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- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was
the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer
William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English
and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock
(born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock (born 1892). Raised as a strict
Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits,
Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. His first job outside of
the family business was in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley
Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in movies began at around
this time, frequently visiting the cinema and reading US trade
journals.
Hitchcock entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer.
It was there that he met Alma Reville, though they never
really spoke to each other. It was only after the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923)
fell ill and Hitchcock was named director to complete the film that he
and Reville began to collaborate. Hitchcock had his first real crack at
directing a film, start to finish, in 1923 when he was hired to direct
the film Number 13 (1922), though the
production wasn't completed due to the studio's closure (he later remade it as a sound film). Hitchcock
didn't give up then. He directed
The Pleasure Garden (1925), a
British/German production, which was very popular. Hitchcock made his
first trademark film in 1927,
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
. In the same year, on the 2nd of December, Hitchcock married Alma
Reville. They had one child,
Patricia Hitchcock who was born on July 7th, 1928. His success followed when he made a number of films in Britain such as The Lady Vanishes (1938)
and Jamaica Inn (1939), some of which
also gained him fame in the USA.
In 1940, the Hitchcock family moved to Hollywood, where the producer
David O. Selznick had hired him to direct an adaptation of 'Daphne du Maurier''s Rebecca (1940).
After Saboteur (1942), as his fame as a director grew, film companies began
to refer to his films as 'Alfred Hitchcock's', for example
Alfred Hitcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's
Family Plot (1976), Alfred
Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972).
Hitchcock was a master of pure cinema who almost never failed to reconcile aesthetics with the demands of the box-office.
During the
making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife
Alma suffered a paralyzing stroke which made her unable to walk very
well. On March 7, 1979, Hitchcock was awarded the AFI Life
Achievement Award, where he said: "I beg permission
to mention by name only four people who have given me the most
affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration.
The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter,
the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a
cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen and their names
are Alma Reville." By this time, he was ill with angina and his
kidneys had already started to fail. He had started to write a screenplay
with Ernest Lehman called The Short Night but he fired Lehman and
hired young writer David Freeman to rewrite the script. Due to
Hitchcock's failing health the film was never made, but Freeman
published the script after Hitchcock's death. In late 1979, Hitchcock
was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. On the 29th April 1980,
9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. His
funeral was held in the Church of Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.
Father Thomas Sullivan led the service with over 600 people attended
the service, among them were
Mel Brooks (director of
High Anxiety (1977), a comedy
tribute to Hitchcock and his films),
Louis Jourdan,
Karl Malden,
Tippi Hedren,
Janet Leigh and
François Truffaut.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born in New York City, New York, to Maud Humphrey, a famed magazine illustrator and suffragette, and Belmont DeForest Bogart, a moderately wealthy surgeon (who was secretly
addicted to opium). Bogart
was educated at Trinity School, NYC, and was sent to Phillips Academy
in Andover, Massachusetts, in preparation for medical studies at Yale.
He was expelled from Phillips and joined the U.S. Naval Reserve. From
1920 to 1922, he managed a stage company owned by family friend
William A. Brady (the father of actress
Alice Brady), performing a variety of tasks
at Brady's film studio in New York. He then began regular stage
performances. Alexander Woollcott
described his acting in a 1922 play as inadequate. In 1930, he gained a
contract with Fox, his feature film debut in a ten-minute short,
Broadway's Like That (1930),
co-starring Ruth Etting and
Joan Blondell. Fox released him after two
years. After five years of stage and minor film roles, he had his
breakthrough role in
The Petrified Forest (1936)
from Warner Bros. He won the part over
Edward G. Robinson only after the
star, Leslie Howard, threatened
Warner Bros. that he would quit unless Bogart was given the key role of
Duke Mantee, which he had played in the Broadway production with
Howard. The film was a major success and led to a long-term contract
with Warner Bros. From 1936 to 1940, Bogart appeared in 28 films,
usually as a gangster, twice in Westerns and even a horror film. His
landmark year was 1941 (often capitalizing on parts
George Raft had stupidly rejected) with
roles in classics such as
High Sierra (1940) and as Sam Spade
in one of his most fondly remembered films,
The Maltese Falcon (1941).
These were followed by
Casablanca (1942),
The Big Sleep (1946), and
Key Largo (1948). Bogart, despite his
erratic education, was incredibly well-read and he favored writers and
intellectuals within his small circle of friends. In 1947, he joined
wife Lauren Bacall and other actors
protesting the House Un-American Activities Committee witch hunts. He
also formed his own production company, and the next year made
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).
Bogie won the best actor Academy Award for
The African Queen (1951) and
was nominated for Casablanca (1942)
and as Captain Queeg in
The Caine Mutiny (1954), a
film made when he was already seriously ill. He died in his sleep at
his Hollywood home following surgeries and a battle with throat cancer.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Fred Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Johanna (Geilus) and Fritz
Austerlitz, a brewer. Fred entered show business at age 5. He was
successful both in vaudeville and on Broadway in partnership with his
sister, Adele Astaire. After Adele retired
to marry in 1932, Astaire headed to Hollywood. Signed to RKO, he was
loaned to MGM to appear in
Dancing Lady (1933) before starting
work on RKO's
Flying Down to Rio (1933). In
the latter film, he began his highly successful partnership with
Ginger Rogers, with whom he danced in 9
RKO pictures. During these years, he was also active in recording and
radio. On film, Astaire later appeared opposite a number of partners
through various studios. After a temporary retirement in 1945-7, during
which he opened Fred Astaire Dance Studios, Astaire returned to film to
star in more musicals through 1957. He subsequently performed a number
of straight dramatic roles in film and TV.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
One of Hollywood's preeminent male stars of all time, James Cagney was also an accomplished dancer and easily played light comedy. James Francis Cagney was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, to Carolyn (Nelson) and James Francis Cagney, Sr., who was a bartender and amateur boxer. Cagney was of Norwegian (from his maternal grandfather) and Irish descent. Ending three
decades on the screen, he retired to his farm in Stanfordville, New
York (some 77 miles/124 km. north of his New York City birthplace),
after starring in Billy Wilder's
One, Two, Three (1961). He
emerged from retirement to star in the 1981 screen adaptation of
E.L. Doctorow's novel "Ragtime"
(Ragtime (1981)), in which he was
reunited with his frequent co-star of the 1930s,
Pat O'Brien, and which was his last
theatrical film and O'Brien's as well). Cagney's final performance came
in the title role of the made-for-TV movie
Terrible Joe Moran (1984),
in which he played opposite Art Carney.- Actress
- Producer
- Costume Designer
Gloria Swanson was born Gloria May Josephine Svensson in Chicago, Illinois. She was destined to be perhaps one of the biggest stars of the silent movie era. Her personality and antics in private definitely made her a favorite with America's movie-going public. Gloria certainly didn't intend on going into show business. After her formal education in the Chicago school system and elsewhere,
she began work in a department store as a salesclerk. In 1915, at the age of 18, she decided to go to a Chicago movie studio with an aunt to see how motion pictures were made. She was plucked out of the crowd, because of her beauty, to be included as a bit player in the film The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket (1915). In her next film, she was an extra also, when she appeared in At the End of a Perfect Day (1915). After another uncredited role, Gloria got a more substantial role in Sweedie Goes to College (1915). In 1916, she first appeared with future husband
Wallace Beery. Once married, the two pulled up stakes in Chicago and moved to Los Angeles to the film colony of Hollywood. Once out west, Gloria continued her torrid pace in films. She seemed to be in hit after hit in such films as The Pullman Bride (1917), Shifting Sands (1918), and Don't Change Your Husband (1919). By the time of the latter, Gloria had divorced Beery and was remarried, but it was not to
be her last marriage, as she collected a total of six husbands. By the middle 1920s, she was the highest-paid actress in Hollywood. It has been said that Gloria made and spent over $8 million in the '20s alone. That, along with the six marriages she had, kept the fans spellbound with her escapades for over 60 years. They just couldn't get enough of her. Gloria was 30 when the sound revolution hit, and there was speculation as to whether she could adapt. She did. In 1928, she received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her role of Sadie Thompson in the film of the same name but lost to Janet Gaynor for 3 different films. The following year, she again was nominated for the same award in The Trespasser (1929). This time, she lost out to Norma Shearer in The Divorcee (1930). By the 1930s, Gloria pared back her work with only four films during that time. She had taken a hiatus from film work after 1934's Music in the Air (1934) and would not be seen again until Father Takes a Wife (1941). That was to be it until 1950, when she starred in Sunset Blvd. (1950) as Norma Desmond opposite William Holden. She played a movie actress who was all but washed up. The movie was a box office smash and earned her a third Academy Award nomination as Best Actress, but she lost to Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday (1950). The film is considered one of the best in the history of film and, on June 16, 1998, was named one of the top 100 films of all time by the American Film Institute, placing 12th. After a few more films in the 1950s, Gloria more or less retired.
Throughout the 1960s, she appeared mostly on television. Her last fling with the silver screen was Airport 1975 (1974), wherein she played herself. Gloria died on April 4, 1983, in New York City at the age of 84. There was never anyone like her, before or since.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Charles Laughton was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, to Eliza (Conlon) and Robert Laughton, hotel keepers of Irish and English descent, respectively. He was educated at Stonyhurst (a highly esteemed Jesuit college in England) and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (received gold medal). His first appearance on stage was in 1926. Laughton formed own film company, Mayflower Pictures Corp., with
Erich Pommer, in 1937. He became an American citizen 1950. A consummate artist, Laughton achieved great success on stage and film, with many staged readings (particularly of George Bernard Shaw) to his credit. Laughton died in Hollywood, California, aged 63.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Jimmy O'Dea was born on 26 April 1899 in Dublin, Ireland. He was an actor, known for Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959), Let's Be Famous (1939) and Blarney (1926). He died on 7 January 1965 in Dublin, Ireland.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Jay C. Flippen could probably be characterized these days as one of those craggy, distinctive faces you know but whose name escapes you while viewing scores of old 1950s and 1960s films and television series. Playing both sides of the law throughout his career, his huge cranium, distinctive bulldog mug, beetle brows, bulky features, usually scowling countenance, and silver-white hair were ideally suited for roles as criminals and rugged adventurers, while his background as a standup comedian in burlesque, vaudeville and minstrel shows.
He was born John Constantine Flippen on March 6, 1899, in Little Rock, Arkansas. His father, John (a bookkeeper), died in 1908. Flippen's older sister, Era, died a year later (in 1909). His mother, Emma L. Flippen (née Pack), earned an income as a dance and theatre instructor. His maternal grandmother, Mary Pack, lived with the family. Picking up on his mother's artistic interests, Flippen joined the Al G. Field Minstrels at age 16. He was discovered by African-American star comedian Bert Williams in the 1920s, and was Williams' Broadway black face understudy and tour replacement for the 1920 musical revue "Broadway Brevities". Between 1924-29, he recorded scores of songs for Pathé Columbia, Perfect, and Brunswick Records. A veteran radio announcer for Yankee baseball games, Flippen was a lifelong baseball fan who forged friendships with several major league baseball stars. He also appeared on Broadway throughout the mid-1920s (and after), including "June Days" (1925), "Hello, Lola" (1926), "The Great Temptation" (1926), "Padlocks of 1927" (1927), "Second Little Show" (1930), the musical "Hellzapoppin'" (1941), and "Take a Bow" (1944).
Flippen made his film debut in the short The Ham What Am (1928), which captured a vaudeville performance, followed by a few other early 1930's shorts. He didn't move strongly into feature films until post-World War II where he could be counted on to provide his patented gruff and bluster in primarily war stories, film noir, and westerns whether playing a sheriff, farmer, cop, prison warden, military high-ranker or bartender. After playing Hodges, a guard, in Brute Force (1947), he appeared in such other crime yarns as Intrigue (1947), They Live by Night (1948), A Woman's Secret (1949), The Las Vegas Story (1952), The Wild One (1953), The Killing (1956), The Midnight Story (1957), Studs Lonigan (1960) and, The Seven Minutes (1971). His also dominated in such westerns as The Lady from Texas (1951), Devil's Canyon (1953), Man Without a Star (1955), Oklahoma! (1955) (as Ike Skidmore), The Restless Breed (1957), Run of the Arrow (1957), The Deerslayer (1957), From Hell to Texas (1958), and The Plunderers (1960).
Flippen supported many a top Hollywood male star during his four-decade film career. His atmospheric characters notably supported James Stewart in several of his top-notch vehicles, including Winchester '73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), Thunder Bay (1953), The Far Country (1954), Strategic Air Command (1955), The Restless Breed (1957), Night Passage (1957), and Firecreek (1968). He was a regular player on 1960s television as well, including Bonanza (1959), The Untouchables (1959), The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), Route 66 (1960), Burke's Law (1963), Gunsmoke (1955), Rawhide (1959), That Girl (1966), and The Name of the Game (1968). He also co-starred as an Chief Petty Officer in Ensign O'Toole (1962).
In later years, Flippen was dogged by illness. While filming his sheriff role in the classic comedy western Cat Ballou (1965), he had to have his leg amputated after a minor scrape, probably aggravated by diabetes, turned into a severe infection. He continued his career often in a wheelchair. His latest television roles were on episodes of The Virginian (1962), Here Come the Brides (1968), and Ironside (1967).- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
At various times in his life a rancher, deputy sheriff and rodeo
performer, this huge, towering (6' 5") beast of a man was born George
Glenn Strange in Weed, New Mexico, on August 16, 1899, but grew up a
real-life cowboy in Cross Cut, Texas. He taught himself (by ear) the fiddle and guitar at a young
age and started performing at local functions as a teen. In the late
1920s, Glenn and his cousin, Taylor McPeters, better known later as the
western character actor Cactus Mack, joined
a radio singing group known as the "The Arizona Wranglers" that toured
throughout the country.
They both started providing singing fillers in film westerns in the
early 1930s. Glenn would play extra or bit roles for a number of years
B Western and serials. One of his first roles was uncredited as a
soldier, in tin armor, as part of "Ming's Army", in the science fiction classic
serial "Flash Gordon"(1936/I). He would perform as a cowhand, rustler,
accomplice, sidekick, or plain old warbling, harmonica-blowing cowboy.
Eventually in the late 30s, his billing improved and he evolved into a
full-time bad guy in hundreds of "B" westerns. He was seen (or
glimpsed) in many of the popular serials of the day, including
The Hurricane Express (1932),
Law of the Wild (1934),
The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939),
and
Riders of Death Valley (1941).
It was his massive build that helped him break into the Universal
horror picture genre of the 1940s. Horror star
Boris Karloff had grown weary and fearful
of his Frankenstein Creature typecast and abandoned the role. Glenn was
the perfect replacement for the job and made his monstrous debut with
House of Frankenstein (1944),
quickly followed by
House of Dracula (1945). It was
he who played the Creature in the cult horror/comedy classic
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
as part of the monstrous trio of
Bela Lugosi's Dracula and
Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man.
As the "B" western started faded off into the sunset in the 1950s,
Strange moseyed on over to TV work. He played the nemesis "Butch
Cavendish" and later reprised the role, after a prison escape, on "The
Lone Ranger" (1949). Among other TV roles, he capped off his career
with a steady (12 years) role as Sam the bartender on the classic
Gunsmoke (1955) series from 1962
until shortly before his death from lung cancer in 1973.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
George was the son of the San Francisco Chief of Police who became a
college athlete. He was the Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the Pacific
Fleet during World War I. In the early 1920s, George wound up in
Hollywood where he worked as a stuntman and part time actor. In 1924,
Director John Ford picked virtually
unknown George to star in his first picture,
The Iron Horse (1924). Over the
next two years, he would appear in four more Ford films and would
co-star with Janet Gaynor in
The Blue Eagle (1926) and
Sunrise (1927).
"Sunrise," a winner of two Academy Awards, was the story of a simple
farmer who lets another woman talk him into murdering his wife. George
remained popular until sound came along. By that time, his popularity
was sliding, but he did make the transition to sound. With his rugged
looks and physical size, he was soon a Western Cowboy Star. He was in
some of the best stories ever written,
Riders of the Purple Sage (1931),
and in some of the worst. But he was consistently in the Top Ten
money-making Western Stars. He would appear in a few films outside the
horse set, such as
Ever Since Eve (1934), but those
roles would be few. By the end of the 1930s, George was still a popular
'B' movie Cowboy Star, but he would not take the parts as seriously as
he did a decade before. During World War II, he hung up his spurs, and
he re-enlisted in the Navy where he fought in the Pacific and was
decorated many times. After the war, when he would not find work in
acting, John Ford, his old Director,
would give him work with the cavalry in three of his films.- Writer
- Actor
- Music Department
Noel Coward virtually invented the concept of Englishness for the 20th
century. An astounding polymath - dramatist, actor, writer, composer,
lyricist, painter, and wit -- he was defined by his Englishness as much
as he defined it. He was indeed the first Brit pop star, the first
ambassador of "cool Britannia." Even before his 1924 drugs-and-sex
scandal of The Vortex, his fans were hanging out of their scarves over
the theater balcony, imitating their idol's dress and repeating each
"Noelism" with glee. Born in suburban Teddington on 16 December 1899,
Coward was on stage by the age of six, and writing his first drama ten
years later. A visit to New York in 1921 infused him with the pace of
Broadway shows, and he injected its speed into staid British drama and
music to create a high-octane rush for the jazz-mad, dance-crazy 1920s.
Coward's style was imitated everywhere, as otherwise quite normal
Englishmen donned dressing gowns, stuck cigarettes in long holders and
called each other "dahling"; his revues propagated the message, with
songs sentimental ("A Room With A View," "I'll See You Again") and
satirical ("Mad Dogs and Englishmen," "Don't Put Your Daughter On the
Stage, Mrs. Worthington"). His between-the-wars celebrity reached a
peak in 1930 with "Private Lives," by which time he had become the
highest earning author in the western world. With the onset of World
War II he redefined the spirit of the country in films such as This Happy Breed (1944),
In Which We Serve (1942), Blithe Spirit (1945) and, perhaps most memorably, Brief Encounter (1945). In the postwar
period, Coward, the aging Bright Young Thing, seemed outmoded by the
Angry Young Men, but, like any modern pop star, he reinvented himself,
this time as a hip cabaret singer: "Las Vegas, Flipping, Shouts "More!"
as Noel Coward Wows 'Em in Cafe Turn" enthused Variety. By the 1960s,
his reappraisal was complete -- "Dad's Renaissance", called it -- and
his "Hay Fever" was the first work by a living author to be produced at
the National Theatre. He was knighted -- at last -- in 1970, and died
in his beloved Jamaica on 26 March 1973. Since his death, his
reputation has grown. There is never a point at which his plays are not
being performed, or his songs being sung. A playwright, director,
actor, songwriter, filmmaker, novelist, wit . . . was there nothing
this man couldn't do? Born into a musical family he was soon treading
the boards in various music hall shows where he met a young girl called
Gertrude Lawrence, a friendship and working partnership that lasted until her
death. His early writings were mainly short songs and sketches for the
revue shows popular in the 1920s, but even his early works often
contained touches of the genius to come ("Parisian Pierrot" 1923). He
went on to write and star (with Gertie) in his own revues, but the
whiff of scandal was never far away, such as that from the drug addict
portrayed in "The Vortex." Despite his obvious homosexual lifestyle he
was taken to the hearts of the people and soon grew into one of the
most popular writer/performers of his time.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Neil Hamilton's show business career began when he secured a job as a
shirt model in magazine ads. He became interested in acting and joined
several stock companies. He got his first film role in 1918, but
received his big break from D.W. Griffith in The White Rose (1923).
After performing in several more Griffith films, Hamilton was signed by
Paramount in the late 1920s and soon became one of that studio's most
popular leading men. His rugged good looks and sophisticated demeanor
kept him steadily employed, and he worked for just about every studio
in Hollywood, from glittering MGM to rock-bottom PRC. Hamilton worked
steadily over the years, and grew gracefully into mature supporting
parts. He is probably best known to modern-day audiences, however, as
Police Commissioner Gordon in the TV series Batman (1966).- George Macready--the name probably does not ring any bells for most but
the voice would be unmistakable. He attended and graduated from Brown
University and had a short stint as a New York newspaperman, but became
interested in acting on the advice of colorful Polish émigré classical
stage director Richard Boleslawski,
who would go on to Hollywood to direct some notable and important
films, including
Rasputin and the Empress (1932)--the
only film in which siblings
John Barrymore,
Ethel Barrymore and
Lionel Barrymore appeared together--and
Clive of India (1935) with
Ronald Colman. Perhaps acting was
meant for Macready all along--he claimed that he was descended from
19th-century Shakespearean actor William Macready.
In 1926 Macready made his Broadway debut in "The Scarlet Letter". His
Broadway career would extend to 1958, entailing 15 plays--mainly dramas
but also some comedies--with the lion's share of roles in the 1930s.
His Shakespearean run included the lead as Benedick in "Much Ado About
Nothing" (1927), "Macbeth" (1928) and "Romeo and Juliet" (1934), with
Broadway legend Katharine Cornell. He
co-starred with her again in "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" and with
with Helen Hayes in "Victoria
Regina" twice (1936 and 1937).
Macready's aquiline features coupled with distinctive high-brow
bottom-voiced diction and superior, nose-in-the-air delivery that could
be quickly tinged with a gothic menace made him perfect as the cultured
bad guy. Added to his demeanor was a significant curved scar on his
right cheek, remnant of a car accident in about 1919--better PR that it
was a saber slash wound from his dueling days as a youth. He did not
turn to films until 1942 and did not weigh-in fully committed until
1944, with a host of both well-crafted and just fair movies until the
end of World War II. When he went all in, though, he excelled as
strong-willed authoritarian and ambitious, murderous--but
well-bred--villains. Among his better roles in that period were in
The Seventh Cross (1944),
The Missing Juror (1944),
Counter-Attack (1945) and
My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)
with a young Nina Foch. Averaging six or more
films per year throughout the 1940s, he appeared not only in dramas and
thrillers, but also period pieces and even some westerns. His standout
role, however--and probably the one he is best remembered for--was the
silver-haired, dark-suited and mysteriously rich Ballin Mundson in
Gilda (1946), who malevolently inserted
himself into the lives of smoldering
Rita Hayworth and moody
Glenn Ford.
By the early 1950s he had sampled the waters of early TV. He had many
appearances on such anthology series as
Four Star Playhouse (1952),
The Ford Television Theatre (1952)
and
Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955),
among others. He became a familiar presence in episodic TV series
beginning in 1954. He made the rounds of most of the hit shows of the
period, including a slew of westerns, including such obscure series as
The Texan (1958) and
The Rough Riders (1958). He
was familiar to viewers of crime dramas--such as
Perry Mason (1957)--and such
classic sci-fi and horror series as
Thriller (1960),
The Outer Limits (1963) and
Night Gallery (1969). He did
some 200 TV roles altogether, but still continued his film appearances.
He assayed what many consider his best role as the ambitious French Gen.
Paul Mireau, a fanatic and martinet whose lust for fame and glory leads
to the deaths of hundreds of French soldiers in a senseless frontal
attack on heavily fortified German lines in
Stanley Kubrick classic antiwar film
Paths of Glory (1957). Macready's
performance stood out in a film brimming with standout performances,
from such veterans as Kirk Douglas,
Adolphe Menjou,
Ralph Meeker and
Timothy Carey. The film was even more
striking when it turns out that it was based on a true incident.
Macready stayed busy into the 1960s, mainly in TV roles. He had a
three-year run as Martin Peyton in the hit series
Peyton Place (1964), the first
prime-time soap opera and a launching pad for many a young rising star
of the time. His film roles became fewer, but there were some good
ones--the Yul Brynner adventure period piece
Taras Bulba (1962) and a meaty role
as an advisor to US Prlesident
Fredric March attempting to stop a coup by
a right-wing general played by
Burt Lancaster in the gripping
Seven Days in May (1964). His
next-to-last film appearance was as a very human
Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, in
Universal's splashy, big-budget but somewhat uneven story of Pearl
Harbor,
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970).
Another role that stands out in his career is a one-in-a-kind film
which you would not expect to find George
Macready--Blake Edwards'
uproarious comedy -The Great Race (1965) -. Macready shined in one
of the film's several subplots, this one a spoof of the "Ruritanian"
chestnut "The Prisoner of Zenda", in which the racers find themselves
in the middle of palace intrigue in a small European monarchy. Macready
played a general trying to stave off a coup by using Professor Fate
(Jack Lemmon, who is a double for the
drunken ruler. Macready held his own with such comedy veterans as
Lemmon, Tony Curtis,
Natalie Wood and a host of others.
To top it of, Macready gets involved in one of the great pie fights in
film history, and takes one right in the kisser!
In real life George Macready was as cultured as he appeared to be on-screen. He was a well-regarded connoisseur of art, and he and a fellow
art devotee--and longtime friend--Vincent Price, opened a very successful Los Angeles
art gallery together during World War II. As far as the villain roles
went, Macready was grateful for the depth they allowed him through his
years as both film and television actor. "I like heavies," he once
said, and to that he added with a philosophic twinkle, "I think there's
a little bit of evil in all of us." - Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Charles Boyer studied philosophy before he went to the theater where he gave
his debut in 1920. Although he had at first no intentions to pursue a
career at the movies (his first movie was Man of the Sea (1920) by Marcel L'Herbier) he used
his chance in Hollywood after several filming stations all over Europe.
In the beginning of his career his beautiful voice was hidden by the
silent movies but in Hollywood he became famous for his whispered
declarations of love (like in movies with Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich or Ingrid Bergman).
In 1934 he married Pat Paterson, his first and (unusual for a star) only
wife. He was so faithful to her that he decided to commit suicide two
days after her death in 1978.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Lean, red/auburn-haired, athletically-inclined Paul Michael Kelly grew up on the tough streets of Brooklyn, New York. Born August 9, 1899, the ninth of ten children in a Roman Catholic family of Irish descent. The siblings' father, Michael, owned a bar called Kelly's Cafe. He died while Paul was still quite young and the entire clan was required to pitch in financially. Young Paul, who wound up making his Broadway debut at age 8 in "The Grand Army Man", did quite well for his family. His father's establishment was located close to Vitagraph Studios and the studio used to borrow furniture from the saloon for their sets. As partial repayment (at the request of his mother), the studio would use Paul for some of their one-reel silent films.
From 1911 on, he was the resident moppet at the studio,known as 'Chick Kelly, the Vitagraph Boy'. He appeared with such top matinée heavyweights as Maurice Costello and Constance Talmadge. The good-looking Kelly played the son in "The Jarr Family" series of one-reel adventures starring Harry Davenport as the patriarch. He transitioned into teen and young adult roles alternating between theater and movie assignments. Hit Broadway shows included "Little Women" (1916), Booth Tarkington's "Seventeen" (1918), and the highly popular "Penrod" starring Helen Hayes (also 1918). On celluloid he was romantically paired with Mary Miles Minter in the silent classic Anne of Green Gables (1919) and the success of that film moved him into even higher contention. The early 20s continued to be fruitful for Paul especially behind the theater footlights where he joined such esteemed leading ladies as Doris Kenyon in "Up the Ladder" (1922) and Blanche Yurka in "The Sea Woman" (1925). Films beckoned with The Great Adventure (1921), The New Klondike (1926), Slide, Kelly, Slide (1927) and Special Delivery (1927).
It was the love of a woman in the form of actress Dorothy Mackaye, however, that temporarily proved his undoing. Kelly met Dorothy Mackaye and her husband, Ziegfeld Follies song-and-dance man Ray Raymond (1888-1927), in New York and the three became fast friends and party-hearty cronies. They reconnected again years later when all had moved to Hollywood to pursue film. Her shaky marriage led her and Paul into a torrid love affair. By April 16, 1927, the couple's cover had been blown wide open. That same day, the two men, both drunk, duked it out. Ray came out the definite loser in the fight. Ethel Lee, the Raymonds' maid, opened the door and Kelly stormed into the house and confronted the much smaller man. Kelly shouted: "I understand that you have been saying things about me." Ray denied the accusation and attempted to defuse the situation by offering Kelly a seat, but Kelly, 6 feet tall and weighed about 200 lbs, was drunk and spoiling for a fight. According to the maid, Ray told Kelly: "I can't fight. I'm fifty pounds underweight, and I've been drinking." "I'll beat you", Kelly reportedly replied and punched Ray three or four times. The maid told police that Raymond got up but that Kelly grabbed him and put one hand behind his neck and beat him with the other, then threw him to the couch. The maid stated that Raymond was just a punching bag for Kelly and had put up minimal resistance. Four year old Valerie Raymond had witnessed the beating. Dr. Sullivan, who attended Raymond, consulted with other doctors who determined the cause of death was "nephritic coma" - the result of an inflammation of the kidneys. Mackaye paid Sullivan $500 (approximately $6500 in current U.S. dollars) for his "services".
The circumstances of Raymond's death might have been permanently successfully covered up if not for local newshounds who got wind of the fight and his subsequent death. They called on Coroner Nance and began asking for details, but he couldn't tell them a thing -- Raymond's death had never been reported to his office. Nance called the hospital where Raymond had died, and was informed that not only was Ray deceased his body had been removed by an undertaker! Nance followed up and located the corpse at a Hollywood mortuary and claimed the body to perform an autopsy. Unsurprisingly, the coroner's findings didn't agree with those of Sullivan - and Nance had harsh words for both Kelly and Mackaye, as well as Sullivan. The coroner reported that "Fortifying himself with four or five drinks - probably to brace up his bully courage - Kelly deliberately went into Raymond's home for the purpose of beating him. I am also informed that Mrs. Raymond was in Kelly's apartment when he left his home for the purpose of going to her home to beat up Raymond and it is my belief that it was due to her influence that Kelly went to Raymond's for the sole purpose of attacking him."
In Kelly's statement to the cops he said he had purposely called on Raymond to demand an apology for comments the cuckolded man had allegedly made. Kelly also told cops was that he went to Raymond's home "to give him the threshing [sic] that was coming to him" and made no other statements except to profess his love for Mackaye. Witnesses stated that Dorothy was still at Kelly's apartment when he returned after beating Ray, and apparently the couple retired to a rear room and conferred in secret for nearly thirty minutes, apparently in order to get their stories straight.
Dorothy Mackaye collapsed three times at the grand jury inquiry into Ray's death. At one point she fell to the marble floor with enough force to render her unconscious for ten minutes. She must have become light-headed after finally being compelled to tell the truth about the day of the beating. Her original story had been that she'd gone out to get Easter eggs for her daughter and to go to a dressmaker. Mackaye summed up her day of testimony before the grand jury by saying: "It has been a terrible ordeal. Why, oh, why, do they have to do all this to me? I would be all right but my nerves are shot to pieces. I hope I won't have to go through all this again very soon. ... Mr. Kelly I have known for years. I knew him as a youngster in New York when he was first starting out. My feeling for him has always been, and is, I suppose, a sort of sisterly love." Like Kelly, she had no words of sadness or remorse for her husband's death. The tabloids had a field day. Kelly was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to one to ten years in prison. Mackaye was sentenced as an accessory after the fact and for concealment of facts involving her husband's death. She was released on bond after serving ten months; Kelly was paroled in August 1929 for "good behavior" after serving only 25 months despite a decided lack of remorse over the incident. In 1931, despite Mackaye's "sisterly love" for Kelly, the couple wed after Kelly's parole board permitted it.
Kelly took his first post-prison Broadway curtain call in a 1930 musical revue and went on to appear in the short-lived drama "Bad Girl" (1930), opposite future film star Sylvia Sidney. Within the next two years he appeared in "Hobo", "Just to Remind You", "Adam Had Two Sons", and "The Great Magoo". Although none were hits, he was firmly establishing himself once again. Hollywood didn't desert him either although he was now relegated to "B" supporting roles with an occasional starring part thrown in for good measure. The virile, thin-lipped actor with trademark jut jaw and iron resolve received consistently good notices for his hard-boiled parts, including Broadway Thru a Keyhole (1933), The President Vanishes (1934), and Song and Dance Man (1936).
Dorothy Mackaye was killed in a car accident in January 1940. Kelly adopted Dorothy's child, Valerie Raymond, who had witnessed the beating death of her father. Her name was changed to Mimi Kelly, removing the last link to the world that Ray Raymond had left behind. Kelly appeared in such films as The Flying Irishman (1939), The Roaring Twenties (1939), Invisible Stripes (1939), Queen of the Mob (1940), The Howards of Virginia (1940), Wyoming (1940), Mystery Ship (1941), Mr. and Mrs. North (1942), Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942), The Story of Dr. Wassell (1944), San Antonio (1945), The Cat Creeps (1946), and Crossfire (1947), freelancing often as either an unyielding police official or sadistic bad guy. He found love again on the film set of Flight Command (1940) and married one of the film's bit part players, Claire Owen (née Zona Mardelle Zwicker), in January 1941, one year after the death of his first wife. Owen subsequently retired from acting and went on to survive him.
During the 1947-48 season, he was nominated and won a Tony Award (tying with Henry Fonda and Basil Rathbone) for his performance in "Command Decision", and also won the Donaldson and Variety Critics awards. In 1950, he went on to earn further acclaim for originating the part of Frank Elgin, the alcoholic actor in Clifford Odets's classic drama "The Country Girl", starring Uta Hagen. Not a big enough movie draw, he lost both parts in the film versions to Clark Gable and Bing Crosby, respectively, but found plentiful work on standard TV drama in the 1950s.
After suffering a heart attack in 1953, the actor was stricken again on Election Day, November 6, 1956, this time fatally, just after returning home from voting for Adlai Stevenson, who lost the election.- Sly, manipulative, dangerously cunning and sinister were the key words
that best described the roles that Gale Sondergaard played in motion
pictures, making her one of the most talented character actresses ever
seen on the screen. She was educated at the University of Minnesota and
later married director
Herbert J. Biberman. Her husband
went to find work in Hollywood and she reluctantly followed him there.
Although she had extensive experience in stage work, she had no
intention of becoming an actress in film. Her mind was changed after
she was discovered by director
Mervyn LeRoy, who offered her a key role in
his film Anthony Adverse (1936);
she accepted the part and was awarded the very first Academy Award as
Best Supporting Actress. LeRoy originally cast her as the Wicked Witch
in The Wizard of Oz (1939),
but she felt she was not right for that role. Instead, she co-starred
opposite Paul Muni in
The Life of Emile Zola (1937),
a film that won Best Picture in 1937. Sondergaard's most-remembered
role was that of the sinister and cunning wife of a husband murdered by
Bette Davis' character in
The Letter (1940). Sondergaard
continued her career rise in films such as
Juarez (1939),
The Mark of Zorro (1940),
The Black Cat (1941), and
Anna and the King of Siam (1946).
Unfortunately, she was blacklisted when she refused to testify during
the McCarthy-inspired "Red Scare" hysteria in the 1950s. She eventually
returned to films in the 1960s and made her final appearance in the
1983 film Echoes (1982). Gale Sondergaard
passed away of an undisclosed illness at the Motion Picture and
Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, at the age of 86. - Director
- Additional Crew
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
George Cukor was an American film director of Hungarian-Jewish descent, better known for directing comedies and literary adaptations. He once won the Academy Award for Best Director, and was nominated other four times for the same Award.
In 1899, George Dewey Cukor was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. His parents were assistant district attorney Viktor Cukor and Helén Ilona Gross. His middle name "Dewey" honored Admiral George Dewey who was considered a war hero for his victory in the Battle of Manila Bay, in 1898.
As a child, Cukor received dancing lessons, and soon fell in love with the theater, appearing in several amateur plays. In 1906, he performed in a recital with David O. Selznick (1902-1965), who would later become a close friend.
As a teenager, Cukor often visited the New York Hippodrome, a well-known Manhattan theater. He often cut classes while attending high school, in order to attend afternoon matinees. He later took a job as a supernumerary with the Metropolitan Opera, and at times performed there in black-face.
Cukor graduated from the DeWitt Clinton High School in 1917. His father wanted him to follow a legal career, and had his son enrolled City College of New York. Cukor lost interest in his studies and dropped out of college in 1918. He then took a job as an assistant stage manager and bit player for a touring production of the British musical "The Better 'Ole". The musical was an adaptation of the then-popular British comic strip "Old Bill" by Bruce Bairnsfather (1887-1959).
In 1920, Cukor became the stage manager of the Knickerbocker Players, a theatrical troupe. In 1921, Cukor became the general manager of the Lyceum Players, a summer stock company. In 1925, Cukor was one of the co-founders the C.F. and Z. Production Company. With this theatrical company, Cukor started working as a theatrical director. He made his Broadway debut as a director with the play "Antonia" by Melchior Lengyel (1880-1974).
The C.F. and Z. Production Company was eventually renamed the Cukor-Kondolf Stock Company, and started recruiting up-and-coming theatrical talents. Cukor's theatrical troupe included at various times Louis Calhern, Ilka Chase, Bette Davis, Douglass Montgomery, Frank Morgan, Reginald Owen, Elizabeth Patterson, and Phyllis Povah.
Cukor attained great critical acclaim in 1926 for directing "The Great Gatsby", an adaptation of a then-popular novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940). He directed six more Broadway productions until 1929. At the time, Hollywood film studios were recruiting New York theater talent for sound films, and Cukor was hired by Paramount Pictures. He started as an apprentice director before the studio lent him to Universal Pictures. His first notable film work was serving as a dialogue director for "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930).
After returning to Paramount Pictures, he worked as aco-director. His first solo directorial effort was "Tarnished Lady" (1931), and at that time he earned a weekly salary of $1500. Cukor co-directed the film "One Hour with You" (1932) with Ernst Lubitsch, but Lubitsch demanded sole directorial credit. Cukor filed a legal suit but eventually had to settle for a credit as the film's assistant director. He left Paramount in protest, and took a new job with RKO Studios.
During the 1930s, Cukor was entrusted with directing films for RKO's leading actresses. He worked often with Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003), although not always with box-office success. He did direct such box office hits as "Little Women" (1933) and "Holiday" (1938), but also notable flops such as "Sylvia Scarlett" (1935).
In 1936, Cukor was assigned to work on the film adaptation of the blockbuster novel "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell. He spent the next two years preoccupied with the film's pre-production, and with supervising screen tests for actresses seeking to play leading character Scarlett O'Hara. Cukor reportedly favored casting either Katharine Hepburn or Paulette Goddard for the role. Producer David O. Selznick refused to cast either one, since Hepburn was coming off a string of flops and was viewed as "box office poison," while Goddard was rumored to have had a scandalous affair with Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977) and her reputation suffered for it.
Cukor did not get to direct "Gone with the Wind", as Selznick decided to assign the directing duties to Victor Fleming (1889-1949). Cukor's involvement with the film was limited to coaching actresses Vivien Leigh (1913-1967) and Olivia de Havilland (1916-). Similarly, the very same year, Cukor also failed to receive a directing credit for "The Wizard of Oz" (1939), though he was responsible for several casting and costuming decisions for this iconic classic.
In this same period, Cukor did direct an all-female cast in "The Women" (1939), as well as Greta Garbo's final motion picture performance in "Two-Faced Woman" (1941). Then his film career was interrupted by World War II, as he joined the Signal Corps in 1942. Given his experience as a film director, Cukor was soon assigned to producing training and instructional films for army personnel. He wanted to gain an officer's commission, but was denied promotion above the rank of private. Cukor suspected that rumors of his homosexuality were the reason he never received the promotion.
During the 1940s, Cukor had a number of box-office hits, such "A Woman's Face" (1941) and "Gaslight" (1944). He forged a working alliance with screenwriters Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, and the trio collaborated on seven films between 1947-1954.
Until the early 1950s, most of his Cukor's films were in black-and-white, and his first film in Technicolor was "A Star Is Born" (1954), with Judy Garland as the leading actress. Casting the male lead for the film proved difficult, as several major stars were either not interested in the role or were considered unsuitable by the studio. Cukor had to settle for James Mason as the male lead, but the film was highly successful and received 6 Academy Award nominations. But Cukor was not nominated for directing.
He had a handful of critical successes over the following years, such as Les Girls (1957) and "Wild Is the Wind" (1957), and also helmed the unfinished "Something's Got to Give" (1962), which had a troubled production and went at least $2 million over budget before it was terminated.
Cukor had a comeback with the critically and commercially successful "My Fair Lady," one of the highlights of his career., for which he
won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Director, along with the Directors Guild of America Award. However, his career very quickly slowed down, and the aging Cukor was infrequently involved with new projects.
Cukor's most notable film in the 1970s was the fantasy The Blue Bird (1976) , which was the first joint Soviet-American production. It was a box-office flop, though it received a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film and was groundbreaking for its time. Cukor's swan song was "Rich and Famous" (1981), depicting the relationship of two women over a period of several decades., played by co-stars Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen, Cukor's final pair of leading ladies.
He retired as a director at the age of 82, and died a year later of a heart attack in 1983. At the time of his death, his net worth was estimated to be $2,377,720. He was buried at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, CA. Cukor was buried next to his long-time platonic friend Frances Howard (1903-1976), the wife of legendary studio mogul Samuel Goldwyn.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Actor, author, and musician Chief Dan George was born in present-day North Vancouver as Geswanouth Slahoot (later anglicized as 'Dan Slaholt'), the son of a tribal chief on Burrard Indian Reserve Nº. 3. He is the only Aboriginal actor in Canadian history to date with the right to use the title "Chief", serving as leader of the Squamish First Nation of Burrard Inlet from 1951-63, and retained the honorary title after his term ended. His last name was changed to George when at age 5 he entered a mission boarding school where the use of his native language was discouraged, if not forbidden.
Until 1959, he had worked as a longshoreman, logger, bus driver, and itinerant musician. After spending much of his early life as a longshoreman, a construction worker, and a school-bus driver, Chief Dan George auditioned for the role of Ol' Antoine on Cariboo Country (1960), a CBC series, and won the part. He made his screen debut at age 65. On the strength of his performance in the series, and after playing the same part in Smith! (1969), a Disney adaptation of one of the show's episodes based on "Breaking Smith's Quarterhorse", a novella by Paul St. Pierre, and starring Glenn Ford, he was asked to play "Old Lodge Skins" in Little Big Man (1970). This role led to an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in 1970. He continued to appear in films and became an accomplished stage actor. He died in 1981 on the same Indian reserve where he was born in North Vancouver at age 82.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Although he came to be called "Hollywood's Irishman in Residence"--and,
along with good friends James Cagney,
Allen Jenkins,
Frank McHugh and a few others were called
"The Irish Mafia"--and he often played Irish immigrants, Pat O'Brien
was US-born and -bred. As a young boy the devoutly Roman Catholic
O'Brien considered entering the seminary to study for the priesthood,
but although he often played a Father, Monsignor or Bishop, he never
actually followed through and entered the seminary. And although never
a policeman, in movies he often wore the cop's badge and, although in
real life he had no discernible Irish accent, he could pour on the
"brogue" when the role called for it.
Pat O'Brien excelled in roles as beneficent men but could also give
convincing performances as wise guys or con artists. He was a most
popular film star during the 1930s and 1940s. Over almost five decades,
he co-starred in nine films with Cagney, including his own screen
swansong, Ragtime (1981).- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
One of the best and most familiar character actors of the first four
decades of sound films, although few who knew his face also knew his
name, John Qualen was born in Canada to Norwegian parents. His father was a
minister. The family moved to the United States and Qualen (whose real
name was Kvalen) grew up in Elgin, Illinois. He won an oratory contest
and was given a scholarship to Northwestern University. His interest in
acting was piqued there, and he began appearing in tent shows on the
Lyceum-Chautauqua circuit and in stock. He went to New York in 1929
and got his big break as the Swedish janitor in Elmer Rice's Street Scene.
He repeated the role two years later in the film version. That same
year he first worked for director John Ford in Arrowsmith (1931). He became a
member of Ford's famed stock company and had prominent roles for Ford
for the next thirty-five years. He became a most familiar character
player, specializing in Scandinavians of various nationalities, but
frequently playing a wide variety of other ethnicities. Perhaps his
greatest work among many memorable roles was as the pitiful Muley, who
recounts the destruction of his farm by the bank in Ford's masterpiece
The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Although plagued in his later years by failing eyesight, he
continued to work steadily into his final years. He was treasurer of
The Authors Club and historian of The Masquers, Hollywood's famed
social group for actors. He had three children, Elizabeth, Kathleen,
and Meredith. Qualen died in 1987.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
The son of a rancher-turned-politician, Guinn Williams was given the
nickname "Big Boy" (and he was, too -
6' 2" of mostly solid muscle from
years of working on ranches and playing semi-pro and pro baseball) by
Will Rogers,
with whom he made one of his first films, in 1919. Although his father
wanted him to attend West Point (he had been an officer in the Army
during World War I), Williams had always wanted to act and made his way
to Hollywood in 1919. His experience as a cowboy and rodeo rider got
him work as a stuntman, and he gradually worked his way up to acting.
He became friends with Rogers and together they made around 15 films.
Additionally,in a film that has recently received critical acclaim, he
appeared alongside Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor in the silent film
Lucky Star (1929), playing a brute vying for the affections of Janet Gaynor in competition with a returning war veteran, played by Charles Farrell. He then easily made the transition from silents to talkies.
Although he also starred in a series of low-budget westerns in the
early and mid-1930s, he really came into his own as a supporting player
in the late 1930s and early 1940s, especially at Warner Bros., where he
appeared in such resoundingly successful westerns as
Dodge City (1939) and
Santa Fe Trail (1940) with his
friends Errol Flynn and
Alan Hale. Williams specialized in the
somewhat dim and quick-tempered but basically decent sidekick, a role
he would play for the next 20 years or so. He also made sound films
other than westerns, and was in, for example,
A Star Is Born (1937). Late in his
career, he won the hearts of TV viewers in a regular role as Pete, the
comedic roadie in Circus Boy (1956). In the early 1960s Williams'
health began to deteriorate, which was noticeable in his last film,
The Comancheros (1961), in which
he had a small part and, sadly, did not look well at all. He died of
uremic poisoning shortly afterwards.- Actress
- Additional Crew
Spouse: James Lincoln Blake (1 Child)
During World War II, she and her husband, James Lincoln Blake, worked in Utah on construction of the detonator for the atomic bomb and performed such jobs as testing equipment destined for the Manhattan Project. The couple received a citation for their work from the U.S. government.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Though born in Georgia and having a Russian-sounding name, Akim Tamiroff
is actually of Armenian descent. At 19 he decided to pursue acting as a
career and was chosen from among 500 applicants to the Moscow Art
Theater School. There he studied under the great
Konstantin Stanislavski, and
launched a stage career. This included road company productions, in one
such tour in 1920 Tamiroff came to New York City, which he liked so
much he decided to stay there. Broadway suited him, and he worked
steadily with the Theatre Guild from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s.
He was a short, stout man with a guttural baritone voice and a thick
but rather generic Russian accent that, with his skill in
characterizations, seemed to mesh with any role calling for a foreign
type--whether European, West Asian or even East Asian. His voice became his
principal asset. He came west to Hollywood in 1932 to break into the
movie business, and first appeared on screen in a bit part in
Okay America! (1932). Until 1934
his appearances were usually uncredited, but he managed to stand out in
several films, one of his best roles of the time being the servant
Pedro of John Gilbert
Queen Christina (1933). By early
1934 he was much in demand, appearing in 12 films during that year. The
next year was even busier for him, with roles in 15 films altogether,
and not just bit parts--he was getting more feature supporting roles,
such as Gopal the emir in
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935)
and the comic puppet master Rudolpho in the adapted operetta
Naughty Marietta (1935). He
signed with Paramount in 1936 but was often loaned out to other
studios. He went to Warner Bros. for one of his earliest big supporting
characters: the sly Cuban mercantile agent Carlo Cibo in
Anthony Adverse (1936). For
Paramount, his General Yang in
The General Died at Dawn (1936)
brought him his first of two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting
Actor. Along with substantial supporting roles in top movies, Tamiroff
was getting starring roles in "B" pictures, allowing him to show his
range by playing everything from amiable rogues to thoroughly evil
villains. Two of his roles from that time exemplify what a versatile
actor he was. As French trapper and scout Dan Duroc of
North West Mounted Police (1940),
he was something of a rascal but with a sense of humor and dignity.
However, as the vile Colonna in
The Corsican Brothers (1941),
he is irredeemably wicked, and deservedly dies in the longest sword
duel on film. For his role as the self-serving guerrilla Pablo in
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943),
Tamiroff received his second Oscar nomination. He continued through the
decade with more fine work, and in 1949 he joined the cast of
Black Magic (1949) and met
Orson Welles, who played late 18th-century
charlatan Cagliostro. The two became friends and associates in Welles'
later film projects. Through the 1950s Tamiroff's time was fairly
divided between T.V. productions and films earlier in the decade and a
surprising number of episodic TV and more films later. His three films
with Welles, as director and sometime actor, were:
Confidential Report (1955) with its Wellesian
maze of flash-backs; the over-the-top
Touch of Evil (1958) with its
gritty surrealism and incredible cast; and
The Trial (1962) (The Trial), Welles'
stylistic spin on the Franz Kafka story.
Certainly it was in "Touch of Evil" that
Tamiroff's Tijuana boss Uncle Joe Grandi--outlandishly bug-eyed
alternately with fear or mercurial anger intensified by Welles' wild
camera angles--stood out as a most intriguing character. He took a last
fling at Broadway in 1959. For the 1960s Tamiroff continued to sample
American T.V. but was still very active in American, French and Italian
movies. His voice and talent were still a draw in films like
Topkapi (1964) and
Alphaville (1965).
In addition, he remained on call for Welles' meandering/unfinished
Don Quixote (1992)
as Sancho Panza for nearly twenty years. One of the great character
actors of film history, Akim Tamiroff appeared in over 150 screen
projects.- Ernest Hemingway was an American writer who won the Pulitzer Prize
(1953) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1954) for his novel The Old
Man and the Sea, which was made into a 1958 film
The Old Man and the Sea (1958).
He was born into the hands of his physician father. He was the second
of six children of Dr. Clarence Hemingway and Grace Hemingway (the
daughter of English immigrants). His father's interests in history and
literature, as well as his outdoorsy hobbies (fishing and hunting),
became a lifestyle for Ernest. His mother was a domineering type who
wanted a daughter, not a son, and dressed Ernest as a girl and called
him Ernestine. She also had a habit of abusing his quiet father, who
suffered from diabetes, and Dr. Hemingway eventually committed suicide.
Ernest later described the community in his hometown as one having
"wide lawns and narrow minds".
In 1916 Hemingway graduated from high school and began his writing
career as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. There he adopted his
minimalist style by following the Star's style guide: "Use short
sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be
positive, not negative." Six months later he joined the Ambulance Corps
in WWI and worked as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, picking
up human remains. In July 1918 he was seriously wounded by a mortar
shell, which left shrapnel in both of his legs causing him much pain
and requiring several surgeries. He was awarded the Silver Medal. Back
in America, he continued his writing career working for Toronto Star .
At that time he met Hadley Richardson and the two married in 1921.
In 1921, he became a Toronto Star reporter in Paris. There he published
his first books, called "Three Stories and Ten Poems" (1923), and "In
Our Time" (1924). In Paris he met
Gertrude Stein, who introduced him to the
circle that she called the "Lost Generation".
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Thornton Wilder,
Sherwood Anderson and
Ezra Pound were stimulating Hemingway's
talent. At that time he wrote "The Sun Also Rises" (1926), "A Farewell
to Arms" (1929), and a dazzling collection of Forty-Nine stories.
Hemingway also regarded the Russian writers
Lev Tolstoy,
Fyodor Dostoevsky,
Ivan Turgenev and
Anton Chekhov as important influences, and
met Pablo Picasso and other artists
through Gertrude Stein. "A Moveable Feast" (1964) is his classic memoir
of Paris after WWI.
Hemingway participated in the Spanish Civil War and took part in the
D-Day landings during the invasion of France during World War II, in
which he not only reported the action but took part in it. In one
instance he threw three hand grenades into a bunker, killing several SS
officers. He was decorated with the Bronze Star for his action. His
military experiences were emulated in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1940)
and in several other stories. He settled near Havana, Cuba, where he
wrote his best known work, "The Old Man and the Sea" (1953), for which
he won a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. This was
adapted as the film
The Old Man and the Sea (1958),
for which Spencer Tracy was
nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor, and
Dimitri Tiomkin received an Oscar for
Best Musical Score.
War wounds, two plane crashes, four marriages and several affairs took
their toll on Hemingway's hereditary predispositions and contributed to
his declining health. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and
insomnia in his later years. His mental condition was exacerbated by
chronic alcoholism, diabetes and liver failure. After an unsuccessful
treatment with electro-convulsive therapy, he suffered severe amnesia
and his physical condition worsened. The memory loss obstructed his
writing and everyday life. He committed suicide in 1961. Posthumous
publications revealed a considerable body of his hidden writings, that
was edited by his fourth wife, Mary, and also by his son Patrick
Hemingway. - Norbert Schiller was born on 24 November 1899 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]. He was an actor and writer, known for Young Frankenstein (1974), Hogan's Heroes (1965) and Morituri (1965). He died on 8 January 1988 in Santa Barbara, California, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
During World War I, Richard Arlen served in the Royal Canadian Flying
Corps as a pilot, but he never saw combat. After the war he drifted
round and eventually wound up in Los Angeles, where he got a job as a
motorcycle messenger at a film laboratory. When he crashed into the
gates of Paramount Pictures and suffered a broken leg, the studio
provided prompt medical attention. Impressed by his good looks,
executives also gave him a contract after he had recovered. Starting as
an extra in 1925, Arlen soon rose to credited roles, but the quality of
his work left much to be desired. However, he continued in films, and his big
break came when William A. Wellman cast him as a pilot in the silent film Wings (1927)
with Charles 'Buddy' Rogers and Clara Bow. The story of fighter
aces would win the Oscar for Best Picture and Arlen would continue to
play the tough, cynical hero throughout his career. Arlen appeared in
three more pictures directed by Wellman, Beggars of Life (1928), Ladies of the Mob (1928) and The Man I Love (1929).
In "Wings" he had a scene with a young actor named Gary Cooper. In 1929, he
again worked with Cooper in the western The Virginian (1929), only this time Cooper
was the star and Arlen was the supporting actor. While Arlen moved
easily into sound, his career just bumped along. By 1935 he was working
in such "B" pictures as Three Live Ghosts (1936). It was in 1935 that he became a
freelance actor and his freelance career soon waned. In 1939, he signed
with Universal and began working in its action films. In 1941 he moved
to the Pine-Thomas unit at Paramount, where he appeared in adventure
films. With the war on, most of his earlier films included war
scenarios. By the end of the 1940s Arlen was becoming deaf and this
seemed to signal the end of his career. However, he had an operation in
1949 that restored his hearing and he went on making a handful of
adventures and westerns through the 1950s and working more in the
1960s. He made 15 westerns for producer A.C. Lyles, who worked with the
old western stars.
Besides movies, Arlen also appeared on television and in commercials.
After leaving the business in the late 1960s, he was coaxed back to the
screen for three small roles in films that were released the same year
that he died.- An extremely versatile character actor and originator of several memorable characterizations in the horror film genre, Dwight Frye had a
notable theatrical career in the 1920s, moving from juvenile parts to leads before entering film. A favorite actor of Broadway theatrical
producer-director Brock Pemberton, he originated the part of "the Son" in his hit 1922 production of Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in
Search of an Author". Pemberton would continue to employ Frye in Broadway productions throughout the decade. Cast with Bela Lugosi in a 1926 production of "The Devil and the Cheese", he ultimately appeared in at least two Lugosi films.
Despite (or perhaps because of) his memorable, impassioned portrayals of real estate agent-cum-madman Renfield in Tod Browning's Dracula (1931) and Fritz the sadistic hunchbacked lab-assistant in James Whale's Frankenstein (1931), the industry seemed determined to typecast Frye, and his film career would be marked with frustration. The Crime of Doctor Crespi (1935) offered him billing second only to that of villain
Erich von Stroheim, but all too soon, he was consigned to playing a lackluster array of crazies, spies, red herrings, grasping heirs and bit parts. He occasionally returned to the stage in comedies, musicals, and thrillers such as "Night Must Fall" and a stage version of "Dracula".
Frye was perplexed to find that his versatility in the theatre went unnoticed in Hollywood, where he was relegated to lunatic roles and often had his parts severely cut. Indeed, in Son of Frankenstein (1939) his role was deemed as unnecessary when an abrupt switch was made from Technicolor to black-and-white after his scenes were shot.
Dwight Frye, a devout Christian Scientist, had concealed a heart-condition from his friends and family. After the outbreak of WWII, unable to enlist, he worked nights (between films and local theatre-productions) as a draftsman for the Lockheed Aircraft Co. An uncanny physical resemblance to then-Secretary of War Newton Baker led his to being signed to a substantial role in Wilson (1944), directed by Henry King, based on the life of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, but Frye succumbed to a heart-attack on a crowded bus a few days after being cast while returning home from a movie with his son. He was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. - One of those wonderfully busy character actors whose face is familiar
if not his name, mild-mannered actor Byron Foulger began performing
with community theater, and stock and repertory companies after
graduating from the University of Utah. He met his future wife,
character actress Dorothy Adams,
in one of these companies. The marriage lasted nearly five decades and
ended only with his death.
Making his Broadway debut in a 1920 production of "Medea" that featured
Moroni Olsen as Jason (of the Argonauts),
and went on to appear in several other Olsen Broadway productions and
in close succession (including "The Trial of Joan of Arc," "Mr. Faust"
and "Candida"). While touring the country with Olsen's stock company,
he ended up at the Pasadena Playhouse where he both acted and directed.
Thereafter he and wife Dorothy decided to settle in Los Angeles.
Together the acting couple tried to stake a claim for themselves in 30s
and 40s Hollywood films. Both succeeded, appearing in hundreds of film
parts, both together and apart, albeit in small and often unbilled
bits. A man of meek, nervous countenance, Foulger's short stature and
squinty stare could be used for playing both humble and shady fellows.
In the 1940s, the actor became a part of
Preston Sturges' company of players,
appearing in five of his classic films --
The Great McGinty (1940),
Sullivan's Travels (1941),
The Palm Beach Story (1942),
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943)
and The Great Moment (1944).
Although predominantly employed as an owlish storekeeper, mortician,
professor, or bank teller, his better parts had darker intentions. He
was exceptional as weaselly, mealy-mouthed, whining henchmen who
inevitably showed their yellow streak by the film's end.
The character actor eased into TV roles in the 1950s and '60s,
displaying a comedy side in many folksy, rural sitcoms. His final
regular TV role was as train conductor Wendell Gibbs in the final years
of the
Petticoat Junction (1963)
series. The father of actress
Rachel Ames, Foulger died of a heart
ailment on April 4, 1970, coincidentally the same day the final new episode
of Petticoat Junction (1963) was broadcast.
. - Actor
- Music Department
- Composer
Award-winning songwriter ("Stardust", "Ole Buttermilk Sky", "Georgia on
My Mind"), composer, pianist, actor and singer, educated at Indiana
University (LL.B). He played piano in the college bands, and later gave
up a law practice for a career in songwriting. He joined ASCAP in 1931,
and his chief musical collaborators included Mitchell Parish, Stuart
Gorrell, Frank Loesser, Johnny Mercer, Sammy Lerner, Stanley Adams,
Edward Heyman, Paul Francis Webster, Jack Brooks, Ned Washington, and
Jo Trent.
His autobiographies are "The Stardust Road" and "Sometimes I Wonder".
His other popular-song compositions include "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of
the Evening" (Academy Award, 1951), "Washboard Blues", "Riverboat
Shuffle", "Little Old Lady", "Lazybones", "Rockin' Chair", "One Morning
in May", "Snowball", "Lazy River", "Thanksgivin'", "Judy", "Moonburn",
, "Small Fry", "Ooh, What You Said", "The Rhumba Jumps", "Two Sleepy
People", "Heart and Soul", "Skylark", "The Nearness of You", "When Love
Walks By", "Daybreak", "Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief", "Ivy", "Memphis
in June", "Hong Kong Blues", "I Get Along Without You Very Well", "Blue
Orchids", "The Old Music Master", "How Little We Know", "The
Lamplighter's Serenade", "I Walk With Music", "Come Easy Go Easy Love",
"Can't Get Indiana Off My Mind", "I Should Have Known You Years Ago",
"Baltimore Oriole", "Rogue River Valley", "Who Killed 'Er (Who Killed
the Black Widder?)", "Moon Country", "When Love Goes Wrong",
"Mediterranean Love", "Music, Always Music", "There Goes Another Pal of
Mine", "Just For Tonight" and "My Resistance is Low".- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Alma Reville was born on 14 August 1899 in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England, UK. She was a writer and assistant director, known for Suspicion (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and The 39 Steps (1935). She was married to Alfred Hitchcock. She died on 6 July 1982 in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Benny Rubin was born on 2 February 1899 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for I Love Lucy (1951), Bright Lights (1935) and Traveling Saleslady (1935). He was married to Beatrice Dallinger and Mary Bolt. He died on 15 July 1986 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
The daughter of a stage entertainer, New York-born actress Genevieve
Tobin started treading the boards as a child and appeared in the role
of Little Eva in the silent short
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1910).
Her older brother George Tobin and
younger sister Vivian Tobin also became
stage and film actors. By her teens Genevieve was appearing as a
sparkling blonde ingénue on 20s Broadway, steadily gaining notice with
her chic looks and vivacious personality. Considered a medium-weight
talent, she nevertheless tackled such roles as Cordelia in "King Lear"
(1923) in addition to her usual frothy comedies and musicals such as
"Polly Preferred" (1923). Following her New York performance in
Cole Porter's musical "Fifty Million
Frenchmen" in 1929 in which she introduced the song "You Do Something
to Me," Genevieve started focusing squarely on films, particularly
screwball farce, starting with a couple of glamorous leading lady roles
in the early talkies
A Lady Surrenders (1930) and
Free Love (1930), one a heavy drama and
the other a lighter comedy both co-starring
Conrad Nagel. Genevieve moved into second
leads as the 1930s flew by, however, often playing the arch or
self-involved 'other woman' role. She appeared in fine form as the
problematic third wheel in
One Hour with You (1932) with
Maurice Chevalier and
Jeanette MacDonald;
Goodbye Again (1933) co-starring
Warren William and
Joan Blondell;
Kiss and Make-Up (1934)
with Cary Grant and
Helen Mack;
The Goose and the Gander (1935)
with Kay Francis and
George Brent; and, her last,
No Time for Comedy (1940)
which paired up James Stewart with
Rosalind Russell, and was also directed
by her husband (and former stage actor)
William Keighley. Genevieve abandoned
her career for high society after marrying Keighley and never looked
back -- her marriage lasting 46 years until his death in 1984 at age
90+. Genevieve herself would live to become a nonagenarian, dying of
natural causes in 1995 in Pasadena, California.- Eileen Crowe was born on 2 March 1899 in Dublin, Ireland. She was an actress, known for The Quiet Man (1952), Top o' the Morning (1949) and The Plough and the Stars (1936). She was married to F.J. McCormick. She died on 8 May 1978 in Dublin, Ireland.
- American actor who had a brief flirtation with stardom before settling
into character roles and bit parts. Born in rural South Dakota
(according to government records, though some sources say Walsh County,
North Dakota) as Robert C. Oakes, the son of a horse rancher, he moved
with his family to Culbertson, Montana (not his birthplace as some
sources have it), where he grew up. The family moved again and he
graduated from high school in Helena. A brief attendance at Montana
Wesleyan College was interrupted by the offer of a job driving a tour
bus in Yellowstone National Park.
Drifting down to Los Angeles in the early 1920s, he got work as an auto
mechanic, but his ranch-honed cowboy skills got him bit parts in
pictures at Paramount when director
John Waters offered him work in a
series of Westerns. Paramount recognized possibilities in the tall,
rugged, handsome cowboy and put him (with a new name, Lane Chandler)
into leading roles, first in Westerns, then in contemporary films
opposite some of the biggest star actresses of the time,
Clara Bow,
Greta Garbo,
Betty Bronson, and
Esther Ralston. As silent films were
phased out, Chandler found his stock slipping at Paramount, which had
begun to overtly favor Gary Cooper
in his place. He began appearing in lower-budgeted Westerns, first in
leads, then as second leads to stars such as
John Wayne and
Jack Hoxie. During this period he free-lanced
at Big 4, Syndicate Pictures and Kent (see
Willis Kent) Pictures, all a far cry from
his days under contract with Adolph Zukor.
Despite the relatively poor production values, several of his early
talkies
(The Hurricane Horseman (1931) and
The Cheyenne Cyclone (1931))
rise above similar fare in entertainment value. Unfortunately, Chandler
was also forced to work on other lesser productions helmed by hack
directors such as J.P. McGowan who cared
more about quickly earning a paycheck than the product itself. His
association with Kent ended in 1930s and Chandler drifted to another
independent outfit called Empire Pictures which promised to produce 6
films, although only 2 were ultimately shot, the entertaining quickies
The Lone Bandit (1935) and
The Outlaw Tamer (1935). Now
in his mid-30's Chandler found his career in irreversible decline and
settled into supporting roles. A favorite of director
Cecil B. DeMille, Chandler worked in
many DeMille films, often in tiny bit parts, though he claimed these
were his favorite parts. Eventually Chandler no longer commanded roles
of any substance and he spent the remaining 35 years of his career in
progressively smaller supporting parts, playing in hundreds of films,
often uncredited. A stalwart of television Westerns of the 1950s, he
was a familiar face to movie fans for nearly fifty years. An astute
businessman with industrial and property holdings, he died in Los
Angeles in 1971 at 73. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Aline MacMahon was born of Scottish-Irish and Russian-Jewish ancestry on May 3,1899, the daughter of William Marcus MacMahon and Jennie Simon MacMahon. Her father became editor-in-chief of Munsey's Magazine, while her mother pursued a theatrical acting career from middle-age and lived to age107. After the family moved to Brooklyn, Aline was educated at then-prestigious Erasmus Hall High School. She later attended Barnard College where she was graduated in 1920.
MacMahon first appeared onstage in 'The Madras House' at the Neighborhood Playhouse Theater and subsequently made her bow on Broadway in "The Mirage" in 1921. During the 1920s, she had a prolific career on Broadway, first, as a comedienne adept at impersonations (notably, in "The Grand Street Follies" and "Artists and Models"). By 1926, she proved to be equally adept at dramatic roles, making an impact in Eugene O'Neill's "Beyond the Horizon." Noël Coward described her as "astonishing, moving and beautiful", while critic Alexander Woollcott commented on her "extraordinary beauty, vitality and truth" (New York Times, October 14, 1991). Her distinguished career on the stage went on for five and a half decades, highlighted by many critically acclaimed performances in plays like "The Eve of St. Mark" (1942-43), "The Confidential Clerk" (1954), "Pictures in the Hallway" (1956) and "All the Way Home" (1960-61). Her somewhat melancholic, heavy-lidded and thickly eye-browed features inspired sculptor Isamu Noguchi and photographer Cecil Beaton.
MacMahon's film career began on the strength of her wisecracking voice-culture teacher, May Daniels, in the Kaufman and Hart comedy 'Once in a Lifetime', which she had created onstage in Los Angeles in 1931. She reprised her role on screen the following year and was, prior to that, cast in similar roles as feisty secretaries in Five Star Final (1931), (her debut) and The Mouthpiece (1932). Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) afforded her a well-received co-starring role as the hard-boiled "Trixie Lorraine". McMahon managed to escape typecasting with several strong dramatic performances: Edward G. Robinson's sad, cast-off wife in Silver Dollar (1932); the sympathetic self-sacrificing Mrs. Moore of The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933); her co-starring role as Guy Kibbee's long-suffering wife Myra in Babbitt (1934); and kindly spinster aunt Lily Davis in Ah Wilderness! (1935). She effortlessly made the transition from Pre-Code films to Post-Code.
In the 1940s, she began playing lower-billed character parts, but was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as the Chinese mother of Katharine Hepburn's character, Ling Tan, in Dragon Seed (1944). After that, she played a succession of gentle mothers and grandmothers, as, for example, in The Eddie Cantor Story (1953). She was also occasionally employed in meatier outdoor roles in anything from swashbucklers, like The Flame and the Arrow (1950), to westerns, such as her ranch owner in The Man from Laramie (1955). More exotically cast, she portrayed James Darren's Hawaiian mother, Kapiolani Kahana, in Diamond Head (1962). In her last motion picture performance, she re-created her stage role as Aunt Hannah for the Paramount film version of All the Way Home (1963). Based on the novel "A Death in the Family" by James Agee, the picture was a huge success with the critics but performed less well at the box office.
Aside from a handful of guest appearances on television, she retired from the screen after 1964 and died of pneumonia at her Manhattan home at the age of 92 in 1991. She was married to Clarence S. Stern, who predeceased her in 1975.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Ramon Novarro was born José Ramón Gil Samaniego on February 6, 1899 in Durango, Mexico, to Leonor (Gavilan) and Dr. Mariano N. Samaniego Siqueiros, a prosperous dentist. Ramon and his family moved to Los
Angeles in 1913, as refugees from the Mexican Revolution. After stints as a ballet dancer, piano teacher and singing
waiter, he became a film extra in 1917. For five years he remained an
extra until director Rex Ingram cast him as Rupert in The Prisoner of Zenda (1922). He was cast
with Lewis Stone and Ingram's wife, Alice Terry (Ingram was also the person who
suggested that he change his name to Novarro). He worked with Ingram in
his next four films and was again teamed with Terry in the successful
Scaramouche (1923). Novarro's rising popularity among female moviegoers resulted
in his being billed as the "New Valentino". In 1925 he appeared in his
most famous role, as the title character in Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), and later
co-starred with Norma Shearer in The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927). His first talking picture was
Call of the Flesh (1930), where he sang and danced the tango. He continued to appear in
musicals, but his popularity was slipping. He starred with Greta Garbo in
the successful Mata Hari (1931), but his career began to fade fast. In 1935 he
left MGM and appeared on Broadway in a show that quickly flopped. His
later career, when he was able to find work in films, consisted mostly
of cameos. On October 30th, 1968, Ramon Novarro was savagely beaten in
his North Hollywood home by two young hustlers. They had heard - in
error - that he had thousands of dollars locked away somewhere in his
home. They never found any money, and Ramon was discovered dead the
next day by his servant.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Though she is little remembered today, silent screen star Carmel Myers
had a high-flying career in her heyday and was ranked among the
screen's most glamorous and enticing vamps. She was born at the turn of
the century in San Francisco, the daughter of immigrant parents. Her
father, a rabbi, emigrated from Australia and her mother from Austria.
Her older brother, Zion Myers, would grow up to become a successful writer
and director in Hollywood. The family moved to Los Angeles when she was
in her early teens and her father, an acquaintance of director D.W. Griffith,
advised Griffith on the biblical scenes for his movie Intolerance (1916), for
which Carmel received a bit role as a dancer.
Signed by Universal, Carmel rose quickly up the ranks appearing with
Rudolph Valentino in A Society Sensation (1918) and All Night (1918). She later branched out and worked for
other studios. She appeared in her most prestigious film over at MGM.
In the epic extravaganza Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), she portrayed Iras, the evil Egyptian
seductress out to snare both Ramon Navarro and Francis X. Bushman. Outrageously adorned,
she was a tremendous hit and MGM signed her up for their pictures
The Devil's Circus (1926) and Tell It to the Marines (1926), with each showcase striving to outdo the costumes
she wore for "Ben-Hur."
Carmel managed the transition into talkies but, due to her age, started
appearing more and more in support roles until she was left with
nothing but bits. In the 1950s she tried television and made her debut
in July 1951 with an interview show called, fittingly, The Carmel Myers Show (1951), in
which she bantered with such show biz elite as Richard Rodgers and Sigmund Romberg, but
the show lasted only one season. Married three times, she turned to
real estate and also founded Carmel Myers, Inc. in which she
distributed French fragrances. She died on November 9,
1980.- Producer
- Writer
Irving Grant Thalberg was born in New York City, to Henrietta (Haymann) and William Thalberg, who were of German Jewish descent. He had a bad heart, having contracted rheumatic fever as a teenager and was plagued with other ailments all of his life. He was quite intelligent with a thirst for knowledge but, convinced that he would never see thirty, he skipped college and became, at 21, a high-level executive at Carl Laemmle's Universal Studios, then the largest motion picture studio in the world.
After hitting a career impasse at Universal (partly as a result of a failed romance with Laemmle's daughter), Thalberg jumped ship and enlisted with the relatively obscure Louis B. Mayer Productions overseeing its typically turgid yet profitable melodramas. While the two men shared a common vision for their company, they approached their responsibilities from radically different angles. Mayer was a macro-manager; like a chess master, he would typically engineer business moves far in advance. Given the opportunity, Mayer could've succeeded as CEO of any multi-national corporation. Thalberg was at heart, all about movies, literally pouring his life into his work, largely leaving the managerial duties of the studio to Mayer. Modest, he disavowed screen credit during his lifetime, decrying any credit that one gives themselves as worthless. This working partnership would keep Louis B. Mayer Productions consistently profitable and would extend into their heydays as masters of MGM but would lead to an acrimonious later relationship.
By 1923 theater mogul Marcus Loew had a big problem. In an effort to secure an adequate number of quality films for his theatrical empire, he had merged Metro Pictures with his latest acquisition, Goldwyn Pictures only to discover his new super-studio had inherited a handful of projects (the Italian-based Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) and Greed (1924)) that had spun wildly out of control. He soon discovered that his problems were magnified by inheriting an incompetent management team. He instructed his attorney to conduct a headhunting expedition with instructions to investigate Louis B. Mayer Productions --- which Loew had previously visited on one of his trips west. Mayer's east Los Angeles studio actually had few tangible assets --- most of his equipment was rented. Loew ended up paying a pittance for Mayer's company but offered both men (after initially rejecting Thalberg!) huge salaries and even more generous profit participation allowances. Answering to New York-based Loew's Inc., Mayer and Thalberg moved into the then-state-of-the-art Goldwyn lot in Culver City and, with Loew's deep pockets, set about creating the most enviable film studio in Hollywood, quickly eclipsing Thalberg's former employer, Universal. Greed was largely scrapped (Thalberg recognizing director Erich von Stroheim's vision of a 7-hour film was unmarketable, had it extensively edited) and written off after a truncated release, with Ben Hur being called home and re-shot with a new director. Saddled with an unfavorable contract and millions in the red, the film would ultimately benefit the new company from prestige more than net profit, despite drawing huge crowds.
Mayer and Thalberg quickly moved past these inherited nightmares and created their dream studio. From 1925 through the mid-1940s there was MGM and then everyone else. It's roster of stars, directors and technicians were unmatched by any other studio. Indeed, to work for MGM meant that you had reached the top of your profession, whether it was front of or behind the cameras. Under Mayer and Thalberg, the studio refined the mechanics of assembly-line film production --- even their B-pictures would outclass the other major's principal productions (arguably MGM's only weakness was comedy). Their formula for quality made MGM the only major studio to remain profitable throughout the Great Depression (although a lesser studio, Columbia also did so, it achieved "major" studio status after 1934, ironically assisted by loaned out stars from MGM).
Thalberg himself was a workaholic and his health, which was never good, suffered. In his position as production supervisor, Thalberg had no qualms about expensive retakes or even extensively re-working a picture after it had completed principal photography --- one such case was with King Vidor's The Big Parade (1925), where he recognized the modest $200,000 WWI drama was lacking the war itself and could be turned into a true spectacle with a few epic battle scenes added. These few additional shots cost $45,000 and turned the film into MGM's first major home-grown hit (and its biggest hit of the silent era), grossing nearly $5 million. If he micro-managed productions there was no one in Hollywood who did it more effectively. Thalberg fell into a deep depression after the mysterious death of his friend and assistant Paul Bern (the two had worked extensively together on the hit Grand Hotel (1932)) and he demanded a one-year sabbatical. Loew's Inc. head Nicholas Schenck (Marcus Loew had died in late 1926) responded by throwing more money at him --- more than Mayer himself was scheduled to earn for the year, alienating Mayer. This, to his ostensible boss was an insufferable insult, one that would drastically alter their relationship. Thalberg remained on the job but suffered a heart attack following a 1932 Christmas party. Mayer quickly engineered a coup of sorts, recruiting a new inner circle of producers (including David O. Selznick and Walter Wanger) to replace him. Thalberg recuperated in Europe with his wife Norma Shearer and returned to MGM in August, 1933 resuming his somewhat reduced duties as a unit production head. He continued to score hits, supervising The Merry Widow (1934), The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), the rousing, definitive version of Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and the lavish Marie Antoinette (1938) (released after his death).
Thalberg also sought to rectify the studio's poor record in comedy films, signing the Marx Brothers, who had just been released from their contract at Paramount after string of flops. He felt the brilliant comedy team had been seriously mismanaged and ordered their MGM films to be shot in sequence and after their routines had been well tested on stage. The Thalberg-produced A Night at the Opera (1935) was a big hit but he wasn't infallible, stumbling with the critically well-received production of Romeo and Juliet (1936), which went on the books as a $1 million loss. Over Mayer's objections, he delved into the film adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's
The Good Earth (1937) but died of pneumonia on September 14, 1936 at age 37. The Good Earth (1937) was released soon afterward, MGM honoring him by providing him his only screen credit (Thalberg had always eschewed a producer's credit on his films).
He was survived by his widow Norma and their two children; Irving, Jr. and Katherine. After his death the Motion Picture Academy created the Irving Thalberg Award, given for excellence in production.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Herbie Faye was born on 2 February 1899 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), The Harder They Fall (1956) and The New Phil Silvers Show (1963). He was married to Mary Lou. He died on 28 June 1980 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.- Stringer Davis was born on 4 June 1899 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Murder She Said (1961), Murder Most Foul (1964) and Murder at the Gallop (1963). He was married to Margaret Rutherford. He died on 29 August 1973 in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, England, UK.
- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Sunday, November the 20th is the anniversary of Marcel Dalio's death in
1983. It was the end of a serendipitous life. You know him. He was a
citizen of the world. Born Israel Moshe Blauschild, in Paris, in 1900,
he became a much sought-after character actor. His lovely animated face
with its great expressive eyes became familiar across Europe. He
appeared in Jean Renoir's idiosyncratic "Rules of the Game" (The Rules of the Game (1939)) and
"Grand Illusion" (The Grand Illusion (1937)), arguably the greatest of all films. True to
his Frenchman's heart, he married the very young, breathtaking beauty
Madeleine Lebeau. He worked with von Stroheim and Pierre Chenal. He had it all.
But then the Germans crushed Poland, swept across Belgium and pressed
on toward Paris. He waited until the last possible moment and finally,
with the sound of artillery clearly audible, with Madeleine, fled in a
borrowed car to Orleans and then, in a freight train, to Bordeaux and
finally to Portugal. In Lisbon, they bribed a crooked immigration
official and were surreptitiously given two visas for Chile. But on
arriving in Mexico City, it was discovered the visas were rank
forgeries. Facing deportation, Marcel and Madeleine found themselves
making application for political asylum with virtually every country in
the western hemisphere. Weeks passed until Canada finally issued them
temporary visas, and they left for Montreal.
Meanwhile, France had fallen and, in the process of subjugating the
country, the Germans had found some publicity stills of Dalio. A series
of posters were produced and were then displayed throughout the city
with the caption 'a typical Jew' so that citizens could more easily
report anyone suspected of unrepentant Jewishness. The madness
continued. The Curtain Rises (1938), a popular film, was ordered re-edited so that
Dalio's scenes could be deleted and re-shot with another, non-Jewish,
actor.
After a short time, friends in the film industry arranged for them to
arrive in Hollywood. Nearly broke, Marcel was immediately put to work
in a string of largely forgettable films. Madeleine, a budding actress
in her own right, was ironically cast in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), a vehicle for Charles Boyer
with a plot driven by the efforts of an émigré (Boyer) trying
desperately to cross into the United States from Mexico. But the real
irony was waiting at Warner Brothers.
In early 1942, Jack L. Warner was driving production of a film based on a one
act play, 'Everybody Comes to Rick's' but had no screenplay. What he
had was a mishmash of treatments loosely based on the play and two
previous movies. But he had a projected release date and a commitment
to his distributors to have a movie for that time slot and little else.
Warner Brothers started to wing it.
Shooting started without a screenplay and little plot. Principal
players were cast and a director hired but casting calls for supporting
roles and bit players continued, and sometime in the early spring
Marcel Dalio and Madeleine Lebeau were cast as, respectively, a croupier and a
romantic entanglement for the male lead. Veteran screen-writers were
hired to produce a running screenplay, sometimes delivering pages of
dialogue one day, for scenes to be shot the following day. No one knew
exactly where the plot would go or how the story would turn out. No one
was sure of the ending. And, of course, they produced a classic,
perhaps the finest, American movie.
They produced a screenplay of multiple genres, rich with
characterizations, perfectly in tune with the unfolding events in
Europe and loaded with talent from top to bottom. Oh, and they changed
the title to Casablanca (1942).
It is so well known, that many lines of long-memorized dialogue have
passed into the slang idiom. 'We'll always have Paris', 'I was
misinformed', 'Here's looking at you, kid', ' I am shocked! Shocked! To
find that there's gambling going on in here!', 'Louis, I think this is
the beginning of a beautiful friendship', 'Oh he's just like any other
man, only more so', 'I don't mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate
one', 'Round up the usual suspects', and, of course, the iconic 'Play it, Sam,' often misquoted as 'Play it again, Sam,' the title of the Woody Allen movie.
Madeleine Lebeau plays Yvonne, the jilted lover of Humphrey Bogart, who is seen drowning
her sorrows at the bar early in the film and who later, to get back at
Rick and looking for solace takes up with a German officer finding only
self-hatred. She is luminous.
And when Claude Rains delivers the signature line, 'I'm shocked! Shocked! To
find that there's gambling going on in here!' the croupier, Emil,
played by Marcel Dalio, approaches from the roulette table and says
simply, 'Your winnings, sir.' It is a delicious moment ripe with
scripted irony, one among many in this film, but one made all the more
so, knowing where Dalio came from and what he and his wife had endured
to arrive at that line.
Alas, they separated and divorced the next year, both going on to long
successful careers. Dalio never remarried.
Late in his career, when Mike Nichols was looking for a vaguely familiar
face to deliver a long and worldly, near-monologue in Catch-22 (1970), he
turned to Dalio. Faced with a hopelessly idealistic young American
pilot, Dalio in tight close-up,
delivers a discourse on practical people faced with impractical
circumstances, of the virtues of expedience in the face of amorality.
Using his wonderful plastic features, now beginning to sag, in a voice
full of melancholy, the old man reassures the young man that regardless
of what 'grand themes' may be afoot in the world, in the end, little
matters but survival.- Curly-locked, cherubic knockabout comedienne of the silent cinema. Her
mother, portrait photographer Mrs. Kemp Raulston, named her after her
favorite actress, Jobyna Howland. She
harbored ambitions for her daughter to achieve similar fame and trained her to that end. After a
failed teenage marriage to a local farmer, Jobyna left her Tennessee home and
went to New York in 1919 to join the
Ned Wayburn dancing academy, a popular
springboard for aspiring actresses.
In 1920, she appeared first on screen in Reelcraft "Cuckoo" comedy
shorts made in Jacksonville, FL. Around this time she also
co-starred in Humor Risk (1921), which marked the film debut of The Marx Brothers, and is now considered a lost film. The following year
she made her one Broadway appearance in
"Two
Little Girls in Blue" by George M. Cohan.
Deciding that comedy was her forte, she went to Hollywood in 1922,
starting as an extra with Hal Roach.
She was cast in a rare dramatic role in
The Call of Home (1922), then
partnered with French comedian Max Linder
and subsequently starred in Roach's
James Parrott comedies. When Harold Lloyd
became aware of her talent, he picked her as his leading lady,
succeeding his wife-to-be
Mildred Davis. By that time, Jobyna had already been in 60 one-reel comedy shorts for Hal Roach. She proceeded to star in
six of Lloyd's features, of which
Why Worry? (1923),
The Freshman (1925) and
The Kid Brother (1927) are
standouts for her ability to combine considerable comedic talent with
pathos. Of her performance in
Girl Shy (1924), "Variety" commented
(April 2) "Jobyna Ralston . . . proves herself considerable of an actress
[sic] in addition to being decidedly pretty". In 1927 "Joby" was cast
in a featured role in the Academy Award-winning drama
Wings (1927), whose star,
Richard Arlen, she married in January of
that year (she eventually divorced Arlen in 1945 on the grounds of desertion, obtaining a $250,000 settlement). As a freelance comedienne she appeared in leading
roles opposite stars like Eddie Cantor,
Charles Ray and
Buck Jones.
Jobyna also starred with
Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in an
obscure Frank Capra melodrama,
The Power of the Press (1928). She made just three talkies,
The College Coquette (1929),
Rough Waters (1930) (her co-star
being Rin Tin Tin!) and
Sheer Luck (1931). In regard to the
first, the New York Times (August 26, 1929) declared that "Miss
Ralston's utterances are frequently indistinct". Indeed, Jobyna was
found to have a noticeable lisp which, combined with her impending
pregnancy, effectively put an end to her career as a motion picture
actress. - Guy Wilkerson was born on 21 December 1899 in Whitewright, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for The Fugitive (1963), Captain Midnight (1942) and Return of the Rangers (1943). He died on 15 July 1971 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Madge was born as Margaret Philpott in Texas. She got her start in theater working with a stock company in Denver.
Put under a personal contract by a Broadway producer, Madge got her big
break when she replaced Helen Hayes in the Broadway play "Dear Brutus".
Her success as a stage actress led to her being signed by Fox Pictures.
After appearing in a number of movies in the early 20's, Madge was best
remembered for her performances in 'Lorna Doone (1922)' and 'The Iron
Horse (1924)'. A strong will contrasted the screen image of innocence
and led to disagreements over roles by the late 20's. Madge had been
cast in a number of movies each year and was in Fox's first dialogue
feature 'Mother Knows Best (1928)'. But her refusal to work in the film
'The Trial of Mary Dugan', which was bought expressly for her, led to
her contract with Fox being terminated. It would be 3 years until she
returned to the screen in the cult favorite 'White Zombie (1932)' with
Bela Lugosi, but her career was not going anywhere as Madge was just
one of those old silent stars. For the next few years, she appeared in
a small number of low budget films and by 1936 her film career was
over. In 1943, she would again appear in the headlines when she shot
her lover, millionaire A. Stanford Murphy after he jilted her to marry
another woman. She did marry two other men, Carlos Bellamy, whose last name she kept, and then to Logan F. Metcalf. Both marriages ended in divorce. She has no children. - Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Master cinematographer James Wong Howe, whose career stretched from
silent pictures through the mid-'70s, was born Wong Tung Jim in Canton
(now Guangzhou), China, on August 28, 1899, the son of Wong How. His
father emigrated to America the year James was born, settling in Pasco,
Washington, where he worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad. Wong How
eventually went into business for himself in Pasco, opening a general
store, which he made a success, despite the bigotry of the locals.
When he was five years old, Wong Tung Jim joined his father in the US.
His childhood was unhappy due to the discrimination he faced, which
manifested itself in racist taunting by the neighborhood children. To
get the kids to play with him, Jimmie often resorted to bribing them
with candy from his father's store. When Jimmie, as he was known to his
friends and later to his co-workers in the movie industry, was about 12
years old he bought a Kodak Brownie camera from a drugstore. Though his
father was an old-fashioned Chinese, suspicious about having his
picture taken and opposed to his new hobby, Jimmie went ahead and
photographed his brothers and sisters. Unfortunately, when the photos
were developed, the heads of his siblings had been cut off, as the
Brownie lacked a viewfinder.
His childhood dream was to be a prizefighter, and as a teenager he
moved to Oregon to fight. However, his interest soon waned, and he
moved to Los Angeles, where he got a job as an assistant to a
commercial photographer. His duties included making deliveries, but he
was fired when he developed some passport photos for a friend in the
firm's darkroom. Reduced to making a living as a busboy at the Beverly
Hills Hotel, he journeyed down to Chinatown on Sundays to watch movies
being shot there.
Jimmie Howe made the acquaintance of a cameraman on one of the location
shoots, who suggested he give the movies a try. He got hired by the
Jesse Lasky Studios' photography department at the princely sum of $10
per week, but the man in charge thought he was too little to lug
equipment around, so he assigned Jimmie custodial work. Thus the future
Academy Award-wining cinematographer James Wong Howe's first job in
Hollywood was picking up scraps of nitrate stock from the cutting-room
floor (more important than it sounds, as nitrate fires in editing rooms
were not uncommon). The job allowed him to familiarize himself with
movie cameras, lighting equipment and the movie film-development
process.
His was a genuine Horatio Alger "Up From His Bootstraps" narrative, as
by 1917 he had graduated from editing room assistant to working as a
slate boy on Cecil B. DeMille's pictures. The promotion came when DeMille needed
all his camera assistants to man multiple cameras on a film. This left
no one to hold the chalkboard identifying each scene as a header as the
take is shot on film, so Jimmie was drafted and given the title "fourth
assistant cameraman. He endeared himself to DeMille when the director
and his production crew were unable to get a canary to sing for a
close-up. The fourth assistant cameraman lodged a piece of chewing gum
in the bird's beak, and as it moved its beak to try to dislodge the
gum, it looked like the canary was singing. DeMille promptly gave
Jimmie a 50% raise.
In 1919 he was being prepared for his future profession of cameraman.
"I held the slate on Male and Female (1919)", he told George C. Pratt in an interview
published 60 years later, "and when Mr. DeMille rehearsed a scene, I
had to crank a little counter . . . and I would have to grind 16 frames
per second. And when he stopped, I would have to give him the footage.
He wanted to know how long the scene ran. So besides writing the slate
numbers down and keeping a report, I had to turn this crank. That was
the beginning of learning how to turn 16 frames".
Because of the problem with early orthochromatic film registering blue
eyes on screen, Howe was soon promoted to operating cameraman at
Paramount (the new name for the Lasky Studio), where his talents were
noted. A long-time photography buff, Jimmie Howe enjoyed taking still
pictures and made extra money photographing the stars. One of his
clients was professional "sweet young thing" Mary Miles Minter, of the William Desmond Taylor
shooting scandal, who praised Jimmie's photographs because they made
her pale blue eyes, which did not register well on film, look dark.
When she asked him if he could replicate the effect on motion picture
film, he told her he could, and she offered him a job as her cameraman.
Howe did not know how he'd made Minter's eyes look dark, but he soon
realized that the reflection of a piece of black velvet at the studio
that had been tacked up near his still camera had cast a shadow in her
eyes, causing them to register darkly. Promoted to Minter's cameraman,
he fashioned a frame of black velvet through which the camera's lens
could protrude; filming Minter's close-ups with the device darkened her
eyes, just as she desired. The studio was abuzz with the news that
Minter had acquired a mysterious Chinese cameraman who made her blue
eyes register on film. Since other blue-eyed actors had the same
problem, they began to demand that Jimmie shoot them, and a
cinematography star was born.
Jimmie Howe was soon advanced beyond operating cameraman to lighting
cameraman (called "director of photography" in Hollywood) on Minter's
Drums of Fate (1923), and he served as director of photography on The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1923) the next
year. As a lighting cameraman he was much in demand, and started to
freelance. Notable silent pictures on which he served as the director
of photography include Paramount's Mantrap (1926), starring "It Girl" Clara Bow,
and MGM's Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928), starring silent superstar John Gilbert opposite Joan Crawford.
The cinematography on "Mantrap" was his breakthrough as a star lighting
cameraman, in which his lighting added enormously to bringing out Clara
Bow's sex appeal. He bathed Bow in a soft glow, surrounding the flapper with shimmering natural light, transforming her into a seemingly three-dimensional sex goddess. Even at this early a stage in his career, Howe had developed a solid aesthetic approach to film, based on inventive, expressive lighting. The film solidified his reputation as a master in the careful handling of female subjects, a rep that would get him his last job a half-century later, on Barbra Streisand's Funny Lady (1975).
Jimmie Howe journeyed back to China at the end of the decade to shoot
location backgrounds for a movie about China he planned to make as a
director. Though the movie was never made, the footage was later used
in Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express (1932). When he returned to the US, Hollywood was in the
midst of a technological upheaval as sound pictures were finishing off
the silent movie, which had matured into a medium of expression now
being hailed as "The Seventh Art." The silent film, in a generation,
had matured into a set art form with its own techniques of
craftsmanship, and pictures like 7th Heaven (1927) and The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929) generally were
thought to be examples of the "photoplay" reaching perfection as a
medium. This mature medium now was violently overthrown by the
revolutionary upstart, Sound. The talkies had arrived.
The Hollywood Howe returned to was in a panic. All the wisdom about
making motion pictures had been jettisoned by nervous studio heads, and
the new Hollywood dogma held that only cameramen with experience in
sound cinematography could shoot the new talking pictures, thus
freezing out many cameramen who had recently been seen as master
craftsmen in the silent cinema. Director William K. Howard, who was in
pre-production with his film Transatlantic (1931), wanted Jimmie Howe's expertise.
Having just acquired some new lenses with $700 of his own money, Howe
shot some tests for the film, which impressed the studio enough to gave
Howard permission to hire Jimmie to shoot it.
Once again, his career thrived and he was much in demand. He earned the
sobriquet "Low-Key Howe" for his low-contrast lighting of interiors,
exerting aesthetic control over the dark spots of a frame in the way
that a great musician "played" the silences between notes. In 1933 he
gave up freelancing and started working in-house at MGM, where he won a
reputation for efficiency. He shot The Thin Man (1934) in 18 days and Manhattan Melodrama (1934) in 28
days. It was at MGM that he became credited as "James Wong Howe".
Howe's original screen credit was "James Howe" or "Jimmie Howe", but
during his early years at MGM "Wong" was added to his name by the front
office, "for exotic flair", and his salary reached $500 a week. After
shooting 15 pictures for MGM, he moved over to Warner Bros. for
Algiers (1938), garnering him his first Academy Award nomination. Studio boss
Jack L. Warner was so thrilled by Howe's work with Hedy Lamarr that he signed
Jimmie to a seven-year contract. James Wong Howe shot 26 movies at
Warners through 1947, and four others on loanout to other studios.
A master at the use of shadow, Howe was one of the first DPs to use
deep-focus cinematography, photography in which both foreground and
distant planes remain in focus. His camerawork typically was
unobtrusive, but could be quite spectacular when the narrative called
for it. In the context of the studio-bound production of the time, Wong
Howe's lighting sense is impressive given his use of location shooting.
Citic James Agee called him one of "the few men who use this country for
background as it ought to be used in films." Wong Howe used backgrounds
to elucidate the psychology of the film's characters and their
psychology, such as in Pursued (1947), where the austere desert landscape
serves to highlight the tortured psyche of Robert Mitchum's character.
Wong Howe was famed for his innovations, including putting a cameraman
with a hand-held camera on roller skates inside a boxing ring for
Body and Soul (1947) to draw the audience into the ring. He strapped cameras to the
actors' waists in The Brave Bulls (1951) to give a closer and tighter perspective on
bullfighting, a sport in which fractions of an inch can mean the
difference between life and death. He was hailed for his revolutionary
work with tracking and distortion in Seconds (1966), in which he used a 9mm
"fish-eye" lens to suggest mental instability.
James Wong Howe became the most famous cameraman in the world in the
1930s, and he bought a Duesenberg, one of the most prestigious and
expensive automobiles in the world. His driving his "Doozy" around
Hollywood made for an incongruous sight, as Chinese typically were
gardeners and houseboys in prewar America, a deeply racist time. During
World War II anti-Asian bigotry intensified, despite the fact that
China was an ally of the United States in its war with Japan. Mistaken
for a Japanese (despite their having been relocated to concentration
camps away from the Pacific Coast), he wore a button that declared "I
am Chinese." His close friend James Cagney also wore the same button, out of
solidarity with his friend.
Wong Howe was involved in a long-term relationship with the writer
Sanora Babb, who was a Caucasian. Anti-miscegenation laws on the books
in California until 1948 forbade Caucasians from marrying Chinese, and
the couple could not legally marry until 1949, after the laws had been
repealed. In September of 1949 they finally tied the knot, and Sanora
Babb Wong Howe later told a family member that they had to hunt for
three days for a sympathetic judge who would marry them.
Wong Howe eventually bought a Chinese restaurant located near the
Ventura Freeway, which he managed with Sanora. When a photographer from
a San Fernando Valley newspaper came to take a picture of the eatery,
Howe counseled that he should put a wide-angle lens on his camera so he
wouldn't have to stand so close to the freeway to get the shot. "I'll
take the picture," the photographer unknowingly snapped at one of the
master cinematographers of the world, "you just mind your goddamned
noodles!"
Perhaps due to the sting of racism, the hypocrisy of a country fighting
the Nazis and their eugenics policies that itself allowed the
proscription of racial intermarriage, which kept him from legally
marrying the woman he loved, or perhaps because of the Red-baiting that
consumed Hollywood after the War, James Wong Howe's professional
reputation began to decline in the late 1940s. Losing his reputation
for efficiency, he was branded "difficult to work with," and producers
began to fear his on-set temper tantrums. Though Wong Howe was never
blacklisted, he came under the scrutiny of the House Un-American
Activities Committee for his propensity for working with "Reds",
"Pinks" and "fellow-travelers" such as John Garfield. Though he was never
hauled in front of HUAC, Wong Howe's good friend Cagney had been a
noted liberal in the 1930s. James Wong Howe felt the chill cast over
the industry by McCarthyism.
In 1953 Wong Howe was given the opportunity to direct a feature film
for the first time, being hired to helm a biography of Harlem
Globetrotters founder Abe Saperstein, Go Man Go (1954). The film, which was
brought in at 21 days on a $130,000 budget, did nothing to enhance his
reputation. Howe managed to pull out of his career doldrums, and after
McCarthyism crested in 1954 he won his first Oscar for the B+W
cinematography of The Rose Tattoo (1955), in which the shadows created by Howe's
cinematography reveal the protagonist Serafina's emotional turmoil as
much as the words of Tennessee Williams. He directed one more picture, the
undistinguished Invisible Avenger (1958), a B-movie in which The Shadow, Lamont
Cranston, investigated the murder of a New Orleans bandleader, before
returning to his true vocation, the motion picture camera.
By the mid-'50s Howe had made it back to the top of the profession. In
1957 he did some of his most brilliant work on Sweet Smell of Success (1957), a textbook
primer on the richness of B+W cinematography. Ironically, he was not
Oscar-nominated for his work on the film, but was nominated the
following year for his color work on The Old Man and the Sea (1958) and won his second Oscar
for the B+W photography of Hud (1963). Once again Wong Howe used a
landscape, the barren and lonely West Texas plains, to highlight the
psychological state of the film's protagonist, the amoral and
go-it-alone title character played by Paul Newman.
One of Wong Howe's favorite assignments in his career was the
five-month shoot under the once-blacklisted Martin Ritt on The Molly Maguires (1970), a tale
of labor strife, which was shot on location in the Pennsylvania coal
fields. His health started to fail after the shoot, and he was forced
into retirement, requiring frequent hospitalization in the final years
of his life. Reportedly he had to turn down the offer to shoot The Godfather (1972),
as he was not healthy enough to undertake the assignment. Gordon Willis got
the job instead.
When Funny Lady (1975) producer Ray Stark fired Vilmos Zsigmond as the director of
photography of his Funny Girl (1968) sequel, he hired Howe due to his faith that
the great lighting cameraman who had done wonders with Mary Miles
Minter, Clara Bow, and Hedy Lamarr could glamorize his star, Barbra
Streisand. Howe took over the shoot, but his health gave out after a
short time and he collapsed on the set. Oscar-winner Ernest Laszlo,
then-president of the American Society of Cinematographers, filled in
until Howe returned from the hospital and finished the shoot. He
received his last Oscar nomination for his work on the film. It marked
the end of a remarkable career in motion pictures that spanned almost
60 years.
By the time of his retirement, he had long been acknowledged as a
master of his art, one of the greatest lighting cameramen of all time,
credited with shooting over 130 pictures in Hollywood and England. He
worked with many of the greatest and most important directors in cinema
history, from Allan Dwan in the silent era to Sidney Lumet in the 1960s. He
created three production companies during his professional career, an
untopped career in which he racked up ten Academy Award nominations in
both B+W white and color (including notoriously difficult Technicolor),
in formats ranging from the Academy ratio to CinemaScope, all of which
he mastered. An even greater honor than his two Oscar wins came his
way. In 1949, when he was chosen to shoot test footage for the proposed
comeback of the great Greta Garbo in the proposed movie "La Duchesse de
Langeais," such was his reputation.
Sanora Babb Wong Howe wrote after his death, "My husband loved his
work. He spent all his adult life from age 17 to 75, a year before his
death, in the motion picture industry. When he died at 77, courageous
in illness as in health, he was still thinking of new ways to make
pictures. He was critical of poor quality in any area of film, but
quick to see and appreciate the good. His mature style was realistic,
never naturalistic. If the story demanded, his work could be harsh and
have a documentary quality, but that quality was strictly Wong Howe. If
the story allowed, his style was poetic realism, for he was a poet of
the camera. This was a part of his nature, his impulse toward the
beautiful, but it did not prevent his flexibility in dealing with all
aspects of reality."
His greatest asset to film may have been his adaptability, the many
ways in which he could vary his aesthetic in service of a story. Howe
initially fought the notoriously gimmicky John Frankenheimer over his desire to
use a fish-eye lens for "Seconds." Subsequently, Howe used the lens
masterfully to convey the psychological torment of the protagonist,
locked in a beyond-Kafkaesque nightmare that simply relying on sets and
lighting couldn't bring across. He had made it work by adapting his
aesthetic to the needs of the story and its characters, in service to
his director.
Howe's work was given retrospectives at the 2002 Seattle
International Film Festival, and in San Francisco in 2004, a rare honor
for a cinematographer. It was testimony to his continuing reputation,
more than a quarter century after his death, as one of the greatest and
most innovative lighting cameramen the world of cinema has ever known.
Perhaps the greatest honor that can be bestowed on James Wong Howe is
that this master craftsman, a genius of lighting, refutes the auteur
theory, which holds that the director solely is "author" of a film. No
one could reasonably make that claim on any picture on which Howe was
the director of photography.- Herman Hack was born on 15 June 1899 in Panola, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Arizona Trails (1935), The Tia Juana Kid (1935) and Range Riders (1934). He was married to Signe Hack. He died on 19 October 1967 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Rusty Lane was born on 31 May 1899 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Johnny Tremain (1957), The Harder They Fall (1956) and The Alaskans (1959). He died on 10 October 1986 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Ian Keith became a well regarded fixture on the Broadway stage during
the 1920s, but from 1924 through the remainder of the decade he
expanded his acting into a string of silent movies as well. To begin
the next decade, he appeared in the cast of Abraham Lincoln (1930), one of the later
movies of D.W. Griffith. His forte was perhaps already becoming obvious --
his role was that of John Wilkes Booth. Keith had a sly look, and there
was an irritated but deadpan demeanor and a side-of-the-mouth delivery
to his speech that marked him as a great villain. And he played many --
including a surprising number in historic costume. There was never any
emotional nuance, but his straight delivery was always completely
effective. He figured prominently in some of the most ambitious of the
early sound epics: The Sign of the Cross (1932), Cleopatra (1934), and The Crusades (1935) of Cecil B. DeMille, and in the
latter Keith was -- a sort of good guy -- the great Sultan Saladin
(surely a strange miscast but DeMille obviously liked him -- he showed
up in the much later The Ten Commandments (1956) as well). He was the nemesis of John Gilbert in
Queen Christina (1933) and of a similar cast in Mary of Scotland (1936), the early John Ford classic
with Katharine Hepburn. He also portrayed an odd twist in the first sound
The Three Musketeers (1935). Counter to the book, his Rochefort is the plotting genius, not
Cardinal Richelieu, as it should be. Incidentally, he reprised
Rochefort, but more in keeping with the original character, in The Three Musketeers (1948)
version for Gene Kelly. In between those years were a lot of B level
movies of everything from the comics to murder mysteries to mark a
downturn said to be the result of too much nightlife. He still did
Broadway intermittently throughout his career amid early TV theater and
episodic fare from the late 1940s through the 1950s. The stage remained
his first choice. At the time of his death he was appearing in "The
Andersonville Trial" (1960) on Broadway.- After retiring from acting, Charlotte Wynters MacLane, divided her time
between her home in LA and her cattle ranch in the Sierra Nevada
foothills of Madera County, which she continued to own until her death
in 1991. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Larry Keating was born on 13 April 1899 in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. He was an actor, known for When Worlds Collide (1951), Mister Ed (1961) and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950). He was married to Ruth Elizabeth Evans, Consuelo Blanche Hamer and Mary Kathleen Rauh. He died on 26 August 1963 in Hollywood, California, USA.