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John Cazale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to an Irish-American mother, Cecilia (Holland), and an Italian-American father, John Cazale. Cazale made only five feature films in his career, which fans and critics alike call classics. But before his film debut, in the short The American Way (1962), he won Obie Awards for his off-Broadway performances in "The Indian Wants the Bronx" and "The Line".
Cazale scored the role of Fredo Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972), after his long-time friend, Al Pacino, invited him to audition. He reprised his role as the troubled Fredo in The Godfather Part II (1974), where his character endures one of the most infamous movie moments in the history of cinema.
Cazale also starred with Gene Hackman and Harrison Ford in the thriller, The Conversation (1974), as Hackman's assistant, Stan. The Godfather's director, Francis Ford Coppola, also directed the movie.
Cazale's fourth feature film, Dog Day Afternoon (1975), earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Sal, a bank robber. His long-time friend and Godfather costar, Al Pacino, played his partner, Sonny.
His final film, The Deer Hunter (1978), was filmed whilst he was ill with cancer. He was in a relationship with his costar, Meryl Streep, whilst filming The Deer Hunter (1978), whom he met when they both appeared in the New York Public Theater's 1976 production of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.
Controversy occurred during the filming. While the studio was unaware of his condition, the director, Michael Cimino, knew about it. As Cazale was evidently weak, he was forced to film his scenes first. When the studio discovered he was suffering from cancer, they wanted him removed from the film. His costar and girlfriend, Meryl Streep, threatened to quit if he was fired. He died shortly after filming was completed.- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Robert Archibald Shaw was born on August 9, 1927, in Westhoughton, Lancashire, England, the eldest son of Doreen Nora (Avery), a nurse, and Thomas Archibald Shaw, a doctor. His paternal grandfather was Scottish, from Argyll. Shaw's mother, who was born in Piggs Peak, Swaziland, met his father while she was a nurse at a hospital in Truro, Cornwall. His father was an alcoholic and a manic depressive; he committed suicide when Robert was only 12. He had three sisters--Elisabeth, Joanna and Wendy--and one brother, Alexander.
As a boy, he attended school in Truro and was quite an athlete, competing in rugby, squash and track events but turned down an offer for a scholarship at 17 to go to London, with further education in Cambridge, as he did not want a career in medicine but, luckily for the rest of us, in acting. He was also inspired by one of the schoolmasters, Cyril Wilkes, who got him to read just about everything, including all of the classics. Wilkes would take three or four of the boys to London to see plays. The first play Robert would ever see was "Hamlet" in 1944 with Sir John Gielgud at the Haymarket. Robert went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts with a £1,000 inheritance from his grandmother. He went on from the Academy, after two years (1946-1948) to Stratford-on-Avon, where he was directed by Gielgud, who said to Shaw, "I do admire you and think you've got a lot of ability, and I'd like to help you, but you make me so nervous." He then went on to make his professional stage debut in 1949 and tour Australia in the same year with the Old Vic.
He had joined the Old Vic at the invitation of Tyrone Guthrie, who had directed him as the Duke of Suffolk in "Henry VIII" at Stratford. He played nothing but lesser Shakespearean roles, Cassio in "Othello" and Lysander in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and toured Europe and South Africa with the company. Shaw was sold on Shakespeare and thought that it would be his theatrical life at that stage. He was discovered while performing in "Much Ado About Nothing" in 1950 at Stratford by Sir Alec Guinness, who suggested he come to London to do Hamlet with him. He then went on to his first film role, a very small part in the classic The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) with Guinness but a start nonetheless. It was also at this time that he married his first wife, Jennifer Bourne, an actress he had met while working at the Old Vic, and married her in Sallsbury, South Rhodesia, on August 1, 1952. Together they would have four daughters: Deborah, Penny, Rachel and Katherine.
He would also appear briefly in The Dam Busters (1955) and did the London production of "Tiger at the Gates" in June 1955 as Topman. He would also make "Hill in Korea" around that time and then, after taking on several jobs as a struggling actor and to support his growing family, he would be cast as Dan Tempest in The Buccaneers (1956). Shaw did not take his role seriously but made £10,000 for eight months' work. It was around that time that he wrote his first novel, "The Hiding Place." It was a success, selling 12,000 copies in England and about the same in France and in the United States. He also wrote a dramatization of it that was produced on commercial television in England, and Playhouse 90 (1956) aired a different dramatization in America. Around 1959, he became involved with well-known actress Mary Ure, who was married to actor John Osborne at the time. He slipped her his telephone number one night at 3 a.m. while visiting the couple, and she called him the next day. It was around then, in 1960, that Robert Shaw became a reporter for England's Queen magazine and covered the Olympics in Rome. Shaw and Ure acted together in Middleton's The Changeling at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1961. He was playing the part of an ugly servant in love with the mistress of the house, who persuades him to murder her fiance. Shaw and Ure had a child on August 31 even though they were still married to their other spouses. His wife, Jennifer, and Ure had children of his only weeks apart from each other. Ure divorced Osborne and married Shaw in April 1963. The couple was often quoted by the press as being "very much in love," and they would have four children together: Colin, Elizabeth, Hannah and Ian. That same year, after making the next two films, The Valiant (1962) and The Guest (1963), he made From Russia with Love (1963) and was unforgettable as blond assassin, Donald 'Red' Grant.
He also made Tomorrow at Ten (1963), as well as a TV version of Hamlet as Claudius. He would then film The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964) with Ure and then star in Battle of the Bulge (1965) as German Panzer commander Hessler. He wrote "The Flag" on the set of the film. He was nominated for his next role, as Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons (1966), an outstanding, unequal lead performance. He would write his fourth novel "The Man in the Glass Booth," which was later made into a play with Donald Pleasence and later into a film with Maximilian Schell. In 1967, he again starred with his wife in Custer of the West (1967) and went on to The Birthday Party (1969) and Battle of Britain (1969). One of his best performances of this decade was also as Spanish conqueror Pizarro in The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969). His last published novel, "A Card from Morocco," was also a big success and he went on to make Figures in a Landscape (1970) with Malcolm McDowell as two escaped convicts in a Latin American country. As the father of Churchill in Young Winston (1972), he was once again his brilliant self, stealing the scene from John Mills, Patrick Magee, Anthony Hopkins and Ian Holm. After his portrayal of Lord Randolph Churchill, he made A Reflection of Fear (1972), a horror movie with Ure, Sondra Locke and Sally Kellerman. As chauffeur Steven Ledbetter in The Hireling (1973), he falls in love with Sarah Miles, an aristocratic widow he helps recover from a nervous breakdown. The film took the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was quite a thought-provoking film.
It was his performances in the following two films--USA-produced The Sting (1973) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)--that Shaw became familiar once again to American audiences, but it was his portrayal as a grizzled Irish shark hunter named Quint, in Jaws (1975), that everyone remembers--even to this day. Hard to believe that Shaw wasn't that impressed with the script and even confided to a friend, Hector Elizondo: "They want me to do a movie about this big fish. I don't know if I should do it or not." When Elizondo asked why Shaw had reservations, Shaw said he'd never heard of the director and didn't like the title, "JAWS." It's also incredible that as the biggest box office film at the time, which was the first to gross more than $100 million worldwide and that he had ever been part of, he didn't make a cent from it because of the taxes he had to pay from working in the United States, Canada and Ireland. It was also during that time that he became a depressed recluse following the death of his wife, who had taken an accidental overdose of barbiturates and alcohol. Some have speculated throughout the years that her death was suicidal, but there was no evidence of that, and so it is mere sensationalism. Following Diamonds (1975), he made End of the Game (1975) and then delivered another brilliant performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin and Marian (1976). During the same year, he also made Swashbuckler (1976) with Geneviève Bujold and James Earl Jones, a very lighthearted pirate adventure.
His next film, Black Sunday (1977), with Shaw playing an Israeli counterterrorist agent trying to stop a terrorist organization called Black September, which is plotting an attack at the Super Bowl, was a big success both with critics and at the box office. I wasn't surprised, considering the depth to which he was also involved in writing the script, although he didn't receive billing for it. Shaw was very happy with the success of his acting career but remained a depressed recluse in his personal life until he finished Black Sunday (1977), when he found himself in love with his secretary of 15 years, Virginia Dewitt Jansen (Jay). They were wed on July 29, 1976, in Hamilton, Bermuda. He adopted her son, Charles, and the couple also had one son, Thomas. During his stay in Bermuda, Shaw began work on his next movie, The Deep (1977), which teamed him and writer Peter Benchley once again, which may have been a mistake in that everyone expected another Jaws (1975). At one point, discussing how bad the film was going, Shaw could be quoted as saying to Nick Nolte, "It's a treasure picture Nick; it's a treasure picture." It did well at the box office but not with critics, although they did hail Shaw as the saving grace. He had done it for the money, as he was to do with his next film, for he had decided when Ure died that life was short and he needed to provide for his 10 children.
In 1977, Shaw traveled to Yugoslavia, where he starred in Force 10 from Navarone (1978), a sequel to The Guns of Navarone (1961). He revived the lead role of British MI6 agent Mallory, originally played by Gregory Peck. He was a big box office draw, and some producers were willing to pay top wages for his work, but he felt restricted by the parts he was being offered. "I have it in mind to stop making these big-budget extravaganzas, to change my pattern of life. I wanted to prove, I think, that I could be an international movie star. Now that I've done it, I see the valuelessness of it." In early 1978, Shaw appeared in Avalanche Express (1979) which was to be his last film; in which he played General Marenkov, a senior Russian official who decides to defect to the West and reveals to a CIA agent, played by Lee Marvin, that the Russians are trying to develop biological weapons. An alcoholic most of his life, Shaw died--before the film was completed--of a heart attack at the age of 51 on August 28, 1978. In poor health due to alcoholism during most of the filming, he in fact completed over 90% of his scenes before the death of director Mark Robson two months earlier, in June 1978, brought production to a halt.
While living in Ireland and taking a hiatus from work, Shaw was driving from Castlebar to his home in Tourmakeady, Ireland, with wife, Virginia, and young son, Thomas, after spending the day playing golf with friends on a local course as well as shopping with Virginia in the town. As they approached their cottage, he felt chest pains which he claimed to Virginia had started earlier that day while he was playing golf but whose pains subsided. He pulled the car over a few hundred yards from his cottage and told her he would get out and walk the pains off. After taking four or five steps from the parked car, he collapsed by the side of the road, and his wife ran to the cottage to phone for help. An ambulance arrived 15 minutes later, and Shaw was taken to Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.- Actress
- Writer
- Composer
Highly alluring Czech-born actress Florence Marly, born on June 2, 1919, initially expressed intentions of being an opera singer. At the age of 18, however, she was discovered by the 33-year-old renowned French director Pierre Chenal while a student of art and literature at the Sorbonne. Chenal put her immediately into his film The Alibi (1937) and an acting career was ignited instead.
Chenal and his protégé married the following year and Florence continued to figure into many of his films including The Lafarge Case (1938), Sirocco (1938), and The Last Turning (1939). Managing to flee Paris prior to the Nazi occupation, the couple arrived in Argentina in 1944 and stayed there for several years where she appeared in a few films -- La piel de Zapa (1943), El fin de la noche (1944) and, for her husband, Viaje sin regreso (1946). Returning to France in the post-war years, she was nominated for a Cannes Film Festival award for her performance in The Damned (1947) [The Damned] directed by René Clément and also starring Marcel Dalio and Henri Vidal.
Exotic foreign imports were popular in Hollywood in post-war years and in 1949, sultry-eyed Florence took a chance on Hollywood when she was signed by Paramount. When not appearing in the typical intrigue and espionage movies expected of her opposite such stars as Ray Milland in Sealed Verdict (1948) and Humphrey Bogart in Tokyo Joe (1949), she entertained American troops in Korea and took time to appear in a homeland movie Krakatit (1948). During this period she also received top billing in the US/Japan co-production Tokyo File 212 (1951) and was featured in the minor comedy Gobs and Gals (1952) which showcased pantomime American comedians George Bernard and Bert Bernard [aka The Bernard Brothers].
Florence's American career was cut short when she was branded a Communist and blacklisted. Leaving America for a time, she was eventually cleared after it was discovered that her name had been confused with the Russian club singer Anna Marly who was on the "subversive" list. The damage had already been done, however, and her film career never recovered.
Appearing in her husband's films El ídolo (1952) [The Idol] and Confesiones al amanecer (1954) [Confessions at Dawn], their marriage, which was marked by long separations, crumbled and she and Chenal divorced in 1955. Florence married an Austrian count the following year, but that marriage too would not survive. With her film career practically finished (one of her last during this period of upheaval was the "C" grade movie Undersea Girl (1957) with Mara Corday), she turned to TV and worked occasionally for the next decade or so on such popular shows as "The Millionaire", "Dragnet", "77 Sunset Strip", "The Man from U.N.C.L.E" and "Love, American Style". She also returned to a small spate of low grade films including Queen of Blood (1966), Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls (1973), The Astrologer (1976) and the movie short Space Boy (1973), in which she also served as writer and composer.
Florence died suddenly in the Los Angeles area at age 59 of a heart attack.- Because of his heavy generically "European" accent and Slavic-sounding surname (not an uncommon one among Czechs or Slovaks), many people assumed Oscar Homolka was Eastern European or Russian. In fact, he was born in Vienna (then Austria-Hungary), the multicultural capital of a large multi-ethnic empire at the time. It was there he began his successful stage career, which eventually led him to Hollywood. Homolka was one of the many Austrian and specifically Viennese actors (many of them Jewish) who fled Europe for the U.S. with the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. Although often typecast in villainous roles - Communist spies, Soviet-bloc military officers or scientists and the like - he was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of Uncle Chris in I Remember Mama (1948).
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Will Geer was born William Aughe Ghere in Frankfort, Indiana, to Katherine (Aughe), a teacher, and Roy Aaron Ghere, a postal worker. Will admired his grandfather, a man who said hello to trees by their Latin names and who had used what he brought back to Indiana from the California gold rush to build Frankfort's first opera house. Will pursued a college major in botany, from Chicago through a Master's degree at Columbia, but ultimately gave in to his need to perform. Starting with touring company tent shows and river boats, his six-decade career included Broadway, movies, television; many Shakespeare roles; one-man performances as Walt Whitman and Mark Twain. His best known role was his last, Zebulon Walton, grandpa in the long-running television series The Waltons (1972). Less well-known was his life-long role as a political agitator and radical ("Someone who goes to the roots, which is the Latin derivation of radical") and folklorist/folksinger - he toured U.S. government work camps in the 1930s, singing with Woody Guthrie and Burl Ives. He was blacklisted during the McCarthy era for refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In 1951, he formed the "Theatricum Botanicum," a repertory theater in Topanga Canyon, California, where he not only coached actors but also encouraged outdoor philosophical discussion and, of course, folksinging. At his deathbed, his family sang "This Land Is Your Land" and recited Robert Frost poems. His ashes lie in a corner of the Shakespearean garden on the grounds of his Theatricum Botanicum.- Bob Crane was born in Waterbury, CT, the youngest of two sons. In school he was known for being a class clown and an intense music lover. His favorites were jazz and big band. Bob's specialty was the drums. After graduating from Stamford High School in 1946, he turned his attention to his love for music. He became a drummer with the Connecticut Symphony Orchestra for about a year. He was later dismissed for not being "serious enough". In 1949 Bob married Ann Terzian, his high school sweetheart. They had three children - Robert David Crane, Debbie, and Karen. In 1956 Bob and his family left the east and moved out west to California. There he began a lengthy, successful career in radio. He worked at KNX radio and became "King of the Airwaves" in Los Angeles. His radio program became a huge success, the most listened to on the air. This was due to Crane's personality and humor. He had charm and an undeniable quick wit. Hollywood's biggest and brightest were frequently interviewed by Bob on his show, including Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Marvin Gaye, Mary Tyler Moore, and Bob Hope. In the midst of his success, Bob's true goal was to make it big as an actor. He began to make guest appearances on such shows as The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961) and The Twilight Zone (1959). He also appeared in the 1961 films, Return to Peyton Place (1961) and Man-Trap (1961). In 1963 Bob got a role on the popular The Donna Reed Show (1958), as "Dr. Dave Kelsey". After two years the producers let him go, saying his character was "too suggestive". This was no problem for Crane. In 1965 he received the starring role in a new sitcom for CBS called Hogan's Heroes (1965). It was a comedy about a group of POWs in a Nazi prison camp. He played the smooth-talking, crafty "Colonel Robert Hogan". Hogan's Heroes became a hit show, finishing in the top 10 at the end of the 1965-66 season. Crane was nominated for an Emmy twice, in 1966 and 1967. He had reached the peak of his success. It was during this time that Crane met Patti Olson, known as Sigrid Valdis. She played "Hilda" on Hogan's Heroes. Bob divorced his wife, Ann, after 20 years of marriage, and married Patti in 1970. They married on the set of "Hogan's Heroes". They had a son, Scott Crane, in 1971. Also in 1971, the new president of CBS abruptly canceled Hogan's Heroes after a 6-year run. Following the end of Hogan's Heroes Bob continued to act. However the roles were few and not very fulfilling. He starred in Superdad (1973) and Gus (1976), two Disney films, and had guest spots on shows, including Police Woman (1974), Ellery Queen (1975), and The Love Boat (1977). Bob briefly had his own show, The Bob Crane Show (1975), in 1975. Unfortunately, NBC canceled the show after 3 months. In 1973 Bob bought the rights to the play "Beginner's Luck". He both directed the play and starred in it. The play went around the country, including California, Texas, Hawaii, and Arizona. In June, 1978 Bob took "Beginner's Luck" to Scottsdale, Arizona. It was in Scottsdale that the unthinkable happened. In the early morning hours of June 29, 1978, Bob Crane was brutally murdered in his rented apartment room. He was beaten to death, while he slept, and strangled with an electrical cord. He was 49 years old. His murder remains unsolved.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
American character actor Frank Ferguson appeared in scores of films and television shows, often as self-important types. Prior to his film debut, he was a prominent performer and director with the acclaimed Pasadena Community Playhouse, where he coached numerous up-and-coming young actors such as Dana Andrews, George Reeves, Robert Preston and Victor Mature. He broke into films, himself, in the early 1940s, usually playing minor supporting roles, though he was seen to advantage in larger roles, notably in two of the best-known (and oddest) westerns of the '50s, Rancho Notorious (1952) and Johnny Guitar (1954). He played hundreds of ranchers, bankers and police detectives in films and television throughout the '50s and '60s. He became most familiar as "Gus" on the children's program My Friend Flicka (1955) and later as "Eli Carson" on the two TV series based on the novel Peyton Place (1964). He semi-retired in 1972 and died of cancer six years later.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Distinguished character player James Firman Daly first appeared on stage in his home town of Wisconsin Rapids in 1928. He was set on acting from an early age, and was strongly encouraged by his parents. His father was in the fuel business and his mother at one time a CIA employee. Upon leaving school, Daly studied dramatic arts at various Midwestern colleges, eventually graduating from Grinnell in Iowa. His acting career was then put on hold as a result of the war and he served in all three of the service branches, the last four years spent in the navy as an ensign.
Daly's acting career got off to a good start once he arrived in New York in 1946, landing a part as understudy to Gary Merrill in the long-running hit play "Born Yesterday" on Broadway. By the time he appeared in his third play, "Man and Superman" (1949), he was billed third in the cast and won a Daniel Blum Award for his performance. Subsequently, Daly had a busy time on stage, both on and off-Broadway. He co-starred three times with the legendary Helen Hayes, most famously in "The Glass Menagerie" in 1950. That same year he also collected the Theater Guild Award as the star of "Major Barbara". His other theatrical roles of note included "Billy Budd", "Saint Joan", "The Merchant of Venice" and (on tour with Colleen Dewhurst) "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?".
A hard-working actor and intent on diversifying into different media, Daly clearly understood the potential of live television drama. He made his small screen debut in the late 1940s and soon starred in early Playhouse productions. Within a few years he featured in his own weekly syndicated series, Foreign Intrigue (1951), about a family of foreign correspondents in Europe. This was one of the first TV shows to be shot on location and it necessitated his and his family's temporary relocation to Paris and Stockholm. Throughout the next twenty years, Daly remained much in demand as a reliable leading television actor with 'gravitas', often playing tragic or despairing figures. He was commanding as the titular star of Give Us Barabbas! (1961). Four years later, he picked up an Emmy for his role in the Hallmark Hall of Fame (1951) episode "The Eagle and the Cage".
Another memorably poignant portrayal was in The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "A Stop at Willoughby", with Daly as a salesperson driven to the brink of a nervous breakdown, desperately escaping his world to a fantasy town in his own mind where life is perpetually simple and peaceful. He was also David Vincent's ill-fated business partner and friend in the pilot episode "Beach-Head", one of the first victims of The Invaders (1967). Many viewers will remember Daly as 'Flint', the solitary near-immortal from the Star Trek (1966) episode "Requiem for Methuselah". There were countless other guest starring roles and even a few choice movie parts, such as Planet of the Apes (1968). Daly enjoyed another recurring role in the long-running (170 episodes) Medical Center (1969) as resident 'elder statesman' to young surgeon Chad Everett. He had just completed filming on an episode of "Roots: The Next Generations" and was scheduled to appear in the play "Equus" at the historic Westchester Theatre, Tarrytown Music Hall, when he died of a heart attack at the age of 59.- He was David Thayer Hersey from an upper crust Winchester, Massachusetts family. After secondary school he began attending Harvard University. Along with several students he founded the Brattle Theatre Company in 1946. After working closely on Brattle with fellow Harvard graduates and his father,Thayer Frye Hersey, David took the stage name Thayer David in honor of his father.
Thayer David was tall and heavy-set with a prominent beetling brow and protruding lips (a somewhat intimidating demeanor) which inevitably bound him to character roles. But he had no false illusions about leading man roles and whatnot other than applying a consummate passion for being a good actor in those parts allotted him. To this he brought a forceful if pursed and imperious voice and a knack for developing voice characterizations to fit any part.
By late 1950 he was on Broadway in a revival of the comedy play "The Relapse" Through most the 1950s he was busy with theater roles rounded with returns to Broadway for the next two decades in some great dramas, including stepping in as a replacement to play Cardinal Wolsey in "A Man for All Seasons" (1961-63). Like many a trained actor looking beyond the stage, David saw the potential of the small screen as a new acting vehicle. By 1957 he had launched his TV career amid the television playhouse phenomenon which had been established by 1950. He would revisit perennially through most of the 1960s, but he had about the same time been discovered by filmdom as well.
His first role was in the quite well done Baby Face Nelson (1957), part of the body of serious dramas that Mickey Rooney (as the machine gun-happy 1930s gangster) was amassing since his early days as one of Hollywood's biggest juvenile stars. David next film had the clumsy and long forgotten title A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958), but it was a much more substantial part with young John Gavin as German friends who become World War II officers and confront humanity versus the Nazi war mentality. As was usual with his roles, David was the veiled (if not overt) antagonist-always intellectual but with a brutish shadow. Within a year the chance to play a really melodramatic villain came with his casting in the film version of Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) from the novel by the visionary French 19th century sci-fi author Jules Verne. Although the film substantially strayed from the novel, the latter plodded along, while the script was fast-paced and engaging. And where there was no villain except nature herself, the film had David as the self-serving-downright nasty - Count Saknussem. With James Mason heading the cast and-then-teen heartthrob Pat Boone drawing in as well a young female audience, the film and its special effects made for a rousing good time.
Into the 1960s David's opportunities focused most on television. And among these was a fad TV acting goal of being a guest super villain on the highly popular and inventive The Wild Wild West (1965 to 1969). David had the even better fortune of being cast in two episodes (1967 and 1969). In the meantime David had hit some more substantial TV pay dirt. The smash daytime horror soaper Dark Shadows had premiered in 1966, and David was in on the ground floor as perfect for several characters to emerge through the series run (1966 to 1971). He played seven characters in the course of the show, the most prominent being Professor T. Elliot Stokes. He reprised this role in the substantially more potent in-a-nutshell film version of the story House of Dark Shadows (1970), considered by horror aficionados as one of best blood and gore vampire romps. David returned in the studio-butchered and thus unsuccessful film sequel Night of Dark Shadows (1971) as his eighth characterization, the Reverend Strack. In all cases David was intimately involved and delighted in meshing makeup and costumes with the voices he invented for all these roles (most of which he developed) for the series.
If not from an already dependable track record, David's longevity on the series marked him as a veteran trooper in the casting halls of Hollywood. But he later recalled that his time invested in doing voice over commercials could often come close to DS production schedule conflicts. His commercial work marked the inevitable practical side of acting. Even the best known actors and actresses have stooped to such business over art, for the money is always good.
David was thereafter quite in demand through the decade of the 1970s in both film and TV. Although he might be best recalled from the era as the crooked fight manager in historic Rocky (1976), his most character of character roles was by far his Dragon in the Clint Eastwood adventure/thriller The Eiger Sanction (1975). Based on the novel by American author Rod Whitaker who used the pseudonym Trevanian to come off European, there is much name wordplay, for instance, Dragon's full name in the novel is Uras S. Dragon (say it fast). David's Dragon is head of CIA-like shadow hit unit which employed Eastwood's character, and Dragon is an extreme albino (can't tolerate normal environment). David gives him a rather strident rasping voice with a hint of menace that along with his nearly colorless eyes and figure bathed in the dramatic red light of an infrared-controlled environment easily makes him the most memorable character in the film.
David guest-starred on some of the most watched episodic fare of the 1970s, and he was especially busy between 1975 and 1977. Amid two to three films per year he made the rounds of TV production at the major studios. Universal had continued using his talents during this period when this contributor met and worked with Thayer David in early 1977. He was an engaging person who enjoyed good conversation - the more obscure the better - and a good cigar. Among outside pursuits he was also a rare book collector with varied interests and enjoyed entertaining at home.
A big man, he was nonetheless at that time overweight and the demands of production visibly put a strain on him - he looked ill. But an actor must work, and he carried on into the next year and lost some weight as well. It was then that Paramount television offered him a potentially great opportunity. This was the lead role in the TV pilot movie for a series on the preoccupied but brilliant, corpulent - and most important, rich - detective Nero Wolfe. The script was good, and Thayer lent his accumulated and considerable characterization talents to make Wolfe his own, although his loss of weight was now much more noticeable and was rumored to be cancer. The success of the TV pilot looked promising, as would the subsequent go-ahead for the series. But in one of the ironic twists of fate, Thayer David suddenly died of a heart attack, perhaps a complication of the purported advancing cancer - he was only 51 years old. The pilot was shelved for over a year, ending up premiering as a late night TV offering (Dec 1979). A Nero Wolfe series did appear (1981), but it was short-lived.
One can only wonder if Thayer David had remained hale. A Nero Wolfe series with such a dedicated and creative actor may have thrived with a long run - the Holy Grail of any actor - the dream of security and the opportunity to contribute thoroughly to on-going success. Oh well - the stuff of dreams - posterity has to settle for the filmed record of Thayer David as is - and that is a very substantial offering indeed. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Of Swedish descent, burly, light-haired character actor Karl Swenson was born in Brooklyn and started his four-decade career on radio. Throughout the late 30s and 40s, his voice could be heard all over the airwaves, appearing in scores of daytime serials ("Lorenzo Jones") and mystery dramas ("Inner Sanctum Mysteries"). He gave visual life to one of his serial characters, Walter Manning, in "Portia Faces Life" when it went to TV in 1953. It was during his lengthy work in this medium that he met his wife, stage and radio actress Joan Tompkins. They appeared together throughout their careers on TV and in a few films. In the 1950s, he kept afloat on TV in rugged guest spots (Dr. Kildare (1961), Gunsmoke (1955), Maverick (1957), Mission: Impossible (1966) and Hawaii Five-O (1968)). He didn't appear in films until age 50+ with minor roles in Kings Go Forth (1958), North to Alaska (1960), The Birds (1963) and The Sons of Katie Elder (1965). His voice was also well utilized in such animated features as The Sword in the Stone (1963) as the voice of Merlin. Karl met actor Michael Landon on the set of Bonanza (1959), appearing in four separate episodes over time. Landon remembered him when he began to film Little House on the Prairie (1974). Cast in the recurring role of lumber mill owner Lars Hanson, he remained with the show until his death in 1978 of a heart attack. His character on the show also died.- Gig Young was born Byron Barr to parents John and Emma Barr in Minnesota, and raised in Washington, DC, where he developed a passion for theatre while appearing in high school plays. After gaining some amateur experience, he applied for and received a scholarship to the acclaimed Southern California's Pasadena Community Playhouse. While acting in "Pancho", a south-of-the-border play by Lowell Barrington, he was spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout, leading to his signing contracts with the studio. Still acting under his given name, Byron Barr, he played bits and extra roles. He experimented with varying screen names because there was already another actor with the same name (see Byron Barr). In 1942, in the picture The Gay Sisters (1942), he was given the role of a character whose name was Gig Young, which he liked well enough to finally adopt it as his permanent stage name. His intermittent roles and, therefore, income, required Young to supplement his income working at a gas station, but success in The Gay Sisters (1942) eventually allowed him the freedom to become a full-time actor. Although service in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II interrupted his ascension, after discharge he quickly established himself as a reliable light leading man, usually the second male lead to stars who were established box office draws. A dramatic part in Come Fill the Cup (1951) resulted in his being nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar; a second Supporting Actor nomination followed seven years later for his comedic performance in Teacher's Pet (1958). A prolific television career later complemented his film work. In 1969, his surprisingly seedy portrayal of a dance-marathon emcee in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) finally brought him that Supporting Actor Oscar. A succession of marriages, including one to actress Elizabeth Montgomery, failed. In 1978, only three weeks after marrying German actress Kim Schmidt, Young apparently shot her to death in their New York City apartment and then turned the gun on himself. The precise motivation for the sad and grisly murder-suicide remains unclear. Young was not quite 65, his bride, 31.
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Colorful character actor of American Westerns. Named "Chill" as an ironic comment on his birth date being the hottest day of 1902. A musician from his youth, he performed from the age of 12 with tent shows, in vaudeville, and with stock companies. While performing in vaudeville in Kansas City, he married ballet dancer Betty Chappelle, with whom he had two children. He formed a musical group, Chill Wills and His Avalon Boys. During an appearance at the Trocadero in Hollywood, they were spotted by an RKO executive, subsequently appearing as a group in several low-budget Westerns. After a prominent appearance with The Avalon Boys as both himself and the bass-singing voice of Stan Laurel in Way Out West (1937), Wills disbanded the group and began a solo career as a usually jovial (but occasionally sinister) character actor, primarily in Westerns. His delightful portrayal of Beekeeper in The Alamo (1960) won him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, but his blatant and embarrassing campaign for the Oscar cost him the award and subjected him to a great deal of humiliation -- and probably cost the film a number of awards as well. His wife died in 1971, and he remarried, to Novadeen Googe, in 1973. He continued to work in films and television, usually in roguishly lovable good-ol'-boy parts, up until his death in 1978.- Actor
- Writer
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Edgar Bergen was born on 16 February 1903 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Fun and Fancy Free (1947), The Muppet Movie (1979) and Letter of Introduction (1938). He was married to Frances Bergen. He died on 30 September 1978 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Hacks are nothing new in Hollywood. Since the beginning of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century, thousands of untalented people have come to Los Angeles from all over America and abroad to try to make it big (as writers, producers, directors, actors, talent agents, singers, composers, musicians, artists, etc.) but who end up using, scamming and exploiting other people for money as well as using their creative ability (either self-taught or professional training), leading to the production of dull, bland, mediocre, unimaginative, inferior, trite work in the forlorn hope of attaining commercial success. Had Edward D. Wood, Jr. been born a decade or two earlier, it's easy to imagine him working for some Poverty Row outfit in Gower Gulch, competing with the likes of no-talent and no-taste producers and directors--such as Victor Adamson, Robert J. Horner and Dwain Esper--for the title of all-time hack. He would have fit in nicely working at Weiss Brothers-Artclass Pictures in the early 1930s in directing low budget Western-themed serials, or directing low budget film noir crime drama features at PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) in the following decade from 1940 to 1946. Ed Wood is the probably the most well known of all the Hollywood hacks because he is imprisoned in his own time, and in the 1950s, Ed Wood simply had no competition. He was ignored throughout his spectacularly unsuccessful film making career and died a penniless alcoholic, only to be "rediscovered" when promoters in the early 1980s tagged him "The Worst Director of All Time" (mostly thanks to the Medveds' hilarious book, "Golden Turkey Awards") and he was given the singular honor of a full-length biopic by Tim Burton (Ed Wood (1994)). This post-mortem celebrity has made him infinitely more famous today than he ever was during his lifetime.
Wood was an exceedingly complex person. He was born on October 10, 1924, in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he lived most of his childhood. He joined the US Marine Corps in 1943 at the height of World War II and was, by all accounts, an exemplary marine, wounded in ferocious combat in the Pacific theater (a transgender, he claimed to have been wearing a bra and panties under his uniform while storming ashore during the bloody beachhead landing at Tarawa in November 1943). He was habitually optimistic, even in the face of the bleak realities that would later consume him. His personality bonded him with a small clique of outcasts who eked out life on the far edges of the Hollywood fringe.
After settling in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, Wood attempted to break into the film industry, initially without success, but in 1952 he landed the chance to direct a film based on the real-life Christine Jorgensen sex-change story, then a hot topic. The result, Glen or Glenda (1953), gave a fascinating insight into Wood's own personality and shed light on his transgender identity (an almost unthinkable subject for an early 1950s mainstream feature). Although devoutly heterosexual, Wood was an enthusiastic cross-dresser, with a particular fondness for angora. On the debit side, though, the film revealed the almost complete lack of talent that would mar all his subsequent films, his tendency to resort to stock footage of lightning during dramatic moments, laughable set design and a near-incomprehensible performance by Bela Lugosi as a mad doctor whose presence is never adequately explained. The film deservedly flopped miserably but Wood, always upbeat, pressed ahead.
Wood's main problem was that he saw himself as a producer-writer-director, when in fact he was spectacularly incompetent in all three capacities. Friends who knew Wood have described him as an eccentric, oddball hack who was far more interested in the work required in cobbling a film project together than in ever learning the craft of film making itself or in any type of realism. In an alternate universe, Wood might have been a competent producer if he had better industry connections and an even remotely competent director. Wood, however, likened himself to his idol, Orson Welles, and became a triple threat: bad producer, poor screenwriter and God-awful director. All of his films exhibit illogical continuity, bizarre narratives and give the distinct impression that a director's job was simply to expose the least amount of film possible due to crushing budget constraints. His magnum opus, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), features visible wires connected to pie-pan UFOs, actors knocking over cardboard "headstones", cars changing models and years during chase sequences, scenes exhibiting a disturbing lack of handgun safety and the ingenious use of shower curtains in airplane cockpits that have virtually no equipment are just a few of the trademarks of that Edward D. Wood Jr. production. When criticized for their innumerable flaws, Wood would cheerfully explain his interpretation of the suspension of disbelief. It's not so much that he made movies so badly without regard to realism--the amazing part is that he managed to get them made at all.
His previous film with Lugosi, Bride of the Monster (1955), was no better (unbelievably, it somehow managed to earn a small profit during its original release, undoubtedly more of a testament to how cheaply it was produced than its value as entertainment), and Wood only shot a few seconds of silent footage of Lugosi (doped and dazed, wandering around the front yard of his house) for "Plan 9" before the actor died in August 1956. What few reviews the film received were brutal. Typically undaunted, Wood soldiered on despite incoherent material and a microscopic budget, peopling it with his regular band of mostly inept actors. Given the level of dialog, budget and Wood's dismal directorial abilities, it's unlikely that better actors would have made much of a difference (lead actor Gregory Walcott made his debut in this film and went on to have a very respectable career as a character actor, but was always embarrassed by his participation in this film)--in fact, it's the film's semi-official status as arguably the Worst Film Ever Made that gives it its substantial cult following. The film, financed by a local Baptist congregation led by Wood's landlord, reaches a plateau of ineptitude that tends to leave viewers open-mouthed, wondering what is it they just saw. "Plan 9" became, whether Wood realized it or not, his singular enduring legacy. Ironically, the rights to the film were retained by the church and it is unlikely that Wood ever received a dime from it; his epic bombed upon release in 1959 and remained largely forgotten for years to come.
After this career "peak," Wood went into, relatively speaking, a decline. Always an "enthusiastic"--for lack of a better word--drinker, his alcohol addiction worsened in the 1960s due to his depression of not achieving the worldwide fame he had always sought. He began to draw away from film directing and focused most of his time on another profession: writing. Beginning in the early 1960s up until his death, Wood wrote at least 80 lurid crime and sex paperback novels in addition to hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces for magazines and daily newspapers. Thirty-two stories known to be written by Wood (he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms such as "Ann Gora" and "Dr. T.K. Peters") are collected in 'Blood Splatters Quickly', published by OR Books in 2014. Novels include Black Lace Drag (1963) (reissued in 1965 as Killer in Drag), Orgy of the Dead (1965), Devil Girls (1967), Death of a Transvestite (1967), The Sexecutives (1968), The Photographer (1969), Take It Out in Trade (1970), The Only House in Town (1970), Necromania (1971), The Undergraduate (1972), A Study of Fetishes and Fantasies (1973) and Fugitive Girls (1974).
In 1965, Wood wrote the quasi-memoir 'Hollywood Rat Race', which was eventually published in 1998. In it, Wood advises new writers to "just keep on writing. Even if your story gets worse, you'll get better", and also recounts tales of dubious authenticity, such as how he and Bela Lugosi entered the world of nightclub cabaret.
In the 1970s, Wood directed a number of undistinguished softcore and later hardcore adult porno films under various aliases, one of which is the name "Akdov Telmig" ("vodka gimlet" spelled backwards; it helps to imagine that you're a boozy dyslexic, as Ed Wood was). His final years were spent largely drunk in his apartment and occasionally being rolled stumbling out of a local liquor store. Three days before his death, Wood and his wife Kathy were evicted from their Hollywood apartment due to failure to pay the rent and moved into a friend's apartment shortly before his death on the afternoon of December 10, 1978, at age 54. He had a heart attack and died while drinking in bed.
Due to his recent resurgence in popularity, many of his equally interesting transgender - themed sex novels have been republished. The gravitational pull of Planet Angora remains quite strong.- Actor
- Producer
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Charles Boyer studied philosophy before he went to the theater where he gave his debut in 1920. Although he had at first no intentions to pursue a career at the movies (his first movie was Man of the Sea (1920) by Marcel L'Herbier) he used his chance in Hollywood after several filming stations all over Europe. In the beginning of his career his beautiful voice was hidden by the silent movies but in Hollywood he became famous for his whispered declarations of love (like in movies with Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich or Ingrid Bergman). In 1934 he married Pat Paterson, his first and (unusual for a star) only wife. He was so faithful to her that he decided to commit suicide two days after her death in 1978.- Actor
- Sound Department
Barry Atwater was born on 16 May 1918 in Denver, Colorado, USA. He was an actor, known for Star Trek (1966), One Step Beyond (1959) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964). He died on 24 May 1978 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Korean-American character actor Philip Ahn played hundreds of Chinese and Japanese characters during a long career. He was born in Los Angeles in 1905 (though 1911 is the year usually given, U.S. government records confirm that Ahn was born in 1905), the son of a Korean diplomat. He attended the University of Southern California at Los Angeles. Ahn got his first film acting job in 1935 and quickly made a place for himself playing Asians of many ethnicities. Although his kindly demeanor made him perfect for sympathetic roles, he could excel in the occasional villainous "Yellow Peril"-type role. Condemned, like most Asian actors of the period, to stereotypical roles, Ahn nevertheless brought a dignity to even the most subservient of characters. In his later years he achieved his greatest fame as the wise Master Kan on the television series Kung Fu (1972). Ahn was also a successful Los Angeles restaurateur. He died in 1978. Not to be confused with his brother, actor Philson Ahn.
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- Soundtrack
Edith MacDonald was the second daughter of Daniel and Anne MacDonald; her father was a contractor and politician. Early on, her older sister Elsie, younger sister Jeanette MacDonald, and she were given theatrical training. Blossom and Jeanette played Philadelphia vaudeville houses while still youngsters.
Edith went to New York where she wed Clarence Rock in 1926; they toured in vaudeville for three years. When vaudeville died, she toured with her husband in "Grand Hotel" and, in 1936, played a streetwalker in "Dead End". The MGM talent agent who saw her in this signed her to the same studio as her now-famous sister Jeanette. Re-named Marie Blake, she debuted in Joan Crawford's Mannequin (1937) and, in 1938, she became established as "Sally" the phone operator in the Dr. Kildare series. After the last of these in 1947, she left MGM, changed her stage name to "Blossom Rock", freelanced, and doing bit parts. She appeared in television often, becoming widely known through the part of "Grandmama" in The Addams Family (1964) series.
Her husband was night manager at the Beverly Hilton Hotel for fifteen years, dying in 1960. After retiring, she lived at the Motion Picture Country Home.- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
Born in New York City, Dan Dailey started his career in vaudeville, later making his Broadway debut in the stage version of "Babes in Arms".
When signed to MGM, the studio initially casted him as a Nazi in The Mortal Storm (1940). The studio realized their mistake and cast him in musical films, thereafter. Then, after serving in World War II, Dailey later returned to acting to make more musicals.- Richard Duane Kelton was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and was the only child of Fred and Glenna Kelton. While growing up in Miami, Oklahoma, he remembered watching James Dean and cites him as his main influence on becoming an actor. After studying drama at The University of Kansas, he made his way to California where he made his debut playing "Bud" in a 1970 2-part episode (Snow Train) of Gunsmoke Gunsmoke (1955). Soon after that he made his TV movie debut as "Lieutenant Charring" in Wild Women (1970). He continued in numerous other guest starring roles and a movie roles. He also played the role of "Nick" in the Broadway revival of "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" in 1976. He made his starring role as "Ficus" in the short-lived science fiction series "Quark" (1978). Later that year he was invited back to The University of Kansas to give a short seminar on films. He continued his career until his death in 1978.
- Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carl Betz formed a repertory theatre company while still in high school, then worked in summer stock. He served in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, then attended Carnegie Tech. Following graduation, he worked as a radio announcer. He made his Broadway debut in "The Long Watch". He was given a contract at Twentieth Century-Fox, and appeared in supporting roles in a number of films before moving into television. After a brief period working in soap operas, he was cast as Dr. Alex Stone on the popular The Donna Reed Show (1958) and spent eight years there. He followed that show with another series, Judd for the Defense (1967), in which he played a masterful attorney. He worked primarily in television, in both guest appearances and TV movies, throughout the Seventies, though he continued to work on stage around the U.S. He fought a gallant fight against early cancer and died in 1978.
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- Soundtrack
Above all else, singer/actress Peggy Wood has endeared herself to both TV and film audiences with one single role in each medium. She made warm, lasting impressions as the benevolent, strong-willed Scandinanvian matriarch Marta Hansen in the series drama Mama (1949), and as the knowing Mother Abbess who gently but firmly steers Julie Andrews' novice away from the nunnery and into the arms of love and a certain Austrian captain with her stirring rendition of "Climb Every Mountain" in, what is arguably considered the most popular musical film ever made, The Sound of Music (1965). But Peggy was so much more than those two undeniable treasures. Encompassing a stage career that lasted six decades, Peggy was unequivocally one of the grand dames of Broadway and London theatre, heightened by the fact that writer Noël Coward wrote some of his strongest pieces with her in mind.
Brooklyn-born Peggy was christened Margaret Wood on February 9, 1892, the daughter of a popular newspaperman and humorist. The lovely blonde soprano began taking singing lessons at age 8 and made her debut as a teenager in the chorus of "Naughty Marietta" (1910). Within a year, she took her first her Broadway bow in "The Three Romeos" (1911) and grew in status after drawing strong applause for her lead ingenue debut in "Maytime" in 1917 while introducing the song "Will You Remember?" The blossoming performer went on to excel prominently in musicals/operettas, including "Buddies" (1919), "Marjolaine" (1922), and "The Clinging Vine" (1922), before making equally respectable ventures into witty comedy (the title role in George Bernard Shaw's "Candida" (1925) and "A Lady in Love" (1927)) and Shakespeare (Portia in "The Merchant of Venice" (1928)).
A quiet beauty who projected little sex appeal, she was naturally not a strong contender for Hollywood stardom but made her feature film debut anyway in the silent movie Almost a Husband (1919) opposite humorist Will Rogers. She never made another silent picture. Along with her first husband, poet, and literary editor John V.A. Weaver, she was a member of the New York "intellectual" circuit and the well-chronicled Algonquin (restaurant) Round Table. Noël Coward wrote Peggy's "Bitter Sweet" role specifically for her. She originated the part in London's West End in 1929 and introduced the song "I'll See You Again." While in London, she also appeared in Jerome Kern's "The Cat and the Fiddle" (1932) with Francis Lederer, wherein she sang the popular "Try to Forget," and complemented Coward once again in the musical "Operette" (1938) with her renditions of "Where Are the Songs We Sung" and "Dearest Love." In 1941, Peggy again inspired Coward, this time playing the role of second wife Ruth Condomine in the New York premiere of "Blithe Spirit" with Clifton Webb, and then took the show to the Piccadilly Theatre in London. During World War II, she also lent her singing talent patriotically with several USO tours.
She returned to films in mid-career and co-starred without much fanfare in Handy Andy (1934) playing Will Rogers' nagging wife, The Right to Live (1935), Jalna (1935) and Call It a Day (1937). Following her supporting work in The Bride Wore Boots (1946), Magnificent Doll (1946) and Dream Girl (1948), she was ignored in films until handed the roles of Naomi in the biblical drama The Story of Ruth (1960) and her Oscar-nominated Mother Abbess.
A master dialectician who handled many ethnic roles during her long career, she became one of early TV's critically-acclaimed "Golden Age" stars with the Norwegian family drama Mama (1949) and was Emmy-nominated twice for her efforts. She also continued on the 50s and 60s stage with roles in "Charley's Aunt", "The Girls in 508" with Imogene Coca, "The Rape of the Belt", "Pictures in the Hallway" and "The Madwoman of Chaillot", which would be one of her last stage shows in 1970. From 1959 to 1966, she served as President of ANTA (American National Theatre and Academy).
Peggy married and was widowed twice. Her first husband died of tuberculosis at age 44 and her second, William Walling, an executive in the printing business, died in 1973 after 32 years. Peggy herself, at age 86, died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Stanford, Connecticut, on March 18, 1978, and was survived by her son, David Weaver, who once assistant stage managed one of her Broadway plays "The Happiest Years".- Actor
- Music Department
- Composer
Born in New Orleans' French Quarter, Louis Prima longed to play jazz. When he was a child, he studied the violin. His older brother Leon took up trumpet while Louis was still quite young, and he soon followed in his brother's footsteps. He played in clubs like "The Famous Door" in the 1930s, and by the time the 1940s rolled around, Prima and his band were becoming well known. Like many other big bands, Prima always had a woman singer, his most famous being Keely Smith, with whom he recorded the classic "That Old Black Magic". She began with him when she was 16 years old, and he eventually married her. They were divorced in 1962, and he married 20-year-old Gia Maione that same year. In 1967 Prima voiced King Louie of the apes in the animated Disney feature The Jungle Book (1967). Prima died in 1978, but his music continues as some of the best jazz and swing music ever recorded.- Maggie McNamara -- with her brown hair in a ponytail -- arrives in Rome in Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) expecting great things to happen. Petite and slender, she looks almost like a schoolgirl in her prim blue suit. She is bright and vivacious and goes for what she wants -- a proposal from "Prince Dino De Cessi" played by Louis Jourdan. She was in her mid-20s, then, and at the height of her career as she made her second film. One of four children of Irish-American parents, Maggie had come a long way since attending Textile High in New York to prepare for a modeling career. Pert as well as petite, she must have reminded people of the young Debbie Reynolds. Both had a look that was popular in the late 1940s. Maggie's picture appeared twice on the cover of Life Magazine and people were saying she too ought to be in movies. She started taking lessons with a dramatic coach and, at the age of 23, she was discovered by Otto Preminger. He signed her to play the role of a proper young lady who lets herself be lured to a bachelor's apartment in the Chicago production of a play of F. Hugh Herbert. She played the ingénue role in "The Moon Is Blue" in the national company for 18 months. Then, in 1951, she made it to Broadway in "The King of Friday's Men". Brooks Atkinson, drama critic for the New York Times, said of her performance in that play that she was "remarkably pretty and has a gift for acting". Then Maggie was offered the female lead in the Otto Preminger's film version of The Moon Is Blue (1953) with William Holden and David Niven. Theater patrons in New York and Chicago had found the stage version of the story amusing. The Catholic Legion of Decency was not amused when it previewed the film. It was stamped "C" for Condemned. The New York Times noted in 1978: "The Moon Is Blue aroused a storm of controversy because of what some observers regarded as 'indecent' discussion of sex, and the ridicule of the rules of parental protection. By current standards, it was, in fact, a prim and proper work". Maggie was supporting herself as a typist when she died in 1978. The New York Times obituary appeared four weeks after her death. It said she was 48. The relative who confirmed that she had died did not give the newspaper the date of her birth. The relative said Maggie had been doing some writing recently and a film script, "The Mighty Dandelion", had been accepted by a new film producing company.
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- Writer
- Producer
African-American movie actor and producer Noble Johnson was born on April 18, 1881, in Marshall, Missouri. His family moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado, when Noble was very young, and it was there that he met Lon Chaney at school. They became friends as children, and later got re-acquainted when both were making movies in Hollywood and became friends all over again (surprisingly, they never made any movies together).
Johnson was built like a bull, standing 6'2" at 215 pounds. His impressive physique and handsome features made him in demand as a character actor and bit player. In the silent era he essayed a wide variety of characters of different races in a plethora of films, primarily serials, westerns and adventure movies. While Johnson was cast as blacks in many films, he also played Native American and Latino parts and "exotic" characters such as Arabians or even a devil in hell in Dante's Inferno (1924) (the old black and white orthochromatic film stock of the early days was less discriminating about a person's color, as were B+W stocks in general, permitting some African-American actors a break, as their "color" was washed out or less obvious when photographed in B+W. As late as the early 1960s, there were very few African-American members of the Screen Actors Guild, since there was a lack of opportunity for them as black performers were confined mostly to race films until the 1960s). In all his roles, Johnson lived up to his Christian name: his was a noble and dignified presence that exhibited great power and substance.
Johnson also was an entrepreneur. In 1916 he founded his own studio to produce what would be called "race films", movies made for the African-American audience, which was ignored by the "mainstream" film industry. The Lincoln Motion Picture Co., which was in existence until 1921, was an all-black company, the first to produce movies portraying African-Americans as real people instead of as racist caricatures (Johnson was followed into the race film business by Oscar Micheaux and others). Johnson, who served as president of the company and was its primary asset as a star actor, helped support the studio by acting in other companies' productions such as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916), and using the money he made in those films to invest in Lincoln.
Lincoln's first picture was The Realization of a Negro's Ambition (1916). For four years Johnson managed to keep Lincoln a going concern, primarily due to his extraordinary commitment to African-American filmmaking. However, he reluctantly resigned as president in 1920, as he no longer could continue his double business life, maintaining a demanding career in Hollywood films while trying to run a studio.
In the 1920s Johnson was a very busy character actor, appearing in such top-notch films as The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) with Rudolph Valentino, Cecil B. DeMille's original The Ten Commandments (1923) andThe Thief of Bagdad (1924). He made the transition to sound, appearing in the 1930 version of Moby Dick (1930) as Queequeg to John Barrymore's Captain Ahab. He was also the tribal leader on Skull Island in the classic King Kong (1933) (and its sequel, Son of Kong (1933)) and appeared in Frank Capra's classic Lost Horizon (1937) as one of theporters. One of his last films was John Ford's classic She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), in which he played Native American Chief Red Shirt. He retired from the movie industry in 1950.
Johnson died on January 9, 1978, in Yucaipa (San Bernardino), California, at age 96. He is buried in the Garden of Peace at Eternal Valley Memorial Park in Newhall, California.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Angela Greene was born on 24 February 1921 in Dublin, Ireland. She was an actress, known for Night of the Blood Beast (1958), The Time, the Place and the Girl (1946) and King of the Bandits (1947). She was married to Stuart Warren Martin. She died on 9 February 1978 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Michael Bates was born on 4 December 1920 in Jhansi, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, British India. He was an actor, known for A Clockwork Orange (1971), Frenzy (1972) and Patton (1970). He was married to Margaret M. J. Chisholm. He died on 11 January 1978 in Chelsea, London, England, UK.
- Charles Horvath was born on 27 October 1920 in Upper Macungie Township, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for A Woman Under the Influence (1974), His Majesty O'Keefe (1954) and Vera Cruz (1954). He was married to Margo and Georgiana Walker. He died on 23 July 1978 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- The lovely blonde actress, Susan Shaw, was groomed by the Rank Organisation in England for a career in film in the 40s and 50s. She was born on August 29, 1929 in West Norwood, England. Susan was at her best when cast in a role as a pretty young slip of a girl with her nose in the air. After a marriage to actor Albert Lieven, with whom she had a daughter, Susan married the American actor Bonar Colleano, known for his roles as the wisecracking Yank in British films. The two made a handsome couple, Susan with her petite blondeness and Bonar with his loud mouth and dark good looks. They had a child together, actor Mark Colleano, in 1955, before her husband suddenly died in a tragic road accident in 1958. After Bonar died, she was never the same and spent most of her life battling a drinking problem until her death in 1978. Her husband's mother became the legal guardian of her little boy and groomed him for an acting career. As a child star, Mark went on to star opposite Rock Hudson in "Hornets' Nest", as a 14-year-old Italian youth.
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- Soundtrack
Douglas Henderson was born on 14 January 1919 in Montclair, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for The Manchurian Candidate (1962), King Dinosaur (1955) and The Wild Wild West (1965). He died on 5 April 1978 in Studio City, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Producer
- Editor
Mark Robson studied political science and economics at the University of California. He then took a law course at Pacific Coast University, and, at one time, also attended the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Ultimately, his interests led him elsewhere, since he ended up in the movie business as a part-time assistant set dresser in the property department of 20th Century Fox. Asking studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck for a promotion turned out to be a bad move, since he was promptly fired. Playing golf with RKO executive Herman Zobel, conversely, opened the door to a position at the studio's film library, where he was to earn a meager 66 cents per hour. Undeterred, Robson eventually moved up to the position of assistant editor and worked (uncredited) on Orson Welles' s Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) for $1.25 per hour, but slaving over a gruelling 110 to 120 hour-week. When "Ambersons" and Journey Into Fear (1943) ran into production difficulties, Welles and his Mercury Group fell out of favour at RKO and Robson was re-assigned by Lou L. Ostrow to a B-unit, headed by Val Lewton.
Within the relaxed atmosphere of Lewton's company, Robson was employed as full-time editor between 1941 and 1943. He became noted for his outstanding work on Cat People (1942). In one famous scene, he originated a technique called 'the bus', abruptly cutting from the face of a person in terror (in this case Simone Simon) to a bus stopping violently with hissing airbrakes, thus effectively jolting the audience in their seats. The 'bus', of course, could be substituted for any other sudden event, intended as a red herring in order to shock the viewer. It is still a widely used practice today, particularly in horror movies or thrillers.
After editing I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and The Leopard Man (1943), Robson was promoted by Lewton to director as a replacement for Jacques Tourneur. Robson's first film was The Seventh Victim (1943), a tale of Satanists operating in Greenwich Village. This was followed by three more entries in Lewton's series of low budget horror thrillers: The Ghost Ship (1943), Isle of the Dead (1945) and Bedlam (1946). All of these modest ventures recouped their investment fourfold. In the long run, however, it was not enough to save struggling RKO. Robson lost his job and found himself on the bread line for the next two years. In 1949, he was head-hunted by independent producer Stanley Kramer to direct the boxing drama Champion (1949), starring Kirk Douglas as a callous boxing champ on his way to the top. This prestige production marked the turning point in Robson's career. Bosley Crowther, the leading New York Times reviewer, praised the director for providing "a wealth of pictorial interest and exciting action of a graphic, colourful sort" (NY Times, April 11 1949). Robson made another film for Kramer, Home of the Brave (1949), which dealt with the results of racial prejudice.
Suddenly finding himself much in demand, Robson worked briefly under contract for Samuel Goldwyn, before launching the second phase of his career as a director of big budget commercial hits, among them the charismatic The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954); another hard-hitting tale of corruption in the world of boxing, The Harder They Fall (1956); the stylishly-made small-town melodrama Peyton Place (1957); and the unabashedly sentimental, romanticised 'true-life' story of an English missionary in China, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) (filmed in North Wales !). One of his best later films was the Paul Newman thriller The Prize (1963), directed by Robson in a style entirely reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock, filled with rollicking action and witty dialogue. That same year, Robson established his own production company, Red Lion. He made several patchy films under this banner, including a stodgy, fictionalised account of the Ghandi assassination Nine Hours to Rama (1963); and a dull, forgettable anti-war drama, Lost Command (1966). The lurid, but slickly-made melodrama Valley of the Dolls (1967) rekindled Robson's career, which was rounded out with the all-star blockbuster disaster movie Earthquake (1974), filmed in 'Sensurround' for greater impact. A massive box-office hit, it eventually grossed in excess of 80 million dollars. Robson died of a heart attack just weeks after completing work on the action thriller Avalanche Express (1979).- Kelly Thordsen was born on 19 January 1917 in Deadwood, South Dakota, USA. He was an actor, known for The Parallax View (1974), Texas Across the River (1966) and Yancy Derringer (1958). He was married to Lucille Ruby Baumgardner. He died on 23 January 1978 in Sun Valley, California, USA.
- Shelly Novack was a star athlete at Venice High School in California. He later played football at Santa Monica City College, Long Beach State, and was drafted by the San Diego Chargers in 1965. He became an actor through football, much like some other athletes do. Shelly won the first Toyota Grand Prix Pro Celebrity Race in 1977. Although he was a decent actor his passion was sports.
- Barry Brown was born on 19 April 1951 in San Jose, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Bad Company (1972), Piranha (1978) and Daisy Miller (1974). He died on 27 June 1978 in Silver Lake, California, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
The English actor Arthur Brough, who achieved fame as senior clothing salesman Mr. Grainger on the BBC-TV comedy series Are You Being Served? (1972) in the 1970s, after almost half-a-century on the stage, was born Frederick Arthur Baker on February 26, 1905 in Petersfield, Hampshire, England. After indulging in amateur theatrics with future star Alistair Sim, Brough attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in the early 1920s. After graduating, he joined a Shakespearean theatrical troupe where he met his wife-to-be, actress Elizabeth Addeyman. After they married, they used their wedding dowry as collateral to rent the Leas Pavilion, a repertory theater in Folkestone.
Arthur both ran the company and acted in the shows, and once the new Folkestone rep was established, he began establishing new repertory companies in Bradford, Bristol, Blackpool, Keighley, Leeds, Lincoln, Oxford and Southampton, as well as other acting companies throughout the country. With the advent of World War II, he enlisted in the Royal Navy, where he served for the duration. Upon being demobilized, he resumed his acting career by reopening the Folkestone rep.
Arthur Brough dedicated his life to the theater, and "Are You Being Served?" co-star Mollie Sugden credits him with helping train a generation of actors. In the 1950s, he established repertory theaters at Southend and Eastbourne. However, with the rise of television, he predicted the eclipse of repertory theater as a viable entertainment venue. In the 50s, he began seeking roles in the mass media, appearing in small roles in movies and television. His daughter, Joanna Hutton, said about his forecast of the decline of repertory theater, "He was very astute and unsentimental about it. He realized the era was over and that he must diversify. One of the first jobs he did away from the stage was the film The Green Man (1956) with Alastair Sim."
According to his daughter, he found it hard adjusting from stage to screen at first. "He realized how hammy he was. He used to take the mickey out of himself; he'd always acted in a Shakespearean manner and suddenly realized he had to tone down his performance for film."
Brough appeared in a wide variety of small and bit parts, including a small role opposite Jayne Mansfield in It Takes a Thief (1960), and made guest appearances in TV shows such as Upstairs, Downstairs (1971), Dad's Army (1968), and Z Cars (1962). He also continued to appear in theatrical productions, including Half a Sixpence (1967), playing a shopkeeper. The Folkestone Rep continued until 1969 before closing.
Throughout his time on the hit show, Brough's personal life was beset with sadness, as his beloved wife was seriously ill.
A crisis hit "Are You Being Served?" after it completed its fifth season (1977). All was going well: Producer David Croft had hired Bob Spiers, a BBC director who'd recently directed Fawlty Towers (1975) and who later helmed the Emmy-winning Absolutely Fabulous (1992), to direct the sixth season. However, on Easter Sunday 1978, Arthur Brough's wife of 50 years, Elizabeth, passed away, and the emotionally devastated Brough announced he was quitting acting.
According to his daughter, he stayed with her for a few weeks, during which time David Croft] and Jeremy Lloyd made contact to say they were writing him into the next series. But unfortunately he died before filming commenced.
Brough died six weeks after his wife, on May 28, 1978, in Folkestone. Croft decided not to have another actor take over the part of Mr. Grainger, so his character in "Are You Being Served"? was replaced by Mr. Tebbs, played by James Hayter.
His co-workers have fond memories of working with Arthur, who - as his daughter noted - "was a highly respected actor who'd spent forty years in the profession." At the time of Arthur's death, David Croft said: "Arthur created a living character who was the inspiration for much of the humour His personality made him a pivot round which a whole lot of laughter and affection revolved."- Duncan Lamont began his career in the 1940's in Waterfront Women (1950) and Quentin Durward (1955) then went to Hollywood for Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). Returning to Britain he went into what he described as one of his happiest roles opposite Margaret Rutherford in Murder at the Gallop (1963). He described himself as a 'heavy with a capacity for light villainy' as he was never really a bad villain. When the film is nearly over there's usually justice to contend with, While sometimes he's was on the right side of the law never the less he always seems to end up dead or defeated. Television work took him to America for appearances in such as The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955), Hawaiian Eye (1959), and The Alaskans (1959), while British credits included such as Z Cars (1962), Danger Man (1960), and Dixon of Dock Green (1955).
- Leo Genn was the son of a successful jewelry merchant Woolfe (William) Genn and his wife Rachel Asserson. He attended the City of London School as a youth and went on to study law at Cambridge. He received his law degree as a qualified barrister (which in English law tradition is a lawyer who is a specialist in law and who appears in court as representative of a client, whereas a solicitor is also a lawyer but further defined as an attorney who deals directly with the client, writing all case-related briefs and hiring a barrister for court appearance - there is no such division in the USA). He began practice in 1928, however law was not his only interest. Acting caught his eye, and about 1930 he made the acquaintance of actor/manager Leon M. Lion, who needed an actor and a legal advisor. Genn fitted both and was hired and later that year made his stage debut. It was certainly of practical value that he continued offering legal counsel into the 1930s to augment the small income of a budding stage performer learning his craft. In 1933 he met and married Marguerite van Praag, a casting director at Ealing Studios.
His first screen role was as Shakespeare's Shylock in the UK production The Immortal Gentleman (1935). It mortised nicely between his two year (1934-36) period of Shakespearean apprenticeship as a member of the Old Vic Company where he appeared in many productions of Shakespeare. Genn had a very pleasant neutral British accent that could fit anywhere. And his voice was wonderfully smooth and yet authoritative, likened to "black velvet", that fit like a glove to his refined manner. Douglas Fairbanks Jr.., in London for one of his many UK starring vehicles, hired Genn as a technical advisor on the law for Accused (1936) and received a bit role - not for his legal advice - but for a "splendid voice and presence". But the legal side of his character stuck to him as he was in the process of dropping the law for acting full time. He spent 1937 playing film prosecutors and defending attorneys - not something he expected. Things picked up the next year - though still wading through some crime dramas - when he nabbed a small Indian character role in The Drum (1938), the ambitious adventure yarn by producer Alexander Korda. And he was the prince dance partner to Wendy Hiller in Pygmalion (1938) - uncredited - as was a young Anthony Quayle. Obviously, small featured extra roles allowed time for more ambitious outings. He starred in the stage hit "The Flashing Stream" also in 1938. It received the nod from Broadway, and Genn made his American debut in early 1939 in the play's successful run in New York.
Though still tagged for law officialdom in several films, Genn moved on to more hearty supporting roles in 1940 with war looming. He joined the Royal Artillery and received a rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 1943. In that year he was already wanted for film's war effort agenda as movie narrator. In 1944 he was given leave for two flag-waver movies - the second a most unusual and significant cinematic event. For Genn, it was a small part, but it was part of a glorious celebration of England and English history during the crisis of World War II - the Henry V of Laurence Olivier. Genn was the Constable of France, and though the lines were few, Shakespeare infused them with a sardonic wink that Genn delivered perfectly in an understated style that became one of his hallmarks. This part brought him to notice as a film actor, but he did not entertain its fruits until later 1946, for with the end of the war Genn, who had been awarded the French Croix de Guerre in 1945, went back to law counseling. He volunteered his legal knowledge to the British army unit involved in the investigation and prosecution of Nazi war crimes perpetrated at the Belsen concentration camp near Luneburg, Germany. And in the subsequent tribunals, Genn served as assistant prosecutor.
He was back in film in 1946, but more so he was being courted by Broadway to return - which he did in that crowded year with one of his best stage roles in the Lillian Hellman classic "Another Part of the Forest". Hollywood waited in the wings to grab him for the Eugene O'Neill update Mourning Becomes Electra (1947) of the ancient Greek tragedy triangle "Orestaia". It was not Genn's American film debut, for he had appeared in the UK/US crime drama The Girl in the News (1940) - as - what else - a prosecuting counsel - a barrister. He was competing with the American debut of Michael Redgrave in the O'Neill adaptation (3 hours, pared to about 2 hours for general release). The film was a great piece of dialog display but a disaster at the box office. But the chemistry of Genn with Rosalind Russell was such that they were marketed together again the next year in another American film, The Velvet Touch (1948), more whodunit but with snappy lines. Subsequently Genn was about equally in demand for film and stage on both sides of the Atlantic.
His film roles on into the 1950s were somewhat uneven, but Genn was always to form - the calm, understated but in control male lead or supporting character, whether war adventure or the inevitable crime drama - many a steady military officer and understanding professional - with a bit of comedy and a few shady characters thrown in.
Perhaps his best known American film role was as the sardonic Gaius Petronius Arbiter in Quo Vadis (1951). Genn's generous part as the ancient Roman satirist was filled with double meaning quips and understated sarcasm that Genn delivered with his poker face charm and subtle sidelong glances. He is so good that the audience hangs on his next sub-level dig with anticipation that partially eclipses the first rate histrionics of Peter Ustinov as a tongue-in-cheek deranged Nero. The level of Genn's performance was recognized with a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. The next year he was more than just a straight-laced William Bradford of American colonial history fame in Plymouth Adventure (1952), a much maligned American film that was, in fact, a realistic portrayal of the trials and tribulations of the Pilgrims (they were not all religious dissenters, not the dour, black and white Puritans who were later arrivals). Having to compete with a cantankerous, perhaps too hammy Spencer Tracy as the ship's captain, Genn's understated intensity brings off a compassionate portrayal.
Genn helped grace some of the most ambitious films of the later 1950s and into the 1960s: Moby Dick (1956), The Longest Day (1962), and 55 Days at Peking (1963). He embraced TV playhouse, both American and British programs, and US/UK episodic series through the period, as well as more outings on Broadway. He made six appearances on the Great White Way - the last in a short run of "The Only Game in Town" in mid 1968. All along Genn's voice had found welcoming slots in narration. Beside films, he was the voice of the royal coronation programs of 1937 and 1953. And he always kept a foot in his first love, British theater; he was a governor of London's The Mermaid Theatre. - Actor
- Soundtrack
"America's Joyboy," beefy, plump-faced comedian Jack Oakie, was one of the funniest top and second banana jokesters of stage, radio and especially film's "Golden Age." He would accomplish so much despite the fact that he was "functionally deaf" throughout his career and performed primarily with the aid of lip reading or vibrations.
The stories vary on how he became deaf -- scarlet fever at age 9, a Wall Street building explosion where he worked -- but, whatever the case, it seems a minor miracle that he managed to become a performing success not only for his famous "triple take" comedy but also for his work in Broadway and Hollywood musicals, which could not have been an easy task! A slapstick inspiration to future comedians like Jackie Gleason, Oakie's lightweight foolery and participation in films was pretty much standard cornball with a lot of mugging to boot, but then he surprised audiences by topping it all off in the hands of the legendary Charles Chaplin with a scene-stealing Oscar-nominated support role in a political satire masterpiece.
Jack was born Lewis Delaney Offield in Sedalia, Missouri on November 12, 1903, the son of a grain dealer (who died while Jack was quite young) and a teacher of psychology (Mary Evelyn Oakie Offield). His family moved to moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma. He was raised at times with his grandmother in Kansas City, Missouri, and made extra money there as a paperboy for The Kansas City Star.
Moving eventually to New York, Jack first worked as a runner for a brokerage firm on Wall Street, and nearly lost his life when a nearby Wall Street building was bombed on September 16, 1920. Interested in comedy and mime by this point, he began building up confidence on the amateur stage and giving himself a new name, Jack Oakie, which was comprised of the first character he ever played on stage and his mother's maiden name.
Jack took his first professional curtain call on Broadway in 1923 as a chorus boy in George M. Cohan's production of "Little Nellie Kelly." From there he found employment in a number of comedies, as well as musicals throughout the mid to late 1920s, including "Sharlee" (1923), the revues "Innocent Eyes" (1924) and "Artists and Models" (1925), and the musical "Peggy-Ann" in 1926. He also appeared in a couple of unbilled film parts in 1923 and 1924.
Films came calling toward the end of the silent era in 1927, and he relocated to Los Angeles where he made several non-talkies on his arrival, including Finders Keepers (1928) starring Laura La Plante and John Harron (Bobby's little brother) and directed by Wesley Ruggles; Clara Bow's The Fleet's In (1928); and the western Sin Town (1929). With the advent of sound, Oakie was signed, with the help of director Ruggles, to a contract by Paramount and appeared in his first talkie, the Ruth Chatterton/Fredric March starrer The Dummy (1929). Jack went on to support Wallace Beery in Chinatown Nights (1929); Dorothy Mackaill in Hard to Get (1929); Betty Compson and John Harron in Street Girl (1929); and Nancy Carroll in the musical Sweetie (1929). Settling in, he never returned to the Broadway stage.
Jack finally shared top billing with Evelyn Brent in the comedy film Fast Company (1929) as Elmer Kane, a character based on the George M. Cohan Broadway show "Elmer the Great." This led to top billing in the film version of the Broadway hit musical Hit the Deck (1929), as well as the early talking comedy vehicles The Social Lion (1930), The Sap from Syracuse (1930), Let's Go Native (1930), Sea Legs (1930), The Gang Buster (1931), June Moon (1931), Dude Ranch (1931), Once in a Lifetime (1932), Madison Square Garden (1932), Uptown New York (1932), Sitting Pretty (1933) and Shoot the Works (1934). Occasional dramas came his way with Dancers in the Dark (1932) co-starring Miriam Hopkins and Sky Bride (1932) co-starring Richard Arlen.
Throughout the 1930s, the 30-year-old plus actor appeared in a host of light college-themed comedies and was lovingly dubbed "The World's Oldest Freshman" while adding to the humor of such films as College Humor (1933), College Rhythm (1934) and Collegiate (1935). Elsewhere, in Too Much Harmony (1933), his mother Evelyn was featured as his mother, and he played Tweedledum to Roscoe Karns' Tweedledee in the all-star version of Alice in Wonderland (1933).
Oakie's contract ended with Paramount in 1934 and he continued as a freelancing agent until an RKO contract came his way a couple of years later. Starting to now gain a bit in girth, Oakie went back into support roles in musicals, adventures and comedies. Among the better known films were Call of the Wild (1935) with Clark Gable and Loretta Young; Colleen (1936) with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler; The Toast of New York (1937) with Edward Arnold and Frances Farmer; Tin Pan Alley (1940) with Alice Faye and Betty Grable and Iceland (1942) with Sonja Henie and John Payne.
In the late 1930s, Jack traveled to Europe for some work and suffered a huge career setback when he returned to Hollywood and found himself unwanted. The draught lasted nearly two years until a major comeback thanks to Charles Chaplin. While such film highlights must include Million Dollar Legs (1932), King of Burlesque (1936), The Affairs of Annabel (1938) and Rise and Shine (1941), Oakie will in all probability be best remembered for his lip-smacking parody of Benito Mussolini ("Il Duce")in Chaplin's classic The Great Dictator (1940). As Benzino Napaloni, the dictator of the fictional country of Bacteria, Jack earned his only Oscar nomination in the "Supporting Actor" category. Throughout his lead career, he worked with a quality number of diverse leading ladies on film from Carole Lombard to Lily Pons.
Oakie also found work on radio, hosting his own show, "Jack Oakie's College," between 1936 and 1938. His deafness did not affect the output of his work, and, as a pro, seldom were there problems in accommodating his disability. Director Jules Dassin, in fact, once made it a point to state that Oakie never caused any delays in the filming of his film noir Thieves' Highway (1949).
Into the 1950s and 1960s, his career slowed down quite a bit, primarily due to his disability. He appeared to good advantage in the films The Rat Race (1960) and Lover Come Back (1961) and with TV comedy and drama on such popular shows as "The Real McCoys," "Daniel Boone," "Bonanza" and, his last, "Night Gallery" in 1972.
Jack Oakie was married twice. His first marriage (1936-1945) was to Venita Varden, who perished in the 1948 air crash of United Airlines Flight 624 at Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. Oakie's second marriage was to actress Victoria Horne in 1950; they moved to an estate in Northridge and lived there until his death. The USC School of Cinematic Arts continues its durable ties with Hollywood history in the form of The Jack Oakie and Victoria Horne Oakie Charitable Foundation, which provides scholarships.
The comic actor died on January 23, 1978, in Los Angeles, California at the age of 74 from an aortic aneurysm. His remains were interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in the Los Angeles area.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Robert Alan Aurthur was born on 10 June 1922 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for All That Jazz (1979), The Philco Television Playhouse (1948) and The Lost Man (1969). He was married to Jane Wetherell, Virginia Lee Trexler and Bea Arthur. He died on 20 November 1978 in New York City, New York, USA.- Helen Travolta was born on 18 January 1912 in New Jersey, USA. She was an actress, known for Saturday Night Fever (1977). She was married to Salvatore Joseph Travolta Jr.. She died on 3 December 1978 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Kim Winona was enrolled as Constance M. Marlow in the Santee Sioux tribe of Nebraska and spent her childhood on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. When she was 17, she and her parents moved to Spokane, Wash. where she met her husband who was also of Indian extraction. At this time she had no theatrical aspirations. Soon after her marriage they moved to Los Angeles. Harvey was a printer by trade and established his own business. Kim took a secretarial job in the office of a commercial artist. The firm in which she was employed had many artists and photographers, many of whom noticed Kim and her unusual natural beauty. Soon after, Kim was supplementing her income as a model. A talent scout spotted one of her pictures, interviewed her, and shortly had a screen test for a role in The Last Hunt (1956). She lost the part to a better known actress but was soon named "Miss Apache", and toured the U.S. to promote the film. In June of 1955 Roy rogers' Frontier Productions was looking for someone to play the tribal maiden Morning Star in the Brave Eagle (1955) series. Mike North, the executive producer was having trouble finding someone with the unique requirements that they needed for the role of Morning Star which called for riding ability, physical stamina to meet the active pace of location shooting, and a player with more than a token knowledge of Indian lore. Kim filled all those perfectly. Kim was also an accomplished painter and sculptress. One sculpture, in wood, on display at the Carnegie Institute. Kim's husband's grandmother was a Custer.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Queenie Smith was born in New York City in 1898. She is described as 5 feet 1 inch with blue eyes and blonde hair and weighing 108 pounds. Her father was English and mother, German. She was educated at public schools, including the Horace Mann School, and matriculated at age 13 with the Ballet School of Metropolitan Opera. While a teenager, Queenie was solo danseuse of the Metropolitan Opera Company in "Aida", "Samson and Delilah", "Faust", and "La Traviata". She also appeared in musical comedies including "Helen of Troy, New York", "Sitting Pretty", "Tip Toes", "Hit the Deck", and "The Street Singer". She appeared in "Lilly Turner", "The Greeks Had a Word for It", "Little Women", "Three Cornered Moon", "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Every Thursday".- Kathryn Givney was born on 27 October 1896 in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, USA. She was an actress, known for Daddy Long Legs (1955), My Friend Irma (1949) and A Place in the Sun (1951). She was married to J. George Stutzman and Francis Alton Connolly. She died on 16 March 1978 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Sally Eilers enjoyed lunch with a classmate from drama school, Jane Peters (who would later become known as Carole Lombard), at the Sennett Studios cafeteria. There she was spotted by Mack Sennett and instantly became one of his "discoveries". Having already appeared in several bit parts, beginning with The Red Mill (1927) in 1927, she was offered a role in The Good-Bye Kiss (1928), a rare dramatic feature for the studio. Either Sennett or Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. (depending on which version of the story is to be believed) tagged Sally with the publicity line "the most beautiful girl in movies".
The vivacious former brunette (quickly transformed by Hollywood into a blonde) spent her apprenticeship as a leading actress co-starring in westerns with her future husband Hoot Gibson and with Buster Keaton in Doughboys (1930). In 1931 director Frank Borzage cast her (instead of established star Janet Gaynor) in the depression-era film Bad Girl (1931). What could have been maudlin melodrama was enlivened by excellent direction and some snappy dialogue (winning Academy Awards for both direction and screenplay) and elicited from Sally in the title role (as "Dot Haley") the best performance of her career. There were to be other films of note: Reducing (1931) with Marie Dressler, the original State Fair (1933) with Will Rogers (with Sally playing a "carny") and Sailor's Luck (1933), with her Bad Girl (1931) co-star James Dunn, in which a reviewer described her performance as "highly satisfactory".
Alas, most of her subsequent parts were in lesser features and she never made the grade as a top star. Sally continued to act in films, eventually reduced to supporting roles, until the late 1940s. She was married four times.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Wendy Barrie was born in Hong Kong to an English-Irish father and a Russian Jewish mother. Her dad was the distinguished King's Counsel F.C. Jenkins which ensured that the family was well off. Wendy received her education at a convent school in England and a finishing school in Switzerland. After working in beauty parlors for a brief period she set her sights on the stage and made her first foray into acting at the London Savoy Theatre in "Wonder Bar" (1930). Two years later, she was "discovered" by producer Alexander Korda while lunching at the Savoy Grill. Having successfully auditioned for the part she was famously cast as Jane Seymour, the third of the six wives at the center of The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), starring Charles Laughton. Hollywood soon beckoned and Wendy left England for America in 1934. During the next decade and a bit, she found regular employment at Paramount (1935), Universal (1936-38) and RKO (1938-42). A blonde, vivacious lass with a certain innocent charm and an instinctive acting ability, she tended to play mostly ingenue roles in minor films and often rose above her material. This led to her being given a grittier role in the social drama Dead End (1937) and Wendy's career henceforth alternated between supporting roles in bigger pictures and leads in B-movies.
From the late 1930s her parts became more varied, ranging from a gangster's moll in the crime melodrama I Am the Law (1938) to a plane crash victim in Five Came Back (1939) and Richard Greene's love interest in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), with Basil Rathbone as "Sherlock Holmes". By the 1940s, Wendy's star began to fade. This was in no small part due to the bad publicity generated by her real-life role as mistress of notorious underworld figure Bugsy Siegel. As her pickings became ever slimmer she found herself relegated to perfunctory leads in various entries of "The Saint" and "Falcon" series at RKO. After appearing in a string of other decidedly mediocre productions she decided to embark on what turned out to be a successful new career as television host of her own pioneering talk show, Picture This (1948) (1948-50). Her relaxed, informal style brought her great popularity and plaudits from television critics like Jack Gould of the New York Times. Wendy's other claim to fame was as one of the first celebrities to make television commercials, famously with Revlon on 'The $64,000 Question'. During the 1960s, she also broadcast her own radio interview show from the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. She was actively involved in various charities and was known to attend as guest speaker at philanthropic functions, freely giving of her time without remuneration. In the mid '70s, Wendy suffered a stroke which affected her mental state and she spent the last years of her life at a nursing home in Englewood, New Jersey, where she died in February 1978, aged 65.- Zara Cully was born on 26 January 1892 in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. She was an actress, known for The Jeffersons (1975), All in the Family (1971) and Sugar Hill (1974). She was married to James M. Brown. She died on 28 February 1978 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Writer
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Author, composer, writer and songwriter, educated at Yale University (BA degree). He joined ASCAP in 1961, and wrote the off-Broadway stage scores for "Living the Life" and "All in Love". His chief musical collaborator was Gene de Paul, and his popular-song compositions included "I Found Him" and "What Can It Be?".- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Harry Wilson was born on 22 November 1897 in London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Some Like It Hot (1959), Frankenstein's Daughter (1958) and One Million B.C. (1940). He died on 6 September 1978 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- André Morell was born on 20 August 1909 in St. Pancras, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Ben-Hur (1959), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and The Message (1976). He was married to Joan Greenwood. He died on 28 November 1978 in London, England, UK.
- Gloria Castillo was born on 2 July 1933 in Belén, Valencia county, New Mexico, USA. She was an actress, known for The Night of the Hunter (1955), Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) and Cavalcade of America (1952). She was married to Ellis Kadison. She died on 24 October 1978 in Los Angeles, California, USA.