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- Actor
- Soundtrack
Joe E. Brown happily claimed that he was the only youngster in show
business who ran away from home to join the circus with the blessings of
his parents. In 1902, the ten-year-old Brown joined a circus tumbling
act called the Five Marvellous Ashtons that toured various circuses
and vaudeville theaters. Joe later began adding comedy bits into his
vaudeville act and added more as it became popular. In 1920 he debuted
on Broadway in an all-star review called "Jim Jam Jems". As he
developed skits and comedy routines throughout the 1920s, he built up
his confidence and his popularity soared. The same could not be said
for his debut in movies. Hired for a non-comedy role in
The Circus Kid (1928), he played a
lion tamer whose fate is death. He didn't register with the public
until he signed with Warner Brothers in 1929 to do comedy roles in the
film adaptations of Broadway shows such as
Sally (1929) and
Top Speed (1930). Joe would be well
known for his loud yell, his infectious grin and his cavernous mouth.
Since many of his films revolved around sports, his natural athletic
ability, combined with the physical comedy, made them hits. In
Local Boy Makes Good (1931),
Joe played a botanist who becomes a track star. As he had briefly
played semi-pro baseball, he was a natural for films like
Fireman, Save My Child! (1932),
in which he played a pitcher who was also a fireman. Two of his biggest
hits also involved the game of baseball,
Elmer, the Great (1933) and
Alibi Ike (1935). In his contract with
Warners, he had it written that he would have his own baseball team at
the studio to play when he was able. Joe was one of the top ten
moneymaking stars for 1933 and 1936. In 1937, he left Warners to make
films for David L. Loew, and it was a
disaster. Most of the films were cheaply made with poor production
values, and only a few were successful. Two of the better ones were
Riding on Air (1937) and
The Gladiator (1938). Brown always
called signing with Loew his biggest professional mistake, and with Loew
his popularity fell. By the end of the 1930s he was working in "B"
material, which would have been unimaginable less than five years
earlier. With the advent of World War II, Joe worked tirelessly to
entertain the troops while his film career floundered. Their
enthusiastic response enabled Joe to overcome the death of his son,
Captain Donald Brown, on a training flight. In 1947 Joe was back in the
biz and back on stage in a road company tour of the comedy "Harvey".
His first movie role in three years was as a small-town minister in the
drama The Tender Years (1948).
Even though he gave a good performance, it would be another three years
before he was again on the big screen, in the big-budget 1951 remake of
Show Boat (1951), in which he played
Cap'n Andy Hawks. When his film career became almost nonexistent, Joe
worked on radio and in television. He starred as the clown in the drama
The Buick Circus Hour (1952)
from 1952 to 1953 and made guest appearances on a number of other shows
in the 1950s and early 1960s. His peers regarded him as one of the few
truly nice people in Hollywood. After a few small movie roles in
the 1950s, he was discovered by a new generation as the millionaire
Osgood Fielding III in Billy Wilder's
classic Some Like It Hot (1959),
uttering the immortal last line of the film, "Well, nobody's perfect."- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
British leading man of primarily American films, one of the great stars
of the Golden Age. Raised in Ealing, the son of a successful silk
merchant, he attended boarding school in Sussex, where he
discovered amateur theatre. He intended to attend Cambridge and become
an engineer, but his father's death cost him the financial support
necessary. He joined the London Scottish Regionals and at the outbreak
of World War I was sent to France. Seriously wounded at the battle of
Messines--he was gassed--he was invalided out of service scarcely two
months after shipping out for France. Upon his recovery he tried to
enter the consular service, but a chance encounter got him a small role
in a London play. He dropped other plans and concentrated on the
theatre, and was rewarded with a succession of increasingly prominent
parts. He made extra money appearing in a few minor films, and in 1920
set out for New York in hopes of finding greater fortune there than in
war-depressed England. After two years of impoverishment he was cast in
a Broadway hit, "La Tendresse". Director
Henry King spotted him in the show
and cast him as Lillian Gish's leading man
in The White Sister (1923). His
success in the film led to a contract with
Samuel Goldwyn, and his career as a
Hollywood leading man was underway. He became a vastly popular star of
silent films, in romances as well as adventure films. The coming of
sound made his extraordinarily beautiful speaking voice even more
important to the film industry. He played sophisticated, thoughtful
characters of integrity with enormous aplomb, and swashbuckled expertly
when called to do so in films like
The Prisoner of Zenda (1937).
A decade later he received an Academy Award for his splendid portrayal
of a tormented actor in
A Double Life (1947). Much of his
later career was devoted to "The Halls of Ivy", a radio show that later
was transferred to television
The Halls of Ivy (1954). He
continued to work until nearly the end of his life, which came in 1958
after a brief lung illness. He was survived by his second wife, actress
Benita Hume, and their daughter
Juliet Benita Colman.- Originally named Shalom Jaffe, he became known to the world as Sam Jaffe. He was born in New York City, to Heida (Ada) and Barnett Jaffe, who were Russian Jewish immigrants. As a child, he appeared in Yiddish theatre productions with his mother, a prominent regional stage actress. He graduated from the City College of New York and then studied engineering at Columbia University graduate school. He began his career as a mathematics teacher in the Bronx. Around 1915 Jaffe joined the Washington Square Players. By 1918 he was no stranger to Broadway, having debuted in the original play Youth, and he appeared regularly through the 1920s, though less in the 1930s and only sporadically in the 1940s. He appeared in 21 plays on Broadway during his acting career, his final appearance in 1979.
Jaffe was a method actor before it was defined and early on sported his signature shock of curly hair that some people would later misinterpret as part of some Harpo Marx characterization. Jaffe was anything but. His acting talents were considerable, and Hollywood noticed him first for the unusual role of the mad Grand Duke Peter in Josef von Sternberg 's The Scarlet Empress (1934). Frightening in his rendition of Peter, he was dispatched by the always magnificent Marlene Dietrich.
Jaffe was no matinee idol but his homely features were made for unusual character roles. He did not disappoint in providing unforgettable performances. Frank Capra cast him as the mysterious High Lama in Lost Horizon (1937) (as last minute replacement; the actor originally cast had died). It would be another two years before Jaffe was once more called to Hollywood - he was back quite busy on Broadway. He appeared in George Stevens Gunga Din (1939) which sported big star names as well. Stevens gave Jaffe the lead, Gunga Din, native regimental bhisti (Hindi for water-carrier). It was probably Jaffe's most familiar film role. It was a standout part which Jaffe handled with great humanity, and the film was a huge hit.
Jaffe would not appear in another film for eight years. His second of two movies in 1947 was Elia Kazan 's powerful expose of anti-Semitism Gentleman's Agreement (1947) in which Jaffe played an Albert Einstein-like professor. Jaffe would play doctors of one sort or another in the handful of movies for the next few years. Then in 1950 he played a very different doctor - Doc Erwin Riedenschneider, criminal mastermind -- in John Huston's taut The Asphalt Jungle (1950). Jaffe would receive a nomination for a supporting actor Oscar for this effort. Of the three films he did in 1951, Jaffe also appeared in an another Einstein-like role in the Robert Wise sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).
Jaffe experienced the destructive anti-communist furor when his name was included on a listing of performers sympathetic to communism in the Red Channels pamphlet and like many, was blacklisted by the big Hollywood studios. He was considered essential by producer Julian Blaustein and Robert Wise to play Professor Jacob Barnhardt, and 20th Century Fox boss Darryl Zanuck (who had resisted much heat for Gentleman's Agreement (1947)) agreed. It was ironic that Einstein, veiled as the character Barnhardt, was a pacifist and being watched by the U.S. government at that time. There was some credence for rumors that Jaffe provided the calculus equations (mainly the gravitational force between bodies) on Barnhardt's blackboard - solved so easily by alien Michael Rennie.
Jaffe didn't appear on-screen for seven years due to the punitive effects of the blacklisting. In 1958, John Huston wanted him for his very original The Barbarian and the Geisha (1958) with John Wayne, and director William Wyler also came forward later to cast him as faithful servant Simonides in the blockbuster Ben-Hur (1959). From then on Jaffe was very busy, especially with episodic TV through the 1960s which included his own recurring role as Dr. Zorba in the very popular Ben Casey (1961) series. Jaffe also appeared with his lifelong best friend, screen icon Edward G. Robinson in the made-for-TV film The Old Man Who Cried Wolf (1970) . Jaffe remained active into the year of his passing, a thoroughly engaging and unique actor and human being who never pushed his views on anyone. - Actor
- Writer
- Director
Sometime in the early 1930s, Denny was between scenes on a movie set
when he met a neighborhood boy who was trying to fly a bulky
gas-powered model plane. When he tried to help by making an adjustment
on the machine, Denny succeeded only in wrecking it. But this launched
his infatuation with model aviation, and his new hobby grew into
Reginald Denny Industries, maker of model plane kits.
When the U.S. Army began hunting for a better and safer way to train
anti-aircraft gunners than using targets towed by piloted planes, Denny
and his associates Walter Righter and Paul Whittier began work on a
radio-controlled target drone, and their third prototype won them an
Army contract. Radioplane was formed in 1940, and during WWII produced
nearly 15,000 target drones (the RP-5A) for the Army. Radioplane was
later purchased by Northrop in 1952.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Mae Busch can certainly claim career versatility, having successfully
played Erich von Stroheim's mistress,
Lon Chaney's girlfriend,
Charley Chase's sister,
James Finlayson's ex-wife and
Oliver Hardy's wife! She was born in
Melbourne, Australia, in 1891; her parents were in the theater and when
she was six years old the family moved to the US, arriving in
San Francisco in 1897 before moving to New York. It is claimed Mae was
placed in St. Elizabeth's Convent in New Jersey until at least the age
of 12, when she joined her parents in vaudeville as part of the
Busch Devere Trio (New York press articles confirm Mae as being part of
the group in early 1908). Her big break came in March 1912 when she
replaced Lillian Lorraine in the lead role in the Broadweay play "Over the River", with
Eddie Foy. She continued in this role until the end of the
season, when she joined one of Jesse L. Lasky's touring "girl" shows, where
she stayed until signed by Mack Sennett for his Keystone Pictures in 1915.
As she was performing on Broadway at the same time as "The Agitator"
was filming in California, the claim that this was her first film is
incorrect. Similarly, there is no evidence that she knew Mabel Normand prior to arriving in Los Angeles in 1915.
In Hollywood things didn't begin so well for Mae. In order to get work,
she falsely claimed to have lived in Tahiti and to be able to swim and
dive. A high dive she took while filming
The Water Nymph (1912) resulted
in an injury and her returning to her parents in New York. It was only
then when working in the theater again that she developed into
leading-lady status.
Mae returned to Hollywood, and Keystone, in 1915. However, her
friendship with Mabel ended abruptly when she was "caught" with
Sennett, Mabel's fiancé, and Mae was forced to leave Keystone. Over the
years she had substantial roles in quite a few films, such as von
Stroheim's
The Devil's Passkey (1920)
and Foolish Wives (1922). Although
1927 was the year of her first movie with
Stan Laurel and Hardy, it wasn't until
Unaccustomed As We Are (1929)
that she first played Mrs. Hardy, the role that she will always be
remembered for. She was Mrs. Hardy again in
Their First Mistake (1932),
Sons of the Desert (1933),
and
The Bohemian Girl (1936). She
also appeared in other Laurel and Hardy pictures but not as Mrs. Hardy,
such as Charlie Hall's wife in
Them Thar Hills (1934), and she
only flirted with Hardy in
Tit for Tat (1935).
Mae's Hollywood career lasted 30 years; she worked with many of the
leading directors, actors and actresses of the time. After a long
illness she died in 1946, aged 54. She was cremated and her ashes
remained in a cardboard box at the Motion Picture Country Home Hospital
for over 20 years until a proper interment and plaque was provided.- Actor
- Soundtrack
American character actor of gruff voice and appearance who was a
fixture in Hollywood pictures from the earliest days of the talkies.
The fifth of seven children, he was born in the first minute of 1891.
He was a boisterous child, and at nine was tried and acquitted for
attempted murder in the shooting of a motorman who had run over his
dog. He worked as a lumberjack and investment promoter, and briefly ran
his own pest extermination business. In his late teens, he gave up the
business and traveled aimlessly about country. In San Francisco, an
attempt to romance a burlesque actress resulted in an offer to join her
show as a performer. He spent the next dozen years touring the country
in road companies, then made a smash hit on Broadway in "Outside
Looking In". Cecil B. DeMille saw Bickford on the stage and offered him the lead
in Dynamite (1929). Contracted to MGM, Bickford fought constantly with studio
head Louis B. Mayer and was for a time blacklisted among the studios. He spent
several years working in independent films as a freelancer, then was
offered a contract at Twentieth Century Fox. Before the contract could
take effect, however, Bickford was mauled by a lion while filming 'East
of Java (1935)'. He recovered, but lost the Fox contract and his
leading man status due to the extensive scarring of his neck and also
to increasing age. He continued as a character actor, establishing
himself as a character star in films like The Song of Bernadette (1943), for which he
received the first of three Oscar nominations. Burly and brusque, he
played heavies and father figures with equal skill. He continued to act
in generally prestigious films up until his death in 1967.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Fanny Brice was a popular and influential American comedienne, singer,
theatre and film actress, who made many stage, radio and film
appearances but is best remembered as the creator and star of the
top-rated radio comedy series, The Baby Snooks Show. Thirteen years
after her death, she was portrayed on the Broadway stage by Barbra
Streisand in Funny Girl. The show was made into a musical film in 1968.
Born Fania Borach, in New York City, she was the third child of Rose (Stern) and Charles Borach, relatively well-off saloon owners of Hungarian Jewish descent. In 1908,
she dropped out of school to work in a burlesque revue, and two years
later she began her association with Florenz Ziegfeld, headlining his
Ziegfeld Follies from 1910 into the 1930s. In the 1921 Follies, she was
featured singing "My Man" which became both a big hit and her signature
song. She made a popular recording of it for Victor Records. The second
song most associated with her is "Second Hand Rose". She recorded
nearly two dozen record sides for Victor and also cut several for
Columbia.
She is a posthumous recipient of a Grammy Hall of Fame Award for her
1921 recording of "My Man". Her films include My Man (1928), Be
Yourself! (1930) and Everybody Sing (1938) with Judy Garland. Brice,
Ray Bolger and Harriet Hoctor were the only original Ziegfeld
performers to portray themselves in The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and
Ziegfeld Follies (1946). For her contribution to the motion picture
industry, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at MP 6415
Hollywood Boulevard.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Gene Lockhart was born on July 18, 1891, in London, Ontario, Canada,
the son of John Coates Lockhart and Ellen Mary (Delany) Lockhart. His
father had studied singing and young Gene displayed an early interest
in drama and music. Shortly after the 7-year-old danced a Highland
fling in a concert given by the 48th Highlanders' Regimental Band, his
father joined the band as a Scottish tenor. The Lockhart family
accompanied the band to England. While his father toured, Gene studied
at the Brompton Oratory School in London. When they returned to Canada,
Gene began singing in concert, often on the same program with Beatrice Lillie.
His mother encouraged his career, urging him to try for a part on
Broadway. Lockhart went to America. At 25, he got a part in a New York
play in September, 1917, as Gustave in Klaw and Erlanger's musical "The
Riviera Girl." Between acting engagements, he wrote for the stage. His
first production was "The Pierrot Players" for which he wrote both book
and lyrics and played. It toured Canada in 1919 and introduced "The
World Is Waiting for the Sunrise" (words by Lockhart, music by
Ernest Seitz), which became a very popular ballad.. "Heigh-Ho" (1920)
followed, a musical fantasy with score by Deems Taylor and book and lyrics
by Lockhart. It had a short run (again, with him in the cast).
Lockhart's first real break as a dramatic actor came in the supporting
role of Bud, a mountaineer moonshiner, in Lula Vollmer's Sun Up (1939). This was
an American folk play, first presented by The Players, a theatrical
club, in a Greenwich Village little theater in 1923. After great
notices it moved to a larger house for a two-year run. During this
engagement, in 1924 at the age of 33, Lockhart married Kathleen Lockhart (aka
Kathleen Arthur), an English actress and musician. Gene meanwhile also
appeared in a series of performances presented by The Players in New
York theaters: as Gregoire in "The Little Father of the Wilderness"; as
Waitwell in "The Way of the World," as Gumption Cute in "Uncle Tom's
Cabin", and as Faust in "Mephisto." The Lockharts' daughter, June Lockhart,
was born in 1925. She would eventually appear regularly in the
television series Lassie (1954) and Lost in Space (1965). In 1933, Gene and Kathleen were
featured in "Sunday Night at Nine," a radio program presented at New
York's Barbizon-Plaza Hotel. Meanwhile, Lockhart was keeping busy
writing articles for theatrical magazines and a weekly column for a
Canadian publication, coaching members of New York's Junior League in
dramatics, lecturing on dramatic technique at the Julliard School of
Music, and directing a revival of "The Warrior's Husband"--a formidable
schedule. It amused him as he said that, "in spite of [the amount of
work in a typical day] I don't get thin." Lockhart had by this time
taken on the appearance that audiences would see again and again in
films--short and plump with a chubby, jowly face and twinkling blue
eyes. In 1933, he played Uncle Sid in the Theatre Guild's production of
Eugene O'Neill's comedy "Ah, Wilderness!" co-starring George M. Cohan. This was the
role that was to bring Lockhart stardom and lead to a contract with RKO
Pictures and his first film, By Your Leave (1934). O'Neill wrote to Lockhart: "Every
time your Sid has come in for dinner I've wanted to burst into song,
and every time you've come down from that nap I've felt the cold gray
ghost of an old heebie-jeebie." The acclaim for his acting in "Ah,
Wilderness!" allowed Lockhart to proceed to Hollywood and remain there
almost without interruption. However, he was back on Broadway in
December, 1949, when he took over the part of Willy Loman in the New
York production of "Death of a Salesman." Lockhart appeared in over 125
films. Though he often played upright doctors, judges and businessmen,
and was in real life described as an amiable and gentle soul, Lockhart
is perhaps best remembered on film as a villain who usually ends up
cowering in a corner whimpering pitifully before getting his just
desserts, a scene he played to the hilt in such movies as Algiers (1938) (for
which he was nominated for an Oscar), Blackmail (1939), Geronimo (1939), Northern Pursuit (1943), and
Hangmen Also Die! (1943). Late on Saturday, March 30, 1957, Lockhart suffered a heart
attack while sleeping in his apartment at 10439 Ashton Avenue in West
Los Angeles. He was taken to St. John's Hospital and died on Sunday
afternoon, March 31. He is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery.- Francis J. McDonald - not a name to bring ready recognition-but a look
at the face reminds one of many old movie roles indeed. His career as
an actor literally spanned from early silent films and the great silver
screen era of sound film to follow on through the golden age of
television. His screen credits, noticeable and small, amount to an
amazing nearly 350 roles. Starting on stage, he was a slight but
handsome leading man who entered films in 1913 and continued lead and
featured romantic roles from contemporary to costume adventure into the
1920s. It was during this period that he married - and divorced -
actress Mae Busch, most familiar for the many Laurel and Hardy comedies
she did. MacDonald worked on Broadway briefly in only two plays
(mid-1918). By the time he did his first totally sound film (late
silent movies had intervals of background or short dialog sound),
Burning Up (1930), MacDonald had 83 films under his belt. But into the 1930s,
being older, his roles were turning toward shady characters of second
order - and increasingly uncredited. With dark hair and mustache and
beady eyes with a prominent nose, MacDonald fit well into many an
ethnic or sneaky villain role and continued in demand. He got to know
Cecil B. DeMille and had a regular featured character role in his long history
of films beginning with The Plainsman (1936).
Still through the 1930s and 40s MacDonald averaged a steady five to ten
films a year-dipping somewhat in the World War II years. Into the 1950s
he was increasingly cast in one of his perennial staples, westerns,
with roles already familiar to him: weaselly, tin horn gamblers,
henchmen, but also dignified Indian chiefs. He was a natural to move
into the incredibly popular western phenomenon that burst over the new
medium of TV. He showed up in the spectrum of episodic oaters: from
early Range Rider, Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok, and The Lone Ranger to
later fare, such as, Have Gun-Will Travel, Wanted Dead or Alive, Wagon
Train, the whole stable of Warner Bros. westerns at the end of the
decade (Maverick, etc.), and The Virginian in the next. In the
meanwhile there were some good character pieces in movies. Perhaps the
most poignant being his last for DeMille's, The Ten Commandments (1956), where he had the
small but showcase role as Simon, the old Jewish slave. Bedraggled and
working in the clay pit - with Charlton Heston - he pleads for freedom for the
Israelites - and gets a a trowel in the gut from a Egyptian guard for
his trouble - dying heroically in Heston's arms - it is classic
DeMille. And it was classic MacDonald - always ready to give a skillful
and memorable performance. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Born Irene Luther on October 13, 1891, silent-screen femme Irene Rich came from a once well-to-do family in Buffalo, New York. Her father had a reversal
of fortune while she was quite young and the family subsequently had to move
to California. Following her education, Irene pursued a career as a
realtor. She had already married twice by the time she decided to
become an actress and, by the "ripe old age" of 27, had begun working
as a movie extra.
Success came quickly for Irene and her first part of
real substance was in
The Girl in His House (1918).
She continued on as a poised, resourceful co-star and became a
particular favorite of Will Rogers,
who used her in
Water, Water, Everywhere (1920),
The Strange Boarder (1920),
Jes' Call Me Jim (1920),
Boys Will Be Boys (1921) and
The Ropin' Fool (1922). Her array
of leading men ran the gamut -- from
Harry Carey in
Desperate Trails (1921) to
Lon Chaney in
The Trap (1922) to
John Barrymore in
Beau Brummel (1924) to movie mutt
Strongheart the Dog in
Brawn of the North (1922).
Irene's true screen persona, however, arrived in the form of
tearjerkers, nobly portraying the ever-suffering, well-coiffed
"doormat" in her own plush, domestic dramas. Somewhat reminiscent in
both looks, style and demeanor of
Irene Dunne, she became a favorite in
women's pictures throughout the 1920s, one of her best known roles
being in
Lady Windermere's Fan (1925).
With age Irene moved into more motherly roles, and by the coming of
sound she was playing Will Rogers' pushy wife in a few of his social
comedies, including
So This Is London (1930) and
Down to Earth (1932). At around the
same time Irene enjoyed a spectacular new career on radio. In 1933 she
began her nationwide anthology program entitled "Dear John" (also
called "The Irene Rich Show"), which lasted over a decade. Her leading
man on that show for many of those years was
Gale Gordon, who later played
Lucille Ball's apoplectic boss and nemesis on 1960s
TV.
Irene also enjoyed some success on stage in such productions as "Seven
Keys to Baldpate" (1935), which starred
George M. Cohan. Eventually she left it
all, marrying a fourth time to businessman George Henry Clifford in
1950, and settling in comfortable retirement. She died at age 96
quietly of heart failure and was survived by two daughters, one of
whom, Frances Rich, was an actress briefly
on the 1930s stage and screen before becoming a noted sculptor.- Canadian-born character actor Jonathan Hale had a long and distinguished film career, appearing in over 260 pictures and television programs.
He was a member of the diplomatic service prior to his film career, and his stately bearing stood him in good stead for the large variety of corporate executives, military officers and high-level politicians he often played.
His best known and most memorable role was that of Dagwood Bumstead's boss, J.C. Dithers, in the "Blondie" film series, a
role he assayed from the first entry (Blondie (1938)) until he left the series in 1946 having appeared in 16 of the 28 "Blondie" films.
In 1966, despondent over health and personal problems, he shot himself to death. - Stanley Andrews was born on 28 August 1891 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Road to Rio (1947), Superman and the Mole-Men (1951) and Johnny Apollo (1940). He died on 23 June 1969 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actress
Stately Isabel Jeans was brought to Hollywood by the director Anatole Litvak to appear as Fermonde Dupond in his comedy Tovarich (1937). The daughter of an art critic, Frederick George Jeans, she had aspired to be a singer but instead forged a career on the stage. Her first role came courtesy of theatre legend Herbert Beerbohm Tree when she was fifteen years old. Isabel went on to acquire a varied repertoire in the classics, as well as displaying a singular comic talent in contemporary works by Noël Coward, Ivor Novello, and others. By the late 1920s, she had become a fixture on the London stage, toured the United States, appeared with great success on Broadway and acted in two early films by Alfred Hitchcock: Downhill (1927) and Easy Virtue (1927). She had been married, thrice separated and eventually divorced from actor Claude Rains, having seemingly relished the role of the philandering wife. Her husband for a subsequently longer haul was to be a prominent English barrister.
In stark contrast to Isabel's usually dignified appearance, her declared favorite pastimes were: playing a mean hand of poker, driving fast cars and going to the race track. On the other hand, there was this aura of maturity and elegance which made her one of the first actresses film producers would turn to when casting dignified socialites or upper class toffs. Hitchcock, for one, gave her another such role, as Mrs. Newsham, in Suspicion (1941). According to her ex Claude Rains, Isabel became a somewhat "mannered actress". Following an absence from the screen for almost ten years, she came once again into her own in delicious character parts, shining as Aunt Alicia in Gigi (1958) and in the satirical Peter Sellers comedy Heavens Above! (1963), as the land-owning Lady Despard.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Frank Fay was born on 17 November 1891 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for God's Gift to Women (1931), Nothing Sacred (1937) and The Matrimonial Bed (1930). He was married to Barbara Stanwyck, Frances White, Betty Kean and Gladys Buchanan. He died on 25 September 1961 in Santa Monica, California, USA.- American character actor of gruff demeanor who played in dozens of
films through the Thirties and Forties. A native of New Jersey, he was
a wagon driver for his father's laundry business before joining a
vaudeville company. He played in stock and touring companies, then was
cast in the Walter Huston production of 'Desire Under the Elms' on Broadway.
While working on the New York stage, he made a few appearances in films
shot on Long Island. In 1935 he came to Hollywood and appeared with
great frequency in supporting roles over the next decade and a half. In
the early 1950s, he was blacklisted for his political beliefs during
the Communist witch-hunts, and returned to the stage almost exclusively
thereafter. In 1976, he gained perhaps his greatest fame, as the title
character's libidinous grandfather on the Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976) TV series. But three
years later, he was beaten to death by robbers burgling his
apartment. - Writer
- Director
- Actor
London-born Edmund Goulding was an actor/playwright/director on the
London stage, and entered the British army when WWI broke out. Mustered
out of the service because of wounds suffered in battle, he emigrated
to the U.S. in 1921. He obtained assignments as a screenwriter in
Hollywood, wrote a novel, "Fury," in 1922 and directed the film version
of it (Fury (1923)). Hired as a screenwriter/director by MGM in 1925,
Goulding quickly developed a reputation for turning out tasteful,
cultured dramas and drawing-room comedies. His films typified the
elegance and refinement with which MGM was identified, the best example
of this being Grand Hotel (1932). He was entrusted with the pictures of some of
MGM's biggest stars, such as Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford. However, one of his
best-known films, and probably the one most atypical of his work, was
Nightmare Alley (1947), a dark, brooding drama of greed and corruption among high and
low society involving phony mentalists and a conniving
psychiatrist.- Actor
- Writer
American character actor, a fixture both in Westerns and in the
comedies of Preston Sturges. Although
frequently billed as "Alan" Bridge, he was born Alfred Morton Bridge in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1891 (not as "Alford" Bridge in 1890, as
his tombstone erroneously states), he and his sister, future actress
Loie Bridge, were raised by their mother
Loie and her second husband, butcher Wilmer Shinn. Following service as
a corporal in the U.S. Army infantry in the first World War, Bridge
joined a theatrical troupe which also included several of his
relatives. The 1920 census showed him on tour in Kansas City, Missouri.
He dabbled in writing and in 1930 sold a script to a short film,
Her Hired Husband (1930). He
followed this with a B-Western script,
God's Country and the Man (1931),
in which he made his film debut as an actor. For the next quarter
century, he managed the atypical achievement of maintaining a career in
both B-Westerns and in bigger dramatic and comedy features. Ten films
for director Preston Sturges represent probably his most familiar
contribution to Hollywood history. Bridge also appeared frequently on
television until his death in 1957 at 66.- Charles Thompson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for The Andy Griffith Show (1960), The Twilight Zone (1959), Peyton Place (1964), Gunsmoke (1955), My Three Sons (1960), and Hot Rods to Hell (1966). He died on October 26, 1979 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Probably best known as Asa Breeney / Asa Bascomb on The Andy Griffith Show (1960). - Actor
- Director
- Writer
The son of writer-theater producer-director-actor
Hal Reid, Wallace was on stage by the age of
four in the act with his parents. He spent most of his early years, not
on the stage, but in private schools where he excelled in music and
athletics. In 1910, his father went to the Chicago studio of "Selig
Polyscope Company" and Wallace decided that he wanted to be a
cameraman. However, with his athletic good looks, he was often put in
front of the camera instead of behind - a situation that he disliked.
His first film before the camera was
The Phoenix (1910), where he played
the role of the young reporter. Wallace preferred to be a cameraman, a
writer, a director - anything but an actor. He took his fathers play
"The Confession" to Vitagraph where he wanted to write and direct the
film. Wallace ended up also acting in it. Starting with bit parts in
various films, Wallace was eventually cast as the leading man to
Florence Turner in numerous films.
Wallace next moved on to "Reliance" where he acted, but also wrote
screenplays. His next big move was to Hollywood, where he was hired by
Universal director Otis Turner, as assistant
director, second cameraman, gopher and scenario writer. It was what he
was looking for, but he ended up back in front of the camera. At 20,
Reid was an unknown assistant director. In 1913, Wallace married
Dorothy Davenport, one of the stars
that he both directed and starred with. Although only 17, Dorothy had
spent a number of years on the stage before heading to the silver
screen. The roles that Wallace played were getting bigger and bigger,
but after appearing in over 100 films, he took a salary cut and a small
part to work with D.W. Griffith on
his milestone film
The Birth of a Nation (1915).
It was after this film that
Jesse L. Lasky signed Wallace to a
contract with "Famous Players" and he became a big star, but his dreams
of directing and writing ended. An alcoholic for years, this situation
worsened. His first film for "Famous Players" was
The Chorus Lady (1915). Wallace
went on to star in a series of pictures in which he represented all
that was best of the ideal American. He had parts in over 60 more
pictures including
Intolerance (1916)
and
The Squaw Man's Son (1917).
But it was the daredevil auto movies that he was most popular at.
Flashing cars, dangerous roads and sometimes a race with a speeding
locomotive thrilled and scared the public. His auto pictures included
The Roaring Road (1919),
Excuse My Dust (1920) and
Double Speed (1920). When the U.S.
entered World War I, Wallace was 25, six foot one and a crack shot.
Even though he wanted to enlist, pressure was exerted on him not to. He
was the rock on which "Famous Players" was built and his loss would
have materially effect the company. He had a newborn son and was the
sole support for his wife, his son, his mother, her mother, his father
and also had to consider his status as a matinée idol.
He did volunteer his time to selling Liberty bonds and often opened his
house to veterans. His films were financial successes, but in his
personal life, he spent money like water. Wallace was a star who was
worked continuously by the studio but disaster struck on a film site in
Oregon. While making the film
The Valley of the Giants (1919),
Wallace was involved in a train crash and his injuries prevented him
from finishing the film. Unwilling to stop the film, the studio sent
the company doctor up to Oregon with a supply of morphine so that he
would continue working and not feel the pain of his injury. After the
picture was finished, he was needed to begin another so the studio kept
supplying Wallace with morphine and he became hooked. Coupled with the
alcohol, Wallace never had a chance and by 1922, he started entering a
succession of hospitals and sanitariums as his health faded. Making his
last film for the studio,
Thirty Days (1922), Wallace was
barely able to stand, let alone act. He died at the sanitarium, in
Dorothy's arms, on the 18th day of January 1923 at the age of only 31.
Wallace was the third major Paramount personality to be involved in
scandal in 1922.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Irving Pichel was born on 24 June 1891 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Destination Moon (1950), Dracula's Daughter (1936) and Tomorrow Is Forever (1946). He was married to Violette Wilson. He died on 13 July 1954 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
George Marshall was a versatile American director who came to Hollywood
to visit his mother and "have a bit of fun". Expelled from Chicago
University in 1912, he was an unsettled young man, drifting from job to
job, variously employed as a mechanic, newspaper reporter and
lumberjack with a logging outfit in Washington state. Trying his luck
in the emerging film industry, he got his start at Universal and was
put to work as an extra. His powerful, six-foot frame served him well
for doing stunt work in westerns, earning him a dollar every time he
fell off a horse.
He was first glimpsed on-screen in a bit as a laundry delivery man in
Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle's
The Waiters' Ball (1916). The
acting gig wasn't to his taste, though, and, within a year he moved on
to writing and directing. The majority of his early assignments were
two-reel westerns and adventure serials, starring the popular
Ruth Roland. A jack-of-all-trades, he was
later prone to remark that in those days he often needed to double as
cameraman and editor, too, often cutting his film with a pair of
scissors and splicing it with cement. In the
1920's, Marshall worked with
cowboy star Tom Mix
and then became a comedy specialist for
Mack Sennett, turning out as many as 60
one- or two-reelers per year. At Fox, he served as supervising director
on all of the studio's comedic output between 1925 and 1930.
At the beginning of the sound era Marshall joined
Hal Roach and directed comedies with
Thelma Todd
(Strictly Unreliable (1932))
and two of Stan Laurel and
Oliver Hardy's best shorts:
Their First Mistake (1932)
and Towed in a Hole (1932)).
Always adept at visual comedy, Marshall directed (and also turned up to
good effect in a cameo as a hard-boiled army cop in)
Pack Up Your Troubles (1932).
Economic conditions forced a downsizing at Roach, and Marshall returned
to Fox in 1934, staying there for four years, then worked at Universal
(1939-40) and Paramount (1942-50, and 1952-54). One of his biggest
critical and financial successes was the classic western
Destry Rides Again (1939),
which re-invigorated the career of
Marlene Dietrich and became Universal's
top box-office hit for the year. He controlled the antics of
W.C. Fields in
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939);
helped Betty Hutton on her way to
stardom with the biopics
Incendiary Blonde (1945) and
The Perils of Pauline (1947);
and directed Alan Ladd in the film
noir classic
The Blue Dahlia (1946). There was
also a fruitful association with
Bob Hope, beginning with
The Ghost Breakers (1940).
Freelancing over the next two decades, Marshall turned out three
superior vehicles for Glenn Ford: a
western (The Sheepman (1958)) and
two comedies (The Gazebo (1959) and
Advance to the Rear (1964)).
He was one of three directors (the other two were
John Ford and
Henry Hathaway) assigned individual
segments of the blockbuster
How the West Was Won (1962).
Towards the end of his long career he helmed several episodes of the
Daniel Boone (1964) and
Here's Lucy (1968) TV series.
With at least 185 directing credits to his name (there may have been as
many as 400, given his prolific output of shorts during the 1910's),
George Marshall retired from making films in 1972 and died three years
later at the age of 83. He has a star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood
Boulevard.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Helen Broderick was a deliciously funny character comedienne with
vaudeville and stage experience, a close friend of
Jeanne Eagels. The story goes that, at the
age of 14, she ran away from home because her mother (who featured in
operatic comedy) was totally obsessed by the theatre. Ironically,
all the people she met turned out to be performers, and Helen (who
needed to make a living, after all) ended up where she hadn't wanted to
be -- on the stage.
Helen started out as a chorus girl in the first Ziegfeld Follies in 1907.
Her talent for comedy was discovered quite by accident. In 1911, she
was understudy to the actress
Ina Claire in the Broadway play
'Jumping Jupiter'. One night, Claire was unable to perform and Helen
Broderick stood in as the romantic lead. She soon had the audience in
stitches, trampling about the stage like an elephant, rolling her big
saucer eyes and attempting to croon 'Cuddle Near Me All Day Long' in
her rather unique voice. The romance was no more and instead turned
into a popular farce with Helen now permanently installed in the lead
role. For a while, Helen partnered her husband
Lester Crawford in vaudeville. In the
1920's, she enjoyed success on Broadway, most notably in
'Fifty Million
Frenchmen' (a role she took to Hollywood in 1931). Her best parts in
the movies were as the perennial friend or chaperone of the heroine (the type of role subsequently associated with Eve Arden),
delivering acidic wisecracks in her inimitable dead-pan manner. On several occasions, Helen co-starred with Victor Moore, one of her previous acting partners on Broadway. However, these efforts were decidedly bottom-of-the-bill. She reserved her amusing best enlivening some of RKO's prestige musicals, especially
Top Hat (1935)
and Swing Time (1936) with
Fred Astaire and
Ginger Rogers. Another good part came her way in
The Rage of Paris (1938) (with
Danielle Darrieux). Helen retired from films in 1946 and died thirteen years later at Beverly Hills Doctor's Hospital at the age of 68.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Buck Jones was one of the greatest of the "B" western stars. Although
born in Indiana, Jones reportedly (but disputedly) grew up on a ranch near Red Rock
in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), and there learned the riding and
shooting skills that would stand him in good stead as a hero of
Westerns. He joined the army as a teenager and served on US-Mexican
border before seeing service in the Moro uprising in the Philippines.
Though wounded, he recuperated and re-enlisted, hoping to become a
pilot. He was not accepted for pilot training and left the army in
1913. He took a menial job with the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West
Show and soon became champion bronco buster for the show. He moved on
to the Julia Allen Show, but with the beginning of the First World War,
Jones took work training horses for the Allied armies. After the war,
he and his wife, Odelle Osborne, whom he had met in the Miller Brothers
show, toured with the Ringling Brothers circus, then settled in
Hollywood, where Jones got work in a number of Westerns starring
Tom Mix and
Franklyn Farnum. Producer
William Fox put Jones under contract
and promoted him as a new Western star. He used the name Charles Jones
at first, then Charles "Buck" Jones, before settling on his permanent
stage name. He quickly climbed to the upper ranks of Western stardom,
playing a more dignified, less gaudy hero than Mix, if not as austere
as William S. Hart. With his famed horse
Silver, Jones was one of the most successful and popular actors in the
genre, and at one point he was receiving more fan mail than any actor
in the world. Months after America's entry into World War II, Jones
participated in a war-bond-selling tour. On November 28, 1942, he was a
guest of some local citizens in Boston at the famed Coconut Grove
nightclub. Fire broke out and nearly 500 people died in one of the
worst fire disasters on record. Jones was horribly burned and died two
days later before his wife Dell could arrive to comfort him. Although
legend has it that he died returning to the blaze to rescue others (a
story probably originated by producer
Trem Carr for whatever reason), the actual
evidence indicates that he was trapped with all the others and
succumbed as most did, trying to escape. He remains, however, a hero to
thousands who followed his film adventures.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Chief Yowlachie was born in Kitsap County, Washington, and later lived with his family on the Yakima Indian Reservation. Although he was not enrolled in the Yakima Nation, his parents John W. Simmons and Lucy Riddle both had Puyallup heritage and owned allotted land on the Yakima reservation. Yowlatchie's real name was Daniel Simmons and he began his show-business career as--believe it or not--an opera singer and spent many years in that
profession. In the 1920s he switched to films, and over the next 25 or
so years played everything from rampaging Apache chiefs to comic-relief
sidekicks. A large, round-faced man, his distinctive voice--a deep,
resonant bass somewhat resembling Bluto's in the old "Popeye"
cartoons--was instantly recognizable, and he had the distinction of not
appearing to have aged much over his career, which is most likely
attributable to the fact that he looked quite a bit younger than he
actually was, so his "aging" wasn't all that noticeable. In addition to
his "serious" roles, he had somewhat more light-hearted parts in
several films, notably
Red River (1948), where he traded quips
with veteran scene-stealer
Walter Brennan, and held his own quite
well.- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Cole Porter was born June 9, 1891, at Peru, Indiana, the son of
pharmacist Samuel Fenwick Porter and Kate Cole. Cole was raised on a
750-acre fruit ranch. Kate Cole married Samuel Porter in 1884 and had
two children, Louis and Rachel, who both died in infancy. Porter's
grandfather, J.G. Cole, was a multi-millionaire who made his fortune in
the coal and western timber business. His mother introduced him to the
violin and the piano. Cole started riding horses at age six and began
to studying piano at eight at Indiana's Marion Conservatory. By age
ten, he had begun to compose songs, and his first song was entitled
"Song of the Birds".
He attended Worcester Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1905, an
elite private school from which he graduated in 1909 as class
valedictorian. That summer he toured Europe as a graduation present
from his grandfather. That fall, he entered Yale University and lived
in a single room at Garland's Lodging House at 242 York Street in New
Haven, CT, and became a member of the Freshman Glee Club. In 1910, he
published his first song, "Bridget McGuire". While at Yale, he wrote
football fight songs including the "Yale Bulldog Song" and "Bingo Eli
Yale," which was introduced at a Yale dining hall dinner concert.
Classmates include poet
Archibald Macleish, Bill Crocker of
San Francisco banking family and actor
Monty Woolley.
Dean Acheson, later to be U.S.
Secretary of State, lived in the same dorm with Porter and was a good
friend of Porter. In his senior year he was president of the University
Glee club and a football cheerleader.
Porter graduated from Yale in 1913 with a BA degree. He attended
Harvard Law school from 1913 to 1914 and the Harvard School of Music
from 1915 to 1916. In 1917 he went to France and distributed foodstuffs
to war-ravaged villages. In April 1918 he joined the 32nd Field
Artillery Regiment and worked with the Bureau of the Military Attache
of the US. During this time he met the woman who would become his wife,
Linda Lee Thomas, a wealthy Kentucky divorcée, at a breakfast reception
at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. He did not, as is often rumored, join the
French Foreign Legion at this time, nor receive a commission in the
French army and see combat as an officer.
In 1919 he rented an apartment in Paris, enrolled in a school
specializing in music composition and studied with Vincent D'indy. On
December 18, 1919, married Linda Lee Thomas, honeymooning in the south
of France. This was a "professional" marriage, as Cole was, in fact,
gay. Linda had been previously married to a newspaper publisher and was
described as a beautiful woman who was one of the most celebrated
hostesses in Europe. The Porters made their home on the Rue Monsieur in
Paris, where their parties were renowned as long and brilliant. They
hired the Monte Carlo Ballet for one of their affairs; once, on a whim,
they transported all of their guests to the French Riviera.
In 1923 they moved to Venice, Italy, where they lived in the Rezzonico
Palace, the former home of poets
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
and Robert Browning. They built
an extravagant floating night club that would accommodate up to 100
guests. They conducted elaborate games including treasure hunts through
the canals and arranged spectacular balls.
Porter's first play on Broadway featured a former ballet dancer, actor
Clifton Webb. He collaborated with
E. Ray Goetz, the brother-in-law of
Irving Berlin, on several Broadway
plays, as Goetz was an established producer and lyricist.
His ballad "Love For Sale" was introduced on December 8, 1930, in a
revue that starred Jimmy Durante and was
introduced by Kathryn Crawford.
Walter Winchell, the newspaper columnist
and radio personality, promoted the song, which was later banned by
many radio stations because of its content. In 1934, his hit "Anything
Goes" appeared on Broadway. During the show's hectic rehearsal Porter
once asked the stage doorman what he thought the show should be called.
The doorman responded that nothing seemed to go right, with so many
things being taken out and then put back in, that "Anything Goes" might
be a good title. Porter liked it, and kept it. In 1936, while preparing
for "Red, Hot and Blue" with Bob Hope
and Jimmy Durante,
Ethel Merman was hired to do stenographic
work to help Porter in rewriting scripts of the show. He later said she
was the best stenographers he ever had.
Porter wrote such classic songs as "Let's Do It" in 1928, "You Do
Something To Me" in 1929, "Love For Sale" in 1930, "What Is This Thing
Called Love?" in 1929, "Night and Day" in 1932, "I Get A Kick Out Of
You" in 1934, "Begin the Beguine" in 1935, "My Heart Belongs to Daddy"
in 1938, "Don't Fence Me In" in 1944, "I Love Paris" in 1953, "I've Got
You Under My Skin", In the Still of The Night", "You'd Be So Nice To
Come Home To", "True Love", "Just One Of Those Things", "Anything
Goes", "From This Moment On", "You're The Top", "Easy to Love" and
many, many more.
On October 24, 1937, taking a break from a re-write of what would be
his weakest musical, "You Never Know", visiting as a guest at a
countess' home, Piping Rock Club in Locust Valley, New York, he was
badly injured in a fall while horseback-riding. Both of his legs were
smashed and he suffered a nerve injury. He was hospitalized for two
years, confined to a wheelchair for five years and endured over 30
operations to save his legs over the next 20 years. During his
recuperation he wrote a number of Broadway musicals.
On August 3, 1952, his beloved mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
His wife, Linda, died of cancer on May 20, 1954. On April 3, 1958, he
sustained his 33rd operation, and still suffering from chronic pain,
his right leg was amputated. He refused to wear an artificial limb and
lived as a virtual recluse in his apartment at the Waldorf-Astoria in
New York City. He sought refuge in alcohol, sleep, self-pity and sank
into despair. He even refused to attend a "Salute to Cole Porter" at
the Metropolitan Opera on May 15, 1960, and the commencement exercises
at Yale University in June of 1960 when he was conferred with an
Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, or his 70th birthday party
arranged by his friends at the Orpheum Theater in New York City in June
1962.
After what appeared to be a successful kidney stone operation at St.
John's hospital in Santa Monica, California, he died very unexpectedly
on October 15, 1964. His funeral instructions were that he have no
funeral or memorial service and he was buried adjacent to his mother
and wife in Peru, Indiana.- Josephine Joseph was born in Austria of Polish-Austrian descent in
1913, whose body was allegedly split down the middle, one side male and
the other female. She/he claimed to be a true intersex, or
"hermaphrodite,' but there is no evidence to confirm whether this was
the case or not. Hermaphrodites generally share the genitals of both
sexes, but are not "divided," as circus performers would lead the
general public to believe. This was known as a "gaffed" or fake
presentation. Most likely, she/he was just a skilled male-female
impersonator. One side of the body would be exercised, with shaved body
hair and a suntan; the other side would be pale and flabby due to lack
of exercise, and the pectoral muscle would resemble a woman's breast.
The performer would then wear a split costume, a Tarzan-style loincloth
on the "male" side, and a low-cut, tight-fitting blouse on the "female"
side. In the majority of cases, half-and-half performers were men, so
Josephine Joseph was most likely a male impersonator, with the feminine
side being dominant.
At the age of 19, Josephine Joseph is best remembered for an appearance
in the Tod Browning classic Freaks (1932). Although she/he only had two
lines, she/he still appeared in a number of scenes, most notably at the
wedding reception where she/he begins the chant, "We accept her, one of
us! We accept her, one of us!" Another has her/him giving an alluring
look to the circus strongman, Hercules, to which Roscoe Ates stammers,
"I think she-he she-he likes you...but he dodo-don't!"
As of this posting, there is no other information on the life of
Josephine Joseph. - James Bell was born on 1 December 1891 in Suffolk, Virginia, USA. He was an actor, known for I Walked with a Zombie (1943), The Spiral Staircase (1946) and Blind Spot (1947). He was married to Joyce Arling. He died on 26 October 1973 in Kents Store, Virginia, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Harry Cording was born on 26 April 1891 in Wellington, Somerset, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Narcotic (1933) and Gypsy Wildcat (1944). He was married to Margaret Fiero. He died on 1 September 1954 in Sun Valley, California, USA.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
On stage since age 15, Roscoe Karns parlayed his machine-gun delivery
and street-wise demeanor (although many thought of him as a New Yorker,
he was actually from San Bernardino, California) into character roles
in dozens of films from the 1920s to the 1960s. His peak period,
though, was in the 1930s, where he often played a wisecracking cab
driver or a brash newspaper reporter (as in His Girl Friday (1940), usually the friend
of the hero who helps him solve the murder/catch the bad guys/find the
missing heiress, etc.- In 1906, Madge went to New York City to study at the Art Students
League where she hoped to become an illustrator. This lasted until she
appeared in a student musical, which led to a full time job in a
traveling stock company. By 1912, Madge was a Broadway Star with the
bedroom farce "Little Miss Brown". For the next five years, Madge
continued to find success on Broadway appearing in similar roles.
Within 3 months of the formation of Goldwyn Pictures, Sam Goldwyn had
signed Madge Kennedy to a big movie contract. Goldwyn was at his best
when it came to publicity. It was Goldwyn himself who gave Madge the
title of "winsome", and Madge was as winsome and sweet as her light
comedies suggested. Some of her films were 'Baby Mine (1917)', 'Our
Little Wife (1918)', The Kingdom of Youth (1918)' and 'Dollars and
Sense (1920)'. While at Goldwyn, Madge shared a dressing room with
actress Mabel Normand. After 21 films, Madge left Goldwyn Pictures and
appeared in a handful of films produced by her husband, Harold Bolster.
These films included 'The Purple Highway (1923)' and 'Bad Company
(1925)'. After that, Madge retired from the screen and returned to the
stage. After a few years and her remarriage, Madge retired from acting
altogether. In 1952, Madge was coaxed out of retirement by George Cukor
for the small role of Judge Carroll in 'The Marrying Kind (1952)'. With
that, she started another career as Character Actress appearing in
films like 'Lust for Life (1956)', 'The Catered Affair (1956)', 'North
by Northwest (1959)' and 'The Day of the Locust (1975)'. On the small
screen, Madge played the part of Aunt Martha on "Leave It to Beaver
(1957)". - Actor
- Soundtrack
Suave, well-mannered, silvery-haired character actor Henry (Joseph) O'Neill played top supports in hundreds of films, often as a benign, wise, sensible father, judge, doctor, minister, general, executive or lawyer. Much of his patrician career was split between two studios: Warner Bros in the 1930s and MGM in the 1940s.
O'Neill was born in Orange, New Jersey on August 10, 1891, and dropped out of college to join a traveling theatre troupe. World War I military service intervened but he quickly returned to acting in 1919 upon his discharge and joined, at different times, the Provincetown Players and the Celtic Players acting companies. Making his Broadway debut at age 30 with "The Spring," he continued on Broadway for over a decade in such plays as Mr. Faust (as the Holy One) 22, "The Hairy Ape" (1922), "The Ancient Mariner" (1924), "The Fountain" (1925), "The Squall" (1926), "Jarnegan" (1928), "The Last Mile" (1930), "Old Man Murphy" (1931), "I Loved You Wednesday (1932) and, his last, "Shooting Star" (1933). His prematurely gray hair lent an air of pride and confidence in his many distinctive stage roles, particularly the works of playwright Eugene O'Neill.
In 1933, O'Neill made a solid, unerring switch to feature films and settled in for the duration of his career as a minor character. Although he was typically cast in agreeable roles, he certainly had it in him to be an urbane villain when the call came in. Films on both sides of the fence included his debut, the romantic drama I Loved a Woman (1933) starring Kay Francis and Edward G. Robinson, as well as many others, the more popular being. -- Fog Over Frisco (1934), Madame Du Barry (1934), The Man Who Reclaimed His Head (1934), Oil for the Lamps of China (1935), The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), Anthony Adverse (1936), The Great O'Malley (1937), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938), Brother Rat (1938), Dodge City (1939), Juarez (1939), Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), Four Wives (1939), Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940), Billy the Kid (1941), Shadow of the Thin Man (1941), Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), Anchors Aweigh (1945), The Beginning or the End (1947) and Alias Nick Beal (1949)
In the 1950's due to failing health, Henry spaced out his feature work with sporadic filming in such movies as The People Against O'Hara (1951), Scarlet Angel (1952), The Wings of Eagles (1957) and, his last, an uncredited bit in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). A one-time member of the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild, he later earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
He died on May 18, 1961, and was survived by his longtime wife (since 1924) Anna and one child, Patricia He was interred at San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, California.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Born in Scotland, Jack Buchanan made his stage acting debut in Britain
in 1912, and on Broadway in 1924. Though he made his film debut in 1917
during the silent film era, Buchanan is probably best remembered for
The Band Wagon (1953),
co-starring with Fred Astaire,
Cyd Charisse,
Nanette Fabray,
James Mitchell,
Oscar Levant and
Robert Gist.
Suffering from spinal arthritis, Buchanan died in London four years
later.- Michael Chekhov was a Russian actor in the Moscow Art Theatre who
emigrated to America and made a career in Hollywood, earning himself an
Oscar nomination.
He was born Mikhail Aleksandrovich Chekhov in St. Petersburg, Russia in
1891. His mother, Natalya Golden, was Jewish, and his father, Aleksandr
Chekhov, was a brother of writer
Anton Chekhov. Anton wrote of his
four-year-old nephew in 1895, "I believe that he has a growing talent."
From 1907-11 he studied classic drama and comedy at Suvorin Theater
School in St. Petersburg, graduating with honors as actor. In St.
Petersburg he met
Konstantin Stanislavski who
invited him to join the Moscow Art Theater. The two became good friends
and partners in propelling the Moscow Art Theater to international
fame. Later Stanislavsky wrote that Michael Chekhov was a genius.
His film career began in 1913 with a role in 'Tryokhsotletie
tsarstvovaniya doma Romanovykh
(1913)' (aka Tercentenary of the
Romanov Dynasty), followed by a few more roles in Russian silent films. It was during the Russian Revolution of 1917 that his beloved first wife,
Olga Tschechowa,
divorced him. He was devastated and suffered from depression and
alcoholism for the rest of his life.
Between 1922 and 1928 he led the second Moscow Art Theater, earning
himself a reputation as teacher, actor and director who brought
innovations experimenting with symbolism and acmeist poetry. Chekhov
updated the Stanislavsky's acting method, by blending it with yoga,
theosophy, psychology and physiology, and adding his own ideas of
transformation of actor's consciousness through psychological gesture
and movement techniques for entering a special state of subconscious
creativity. His idea of using an actor's own intuition and creative
imagination was a departure from the original method of his teacher,
Stanislavsky.
Chekhov ignored the communist regime and was attacked by the Soviets
for joining the Anthroposophic Society. In 1928 he was fired from the
Moscow Art Theatre and eventually left Russia. In Europe, he taught his
acting method and also made a big success in German films, co-starring
with his ex-wife Olga Tschechowa, who
was then living in Germany with her second husband. In 1931 he founded
the Chekhov Theatre, with support from Rachmaninov, Bohner and
Morgenstern, and in 1935 he brought the Chekhov Theatre on tour to New
York. He taught acting in France, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, and in
England before WWII. In 1938 he moved to the United States, where he
started his own school, and also successfully directed Dostoyevsky's
"Demons" on Broadway. Then he was introduced to Hollywood by
Sergei Rachmaninoff.
In 1945 Chekhov played his best known film role, psychiatrist Brulov in
Spellbound (1945). He received an
Academy Award nomination for the role and became a member of the
American Film Academy in 1946. At that time, he taught his acting
method in Hollywood. In 1953 he published a book about his method, "To
The Actor", with preface written by
Yul Brynner. His students included
Gregory Peck,
Marilyn Monroe,
Gary Cooper,
Ingrid Bergman,
Anthony Quinn,
Jack Palance,
Feodor Chaliapin Jr.,
Elia Kazan,
Clint Eastwood,
Yul Brynner and many other Hollywood actors
and directors.
At the end of his life Chekhov reunited with his daughter
Ada Tschechowa in California. He died in
1955 in Beverly Hills, and was laid to rest in the Forest Lawn Cemetery
in Los Angeles. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Robertson Hare, most well known to British audiences for his portrayals of a bald headed and hen pecked husband in the film versions of Ben Travers West End of London farces, began his stage career at age 20.
His trademark was losing his trousers during a stage performance and then exclaiming, "Oh! Calamity."
Much later,at the age of 75, he became popular again with a new and larger audience for his television role as the Archdeacon the Venerable Henry Blunt in a sitcom, All Gas and Gaiters.
He summed up his long career in a 1958 autobiography.- Music Department
- Composer
- Casting Department
Walter Scott Bradley was a legendary composer for animated cartoons, namely from the 1920s to the 1950s.
He was born on November 26, 1891 in Russellville, Arkansas. Piano was his specialty. Bradley noted that he started out performing a theaters and conductions in Houston, Texas. In 1926, he moved to Los Angeles to practice music even more!
Bradley was very busy during this time; as a staff musician for Walt Disney (1929), Ub Iwerks (1930-1934), and Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising (1934-1938)! His most notable success during this time was 1938's Cartoonia. In 1937, when MGM's new cartoon studio was established, Bradley was permanently hired and remained with the department for 20 years.
At first, Bradley composed popular and anonymous music, but by the mid 1940s, his music conduction started to become more original and complex, namely the "twelve tone technique". This began with the 1944 Tom and Jerry short "Puttin' On the Dog. Many people criticized Bradley's composition, with one even saying that he is going to break fingers!
Bradley worked a lot with Tom and Jerry's co-creator William Hanna, because both worked on timing. In 1954, MGM terminated it's weekly contract with Bradley but still paid him $1000 per film. This theme remained evident until the cartoon studio closed it's doors in 1958, after the point which Bradley retired after having spent about 45 years in music.
He died on April 27, 1977 in Chatsworth, California at the age of 85. He lived in Chatsworth for over 40 years!
Bradley is still best known for scoring almost all the MGM cartoons. Many of his conductions have been performed in the concert hall, just like what Bradley had done before.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Daphne Pollard was born on 19 October 1891 in Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia. She was an actress, known for Thicker Than Water (1935), Our Relations (1936) and Loose Ankles (1930). She was married to Ellington Strother Bunch. She died on 22 February 1978 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
- Casting Director
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Miriam Cooper was born to Julian Cooper and Margaret Stewart in
Baltimore, Maryland, in 1891. The family was Roman Catholic, and the
Coopers were fairly well-to-do. After the birth of five children in
five years (one of whom died in infancy), Julian Cooper deserted his
family and fled to Europe. Margaret Cooper raised Miriam and her
siblings Nelson, Gordon and Lenore with financial assistance from her
mother-in-law. After grandmother Cooper died, the family lived in
abject poverty and was forced to move from Washington Heights to Little
Italy. At one point, Miriam spent time in an orphanage when her mother
was too sick to take care of her. Miriam was educated at St. Walburga's
Academy, a convent school, and at Coopers Union Art School. Before
stumbling into the nascent motion picture industry, she was a model for
artists Harrison Fisher and
Charles Dana Gibson. Her first film
role was as an extra in
D.W. Griffith's
A Blot on the 'Scutcheon (1912).
She next traveled to Florida where she played the ingénue in nearly 30
films for Kalem studios. Most of the films were Civil War dramas and
romances, and Miriam did all of her own stunts, including horseback
riding, running along the tops of trains and swimming a horse across a
river, only to be fired in 1913 for asking for a raise.
In 1914 Griffith rediscovered a screen test she made for him and
brought her into his circle. Miriam had leading roles in both
The Birth of a Nation (1915)
and
Intolerance (1916).
She also fell in love with one of Griffith's assistant directors,
Raoul Walsh. Knowing that Griffith would not
like the idea of their getting married, Miriam and Walsh were secretly
married on the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona in 1916. Walsh
eventually left Griffith for Fox Films. When Miriam joined him, their
marriage became public. Miriam lost interest in her film career after
their marriage, but Walsh preferred to direct her, and she made quite a
few movies for him at Fox, the most popular of which was probably
Evangeline (1919).
Miriam wanted to be a wife and mother, but the couple was unable to
have children, so they adopted two boys. Eventually Miriam tired of
Walsh's philandering and divorced him in 1925. She never remarried, and
although she felt some bitterness and resentment, it was obvious that
she continued to love and admire him after the divorce. Miriam made her
last film in 1923. She was tired of Hollywood and the film industry,
and once she left it, she never looked back. The money she had saved
was adequate for her to live very well. She became a golfing enthusiast
and hit holes-in-one in three different states. In the 1960s she was
rather surprised to be rediscovered by film historians and college
students, but she enjoyed their attention. She completed her
autobiography "Dark Lady of the Silents" in 1973, before dying of a
stroke in 1976.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Writer
One of the great stars of early American Westerns. McCoy was the son of
an Irish soldier who later became police chief of Saginaw, Michigan,
where McCoy was born. He attended St. Ignatius College in Chicago and
after seeing a Wild West show there, left school and found work on a
Wyoming ranch. He became an expert horseman and roper and developed a
keen knowledge of the ways and languages of the Indian tribes in the
area. He competed in numerous rodeos, then enlisted in the U.S. Army
when America entered the First World War. He was commissioned and rose
to the rank of lieutenant colonel. At the end of World War I, he
returned to his ranch in Wyoming, only to be called by Governor Bob
Carry to the post of Adjutant General of Wyoming, a position he held
until 1921. The position carried with it the rank of Brigadier General
(a brevet promotion) and it has been reported that this made him the
youngest general officer in the U.S. Army. His reputation as a friend
to the Wind River Reservation Indians, both Arapahoe and Shoshone,
preceded him and in 1922, he was asked by the head of Famous
Players-Lasky, Jesse L. Lasky, to provide
Indian extras for the Western extravaganza,
The Covered Wagon (1923). He
resigned from the state position and recruited several hundred Indians
to the Utah movie location. When the film wrapped, he was asked to
choose several Indians to accompany him to Hollywood. There the
production company developed a live 'prologue' to be presented just
prior to the movie showing. The idea was a success and McCoy and his
Indian group toured the U.S. and eventually, Europe as well. After
touring this country and Europe with the Indians as publicity, McCoy
returned to Hollywood and used his connections to obtain further work
in the movies, both as a technical advisor and eventually as an actor.
MGM speedily signed him to a contract to star in a series of Westerns
and McCoy rapidly rose to stardom, making scores of Westerns and
occasional non-Westerns. In 1935, he left Hollywood, first to tour with
the Ringling Brothers Circus and then with his own Wild West show. His
1938 Wild West Show cost over $300,000 to mount and closed in
bankruptcy in just 28 days. He returned to films in 1940, in a series
teaming him with Buck Jones and
Raymond Hatton, but World War II and
Jones's death in 1942 ended the project. McCoy returned to the Army for
the war and served with the Army Air Corps in Europe, winning several
decorations and a promotion to full Colonel. He retired from the army
and from films after the war, but emerged in the late 1940s for a few
more films and some television work. In 1942 he ran for the Republican
Nomination for the U.S. Senate in Wyoming. He was defeated and returned
to Hollywood and an uncertain future. In 1946 he sold his Wyoming ranch
and moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania and the life of the gentleman
farmer. While living there, he met and married Danish writer Inga
Arvad. He later built a home in Nogales, Arizona where Inga
subsequently died in 1973. He spent his later years as a retired
rancher. He died at the U.A. Army hospital at Ft. Hauchuca, Arizona on
January 29 1978 at the age of 86.- Mikhail A. Bulgakov was a Russian writer and medical doctor known for
big screen adaptations of his books, such as
Beg (1971) and
Master i Margarita (2006).
He was born Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov on May 15, 1891, in Kiev,
Russia (now Kiev, Ukraine). He was the first of six children in the
family of a theology professor. His family belonged to the intellectual
elite of Kiev. Bulgakov with his brothers took part in the
demonstration commemorating the death of
Lev Tolstoy. Bulgakov graduated with honors
from the Medical School of Kiev University in 1915. He married his
classmate Tatiana Lippa, who became his assistant at surgeries and in
his Doctor's office. He practiced medicine, specializing in venereal
and other infectious diseases from 1915 to 1919.
Bulgakov wrote about his experiences as a doctor in his early works
"Notes of a Young Doctor." In 1917-1919, he suffered from an infection
that caused him an unbearable painful itch requiring him to take
morphine; which he became addicted to, but he managed to overcome the
dependency and quit. He joined the anti-communist White Army in the
Russian Civil War. After the Civil War, he tried to emigrate from
Russia, to reunite with his brother in Paris. But he became trapped in
Soviet Russia. Several times he was almost killed by opposing forces on
both sides of the Russian Civil War, but soldiers needed doctors, so
Bulgakov was left alive. He provided medical help to the Chehchens,
Caucasians, Cossacs, Russians, the Whites, the Reds... Bulgakov was the
Doctor to all the sick people.
In 1921, Bulgakov moved to Moscow. There he became a writer and made
friends with Valentin Kataev,
Yuriy Olesha,
Ilya Ilf,
Yevgeni Petrov, and
Konstantin Paustovsky. Later, he
met Mikhail Zoschenko,
Anna Akhmatova,
Viktor Ardov,
Sergey Mikhalkov, and
Korney Ivanovich Chukovskiy. Bulgakov's plays at
the Moscow Art Theatre were directed by
Konstantin Stanislavski and
Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.
"Days of the Turbins," about the demise of the White Army, was
performed more than 200 times at the Moscow Art Theatre, and also at
other Soviet theatres until it was banned.
The play was later restored to the repertoire and at least fifteen
performances of this play were attended by
Joseph Stalin. Stalin liked the play and
later, in his official speeches, he used some of the well-written lines
that were spoken from the stage by the Bulgakov's characters. In 1941,
after the Nazi invasion in Russia during the Second World War,
Joseph Stalin started his first radio
address to the people of the Soviet Union with Bulgakov's words from
the play, "Brothers and Sisters..."
Bulgakov's political independence was expressed in his article on the
death of the first Soviet dictator
Vladimir Lenin, "He killed a river of people..."
wrote Bulgakov in 1924.
Bugakov's own way of life and his witty criticism of the ugly realities
of life in the Soviet Union caused him much trouble. In 1925 he
released 'Heart of a Dog', a bitter satire about the loss of civilized
values in Russia under the Soviet system. Soon after, Bulgakov was
interrogated by the Soviet secret service, OGPU. After interrogations,
his personal diary and several unfinished works were confiscated by the
secret service.
His plays were banned in all theaters, which terminated his income.
Being financially broke, he wrote to his brother in Paris about his
terrible life and poverty in Moscow. Bulgakov distanced himself from
the Proletariat Writer's Union because he refused to write about the
peasants and proletariat. He made adaptation of the "Dead Souls" by
Nikolay Gogol for the stage; it became a
success but was abruptly banned.
He took a risk and wrote a letter to
Joseph Stalin with an ultimatum: "Let me
out of the Soviet Union, or restore my work at the theaters." On the
18th of April of 1930, Bulgakov received a telephone call from
Joseph Stalin. The dictator told the
writer to fill an employment application at the Moscow Art Theater.
Gradually, Bulgakov's plays were back in the repertoire of the Moscow
Art Theatre. But most other theatres were in fear and did not stage any
of the Bulgakov's plays for many years.
Joseph Stalin, who was increasingly
paranoid, ordered massive extermination of intellectuals during the
repressions known as the "Great Terror" (aka.. Great Purge). Many of
Bulgakov's friends and colleagues, like
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Osip
Mandelstam, Vsevolod Meyerhold,
Anna Akhmatova,
Mikhail Zoschenko and many others were
censored, banned, prosecuted, exiled, imprisoned, executed, found dead,
or just disappeared without a trace.
At that time Bulgakov started his masterpiece - "Master and Margarita."
It was slowly evolving from the series of chapters, initially titled
"The Black Magician" in 1929. That was changed to "The Prince of
Darkness" in 1930. Then it was changed again to "The Great Chancellor"
in 1934. Finally, the novel was titled as "Master and Margarita" in
1934 and was rewritten and updated constantly until the writer's death
in 1940.
While writing the novel, Bulgakov met Elena Sergeevna Shilovskaya, who
became his wife. She was, in part, the model for Margarita in the
novel. Secret service agents were spying on Bulgakov and learned about
his new novel. Bulgakov was interrogated again and was ordered to
destroy the manuscript under the threat from the government agents. He
had to be very cautious. Bulgakov split the manuscript in two parts and
destroyed one half in a fire.
Soon, he restored the missing part from memory and continued writing
the novel. He was writing the novel in secrecy, hiding its manuscript
for many years until his death in 1940. The main character in the
novel, Voland, alludes to Stalin, or Beria, or any dictator who plays a
semi-god. Voland was modeled after Satan in "Faust" by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The novel
has many parallels with the Bible and the "Divine Comedy" by
Dante Alighieri. The characters and
events in "Master and Margarita" are alluding to Bulgakov's experiences
in Moscow under the dictatorship of
Joseph Stalin.
Five days before his death, Bulgakov accepted an unusual promise from
his loving wife. She swore to live a humble life and wait as long as it
would take for Bulgakov's masterpiece to be published. The original
manuscript of "The Master and Margarita" was preserved by Bulgakov's
wife, Elena Sergeevna, until its first publication in 1966. It is a
Menippean satire, a cross-genre comedy, drama, and fantasy, regarded by
many as the best of the 20th century Russian novels.
Mikhail Bulgakov died of a kidney failure, on March 10, 1940, in
Moscow. He was laid to rest in the Novodevichy Monastery Cemetery, next
to other Russian cultural luminaries. - Belle Bennett's parents were William and Mary Bendon (stage name Bennett). They appeared in "Billy Bennett's Big Shows" which were traveling shows appearing in tents and local 'opera' houses. The shows presented vaudeville acts and melodramas. Belle was headlining in her teens before moving on to stage and film in her twenties. Dozens of advertisements and articles appeared in the local paper "The Mille Lacs Co. Times." None refer to a circus but to the above mentioned 'shows'.
- Farrell Pelly was born on 1 March 1891 in Galway, Ireland. He was an actor, known for Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959), Play of the Week (1959) and The Magical World of Disney (1954). He died on 23 April 1963 in New York City, New York, USA.
- An actress best known for her death, her controversial demise occurred
the day after being discovered in a hotel bedroom during a party that
involved a large amount of alcohol consumption. Actor Roscoe "Fatty"
Arbuckle was the last person seen with Rappe before she was found
seriously injured. After her death, Arbuckle went through a murder
trial and retrials before being found not guilty. The trials severely
damaged the reputations of both Arbuckle and Rappe, and Arbuckle's
career never recovered from the scandal. - Producer
- Additional Crew
- Production Manager
He was crude, uneducated, foul and, even on his best behavior,
abrasive. No major studio executive of the so-called "Golden Age" was
more loathed (although at times the dictatorial
Samuel Goldwyn and the hard-nosed
Jack L. Warner came close) than Harry
Cohn.
Born in the middle of 5 children to Joseph Cohn, a Jewish tailor, and
Bella, a Polish émigré, Harry was raised on New York's rough
lower-class East 88th St., where he followed his older brother
Jack Cohn into show business. Harry's life and
the origins of Columbia Pictures are closely associated with Jack,
whose early career paved the way for Harry's own ambitions, despite the
fact that the two brothers fought bitterly and each harbored deep
resentment over the other's success. By 19 Jack had left a job with an
advertising agency to work for
Carl Laemmle's newly formed Independent
Motion Picture Company (IMP), rapidly working his way from entry-level
job in the processing lab and through various positions where he
founded Universal Weekly, one of the first newsreel outfits, for
Laemmle. Jack soon found himself in charge of IMP's shorts as an
uncredited producer. He was involved in Laemmle's first stab at feature
production,
Traffic in Souls (1913), which
returned a then-whopping $450,000 on a $57,000 negative cost,
convincing Uncle Carl to head west and invest in his own studio,
Universal City. During this period Jack had convinced Laemmle to hire
Joe Brandt, an attorney he'd worked for in
advertising. Brandt, who would become the head of Universal's East
Coast operations, would later be a key factor in the brothers' success.
Harry had grown up in his brother's shadow, working for much of the
first decade of the 20th century as a lowly shipping clerk for a music
publishing company. In 1912 he teamed with
Harry Ruby at a local nickelodeon, singing
duo for $28 per week, with Ruby receiving the biggest slice of the pie.
The act would split up within a year and, after a brief stint as a
trolley-car fare collector, Harry hit on the idea of applying song
plugging to motion pictures. He produced a handful of silent shorts in
which popular songs were mimed by actors, inviting the audiences to
join in. His relatively modest success at this greased the skids for
his brother to recommend him for a job at Universal. At age 27 Harry
was working for Laemmle.
By 1919 Jack was itching for a change and wanted to become an
independent film producer--he produced a series of shorts called Screen
Snapshots, which purported to show stars' lives off-screen. Their
popularity encouraged Jack to jump ship and Harry, sensing an
opportunity, went with him. With them went Joe Brandt. The three formed
CBC Film Sales, which released shorts, mostly terrible--so terrible, in
fact, they earned the studio the nickname "Corned Beef and Cabbage
Productions" (Harry would explode into a rage whenever he heard this).
Desperate to put distance between he and his brother, Harry headed for
Hollywood to oversee CBC productions there. By design or opportunity he
ended up working out of the old Balshofer Studio on Hollywood Boulevard
and gradually created his own studio, renting out the Independent
Studios lot on Sunset and Gower. This was the heart of "Poverty
Row"--so-called because it was an area filled with the offices of
low-budget production companies and fly-by-night producers, who ground
out ultra-cheap programmers (mostly westerns) hoping to make a few
bucks. Harry was home.
He began producing two-reelers cheaply and nearly everything he sent
east made money for CBC. It soon dawned on him that the big money
wasn't in shorts but features, and the company scraped $20,000 together
and produced
More to Be Pitied Than Scorned (1922).
Through the then-complex system of exchange releasing and so-called
states rights sales, CBC netted $130,000 on the picture and, even more
importantly, scored a deal for five additional features. By the end of
1923 CBC had released ten features, none of which lost money--a
remarkable event along Gower Gulch. Harry was extremely conscious of
his place in Hollywood and took offense at the derision CBC films
received. He finally had enough, and on January 10, 1924, the company's
name became Columbia Pictures Corporation. The next year the company
paid $150,000 for a property at 6070 Sunset Boulevard. The partners
made a fateful decision about the same time: unlike most of the other
major studios (and this definition certainly didn't include Columbia at
the time), they opted to forego theater ownership. This decision would
prove extremely wise over the next 3three decades. Under Harry,
Columbia rose from the Gower Gulch ash heap. His releases rarely
featured A-list stars but consistently made money. Columbia took its
first tentative stab at A-list feature production with
The Blood Ship (1927) (its first
featuring the now-familiar torch lady logo), and even that was made
using a faded star, Hobart Bosworth, who
agreed to appear in the melodrama for free.
Fate smiled on Harry when former
Mack Sennett writer/director
Frank Capra became available, and he was
able to initially secure Capra's services for $1000 per picture.
Capra's importance to the fortunes of Columbia Pictures cannot be
overstated and, to be fair to Cohn, he recognized it. With rare
exceptions the studio utilized competent journeymen directors like
Erle C. Kenton,
Malcolm St. Clair or
Edward LeSaint, usually assigned to
projects starring capable B-level actors hired on a one-shot basis
(every so often Columbia would splurge and hire an "A"-list director
like Howard Hawks. With each of his
features, Capra's significance to Columbia grew, and with each hit
Capra was given increasing carte blanche; the congenitally tightfisted
Cohn would still fight bitterly with his star director over budgets,
but would usually relent to the demands of his productions. Strangely,
Columbia's status as a Poverty Row outfit actually helped. The major
studios loaned them temperamental stars who demanded pay raises or
script approval--since working for a "low-rent" studio like Columbia
was considered punishment in the class-conscious world of
Hollywood--and Harry enthusiastically assigned them to Capra's
pictures, a tactic that usually paid off big. A top actor from MGM or
Warners was expected to suffer in the low-budget purgatory of Gower
Gulch but usually left eagerly wanting to work for Capra again. One
such production,
It Happened One Night (1934),
single-handedly propelled the studio into the ranks of the majors and
garnered Columbia its first Oscars (although the studio had been
nominated for productions infrequently since 1931). Cohn never looked
back; signing directors to contracts was one thing, but hordes of
potentially unruly actors was another thing entirely--he held firm to
his long-standing belief that contract stars were nothing but trouble,
after paying keen interest to
Jack L. Warner's battles with
James Cagney,
Bette Davis and
Olivia de Havilland. In 1934 he
signed The Three Stooges (who would
enjoy a 22-year run at Columbia) and recent German émigré
Peter Lorre (Cohn was at a loss on
how to utilize him and Lorre would spent most of his time at Columbia
being loaned out to other studios) to long-term contracts, but wouldn't
begin to build a roster of contract stars in earnest until the late
1930s, beginning with Rosalind Russell,
and always he kept their numbers comparatively small
(William Holden,
Glenn Ford and
Rita Hayworth were among the select few in
the late 1930s and early 1940s).
The vast majority of Columbia's output remained at the B-level well
into the 1950s, but most of its films were profitable. It took Columbia
until 1946 to experience its first bona fide blockbuster with
The Jolson Story (1946), which
netted $8 million on a $2-million investment and resulted in a
profitable sequel in 1949. Among the major studios only Paramount and
Columbia eagerly welcomed the intrusion of television, and Columbia
responded by creating a subsidiary, Screen Gems (created by Harry's
nephew Ralph Cohn) in the early 1950s. The
division would pay off handsomely over the next 20 years.
Harry and his brother Jack continued to fight fiercely over business
matters until Jack's death in 1956. Harry himself died of a heart
attack in 1958. Despite his undeniable crudeness--the boorish,
thuggish, crooked, loudmouthed "Harry Brock" character in
Garson Kanin's classic
Born Yesterday (1950), memorably
played by Broderick Crawford,
was largely based on Cohn), Harry Cohn's Columbia Pictures never had a
negative year during his 30-year-plus reign--a record only approached
by Louis B. Mayer, who ruled MGM from
1924 through mid-1951. Columbia began from a far more disadvantaged
position than MGM did, though, and it thrived due to Cohn's keen judge
of talent and his near-fanatical adherence to early business policies
that were originally ridiculed.- Director
- Animation Department
- Writer
Burt Gillett was an animator from the state of New York, and a notable director of animated short films. He directed about a 100 short films between 1920 and 1940, but is best remembered for directing "Three Little Pigs" (1933) for the Disney studio.
Gillett started his film career c. 1916, when he was hired by the animation studio "International Film Service" (1915-1921). It was a subsidiary company of the International News Service, owned by William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951). The studio focused on creating adaptations for then-popular comic strips, such as "Krazy Kat," "The Katzenjammer Kids," and "Happy Hooligan."
Gillett worked in relative obscurity, until 1929 when hired by the Walt Disney Animation Studios. Studio head Walt Disney was facing a problem at the time, because Ub Iwerks was the only experienced animator on the studio's staff. Walt decided to head to New York City and to offer employment to a number of experienced animators working in the city's studios. Gillett was the second animator to accept Walt's offer, following Ben Sharpsteen.
By the summer of 1929, Gillett had become on the Disney's leading directors. He took over control of the "Mickey Mouse" film series, starting with the short film "Wild Waves". In 1930, Gillett also started directing films in the "Silly Symphonies" film series, an anthology which focused on one-shot characters. His first film in the series was "Cannibal Capers", featuring the tribal dance of a cannibal tribe.
Two of Gillett's short films won the "Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film": "Flowers and Trees" (1932) and "Three Little Pigs" (1933). "Flowers and Trees" was the first commercially released film to be produced in the full-color three-strip Technicolor process, an is credited as a milestone in the development of color films. "Three Little Pigs" introduced Disney's version of the Big Bad Wolf (also known as "Zeke Wolf") and the Three Little Pigs. The characters later became regularly featured characters in Disney comic strips and comic books.
Due to his newfound fame in the animation industry, Gillett was offered a more lucrative position as the new studio head of the animation studio Van Beuren Studios. Gillett started working there in 1934, and helped the studio transition to producing only color cartoon shorts.
While at Van Beuren, Gillett introduced the film series "Rainbow Parade." It was a "Silly Symphonies"-style anthology series, produced fully in Technicolor. Gillett personally directed many of the series' films. His most notable works for the studio included the "Molly Moo-Cow" sub-series (1935-1936), three animated adaptation of the popular comic strip "Toonerville Folks" (1908-1955), and a few color films for Felix the Cat.
Gillett's policies at the Van Beuren studios were controversial at the time. In order to compete effectively with the Disney studio, Gillett adopted several of the methods and techniques used by Disney. This made the studio's products seem more modern, but their films were seen as derivative. Gillett also fired several animators who had failed to meet his quality standards. His most controversial policy was forcing employees to work overtime to complete films, without any compensation for the extra hours.
In the mid-1930s, the Animated Motion Picture Workers Union (AMPWU) filed a complain against Van Beuren with the National Labor Relations Board. Their complain was based on Gillett's policies, but the Board decided in favor of the studio management. Gillett celebrated his victory by firing union agitators.
The Van Beuren studio shut down in 1936, leaving Gillett temporarily unemployed. The studio had lost its main distributor, RKO Pictures, and was unable to find another distributor. RKO had signed an exclusive deal to distribute Disney's films, and most major film studios already had animation subsidiaries.
Gillett was re-hired by the Disney studio, and he returned to directing films. His most notable film during this period of his career was the horror comedy "Lonesome Ghosts" (1937). It featured Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy as ghost hunters. The film's ghosts were portrayed as malicious pranksters. The short has received a number of adaptations of its own, including scenes in Disney-related video games.
In 1938, Gillett was hired by the Walter Lantz Studio. He worked as a director for a hand full of films, most notably introducing the new character Lil' Eightball, as a caricature of an African-American child. The character starred in three animated shorts, but was then retired. Gillett also directed a few entries in the popular "Andy Panda" series.
Gillett retired from the animation industry in 1940, and lived the rest of his life out of the limelight. He died in 1971, at the age of 80. His fame in the animation industry endures, in part due to directing several highly regarded short films, and in part due to his pioneering work in producing color films. Animation histories often include both his accomplishments and his controversial decisions.- Fritz Heinrich Rasp was the thirteenth child of a county surveyor. He
was schooled from 1908-1909 at the Theaterschule Otto Königin in Munich
where, due to a speech impediment, Rasp developed a Frankish dialect.
Rasp debuted on the stage in 1909, as Amandus in Max Halbe's
"Skandalstück Jugend" as the Münchner Schauspielhaus.
In May 1914, Rasp received a five-year contract in the Reinhardts
Deutschem Theater in Berlin, which was interrupted by his military
service to Germany from 1916 - 1918. - Jamie Forster was born on 16 September 1891 in Thomasville, Alabama, USA. He was an actor, known for Perry Mason (1957), The Twilight Zone (1959) and Attack of the Puppet People (1958). He was married to Margaret Claire McGregor. He died on 7 September 1970 in Thomasville, Alabama, USA.
- William H. O'Brien was born on 19 July 1891 in Peak Hill, New South Wales, Australia. He was an actor, known for I've Been Around (1935), Once a Gentleman (1930) and The Sky Raiders (1931). He died on 18 April 1981 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Ann Shoemaker was born on 10 January 1891 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Alice Adams (1935), Sunrise at Campobello (1960) and My Favorite Wife (1940). She was married to Henry Stephenson and Louis Leon Hall. She died on 18 September 1978 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Although Dutch-born silent screen femme fatale Jetta Goudal (pronounced
Zhett-eh Goo-doll) may be pretty much forgotten today, she was, in her
glorious Hollywood heyday, a star rivaling that of
Gloria Swanson and fellow vamps
Barbara La Marr and
Nita Naldi. The daughter of a Jewish orthodox
diamond cutter in Amsterdam, she began her career on stage in Europe,
traveling with various theater companies. Arriving in America (New York
City) following the WWI armistice (1918), Juliette (Julie) Henriette
Goudeket purposely disguised her Dutch and Jewish ancestry and her age,
passing herself off as "Jetta Goudal," a Parisienne born in Versailles
in 1901 and the daughter of a lawyer.
She first appeared on Broadway in the drama "The Hero" in March of
1921; that September she returned with the melodrama "The Elton Charm".
Eventually testing for film. She attracted immediate attention with her
first two small film roles and caught the eye of legendary
producer/director Cecil B. DeMille. He
hired her for what turned out to be some of her (and his) greatest
critical successes, including her emotional roles in
The Coming of Amos (1925),
The Road to Yesterday (1925),
White Gold (1927) and
The Forbidden Woman (1927).
Unfortunately, the exotic allure and element of mystery that made
Goudal so popular on-screen came with a price. She was an unrepentant
theatrical "grand dame" and possessed a fierce temper well known to the
film community.
Her extreme difficulty on the set led to DeMille breaking her contract,
which in turn led Goudal to file a landmark lawsuit against him. She
charged him with breach of contract, while he claimed her diva-like
tirades over every detail of production, from costumes and scenery to
mere entrances, caused a multitude of delays and severe financial
setbacks for the studio. Goudal, however, won the suit--one reason
being that neither DeMille nor the studio could furnish financial
records to back up their claims that she cost them untold thousands of
dollars--and it set a precedent regarding actors' rights vs. studios'
rights. The damage to her career and reputation, however, was sealed
and she never recaptured her former glory. Moreover, with the arrival
of sound her very thick French accent left her with limited offers.
Goudal married art director Harold Grieve
in 1930 and retired from the screen permanently three years later.
Along with her husband, she went into interior design and faded from
the Hollywood scene. They had no children. Plagued by health problems
(heart condition) in the 1960s, she suffered a serious fall in 1973
which left her an invalid. She died in 1985 and was interred in a
private room at the Great Mausoleum, Sanctuary of the Angels, at Forest
Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Her devoted
husband was interred next to her upon his death in 1993. - Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
A stage actor, Archie Mayo went to Hollywood in 1915 and worked until his
retirement in 1946. He began directing slapstick two-reelers, later
making features at Warner Bros. just about the time sound was being
introduced into films. He did much work for Warners, but he also made films at Goldwyn and 20th
Century-Fox. During the 1940s he became somewhat
of a tyrant on the set and fought constantly with stars; the heavyset Mayo was referred to by one particular star as a "fat slob". He left the business for 12 years and returned as a producer in 1958.