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1-3 of 3
- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Francisco Rabal -- Paco to everyone -- was born in the mining camp where his father worked. His mother owned a small mill. At the age of six, with the Civil War breaking out, the family emigrated to Madrid and he started working as a street salesman and later in a chocolate factory, which later led to him working as an electrician in the Chamartín Film Studios. It was here he started in his first films in crowd scenes and so on. However, following advice from people like Dámaso Alonso, he found his way into the theatre and in 1950 started working with José Tamayo where he met Asunción Balaguer, who was to become his wife and inseparable companion for the rest of his life. One of the plays he starred in was a Spanish version of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman." The big breakthrough came when he met Luis Buñuel, one of the greatest of Spanish film directors. They became great friends, in part due to their similar philosophies on life. Nazarín and Viridiana remain as hallmarks of that early period. However, with maturity and the passing of the Franco Régime, Rabal's best work was yet to come, and indeed culminated with his exceptional rôle in _Santos Inocentes, Los (1984)_, one of the best three or four Spanish films of all time. In 1987 he made a wonderful TV series called Juncal (1989) which was probably the character which mostly resembled the real-life Paco Rabal: a veritable "truhan" -- a roguish rascal. However, he has played the character of the Aragonese painter Francisco Goya in three different films, a personage who he became heavily identified with. It is in this period that he received his highest awards in Spain, Cannes, Montreal, etc. He is the only Spanish actor to have been given a Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of his native Murcia. Returning from the XXV Montreal Festival where he was homaged for a lifetime's work, he died over the English Channel aboard the aeroplane bringing him from London to Madrid and, despite the emergency landing in Bordeaux, nothing could be done for him. The pressure inside the plane aggravated his chronic bronchitis and started a fit of coughing which he was not able to overcome. He has published a few books which he called "some little things of mine," but most notably his collection of verses and "coplas" in 1994 and a little later collaborated with Agustín Cerezales on his biography "Si yo te contara" (If I told you all about it). His daughter, Teresa Rabal, is a successful actress, singer and TV presenter, while his son, Benito, also works as film director.- Writer
- Additional Crew
- Script and Continuity Department
Born in Beaver, Utah, during World War I, it was not until the next World War that Lawrence Marcus found his niche as a writer. Serving in the Army Air Force, he found that he had a knack for writing and began scripting radio shows. The irony of discovering himself applying skills that are usually honed and developed only after one receives the traditional high school diploma and a degree or two from a reputable university, of course, lay in the fact that while growing up in Chicago, Marcus had gone only as far as the eighth grade in school. In his fifty-year writing career, he also found that he had a knack for award-winning scripts. He received an Academy Award nomination for his work on the 1980 "Stunt Man." His writing also garnered the Writers Guild of America Award, the Golden Globe, a Christopher Award, and an Alfred Sloan Award. One of his best remembered works is his 1968 adaptation for Richard Lester of the John Hasse novel "Me and the Arch Kook Petulia." "Petulia," the title of the resulting movie, starred George C. Scott and Julie Christie and is consider by many one of the ten best movies of the decade. Interestingly, Marcus attempted to bow out of working on the script. He became frustrated and disappointed with his efforts and, after the first thirty-five pages, sent what he had to Richard Lester with a letter of resignation. Lester immediately wired Marcus: "Love the pages; hated the letter, work." He also experienced disappointments in his writing when he collaborated on a screenplay with Jim Morrison of The Doors fame. But this time, unlike the reaction Richard Lester supplied, Morrison destroyed the script and the project. Throughout his career he collaborated with Douglas Fairbanks III, Rosalind Russell, lived in Rome, where he developed feature films, traveled to South Africa for a story on diamond mining. His final project was work on a early 1990s project for Universal Studios and Paul Newman, tentatively entitled "Homesman." In the 1980s, helping others achieve heights (i.e. degrees) that had eluded him, he taught screenwriting at New York University. Not bad for a man with only an eighth grade education.- Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
- Additional Crew
David P. Harmon was born on 3 September 1918 in Buffalo, New York, USA. He was a writer, known for Star Trek (1966), Mannix (1967) and McCloud (1970). He was married to Ruth Harmon. He died on 28 August 2001 in Los Angeles, California, USA.