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- Actor
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Patrick Wayne Swayze was born on August 18, 1952 in Houston, Texas, to Patsy Swayze (née Yvonne Helen Karnes), a choreographer, and Jesse Wayne Swayze, a chemical plant
engineer draftsman. His mother owned a dance school in
Houston, where Patrick was also a student. His father passed away in
1982. He graduated from Waltrip High School in Houston, and attended
San Jacinto College in Pasadena, Texas. He married actress/dancer
Lisa Niemi on June 12, 1975, whom he had
known when she was 15 and a student at his mother's dance school. His
New York City dance training included the Harkness Ballet School and
Joffrey Ballet School. He first danced professionally as "Prince
Charming" in "Disney on Parade". After a stint as "Danny Zuko" in the
original Broadway production of "Grease", he made his film debut with a
small role in
Skatetown U.S.A. (1979). He
made his television debut in 1981 on
M*A*S*H (1972), as a soldier
diagnosed with leukemia.
After many supporting roles in films and a lead role in the TV
mini-series
North & South: Book 1, North & South (1985), he
landed his breakthrough role as dance instructor "Johnny Castle" in the
hit film Dirty Dancing (1987), for
which he received a Golden Globe nomination. He received a second
nomination for his portrayal of "Sam Wheat" in the blockbuster
Ghost (1990).
Ghost (1990) was the highest-grossing film
of 1990, and at one point, the fourth highest-grossing film of all
time. Unfortunately, he did not capitalize on its success. His
subsequent films like
City of Joy (1992),
Tall Tale (1995),
Black Dog (1998), and
Waking Up in Reno (2002) did
not fare well with critics or audiences. In December 2003, he returned
to Broadway as a replacement for the lead role of "Billy Flynn" in the
acclaimed revival of John Kander &
Fred Ebb's musical, "Chicago". The production
also went on tour in several cities of the United States, including Los
Angeles. In January 2008, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He
fought the illness for well over a year and was able to continue
working, but died on September 14, 2009.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Adan Canto is a Mexican-American actor and director. He left home at the age of 16 to pursue a career as a musician. Canto wrote for and produced several songs for film and television while living in Mexico City. He began acting in a handful of commercials in Mexico City and was soon cast in a television series called Estado de Gracia. Canto eventually turned to the stage after being cast as a lead for the adaptation of Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother.
In 2013, Canto made his debut in American television, playing the role of Paul Torres on the Fox drama series, The Following. In 2015 Canto played real life politician Rodrigo Lara Bonia in Netflix drama series Narcos. In 2016, he was cast in the ABC political drama series, Designated Survivor, playing White House Chief of Staff Aaron Shore opposite Kiefer Sutherland, Natascha McElhone, and Maggie Q. Canto wrote and directed his first short film Before Tomorrow in 2014. His short film The Shot earned several festival awards for Best Narrative Short Film in 2020.- This talented actress was born Anne Marie Wersching and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. She opted early on for a life in the entertainment industry, performing in community theatre and later as a dancer for some fourteen years with a troupe called the St. Louis Celtic Stepdancers. After moving to Chicago, she acted in several touring plays and at the Utah Shakespearean Festival. In 1999, Wersching graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Musical Theatre from the Millikin University School of Theater and Dance in Decatur, Illinois. Moving to Los Angeles, two years later, she appeared in a revival of the Stephen Sondheim-Richard Rodgers-Arthur Laurents musical "Do I Hear a Waltz?" at the Pasadena Playhouse, as well as making her screen debut in an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise (2001).
Testament to her acting skill have been lengthy stints on popular prime time series like 24 (2001) (as the valiant but ill-fated FBI Special Agent Renee Walker), The Vampire Diaries (2009) (Lily Salvatore), Timeless (2016) (as time traveler Emma Whitmore) and Marvel's Runaways (2017) (as charismatic villain turned ally Leslie Dean). She also gave a thoroughly convincing performance as extrovert rookie police officer Julia Brasher, involved with (Harry) Bosch (2014) at LAPD's Hollywood Division on both a professional and a personal level. Their relationship eventually soured in season two, although Brasher returned briefly for two episodes in season 7. Wersching became the third actress to play the dreaded Borg Queen (following in the footsteps of Alice Krige and Susanna Thompson) and did so to chilling effect in season two of Star Trek: Picard (2020). Her steady volume of television work has included guest appearances on Charmed (1998), Supernatural (2005), NCIS (2003), Hawaii Five-0 (2010) and Castle (2009).
Very much at the peak of her career, Annie Wersching was diagnosed with cancer in the summer of 2020, but kept her illness private and continued to work afterwards. She passed away at her home in Los Angeles, California on January 29, 2023, at age 45. - Actor
- Director
- Writer
Marlon Brando is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all
time, rivaled only by the more theatrically oriented
Laurence Olivier in terms of esteem.
Unlike Olivier, who preferred the stage to the screen, Brando
concentrated his talents on movies after bidding the Broadway stage
adieu in 1949, a decision for which he was severely criticized when his
star began to dim in the 1960s and he was excoriated for squandering
his talents. No actor ever exerted such a profound influence on
succeeding generations of actors as did Brando. More than 50 years
after he first scorched the screen as Stanley Kowalski in the movie
version of Tennessee Williams'
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
and a quarter-century after his last great performance as Col. Kurtz in
Francis Ford Coppola's
Apocalypse Now (1979), all
American actors are still being measured by the yardstick that was
Brando. It was if the shadow of
John Barrymore, the great
American actor closest to Brando in terms of talent and stardom,
dominated the acting field up until the 1970s. He did not, nor did any
other actor so dominate the public's consciousness of what WAS an actor
before or since Brando's 1951 on-screen portrayal of Stanley made him a
cultural icon. Brando eclipsed the reputation of other great actors
circa 1950, such as Paul Muni and
Fredric March. Only the luster of
Spencer Tracy's reputation hasn't
dimmed when seen in the starlight thrown off by Brando. However,
neither Tracy nor Olivier created an entire school of acting just by
the force of his personality. Brando did.
Marlon Brando, Jr. was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to
Marlon Brando, Sr., a calcium carbonate salesman, and his artistically
inclined wife, the former Dorothy Julia Pennebaker. "Bud" Brando was
one of three children. His ancestry included English, Irish, German, Dutch, French Huguenot, Welsh, and Scottish;
his surname originated with a distant German immigrant ancestor named
"Brandau." His oldest sister
Jocelyn Brando was also an actress,
taking after their mother, who engaged in amateur theatricals and
mentored a then-unknown Henry Fonda, another
Nebraska native, in her role as director of the Omaha Community
Playhouse. Frannie, Brando's other sibling, was a visual artist. Both
Brando sisters contrived to leave the Midwest for New York City,
Jocelyn to study acting and Frannie to study art. Marlon managed to
escape the vocational doldrums forecast for him by his cold, distant
father and his disapproving schoolteachers by striking out for The Big
Apple in 1943, following Jocelyn into the acting profession. Acting was
the only thing he was good at, for which he received praise, so he was
determined to make it his career - a high-school dropout, he had
nothing else to fall back on, having been rejected by the military due
to a knee injury he incurred playing football at Shattuck Military
Academy, Brando Sr.'s alma mater. The school booted Marlon out as
incorrigible before graduation.
Acting was a skill he honed as a child, the lonely son of alcoholic
parents. With his father away on the road, and his mother frequently
intoxicated to the point of stupefaction, the young Bud would play-act
for her to draw her out of her stupor and to attract her attention and
love. His mother was exceedingly neglectful, but he loved her,
particularly for instilling in him a love of nature, a feeling which
informed his character Paul in
Last Tango in Paris (1972)
("Last Tango in Paris") when he is recalling his childhood for his
young lover Jeanne. "I don't have many good memories," Paul confesses,
and neither did Brando of his childhood. Sometimes he had to go down to
the town jail to pick up his mother after she had spent the night in
the drunk tank and bring her home, events that traumatized the young
boy but may have been the grain that irritated the oyster of his
talent, producing the pearls of his performances.
Anthony Quinn, his Oscar-winning
co-star in Viva Zapata! (1952) told
Brando's first wife Anna Kashfi, "I admire
Marlon's talent, but I don't envy the pain that created it."
Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's
Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School, and was mentored by
Stella Adler, a member of a famous Yiddish
Theatre acting family. Adler helped introduce to the New York stage the
"emotional memory" technique of Russian theatrical actor, director and
impresario
Konstantin Stanislavski, whose
motto was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." The
results of this meeting between an actor and the teacher preparing him
for a life in the theater would mark a watershed in American acting and
culture.
Brando made his debut on the boards of Broadway on October 19, 1944, in
"I Remember Mama," a great success. As a young Broadway actor, Brando
was invited by talent scouts from several different studios to
screen-test for them, but he turned them down because he would not let
himself be bound by the then-standard seven-year contract. Brando would
make his film debut quite some time later in
Fred Zinnemann's
The Men (1950) for producer
Stanley Kramer. Playing a paraplegic
soldier, Brando brought new levels of realism to the screen, expanding
on the verisimilitude brought to movies by Group Theatre alumni
John Garfield, the predecessor
closest to him in the raw power he projected on-screen. Ironically, it
was Garfield whom producer
Irene Mayer Selznick had chosen to
play the lead in a new
Tennessee Williams play she was about
to produce, but negotiations broke down when Garfield demanded an
ownership stake in "A Streetcar Named Desire."
Burt Lancaster was next approached, but
couldn't get out of a prior film commitment. Then director
Elia Kazan suggested Brando, whom he had
directed to great effect in
Maxwell Anderson's play
"Truckline Café," in which Brando co-starred with
Karl Malden, who was to remain a close
friend for the next 60 years.
During the production of "Truckline Café," Kazan had found that
Brando's presence was so magnetic, he had to re-block the play to keep
Marlon near other major characters' stage business, as the audience
could not take its eyes off of him. For the scene where Brando's
character re-enters the stage after killing his wife, Kazan placed him
upstage-center, partially obscured by scenery, but where the audience
could still see him as Karl Malden and
others played out their scene within the café set. When he eventually
entered the scene, crying, the effect was electric. A young
Pauline Kael, arriving late to the play,
had to avert her eyes when Brando made this entrance as she believed
the young actor on stage was having a real-life conniption. She did not
look back until her escort commented that the young man was a great
actor.
The problem with casting Brando as Stanley was that he was much younger
than the character as written by Williams. However, after a meeting
between Brando and Williams, the playwright eagerly agreed that Brando
would make an ideal Stanley. Williams believed that by casting a
younger actor, the Neanderthalish Kowalski would evolve from being a
vicious older man to someone whose unintentional cruelty can be
attributed to his youthful ignorance. Brando ultimately was
dissatisfied with his performance, though, saying he never was able to
bring out the humor of the character, which was ironic as his
characterization often drew laughs from the audience at the expense of
Jessica Tandy's Blanche Dubois. During the
out-of-town tryouts, Kazan realized that Brando's magnetism was
attracting attention and audience sympathy away from Blanche to
Stanley, which was not what the playwright intended. The audience's
sympathy should be solely with Blanche, but many spectators were
identifying with Stanley. Kazan queried Williams on the matter,
broaching the idea of a slight rewrite to tip the scales back to more
of a balance between Stanley and Blanche, but Williams demurred,
smitten as he was by Brando, just like the preview audiences.
For his part, Brando believed that the audience sided with his Stanley
because Jessica Tandy was too shrill. He
thought Vivien Leigh, who played the part
in the movie, was ideal, as she was not only a great beauty but she WAS
Blanche Dubois, troubled as she was in her real life by mental illness
and nymphomania. Brando's appearance as Stanley on stage and on screen
revolutionized American acting by introducing "The Method" into
American consciousness and culture. Method acting, rooted in Adler's
study at the Moscow Art Theatre of Stanislavsky's theories that she
subsequently introduced to the Group Theatre, was a more naturalistic
style of performing, as it engendered a close identification of the
actor with the character's emotions. Adler took first place among
Brando's acting teachers, and socially she helped turn him from an
unsophisticated Midwestern farm boy into a knowledgeable and
cosmopolitan artist who one day would socialize with presidents.
Brando didn't like the term "The Method," which quickly became the
prominent paradigm taught by such acting gurus as
Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Brando
denounced Strasberg in his autobiography "Songs My Mother Taught Me"
(1994), saying that he was a talentless exploiter who claimed he had
been Brando's mentor. The Actors Studio had been founded by Strasberg
along with Kazan and Stella Adler's
husband, Harold Clurman, all Group
Theatre alumni, all political progressives deeply committed to the
didactic function of the stage. Brando credits his knowledge of the
craft to Adler and Kazan, while Kazan in his autobiography "A Life"
claimed that Brando's genius thrived due to the thorough training Adler
had given him. Adler's method emphasized that authenticity in acting is
achieved by drawing on inner reality to expose deep emotional
experience
Interestingly, Elia Kazan believed that
Brando had ruined two generations of actors, his contemporaries and
those who came after him, all wanting to emulate the great Brando by
employing The Method. Kazan felt that Brando was never a Method actor,
that he had been highly trained by Adler and did not rely on gut
instincts for his performances, as was commonly believed. Many a young
actor, mistaken about the true roots of Brando's genius, thought that
all it took was to find a character's motivation, empathize with the
character through sense and memory association, and regurgitate it all
on stage to become the character. That's not how the superbly trained
Brando did it; he could, for example, play accents, whereas your
average American Method actor could not. There was a method to Brando's
art, Kazan felt, but it was not The Method.
After
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951),
for which he received the first of his eight Academy Award nominations,
Brando appeared in a string of Academy Award-nominated performances -
in Viva Zapata! (1952),
Julius Caesar (1953) and the summit
of his early career, Kazan's
On the Waterfront (1954). For
his "Waterfront" portrayal of meat-headed longshoreman Terry Malloy,
the washed-up pug who "coulda been a contender," Brando won his first
Oscar. Along with his iconic performance as the rebel-without-a-cause
Johnny in The Wild One (1953) ("What
are you rebelling against?" Johnny is asked. "What have ya got?" is his
reply), the first wave of his career was, according to
Jon Voight, unprecedented in its audacious
presentation of such a wide range of great acting. Director
John Huston said his performance of
Marc Antony was like seeing the door of a furnace opened in a dark
room, and co-star John Gielgud, the premier
Shakespearean actor of the 20th century, invited Brando to join his
repertory company.
It was this period of 1951-54 that revolutionized American acting,
spawning such imitators as James Dean - who modeled his acting and even his lifestyle on his hero Brando - the young Paul Newman and
Steve McQueen. After Brando, every up-and-coming star with true acting talent and a brooding, alienated quality would be hailed as the "New Brando," such as
Warren Beatty in Kazan's
Splendor in the Grass (1961).
"We are all Brando's children,"
Jack Nicholson pointed out in
1972. "He gave us our freedom." He was truly "The Godfather" of
American acting - and he was just 30 years old. Though he had a couple of failures, like Désirée (1954) and The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), he was clearly miscast in them and hadn't sought out the parts so largely escaped blame.
In the second period of his career, 1955-62, Brando managed to uniquely
establish himself as a great actor who also was a Top 10 movie star,
although that star began to dim after the box-office high point of his
early career, Sayonara (1957) (for which
he received his fifth Best Actor Oscar nomination). Brando tried his
hand at directing a film, the well-reviewed
One-Eyed Jacks (1961) that he made
for his own production company, Pennebaker Productions (after his
mother's maiden name). Stanley Kubrick
had been hired to direct the film, but after months of script rewrites
in which Brando participated, Kubrick and Brando had a falling out and
Kubrick was sacked. According to his widow
Christiane Kubrick, Stanley believed
that Brando had wanted to direct the film himself all along.
Tales proliferated about the profligacy of Brando the director, burning
up a million and a half feet of expensive VistaVision film at 50 cents
a foot, fully ten times the normal amount of raw stock expended during
production of an equivalent motion picture. Brando took so long editing
the film that he was never able to present the studio with a cut.
Paramount took it away from him and tacked on a re-shot ending that
Brando was dissatisfied with, as it made the Oedipal figure of Dad
Longworth into a villain. In any normal film Dad would have been the
heavy, but Brando believed that no one was innately evil, that it was a
matter of an individual responding to, and being molded by, one's
environment. It was not a black-and-white world, Brando felt, but a
gray world in which once-decent people could do horrible things. This
attitude explains his sympathetic portrayal of Nazi officer Christian
Diestl in the film he made before shooting
One-Eyed Jacks (1961),
Edward Dmytryk's filming of
Irwin Shaw's novel
The Young Lions (1958). Shaw
denounced Brando's performance, but audiences obviously disagreed, as
the film was a major hit. It would be the last hit movie Brando would
have for more than a decade.
One-Eyed Jacks (1961) generated
respectable numbers at the box office, but the production costs were
exorbitant - a then-staggering $6 million - which made it run a
deficit. A film essentially is "made" in the editing room, and Brando
found cutting to be a terribly boring process, which was why the studio
eventually took the film away from him. Despite his proved talent in
handling actors and a large production, Brando never again directed
another film, though he would claim that all actors essentially direct
themselves during the shooting of a picture.
Between the production and release of
One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Brando
appeared in Sidney Lumet's film version of
Tennessee Williams' play "Orpheus Descending,"
The Fugitive Kind (1960) which
teamed him with fellow Oscar winners
Anna Magnani and
Joanne Woodward. Following in
Elizabeth Taylor's trailblazing
footsteps, Brando became the second performer to receive a $1-million
salary for a motion picture, so high were the expectations for this
re-teaming of Kowalski and his creator (in 1961 critic
Hollis Alpert had published a book "Brando
and the Shadow of Stanley Kowalski"). Critics and audiences waiting for
another incendiary display from Brando in a Williams work were
disappointed when the renamed
The Fugitive Kind (1960)
finally released. Though Tennessee was hot, with movie versions of
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
and
Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
burning up the box office and receiving kudos from the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts & Sciences,
The Fugitive Kind (1960) was a
failure. This was followed by the so-so box-office reception of
One-Eyed Jacks (1961) in 1961 and
then by a failure of a more monumental kind:
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962),
a remake of the famed 1935 film.
Brando signed on to
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
after turning down the lead in the
David Lean classic
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
because he didn't want to spend a year in the desert riding around on a
camel. He received another $1-million salary, plus $200,000 in overages
as the shoot went overtime and over budget. During principal
photography, highly respected director
Carol Reed (an eventual Academy Award
winner) was fired, and his replacement, two-time Oscar winner
Lewis Milestone, was shunted aside by
Brando as Marlon basically took over the direction of the film himself.
The long shoot became so notorious that President
John F. Kennedy asked director
Billy Wilder at a cocktail party not "when"
but "if" the "Bounty" shoot would ever be over. The MGM remake of one
of its classic Golden Age films garnered a Best Picture Oscar
nomination and was one of the top grossing films of 1962, yet failed to
go into the black due to its Brobdingnagian budget estimated at $20
million, which is equivalent to $120 million when adjusted for
inflation.
Brando and Taylor, whose
Cleopatra (1963) nearly bankrupted 20th
Century-Fox due to its huge cost overruns (its final budget was more
than twice that of Brando's
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)),
were pilloried by the show business press for being the epitome of the
pampered, self-indulgent stars who were ruining the industry. Seeking
scapegoats, the Hollywood press conveniently ignored the financial
pressures on the studios. The studios had been hurt by television and
by the antitrust-mandated divestiture of their movie theater chains,
causing a large outflow of production to Italy and other countries in
the 1950s and 1960s in order to lower costs. The studio bosses, seeking
to replicate such blockbuster hits as the remakes of
The Ten Commandments (1956)
and Ben-Hur (1959), were the real
culprits behind the losses generated by large-budgeted films that found
it impossible to recoup their costs despite long lines at the box
office.
While Elizabeth Taylor, receiving the unwanted gift of reams of
publicity from her adulterous romance with
Cleopatra (1963) co-star
Richard Burton, remained hot
until the tanking of her own Tennessee Williams-renamed debacle
Boom! (1968), Brando from 1963 until the end
of the decade appeared in one box-office failure after another as he
worked out a contract he had signed with Universal Pictures. The
industry had grown tired of Brando and his idiosyncrasies, though he
continued to be offered prestige projects up through 1968.
Some of the films Brando made in the 1960s were noble failures, such as
The Ugly American (1963),
The Appaloosa (1966) and
Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967).
For every "Reflections," though, there seemed to be two or three
outright debacles, such as
Bedtime Story (1964), Morituri (1965), The Chase (1966),
A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), Candy (1968),
The Night of the Following Day (1969).
By the time Brando began making the anti-colonialist picture
Burn! (1969) in Colombia with
Gillo Pontecorvo in the director's
chair, he was box-office poison, despite having worked in the previous
five years with such top directors as
Arthur Penn,
John Huston and the legendary
Charles Chaplin, and with such
top-drawer co-stars as David Niven,
Yul Brynner,
Sophia Loren and Taylor.
The rap on Brando in the 1960s was that a great talent had ruined his
potential to be America's answer to
Laurence Olivier, as his friend
William Redfield limned the dilemma in
his book "Letters from an Actor" (1967), a memoir about Redfield's
appearance in Burton's 1964 theatrical production of "Hamlet." By
failing to go back on stage and recharge his artistic batteries,
something British actors such as Burton were not afraid to do, Brando
had stifled his great talent, by refusing to tackle the classical
repertoire and contemporary drama. Actors and critics had yearned for
an American response to the high-acting style of the Brits, and while
Method actors such as Rod Steiger tried to
create an American style, they were hampered in their quest, as their
king was lost in a wasteland of Hollywood movies that were beneath his
talent. Many of his early supporters now turned on him, claiming he was
a crass sellout.
Despite evidence in such films as
The Appaloosa (1966) and
Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)
that Brando was in fact doing some of the best acting of his life,
critics, perhaps with an eye on the box office, slammed him for failing
to live up to, and nurture, his great gift. Brando's political
activism, starting in the early 1960s with his championing of Native
Americans' rights, followed by his participation in the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference's March on Washington in 1963, and
followed by his appearance at a Black Panther rally in 1968, did not
win him many admirers in the establishment. In fact, there was a de
facto embargo on Brando films in the recently segregated (officially,
at least) southeastern US in the 1960s. Southern exhibitors simply
would not book his films, and producers took notice. After 1968, Brando
would not work for three years.
Pauline Kael wrote of Brando that he was
Fortune's fool. She drew a parallel with the latter career of
John Barrymore, a similarly
gifted thespian with talents as prodigious, who seemingly threw them
away. Brando, like the late-career Barrymore, had become a great ham,
evidenced by his turn as the faux Indian guru in the egregious
Candy (1968), seemingly because the
material was so beneath his talent. Most observers of Brando in the
1960s believed that he needed to be reunited with his old mentor
Elia Kazan, a relationship that had soured
due to Kazan's friendly testimony naming names before the notorious
House un-American Activities Committee. Perhaps Brando believed this,
too, as he originally accepted an offer to appear as the star of
Kazan's film adaptation of his own novel,
The Arrangement (1969). However,
after the assassination of
Martin Luther King, Brando backed out
of the film, telling Kazan that he could not appear in a Hollywood film
after this tragedy. Also reportedly turning down a role opposite
box-office king Paul Newman in a
surefire script,
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969),
Brando decided to make Burn! (1969)
with Pontecorvo. The film, a searing indictment of racism and
colonialism, flopped at the box office but won the esteem of
progressive critics and cultural arbiters such as
Howard Zinn. He subsequently appeared in the British film The Nightcomers (1971), a prequel to "Turn of the Screw" and another critical and box office failure.
Kazan, after a life in film and the theater, said that, aside from
Orson Welles, whose greatness lay in
film making, he only met one actor who was a genius: Brando. Richard
Burton, an intellectual with a keen eye for observation if not for his
own film projects, said that he found Brando to be very bright, unlike
the public perception of him as a Terry Malloy-type character that he
himself inadvertently promoted through his boorish behavior. Brando's
problem, Burton felt, was that he was unique, and that he had gotten
too much fame too soon at too early an age. Cut off from being nurtured
by normal contact with society, fame had distorted Brando's personality
and his ability to cope with the world, as he had not had time to grow
up outside the limelight.
Truman Capote, who eviscerated Brando in
print in the mid-'50s and had as much to do with the public perception
of the dyslexic Brando as a dumbbell, always said that the best actors
were ignorant, and that an intelligent person could not be a good
actor. However, Brando was highly intelligent, and possessed of a rare
genius in a then-deprecated art, acting. The problem that an
intelligent performer has in movies is that it is the director, and not
the actor, who has the power in his chosen field. Greatness in the
other arts is defined by how much control the artist is able to exert
over his chosen medium, but in movie acting, the medium is controlled
by a person outside the individual artist. It is an axiom of the cinema
that a performance, as is a film, is "created" in the cutting room,
thus further removing the actor from control over his art. Brando had
tried his hand at directing, in controlling the whole artistic
enterprise, but he could not abide the cutting room, where a film and
the film's performances are made. This lack of control over his art was
the root of Brando's discontent with acting, with movies, and,
eventually, with the whole wide world that invested so much cachet in
movie actors, as long as "they" were at the top of the box-office
charts. Hollywood was a matter of "they" and not the work, and Brando
became disgusted.
Charlton Heston, who participated in
Martin Luther King's 1963 March on
Washington with Brando, believes that Marlon was the great actor of his
generation. However, noting a story that Brando had once refused a role
in the early 1960s with the excuse "How can I act when people are
starving in India?," Heston believes that it was this attitude, the
inability to separate one's idealism from one's work, that prevented
Brando from reaching his potential. As
Rod Steiger once said, Brando had it all,
great stardom and a great talent. He could have taken his audience on a
trip to the stars, but he simply would not. Steiger, one of Brando's
children even though a contemporary, could not understand it. When
James Mason' was asked in 1971 who
was the best American actor, he had replied that since Brando had let
his career go belly-up, it had to be
George C. Scott, by default.
Paramount thought that only
Laurence Olivier would suffice, but
Lord Olivier was ill. The young director believed there was only one
actor who could play godfather to the group of Young Turk actors he had
assembled for his film, The Godfather of method acting himself - Marlon
Brando. Francis Ford Coppola won
the fight for Brando, Brando won - and refused - his second Oscar, and
Paramount won a pot of gold by producing the then top-grossing film of
all-time, The Godfather (1972), a
gangster movie most critics now judge one of the greatest American
films of all time. Brando followed his iconic portrayal of Don Corleone
with his Oscar-nominated turn in the high-grossing and highly
scandalous
Last Tango in Paris (1972)
("Last Tango in Paris"), the first film dealing explicitly with
sexuality in which an actor of Brando's stature had participated. He
was now again a top ten box office star and once again heralded as the
greatest actor of his generation, an unprecedented comeback that put
him on the cover of "Time" magazine and would make him the highest-paid
actor in the history of motion pictures by the end of the decade.
Little did the world know that Brando, who had struggled through many
projects in good faith during the 1960s, delivering some of his best
acting, only to be excoriated and ignored as the films did not do well
at the box office, essentially was through with the movies.
After reaching the summit of his career, a rarefied atmosphere never
reached before or since by any actor, Brando essentially walked away.
He would give no more of himself after giving everything as he had done
in Last Tango in Paris (1972)," a performance that embarrassed him, according
to his autobiography. Brando had come as close to any actor to being
the "auteur," or author, of a film, as the English-language scenes of
"Tango" were created by encouraging Brando to improvise. The
improvisations were written down and turned into a shooting script, and
the scripted improvisations were shot the next day.
Pauline Kael, the Brando of movie critics
in that she was the most influential arbiter of cinematic quality of
her generation and spawned a whole legion of Kael wannabes, said
Brando's performance in Last Tango in Paris (1972) had revolutionized the art of
film. Brando, who had to act to gain his mother's attention; Brando,
who believed acting at best was nothing special as everyone in the
world engaged in it every day of their lives to get what they wanted
from other people; Brando, who believed acting at its worst was a
childish charade and that movie stardom was a whorish fraud, would have
agreed with Sam Peckinpah's summation of
Pauline Kael: "Pauline's a brilliant critic
but sometimes she's just cracking walnuts with her ass." He probably would have done so in a
simulacrum of those words, too.
After another three-year hiatus, Brando took on just one more major
role for the next 20 years, as the bounty hunter after
Jack Nicholson in
Arthur Penn's
The Missouri Breaks (1976), a
western that succeeded neither with the critics or at the box office. Following The Godfather and Tango, Brando's performance was disappointing for some reviewers, who accused him of giving an erratic and inconsistent performance. In 1977, Brando made a rare appearance on television in the miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979), portraying George Lincoln Rockwell; he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance. In 1978, he narrated the English version of Raoni (1978), a French-Belgian documentary film directed by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux and Luiz Carlos Saldanha that focused on the life of Raoni Metuktire and issues surrounding the survival of the indigenous Indian tribes of north central Brazil.
Later in his career, Brando concentrated on extracting the maximum amount of
capital for the least amount of work from producers, as when he got the
Salkind brothers to pony up a then-record $3.7 million against 10% of
the gross for 13 days work on
Superman (1978). Factoring in inflation,
the straight salary for "Superman" equals or exceeds the new record of
$1 million a day Harrison Ford set
with
K-19: The Widowmaker (2002). He agreed to the role only on assurance that he would be paid a large sum for what amounted to a small part, that he would not have to read the script beforehand, and his lines would be displayed somewhere off-camera. Brando also filmed scenes for the movie's sequel, Superman II, but after producers refused to pay him the same percentage he received for the first movie, he denied them permission to use the footage.
Before cashing his first paycheck for
Superman (1978), Brando had picked up $2
million for his extended cameo in
Francis Ford Coppola's
Apocalypse Now (1979) in a role,
that of Col. Kurtz, that he authored on-camera through improvisation
while Coppola shot take after take. It was Brando's last bravura star
performance. He co-starred with George C. Scott and John Gielgud in The Formula (1980), but the film was another critical and financial failure. Years later though, he did receive an eighth and final Oscar nomination
for his supporting role in A Dry White Season (1989)
after coming out of a near-decade-long retirement. Contrary to those
who claimed he now only was in it for the money, Brando donated his
entire seven-figure salary to an anti-apartheid charity. He then did an amusing performance in the comedy The Freshman (1990), winning rave reviews. He portrayed Tomas de Torquemada in the historical drama 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), but his performance was denounced and the film was another box office failure. He made another comeback in the Johnny Depp romantic drama Don Juan DeMarco (1994), which co-starred Faye Dunaway as his wife. He then appeared in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), co-starring Val Kilmer, who he didn't get along with. The filming was an unpleasant experience for Brando, as well as another critical and box office failure.
Brando had first attracted media attention at the age of 24, when
"Life" magazine ran a photo of himself and his sister Jocelyn, who were
both then appearing on Broadway. The curiosity continued, and
snowballed. Playing the paraplegic soldier of
The Men (1950), Brando had gone to live
at a Veterans Administration hospital with actual disabled veterans,
and confined himself to a wheelchair for weeks. It was an acting
method, research, that no one in Hollywood had ever heard of before,
and that willingness to experience life.- Actor
- Producer
- Art Department
John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Iowa, to Mary
Alberta (Brown) and Clyde Leonard Morrison, a pharmacist. He was of English, Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and Irish ancestry.
Clyde developed a lung condition that required him to move his family
from Iowa to the warmer climate of southern California, where they
tried ranching in the Mojave Desert. Until the ranch failed, Marion and
his younger brother
Robert E. Morrison swam in an
irrigation ditch and rode a horse to school. When the ranch failed, the
family moved to Glendale, California, where Marion delivered medicines
for his father, sold newspapers and had an Airedale dog named "Duke"
(the source of his own nickname). He did well at school both
academically and in football. When he narrowly failed admission to
Annapolis he went to USC on a football scholarship 1925-7.
Tom Mix got him a summer job as a prop
man in exchange for football tickets. On the set he became close
friends with director John Ford for
whom, among others, he began doing bit parts, some billed as
John Wayne. His first featured film
was Men Without Women (1930).
After more than 70 low-budget westerns and adventures, mostly routine,
Wayne's career was stuck in a rut until Ford cast him in
Stagecoach (1939), the movie that made
him a star. He appeared in nearly 250 movies, many of epic proportions.
From 1942-43 he was in a radio series, "The Three Sheets to the Wind",
and in 1944 he helped found the Motion Picture Alliance for the
Preservation of American Ideals, a Conservative political organization,
later becoming its President. His conservative political stance was
also reflected in The Alamo (1960),
which he produced, directed and starred in. His patriotic stand was
enshrined in
The Green Berets (1968) which he
co-directed and starred in. Over the years Wayne was beset with health
problems. In September 1964 he had a cancerous left lung removed;
in 1977 when Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope was being made,
John Waynes archive voice was used for the character Garindan ezz Zavor,
later in March 1978 there was heart valve replacement surgery; and in January
1979 his stomach was removed. He received the Best Actor nomination for
Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and
finally got the Oscar for his role as one-eyed Rooster Cogburn in
True Grit (1969). A Congressional Gold
Medal was struck in his honor in 1979. He is perhaps best remembered
for his parts in Ford's cavalry trilogy -
Fort Apache (1948),
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)
and Rio Grande (1950).- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Incisive, intense, multi-talented American actor Lance Solomon Reddick was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the younger of two sons, to Solomon Reddick and public schoolteacher Dorothy Gee. Having opted initially for a career in music, he attended first the Peabody Preparatory Institute and the Walden School before studying classical composition at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music, qualifying with a Bachelor's Degree. By the early '90s, however, Reddick was forced to re-evaluate his career plans because of a severe back injury suffered while pulling a double shift waiting on tables and delivering newspapers. A pressing need to make ends meet made him enroll at the Yale School of Drama, from where he went on to graduate in 1994 with a Master of Fine Arts Degree. He derived much inspiration from his classmate Paul Giamatti and came to regard Daniel Day-Lewis as his quintessential acting role model.
Possessed of an athletic build and a deep, resonant voice, Reddick also had a self-declared affinity for accents. Preparing himself for his roles, he immersed himself fully into his characters as a "transformational performer", often rehearsing his lines in front of a mirror. He made his television debut in an episode of New York Undercover (1994). Though he played a couple of drug addicts early on, he soon found himself much in demand-- and ultimately typecast -- as powerful authority figures, from police detectives (Johnny Basil in Oz (1997)) to FBI agents (Law & Order (1990)) to senior defense attorneys (Cedric Daniels in The Wire (2002)). One of his best known roles on the big screen was as the mysterious Mr. Charon, concierge at the Continental Hotel, scene of much of the action in the John Wick (2014) franchise.
Arguably, his most memorable character was that of Phillip Broyles, special agent-in-charge with the Department of Homeland Security, heading a team of experts investigating paranormal events in the outstanding science fiction drama series Fringe (2008). Broyles was a no-nonsense tough guy, who, nevertheless, remained steadfastly loyal in defense of his team against insidious forces from within and without. Unlike Broyles, Reddick's other important recurring TV character, Chief Irving in Bosch (2014), was a morally ambiguous man motivated chiefly by political ambition. Both were flawless performances.
Prior to his sad and untimely passing in March 2023 at the age of 60, Reddick was much sought-after as a voice actor for animations and video games. He also never lost his lifelong passion for music, and, in 2007, released an album of his compositions entitled Contemplations & Remembrances. In private life,the twice-married Reddick was said to have been very much devoted to his three dogs.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Brittany Murphy was born Brittany Anne Bertolotti on November 10, 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia, to Sharon Kathleen Murphy and Angelo Joseph Bertolotti. Her father's ancestry is Italian, and her mother is of Irish and Slovak descent. Her father moved the family back to Edison,
New Jersey as a native New Yorker and to be closer to other siblings from previous marriages. While dining out one night in the presence of
Hollywood royalty, Brittany at the age of 5 approached an adjoining table when Academy Award nominee Burt Reynolds and George Segal were seated. Brittany introduced herself to the Hollywood legends and confidently told them that someday she too would be a star.
She comes from a long line of international musicians and performers with three half-brothers and a sister. Angelo Bertolotti was torn from their tight-knit family as a made-man with the Italian Mafia. The Senior Bertolotti, who coined the nickname of "Britt" for his daughter, was
also an entrepreneur and diplomat for organized crime families and one of the first to be subjected to a RICO prosecution. Brittany's interests and well-being were always her father's first goal and objective. To distance his talented daughter from his infamous past, Angelo allowed Sharon to use her maiden name for Brittany's, so that her shining star would not be overshadowed by a father's past, with the couple divorcing thereafter.
Brittany began receiving accolades and applause in regional theater at the early age of 9. At the age of 13, she landed several national commercials. She appeared on television and caught the attention of a personal manager and an agent. Soon, Brittany's mother Sharon turned full-time to being a "Stage Mom" where Angelo provided financial support throughout and their relationship is memorialized with a long and close history in pictures. The hopeful daughter and mother moved to Burbank, CA, where Brittany landed her first television role on Blossom (1990). Hearts and doors opened up for a starring role on Drexell's Class (1991), a short lived TV series.
Brittany's big screen movie debut started with Clueless (1995), where she was co-starring with Alicia Silverstone. Britt soared, demonstrating her musical and artistic talents with dramatic and comedic roles landing a nomination for best leading female performance in the Young Artist Awards for her role in the television film David and Lisa (1998). She garnered tremendous attention for her role in Girl, Interrupted (1999) with Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie. Brittany's band, "Blessed Soul" was growing with her as lead singer and Britt lent her vocal talents to the TV hit, cartoon sensation, King of the Hill (1997) as the voice of Luanne.
She is alleged to have been a witness in the case of the former Department of Homeland Security employee and persecuted whistleblower Julia Davis. According to Davis, Brittany and her fiancée Simon Monjack were then targeted for retaliation that included land and aerial surveillance and a threatened prosecution. Monjack was arrested and detained by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Brittany and Simon confided in Alex Ben Block of the Hollywood Reporter, telling him in an interview that they were under surveillance by helicopters and their telephones have been wiretapped. This information was published by THR posthumously, in an article entitled "The Last Difficult Days of Brittany Murphy."
On December 20, 2009, Brittany Murphy died an untimely death. The LAPD and Los Angeles County Coroner closed the case within one hour, attributing her death to pneumonia and anemia. Five months after Brittany's unexpected demise, her husband Simon Monjack was found dead in the house he shared with Brittany. The chief/spokesperson at the Los Angeles County Dept of Coroner, Craig Harvey, stated that Simon also died from the same exact causes as his wife, namely pneumonia and anemia. Neither Brittany, nor Simon, were given a thorough and complete forensic autopsy for poisons. Brittany's father, Angelo "AJ" Bertolotti, is pursuing the investigation of the true reasons behind Brittany's and Simon's sudden demise, as he believes that the two were murdered. Abnormally high levels of heavy metals and poisons were discovered in Brittany's hair, tested by two other independent forensic labs with famed Pathologist, attorney Cyril Wecht concluded from the appearances, Brittany could have been murdered and should be exhumed. Her father Angelo is preparing court actions to ensure she obtains justice.- Actor
- Director
- Stunts
A masculine and enigmatic actor whose life and movie career have had more ups and downs than the average rollercoaster and whose selection of roles has arguably derailed him from achieving true superstar status, James Caan is New York-born and bred.
He was born in the Bronx, to Sophie (Falkenstein) and Arthur Caan, Jewish immigrants from Germany. His father was a meat dealer and butcher. The athletically gifted Caan played football at Michigan State University while studying economics, holds a black belt in karate and for several years was even a regular on the rodeo circuit, where he was nicknamed "The Jewish Cowboy". However, while studying at Hofstra University, he became intrigued by acting and was interviewed and accepted at Sanford Meisner's
Neighborhood Playhouse. He then won a scholarship to study under acting coach Wynn Handman and began to appear in
several off-Broadway productions, including "I Roam" and "Mandingo".
He made his screen debut as a sailor in Irma la Douce (1963) and began to impress audiences with his work in Red Line 7000 (1965) and the
western El Dorado (1966) alongside John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. Further work followed in Journey to Shiloh (1968) and in
the sensitive The Rain People (1969). However, audiences were moved to tears as he put in a heart-rending performance as cancer-stricken Chicago Bears running back Brian Piccolo in the highly rated made-for-TV film Brian's Song (1971).
With these strong performances under his belt, Francis Ford Coppola then cast him as hot-tempered gangster Santino "Sonny" Corleone in the Mafia epic The Godfather (1972). The film was an enormous success, Caan scored a Best Supporting Actor nomination
and, in the years since, the role has proven to be the one most fondly remembered by his legion of fans. He reprised the role for several flashback scenes in the sequel The Godfather Part II (1974) and then moved on to several very diverse projects. These included a
cop-buddy crime partnership with Alan Arkin in the uneven Freebie and the Bean (1974), a superb performance as a man playing for his life in The Gambler (1974) alongside Lauren Hutton, and pairing with Barbra Streisand in Funny Lady (1975). Two further strong
lead roles came up for him in 1975, first as futuristic sports star "Jonathon E" questioning the moral fiber of a sterile society in
Rollerball (1975) and teaming up with Robert Duvall in the Sam Peckinpah spy thriller The Killer Elite (1975).
Unfortunately, Caan's rising star sputtered badly at this stage of his career, and several film projects failed to find fire with either
critics or audiences. These included such failures as the hokey Harry and Walter Go to New York (1976), the quasi-western Comes a Horseman (1978) and the
saccharine Chapter Two (1979). However, he did score again with the stylish Michael Mann-directed heist movie Thief (1981). He followed this with a supernatural romantic comedy titled Kiss Me Goodbye (1982) and then, due to personal conflicts, dropped out of the spotlight for several years before returning with a stellar performance under old friend Francis Ford Coppola in the moving
Gardens of Stone (1987).
Caan appeared back in favor with fans and critics alike and raised his visibility with the sci-fi hit Alien Nation (1988) and Dick Tracy (1990), then surprised everyone by playing a meek romance novelist held captive after a car accident by a deranged fan in the dynamic Misery (1990). The 1990s were kind to him and he notched up roles as a band leader in For the Boys (1991), another
gangster in Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), appeared in the indie hit Bottle Rocket (1996) and pursued Arnold Schwarzenegger in Eraser (1996).
The demand on Caan's talents seems to have increased steadily over the past few years as he is making himself known to a new generation of fans. Recent hot onscreen roles have included The Yards (2000), City of Ghosts (2002) and Dogville (2003). In addition, he finds himself at the helm of the hit TV series Las Vegas (2003) as casino security chief "Big Ed" Deline. An actor of undeniably manly appeal, James Caan continued to surprise and delight audiences with his invigorating performances up until his death in July 2022 at the age of 82.- Michael Massee was born on 1 September 1952 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. He was an actor, known for The Crow (1994), The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and The Amazing Spider-Man (2012). He was married to Ellen Sussdorf. He died on 20 October 2016 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Bill Paxton was born on May 17, 1955 in Fort Worth, Texas. He was the son of Mary Lou (Gray) and John Lane Paxton, a businessman and actor (as John Paxton). Bill moved to Los Angeles, California at age eighteen, where he found work in the film industry as a set dresser for Roger Corman's New World Pictures. He made his film debut in the Corman film Crazy Mama (1975), directed by Jonathan Demme. Moving to New York, Paxton studied acting under Stella Adler at New York University. After landing a small role in Stripes (1981), he found steady work in low-budget films and television. He also directed, wrote and produced award-winning short films including Barnes & Barnes: Fish Heads (1980), which aired on Saturday Night Live (1975). His first appearance in a James Cameron film was a small role in The Terminator (1984), followed by his very memorable performance as Private Hudson in Aliens (1986) and as the nomadic vampire Severen in Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark (1987). Bill also appeared in John Hughes' Weird Science (1985), as Wyatt Donnelly's sadistic older brother Chet. Although he continued to work steadily in film and television, his big break did not come until his lead role in the critically acclaimed film-noir One False Move (1991). This quickly led to strong supporting roles as Wyatt Earp's naive younger brother Morgan in Tombstone (1993) and as Fred Haise, one of the three astronauts, in Apollo 13 (1995), as well as in James Cameron's offering True Lies (1994).
Bill died on February 25, 2017, in Los Angeles, from complications following heart surgery. He was 61.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Richard Philip Lewis was born on June 29, 1947 in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Englewood, New Jersey. He went to Dwight Morrow High School and Ohio State University, graduating in 1969 with a degree in marketing and communications. Lewis wrote ad copy in New Jersey while also writing jokes for comedians such as Morty Gunty. He finally got the nerve to perform his own jokes in 1971 at New York's Improvisation and Pips.
After appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962) in 1974, he continued to tour and hone his act with help from David Brenner and Robert Klein. His film Diary of a Young Comic (1979) aired in the Saturday Night Live (1975) time-slot. His work on cable "I'm in Pain" for Showtime in 1988, The I'm Exhausted Concert (1988) earned a nomination from American Comedy Awards for Funniest Male Performer in a Television Special (for HBO); Richard Lewis: I'm Doomed (1990) (HBO) won him a second Ace Nomination for Best Stand-Up Comedy Special. His Richard Lewis: The Magical Misery Tour (1996) was filmed at New York's "Bottom Line" in December 1996. In December 1989, he performed to an SRO crowd at Carnegie Hall.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Matthew Perry was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, to Suzanne Marie
(Langford), a Canadian journalist, and
John Bennett Perry, an American
actor. His ancestry includes English, Irish, German, Swiss-German, and
French-Canadian.
Perry was raised in Ottawa, Ontario, where he became a top-ranked
junior tennis player in Canada. However, after moving to Los Angeles at
the age of 15 to live with his father, he became more interested in
acting. In addition to performing in several high school stage
productions, he remained an avid tennis player. Perry ranked 17th
nationally in the junior singles category and third in the doubles
category. Upon graduating from high school, Perry intended to enroll at
the University of Southern California. However, when he was offered a
leading role on the television series,
Boys Will Be Boys (1987), he seized
the opportunity to begin his acting career.
Perry appeared in the hit comedy film
The Whole Nine Yards (2000),
as the neighbor of a hit man, played by
Bruce Willis. His other feature film
credits included
Fools Rush In (1997),
A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon (1988),
She's Out of Control (1989)
and
Parallel Lives (1994).
He also co-starred with
Chris Farley in the buddy comedy
Almost Heroes (1998) and in the
romantic comedy,
Three to Tango (1999), opposite
Neve Campbell. Perry resides in Los
Angeles. He enjoyed playing ice hockey and softball in his spare time.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Carrie Frances Fisher was born on October 21, 1956 in Burbank, California, to singers/actors Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. She was an actress and writer known for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983). Fisher is also known for her book, "Postcards from the Edge", and she wrote the screenplay for the movie based on her novel. Carrie Fisher and talent agent Bryan Lourd have a daughter, Billie Lourd (Billie Catherine Lourd), born on July 17, 1992.- The archetypal screen tough guy with weatherbeaten features--one film
critic described his rugged looks as "a
Clark Gable who had been left out in
the sun too long"--Charles Bronson was born Charles Buchinsky, one of
15 children of struggling parents in Pennsylvania. His mother, Mary
(Valinsky), was born in Pennsylvania, to Lithuanian parents, and his
father, Walter Buchinsky, was a Lithuanian immigrant coal miner.
He completed high school and joined his father in the mines (an
experience that resulted in a lifetime fear of being in enclosed
spaces) and then served in WW II. After his return from the war,
Bronson used the GI Bill to study art (a passion he had for the rest of
his life), then enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. One
of his teachers was impressed with the young man and recommended him to
director Henry Hathaway, resulting in
Bronson making his film debut in
You're in the Navy Now (1951).
He appeared on screen often early in his career, though usually
uncredited. However, he made an impact on audiences as the evil
assistant to Vincent Price in the
3-D thriller House of Wax (1953).
His sinewy yet muscular physique got him cast in action-type roles,
often without a shirt to highlight his manly frame. He received
positive notices from critics for his performances in
Vera Cruz (1954),
Target Zero (1955) and
Run of the Arrow (1957). Indie
director Roger Corman cast him as the lead
in his well-received low-budget gangster flick
Machine-Gun Kelly (1958), then
Bronson scored the lead in his own TV series,
Man with a Camera (1958).
The 1960s proved to be the era in which Bronson made his reputation as
a man of few words but much action.
Director John Sturges cast him as half
Irish/half Mexican gunslinger Bernardo O'Reilly in the smash hit
western
The Magnificent Seven (1960),
and hired him again as tunnel rat Danny Velinski for the WWII POW
big-budget epic
The Great Escape (1963). Several
more strong roles followed, then once again he was back in military
uniform, alongside Lee Marvin and
Ernest Borgnine in the
testosterone-filled
The Dirty Dozen (1967).
European audiences had taken a shine to his minimalist acting style,
and he headed to the Continent to star in several action-oriented
films, including
Guns for San Sebastian (1968)
(aka "Guns for San Sebastian"), the cult western
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
(aka "Once Upon a Time in The West"),
Rider on the Rain (1970)
(aka "Rider On The Rain") and, in one of the quirkier examples of
international casting, alongside Japansese screen legend
Toshirô Mifune in the western
Red Sun (1971) (aka "Red Sun").
American audiences were by now keen to see Bronson back on US soil, and
he returned triumphantly in the early 1970s to take the lead in more
hard-edged crime and western dramas, including
The Valachi Papers (1972) and
the revenge western
Chato's Land (1972). After nearly 25
years as a working actor, he became an
'overnight" sensation. Bronson
then hooked up with British director
Michael Winner
to star in several highly successful urban crime thrillers, including
The Mechanic (1972) and
The Stone Killer (1973). He then
scored a solid hit as a Colorado melon farmer-done-wrong in
Richard Fleischer's
Mr. Majestyk (1974). However, the
film that proved to be a breakthrough for both Bronson and Winner came
in 1974 with the release of the controversial
Death Wish (1974) (written with
Henry Fonda in mind, who turned it down
because he was disgusted by the script).
The US was at the time in the midst of rising street crime, and
audiences flocked to see a story about a mild-mannered architect who
seeks revenge for the murder of his wife and rape of his daughter by
gunning down hoods, rapists and killers on the streets of New York
City. So popular was the film that it spawned four sequels over the
next 20 years.
Action fans could not get enough of tough guy Bronson, and he appeared
in what many fans--and critics--consider his best role: Depression-era
street fighter Chaney alongside
James Coburn in
Hard Times (1975). That was followed
by the somewhat slow-paced western
Breakheart Pass (1975) (with wife
Jill Ireland), the light-hearted romp (a
flop)
From Noon Till Three (1976)
and as Soviet agent Grigori Borsov in director
Don Siegel's Cold War thriller
Telefon (1977).
Bronson remained busy throughout the 1980s, with most of his films
taking a more violent tone, and he was pitched as an avenging angel
eradicating evildoers in films like the
10 to Midnight (1983),
The Evil That Men Do (1984),
Assassination (1987) and
Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects (1989).
Bronson jolted many critics with his forceful work as murdered United
Mine Workers leader Jock Yablonski in the TV movie
Act of Vengeance (1986),
gave a very interesting performance in the
Sean Penn-directed
The Indian Runner (1991) and
surprised everyone with his appearance as compassionate newspaper
editor Francis Church in the family film
Yes Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus (1991).
Bronson's final film roles were as police commissioner Paul Fein in a
well-received trio of crime/drama TV movies
Family of Cops (1995),
Breach of Faith: A Family of Cops II (1997)
and
Family of Cops III: Under Suspicion (1999).
Unfortunately, ill health began to take its toll; he suffered from
Alzheimer's disease for the last few years of his life, and finally
passed away from pneumonia at Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
in August 2003.
Bronson was a true icon of international cinema; critics had few good
things to say about his films, but he remained a fan favorite in both
the US and abroad for 50 years, a claim few other film legends can
make. - Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Anne Celeste Heche was an American actress, director, and screenwriter. She came to recognition portraying Vicky Hudson and Marley Love in the soap opera Another World (1964), which won her a Daytime Emmy Award and two Soap Opera Digest Awards. She came to mainstream prominence in the late 1990s with roles in the crime drama film Donnie Brasco (1997), the disaster film Volcano (1997), the slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), the action comedy film Six Days Seven Nights (1998), and the drama-thriller film Return to Paradise (1998).- 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.- Actress
- Producer
- Executive
Angela Lansbury was born in 1925 into
a prominent family of the upper middle class living in the Regent's Park neighborhood of London. Her father was socialist politician Edgar Isaac Lansbury (1887-1935), a member of both the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and the Labour Party. Edgar served as Honorary Treasurer of the East London Federation of Suffragettes (term 1915), and Mayor of Poplar (term 1924-1925). He was the second Communist mayor in British history, the first being Joe Vaughan (1878-1938). Lansbury's mother was Irish film actress Moyna Macgill (1895-1975), originally from Belfast. During the first five years of Angela's life, the Lansbury family lived in a flat located in Poplar. In 1930, they moved to a house located in the Mill Hill neighborhood of north London. They spend their weekends vacationing in a farm located in Berrick Salome, a village in South Oxfordshire.
In 1935, Edgar Lansbury died from stomach cancer. Angela reportedly retreated into "playing characters", as a coping mechanism to deal with the loss. The widowed Moyna Macgill soon became engaged to Leckie Forbes, a Scottish colonel. Moyna moved into his house in Hampstead.
From 1934 to 1939, Angela was a student at South Hampstead High School. During these years, she became interested in films.. She regularly visited the local cinema, and imagined herself in various roles. Angela learned how to play the piano, and received a musical education at the Ritman School of Dancing.
In 1940, Lansbury started her acting education at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art, located in Kensington, West London. She made her theatrical debut in the school's production of the play "Mary of Scotland" (1933) by Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959). The play depicted the life of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587, reigned 1542-1567), and Lansbury played one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting.
Also in 1940, Lansbury's paternal grandfather, George Lansbury, died from stomach cancer. When the Blitz started, Moyna Macgill had reasons to fear for the safety of her family and few remaining ties to England. Macgill moved to the United States to escape the Blitz, taking her three youngest children with her. Isolde was already a married adult, and was left behind in England.
Macgill secured financial sponsorship from American businessman Charles T. Smith. She and her children (including Angela) moved into Smith's house in Mahopac, New York, a hamlet in Putnam County. Lansbury was interested in continuing her studies, and secured a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing. From 1940 to 1942, Lansbury studied acting at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art, located in New York City. She appeared in performances organized by the school.
In 1942, Lansbury moved with her family to a flat located in Morton Street, Greenwich Village. She soon followed her mother in her theatrical tour of Canada. Lansbury secured her first paying job in Montreal, singing at the nightclub Samovar Club for a payment of 60 dollars per week. Lansbury was 16 years old at the time, but lied about her age and claimed to be 19 in order to be hired.
Lansbury returned to New York City in August, 1942, but Moyna Macgill soon moved herself and her family again. The family moved to Los Angeles, where Moyna was interested in resurrecting her film career. Their first home there was a bungalow in Laurel Canyon, a neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills.
Lansbury helped financially support her family by working for the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles. Her weekly wages were only 28 dollars, but she had a secure income while her mother was unemployed. Through her mother, Lansbury was introduced to screenwriter John Van Druten (1901-1957), who had recently completed his script of "Gaslight" (1944). He suggested that young Lansbury would be perfect for the role of Nancy Oliver, the film's conniving cockney maid. This helped secure Lansbury's first film role at the age of 17, and a seven-year contract with the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She earned 500 dollars per week, and chose to continue using her own name instead of a stage name.
In 1945, Lansbury married actor Richard Cromwell (1910-1960), who was 15 years older than she. The troubled marriage ended in a divorce in 1946. The former spouses remained friends until Cromwell's death.
In 1946, Lansbury started a romantic relationship with aspiring actor Peter Shaw (1918-2003), who was 7 years older than her. Shaw had recently ended his relationship with actress Joan Crawford (c. 1908-1977). The new couple started living together, while planning marriage. They wanted to be married in the United Kingdom, but the Church of England refused to marry two divorcees. They were married in 1949, in a Church of Scotland ceremony at St. Columba's Church, located in Knightsbridge, London. After their return to the United States, they settled into Lansbury's home in Rustic Canyon, Malibu. In 1951, both Lansbury and Shaw became naturalized citizens of the United States, while retaining their British citizenship.
Meanwhile, Lansbury continued appearing in MGM films. She appeared in 11 MGM films between 1945 and 1952. MGM at times loaned Lansbury to other film studios. She appeared in United Artists' "The Private Affairs of Bel Ami" (1947), and Paramount Pictures' "Samson and Delilah" (1949). In 1948, Lansbury made her debut in radio roles, followed by her television debut in 1950.
In 1952, Lansbury requested the termination of her contract with MGM, instead of its renewal. She felt unsatisfied with her film career as an MGM contract player. She then joined the East Coast touring productions of two former Broadway plays. By 1953, Lansbury had two children of her own and was also raising a stepson. She and her family moved into a larger house, located on San Vincente Boulevard in Santa Monica. In 1959, she and her family moved into a house in Malibu. The married couple were able to send their children to a local public school.
Meanwhile she continued her film career as a freelance actress, but continued to be cast in middle-aged roles. She regained her A-picture actress through well-received roles in the drama film "The Long, Hot Summer" (1958) and the comedy film "The Reluctant Debutante" (1958). She also appeared regularly in television roles, and became a regular on game show "Pantomime Quiz" (1947-1959).
In 1957, Lansbury made her Broadway debut in a performance of "Hotel Paradiso". The play was an adaptation of the 1894 "L'Hôtel du libre échange" ("Free Exchange Hotel"), written by Maurice Desvallières (1857-1926) and Georges Feydeau (1862-1921). Lansbury's role as "Marcel Cat" was critically well received. She continued appearing in Broadway over the next several years, most notably cast as the verbally abusive mother in "A Taste of Honey". She was cast as the mother of co-star Joan Plowright (1929-), who was only four years younger.
In the early 1960s, Lansbury was cast as an overbearing mother in "Blue Hawaii" (1961). The role of her son was played by Elvis Presley (1935-1977), who was only 10 years than her. The film was a box office hit, it finished as the 10th-top-grossing film of 1961 and 14th for 1962 on the "Variety" national box office survey. It gained Lansbury renewed fame, at a difficult point of her career.
Lansbury gained critical praise for a sympathetic role in the drama film "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1960), and the role of a manipulative mother in the drama film "All Fall Down" (1962). Based on her success in "All Fall Down", she was cast in a similar role in the Cold War-themed thriller "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962). She was cast as Eleanor Iselin, the mother of her co-star Laurence Harvey (1928-1973), who was only 3 years younger than she. This turned out to be one of the most memorable roles in her career. She received critical acclaim and was nominated for a third time for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The award was instead won by Patty Duke (1946-2016).
Lansbury made a comeback in the starring role of Mame Dennis in the musical "Mame" (1966), by Jerome Lawrence (1915-2004) and Robert Edwin Lee (1918-1994). The play was an adaptation of the novel "Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade" (1955) by Patrick Dennis (1921-1976), and focused on the life and ideas of eccentric bohemian Mame Dennis. The musical received critical and popular praise, and Lansbury won her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Lansbury gained significant fame from her success, becoming a "superstar".
Her newfound fame led to other high-profile appearances by Lansbury. She starred in a musical performance at the 1968 Academy Awards ceremony, and co-hosted the 1968 Tony Awards. The Hasty Pudding Club, a social club for Harvard students. elected her "Woman of the Year" in 1968.
Lansbury's next theatrical success was in 1969 "The Madwoman of Chaillot" (1945) by Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944). The play concerns an eccentric Parisian woman's struggles with authority figures. Lansbury was cast in the starring role of 75-year-old Countess Aurelia, despite her actual age of 44. The show was well received and lasted for 132 performances. Lansbury won her second Tony Award for this role.
In 1970, Lansbury's Malibu home was destroyed in a brush fire. Lansbury and her husband decided to buy Knockmourne Glebe, an 1820s Irish farmhouse, located near the village of Conna in rural County Cork.
Her film career reached a new height. She was cast in the starring role of benevolent witch Eglantine Price in Disney's fantasy film "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (1971). The film was a box-office hit; it was critically well received, and introduced Lansbury to a wider audience of children and families.
In 1972, Lansbury returned to the British stage, performing in London's West End with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1973, Lansbury appeared in the role of Rose in London performances of the musical "Gypsy" (1959) by Arthur Laurents. It was quite successful. In 1974, "Gypsy" went on tour in the United States. with the same cast. For her role, Lanbury won the Sarah Siddons Award and her third Tony Award. The musical had its second tour in 1975.
Tired from musicals. Lansbury next sought Shakespearean roles in the United Kingdom. From 1975 to 1976, she appeared as Queen Gertrude in the National Theatre Company's production of Hamlet. In November 1975, Lansbury's mother Moyna Macgill died at the age of 79. Lansbury arranged for her mother's remains to be cremated, and the ashes scattered near her own County Cork home.
In 1976, Lansbury returned to the American stage. In 1978, Lansbury temporarily replaced Constance Towers (1933-) in the starring role of Anna Leonowens (1831-1915) in The King and I. While Towers was on a break from the role, Lansbury appeared in 24 performances.
In 1978, Lansbury appeared in her first film role in seven years, as the novelist and murder victim Salome Otterbourne in the mystery film "Death on the Nile" (1978). The film was an adaptation of the 1937 novel by Agatha Christie (1890-1976); Otterbourne was loosely based on real-life novelist Elinor Glyn (1864-1943). The film was a modest box-office hit, and Lansbury befriended her co-star Bette Davis (1908-1989).
In 1979, Lansbury was cast in the role of meat pie seller Mrs. Lovett in the musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (1979), by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler (1912-1987). The musical was loosely based on the penny dreadful serial novel "The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance" (1846-1847), which first depicted fictional serial killer Sweeney Todd. Lansbury remained in the role for 14 months, and was then replaced by Dorothy Loudon (1925-2003). Lansbury won her fourth Tony Award for this role. She returned to the role for 10 months in 1980.
Lansbury's next prominent film role was that of Miss Froy in "The Lady Vanishes" (1979), a remake of the 1938 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). She was next cast in the role of amateur sleuth Miss Jane Marple in the mystery film "The Mirror Crack'd" (1980), an adaptation of the novel "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side" (1962) by Agatha Christie. The novel was loosely inspired by the life of Gene Tierney (1920-1991). The film was a modest commercial success. There were plans for at least two sequels, but they ended in development hell.
In 1982, Lansbury was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, She appeared at the time in the new play "A Little Family Business" and a revival of "Mame", but both shows were commercial failures. In film, Lansbury voiced the witch Mommy Fortuna in the animated fantasy film "The Last Unicorn" (1982). The film was critically well received, but was not a box-office hit.
Lansbury played Ruth in the musical comedy "The Pirates of Penzance" (1983), a film adaptation of the 1879 comic opera by William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900). The film was a box office bomb, earning about 695,000 dollars.
Lansbury's next film role was that of Granny in the gothic fantasy film "The Company of Wolves" (1984), based on a 1979 short story by Angela Carter (1940-1992). Lansbury was cast as the grandmother of protagonist Rosaleen (played by Sarah Patterson), in a tale featuring werewolves and shape-shifting. The film was critically well received, but barely broke even at the box office.
At about that time, Lansbury appeared regularly in television films and mini-series. Her most prominent television role was that of Jessica Fletcher in the detective series "Murder, She Wrote" (1984-1996). Jessica was depicted as a successful mystery novelist from Maine who encounters and solves many murders. The character was considered an American counterpart to Miss Marple. The series followed the "whodunit" format and mostly avoided depictions of violence or gore.
The series was considered a television landmark for having an older female character as the protagonist. It was aimed primarily at middle-aged audiences, but also attracted both younger viewers and senior citizen viewers. Ratings remained high for most of its run. Lansbury rejected pressure from network executives to put her character in a relationship, as she believed that Fletcher should remain a strong single female.
In 1989, Lansbury co-founded the production company Corymore Productions, which started co-producing the television series with Universal Television. This allowed Lansbury to have more creative input on the series. She was appointed an executive producer. By the time the series ended in 1996, it tied with the original "Hawaii Five-O" (1968-1980) as the longest-running detective drama series in television history.
Her popularity from "Murder, She Wrote" made Lansbury a much-sought figure for advertisers. She appeared in advertisements and infomercials for Bufferin, MasterCard and the Beatrix Potter Company.
Lansbury's highest-profile film role in decades was voicing the character of singing teapot Mrs. Potts in Disney's animated fantasy film "Beauty and the Beast" (1991). Lansbury performed the film's title song, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.
During the late 1980s and 1990s, Lansbury lived most of the year in California. In 1991, she had Corymore House, a farmhouse at Ballywilliam, County Cork, built as her new family home. She spend Christmases and summers there.
Following the end of "Murder, She Wrote", Lansbury returned to a career as a theatrical actress. She temporarily retired from the stage in 2001, to take care of her husband Peter Shaw, whose health was failing. Shaw died in 2003, from congestive heart failure at the couple's Brentwood, California home. Their marriage had lasted for 54 years (1949-2003).
Lansbury felt at the time that she could not take on any more major acting roles, but that she could still make cameos. She moved back to New York City in 2006, buying a condominium in Manhattan. Her first prominent film role in years was that of Aunt Adelaide in the fantasy film "Nanny McPhee" (2005). She credits her performance in the film with pulling her out of depression, a state of mind which had lasted since her husband's death.
Lansbury returned to performing on the Broadway stage in 2007, after an absence of 23 years. In 2009, she won her fifth Tony Award. She shared the record for most Tony Award victories with Julie Harris (1925-2013). In the 2010s, she continued regularly appearing in theatrical performances. In 2014, she returned to the London stage, after an absence of nearly 40 years.
In 2015, Lansbury received her first Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress. At age 89, she was among the oldest first-time winners. Also in 2015, November 2015 was awarded the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.
In 2017, she was cast as Aunt March in the mini-series "Little Women". The mini-series was an adaptation of the 1868-1869 novel of the same name by Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888). The series lasted for 3 episodes, and was critically well received.
In 2018, Lansbury gained her next film role in Disney's fantasy film "Mary Poppins Returns" (2018), a sequel to "Mary Poppins". Lansbury was cast in the role of the Balloon Lady, a kindly old woman who sells balloons at the park. The films was a commercial hit, earning about 350 million dollars at the worldwide box office.
In 2019, Lansbury performed at a one-night benefit staging of Oscar Wilde's play "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895). a farce satirizing Victorian morals. She was cast in the role of society lady Lady Bracknell, mother to Gwendolen Fairfax.
By 2020, Lansbury was 95 years old, one of the oldest-living actresses. She has never retired from acting, and remains a popular icon.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Director
Born in Danbury, Connecticut, USA, to Greg and Mary, Jonathan Brandis
began his career at age 5, acting in several television commercials. He also
appeared in small parts in several films and TV shows before his first
starring role in the 1990 film
The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990).
He starred in popular films such as
Ladybugs (1992) and starred as Lucas
Wolenczak in Steven Spielberg's
television series
SeaQuest 2032 (1993). He doubled
up his high school courses so he could finish a year early for his role
on SeaQuest. After his career stalled for a bit, he was hoping his role in serious drama film Hart's War (2002) would relaunch it. However, most of his scenes ended up being cut from the finished film. This caused him to fall into a deep depression in which he would drink heavily and tragically end his own life on November 12th, 2003.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Talented and highly capable character actor Geoffrey Lewis, with rustic (sometimes sour-faced) looks, grew up in Rhode Island but was moved out to California at the age of ten. Lewis was very keen on the dramatic arts at high school, but often preferred to put on his own one-man shows rather than participate in larger school productions. His drama teacher took note of his growing talent and referred him to the Plymouth Theater in Massachusetts, where he appeared in summer stock. Afterwards he appeared in several off-Broadway productions in New York City. After spending considerable time traveling, in both the United States and abroad, Lewis turned his attention back to his love of the dramatic arts, and scored his first minor movie role in The Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972) as a somewhat jovial but deadly cowhand. He then cropped up as gangster Harry Pierpont in Dillinger (1973) before beginning a long association with Clint Eastwood, starting off with High Plains Drifter (1973), then as kind-hearted thief Eddie Goody in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), as Clint's buddy Orville Boggs in Every Which Way But Loose (1978) and Any Which Way You Can (1980), then as a henpecked husband in Bronco Billy (1980), as Ricky Z in Pink Cadillac (1989), and in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) also as patient Michael Kahn in Disturbed (1990).
Equally busy on the small screen, he has guest-starred in dozens of episodes of high profile TV series. Additionally, he received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in the series Flo (1980). Apart from his extensive film and TV exposure, Lewis is also a member of the rather unique musical/storytelling "Celestial Navigations," along with award-winning composer songwriter Geoff Levin. Their performances have received terrific reviews from some of Hollywood's top actors and noted musicians, including Chick Corea. As Geoffrey Lewis approaches his seventh decade, nothing seems likely to slow down this multi-talented actor, storyteller and engaging entertainer!- Actress
- Soundtrack
Sharon's early life was one of constant moving as her father served in the military. When she lived in Italy, she was voted "Homecoming Queen" of her high school. After being an extra in a few Italian films, Sharon headed to Hollywood where she would again start as an extra. Her first big break came when she was cast as the shapely bank secretary, "Janet Trego", in the television series The Beverly Hillbillies (1962) (1963-1965). In 1967, she would meet her future husband, director Roman Polanski, on the set of the English film The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967). Sharon's big role would be that same year when she was the starlet in Valley of the Dolls (1967). With her marriage to Roman, her life became one of parties, travel and meeting influential movie people. She would appear as a red-haired beauty in the spy spoof The Wrecking Crew (1968) working with Dean Martin and the equally beautiful Elke Sommer. Sharon was 2 months pregnant of her first child while filming in Italy and France a funny Italian comedy movie 12 + 1 (1969) in February 1969. On August 9, 1969 Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, Steve Parent, and Voytek Frykowski were murdered by 3 of Charles Manson's followers: Charles 'Tex' Watson, Susan Atkins (died in prison in 2009), and Patricia Krenwinkel. Manson died in prison in 2017. Watson and Krenwinkel are still in prison.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was considered one of the last, if not the last, major star to have come out of the old Hollywood studio system. She was known internationally for her beauty, especially for her violet eyes, with which she captured audiences early in her youth and kept the world hooked with ever after.
Taylor was born on February 27, 1932 in London, England. Although she was born an English subject, her parents, Sara Taylor (née Sara Viola Warmbrodt) and Francis Taylor, were Americans, art dealers from St. Louis, Missouri. Her father had moved to London to set up a gallery prior to Elizabeth's birth. Her mother had been an actress on the stage, but gave up that vocation when she married. Elizabeth lived in London until the age of seven, when the family left for the US when the clouds of war began brewing in Europe in 1939. They sailed without her father, who stayed behind to wrap up the loose ends of the art business.
The family relocated to Los Angeles, where Mrs. Taylor's own family had moved. Mr. Taylor followed not long afterward. A family friend noticed the strikingly beautiful little Elizabeth and suggested that she be taken for a screen test. Her test impressed executives at Universal Pictures enough to sign her to a contract. Her first foray onto the screen was in There's One Born Every Minute (1942), released when she was ten. Universal dropped her contract after that one film, but Elizabeth was soon picked up by MGM.
The first production she made with that studio was Lassie Come Home (1943), and on the strength of that one film, MGM signed her for a full year. She had minuscule parts in her next two films, The White Cliffs of Dover (1944) and Jane Eyre (1943) (the former made while she was on loan to 20th Century-Fox). Then came the picture that made Elizabeth a star: MGM's National Velvet (1944). She played Velvet Brown opposite Mickey Rooney. The film was a smash hit, grossing over $4 million. Elizabeth now had a long-term contract with MGM and was its top child star. She made no films in 1945, but returned in 1946 in Courage of Lassie (1946), another success. In 1947, when she was 15, she starred in Life with Father (1947) with such heavyweights as William Powell, Irene Dunne and Zasu Pitts, which was one of the biggest box office hits of the year. She also co-starred in the ensemble film Little Women (1949), which was also a box office huge success.
Throughout the 1950s, Elizabeth appeared in film after film with mostly good results, starting with her role in the George Stevens film A Place in the Sun (1951), co-starring her good friend Montgomery Clift. The following year, she co-starred in Ivanhoe (1952), one of the biggest box office hits of the year. Her busiest year was 1954. She had a supporting role in the box office flop Beau Brummell (1954), but later that year starred in the hits The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) and Elephant Walk (1954). She was 22 now, and even at that young age was considered one of the world's great beauties. In 1955 she appeared in the hit Giant (1956) with James Dean.
Sadly, Dean never saw the release of the film, as he died in a car accident in 1955. The next year saw Elizabeth co-star with Montgomery Clift in Raintree County (1957), an overblown epic made, partially, in Kentucky. Critics called it dry as dust. In addition, Clift was seriously injured during the film, with Taylor helping save his life. Despite the film's shortcomings and off-camera tragedy, Elizabeth was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Southern belle Susanna Drake. However, on Oscar night the honor went to Joanne Woodward for The Three Faces of Eve (1957).
In 1958 Elizabeth starred as Maggie Pollitt in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). The film received rave reviews from the critics and Elizabeth was nominated again for an Academy Award for best actress, but this time she lost to Susan Hayward in I Want to Live! (1958). She was still a hot commodity in the film world, though. In 1959 she appeared in another mega-hit and received yet another Oscar nomination for Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Once again, however, she lost out, this time to Simone Signoret for Room at the Top (1958). Her Oscar drought ended in 1960 when she brought home the coveted statue for her performance in BUtterfield 8 (1960) as Gloria Wandrous, a call girl who is involved with a married man. Some critics blasted the movie but they couldn't ignore her performance. There were no more films for Elizabeth for three years. She left MGM after her contract ran out, but would do projects for the studio later down the road. In 1963 she starred in Cleopatra (1963), which was one of the most expensive productions up to that time--as was her salary, a whopping $1,000,000. The film took years to complete, due in part to a serious illness during which she nearly died.
This was the film where she met her future and fifth husband, Richard Burton (the previous four were Conrad Hilton, Michael Wilding, Mike Todd--who died in a plane crash--and Eddie Fisher). Her next films, The V.I.P.s (1963) and The Sandpiper (1965), were lackluster at best. Elizabeth was to return to fine form, however, with the role of Martha in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Her performance as the loudmouthed, shrewish, unkempt, yet still alluring Martha was easily her finest to date. For this she would win her second Oscar and one that was more than well-deserved. The following year, she and Burton co-starred in The Taming of The Shrew (1967), again giving winning performances. However, her films afterward were box office failures, including Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), The Comedians (1967), Boom! (1968) (again co-starring with Burton), Secret Ceremony (1968), The Only Game in Town (1970), X, Y and Zee (1972), Hammersmith Is Out (1972) (with Burton again), Ash Wednesday (1973), Night Watch (1973), The Driver's Seat (1974), The Blue Bird (1976) (considered by many to be her worst), A Little Night Music (1977), and Winter Kills (1979) (a controversial film which was never given a full release and in which she only had a small role). She later appeared in some movies, both theatrical and made-for-television, and a number of television programs. In February 1997, Elizabeth entered the hospital for the removal of a brain tumor. The operation was successful. As for her private life, she divorced Burton in 1974, only to remarry him in 1975 and divorce him, permanently, in 1976. She had two more husbands, U.S. Senator John Warner and construction worker Larry Fortensky, whom she met in rehab.
In 1959, Taylor converted to Judaism, and continued to identify herself as Jewish throughout her life, being active in Jewish causes. Upon the death of her friend, actor Rock Hudson, in 1985, she began her crusade on behalf of AIDS sufferers. In the 1990s, she also developed a successful series of scents. In her later years, her acting career was relegated to the occasional TV-movie or TV guest appearance.
Elizabeth Taylor died on March 23, 2011 in Los Angeles, from congestive heart failure. Her final resting place is Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Glendale, California.- Actress
- Writer
- Music Department
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, comedienne, singer, and model. She became one of the world's most enduring iconic figures and is remembered both for her winsome embodiment of the Hollywood sex symbol and her tragic personal and professional struggles within the film industry. Her life and death are still the subjects of much controversy and speculation.
She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at the Los Angeles County Hospital on June 1, 1926. Her mother, Gladys Pearl (Monroe), was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, to American parents from Indiana and Missouri, and was a film-cutter at Consolidated Film Industries. Marilyn's biological father has been established through DNA testing as Charles Stanley Gifford, who had been born in Newport, Rhode Island, to a family with deep roots in the state. Because Gladys was mentally and financially unable to care for young Marilyn, Gladys placed her in the care of a foster family, The Bolenders. Although the Bolender family wanted to adopt Marilyn, Gladys was eventually able to stabilize her lifestyle and took Marilyn back in her care when Marilyn was 7 years old. However, shortly after regaining custody of Marilyn, Gladys had a complete mental breakdown and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and was committed to a state mental hospital. Gladys spent the rest of her life going in and out of hospitals and rarely had contact with young Marilyn. Once Marilyn became an adult and celebrated as a film star, she paid a woman by the name of Inez Melson to look in on the institutionalized Gladys and give detailed reports of her progress. Gladys outlived her daughter, dying in 1984.
Marilyn was then taken in by Gladys' best friend Grace Goddard, who, after a series of foster homes, placed Marilyn into the Los Angeles Orphan's Home in 1935. Marilyn was traumatized by her experience there despite the Orphan's Home being an adequate living facility. Grace Goddard eventually took Marilyn back to live with her in 1937 although this stay did not last long as Grace's husband began molesting Marilyn. Marilyn went to live with Grace's Aunt Ana after this incident, although due to Aunt Ana's advanced age she could not care properly for Marilyn. Marilyn once again for the third time had to return to live with the Goddards. The Goddards planned to relocated and according to law, could not take Marilyn with them. She only had two choices: return to the orphanage or get married. Marilyn was only 16 years old.
She decided to marry a neighborhood friend named James Dougherty; he went into the military, she modeled, they divorced in 1946. She owned 400 books (including Tolstoy, Whitman, Milton), listened to Beethoven records, studied acting at the Actors' lab in Hollywood, and took literature courses at UCLA downtown. 20th Century Fox gave her a contract but let it lapse a year later. In 1948, Columbia gave her a six-month contract, turned her over to coach Natasha Lytess and featured her in the B movie Ladies of the Chorus (1948) in which she sang three numbers : "Every Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy", "Anyone Can Tell I Love You" and "The Ladies of the Chorus" with Adele Jergens (dubbed by Virginia Rees) and others. Joseph L. Mankiewicz saw her in a small part in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and put her in All About Eve (1950) , resulting in 20th Century re-signing her to a seven-year contract. Niagara (1953) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) launched her as a sex symbol superstar.
When she went to a supper honoring her in the The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she arrived in a red chiffon gown borrowed from the studio (she had never owned a gown). That same year, she married and divorced baseball great Joe DiMaggio (their wedding night was spent in Paso Robles, California). After The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she wanted serious acting to replace the sexpot image and went to New York's Actors Studio. She worked with director Lee Strasberg and also underwent psychoanalysis to learn more about herself. Critics praised her transformation in Bus Stop (1956) and the press was stunned by her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller . True to form, she had no veil to match her beige wedding dress so she dyed one in coffee; he wore one of the two suits he owned. They went to England that fall where she made The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) with Laurence Olivier , fighting with him and falling further prey to alcohol and pills. Two miscarriages and gynecological surgery followed. So had an affair with Yves Montand . Work on her last picture The Misfits (1961) , written for her by departing husband Miller, was interrupted by exhaustion. She was dropped from the unfinished Something's Got to Give (1962) due to chronic lateness and drug dependency.
On August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe's day began with threatening phone calls. Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn's physician, came over the following day and quoted later in a document "Felt it was possible that Marilyn had felt rejected by some of the people she had been close to." Apart from being upset that her publicist slept too long, she seemed fine. Pat Newcombe, who had stayed the previous night at Marilyn's house, left in the early evening as did Greenson who had a dinner date. Marilyn was upset he couldn't stay, and around 7:30pm she telephoned him to say that her second husband's son had called him. Peter Lawford also called Marilyn, inviting her to dinner, but she declined. Lawford later said her speech was slurred. As the evening for wore on there were other phone calls, including one from Jose Belanos, who said he thought she sounded fine. According to the funeral directors, Marilyn died sometime between 9:30pm and 11:30pm. Her maid unable to raise her but seeing a light under her locked door, called the police shortly after midnight. She also phoned Ralph Greenson who, on arrival, could not break down the bedroom door. He eventually broke in through French windows and found Marilyn dead in bed. The coroner stated she had died from acute barbiturate poisoning, and it was a 'probable suicide' though many conspiracies would follow in the years after her death.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Amiable and handsome James Garner had obtained success in both films
and television, often playing variations of the charming
anti-hero/con-man persona he first developed in Maverick, the offbeat
western TV series that shot him to stardom in the late 1950s.
James Garner was born James Scott Bumgarner in Norman, Oklahoma, to
Mildred Scott (Meek) and Weldon Warren Bumgarner, a carpet layer. He
dropped out of high school at 16 to join the Merchant Marines. He
worked in a variety of jobs and received 2 Purple Hearts when he was
wounded twice during the Korean War. He had his first chance to act
when a friend got him a non-speaking role in the Broadway stage play
"The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (1954)". Part of his work was to read
lines to the lead actors and he began to learn the craft of acting.
This play led to small television roles, television commercials and
eventually a contract with Warner Brothers. Director
David Butler saw something in
Garner and gave him all the attention he needed when he appeared in
The Girl He Left Behind (1956).
After co-starring in a handful of films during 1956-57, Warner Brothers
gave Garner a co-starring role in the the western series
Maverick (1957). Originally planned
to alternate between Bart Maverick
(Jack Kelly) and Bret Maverick
(Garner), the show quickly turned into the Bret Maverick Show. As
Maverick, Garner was cool, good-natured, likable and always ready to
use his wits to get him in or out of trouble. The series was highly
successful, and Garner continued in it into 1960 when he left the
series in a dispute over money.
In the early 1960s Garner returned to films, often playing the same
type of character he had played on "Maverick". His successful films
included
The Thrill of It All (1963),
Move Over, Darling (1963),
The Great Escape (1963) and
The Americanization of Emily (1964).
After that, his career wandered and when he appeared in the automobile
racing movie Grand Prix (1966), he got
the bug to race professionally. Soon, this ambition turned to
supporting a racing team, not unlike what
Paul Newman would do in later years.
Garner found great success in the western comedy
Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969).
He tried to repeat his success with a sequel,
Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971),
but it wasn't up to the standards of the first one. After 11 years off
the small screen, Garner returned to television in a role not unlike
that in
Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969).
The show was Nichols (1971) and he
played the sheriff who would try to solve all problems with his wits
and without gun play. When the show was canceled, Garner took the news
by having Nichols shot dead, never to return in a sequel. In 1974 he
got the role for which he will probably be best remembered, as wry
private eye Jim Rockford in the classic
The Rockford Files (1974).
This became his second major television hit, with
Noah Beery Jr. and
Stuart Margolin, and in 1977 he won an
Emmy for his portrayal. However, a combination of injuries and the
discovery that Universal Pictures' "creative bookkeeping" would not
give him any of the huge profits the show generated soon soured him and
the show ended in 1980. In the 1980s Garner appeared in few movies, but
the ones he did make were darker than the likable Garner of old. These
included Tank (1984) and
Murphy's Romance (1985). For the
latter, he was nominated for both the Academy Award and a Golden Globe.
Returning to the western mode, he co-starred with the young
Bruce Willis in
Sunset (1988), a mythical story of
Wyatt Earp,
Tom Mix and 1920s Hollywood.
In the 1990s Garner received rave reviews for his role in the acclaimed
television movie about corporate greed,
Barbarians at the Gate (1993).
After that he appeared in the theatrical remake of his old television
series, Maverick (1994), opposite
Mel Gibson. Most of his appearances
after that were in numerous TV movies based upon
The Rockford Files (1974).
His most recent films were
My Fellow Americans (1996)
and Space Cowboys (2000) .- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Peter Lorre was born László Löwenstein in Rózsahegy in the Slovak area of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son of Hungarian Jewish parents. He learned both Hungarian and German languages from birth, and was educated in elementary and secondary schools in the Austria-Hungary capitol Vienna, but did not complete. As a youth he ran away from home, first working as a bank clerk, and after stage training in Vienna, Austria, made his acting debut at age 17 in 1922 in Zurich, Switzerland. He traveled for several years acting on stage throughout his home region, Vienna, Berlin, and Zurich, including working with Bertolt Brecht, until Fritz Lang cast him in a starring role as the psychopathic child killer in the German film M (1931).
After several more films in Germany, including a couple roles for which he learned to speak French, Lorre left as the Nazis came to power, going first to Paris where he made one film, then London where Alfred Hitchcock cast him as a creepy villain in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), where he learned his lines phonetically, and finally arrived in Hollywood in 1935. In his first two roles there he starred as a mad scientist in Mad Love (1935) directed by recent fellow-expatriate Karl Freund, and the leading part of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment (1935), by another expatriate German director Josef von Sternberg, a successful movie made at Lorre's own suggestion. He returned to England for a role in another Hitchcock film, Secret Agent (1936), then back to the US for a few more films before checking into a rehab facility to cure himself of a morphine addiction.
After shaking his addiction, in order to get any kind of acting work, Lorre reluctantly accepted the starring part as the Japanese secret agent in Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937), wearing makeup to alter his already very round eyes for the part. He ended up committed to repeating the role for eight more "Mr. Moto" movies over the next two years.
Lorre played numerous memorable villain roles, spy characters, comedic roles, and even a romantic type, throughout the 1940s, beginning with his graduation from 30s B-pictures The Maltese Falcon (1941). Among his most famous films, Casablanca (1942), and a comedic role in the Broadway hit film Arsenic and Old Lace (1944).
After the war, between 1946 and '49 Lorre concentrated largely on radio and the stage, while continuing to appear in movies. In Autumn 1950 he traveled to West Gemany where he wrote, directed and starred in the critically acclaimed but generally unknown German-language film The Lost Man (1951), adapted from Lorre's own novel.
Lorre returned to the US in 1952, somewhat heavier in stature, where he used his abilities as a stage actor appearing in many live television productions throughout the 50s, including the first James Bond adaptation Casino Royale (1954), broadcast just a few months after Ian Fleming had published that first Bond novel. In that decade, Lorre had various roles, often to type but also as comedic caricatures of himself, in many episodes of TV series, and variety shows, though he continued to work in motion pictures, including the Academy Award winning Around the World in 80 Days (1956), and a stellar role as a clown in The Big Circus (1959).
In the late 50s and early 1960s he worked in several low-budget films, with producer-director Roger Corman, and producer-writer-director Irwin Allen, including the aforementioned The Big Circus and two adventurous Disney movies with Allen. He died from a stroke the year he made his last movie, playing a stooge in Jerry Lewis' The Patsy (1964).- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Multi-talented and unconventional actor/director regarded by many as one of the true "enfant terribles" of Hollywood who led an amazing cinematic career for more than five decades, Dennis Hopper was born on May 17, 1936, in Dodge City, Kansas. The young Hopper expressed interest in acting from a young age and first appeared in a slew of 1950s television shows, including Medic (1954), Cheyenne (1955) and Sugarfoot (1957). His first film role was in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), quickly followed by Giant (1956) and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). Hopper actually became good friends with James Dean and was shattered when Dean was killed in a car crash in September 1955.
Hopper portrayed a young Napoléon Bonaparte (!) in the star-spangled The Story of Mankind (1957) and regularly appeared on screen throughout the 1960s, often in rather undemanding parts, usually as a villain in westerns such as True Grit (1969) and Hang 'Em High (1968). However, in early 1969, Hopper, fellow actor Peter Fonda and writer Terry Southern, wrote a counterculture road movie script and managed to scrape together $400,000 in financial backing. Hopper directed the low-budget film, titled Easy Rider (1969), starring Fonda, Hopper and a young Jack Nicholson. The film was a phenomenal box-office success, appealing to the anti-establishment youth culture of the times. It changed the Hollywood landscape almost overnight and major studios all jumped onto the anti-establishment bandwagon, pumping out low-budget films about rebellious hippies, bikers, draft dodgers and pot smokers. However, Hopper's next directorial effort, The Last Movie (1971), was a critical and financial failure, and he has admitted that during the 1970s he was seriously abusing various substances, both legal and illegal, which led to a downturn in the quality of his work. He appeared in a sparse collection of European-produced films over the next eight years, before cropping up in a memorable performance as a pot-smoking photographer alongside Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen in Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now (1979). He also received acclaim for his work in both acting and direction for Out of the Blue (1980).
With these two notable efforts, the beginning of the 1980s saw a renaissance of interest by Hollywood in the talents of Dennis Hopper and exorcising the demons of drugs and alcohol via a rehabilitation program meant a return to invigorating and provoking performances. He was superb in Rumble Fish (1983), co-starred in the tepid spy thriller The Osterman Weekend (1983), played a groovy school teacher in My Science Project (1985), was a despicable and deranged drug dealer in River's Edge (1986) and, most memorably, electrified audiences as foul-mouthed Frank Booth in the eerie and erotic David Lynch film Blue Velvet (1986). Interestingly, the offbeat Hopper was selected in the early 1980s to provide the voice of "The StoryTeller" in the animated series of "Rabbit Ears" children's films based upon the works of Hans Christian Andersen!
Hopper returned to film direction in the late 1980s and was at the helm of the controversial gang film Colors (1988), which was well received by both critics and audiences. He was back in front of the cameras for roles in Super Mario Bros. (1993), got on the wrong side of gangster Christopher Walken in True Romance (1993), led police officer Keanu Reeves and bus passenger Sandra Bullock on a deadly ride in Speed (1994) and challenged gill-man Kevin Costner for world supremacy in Waterworld (1995). The enigmatic Hopper continued to remain busy through the 1990s and into the new century with performances in All the Way (2003), The Keeper (2004) and Land of the Dead (2005).
As well as his acting/directing talents, Hopper was a skilled photographer and painter, having had his works displayed in galleries in both the United States and overseas. He was additionally a dedicated and knowledgeable collector of modern art and had one of the most extensive collections in the United States. Dennis died of prostate cancer on May 29, 2010, less than two weeks after his 74th birthday.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Cornel Wilde was born Kornel Lajos Weisz on October 13, 1912 in Prievidza, Hungary (now part of Slovakia) to a Jewish family. In 1920, he immigrated to New York City with his parents, Rayna (Vid) and Vojtech Béla Weisz, and elder sister, Edith. His family Anglicized their names. Kornel took the name Cornelius Louis Wilde. He spent much of his youth traveling in Europe, developing a continental flair as well as an affinity for languages. He received a scholarship for medical school, but turned it down in favor of his new love, the theatre.
A natural athlete and a champion fencer with the U.S. Olympic fencing team, he quit the team just prior to the 1936 Berlin Olympics in order to take a role in a play. In 1937, he married Marjorie Heintzen (later known as Patricia Knight), and they both shaved a few years off their ages in order to get work, Wilde thereafter claiming publicly he was born in New York in 1915 while continuing to list his correct place and year of birth on government documents.
Shortening his name to Cornel Wilde for the stage, he appeared in the Broadway hit "Having a Wonderful Time", but it wasn't until he was hired in the dual capacities of fencing choreographer and actor (Tybalt) in Laurence Olivier's 1940 Broadway production of "Romeo and Juliet" that Hollywood spotted him. He played a few minor roles before leaping to fame and an Oscar nomination as Frederic Chopin in A Song to Remember (1945). He spent the balance of the 1940s in romantic, and often swashbuckling, leading roles.
During the 1950s, his star dimmed a little, and aside from an occasional blockbuster like
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), he settled mainly into adventure films. A growing interest in directing led him to form his own production company with the goal of directing his own films. Several of his ventures into film noir in this period, both his own and those of other directors, are quite interesting (The Big Combo (1955) and Storm Fear (1955), for example). He produced, directed and starred in The Naked Prey (1965), a tour-de-force adventure drama that brought him real acclaim as a director. His later films were of varying quality, and he ended his career in near-cameos in minor adventure films. He died of leukemia in 1989, three days after his 77th birthday, leaving behind an unpublished autobiography, "The Wilde Life".- Actor
- Soundtrack
Stanton was born in West Irvine, Kentucky, to Ersel (Moberly), a cook, and Sheridan Harry Stanton, a barber and tobacco farmer. He lived in Lexington, Kentucky and graduated from Lafayette Senior High School with the class of 1944. Drafted into the Navy, he served as a cook in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and was on board an LST during the Battle of Okinawa. He then returned to the University of Kentucky to appear in a production of "Pygmalion", before heading out to California and honing his craft at the prestigious Pasadena Playhouse. Stanton then toured around the United States with a male choir, worked in children's theater, and then headed back to California.
His first role on screen was in the tepid movie Tomahawk Trail (1957), but he was quickly noticed and appeared regularly in minor roles as cowboys and soldiers through the late 1950s and early 1960s. His star continued to rise and he received better roles in which he could showcase his laid-back style, such as in Cool Hand Luke (1967), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Dillinger (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), and in Alien (1979). It was around this time that Stanton came to the attention of director Wim Wenders, who cast him in his finest role yet as Travis in the moving Paris, Texas (1984). Next indie director Alex Cox gave Stanton a role that brought him to the forefront, in the quirky cult film Repo Man (1984).
Stanton was now heavily in demand, and his unique look got him cast as everything from a suburban father in the mainstream Pretty in Pink (1986) to a soft-hearted, but ill-fated, private investigator in Wild at Heart (1990) and a crazy yet cunning scientist in Escape from New York (1981). Apart from his film performances, he was also an accomplished musician, and "The Harry Dean Stanton Band" and their unique spin on mariachi music played together for well over a decade. They toured internationally. He became a cult figure of cinema and music and when Debbie Harry sang the lyric, "I want to dance with Harry Dean..." in her 1990s hit "I Want That Man", she was talking about him. Stanton remained consistently active on screen, lastly appearing in films including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), The Green Mile (1999) and The Man Who Cried (2000).- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Michael Clarke Duncan was born on December 10, 1957 in Chicago,
Illinois. Raised on Chicago's South Side by his single mother, Jean,
a house cleaner, Duncan grew up resisting drugs and alcohol, instead
concentrating on school. He wanted to play football in high school, but
his mother wouldn't let him, afraid that he would get hurt. He then
turned to acting and dreamed of becoming a famous actor.
After graduating from high school and attending community college, he
worked digging ditches at People's Gas Company in Chicago. When he quit
his job and headed to Hollywood, he landed small roles while working as
a bodyguard. Duncan's role in the movie
Armageddon (1998) led to his
breakthrough performance in
The Green Mile (1999), when his
Armageddon co-star Bruce Willis called
director Frank Darabont, suggesting
Duncan for the part of convict John Coffey. He landed the role and won
critical acclaim as well as many other Awards and Nominations,
including an Academy Award Nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting
Role.
After suffering a heart attack on July 13, 2012, he was taken to a Los
Angeles hospital, in which his girlfriend Omarosa Manigault-Stallworth
tried to save his life with CPR. Unfortunately, on September 3, 2012,
Michael Clarke Duncan died at age 54 from respiratory failure.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Chadwick Boseman was an American actor. He is known for his portrayal of T'Challa / Black Panther in the Marvel Cinematic Universe from 2016 to 2019, particularly in Black Panther (2018), and for his starring roles as several pioneering Americans, Jackie Robinson in 42 (2013), James Brown in Get on Up (2014), and Thurgood Marshall in Marshall (2017). He also had choice parts in The Express (2008), Draft Day (2014), and Message from the King (2016). Born in Anderson, South Carolina, he attended Howard University and studied at the Oxford Mid-Summer Program for acting, before moving to Los Angeles in 2008 to pursue his craft on the big screen. He died in 2020, after a four year bout with colon cancer, during which time he had starred in several of the biggest movies ever made.- 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
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Eldred Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916 in La Jolla, California, to Bernice Mae (Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, a chemist and druggist in San Diego. He had Irish (from his paternal grandmother), English, and some German, ancestry. His parents divorced when he was five years old. An only child, he was sent to live with his grandmother. He never felt he had a stable childhood. His fondest memories are of his grandmother taking him to the movies every week and of his dog, which followed him everywhere. He studied pre-med at UC-Berkeley and, while there, got bitten by the acting bug and decided to change the focus of his studies. He enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and debuted on Broadway after graduation. His debut was in Emlyn Williams' play "The Morning Star" (1942). By 1943, he was in Hollywood, where he debuted in the RKO film Days of Glory (1944).
Stardom came with his next film, The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Peck's screen presence displayed the qualities for which he became well known. He was tall, rugged and heroic, with a basic decency that transcended his roles. He appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) as an amnesia victim accused of murder. In The Yearling (1946), he was again nominated for an Academy Award and won the Golden Globe. He was especially effective in westerns and appeared in such varied fare as David O. Selznick's critically blasted Duel in the Sun (1946), the somewhat better received Yellow Sky (1948) and the acclaimed The Gunfighter (1950). He was nominated again for the Academy Award for his roles in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), which dealt with anti-Semitism, and Twelve O'Clock High (1949), a story of high-level stress in an Air Force bomber unit in World War II.
With a string of hits to his credit, Peck made the decision to only work in films that interested him. He continued to appear as the heroic, larger-than-life figures in such films as Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) and Moby Dick (1956). He worked with Audrey Hepburn in her debut film, Roman Holiday (1953). Peck finally won the Oscar, after four nominations, for his performance as lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). In the early 1960s, he appeared in two darker films than he usually made, Cape Fear (1962) and Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), which dealt with the way people live. He also gave a powerful performance as Captain Keith Mallory in The Guns of Navarone (1961), one of the biggest box-office hits of that year.
In the early 1970s, he produced two films, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972) and The Dove (1974), when his film career stalled. He made a comeback playing, somewhat woodenly, Robert Thorn in the horror film The Omen (1976). After that, he returned to the bigger-than-life roles he was best known for, such as MacArthur (1977) and the monstrous Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele in the huge hit The Boys from Brazil (1978). In the 1980s, he moved into television with the miniseries The Blue and the Gray (1982) and The Scarlet and the Black (1983). In 1991, he appeared in the remake of his 1962 film, playing a different role, in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991). He was also cast as the progressive-thinking owner of a wire and cable business in Other People's Money (1991).
In 1967, Peck received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He was also been awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. Always politically progressive, he was active in such causes as anti-war protests, workers' rights and civil rights. In 2003, his Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch was named the greatest film hero of the past 100 years by the American Film Institute. Gregory Peck died at age 87 on June 12, 2003 in Los Angeles, California.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton on September 1, 1922
in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was three when her father
abandoned the family. Her mother turned to waitressing in a restaurant
to make ends meet--a rough beginning for an actress who would, one day,
be one of Hollywood's elite. Yvonne's mother wanted her to be in the
entertainment field and enrolled her in a local dance school and also
saw that she studied dramatics. Yvonne was not shy in the least. She
was somewhat akin to Colleen Moore
who, like herself, entertained the neighborhood with impromptu
productions. In 1937, when Yvonne was 15, her mother took her to
Hollywood to try for fame and fortune, but nothing came of it and they
returned to Canada. They came back to Hollywood in 1940, where Yvonne
would dance in chorus lines at night while she checked in at the
studios by day in search of film work. After appearing in unbilled
parts in three short films, she finally got a part in a feature.
Although the film
Harvard, Here I Come! (1941)
was quite lame, Yvonne glowed in her brief appearance as a bathing
beauty. The rest of 1942 and 1943 saw her in more uncredited roles in
films that did not quite set Hollywood on fire. In
The Deerslayer (1943), she played
Wah-Tah. The role did not amount to much, but it was much better than
the ones she had been handed previously. The next year was about the
same as the previous two years. She played small parts as either
secretaries, someone's girlfriend, native girls or office clerks. Most
aspiring young actresses would have given up and gone home in defeat,
but not Yvonne. She trudged on. The next year, started out the same,
with mostly bit parts, but later that year, she landed the title role
in
Salome, Where She Danced (1945)
for Universal Pictures. While critics were less than thrilled with the
film, it was at long last her big break, and the film was a success for
Universal. Now she was rolling.
Her next film was the western comedy
Frontier Gal (1945) as Lorena
Dumont. After a year off the screen in 1946, she returned in 1947 as
Cara de Talavera in
Song of Scheherazade (1947),
and many agreed that the only thing worth watching in the film was
Yvonne. Her next film was the highly regarded
Burt Lancaster prison film
Brute Force (1947). Time after time,
Yvonne continued to pick up leading roles, in such pictures as
Slave Girl (1947),
Black Bart (1948),
Casbah (1948) and
River Lady (1948). She had a meaty
role in Criss Cross (1949), a
gangster movie, as the ex-wife of a hoodlum. At the start of the 1950s,
Yvonne enjoyed continued success in lead roles. Her talents were again
showcased in movies such as
The Desert Hawk (1950),
Silver City (1951) and
Scarlet Angel (1952). Her last film
in 1952 was
Hurricane Smith (1952), a picture
most fans and critics agree is best forgotten.
In 1956, she appeared in the film that would immortalize her best,
The Ten Commandments (1956).
She played Sephora, the wife of Moses
(Charlton Heston). The film was,
unquestionably, a super smash, and is still shown on television today.
Her performance served as a springboard to another fine role, this time
as Amantha Starr in
Band of Angels (1957). In the late
1950s and early 1960s, Yvonne appeared on such television series as
Bonanza (1959) and
The Virginian (1962). With film roles drying up, she took the role of Lily Munster in the smash
series The Munsters (1964).
However, she still was not completely through with the big screen.
Appearances in such films as
McLintock! (1963),
The Power (1968),
The Seven Minutes (1971) and
La casa de las sombras (1976)
kept her before the eyes of the movie-going public. Yvonne De Carlo died
at age 84 of natural causes on January 8, 2007 in Woodland Hills,
California.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
A new reigning 1960s international sex symbol took to the cinematic throne as soon as Raquel Welch emerged from the sea in her purposely depleted, furry prehistoric bikini. Tantalizingly wet with her garb clinging to all the right amazonian places, One Million Years B.C. (1966), if nothing else, captured the hearts and libidos of modern men (not to mention their teenage sons) while producing THE most definitive and best-selling pin-up poster of that time.
She was born Jo Raquel Tejada on September 5, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois, the first of three children of Bolivian-born Armando Carlos Tejada, an aerospace engineer, and his wife, Josephine Sarah (Hall). The family moved to San Diego, California (her father was transferred) when Raquel was only two. Taking dance lessons as a youngster, she grew up to be quite a knockout and nailed a number of teen beauty titles ("Miss Photogenic," "Miss La Jolla," "Miss Contour," "Miss Fairest of the Fair" and "Miss San Diego").
With her sights set on theater arts, she studied at San Diego State College on a scholarship starting in 1958 and married her first husband, high school sweetheart James Welch, the following year. They had two children: Damon Welch (born 1959), who later became an actor/production assistant, and actress Tahnee Welch (born 1961). Tahnee went on to take advantage of her own stunning looks as an actress, most notably with her prime role in Cocoon (1985).
Off campus, she became a local TV weather girl in San Diego and eventually quit college. Following the end of her marriage in 1962 (although Raquel and James Welch didn't divorce until 1964), she packed up her two children and moved to Dallas, Texas, where she modeled for Neiman-Marcus and worked as a barmaid for a time.
Regrouping, she returned to California and made the rounds of film/TV auditions. She found work providing minor but sexy set decoration on the small screen (Bewitched (1964), McHale's Navy (1962) and The Virginian (1962)) as well as the large screen (Elvis Presley's Roustabout (1964) and Doris Day's Do Not Disturb (1965)). Caught in the midst of the "beach party" craze, it's not surprising to find out that her first major film role was A Swingin' Summer (1965), which concentrated more on musical guests The Righteous Brothers and Gary Lewis & The Playboys than on Welch's outstanding assets. But 20th Century-Fox certainly took notice and signed her up.
With her very first film under contract (actually, she was on loan out to Britain's Hammer Studios at the time), she took on One Million Years B.C. (1966) (the remake of One Million B.C. (1940), in the role originated by Carole Landis), and the rest is history. Welch remained an international celebrity in her first few years of stardom. In England, she was quite revealing as the deadly sin representing "lust" for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their vehicle Bedazzled (1967), and as the title secret agent in the spy spoof Fathom (1967). In Italy, she gained some exposure in primarily mediocre vehicles opposite such heartthrobs as Marcello Mastroianni.
Back in the U.S., however, she caused quite a stir in her groundbreaking sex scenes with black athlete Jim Brown in the "spaghetti western" 100 Rifles (1969), and as the transgender title role in the unfathomable Myra Breckinridge (1970). Adapted from Gore Vidal's novel, she created some unwelcome notoriety by locking horns with septuagenarian diva Mae West on the set. The instant cult movie certainly didn't help Welch's attempt at being taking seriously as an actress.
Box office bombs abounded. Try as she might in such films as Kansas City Bomber (1972) and The Wild Party (1975), which drew some good reviews for her, her sexy typecast gave her little room to breathe. With determination, however, she partly offset this with modest supporting roles in larger ensemble pieces. She showed definite spark and won a Golden Globe for the swashbuckler The Three Musketeers (1973), and appeared in the mystery thriller The Last of Sheila (1973). She planned on making a comeback in Cannery Row (1982), even agreeing to appear topless (which she had never done before), but was suddenly fired during production without notice. She sued MGM for breach of contract and ultimately won a $15 million settlement, but it didn't help her film career and only helped to label her as trouble on a set.
TV movies became a positive milieu for Welch as she developed sound vehicles for herself such as The Legend of Walks Far Woman (1980) and Right to Die (1987), earning a Golden Globe nomination for the latter project. She also found a lucrative avenue pitching beauty products in infomercials and developing exercise videos (such as Jane Fonda).
Welch took advantage of her modest singing and dancing abilities by performing in splashy Las Vegas showroom acts and starring in such plausible stage vehicles as "Woman of the Year" and "Victor/Victoria". She spoofed her own image on occasion, most memorably on Seinfeld (1989). Into the millennium, she co-starred in the Hispanic-oriented TV series American Family (2002) and the short-lived comedies Welcome to the Captain (2008) and Date My Dad (2017), along with the movies Tortilla Soup (2001), Legally Blonde (2001), Forget About It (2006) and How to Be a Latin Lover (2017).
Her three subsequent marriages were to producer/agent Patrick Curtis (who produced her TV special, Raquel (1970)), director André Weinfeld (who directed her in several fitness videos), and pizza parlor owner Richie Palmer, who was 14 years her junior. All these unions ended in divorce.
She died at 2:25 a.m. on February 15, 2023, aged 82, at her Los Angeles home after suffering a cardiac arrest. She had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Jack Lemmon was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to Mildred Lankford Noel and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., the president of a doughnut company.
His ancestry included Irish (from his paternal grandmother) and
English. Jack attended Ward Elementary near his Newton, MA home. At age
9 he was sent to Rivers Country Day School, then located in nearby
Brookline. After RCDS, he went to high school at Phillips Andover
Academy. Jack was a member of the Harvard class of 1947, where he was
in Navy ROTC and the Dramatic Club. After service as a Navy ensign, he
worked in a beer hall (playing piano), on radio, off Broadway, TV and
Broadway. His movie debut was with
Judy Holliday in
It Should Happen to You (1954).
He won Best Supporting Actor as Ensign Pulver in
Mister Roberts (1955). He received
nominations in comedy
(Some Like It Hot (1959),
The Apartment (1960)) and drama
(Days of Wine and Roses (1962),
The China Syndrome (1979),
Tribute (1980) and
Missing (1982)). He won the Best Actor
Oscar for Save the Tiger (1973)
and the Cannes Best Actor award for "Syndrome" and "Missing". He made
his debut as a director with Kotch (1971)
and in 1985 on Broadway in "Long Day's Journey into Night". In 1988 he
received the Life Achievement Award of the American Film Institute.- Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
Born to a Czech mother and a Serbian father in Chicago as Mladen Sekulovich, on March 22, 1912, Karl Malden did not speak English until he was in kindergarten. After graduating from high school in the nearby steel town of Gary, Indiana, Malden worked in the industry for three years until 1934, when he was frustrated with the drudgery of manual labor. He left to attend the Arkansas State Teacher's College, then the Goodman Theater Dramatic School and never looked back. Three years later, he went to New York City to find fame.
Malden rapidly became involved with the Group Theater, an organization of actors and directors who were changing the face of theater, where he attracted the attention of director Elia Kazan. With Kazan directing, Karl starred in plays such as "All My Sons" by Arthur Miller and "A Streetcar Named Desire" by Tennessee Williams. While Malden had one screen appearance before his military service in World War II, in They Knew What They Wanted (1940), he did not establish his film career until after the war. Malden won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor as Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and showed his range as an actor in roles such as that of Father Corrigan in On the Waterfront (1954) and the lecherous Archie Lee in Baby Doll (1956).
He starred in dozens of films such as Fear Strikes Out (1957), Pollyanna (1960), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Gypsy (1962), How the West Was Won (1962), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), and Patton (1970) as General Omar Bradley. In the early 1970s, he built a television career on the tough but honest screen persona he had created when he starred as Detective Mike Stone on The Streets of San Francisco (1972), co-starring with Michael Douglas. He also became the pitchman for American Express, a position he held for 21 years. In 1988, he was elected President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a position he held for five years. Following that he, published his memoir entitled, "When Do I Start?: A Memoir", written with his daughter Carla.
Malden also courted controversy by pushing for a special salute to Elia Kazan at the 1999 Academy Awards. Malden defended both Kazan and the award, arguing that Kazan's artistic achievements outshone any shame attached to Kazan's naming names before the Congressional committee investigating Communists in Hollywood. Marlon Brando refused to give Kazan the statuette; Robert De Niro ultimately did. Karl Malden died at age 97 of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles on July 1, 2009. He was buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Elizabeth Montgomery was born into show business. Her parents were
screen actor Robert Montgomery
and Broadway actress
Elizabeth Allen. Elizabeth
graduated from the Spence School in New York City and attended the
Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. After three years' intensive
training, she made her TV debut in her father's 1950s playhouse series
Robert Montgomery Presents (1950)
and appeared in more than 200 live programs over the next decade. She
once remarked, "I guess you could say I'm a TV baby." Notable early
film roles included
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)
and Johnny Cool (1963). However, she is best remembered for her leading
role as the witch Samantha in the top-rated ABC sitcom
Bewitched (1964). Her family -
mother Endora (Agnes Moorehead),
look-alike cousin Serena (Montgomery, wearing a dark wig) and advertising executive husband Darrin
(first Dick York then
Dick Sargent) - tried to suppress her
supernatural skills but often turned to her tricks to solve problems.
The signal of impending witchcraft was a twitch of Samantha's nose.
After her first and only TV series ended she turned to made-for-TV
movies, many of which won critical praise:
A Case of Rape (1974),
The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975),
Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story (1993).
She narrated the movie
The Panama Deception (1992)
which won an Academy Award in 1993. Reference works showed her as 62
when she died though the family said she was 57. The family did not
disclose the type of cancer which caused her death.- Actress
- Director
- Producer
The early film career of Stella Stevens could be said to mirror that of Marilyn Monroe. She began by playing a succession of sensuous, blond glamour girls, from naïve virgins and funny coquettes to precocious or briny-tongued floozies. Her early maturity on screen may have reflected her own turbulent private life: she was married at 15, had a child at 16 and was divorced a year later. At 21, Stella, having a child to support and no money, posed for a celebrated Playboy centerfold (she was Playmate of the Month for January 1960) which did her subsequent movie career no harm whatever. Voted by Playboy as among the 100 sexiest women of the 20th Century, she then also became one of the most photographed stars of the 60s.
The voluptuous, blue-eyed Stella was born Estelle Caro Eggleston to one of the oldest families in Yazoo, Mississippi. A myth, which had her hailing from the quaintly named town of Hot Coffee was purely an invention by Hollywood publicists. Her father, Thomas Ellett, was an insurance salesman, her mother, Estelle, a nurse. The family moved to Memphis when she was four. In her early childhood, Stella was nicknamed 'Bootsie'. Impatient to grow up, she took to watching movies at every opportunity. It became her main passion. Graduating from high school in 1955, Stella spent two years attending Memphis State University where she was 'discovered' during a production of Bus Stop in the role of aspiring nightclub singer Chérie (famously played by Marilyn in the film version). Borrowing some money, Stella made her way to the bright lights of Los Angeles and was signed by 20th Century Fox in 1959. She made only three films for the studio during a six months spell before her contract was dropped, her debut being a bit part in Frank Tashlin's saccharine comedy-drama Say One for Me (1959). Her role won her a Golden Globe Award as Most Promising Newcomer. That same year, she was picked up by Paramount and made her first breakthrough on the screen as the vampish Apassionata von Climax in the film version of the hit Broadway musical Li'l Abner (1959), based on Al Capp's comic strip.
Stella then alternated motion pictures with television appearances, displaying a perhaps unexpectedly wide range as an actress in both dramatic and comedic roles. She stood out in films like Too Late Blues (1961) and The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963), both under greatly contrasting directorial styles. In the classic disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure (1972), she was more or less typecast as the proverbial hooker with the heart of gold. Above all, Stella saw herself not as a sex icon but as a comedienne. She once said "I want to be remembered for whatever made people laugh the most." Unafraid to do physical comedy in the manner of Lucille Ball she was also often lauded for her comic timing in films like The Silencers (1966) (a James Bond-style spoof, co-starring a sleepy-eyed Dean Martin) and Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! (1968). In the 70s, her best role was as a warmhearted prostitute in Sam Peckinpah's seminal western The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970). The respected writer and critic Roger Ebert wrote of her performance "There are few enough actresses who can be funny and feminine at the same time, but she is certainly one of them."
Like many film careers, hers too experienced a fair share of hiccups along the way, often due to typecasting: duds like Slaughter (1972), Stand Up and Be Counted (1972), Las Vegas Lady (1975), The Manitou (1978), and others. However, Stella proved resourceful enough to diversify and go behind the camera, both as producer and director of a feature-length documentary, The American Heroine (1979). She co-authored a novel entitled 'Razzle, Dazzle' (published in 1999), about the rise and fall of a glamorous rock star. Also at this time, she unveiled her own range of women's and men's fragrances, called 'Sexy'.
During the 80s and 90s, Stella concentrated primarily on television and enjoyed lengthy tenures on the glossy soaps Flamingo Road (1980) and Santa Barbara (1984), in addition to many guest appearances in shows as diverse as Police Story (1973), Hotel (1983), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1985) and In the Heat of the Night (1988). In 1976, she briefly forsook the glamour of Beverly Hills and set up home on a 27-acre ranch on the edge of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State and then proceeded to operate an art gallery and bakery in a nearby town. By 1983, she had returned to her Beverly Hills home where she lived with her partner (the rock guitarist Bob Kulick), until the home was sold in 2016. Afflicted by Alzheimer's disease, Stella Stevens spent her remaining years in an assisted living home in California and passed away in Los Angeles on February 17 2023 at the age of 84.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, to Elizabeth Ruth (Johnson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store. He was of Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and some English descent. Stewart was educated at a local prep school, Mercersburg Academy, where he was a keen athlete (football and track), musician (singing and accordion playing), and sometime actor.
In 1929, he won a place at Princeton University, where he studied architecture with some success and became further involved with the performing arts as a musician and actor with the University Players. After graduation, engagements with the University Players took him around the northeastern United States, including a run on Broadway in 1932. But work dried up as the Great Depression deepened, and it was not until 1934, when he followed his friend Henry Fonda to Hollywood, that things began to pick up.
After his first screen appearance in Art Trouble (1934), Stewart worked for a time for MGM as a contract player and slowly began making a name for himself in increasingly high-profile roles throughout the rest of the 1930s. His famous collaborations with Frank Capra, in You Can't Take It with You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and, after World War II, It's a Wonderful Life (1946) helped to launch his career as a star and to establish his screen persona as the likable everyman.
Having learned to fly in 1935, he was drafted into the United States Army in 1940 as a private (after twice failing the medical for being underweight). During the course of World War II, he rose to the rank of colonel, first as an instructor at home in the United States, and later on combat missions in Europe. He remained involved with the United States Air Force Reserve after the war and officially retired in 1968. In 1959, he was promoted to brigadier general, becoming the highest-ranking actor in U.S. military history.
Stewart's acting career took off properly after the war. During the course of his long professional life, he had roles in some of Hollywood's best-remembered films, starring in a string of Westerns, bringing his everyman qualities to movies like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)), biopics (The Stratton Story (1949), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), and The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), for instance, thrillers (most notably his frequent collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock), and even some screwball comedies.
On June 25, 1997, a thrombosis formed in his right leg, leading to a pulmonary embolism, and a week later on July 2, 1997, surrounded by his children, James Stewart died at age 89 at his home in Beverly Hills, California. His last words to his family were, "I'm going to be with Gloria now".- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Betty White was born in Oak Park, Illinois, to Christine Tess
(Cachikis), a homemaker, and Horace Logan White, a lighting company
executive for the Crouse-Hinds Electric Company. She was of Danish, Greek, English, and Welsh descent.
Although she was best known as the devious Sue Ann Nivens on the classic sitcom
The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) and
the ditzy Rose Nylund on
The Golden Girls (1985),
Betty White had been in television for a long, long time before those
two shows, having had her own series,
Life with Elizabeth (1952)
in 1952.
She was married three times, lastly for eighteen years, until widowed, to TV game-show host
Allen Ludden.
She was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame and she was known for her tireless efforts on
behalf of animals.
Betty White died on 31 December 2021, at the age of 99.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Brad Renfro was born on July 25, 1982 in Knoxville, Tennessee, to
Angela Denise McCrory and Mark Renfro, a factory worker. He was
discovered at age 10 by director
Joel Schumacher and was cast in the
motion picture The Client (1994),
which starred Susan Sarandon and
Tommy Lee Jones. Although this would be
his zenith, he went on to appear in other films, including
The Cure (1995),
Tom and Huck (1995),
Sleepers (1996), and
Apt Pupil (1998). Renfro won The
Hollywood Reporter's Young Star Award in 1995 and was nominated as one
of People magazine's "Top 30 Under 30," though addiction problems in
his teens and early 20s led to several police arrests and hampered his
career. He died of a drug overdose in January 2008, aged 25.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Actor, raconteur, art collector and connoisseur of haute cuisine are just some of the attributes associated with Vincent Price. He was born Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. in St. Louis, Missouri, to Marguerite Cobb "Daisy" (Wilcox) and Vincent Leonard Price, who was President of the National Candy Company. His grandfather, also named Vincent, invented Dr. Price's Baking Powder, which was tartar-based. His family was prosperous, as he said, "not rich enough to evoke envy but successful enough to demand respect." His uniquely cultivated voice and persona were the result of a well-rounded education which began when his family dispatched him on a tour of Europe's cultural centres. His secondary education eventually culminated in a B.A. in English from Yale University and a degree in art history from London's Courtauld Institute.
Famously, his name has long been a byword for Gothic horror on screen. However, Vincent Price was, first and foremost, a man of the stage. It is where he began his career and where it ended. He faced the footlights for the first time at the Gate Theatre in London. At the age of 23, he played Prince Albert in the premiere of Arthur Schnitzler 's 'Victoria Regina' and made such an impression on producer Gilbert Miller that he launched the play on Broadway that same year (legendary actress Helen Hayes played the title role). In early 1938, he was invited to join Orson Welles 's Mercury Theatre on a five-play contract, beginning with 'The Shoemaker's Holiday'. He gave what was described as "a polished performance". Thus established, Vincent continued to make sporadic forays to the Great White Way, including as the Duke of Buckingham in Shakespeare's 'Richard III' (in which a reviewer for the New Yorker found him to be "satisfactorily detestable") and as Oscar Wilde in his award-winning one man show 'Diversions and Delights', which he took on a hugely successful world-wide tour in 1978. While based in California, Vincent was instrumental in the success of the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, starring in several of their bigger productions, including 'Billy Budd' and 'The Winslow Boy'. In 1952, Vincent joined the national touring company of 'Don Juan in Hell' in which he was cast as the devil. Acting under the direction of Charles Laughton and accompanied by noted thespians Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead, he later recalled this as one of his "greatest theatrical excitements".
As well as acting on stage, Vincent regularly performed on radio network programs, including Lux Radio Theatre, CBS Playhouse and shows for the BBC. He narrated or hosted assorted programs ranging from history (If these Walls Could Speak) to cuisine (Cooking Price-Wise). He wrote several best-selling books on his favourite subjects: art collecting and cookery. In 1962, he was approached by Sears Roebuck to act as a buying consultant "selling quality pictures to department store customers". As if that were not enough, he lectured for 15 years on art, poetry and even the history of villainy. He recorded numerous readings of poems by Edgar Allan Poe (nobody ever gave a better recital of "The Raven"!), Shelley and Whitman. He also served on the Arts Council of UCLA, was a member of the Fine Arts Committee for the White House, a former chairman of the Indian Arts & Crafts Board and on the board of trustees of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
And besides all of that, Vincent Price remained a much sought-after motion picture actor. He made his first appearance on screen as a romantic lead in Service de Luxe (1938), a frothy Universal comedy which came and went without much fanfare. After that, he reprized his stage role as Master Hammon in an early television production of 'The Shoemaker's Holiday'. For one reason or another, Vincent was henceforth typecast as either historical figures (Sir Walter Raleigh, Duke of Clarence, Mormon leader Joseph Smith, King Charles II, Cardinal Richelieu, Omar Khayyam) or ineffectual charmers and gigolos. Under contract to 20th Century Fox (1940-46), Laura (1944) provided one of his better vehicles in the latter department, as did the lush Technicolor melodrama Leave Her to Heaven (1945) which had Vincent showcased in a notably powerful scene as a prosecuting attorney. His performance was singled out by the L.A. Times as meriting "attention as contending for Academy supporting honors".
His first fling with the horror genre was Dragonwyck (1946), a Gothic melodrama set in the Hudson Valley in the early 1800's. For the first time, Vincent played a part he actually coveted and fought hard to win. His character was in effect a precursor of those he would later make his own while working for Roger Corman and American-International. As demented, drug-addicted landowner Nicholas Van Ryn, he so effectively terrorized Gene Tierney's Miranda Wells that the influential columnist Louella Parsons wrote with rare praise: "The role of Van Ryn calls for a lot of acting and Vincent admits he's a ham and loves to act all over the place, but the fact that he has restrained himself and doesn't over-emote is a tribute to his ability". If Vincent was an occasional ham, he proved it with his Harry Lime pastiche Carwood in The Bribe (1949). Much better was his starring role in a minor western, The Baron of Arizona (1950), in which he was convincingly cast as a larcenous land office clerk attempting to create his own desert baronetcy.
With House of Wax (1953) , Vincent fine-tuned the character type he had established in Dragonwyck, adding both pathos and comic elements to the role of the maniacal sculptor Henry Jarrod. It was arduous work under heavy make-up which simulated hideous facial scarring and required three hours to apply and three hours to remove. He later commented that it "took his face months to heal because it was raw from peeling off wax each night". However, the picture proved a sound money maker for Warner Brothers and firmly established Vincent Price in a cult genre from which he was henceforth unable to escape. The majority of his subsequent films were decidedly low-budget affairs in which the star tended to be the sole mitigating factor: The Mad Magician (1954), The Fly (1958) (and its sequel), House on Haunted Hill (1959), the absurd The Tingler (1959) (easily the worst of the bunch) and The Bat (1959). With few exceptions, Vincent's acting range would rarely be stretched in the years to come.
Vincent's association with the genial Roger Corman began when he received a script for The Fall of the House of Usher, beginning a projected cycle of cost-effective films based on short stories by Edgar Allen Poe. As Roderick Usher, Vincent was Corman's "first and only choice". Though he was to receive a salary of $50,000 for the picture, it was his chance "to express the psychology of Poe's characters" and to "imbue the movie versions with the spirit of Poe" that clinched the deal for Vincent. He made another six films in this vein, all of them box office winners. Not Academy Award stuff, but nonetheless hugely enjoyable camp entertainment and popular with all but highbrow audiences. Who could forget Vincent at his scenery chewing best as the resurgent inquisitor, luring Barbara Steele into the crypt in The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)? Or as pompous wine aficionado Fortunato Luchresi in that deliriously funny wine tasting competition with Montresor Herringbone (Peter Lorre) in Tales of Terror (1962)? Best still, the climactic battle of the magicians pitting Vincent's Erasmus Craven against Boris Karloff's malevolent Dr. Scarabus in The Raven (1963) (arguably, the best offering in the Poe cycle). The Comedy of Terrors (1963) was played strictly for laughs, with the inimitable combo of Price and Lorre this time appearing as homicidal undertakers.
For the rest of the 60s, Vincent was content to remain in his niche, playing variations on the same theme in City in the Sea (1965) and Witchfinder General (1968) (as Matthew Hopkins). He also spoofed his screen personae as Dr. Goldfoot and as perennial villain Egghead in the Batman (1966) series. He rose once more to the occasion in the cult black comedy The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) (and its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)) commenting that he had to play Anton Phibes "very seriously so that it would come out funny". The tagline, a parody of the ad for Love Story (1970), announced "love means never having to say you're ugly".
During the 70s and 80s, Vincent restricted himself mainly to voice-overs and TV guest appearances. His final role of note was as the inventor in Edward Scissorhands (1990), a role written specifically for him. The embodiment of gleeful, suave screen villainy, Vincent Price died in Los Angeles in October 1993 at the age of 82. People magazine eulogized him as "the Gable of Gothic." Much earlier, an English critic named Gilbert Adair spoke for many fans when he said "Every man his Price - and mine is Vincent."- Actor
- Soundtrack
Henry Gibson was born on 21 September 1935 in Germantown, Pennsylvania.
Before appearing in films and television series, he was a child star on
the stage during the 1940s and during the late 1950s he was an
intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force. His screen debut came in
1963 when he was cast in the
Jerry Lewis film
The Nutty Professor (1963).
He made two other small film appearances in the early 1960s in
Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) and
The Outlaws Is Coming (1964),
in which he played a rather hip Indian named Charlie Horse. His
breakthrough came in 1968 when he was cast as a member of the regular
cast of
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1967).
He stayed with the show until 1971, when he left and continued his
career as a character actor. His best known film role was probably his
performance in Nashville (1975). He
played Haven Hamilton, a smarmy Country and Western singer. For this
role he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and was awarded the
National Film Critics Award for best supporting actor. Gibson's career
carried on through the 1980s and 1990s when he appeared in many films,
such as
The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981)
and The 'Burbs (1989). He also
provided voice-overs for many children's animated series like
The Smurfs (1981),
The Wuzzles (1985) and
Galaxy High School (1986).
His most recent appearance have been in the
Paul Thomas Anderson drama
Magnolia (1999) and the independent film
The Year That Trembled (2002).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Suzanne Pleshette achieved television immortality in her role as Bob Newhart's wife in the 1970s classic situation comedy, The Bob Newhart Show (1972). For her role as "Emily Hartley," wife of psychologist "Bob Hartley" (played by Bob Newhart), Pleshette was nominated for the Emmy Award twice, in 1977 and 1978. She was also nominated for an Emmy in 1962 for a guest appearance on the TV series, Dr. Kildare (1961) and, in 1991, for playing the title role in Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean (1990) in a 1990 TV movie. Her acting career lasted almost 50 years.
Suzanne Pleshette was born on January 31, 1937, in New York, New York, to Gene Pleshette, a TV network executive who had managed the Paramount Theaters in Manhattan and Brooklyn during the Big Band era, and the former Geraldine Kaplan, a dancer who performed under the pseudonym Geraldine Rivers. Pleshette claims that she was not an acting natural, but just "found" herself attending New York City's High School of the Performing Arts. After graduating high school, she attended Syracuse University for a semester before returning to NYC to go to Finch College, an elite finishing school for well-to-do young ladies. After a semester at Finch, Pleshette dropped out of college to take lessons from famed acting teacher Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
She made her Broadway debut in 1957 as part of the supporting cast for the play Compulsion (1959). Initially cast as "The Fourth Girl," she eventually took over the ingénue role during the play's run.
Blessed with beauty, a fine figure, and a husky voice that made her seem older than her years, she quickly achieved success on both the small and big screens. She made her TV debut, at age 20, in Harbourmaster (1957), then was chosen as the female lead opposite superstar Jerry Lewis in his 1958 comedy, The Geisha Boy (1958). On Broadway, she replaced Anne Bancroft in the Broadway hit The Miracle Worker (1962).
Once Pleshette started acting, her career never lagged until she was afflicted with cancer.
Her most famous cinematic role was in Alfred Hitchcock's classic, The Birds (1963), as the brunette schoolteacher jilted by the hero of the film, "Mitch Brenner" (played by Rod Taylor). Pleshette's warm, earthy character was a perfect contrast to the icy blonde beauty, "Melanie Daniels" (Tippi Hedren).
Frankly, it is hard to understand how Taylor's Mitch would jilt Pleshette's Annie, other than to work out Hitchcock's dark vision of society and psychosexual relations between the sexes, in which amoral blondes triumph for aesthetic rather than moral reasons.
Still, it is for Emily Hartley she will always be remembered, for both the original show and her part in another show that had the most clever sign-off episode in TV series history. Bob Newhart had enjoyed a second success during the 1980s with his TV sitcom Newhart (1982), and when he decided to end that series, he asked Suzanne Pleshette to come back. She did, reprising her tole of Emily in a final episode of Newhart, where Newhart woke up as Bob Hartley from "The Bob Newhart Show" in the bedroom of the Hartley's Chicago apartment, Pleshette's Emily at his side. Bob Hartley then told his wife Emily of a crazy dream he'd just had, where he was the proprietor of a Vermont inn overrun with eccentrics, the premise of the second show.
After "The Bob Newhart Show" ceased production, Suzanne Pleshette worked regularly on television, mostly in TV movies. Although she was a talented dramatic actress, she had a flair for comedy and, in 1984, she headlined her own series at CBS. She helped develop the half-hour sitcom, and even had the rare honor of having her name in the title. Suzanne Pleshette Is Maggie Briggs (1984), however, was not a success. She co-starred with Hal Linden in another short-lived CBS TV series, The Boys Are Back (1994), in the 1994-95 season, then had recurring roles in the TV series Good Morning, Miami (2002) and 8 Simple Rules (2002).
Pleshette was married three times: In 1964, she wed teen idol Troy Donahue, her co-star in the 1962 film Rome Adventure (1962) and in 1964's A Distant Trumpet (1964), but the marriage lasted less than a year. She was far more successful in her 1968 nuptials to Texas oil millionaire Tommy Gallagher, whom she remained married to until his death in 2000. After becoming a widow, she and widower Tom Poston (a Newhart regular) rekindled an old romance they had enjoyed when appearing together in "The Golden Fleecing," a 1959 Broadway comedy. They were married from 2001 until Poston's death, in April 2007.
Pleshette was diagnosed with lung cancer and underwent chemotherapy in the summer of 2006; she rallied, but in late 2007, she barely survived a bout of pneumonia. She died of respiratory failure on January 19, 2008, a few days shy of her 71st birthday.
Suzanne Pleshette was remembered as a gregarious, down-to-earth person who loved to talk and often would regale her co-stars with a naughty story. Newhart and his producers had picked her for the role of Emily in "The Bob Newhart Show" after watching her appearances with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), where she showed herself to be a first-rate raconteuse. Because she could hold her own with Newhart's friend Carson, it was felt she would be a perfect foil as Newhart's TV wife.
She accepted the part, and TV history was made.- Actress
- Producer
- Editorial Department
Markie Post grew up in Walnut Creek, California and started her career
on films and TV shows, such as
Card Sharks (1978) and "The New
Card Sharks" (1986) and went on to even produce such projects as
Double Dare (1976) and has made
appearances on such television projects as
1st to Die (2003),
E! True Hollywood Story (1996)
and
Electra Woman and Dyna Girl (2001).
Perhaps her biggest TV role was as "Christine Sullivan" on
Night Court (1984). She appeared
in 156 episodes of this comedy, from 1984 to 1992.- Actor
- Sound Department
- Soundtrack
Cameron Boyce was an American actor, with Afro-Caribbean and African-American descent. His paternal grandmother Jo Ann Allen was one of the "Clinton Twelve", the first African-Americans to attend an integrated high school in the Southern United States (specifically in Clinton, Tennessee).
In 1999, Boyce was born in Los Angeles, California. He was trained as a dancer from an early age. In 2008, he made his debut in the music video "That Green Gentleman (Things Have Changed)" by the band "Panic! at the Disco". He was playing a child version of guitarist Ryan Ross. Also in 2008, Boyce gained a recurring role in the short-lived soap opera "General Hospital: Night Shift" (2007-2008).
Boyce's first appearance in a feature film was in the horror film "Mirrors" (2008), playing the role of Michael "Mikey" Carson (the son of the film
's protagonist). His second film appearance was in the spy film "Eagle Eye" (2008), playing the role of Sam Holloman. His next prominent film role was in the comedy film "Grown Ups" (2010), again playing the son of the film's protagonist.
Boyce showcased his dancing skills in the web series "The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers" (2010-2011). In 2011, Boyce appeared as a featured dancer in a "Dancing with the Stars" special and in the television sitcom "Shake It Up" (2010-2013). He made a guest appearance in the sitcom "Good Luck Charlie" (2010-2014), playing an impostor version of regular character Gabe Duncan.
Boyce next gained the co-starring role of Luke Ross in the sitcom "Jessie" (2011-2015). The premise of the series was that celebrity couple Morgan and Christina Ross had no free time to spend with their four children, so they hired aspiring actress Jessie Prescott (played by Debby Ryan) as a full-time nanny and surrogate mother to the kids. Luke was the second oldest child, who viewed Jessie as a love interest. The series was a ratings hit for Disney Channel. It lasted for 4 seasons, and a total of 98 episodes.- Diana Hyland, a striking, knowing beauty with a confident air about her, was born Joan Diane (or Joan Diana) Gentner on January 25, 1936, in Ohio and appeared on stage in summer stock, as a teen, before graduating from Cleveland Heights High School.
Moving to New York in 1955, aged 19, to test her acting mettle, the slim-faced, honey-blonde actress began to find TV roles almost immediately (one of her first being a Robert Montgomery Presents (1950)
episode) in-between supplementing her income as a switchboard operator. Initially billed as Diane Gentner, she changed it to Diana Hyland.
Following a tour of the play, "Look Back in Anger", she broke through quite impressively on the Broadway boards as the damaged (by a long-ago tryst with the lead male character) ingénue of a dangerously powerful Southern politician in the acclaimed 1959 Tennessee Williams production of "Sweet Bird of Youth", starring Paul Newman and Geraldine Page. Her role of "Heavenly Finley" could have made her a film star, had she been allowed to take it to the big screen, but Shirley Knight was given the role in the somewhat sanitized film version.
In the early 1960s, she focused on the small screen with strong, emotional roles on such soaps as Young Dr. Malone (1958) and Peyton Place (1964) (in a
particularly showy role as a minister's alcoholic wife). She also scored well in a series of guest parts, notably The Twilight Zone (1959), The Fugitive (1963), The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962) and Alcoa Premiere (1961), the
last for which she received an Emmy nomination. She was a particularly sought-after presence on medical shows, as well, spicing up such
popular tearjerkers as Ben Casey (1961),
Dr. Kildare (1961), The Doctors (1963),The Doctors and the Nurses (1962), Medical Center (1969) and
Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969).
She made noticeably few films during her career, her best showcase being that of the unconventional minister's wife opposite
Don Murray's Rev. Norman Vincent Peale in One Man's Way (1964). In addition to a small, downbeat supporting turn in The Chase (1966) starring
Marlon Brando, Robert Redford and
Jane Fonda, she also co-starred with
Fess Parker in the routine western
yarn, Smoky (1966). Remaining focused on television, she continued to brightened up that medium into the 1970s, the last decade of her too-short life, with an emphasis on crime dramas (Kojak (1973), Harry O (1973),
Cannon (1971), Mannix (1967), etc.).
In 1969, Hyland married actor
Joseph Goodson. The couple had one son,
Zachary Goodson (born 1973). The couple eventually split. A highly independent, intelligent and outspoken woman in real-life, she subsequently began a May-December
affair with a much younger actor, John Travolta, in 1976. Travolta, who was 18 years Diana's junior, had just come into his own with the sitcom, Welcome Back, Kotter (1975). The two met while appearing together in the TV-movie,
The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). John played the special-needs title role and Diana, along with Robert Reed, were cast as his parents. Interestingly, around that time, Diana was cast as a sophisticated wealthy woman who has designs on the much younger "Fonz" in the early 1977 Happy Days (1974) episode,
Fonzie's Old Lady (1977).
Around that time, she won the regular role of
Dick Van Patten's wife, "Joan Bradford",
mother to a large brood, in the upcoming family series, Eight Is Enough (1977). Career-wise, things couldn't have looked more promising for the actress. Sadly, it would be a short-lived celebration. A couple of years earlier, Diana had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Despite undergoing a mastectomy, the cancer returned around Christmas time of 1976 and the disease spread rapidly. The 41-year-old actress died a few months later, on March 27, 1977, having shot just four episodes of her new series. The rest of the episodes during that first season explained her as being "away". When the series returned that fall, it was revealed that her Joan character had also died. The second season was then devoted to having Dick Van Patten's widower character return to the dating scene and eventually remarrying.
With her terribly untimely death, Hollywood lost a truly superb actress. In a most fitting tribute, the actress was awarded a posthumous Emmy for her touching supporting performance in The Boy in the Plastic Bubble (1976). John Travolta accepted on her behalf at the awards ceremony. - Actor
- Writer
- Director
His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was orphaned at 15 after his father's death in 1930 and became the ward of Dr. Maurice Bernstein of Chicago. In 1931, he graduated from the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois. He turned down college offers for a sketching tour of Ireland. He tried unsuccessfully to enter the London and Broadway stages, traveling some more in Morocco and Spain, where he fought in the bullring.
Recommendations by Thornton Wilder and Alexander Woollcott got him into Katharine Cornell's road company, with which he made his New York debut as Tybalt in 1934. The same year, he married, directed his first short, and appeared on radio for the first time. He began working with John Houseman and formed the Mercury Theatre with him in 1937. In 1938, they produced "The Mercury Theatre on the Air", famous for its broadcast version of "The War of the Worlds" (intended as a Halloween prank). His first film to be seen by the public was Citizen Kane (1941), a commercial failure losing RKO $150,000, but regarded by many as the best film ever made. Many of his subsequent films were commercial failures and he exiled himself to Europe in 1948.
In 1956, he directed Touch of Evil (1958); it failed in the United States but won a prize at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. In 1975, in spite of all his box-office failures, he received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1984, the Directors Guild of America awarded him its highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award. His reputation as a filmmaker steadily climbed thereafter.- Kenneth Mitchell was born on 25 November 1974 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was an actor, known for Jericho (2006), Miracle (2004) and The Astronaut Wives Club (2015). He was married to Susan May Pratt. He died on 24 February 2024 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actor
- Producer
- Script and Continuity Department
Harvard-educated stage and screen actor Richard Jordan was born into a
socially prominent family on July 19, 1937 in New York City, the
grandson of Learned Hand, the greatest
American jurist never to have served on the U.S. Supreme Court. Newbold
Morris, his stepfather, was a member of the New York City Council
during Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's
administration. Young Richard was educated in private Manhattan schools
and then at the exclusive Hotchkiss prep school in Lakeville,
Connecticut. While at Hotchkiss, he was outstanding as the eponymous
lead of the school play "Mr. Roberts", which won him a place in the
Sharon, Connecticut summer stock company. Jordan went to England as an
exchange student at the Sherbourne School, a college (private school)
that was over 1,000 years old. After graduating from Sherbourne, Jordan
entered Harvard College and took his degree in three years.
At Harvard, Jordan was a member of the Dramatic Club, both as an actor
and as a director. It was while at Harvard that he decided to become a
professional actor and began performing with off-campus stage
companies. After graduating from Harvard, Jordan launched what was to
be a prolific stage career in New York, making his Broadway debut in
December 1961 in the play "Take Her, She's Mine" under the direction of
the venerable George Abbott in
Biltmore Theatre. The play, which starred
Art Carney,
Elizabeth Ashley in a Tony
Award-winning turn, and
Heywood Hale Broun, was a hit,
playing 404 performances.
Jordan next appeared in a one-night flop, in "Bicycle Ride to Nevada",
which opened and closed on September 24, 1963. He was more lucky with
his next play, "Generation", a comedy starring
Henry Fonda that played for 300 performances
in the 1965-66 season. He last appeared on Broadway in a success
d'estime, John Osborne's "A Patriot
for Me", directed by Peter Glenville and
starring Maximilian Schell and
Tommy Lee Jones, who was making his
Broadway debut. By that time, Jordan had established himself as a
leading player Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway, which accounted for
the majority of his over 100 New York stage appearances.
Jordan, as actor and director, was a major force in the development of
New York's "Off-Off-Broadway" theater that flourished in the 1960s. He
was one of the founders of the Gotham Arts Theater, which put on plays
in an old funeral parlor on West 43rd Street. Fittingly, the company's
first play was about necrophilia. Jordan engaged young New York artists
to design the sets, the results of which were not always auspicious.
Jordan said of this development, "With our weirdo plays against their
far-out sets...it was total insanity!" He made a significant
breakthrough, career-wise, with his appearance in the anti-war play
"The Trial Of The Catonsville Nine" in both New York and California.
Jordan spent eight years with Joseph Papp's
New York Shakespeare Festival. He made his debut with Papp's
Shakespeare Festival in 1963, playing "Romeo" opposite the "Juliet" of
Kathleen Widdoes, the fellow Papp stock
company member who would become his wife, in Papp's Shakespeare in the
Park series. The couple married in 1964, and their eight-year marriage
produced a daughter, Nina Jordan, born in
1964, who would later co-star with her father in the movie
Old Boyfriends (1979).
Although he appeared on television during the 1960s, the tall, handsome
and talented Jordan did not make his motion picture debut until 1971,
when he appeared in a supporting role in
Michael Winner's horse opera
Lawman (1971), which featured a first-rate
cast, including Burt Lancaster,
Robert Ryan,
Lee J. Cobb and
Robert Duvall. However, it was his role as
the baby-faced, amoral Treasury agent in
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)
that made him a known commodity on-screen, while it was the monumental
mini-series
Captains and the Kings (1976)
that made his reputation. His performance as the Irish immigrant
"Joseph Armagh" brought him an Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe
award, and it also brought him his long-time companion, co-star
Blair Brown, whom he lived with for
many years and by whom he had a son.
An actor rather than a star, Jordan played many unsympathetic roles,
including that of Nazi Albert Speer in the
TV movie The Bunker (1981).
He continued to appear on the stage, Off-Broadway and in stock
companies touring the major cities of the U.S., while appearing in
films and on TV. Jordan was the manager of the L.A. Actors Theater in
Los Angeles during the 1970s, where he produced, directed and wrote his
own plays. For the 1983-84 Off-Broadway season, he won an Obie Award
for his performance in Czech playwright
Václav Havel's "A Private View". He won the
Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for directing Havel's "Largo
Desolato" at the Taper, Too in 1987.
In 1992, Jordan had begun filming
The Fugitive (1993) when his fatal
illness forced him to leave the production. Thus, Jordan's final role
was that of "General Lewis Armistead" in the film
Gettysburg (1993), which was a labor
of love for him. He was close friends with
Michael Shaara, the author of the novel
"The Killer Angels", which the movie was based upon, and contributed to
the screenplay. Jordan's last appearance as an actor was the death of
his on-screen character, "General Armistead".
Richard Jordan died in Los Angeles, California of a brain tumor on
August 30, 1993. He was 56 years old.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
John Cassavetes was a Greek-American actor, film director, and screenwriter. He is considered a pioneer of American independent film, as he often financed his own films.
Cassavetes was born in New York City in 1929 to Nicholas John Cassavetes (1893-1979) and his wife, Katherine Demetre (1906-1983). Nicholas was an immigrant from Greece, while Katherine was Greek-American who had been born in New York City. The Cassavetes family moved back to Greece in the early 1930s, and John learned Greek as his primary language. The family moved back to the United States around 1936, possibly to evade Greece's new dictatorship, the 4th of August Regime (1936-1941). Young John had to learn to speak English. He spent his late childhood and most of his teenage years in Long Island, New York. From 1945-47, he attended the Port Washington High School. He wrote for the school newspaper and the school yearbook. The 18-year-old Cassavetes was then transferred to the Blair Academy, a boarding school located in Blairstown, New Jersey. When the time came for him to start college, Cassavetes enrolled at Champlain College (in Burlington, Vermont) but was expelled owing to poor grades.
After a brief vacation to Florida, Cassavetes enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA), in New York City. Several of his old friends were already students there and had recommended it to Cassavetes, who would be mentored by Don Richardson (1918-1996). After graduating, he began to regularly perform on stage while also appearing in small roles in films and television shows.
Cassavetes's first notable film role was that of Robert Batsford, one of the three villains (along with Vince Edwards and David Cross) in The Night Holds Terror (1955). His next major role was juvenile delinquent Frankie Dane in the crime film "Crime in the Streets" (1956). He won a lead role in Edge of the City (1957) as drifter Axel Nordmann. His co-star for the film was Sidney Poitier, who played stevedore Tommy Tyler. The film helped break new ground, portraying a working-class interracial friendship. Cassavetes gained critical acclaim for his role, and film critics compared him to Marlon Brando. Cassavetes's success as an actor led to his becoming a contract player for MGM. In 1959, he directed his first film, Shadows (1958). It depicted the lives of three African-American siblings in New York City. It won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival.
His next directing effort, Too Late Blues (1961), was about the professional and romantic problems of a struggling jazz musician. The film was poorly received at the time, though its autobiographical elements are considered remarkable. Cassavetes then directed A Child Is Waiting (1963), which depicted life in a state institution for mentally handicapped and emotionally disturbed children. The film was a documentary-style portrayal of problems in the social services. It was praised by critics but failed at the box office.
In 1968, Cassavetes had a comeback as a director with Faces (1968), which depicts a single night in the life of a middle-aged married couple. After 14 years of marriage, the two feel rather miserable and seek happiness in the company of friends and the beds of younger lovers, but neither manages to cure their sense of misery. The film gained critical acclaim, and, in 2011, was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Cassavetes returned to the theme of a midlife crisis in his next film, Husbands (1970). The film depicts three middle-aged men, professionally successful and seemingly happily married. The death of a close childhood friend reminds them of their own mortality, and of their fading memories of youth. They flee their ordinary lives with a shared vacation to London, but their attempts to rejuvenate themselves fail. This film attracted mixed reviews, with some critics praising its "moments of piercing honesty" and others finding fault with its rambling dialogue.
Cassavetes's next film was Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), about the romantic relationship between a seemingly incompatible couple, jaded museum curator Minnie Moore and the temperamental drifter Seymour Moskowitz. It was well received and garnered Cassavetes a Writers Guild of America Award for Best Comedy Written Directly for the Screen. His next film was A Woman Under the Influence (1974), concerning the effects of mental illness on a working-class family. In the film, ordinary housewife Mabel Longhetti starts displaying signs of a mental disorder. She undergoes psychiatric treatment for six months while her husband, Nick Longhetti, attempts to play the role of a single father. But Nick seems to be a social misfit in his own right, and neither parent seems to be "normal". Cassavetes was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for this film, but the award was won by Francis Ford Coppola.
Cassavetes next directed the gritty crime film, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976). In the film, Korean War veteran and cabaret owner Cosmo Vittelli owes a large debt to a criminal organization and is coerced to serve as their hit-man in an assassination scheme. He has been told that the target is an insignificant bookie, but after the assassination Vittelli learns that he just killed a high-ranking crime boss of the Chinese mafia and that he himself is now a target for assassination. The film gained good reviews and a cult following.
His next film, Opening Night (1977), was more enigmatic, mixing drama with horror elements. Protagonist Myrtle Gordon (played by Cassavetes's wife, Gena Rowlands) is a famous actress, but aging and dissatisfied with the only theatrical role available to her. After seeing teenager Nancy Stein, one of her obsessive fans , get killed in a car accident, Myrtle starts having visions of Nancy's ghost. As she keeps fighting the ghost, drinking heavily and chain-smoking, the film ends without explaining what seems to be going wrong with Myrtle's perception of reality. The film was a hit in Europe but flopped in the United States.
Cassavetes had another directing comeback with "Gloria" (1980). In the film, Gloria Swenson (formerly a gangster's girlfriend) is asked to protect Phil Dawn, the young son of an FBI informant within a New York crime family. After the apparent assassination of Phil's parents, Gloria finds herself targeted by gangsters and wanted by the police as a kidnapping suspect. The film won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival, and protagonist Gena Rowlands was nominated for several acting awards.
Cassavetes's 11th directing effort was the rather unconventional drama Love Streams (1984), about the relationship between two middle-aged siblings. In the film, Sarah Lawson suffers from depression following a messy divorce and moves in with her brother, Robert Harmon, an alcoholic writer with self-destructive tendencies. Though estranged from his ex-wife and his only son and unable to protect himself from violent foes, in the end Robert finally has someone for whom to care. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Cassavetes' swan song as a director was the comedy Big Trouble (1986), replacing the much younger Andrew Bergman. The film concerns an insurance agent who needs $40,000 for college tuition for his three daughters. He agrees to cooperate in an insurance scam with the wife of one of his clients, though the plan may require them to murder her husband. Several elements of the film were recycled from the plot of the iconic film noir Double Indemnity (1944), and "Big Trouble" served as its unofficial remake. The film was unsuccessful, and Cassavetes himself reportedly disliked the script.
In the late 1980s, Cassavetes suffered from health problems and his career was in decline. He died in 1989 from cirrhosis of the liver caused by many years of heavy drinking. He was only 59 years old. He is buried at the Westwood Village Memorial Park in Los Angeles, having left more than 40 unproduced screenplays and an unpublished novel. His son, Nick Cassavetes, eventually used one of the unproduced screenplays to direct a new film, the romantic drama, She's So Lovely (1997). It was released eight years after the death of John Cassavetes, and was well received by critics.