How many centenarians of entertainment do you know?
How many centenarians of entertainment do you know?
Now we are up to 141 names.
Hope you enjoy my little tid-bits of trivia.
And thanks to those who write with comments.
Now we are up to 141 names.
Hope you enjoy my little tid-bits of trivia.
And thanks to those who write with comments.
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- Actress
- Soundtrack
Gloria Stuart was born on a dining room table on 4th Street in Santa Monica, California on July 4, 1910. Her early roles as a performing artist were in plays she produced in her home as a young girl. She was the star of her senior class play at Santa Monica High School in 1927. Attending the University of California, at Berkeley, she continued to perform on the stage. Stuart married and move to Carmel, where she performed in a production of "The Seagull" which was transferred to the Pasadena Playhouse in 1932. It was there that talent scouts for both Paramount and Universal saw her. In a famous dispute, the heads of the two studios flipped a coin and Universal won. She played lead roles for director James Whale, including (The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933)). The hard work at the studio estranged her from her first husband (Stuart helped create the Screen Actors Guild). She played the leading lady in Roman Scandals (1933), on the set of which she met her husband Arthur Sheekman. She was dissatisfied with the roles in which she was cast at Universal and played roles in films for other studios. Ultimately, a few years after having her daughter Sylvia (named after the role she was playing when she met Sheekman), she left the cinema and sought roles on the stage in New York. In the 1940s, she opened an art furniture shop where she created decoupage lamps, tables and trays, many of which sold to stars like Judy Garland and others. Later, Stuart took up oil painting and was very prolific, showing and selling her work in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Her landscapes of The Watts Towers are on permanent collection at The Los Angeles County Museum. She also took up and mastered the art of bonsai and some of her trees are on permanent collection in the Huntington Library Japanese Garden. When her husband fell ill in the 1970s (he died in 1978), she returned to acting doing a range of television series. In 1982, she returned to the screen appearing in a brief dance scene with Peter O'Toole in My Favorite Year (1982).
About this time a friend, she knew half a century earlier in Carmel, who was a master printer, re-entered her life and from him, Stuart learned the craft of fine printing. She established a printing press in her home studio called Imprenta Glorias. where she created a body of fine artist's books. Her greatest book, "Flight of Butterfly Kites" is in permanent collection at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Gloria Stuart won a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Oscar-nomination for her performance as the Old Rose in Titanic (1997). In July 2010, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences honored Gloria Stuart with a Centennial Celebration. She was the first such honoree to be living for a centennial. At 100 years of age, she had completed her greatest artist's book with her great-granddaughter working as her apprentice and also her final appearance on film in her grandson's documentary about her, entitled Secret Life of Old Rose: The Art of Gloria Stuart (2012) when she died at home at the age of 100 on September 26, 2010.Gloria Stuart ( actress) born 04 Jul 1910 - died 26 Sep 2010 (100years 2months +)
Since Christopher Plummer's nomination (and win) in 2012, Gloria Stuart is now the second oldest person ever to be nominated for an Academy Award in an acting category.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
George Burns was an American actor, comedian, singer, and published author. He formed a comedy duo with his wife Gracie Allen (1895-1964), and typically played the straight man to her zany roles. Following her death, Burns started appearing as a solo performer. He once won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and continued performing until his 90s. He lived to be a centenarian, was viewed as an "elder statesman" in the field of comedy.
Burns was born under the name "Nathan Birnbaum" in 1896, and was nicknamed "Nattie" by his family. His father was Eliezer "Louis" Birnbaum (1855-1903), a coat presser who also served a substitute cantor at a local synagogue in New York City. His mother was Hadassah "Dorah" Bluth (1857-1927), a homemaker. Both parents were Jewish immigrants, originally from the small town of Kolbuszowa in Austrian Galicia (currently part of Poland). Kolbuszowa had a large Jewish population until World War II, when the German occupation forces in Poland relocated the local Jews to a ghetto in Rzeszów.
The Birnbaums were a large family, and Burns had 11 siblings. He was the 9th eldest of the Birnbaum Children. In 1903, Louis Birnbaum caught influenza and died, during an ongoing influenza epidemic. Orphaned when 7-years-old, Burns had to work to financially support his family. He variously shined shoes, run errands, selling newspapers, and worked as a syrup maker in a local candy shop.
Burns liked to sing while working, and practiced singing harmony with three co-workers of similar age. They were discovered by letter carrier Lou Farley, who gave them the idea to perform singing in exchange for payment. The four children soon started performing as the "Pee-Wee Quartet", singing in brothels, ferryboats, saloons, and street corners. They put their hats down for donations from their audience, though their audience was not always generous. In Burns' words: "Sometimes the customers threw something in the hats. Sometimes they took something out of the hats. Sometimes they took the hats."
Burns started smoking cigars c. 1910, when 14-years-old. It became a lifelong habit for him. Burns' performing career was briefly interrupted in 1917, when he was drafted for service in World I. He eventually failed his physical exams, due to his poor eyesight.
By the early 1920s, he adopted the stage name "George Burns", though he told several different stories of why he chose the name. He supposedly named himself after then-famous baseball player George Henry Burns (1897-1978), or the also famous baseball player George Joseph Burns (1889-1966). In another version, he named himself after his brother Izzy "George" Birnbaum, and took the last name "Burns" in honor of Burns Brothers Coal Company.
Burns performed dance routines with various female partners, until he eventually married his most recent partner Gracie Allen in 1926. Burns made his film debut in the comedy short film "Lambchops" (1929), which was distributed by Vitaphone. The film simply recorded one of Burns and Allen's comedy routines from vaudeville.
Burns made his feature film debut in a supporting role of the musical comedy "The Big Broadcast" (1932). He appeared regularly in films throughout the 1930s, with his last film role for several years appearing in the musical film "Honolulu" (1939). Burns was reportedly considered for leading role in "Road to Singapore" (1940), but the studio replaced him with Bob Hope (1903-2003).
Burns and Allen started appearing as comic relief for a radio show featuring bandleader Guy Lombardo (1902-1977). By February 1932, they received their own sketch comedy radio show. The couple portrayed younger singles, until the show was retooled in 1941 and started featuring them as a married couple. By the fall of 1941, the show had evolved into a situational comedy about married life. Burns and Allen's supporting cast included notable voice actors Mel Blanc, Bea Benaderet, and Hal March.
The radio show finally ended in 1949, reworked into the popular television show "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" (1950-1958). Allen would typically play the "illogical" housewife, while Burns played the straight man and broke the fourth wall to speak to the audience. The couple formed the production company McCadden Corporation to help produce the show.
Allen developed heart problems during the 1950s, and by the late 1950s was unable to put up the energy needed for the show. She fully retired in 1958. The show was briefly retooled to "The George Burns Show" (1958-1959), but Burns comedic style was not as popular as that of his wife. The new show was canceled due to low ratings.
Following Allen's death in 1964, Burns attempted a television comeback by creating the sitcom "Wendy and Me" (1964-1965) about the life of a younger married couple. The lead roles were reserved for Ron Harper and Connie Stevens, while Burns had a supporting role as their landlord. He also performed as the show's narrator.
As a television producer, Burns produced the military comedy "No Time for Sergeants", and the sitcom "Mona McCluskey". As an actor, he mostly appeared in theaters and nightclubs. Burns had a career comeback with the comedy film "The Sunshine Boys" (1975), his first film appearance since World War II. He played faded vaudevillian Al Lewis, who has a difficult relationship with his former partner Willy Clark (played by Walter Matthau). The role was met with critical success, and Burns won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. At age 80, Burns was the oldest Oscar winner at the time. His record was broken by Jessica Tandy in 1989.
Burns had his greatest film success playing God in the comedy film "Oh, God!" (1977). The film 51 million dollars at the domestic box office, and was one of the greatest hits of 1977. Burns returned to the role in the sequels "Oh, God! Book II" (1980) and "Oh, God! You Devil" (1984). He had a double role as both God and the Devil in the last film.
Burns had several other film roles until the 1990s. His most notable films in this period were the musical comedy "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1978), the comedy film "Just You and Me, Kid" (1979), the caper film "Going in Style" (1979), and the fantasy-comedy "18 Again!" (1988). The last of the four featured him as a grandfather who exchanges souls with his grandson.
Burns' last film role was a bit part in the mystery film "Radioland Murders" (1994), which was a box office flop. In July 1994, Burns fell in his bathtub and underwent surgery to remove fluid in his skull. He survived, but his health never fully recovered. He was forced to retire from acting and stand-up comedy.
On January 20, 1996, Burns celebrated his 100th birthday, but was in poor health and had to cancel a pre-arranged comeback performance. In March 1996, he suffered from cardiac arrest and died. He was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, next to Gracie Allen.George Burns (actor/comedian) born 20 Jan 1896 - died 09 Mar 1996 (100years 1month +)
At the time of his Oscar win, he was the oldest recipient of an Oscar in an acting category.- Editor
- Editorial Department
- Producer
Margaret Booth was born on 14 January 1898 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an editor and producer, known for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Murder by Death (1976) and Annie (1982). She died on 28 October 2002 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Margaret Booth (editor) born 14 Jan 1898 – died 28 Oct 2002 (104years 9months +)
The longest lived person ever nominated for an Academy Award in the competetive categories and also the longest lived person ever to win an Honorary Academy Award.- Ethel Owen was born on 30 March 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for Robert Montgomery Presents (1950), Inner Sanctum (1954) and Kraft Theatre (1947). She was married to John Hale Almy and Dr. Raymond Gilbert Owens. She died on 16 February 1997 in Savannah, Georgia, USA.Ethel Owen (actress) born 30 Mar 1893 – died 16 Feb 1997 (103years 10months +)
Remembered as Alice's mother in The Honeymooners. - Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Irving Berlin was born Israel Isidor Baline on May 11, 1888 in Mogilev, Belarus, Russian Empire. Towering composer, songwriter, ("God Bless America", "Always", "Blue Skies", "White Christmas") author and publisher, he came to the United States at age 5 and was educated in New York's public schools. His earliest musical education was from his father, a cantor. He earned Honorary degrees from Bucknell University and Temple University. Beginning his career as a song-plugger for publisher Harry von Tilzer, Berlin worked as a singing waiter in Chinatown. In 1909, he was hired as a staff lyricist by the Ted Snyder Company, and became a partner to that firm four years later.
In 1910, he began doing vaudeville appearances in the United States and abroad, and also appeared with Snyder in the Broadway musical "Up and Down Broadway", that ran for 72 performances. He joined ASCAP as a charter member in 1914, and served on its first board of directors between 1914-1918. Berlin enlisted the United States Army infantry in World War I, and was a sergeant at Camp Upton, New York. After the war, he established his own public-relations firm, and in 1921, he built the 1025-seat Music Box Theatre (at 239 W. 45th Street, New York) with Sam H. Harris. After Harris' death in 1941, Berlin assumed full ownership and the theatre remains a Broadway institution to this day.
Among his many awards was the Medal for Merit for his 1942 all-soldier show "This Is the Army", which toured the United States, Europe and South Pacific battle zones; all proceeds were assigned to Army Emergency Relief and other service agencies. Berlin was also a member of the French Legion of Honor and held the Congressional Medal of Honor for "God Bless America", the proceeds from which went to the God Bless America Fund. His songs were sung by Fred Astaire, Al Jolson, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Dick Powell, Alice Faye and many others. Irving Berlin died at the age of 101 of natural causes on September 22, 1989 in New York City.Irving Berlin (composer) born 11 May 1888 - died 22 Sep 1989 (101years 4months +)
One of the most important songwriters in the USA.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Irving Lippman was born on 8 November 1906 in Edendale, California, USA. He was a cinematographer, known for Jungle Jim (1955), Angel Unchained (1970) and 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957). He died on 15 November 2006 in Woodland Hills, California, USA.Irving Lippman (cinematographer) born 08 Nov 1906 – died 15 Nov 2006 (100years +)
Another Irving.- Additional Crew
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Irving Rapper was one of the last surviving directors from the "Golden Age of Hollywood," passing away on Dec. 20, 1999, at the age of 101, four weeks shy of his 102nd birthday. Rapper is best remembered for the films he made with Bette Davis, including the classics Now, Voyager (1942) and The Corn Is Green (1945). He also directed the first film adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie (1950), and the Rapper-helmed The Brave One (1956) won screenwriter Robert Rich an Oscar (Rich actually was blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, one of The Hollywood Ten, who did not receive his Oscar for almost 20 years). Rapper continued directing well into the 1970s.
Born in London on January 16, 1898, he emigrated to the United States and became an actor and stage director on Broadway while studying at New York University. In the mid-'30s, he journeyed westward to Hollywood, hired as an assistant director and dialog coach at Warner Bros., where he proved invaluable translating--and mediating--for non-native-English-speaking directors; by the early 1940s, he had metamorphosed into the hottest director on the Warner Bros. lot.
Hired as a "dialog director" (a position created by the film studios in the late 1920s with the advent of sound) by Warners in 1935, he practiced that craft until 1941, when he was promoted to director. While the position of dialog director no longer exists, in the first decades of the talkies dialog directors worked with the actors on their line readings and interpretation of individual scenes. The position was particularly critical when the director was a foreigner who didn't understand English very well.
Rapper initially worked with Gernan émigré William Dieterle on The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and Juarez (1939). While Dieterle was focused on the technical aspects of filmmaking, such as the lighting of the sets and the camera angles, Rapper concentrated on the actors' performances. He also served as a dialog director for Hungarian émigré Michael Curtiz, for whom he translated (and who, according to Rapper, spoke English more poorly the longer he was in Hollywood) and French-born Anatole Litvak. In that position, Rapper forged strong bonds with certain actors, who came to depend on him.
Bette Davis and Rapper formed a bond that included the free solicitation of advice. He counseled Davis to ask to have William Keighley, who was originally assigned to direct her in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), replaced by Curtiz. Davis was to be in heavy makeup, and Rapper knew that Curtiz, a perfectionist, would be the right man to capture the visuals in the costume drama. Ironically, Rapper did not get to be the dialog director on the film, as he was assigned to a troubled picture helmed by Litvak. Without him on the set of "Elizabeth and Essex" to run interference, Davis and Curtiz--both strong-willed perfectionists---fought furiously.
Rapper resisted being assigned as a director of "B" films because he knew that once you were assigned to that unit you were stuck there and would never get a chance to graduate to "A" pictures. Rapper bided his time until he was offered a "programmer," Shining Victory (1941), by studio head Jack L. Warner. Shot without stars, the inspirational movie was a modest success and Warners assigned him to another "inspirational" picture, about a minister, One Foot in Heaven (1941). The minister was played by Oscar-winner Fredric March, then widely considered the best American actor since John Barrymore (who had by now turned into a parody of himself). March's talent was matched only by Paul Muni and the Great Profile's brother Lionel Barrymore. March was enthusiastic about the character and has long considered it one of his favorite roles. The film's success solidified Rapper's filmmaking career, which was further bolstered by his next picture The Gay Sisters (1942), starring the great Barbara Stanwyck, who lobbied for the role.
The next picture he directed was destined to become a classic. "Now, Voyager" (1942) was "the picture that made me," Rapper said in a 1981 interview. Politics played a role in his nabbing the choice assignment with only three directorial credits under his belt. Hal B. Wallis, a Warners producer with his own unit, intended to cast Irene Dunne in the picture, but Rapper leaked Wallis' plans to his close friend Bette Davis, who demanded the part from Jack L. Warner. The front office gave in to her demands, and she reciprocated Rapper's favor by asking for him as her director.
Rapper knew that casting Davis' co-stars was important if the picture was to work. He defied Wallis' choice of May Whitty as the mother of Davis' character, stumping for Gladys Cooper, whom Wallis claimed he had never heard of. Cooper received an Oscar nomination in the role. Paul Henreid got his first big break from Rapper, who tested him and then got approval to cast him (although the role made Henreid's career, he later humiliated Rapper at Davis' gala American Film Institute tribute in 1977, where he mocked the director and took credit for the famous scene where he lights two cigarettes at once and hands one to Davis. According to Rapper, Henreid had always wanted to be a successful director, and this engendered a personal enmity in him towards the director who "discovered him").
In addition to Davis and Henreid, Rapper attributed the film's success to lighting cameraman Sol Polito and versatile character actor Claude Rains, who played the psychoanalyst and thus the third side of the love triangle anchored by Davis and Henreid. Rapper felt that after the picture ends, Davis' character eventually will marry her psychoanalyst.
Rapper reteamed with Davis for the highly successful "The Corn Is Green" (1945), a story set in Wales but shot entirely--even the outdoor scenes--on Warners' sound stages. Rapper said that for her role as the Welsh schoolteacher, Davis tried very hard to not use the mannerisms that had made her famous. Rapper believes that John Dall, who played the schoolboy and whom he discovered, did not have a major career and became typecast as a villain because he was androgynous, and the public mood and cinema censorship of the time would not allow such an actor to be a star.
Rapper reportedly broke with Warners over Rhapsody in Blue (1945), a biography of George Gershwin. He felt that the script, which was approved by the Gershwin family which initially controlled the project, was wrong in that it made Gerswhin a character infatuated with two fictional women, while the real Gershwin was likely only really enthused about his music. Jack Warner, whose studio had never employed Gershwin and thus was an odd choice for the Gershwin family to entrust with his life story, fought the director over his choice of John Garfield to play the composer. Rapper believed that the casting of the film was all-important and its success ultimately was compromised by the casting of the bland Robert Alda at Warner's insistence. Jack Warner would not cast Garfield, as he was seeking leverage in the actor's upcoming contract negotiations. He also vetoed Rapper's second choice of Cary Grant on the grounds that no one would accept Grant as a composer (Warner subsequently took Rapper's insight to heart and cast Grant as Cole Porter in Night and Day (1946)). Although he looked like Gershwin, Alda "had a blah personality," Rapper told an interviewer in 1981. The film was showcased at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, but ultimately it was a failure. Some movie historians believe that Rapper's disenchantment over the failure of the film caused him to eventually break with Warner Bros.
He made Deception (1946) with Davis, which reunited her with "Now, Voyager" co-stars Rains and Henreid. Rapper claims that the movie was compromised when Davis--who was convinced that Rains' performance was stealing the picture from her--went behind Rapper's back and got Jack Warner to change the script so that she could shoot Rains' character in the finale. Rapper believed that the new ending weakened the picture. He also felt that his next picture The Voice of the Turtle (1947), an adaptation of the huge Broadway hit, was compromised by the casting of Ronald Reagan as the leading man. Despite Reagan's trying to beef his part up by inventing bits of business, Rapper believes that Eve Arden stole the film from him and his co-star, Eleanor Parker.
Rapper claimed in 1981 that he left Warners and became a freelancer due to the bad advice of his agent, who told him " . . . the movie business was booming and I could have my pick of assignments." Unfortunately, neither Rapper nor his agent forecast the downturn in the industry caused by the advent of television and the US Justice Department's order that the film studios divest themselves of their theater chains. The industry went into an economic tailspin, and Rapper's career suffered.
His first post-Warners gig was at Columbia Pictures, directing Anna Lucasta (1949). Originally a story of an African-American girl looking for acceptance from society, studio boss Harry Cohn had the girl and her family's ethnic identity changed to Polish, with narrative results that were, in Rapper's words, "pretty bizarre." Rapper wanted future Oscar-winner Susan Hayward for the girl, but Columbia cast Paulette Goddard in order to fulfill a one-picture commitment she had to the studio. Goddard got the role because she had threatened to sue Columbia if the studio didn't fulfill her contract. Rapper said that Goddard was "hopeless in drama. She couldn't match any bits of business and her reading of lines was wooden." Cast in the role of a teenager, Goddard "claimed she was 34 but the records showed it was more like 44." Thus are debacles made.
Rapper returned to Warner Bros. to helm The Glass Menagerie (1950), the first movie adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, because producer Charles Feldman requested him. Just off her Oscar win for Johnny Belinda (1948), the 36-year-old Jane Wyman was cast as the 20-something Laura to boost box-office returns. Tallulah Bankhead was hired to play Amanda Wingfield, but her drunkenness on the set on the second day of shooting led Jack Warner to fire her. Refusing to cast Miriam Hopkins "because of past differences," Warner "positively screamed when I mentioned Bette Davis." Ruth Chatterton was considered, and Ethel Barrymore, who wanted the part, was rejected as being too old. Finally, said Rapper, "that left Gertrude Lawrence, who had little camera experience and was so very jittery she'd cry every time a take was spoiled."
Commenting on the film three decades later, Rapper said, "I still like Kirk Douglas as the gentleman caller and Arthur Kennedy as Tom." The movie, considered one of the least successful adaptations of Williams' work, is barely remembered today and suffers from a bowdlerization of the original play. Williams hated the film as, against his wishes, the script implies a totally different, more upbeat ending than his play.
Of his later films, Rapper felt that they suffered, as he "missed the studio set-up." He claimed "The Brave One" (1956) as his best movie. Marjorie Morningstar (1958) was his last success at the box office, and his career tailed off in the 1960s, although he continued to direct until the end of the 1970s.
He attributed the failure of The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970) to "casting a beautiful boy [John Hansen] rather than a girl" to play Jorgensen, who rocketed to fame in the 1950s after a sex change. "That, after all, was Christine's story. She always believed she was a woman trapped inside a man's body." Born Again (1978), based on a memoir of a convicted Watergate co-conspirator who was on President Richard Nixon's staff, was a failure, as Rapper "was prevented from dramatizing the crimes of Charles Colson, only the redemption--and that made for boredom."
"Born Again" turned out to be Rapper's last film, as he reneged on his commitment to direct Sextette (1977), an exploitation film based on the joke of the elderly Mae West taking a (far younger) husband, her sixth. Rapper backed out, as he didn't have the heart for it: "Mae West was too frail-looking. She'd put her hands on her hips but there were no hips; she had faded away. However, I helped her with her line readings. So, you see, I was back to where I started--as a dialog director!"
Irving Rapper's goal late in life was to live in three separate centuries. He died on Dec. 20, 1999, aged 101, a little less than two weeks shy of fulfilling that wish.Irving Rapper (director) born 16 Jan 1898 – died 20 Dec 1999 (101years 11months +)
And another Irving. One of the last surviving directors from the Golden Age of Hollywood, directing Bette Davis in Now Voyager and The Corn is Green- Producer
- Additional Crew
Born in Brooklyn, New York on June 21, 1911, Irving Ashley Fein was found to be an excellent student and skipped several elementary school grades. His interest in acting and writing was developed during the summer months between college terms at various summer camps. After working in the publicity department of Warner Brothers, Irving jumped ship for MGM. His major fame was from working for decades as publicity agent for both Jack Benny and George Burns. He is still with us approaching the age of 100 just as his last client George Burns did. (2008)Irving Fein (producer) born 21 Jun 1911 – died 10 Aug 2012 (101years 1month +)
Our list's forth Irving. Long time agent of George Burns and Jack Benny.
**FACT**Lived 101 years and 50 days, and George Burns lived 100years and 49 days!!- Music Department
- Writer
- Composer
Composer, songwriter ("Swanee", "Tea for Two", "Crazy Rhythm", "Just a Gigolo"), author and publisher, educated at Chautauqua Mountain Institute and City College of New York. He was a stenographer aboard the Henry Ford Peace Ship during World War I. He joined ASCAP in 1920 and was a director between 1920 and 1946, and again in 1949, and he was the co-founder and a past-president of AGAC. He collaborated musically with George Gershwin, Vincent Youmans, Victor Herbert, Sigmund Romberg, Rudolf Friml, Ray Henderson, Cliff Friend, Louis Hirsch, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Joseph Meyer, Oscar Levant and Gerald Marks. His Broadway stage scores include "Greenwich Village Follies " (four editions), "Betty Lee", "Sweetheart Time", "No, No, Nanette", "Yes, Yes, Yvette", "Here's Howe", "Americana", "Ripples", "Nina Rosa", "The Wonder Bar", "Melody" and "White Horse Inn". His popular song compositions also include "Imagination", "There Ought to Be a Law Against That", "Lady Play Your Mandolin", "You Are the Song", "What, No Mickey Mouse", "Give Me a Roll on the Drum", "If I Forget You", "Hold My Hand", "My Dog Loves Your Dog", "Oh, You Nasty Man", "Oh, Susannah, Dust Off that Old Pianna", "That's What I Want for Christmas", "Animal Crackers in My Soup", "Blue Eyes", "I Canno Live Without Your Love", "Is It True What They Say About Dixie?", "Love Is Such a Cheat", "Umbriago", "I Was So Young (You Were So Beautiful), "Sixty Seconds Every Minute", "Chansonette", "What Do You Do Sunday, Mary?", "Nashville Nightingale", "I Want to Be Happy", "Too Many Rings Around Rosie", "You Can Dance With Any Girl At All", "Sometimes I'm Happy", "Gigolette", "I'm a Little Fonder of You", and "Your US Mail Gets Through" (official song, National Association of Postmasters of the U.S.).Irving Ceaser (songwriter/composer) born 04 Jul 1895 – died 17 Dec 1996 (101years 5months +)
OMG! Another Irving!- Actress
- Soundtrack
Doris Eaton was born in Norfolk, Virginia, into a show business family. The young Doris began appearing on stage with her brothers Charles and Joseph and her sisters Mary and Pearl when she was five years old. She made her Broadway debut aside her brother Charles in "Mother Carey's Chickens" in 1917. The following year, the 14-year-old Doris became a Ziegfeld Girl, performing in the "Ziegfeld Follies" of 1918 and 1920 and the "Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic" in 1919. After having served her dance apprenticeship in legendary theatrical impresario Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.'s chorus for three years, she decamped for the movies. She made her screen debut in "At the Stage Door" (1921) in support of Billie Dove.
She moved to England to appear as the lead in three films, Tell Your Children (1922), The Call of the East (1922), and The Call of the East (1922). Back in America, she made The Broadway Peacock (1922) with Pearl White and High Kickers (1923) with Jack Cooper and the Gorham Follies Girls.
Doris returned to Broadway in 1924, appearing in the musical "No Other Girl" and the plays "The Sap" and "Excess Baggage." In 1925, she co-starred with Al Jolson in the musical comedy "Big Boy." She then appeared in the comedy "Excess Baggage" in 1927, and the musical comedy "Cross My Heart" the next year. Moving to Hollywood in 1929, she began a career as a featured dancer at the Music Box Review Theater on Sunset Boulevard. It was there that she introduced the song "Singin' in the Rain." Her last appearance on Broadway in a legitimate production was in the comedy "Page Pygmalion" in 1932.
Her career as a dancer began to peter out during the Great Depression, and she became an Arthur Murray dance instructor in 1936. Relocating to the state of Michigan, she eventually became the operator of 18 Arthur Murray dance schools. Eventually, Doris retired to Oklahoma with her husband Paul Tavis, where they operated a quarter horse ranch. When they built their house in Norman, Oklahoma, Doris demanded that the house have a foyer large enough for dancing. Doris still dances in the foyer at night.
"I have my little Victrola there and I play the records and I dance the foxtrot and the waltz and the rumba, though swaying by myself."
Doris has become a regular performer at Broadway's annual AIDS benefit. People express surprise that she was a Ziegfeld Girl.
"It seems that when people find out about it, they're astonished; and possibly because I'm still walking around."
Since her husband passed away in the year 2000, Doris lets people use the ranch to board their horses. Doris jokes, "I call it the Travis Ranch Nursing Home for Horses."
She had dropped out of school to pursue her dance career, but in the 1980s, Travis went back to college and graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1992. She was named a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society while at the university.
At 101 years old, Doris was quoted as saying that dance was the primary reason for her longevity. In fact, her last stage appearance was one month short of her death at age 106.Doris Eaton (actress/dancer/Ziegfeld girl) born 14 Mar 1904 – died 11 May 2010 (106years 1month +)
Last surviving Ziegfeld Follies dancer. Danced in the 1920s and was still dancing (for charity) well passed her 100th birthday.- Lucile Zinman was born on 22 July 1903 in Yonkers, New York, USA. She was married to M. Boyd Zinman. She died on 22 December 2004.Lucile Layton Zinman (Ziegfeld dancer) 22 Jul 1903 – died 21 Dec 2004 (101years 4months +)
Lucille Zinman - nee Layton - was another Ziegfeld girl to reach her 100th birthday
** The other Ziegfeld Girl that made it to 100 years was Dorothy Raphaelson - nee Wegman (but she is not listed on IMDb so cannot be included in this list) and she died two weeks short of her 102nd birthday - Myrtle Woods was born on 14 March 1900 in Albury, New South Wales, Australia. She was an actress, known for A Woman's Tale (1991), Homicide (1964) and The Great MacArthy (1975). She was married to Woods. She died on 12 May 2001 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.Murtle Woods(Australian actress) born 14 Mar 1900 – died 12 May 2001 (101years 1months +)
Australia's own acting centenarian. Best known by Aussies for her commercials as Granny Davis for Granny Davis bread.
The first actress from Prisoner, Cell Block H to become a Centenarian. - Sylvia Davis was born on 10 April 1910 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for Stardust Memories (1980), Alice's Restaurant (1969) and The Edge of Night (1956). She died on 3 November 2010 in Englewood, New Jersey, USA.Sylvia Davis (actress) born 10 Apr 1910 – died 03 Nov 2010 (100years 6months +)
From Australia to America, from Granny Davis to Sylvia Davis. - Actor
- Soundtrack
American politician and songwriter who appeared in a number of films. Davis was born in the now-nonexistent town of Beech Springs, Louisiana, the son of sharecroppers. He and his ten siblings lived in dire poverty, but Davis paid his way through Louisiana College and Louisiana State University as a street musician. After graduate school, he taught at Dodd College for Women, supporting himself with a singing job on a local radio station. He got a chance to record one of his songs when a record talent scout heard him on a broadcast, and in 1934 his song "Nobody's Darling But Mine" was a hit. A 1931 song, "You Are My Sunshine," became a 1939 hit, a standard eventually recorded by a score of singing stars from Bing Crosby to Aretha Franklin. No longer poor, but unable to live off his songs, Davis entered politics and was elected police chief of Shreveport. He continued to record songs and occasionally acted in movies, especially B-Westerns, until in 1943 he decided to run for governor of Louisiana. Although Davis's opponent tried to use his singing background against him, it actually was a great factor in Davis's election to the post. Even after he was elected governor, he continued to record songs and played himself in a movie of his life, Louisiana (1947). During the 1950s, he made records and concert appearances, then ran again for governor again in the 1960s. He was elected again and reluctantly presided over Louisiana's difficult transition into greater racial equality. After this second term, Davis spent the rest of his career singing, recording over fifty albums. He died at 101, enormously popular in his home state and likely to be remembered less as a politician or actor than as the composer of "You Are My Sunshine," one of the most familiar American songs of all time.Jimmie Davis (actor/composer) born 11 Sep 1899 – died 05 Nov 2000 (101years 1month +)
Singer, songwriter and politician. And also another 'Davis'.- Mary Ward was born on 6 March 1915 in Fremantle, Western Australia, Australia. She was an actress, known for Blue Heelers (1994), If This Be Sin (1949) and Homicide (1964). She died on 19 July 2021 in Murrumbeena, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.Mary Ward (Australian actress) born 06 Mar 1914(100 +)
STILL LIVING - Director
- Writer
- Actor
Miguel Morayta was born on 15 August 1907 in Ciudad Real, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. He was a director and writer, known for El mártir del Calvario (1952), Vagabunda (1950) and La mujer marcada (1957). He died on 19 June 2013 in Mexico City, Mexico.Miguel Morayta(Spanish writer/director) born 15 August 1907 - died 19 Jun 2013 (105years 10months +)
Director- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Manoel de Oliveira was born on 11 December 1908 in Oporto, Portugal. He was a director and writer, known for The Cannibals (1988), I'm Going Home (2001) and Christopher Columbus, the Enigma (2007). He was married to Maria Isabel Brandão de Meneses de Almeida Carvalhais. He died on 2 April 2015 in Oporto, Portugal.Manoel de Oliveira (Portuguese director) born 11 Dec 1908 (105 +)
STILL LIVING
For the last decade he has been the oldest director and still works to this day.- Producer
- Director
- Actress
Leni Riefenstahl's show-biz experience began with an experiment: she wanted to know what it felt like to dance on the stage. Success as a dancer gave way to film acting when she attracted the attention of film director Arnold Fanck, subsequently starring in some of his mountaineering pictures. With Fanck as her mentor, Riefenstahl began directing films.
Her penchant for artistic work earned her acclaim and awards for her films across Europe. It was her work on Triumph of the Will (1935), a documentary commissioned by the Nazi government about Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, that would come back to haunt her after the atrocities of World War II. Despite her protests to the contrary, Riefenstahl was considered an intricate part of the Third Reich's propaganda machine. Condemned by the international community, she did not make another movie for over 50 years.Leni Reifenstahl (German director/producer) born 22 Aug 1902 – died 08 Sep 2003 (101years +)
German film maker. At 99, she was the oldest director to make a documentary.- Rosa Albach-Retty was born on 26 December 1874 in Hanau, Hesse, Germany. She was an actress, known for Geld auf der Straße (1930), Dreimal Hochzeit (1941) and Der Kongreß tanzt (1955). She was married to Karl Albach. She died on 26 August 1980 in Baden, Lower Austria, Austria.Rosa Albach-Retty (German actress) born 26 Dec 1874 – died 26 Aug 1980 (105years 8months)
Another German to add to this list. Grandmother of Romy Schneider. - Tonio Selwart was born on 9 June 1896 in Wartenberg, Bavaria, Germany. He was an actor, known for The Other Side of the Wind (2018), Wilson (1944) and The Hitler Gang (1944). He died on 2 November 2002 in New York, USA.Tonio Selwart (German actor) born 09 Jun 1896 – died 02 Nov 2002 (106years 4months +)
And another German. - Erwin Geschonneck was born on 27 December 1906 in Bartenstein/East Prussia (now Poland). In the Twenties, he became a member of the Communistic Party of Germany. After rise of Nazism, he emigrated to Poland, later to Latvia and Czechoslovakia. In the Soviet Union he became a member of a German theatre company. In 1938 he was arrested in Prague and was deported to different concentration camps. Finally he was evacuated from the concentration camp of Neuengamme near Hamburg to Denmark. But the boat, the Cap Arcona, was accidentally bombed by the RAF. The ship sank in the bay of Lübeck, and Geschonneck was one of only a few survivors. In 1945 he played theatre in Hamburg and had his film debut in Helmut Käutner's post-war drama 'In Jenen Tagen'. It was the famous 'Bertholt Brecht' who offered him a contract for his Berlin Ensemble. Geschonneck moved to East Berlin and became a star of the newly founded DEFA, the only production company of the German Democratic Republic.Erwin Geschonneck (German actor) born 27 Dec 1906 – died 12 Mar 2008 (101years 2months +)
Still another German. - Cinematographer
- Actor
- Director
Guzzi Lantschner was born on 12 August 1910 in Innsbruck, Austria. He was a cinematographer and actor, known for Osterskitour in Tirol (1940), Canción de la nieve (1954) and Wilde Wasser (1937). He died on 19 March 2011 in Krailling, Bavaria, Germany.Guzzi Lantschner (German cinematographer) born 12 Aug 1910 – died 19 Mar 2011(101 years 7months +)
The Germans keep coming.- Renate Brausewetter was born on 1 October 1905 in Málaga, Málaga, Andalucía, Spain. She was an actress, known for Adventures of a Ten Mark Note (1926), Menschen untereinander (1926) and Schwere Jungs - leichte Mädchen (1927). She was married to Hubert Wagner. She died on 19 August 2006 in Linz am Rhein, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.Renata Brausewetter (German actress) born 01 Oct 1905 – died 20 Aug 2006 (100years 10 months +)
This German actress lived to be 100. Her actor brother lived to be 45. - In the quest to discover "another Garbo" M.G.M. production chief Irving Thalberg and his actress wife, Norma Shearer saw a picture in a newspaper of a dancing instructor by the name of Eva Plentzner von Sharneck while on a belated honeymoon to Europe, specifically Vienna in late 1927 - early 1928. The 17 year old Miss Plentzner was signed to a contract and arrived in New York in July of 1928. She spoke only a couple of words of English, but was the beneficiary of extra publicity by the studio's press department who feared a repeat of their overlooking a potential star in the way they had done with Garbo. She was renamed Eva von Berne.
Unfortunately, the completely untrained Miss von Berne was not prepared for the requirements and pressures of movie stardom. Her greatest fault was being 20 pounds overweight, causing her debut movie opposite M.G.M.'s top male star, John Gilbert, to be delayed while considering whether to replace the 17 year old actress or not. The cast and crew liked Miss von Berne and vowed to help her during a forced recess in the filming, and have her underweight and skilled enough to resume her ingénue role. She completed "Masks of the Devil" but the damage had already been done, and while the movie was opening in theatres in the fall of 1928, by December Miss von Berne was back in Europe, ostensibly to "learn English" as stated in the studio releases.
Her reviews for "Masks of the Devil" were respectable, but, in the US no more than six months, she was sent back to Europe, where she was at least, an American movie star and was cast in a number of German films before her reputed death in 1930.
Hubert Voight, a publicist with M.G.M. erroneously released news of Miss Von Berne's death in 1930, a notice which was picked up in a number of American newspapers. In a 1980's article in the magazine "Sight and Sound" he repeated his belief that she had passed, when in fact, she was very much alive.
After 1930, Eva worked as an executive in window display for a Vienna department store. During World War II, Eva fled to Salzburg to be with her family. Eva married Helmut Krauss, a former major in the Austrian army. She had a successful career as an artist with numerous exhibitions in Austria.
In a telephone interview with German film journalist Toni Schieck in 2006, Miss von Berne said she believe it was fortunate that the world thought she was dead because she didn't have to deal with autograph hunters.
It is impossible to determine the quality of Miss von Berne's acting skills as "Masks of the Devil" is a lost film. Tragedy was no stranger to its cast though, as it included John Gilbert who was (one way or another) a casualty of sound and Alma Rubens, an actress reputed to have health issues emanating from a drug dependency.Eva von Berne (German actress) born 08 Jul 1910 – died 09 Nov 2010 (100years 4months +)
Irving Thalberg and Norma Shearer wanted her to become the next 'Garbo'. It didn't work out as hoped. Retired from movies, she was thought to have died in 1930. Actually she died in 2010! - Actress
- Soundtrack
Luise Rainer, the first thespian to win back-to-back Oscars, was born on January 12, 1910 in Dusseldorf, Germany, into a prosperous Jewish family. Her parents were Emilie (Königsberger) and Heinrich Rainer, a businessman. She took to the stage, and plied her craft on the boards in Germany. As a young actress, she was discovered by the legendary theater director Max Reinhardt and became part of his company in Vienna, Austria. "I was supposed to be very gifted, and he heard about me. He wanted me to be part of his theater," Rainer recounted in a 1997 interview. She joined Reinhardt's theatrical company in Vienna and spent years developing as an actress under his tutelage. As part of Reinhardt's company, Rainer became a popular stage actress in Berlin and Vienna in the early 1930s. Rainer was a natural talent for Reinhardt's type of staging, which required an impressionistic acting style.
Rainer, who made her screen debut as a teenager and appeared in three other German-language films in the early 1930s, terminated her European career when the Austrian Adolf Hitler consolidated his power in Germany. With his vicious anti-Semitism bringing about the Draconian Nuremberg Laws severely curtailing the rights of Germany's Jews, and efforts to expand that regime into the Sudetenland and Austria, Hitler and his Nazi government was proving a looming threat to European Jewry. Rainer had been spotted by a talent scout, who offered her a seven-year contract with the American studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The 25-year-old Rainer took the deal and emigrated to the United States.
She made her American debut in the movie Escapade (1935), replacing Myrna Loy, who was originally slated for the part. It was her luck to have William Powell as her co-star in her first Hollywood film, as he mentored her, teaching her how to act in front of the camera. Powell, whom Rainer remembers as "a dear man" and "a very fine person," lobbied MGM. boss Louis B. Mayer, reportedly telling him, "You've got to star this girl, or I'll look like an idiot."
During the making of "Escapade", Rainer met, and fell in love with, the left-wing playwright Clifford Odets, then at the height of his fame. They were married in 1937. It was not a happy union. MGM cast Rainer in support of Powell in the title role of the The Great Ziegfeld (1936), its spectacular bio-epic featuring musical numbers that recreated his "Follies" shows on Broadway. As Anna Held, Ziegfeld's common-law wife, Rainer excelled in the musical numbers, but it is for her telephone scene that she is most remembered. "The Great Ziegfeld" was a big hit and went on to win the Academy Award as Best Picture of 1936. Rainer received her first of two successive Best Actress Oscars for playing Held. The award was highly controversial at the time as she was a relative unknown and it was only her first nomination, but also because her role was so short and relatively minor that it better qualified for a supporting nomination. (While 1936 was the first year that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences honored supporting players, her studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, listed her as a lead player, then got out its block vote for her.) Compounding the controversy was the fact that Rainer beat out such better known and more respected actresses as Carole Lombard (her sole Oscar nomination) in My Man Godfrey (1936), previous Best Actress winner Norma Shearer (her fifth nomination) in Romeo and Juliet (1936), and Irene Dunne (her second of five unsuccessful nominations) in Theodora Goes Wild (1936). Some of the bitchery was directed toward Louis B. Mayer, whom non-MGM Academy members resented for his ability to manipulate Academy votes. Other critics of her first Oscar win claimed it was the result of voters being unduly impressed with the great budget ($2 million) of "The Great Ziegfeld" rather than great acting. Most observers agree that Rainer won her Oscar as the result of her moving and poignant performance in just one single scene in the picture, the famous telephone scene in which the broken-hearted Held congratulates Ziegfeld over the telephone on his upcoming marriage to Billie Burke while trying to retain her composure and her dignity. During the scene, the camera is entirely focused on Rainer, and she delivers a tour-de-force performance. Seventy years later, it remains one of the most famous scenes in movie history. With another actress playing Held, the scene could have been mawkish, but Rainer brought the pathos of the scene out and onto film. She based her interpretation of the scene on Jean Cocteau's play "La Voix Humaine". "Cocteau's play is just a telephone conversation about a woman who has lost her beloved to another woman", Rainer remembered. "That is the comparison. As it fit into the Ziegfeld story, that's how I wrote it. It's a daily happening, not just in Cocteau." In an interview held 60 years after the film's release, Rainer was dismissive of the performance. "I was never proud of anything", she said. "I just did it like everything else. To do a film - let me explain to you - it's like having a baby. You labor, you labor, you labor, and then you have it. And then it grows up and it grows away from you. But to be proud of giving birth to a baby? Proud? No, every cow can do that."
Rainer would allay any back-biting from Hollywood's bovines over her first Oscar with her performance as O-Lan in MGM producer Irving Thalberg's spectacular adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's "The Good Earth", the former Boy Wonder's final picture before his untimely death. The role won Rainer her second Best Actress Award. The success of The Good Earth (1937) was rooted in its realism, and its realism was enhanced by Rainer's acting opposite the legendary Paul Muni as her husband. When Thalberg cast Muni in the role of Wang Lung, he had to abandon any thought of casting the Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong as O-Lan as the Hays Office would not allow the hint of miscegenation, even between an actual Chinese woman and a Caucuasian actor in yellow-face drag. So, Thalberg gave Rainer the part, and she made O-Lan her own. She refused to wear a heavy makeup, and her elfin look helped her to assay a Chinese woman with results far superior to those of Myrna Loy in her Oriental vamp phase or Katharine Hepburn in Dragon Seed (1944). In the late 1990s, Rainer praised her director, Sidney Franklin, as "wonderful", and explained that she used an acting technique similar to "The Method" being pioneered by her husband's Group Theatre comrades back in New York. "I worked from inside out", she said. "It's not for me, putting on a face, or putting on makeup, or making masquerade. It has to come from inside out. I knew what I wanted to do and he let me do it." The win made Rainer the first two-time Oscar winner in an acting category and the first to win consecutive acting awards (Spencer Tracy, her distaff honoree for Captains Courageous (1937) would follow her as a consecutive acting Oscar winner the next year, and Walter Brennan, Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner for Come and Get It (1936) the year Rainer won her first, would tie them both in 1937 with his win for Kentucky (1938) and trump them with his third win for The Westerner (1940), a record subsequently tied by Ingrid Bergman, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis, and surpassed by Katharine Hepburn.)
Rainer's career soon went into free-fall and collapsed, as she became the first notable victim of the "Oscar curse", the phenomenon that has seem many a performer's career take a nose-dive after winning an Academy Award. "For my second and third pictures I won Academy Awards. Nothing worse could have happened to me", Rainer said. A non-conformist, Rainer rejected Hollywood's values of Hollywood. In the late 1990s, she said, "I came from Europe where I was with a wonderful theater group, and I worked. The only thing on my mind was to do good work. I didn't know what an Academy Award was." MGM boss Mayer, the founding force behind the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, had to force her to attend the Awards banquet to receive her Oscar. She rebelled against the studio due to the movies that MGM forced her into after "The Good Earth".
In one case, director Dorothy Arzner had been assigned by MGM producer Joseph M. Mankiewicz (whose wife, Rose Stradner had been Rainer's understudy in the Vienna State Theater) in 1937 to direct Rainer in "The Girl from Trieste", an unproduced Ferenc Molnár play about a prostitute trying to go reform herself who discovers the hypocrisies of the respectable class which she aspires to. After Thalberg's death in 1936, Mayer's lighter aesthetic began to rule the roost at MGM. Mayer genuinely believed in the goodness of women and motherhood and put women on a pedestal; he once told screenwriter Frances Marion that he never wanted to see anything produced by MGM that would embarrass his wife and two daughters.
Without the more sophisticated Thalberg at the studio to run interference, Molnar's play was rewritten so that it was no longer about a prostitute, but a slightly bitter Cinderella story with a happy ending. Retitled by Mankiewicz as The Bride Wore Red (1937), Rainer withdrew and was replaced by Joan Crawford. In a 1976 interview in "The New York Times", Arzner claimed that Rainer "had been suspended for marrying a Communist" (Clifford Odets). This is unlikely as MGM, like all Hollywood studios, had known or suspected communists on its payroll, most of whose affiliations were known by MGM vice president E.J. Mannix. (Mannix, one of whose functions was responsibility for security at the studio, once said it would have been impossible to fire them all, as "the communists" were the studio's best writers.) The studio never took action against alleged communists until an industry-wide agreement to do so was sealed at the Waldorf Conference of 1947, which was held in reaction to the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) launching a Hollywood witch hunt.
It was more likely that Rainer, fussy over her projects and wanting to use her Academy Award prominence to ensure herself better roles, withdrew on her own due to her lack of enthusiasm for the reformulated product. In the late 1990s, Rainer recalled the satisfaction of being a European stage actress. "One day we were on a big tour", she told an interviewer in the late 1990s. "We did a play by Pirandello, and Reinhardt was in the theater. I shall never forget, it was the greatest compliment I ever got, better than any Academy Award. He came to me, looked at me and said - we were never called by first names - 'Rainer, how did you do this?' It was so wonderful. 'How did you create this?' I was so startled and happy. That was my Academy Award." Rainer still is dismissive of the Academy Awards. "I can't watch the Oscars," she said. "Everybody thanking their mother, their father, their grandparents, their nurse - it's a crazy, horrible." She blames the studio and Mayer for the rapid decline in her career. "What they did with me upset me very much", she said in a 1997 interview. "I was dreaming naturally like anyone to do something very good, but after I got the two Academy Awards the studio thought, it doesn't matter what she gets. They threw all kinds of stuff on me, and I thought, no, I didn't want to be an actress."
Mayer pulled his famous emotional routines when Rainer, whom he wanted to turn into a glamorous star, would demand meatier roles. "He would cry phony tears", she recalled. Mayer had opposed her being cast as O-Lan in "The Good Earth", but Thalberg, who had a connection with MGM capo di tutti capi Nicholas Schenck, the president of MGM corporate parent Loew's, Inc., appealed to Schenck, who overrode Mayer's veto. (Mayer, who was involved in a power struggle with Thalberg before the latter's death, had opposed his filming Pearl Buck's novel. Mayer's reasoning was that American audiences wouldn't patronize movies about American farmers, so what made anyone think they'd flock to see a film about Chinese farmers, especially one with such a big budget, estimated at $2.8 million. (Upon release, the film barely broke even.) Thalberg died during the filming of "The Good Earth" (the only film of his released by MGM whose title credits bore his name, in the form of a posthumous tribute).
Rainer felt lost without her protector. She recalled that Mayer "didn't know what to do with me, and that made me so unhappy. I was on the stage with great artists, and everything was so wonderful. I was in a repertory theater, and every night I played something else." Rainer asked to play Nora in a film of Ibsen's "A Doll's House" or portray Madame Curie, but instead, Mayer - now in complete control of the studio - had her cast in The Toy Wife (1938), a movie she actually wound up liking, as she was charmed by her co-star, the urbane, intellectually and politically enlightened Melvyn Douglas. She recalls Douglas, ultimately a double-Oscar winner like herself, as her favorite leading man. "He was intelligent, and he was interested also in other things than acting."
Her problems with the culture of Hollywood, or the lack thereof, were worsening. The lack of intellectual conversation or concern with ideas by the denizens of the movie colony she was forced to work with was depressing. Hollywood was an unsophisticated place where materialism, such as the stars' preoccupation with clothes, was paramount. As she tells it, "Soon after I was there in Hollywood, for some reason I was at a luncheon with Robert Taylor sitting next to me, and I asked him, 'Now, what are your ideas or what do you want to do', and his answer was that he wanted to have 10 good suits to wear, elegant suits of all kinds, that was his idea. I practically fell under the table."
MGM teamed her with fellow Oscar-winner Tracy in Big City (1937), a movie about conflict between rival taxi drivers. The memory of the movie disgusted her. "Supposedly it wasn't a bad film, but I thought it was a bad film!" She was also cast in The Emperor's Candlesticks (1937), reteaming her with "Ziegfeld" co-star Powell, a movie she didn't like, as she couldn't understand its story. A detective tale, the script thoroughly confused Rainer, who was expected to soldier on like a good employee. Instead, she resisted.
After appearing in The Great Waltz (1938) and Dramatic School (1938), her career was virtually over by 1938. She never made another film for MGM. "I just had to get away", she said about Hollywood. "I couldn't bear this total concentration and interviews on oneself, oneself, oneself. I wanted to learn, and to live, to go all over the world, to learn by seeing things and experiencing things, and Hollywood seemed very narrow." When World War II broke out in Europe, Rainer was joined by her family, as her German-born father was also an American citizen, allowing them all to escape Hitler and the Holocaust. Even before the outbreak of war, Rainer had been very worried about the state of affairs of the world, and she could not abide the escapist trifles that MGM wanted to cast her in. When she protested, Mayer told Rainer that if she defied him, he would blackball her in Hollywood.
Disturbed by Hollywood's apathy over fascism in Europe and Asia and by labor unrest and poverty in the U.S., she decided to walk out on her contract. She and Odets returned to New York. They were divorced in 1940. "Hollywood was a very strange place", she remembered. "To me, it was like a huge hotel with a huge door, one of those rotunda doors. On one side people went in, heads high, and very soon they came out on the other side, heads hanging." Her frustration with Hollywood was so complete, she abandoned movie acting in the early 1940s, after making the World War II drama Hostages (1943) for Paramount.
She made her Broadway debut in the play "A Kiss for Cinderella", which was staged by Lee Strasberg, which opened at the Music Box Theatre on March 10, 1942 and closed April 18th after 48 performances. Rainer then worked for the war effort during World War II, appearing at war bond rallies. She went on a tour of North Africa and Italy for the Army Special Service, socializing with soldiers to build their morale, and supplying them with books. The experience changed her life, allowing her to get over the shyness she'd had all her life. It also broadened her experience, forcing her to deal with the obvious fact that there were more important things than movie acting, which had proven unfulfilling to her.
Fortunately, Rainer found happiness in a long-lived marriage with the publisher Robert Knittel, a wealthy man whom she married in 1945. The couple had a daughter and made their home mostly in Switzerland and England as Rainer essentially left acting behind, although she did do some television in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. Her retirement from the movies lasted for 53 years, until her brief comeback in The Gambler (1997), a movie based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's eponymous story. In the film, Rainer played the role of the matriarch of an aristocratic Russian family in the 1860s who is in hock due to the family members' obsession with gambling.
Toward the end of her life, Rainer lived in a luxurious flat in Eaton Square in London's Belgravia district, in a building where Vivien Leigh once lived. Blessed with a good memory, she claimed she could not remember the 1937 Academy Awards ceremony, when she won her first Oscar. She says the glamour of the event was out of sync with her life at the time, which was one of great sadness. "I married Clifford Odets. The marriage was for both of us a failure. He wanted me to be his little wife and a great actress at the same time. Somehow I could not live up to all of that."
She had intriguing offers during her long retirement. Federico Fellini had wanted Rainer for a role in La Dolce Vita (1960), but though she admired the director, she didn't like the script and turned it down. Rainer occasionally plied her craft as an actress on the stage. She made one more stab at Broadway, appearing in a 1950 production of Ibsen's "The Lady from the Sea", which was staged by Sam Wanamaker and Terese Hayden and co-starred Steven Hill, one of the founding members of Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio. The play was a flop, running just 16 performances. "I was living in America and was on the stage there - sporadically. I always lived more than I worked. Which doesn't mean that I do not love my profession, and every moment I was in it gave me great satisfaction and happiness."
Rainer had no regrets over not becoming the star she might have been. She outlived all of the legendary stars of her era, which likely is the best revenge for the loss of her career after bidding adieu to a company town she could not abide.Luise Rainer ( German actress) born 12 Jan 1910 (104 +)
STILL LIVING
And our eighth German! And the only one to win an Oscar. Actually, she won two!- Willy Sommerfeld was born on 11 May 1904 in Danzig, West Prussia, Germany [now Gdansk, Pomorskie, Poland]. He died on 19 December 2007 in Berlin, Germany.Willy Sommerfeld (German silent film pianist) born 19 May 1904 – died 17 Dec 2007 (103 years 6months +)
The list's ninth German. Must be something in the water? - Director
- Writer
- Actor
Kurt Maetzig was born on 25 January 1911 in Berlin, Germany. He was a director and writer, known for The Rabbit Is Me (1965), Marriage in the Shadows (1947) and Ernst Thälmann - Sohn seiner Klasse (1954). He was married to Yvonne Merin, Bärbel and Marion Keller. He died on 8 August 2012 in Wildkuhl, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.Kurt Maetzig (German director) born 25 Jan 1911 – died 08 Aug 2012 (101years 7months +)
A tenth German!- Actor
- Soundtrack
Mean, miserly and miserable-looking, they didn't come packaged with a more annoying and irksome bow than Charles Lane. Glimpsing even a bent smile from this unending sourpuss was extremely rare, unless one perhaps caught him in a moment of insidious glee after carrying out one of his many nefarious schemes. Certainly not a man's man on film or TV by any stretch, Lane was a character's character. An omnipresent face in hundreds of movies and TV sitcoms, the scrawny, scowling, beady-eyed, beak-nosed killjoy who usually could be found peering disdainfully over a pair of specs, brought out many a comic moment simply by dampening the spirit of his nemesis. Whether a Grinch-like rent collector, IRS agent, judge, doctor, salesman, reporter, inspector or neighbor from hell, Lane made a comfortable acting niche for himself making life wretched for someone somewhere.
He was born Charles Gerstle Levison on January 26, 1905 in San Francisco and was actually one of the last survivors of that city's famous 1906 earthquake. He started out his working-class existence selling insurance but that soon changed. After dabbling here and there in various theatre shows, he was prodded by a friend, director Irving Pichel, to consider acting as a profession. In 1928 he joined the Pasadena Playhouse company, which, at the time, had built up a solid reputation for training stage actors for the cinema. While there he performed in scores of classical and contemporary plays. He made his film debut anonymously as a hotel clerk in Smart Money (1931) starring Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney and was one of the first to join the Screen Actor's Guild. He typically performed many of his early atmospheric roles without screen credit and at a cost of $35 per day, but he always managed to seize the moment with whatever brief bit he happened to be in. People always remembered that face and raspy drone of a voice. He appeared in so many pictures (in 1933 alone he made 23 films!), that he would occasionally go out and treat himself to a movie only to find himself on screen, forgetting completely that he had done a role in the film. By 1947 the popular character actor was making $750 a week.
Among his scores of cookie-cutter crank roles, Lane was in top form as the stage manager in Twentieth Century (1934); the Internal Revenue Service agent in You Can't Take It with You (1938); the newsman in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939); the rent collector in It's a Wonderful Life (1946); the recurring role of Doc Jed Prouty, in the "Ellery Queen" film series of the 1940s, and as the draft board driver in No Time for Sergeants (1958). A minor mainstay for Frank Capra, the famed director utilized the actor's services for nine of his finest films, including a few of the aforementioned plus Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and State of the Union (1948).
Lane's career was interrupted for a time serving in the Coast Guard during WWII. In post-war years, he found TV quite welcoming, settling there as well for well over four decades. Practically every week during the 1950s and 1960s, one could find him displaying somewhere his patented "slow burn" on a popular sitcom - Topper (1953), The Real McCoys (1957), The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959), Mister Ed (1961), Bewitched (1964), Get Smart (1965), Gomer Pyle: USMC (1964), The Munsters (1964), Green Acres (1965), The Flying Nun (1967) and Maude (1972). He hassled the best sitcom stars of the day, notably Lucille Ball (an old friend from the RKO days with whom he worked multiple times), Andy Griffith and Danny Thomas. Recurring roles on Dennis the Menace (1959), The Beverly Hillbillies (1962) and Soap (1977) made him just as familiar to young and old alike. Tops on the list had to be his crusty railroad exec Homer Bedloe who periodically caused bucolic bedlam with his nefarious schemes to shut down the Hooterville Cannonball on Petticoat Junction (1963). He could also play it straightforward and serious as demonstrated by his work in The Twilight Zone (1959), Perry Mason (1957), Little House on the Prairie (1974) and L.A. Law (1986).
A benevolent gent in real life, Lane was seen less and less as time went by. One memorable role in his twilight years was as the rueful child pediatrician who chose to overlook the warning signs of child abuse in the excellent TV movie Sybil (1976). One of Lane's last on-screen roles was in the TV-movie remake of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1995) at age 90. Just before his death he was working on a documentary on his long career entitled "You Know the Face".
Cinematically speaking, perhaps the good ones do die young, for the irascible Lane lived to be 102 years old. He died peacefully at his Brentwood, California home, outliving his wife of 71 years, former actress Ruth Covell, who died in 2002. A daughter, a son and a granddaughter all survived him.Charles Lane (character actor) born 26 Jan 1905 – died 09 Jun 2007 (102years 5months +)
Prolific character actor seen in hundreds of movies and TV shows.- Herman Brix was a star shot-putter in the 1928 Olympics. After losing the lead in MGM's Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) due to a shoulder injury, he was contracted by Ashton Dearholt for his independent production of The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935), a serial and the only Tarzan film between the silents and the 1960s to present the character accurately, as a sophisticated, educated English nobleman who preferred living in the jungle and was able to speak directly with animals in their own language. He subsequently found himself typecast and confined to starring roles in other serials and character and even bit parts in poverty row features and two-reeler comedies. After starring in the Republic Pictures serial Hawk of the Wilderness (1938) as the Tarzan-like Kioga, he dropped out of films for a few years, took acting lessons, and changed his name to Bruce Bennett. He made many movies after that, gaining fame as a leading man in many Warners products. In 1960, he retired from acting and went into business, becoming sales manager of a major vending machine company, making only occasional TV guest appearances. A reclusive man, he eschewed interviews, although he did appear at one Burroughs-oriented convention in the 1970s and discussed some of his experiences during the making of his Tarzan serial. In 2001, he allowed himself to be interviewed for a slender biography by a Mike Chapman, and held signings at local bookstores, enjoying his "rediscovery" by the general public in the few years remaining before his death.Bruce Bennett (actor) born 16 May 1906 – died 24 Feb 2007 (100years 8months +)
From Olympic athelete to Tarzan the Ape Man to a movie actor who appeared alongside Joan Crawford, Humphrey Bogart, Agnes Moorehead and other big names. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Beatrice Shaw was born on 2 August 1908 in Barking, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for ITV Play of the Week (1955), The Quatermass Conclusion (1979) and The Girl from Starship Venus (1975). She died on 1 December 1995 in Colchester, Essex, England, UK.Beatrice Shaw (British actress) born 26 Mar 1893 – died 14 Oct 1993 (100years 6months +)
Born in the US and died in the US, she worked mostly in the UK, including the Waldorf Salad episode of Fawlty Towers.- Helen Shaw was born on 25 July 1897 in Michigan, USA. She was an actress, known for Parenthood (1989), Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) and Wicked Stepmother (1989). She died on 8 September 1997 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Helen Shaw (actress) born 25 Jul 1897 – died 8 Sep 1997 (100years 1month +)
Another Shaw. Was 93 when she appeared as Grandma in Parenthood opposite Steve Martin. - Actress
- Soundtrack
When Estelle saw the girl on a white horse at the circus, she then decided that she wanted to be an actress. And she was from the age of 5, to the disapproval of her father. Her mother had her train with the Liverpool Repertory Company, and Estelle performed in many plays and many roles in the West End. In 1916, she made her debut on Broadway and worked with a number of acclaimed stage actors. Estelle spent the rest of the 'teens and '20s working in plays on both sides of the Atlantic. Being an actor in the theater, Estelle was not about to be one of those who acted in flicks and held out for a very long time. In fact, besides a small role in a few English films in the early 1930s, her real debut was Quality Street (1937), a picture that she undertook when she was in her 50s. Anyway, that was enough as it would be almost two decades before she would return to the big screen. She appeared on the stage in the plays "The Merry Wives of Windsor," "Ten Little Indians," and "The Importance of Being Earnest." But, in 1955, Estelle did return to the movies as Leslie Caron's "fairy godmother" in The Glass Slipper (1955). Estelle would spend the next 10 years appearing in films, often cast as eccentric, frail old ladies, some of whom could be deadly. Not to be left out, Estelle also would work on Television, doing guest spots in a number of shows. At 84, Estelle played a woman who was enamored by crooked Zero Mostel in the comedy The Producers (1967). Her last film would be the detective spoof Murder by Death (1976). When Estelle was asked, on the occasion of her 100th birthday, how she felt to have lived so long, she replied, "How rude of you to remind me!".Estelle Winwood (actress) born 24 Jan 1883 – died 20 June 1984 (101years 4months +)
Was 96 when she appeared in Quincy M.E. following a career spanning 6 decades. At the time of her death she was the all-time oldest member of the Screen Actor's Guild.- Composer
- Music Department
A prodigy, Rosa Rio began playing the piano at age four, taking lessons at eight, & at nine was invited to play the piano at a silent movie theatre. Her music education included stints at Oberlin College, & a course of study in film accompaniment at the Eastman School of Music. Her career as a theatre organist proceeded through posts at theaters in Syracuse, Loew's houses around NYC, tours through the Saenger chain of southeastern theatres, the Scranton Paramount, Brooklyn Fox Theatre, RKO Albee, & the Brooklyn Paramount.
Moving into radio, she became a staff organist at NBC radio, accompanying performances during the "golden age" of radio. During this time, she was heard playing on such shows ast "The Shadow", "Lorenzo Jones", "My True Story" and "Deadline Drama".
Television became an important new medium, & she played the organ for many network series, including "The Today Show", "The Guiding Light", & an early Saturday morning series which encouraged children to draw, "Cartoon TeleTales".
In the 1980s, she scored & accompanied on the Hammond organ around 375 silent films released on video by the Video Yesteryear label. Besides these "regular gigs", she continued to perform as a concert artist, had arrangements of popular music published, taught music, & released record albums. She is frequently found as a guest at "golden age of radio" conventions & as an instructor at theatre organ seminars. Rosa Rio continues to compose & play, most notably accompanying silent films on the Wurlitzer at the Tampa Theatre in Tampa, Florida.Rosa Rio (composer) born 03 Jun 1902 – died 13 May 2010 (107years 11months +)
Musician who started working at age 9 and was still playing the organ at age 106!- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Camera and Electrical Department
Carla Laemmle was born on 20 October 1909 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for The Adventures of Frank Merriwell (1936), King of Jazz (1930) and The Gate Crasher (1928). She died on 12 June 2014 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Carla Laemmle (actress) born 20 Oct 1909 – died 12 June 2014 (104years 7months +)
Niece of Universal Pictures founder Carl Laemmle. Took a 62 year break between movies. And for a time before her death was Hollywood's oldest working actress.- Music Department
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Petite, auburn-haired, Kansas-born beauty Marjorie Lane (her real name) is best remembered as the singing voice of dancing icon Eleanor Powell in late 1930s Hollywood, but she actually garnered more personal attention at the time as a popular singing attraction in Los Angeles niteries. While she eventually gave up her modest career to become Mrs. Brian Donlevy and a mother, Marjorie still deserves more than just a footnote in the Hollywood annals.
Born on February 21, 1912 in Manhattan, Kansas, Marjorie was the daughter of Charles W. Lane, head of a Santa Fe public relations department. With no prior vocal training, she arrived in Hollywood with her mother in the mid-1930s and first earned notice at the popular Trocadero Club on Sunset Boulevard. While there she caught the eye of none other than Louis B. Mayer who quickly signed her to an MGM contract. While working for MGM, Marjorie continued her busy schedule of performing studio assignments by day and showing up nightly at the Trocadero. In 1935 she recorded "What a Wonderful World" for Tommy Dorsey's outfit.
Mayer primarily signed up the pretty hopeful for her voice. One of her first jobs was to dub the voice of Isabel Jewell in Shadow of Doubt (1935). However, once she provided the singing voice for dancing legend Eleanor Powell in Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935) on the songs "You Are My Lucky Star" and "Sing Before Breakfast," Marjorie found a Marni Nixon-like cushy spot that would provide steady employment for the next few years--even if she was more heard than seen. The singer followed Powell into her next picture Born to Dance (1936) and dubbed the songs "Easy to Love," "Rap Tap on Wood" and "Hey Babe Hey" for the dancer.
Actor Brian Donlevy met Marjorie in 1935 while she was performing at the Trocadero. They married at Christmas time in 1936, and settled in Beverly Hills. Marjorie continued her behind-the-camera singing career by once again giving good voice to Eleanor Powell in the films Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937), covering the songs "Yours and Mine," "I'm Feelin' Like a Million" and "Follow in My Footsteps," and Rosalie (1937), with "I've Got a Strange New Rhythm in My Heart".
Donlevy's cinematic career on the rise during this time, with superior work in Beau Geste (1939) (Oscar nomination), The Great McGinty (1940), The Glass Key (1942) and Wake Island (1942). As a result, Marjorie's career quickly took a back seat. Daughter Judith Ann Donlevy was born on February 20, 1943. The marriage fell apart, however, and the couple divorced in 1947.
Instead of returning after her divorce, Marjorie withdrew from the limelight completely. Her second marriage in 1952 to a Los Angeles-area doctor also ended in divorce. Her third marriage to Sumner Bates, an ice cream manufacturer, was by far the happiest and only ended with his death. At age 99, Marjorie continues to live healthily in Santa Monica, California.Marjorie Lane (actress) born 21 Feb 1912 - died 02 Oct 1912 (100 years 5months +)
She and husband Brian Donlevy were witnesses to the Las Vegas elopement of William Holden and Brenda Marshall- A pretty, diminutive (4'11") actress of the silent and early sound era, Barbara Cloutman (later Kent) was born in Gadsby, Alberta, Canada on December 16, 1907. Upon graduating from Hollywood High School in 1925, Kent won the Miss Hollywood Pageant, and set her sights on a career in the movies. She was 18 when Universal Studios signed her; she made her film debut in the western Prowlers of the Night (1926). That same year, Kent established herself with the classic romantic melodrama Flesh and the Devil (1926), in which she played the rival to femme fatale Greta Garbo's affections for John Gilbert. She was loaned to MGM for that movie. Kent was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1927 as a result of the popularity of her film No Man's Law (1927), in which she had a nude scene.
Kent subsequently appeared opposite Richard Barthelmess in The Drop Kick (1927) and had a starring role in another silent classic, Lonesome (1928), before smoothly making the transition to talkies. She played Harold Lloyd's love interest in his first two sound movies, Welcome Danger (1929) and Feet First (1930). Kent had supporting parts opposite Gloria Swanson in Indiscreet (1931) and Marie Dressler in Emma (1932), as well as playing the role of the aunt in Oliver Twist (1933) (notable since the character is often omitted from dramatizations of the novel).
In 1933, Kent took a year-long hiatus from acting so that her new husband, talent agent Harry E. Edington, could groom her for what he intended to be a high-profile return. Unfortunately, Kent's popularity had declined by the time she did return. She made three more films between 1935 and 1941, before retiring from the screen.
Edington died in 1949, and Kent remarried in 1954, to Jack Monroe, an engineer. They settled in Palm Desert, California, where Kent remained after Monroe's death. Her retirement was long and peaceful; she passed away on October 13, 2011 at the age of 103.Barbara Kent (actress) born 16 Dec 1907 – died 13 Oct 2011(103years 7months +)
Leading actress who retired from Hollywood 76 years prior to her death. - Bradbury Foote was born on 5 April 1894 in Fairfield, Iowa, USA. He was a writer, known for Homicide for Three (1948), Prisoners in Petticoats (1950) and The Bride Wore Red (1937). He died on 14 December 1995 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Bradbury Foote (screenwriter) born 05 Apr 1894 – died 14 Dec 1995 (101years 8months +)
The first of this list's writers. - Tullio Pinelli was born on 24 June 1908 in Turin, Piedmont, Italy. He was a writer, known for La Dolce Vita (1960), The Road (1954) and 8½ (1963). He was married to Madeleine Lebeau. He died on 7 March 2009 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.Tullio Pinelli (Italian writer) born 24 Jun 1908 - died 07 Mar 2009 (100years 8months +)
Nominated for four Oscars in the writing category. - Writer
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Oscar Brodney was born on 18 February 1907 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for Harvey (1950), The Glenn Miller Story (1954) and The Gal Who Took the West (1949). He died on 12 February 2008 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.Oscar Brodney (screenwriter) born 18 Feb 1907 - died 12 Feb 2008 (100years 11months +)
Another Oscar nominated writer to have reached 100 years of age.- Writer
- Producer
Aleen Leslie was born on 5 February 1908 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. She was a writer and producer, known for Affectionately Yours (1941), It Comes Up Love (1943) and Rosie the Riveter (1944). She was married to Jacques Leslie. She died on 2 February 2010 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.Aleen Leslie (screenwriter) born 05 Feb 1908 – died 02 Feb 2010 (101years 11months +)- Lester Ziffren was born on 30 April 1906 in Rock Island, Illinois, USA. He was a writer, known for Sharpshooters (1938), Charlie Chan in Panama (1940) and Charter Pilot (1940). He was married to Edythe L. Wurtzel. He died on 12 November 2007 in New York City, New York, USA.Lester Ziffren (screenwriter) born 30 April 1906 – died 12 Nov 2007 (101years 6months +)
- Writer
- Producer
Erna Lazarus was born on 16 June 1903 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. She was a writer and producer, known for Atlantic Flight (1937), Meet Me After the Show (1951) and Cracked Nuts (1941). She died on 19 February 2006 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.Erna Lazarus(writer) born 16 June 1903 – died 19 Feb 2006 (102years 8months +)
Was an associate to the founding members of the Screen Writers Guild West as well as a charter member of what is now known as the Interguild Federal Credit Union.- Writer
- Director
- Additional Crew
Legendary Broadway writer/producer/director George Abbott was born in 1887 in Forestville, New York. His father was mayor of Salamanca, New York, for two terms. In 1898 his family moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Abbott attended Kearney Military Academy. The family returned to New York, where Abbott attended Hamburg High School, graduating in 1907, and the University of Rochester (BA degree in 1911). He wrote the play "Perfectly Harmless" for University Dramatic Club. He attended Harvard University from 1911-1912, studying play writing under George Pierce Baker, and wrote "The Head of the Family" for Harvard Dramatic Club. In 1912 he won $100 in a play contest sponsored by the Bijou Theatre in Boston, Massachusetts, for "The Man in the Manhole", and worked at the Bijou for a year as assistant stage manager. He made his Broadway debut as an actor in 1913 in "The Misleading Lady" (as Babe Merrill, a drunken student), followed by "The Yeoman of the Guard" (1915), "The Queen's Enemies" (1916), "Daddies" (1918), "The Broken Wing" (1920), "Dulcy" (on tour) (1921), "Zander the Great" (1923), "White Desert" (1923), "Hell-Bent for Heaven" (1924), "Lazybones" (1924), "Processional" (1925) and "Cowboy Crazy" (1926). From that point he concentrated on writing and directing, with "The Fall Guy" (his Broadway's debut, 1925), "Three Men on a Horse" (1935), "Jumbo" (1935), "On Your Toes" (1936), "The Boys from Syracuse" (1938), "Too Many Girls" (1939), "Pal Joey" (1940), "Best Foot Forward" (1941), "On the Town" (1944), "High Buttom Shoes" (1947), "Where's Charley?" (1948), "Call Me Madam" (1950), "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" (1951), "Wonderful Town" (1953), "The Pajama Game" (1954), "Damn Yankees" (1955), "New Girl Town" (1957), "Fiorello!" (1959), "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Forum" (1962), "Flora, the Red Menace" (1965; Liza Minnelli's Broadway debut).
He won five Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize (for "Fiorello!"). He was nominated for an Oscar for writing All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). His daughter, Judith Abbott, is a stage actress/director and was married (1946-49) to Tom Ewell.George Abbott (writer/director/producer) born 25 June 1887 - died 31 Jan 1995 (107years 7months +)
The most famous writer, amongst other things that he did, to join the centenarian club. Wrote All Quiet on the Western Front and won an Oscar. Fellow centenarian-to-be Arthur Gardner briefly appeared in the film.- Frederica Sagor Maas was born in America, the youngest daughter of Russian immigrants. Feeling no great desire to complete her course in journalism at Columbia University, New York, she found film an exciting new artistic medium, and was hired by Universal Studios as a story editor, and later MGM as a fully fledged screenwriter. Thus began a bumpy life in the film industry. Maas went from rubbing shoulders with stars such as Clara Bow, Norma Shearer, and Joan Crawford and being at the top of her game with hits like The Plastic Age (1925) to watching several ideas and stories being robbed outright by unscrupulous insiders, to watching dear friends lose their careers in the McCarthy era, and eventually leaving the motion picture industry in the 1950s after a series of crushing disappointments. She married fellow writer and producer Ernest Maas in 1927, and honoured his commitments to the industry long after she realised it would take from them far more than they would take from it. She recounted these adventures in her clear-eyed, frank autobiography, published in 1999 - when she was 99! They say that history is written by the winners, but her story proves that the tales of the also rans can be just as fascinating.Frederica Sagor Maas (screenwriter) born 06 Jul 1900 - died 05 Jan 2012 (111 years 5months+)
Wrote for many of the biggest stars of the 20s and 30s and outlived them all. - Actress
Mabel Richardson was born on 27 July 1890 in London, England, UK. She was an actress. She was married to John J. Richardson. She died on 15 March 2001 in Long Beach, California, USA.Mabel Richardson(Hollywood extra) born 1891 – died 2001 (110 years)
The only other known American supercentenarian. Was in more movies than is listed in IMDb.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Stickney, who was born in Dickinson, North Dakota, studied acting in Minneapolis, after which she spent several years in summer stock and vaudeville. Her father, Victor Hugo Stickney, was a doctor who made house calls on horseback; he was among the first 10 elected to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.
She attended the North Western Dramatic School in Minneapolis, and was one of the four singer/dancer "Southern Belles" in vaudeville. Her initial failure to obtain acting roles in New York in the 1920s led her to write a poem, "You're Not the Type", published in Liberty magazine. Her 1926 Broadway debut was a bit part in "The Squall", after which she often played character roles as an eccentric.
She created the role of Mollie Molloy (who jumps out of the window) in "The Front Page." Other plays included "Chicago," "Another Language," and "On Borrowed Time." "Life With Father," written by her husband Howard Lindsay, was turned down by everyone (including Lunt and Fontanne), so she and Lindsay played the parts in summer stock, bringing it finally to Broadway's Empire Theater on November 8, 1939. It closed seven years and 3,224 performances later, still the longest running non-musical on Broadway. When the Empire was demolished, she and Lindsay put two salvaged orchestra seats in their East Side townhouse; she died there, aged 101.Dorothy Stickney (stage & screen actress) born 21 Jun 1896 – died 02 Jun 1998 (101years 11months +)
Had a long Broadway career, but still manged to get herself in movies over several years, including opposite Barry Fitzgerald in the Bette Davis/Ernest Borgnine vehicle, The Catered Affair.- Dorothy Young was born on 3 May 1907 in Otisville, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for E! Mysteries & Scandals (1998), 100 Years of Dorothy Young (2007) and Biography (1987). She was married to Gilbert Kiamie and Robert Perkins. She died on 20 March 2011 in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, USA.Dorothy Young (Assistant to Harry Houdini) born 03 May 1907 – died 20 Mar 2011 (103years 10months +)
The last surviving member of magician Harry Houdini's touring show and this list's second Dorothy. - Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
Frantisek Lederer was born on November 6th, 1899, in Czechoslovakia. His father was a leather merchant, and young Frantisek began his working life as a department store delivery boy in Prague. He fell in love with acting from a young age, and was soon on stage touring Moravia and then all over Central Europe with people like Peter Lorre.
Lederer was easily lured into film by German actress Henny Porten and her producer husband. And it wasn't long before he was starring in the legendary German silent movie Pandora's Box (1929).
Whilst Lederer, who was using the German name of Franz, shifted from silents to talkies easily and was fast becoming one of Germany's top stars, he hadn't yet learned to speak any English.
By 1934, Lederer, (now using Francis), had begun working in America. And he was getting top billing too. Irving Thalberg had planned to make Lederer "the biggest star in Hollywood" but Thalberg's untimely death put a stop to that. But Lederer continued successfully in film and TV for many years.
After two brief marriages his third lasted 59 years. He invested in property well and made a fortune in the Canoga Park, California area. He founded the National Academy of Performing Arts on which his close friend Joan Crawford was on the Advisory Board. He loved to teach.
Lederer was still teaching the week before he died in 2000, aged 100 years.Francis Lederer (actor) born 06 Nov 1899 – died 25 May 2000 (100years 6months +)
Another European who was destined for great heights with the help of Irving Thalberg, although it didn't quite work. Yet, Lederer worked constantly and became very wealthy, founding the National Academy of Performing Arts.- Red Wing was born on February 13, 1884 on the Winnebago Reservation, Nebraska, USA as Lillian St. Cyr. Her parents were Julia De Cora (Winnebago) and Mitchell St. Cyr (French Canadian and Sauk). She was graduated in 1902 from the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. Red Wing was an actress known for her feature role in one of Hollywood's first feature Westerns The Squaw Man (1914). She had previously acted in many short films for Biograph, Bison and Pathe. She was married to James Young Deer (aka James Young Johnson), a producer and director. She retired from acting in the 1920s and died on March 13, 1974 in New York City, New York, USA.Red Wing (American Indian silent screen actress) born 13 Feb 1873 – died 13 Mar 1974 (101years 1month)
Alhough born Lillian St. Cyr she was an American Indian born on an Indian Reservation but only appeared in movies, mostly shorts, between 1908 to 1921. - Moy Ming's life is something that a Hollywood movie couldn't dream up. He immigrated to the United States in 1876. There was not much work for Chinese workers back then, so Ming became a craftsman, a professional occupation he later taught his son.
While trying to find work one day Ming was seen by prolific director D.W. Griffith who saw Ming's unique appearance and demanded that he appear in his movie Broken Blossoms. Ming took great pride in this role and frequently cited it as one of the first character roles played by a Chinese actor in an American film. However, Ming knew he could not find steady work in California so he went to Chicago and opened up an importing business.
Since he did not resume his acting career until he retired from his business in 1931, Ming was never burdened with trying to make a living as an actor. Ming just enjoyed working in films and referred to it as fun. While he managed to appear in various films including The Good Earth and numerous Charlie Chan films, it wasn't until 1945 when at the age of 82, he achieved one of his biggest dreams when he obtained American citizenship. Ming eventually retired from films after his 90th birthday and for his 100th birthday, he received a telegram from President John F. Kennedy congratulating him on his milestone.Moy Ming (Chinese born Hollywood bit player) born 10 Jan 1863 – died 16 Aug 1964 (101years 7months +)
From Red Wing to Moy Ming, Ming was already in his 90s and at the end of his career when he played opposite Humphrey Bogart at the very beginning of The Left Hand of God. - Art Department
- Animation Department
- Additional Crew
Tyrus Wong was born on 25 October 1910 in Taishan, Guangdong Province, China. He is known for Bambi (1942), How to Live Forever (2009) and When the World Breaks (2010). He was married to Ruth Ng Kim. He died on 30 December 2016 in Sunland, California, USA.Tyrus Wong (illustrator) born 25 Oct 1910 (102 +) STILL LIVING
From Wing to Ming to Wong. Born in China he worked for decades at Disney.- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Production Manager
Run Run Shaw was born in Shanghai, China on October 4, 1907. He went into the filming industry with his brother, Runme Shaw, and established the Shaw Organization in 1926 and the Shaw Studios (formerly South Seas Film studio) in 1930. In 1967, Shaw established the famous Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) station in Hong Kong, and it grew into a multi-billion dollar TV empire. TVB set the stage for numerous television sitcoms, drama series, documentaries and singing performances, as well as "Enjoy Yourself Tonight," a variety show similar to "Saturday Night Live."
Shaw owns many businesses throughout the world, including Macy's and Canada's Shaw Tower at Cathedral Place. Throughout the years, Shaw has donated billions of dollars to charities, schools and hospitals. As a result, many Hong Kong buildings were named after him.
Shaw himself has also made regular appearances in TV shows and programs from TVB, including their Chinese New Year celebration programs. During these programs, Shaw would often lead an "awakening" ceremony that precedes the famous Chinese Lion Dance. Shaw has continued to lead this tradition throughout the years.Sir Run Run Shaw(producer)born 04 Oct 1907 – died 07 Jan 2014 (106years 3months+)
This list's third 'Shaw' and third Chinese but only billionaire.- Nikolai Annenkov, one of Russian theatre's most eloquent voices who was a descendant of liberated peasants, was a leading actor of Maly Theatre and teacher of many film stars.
He was born Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kokin on September 21, 1899, in the village of Inzhaviono, Tambov province, Russian Empire. His grandfather was a liberated Russian peasant who started his own farming business. His father, named Aleksandr Ivanovich Kokin, became a prosperous farmer and trader. His mother, named Anna Ivanovna Kokina (nee Kazakina), was a homemaker and raised six children. From 1910-1917 he studied at Tambov Gymnasium, then at Moscow Institute of Communications. From 1919-1922 he served in Cavalry of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. From 1922-1924 he studied at Shchepkin School of Acting at Maly Theatre in Moscow.
From 1922-1999 Annenkov was a permanent member of the legendary troupe at Maly Academic Theatre in Moscow. There he played over 200 roles on stage. He began his acting career as a stage partner of Maria Ermolova. He worked on stage with such actors as Yelena Gogoleva, A. Yablochkina, Varvara Massalitinova, Vsevolod Aksyonov, Yevdokiya Turchaninova, Vera Pashennaya, Olga Sadovskaya, Elina Bystritskaya, Rufina Nifontova, Boris Babochkin, Mikhail Zharov, Igor Ilyinsky, Yuriy Solomin, and many other notable Russian actors.
Nikolai Annenkov was famous for his special voice and an authentic, eloquent Russian speech. His voice was loved by millions of radio listeners for his radio-readings from classic literature. His eloquent narration for the 24-hour-long documentary about the art collection and history of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg won him numerous awards. Annenkov's stage performances were admired by such directors as Vsevolod Meyerhold, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, and Aleksandr Tairov, as well as by critics and public across Russia.
Annenkov celebrated his 100th birthday on stage of Maly Theatre in Moscow. His birthday party was attended by many celebrities, political and cultural figures of Russia. He was awarded three State Prizes of the USSR and Russia, and was designated People's Artist of the USSR (1960). From 1946-1999 he taught at Shchepkin School of Maly Theatre. There his students were such actors as Oleg Dal, Viktor Pavlov, Georgi Obolensky, Mikhail Kononov, Vitali Solomin, and many other notable Russian actors.
Nikolai Annenkov passed away on September 30, 1999, at the age of 100, and was laid to rest in Novodevichi Convent Cemetery in Moscow, Russia.
"Russian is one of the best languages to convey the most subtle motions of soul", said Nikolai Annenkov.Nikolai Annenkov (Russian stage and occasional film actor) born 21 Sep 1899 – died 30 Sep 1999 (100 years +)
Just makes it onto this list as he only lived one week passed his 100th birthday. - Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Hal Roach was born in 1892 in Elmira, New York. After working as a mule skinner, wrangler and gold prospector, among other things, he wound up in Hollywood and began picking up jobs as an extra in comedies, where he met comedian Harold Lloyd in 1913 in San Diego. By all accounts, including his own, he was a terrible actor, but he saw a future in the movie business and in Harold Lloyd. Roach came into a small inheritance and began producing, directing and writing a series of short film comedies, under the banner of Phun Philms (soon changed to Rolin, which lasted until 1922), starring Lloyd in early 1915. Initially these were abysmal, but with tremendous effort, the quality improved enough to be nominally financed and distributed by Pathe, which purchased Roach's product by the exposed foot of film. The Roach/Lloyd team morphed through two characters. The first, nominally tagged as "Will E. Work", proved hopeless; the second, "Lonesome Luke," an unabashed imitation of Charles Chaplin, proved more successful with each new release. Lloyd's increasing dissatisfaction with the Chaplin clone character irritated Roach to no end, and the two men engaged in a series of battles, walkouts and reconciliations. Ultimately Lloyd abandoned the character completely in 1917, creating his now-famous "Glasses" character, which met with even greater box-office success, much to the relief of Roach and Pathe. This new character hit a nerve with the post-war public as both the antithesis and complement to Chaplin, capturing the can-do optimism of the age. This enabled Roach to renegotiate the deal with Pathe and start his own production company, putting his little studio on a firm financial foundation. Hal Roach Productions became a unique entity in Hollywood. It operated as a sort of paternalistic boutique studio, releasing a surprising number of wildly popular shorts series and a handful of features. Quality was seldom compromised and his employees were treated as his most valuable asset.
Roach's relationship with his biggest earner was increasingly acrimonious after 1920 (among other things, Lloyd would bristle at Roach's demands to appear at the studio daily regardless of his production schedule). After achieving enormous success with features (interestingly, his only real feature flop of the 1930s was with General Spanky (1936), a very poorly conceived vehicle for the property), Lloyd had achieved superstar status by the standards of "The Roaring Twenties" and wanted his independence. The two men severed ties, with Roach retaining re-issue rights for Lloyd's shorts for the remainder of the decade. While both men built their careers together, it was Lloyd who first recognized his need for creative freedom, no longer needing Roach's financial support. This realization irked Roach, and from this point forward he found it difficult, if not impossible, to offer unadulterated praise for his former friend and star (while Lloyd himself was far more generous in his later praise of Roach, he, too, could be critical, if more accurate, in his recollections). Lloyd went on to much greater financial success at Paramount.
Despite facing the prospect of losing his biggest earner, Roach was already preoccupied with building his kiddie comedy series, Our Gang, which became an immediate hit with the public. By the time he turned 25 in 1917, Roach was wealthy and increasingly spending time away from his studio. He traveled extensively across Europe. By the early 1920s he had eclipsed Mack Sennett as the "King of Comedy" and created many of the most memorable comic series of all time. These included the team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Charley Chase, Edgar Kennedy, 'Snub' Pollard and especially the long-running Our Gang series (AKA "The Little Rascals" in TV distribution). Pathe, which distributed his films, shut down its U.S. operations after its domestic representative, Paul Brunet, returned to France in 1927. But Roach was able to secure an even better deal with MGM (his key competitor, Mack Sennett, was also distributed by Pathe, but he was unable to land a deal, ultimately declaring bankruptcy in 1933). For the next eleven years Roach shored up MGM's bottom line, although the deal was probably more beneficial to Roach. In the mid-'30s Roach became inexplicably enamored of 'Benito Mussolini', and sought to secure a business alliance with the fascist dictator's recently completed film complex, Cinecitta. After Roach asked for (and received) assurances from Mussolini that Italy wasn't about to seek sanctions against the Jews, the two men formed RAM ("Roach And Mussolini") Productions, a move that appalled the powers at MGM parent company, Leow's Inc. These events coincided with Roach selling off "Our Gang" to MGM and committing himself solely to feature film production. In September 1937, Il Duce's son, Vittorio Mussolini, visited Hollywood and Roach's studio threw a lavish party celebrating his 21st birthday. Soon afterward the Italian government took on an increasingly anti-Semitic stance and, in retribution, Leow's chairman Nicholas Schenck canceled his distribution deal. Roach signed an adequate deal with United Artists in May 1938 and redeemed his previous record of feature misfires with a string of big hits: Topper (1937) (and its lesser sequels), the prestigious Of Mice and Men (1939) and, most significantly, One Million B.C. (1940), which became the most profitable movie of the year. Despite the nearly unanimous condemnation by his industry peers, Roach stubbornly refused to re-examine his attitudes over his dealings with Mussolini, even in the aftermath of World War II (he proudly displayed an autographed portrait of the dictator in his home up until his death). His tried-and-true formula for success was tested by audience demands for longer feature-length productions, and by the early 1940s he was forced to try his hand at making low-budget, full-length screwball comedies, musicals and dramas, although he still kept turning out extended two-reel-plus comedies, which he tagged as "streamliners"; they failed to catch on with post-war audiences. By the 1950s he was producing mainly for television (My Little Margie (1952), Blondie (1957) and The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna (1956), for example). His willingness to delve into TV production flew in the face of most of the major Hollywood studios of the day. He made a stab at retirement but his son, Hal Roach Jr., proved an inept businessman and drove the studio to the brink of bankruptcy by 1959. Roach returned and focused on facilities leasing and managing the TV rights of his film catalog.
In 1983 his company developed the first successful digital colorization process. Roach then became a producer for many TV series on the Disney Channel, and his company still produces most of their films and videos. He died peacefully just shy of his 101st birthday, telling stories right up until the end.Hal Roach (producer) born 14 Jan 1892 - died 02 Nov 1992 (100years 9months +)
One of the most successful producers of all time in Hollywood.- Additional Crew
- Producer
- Actor
Adolph Zukor was a poor Hungarian immigrant when he arrived in the United States in 1889. He tried his hand in the fur trade (starting as a sweeper for $2 a week pay) and proved his entrepreneurial acumen by steady advancement, eventually setting up successful businesses in New York and Chicago. By the time he reached thirty, he had already amassed a considerable personal fortune. As early as 1903, Zukor astutely forecast the prospective financial rewards to be made from the burgeoning celluloid medium. Within a decade, he became heavily involved in the independent production of 'flickers', setting up penny arcades with nickelodeons and shooting galleries. In partnership with Marcus Loew, Zukor soon operated a major chain of cinemas. In 1912, he acquired the American rights to a popular French four-reel feature film, Les amours de la reine Élisabeth (1912), starring Sarah Bernhardt. The picture premiered at New York's Lyceum Theatre and its inevitable box office success led Zukor to challenge the notion -- commonly held by thespians of the period -- that motion pictures were inferior to the stage and were 'beneath' stage actors. In short order, he succeeded in persuading important Broadway-based stars like Minnie Maddern Fiske and James K. Hackett to join his Famous Players Film Company (set up in partnership with Loew Enterprises and veteran impresario Daniel Frohman). Other big names soon followed: Marie Doro, Pauline Frederick, Henry Ainley, Florence Reed, to name but a few. The undisputed star on the Famous Players roster, however, was Mary Pickford -- signed for two years in August 1916.
Four days after Pickford signed her contract, Zukor inaugurated the forthcoming wave of Hollywood mergers by combining his interests with those of pioneer producer Jesse L. Lasky to create Famous Players-Lasky. Several other companies -- Morosco, Bosworth and Pallas -- were also acquired. The distribution chain Paramount Pictures Corporation, jointly created by Zukor and Lasky in 1914, served to ensure nationwide distribution (more than a hundred additional cinemas were purchased near the end of the decade, including prestige venues such as the Rialto and Rivoli on Broadway). By 1919, Zukor effectively dominated the film industry in America. At least half of the major stars in the business were on his payroll. Realart Pictures Corporation was added to the mix as an outlet for second features while the A-grade output was released through Artcraft. Two production facilities were in place, one in Hollywood, the other, Astoria Studios, in New York. A partnership between Zukor and newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst also resulted in the formation of Cosmopolitan Productions (as a vehicle for films starring Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies). In 1924, Zukor's theatres began to proliferate even in Europe with the opening of the Paris Paramount and the London Plaza. Zukor further cemented this preeminent position in the industry by promoting the practice of 'block-booking'. This was a way of coercing independent theatre owners who wished to exhibit the films of a bankable box office star to also take a package -- sight unseen -- which was bound to include much of the lesser Realart product.
Between 1920 and 1923, Paramount averaged an annual profit of $4.5 million. By 1930, that figure had risen to $18.4 million. Wile this was largely the result of clever marketing and effective distribution, Zukor's shrewd, multifarious financial machinations had also contributed greatly to that success. He was not particularly concerned with film making itself, other than the monetary aspects (a long-standing dispute between Zukor and Cecil B. DeMille over budgets and salary demands led to Paramount's premier director departing the company in 1925). The artistic impetus for Paramount's rise to preeminence in the 20's was provided by the likes of Lasky and the creative genius of B.P. Schulberg (an independent producer with a keen eye for talent, hired in 1926 to head the West Coast studios as vice president in charge of production). Zukor, conversely, rarely left New York (except for a brief visit West in 1936 to help restructure the company).
In 1932, Paramount went bankrupt and declared a $ 15.8 million deficit. Chiefly to blame for this decline was an over-expansion propelled by Zukor himself, in particular the acquisition of the Publix theatre chain which had been bought with Paramount stock -- stock rendered all but worthless after the Wall Street Crash. Heads rolled, including those of Schulberg, sales chief Sidney Kent, and, ultimately, Lasky. Zukor, the consummate survivor, remained in place as company president until 1936, thereafter holding the position of chairman of the board and chairman emeritus until his death at the extraordinary age of 103. He went on to preside over a revitalised and profitable organisation (though no longer the industry leader it had been the 1920's -- a mantle now held by MGM). During the 1940's, Paramount showed record profits ($39.2 million in 1946)), a trend which continued through the 50's.
Zukor was described as mild-mannered, lean and aquiline in appearance, a reserved man who did not make friends easily. He also had a reputation for ruthlessness, which people like Samuel Goldwyn and Lewis J. Selznick could certainly attest to. Above all, he was a shrewd financier, never more than a self-proclaimed merchant with a 'calculated vision' who 'looked ahead a little and gambled a lot'.Adolph Zukor (President Paramount Pictures) born 07 Jan 1873 – died 10 Jun 1976 (103years 5months +)
Founder of Paramount Pictures and Chairman until his death at 103.- Miriam Seegar was born on September 1, 1907, to Frank and Carrie (née Wall) Seegar, both teachers. Raised in Greentown, Indiana, in the Seegar-Sewell home on 404 S. Main Street, she was the fourth of five daughters. Her sisters, known around town as the Seegar Sisters, were educator Helen Seegar-Stone (1895-1976) stage actress and opera singer Dorothy Seegar-Hatch (1897-1999) Mildred Seegar (1905-1913) and actress Sara Seegar (1914-1990.)
Seegar viewed her first movies in Kokomo, Indiana at the age of eight. As the sisters started acting and singing, Frank Seegar left teaching to open a hardware store in efforts to support his daughters' growing singing and acting pursuits. After his death at Seegar's age of 14, her two older sisters invited her to spend summers with them in their bedbug-laden Upper West Side apartment in New York City. Helen, working in a theatrical producer's office and Dorothy, acting and singing on Broadway, sent Miriam to an agent, and she began appearing on stage in minor, uncredited roles. She would return to Greentown in the winter upon her mother's insistence to complete her schooling with her younger sister, Sara.
After finishing school, Seegar acted in her first Broadway production as a Spanish blonde in a now-forgotten play at the 48th Street Theatre, followed by five more stage stints. While playing the part of the ingenue in The Squall (1926-1927) prolific producer Albert H. Woods took notice, and offered Seegar to star with Ernest Truex in the London West End production of his hit show Crime (1928.) At the age of 18, Seegar accepted Woods' offer and moved to London, soon followed by her mother and sister Sara to live with her in the Park Lane Hotel: "All my life I had wanted to go to England. I was just beginning to get a start in New York, but I was glad to be transferred to England." Between Stage engagements with multiple productions in London, she acted in her first two films The Price of Divorce and The Valley of Ghosts (film), both released in 1928. Next Miriam was chosen to co-star with Nelson Keyes in When Knights Were Bold (1929 film), as her figure of just under 5'1 and 100lbs would make her shorter and smaller than Keyes. The film was being directed by American director Tim Whelan, whom Miriam had just met. After the film's release she and Whelan, 14 years her senior, moved to Hollwood in 1929 and started dating. She quickly went to work making three pictures in 1929, signing with Paramount for Fashions in Love and the love doctor then making Seven Keys to Baldpate for RKO. For the next three years, Seegar made 11 more films, most being B-movies.
Blonde haired, blue eyed Miriam was one of the tiniest women in pictures, standing at just under 5'1 tall and weighing 100lbs. From a 1930 Photoplay magazine: "The question of clothes is a problem to her. Everything must be specially made, since she has no desire to step out in twelve-year-old dimities from a department store. She sees a gown model she likes and has it duplicated in a more miniature form. She likes frocks of rich material, but made without fuss and furbelows." Miriam didn't consider her name good for screen purposes as she said people were inclined to accent the last syllable, as if it were "cigar." However, she refused to change it unlike some Hollywood actresses, even after being asked by Albert H. Woods while offering to send her to London for "Crime." Also from Photoplay in 1930: "Miriam has had no very serious love affairs, although she does admit that she has been in love. In fact, several times. The only trouble is that she falls out of love so easily. She says that she believes married men are far more interesting than the young eligibles, but she's an old-fashioned girl and does not care to be the "heavy" in a real life triangle drama.
Seegar married Tim Whelan in 1931, and the couple had two sons, Tim Junior and Michael(1935-1997,) born with down's syndrome. Miriam's last film, false faces, was made in 1932. It played the Times Square Paramount, where her first American picture had been premiered just three and a half years earlier. Seegar retired from acting to raise her first child, Tim Whelan Jr, and found her career at odds with her husband's: "The sort of roles I got latterly were not becoming for a woman whose husband was then a major force in motion pictures. Selznick and Cukor offered me work, but after a while I just said no."
In 1953, she received her ASID certification and began working as an interior decorator, first with Harriet Shellenberger and later on her own. She did not retire until 1995. Her husband died in 1957, and decades later, both sons died within a span of nine months. Tim Whelan, Jr. died from cancer in 1997, and son Michael, who was born with Down syndrome, died in 1998. In 2000, at the age of 93, Seegar appeared in the documentary I Used to Be in Pictures, which featured commentary from many of her contemporaries. Thereafter she made a series of guest appearances at film festivals which culminated in an award for her screen work from the Memphis Film Festival when she was 95. On her 102nd birthday she sailed from Southampton to New York on the RMS Queen Mary 2 and back again.
Miriam Seegar had two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren at the time of her death on January 2, 2011. No specific cause of death was given, but her daughter-in-law Harriet Whelan stated that Seegar was very frail and had died from "age-related causes".Miriam Seegar (silent screen actress)born 01 Sep 1907 – died 02 Jan 2011 (103years 3months +)
Retired from acting in 1932 - Actress
- Writer
Florence Lee was born on 12 March 1888 in Jamaica, Vermont, USA. She was an actress and writer, known for A Mixed Affair (1912), A Natural Mistake (1914) and Illusion of Love (1929). She was married to Dell Henderson. She died on 1 September 1962 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.Florence Lee (silent screen actress) born 12 Mar 1858 – died 01 Sep 1962 (104years 4months +)
Started in film in 1911 aged 58 and retired in 1931.- Lucile Taft was born on 15 October 1881 in Indiana, USA. She was an actress, known for The Idol of the Stage (1916), Queen X (1917) and The Drifter (1916). She was married to ? Deacuna. She died on 16 April 1988 in Orange County, California, USA.Lucile Taft(silent screen actress)born 15 Oct 1881 – died 16 Apr 1988 (106years 6months +)
Retired from film acting in 1917. - Helen Bray was born on 25 November 1889 in Missouri, USA. She was an actress, known for Big Timber (1917), Little Miss Optimist (1917) and Bob's Love Affairs (1915). She was married to George C. Pearce. She died on 15 October 1990 in Redwood City, California, USA.Helen Bray (silent screen actress) born 25 Nov 1889 – died 15 Oct 1990 (100years 10months +)
Retired from acting in 1917. - Elsie Greeson was born on 20 March 1895 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. She was an actress, known for In the Days of Buffalo Bill (1922), An Heiress for Two (1915) and The Sealed Package (1914). She died on 11 June 1995 in Banning, California, USA.Elsie Greeson (silent screen actress) born 20 Mar 1895 - died 11 June 1995 (100years 2months +)
Retired from acting in 1922. - Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Louise Henry was born as Jessouise Heiman to Dr. Jesse Heiman and his wife, Louise Henry Heiman, who was a vaudeville star. Louise Henry Sr. as she was known, contracted tuberculosis while performing in vaudeville and was sent to a sanitarium in Saranac Lake, NY. While there she was treated by Dr. Heiman and the couple fell in love and got married. Jessoiuse was their only child, and she and her mother spent a great deal of her youth touring Europe, where the young Louise, as she was called, made quite a splash dancing the Charleston. When they returned to the states Louise moved to Hollywood, where she took her mother's name as a stage name and started acting in movies. She had several connections before arriving in Hollywood, among them Will Rogers who had been a good friend of Louise Sr. in their vaudeville days and Carl Laemmle, whose life had been saved by Dr. Heiman.
Louise only acted for a few years, but made several films mostly at MGM, where her beauty was compared to that of Jean Harlow and Carol Lombard. She returned to New York City in the early 40's and married Samuel Robert Weltz, Sr. She had two stepchildren from this marriage S. Robert Weltz, Jr. and Pauline Weltz Raiff. Louise and her husband, who was a lawyer, lived a quiet life splitting their time between homes in Manhattan and Elberon, NJ. Although she was very sick in her last few years, her beauty never waned and she always had a smile on her face.
She was the step grandmother of filmmaker, Laurie Weltz and the step great grandmother of actress India Ennenga.Louise Henry (actress) born 14 Jun 1911 – died 12 Dec 2011 (100years 5months +)- Mabel Trunnelle was born in Dwight, Illinois on November 8, 1879. A stage actress from the East Coast, Mabel was 32 when she appeared on the silver screen. In 1911 she was in A MODERN CINDERELLA, IN THE DAYS OF CHIVALRY, and THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER, the latter being the most notable. Her last film was in 1923's THE LOVE TRAP. At 44 she went back to the stage. On April 29, 1981, Mabel died in Glendale, California at the age of 101.Mabel Trunnelle (silent screen actress) born 08 Nov 1879 – died 29 Apr 1981 (101years 5months +)
Retired from film acting in 1923 but continued on the stage. - Georgie Stone was born on 3 September 1909 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for Just Pals (1920), Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1918) and Gretchen the Greenhorn (1916). He died on 25 April 2010 in Denver, Colorado, USA.Georgie Stone(child actor) born 03 Sep 1909 – died 25Apr 2010 (100years 6months +)
- Actress
Jennie Mac (born Yachna Sosa Shimon, later known as Jennie Cecile Simon and Jennie Simon MacMahon) was born in Tsarist Russia into a Jewish family that would emigrate to the United States.
She began her acting career in 1931 at the age of 53 after the death of her husband, William MacMahon. Her daughter, Aline MacMahon, was a well-known film and stage actress who encouraged her mother's new career. Jennie Mac studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She often appeared in the films of her nephew, S. Sylvan Simon.
She died in 1984, several weeks before her 107th birthday, at her home in Beverly Hills.Jennie Mac(smalltime bit player)born 19 Jan 1878 – died 31 Dec 1984 (106years 11months +)
Actress and daughter Aline MacMahon got her started on the stage later in life and she had a few small roles in a few films with Abbott & Costello, Red Skelton, Wallace Beery and Marjorie Main.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Hugues Cuénod was born on 26 June 1902 in Corseaux, Vaud, Switzerland. He was an actor, known for Turandot (1987), Love Reinvented (1996) and On Such a Night (1956). He died on 6 December 2010 in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland.Hugues Cuenod (Swiss tenor) born 26 Jun 1902 – died 06 Dec 2010 (108years 5months +)
The oldest person to make a debut at the Metropolitan Opera. At age 105 he wed his partner when same-sex unions were legalised in Switzerland.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
John Calvert was born on 5 August 1911 in New Trenton, Indiana, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Dark Venture (1956), Search for Danger (1949) and Gold Fever (1952). He was married to Tammy and Ann Cornell. He died on 27 September 2013 in Lancaster, California, USA.John Calvert (magician) born 05 Aug 1911 – died 27 Sep 2013 (102years 1month +)
American magician- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
The Spanish born ventriloquist Senor Wences was one of the highest paid vaudeville acts in the world. Hugely popular with American TV audiences Wences was also a top nightclub favorite.
Born Wenceslao Moreno in Peñaranda de Bracamonte, Salamanca (Spain), Wences began performing ventriloquism as a child An early career in bullfighting proved unsuccessful so he took up ventriloquism and juggling professionally. Wences toured Europe in the 1920s before coming to America in 1935 where he made his New York debut at the Club Chico.
He became an overnight sensation on "The Milton Berle Show" and later made appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and TV specials with Jack Benny and Perry Como. In 1947 he had stand-out cameo in the film comedy Mother Wore Tights (1947), starring Dan Dailey and Betty Grable.
Among his famous vent characters were 'Johnny', ingeniously formed by one of Wences's hands and 'Pedro', a torso-less head in a box. In the middle of a routine Wences would lift the lid of the box and say "Are you alright?" to which Pedro would reply "S'alright". "S'alright" - which became a classic catchphrase.
In 1986 Wences toured America with Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller in the musical Sugar Babies. He also received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Comedy Hall of Fame which was inscribed "For his devotion to entertaining generations of audiences and bringing countless hours of joy and happiness to millions throughout the world."Senor Wences (Hollywood ventriloquist) born 17 Apr 1896 – died 20 Apr 1999 (103years +)
Was one of the highest paid vaudeville acts in the world.- Actor
- Production Manager
Mino Doro was born on 6 May 1903 in Venice, Veneto, Italy. He was an actor and production manager, known for La Dolce Vita (1960), 8½ (1963) and Una notte dopo l'opera (1942). He died on 13 April 1992 in Marino, Italy.Mino Doro(Italian actor) born 06 May 1903 - died 12 May 2006(103years +)
Italian actor- Germaine Auger was born on 13 June 1889 in Saint-Omer, Pas-de-Calais, France. She was an actress, known for Théodore et Cie (1933), Tout pour rien (1933) and Il faut rester garçon (1932). She died on 24 August 2001 in Couilly-Pont-aux-Dames, Seine-et-Marne, France.Germaine Auger (French actress) born 03 Jun 1889 – died 24 Aug 2001 (112 years 2months +)
Possibly the longest lived actress in the world. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Marie Glory was born on 3 March 1905 in Mortagne-au-Perche, Orne, France. She was an actress, known for Monte Cristo (1929), La femme idéale (1934) and ...And God Created Woman (1956). She died on 24 January 2009 in Cannes, Alpes-Maritimes, France.Marie Glory (French actress) born 03 Mar 1905 – died 24 Jan 2009 (103years 10months +)- Madeleine Milhaud was born on 22 March 1902 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Les jumeaux de Brighton (1936), Courrier Sud (1937) and Ghosts Before Breakfast (1928). She was married to Darius Milhaud. She died on 17 January 2008 in Paris, France.Madeleine Milhaud(French actress)born 22 Mar 1902 – died 17 Jan 2008 (105years 9months +)
- Jenny Alpha was born on 22 April 1910 in Fort de France, Martinique. She was an actress, known for Une femme, une époque (1978), La vieille quimboiseuse et le majordome (1987) and Noir comme le souvenir (1995). She died on 8 September 2010 in Paris, France.Jenny Alpha (Martinique born French actress) born 22 Apr 1910 – died 08 Sep 2010 (100years 4months +)
- Pierre Gérald was born on 26 May 1906 in Paris, France. He was an actor, known for Highlander (1992), Les dossiers de Jérôme Randax (1965) and Hunting and Gathering (2007). He died on 24 March 2012 in Levallois-Perret, Hauts-de-Seine, France.Pierre Gerald (French actor) born 26 May 1906 - died 24 Mar 2012 (105years 9months +)
One of the oldest actors ever to work on screen. - One of the very few actors to have spent more than a hundred years on this earth and to have performed his art until he was over 90, Roger Karl (1882-1984) was an exceptionally gifted person who could have become an artist ('Pablo Picasso' was a friend of his) or a writer (he was close to Guillaume Apollinaire and Paul Léautaud, eventually putting pen to paper with a book of memoirs, "Journal d'un homme de nulle part"). Bur Roger Karl finally opted for acting, studying drama at the Conservatoire de Paris first, then at the Odeon. Throughout his long career, he appeared in prestigious plays (Molière 's "L'amour médecin", Jules Romains's Le roi masqué, Albert Camus's "Le malentendu", William Shakespeare's "Henry IV and many many others), with prestigious partners (among whom the legendary Sarah Bernhardt) under the direction of prestigious directors (Jacques Copeau, Louis Jouvet, Jean Vilar ...) But although theater was a passion and despite the fact that he had always expressed his preference for theater over cinema, Roger Karl did not miss out on a film actor career, debuting on the silver screen as early as 1909, which was an exception among 'serious' theater actors of his kind only to say his professional goodbye 65 years later in a 1974 TV movie. A much more uneven career than his stage one, both in terms of quality and steadiness (he indeed made only brief and sparse appearances after 1946), it is not without high points though, notably the five films directed by famous avant-garde director director Marcel L'Herbier: Phantasmes (1917), Man of the Sea (1920),The Living Image, or the Lady of Petrograd (1926) and The Devil in the Heart (1927) and L'Argent (1928), two of which are eternal masterpieces (L'homme du large" and "L'argent"). As a tough Breton fisherman, the desperate but uncompromising father of a good-for-nothing, Roger Karl proved particularly convincing, which earned him a lot of authority figures such as bankers, police commissioners, bishops, nobles and other ministers. The trouble is that well as fine-looking with gravitas Roger Karl played them, it was often in conventional bourgeois dramas which have not stood the test of time, especially during the thirties. Nevertheless a few films have fared better and are still exciting to see today, like Misdeal (1928), directed by Jean Grémillon alongside 'Charles Dullin' and wife, Julien Duvivier's ,The Golem: The Legend of Prague (1936), Under Western Eyes (1936) Oddly enough, while the quality of the films Roger Karl improved in the early forties, the military types he continued playing were on the wrong side of history. He was indeed a German officer in Christian-Jaque's excellent adaptation of Maupassant Angel and Sinner (1945) and in Maurice de Canonge 's more indifferent resistance drama Mission spéciale (1946). After that, Roger Karl more or less vanished from the screens while going on with a remarkable theater career. For all that, it remains undeniable that, even if films were not Roger Karl's artistic priority, his contribution to the seventh art is not to be overlooked.Roger Karl (French actor) born 29 Apr 1882 – died 04 May 1984 (102years +)
- Lucien Pascal (French actor) born 10 Apr 1906 – died 12 Aug 2006(100years +)
Another French actor.
Married to centenarian Gisele Casadesus. Brother in law to centenarian Christian Casadesus. - Gisèle Casadesus was born on 14 June 1914 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Loves of Casanova (1947), Paméla (1945) and Sous le figuier (2012). She was married to Lucien Pascal. She died on 24 September 2017 in Paris, France.Gisele Casadesus (French actress) born 14 Jun 1914
STILL LIVING
Married to centenarian Lucien Pascal. Sister of centenarian Christian Casadesus. - Christian Casadesus was born on 26 December 1912 in Paris, France. He was an actor, known for Le capitaine jaune (1930), Hôtel des étudiants (1932) and Coups de roulis (1932). He died on 6 March 2014.Christian Casadesus (French actor) born 26 Dec 1912 died 06 Mar 2014 (101years 2months +)
Brother of centenarian Gisele Casadesus. Brother in law of centenarian Pascal Lucien. - Actress
- Casting Director
- Additional Crew
Andrée Champeaux was born on 1 December 1905 in Lyon, Rhône, France. She was an actress and casting director, known for Docteur Erika Werner (1978), Diva (1981) and La grotte aux fées (1972). She died on 12 November 2006 in Couilly-Pont-aux-Dames, Seine-et-Marne, France.Andree Champeaux (French actress) born 01 Dec 1905 – died 12 Nov 2006 (100years 11months +)- Yvette Lebon was born on 14 August 1910 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Michel Strogoff (1936), Paméla (1945) and Ulysses Against Hercules (1962). She was married to Nat Wachsberger and Roger Duchesne. She died on 28 July 2014 in Cannes, Alpes-Maritimes, France.Yvette Labon (French actress) born 14 Aug 1910 – died 28 July 2014 (103years 11 months +)
- Costume Designer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Special Effects
Rosine Delamare was born on 11 June 1911 in Colombes, Seine [now Seine-Saint-Denis, Île-de-France], France. She was a costume designer, known for Rififi (1955), The Earrings of Madame De... (1953) and The Day of the Jackal (1973). She died on 17 March 2013 in Paris, France.Roseine Delamare (French costume designer) born 11 Jun 1911 - died 17 Mar 2013 (101years 8months +)
Nominated for an Academy Award- Actress
- Soundtrack
Paulette Dubost was born on 8 October 1910 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for The Rules of the Game (1939), Les vingt-huit jours de Clairette (1933) and Les mystères de Paris (1962). She was married to André Ostertag. She died on 21 September 2011 in Longjumeau, Essonne, France.Paulette Dubost (French actress) born 08 Oct 1910 – 21 Sep 2011(100years 11months +)
Had one of the longest careers in film history and the ninth French actor or actress to see their 100th birthday.- Editor
- Director
- Additional Crew
René Le Hénaff was born on 24 April 1901 in Saigon, Vietnam. He was an editor and director, known for Joli monde (1935), Monsieur de Falindor (1947) and Mountain Man (1934). He died on 5 January 2005 in Belley, Ain, France.Rene Le Henaff (French editor/director) born 26 Apr 1902 – died 05 Jan 2005 (103 years 8months +)- Producer
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Jules V. Levy, Arthur Gardner and Arnold Laven met in 1943 in the First Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Force; they were stationed at the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, CA (with other notables such as Capt. Ronald Reagan, Capt. Clark Gable and Lt. William Holden, etc.), making training films. Levy, Gardner and Laven resolved that they would start their own independent motion picture company after they got out of the Air Force; all were discharged in 1945, but their company wasn't formed until 1951 (in the interim, Levy and Laven worked as script supervisors and Gardner as an assistant director and production manager). The first Levy-Gardner-Laven film was 1952's Without Warning! (1952); in the decades since, they have produced dozens of additional features and several TV series (including The Rifleman (1958), Law of the Plainsman (1959), The Detectives (1959) and The Big Valley (1965).Arthur Gardner (actor/producer) born 07 Jun 1910 – died 19 December 2014 (104years 6months +)
Was in the 1930 Best Picture winner, All Quiet on the Western Front, written by another future centenarian George Abbott- Art Director
- Production Designer
- Art Department
Robert F. Boyle was born on 10 October 1909 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an art director and production designer, known for North by Northwest (1959), Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and The Shootist (1976). He was married to Bess Boyle. He died on 1 August 2010 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Robert F. Boyle (Art Director) born 10 Oct 1909 - died 02 Aug 2010 (100years 9months +)
Nominated for four Oscars and given an Honarary one at the age of 98.- Special Effects
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Harry Redmond Jr. was born on 15 October 1909 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer, known for Ripcord (1961), Science Fiction Theatre (1955) and Sea Hunt (1987). He was married to Dorothea Holt. He died on 23 May 2011 in Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.Harry Redmond (Special Affects) born 15 Oct 1909 – died 23 May 2011 (101 years 7months+)
Special affects pioneer- Emily Perry was born on 28 June 1907 in Torquay, Devon, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Dame Edna's Neighbourhood Watch (1992), Dame Edna's Hollywood (1991) and A Night on Mount Edna (1990). She died on 20 February 2008 in Twickenham, Middlesex, England, UK.Emily Perry(English actress and mime artist) born 28 Jun 1907 – died 20 Feb 2008 (100years 7months +)
Hilarious as the long suffering bridesmaid of Dame Edna Everage. - Actress
- Soundtrack
In addition to her vocal dubbing and on-screen film credits, Etta Moten played the role of Bess in the 1943 revival of "Porgy and Bess" at the personal request of Ira Gershwin (not George, who had died in 1937). Etta and husband Claude Barnett, founder of the Negro Associated Press, served as US representatives to the independence celebrations of Ghana and several other African countries. Also a radio journalist, Etta interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after the ceremonies in Ghana on March 6, 1957, and conducted her own radio show for WMAQ/NBC in Chicago for many years.Etta Moten (actress/singer) born 5 Nov 1901 - died 02 Jan 2004 (102years 1month +)
Was called "The first Negro woman to play a dignified role in pictures" and was also the first African-American to perform at the White House (in 1933).- Born in Plymouth, England in 1902, Sybil Fowler's family never had any money. Her father, although a dentist, drank heavily. She went to a local convent school until the age of 16 and was expected to become a teacher. To everyone's horror she said she was going to be a stage actress.
Leaving Plymouth for the first time in her life she went to London and joined a touring musical revue. From there she became a chorus girl. Then an American director spotted her and made her his leading lady's understudy. She was asked to go to America, but fear of the foreign land and of the director's intentions ended that.
After five years in the chorus and being the face in advertisements for cigarettes, baby milk, corsets and false teeth Sybil Rhoda, as she was known then, became a movie star. She landed a contract with Stoll's Production Company after winning a beauty contest.
Against the orders of her theater manager, Sybil went to Spain to film Sahara Love(1926)_. And she made her next two movies without the manager's knowledge, having to film in the daytime and rush to the theater for the evening performance, often running across London still in full costume.
In 1928 she married a wealthy Anglo-Austrian businessman and went to Vienna to live. Her movie career was over. They returned to England prior to the war as her husband was Jewish. She did not return to the stage and stayed home to raise their daughter. Eventually they moved to the US.
Sybil Rhoda died in London in August 2005, aged 102 years.Sybil Rhoda (British stage/film actress) born 14 Feb 1902 – Aug 2004 (101years 2months)
Mainly a stage actress who went to work in Europe but left before WWII as her husband was a Jew. She never acted again. - Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Lovely brown-eyed, brunette Claire Du Brey enjoyed a rich, four-decade film career in all. Born Clara Violet Dubrey on August 31, 1892, in Bonner's Ferry Idaho, her family traveled the rugged Sierra Madre terrain by covered wagon in their move to California when she was 13.
Educated in a convent setting and once trained to be a nurse, Claire responded to an newspaper ad and found employment working part time in motion pictures. From there, she found herself in front of the camera, making her movie debut as star Billie Burke's friend in the Triangle release Peggy (1916). Universal saw a leading lady vamp in her, however, and from 1917 she enjoyed star billing in such silent short and feature-length vehicles as Princess Dione in the Rex Ingram-directed The Reward of the Faithless (1917); The Fighting Gringo (1917), opposite Harry Carey; Anything Once (1917) and The Winged Mystery (1917) both co-starring Franklyn Farnum; Brace Up (1918) with Herbert Rawlinson; the family drama The Magic Eye (1918); and A Man in the Open (1919) with Dustin Farnum. She also appeared in a number of Lon Chaney's early Universal vehicles such as The Rescue (1917) Pay Me! (1917) and Triumph (1917).
A versatile player whether asked to portray royalty, servants, temptresses or prairie flowers, Claire turned to Los Angeles stage plays during an early 1920s lull in film offers and graced such vehicles as "Madame X," "Spring Cleaning" and "The Youngest". Later "jazz age" film roles included The Sea Hawk (1924), Drusilla with a Million (1925) Exquisite Sinner (1926), and The Devil Dancer (1927).
During the declining period of her career (1928), Claire met actress Marie Dressler and they became close friends. Claire wound up serving as Dressler's secretary, fan mail handler and travel companion. In reward, Dressler arranged for Claire to get small roles a few of her talking films Politics (1931) and Prosperity (1932). She also served as Dressler's nurse in 1933 when the elder woman was dying of cancer.
As a character actress, Claire became much in demand throughout the late 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, appearing in general purpose roles as secretaries, nurses, salesladies, housekeepers, matrons, spinsters, relatives, etc. On a rare occasion she managed to stand out, none more so than in her mad scene as Bertha Rochester in a "B"-level version of Jane Eyre (1934) starring Colin Clive and Virginia Bruce. Seen sporadically on TV into the 1950s, she retired by the end of the decade. Her last film roles were in Girls Town (1959) and The Miracle (1959), both unbilled.
An early marriage to a doctor, Mark Gorman, ended in divorce. She lived another four decades after leaving the limelight. In her final years she grew deaf and her health quite fragile, dying at the age of 100 on August 1, 1993.Claire DuPrey (actress) born 31 Aug 1892 – died 01 Aug 1993 (100years 11months +)- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Osmond Borradaile was born on 17 July 1898 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He was a cinematographer and director, known for The Four Feathers (1939), After the Fog (1930) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). He was married to Christiane Lippens. He died on 23 March 1999 in Canada.Osmond Borradaile (cinematographer) born 17 Jul 1898 – died 23 Mar 1999 (100years 8months +)
Academy Award nominee who also received the Order of Canada at age 84.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Gunnar Fischer was born on 18 November 1910 in Ljungby, Sweden. He was a cinematographer and director, known for Wild Strawberries (1957), The Seventh Seal (1957) and Smiles of a Summer Night (1955). He was married to Gull Söderblom. He died on 11 June 2011 in Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden.Gunner Fischer(Swedish cinematographer) born 18 Nov 1910 – died 11 Jun 2011 (100years 6months +)
Won the Swedish version of an Honorary Academy Award at age 91.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Visual Effects
Eric Cross was born on 31 May 1902 in London, England, UK. He was a cinematographer, known for The Lure (1933), The Last Adventurers (1937) and The Gang (1938). He died on 1 March 2004 in Middlesex, England, UK.Eric Cross (English cinematographer) born 31 May 1902 - died 01 Mar 2004 (101years 9months +)- Additional Crew
- Actress
- Writer
It has been rightly suggested that Dame Ninette de Valois is one of the most important women of the century. It was due to her drive and ambition that the modern English ballet was created. In that respect she changed history single handed. Born in Ireland, young Ninette (her stage name was her mother's suggestion) came to England aged 7 to study dance.
At that time (1905) the only ballet seen in England was touring Russian or French companies. Inspired by a perfromance of the Ballets Russes under Diaghilev, she joined them in 1923. By the mid 1920's she was convinced that Britain needed and should be capable of producing it's own National Ballet and she set about working towards it with a single minded determination.
By 1926 she opened her first school in London, called the Academy of Choreographic Arts. By the early 1930s she had, with the help of Lillian Bayliss, the director of The Old Vic that the theater needed it's own ballet company and school. With help from Lillian Bayliss, Madame (as she was known by her pupils), bought the old Sadler's Wells Theatre and opened her new Ballet School there.
As well as starting the new theatre and ballet school she also found time to choreograph such works as The Rake's Pregress (based on the Hogarth prints) for the new company. She soon attracted quite a few talented people around her including the young Frederick Ashton.
By 1934 the new theatre and ballet school were in full operation and they produced full length ballets such as Giselle and Copellia (featuring Alicia Markova). That year a young dancer may have been found in the ranks by the name of Margot Fonteyn. de Valois had realised from the beginning that the only way to make a truly British Ballet was to have a complete system in place from school to stage.
She had developed what came to be known as the English Ballet style of narrative, lyrical ballet and this was taught in the school. She was also still an innovative choreograph such innovative works as Checkmate (1937). During the years of the second world war they toured extensively and became a major morale booster.
For all her work Ninette was created a Dame of the Order of the British Empire in 1951. In 1955 she started a new ballet school in White Lodge, Richmond Park, Surrey. Away from the busy metropolis the Royal Ballet (as they had become) had a perfect home here. Although retired since 1963, Dame Ninette is still a powerful force in the world of ballet.Dame Ninette de Valois (choreographer) born 06 Jun 1898 – died 08 Mar 2001 (102years 8months +)
Received many awards due to her contributions to ballet. Made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire when she as 53.- Gwen Ffrangcon Davies was born on 25 January 1891 in Hampstead, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes (1991), Nine Days a Queen (1936) and Paul Krüger (1956). She died on 27 January 1992 in Stambourne, Essex, England, UK.Dame Gwen Ffrangcon Davies (actress) born 25 Jan 1891 – died 27 Jan 1992 (101years +)
Mainly a stage actress, she was working well into her 90s and became Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire when she was 100. - Actress
- Soundtrack
A promising star first with the Metropolitan Opera than on the Broadway and London stages, soprano Mary Ellis had little chance to prove herself as either a musical or dramatic film star with only a few creaky vehicles left for audiences to ponder. Her versatility on stage, however, was extensive, ranging from heavy doses of Shakespeare and Eugene O'Neill to the Restoration comedies of Sheridan and the light operettas of Oscar Hammerstein.
Born May Belle Elsas on June 15, 1897 of humble means in New York City, her family had emigrated to the States earlier from Alsace. Her father eventually prospered as a successful paper merchant. Mary inherited any artistic leanings from her mother who was a gifted pianist. She initially delved into painting before the desire to dedicate herself to song took hold. Studying with Madame Ashworth, Mary's had the makings of a great classical singer and was offered a multiple year contract with the Metropolitan Opera company at the age of 21. Given the stage name of Mary Ellis by the company, she made her debut with Puccini's "Suor Angelica" (1918) and went on to appear in "The Blue Bird" and "Boris Gudunov", among others. Arguably the highlights of her brief operatic career include her appearances opposite the legendary tenor Enrico Caruso in his final performance (Christmas Eve, 1920) of "The Elixir of Love" (he died the following year of pneumonia), and the renowned prima donna Geraldine Farrar in "Louise". However, in 1922, Mary's burgeoning desire to act on the legitimate stage took over and, against all advice, left the Met in 1922 to pursue her "new dream".
Already a name in opera, Mary joined the David Belasco theatre company. Belasco produced and directed her in her first Broadway production "The Merchant of Venice". A lovely, vibrant presence on stage, she subsequently appeared in "Casanova" and "The Merry Wives of Gotham", but did not become a full-fledged star until playing the titular heroine in Hammerstein's operetta "Rose-Marie". Career-threatening problems incurred when the impulsive Mary decided to leave the show before her tightly binding contract with Hammerstein was completed. As a result, she was prevented from ever performing again as a singer in America. She was now forced to return to high drama in straight plays. She subsequently appeared in a series of Broadway productions co-starring British actor Basil Sydney, which included her playing of Katherine to his Petruchio in "The Taming of the Shrew". Sydney became her third husband (following two short-lived marriages) in 1929.
Unable to escape her career restrictions, she and Sydney moved to England in 1931. She met with instantaneous success in O'Neill's epic drama "Strange Interlude" the following year. She also became a lovely muse for Ivor Novello on the 30s British stage, as noted in their successful teaming of "Glamorous Night" (1935) and "The Dancing Years" (1939). England gave her the opportunity to try films and she starred in two in 1934, the drama Bella Donna (1934) with John Stuart, Cedric Hardwicke and Conrad Veidt, and in the musical All the King's Horses (1935) in which she played the Queen of Langenstein. She also managed to return to America to star in the films Paris in Spring (1935) and Fatal Lady (1936). After filming her stage triumph Glamorous Night (1937) co-starring Otto Kruger back in England, she retired from the screen, unable to gain a strong footing.
Her marriage to Basil Sydney lasted but a few years. Her fourth and last husband, Jock Muir Stewart Roberts, a Scotsman, was a happy one until his tragic death twelve years later in a 1950 mountain-climbing accident. A volunteer nurse during WWII, Mary appeared sporadically on the post-war stage (notably the Old Vic) in such successful productions as "John Gabriel Borkman", "The School for Scandal", "The Browning Version" and "Hattie Stowe" in which she portrayed Harriet Beecher Stowe. After her husband's death she was seen less and less and took her last curtain call in "Mrs. Warren's Profession" in 1970. Isolated film appearances included The Magic Box (1951) and The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960).
Mary was seen briefly as late as the 1990s playing octogenarian roles, and during her twilight years published two autobiographies: Those Dancing Years (1982) and Moments of Truth (1986. Mary, who was childless, died in London at the ripe old age of 105 on January 30, 2003.Mary Ellis (actress) born 15 Jun 1897 – died 30 Jan 2003 (105years 7months +)
Began as an opera singer at 21. Staying on stage all her life she also did movies and TV until she was in her 90s.- Cora Goffin was one of Britain's most famous pantomime princpal boys and musical comedy stars. At the height of her fame during the 1920s and 30s she was a household name and her picture adorned chocolate boxes, cigarette cards and magazine covers.
Married to the powerful impresario Emile Littler she starred in many of his stage shows. Her costumes were created by the leading designers of the day and her legs were insured for £20,000.
Born in London, the daughter of the actress Cora Poole, she began performing at an early age at afternoon tea parties given by London society hostesses. In 1912, at the age of 10, she made her professional debut as a child dancer at the London Palladium with the Russian Ballet. After one performance, the legendary ballerina Anna Pavlova told her "Little girl, one day you will be a great star."
After her father's death Cora Goffin toured on variety bills billed as 'Little Cora Goffi - the Child Phenomenon'. She went on to appear in leading roles in Shakespeare in London's West End but her most memorable role as a child star was Little Lord Fauntleroy.
After her marriage in 1933 to Emile Littler she starred in several stage shows and films but retired from acting in 1940. Littler was knighted for his services to entertainment in 1974 and shortly afterwards the couple moved to Ditchling, Sussex in the south of England. A much admired hostess Cora numbered among her many close friends stars such as Elsie Randolph, Alice Delysia, Vera Lynn and Douglas Byng.Cora Goffin (Lady Littler) (English musical star and pantomime player) born 26 Apr 1902 – died 10 May 2004 (102years +)
Otherwise known as Lady Littler, (as her husband was a Knight), she was one of Britain's most famous pantomime principal boys and musical comedy stars. - Teruko Nagaoka was born on 5 January 1908 in Morioka, Iwate, Japan. She was an actress, known for Tokyo Story (1953), Sound of the Mountain (1954) and The First Kiss (1955). She died on 18 October 2010 in Tokyo, Japan.Teruko Nagaoka (Japanese actress) born 05 Jan 1908 – died 18 Oct 2010 (102years 9months +)
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Athene Seyler was born on 31 May 1889 in Hackney, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Drake the Pirate (1935), Curse of the Demon (1957) and The Franchise Affair (1951). She was married to Nicholas Hannen and James Bury Sterndale-Bennett. She died on 12 September 1990 in Hammersmith, London, England, UK.Athene Seyler (actress) born 13 May 1889– died 12 Sep 1990 (101years 3months +)- Actor
- Soundtrack
Growing up as the youngest of four sons of the merchant Jacobus Heesters and his wife Gertruida, née van der Hoevel, he began a commercial apprenticeship after finishing school. He actually wanted to become a priest, but then began an apprenticeship in a bank. In 1920 he switched to acting. He initially completed singing and acting training in Amsterdam and had his first theater engagements there in 1921. He later also played on stages in The Hague, Brussels and Rotterdam. In 1924 he received a supporting role in his first silent film "Cirque Hollandais" directed by Theo Frenkel. In 1930 Heesters married Louisa H. Ghijs, with whom he had two daughters, Wiesje and Nicole. He was married to his wife for 53 years until her death in 1985. After appearances at theaters in the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland, he received his first engagement as a tenor in operetta in 1934 in Millöcker's "The Begging Student" at the Vienna Volksoper. A year later, in 1936, he went to Berlin.
Here Heesters celebrated his breakthrough, first at the Komische Oper and then at the Metropoltheater and the Admiralspalast. He also owed his nickname "Jopie" to the audience in the German capital. He was immediately discovered for the film. Numerous UFA productions followed, such as his first leading role in "The Bettelstudent" (1936) and "The Court Concert" (1936). With "Gasparone" (1937) alongside Marika Rökk, Heesters became a film star. In 1938 he sang the role of Count Danilo for the first time in the Franz Léhar operetta "The Merry Widow", a role that he developed into one of his signature roles for 35 years. This was followed by "The Adventure Continues - Every Woman Has a Sweet Secret", "My Aunt - Your Aunt" (1939) and "Love School" (1940). The Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda soon included him on the so-called "God-Given List". His attitude towards Nazi Germany was contradictory. Although he owed his success primarily to the UFA, he also rejected German citizenship. He neither became a member of the NSDAP nor did he explicitly distance himself from National Socialism.
Despite a few encounters with Adolf Hitler, he performed in the Netherlands in 1938 with a Jewish theater group that had fled Germany. There was massive criticism from abroad, especially in Holland, where he was accused of being a collaborator who was in German service when his homeland was occupied by the Wehrmacht. He celebrated great successes during the war years with films such as "Hello Janine" with Marika Rökk, "It began so harmlessly" with Theo Lingen and "Roses in Tirol" with Hans Moser. Despite his success in film, Heesters returned to theater after the Second World War. His popularity remained unbroken. Count Danilo's entrance song "I'm going to Maxim" from the operetta "The Merry Widow" became an evergreen. He appeared on stage in this role over 1,600 times. In 1953, Otto Preminger hired him for the Hollywood film "The Virgin on the Roof". Meanwhile, Heesters had already been involved in around 50 film productions by 1961. In 1970, after a long break from filming, he appeared in "The Inspector: Parking Lot Hyenas". "The Beautiful Wilhelmine" followed in 1983.
In 1984 Johannes Heesters became an honorary member of the Vienna Volksoper. In 1985 the comedy film "Otto - The Film" followed. Heesters was also active in literature. He described his life in his 1993 autobiography entitled "Thank God I'm Not Young Anymore." In the 1990s he appeared in front of the camera for the television plays "Two Munichers in Hamburg", "Two Old Hands" and "Between Night and Day". In 1992 Heesters married the actress Simone Rethel, who was 46 years his junior. From 1996 to the summer of 2001 he played alongside his wife in the play "A Blessed Age" written for him by Curth Flatow. In 1999 he was awarded a "Bambi" for his life's work. In 1997, at the age of 94, Heesters celebrated his 75th stage anniversary and went on tour with the play "A Blessed Age". At the turn of the millennium, Heesters, who was fond of tobacco and whiskey until old age, became the oldest active entertainer in the world. In 2001 he was honored with the Platinum Romy for his life's work.
In 2002, the 99-year-old Heesters was able to look back on 80 years on the stage. Another autobiographical work by Heesters followed in 2002 with the title "Even a hundred years are not enough". In 2003, Johannes Heesters received an honorary award from the "Bambi" for his life's work. In 2004, Heesters appeared four times in the role of the gentleman in Hofmannsthal's "Everyman". At the Wittenberge Elbland Festival he was awarded the title of "chamber singer". In August 2006, the first exhibition about Heesters took place in the Berlin Academy of Arts, which he personally opened with a song recital. In the year 2006 he received the "Honorary Radio Rainbow Award". In 2008, Heesters took on a supporting role in the Til Schweiger comedy "1 1/2 Knights - In Search of the Adorable Herzelinde". From July 2010, Heesters plays the king in Rolf Hochhuth's "Inselkomödie" in the Berliner Ensemble.
Johannes Heesters died on December 24, 2011 in Starnberg, at the age of 108.Johannes Heestars (Dutch actor/singer) born 05 Dec 1903 - died 24 Dec 2011(108years +)
STILL LIVING
Widely considered the world's oldest regular stage performer until his death.- Leila Danette was born on 23 August 1909 in Jacksonville, Florida, USA. She was an actress, known for Law & Order (1990), Running on Empty (1988) and The Rosary Murders (1987). She died on 4 September 2012.Leila Danette(actress) born 23 Aug 1909 - died 04 September 2012(103years +)
Didn't start acting on stage until she was 67 and then got into movies and TV after she was 80.