer in Before Winter Comes (1968), the title highwayman in Sinful Davey (1969), a morose little brother in In Search of Gregory (1969), a dim, murderous truck driver in 10 Rillington Place (1971), a skirt-chasing, penguin-studying biologist in Cry of the Penguins (1971), the unappetizing son of a baron in The Pied Piper (1972) and a repeat of his title stage role as Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs (1974).
Hurt shot to international stardom, however, on TV where he was allowed to display his true, fearless range. He reaped widespread acclaim for his embodiment of the tormented gay writer and raconteur Quentin Crisp in the landmark television play The Naked Civil Servant (1975), adapted from Crisp's autobiography. Hurt's bold, unabashed approach on the flamboyant and controversial gent who dared to be different was rewarded with the BAFTA (British TV Award). This triumph led to the equally fascinating success as the cruel and crazed Roman emperor Caligula in the epic television masterpiece I, Claudius (1976), followed by another compelling interpretation as murderous student Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment (1979).
A resurgence occurred on film as a result. Among other unsurpassed portraits on his unique pallet, the chameleon in him displayed a polar side as the gentle, pathetically disfigured title role in The Elephant Man (1980), and as a tortured Turkish prison inmate who befriends Brad Davis in the intense drama Midnight Express (1978) earning Oscar nominations for both. Mainstream box-office films were offered as well as art films. He made the most of his role as a crew member whose body becomes host to an unearthly predator in Alien (1979). With this new rush of fame came a few misguided ventures as well that were generally unworthy of his talent. Such brilliant work as his steeple chase jockey in Champions (1984) or kidnapper in The Hit (1984) was occasionally offset by such drivel as the comedy misfire Partners (1982) with Ryan O'Neal in which Hurt looked enervated and embarrassed. For the most part, the craggy-faced actor continued to draw extraordinary notices. Tops on the list includes his prurient governmental gadfly who triggers the Christine Keeler political sex scandal in the aptly-titled Scandal (1989); the cultivated gay writer aroused and obsessed with struggling "pretty-boy" actor Jason Priestley in Love and Death on Long Island (1997); and the Catholic priest embroiled in the Rwanda atrocities in Shooting Dogs (2005).
Latter parts of memorable interpretations included Dr. Iannis in Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), the recurring role of the benign wand-maker Mr. Ollivander in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010), the tyrannical dictator Adam Sutler in V for Vendetta (2005) and the voice of The Dragon in Merlin (2008). Among Hurt's final film appearances were as a terminally ill screenwriter in That Good Night (2017) and a lesser role in the mystery thriller Damascus Cover (2017). Hurt's voice was also tapped into animated features and documentaries, often serving as narrator. He also returned to the theatre performing in such shows as "The Seagull", "A Month in the Country" (1994), "Afterplay" (2002) and "Krapp's Last Tape", the latter for which he received the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award.
A recovered alcoholic who married four times, Hurt was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by the Queen in 2004, and Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in 2015. That same year (2015) he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In July of 2016, he was forced to bow out of the father role of Billy Rice in a then-upcoming London stage production of "The Entertainer" opposite Kenneth Branagh due to ill health that he described as an "intestinal ailment". Hurt died several months later at his home in Cromer, Norfolk, England on January 15, 2017, three days after his 77th birthday.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Jean Margaret Hodgkinson, known by the stage name Jean Alexander, was a British television actress. She was best known to British television viewers as Hilda Ogden in the soap opera Coronation Street (1960), a role she played from 1964 until 1987, and also as Auntie Wainwright in the long-running sitcom Last of the Summer Wine from 1988 to 2010. For her role in Coronation Street (1960), she won the 1985 Royal Television Society Award for Best Performance, and received a 1988 BAFTA TV Award nomination for Best Actress.
Alexander was born at 18 Rhiwlas Street Toxteth, Liverpool, in 1926, to Nell and Archie Hodgkinson; her father worked as an electrician and the family lived in a terraced house with no indoor lavatory. Alexander had an elder brother, Kenneth. She aspired to become an actress from an early age, and later said that she was inspired by variety acts she saw at the Pavilion theatre in her home city. She attended St Edmund's College for Girls in Princes Park, Toxteth and as a teenager, she joined an amateur theatre group and took elocution lessons.
Alexander spent five years as a library assistant in Liverpool before she began her acting career in 1949 at the Adelphi Guild Theatre in Macclesfield. She first appeared as Florrie in Sheppey by Somerset Maugham. She later worked in rep in Oldham, Stockport and York. Most of her parts were minor, and she also worked as a wardrobe mistress and stage manager. Her television debut is variously given as in the police series Z-Cars or in Deadline Midnight.
Alexander first appeared in Coronation Street in 1962 in a minor role as a landlady. Two years later, she returned to the programme as Hilda Ogden. She started playing the role on 8 July 1964, finally leaving on 25 December 1987. Ogden became highly popular with viewers and Alexander was often identified with her character.
The British League for Hilda Ogden was established in 1979 by Sir John Betjeman, Willis Hall, Russell Harty, Laurence Olivier and Michael Parkinson, among others. In 1984, hundreds of fans sent her condolence cards after the death of her on-screen husband Stan Ogden, played by Bernard Youens, who had died a few months before his character was killed off. In 1985 she received the Royal Television Society Award for her performance on Coronation Street. When she decided to leave the show in 1987, fans started "Save Hilda!" campaigns; however, many did not realise that she had made her own decision to depart. Her final scenes in the programme were aired on 25 December 1987, attracting nearly 27 million viewers, the highest number in the show's history.
In 2005 the UK TV Times poll voted her as the "Greatest Soap Opera Star of All Time".- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
José Ferrer was a Puerto Rican actor and film director. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for playing the title character in Cyrano de Bergerac (1950). Ferrer was the first Puerto Rican actor to win an Academy Award, and also the first Hispanic actor to win an Academy Award.
In 1912, Ferrer was born is San Juan, the capital city of Puerto Rico. Established as a Spanish colonial city in 1521, San Juan is the third oldest European-established capital city in the Americas, following Santo Domingo (established in 1496) and Panama City (established in 1521). Ferrer's father was Rafael Ferrer, a lawyer and author who was born and raised in San Juan. Ferrer's mother was María Providencia Cintrón, a native of the coastal town of Yabucoa. Ferrer's paternal grandfather was Dr. Gabriel Ferrer Hernández, who had campaigned for Puerto Rican independence from the Spanish Empire.
The Ferrer family moved to New York City in 1914, when José was 2-years-old. As a school student, Ferrer was educated abroad at the Institut Le Rosey, a prestigious boarding school located in Rolle, Switzerland. In 1933, Ferrer was enrolled at Princeton University, located in Princeton, New Jersey. He studied architecture, and wrote a senior thesis about French Naturalism and the literary works of Spanish naturalist writer Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921). In 1934, Ferrer transferred to Columbia University, where he studied Romance languages.
In 1934, while still a college student, Ferrer made his theatrical debut in Long Island-based theatre. In 1935, he was hired as the stage manager at the Suffern Country Playhouse. Later in 1935, Ferrer made his Broadway debut in the comedy play "A Slight Case of Murder" by Damon Runyon (1880-1946) and Howard Lindsay (1889-1968). This stage production of the play ran for 69 performances, with Ferrer appearing in all of them.
Ferrer's major success as a Broadway actor was performing in the play "Brother Rat" by John Monks Jr. (1910-2004) and Fred F. Finklehoffe (1910-1977). The play had a ran of 577 performances from 1936 to 1938. Among his subsequent theatrical appearances, the most successful were staged productions of Mamba's Daughters (1938), which ran for 163 performances, and "Charley's Aunt" (1940-1941), which ran for 233 performances. His role in "Charley's Aunt" required him to perform in drag, for the first time in his career.
Ferrer had one of the greatest theatrical successes of his career when playing the villainous Iago in a Broadway production of "Othello' by William Shakespeare. The production had a ran of 296 performances, lasting from 1943 to 1944. Ferrer played his most famous role as the historical figure of Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) in the 1946-1947 Broadway season. For this role, Ferrer won the 1947 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.
Ferrer made his film debut in the Technicolor epic "Joan of Arc" (1948). He played the historical monarch Charles VII of France (1403-1461, reigned 1422-1461), the ruler who Joan of Arc served during the Hundred Years' War. For his debut role, Ferrer was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The Award was instead won by rival actor Walter Huston (1883-1950).
Ferrer's success as a film actor, helped him gain more film roles in Hollywood-produced films. He played the "smooth-talking hypnotist David Korvo" in the film noir "Whirlpool" (1949), and dictator Raoul Farrago in the film noir "Crisis". He had a career highlight with a film adaptation of the play "Cyrano de Bergerac", where he played the title role. For this role, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.
His next critically successful role was that of artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) in the historical drama "Moulin Rouge" (1952). For this role, Ferrer was again nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The award was instead won by rival actor Gary Cooper (1901-1961). The film also marked a financial success for Ferrer, who received 40% of the film's profits.
Ferrer also appeared in other box office hits of the 1950s, such as the musical "Miss Sadie Thompson" (1953), the Navy-themed drama "The Caine Mutiny" (1954), and the biographical film "Deep in My Heart" (1954). Ferrer was also interested in becoming a film director. He made his directing debut with the film noir "The Shrike" (1955). His subsequent directing efforts included war film "The Cockleshell Heroes" (1955), the film noir "The Great Man" (1956), the biographical film I Accuse! (1958), and the comedy film "The High Cost of Loving" (1958). While still critically well-received, several of these films were box office flops. He took a hiatus from films productions.
Ferrer attempted a comeback as a film director with the sequel film "Return to Peyton Place" (1961) and the musical film "State Fair" (1962). Both films were box office flops. As an actor, Ferrer had a supporting role as a Turkish Bey in the historical drama "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962). While a relatively minor role, Ferrer considered the finest role of his film career.
In television, Ferrer gained a notable role as the narrator in the pilot episode of the hit sitcom "Bewitched" (1964-1972). In films, Ferrer started playing mostly supporting roles. He briefly returned to the role of Cyrano de Bergerac in the French adventure film "Cyrano and d'Artagnan". He had another notable role as a historical monarch, playing Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea (reigned 4 BC-39 AD) in the Biblical epic "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (1965).
Ferrer had his first notable role as a voice actor, playing the villain Ben Haramed in the Rankin/Bass Christmas "The Little Drummer Boy" (1968). But at this time, he started having legal troubles. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) accused Ferrer of still owing unpaid taxes since 1962.
Ferrer had many film roles in the 1970s, but no outstanding highlights. As a voice actor, he voiced Cyrano de Bergerac in an episode of "The ABC Afterschool Special". In the 1980s, Ferrer played a monarch again, playing Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV in the science fiction film "Dune". The film was an adaptation of the 1965 novel "Dune" by Frank Herbert (1920-1986), and Shaddam was one of the film's villains. This was among the last notable roles of Ferrer's long career.
Ferred retired from acting entirely in 1991, due to increasing health problems. His last theatrical performance was a production of the generation-gap drama "Conversations with My Father". Ferrer died in 1992, due to colorectal cancer. He was 80-years-old. He died in Coral Gables, Florida, but was buried in the Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Several of his children had acting careers of their own.- Actor
- Soundtrack
A Russian-born stage and screen actor who usually plays a military man in lots of spy thrillers and war films, Alexander Molchanoff was born in Petrograd in 1921. He was the eldest son of Colonel Paul Molchanoff, of the Semionovsky regiment. In 1924 his family left Russia via Finland and Germany finally ending up in London,where Alexander's grandmother had a house in Harley Street. Alexander was educated in Monmouth School. After that he became an assistant to the Russian tenor Vladimir Rosing at Covent Garden. Later he joined the RAF and after being invalided out he turned into Richard Marner and started his long career as a stage and film actor.
His first success was a title role in a stage version of Dracula where he made a memorable performance. He went on with his work in theatre but he started appearing in films as well. A small part in The African Queen (1951) was one of his first. He continued with roles in plenty of films where he usually played German or Russian officers. He acted in classic films such as The Dirty Dozen and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and also had a part in James Bond's You Only Live Twice.
While working as an actor he supplemented his income by working as a sales agent for a costume jewellery manufacturer. In the 1980s Marner played the part of Colonel Von Strohm in the British comedy classic "Allo Allo" which was his most famous and loved performance as an actor. His last film was The Sum of All Fears where he played the Russian president.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Thelma Ritter appeared in high school plays and was trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. In the 1940s she worked in radio. Her movie career was started with a bit part in the 1946 Miracle on 34th Street (1947). In the movie she played a weary Xmas shopper. Her performance in the short scene was noticed by Darryl F. Zanuck who insisted her role be expanded. During the period 1951 to 1963 Ms. Ritter was nominated for 6 Academy Awards. She is one of the most nominated actors who never won the statue. Shortly after a 1968 performance on The Jerry Lewis Show (1967), Ms. Ritter suffered a heart attack which proved fatal.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Walter Hampden was one of the great American stage actors and the only performer, aside from Maurice Evans, to play Hamlet three times on Broadway in the post-World War I-era. Born Walter Hampden Dougherty on June 30, 1879, in Brooklyn, New York, he learned his craft in London, where he made his debut as a professional actor in 1901 with the Frank Benson Stock Company. He spent six years apprenticing in England, where he was thoroughly trained as a classical actor. When he returned to the US in 1907, he toured with the great Russian actress Alla Nazimova in a presentation of the plays of Henrik Ibsen.
Hampden played "Hamlet" on Broadway in 1918-1919, in 1925 (with Ethel Barrymore as his Ophelia at his own Hampden's Theatre), and in 1934. His greatest role was that of Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac," a part he first performed in 1923 and that he repeated four more times on the Great White Way.
In 1925 he took over management of the Colonial Theatre, a vaudeville house on Upper Broadway, and renamed it Hampden's Theatre. After christening his house with his second Hamlet on October 10, 1925, he played there with his own company through 1930. Later, Hampden helped launch the American Repertory Theatre, playing Cardinal Wolsey in William Shakespeare's "Henry VIII."
Hampden became revered as the grand old man of the American theater. He was president of the Players' Club for 27 years. His last distinguished role on Broadway was in Arthur Millers parable of McCarthyism, "The Crucible," capping a career that spanned a half-century.
Walter Hampden died on June 11, 1955, just three weeks shy of his 76th birthday.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Demure British beauty Jean Simmons was born January 31, 1929, in Crouch End, London. As a 14-year-old dance student, she was plucked from her school to play Margaret Lockwood's precocious sister in Give Us the Moon (1944). She had a small part as a harpist in the high-profile Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), produced by Gabriel Pascal, starring Vivien Leigh, and co-starring her future husband Stewart Granger. Pascal saw potential in Simmons, and in 1945 he signed her to a seven-year contract to the J. Arthur Rank Organization, and she went on to make a name for herself in such major British productions as Great Expectations (1946) (as the spoiled, selfish Estella), Black Narcissus (1947) (as a sultry native beauty), Hamlet (1948) (playing Ophelia to Laurence Olivier's great Dane and earning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination), The Blue Lagoon (1949) and So Long at the Fair (1950), among others.
In 1950, she married Stewart Granger, and that same year, she moved to Hollywood. While Granger was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Rank sold her contract to Howard Hughes, who then owned RKO Pictures. Hughes was eager to start a sexual relationship with Simmons, but Granger put a stop to his advances. Her first Hollywood film was Androcles and the Lion (1952), produced by Pascal and co-starring Victor Mature. It was followed by Angel Face (1952), directed by Otto Preminger with Robert Mitchum. To further punish Simmons and Granger, Hughes refused to lend her to Paramount, where William Wyler wanted to cast her in the female lead for his film Roman Holiday (1953); the role made a star of Audrey Hepburn. A court case freed Simmons from the contract with Hughes in 1952. They settled out of court; part of the arrangement was that Simmons would do one more film for no additional money. Simmons also agreed to make three more movies under the auspices of RKO, but not actually at that studio - she would be lent out. MGM cast her in the lead of Young Bess (1953) playing a young Queen Elizabeth I with Granger. She went back to RKO to do the extra film under the settlement with Hughes, titled Affair with a Stranger (1953) with Mature; it flopped.
Simmons went over to 20th Century Fox to play the female lead in The Robe (1953), the first CinemaScope movie and an enormous financial success. Less popular was The Actress (1953) at MGM alongside Spencer Tracy, despite superb reviews; it was one of her personal favorites. Fox asked Simmons back for The Egyptian (1954), another epic, but it was not especially popular. She had the lead in Columbia's A Bullet Is Waiting (1954). More popular with moviegoers was Désirée (1954), where Simmons played Désirée Clary to Marlon Brando's Napoleon Bonaparte. Simmons and Granger returned to England to make the thriller Footsteps in the Fog (1955). She then starred in the musical Guys and Dolls (1955) with Brando and Frank Sinatra; she used her own singing voice and earned her first Golden Globe Award. Simmons played the title role in Hilda Crane (1956) at Fox, a commercial failure. So, too, were This Could Be the Night (1957) and Until They Sail (1957), both at MGM. Simmons had a big success, though, in The Big Country (1958), directed by Wyler. She starred in Home Before Dark (1958) at Warner Bros. and This Earth Is Mine (1959) with Rock Hudson at Universal.
Simmons divorced Granger in 1960 and almost immediately married writer-director Richard Brooks, who cast her as Sister Sharon opposite Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry (1960), a memorable adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel. That same year, she co-starred with Kirk Douglas in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) and played a would-be homewrecker opposite Cary Grant in The Grass Is Greener (1960).
Off the screen for a few years, Jean captivated moviegoers with a brilliant performance as the mother in All the Way Home (1963), a literate, tasteful adaptation of James Agee's "A Death in the Family". However, after that, she found quality projects somewhat harder to come by, and took work in Life at the Top (1965), Mister Buddwing (1966), Divorce American Style (1967), Rough Night in Jericho (1967), The Happy Ending (1969) (a Richard Brooks film for which she was again Oscar-nominated, this time as Best Actress).
Jean continued making films well into the 1970s. In the 1980s, she appeared mainly in television miniseries, such as North & South: Book 1, North & South (1985) and The Thorn Birds (1983). She made a comeback to films in 1995 in How to Make an American Quilt (1995) co-starring Winona Ryder and Anne Bancroft, and most recently voiced the elderly Sophie in the English version of Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle (2004). She now resided in Santa Monica, California, with her dog, Mr. Gates, and her two cats, Adisson and Megan. Jean Simmons died of lung cancer on January 22, 2010, nine days before her 81st birthday.- Hope Summers could portray a friendly neighbor or companion as she did for Frances Bavier's Aunt Bee character on many episodes of The Andy Griffith Show (1960) or a seemingly amiable satanist in Rosemary's Baby (1968).
Born in Mattoon, Illinois, she developed an early interest in the theater. Graduating from Northwestern School of Speech in Evanston, Illinois, she subsequently taught speech and diction there. This, in turn, led to her the head position in the Speech Department at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, teaching students privately on the side as well. In the 1930s Hope began to focus on acting. She found work in community and stock theaters in Illinois and earned some notice for putting on one-woman shows such as "Backstage of Broadway." She made use of her vocal eloquence by building up her resumé on radio, performing in scores of dramatic shows, including "Authors' Playhouse," "First Night," "Ma Perkins", and "Step-Mother".
In 1950 Hope transferred her talents to the new medium of television and earned a regular role on the comedy series Hawkins Falls: A Television Novel (1950). By the age of 50 she was customarily called upon to play slightly older than she was, appearing in a number of minuscule matron roles in such films as Zero Hour! (1957), Hound-Dog Man (1959), Inherit the Wind (1960), Spencer's Mountain (1963), The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966), Charley Varrick (1973) and her last, Foul Play (1978). She never had any major stand-out roles in movies; TV would be a more prolific choice of medium. Her gently stern, old-fashioned looks allowed her to be a part of many small-town settings, including Dennis the Menace (1959) and Petticoat Junction (1963), and in various western locales such as Maverick (1957) and Wagon Train (1957).
She played a rustic regular for many years on The Rifleman (1958). Usually assigned to play teachers, nurses and other helpful, nurturing types, her characters were also known to be inveterate gossips. Hope worked until close to the end of her life, passing away from heart failure in 1979. - Peter Hobbs was born on 18 January 1918 in Etretat, France. He was an actor, known for The Man with Two Brains (1983), The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Sleeper (1973). He was married to Carolyn Adams, Patience Cleveland, Parker McCormick and Ruth Margaret Davis. He died on 2 January 2011 in Santa Monica, California, USA.
- Patience Cleveland was born on 23 May 1931 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Donnie Darko (2001), Psycho III (1986) and Murder, She Wrote (1984). She was married to Peter Hobbs. She died on 27 May 2004 in Santa Monica, California, USA.
- Robert Russell was born on 24 May 1936 in Kent, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Sitting Target (1972), Witchfinder General (1968) and Blake's 7 (1978). He died on 12 May 2008 in Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, UK.
- Patricia Haines was born on 3 February 1932 in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Avengers (1961), The Last Shot You Hear (1969) and The Adventures of Don Quick (1970). She was married to Bernard Kay and Michael Caine. She died on 25 February 1977 in Northampton, Northamptonshire, England, UK.
- Music Artist
- Actor
- Music Department
Isaac Hayes, the second-born child of Eula and Isaac Hayes Sr., was raised by his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Willie Wade Sr. The child of a poor family, he grew up picking cotton in Covington, Tennessee. He dropped out of high school, but later his former high-school teachers to get his diploma, which he earned when he was 21. Otis Redding, Johnnie Taylor, The Bar-Kays, and Booker T. Jones (later of Booker T. & the M.G.s fame) were some of the "Memphis Sound" musical luminaries Hayes worked with during his early years as a budding musician and vocalist. He was a multi-talented composer, singer, and arranger who played the piano, vibraphone, and saxophone equally well. In 1971 he won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for a Motion Picture for the "Theme from Shaft" (1970) and was nominated for Best Original Dramatic Score for Shaft (1971).- David Graf was a Lancaster, Ohio native. He was a graduate of Lancaster High School in 1968. He went on to attend college at Otterbein University where he graduated in 1972 as a theater major. He attended Ohio State University grad school until 1975 when he dropped out to pursue an acting career in New York City. He broke into the movies with Four Friends (1981). David never forgot his roots. He always returned to Lancaster each year in October for the Fairfield County Fair. It was his way of keeping in touch. In a tragic coincidence, David passed away at the same age and condition that his father did. David is survived by his wife of 17 years, Kathryn Graf, two sons, Daniel and Sean; mother and brother who reside in Zanesville, Ohio.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
One of the brightest, most tragic movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Era, Judy Garland was a much-loved character whose warmth and spirit, along with her rich and exuberant voice, kept theatre-goers entertained with an array of delightful musicals.
She was born Frances Ethel Gumm on 10 June 1922 in Minnesota, the youngest daughter of vaudevillians Ethel Marian (Milne) and Francis Avent "Frank" Gumm. She was of English, along with some Scottish and Irish, descent. Her mother, an ambitious woman gifted in playing various musical instruments, saw the potential in her daughter at the tender age of just 2 years old when Baby Frances repeatedly sang "Jingle Bells" until she was dragged from the stage kicking and screaming during one of their Christmas shows and immediately drafted her into a dance act, entitled "The Gumm Sisters," along with her older sisters Mary Jane Gumm and Virginia Gumm. However, knowing that her youngest daughter would eventually become the biggest star, Ethel soon took Frances out of the act and together they traveled across America where she would perform in nightclubs, cabarets, hotels and theaters solo.
Her family life was not a happy one, largely because of her mother's drive for her to succeed as a performer and also her father's closeted homosexuality. The Gumm family would regularly be forced to leave town owing to her father's illicit affairs with other men, and from time to time they would be reduced to living out of their automobile. However, in September 1935 the Gumms', in particular Ethel's, prayers were answered when Frances was signed by Louis B. Mayer, mogul of leading film studio MGM, after hearing her sing. It was then that her name was changed from Frances Gumm to Judy Garland, after a popular '30s song "Judy" and film critic Robert Garland.
Tragedy soon followed, however, in the form of her father's death of meningitis in November 1935. Having been given no assignments with the exception of singing on radio, Judy faced the threat of losing her job following the arrival of Deanna Durbin. Knowing that they couldn't keep both of the teenage singers, MGM devised a short entitled Every Sunday (1936) which would be the girls' screen test. However, despite being the outright winner and being kept on by MGM, Judy's career did not officially kick off until she sang one of her most famous songs, "You Made Me Love You," at Clark Gable's birthday party in February 1937, during which Louis B. Mayer finally paid attention to the talented songstress.
Prior to this her film debut in Pigskin Parade (1936), in which she played a teenage hillbilly, had left her career hanging in the balance. However, following her rendition of "You Made Me Love You," MGM set to work preparing various musicals with which to keep Judy busy. All this had its toll on the young teenager, and she was given numerous pills by the studio doctors in order to combat her tiredness on set. Another problem was her weight fluctuation, but she was soon given amphetamines in order to give her the desired streamlined figure. This soon produced the downward spiral that resulted in her lifelong drug addiction.
In 1939, Judy shot immediately to stardom with The Wizard of Oz (1939), in which she portrayed Dorothy, an orphaned girl living on a farm in the dry plains of Kansas who gets whisked off into the magical world of Oz on the other end of the rainbow. Her poignant performance and sweet delivery of her signature song, 'Over The Rainbow,' earned Judy a special juvenile Oscar statuette on 29 February 1940 for Best Performance by a Juvenile Actor. Now growing up, Judy began to yearn for meatier adult roles instead of the virginal characters she had been playing since she was 14. She was now taking an interest in men, and after starring in her final juvenile performance in Ziegfeld Girl (1941) alongside glamorous beauties Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr, Judy got engaged to bandleader David Rose in May 1941, just two months after his divorce from Martha Raye. Despite planning a big wedding, the couple eloped to Las Vegas and married during the early hours of the morning on July 28, 1941 with just her mother Ethel and her stepfather Will Gilmore present. However, their marriage went downhill as, after discovering that she was pregnant in November 1942, David and MGM persuaded her to abort the baby in order to keep her good-girl image up. She did so and, as a result, was haunted for the rest of her life by her 'inhumane actions.' The couple separated in January 1943.
By this time, Judy had starred in her first adult role as a vaudevillian during WWI in For Me and My Gal (1942). Within weeks of separation, Judy was soon having an affair with actor Tyrone Power, who was married to French actress Annabella. Their affair ended in May 1943, which was when her affair with producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz kicked off. He introduced her to psychoanalysis and she soon began to make decisions about her career on her own instead of being influenced by her domineering mother and MGM. Their affair ended in November 1943, and soon afterward Judy reluctantly began filming Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), which proved to be a big success. The director Vincente Minnelli highlighted Judy's beauty for the first time on screen, having made the period musical in color, her first color film since The Wizard of Oz (1939). He showed off her large brandy-brown eyes and her full, thick lips and after filming ended in April 1944, a love affair resulted between director and actress and they were soon living together.
Vincente began to mold Judy and her career, making her more beautiful and more popular with audiences worldwide. He directed her in The Clock (1945), and it was during the filming of this movie that the couple announced their engagement on set on January 9, 1945. Judy's divorce from David Rose had been finalized on June 8, 1944 after almost three years of marriage, and despite her brief fling with Orson Welles, who at the time was married to screen sex goddess Rita Hayworth, on June 15, 1945 Judy made Vincente her second husband, tying the knot with him that afternoon at her mother's home with her boss Louis B. Mayer giving her away and her best friend Betty Asher serving as bridesmaid. They spent three months on honeymoon in New York and afterwards Judy discovered that she was pregnant.
On March 12, 1946 in Los Angeles, California, Judy gave birth to their daughter, Liza Minnelli, via cesarean section. It was a joyous time for the couple, but Judy was out of commission for weeks due to the cesarean and her postnatal depression, so she spent much of her time recuperating in bed. She soon returned to work, but married life was never the same for Vincente and Judy after they filmed The Pirate (1948) together in 1947. Judy's mental health was fast deteriorating and she began hallucinating things and making false accusations toward people, especially her husband, making the filming a nightmare. She also began an affair with aspiring Russian actor Yul Brynner, but after the affair ended, Judy soon regained health and tried to salvage her failing marriage. She then teamed up with dancing legend Fred Astaire for the delightful musical Easter Parade (1948), which resulted in a successful comeback despite having Vincente fired from directing the musical. Afterwards, Judy's health deteriorated and she began the first of several suicide attempts. In May 1949, she was checked into a rehabilitation center, which caused her much distress.
She soon regained strength and was visited frequently by her lover Frank Sinatra, but never saw much of Vincente or Liza. On returning, Judy made In the Good Old Summertime (1949), which was also Liza's film debut, albeit via an uncredited cameo. She had already been suspended by MGM for her lack of cooperation on the set of The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), which also resulted in her getting replaced by Ginger Rogers. After being replaced by Betty Hutton on Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Judy was suspended yet again before making her final film for MGM, entitled Summer Stock (1950). At 28, Judy received her third suspension and was fired by MGM, and her second marriage was soon dissolved.
Having taken up with Sidney Luft, Judy traveled to London to star at the legendary Palladium. She was an instant success and after her divorce from Vincente Minnelli was finalized on March 29, 1951 after almost six years of marriage, Judy traveled with Sid to New York to make an appearance on Broadway. With her newfound fame on stage, Judy was stopped in her tracks in February 1952 when she became pregnant by her new lover, Sid. At the age of 30, she made him her third husband on June 8, 1952; the wedding was held at a friend's ranch in Pasadena. Her relationship with her mother had long since been dissolved by this point, and after the birth of her second daughter, Lorna Luft, on November 21, 1952, she refused to allow her mother to see her granddaughter. Ethel then died in January 1953 of a heart attack, leaving Judy devastated and feeling guilty about not reconciling with her mother before her untimely demise.
After the funeral, Judy signed a film contract with Warner Bros. to star in the musical remake of A Star Is Born (1937), which had starred Janet Gaynor, who had won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929. Filming soon began, resulting in an affair between Judy and her leading man, British star James Mason. She also picked up on her affair with Frank Sinatra, and after filming was complete Judy was yet again lauded as a great film star. She won a Golden Globe for her brilliant and truly outstanding performance as Esther Blodgett, nightclub singer turned movie star, but when it came to the Academy Awards, a distraught Judy lost out on the Best Actress Oscar to Grace Kelly for her portrayal of the wife of an alcoholic star in The Country Girl (1954). Many still argue that Judy should have won the Oscar over Grace Kelly. Continuing her work on stage, Judy gave birth to her beloved son, Joey Luft, on March 29, 1955. She soon began to lose her millions of dollars as a result of her husband's strong gambling addiction, and with hundreds of debts to pay, Judy and Sid began a volatile, on-off relationship resulting in numerous divorce filings.
In 1961, at the age of 39, Judy returned to her ailing film career, this time to star in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but this time she lost out to Rita Moreno for her performance in West Side Story (1961). Her battles with alcoholism and drugs led to Judy's making numerous headlines in newspapers, but she soldiered on, forming a close friendship with President John F. Kennedy. In 1963, Judy and Sid finally separated permanently, and on May 19, 1965 their divorce was finalized after almost 13 years of marriage. By this time, Judy, now 41, had made her final performance on film alongside Dirk Bogarde in I Could Go on Singing (1963). She married her fourth husband, Mark Herron, on November 14, 1965 in Las Vegas, but they separated in April 1966 after five months of marriage owing to his homosexuality. It was also that year that she began an affair with young journalist Tom Green. She then settled down in London after their affair ended, and she began dating disk jockey Mickey Deans in December 1968. They became engaged once her divorce from Mark Herron was finalized on January 9, 1969 after three years of marriage. She married Mickey, her fifth and final husband, in a register office in Chelsea, London, England on March 15, 1969.
She continued working on stage, appearing several times with her daughter Liza. It was during a concert in Chelsea, London, England that Judy stumbled into her bathroom late one night and died of an overdose of barbiturates, the drug that had dominated her much of her life, on June 22, 1969 at the age of 47. Her daughter Liza Minnelli paid for her funeral, and her former lover James Mason delivered her touching eulogy. She is still an icon to this day with her famous performances in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), and A Star Is Born (1954).- Actor
- Soundtrack
Ray Bolger was born Raymond Wallace Bolger on January 10, 1904 in Dorchester, Massachusetts, to Anne C. (Wallace) and James Edward Bolger, both Irish-Americans. Ray began his career in vaudeville. He was half of a team called "Sanford and Bolger" and also did numerous Broadway shows on his own. Like Gene Kelly, he was a song-and-dance man as well as an actor. He was signed to a contract with MGM and his first role was as himself in The Great Ziegfeld (1936). This was soon followed by a role opposite Eleanor Powell in the romantic comedy Rosalie (1937). His first dancing and singing role was in Sweethearts (1938), where he did the "wooden shoes" number with redheaded soprano/actress Jeanette MacDonald. This got him noticed by MGM producers and resulted in his being cast in his most famous role, the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz (1939).
Surprisingly, even though the film was a success, Bolger's contract with MGM ended. He went to RKO Radio Pictures to make the romantic comedy Four Jacks and a Jill (1942). After this, Bolger went to Broadway, where he received his greatest satisfaction. In 1953, he turned to television and received his own sitcom, Where's Raymond? (1953), later changed to "The Ray Bolger Show". After his series ended, Bolger guest starred on many television series such as Battlestar Galactica (1978) and Fantasy Island (1977), and had some small roles in movies. In 1985, he co-hosted the documentary film That's Dancing! (1985) with Liza Minnelli. Ray Bolger died of bladder cancer in Los Angeles, California on January 15, 1987, five days after his 83rd birthday.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Charles Arnt was born on 20 August 1906 in Michigan City, Indiana, USA. He was an actor, known for Sudan (1945), The Great Gildersleeve (1942) and Dangerous Intruder (1945). He died on 6 August 1990 in Orcas Island, Washington, USA.- Lithuanian-born author and screenwriter, in the U.S. from 1894. Hoffenstein graduated from Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and subsequently went to work as a reporter for a local newspaper. By 1913, he had moved on to a position as a drama critic for the New York Evening Sun. At the same time, he contributed articles and short stories to Vanity Fair and a regular column to The New York Tribune, as well as writing poetry (one of his collections was entitled "Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing", 1928).
Hoffenstein settled in Los Angeles in 1931 and was employed as a screenwriter by Paramount until 1936, and by 20th Century Fox, from 1941 to 1948. He was twice an Oscar co-nominee, respectively for Best Adaptation and Best Screenplay for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) (considered one of the best adaptations of a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson) and Laura (1944). He was hired for the latter by supervising producer Bryan Foy. At the time, "Laura" was intended to be a B-movie. After Hoffenstein's revised screenplay (he was chiefly responsible for creating the acidulous character Waldo Lydecker, played brilliantly by Clifton Webb) was submitted, the picture was upgraded to A-status. Hoffenstein died just three years later at the age of 56. - Malcolm Tierney was born on 25 February 1938 in Manchester, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Braveheart (1995), The Saint (1997) and In the Name of the Father (1993). He was married to Andrea Schinko. He died on 18 February 2014 in the UK.
- Beatrix Lehmann was born on 1 July 1903 in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Doctor Who (1963), The Portrait of a Lady (1968) and Crime and Punishment (1979). She died on 31 July 1979 in London, England, UK.
- Renato Salvatori was born on 20 March 1933 in Seravezza, Tuscany, Italy. He was an actor, known for Z (1969), Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and The Organizer (1963). He was married to Annie Girardot. He died on 27 March 1988 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.
- Actor
- Additional Crew
With his whitish blond crew-cut, slow, menacing drawl and Germanic manner, Van Eyck was destined to be typecast as stereotypically scowling, arrogant Nazi officers. This was ironic, because he was an avowed anti-fascist who had left Germany in 1931 -- two years before Adolf Hitler came to power. The son of an aristocratic Prussian land owner, his father had intended him to embark on a military career. Instead, Peter spent his education in Berlin, where he trained as a musician.
In 1937, Van Eyck arrived in New York via Havana, Cuba, and became acquainted with the composer Aaron Copland. This led to a collaboration, as well as solo efforts, as composer and lyricist on a variety of songs for revue and cabaret. He also moonlighted as a pianist in bars and nightclubs. Around this time, he also began to work as a stage manager and arranger for Irving Berlin. Not afraid to try any job that came along, he tried his hand at driving a truck, and this, somehow, led him to Hollywood where he became a protege of the director Billy Wilder. Wilder prompted him to appear in front of the camera. In 1943, Peter commenced his career in films, by this time, as a naturalized American citizen. For the remainder of the decade, he had little to do but act an assembly line of parts as German officers and Gestapo henchmen in films like Five Graves to Cairo (1943) and Address Unknown (1944).
After the war, Van Eyck returned to Germany, where he was ironically cast as an American officer in Hallo, Fräulein! (1949). He also appeared in the comedy Royal Children (1950) ,with Jenny Jugo), as yet another American. He gave one of his very best performances in the role of Bimba in Henri-Georges Clouzot's high octane thriller The Wages of Fear (1953). In this famous French classic, he played one of a group of daredevil truck drivers traversing an impenetrable South American jungle with a deadly load of nitroglycerin.
Down the track, he found other good roles: as the womanising Frenchman Fribert in Rosemary (1958); as a police inspector investigating a famous murder in Dr. Crippen lebt (1958),aka ('Dr.Crippen lives'); a starring role as Paul Decker, who attempts the perfect murder of his wife in The Snorkel (1958); and one of two industrialist brothers in Helmut Käutner''s The Rest Is Silence (1959).
During the 60's, Van Eyck appeared increasingly in international co-productions of variable quality. Having settled in Switzerland and maintaining a residence in Paris, he was ideally placed to alternate between French, English and German film roles. He made three potboilers about the master criminal Dr. Mabuse which were extremely popular in Germany. His best performances during this period were as the East German intelligence officer Mundt, who is the target of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) and as Colonel General von Brock in the absorbing war drama The Bridge at Remagen (1969), which was also his last film.
Van Eyck died near Zurich in July,1969, of septicemia, just short of his 58th birthday.- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
With eye-catching good looks, blond Lithuanian-born actor Jacques Sernas (aka Jack Sernas) is best known for cutting a fine figure in European costumers and spectacles in the 1950s and 1960s. Born on July 30, 1925, his father died when he was a year old and the boy would be raised by his mother in Paris. After schooling there he joined up as a French Resistance fighter during W.W.II. Captured by German forces and imprisoned for over a year in Buchenwald, he was eventually freed.
Sernas originally studied medicine in the early postwar years but acting soon caught his fancy. He made an unbilled movie debut in the French film Miroir (1947) starring Jean Gabin. In the years to come Italian/European action films would dominate his screen time. Audience attention grew in proportion with a variety of comedies, dramas, costumers and adventures including Lost Youth (1948) [Lost Youth]; Stolen Affections (1948) [Stolen Affections]; Il falco rosso (1949) [The Red Falcon] in which he played the title role; Bluebeard (1951); the costumed romancer Anita Garibaldi (1952) [Anita Garibaldi]; and Lulù (1953) co-starring with Valentina Cortese.
The actor hit major international attention after being cast as Paris opposite sex sirens Rossana Podestà and Brigitte Bardot in Helen of Troy (1956) and Hollywood itself took brief notice, handing him a starring role in the Warner Bros. war film Jump Into Hell (1955) and a few TV guest parts. When nothing came of it, he returned to Italy and was for the most part relegated to supporting characters, making one lasting impression as a fading matinée idol in Fellini's masterpiece La Dolce Vita (1960).
Other Italian/European films in and around this decade included Goddess of Love (1957) co-starring Belinda Lee; The Nights of Lucretia Borgia (1959); Duel of Champions (1961) starring Alan Ladd; The Centurion (1961) in which he co-starred with John Drew Barrymore; Duel of the Titans (1961) starring musclemen Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott; 55 Days at Peking (1963) starring Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner, which filmed in Spain; The Secret Agents (1965) [aka The Dirty Game] starring Henry Fonda, which filmed in Germany; the "spaghetti western" Fort Yuma Gold (1966), Midas Run (1969) starring Fred Astaire and Richard Crenna, which filmed in Italy and England; and the Italian/US co-production Hornets' Nest (1970), a war drama starring Rock Hudson.
As the years rolled by Sernas was seen less and less on film and more and more on Italian TV. Into the millennium he appeared in a few elderly roles, one being a 2003 TV movie about Pope John XXIII. Jacques died at age 89 on July 3, 2015 in Rome.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
George Harris Kennedy, Jr. was born on February 18, 1925 in New York City, to Helen (Kieselbach), a ballet dancer, and George Harris Kennedy, an orchestra leader and musician. Following high school graduation, Kennedy enlisted in the United States Army in 1943 with the hope to become a fighter pilot in the Army Air Corps. Instead, he wound up in the infantry, served under General George S. Patton and distinguished himself with valor. He won two Bronze Stars and four rows of combat and service ribbons.
A World War II veteran, Kennedy at one stage in his career cornered the market at playing tough, no-nonsense characters who were either quite crooked or possessed hearts of gold. Kennedy notched up an impressive 200+ appearances in both television and films, and was well respected within the Hollywood community. He started out on television Westerns in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), Rawhide (1959), Maverick (1957), Colt .45 (1957), among others) before scoring minor roles in films including Lonely Are the Brave (1962), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and The Flight of the Phoenix (1965).
The late 1960s was a very busy period for Kennedy, and he was strongly in favor with casting agents, appearing in Hurry Sundown (1967), The Dirty Dozen (1967) and scoring an Oscar win as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Cool Hand Luke (1967). The disaster film boom of the 1970s was also kind to Kennedy and his talents were in demand for Airport (1970) and the three subsequent sequels, as a grizzled police officer in Earthquake (1974), plus the buddy/road film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) as vicious bank robber Red Leary.
The 1980s saw Kennedy appear in a mishmash of roles, playing various characters; however, Kennedy and Leslie Nielsen surprised everyone with their comedic talents in the hugely successful The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), and the two screen veterans exaggerate themselves again, in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994). From 1988-1991, he also played Ewing family nemesis Carter McKay on the CBS prime-time soap opera Dallas (1978).
Kennedy also played President Warren G. Harding in the miniseries Backstairs at the White House (1979) and had a long standing role on the CBS daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless (1973). He remained busy in Hollywood and lent his distinctive voice to the animated Cats Don't Dance (1997) and the children's action film Small Soldiers (1998). A Hollywood stalwart for nearly 50 years, he is one of the most enjoyable actors to watch on screen. His last role was in the film The Gambler (2014), as Mark Wahlberg's character's grandfather.
George Kennedy died of natural causes in Middleton, Idaho on February 28, 2016, only ten days after his 91st birthday.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Of Greek descent on both sides, the son of immigrants, Savalas was a soldier during World War II, although most of his enlistment records were destroyed in a fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1973. He later studied psychology at Columbia University under the GI Bill.
Iconically bald, he often played character roles, sometimes as sadists or psychotics. He became famous in the 1970s when his role as Det. Theo Kojak in the TV movie The Marcus-Nelson Murders (1973) was expanded into the gritty Kojak (1973) TV series (1973-78).- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Shirley Douglas was born on 2 April 1934 in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada. She was an actress, known for Dead Ringers (1988), Wind at My Back (1996) and Lolita (1962). She was married to Donald Sutherland and Timothy Emil Sicks. She died on 5 April 2020 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Clint Walker was born Norman Eugene Walker in Hartford, southwestern Illinois, to Gladys Huldah (Schwanda), a Czech immigrant, and Paul Arnold Walker, who was from Arkansas. Walker almost single-handedly started the western craze on TV in the 1950s as Cheyenne Bodie in Cheyenne (1955). Growing up in the Depression era meant taking work wherever you could get it, and Walker found himself working at such jobs as Mississippi River boatman, carnival roustabout and golf caddy. He quit high school at 16 and at age 17 joined the Merchant Marine. After the war he worked his way cross country, including working in the oil fields in Brownwood, Texas, and wound up in California, where he worked as an undercover agent for a private detective agency on the Long Beach waterfront. After a while he took a job as a security officer at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. It was there that he met quite a few Hollywood people who told him that his size, physique and good looks would serve him well in Hollywood and that he should go to Los Angeles and give it a try. He met actor Henry Wilcoxon, who introduced him to director Cecil B. DeMille, and Walker found himself playing the part of a Captain of the Guard in The Ten Commandments (1956). Someone from Warner Bros. saw the film, found out that Walker was under contract to producer Hal B. Wallis, bought up Walker's contract and gave him the lead in "Cheyenne". The series was a huge hit and spawned countless other western series, from Warners and other studios. However, Walker was dissatisfied with the way Warners was handling his career -- they would let other contract players make films, for example, but he wasn't allowed to -- and that triggered a dispute which ended up with him taking a walk from the show. He and Warners eventually settled their disagreements. When the show ended Walker began to get supporting parts in features, his biggest and most successful one being The Dirty Dozen (1967). He starred in the well-received The Night of the Grizzly (1966) and the not-so-well received None But the Brave (1965), a WWII film that was Frank Sinatra's one and only stab at directing. He also played the lead in Baker's Hawk (1976), and turned in a good performance as a villain in the TV movie Scream of the Wolf (1974). Lately he and several of his colleagues from "The Dirty Dozen" provided the voices for the animated film Small Soldiers (1998).- Actor
- Writer
Al Mancini was born on 13 November 1932 in Steubenville, Ohio, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Falling Down (1993), Miller's Crossing (1990) and The Dirty Dozen (1967). He was married to Carlyn Clayton and Denny Dayviss. He died on 12 November 2007 in London, Ohio, USA.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Richard Attenborough, Baron Attenborough of Richmond-upon-Thames, was born in Cambridge, England, the son of Mary (née Clegg), a founding member of the Marriage Guidance Council, and Frederick Levi Attenborough, a scholar and academic administrator who was a don at Emmanuel College and wrote a standard text on Anglo-Saxon law. The family later moved to Leicester where his father was appointed Principal of the university while Richard was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA).
His film career began with a role as a deserting sailor in In Which We Serve (1942), a part that contributed to his being typecast for many years as a coward in films like Dulcimer Street (1948), Operation Disaster (1950) and his breakthrough role as a psychopathic young gangster in the film adaptation of Graham Greene's novel, Brighton Rock (1948). During World War II, Attenborough served in the Royal Air Force.
He worked prolifically in British films for the next 30 years, and in the 1950s appeared in several successful comedies for John Boulting and Roy Boulting, including Private's Progress (1956) and I'm All Right Jack (1959). Early in his stage career, Attenborough starred in the London West End production of Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap", which went on to become one of the world's longest-running stage productions. Both he and his wife were among the original cast members of the production, which opened in 1952 and (as of 2007) is still running.
In the 1960s, he expanded his range of character roles in films such as Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) and Guns at Batasi (1964), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the regimental Sergeant Major. He appeared in the ensemble cast of The Great Escape (1963), as Squadron Leader "Roger Bartlett" ("Big X"), the head of the escape committee.
In 1967 and 1968, he won back-to-back Golden Globe Awards in the category of Best Supporting Actor, the first time for The Sand Pebbles (1966), starring Steve McQueen, and the second time for Doctor Dolittle (1967), starring Rex Harrison. He would win another Golden Globe for Best Director, for Gandhi (1982), in 1983. Six years prior to "Gandhi", he played the ruthless "Gen. Outram" in Indian director Satyajit Ray's period piece, The Chess Players (1977). He has never been nominated for an Academy Award in an acting category.
He took no acting roles following his appearance in Otto Preminger's The Human Factor (1979), until his appearance as the eccentric developer "John Hammond" in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993). The following year, he starred as "Kris Kringle" in Miracle on 34th Street (1994), a remake of the 1947 classic. Since then, he has made occasional appearances in supporting roles, including the historical drama, Elizabeth (1998), as "Sir William Cecil".
In the late 1950s, Attenborough formed a production company, "Beaver Films", with Bryan Forbes and began to build a profile as a producer on projects, including The League of Gentlemen (1960), The Angry Silence (1960) and Whistle Down the Wind (1961), also appearing in the first two of these as an actor.
His feature film directorial debut was the all-star screen version of the hit musical, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), and his acting appearances became more sporadic - the most notable being his portrayal of serial killer "John Christie" in 10 Rillington Place (1971). He later directed two epic period films: Young Winston (1972), based on the early life of Winston Churchill, and A Bridge Too Far (1977), an all-star account of Operation Market Garden in World War II. He won the 1982 Academy Award for Directing for his historical epic, Gandhi (1982), a project he had been attempting to get made for many years. As the film's producer, he also won the Academy Award for Best Picture. His most recent films, as director and producer, include Chaplin (1992), starring Robert Downey Jr. as Charles Chaplin, and Shadowlands (1993), based on the relationship between C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham. Both films starred Anthony Hopkins, who also appeared in three other films for Attenborough: "Young Winston", "A Bridge Too Far" and the thriller, Magic (1978).
Attenborough also directed the screen version of the hit Broadway musical, "A Chorus Line" (A Chorus Line (1985)), and the apartheid drama, Cry Freedom (1987), based on the experiences of Donald Woods. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director for both films. His most recent film as director was another biographical film, Grey Owl (1999), starring Pierce Brosnan.
Attenborough is the President of RADA, Chairman of Capital Radio, President of BAFTA, President of the Gandhi Foundation, and President of the British National Film and Television School. He is also a vice patron of the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund.
He is also the patron of the UWC movement (United World Colleges), whereby he continually contributes greatly to the colleges that are part of the organization. He has frequented the United World College of Southern Africa(UWCSA) Waterford Kamhlaba. His wife and he founded the "Richard and Sheila Attenborough Visual Arts Center". He also founded the "Jane Holland Creative Center for Learning" at Waterford Kamhlaba in Swaziland in memory of his daughter, who died in the Tsunami on Boxing Day, 2004. He passionately believes in education, primarily education that does not judge upon color, race, creed or religion. His attachment to Waterford is his passion for non-racial education, which were the grounds on which Waterford Kamhlaba was founded. Waterford was one of his inspirations for directing Cry Freedom (1987), based on the life of Steve Biko.
He was elected to the post of Chancellor of the University of Sussex on 20 March 1998, replacing the Duke of Richmond and Gordon. A lifelong supporter of Chelsea Football Club, Attenborough served as a director of the club from 1969-1982 and, since 1993, has held the honorary position of Life Vice President. He is also the head of the consortium, "Dragon International", which is constructing a film and television studio complex in Llanilid, Wales, often referred to as "Valleywood".
In 1967, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He was knighted in 1976 and, in 1993, he was made a life peer as Baron Attenborough, of Richmond-upon-Thames in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.
On 13 July 2006, Attenborough and his brother, David Attenborough, were awarded the titles of Distinguished Honorary Fellows of the University of Leicester "in recognition of a record of continuing distinguished service to the University". Lord Attenborough is also listed as an Honorary Fellow of Bangor University for his continued efforts to film making.
Attenborough has been married to English actress Sheila Sim, since 1945. They had three children. In December 2004, his elder daughter, Jane Holland, as well as her daughter Lucy and her mother-in-law, also named Jane, were killed in the tsunami caused by the Indian Ocean earthquake. A memorial service was held on 8 March 2005, and Attenborough read a lesson at the national memorial service on 11 May 2005. His grandson, Samuel Holland, and granddaughter, Alice Holland, also read in the service.
Attenborough's father was principal of University College, Leicester, now the city's university. This has resulted in a long association with the university, with Lord Attenborough a patron. A commemorative plaque was placed on the floor of Richmond Parish Church. The university's "Richard Attenborough Centre for Disability and the Arts", which opened in 1997, is named in his Honor.
His son, Michael Attenborough, is also a director. He has two younger brothers, the famous naturalist Sir David Attenborough and John Attenborough, who has made a career in the motor trade.
He has collected Pablo Picasso ceramics since the 1950s. More than 100 items went on display at the New Walk Museum and Art Gallery in Leicester in 2007; the exhibition is dedicated to his family members lost in the tsunami.- Actor
- Soundtrack
John Banner, who achieved television immortality for his portrayal of the Luftwaffe POW camp guard Sergeant Schultz in the TV series Hogan's Heroes (1965), was born on Tuesday, January 28th, 1910 in Vienna., which in 1938 was then the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The 28-year-old Banner, who was Jewish, was forced to flee from his homeland to avoid being captured after the Anschluss (union) between Nazi Germany and Austria. This occurred while he was engaged in a tour of Switzerland with an acting company. Unable to return to Austria due to Hitler's anti-Semitic policies of persecution, Banner emigrated to the United States of America as a political refugee.
Soon after reaching the United States, John Banner, who knew nothing of the English language, was hired to be a Master of Ceremonies to a musical revue. He had to learn his lines phonetically. The total immersion paid off in that he rapidly picked up English. His accent and "Nordic" look ironically meant that Banner was typecast in several films as Nazis during the 1940s. He survived the war portraying the same villains who were murdering every member of his family, who had been left behind in Austria. All of them perished in concentration camps; his biological parents and all of his siblings perished.
At the time of his emigration to the US, John Banner weighed a trim 180 pounds. He eventually added another 100 pounds to become the chubby character actor America would come to know and love in regular appearances in movies and on TV. He specialized in foreign-official types, such the his role as Soviet Ambassador in Fred MacMurray's comedy movie, Kisses for My President (1964).
In 1965, Bing Crosby Productions cast Banner as "Sergeant Schultz", in the wartime comedy television sitcom, Hogan's Heroes (1965). The show debuted on Friday evening, September 17th, 1965, on CBS channels. The series was a take-off on Billy Wilder's Stalag 17 (1953), although with much more humor and less drama. The bumbling Dutch uncle who Banner portrayed was a continent apart from the wickedly evil Nazis he had portrayed during World War II. Spectacularly inept as a guard of Allied prisoners of war, Sergeant Schultz was prone to ignoring the irregularities that transpired in the fictional Stalag 13, bellowing firmly, "I know nothing! I see nothing! Nothing!!!"
John Banner enjoyed the role but demurred when accused of portraying a "cuddly" Nazi. He told TV Guide, "I see Schultz as the representative of some kind of goodness in every generation."
Banner and Werner Klemperer (who portrayed the equally comical and bumbling "Colonel Klink", and who, like Banner, was a Jewish refugee who had escaped Hitler's reach), co-starred with the series' leading actor, Bob Crane, in The Wicked Dreams of Paula Schultz (1968), a bizarre movie "comedy" about a defecting East German athlete. The picture bombed and the trio went back to turning out the highly popular series without losing too much pride or momentum.
After the cancellation of Hogan's Heroes (1965) in 1971, Banner was signed for another TV show set in the past. The Chicago Teddy Bears (1971), which was set during the Prohibition era. Banner's "Uncle Latzi" was a close cousin of Schultz, but lightning did not strike twice and the series was canceled after only 13 episodes in a three month season.
John Banner died on his 63rd birthday, Sunday, January 28th, 1973, in his hometown and country of Vienna, Austria. His 63 year (including 16 Leap Days) lifespan consisted of 23,011 total days, equaling 3,287 weeks and 2 days.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Enjoyably larger-than-life character actor Hugh Emrys Griffith was born in Marianglas, Anglesey, North Wales, to Mary (Williams) and William Griffith. Griffith left the world of banking (having been employed as a teller) after winning a scholarship to study acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Though he graduated a gold medalist, top of his class of 300, the war put the brakes on his career and he enlisted in the Army in 1940, serving with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in India for six years. Following the war, he enjoyed a successful career on the stage, appearing in Shakespearean plays in Stratford-upon-Avon with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was particularly noteworthy as "Falstaff" and, his favourite role, "King Lear", which he played both in English and in his native Welsh. On the other side of the Atlantic, he made his Broadway debut in 1951 and had a hit starring in "Look Homeward Angel" (1957-59) with Anthony Perkins and Jo Van Fleet. The play ran for 564 performances and earned Griffith a Tony Award nomination for the part of "W.O. Gant". He later jokingly remarked, that, when the producers asked him to play a man from the deep south, he (Griffith) had understood that to mean a man from the deep south of Wales.
Griffith started his film career proper in 1948 with films like Dulcimer Street (1948), followed by the wonderful black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) at Ealing in 1949. A portly, thickly-bearded character with bushy eyebrows, ruddy complexion and a resonant voice, Griffith made a lasting impression for his many portrayals of eccentric, bucolic and, sometimes, raucous types. In 1959, he won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his "Sheikh Ilderim", who supplies Charlton Heston with the chariot race-winning white stallions in Ben-Hur (1959). He was equally memorable as the lecherous "Squire Western" in Tom Jones (1963), a role for which he was nominated for both an Oscar and a BAFTA Award as Best British Actor. He later appeared in the critically-acclaimed musical version of Oliver! (1968), as a hilarious "King Louis" in Start the Revolution Without Me (1970) and one of Vincent Price's many victims in Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972). On television, he was a noteworthy, rolling-eyed "Long John Silver" in a 1960 version of "Treasure Island", Treasure Island (1960), and roving-eyed funeral director "Caradog Lloyd-Evans" in the comedy Grand Slam (1978).
Griffith was a lifelong friend (and drinking companion) of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.- Greta Kukkonen was born on 25 January 1911 in Helsinki, Finland. She was married to Gregory Peck. She died on 19 January 2008 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Green-eyed beauty Jean Elizabeth Peters flashed across the screen as a bright star during her relatively brief tenure in Hollywood. After just seven years under contract to 20th Century-Fox (1947-54), she joined in the reclusive lifestyle of her eccentric billionaire husband, Howard Hughes, and all but vanished from public view.
Jean was born in Canton, Ohio, in October of 1926. Her father died when she was ten years old. Her mother owned a tourist camp on the outskirts of town and there was enough money around to send Jean to college. She received the latter part of her tertiary education at Ohio State University and graduated with a diploma qualifying her as an English teacher. A campus popularity contest she won ended her plans as an English teacher because it came with a trip to Hollywood and a screen test. In short order, "Miss Ohio State University" was offered a seven-year contract at 20th Century-Fox with a starting salary of $150 a week.
After being picked by Darryl F. Zanuck to co-star opposite Tyrone Power in the studio's splashy big-budget swashbuckler Captain from Castile (1947), Jean came to the attention of Howard Hughes. She discreetly dated him for the remainder of the decade and continued to live an unpretentious lifestyle, rarely seen in public and eschewing the Hollywood nightlife and parties. A self-confessed tomboy, she rarely wore make-up in private and preferred to dress in jeans rather than glamorous gowns. She and her mother lived in a smallish bungalow in Bel-Air, paid for by Hughes. After relative success in her second feature, Deep Waters (1948), she became increasingly dissatisfied with the prissy roles she was assigned in her subsequent efforts. She was no shrinking violet when it came to defending her interests: she refused outright to appear in Yellow Sky (1948) (a part she thought as "too sexy") and Sand (1949), and her contract was consequently terminated. She returned to farm life in Ohio, but was back in New York in 1951 to be screen-tested by Elia Kazan for the epic biopic of Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata! (1952), shot on location in Mexico with Marlon Brando in the lead.
Fox wisely used Jean during the next few years for similarly unglamorous outdoor roles, notably as the titular heroine of Anne of the Indies (1951), a tempestuous girl living in the Georgia swamps in Lure of the Wilderness (1952), a gum-chewing dame innocently involved in espionage in Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street (1953) and as Burt Lancaster's Indian squaw in the hard-hitting western Apache (1954). She got good notices in all of these films and was now recognized as a major star. As a result, she was cast in the prestigious film noir Niagara (1953), opposite Joseph Cotten and Marilyn Monroe (both of whom she befriended) and the Spencer Tracy western Broken Lance (1954). Under a new contract with Fox, Jean was now no longer in a position to refuse an assignment and, though basically unhappy with her part in Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), the picture proved to be one of her most popular pictures to date. Her next film, A Man Called Peter (1955), was to be her swan song. Following a 33-day marriage to a Texan oilman which ended in a whirlwind divorce, Jean finally married Howard Hughes in a secret ceremony and left public life for the next 13 years. She never gave interviews and retreated to an isolated hilltop mansion above the Santa Monica Mountains. In 1969 she resurfaced, studying for a degree in sociology at UCLA under an assumed name.
When Jean's marriage to Hughes ended in June 1971, the actress settled for the relatively modest sum of $70,000 a year and happily waived any further claims on the estate. That same year she got married for the third time, to 20th Century-Fox vice-president Stan Hough. Her screen career was briefly resuscitated when she was cast in the miniseries Arthur Hailey's the Moneychangers (1976) and she was last seen in an episode of Murder, She Wrote (1984). She devoted her final years to charitable causes and never spoke in public about her years with Howard Hughes.- Myrtle Reeves was born on 15 January 1897 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. She was an actress, known for Beautifully Trimmed (1920), A Kentucky Cinderella (1917) and The Grip of Evil (1916). She was married to Oliver Hardy. She died on 18 January 1983 in Garden Grove, California, USA.
- Ida Kitaeva was born on 26 January 1899 in Chita, Russian Empire [now Russia]. She was an actress, known for One Moment Please (1956) and This Is Your Life (1950). She was married to Stan Laurel and Raphael. She died on 26 January 1980 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Actress
Judy Lewis was born and raised in Los Angeles, the love child of actors Loretta Young and Clark Gable. At the time of her birth, Gable was married, Young was unmarried. Young covered up the fact of her pregnancy, later announcing she had adopted the girl. Judy graduated from Marymount High School in 1953. She moved to New York and began her acting career, landing a small part on Ponds Theater (1953). She appeared on Broadway in Jean Kerr's "Mary, Mary", and became a featured performer on a number of daytime series, including The Secret Storm (1954) and General Hospital (1963). Judy had a successful career behind the camera, as well. She produced the daytime soap, Texas (1980), and also won a Writer's Guild award for her work on Search for Tomorrow (1951). In the 1980s, Judy went on to earn a bachelor's degree and then a master's degree in clinical psychology at Antioch University, Los Angeles. She took a few years off to write. Her first book, the autobiographical Uncommon Knowledge, about her parent's affair and her childhood, made her an acclaimed author. She began working in the field she always was fascinated with: psychology. She received her marriage and family - child counseling license (M.F.C.C) in the early 1990s. She now uses her talent, her love of introspection and her awareness in spirituality to help others. She has one daughter, Maria, and two grandsons, Michael and Gregory.- She came to Los Angeles alone and signed a contract with Warner Brothers in. In December 1934 she married Daniel J.Danker Jr., head of the J. Walter Thompson Hollywood Office. He was a Vice-President and later a board member of the Company. The Thompson Hollywood Office produced many popular radio programs such as the Lux Radio Theater. Danny Danker was known as the Mayor of Hollywood because he knew, and was friends with, so many people in the radio and picture businesses. The Dankers had one child, Suzanne. Danker died suddenly in July, 1944 and Lorena went to work for The Thompson Co., getting actors for the Cecil B. DeMille, Lux Radio Theater. She met Louis B. Mayer, as part of her job, and they married in December, 1948. Mayer adopted Suzanne. Mayer's own daughters, Edith Goetz(Mrs William) and Irene Selznick(Mrs. David) were about Lorena's age. Mayer, perhaps the top movie producer of his era, ran MGM for Loews until the early fifties. Mayer died in late 1957. Lorena married Michael Nidorf in 1961. Nidorf was a successful show business agent and manager. Nidorf died in the late seventies. .
- Jack Tenner was born on 2 October 1920 in Kiev, Ukraine. He was an actor, known for The '70s (2000). He was married to Georgann Johnson and Hallie Jean Bialac. He died on 13 October 2008 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Debralee Scott was born in 1953 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, as the youngest of four daughters born to William Henry Scott, Jr. (March 1, 1914, Scranton, Pennsylvania - September 17, 1993, Scranton, Pennsylvania) and Marion Jones (February 11, 1916, Scranton, Pennsylvania - October 1993, Pittston, Pennsylvania); Debralee's older sisters were producer Carol Ann Scott (later known as Scott Bushnell) and Beverly Hills talent manager Jerilyn Scott, and Ardith Lynn Scott, who had died in infancy. When Scott's sisters were young adults, they relocated from Elizabeth, New Jersey, to San Francisco, California.
Scott was raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, where she was a high school cheerleader. In Elizabeth, she worked at a movie theater while she attended a Greek-Latin course at Stroudsburg High School. In 1969, the 16-year-old Scott joined her older sisters in San Francisco; she graduated from Galileo Academy of Science and Technology in 1971 and started acting at the American Conservatory Theater.
Scott's very first acting job was in 1971 as an uncredited extra in "Dirty Harry (1971)"; she played the nude corpse of Ann Mary Deacon, a 14-year-old girl who was kidnapped, raped, and buried alive by the Scorpio Killer. Following this, Scott played the girlfriend of Harrison Ford in "American Graffiti (1973)" ("Ain't he neat?" her character says).
In the mid 1970s, Scott relocated to Los Angeles, California, and got an agent. Scott played semi-recurring character Rosalie 'Hotsy' Totsy on Welcome Back, Kotter (1975). At the age of 22, Scott starred in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976) as the titular character's younger sister Cathy and reprised the role for the show's sequel Forever Fernwood (1977). After "Forever Fernwood" ended, Scott became a host for celebrity quiz game shows, including The $10,000 Pyramid (1973), Super Password (1984), and Match Game (1973). Scott also acted in Pandemonium (1982) and Police Academy (1984). She was in relationships with Desi Arnaz Jr., Micky Dolenz, Richard Dreyfuss, Jonathan Frakes, Peter P. Lucia Jr., Neal Schon, and Ringo Starr.
In the mid 1990s, Scott became a talent manager for the agency Empowered Artists. On December 15, 1995, she went to the Greenwich Village bar Hogs & Heifers and met her future fiancé, John Dennis Levi, an NYPD officer working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Over time, Scott lived at Levi's house in Brooklyn, New York, with his mother Joanne Priavity. In 2001, while on a cross-country trip, Levi proposed to Scott at a hotel in Winslow, Arizona, and she accepted. They planned to get married in March 2002, but Levi was killed in the South Tower of the World Trade Center during the September 11 attacks. Heartbroken, Scott became an alcoholic and developed cirrhosis of the liver.
In March 2005, Scott relocated from Brooklyn to Fernandina Beach, Florida, to care for her eldest sister, Carol Ann, who was suffering from emphysema and heart problems. One day, she collapsed and fell into a coma for several days. It was not known what caused the coma. On March 31, 2005, Scott woke up in the hospital, underwent eye surgery, and was released two days later on her birthday, appearing to be fine. Three days later, on April 5, 2005, Scott lay down to take a nap and died in her sleep at the age of 52. An autopsy was performed, but no specific cause of death was listed, and Scott was cremated.- Carolyn Mitchell was born Barbara Ann Thomason on January 25, 1937 in Phoenix, Arizona, to Don and Helen Thomason. While attending Emerson Elementary School in Phoenix, she became known as the prettiest girl in Phoenix. Her family moved to Inglewood, California in 1951, a part of Los Angeles, a mecca for beautiful and ambitious young woman desiring to be spotted.
While attending Inglewood's Morningside High School, she began entering beauty pageants, and in October 1953, her dreams came true when she was crowned "Miss Venus." In 1954, she began attending the Hollywood Professional School, where she started using weights to tone her figure to better compete in beauty pageants. In 1954, she was crowned "Queen of the Championships of Southern California." Later that year, she won the "Miss Muscle Beach" and "Miss Surf Festival" titles.
In 1955, she had the honor of being named "Miss Huntington Beach," followed by the "Miss Van Ness," "Miss Bay Beach," "Miss Southwest Los Angeles," "Miss Pacific Coast," and "Queen of Southern California" titles. After graduating from school, she became a dance instructor for Arthur Murray. As "Tara Thomas," she became a model, appearing in "Modern Man" in December 1957.
Early in 1958, Fate intervened in the guise of car salesman Bill Gardner, who introduced her to Hollywood legend Mickey Rooney at a nightclub. The smitten Rooney, hot again after winning the third of his four Oscar nominations the year before (for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for "The Bold and the Brave") and appearing in a box office hit as the eponymous lead in 'Don Siegel's "Baby Face Nelson" (1957), bought her a $4,500 fur coat. On April 12th, 1958, she reportedly took an overdose of sleeping pills. The day after the incident, she told the press that the Mick tried to resuscitate her by pushing her into his swimming pool. The incident later was revealed to be a publicity stunt. By June, Mickey had separated from his fourth wife, actress Elaine Devry, and bought a new house in Sherman Oaks which she moved into to play house with the diminutive movie star.
Before becoming the fifth Mrs. Mickey Rooney, Thomason made two low-budget, indie features, including "Cry Baby Killer" (1958) with future superstar Jack Nicholson. Thomason and Mickey were secretly married in Mexico on December 1, 1958. In March of 1959, the three-months-pregnant Thomason threatened to commit suicide if Rooney didn't get a divorce and marry her, though Mickey tried to convince here that they were already married. On September 13, 1959, Barbara Ann Thomason Rooney gave birth to a daughter, Kelly Ann, at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. Rooney announced he had wed Thomason in a Mexican ceremony. Later that year, she appeared in the November 1959 issue of "Gala" magazine.
Due to the dubious nature of their Mexican marriage, Mickey remarried Thomason in 1960, with the Reverend Douglas Smith presiding at his Los Angeles church, making their marriage legal. Their second daughter, Kerry Yule, was born on December 30, 1960. They would have two more children, a son Michael Joseph, born on April 2, 1962, and a third daughter, Kimmy Sue, born four years to the day after their first, on September 13, 1963 by cesarean section.
In August 1963, the heavily pregnant Barbara accompanied Mickey to Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, for the filming of "The Secret Invasion." According to his second autobiography, Mickey had been cheating on her, and on July 4th, 1964, Mickey had met a stripper and movie extra in Atlantic City. In late August, his new girlfriend created a row when Barbara Ann accompanied Mickey to the set for the filming of his television series, "Mickey." After the incident, Barbara had a massive fight with Mickey, and in September '64, they both were in contact with divorce attorneys. However, they didn't divorce but decided to move out of Beverly Hills. They sold their Beverly Hills home and moved into a Brentwood house they bought relatively cheap for only $65,000 as both of the previous two occupants had died at the house in freak accidents. It would prove equally unlucky for Barbara.
After becoming friendly with French actor Alain Delon, who was in Los Angeles in the Fall of 1964 to try to make a go at Hollywood. It was Delon who introduced Mickey and Barbara to his stand-in Milos Milosevics, a 24-year-old Yugoslavian actor Delon has brought with him from Paris. Mickey had to go on location to the Philippines to film a picture, and he made the fatal mistake of asking his new friend Milosevics to look after his his wife. Milosevics agreed. With the cat away, the mice did play. Barbara reportedly took Milosevics as a lover to get back at Mickey for his philandering.
While Mickey was in the Philippines, Barbara Ann accompanied her new lover Milosevics to northern California, to the location shoot of "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming," in which he has a bit part. They were still having an affair when Mickey returned and moved out of the Brentwood house after finding out. The couple filed for an official separation on December 1965, after which Milosevics moved into the Brentwood house to live with Barbara and her four children by Mickey.
After learning she was planning to file a lawsuit for separate maintenance, Mickey filed for divorce on January 19, 1966, citing mental cruelty. In his suit, Mickey asked the court for a restraining order to keep Milosevics out of the Brentwood house. Barabra began to panic when she learned that she might lose her children in a custody battle due to her adultery. On his part, Milosevics became jealous when he realized she was considering returning to Mickey. He was even more incensed when he heard a tape recording of a conversation between Barbara and Mickey, discussing the divorce suit. On the tape, made by a private detective on January 20, 1966 with the help of Barbara and Milosevics, she tells Mickey that she will not see Milosevics again, even as a friend. Afterwards, Mickey checked in to the hospital for treatment of an exotic blood disease he has picked up on location.
That night, she went out with Milosevics and her friend Margie Lane for dinner at the Daisy on Rodeo Drive. They returned to Brentwood and bid her friend goodnight at 8:30 p.m. Three of the children were at home; three-year-old Kimmy Sue was visiting her grandparents in Inglewood. The following day, her friend Wilma Catania and the maid forced open the locked door of the master bedroom with a screwdriver. In the bathroom, they found the bodies of Barbara and Milosevics. She was lying on her back, shot through the jaw, Milosevics beside her, face down, a bullet hole in his temple. Milosevic had shot Barbara with Mickey's chrome-plated .38 caliber revolver, then turned the weapon on himself. When Mickey learned about the murder-suicide, he went into shock and is forced to stay another day in the hospital.
Barabra Ann Thomason's funeral services and interment were held at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale on February 5, 1966, with Reverend Douglas Smith, the minister who had married her and Mickey in 1960, presiding. Barbara's four children were put into the custody of their grandparents in Inglewood.
In his autobiography, Mickey said of the murder-suicide,"I died when she did. I am furious at what happened to her." On the rebound, Mickey married Barbara's close friend Marge Lane. That marriage failed after 100 days. - Actress
Maj Hagman was born on 13 May 1928 in Eskilstuna, Södermanlands län, Sweden. She was an actress, known for Antonio (1973), The Annual National Jewish Fund Awards Dinner (1989) and Living with Ed (2007). She was married to Larry Hagman. She died on 31 May 2016 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- The cinema took a while to discover him. Born in England, the son of an insurance agent, RADA-trained Donald Moffat first appeared on the Shakespearean stage with the Old Vic. In 1954, he stage managed the popular revue "Salad Days". Then, 'discontentment' (which, he later explained, had much to do with the class system in Britain) prompted a permanent relocation to the United States. Accompanying his American actress wife to her home state in Oregon, Moffat initially tried his hand at bartending and as a lumberjack. After six months, he concluded that he was not cut out for outdoorsy pursuits and decided to return to his original muse. A "motivating stimulus", as he would later explain, was that "America seemed much more theatrically vibrant than things were at home".
Modest beginnings with an amateur theatre group in Princeton provided a meagre income of $25 a week which necessitated temporarily making ends meet as a carpenter. That situation improved in the wake of Moffat's 1957 debut on Broadway in "Under Milkwood". From then on, he managed to keep himself exceedingly busy for some three decades -- both on and off-Broadway -- in roles ranging from O'Neill and Chekhov to Ibsen and Miller. Stops along the way included the Ohio Shakespeare Festival in Akron, as well as theatres in New York (where he made a memorable Falstaff in 1987), Cincinnati, Chicago and Los Angeles. In the early 60s, Moffat enjoyed a lengthy tenure as a member of the ensemble of the Association of Producing Artists (APA) Phoenix Repertory Company.
Having lost his British accent early on, Moffat excelled at slotting into diverse roles as totally believable Americans, be they dignified, self-effacing, doleful, tough or acerbic. This was very much in keeping with his working credo: "respect the text - you fit the part, not the other way around". Instantly recognisable in appearance -- lean, long-faced and bushy-browed -- he was a subtle actor who made good use of a mellow but resonant voice which combined with a strong stage presence. On the screen, Moffat began as a TV supporting player with numerous guest roles in hit shows, including Hawaii Five-O (1968), Bonanza (1959), Mission: Impossible (1966), Mannix (1967) and The West Wing (1999), playing an assortment of judges, doctors, reverends, politicians and army officers, even a quirky android named Rem in the short-lived CBS series Logan's Run (1977). His cinematic debut did not eventuate until 1968 as the (deceased) father of Joanne Woodward's titular protagonist in Rachel, Rachel (1968). Other memorable roles include the shady president in Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger (1994), the ill-fated station commander Garry in John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) and Lyndon B. Johnson in The Right Stuff (1983).
Described as a consummate professional, Obie award-winning actor Donald Moffat retired in 2005 and passed away on 20 December 2018 at the age of 87. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Ken Howard was elected the National President of The Screen Actors Guild on September 24, 2009. He was a working member of SAG for over forty years. The Tony and two-time Emmy Award-winning actor, most recently received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie playing Phelan Beale in critically-acclaimed Grey Gardens (2009). The Emmy and Golden Globe-winning film starred Golden Globe-winner Drew Barrymore and fellow Emmy-winner Jessica Lange.
He starred opposite Jimmy Smits in the CBS drama Cane (2007) as "Joe Samuels". Howard portrayed the world-wise retired Detective Lieutenant "Max Cavanaugh" on NBC's Crossing Jordan (2001) and is perhaps best known for his performance as a street-savvy teacher in the classic drama The White Shadow (1978). He taught master classes at the American Repertory Theatre Institute and was an instructor at Harvard University and Harvard Law School. His teaching experience helped form the basis for his book, ACT NATURAL: How to Speak to Any Audience, published by Random House in 2003.
In 1968, two years into the three-year program at the Yale School of Drama, he accepted a small role on Broadway in Neil Simon's "Promises, Promises". He originated the role of Thomas Jefferson in the Tony-winning musical 1776 (1972), directed by Peter H. Hunt, receiving a Theatre World Award. Howard earned his Tony for his work as a young gym coach at a Catholic Boys' school in "Child's Play". He starred on Broadway in "Seesaw", "The Norman Conquests", "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" and the national tour of "Equus". In 2008, Howard starred in the one-man play, "According to Tip". His award-winning performance as Tip O'Neill was critically acclaimed.
His feature-film debut was in Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970), opposite Liza Minnelli. Additional films: 1776 (1972), Such Good Friends (1971), Clear and Present Danger (1994), The Net (1995), At First Sight (1999), 2:13 (2009), A Numbers Game (2010) and The Beacon (2009). He delighted movie audiences in 2005 with his work in FOX 2000's In Her Shoes (2005), with Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley MacLaine, and in Dreamer (2005), for Dreamworks, co-starring Kurt Russell and Dakota Fanning. He starred with Sylvester Stallone in Rambo (2008) (aka "Rambo IV"), Michael Clayton (2007) with George Clooney and Smother (2008) opposite Diane Keaton. He became firmly established in the public's mind as "Coach Ken Reeves" on MTM's prestigious The White Shadow (1978), a series which he co-created, based on his own experiences as the only white player on his high school basketball team. "White Shadow" fans can revisit the critically-acclaimed series of seasons 1 and 2 on DVD. He co-starred on the series It's Not Easy (1982), The Colbys (1985) and Dynasty (1981). He guest-starred in numerous prime-time shows: Boston Legal (2004), Dirty Sexy Money (2007), Eli Stone (2008), Cold Case (2003), Brothers & Sisters (2006), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), Arli$$ (1996), The West Wing (1999), Conviction (2006), Ghost Whisperer (2005), George Lopez (2002) and Showtime's Huff (2004), opposite his dear friend, Blythe Danner. He had a recurring role on Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000) and The Practice (1997). He starred in Sacrifices of the Heart (2007) for the Hallmark Channel. Miniseries include Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: JonBenét and the City of Boulder (2000), The Thorn Birds (1983), Rage of Angels (1983), OP Center (1995), Mastergate (1992), He's Not Your Son (1984), The Country Girl (1982), Murder in New Hampshire: The Pamela Smart Story (1991), Memories of Midnight (1991). Howard's first Emmy Award was for the on-camera narration of "Facts for Boys: The Body Human". His voice can be heard on more than 30 best-selling books on tape. A kidney transplant success (the gift of longtime friend and stunt-woman Jeannie Epper), Howard was appointed Chancellor of the National Kidney Foundation, and worked with their efforts to encourage people to donate their organs. He was a member of the Board of the Los Angeles Alzheimer's Committee and, along with his wife, Linda, served as Board members of Shambala Animal Preserve. He was also the national spokesperson for the Onyx and Breezy Foundation. Howard resided in Los Angeles, with his wife, retired stunt-woman Linda Fetters Howard Howard, and their recently rescued dogs, Harley Hoops and Hannah Henrietta.- Actress
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Her real name was Frances "Fanny" Rose Shore, and she was born in Winchester, Tennessee. Stricken with polio at 18 months of age, she recovered after receiving the Sister Kenny treatment. She became a cheerleader at Hume-Fogg High School in Nashville and went on to graduate from Vanderbilt University in 1938, where she majored in sociology. She took voice and acting lessons on the side and sang on radio station WSM in Nashville. In 1938 she left Tennessee for New York City and began singing on radio station WNCW in New York. Her first recordings were with bandleader Xavier Cugat, and she later changed her named to Dinah after her success with the song of the same name. She received numerous Emmy awards for television specials and productions and appeared in many films. She was married to actor George Montgomery, with whom she had one daughter and adopted a son.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Nipsey Russell was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1918. He got his start in Rock and Roll Review and other music revues in the 1950s. In the 1960s Russell achieved his first major role as Officer Anderson in Car 54, Where Are You? (1961). After being on the show for a year, Russell was a mainstay on variety shows, appearing on Laugh-In, The Dean Martin Show (1965), and the Jackie Gleason Show, among many others. Russell also appeared on many small shows in the 1960s as an always unique personality who would liven up almost any program. As the 1970s approached, Nipsey Russell became a popular game show panelist, appearing on To Tell The Truth, Match Game PM (1975), and many others. Nipsey was known as television's poet laureate on such shows as the Tonight Show and many other popular talk shows of the day.
Nipsey's film roles were remarkably scarce, but he will always be remembered for his role of the Tin Man in the 1978 remake of the Wizard of Oz, The Wiz (1978). The movie was a box office failure, but since that time the movie has been considered a cult classic. But Russell's skill cannot be judged solely by his television and movie appearances. He was an accomplished actor and singer on stage and had a strong presence on Broadway for many years.- Actor
- Soundtrack
John Conte was born on 15 September 1915 in Palmer, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Musical Comedy Time (1950) and Thousands Cheer (1943). He was married to Sirpuhe Philibosian, Ruth Harris Conte and Marilyn Maxwell. He died on 4 September 2006 in Rancho Mirage, California, USA.- Ken Clark was born on 4 June 1927 in Neffs, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959), None But the Lonely Spy (1964) and Missione speciale Lady Chaplin (1966). He was married to Bette Lola Eileen Kruger. He died on 1 June 2009 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Statuesque, smart Canadian-born Alexis Smith, with her blue/green eyes and a seductively husky voice, lent a touch of class to her leading ladies of the 1940s and 1950s.
After her family moved to California, Alexis grew into a precocious talent and performed ballet in public by the age of thirteen -- dancing to 'Carmen' at the Hollywood Bowl. She later graduated with a degree in drama from Los Angeles City College having previously won an acting contest whilst still in high school. During a performance of a play on campus she was spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout and signed to a contract in 1941. Until the early 1950s she was paired with the top male stars in Hollywood, including Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden and Bing Crosby. While often simply decorative (as, for example, in Of Human Bondage (1946) and Stallion Road (1947)), stylishly attired by costume designers like Milo Anderson and Helen Rose in the most glamorous gowns, Alexis also proved to be a capable and spirited actress in spite of relatively few opportunities to break out of the mold of "the other woman".
Early on in her screen career the studio's publicity department touted Alexis -- much to her chagrin -- as the "Dynamite Girl". While she claimed in later years to have typecast herself (saying that few of her assigned roles ever challenged her on any level) Alexis nonetheless enjoyed good critical reviews for many of her performances. She was also popular with directors and film crews who appreciated her relaxed, professional manner on the set. Commencing her Hollywood tenure, she was cast in two films with Errol Flynn (she would make a total of four films with him): Dive Bomber (1941) and the boxing drama Gentleman Jim (1942). Though decidedly second fiddle to both the action and the charismatic Flynn, Alexis made a good first impression as the fetching romantic interest. Her next performance, in The Constant Nymph (1943) opposite Charles Boyer, was described by a reviewer as an "intelligent rendition". Her biggest hit of the mid-1940s was as Cole Porter's wife in the inaccurate--but hugely successful--biopic Night and Day (1946). She also appeared in two "noir" films with Humphrey Bogart at his most menacing: the interesting and underrated Conflict (1945) and the excellent The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947). As Clark Gable's wife in the gambling drama Any Number Can Play (1949) she was critically lauded as "genuinely appealing". In between, there were also some conspicuous failures, in particular her rather stolid performance in the period drama The Woman in White (1948). She had little to do in Here Comes the Groom (1951) and The Turning Point (1952) and her best part in the 1950s, though small, was that of Carol Wharton in The Young Philadelphians (1959).
During the 1960s, Alexis took a sabbatical from the screen to appear on stage with her husband, actor Craig Stevens (her marriage, a rare Hollywood success, lasted 49 years) in "Critic's Choice", "Cactus Flower" and "Mary, Mary". She reserved her best acting for the stage, becoming the Tony Award-winning star of Stephen Sondheim's musical "Follies" in which she played Phyllis during the 1971 run on Broadway (which landed her on the cover of the May 3 issue of 'Time' Magazine) and at the Shubert Theatre in Los Angeles in 1972. In 1973, she played Sylvia Fowler in a revival of Clare Boothe Luce's "The Women" and was nominated for another Tony for her leading role of Lila Halliday in "Platinum" in 1979.
Alexis was seen infrequently on television from the mid-'50s, sometimes appearing on the same show opposite her husband. She had a recurring role as the homicidal Lady Jessica Montfort in Dallas (1978) during the 1984 and 1990 seasons and was nominated for an Emmy for a guest-starring role on Cheers (1982). It was fitting, or perhaps ironic, that her last film role in The Age of Innocence (1993) was as a New York socialite, the kind of stereotypical persona she had portrayed so often in her heyday at Warners.- Composer
- Actor
- Music Department
Mort Shuman was born on 12 November 1938 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for Army of the Dead (2021), The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976) and Lost Highway (1997). He was married to Maria-Pia. He died on 2 November 1991 in London, England, UK.