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The son of the great character actor (and Errol Flynn sidekick) Alan Hale, Alan Hale Jr. (he dropped the Jr. after his father passed away) was literally born into the movies. Hale did his first movie as a baby and continued to act until his death. Unlike other child actors, Hale made a smooth transition in the movies and starred in several classics like Up Periscope (1959), The Lady Takes a Flyer (1958) and The West Point Story (1950), as well as many westerns. He did many television guest appearances as well before getting his role as Skipper Jonas Grumby on the cult comedy Gilligan's Island (1964). After the sitcom went off the air, Hale continued to act and even teamed up with Gilligan co-star Bob Denver in The Good Guys (1968), a CBS-TV comedy that lasted only two years. After that ended, Hale keep busy acting in guest appearances and maintained his business interests which included a restaurant and travel agency. On January 2, 1990, Alan Hale Jr. died at age 68 of thymus cancer at St. Vincent Medical Center (SVMC) in Los Angeles, California. Upon his death, his remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean.- Being born and raised in Edinburgh, Charleson attended the Royal High School and then went on to attend Edinburgh University. He initially studied architecture but switched to an MA degree after cultivating an interest in acting. He won a place at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art after graduating from Edinburgh.
- Actor
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- Producer
One of Britain's most beloved eccentric comedians, the irrepressible, gap-toothed Terry-Thomas was born Thomas Terry Hoar-Stevens in Lichfield Grove, Finchley. He was the son of Ellen Elizabeth (Hoar) and Ernest Frederick Stevens, a fairly well-to-do London businessman. He was afforded a private education at Ardingly College in Sussex, with the understanding that this was to lead him towards a prosperous future in the world of commerce. Ironically, deemed to have no acting talent and thus spurned by his school's dramatic society, young Thomas took to music and soon fronted his own jazz band, "The Rhythm Maniacs", in which he also played ukulele. His initial experience in the work force was, at best humdrum, at worst traumatic. He started as a transport clerk with the Union Cold Storage Company, went on selling meat at the Smithfield Markets and then peddled insurance policies for Norwich Union. By both choice and inclination, he didn't fit into any of these jobs, was often bullied and consequently adopted as his life-long mantra the motto "I Shall Not Be Cowed".
Trying everything to break out of what he perceived as lower middle class mediocrity, he first changed his accent from North London to the posh upper-crust tones of then-matinee idol Owen Nares. He turned to professional ballroom dancing, found work in films as an extra and performed comedy monologues, as well as impersonations in night clubs and cabaret. He also tried several variations for a stage name people would remember, including a reversed spelling of Tom Stevens: 'Mot Snevets'. Not surprisingly, this didn't catch on, and so he eventually settled on 'Terry Thomas', later adding the hyphen, which he likened to the gap between his teeth.
His theatrical debut at the Tivoli Theatre in Hull did not eventuate until he was twenty-eight. The onset of World War II put his burgeoning career on hold. He enlisted in the Army Signals Corps and, somehow, rose to the rank of sergeant. Between 1940 and 1942, Terry participated in the ENSA program, staging his own shows "Cabaret Parade" and "Stars in Battledress". It was at this time, that he first adopted the affected mannerisms, which later became his stock-in-trade. He also demonstrated an amazing repertoire for imitating popular vocalists and for recreating all types of sound effects with his voice.
In July 1946, Terry joined the cast of the revue "Piccadilly Hayride" and suddenly became the comic discovery of the year, which ended with a Royal Variety Performance in front of King and Queen. His proper breakthrough, though, came via his radio show "To Town with Terry" (and its sequel), aired on the BBC Home Service from October 1948. This opened many doors, including Terry getting his own TV series, How Do You View? (1949). He was invited to a cabaret gig at New York's Waldorf Astoria in 1951. Terry was featured on the inaugural cover of TV Mirror, even before the part of his career for which he is primarily remembered had begun in earnest.
After a brace of nondescript roles, he was finally cast as the effete, derisive Major Hitchcock in the first of several films produced by the Boulting brothers, Private's Progress (1956). For several years after, Terry's popularity flourished with similar films taking a jaundiced view of British institutions. Following his overbearing Bertrand Welch in Lucky Jim (1957), he starred as the titular Man in a Cocked Hat (1959), a satire paralleling the Suez Affair, which turned out to be one of his best roles. Terry played an inept, blundering diplomat appointed as 'special ambassador' to sort out the political quagmire of an obscure former colony, overrun by foreign agents and on the verge of an uprising. For this assignment, his character has little more to draw upon, other than his knowledge of Debrett's Peerage and Sporting Life. This film, established the dandified "jolly good show"-type Terry-Thomas screen personae once and for all.
After Carleton-Browne, came I'm All Right Jack (1959) (in which he recreated his Major Hitchcock character as a representative of management vis-à-vis labour) and School for Scoundrels (1960), in which he was perfectly cast a first-class bounder. Alternating dastardly, moustache-twirling comic villains (Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes (1965)) with sophisticated, rakish bon vivants and impeccably British chauffeurs (Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (1966) or butlers (How to Murder Your Wife (1965), popularised Terry on both sides of the Atlantic. Mostly, he came to epitomise the archetypal British 'silly ass' -- an instantly recognisable figure replete with RAF-style moustache, cheeky gap-toothed grin, mobile eyebrows, flashy waistcoats, button-hole carnation, suede shoes and enormous cigarette holders (including one studded with 42 diamonds!). Life imitated art, when it came to womanising, clothing and accessories. Terry, a founding member of the London Waistcoat Club, ended up owning more than 150 of these garments, in addition to 80 Savile Row bespoke suits.
In the late 1960's, Terry settled on the island of Ibiza with his twenty-six year old second wife. However, by 1984, his prior extravagant lifestyle and the exorbitant costs associated with the treatment of Parkinson's disease, with which he had been diagnosed in 1971, forced the couple to sell the villa and move back to a sparse flat in Britain. Almost destitute, his remaining days were made easier by his numerous friends in show business who managed to raise 51,000 pounds for him at a London benefit. Terry-Thomas died at a high care nursing home in Godalming, Surrey, in January 1990 at the age of 78.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Northern Calloway was born on 22 January 1948 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Sesame Street (1969), Sesame Street: Put Down the Duckie (1988) and Christmas Eve on Sesame Street (1978). He was married to Terry Calloway. He died on 9 January 1990 in Ossining, New York, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Gordon Cameron Jackson was born on December 19, 1923, in Glasgow, Scotland, the youngest of five children, whose father taught painting in the city. His interest in acting began during his school years, when he took part in many amateur productions. This led to him being spotted by the BBC, and that led to work in such radio shows such as "Children's Hour" followed. However, by age 15 he left school and went to work for Rolls-Royce. However, when some film producers were looking for a young Scot for a role in Somewhere in France (1942), "The Beeb" hadn't forgotten Gordon (even if he had forgotten them) and recommended him.
His abilities as an actor really came to the forefront at age 20 with his appearance as an airman in Millions Like Us (1943). Although his roles were limited by his Scottish accent, his versatility won him many film and TV roles in a career spanning almost 50 years. He was a very prolific actor and, although not always starring in high-profile films, he was rarely out of work. His early career also included work in radio and repertory theater in Glasgow, Worthing and Perth. He made his London stage debut in 1951, in the long-running farce "Seagulls Over Sorrento". Later stage roles included Horatio in "Hamlet", Banquo in "Macbeth", Ishmael in "Moby Dick" directed by Orson Welles and a range of other parts both classical and modern.
In 1949 he starred in the film Floodtide (1949) alongside Rona Anderson, whom he married two years later. The couple had two children, Graham and Roddy. His film work remained steady throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In 1969 he played Horatio in Tony Richardson's production of "Hamlet" at the Round House, and won the Clarence Derwent Award for Best Supporting Actor. However, the public didn't really "discover" him until 1971 with London Weekend Television's classic Upstairs, Downstairs (1971). This series set in the 1910s and 1920s concerned the contrast between the lives of a wealthy family (upstairs) and their servants (downstairs). He played the "middleman" butler, Hudson. The series lasted five years and aired in dozens of countries worldwide, and was particularly popular in the US.
In 1974 he was awarded British Actor of the Year award and a Supporting Actor Emmy in 1975 for "Upstairs, Downstair". In 1977 came the long-running The Professionals (1977), an action-based crime series in which he played the tough, ruthless, wily head of a government agency called Criminal Intelligence (essentially a cross between MI6, Special Branch and the SAS). This was a complete (if temporary) change of direction for his career and he appeared to relish the challenge of playing an entirely different role. Despite the controversial depiction of violence, the series was hugely successful all over the world (except America, as the TV network executives there felt it too violent). Reportedly the British royal family were fans of the series, and in 1979 he was awarded OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for his services to drama. Shortly after completion of the series in 1981, he appeared in the Australian mini-series A Town Like Alice (1981).. He won Australia's Logie award for this role. Yet despite his success, he claimed that he did not enjoy his own performances and never watched himself on screen, stating that he never felt very confident or comfortable in front of the camera or on stage.
Throughout the remainder of the 1980s he generally took small roles in TV and film projects. Tragically his career was cut short when, in 1989, it was discovered he had irreversible bone cancer. He passed away on 14 January 1990 at the Cromwell Hospital in South Kensington, London.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Today Barbara Stanwyck is remembered primarily as the matriarch of the family known as the Barkleys on the TV western The Big Valley (1965), wherein she played Victoria, and from the hit drama The Colbys (1985). But she was known to millions of other fans for her movie career, which spanned the period from 1927 until 1964, after which she appeared on television until 1986. It was a career that lasted for 59 years.
Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York, to working class parents Catherine Ann (McPhee) and Byron E. Stevens. Her father, from Massachusetts, had English ancestry, and her Canadian mother, from Nova Scotia, was of Scottish and Irish descent. Stanwyck went to work at the local telephone company for fourteen dollars a week, but she had the urge (a dream--that was all it was) somehow to enter show business. When not working, she pounded the pavement in search of dancing jobs. The persistence paid off. Barbara was hired as a chorus girl for the princely sum of $40 a week, much better than the wages she was getting from the phone company. She was seventeen, and was going to make the most of the opportunity that had been given her.
In 1928 Barbara moved to Hollywood, where she was to start one of the most lucrative careers filmdom had ever seen. She was an extremely versatile actress who could adapt to any role. Barbara was equally at home in all genres, from melodramas, such as Forbidden (1932) and Stella Dallas (1937), to thrillers, such as Double Indemnity (1944), one of her best films, also starring Fred MacMurray (as you have never seen him before). She also excelled in comedies such as Remember the Night (1939) and The Lady Eve (1941). Another genre she excelled in was westerns, Union Pacific (1939) being one of her first and TV's The Big Valley (1965) (her most memorable role) being her last. In 1983, she played in the ABC hit mini-series The Thorn Birds (1983), which did much to keep her in the eye of the public. She turned in an outstanding performance as Mary Carson.
Barbara was considered a gem to work with for her serious but easygoing attitude on the set. She worked hard at being an actress, and she never allowed her star quality to go to her head. She was nominated for four Academy Awards, though she never won. She turned in magnificent performances for all the roles she was nominated for, but the "powers that be" always awarded the Oscar to someone else. However, in 1982 she was awarded an honorary Academy Award for "superlative creativity and unique contribution to the art of screen acting." Sadly, Barbara died on January 20, 1990, leaving 93 movies and a host of TV appearances as her legacy to us.- Actress
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Ava Lavina Gardner was born on December 24, 1922 in Grabtown, North Carolina, to Mary Elizabeth (née Baker) and Jonas Bailey Gardner. Born on a tobacco farm, where she got her lifelong love of earthy language and going barefoot, Ava grew up in the rural South. At age 18, her picture in the window of her brother-in- law's New York photo studio brought her to the attention of MGM, leading quickly to Hollywood and a film contract based strictly on her beauty. With zero acting experience, her first 17 film roles, 1942-1945, were one-line bits or little better. After her first starring role in B-grade Whistle Stop (1946), MGM loaned her to Universal for her first outstanding film The Killers (1946). Few of her best films were made at MGM which, keeping her under contract for 17 years, used her popularity to sell many mediocre films. Perhaps as a result, she never believed in her own acting ability, but her latent talent shone brightly when brought out by a superior director, as with John Ford in Mogambo (1953) and George Cukor in Bhowani Junction (1956).
After three failed marriages, dissatisfaction with Hollywood life prompted Ava to move to Spain in 1955; most of her subsequent films were made abroad. By this time, stardom had made the country girl a cosmopolitan, but she never overcame a deep insecurity about acting and life in the spotlight. Her last quality starring film role was in The Night of the Iguana (1964), her later work being (as she said) strictly "for the loot". In 1968, tax trouble in Spain prompted a move to London, where she spent her last 22 years in reasonable comfort. Her film career did not bring her great fulfillment, but her looks may have made it inevitable; many fans still consider her the most beautiful actress in Hollywood history. Ava Gardner died at age 67 of bronchial pneumonia on January 25, 1990 in Westminister, London, England.- Actor
- Additional Crew
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German-born Henry Brandon was a character actor in American films, most often seen in villainous roles. His parents emigrated to the US shortly after his birth. His early interest in acting led him to study at the acclaimed Pasadena Community Playhouse. He landed the lead villain role in the Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy film March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934), and rapidly became a familiar and reliable heavy in pictures both large and small. In 1936 he adopted the stage name Henry Brandon after several years of being billed as either Henry or Harry Kleinbach. He captivated thriller audiences as the sinister Dr. Fu Manchu in Drums of Fu Manchu (1943), yet balanced things by playing a sizable number of sympathetic roles as well, such as the skilled foreman Joe Dombrowski in Black Legion (1937). He continued to work on stage throughout his film career, playing the villain for many years in the record-length run of the melodrama "The Drunkard". His sharp features led him rather incongruously to be cast as Indian chiefs in two John Ford features, The Searchers (1956) and Two Rode Together (1961). He kept busy in films and occasional television roles, as well as reprising his role in "The Drunkard" onstage in the 1980s, until the end of his life. Brandon was a confirmed bachelor.- Actor
- Soundtrack
With his slicked back hair and thin moustache Erik Rhodes arrived in Hollywood to recreate his stage role of Rudolfo Tonetti (which he had performed first on Broadway and then in London, 1932-1933) for the filming of The Gay Divorcee (1934), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Contrary to his screen image, Erik was born in Oklahoma and graduated from the University of Oklahoma where he won a scholarship to study acting in New York. He made his theatrical debut, delivering eight lines, in the 1928 play 'A Most Immoral Lady', under his birth name Ernest (sometimes spelled Earnest) Sharpe. Because of his good baritone voice, he was next cast in two musicals. An expert mimicker of accents and dialects, he came to specialise in films as the perennial hyperactive continental charmer. In his second notable screen outing, Top Hat (1935), he played flamboyant dressmaker Alberto Beddini, famously declaring to Ginger Rogers "All my life I have promised my dresses I'd take them to Italy...and you must be in them". There were other good parts, particularly in the comedy A Night at the Ritz (1935) as would-be master chef Leopold Jaynos. Andre Sennwald's review in The New York Times (May 16,1935) commented on Erik's performance "as the psychopath with a yearning for culinary immortality, he gives 'A Night at the Ritz' its air of polite lunacy and helps to wring laughter out of a featherweight enterprise".
Erik Rhodes made films at RKO until 1937, more often than not as excitable Europeans (Henri Saffron in Woman Chases Man (1937), Frank Rochet in Old Man Rhythm (1935), Tony Bandini in Criminal Lawyer (1937) and, not forgetting, Spaghetti Nadzio in Music for Madame (1937)). By the end of the decade, his screen career had run its course. After his wartime service with U.S. Air Force Intelligence, he went back to Broadway for a lengthy spell in 'Can Can' as a Parisian bon vivant.- Actor
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One of the greatest of the transition singers between the crooners and the rockers, Johnnie Ray was the only son of Elmer and Hazel Ray. He was born and raised in Oregon where he loved hiking in nature. He was close with his older sister, sometimes hiking with her. After he became famous, he corrected any reporter who asked him whether he preferred living in Los Angeles or New York. He insisted Oregon always would be his home.
Ray lost a large part of his hearing at age 13 in an accident while at a Boy Scout event. His hearing loss was not known to his immediate family for several months; they knew only that he became more withdrawn. After high school, he began singing locally in a wild, flamboyant style, unlike any other white singer up to that time. At age 25 he became an American sensation. The following year, during his first concert tour of the United Kingdom, Ray started attracting mobs of young people who rioted in front of him. In 1954, at age 27, he became the first American performer to draw crowds in Australia.
Ray's early songs, such as the 1952 45 RPM record, "Cry" / "The Little White Cloud That Cried," were major successes. Following up on that hit single, later the same year (1952) Ray had a #4 United States hit with a cover of the 1930 standard "Walkin' My Baby Back Home." In 1954, he covered The Drifters' R & B hit "Such A Night." Ray's version, released a short time after The Drifters' version, peaked at #18 on the American charts.
In 1954, Johnnie Ray co-starred alongside Marilyn Monroe, Donald O'Connor, Dan Dailey, Mitzi Gaynor and Ethel Merman in the 20th Century Fox film version of There's No Business Like Show Business (1954). Monroe's hatred of the film was widely publicized, and it was a disappointment both at the box office and with critics. After Monroe's premature death, There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) was remembered for her dancing and singing "Heat Wave". Ray's character, Steve Donahue, sings and dances with his family in vaudeville until he surprises them by becoming a Catholic priest. Much later, he returns to the family, explaining that the parish is allowing him to perform with them while wearing clothing that is similar to theirs. Ray never appeared in another A-list motion picture.
His cover of "Just Walkin' In The Rain", which had been composed years earlier by two incarcerated men, rose to #2 on the American charts in December 1956. His last major hit song in the United States came in 1957: "You Don't Owe Me A Thing." His recordings reached many more people in the United Kingdom than in the United States for the next four years.
In 1960, Ray's record label dropped him. Another label signed him in 1961 then dropped him a short time later. He never released another recording. From 1961 until his death in 1990, his popularity could be measured only by the venues where he performed and the number of tickets sold. Ray never played a stadium or large concert hall in the United States again.
In 1987, Ray performed in the relatively small auditorium at El Camino College in Torrance, California, a far cry from the nearby Hollywood Bowl where he had performed on August 27, 1955. Even that far back, according to a Los Angeles Times display ad for the Hollywood Bowl that can be found in the newspaper's August 23 edition in its database, Johnnie Ray was billed as one of six attractions at the "8:30 Pops" concert. (Performers were billed in this order: Johnny Green, Johnnie Ray, Helen O'Connell, Les Baxter, Four Freshmen, Leo Diamond.) It was the only appearance Ray ever made at the Hollywood Bowl.
Ray's brushes with the law during two visits to Detroit (1951 and 1959) resulted from a sting operation that police officers throughout the United States routinely did to apprehend gay men. In the aftermath of the 1951 arrest, Ray pled guilty and paid a fine. He was acquitted of the 1959 charge. Some writers have said Ray's trouble in Detroit may have contributed to a decline in his popularity in his home country. His 1951 arrest, however, was not reported in any newspapers at the time because there was no trial and his career did not take off until a few months later. By the time of his arrest and acquittal at the end of 1959, his career already had slipped considerably.
Other music historians have cited an equally important factor in Ray's fade from public view: an operation he underwent in New York in 1958 that he and his surgeon hoped would restore his hearing. The surgeon botched the procedure and his hearing worsened, thereby making it much harder for him to communicate with musicians who backed him and with record producers and sound engineers. Ray had to deal with the worst fate that could befall a solo performer in the 1960s as younger fans lionized groups that wrote their own songs: Ray no longer introduced new material to concertgoers or record buyers.
During his heyday, Johnnie Ray married a Los Angeles woman named Marilyn Morrison. Newspaper columnist Louella Parsons wrote about the couple many times between 1952 and 1954 as they frequently separated and reconciled, or so the columnists claimed. A biographer speculated decades later that music business bigwigs, which included Morrison's father, had arranged the marriage to divert the public's attention from Ray's alleged homosexuality. But during Ray's declining years, he had to cope with a media cover-up that was even more devastating: columnist Earl Wilson untruthfully reported that Ray's 1958 botched surgery was a total success. As new generations came along, no one in the music business knew or cared why Ray was unable to communicate with musicians and other people he needed for a comeback.
At the same time Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly replaced him on the Billboard charts, syndicated columnist Dorothy Kilgallen continued to write about him as if he were still on the A list. New Yorkers who saw them together noticed that they were openly affectionate in public. For many years, they speculated that she was blurring the boundary between her career and personal life, using her column to try to advance Ray's career.
Kilgallen's column as it appeared in the New York Journal-American on September 15, 1965 included a plug for his current show at New York's Latin Quarter nightclub, owned by the father of future star television newscaster Barbara Walters, and it also plugged a gig he had scheduled for October in Las Vegas. Neither Kilgallen nor any other journalist revealed that immediately before the Latin Quarter gig had started, Ray and his new manager lived in Spain for eight months during which time they settled a debt of many thousands of dollars that he owed to the IRS. Ray's manager from the previous decade, Bernie Lang, allegedly had been responsible for the accumulation of the IRS debt, and this presents yet another factor that likely contributed to Ray's disappearance from the public eye. Unlike the trouble that Col. Tom Parker caused Elvis, the way Bernie Lang treated Johnnie Ray has interested few people over the years. Lang was interviewed after Ray's death and maintained his innocence.
Ray had a minor comeback in the United States in the early 1970s, making TV appearances on The Andy Williams Show (1962) and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962). Record labels and songwriters continued to ignore him, however. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, nostalgia for music without electric guitar distortion drew American television viewers to such prime-time shows as Happy Days (1974) and The Love Boat (1977), but Ray never appeared on-camera. His 1950s recordings can be heard playing in the background of two 1974 Happy Days episodes. In 1982, MTV put in heavy rotation the video for "Come On, Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runners. The opening verse name-checked Johnnie Ray and the video included 28-year-old news footage of emotional girls greeting Ray as he arrived at Heathrow Airport in London. But most of the target audience for the song and especially for the MTV video had never heard of him. They tuned out the black-and-white footage and the lyrics, which Dexys Midnight Runners sang with a heavy English accent. American listeners were clueless about the words that open the song. They were almost unintelligible in the era before Google: "Poor old Johnnie Ray / sounded sad upon the radio, etc."
Ray continued to perform in Las Vegas but attracted much less attention than headliners Frank Sinatra, Wayne Newton and Liberace. His popularity never waned at large concert venues in England, Scotland, and Australia. The summer of 1989 saw Ray headlining and filling up those foreign venues, but when he performed in his beloved Oregon in October of that year, more than half the seats were empty.
Very soon after returning from Oregon, which he said was his actual home, to Los Angeles, where he lived out of necessity, he began showing symptoms of cirrhosis of the liver. His overseas fans didn't have access to this information. The American media now included many more entertainment news outlets than it had in the era when Parsons and Wilson had made a fuss over Ray, but all journalists, including those on Entertainment Tonight, ignored the fact that he was dying.
In 1990, he was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for three weeks without attracting attention. When he entered an irreversible coma on February 23, 1990, a newspaper wire service finally picked up the story, followed by frequent announcements on CNN until he died the next day. His loyal fans in Europe and Australia had not known he was ill and were shocked and saddened. He was 63.- Actor
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Gary Merrill was born August 2, 1915, in Hartford, Connecticut. He began his career acting in summer stock plays. He married Barbara Leeds, an actress, and then served a brief stint in the army. After the army, he landed in New York, where he was chosen to join the already popular play "Born Yesterday". In 1950 he was cast in the part of Bill Sampson in All About Eve (1950). It would be his first time meeting Bette Davis and they became an instant couple. After their respective divorces, they were married in Mexico. She was 42 and he was 35. During their marriage they adopted two children, Margot and Michael, and after ten years of fighting and financial problems they divorced. Merrill did not marry again, though he was involved with Rita Hayworth for a time. Later in his career Merrill made a lucrative living doing voice-overs for radio and television commercials. In 1988 he published his autobiography, "Bette, Rita, And The Rest Of My Life". He died of lung cancer at the age of 74.- With classic patrician features and an independent, non-conformist personality, Capucine began her film debut in 1949 at the age of 21 with an appearance in the film Rendezvous in July (1949). She attended school in France and received a BA degree in foreign languages. Married for six months in her early twenties, she never remarried. In 1957, she was discovered by director Charles K. Feldman while working as a high-fashion model for Givenchy in Paris and was brought to Hollywood to study acting under Gregory Ratoff. She was put under contract by Columbia studios in 1958 and had her first leading part in the movie Song Without End (1960). She made six more major movies in the early to mid 1960s, two of which (The Lion (1962) and The 7th Dawn (1964)) starred William Holden, with whom she had a two-year affair. Moving from Hollywood to a penthouse apartment in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1962, she continued making movies, mostly in Europe, until her suicide in 1990.
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Greta Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, 1905, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Anna Lovisa (Johansdotter), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson, a laborer. She was fourteen when her father died, which left the family destitute. Greta was forced to leave school and go to work in a department store. The store used her as a model in its newspaper ads. She had no film aspirations until she appeared in short advertising film at that same department store while she was still a teenager. Erik A. Petschler, a comedy director, saw the film and gave her a small part in his Luffar-Petter (1922). Encouraged by her own performance, she applied for and won a scholarship to a Swedish drama school. While there she appeared in at least one film, En lyckoriddare (1921). Both were small parts, but it was a start. Finally famed Swedish director Mauritz Stiller pulled her from the drama school for the lead role in The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924). At 18 Greta was on a roll.
Following The Joyless Street (1925) both Greta and Stiller were offered contracts with MGM, and her first film for the studio was the American-made Torrent (1926), a silent film in which she didn't have to speak a word of English. After a few more films, including The Temptress (1926), Love (1927) and A Woman of Affairs (1928), Greta starred in Anna Christie (1930) (her first "talkie"), which not only gave her a powerful screen presence but also garnered her an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress (she didn't win). Later that year she filmed Romance (1930), which was somewhat of a letdown, but she bounced back in 1931, landing another lead role in Mata Hari (1931), which turned out to be a major hit.
Greta continued to give intense performances in whatever was handed her. The next year she was cast in what turned out to be yet another hit, Grand Hotel (1932). However, it was in MGM's Anna Karenina (1935) that she gave what some consider the performance of her life. She was absolutely breathtaking in the role as a woman torn between two lovers and her son. Shortly afterwards, she starred in the historical drama Queen Christina (1933) playing the title character to great acclaim. She earned an Oscar nomination for her role in the romantic drama Camille (1936), again playing the title character. Her career suffered a setback the following year in Conquest (1937), which was a box office disaster. She later made a comeback when she starred in Ninotchka (1939), which showcased her comedic side. It wasn't until two years later she made what was to be her last film, Two-Faced Woman (1941), another comedy. But the film drew controversy and was condemned by the Catholic Church and other groups and was a box office failure, which left Garbo shaken.
After World War II Greta, by her own admission, felt that the world had changed perhaps forever and she retired, never again to face the camera. She would work for the rest of her life to perpetuate the Garbo mystique. Her films, she felt, had their proper place in history and would gain in value. She abandoned Hollywood and moved to New York City. She would jet-set with some of the world's best-known personalities such as Aristotle Onassis and others. She spent time gardening and raising flowers and vegetables. In 1954 Greta was given a special Oscar for past unforgettable performances. She even penned her biography in 1990.
On April 15, 1990, Greta died of natural causes in New York and with her went the "Garbo Mystique". She was 84.- Actor
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Albert Salmi was born on March 11, 1927, in Brooklyn, New York, to Finnish parents. After serving in the Army during WWII, he used the GI Bill to study at the Dramatic Workshop of the American Theater Wing and the prestigious Actors Studio. He became a stage actor, very soon landing on Broadway, where his role as Bo Decker in "Bus Stop" was his biggest stage success. A compromise between the stage and screen was live TV drama, in which he was cast regularly. His portrayal of Bruce Pearson in the The United States Steel Hour (1953)'s live 1956 broadcast of "Bang the Drum Slowly" was heart-tuggingly poignant. Salmi's very first film appearance was a choice role in The Brothers Karamazov (1958), for which he turned down an Oscar nomination. The National Board of Review succeeded in presenting him with its award for the same picture, however. Salmi came to enjoy film work and actively sought out parts in westerns. He became a very familiar presence, especially on the TV screen, where he guest starred in many of the westerns and other series of the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1967 he was presented with the Western Heritage (Wrangler) Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame for his role in the Gunsmoke (1955) episode entitled "Death Watch". This bronze cowboy on horseback became his most cherished award. Salmi demonstrated his versatility, however, as years went on. Tall, brawny and sometimes quite intimidating, he was often cast as the bad guy or the authority figure. He was equally convincing, though, as a wronged or misunderstood good guy or a good-natured sidekick. A method actor, Salmi had the ability to make you love or hate his character.
He was, in real life, quite different from most of the characters he played. A quiet-natured family man, he was an oddity by glitzy Hollywood standards. Many of his friends and co-stars have commented on his sense of humor and his lack of pretense. In semi-retirement, he shared his knowledge of theatre by teaching drama classes in Spokane, Washington, where he and his wife settled.- Actress
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A fascinating aura of mystery seemed to surround the characters portrayed by blue-eyed blonde actress Susan Oliver, whose trademark high cheekbones, rosebud lips and heart-shaped face kept audiences intrigued for nearly three decades. She left a fine legacy of work in theater, motion pictures and television.
Born Charlotte Gercke on February 13, 1932 in New York City, she was the daughter of well-to-do George Gercke, a political reporter and journalist for the New York World, and his astrology practitioner wife, Ruth Oliver (aka Ruth Hale Oliver), both of whom divorced while Susan was still quite young (age 3). As a privileged adolescent, she went to various public and boarding schools. As a teenager, she lived with her father and traveled with him overseas to Japan, where he maintained a news post. While there (1948-49), she studied at the Tokyo International College and developed an interest in Japan's deep obsession with the American popular culture. Much later in her career (1977), in fact, Susan would write and direct Cowboysan (1978), a short film which told of Japanese actors performing in an American western.
In the spring of 1949, Susan briefly rejoined her mother, who was now remarried, residing in Los Angeles, and gaining a solid reputation as Hollywood's astrologer to the stars. However, by that fall, Susan was back East, studying drama at Pennsylvania's Swarthmore College (for four years). She then continued her training at New York City's Neighborhood Playhouse, while finding stage work in both summer stock and regional theaters. Commercials and daytime/prime-time television work started coming Susan's way and, by that time, she had already changed her stage moniker to the more flowing name of Susan Oliver.
The year 1957 began with a debut ingénue role as a Revolutionary War-era daughter in the Broadway comedy "Small War on Murray Hill", which opened and closed at the Ethel Barrymore Theater after only nine days. A far more potent and substantial role fell her way in October of that same year, when she replaced British actress Mary Ure as Allison Porter in the superior kitchen sink drama "Look Back in Anger". Susan continued to find extensive dramatic work in live East coast television plays, with roles on The Kaiser Aluminum Hour (1956), The United States Steel Hour (1953), Studio 57 (1954) and Matinee Theatre (1955). At this juncture, she decided to migrate back to Los Angeles for more on-camera opportunities and attained guest roles on such popular prime-time series as Wagon Train (1957), Father Knows Best (1954), The Millionaire (1955) and The Lineup (1954).
Susan made her cinematic debut as the tough yet doomed title role in Warner Bros.' low-budget melodrama The Green-Eyed Blonde (1957). The film was shot in black and white, so it didn't matter that Susan's eyes were blue. Topbilled, she played the rebellious delinquent leader at a girls' reformatory and lent class to the rather exploitative material, which was written by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo. Two years later, Susan returned to the big screen as another tough cookie in the better-received biopic The Gene Krupa Story (1959), as a jazz singer who lures the renowned drummer (played by Sal Mineo) down the road to drugs and near ruin. A brief return to the Broadway stage, with the comedy "Patate" starring Tom Ewell and Lee Bowman, would last only four days but Susan earned great notices and won New York's Theatre World Award World for her outstanding breakout performance.
On early 1960s television, Susan continued to offer a number of striking and often showy, neurotic performances on episodes of Bonanza (1959), Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958), 77 Sunset Strip (1958), Wagon Train (1957), The Virginian (1962), Adventures in Paradise (1959), Route 66 (1960), Dr. Kildare (1961) and The Fugitive (1963). Filmwise, she found a few lead and support roles in the Elizabeth Taylor-starred BUtterfield 8 (1960); as a psychiatric nurse in the all-star hospital melodrama The Caretakers (1963); in the tailored-for-the-teens romp, Looking for Love (1964), as a friend to Connie Francis; and in the hilarious Jerry Lewis slapstick vehicle The Disorderly Orderly (1964), in which she added rather heavy drama as a depressed hospital patient. During this time, her most challenging role was as the ambitious wife of doomed country music legend Hank Williams (George Hamilton, in offbeat casting) in Your Cheatin' Heart (1964).
Susan's name remained active particularly on television, where she graced such series as The Andy Griffith Show (1960), The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1963), Burke's Law (1963), Dr. Kildare (1961), Ben Casey (1961), Gomer Pyle: USMC (1964), My Three Sons (1960), The Invaders (1967) and Mannix (1967). Classic television showcases includes the episode, People Are Alike All Over (1960), in which she plays the beautiful martian Teenya, who encounters astronaut Roddy McDowall, and the unsold pilot episode The Cage (1966), as Vina, the sole survivor of a crashed spaceship who charms Captain Christopher Pike (Jeffrey Hunter, the captain subsequently replaced by William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk, when the show became a series). Footage from that pilot was later incorporated into the two-part episode "The Menagerie". In 1966, Susan made bittersweet news, when her regular role as Ann Howard in the prime-time soap opera Peyton Place (1964), was pushed off a cliff to her death. Written out after only five months of a year-long planned role, audiences (as well as Susan) were saddened by the loss of a character they had grown to care about. Subsequently, Susan starred in her own pilot for a new series, "Apartment in Rome", but that didn't sell.
Unfortunately, Susan's late 1960s work in a variety of film genres and opposite a number of formidable leading men were ultimately too few and did not help to advance her career. These included the LSD-induced drama The Love-Ins (1967) with Richard Todd and James MacArthur; the western A Man Called Gannon (1968) starring Anthony Franciosa; and the sci-fiers Change of Mind (1969) with Raymond St. Jacques and The Monitors (1969) with Guy Stockwell. The 1970s also hardly fared better with standard roles in Ginger in the Morning (1974) (donning a black wig), the Spanish-made drama Nido de viudas (1977), and Hardly Working (1980), in which she reunited with Jerry Lewis in what was supposed to be his comeback attempt. That film was ultimately shelved, before earning scant release a couple of years later.
Susan appeared as a regular for one season (1975-76) on Days of Our Lives (1965) and received a "Supporting Actress" Emmy nomination for the made-for-TV movie Amelia Earhart (1976), playing aviatrix Neta "Snookie" Snook, friend and mentor to the title character, played by Emmy-nominated Susan Clark. The role of "Snookie" was tailor-made for Susan, who, by this time, had merited attention as a licensed commercial pilot.
Susan's passion for flying had been compromised a decade earlier after a dramatic 1966 commercial plane scare. The near-death experience kept the actress on solid ground for well over a year, before she managed to overcome her paralyzing fear. In 1970, fully recovered, she co-piloted a single-engine Piper Comanche to victory in the Powder Puff Derby racing event, a victory that earned her the name, "Pilot of the Year". [Amelia Mary Earhart was the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean]. However, in her attempt to fly to Moscow, the Soviet government denied her entrance to their air space and she was forced to end her journey in Denmark. Susan would later write about her flying exploits in her autobiography "Odyssey: A Daring Transatlantic Journey" (1983).
Susan's last years were focused on the small screen, with roles in the made-for-TV movies Tomorrow's Child (1982) and International Airport (1985), and standard guest-starring on The Love Boat (1977), Murder, She Wrote (1984), Simon & Simon (1981) and Freddy's Nightmares (1988). She also moved behind the camera a few times, directing episodes of M*A*S*H (1972) and Trapper John, M.D. (1979). A longtime smoker, the never-married Susan was diagnosed with lung cancer and died with quiet dignity at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California at age 58 -- an untimely death for such a beautiful lady and strong talent.- Actor
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Sammy Davis Jr. was often billed as the "greatest living entertainer in the world".
He was born in Harlem, Manhattan, the son of dancer Elvera Davis (née Sanchez) and vaudeville star Sammy Davis Sr.. His father was African-American and his mother was of Cuban and African-American ancestry. Davis Jr. was known as someone who could do it all, sing, dance, play instruments, act, do stand-up and he was known for his self-deprecating humor; he once heard someone complaining about discrimination, and he said, "You got it easy. I'm a short, ugly, one-eyed, black Jew. What do you think it's like for me?" (he had converted to Judaism).
A short stint in the army opened his eyes to the evils of racism. A slight man, he was often beaten up by bigger white soldiers and given the dirtiest and most dangerous assignments by white officers simply because he was black. He helped break down racial barriers in show business in the 1950s and 1960s, especially in Las Vegas, where he often performed; when he started there in the early 1950s, he was not allowed to stay in the hotels he played in, as they refused to take blacks as customers. He also stirred up a large amount of controversy in the 1960s by openly dating, and ultimately marrying, blonde, blue-eyed, Swedish-born actress May Britt.
He starred in the Broadway musical "Golden Boy" in the 1960s. Initially a success, internal tensions, production problems and bad reviews--many of them directed at Davis for playing a role originally written for a white man resulted in its closing fairly quickly. His film and nightclub career were in full swing, however, and he became even more famous as one of the "Rat Pack", a group of free-wheeling entertainers that included Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford.
A chain smoker, Davis died from throat cancer at the age of 64. When he died, he was in debt. To pay for Davis' funeral, most of his memorabilia was sold off.- Actor
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Jim Henson never thought that he would make a name of himself in puppetry; it was merely a way of getting himself on television. The vehicle that achieved it was Sam and Friends (1955), a late-night puppet show that was on after the 11:00 news in Washington DC. It proved to be very popular and inspired Jim to continue using puppets for his work. He made many commercials, developing the signature humor that Henson Productions is known for. A key reason for the success of his puppets is that Jim realized he didn't need to hide puppeteers behind a structure when they were in front of a camera. All he had to do was instruct the camera operators to focus on the puppets and keep the puppeteers out of the frame. This allowed the puppets to dominate the image and make them more lifelike. This work on puppets and television would lead to separate projects that had different goals. The first one was his work on the The Jimmy Dean Show (1963) with the character Rowlf the Dog, the oldest clearly identified character that Henson Productions still uses. This show provided an income that allowed Jim to work on a pet project. That project was Time Piece (1965), a surrealistic short about time which was nominated for best live-action short Oscar. Henson shot to prominence when he was approached to use his muppets for the revolutionary educational show Sesame Street (1969). The show was a smash hit and his characters have become staples on public television. Unforetunately, this also led to Henson being typecast as only an entertainer for children. He sought to disprove that by being part of the initial crew of Saturday Night Live (1975), but his style and that of the creative staff simply didn't jibe. It was this circumstance that encouraged him to develop a variety show format that had the kind of sophisticated humor that "Sesame Street (1969)" didn't work with. No American broadcaster was interested, but British producer Lew Grade was. This led to The Muppet Show (1976). It initially struggled both in the ratings and in the search for guest stars, but in the second season it became a smash hit and would eventually become the most widely watched series in television history. Hungry for a new challenge, Henson made The Muppet Movie (1979), defying the popular industry opinion that his characters would never work in a movie. The film became a hit and spawned a series of features which included the moody fantasy The Dark Crystal (1982), which was a drastic and bold departure from the amiable tone of his previous work. The most successful TV work in the 1980s was Fraggle Rock (1983), a fantasy series specifically designed to appeal to as many cultural groups as possible. During this time he also established the Creature Shop, a puppet studio that became renowned for being as brilliant with puppetry as ILM was at special effects. When he died all too soon in 1990, he was indisputably one of the geniuses of puppetry. More importantly, he was a man who achieved his phenomenal success while still retaining his social conscience and artistic integrity as his work in promoting environmentalism and his brilliant The Storyteller (1987) series respectively attest to.- Actress
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Jill Ireland was a British-American actress best known for her appearance as "Leila Kalomi," the only woman Mr. Spock ever loved (in the Star Trek (1966) episode, This Side of Paradise (1967)) and for her many supporting roles in the movies of Charles Bronson. She is also known for her battle with breast cancer, having written two books on her fight with the disease and serving as a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society.
Jill Dorothy Ireland was born in London on April 24, 1936, to wine merchant Jack Ireland and his wife Dorothy, who were fated to outlive their daughter. Young Jill started her entertainment career at age 16 as a dancer, and made her screen debut in 1955, in Michael Powell's Oh... Rosalinda!! (1955). On May 11, 1957, she married actor David McCallum, whom she met on the set of the Stanley Baker action picture Hell Drivers (1957). In the mid-'60s, they moved to the United States so McCallum could star as agent "Ilya Kuryakin" in the TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964). She got steady work on American television and would co-star with her husband in five episode of the series in 1964, 1965 and 1967.
Ireland separated from McCallum, with whom she had two biological sons and one adopted son, in June 1965. He filed for divorce in August 1966, and it was finalized in February 1967. On October 5, 1968, she married Charles Bronson, who was 15 years her senior and still several years away from coming into his own as a leading man. They had first met when McCallum introduced them on the set of The Great Escape (1963). With Bronson, she had two children, a daughter born to the couple in 1971, and an adopted daughter. They first co-starred together in the 1970 French movie Rider on the Rain (1970), which made Bronson a major star in Europe (she had first played an uncredited bit part in his movie London Affair (1970), released that same year). They starred in 13 more pictures over the next 17 years, a period during which Bronson and Ireland rivaled Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke as the most prolific screen couple. During her marriage to Bronson, Ireland appeared in only one TV episode, one TV movie and one theatrical picture that didn't star her husband.
She was diagnosed with cancer in her right breast in 1984 and underwent a mastectomy. She wrote about her battle and became an advocate for the American Cancer Society, which led to the organization giving her its Courage Award. Ireland was presented with the award by President Ronald Reagan. Tragically, she lost her battle with the disease after it metastasized and died at her home in Malibu, California, on May 18, 1990, aged only 54. She was survived by her husband, children, stepchildren, parents, brother, and extended family.- Actor
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Vic Tayback was born on 6 January 1930 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Alice (1976), Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) and All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989). He was married to Sheila McKay Barnard. He died on 25 May 1990 in Glendale, California, USA.- Actor
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Rex Harrison was born Reginald Carey Harrison in Huyton, Lancashire, England, to Edith Mary (Carey) and William Reginald Harrison, a cotton broker. He changed his name to Rex as a young boy, knowing it was the Latin word for "King". Starting out on his theater career at age 18, his first job at the Liverpool Rep Theatre was nearly his last - dashing across the stage to say his one line, made his entrance and promptly blew it. Fates were kind, however, and soon he began landing roles in the West End. "French Without Tears", a play by Terence Rattigan, proved to be his breakthrough role. Soon he was being called the "greatest actor of light comedy in the world". Having divorced his first wife Collette Thomas in 1942, he married German actress Lilli Palmer. The two began appearing together in many plays and British films. He attained international fame when he portrayed the King in Anna and the King of Siam (1946), his first American film. After a sex scandal, in which actress Carole Landis apparently committed suicide because he ended their affair, the relationship with wife Lilli became strained. Rex (by this time known as "Sexy Rexy" for his philandering ways and magnetic charm) began a relationship with British actress Kay Kendall and divorced Lilli to marry the terminally ill Kay with hopes of a re-marriage to Palmer upon Kay's death. The death of Kay affected Harrison greatly and Lilli never returned to him. During this time Rex was offered the defining role of his career: Professor Henry Higgins in the original production of "My Fair Lady". He won the Tony for the play and an Oscar for the film version. In 1962 Harrison married actress Rachel Roberts. This union and the one following it to Elizabeth Harris (Richard's ex) also ended in divorce. In 1978 Rex met and married Mercia Tinker. He and Mercia remained happily married until his death in 1990. She was also with him in 1989 when he was granted his much-deserved and long awaited knighthood at Buckingham Palace. Rex Harrison died of pancreatic cancer three weeks after his last stage appearance, as Lord Porteous in W. Somerset Maugham's "The Circle".- Actor
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Jack Gilford was born in Brooklyn, New York, as Yankel Gellman. He began his career in the Amateur Nights of the 1930s moving on to nightclubs as an innovative comedian doing satire and pantomime. He was a regular at the Greenwich Village nightspot, Cafe Society and hosted shows featuring Zero Mostel, Billie Holiday and jazz greats like Hazel Scott. It is said that he invented the expression, "The butler did it!", as part of one of his movie satire routines. He also did a facial pantomime of "Pea Soup Coming to a Boil". During the 1950s, he was a victim of the The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) blacklisting which stalled his TV career until the early 1960s. But after that, he became a regular popular comic character actor on dozens of TV series and movies. He was most recognized for being the rubber-faced guy on the "Cracker Jacks" commercials for a dozen years, from 1960-1972.
He was nominated for Tony awards on Broadway for best supporting actor in the musical, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum", and "Cabaret". The song "Meeskite" was written for him by John Kander & Fred Ebb.
He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film, Save the Tiger (1973), starring opposite Jack Lemmon, who won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance.- Actress
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Brooklyn-native actress Ina Balin (née Rosenberg) was born on November 12, 1937, into a Jewish family of entertainers. Her parents were Betty (nee Friedman) and Sam Rosenberg, who divorced when she was 9 years old. Her father was a dancer/singer/comedian who worked the Borscht Belt. He later quit show business to join his family's furrier business. Her mother was a Hungarian-born professional dancer who escaped a troubled family life by marrying at age 15. Sam was her third husband at age 21. They divorced when Ina and her brother, Richard Balin, were still quite young and the children were placed in boarding schools (she at the Montessori Children's Village in Bucks County, Pennsylvania) until their mother married a fourth time to wealthy shoe magnate Harold Balin, who later adopted Betty's two children, who took his surname.
Ina always wanted to be an actress and her mother encouraged her to take ballet lessons while young. Her first big break occurred in NewvYork at age 15 when she appeared on Perry Como's 1950s TV show. She went on to attend New York University majoring in theater and also studied with Actors Studio exponents Lonny Chapman and Curt Conway while gathering additional experience on the summer stock stage. She made an auspicious Broadway debut in a female lead with "Compulsion" in 1957. Two years later, the dark-haired, olive-skinned beauty won a Theatre World Award for her outstanding performance in the Broadway comedy, "A Majority of One", starring Gertrude Berg. Producer Carlo Ponti saw her Broadway performance in "Compulsion" and requested her for a prime role in his film The Black Orchid (1958).
Starring Ponti's wife, Sophia Loren, and Anthony Quinn, Ina received impressive notices as Quinn's sensitive, grown daughter. Considered one of 20th Century Fox's most promising new talents, she received a special "International Star of Tomorrow" Golden Globe for this early work. A major career disappointment occurred when the film version of Compulsion (1959) was made and Ina's ethnic role of "Ruth Goldenberg" was transformed into a non-ethnic part (Ruth Evans) that wound up starring Diane Varsi. Ina was given an unbilled part in the movie. The sting of that studio transgression was somewhat softened when she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for "Best Supporting Actress" for her intensive performance in the Paul Newman/Joanne Woodward soaper, From the Terrace (1960), as Newman's love interest. She found herself typecast by the studio and eventually felt compelled to leave.
A soft, slender, but intent-looking actress who could play various types of ethnicities (Jewish, Italian, Mexican, Spanish, Greek, et al.), she had a lovely, quiet glow but could easily display the fiery temperament of an Anna Magnani when called upon. In the 1960s, however, she was overshadowed by a number of her leading men in their respective showcases. She appeared in many Westerns, often as the girlfriend or love interest of the hero. There was little room for any actor to generate interest upon themselves when playing opposite the likes of an Elvis Presley, Jerry Lewis and/or John Wayne. In other situations, her roles were merely decorative, less showy, or proved less integral to the main plot, such as her secondary role as "Martha" in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). While Ina maintained a fine balance of TV roles ranging from the dramatic (Bonanza (1959), Mannix (1967), Quincy M.E. (1976), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964)) to the humorous (The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961), Get Smart (1965)), the one big acting role which could have set her apart from the others never materialized.
Subsequent pictures such as the cult film The Projectionist (1970) and The Don Is Dead (1973) and her assorted appearances in several TV-movies failed to advance her status in Hollywood. And then her life changed...dramatically. As the first woman to ever participate in a handshake tour of a South Vietnam military hospital in the late 1960s, Ina toured Vietnam with the USO in 1970 and was greatly affected by the entire experience. It also triggered a series of trips back to the war-torn region. As a Board Member of the An Lac orphanage in Saigon, she courageously took part in the full-scale evacuation of nearly 400 orphans in 1975 during the fall of the city to the Communists. She eventually adopted three of the 219 children who managed to be flown out of the country. In 1980, the dramatic rescue was replayed via a TV film in which Balin portrayed herself. The well-received The Children of an Lac (1980) also starred Shirley Jones (as fellow rescuer "Betty Tisdale") and Beulah Quo (as the concerned Vietnamese woman who ran the orphanage).
From this point on, Ina's professional career took a back seat to the raising of her children and her ongoing interest in foreign relief. She appeared throughout the 1980s with a sprinkling of guest shots on TV's Battlestar Galactica (1978), Murder, She Wrote (1984) and As the World Turns (1956), among others. As for film, her last movies (The Comeback Trail (1982), Vasectomy: A Delicate Matter (1986) and That's Adequate (1989)) were unworthy of her talents.
Ina never managed to fulfill her promising, Golden Globe-winning potential for she was diagnosed and eventually succumbed, at the age of 52 from pulmonary hypertension. A single parent, she was survived by her three children.- Actor
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Tough, virile, wavy-haired and ruggedly handsome with trademark forlorn-looking brows that added an intriguing touch of vulnerability to his hard outer core, actor Howard Duff and his wife-at-the-time, actress Ida Lupino, were one of Hollywood's premiere film couples during the 1950s "Golden Age". Prior to that, Duff had relationships with a number of the cinema's most dazzling leading ladies, including Ava Gardner (just prior to her marriage to musician Artie Shaw) and Gloria DeHaven.
Duff's talent first manifested itself on radio as Dashiell Hammett's popular private eye "Sam Spade" (1946-1950), and eventually extended to include stage, film and TV. While never considered a top-tier movie star and, despite his obvious prowess, never considered for any acting awards, Howard Duff was an undeniably strong good guy and potent heavy but perhaps lacked the requisite charisma or profile to move into the ranks of a Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas or Robert Mitchum. His career spanned over four decades.
His full name was Howard Green Duff and he was born in Bremerton, Washington on November 24, 1913. Growing up in and around the Seattle area, he attended Roosevelt High School where he played basketball. It was here that he also found an outlet acting in school plays and, following graduation, studied drama. He eventually became an acting member of the Repertory Playhouse in Seattle. Military service interrupted his early career and he served with the U.S. Army Air Force's radio service from 1941 to 1945. Upon his discharge, he returned to his acting pursuits and won the role of "Sam Spade" on NBC Radio in the role Humphrey Bogart made famous in The Maltese Falcon (1941). Lurene Tuttle played his altruistic secretary "Effie" on the series. He eventually left the program when his film career settled in and Stephen Dunne took over the radio voice of the detective in 1950 for its final season.
Duff's post-war movie career started completely on the right foot at Universal with the hard-hitting film noir Brute Force (1947), in which he received good notices as an ill-fated cellmate to Burt Lancaster, Charles Bickford and others. Quite well-known for his radio voice by this time, he was given special billing in the movie's credits as "Radio's Sam Spade". This was followed by equally vital and volatile performances in the prescient semi-documentary-styled police drama The Naked City (1948) and in Arthur Miller's taut family drama All My Sons (1948) starring Lancaster, again, and Edward G. Robinson.
After such a strong showing, Howard career went into a period of moviemaking in which his films were more noted for its entertainment and rousing action than as character-driven pieces. A number of them were routine westerns that paired him opposite some of Hollywood's loveliest ladies: Red Canyon (1949) with Ann Blyth, Calamity Jane and Sam Bass (1949) with Yvonne De Carlo and The Lady from Texas (1951) with Mona Freeman. Other adventure-oriented flicks that more or less came and went included Spaceways (1953), Tanganyika (1954), The Yellow Mountain (1954), Flame of the Islands (1955), Blackjack Ketchum, Desperado (1956) (title role), The Broken Star (1956) and Sierra Stranger (1957). Howard also began appearing infrequently on the stage in the early 1950s with such productions as "Season in the Sun" (1952) and "Anniversary Waltz" (1954).
Those films that rose above the standard included gritty top-billed roles in Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949), Illegal Entry (1949), Shakedown (1950), Spy Hunt (1950) and Woman in Hiding (1950), the last a film noir which paired him with Ida Lupino for the first time. Here, he plays the hero who saves Lupino from a murdering husband (Stephen McNally). In 1951, he married Ms. Lupino, already a well-established star at Warner Bros., who was coming into her own recently as a director. The couple had one daughter, Bridget Duff, born in 1952. Lupino and Duff co-starred in four hard-boiled film dramas during the 1950s -- Jennifer (1953), Private Hell 36 (1954), Women's Prison (1955) and While the City Sleeps (1956). The demise of the studio-guided contract system had an effect on Howard's film career and offers started drying up in the late 1950s.
Fortunately, he found just as wide an appeal on TV, appearing in a number of dramatic showcases for Science Fiction Theatre (1955), Lux Video Theatre (1950) and Climax! (1954). And, in a change of pace, the married couple decided to go for laughs by starring together in the TV series Mr. Adams and Eve (1957). Here, they played gregarious husband-and-wife film stars "Howard Adams" and "Eve Drake". Many of the scripts, though broadly exaggerated for comic effect, were reportedly based on a few of their own real-life experiences. They also guest-starred in an entertaining hour-long episode of the The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957) in 1959 with the two couples inadvertently booked at the same vacant lodge, together. The show ends up a battle-of-the sexes, free-for-all with the two gals scheming to add a little romance to what has essentially become a fishing vacation for the guys. The 1960s bore more fruit on TV than in film. Sans Lupino, Duff went solo as nightclub owner "Willie Dante" in the tongue-in-cheek adventure series Dante (1960), which lasted less than a season. A few years later, the veteran co-starred with handsome rookie Dennis Cole in what is perhaps his best-remembered series, the police drama The Felony Squad (1966), which was filmed in and around Los Angeles. Duff directed one of those episodes, having directed several episodes of the silly sitcom Camp Runamuck (1965), a year or so earlier. In between series work were guest assignments on such popular primetime shows as Bonanza (1959), The Twilight Zone (1959), Burke's Law (1963) and Combat! (1962).
The marriage of Ida and Howard did not last, however, and the famous married couple separated in 1966 after 15 years of marriage. Ida and Howard didn't officially divorce, however, until 1984. Howard later married a non-professional, Judy Jenkinson, who survived him. While much of Howard's work in later years was standard, if unmemorable, every now and then he would demonstrate the fine talent he was. A couple of his better film performances came as a sex-minded, booze-swilling relative in A Wedding (1978) and as Dustin Hoffman's attorney in the Oscar-winning drama Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). He also enjoyed a villainous role in the short-lived series Flamingo Road (1980) and had a lengthy stint on Knots Landing (1979) during the 1984-1985 season. Duff died at age 76 of a heart attack, on July 8, 1990, in Santa Barbara, California.- Actor
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Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on March 31, 1907, Eddie Quillan was seven years old and already performing in vaudeville with his sister and three brothers in an act called "The Rising Generation." His parents, Joseph Quillan and Sarah Quillan, were well-known performers with Joseph himself managing the family act. Booked in such top places as the Orpheum Theatre, the kids eventually took a screen test for Mack Sennett but only Eddie was chosen. Beginning with the short film A Love Sundae (1926), Eddie would make nearly 20 two-reeler shorts with Sennett.
Freelancing a couple of years later, he played the lead in The Godless Girl (1928) and The Sophomore (1929) and received a contract at Pathe Studios, but he wasn't really leading-man material what with his rubbery face and short stature. Nevertheless, his high energy and sharp comedy instincts earned him many support roles in such films as Big Money (1930), Girl Crazy (1932), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940), to cite some of his more popular films.
Discouraged with playing simple roles such as bellhops, soda jerks, et al., he continued on in "B" pictures until Sensation Hunters (1945), when his film career finally fell away. He owned and operated a bowling alley for a time but eventually returned to the film industry, with middling results and infrequent appearances, among them Brigadoon (1954). Light-hearted fluff also came his way in the next decade with The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966), Angel in My Pocket (1969) and How to Frame a Figg (1971), but his contributions were relatively minor. His career experienced a minor resurgence during the 1960s and 1970s on TV when he guested on such series as Mannix (1967), Lucas Tanner (1974), Police Story (1973), and Baretta (1975). A close friendship with actor Michael Landon led to work for Eddie in several of Landon's TV vehicles, including Little House on the Prairie (1974) and Father Murphy (1981) and "Highway to Heaven" (1984)_.
The never-married Eddie died in Burbank, California of cancer in 1990 at age 83, and was interred at the San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills.- Actress
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Her father Joseph was a minister and her mother was named Ella Mae. Her birth name was Pearly Mae but her parents anticipated she would be a boy and when a girl was born she was nicknamed "Dickie". Her brother was entertainer Bill Bailey (1912-1978). She spent her early life in Washington DC where she received her early education. Bailey frequently appeared in the Old Howard theater in downtown Washington. As a young woman she toured the Pennsylvania mining towns as a dancer and later as a singer in Vaudeville. She starred in the film St. Louis Blues opposite Nat King Cole, which was the biography of W.C. Handy. Her greatest theater role was in the Broadway musical "Hello Dolly".- Actor
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Tall (6'3"), imposing actor Raymond St. Jacques, who appeared as both hero and villain in hundreds of roles, was born James Arthur Johnson in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1930, but he and younger sister Barbara were raised in Depression-era New Haven after their parents' divorce. He started writing and performing in his own short plays in elementary school and developed a strong interest in acting after appearing in a production of "Othello".
A stint with the Air Force in 1952 during the Korean War temporarily interrupted his professional momentum, but he managed to arrange plays and entertain servicemen during his stay of duty. Upon his discharge, he refocused, auditioned and was accepted into both the Actor's Studio and Herbert Berghof's Institute while modeling, dish washing and working as a sales clerk at Bloomingdale's to make ends meet. At around this time, he changed his stage moniker from the very common name of Raymond Johnson to Ray Saint Jacques (later Raymond St. Jacques) to avoid confusion with other actors. St. Jacques went on to perform for the American Shakespearean Festival, Stratford Connecticut, and, in addition to acting and assistant directing, was relied upon to train other actors in the art of swordplay as he had grown to become an accomplished fencing master.
Raymond made his Broadway bow in the 1955 musical "Seventh Heaven" and appeared in various on- and off-Broadway productions including "The Blacks", "Night Life", "The Cool World" and "A Raisin in the Sun". He also continued to performed in the Bard's plays, including "Henry V", "Romeo and Juliet" and "Julius Caesar".
The actor started gracing films in mid-career, making his debut with Black Like Me (1964). His breakthrough role came with the otherwise tepidly-received The Comedians (1967) where he stole the thunder from under husband and wife Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. This led to a series of black-oriented 'stud' roles in Uptight (1968), Change of Mind (1969), Cool Breeze (1972), and notably, If He Hollers, Let Him Go! (1968) (1968) in which he shared some torrid and controversial bed scenes with Barbara McNair that made the "Sex in the Cinema" pages of Playboy magazine. He also winningly played Coffin Ed Johnson alongside Godfrey Cambridge as Gravedigger Jones in the comedy action crimers Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and Come Back Charleston Blue (1972) and portrayed the part of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the biopic The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977).
St. Jacques made history as the first black actor to appear in a regular role on a western series, playing Simon Blake on Rawhide (1959). St. Jacques moved briefly into producing and directing with the film Book of Numbers (1973), which relayed the stories of various African-Americans during the late 1800s.
Raymond went on to appear as a guest in a number of popular programs including "Dr. Kildare," "Daktari," "I Spy," "The Virginian," "Daniel Boone," "The Green Hornet," "The Name of the Game," "McCloud," "The Rookies," "Police Story," "Little House on the Prairie," "Police Woman," "Quincy," "Hart to Hart," "Fantasy Island," "Airwolf," "Murder, She Wrote," "A Different World" and "MacGyver." He also had recurring roles on the nighttime soaper Falcon Crest (1981) and as a judge on Superior Court (1986). His final films included featured roles in The Wild Pair (1987), Glory (1989) (as Frederick Douglass), Voodoo Dawn (1990) and Timebomb (1991), the last two released posthumously.
A noted civil rights activist and lecturer both here and abroad on apartheid issues. St. Jacques died of lymphoma in 1990 at age 60.- Actress
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Irene Marie Dunne was born on December 20, 1898, in Louisville, Kentucky. She was the daughter of Joseph Dunne, who inspected steamships, and Adelaide Henry, a musician who prompted Irene in the arts. Her first production was in Louisville when she appeared in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the age of five. Her "debut" set the tone for a fabulous career. Following the tragic death of her father when she was 12, she moved with her remaining family to the picturesque and historic town of Madison, Indiana, to live with her maternal grandparents at 916 W. Second St. During the next few years Irene studied voice and took piano lessons in town. She was able to earn money singing in the Christ Episcopal Church choir on Sundays. After graduating from Madison High School in 1916, she studied until 1917 in a music conservatory in Indianapolis. After that she accepted a teaching post as a music and art instructor in East Chicago, Indiana, just a stone's throw from Chicago. She never made it to the school. While on her way to East Chicago, she saw a newspaper ad in the Indianapolis Star and News for an annual scholarship contest run by the Chicago Music College. Irene won the contest, which enabled her to study there for a year. After that she headed for New York City because it was still the entertainment capital of the world. Her first goal in New York was to add her name to the list of luminaries of the Metropolitan Opera Company. Her audition did her little good, as she was rejected for being too young and inexperienced. She did win the leading role in a road theater company, which was, in turn, followed by numerous plays. During this time she studied at the Chicago Music College, from which she graduated with high honors in 1926. In 1928, Irene met and married a promising young dentist from New York named Francis Dennis Griffin. She remained with Dr. Griffin until his death in 1965.
Irene came to the attention of Hollywood when she performed in "Show Boat" on the East Coast. By 1930 she was under contract to RKO Pictures. Her first film was Leathernecking (1930), which went almost unnoticed. In 1931 she appeared in Cimarron (1931), for which she received the first of five Academy Award nominations. No Other Woman (1933) and Ann Vickers (1933) the same year followed.
In 1936 (due to her comic skits in Show Boat (1936)), she was "persuaded" to star in a comedy, up to that time a medium for which she had small affection. However, Theodora Goes Wild (1936) was an instant hit, almost as popular as the more famous It Happened One Night (1934) from two years before. From this she earned her second Academy Award nomination. Later, in 1937, she was teamed with Cary Grant in The Awful Truth (1937). This helped her garner a third Academy Award nomination. She starred with Grant later in My Favorite Wife (1940) and Penny Serenade (1941).
Her favorite film was Love Affair (1939) with Charles Boyer, a huge hit in a year with so many great films, and a role for which she was again nominated for an Academy Award. Howevever, it was the tear-jerker I Remember Mama (1948) for which she will be best remembered in the role of the loving, self-sacrificing Norwegian mother. She got another nomination for that but again lost. This was the picture in which she should have won the Oscar.
She began to wean herself away from films toward the many charities and public works she championed. Her last major movie was as Polly Baxter in 1952's It Grows on Trees (1952). After that she only appeared as a guest on television. Irene knew enough to quit while she was ahead of the game and this helped keep her legacy intact.
In 1957 she was appointed as a special US delegate to the United Nations during the 12th General Assembly by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, such was her widespread appeal. The remainder of her life was spent on civic causes. She even donated $10,000 to the restoration of the town fountain in her girlhood home of Madison, Indiana, in 1976, even though she had not been there since 1938 when she came home for a visit. She died of heart failure on September 4, 1990, in Los Angeles, California.- Actress
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Jill Bennett was born on 24 December 1931 in Penang, Malaysia. She was an actress and writer, known for The Nanny (1965), For Your Eyes Only (1981) and Moulin Rouge (1952). She was married to John Osborne and Willis Hall. She died on 4 October 1990 in Kensington, London, England, UK.- Actor
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One of the great stars of American Westerns, and a very popular leading man in non-Westerns as well. He was born and raised in the surroundings of Hollywood and as a boy became interested in the movies that were being made all around. He studied acting at Pomona College and got some stage experience at the Pasadena Community Playhouse, where other future stars such as Randolph Scott, Robert Young, and Victor Mature would also get their first experience. He worked as an extra after graduation from the University of Southern California in 1928 and did some stunt work. In a rare case of an extra being chosen from the crowd to play a major role, McCrea was given a part in The Jazz Age. A contract at MGM followed, and then a better contract at RKO. Will Rogers took a liking to the young man (they shared a love of ranching and roping) and did much to elevate McCrea's career. His wholesome good looks and quiet manner were soon in demand, primarily in romantic dramas and comedies, and he became an increasingly popular leading man. He hoped to concentrate on Westerns, but several years passed before he could convince the studio heads to cast him in one. When he proved successful in that genre, more and more Westerns came his way. But he continued to make a mark in other kinds of pictures, and proved himself particularly adept at the light comedy of Preston Sturges, for whom he made several films. By the late Forties, his concentration focused on Westerns, and he made few non-Westerns thereafter. He was immensely popular in them, and most of them still hold up well today. He and Randolph Scott, whose career strongly resembles McCrea's, came out of retirement to make a classic of the genre, Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962). Scott stayed retired thereafter; McCrea made a couple of appearances in small films afterwards, but was primarily content to maintain his life as a gentleman rancher. He was married for fifty-seven years to actress Frances Dee, who survived him.- Actor
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Among others of Ugo Tognazzi's superb, award-winning performances of his prolific career, this excellent Italian character star has been widely cherished for his classic comedy role of gay cabaret owner Renato Baldi, opposite Michel Serrault's hilariously mincing drag queen partner Alban, in La Cage aux Folles (1978) one of the biggest cross-over foreign hits to ever land on American soil.
Born Ottavio Tognazzi in Cremona, Italy, on March 23, 1922, by the time Ugo was a teen he was a bookkeeper for a salami factory and performed in local amateur theatricals on the sly. Appearing on the stage, he finally found an entry into films at age 28 in 1950 with a featured role in the war comedy I cadetti di Guascogna (1950). He built up a solid comedy resume in primarily Neapolitan 50's features including La paura fa 90 (1951) (his first co-starring role), Café chantant (1953), I milanesi a Napoli (1954), La moglie è uguale per tutti (1955), Domenica è sempre domenica (1958), Le confident de ces dames (1959) and Tipi da spiaggia (1959).
Ugo became a middle-aged European star the following decade. Turning in a number of powerhouse character studies, he excelled as bon vivants, adulterous husbands and other suave gents in primarily farcical comedy and saucy, sardonic romps, particularly those of director/writer Marco Ferreri. He also demonstrated a remarkable range when it came to portraying world-weary protagonists in political drama or grim satire. For Ferreri alone, he appeared in the award-winning The Conjugal Bed (1963), Countersex (1964), The Wedding March (1966), L'udienza (1972) and the masterful The Big Feast (1973), among others.
In 1978, Tognazzi decided to take a chance, and play a character unlike anything he had done, (and, also, rarely done, for fear of being 'stereotyped'), and co-starred with the wonderful Michel Serrault in an image-shattering part in 1978. What he did was experience the most popular role of his career as one-half of an aging gay couple who operate a drag club. La Cage aux Folles (1978) went on to spawn two sequels and an American remake (The Birdcage (1996) starring Robin Williams (in the Tognazzi role) and Nathan Lane (in the diva Serrault part).
Tognazzi won several acting honors over the course of his long career. He copped several European awards for his classic roles in The Monsters (1963) (The Monsters), I Knew Her Well (1965), The Climax (1967) (also a rare foreign Golden Globe nomination), La bambolona (1968), Il commissario Pepe (1969), Lady Caliph (1970) and Duck in Orange Sauce (1975). He capped it off with the Cannes Film Festival award for his trenchant performance in Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981), the tale of a near-bankrupt factory owner who attempts to use the kidnapping of his son (played by his real-life eldest son Ricky Tognazzi) to his financial advantage. Tognazzi was also the father of actor Gianmarco Tognazzi and director Maria Sole Tognazzi, and had another son, producer/writer Thomas Robsahm, via a relationship with actress Margrete Robsahm.
In the eighties, Tognazzi focused strongly on the theater and starred in such plays as Luigi Pirandello's "Six Characters in Search of an Author" (1986, directed by Jean-Pierre Vincent in Paris, Théâtre de l' Europe) and Molière's "The Miser" (1989, where he sparked a controversy in Italian government circles when he improvised lines about corruption in high places during his performance). Although he directed himself in a handful of his own often sexually explicit films, including Il fischio al naso (1967) and Sissignore (1968), Ugo's true brilliance shines in front of the camera and in the works of other famed European directors, notably Ferrari, Bernardo Bertolucci, Pietro Germi, Dino Risi and Mario Monicelli. He worked up until the end with incisive starring performances in Arrivederci e grazie (1988), I giorni del commissario Ambrosio (1988), Tolérance (1989) and La batalla de los Tres Reyes (1990) (The Battle of the Three Kings). In 1972, at age 50, Tognazzi wed actress Franca Bettoia, who survives him. He died of a brain hemorrhage in 1990, age 68.- Actress
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Originally a dance instructor, she came to Broadway during the Depression to begin her career as a professional actress. A daughter of Texas, she originally began work as a dance instructor until a local evangelical-adherent burned down her studio citing her work as being too sinful for human nature. Coming to New York City, she appeared on Broadway introducing the song "My Heart Belongs to Daddy". She later made a name for herself in several Hollywood musicals during the 1940s and later in her career enjoyed huge success as Peter Pan, which she cited as her favorite role.- Actress
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Eve Arden was born Eunice Mary Quedens in Mill Valley, California (near San Francisco), and was interested in show business from an early age. At 16, she made her stage debut after quitting school to join a stock company. After appearing in minor roles in two films under her real name, Eunice Quedens, she found that the stage offered her the same minor roles. By the mid 30s, one of these minor roles would attract notice as a comedy sketch in the stage play "Ziegfeld Follies".
By that time, she had changed her name to Eve Arden, which she adopted while looking over some cosmetics and spotting the names "Evening in Paris" and "Elizabeth Arden". In 1937, she garnered some attention with a small role in Oh, Doctor (1937), which led to her being cast in a minor role in the film Stage Door (1937). By the time the film was finished, her part had expanded into the wise-cracking, fast-talking friend to the lead. She would play virtually the character for most of her career.
While her sophisticated wise-cracking would never make her the lead, she would be a busy actress in dozens of movies over the next dozen years. In At the Circus (1939), she was the acrobatic Peerless Pauline opposite Groucho Marx and the Russian sharp shooter in the comedy The Doughgirls (1944). For her role as Ida in Mildred Pierce (1945), she received an Academy Award nomination. Famous for her quick ripostes, this led to work in Radio during the 1940s. In 1948, CBS Radio premiered "Our Miss Brooks", which would be the perfect show for her character. As her film career began to slow, CBS would take the popular radio show to television in 1952. The television series Our Miss Brooks (1952) would run through 1956 and led to the movie Our Miss Brooks (1956).
When the show ended, Arden tried another television series, The Eve Arden Show (1957), but it was soon canceled. In the 1960s, Arden raised a family and did a few guest roles, until her come-back television series The Mothers-In-Law (1967). This show, co-starring Kaye Ballard ran for two seasons. After that, she would make more unsold pilots, a couple of television movies and a few guest shots. She returned in occasional cameo appearances including as Principal McGee in Grease (1978), and Warden June in Pandemonium (1982).- Actor
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American stage actor who appeared frequently on television and occasionally but impressively in films. A Marine Corps veteran of the Second World War, he worked on Broadway and on tour in stage productions after the war. In the late 1950s, he became an increasingly familiar face on American television, following a strong performance in the film Sweet Smell of Success (1957), in which he played the smarmy fellow who gets a dalliance with the unwilling Barbara Nichols in exchange for a favor to Tony Curtis's Sidney Falco. Cads and pompous politicians became White's strong suit, but he achieved his greatest fame as the unctuous Larry Tate on the hit TV series Bewitched (1964). He continued to work in the theatre, particularly as a member of acclaimed Theatre West company in Los Angeles and at the Mark Taper Forum there. In December, 1988, White's 33-year-old son, Jonathan, was killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, UK. White, who had been widowed soon after Jonathan's birth, was embittered and enraged by this new tragedy. He became reclusive for a time, but was returning to some social activity and theatre work when he died of a massive heart attack in 1990, just a few days prior to the second anniversary of his son's death. He was survived by his daughter.- Actor
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Effective light comedian of '30s and '40s films and '50s and '60s TV series, Robert Cummings was renowned for his eternally youthful looks (which he attributed to a strict vitamin and health-food diet). He was educated at Carnegie Tech and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Deciding that Broadway producers would be more interested in an upper-crust Englishman than a kid from Joplin, Missouri, Cummings passed himself off as Blade Stanhope Conway, British actor. The ploy was successful. Cummings decided that if it worked on Broadway, it would work in Hollywood, so he journeyed west and assumed the identity of a rich Texan named Bruce Hutchens. The plan worked once more, and he began securing small parts in films. He soon reverted to his real name and became a popular leading man in light comedies, usually playing well-meaning, pleasant but somewhat bumbling young men. He achieved much more success, however, in his own television series in the '50s, The Bob Cummings Show (1955) and My Living Doll (1964).- Actress
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Joan Geraldine Bennett was born on February 27, 1910, in Palisades, New Jersey. Her parents were both successful stage actors, especially her father, Richard Bennett, and often toured the country for weeks at a time. In fact, Joan came from a long line of actors, dating back to the 18th century. Often, when her parents were on tour, Joan and her two older sisters, Constance Bennett, who later became an actress, and Barbara were left in the care of close friends. At the age of four, Joan made her first stage appearance. She debuted in films a year later in The Valley of Decision (1916), in which her father was the star and the entire Bennett clan participated. In 1923 she again appeared in a film which starred her father, playing a pageboy in The Eternal City (1923). It would be five more years before Joan appeared again on the screen. In between, she married Jack Marion Fox, who was 26 compared to her young age of 16. The union was anything but happy, in great part because of Fox's heavy drinking. In February of 1928 Joan and Jack had a baby girl they named Adrienne. The new arrival did little to help the marriage, though, and in the summer of 1928 they divorced. Now with a baby to support, Joan did something she had no intention of doing--she turned to acting. She appeared in Power (1928) with Alan Hale and Carole Lombard, a small role but a start. The next year she starred in Bulldog Drummond (1929), sharing top billing with Ronald Colman. Before the year was out she was in three more films--Disraeli (1929), The Mississippi Gambler (1929) and Three Live Ghosts (1929). Not only did audiences like her, but so did the critics. Between 1930 and 1931, Joan appeared in nine more movies. In 1932 she starred opposite Spencer Tracy in She Wanted a Millionaire (1932), but it wasn't one she liked to remember, partly because Tracy couldn't stand the fact that everyone was paying more attention to her than to him. Joan was to remain busy and popular throughout the rest of the 1930s and into the 1940s. By the 1950s Joan was well into her 40s and began to lessen her film appearances. She made only eight pictures, in addition to appearing in two television series. After Desire in the Dust (1960), Joan would be absent from the movie scene for the next ten years, resurfacing in House of Dark Shadows (1970), reprising her role from the Dark Shadows (1966) TV series as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Joan's final screen appearance was in the Italian thriller Suspiria (1977). Her final public performance was in the TV movie Divorce Wars: A Love Story (1982). On December 7, 1990, Joan died of a heart attack in Scarsdale, New York. She was 80 years old.- Actor
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With an intimidating face like craggy granite and a towering 6'5" solid frame, Mike Mazurki (born Mikhail Mazuruski or Mikhail Mazurkiewicz) was one of cinema's first serial thugs and specialized in playing strongarm men, gangsters and bullies for over 50 years on screen. Nearly always portrayed as a lowbrow muscle, in real life Mazurski was highly intelligent, very well read and a witty conversationalist. He was also an accomplished sportsman, having been a football player and a professional wrestler. He first appeared onscreen in uncredited roles in films such as Gentleman Jim (1942) and About Face (1942); however, his daunting bruiser looks were soon noticed and he became phenomenally busy in the 1940s, appearing in nearly 50 movies during the decade, including his well remembered performance as ex-con "Moose Malloy" in the film noir thriller Murder, My Sweet (1944) and as the gruesome "Splitface" in Dick Tracy (1945).
He continued his menacing onscreen presence throughout the 1950s and 1960s, often showing he could be quite adept at deadpan comedy in films including Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in Hollywood (1945), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), Donovan's Reef (1963) and The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin (1967). Demand for his talents slowed down in the late 1970s and most of the 1980s, as younger villains came to the fore; however, he still turned up in support roles and was still acting at the age of 83 when he passed away in December, 1990.- Veteran character actress Anne Revere became another in the long line of talented artists whose careers would crash under the weight of the "Red Scare" hysteria that tore through Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. Born in Manhattan and a direct descendant of Revolutionary War figure Paul Revere, Anne graduated from Wellesley College, then trained for the stage at the American Laboratory Theatre.
She made her Broadway bow in 1931 with "The Great Barrington" and her film debut in a version of another Broadway play, Double Door (1934). Returning to Broadway after receiving no other film offers, she would not make another movie until 1940...then she stayed. She went on to epitomize the warm, wise and invariably stoic mother to a number of great "golden age" stars, her understated power and intensity capturing the hearts of critics and war-torn audiences alike. Her plain, freckled, careworn looks appeared equally at home on the frontier or in a tenement setting. Anne was nominated three times for an Oscar for her strong, matriarchal figures -- as Jennifer Jones' mother in The Song of Bernadette (1943), Elizabeth Taylor's in National Velvet (1944) and Gregory Peck's in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), winning the Oscar on her second try for National Velvet (1944).
A versatile talent, she extended her range to include a number of brittle, neurotic and even crazy ladies. This all ended abruptly in 1951 when her name appeared as one of 300 on the infamous "Hollywood blacklist". She had just completed a major role as Montgomery Clift's Salvation Army mom in A Place in the Sun (1951). She stood on her Fifth Amendment rights before the Communist-obsessed House Un-American Activities Committee and, as a result, her part in that film was reduced to a glorified cameo. She did not appear in another film for nearly 20 years (a starring role in a new TV series was also taken from her).
In the interim, she and husband Samuel Rosen, a stage actor, writer and director, ran an acting school in Los Angeles before relocating to New York, where she managed to find employment in stock productions and under the Broadway lights. She received the Tony Award during the 1960-1961 season for her fine portrayal of a spinster sister in Lillian Hellman's "Toys in the Attic," a part that went to British actress Wendy Hiller when it transferred to film. TV jobs began coming her way again in the mid-1960s, and by 1970 she was working sporadically on such daytime soaps as Search for Tomorrow (1951) and Ryan's Hope (1975). She appeared briefly in Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970) starring Liza Minnelli, and then earned a showier part in Birch Interval (1976).
Anne passed away after contracting pneumonia at age 87 and was survived by a sister. She had no children. Although a victim of "Cold War" paranoia, she always persevered, showing the same kind of grit and courage that embodied her gallery of characters on film. - Actress
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Paulette Goddard was a child model who debuted in "The Ziegfeld Follies" at the age of 13. She gained fame with the show as the girl on the crescent moon, and was married to a wealthy man, Edgar James, by the time she was 17. After her divorce she went to Hollywood in 1931, where she appeared in small roles in pictures for a number of studios. A stunning natural beauty, Paulette could mesmerize any man she met, a fact she was well aware of. One of her bigger roles in that period was as a blond "Goldwyn Girl" in the Eddie Cantor film The Kid from Spain (1932). In 1932 she met Charles Chaplin, and they soon became an item around town. He cast her in Modern Times (1936), which was a big hit, but her movie career was not going anywhere because of her relationship with Chaplin. They were secretly married in 1936, but the marriage failed and they were separated by 1940. It was her role as Miriam Aarons in The Women (1939), however, that got her a contract with Paramount. Paulette was one of the many actresses tested for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939), but she lost the part to Vivien Leigh and instead appeared with Bob Hope in The Cat and the Canary (1939), a good film but hardly in the same league as GWTW. The 1940s were Paulette's busiest period. She worked with Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940), Cecil B. DeMille in Reap the Wild Wind (1942) and Burgess Meredith in The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946). She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in So Proudly We Hail! (1943). Her star faded in the late 1940s, however, and she was dropped by Paramount in 1949. After a couple of "B" movies, she left films and went to live in Europe as a wealthy expatriate; she married German novelist Erich Maria Remarque in the late 1950s. She was coaxed back to the screen once more, although it was the small screen, for the television movie The Female Instinct (1972).- Arthur Kennedy, one of the premier character actors in American film from the late 1940s through the early 1960s, achieved fame in the role of Biff in Elia Kazan's historic production of Arthur Miller's Pultizer-Prize winning play "Death of a Salesman." Although he was not selected to recreate the role on screen, he won one Best Actor and four Best Supporting Academy Award nominations between 1949 and 1959 and ranked as one of Hollywood's finest players.
Born John Arthur Kennedy to a dentist and his wife on February 17, 1914 in Worcester, Massachusetts. As a young man, known as "Johnny" to his friends, studied drama at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. By the time he was 20 years old, he was involved in local theatrical groups. Kennedy's first professional gig was was with the Globe Theatre Company, which toured the Midwest offering abbreviated versions of Shakespearian plays. Shakesperian star Maurice Evans hired Kennedy for his company, with which he appeared in the Broadway production of "Richard II" in 1937. While performing in Evans' repertory company, Kennedy also worked in the Federal Theatre project.
Arthur Kennedy made his Broadway debut in "Everywhere I Roam" in 1938, the same year that he married Mary Cheffrey, who would remain his wife until her death in 1975. He also appeared on Broadway in "Life and Death of an American" in 1939 and in "An International Incident" in 1940 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, in support of the great American actress the theater had been named after.
Kennedy and his wife moved west to Los Angeles, California in 1938, and it was while acting on the stage in L.A. that he was discovered by fellow actor James Cagney, who cast him as his brother in the film City for Conquest (1940). The role brought with it a contract with Warner Bros., and the studio put him in supporting roles in some prestigious movies, including High Sierra (1940), the film that made Humphrey Bogart a star, They Died with Their Boots On (1941) with Errol Flynn, and Howard Hawks's Air Force (1943) alongside future Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner Gig Young and the great John Garfield. His career was interrupted by military service in World War Two.
After the war, Kennedy went back to the Broadway stage, where he gained a reputation as an actor's actor, appearing in Arthur Miller's 1947 Tony Award-winning play "All My Sons," which was directed by Kazan. He played John Proctor in the original production of Miller's reflection on McCarthyism, "The Crucible" - which Kazan, an informer who prostrated himself before the forces of McCarthyism, refused to direct - and also appeared in Miller's last Broadway triumph, "The Price."
When Kennedy returned to film work, he quickly distinguished himself as one of the best and most talented of supporting actors & character leads, appearing in such major films as Boomerang! (1947), Champion (1949) (for which he received his first Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor) and The Glass Menagerie (1950), playing Tom in a mediocre adaptation of Tennessee Williams's classic play. Kennedy won his first and only Best Actor nomination for Bright Victory (1951), playing a blinded vet, a role for which he won the New York Film Critics Circle award over such competition as Marlon Brando and Humphrey Bogart. Other films included Fritz Lang's 'Rancho Notorious (1951)', Anthony Mann's Bend of the River (1952), William Wyler's The Desperate Hours (1955), Richard Brooks' Elmer Gantry (1960), David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn (1964).
In 1956, Kennedy won another Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his role in Trial (1955), plus two more Supporting nods in 1958 and 1959 for his appearances in the screen adaptations of Grace Metalious's Peyton Place (1957), and James Jones Some Came Running (1958).
Kennedy returned to Broadway frequently in the 1950s, and headlined the 1952 play "See the Jaguar", a flop best remembered for giving a young actor named James Dean one of his first important parts. A decade later, Kennedy replaced his good friend Anthony Quinn in the Broadway production of "Becket", alternating the roles of Becket and Henry II with Laurence Olivier, who was quite fond of working with him. In the 1960s, the prestigious movie parts dried up as he matured, but he continued working in movies and on TV until he retired in the mid-1980s. He moved out of Los Angeles to live with family members in Connecticut. In the last years of his life, he was afflicted with thyroid cancer and eye disease. He died of a brain tumor at 75, survived by his two children by his wife Mary, Terence and actress Laurie Kennedy. He is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in Lequille, Nova Scotia, Canada. - Actress
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Karachi-born Margaret Lockwood, daughter of a British colonial railway clerk, was educated in London and studied to be an actress at the Italia Conti Drama School. Her first moment on stage came at the age of 12, when she played a fairy in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in 1928. She had a bit part in the Drury Lane production of "Cavalcade" in 1932, before completing her training at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Her film career began in 1934 with Lorna Doone (1934) and she was already a seasoned performer when Alfred Hitchcock cast her in his thriller, The Lady Vanishes (1938), opposite relative newcomer Michael Redgrave. The film was shot at Islington studios and was "in the can" after just five weeks in 1937 and released the following year. This was her first opportunity to shine, and she gave an intelligent, convincing performance as the inquisitive girl who suspects a conspiracy when an elderly lady (May Whitty) seemingly disappears into thin air during a train journey. Due to the success of the film, Margaret spent some time in Hollywood but was given poor material and soon returned home. Back at Gainsborough, producer Edward Black had planned to pair Lockwood and Redgrave much the same way William Powell and Myrna Loy had been teamed up in the "Thin Man" films in America, but the war intervened and the two were only to appear together in the Carol Reed-directed The Stars Look Down (1940). This was the first of her "bad girl" roles that would effectively redefine her career in the 1940s. In between playing femmes fatales, she had a popular hit in the 1944 melodrama A Lady Surrenders (1944) as a brilliant but fatally ill pianist and was sympathetic enough as a young girl who is possessed by a ghost in A Place of One's Own (1945). However, her best-remembered performances came in two classic Gainsborough period dramas. The first of these, The Man in Grey (1943), co-starring James Mason, was torrid escapist melodrama with Lockwood portraying a treacherous, opportunistic vixen, all the while exuding more sexual allure than was common for films of this period. The enormous popular success of this picture led to her second key role in 1945 (again with Mason) as the cunning and cruel title character of The Wicked Lady (1945), a female Dick Turpin. This was even more daring in its depiction of immorality, and the controversy surrounding the film did no harm at the box office. Some of Lockwood's scenes had to be re-shot for American audiences not accustomed to seeing décolletages. Margaret scored another hit with Bedelia (1946), as a demented serial poisoner, and then played a Gypsy girl accused of murder in the Technicolor romp Jassy (1947).
As her popularity waned in the 1950s she returned to occasional performances on the West End stage and appeared on television, making her greatest impact as a dedicated barrister in the ITV series Justice (1971), which ran from 1971 to 1974.- Actor
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Kiel Martin was born on 26 July 1944 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for Hill Street Blues (1981), Trick Baby (1972) and The Panic in Needle Park (1971). He was married to Joanne Marie Lapomarda, Christina Montoya and Claudia Martin. He died on 28 December 1990 in Rancho Mirage, California, USA.- American character actor specializing in villainous roles. Born in White Plains, New York to Herman E. and Franceska Lauter, he was raised in Denver, Colorado. Although it has been suggested that he appeared briefly in a couple of films during the Thirties, his real movie career began in 1946. He came to be a familiar presence in low-budget films, serials, and television programs in the 1950s, though he only once really came close to stardom, as one of the leads in the television series Tales of the Texas Rangers (1955). Most of his career was spent as a serviceable second lead or heavy, though he continued to play bit parts in larger pictures. The son of an artist, he devoted much of his energy late in life to his own painting and running an art gallery. He died in 1990.
- Henry Kendrick was born on 25 September 1933 in Bisbee, Arizona, USA. He was an actor, known for Raising Arizona (1987), Revenge of the Nerds (1984) and Hell's Belles (1969). He was married to Kathryne Marie Sullivan. He died on 15 April 1990 in Phoenix, Arizona, USA.