Official list of oldest living people in Showbusiness
From 1907 til 1925. Any suggestions or comments are welcome.
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Last up-date: March 5, 2013
Reason for last up-date: Death of María Asquerino
Recent death(s):
María Asquerino (November 25, 1925 - February 27, 2013) 87
Dale Robertson (July 14, 1923 - February 27, 2013) 89
Carmen Montejo (May 26, 1925 - February 25, 2013) 87
Bob Godfrey (May 27, 1921 - February 22, 2013) 91
Milt Hoffman (1922/1923? - February 21, 2013) 90
Joaquín Cordero (August 16, 1922 - February 19, 2013) 90
Donald Richie (April 17, 1924 – February 19, 2013) 88
Richard Collins (July 20, 1914 – February 14, 2013) 98
John Ammonds (May 21, 1924 – February 13, 2013) 88
Tekin Akmansoy (January 20, 1924 – February 12, 2013) 89
Petro Vlahos (August 20, 1916 – February 10, 2013) 96
Stuart Freeborn (September 5, 1914 – February 5, 2013) 98
Recent addition(s):
Run Run Shaw (November 23, 1907)
Harry Lewis (April 1, 1920)
Don Kennedy (June 8, 1920)
Kathryn Adams (July 15, 1920)
Ruth Terry (October 21, 1920)
Joe Kirkwood Jr. (November 15, 1920)
Betty Jaynes (February 12, 1921)
Jane Adams (August 7, 1921)
Matt Mattox (August 18, 1921)
Virginia Belmont (September 20, 1921)
Peter Hansen (December 5, 1921)
Ray Anthony (January 20, 1922)
William Phipps (February 4, 1922)
Stewart Stern (March 22, 1922)
Margia Dean (April 7, 1922)
Audrey Long (April 14, 1922)
Monica Lewis (May 5, 1922)
Umberto Raho (June 4, 1922)
Dick Smith (June 26, 1922)
Kay Starr (July 21, 1922)
Norman Lear (July 27, 1922)
Please leave me a message on: [link]https://twitter.com/TheDutchViewer[/link]
Last up-date: March 5, 2013
Reason for last up-date: Death of María Asquerino
Recent death(s):
María Asquerino (November 25, 1925 - February 27, 2013) 87
Dale Robertson (July 14, 1923 - February 27, 2013) 89
Carmen Montejo (May 26, 1925 - February 25, 2013) 87
Bob Godfrey (May 27, 1921 - February 22, 2013) 91
Milt Hoffman (1922/1923? - February 21, 2013) 90
Joaquín Cordero (August 16, 1922 - February 19, 2013) 90
Donald Richie (April 17, 1924 – February 19, 2013) 88
Richard Collins (July 20, 1914 – February 14, 2013) 98
John Ammonds (May 21, 1924 – February 13, 2013) 88
Tekin Akmansoy (January 20, 1924 – February 12, 2013) 89
Petro Vlahos (August 20, 1916 – February 10, 2013) 96
Stuart Freeborn (September 5, 1914 – February 5, 2013) 98
Recent addition(s):
Run Run Shaw (November 23, 1907)
Harry Lewis (April 1, 1920)
Don Kennedy (June 8, 1920)
Kathryn Adams (July 15, 1920)
Ruth Terry (October 21, 1920)
Joe Kirkwood Jr. (November 15, 1920)
Betty Jaynes (February 12, 1921)
Jane Adams (August 7, 1921)
Matt Mattox (August 18, 1921)
Virginia Belmont (September 20, 1921)
Peter Hansen (December 5, 1921)
Ray Anthony (January 20, 1922)
William Phipps (February 4, 1922)
Stewart Stern (March 22, 1922)
Margia Dean (April 7, 1922)
Audrey Long (April 14, 1922)
Monica Lewis (May 5, 1922)
Umberto Raho (June 4, 1922)
Dick Smith (June 26, 1922)
Kay Starr (July 21, 1922)
Norman Lear (July 27, 1922)
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- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Miguel Morayta was born on 15 August 1907 in Ciudad Real, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. He was a director and writer, known for El mártir del Calvario (1952), Vagabunda (1950) and La mujer marcada (1957). He died on 19 June 2013 in Mexico City, Mexico.Spanish director/screenwriter
Born: August 15, 1907
Age: 105- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Production Manager
Run Run Shaw was born in Shanghai, China on October 4, 1907. He went into the filming industry with his brother, Runme Shaw, and established the Shaw Organization in 1926 and the Shaw Studios (formerly South Seas Film studio) in 1930. In 1967, Shaw established the famous Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) station in Hong Kong, and it grew into a multi-billion dollar TV empire. TVB set the stage for numerous television sitcoms, drama series, documentaries and singing performances, as well as "Enjoy Yourself Tonight," a variety show similar to "Saturday Night Live."
Shaw owns many businesses throughout the world, including Macy's and Canada's Shaw Tower at Cathedral Place. Throughout the years, Shaw has donated billions of dollars to charities, schools and hospitals. As a result, many Hong Kong buildings were named after him.
Shaw himself has also made regular appearances in TV shows and programs from TVB, including their Chinese New Year celebration programs. During these programs, Shaw would often lead an "awakening" ceremony that precedes the famous Chinese Lion Dance. Shaw has continued to lead this tradition throughout the years.Hong Kong producer
Born: November 23, 1907
Age: 105- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Manoel de Oliveira was born on 11 December 1908 in Oporto, Portugal. He was a director and writer, known for The Cannibals (1988), I'm Going Home (2001) and Christopher Columbus, the Enigma (2007). He was married to Maria Isabel Brandão de Meneses de Almeida Carvalhais. He died on 2 April 2015 in Oporto, Portugal.Portuguese director/screenwriter
Born: December 11, 1908
Age: 104- Leila Danette was born on 23 August 1909 in Jacksonville, Florida, USA. She was an actress, known for Law & Order (1990), Running on Empty (1988) and The Rosary Murders (1987). She died on 4 September 2012.American actress
Born: August 23, 1909
Age: 103 - Stein Grieg Halvorsen was born on 19 October 1909 in Oslo, Norway. He was an actor, known for Fru Inger til Østråt (1975), Peer Gynt (1993) and The Bachelor Father (1935). He was married to Vibe Falk and Else Thaulow. He died on 11 November 2013.Norwegian actor
Born: October 19, 1909
Age: 103 - Actress
- Additional Crew
- Camera and Electrical Department
Carla Laemmle was born on 20 October 1909 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for The Adventures of Frank Merriwell (1936), King of Jazz (1930) and The Gate Crasher (1928). She died on 12 June 2014 in Los Angeles, California, USA.American actress
Born: October 20, 1909
Age: 103- Actress
- Soundtrack
Luise Rainer, the first thespian to win back-to-back Oscars, was born on January 12, 1910 in Dusseldorf, Germany, into a prosperous Jewish family. Her parents were Emilie (Königsberger) and Heinrich Rainer, a businessman. She took to the stage, and plied her craft on the boards in Germany. As a young actress, she was discovered by the legendary theater director Max Reinhardt and became part of his company in Vienna, Austria. "I was supposed to be very gifted, and he heard about me. He wanted me to be part of his theater," Rainer recounted in a 1997 interview. She joined Reinhardt's theatrical company in Vienna and spent years developing as an actress under his tutelage. As part of Reinhardt's company, Rainer became a popular stage actress in Berlin and Vienna in the early 1930s. Rainer was a natural talent for Reinhardt's type of staging, which required an impressionistic acting style.
Rainer, who made her screen debut as a teenager and appeared in three other German-language films in the early 1930s, terminated her European career when the Austrian Adolf Hitler consolidated his power in Germany. With his vicious anti-Semitism bringing about the Draconian Nuremberg Laws severely curtailing the rights of Germany's Jews, and efforts to expand that regime into the Sudetenland and Austria, Hitler and his Nazi government was proving a looming threat to European Jewry. Rainer had been spotted by a talent scout, who offered her a seven-year contract with the American studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The 25-year-old Rainer took the deal and emigrated to the United States.
She made her American debut in the movie Escapade (1935), replacing Myrna Loy, who was originally slated for the part. It was her luck to have William Powell as her co-star in her first Hollywood film, as he mentored her, teaching her how to act in front of the camera. Powell, whom Rainer remembers as "a dear man" and "a very fine person," lobbied MGM. boss Louis B. Mayer, reportedly telling him, "You've got to star this girl, or I'll look like an idiot."
During the making of "Escapade", Rainer met, and fell in love with, the left-wing playwright Clifford Odets, then at the height of his fame. They were married in 1937. It was not a happy union. MGM cast Rainer in support of Powell in the title role of the The Great Ziegfeld (1936), its spectacular bio-epic featuring musical numbers that recreated his "Follies" shows on Broadway. As Anna Held, Ziegfeld's common-law wife, Rainer excelled in the musical numbers, but it is for her telephone scene that she is most remembered. "The Great Ziegfeld" was a big hit and went on to win the Academy Award as Best Picture of 1936. Rainer received her first of two successive Best Actress Oscars for playing Held. The award was highly controversial at the time as she was a relative unknown and it was only her first nomination, but also because her role was so short and relatively minor that it better qualified for a supporting nomination. (While 1936 was the first year that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences honored supporting players, her studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, listed her as a lead player, then got out its block vote for her.) Compounding the controversy was the fact that Rainer beat out such better known and more respected actresses as Carole Lombard (her sole Oscar nomination) in My Man Godfrey (1936), previous Best Actress winner Norma Shearer (her fifth nomination) in Romeo and Juliet (1936), and Irene Dunne (her second of five unsuccessful nominations) in Theodora Goes Wild (1936). Some of the bitchery was directed toward Louis B. Mayer, whom non-MGM Academy members resented for his ability to manipulate Academy votes. Other critics of her first Oscar win claimed it was the result of voters being unduly impressed with the great budget ($2 million) of "The Great Ziegfeld" rather than great acting. Most observers agree that Rainer won her Oscar as the result of her moving and poignant performance in just one single scene in the picture, the famous telephone scene in which the broken-hearted Held congratulates Ziegfeld over the telephone on his upcoming marriage to Billie Burke while trying to retain her composure and her dignity. During the scene, the camera is entirely focused on Rainer, and she delivers a tour-de-force performance. Seventy years later, it remains one of the most famous scenes in movie history. With another actress playing Held, the scene could have been mawkish, but Rainer brought the pathos of the scene out and onto film. She based her interpretation of the scene on Jean Cocteau's play "La Voix Humaine". "Cocteau's play is just a telephone conversation about a woman who has lost her beloved to another woman", Rainer remembered. "That is the comparison. As it fit into the Ziegfeld story, that's how I wrote it. It's a daily happening, not just in Cocteau." In an interview held 60 years after the film's release, Rainer was dismissive of the performance. "I was never proud of anything", she said. "I just did it like everything else. To do a film - let me explain to you - it's like having a baby. You labor, you labor, you labor, and then you have it. And then it grows up and it grows away from you. But to be proud of giving birth to a baby? Proud? No, every cow can do that."
Rainer would allay any back-biting from Hollywood's bovines over her first Oscar with her performance as O-Lan in MGM producer Irving Thalberg's spectacular adaptation of Pearl S. Buck's "The Good Earth", the former Boy Wonder's final picture before his untimely death. The role won Rainer her second Best Actress Award. The success of The Good Earth (1937) was rooted in its realism, and its realism was enhanced by Rainer's acting opposite the legendary Paul Muni as her husband. When Thalberg cast Muni in the role of Wang Lung, he had to abandon any thought of casting the Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong as O-Lan as the Hays Office would not allow the hint of miscegenation, even between an actual Chinese woman and a Caucuasian actor in yellow-face drag. So, Thalberg gave Rainer the part, and she made O-Lan her own. She refused to wear a heavy makeup, and her elfin look helped her to assay a Chinese woman with results far superior to those of Myrna Loy in her Oriental vamp phase or Katharine Hepburn in Dragon Seed (1944). In the late 1990s, Rainer praised her director, Sidney Franklin, as "wonderful", and explained that she used an acting technique similar to "The Method" being pioneered by her husband's Group Theatre comrades back in New York. "I worked from inside out", she said. "It's not for me, putting on a face, or putting on makeup, or making masquerade. It has to come from inside out. I knew what I wanted to do and he let me do it." The win made Rainer the first two-time Oscar winner in an acting category and the first to win consecutive acting awards (Spencer Tracy, her distaff honoree for Captains Courageous (1937) would follow her as a consecutive acting Oscar winner the next year, and Walter Brennan, Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner for Come and Get It (1936) the year Rainer won her first, would tie them both in 1937 with his win for Kentucky (1938) and trump them with his third win for The Westerner (1940), a record subsequently tied by Ingrid Bergman, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Daniel Day-Lewis, and surpassed by Katharine Hepburn.)
Rainer's career soon went into free-fall and collapsed, as she became the first notable victim of the "Oscar curse", the phenomenon that has seem many a performer's career take a nose-dive after winning an Academy Award. "For my second and third pictures I won Academy Awards. Nothing worse could have happened to me", Rainer said. A non-conformist, Rainer rejected Hollywood's values of Hollywood. In the late 1990s, she said, "I came from Europe where I was with a wonderful theater group, and I worked. The only thing on my mind was to do good work. I didn't know what an Academy Award was." MGM boss Mayer, the founding force behind the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, had to force her to attend the Awards banquet to receive her Oscar. She rebelled against the studio due to the movies that MGM forced her into after "The Good Earth".
In one case, director Dorothy Arzner had been assigned by MGM producer Joseph M. Mankiewicz (whose wife, Rose Stradner had been Rainer's understudy in the Vienna State Theater) in 1937 to direct Rainer in "The Girl from Trieste", an unproduced Ferenc Molnár play about a prostitute trying to go reform herself who discovers the hypocrisies of the respectable class which she aspires to. After Thalberg's death in 1936, Mayer's lighter aesthetic began to rule the roost at MGM. Mayer genuinely believed in the goodness of women and motherhood and put women on a pedestal; he once told screenwriter Frances Marion that he never wanted to see anything produced by MGM that would embarrass his wife and two daughters.
Without the more sophisticated Thalberg at the studio to run interference, Molnar's play was rewritten so that it was no longer about a prostitute, but a slightly bitter Cinderella story with a happy ending. Retitled by Mankiewicz as The Bride Wore Red (1937), Rainer withdrew and was replaced by Joan Crawford. In a 1976 interview in "The New York Times", Arzner claimed that Rainer "had been suspended for marrying a Communist" (Clifford Odets). This is unlikely as MGM, like all Hollywood studios, had known or suspected communists on its payroll, most of whose affiliations were known by MGM vice president E.J. Mannix. (Mannix, one of whose functions was responsibility for security at the studio, once said it would have been impossible to fire them all, as "the communists" were the studio's best writers.) The studio never took action against alleged communists until an industry-wide agreement to do so was sealed at the Waldorf Conference of 1947, which was held in reaction to the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) launching a Hollywood witch hunt.
It was more likely that Rainer, fussy over her projects and wanting to use her Academy Award prominence to ensure herself better roles, withdrew on her own due to her lack of enthusiasm for the reformulated product. In the late 1990s, Rainer recalled the satisfaction of being a European stage actress. "One day we were on a big tour", she told an interviewer in the late 1990s. "We did a play by Pirandello, and Reinhardt was in the theater. I shall never forget, it was the greatest compliment I ever got, better than any Academy Award. He came to me, looked at me and said - we were never called by first names - 'Rainer, how did you do this?' It was so wonderful. 'How did you create this?' I was so startled and happy. That was my Academy Award." Rainer still is dismissive of the Academy Awards. "I can't watch the Oscars," she said. "Everybody thanking their mother, their father, their grandparents, their nurse - it's a crazy, horrible." She blames the studio and Mayer for the rapid decline in her career. "What they did with me upset me very much", she said in a 1997 interview. "I was dreaming naturally like anyone to do something very good, but after I got the two Academy Awards the studio thought, it doesn't matter what she gets. They threw all kinds of stuff on me, and I thought, no, I didn't want to be an actress."
Mayer pulled his famous emotional routines when Rainer, whom he wanted to turn into a glamorous star, would demand meatier roles. "He would cry phony tears", she recalled. Mayer had opposed her being cast as O-Lan in "The Good Earth", but Thalberg, who had a connection with MGM capo di tutti capi Nicholas Schenck, the president of MGM corporate parent Loew's, Inc., appealed to Schenck, who overrode Mayer's veto. (Mayer, who was involved in a power struggle with Thalberg before the latter's death, had opposed his filming Pearl Buck's novel. Mayer's reasoning was that American audiences wouldn't patronize movies about American farmers, so what made anyone think they'd flock to see a film about Chinese farmers, especially one with such a big budget, estimated at $2.8 million. (Upon release, the film barely broke even.) Thalberg died during the filming of "The Good Earth" (the only film of his released by MGM whose title credits bore his name, in the form of a posthumous tribute).
Rainer felt lost without her protector. She recalled that Mayer "didn't know what to do with me, and that made me so unhappy. I was on the stage with great artists, and everything was so wonderful. I was in a repertory theater, and every night I played something else." Rainer asked to play Nora in a film of Ibsen's "A Doll's House" or portray Madame Curie, but instead, Mayer - now in complete control of the studio - had her cast in The Toy Wife (1938), a movie she actually wound up liking, as she was charmed by her co-star, the urbane, intellectually and politically enlightened Melvyn Douglas. She recalls Douglas, ultimately a double-Oscar winner like herself, as her favorite leading man. "He was intelligent, and he was interested also in other things than acting."
Her problems with the culture of Hollywood, or the lack thereof, were worsening. The lack of intellectual conversation or concern with ideas by the denizens of the movie colony she was forced to work with was depressing. Hollywood was an unsophisticated place where materialism, such as the stars' preoccupation with clothes, was paramount. As she tells it, "Soon after I was there in Hollywood, for some reason I was at a luncheon with Robert Taylor sitting next to me, and I asked him, 'Now, what are your ideas or what do you want to do', and his answer was that he wanted to have 10 good suits to wear, elegant suits of all kinds, that was his idea. I practically fell under the table."
MGM teamed her with fellow Oscar-winner Tracy in Big City (1937), a movie about conflict between rival taxi drivers. The memory of the movie disgusted her. "Supposedly it wasn't a bad film, but I thought it was a bad film!" She was also cast in The Emperor's Candlesticks (1937), reteaming her with "Ziegfeld" co-star Powell, a movie she didn't like, as she couldn't understand its story. A detective tale, the script thoroughly confused Rainer, who was expected to soldier on like a good employee. Instead, she resisted.
After appearing in The Great Waltz (1938) and Dramatic School (1938), her career was virtually over by 1938. She never made another film for MGM. "I just had to get away", she said about Hollywood. "I couldn't bear this total concentration and interviews on oneself, oneself, oneself. I wanted to learn, and to live, to go all over the world, to learn by seeing things and experiencing things, and Hollywood seemed very narrow." When World War II broke out in Europe, Rainer was joined by her family, as her German-born father was also an American citizen, allowing them all to escape Hitler and the Holocaust. Even before the outbreak of war, Rainer had been very worried about the state of affairs of the world, and she could not abide the escapist trifles that MGM wanted to cast her in. When she protested, Mayer told Rainer that if she defied him, he would blackball her in Hollywood.
Disturbed by Hollywood's apathy over fascism in Europe and Asia and by labor unrest and poverty in the U.S., she decided to walk out on her contract. She and Odets returned to New York. They were divorced in 1940. "Hollywood was a very strange place", she remembered. "To me, it was like a huge hotel with a huge door, one of those rotunda doors. On one side people went in, heads high, and very soon they came out on the other side, heads hanging." Her frustration with Hollywood was so complete, she abandoned movie acting in the early 1940s, after making the World War II drama Hostages (1943) for Paramount.
She made her Broadway debut in the play "A Kiss for Cinderella", which was staged by Lee Strasberg, which opened at the Music Box Theatre on March 10, 1942 and closed April 18th after 48 performances. Rainer then worked for the war effort during World War II, appearing at war bond rallies. She went on a tour of North Africa and Italy for the Army Special Service, socializing with soldiers to build their morale, and supplying them with books. The experience changed her life, allowing her to get over the shyness she'd had all her life. It also broadened her experience, forcing her to deal with the obvious fact that there were more important things than movie acting, which had proven unfulfilling to her.
Fortunately, Rainer found happiness in a long-lived marriage with the publisher Robert Knittel, a wealthy man whom she married in 1945. The couple had a daughter and made their home mostly in Switzerland and England as Rainer essentially left acting behind, although she did do some television in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. Her retirement from the movies lasted for 53 years, until her brief comeback in The Gambler (1997), a movie based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's eponymous story. In the film, Rainer played the role of the matriarch of an aristocratic Russian family in the 1860s who is in hock due to the family members' obsession with gambling.
Toward the end of her life, Rainer lived in a luxurious flat in Eaton Square in London's Belgravia district, in a building where Vivien Leigh once lived. Blessed with a good memory, she claimed she could not remember the 1937 Academy Awards ceremony, when she won her first Oscar. She says the glamour of the event was out of sync with her life at the time, which was one of great sadness. "I married Clifford Odets. The marriage was for both of us a failure. He wanted me to be his little wife and a great actress at the same time. Somehow I could not live up to all of that."
She had intriguing offers during her long retirement. Federico Fellini had wanted Rainer for a role in La Dolce Vita (1960), but though she admired the director, she didn't like the script and turned it down. Rainer occasionally plied her craft as an actress on the stage. She made one more stab at Broadway, appearing in a 1950 production of Ibsen's "The Lady from the Sea", which was staged by Sam Wanamaker and Terese Hayden and co-starred Steven Hill, one of the founding members of Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio. The play was a flop, running just 16 performances. "I was living in America and was on the stage there - sporadically. I always lived more than I worked. Which doesn't mean that I do not love my profession, and every moment I was in it gave me great satisfaction and happiness."
Rainer had no regrets over not becoming the star she might have been. She outlived all of the legendary stars of her era, which likely is the best revenge for the loss of her career after bidding adieu to a company town she could not abide.German actress
Born: January 12, 1910
Age: 103- Producer
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Jules V. Levy, Arthur Gardner and Arnold Laven met in 1943 in the First Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Force; they were stationed at the Hal Roach Studios in Culver City, CA (with other notables such as Capt. Ronald Reagan, Capt. Clark Gable and Lt. William Holden, etc.), making training films. Levy, Gardner and Laven resolved that they would start their own independent motion picture company after they got out of the Air Force; all were discharged in 1945, but their company wasn't formed until 1951 (in the interim, Levy and Laven worked as script supervisors and Gardner as an assistant director and production manager). The first Levy-Gardner-Laven film was 1952's Without Warning! (1952); in the decades since, they have produced dozens of additional features and several TV series (including The Rifleman (1958), Law of the Plainsman (1959), The Detectives (1959) and The Big Valley (1965).American producer
Born: June 7, 1910
Age: 102- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Born in Oaxaca, Mexico, Lupita Tovar appeared first in silent Fox films before making the move to Universal and co-starring in the Spanish-language version of 1930's "The Cat Creeps" (La voluntad del muerto (1930)). For the same producer, Czech-born Paul Kohner, she appeared as Eva Seward (the Spanish-language counterpart of Helen Chandler's Mina) in Universal's Spanish Dracula (1931). In 1932, she married Kohner, who later became one of the top agents in Hollywood. (Their actress-daughter, Susan Kohner, was Oscar-nominated for her performance in Universal's 1959 Imitation of Life (1959); their son, Pancho Kohner, is a producer). Tovar gave up films in the 1940s and has been widowed since 1988.Mexican actress
Born: July 27, 1910
Age: 102- Actor
- Director
- Writer
John Calvert was born on 5 August 1911 in New Trenton, Indiana, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Dark Venture (1956), Search for Danger (1949) and Gold Fever (1952). He was married to Tammy and Ann Cornell. He died on 27 September 2013 in Lancaster, California, USA.American actor/magician
Born: August 5, 1911
Age: 101- Urho Harkola was born on 13 September 1911 in Tampere, Finland. He is an actor, known for Huijarien huvittavat huiputtajat (1945), Katariina kaunis leski (1961) and Rakas Wenander (1966).Finnish actor
Born: September 13, 1911
Age: 101 - Actress
- Soundtrack
She was the standard prototype of the porcelain-pretty collegiate and starry-eyed romantic interest in a host of Depression-era films and although her name may not ring a bell to most, Mary Carlisle enjoyed a fairly solid decade in the cinematic limelight.
The petite Boston-born, blue-eyed blonde was born on February 3, 1914, and brought to Hollywood in 1918, at age 4, by her mother after her father passed away. The story goes that the 14-year-old and her mother were having lunch at the Universal commissary when she was noticed by producer Carl Laemmle Jr., who immediately gave her a screen test. Her age was a hindering factor, however, and Mary completed her high school studies before moving into the acting arena. An uncle connected to MGM helped give the young hopeful her break into the movies as a singer/dancer a few years later.
Mary started out typically as an extra and bit player in such films as Madam Satan (1930), The Great Lover (1931) and in Grand Hotel (1932) in which she played a honeymooner. The glamorous, vibrant beauty's career was given a build-up as a "Wampas Baby Star" in 1933 and soon she began finding work in films playing stylish, well-mannered young co-eds. Although she performed as a topline actress in a number of lightweight pictures such as Night Court (1932) with Anita Page, Murder in the Private Car (1934) starring Charles Ruggles, and It's in the Air (1935) alongside Jack Benny, she is perhaps best remembered as a breezy co-star to Bing Crosby in three of his earlier, lightweight '30s musicals: College Humor (1933), Double or Nothing (1937) and Doctor Rhythm (1938). In the last picture mentioned she is the lovely focus of his song "My Heart Is Taking Lessons". Her participation in weightier material such as Kind Lady (1935) was often overshadowed by her even weightier co-stars, in this case Basil Rathbone and Aline MacMahon.
Disappointed with the momentum of her career and her inability to extricate herself from the picture-pretty, paragon-of-virtue stereotype, Mary traveled and lived in London for a time in the late '30s. Following her damsel-in-distress role in the horror opus Dead Men Walk (1943) with George Zucco and Dwight Frye, Mary retired from the screen, prompted by her marriage to James Blakeley, a flying supervisor, the year before. The Beverly Hills couple had one son. Her husband, a former actor who also appeared in '30s musicals with Crosby as a dapper second lead (e.g., in Two for Tonight (1935)), later became an important executive (producer, editor, etc.) at Twentieth Century-Fox.
In later years Mary managed an Elizabeth Arden Salon in Beverly Hills and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her husband passed away in 2007. Mary herself lived to the ripe old age of 104 on August 1, 2018.American actress
Born: February 3, 1912
Age: 101- Actress
- Soundtrack
From the day she was born Martha lived in a world of music. For sure her father was a banker but he was also an amateur pianist. As for her mother, she was a housewife but also a very talented opera singer who had given up her career for the joys of matrimony and motherhood. It does not come as a surprise, under such circumstances, that the little girl's singing capacities were soon discovered. At eight she was already on a scene singing an aria from "The Barber of Seville". A critic attended the show and was impressed by her performance. He introduced her to the director of the Magyar Theater, where she landed her first contract. As of the age of 10 she was hailed as Hungary's "national idol". And it was not long before her triumph became international. An operetta, "Pogasza", was written specially for the crystal-clear-voiced little singer. Among others, she played the role of the doll in "Tales of Hoffmann" and starred in "Das Veilchen vom Montmartre" by Kalman. With the advent of sound films, she found herself very much in demand in the 1930s, bringing her beautiful voice and looks to yet more delighted viewers. It is on the set of "Mein Herz ruft nach dir" that she met Jan Kiepura, another successful opera and operetta singer. Although it was not love at first sight, Jan and Martha gradually fell in love, married two years later, had two sons and were separated only by death with the demise of Jan in 1966. In 1938, the couple fled Austria after its annexation by Hitler and settled down in the South of France first then in the USA. Martha made fewer movies but kept on singing. For instance she co-starred in "The merry Widow" in Broadway for three years with Jan Kiepura. She became an American citizen in the fifties and currently lives in Rye, new York.Hungarian-American actress/singer
Born: April 17, 1912
Age: 100- Actress
- Additional Crew
Sahibzadi Zohra Begum Mumtaz-ullah Khan, better known as Zohra Sehgal, was born into a Sunni Muslim Rohilla Pathan family of Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, on 27th April, 1912 in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, India. However, unlike most other children of traditional households, Zohra Sehgal was a tomboy, who enjoyed climbing trees and playing games. Always rebellious, she saw in her teens Uday Shankar perform in Dehra Dun, during a vacation there, and that acted as the turning point of her life.
She traveled all the way across India, West Asia and Europe by car with an uncle who was close to her. On her return, she was sent, clad in a burqa, to Queen Mary's Girls College, Lahore, a place of higher learning for daughters of aristocratic families. After she finished her college, she joined Uday Shankar's dance troupe, and traveled to Japan, West Asia, Europe and America. During this time, she met Kameshwar Sehgal, a Hindu and eight years younger to herself, and fell in love with him. After initial opposition from her parents, the couple got married, and in spite of Kameshwar's willingness to convert to Islam to marry Zohra, nobody insisted on it. The two had a civil marriage in August 1942. (As Khushwant Singh noted, Jawaharlal Nehru was to attend the wedding reception, but he was arrested a couple of days earlier for supporting Gandhi's Quit India Movement.
The couple first worked in Uday Shankar's dance institute at Almora.When it shut down, they migrated to Lahore and founded their own Dance Institute. However, the growing communal tension prior to the Partition of India made them feel unwelcome, and they went to Bombay, where Zohra joined Prithviraj Kapur's theater as a stage actress and worked there for 14 years.
They had two children, who had the choice of being Hindu or Muslim. For a while they accepted both, then discarded them. By that time, Zohra became an atheist. Her husband was all along a 'non-religious' man.
Zohra had acted on the stage in different parts of India, including plays performed for jails inmates. According to Khushwant Singh, she once stayed back to witness an execution in the Ferozepore jail after staging a play there.
After her husband's suicide, Zohra first moved to Delhi, and then went to London. When she did not get roles as a dancer or an actress, she took on odd jobs like working in the India Tea Centre. Then she got her first break in the films and was signed by Arthur Rank and Merchant Ivory productions.
In India, she became well-known after the appeared in the TV series Mullah Naseeruddin. She has since appeared in many Bollywood as British (mostly British Indian) movies.Indian actress
Born: April 27, 1912
Age: 100- Producer
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Ted Richmond was born on 10 June 1910 in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for Papillon (1973), Blonde Comet (1941) and Shakedown (1950). He died on 23 December 2013 in Paris, France.American producer
Born: June 10, 1912
Age: 100- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Wolfgang Suschitzky was born on 29 August 1912 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]. He was a cinematographer, known for Get Carter (1971), Ulysses (1967) and Worzel Gummidge (1979). He was married to Beatrice Cunningham, Ilona Suschitzky and Helena "Puck" Voute. He died on 7 October 2016 in London, England, UK.Austrian cinematographer
Born: August 29, 1912
Age: 100- Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Louise Currie attended Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, became interested in acting and began taking courses at Max Reinhardt's drama school in Hollywood. Talent scouts spotted the aspiring actress in the acting workshop's stage productions and pressed her to make the rounds of the Hollywood studios, but Currie remained adamant about staying out of the limelight until she felt she was ready. After graduation, she found an agent (Sue Carol, wife of actor Alan Ladd) and began working in pictures, generally at smaller studios like Monogram and PRC. She appeared in Columbia two-reelers, many B-Westerns and two of Republic's "Golden Age" serials (Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941) and The Masked Marvel (1943)) before leaving the picture profession in the early '50s. With her husband, former actor John Good, she went into a new business: Good (an architectural designer) remodeled houses and Currie decorated them.American actress
Born: April 7, 1913
Age: 99 - Director
- Writer
- Producer
Richard L. Bare was born on 12 August 1913 in Turlock, California, USA. He was a director and writer, known for 77 Sunset Strip (1958), The Islanders (1960) and I Sailed to Tahiti with an All Girl Crew (1969). He was married to Gloria Jean Bailey, Jeanne Evans, Julie Van Zandt, Phyllis Coates, Virginia May Carpenter and Barbara Joyce. He died on 28 March 2015 in Newport Beach, California, USA.American director/writer
Born: August 12, 1913
Age: 99- Actor
- Composer
- Director
This velvet-toned jazz baritone and sometime actor was (and perhaps still is) virtually unknown to white audiences. Yet, back in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Herb Jeffries was very big...in black-cast films. Today he is respected and remembered as a pioneer who broke down rusted-shut racial doors in Hollywood and ultimately displayed a positive image as a black actor on celluloid.
The Detroit native was born Umberto Alejandro Ballentino on September 24, 1911 (some sources list 1914). His white Irish mother ran a rooming house, and his father, whom he never knew, was of mixed ancestry and bore Sicilian, Ethiopean, French, Italian and Moorish roots. Young Herb grew up in a mixed neighborhood without experiencing severe racism as a child. He showed definitive interest in singing during his formative teenage years and was often found hanging out with the Howard Buntz Orchestra at various Detroit ballrooms.
After moving to Chicago, he performed in various clubs. One of his first gigs was in a club allegedly owned by Al Capone. Erskine Tate signed the 19-year-old Herb to a contract with his Orchestra at the Savoy Dance Hall in Chicago. While there Herb was spotted by Earl 'Fatha' Hines, who hired him in 1931 for a number of appearances and recordings. It was during the band's excursions to the South that Jeffries first encountered blatant segregation. He left the Hines band in 1934 and eventually planted roots in Los Angeles after touring with Blanche Calloway's band. There he found employment as a vocalist and emcee at the popular Club Alabam. And then came Duke Ellington, staying with his outfit for ten years. Herb started his singing career out as a lyrical tenor, but, on the advice of Duke Ellington's longtime music arranger, Billy Strayhorn, he lowered his range.
The tall, debonair, mustachioed, blue-eyed, light-complexioned man who had a handsome, matinée-styled Latin look, was a suitable specimen for what was called "sepia movies" -- pictures that played only in ghetto and/or segregated theaters and were advertised with an all-black cast. Inspired by the success of Gene Autry, Herb made his debut as a crooning cowboy with Harlem on the Prairie (1937), which was considered the first black western following the inauguration of the talkies. Dark makeup was applied to his light skin and he almost never took off his white stetson which would have revealed naturally brown hair. A popular movie, Herb went on to sing his own songs (to either his prairie flower and/or horse) in both The Bronze Buckaroo (1939) and Harlem Rides the Range (1939). Outside the western venue, he starred in the crimer Two-Gun Man from Harlem (1938). As the whip-snapping, pistol-toting, melody-gushing Bronze Buckaroo, Jeffries finally offered a positive alternative to the demeaning stereotypes laid on black actors. Moreover, he refused to appear in "white" films in which he would have been forced to play in servile support.
In the midst of all this, Herb continued to impress as a singer and made hit records of the singles "In My Solitude", "I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good", "When I Write My Song", Duke Ellington's "Jump for Joy" and his signature song "Flamingo", which became a huge hit in 1941. Some of the songs he did miss out on which could have furthered his name, were "Love Letters" and "Native Boy". During the 1950s Herb worked constantly in Europe, especially in France, where he owned his own Parisian nightclub for a time. He also starred in the title film role of Calypso Joe (1957) co-starring Angie Dickinson and later appeared on episodes of "I Dream of Jeannie", "The Virginian" and "Hawaii Five-0".
Although he very well could have with his light skin tones, the man dubbed "Mr. Flamingo" never tried to pass himself off as white. He was proud of his heritage and always identified himself as black. In the mid-1990s, westerns returned in vogue and Herb recorded a "comeback album" ("The Bronze Buckaroo Rides Again") for Warner Western. During this pleasant career renaissance he has also been asked to lecture at colleges, headline concerts and record CDs. In 1999-2000, at age 88, he recorded the CD "The Duke and I", recreating songs he did with Duke. It also was a tribute honoring the great musician's 100th birthday.
His five marriages, including one to notorious exotic dancer Tempest Storm, produced five children. At age 90-plus, Herb "Flamingo" Jeffries, lived in the Palm Springs area with significant other (and later his fifth wife) Savannah Shippen, who is 45 years his junior, remaining one of the last of the original singing cowboys still alive (along with Monte Hale) until he finally passed away on May 25, 2014, having hit the century mark.
In 2003 he was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame and was invited to sing for President Bush at the White House. He is also the last surviving member of The Great Duke Ellington Orchestra, and certainly deserves proper credit for his historic efforts in films and music.American actor
Born: September 24, 1913
Age: 99- Margery Mason was born on 27 September 1913 in Hackney, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Princess Bride (1987), Love Actually (2003) and Les Misérables (1998). She was married to Peter Daminoff. She died on 26 January 2014 in Swiss Cottage, Camden, London, England, UK.English actress
Born: September 27, 1913
Age: 99 - Actress
- Soundtrack
The multifaceted Ellen Albertini was a student of dance and piano at the age of five, and obtained a B.A. and M.A. in theater from Cornell University. She moved to New York, and studied and worked with the legendary likes of Hanya Holm, Martha Graham, Michael Shurtleff, Uta Hagen, Marcel Marceau, and Jacques Lecoq in Paris. She was an acting coach before she made her debut film appearance in American Drive-in (1985), and later became memorable as the rapping grandmother in The Wedding Singer (1998), "Disco Dottie" in 54 (1998) and the homophobic grandmother in Wedding Crashers (2005).American actress
Born: November 16, 1913
Age: 99- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
One of Hollywood's more high-flying dancers on film, dimpled, robust, fair-haired Marc Platt provided fancy footwork to a handful of "Golden Era" musicals but truly impressed in one vigorous 1950s classic.
Born to a musical family on December 2, 1913 in Pasadena, California as Marcel Emile Gaston LePlat, he was the only child of a French-born concert violinist and a soprano singer. After years on the road, the family finally settled in Seattle, Washington. Following his father's death, his mother found a job at the Mary Ann Wells' dancing school while young Marc earned his keep running errands at the dance school. He eventually became a dance student at the school and trained with Wells for eight years who saw great potential in Marc.
It was Wells who arranged an audition for Marc with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo when the touring company arrived in Seattle. The artistic director Léonide Massine accepted him at $150 a week and changed his name to Marc Platoff in order to maintain the deception that the company was Russian. A highlight was his dancing as the Spirit of Creation in Massine's legendary piece "Seventh Symphony". Platt also choreographed during his time there, one piece being Ghost Town (1939), which was set to music by Richard Rodgers. While there he met and married (in 1942) dancer Eleanor Marra. They had one son before divorcing in 1947. Ted Le Plat, born in 1944, became a musician as well as a daytime soap and prime-time TV actor.
Anxious to try New York, Marc left the ballet company in 1942 and moved to the Big Apple where he changed his marquee name to the more Americanized "Marc Platt" and pursued musical parts. Following minor roles in the short run musicals "The Lady Comes Across" (January, 1942) with Joe E. Lewis, Mischa Auer and Gower Champion and "Beat the Band" (October-December, 1942) starring Joan Caulfield, Marc and Kathryn Sergava found themselves cast in a landmark musical, the Rodgers and Hammerstein rural classic "Oklahoma!" Choreographer Agnes de Mille showcased them in the ground-breaking extended dream sequence roles of (Dream) Curly and (Dream) Laurey. Platt stayed with the show for a year but finally left after Columbia Pictures signed him to a film contract.
Aside from a couple of short musical films, he made his movie feature debut with a featured role as Tommy in Tonight and Every Night (1945) starring Rita Hayworth. From there he appeared in the Sid Caesar vehicle Tars and Spars (1946) and back with Rita Hayworth in Down to Earth (1947). Columbia tried Marc out as a leading man in one of their second-string musicals When a Girl's Beautiful (1947) opposite Adele Jergens and Patricia Barry but did not make a great impression. Featured again in the non-musical adventure The Swordsman (1948) starring Ellen Drew and Larry Parks and the Italian drama Addio Mimí! (1949) based on Puccini's "La Boheme," Marc's film career dissipated.
After appearing on occasional TV variety shows such as "The Ed Sullivan Show" and "The Colgate Comedy Hour" and following a single return to Broadway in the musical "Maggie" (1953, Platt returned to film again after a five-year absence but when he finally did, he made a superb impression as one of Howard Keel's uncouth but vigorously agile woodsman brothers (Daniel) in MGM's Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). The film still stands as one of the most impressive dancing pieces of the "Golden Age" of musicals. He followed this with a minor dancing role (it was James Mitchell who played Dream Curly here) in the film version of Oklahoma! (1955).
When the musical film lost favor in the late 1950's, Marc finished off the decade focusing on straight dramatic roles on TV with roles in such rugged series as "Sky King," "Wyatt Earp" and "Dante". By the 1960s Marc had taken off his dance shoes and turned director of the ballet company at New York's Radio City Music Hall. He and his second wife, Jean Goodall, whom he married back in 1951 and had two children (Donna, Michael), also ran a dance studio of their own. Following this they left New York and moved to Fort Myers, Florida where they set up a new dance school.
Marc moved to Northern California to be near family following his wife's death in 1994 and occasionally appeared at the Marin Dance Theatre in San Rafael. One of his last performances was a non-dancing part in "Sophie and the Enchanted Toyshop" at age 89. In 2000, Marc was presented with the Nijinsky Award at the Ballets Russe's Reunion. He appeared in the 2005 documentary Ballets Russes (2005). Platt died at the age of 100 at a hospice in San Rafael from complications of pneumonia. He was survived by his three children.American actor
Born: December 2, 1913
Age: 99- Actor
- Writer
- Director
He was born in Parkstone, Dorset, England. His father was English and his mother was Danish. Olaf was a student of architecture at the Architectural Association, London, and of painting at the Chelsea School of Art. In Paris, he studied under the tutelage of Marcel Grommaire, at the Acedemie Colorossi. He has exhibited in Europe, including with the London Group and the Bloomsbury Gallery, London; in Paris at the Gallerie d'Alsace, the Centre Culturel Saint Severin, and L'Imagerie - and in Mallorca, at La Residencia and the Galleria Ortez, Palma de Mallorca. Alongside his work as a painter, he has been a working actor since his days in England. His first full time employment was in the Design Department at Pinewood Film Studios in England. He subsequently worked in Theatre Décor. He was a member of the BBC Radio Drama Reparatory Company. He went onto working successfully as an actor in London's West End Theatre and the various alternative media.
Upon immigrating to the United States in 1986, Olaf continued his acting career while his second wife, Gabrielle Beaumont, pursued a very successful TV Director career. He had a reoccurring role as Professor Stahlman in the Doctor Who television series. He is one of only 25 actors to have speaking roles in both the "Star Trek" and the "Doctor Who" franchises. He still receives mail from fans around the world who follow the Dr. Who series and admire his work. He has written numerous screen plays and was a close friend of Sir Alec Guinness for many years.
Olaf Pooley's current studio location is at the Santa Monica Art Studios located at 3026 Airport Drive, Santa Monica, CA 90405. For more information about his paintings, email: inharmony@aol.com.English actor
Born: March 13, 1914
Age: 98- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Stunts
Born George Shephard Houghton on June 4, 1914, in Salt Lake City, Utah, Shep is the youngest of two sons born to George Henry Houghton and Mabell Viola Shephard. Far from being born into show business, his father was an insurance company representative who moved his family to Hollywood for business reasons in 1927. As luck would have it, they rented a house on Bronson Avenue just two blocks from Paramount Studio's iron front gate, and not far from the Edwin Carreau studio. Picked off the street by an assistant producer, Shep's first work in the movie industry was in 1927 as a Mexican youngster in Carreau's production of Ramona, released in 1928. As a thirteen-year old he also worked in Emil Janning's The Last Command, and continued to work for director Josef von Sternberg in several subsequent pictures. He found movie work to his liking, and out of high school he worked through Central Casting for Mascot Productions, Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, Fox Film Corporation, and Warner Brother's, where he became a favorite in the Busby Berkeley musicals as a dancer and chorus singer. In 1935 he married Jane Rosily Kellog, his high school sweetheart. Together they had one child, Terrie Lynn, born on September 22, 1939. They were divorced in October, 1945. In 1946 he married Geraldine Farnum, daughter of featured actor Franklin Farnum. They had also one child, Peter William, born August 19, 1947. He and Gerry were divorced in 1948.
Shep was a talent in television from its earliest days. He acted in many recurring roles, beginning with the Jack Benny Program in 1950. That show, and Shep's work in it, lasted until 1965. He worked on many programs through their entire runs, with the notable exception of the original Star Trek of 1966, in which he appeared in only the first three episodes. In addition to these productions, he worked on the I Love Lucy show from 1951 to 1957, and Wagon Train, Perry Mason, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, Mr. Lucky, The Untouchables, and The Twilight Zone, all in the 1950s.
The 1960s brought him steady work in My Three Sons, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Loretta Young Show, both The Lucille Ball Show and the renewed Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, Hogan's Heroes, Mannix, and Marcus Welby. In the 1970s he worked on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Shep was a charter member of both SAG and SEG, and continued to work in both movies and television until his retirement in 1976. He and Mel Carter Houghton were married in 1975, and continue to live happily ever after. She lets him play golf very nearly every day.American actor
Born: June 4, 1914
Age: 98- Gisèle Casadesus was born on 14 June 1914 in Paris, France. She was an actress, known for Loves of Casanova (1947), Paméla (1945) and Sous le figuier (2012). She was married to Lucien Pascal. She died on 24 September 2017 in Paris, France.French actress
Born: June 14, 1914
Age: 98 - Professor Irwin Corey, "The World's Foremost Authority," was born on July 29, 1914, in Brooklyn, New York. He and his five siblings were wards of the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum, and during the Great Depression, he worked for the Civilian Conservation Corp. Possessing brawn as well as brains, Professor Irwin Corey is proud to tell anyone who will listen that he was the C.C.C.'s boxing champ in the 112-pound weight class.
Before becoming certified (as a professor purveying the surreal), the young Irwin caught the performing bug by appearing in a borscht belt show, "Pots and Pans," in a bit part. He made his debut in a musical comedy in a U.S.O. presentation of "Oklahoma" in Europe, in which he played the part of the Arab peddler Ali Hakim.
Perfecting his crazy professor shtick, who always appeared in an old-fashioned tuxedo with tails like Groucho Marx, Corey broke through as a stand-up comic at San Francisco's "hungry i" and New York City's Copacabana and Village Vanguard nightclubs. His lectures, characterized by a constant barrage of non-sequitur and double-talk, were rooted in the word-play epitomized by Groucho Marx and Chico Marx in such classic routines as "Why a Duck?" However, whatever "logic" The Marx Brothers might display (at least in exasperated double takes by Groucho) was missing in the Professor's shtick. Before the Talking Heads ever sang about it, Professor Irwin Corey made an art form out of "Stop Making Sense."
Theater critic Kenneth Tynan said of the Professor, "[Corey is] a cultural clown, a parody of literacy, a travesty of all that our civilization holds dear and one of the funniest grotesques in America. He is Chaplin's clown with a college education."
Corey thrived on the radio, memorably appearing on Edgar Bergen's radio show as a tutor to Charlie McCarthy. Television was another natural medium for the professor, and he appeared as a regular on The Jackie Gleason Show (1952) and also made the rounds of the talk show circuit of the 1950s, '60s and '70s, appearing with 'Steve Allen', Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, Merv Griffin, and Mike Douglas. He also was on "The Ed Sullivan Show" (aka The Ed Sullivan Show (1948)) as well as appeared with the new lessor of the Ed Sullivan Theater, David Letterman.
Irwin Corey also has appeared on Broadway, in "Heaven on Earth," "Happy as Larry," "Fla-hooley," and "Mrs. McThing," as well as recent productions of "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Hamlet." Off-Broadway, he appeared as the eponymous lead in "The Good Soldier Schweik" and as Marlo Thomas' father in Herb Gardner's play "Thieves," reprising the role in the film (Thieves (1977)). He also appeared in numerous episodes of series television, including The Andy Griffith Show (1960), "Doc" (with Barnard Hughes), The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967), and Pat Paulsen's Half a Comedy Hour (1970).
The Professor's last film was Woody Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001). At 91, and still going strong, Professor Irwin Corey truly is the dean of stand-up comedians, if not quite at the head of his class.American actor
Born: July 29, 1914
Age: 98 - Lydia Lamaison was born on 5 August 1914 in Mendoza, Argentina. She was an actress, known for Nano (1994), La caída (1959) and Jesús, el heredero (2004). She was married to Oscar Soldati. She died on 20 February 2012 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Argentine actress
Born: August 5, 1914
Age: 98 - Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Actor
- Writer
Michael D. Moore was born on 14 October 1914 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He was an assistant director and actor, known for The War of the Worlds (1953), Willow (1988) and Never Say Never Again (1983). He was married to Laurie Abdo and Esther McNeill. He died on 4 March 2013 in Malibu, Los Angeles County, California, USA.Canadian-American actor/director
Born: October 14, 1914
Age: 98- Anna Wing first appeared on television in the late 1930s, and became a highly experienced film and stage actress. She appeared in numerous television series throughout her career, including The Wednesday Play (1964), Anna Karenina (1977) and Z Cars (1962). However, she became a household name when she starred in over 230 episodes of EastEnders (1985) as the matriarch Lou Beale.
She had two sons, including the actor Mark Wing-Davey. She died in her sleep in July 2013, aged 98.English actress
Born: October 30, 1914
Age: 98 - Producer
- Actor
- Director
Norman Lloyd was born Norman Perlmutter in Jersey City, New Jersey, to Sadie (Horowitz), a housewife and singer, and Max Perlmutter, a furniture store manager. His family was Jewish (from Hungary and Russia). He began his acting career in the theater, first "treading the boards" at Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory in New York. Aspiring to work as a classical repertory player, he gradually shed his Brooklyn accent and became a busy stage actor in the 1930s; he next joined the original company of the Orson Welles-John Houseman Mercury Theatre. Lloyd was brought to Hollywood to play a supporting part (albeit the title role) in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942). Hitchcock, who later used the actor in Spellbound (1945) and other films, made him an associate producer and a director on TV's long-running Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) (then in its third year). In the course of his eight years on the series, Lloyd became a co-producer (with Joan Harrison) and then executive producer. He has since directed for other series (including the prestigious Omnibus (1952)) and for the stage, produced TV's Tales of the Unexpected (1979) and Journey to the Unknown (1968), and played Dr. Auschlander in TV's acclaimed St. Elsewhere (1982).American actor
Born: November 8, 1914
Age: 98- Director
- Script and Continuity Department
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Leslie H. Martinson was born on 16 January 1915 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was a director and assistant director, known for Batman: The Movie (1966), Mission: Impossible (1966) and Hot Rod Girl (1956). He was married to Connie Martinson. He died on 3 September 2016 in Los Angeles, California, USA.American director
Born: January 16, 1915
Age: 98- Alicia Rhett was born on 1 February 1915 in Savannah, Georgia, USA. She was an actress, known for Gone with the Wind (1939). She died on 3 January 2014 in Charleston, South Carolina, USA.American actress/painter
Born: February 1, 1915
Age: 98 - Wally Cassell was born on 3 March 1912 in Agrigento, Sicily, Italy. He was an actor, known for White Heat (1949), Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and Story of G.I. Joe (1945). He was married to Marcy McGuire. He died on 2 April 2015 in Palm Desert, California, USA.American actor
Born: March 3, 1915
Age: 97 - Actress
- Soundtrack
Woefully misused while in her prime screen years at Paramount during the late '30s and '40s, Patricia Morison, lovely and exotic with Rapunzel-like long, dark hair, nevertheless became a star in her own right -- as a supremely talented diva on the singing stage.
Born on March 19, 1915, in New York City, her father, William Morison, was a playwright and occasional actor who billed himself under the name Norman Rainey. Patricia's mother worked for British Intelligence during WWI. Graduating from Washington Irving High School in New York, Patricia studied at the Art Students League and proceeded to take acting classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse while also studying dance with the renowned Martha Graham. She earned a steady check at the time as a dress shop designer.
At age 19 Patricia made her Broadway debut in the short-lived play "Growing Pains" and proceeded to understudy the legendary Helen Hayes in her classic role of "Victoria Regina". She never went on. In 1938, shortly after opening in the musical "The Two Bouquets" opposite musical star Alfred Drake, Paramount talent scouts, looking for exotic, dark-haired glamour types then to rein in their star commodity, Dorothy Lamour, scoped Patricia out and tested her. The blue-eyed beauty who indeed resembled Lamour was signed and made her film debut the following year, showing bright promise in the "B" film Persons in Hiding (1939).
Patricia's stock did not improve, however, despite such promise, and she was relegated to such second-string westerns as I'm from Missouri (1939), Rangers of Fortune (1940), Romance of the Rio Grande (1940), and The Round Up (1941). When things didn't improve with such stilted fare as Night in New Orleans (1942), Beyond the Blue Horizon (1942), and Are Husbands Necessary? (1942), she left Paramount. She freelanced in 'other woman' roles which included the Tracy/Hepburn vehicle Without Love (1945) and The Fallen Sparrow (1943), and played Empress Eugenie in The Song of Bernadette (1943), but the focus was seldom on her. Overlooked when cast in top leads at 'poverty row' programmers, her best chance at film stardom came as Victor Mature's despairing wife who takes her own life (which was to have been shown on screen) in Kiss of Death (1947), but her juicy role was excised from the film by producers (or, more likely, the Breen Commission) who felt audiences weren't ready for such shocking displays.
During the war years, Patricia had trained her voice and performed in USO tours. Cole Porter heard her sing in Hollywood one evening and decided she had the right tenacity, feistiness and vocal expertise to play the female lead in his new show. In 1948, over the objections of both the producer and director, stardom was clenched in the form of Porter's classic musical-within-a-musical "Kiss Me Kate." As the sweeping, vixenish Lilli Vanessi, a severe-looking stage diva whose own volatile personality coincided with that of her onstage role (Kate from "The Taming of the Shrew"), Patricia found THE role of her career, giving over 1,000 performances in all. Playing again alongside her former Broadway co-star Alfred Drake, Patricia basked in the multitude of glowing reviews, and such songs as "I Hate Men," "Wunderbar" and "So In Love" rightfully became signature songs. Following this triumph, film work never became a top priority again.
Patricia continued on successfully in the London version of "Kate" and went on to conquer other classic leads in the musicals "The King and I," "Kismet," "The Merry Widow," "Song of Norway" and Pal Joey," among others. Her last movie role was a cameo part as writer George Sand in the mildly received biopic Song Without End (1960) starring Dirk Bogarde as composer Franz Liszt.
On TV Patricia recreated her Kate role with Mr. Drake and made a few scattered but lively appearances over the years. One of her later guest shots was on a 1989 episode of "Cheers" and a 1991 episode of "Gabriel's Fire." In later years the never-married actress devoted herself to painting (an early passion) and enjoyed many showings in the Los Angeles area. The lovely lady with the trademark long hair died in L.A. at the age of 103, on May 20, 2018.American actress
Born: March 19, 1915
Age: 97- A beautiful and durable actress of screen, stage and television, Asherson was born Renée Ascherson in London (dropping the "c" early in her acting career), the younger daughter of Charles Ascherson, a businessman and bibliophile of German-Jewish extraction, and his second wife, Dorothy Wiseman, who wed on 14 December 1910. (Her older sister was Janet Elizabeth Ascherson, born 22 May 1914).
Asherson's parents narrowly avoided being passengers on the fateful maiden voyage of the Titanic in 1912, after Charles Ascherson reportedly canceled the passage due to suffering from appendicitis.
She played the bride of Laurence Olivier's title character in Henry V (1944) (Henry V (1944)). She later appeared in Maniacs on Wheels (1949), a speedway drama with Dirk Bogarde. A frequent co-star of the actor Robert Donat, whom she married in 1953. The couple separated in 1956, but were due to reconcile at the time of his untimely death in London on 9th June 1958, aged 53.English actress
Born: May 19, 1915
Age: 97 - Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
One of Hollywood's finest character / "Method" actors, Eli Wallach was in demand for over 60 years (first film/TV role was 1949) on stage and screen, and has worked alongside the world's biggest stars, including Clark Gable, Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Marilyn Monroe, Yul Brynner, Peter O'Toole, and Al Pacino, to name but a few.
Wallach was born on 7 December 1915 in Brooklyn, NY, to Jewish parents who emigrated from Poland, and was one of the few Jewish kids in his mostly Italian neighborhood. His parents, Bertha (Schorr) and Abraham Wallach, owned a candy store, Bertha's Candy Store. He went on to graduate with a B.A. from the University of Texas in Austin, but gained his dramatic training with the Actors Studio and the Neighborhood Playhouse. He made his debut on Broadway in 1945, and won a Tony Award in 1951 for portraying Alvaro Mangiacavallo in the Tennessee Williams play "The Rose Tattoo".
Wallach made a strong screen debut in 1956 in the film version of the Tennessee Williams play Baby Doll (1956), shined as "Dancer", the nattily dressed hitman, in director Don Siegel's film-noir classic The Lineup (1958), and co-starred in the heist film Seven Thieves (1960). Director John Sturges then cast Wallach as vicious Mexican bandit Calvera in The Magnificent Seven (1960), the western adaptation of the Akira Kurosawa epic Seven Samurai (1954). The Misfits (1961), in the star-spangled western opus How the West Was Won (1962), the underrated WW2 film The Victors (1963), as a kidnapper in The Moon-Spinners (1964), in the sea epic Lord Jim (1965) and in the romantic comedy How to Steal a Million (1966).
Looking for a third lead actor in the final episode of the "Dollars Trilogy", Italian director Sergio Leone cast the versatile Wallach as the lying, two-faced, money-hungry (but somehow lovable) bandit "Tuco" in the spectacular The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) (aka "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"), arguably his most memorable performance. Wallach kept busy throughout the remainder of the '60s and into the '70s with good roles in Mackenna's Gold (1969), Cinderella Liberty (1973), Crazy Joe (1974), The Deep (1977) and as Steve McQueen's bail buddy in The Hunter (1980).
The 1980s was an interesting period for Wallach, as he was regularly cast as an aging doctor, a Mafia figure or an over-the-hill hitman, such as in The Executioner's Song (1982), Our Family Honor (1985), Tough Guys (1986), Nuts (1987), The Two Jakes (1990) and as the candy-addicted "Don Altabello" in The Godfather Part III (1990). At 75+ years of age, Wallach's quality of work was still first class and into the 1990s and beyond, he has remained in demand. He lent fine support to Vendetta: Secrets of a Mafia Bride (1990), Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story (1992), Naked City: Justice with a Bullet (1998) and Keeping the Faith (2000). Most recently Wallach showed up as a fast-talking liquor store owner in Mystic River (2003) and in the comedic drama King of the Corner (2004).
In early 2005, Eli Wallach released his much anticipated autobiography, "The Good, The Bad And Me: In My Anecdotage", an enjoyable reading from one of the screen's most inventive and enduring actors.
Eli Wallach was very much a family man who remained married to his wife Anne Jackson for 66 years. When Wallach died at 98, in 2014, in Manhattan, NY, he was survived by his wife, three children, five grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.American actor
Born: December 7, 1915
Age: 97- Actor
- Additional Crew
Arnoldo Foà was born on 24 January 1916 in Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. He was an actor, known for The Trial (1962), War Gods of Babylon (1962) and Lucrèce Borgia (1953). He was married to Anna Procaccini, Patrizia Uva and Ludovica Volpe. He died on 11 January 2014 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.Italian actor
Born: January 24, 1916
Age: 97- James Edmond was born on 7 February 1924 in Walkerton, Ontario, Canada. He was an actor, known for Black Christmas (1974), Devil Girl from Mars (1954) and ABC Weekend Specials (1977). He was married to Shirley Faessler. He died on 4 November 2000 in Paris, Ontario, Canada.Canadian actor
Born: February 9, 1916
Age: 97 - Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Lucille Bliss was an American voice actress from New York City who was known for voicing Smurfette from The Smurfs, Anastasia from Cinderella and Ms. Bitters from Invader Zim. She voiced in other animated projects and video games including Robots and The Secret of NIMH. She passed away in November 8th, 2012.American actress
Born: March 31, 1916
Age: 96- Kevin O'Morrison was born on 25 May 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Funny Farm (1988) and Dear Ruth (1947). He was married to Linda Soma. He died on 11 December 2016 in Lynnwood, Washington, USA.American actor
Born: May 25, 1916
Age: 96 - Actress
- Soundtrack
Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916 in Tokyo, Japan to British parents, Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her sister Joan, later to become famous as Joan Fontaine, was born the following year. Her surname comes from her paternal grandfather, whose family was from Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Her parents divorced when Olivia was just three years old, and she moved with her mother and sister to Saratoga, California.
After graduating from high school, where she fell prey to the acting bug, Olivia enrolled in Mills College in Oakland, where she participated in the school play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and was spotted by Max Reinhardt. She so impressed Reinhardt that he picked her up for both his stage version and, later, the Warner Bros. film version in 1935. She again was so impressive that Warner executives signed her to a seven-year contract. No sooner had the ink dried on the contract than Olivia appeared in three more films: The Irish in Us (1935), Alibi Ike (1935), and Captain Blood (1935), this last with the man with whom her career would be most closely identified: heartthrob Errol Flynn. He and Olivia starred together in eight films during their careers. In 1939 Warner Bros. loaned her to David O. Selznick for the classic Gone with the Wind (1939). Playing sweet Melanie Hamilton, Olivia received her first nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, only to lose out to one of her co-stars in the film, Hattie McDaniel.
After GWTW, Olivia returned to Warner Bros. and continued to churn out films. In 1941 she played Emmy Brown in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), which resulted in her second Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress. Again she lost, this time to her sister Joan for her role in Suspicion (1941). After that strong showing, Olivia now demanded better, more substantial roles than the "sweet young thing" slot into which Warners had been fitting her. The studio responded by placing her on a six-month suspension, all of the studios at the time operating under the policy that players were nothing more than property to do with as they saw fit. As if that weren't bad enough, when her contract with Warners was up, she was told that she needed to make up the time lost because of the suspension. Irate, she sued the studio, and for the length of the court battle she didn't appear in a single film. The result, however, was worth it. In a landmark decision, the court said that not only would Olivia not need to make up the time, but also that all performers would be limited to a seven-year contract that would include any suspensions handed down. This became known as the "de Havilland decision": no longer could studios treat their performers as chattel. Olivia returned to the screen in 1946 and made up for lost time by appearing in four films, one of which finally won her the Oscar that had so long eluded her: To Each His Own (1946), in which she played Josephine Norris to the delight of critics and audiences alike. Olivia was the strongest performer in Hollywood for the balance of the 1940s.
In 1948 she turned in another strong showing in The Snake Pit (1948) as Virginia Cunningham, a woman suffering a mental breakdown. The end result was another Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but she lost to Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda (1948). As in the two previous years, she made only one film in 1949, but she again won a nomination and the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Heiress (1949). After a three-year hiatus, Olivia returned to star in My Cousin Rachel (1952). From that point on, she made few appearances on the screen but was seen on Broadway and in some television shows. Her last screen appearance was in The Fifth Musketeer (1979), and her last career appearance was in the TV movie The Woman He Loved (1988).
Her turbulent relationship with her only sibling, Joan Fontaine, was press fodder for many decades; the two were reported as having been permanently estranged since their mother's death in 1975, when Joan claimed that she had not been invited to the memorial service, which she only managed to hold off until she could arrive by threatening to go public. Joan also wrote in her memoir that her elder sister had been physically, psychologically, and emotionally abusive when they were young. And the iconic photo of Joan with her hand outstretched to congratulate Olivia backstage after the latter's first Oscar win and Olivia ignoring it because she was peeved by a comment Joan had made about Olivia's new husband, Marcus Goodrich, remained part of Hollywood lore for many years.
Nonetheless, late in life, Fontaine gave an interview in which she serenely denied any and all claims of an estrangement from her sister. When a reporter asked Joan if she and Olivia were friends, she replied, "Of course!" The reporter responded that rumors to the contrary must have been sensationalism and she replied, "Oh, right--they have to. Two nice girls liking each other isn't copy." Asked if she and Olivia were in communication and spoke to each other, Joan replied "Absolutely." When asked if there ever had been a time when the two did not get along to the point where they wouldn't speak with one another, Joan replied, again, "Never. Never. There is not a word of truth about that." When asked why people believe it, she replied "Oh, I have no idea. It's just something to say ... Oh, it's terrible." When asked if she had seen Olivia over the years, she replied, "I've seen her in Paris. And she came to my apartment in New York often." The reporter stated that all this was a nice thing to hear. Joan then stated, "Let me just say, Olivia and I have never had a quarrel. We have never had any dissatisfaction. We have never had hard words. And all this is press." Joan died in 2013.
During the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of GWTW in 1989, Olivia graciously declined requests for all interviews as the last of the four main stars. She enjoyed a quiet retirement in Paris, France, where she resided for many decades, and where she died on 26 July, 2020, at the age of 104.
As well as being the last surviving major cast member of some of cinema's most beloved pre-war and wartime film classics (including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Gone with the Wind (1939)), and one of the longest-lived major stars in film history, Olivia de Havilland was unquestionably the last surviving iconic figure from the peak of Hollywood's golden era during the late 1930s, and her passing truly marked the end of an era.British-American actress
Born: July 1, 1916
Age: 96- Writer
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Jean Rouverol was born on 8 July 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. She was a writer and actress, known for It's a Gift (1934), Bar 20 Rides Again (1935) and Guiding Light (1952). She was married to Hugo Butler. She died on 24 March 2017 in Wingdale, New York, USA.American actress
Born: July 8, 1916
Age: 96- Actor
- Additional Crew
Dr. Dean Kent Brooks, M.D., was born in Everett, Washington, in 1916. He was the head of the Oregon State Hospital in 1975 when the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) was filmed there. He starred, surprising enough, as the head of the psychiatric hospital in the film, "Dr. John Spivey, M.D."
He attended the University of Kansas Medical School in Kansas City, Kansas, and graduated from there on June 1, 1942. He was first licensed in Oregon to practice psychiatry on January 21, 1950. He retired from the practice of Psychiatric Medicine on December 31, 1999.
During the filming of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), he diagnosed actor William Redfield (who played psychiatric hospital patient "Harding") with Leukemia (this was long before the days of bone marrow transplants), and gave Mr. Redfield 18 months to live (he died 18 months later, pretty much to the day).
He never had a single complaint filed against him in his long and distinguished career as a psychiatrist.American actor
Born: July 22, 1916
Age: 96- Actor
- Soundtrack
Don Keefer was born on 18 August 1916 in Highspire, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Twilight Zone (1959) and Death of a Salesman (1951). He was married to Catherine McLeod. He died on 7 September 2014 in Sherman Oaks, California, USA.American actor
Born: August 18, 1916
Age: 96- Actor
- Writer
Robert Boon was born on 26 October 1916 in Haarlem, Noord-Holland, Netherlands. He was an actor and writer, known for Queen of Blood (1966), Producers' Showcase (1954) and The Twilight Zone (1959). He died on 13 January 2015 in West Hills, California, USA.Dutch-American actor
Born: October 26, 1916
Age: 96- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Cleft-chinned, steely-eyed and virile star of international cinema who rose from being "the ragman's son" (the name of his best-selling 1988 autobiography) to become a bona fide superstar, Kirk Douglas, also known as Issur Danielovitch Demsky, was born on December 9, 1916 in Amsterdam, New York. His parents, Bryna (Sanglel) and Herschel Danielovitch, were Jewish immigrants from Chavusy, Mahilyow Voblast (now in Belarus). Although growing up in a poor ghetto, Douglas was a fine student and a keen athlete and wrestled competitively during his time at St. Lawrence University. Professional wrestling helped pay for his studies as did working on the side as a waiter and a bellboy. However, he soon identified an acting scholarship as a way out of his meager existence, and was sufficiently talented to gain entry into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his Broadway debut in "Spring Again" before his career was interrupted by World War II. He joining the United States Navy in 1941, and then after the end of hostilities in 1945, returned to the theater and some radio work. On the insistence of ex-classmate Lauren Bacall, movie producer Hal B. Wallis screen-tested Douglas and cast him in the lead role in The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). His performance received rave reviews and further work quickly followed, including an appearance in the low-key drama I Walk Alone (1947), the first time he worked alongside fellow future screen legend Burt Lancaster. Such was the strong chemistry between the two that they appeared in seven films together, including the dynamic western Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), the John Frankenheimer political thriller Seven Days in May (1964) and their final pairing in the gangster comedy Tough Guys (1986). Douglas once said about his good friend: "I've finally gotten away from Burt Lancaster. My luck has changed for the better. I've got nice-looking girls in my films now."
After appearing in "I Walk Alone," Douglas scored his first Oscar nomination playing the untrustworthy and opportunistic boxer Midge Kelly in the gripping Champion (1949). The quality of his work continued to garner the attention of critics and he was again nominated for Oscars for his role as a film producer in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and as tortured painter Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956), both directed by Vincente Minnelli. In 1955, Douglas launched his own production company, Bryna Productions, the company behind two pivotal film roles in his career. The first was as French army officer Col. Dax in director Stanley Kubrick's brilliant anti-war epic Paths of Glory (1957). Douglas reunited with Kubrick for yet another epic, the magnificent Spartacus (1960). The film also marked a key turning point in the life of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy "Red Scare" hysteria in the 1950s. At Douglas' insistence, Trumbo was given on-screen credit for his contributions, which began the dissolution of the infamous blacklisting policies begun almost a decade previously that had destroyed so many careers and lives.
Douglas remained busy throughout the 1960s, starring in many films. He played a rebellious modern-day cowboy in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), acted alongside John Wayne in the World War II story In Harm's Way (1965), again with The Duke in a drama about the Israeli fight for independence, Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), and once more with Wayne in the tongue-in-cheek western The War Wagon (1967). Additionally in 1963, he starred in an onstage production of Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," but despite his keen interest, no Hollywood studio could be convinced to bring the story to the screen. However, the rights remained with the Douglas clan, and Kirk's talented son Michael Douglas finally filmed the tale in 1975, starring Jack Nicholson. Into the 1970s, Douglas wasn't as busy as previous years; however, he starred in some unusual vehicles, including alongside a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in the loopy western comedy The Villain (1979), then with Farrah Fawcett in the sci-fi thriller Saturn 3 (1980) and then he traveled to Australia for the horse opera/drama The Man from Snowy River (1982).
Unknown to many, Kirk has long been involved in humanitarian causes and has been a Goodwill Ambassador for the US State Department since 1963. His efforts were rewarded with the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1981), and with the Jefferson Award (1983). Furthermore, the French honored him with the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. More recognition followed for his work with the American Cinema Award (1987), the German Golden Kamera Award (1987), The National Board of Reviews Career Achievement Award (1989), an honorary Academy Award (1995), Recipient of the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award (1999) and the UCLA Medal of Honor (2002). Despite a helicopter crash and a stroke suffered in the 1990s, he remained active and continued to appear in front of the camera. Until his passing on February 5 2020 at the age of 103, he and Olivia de Havilland were the last surviving major stars from the Golden Years of Hollywood.American actor
Born: December 9, 1916
Age: 96- Actress
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Birgitta Valberg was born on 16 December 1916 in Stockholm, Sweden. She was an actress and assistant director, known for The Virgin Spring (1960), Paradistorg (1977) and A Time in the Sun (1966). She died on 29 March 2014 in Sweden.Swedish actress
December 16, 1916
Age: 96- Venezuelan veteran actress Elisa Stella was born on June 15, 1933 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She spent many years working in theatre and made her film debut in 1971 and TV debut in 1975. Through the years she gave some of the finest performances in series such as Mi Gorda Bella (as Dona Elena), Soberana (as Inginia Dominguez) and La Mujer de Judas (as Isabel). In Mi Gorda Bella, telenovela with huge success in general, she played the mayordoma Elena. In la mujer de judas, she portrayed Isabel, small role, but vital to the story, since her testimony was crucial for imprisoning main character for the crime she didn't commit. She often portrays ominous old ladies or quiet housekeepers, but in a way she just catches the public's attention, no matter if her role is large or not.Venezuelan actress
Born: 1916
Age: 96 - Actress
- Soundtrack
Shannon Bolin was born on 1 January 1917 in Spencer, South Dakota, USA. She was an actress, known for Damn Yankees (1958), If Ever I See You Again (1978) and The Children (1980). She was married to Milton Kaye. She died on 25 March 2016 in New York City, New York, USA.American actress
Born: January 1, 1917
Age: 96- Actress
- Soundtrack
Undoubtedly the woman who had come to epitomize what we recognize today as "celebrity," Zsa Zsa Gabor, is better known for her many marriages, personal appearances, her "dahlink" catchphrase, her actions, gossip, and quotations on men, rather than her film career.
Zsa Zsa was born as Sári Gabor on February 6, 1917 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman) and Vilmos Gabor (born Farkas Miklós Grün), both of Jewish descent. Her siblings were Eva Gabor and Magda Gabor. Zsa Zsa studied at a Swiss finishing school, was second runner-up in the fifth Miss Hungary pageant, and began her stage career in Vienna in 1934. In 1941, the year she obtained her first divorce, she followed younger sister Eva to Hollywood.
A radiant, beautiful blonde, Zsa Zsa began to appear on television series and occasional films. Her first film was at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Lovely to Look At (1952), co-starring Kathryn Grayson and Red Skelton. She next made a comedy called We're Not Married! (1952) at 20th Century Fox with Ginger Rogers. It was far from a star billing; she appeared several names down the cast as a supporting actress. But in 1952 she broke into films big time with her starring role opposite José Ferrer in Moulin Rouge (1952), although it has been said that throughout filming, director John Huston gave her a very difficult time.
In the following years, Zsa Zsa slipped back into supporting roles in films such as Lili (1953) and 3 Ring Circus (1954). Her main period of film work was in the 1950s, with other roles in Death of a Scoundrel (1956), with Yvonne De Carlo, and The Man Who Wouldn't Talk (1958) with Anna Neagle; again, these were supporting roles. By the 1960s, Zsa Zsa was appearing more as herself in films. She now appeared to follow her own persona around, and cameo appearances were the order of the day in films such as Pepe (1960) and Jack of Diamonds (1967). This continued throughout the 1970s.
She was memorable as herself in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991), in which she humorously poked fun at a 1989 incident where she was convicted of slapping a police officer (Paul Kramer) during a traffic stop. She spent three days in jail and had to do 120 hours of community service. Such infamous incidents contributed to her becoming one of the most all-time recognizable of Hollywood celebrities, and sometimes ridiculed as a result. She was also memorable to British television viewers on The Ruby Wax Show (1997).
In 2002, Gabor was reported to be in a coma in a Los Angeles hospital after a horrifying car accident. The 85-year-old star was injured when the car she was traveling in hit a utility pole in West Hollywood, California. The reports about her coma eventually proved to be inaccurate.
Zsa Zsa's life, spanning two continents, nine husbands, and 11 decades, came to an end on December 18, 2016, when she died of cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California. She was 99.American actress
Born: February 6, 1917
Age: 96- Actor
- Soundtrack
A golden career was reflected in his name. Robert Golden Armstrong ("Bob" to his friends) was born in Birmingham, Alabama on April 7, 1917. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While there, he was frequently performing on stage with the Carolina Playmakers. After graduating, R.G. headed to New York, where his acting career really took off. In 1953, along with many of his Actors Studio buddies, he was part of the cast of "End As a Man" -- this became the first play to go from off-Broadway to Broadway. The following year, R.G. got his first taste of movies, appearing in Garden of Eden (1954). However, he returned to New York and the live stage. He received great reviews for his portrayal of Big Daddy in the Broadway production of "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof" in 1955.
In 1958, R.G. took the plunge to Hollywood -- he appeared in two movies, a television series, and did numerous guest appearances on television series that year, usually in Westerns such as The Rifleman (1958), Have Gun - Will Travel (1957) and Zane Grey Theatre (1956), among others. He would go on to appear in 80 movies and three television series in his career, and guest-starred in 90 television series, many of them Westerns, often as a tough sheriff or a rugged land baron. R.G. was a regular cast member in the television series T.H.E. Cat (1966), playing tough, one-handed Captain MacAllister. During the filming of Steel (1979) in Kentucky, watching the mammoth Kincaid Tower being built, he made some good friends in the cast: "You become a family on the set," he said in an interview at the time.
Even though he had a long, versatile career, the younger generation knows him as the demonic Lewis Vandredi (pronounced VON-drah-dee), who just would not let the main characters have a good night's sleep on the television series Friday the 13th: The Series (1987). Finally retiring after six successful decades in show business -- his last film appearance was Purgatory (1999) -- R.G. and his lovely wife Mary Craven were mostly just enjoying life in California, and still traveled and vacationed in Europe occasionally. His upbeat, fun-loving personality made him a delight for all who came in contact with him. R.G. Armstrong died at age 95 of natural causes in Studio City, California on July 27, 2012.American actor
Born: April 7, 1917
Age: 95- Actress
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Danielle Darrieux was born in 1917 in Bordeaux, France, to Marie-Louise (Witkowski) and Germain Jean Darrieux, a physician. She was raised in Paris. She was only fourteen when she auditioned for a secondary role in Le bal (1931): she got the part, and the producer offered her a five-year contract. She had her first romantic lead in La crise est finie (1934) and scored an international hit with the historical drama Mayerling (1936) in which she played Marie Vetsera opposite Charles Boyer. In 1938, she went to Hollywood to appear in the fine comedy The Rage of Paris (1938) but quickly returned to Paris.
Darrieux remained in France during the Occupation and was one of the leading actresses during this period, starring in major hits such as Premier Rendez-Vous (1941). In 1945, she appeared both on stage (in "Tristan et Isolde") and on screen (in Au petit bonheur (1946)). In the next three decades, she found several important roles, in films like La Ronde (1950), The Earrings of Madame De... (1953) -- in which she gave her best performance, as a society lady torn between her husband and her lover -- and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).
In 1970, she replaced Katharine Hepburn on Broadway in "Coco." Afterwards, she made occasional screen and stage appearances. But she made a triumphant comeback in 2002, playing Catherine Deneuve's mother in the international hit 8 Women (2002).
She died on October 17, 2017 in Bois-le-Roi, Eure, France. She was 100.French actress
Born: May 1, 1917
Age: 95- Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
George Gaynes was born in Helsinki in May, 1917, which was then the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland. The Grand Duchy was part of the Russian Empire, which was in a state of collapse at the time of Gaynes' birth. The Emperor Nicholas II of Russia had abdicated the throne on March 15, two months prior to Gaynes' birth, and the Empire was in the process of splintering.
His family left the country, and George was primarily raised in France, England, and Switzerland. Neither of his parents was Finnish. His father Gerrit Jongejans was a Dutch businessman, and his mother Iya Grigorievna de Gay was a Russian artist. George attended college in the vicinity of Lausanne, Switzerland and graduated in 1937. He then attended a music school in Milan, Italy for about a year.
In 1940, George Gaynes was living in France, during the time of the Battle of France in World War II. The Battle ended in defeat for the French Third Republic and the country was occupied by Nazi Germany. George attempted to flee the occupation authorities, by crossing the Pyrenees mountains into neutral Spain. He was arrested by the Spanish authorities for illegally crossing the border, but was soon released.
In 1943, George joined the Royal Netherlands Navy. With the Netherlands under German occupation, the headquarters of the Navy had moved to London, in the United Kingdom. George had no previous military experience, but he was noticed for multilingual skills. He fluently spoke Dutch, English, French, Italian and Russian. He was soon detached to the (British) Royal Navy to serve as a translator.
During his naval service in World War II, George took part in the Allied invasion of Sicily, the Battle of Anzio in the Italian Campaign, and the Adriatic Campaign. The War ended in 1945 and George was honorably discharged in July, 1946. His highest military rank was that of a sergeant.
In 1946, George briefly returned to living in France. He was approached by an American theater director with the offer to play a part in a musical. He took the offer and moved to New York City, where he started appearing in Broadway musicals. He applied for American citizenship and officially became a citizen in 1948.
From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, George Gaynes was primarily a theatrical actor. His roles included various musicals, dramas, and comedies. One of his better-known roles was that of Henry Higgins in the theatrical version of ''My Fair Lady'', which went on a successful tour in 1964.
In the early 1960s, George started appearing as a character actor in various television series. He was also offered a number of film roles. His career unexpectedly took off in the 1980s, with a major part in the television series Punky Brewster (1985) and another one in the then-popular film series "Police Academy" from 1984 to 1994. In Police Academy (1984), his role was that of Commandant Eric Lassard, the titular leader of the Academy. He played the role in all 7 films of the series, though he only had a featured part in the fifth film. This was probably his most memorable role and gained him celebrity recognition for the first time.
In the 1990s, his career slowed down again, with only a few film appearances. He only played in a single film through the 2000s, Just Married (2003), and then retired. He was 86-years-old and could no longer play physically demanding roles. He spend 13 years in retirement before he died of natural causes in 2016.American actor
Born: May 16, 1917
Age: 95- Lee Miller was born on 21 March 1918 in Hollywood, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Perry Mason (1957), Please Murder Me! (1956) and Vacation Playhouse (1963). He was married to Bertha Maxine Lynch and Bertha Elizabeth McClean. He died on 26 July 2002 in Los Angeles, California, USA.English actor
Born: May 18, 1917
Age: 95 - He was the narrator of the famous TV series The Invaders, an American science fiction television program created by Larry Cohen that aired on ABC for two seasons, from January 10, 1967 to March 26, 1968. Dominic Frontiere, who had provided scores for Twelve O'Clock High and The Outer Limits, provided scores for The Invaders as well. The series was later shown in reruns on the Sci Fi Channel. The series was a Quinn Martin Production (season one was produced in association with the ABC Television Network - or as it was listed in the end credits, "The American Broadcasting Company Television Network").American actor
Born: July 16, 1917
Age: 95 - Actress
- Soundtrack
Born Virginia Pound, Lorna Gray was "discovered" by an agent while modeling in a fashion show. She was given a screen test, and Columbia was impressed enough to sign her to a contract. (It was at this time that she was given the name "Lorna Gray", which she kept until 1945, when she changed it to "Adrian Booth".) She was put in the studio's B unit, occasionally loaned out to Republic or Monogram, and when not making features was used in Columbia's comedy shorts, supporting such performers as The Three Stooges and Buster Keaton (where she actually acquitted herself quite well). She left Columbia and began her long career with Republic Pictures in 1941, appearing in westerns, thrillers, horror pictures, and especially the serials in which the studio specialized. She married David Brian in 1948, and after making films for a few more years, retired from the screen in 1951.American actress
Born: July 26, 1917
Age: 95- Earl Cameron did not set out to be an actor. Bermudian by birth, Cameron joined the British Merchant Navy in the 1930s for the travel opportunities that it afforded. By the early 1940s, with World War II in full swing, Cameron found himself in London working menial jobs to survive. After seeing a West End revival of the musical comedy Chu Chin Chow, he got the acting bug. When an actor didn't show up for a performance, Cameron replaced the actor in the production. This was followed by a series of roles on the London stage.
In 1951, he received a big break when he was cast in Pool of London (1951). The film directed by Basil Dearden in which Cameron played a dockworker who falls in love with a local woman, was significant in that it was one of the first British films to feature a Black man in a non-stereotypical role. He was essentially the UK counterpart to Sidney Poitier, who made his film debut around the same time, although equally talented, he never became a star. Toward the end of the decade, he would work with Dearden again in Sapphire (1959), where he would play a physician who is the brother of the title character, who was murdered while passing for White.
Other significant film film roles in Cameron's career include Thunderball (1965) where he played opposite Sean Connery as Pinder, Bond's Bahamian assistant. Cameron played an ambassador in A Warm December (1973), a film starring and directed by Poitier. In The Interpreter (2005), a film directed by Sydney Pollack , in which he played Edmond Zuwanie, a dictator loosely based on Robert Mugabe.
Cameron continued to work steadily in film and television into his nineties. One of his last appearances was in They've Gotta Have Us (2018), a documentary on Black actors in Hollywood produced by BBC Two.
He died in 2020 at the age of 102.British actor
Born: August 8, 1917
Age: 95 - Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Armando Trovajoli was born on 2 September 1917 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. He was a composer and actor, known for Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), A Special Day (1977) and Get Smart (2008). He was married to Maria Paola Trovajoli and Pier Angeli. He died on 1 March 2013 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.Italian film composer
Born: September 2, 1917
Age: 95- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Legendary voice actress June Foray was born June Lucille Forer on September 18, 1917 in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Maurice Forer and Ida Edith Robinson, who wed in Hampden, Massachusetts. Her father, who was Jewish, emigrated from Novgorod, Imperial Russia, while her Massachusetts-born mother was of Lithuanian Jewish and French-Canadian descent. Her mother converted to Judaism to marry, and took the name Sarah.
At age 12, young June was already doing "old lady" voices. She had the good fortune of having a speech teacher who also had a radio program in the Springfield area. This teacher became her mentor, and added June to the cast of her show. Eventually her family moved to Los Angeles, where she continued in radio. By age fifteen, she was writing her own show for children, "Lady Makebelieve", in which she also provided voices. June dabbled in both on-camera acting and voice work, but was particularly talented in voice characterizations, dialects and accents. Just like Daws Butler, one of her later co-stars, she was a "voice magician" and worked steadily in radio from the 1930s into the 1950s.
June branched out from radio and began providing voices for cartoon characters. In the 1940s, she provided the voices for a live-action series of shorts, "Speaking of Animals", in which she dubbed in voices for real on-screen animals, a task she was to repeat many years later in an episode of The Magical World of Disney (1954). In the late 1940s June, Stan Freberg, Daws Butler, Pinto Colvig and many others recorded hundreds of children's and adult albums for Capitol Records. Her female characterizations on these records ran the entire gamut from little girls to middle-aged women, old ladies, dowagers and witches. No one seemed to be able to do these same voices with the warmth, energy and sparkle that June did.
In the 1950s June's star in animation not only began to rise but soared when Walt Disney sought her out and hired her to do the voice of Lucifer the cat in Cinderella (1950). The Disney organization continued to use June many times over, well into the 21st century. Warner Brothers also hired her to replace Bea Benaderet and do all of its "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" cartoons. June has done many incidental characters for Warners, but her most famous voice has been that of Granny (in the "Tweety and Sylvester" series). Unfortunately, since Mel Blanc's contract called for exclusive voice credit on these cartoons, June never received credit for all the voices she did. During this time she also appeared on [error].
In 1957, Jay Ward met with June to discuss her voicing the characters of "Rocky the Flying Squirrel" and "Natasha Fatale" in a cartoon series. On November 19, 1959, the show debuted as The Bullwinkle Show (1959), later changing its name to The Bullwinkle Show (1959). June provided many other voices for this show, especially its "side shows" such as "Fractured Fairy Tales" and "Aesop and Son". She did fewer voices for the "Peabody's Improbable History" segment, but she did appear in at least three of those episodes. After the show had been successful for a few years, Ward added one of its most popular segments, "Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties". June was a regular in this side show as Dudley's girlfriend Nell Fenwick.
Since Ward used June exclusively for nearly all his female voices, he showcased her talents as no other producer had before. June missed out on doing voices for three of the show's "Fractured Fairy Tales" because she could not reschedule some bookings to do recording work with Stan Freberg, so Julie Bennett filled in for her on those occasions. Dorothy Scott--co-producer Bill Scott's wife--also filled in for June a few times for "Peabody's Improbable History". Her collaboration with Ward made her incredibly famous, and "Rocky the Flying Squirrel" became her signature voice. To this day June regularly wears a necklace with the figure of Rocky sculpted by her niece Lauren Marems.
Ward later produced two other cartoon series, Hoppity Hooper (1964) and George of the Jungle (1967). June's appearances on "Hoppity Hooper" were limited to the segments of "Fractured Fairy Tales", "Dudley Do-Right" and "Peabody" that aired during its run. On "Fractured Fairy Tales" June did a whole montage of voices similar to those from her Capitol Records days. Her witch voices were so incredibly funny and magnificently done that Disney and Warner Brothers tapped her to provide that same voice for the character of Witch Hazel. She was once again the lone female voice artist, this time on "George of the Jungle". Included on that show were the "Super Chicken" and "Tom Slick" side shows.
In the 1960s, June lost out to Bea Benaderet when she auditioned for the voice of "Betty Rubble" on The Flintstones (1960). June appeared numerous times during the decade in holiday specials such as Frosty the Snowman (1969) and The Little Drummer Boy (1968)). In the 1960s and 1970s, June dubbed in voices for full-length live-action feature films many times. Jay Ward and Bill Scott also had her dub in dialogue for silent movies in their non-animated series Fractured Flickers (1963).
In the early 1970s, June tried her hand at puppetry. She became the voice of an elephant, an aardvark and a giraffe on Curiosity Shop (1971). Around this time she also recorded various voices for the road shows of "Disney on Parade", which toured the US and Europe for several years.
She acted on-camera occasionally over the years, primarily on talk shows, game shows and documentaries; in the early years of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), she performed a 13-week stint as a little Mexican girl. However, June had said that she prefers to record behind the scenes because she jokingly said "She can earn more money in less time."
June Foray died on July 26, 2017, in Los Angeles, California, U.S. She was ninety nine years old.American actress
Born: September 18, 1917
Age: 95- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Stardom somehow eluded this vastly gifted actress. Had it not perhaps been for her low-level profile compounded by her McCarthy-era blacklisting in the early 1950s, there is no telling what higher tier Marsha Hunt might have attained. Perhaps her work was not flashy enough, or too subdued, or perhaps her intelligence too often disguised a genuine sex appeal to stand out among the other lovelies. Two studios, Paramount in the late 1930s and MGM in the early 1940s, failed to complete her star. Nevertheless, her talent and versatility cannot be denied. This glamorous, slimly handsome leading lady offered herself to well over 50 pictures during the 1930s and 1940s alone.
Christened Marcia Virginia Hunt, the Chicago-born actress was the younger of two girls born to an attorney and voice teacher/accompanist. The family relocated to New York when she was quite young and she attended such schools as PS #9 and Horace Mann School for Girls. She developed an interest in acting at an early age (3), performing around and about in school plays and at church functions. Following her high school graduation the young beauty found work as a John Powers model and as a singer on radio, a gift obviously inherited from her mother. Marcia (she later changed the spelling of her first name to Marsha) studied drama at the Theodora Irvine Drama School (one of her fellow students was Cornel Wilde).
Encouraged to try Hollywood by various New York people in the business, the young photogenic hopeful moved there in 1934. She was only 17 but was accompanied by her older sister. It didn't take long for the studios to take an interest in her and she was signed up by Paramount not long after. Marsha's very first movie was in a featured role opposite Robert Cummings and Johnny Downs in the old-fashioned The Virginia Judge (1935). Displaying an innate, fresh-faced sensitivity, she moved directly into her second film, playing the title role in Gentle Julia (1936), this time with Tom Brown as her romantic interest.
Marsha continued to show promise but these well-acted roles were, more often than not, overlooked in mild "B"-level offerings. Appearing in co-starring roles in everything from westerns (Desert Gold (1936) and Thunder Trail (1937)) to folksy or flyweight comedy (Easy to Take (1936) and Murder Goes to College (1937)), she could not find decent enough scripts at Paramount. Though she was once deemed one of the studio's promising starlets, one of her last films there was another prairie flower role--[error]--with cowboys John Wayne and Johnny Mack Brown vying for her attention. At about this time (1938) she married Jerry Hopper, a Paramount film editor who turned to directing in the 1950s. This marriage lasted but a few years.
Freelancing for a time for many studios, Marsha's more noticeable war-era work in sentimental comedy and staunch war dramas came from MGM, and she finally signed with the studio in 1939. The roles offered, which included a featured part as one of the sisters in Pride and Prejudice (1940) starring Greer Garson, and again as a sister to Garson in Blossoms in the Dust (1941), which showed much more promise. Some of her better war-era roles came in the films Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941), Kid Glove Killer (1942) and The Affairs of Martha (1942). During this time she also sang on extended USO tours and stayed busy on radio. Her best known film is arguably The Human Comedy (1943) but she wasn't the star. Other film roles had her in support of others, such as Margaret Sullavan in Cry 'Havoc' (1943), little Margaret O'Brien in Lost Angel (1943) and Garson again in The Valley of Decision (1945). Leading roles did not come in "A" pictures.
Her MGM contract was allowed to lapse in 1945 and a second marriage in 1946, to screenwriter Robert Presnell Jr., became a higher priority. The marriage was long and happy (exactly 40 years) and lasted until his passing in June of 1986. The few pictures she made were, again, uneventful or in support of the star, although she did have a catchy, unsympathetic role in the Susan Hayward starrer Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947) as a scheming secretary. In Raw Deal (1948), starring Dennis O'Keefe, she got the "raw deal" being overshadowed as a "good girl" by the "bad girl" posturings of Claire Trevor. At this point of her career she decided to try the stage and made her Broadway debut in "Joy to the World" (1948). Other plays down the road would include "The Devil's Disciple" with Maurice Evans, "The Lady's Not for Burning" with Vincent Price and "The Little Hut" with Leon Ames. She even had a chance to return to her beloved singing as Anna in a production of "The King and I" and (much later) in productions of "State Fair" and "Meet Me in St. Louis". TV also yielded some new work opportunities, including a presentation of "Twelfth Night" in which she portrayed Viola.
The seams of her film career fell apart in the early 1950s. During the late 1930s and into the 1940s she signed a number of petitions promoting liberal ideals, and was a member of the Committee for the First Amendment. A strong supporter of freedom of speech, these associations led to her name appearing in the pamphlet "Red Channels", a McCarthy-era publication that "exposed" alleged Communists and "subversives". Although she and her husband were never called before the House Un-American Activities Commission, their names were nevertheless smeared all over Hollywood as "Reds". While she still found film work on occasion, it was rare. Although she had worked steadily from 1935 until 1949, appearing in over 50 films, she made only three films in the next eight years. Her screenwriter husband would be credited for only one film from 1948 to 1955.
Semi-retired by the early 1960s, stage and TV became Marsha's focal points. She also devoted herself to civil rights causes and such humanitarian efforts as UNICEF, The March of Dimes and The Red Cross. She became actively involved with the United Nations. On the acting front she appeared only in smaller roles in five films but in numerous TV programs and made-for-TV movies, playing everything from judges to grandmas. She became the Honorary Mayor of Sherman Oaks, California, in 1983, and published a book on fashion entitled "The Way We Wore" in 1993. Widowed in 1986, the ever-vibrant Marsha, in her 90s, continues to serve on the Advisory Board of Directors for the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center, a large non-profit that advocates for adults and children affected by homelessness and mental illness. As recently as 2006, she appeared to good advantage in the movie Chloe's Prayer (2006) and, at age 91, was seen in Empire State Building Murders (2008).American actress
Born: October 17, 1917
Age: 95- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland on October 22, 1917, in Tokyo, Japan, in what was known as the International Settlement, to British parents, Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her paternal grandfather's family was from Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Her father had a lucrative practice in Japan, but due to Joan and older sister Olivia de Havilland's recurring ailments the family moved to California in the hopes of improving their health. Mrs. de Havilland and the two girls settled in Saratoga while their father went back to his practice in Japan. Joan's parents did not get along well and divorced soon afterward. Mrs. de Havilland had a desire to be an actress but her dreams were curtailed when she married, but now she hoped to pass on her dream to Olivia and Joan. While Olivia pursued a stage career, Joan went back to Tokyo, where she attended the American School. In 1934 she came back to California, where her sister was already making a name for herself on the stage. Joan likewise joined a theater group in San Jose and then Los Angeles to try her luck there. After moving to L.A., Joan adopted the name of Joan Burfield because she didn't want to infringe upon Olivia, who was using the family surname.
She tested at MGM and gained a small role in No More Ladies (1935), but she was scarcely noticed and Joan was idle for a year and a half. During this time she roomed with Olivia, who was having much more success in films. In 1937, this time calling herself Joan Fontaine, she landed a better role as Trudy Olson in You Can't Beat Love (1937) and then an uncredited part in Quality Street (1937). Although the next two years saw her in better roles, she still yearned for something better. In 1940 she garnered her first Academy Award nomination for Rebecca (1940). Although she thought she should have won, (she lost out to Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle (1940)), she was now an established member of the Hollywood set. She would again be Oscar-nominated for her role as Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth in Suspicion (1941), and this time she won. Joan was making one film a year but choosing her roles well. In 1942 she starred in the well-received This Above All (1942).
The following year she appeared in The Constant Nymph (1943). Once again she was nominated for the Oscar, she lost out to Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette (1943). By now it was safe to say she was more famous than her older sister and more fine films followed. In 1948, she accepted second billing to Bing Crosby in The Emperor Waltz (1948). Joan took the year of 1949 off before coming back in 1950 with September Affair (1950) and Born to Be Bad (1950). In 1951 she starred in Paramount's Darling, How Could You! (1951), which turned out badly for both her and the studio and more weak productions followed.
Absent from the big screen for a while, she took parts in television and dinner theaters. She also starred in many well-produced Broadway plays such as Forty Carats and The Lion in Winter. Her last appearance on the big screen was The Witches (1966) and her final appearance before the cameras was Good King Wenceslas (1994). She is, without a doubt, a lasting movie icon.British-American actress
Born: October 22, 1917
Age: 95- Actress
- Soundtrack
Movita Castaneda was an American actress best known for having been the second wife of actor Marlon Brando. She was eight years older than Brando. In films, she played exotic women/singers, such as in Flying Down to Rio (1933) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), of which she was the last surviving cast member. She is the mother of Miko Castaneda Brando and Rebecca Brando Kotlizky.
Movita was born in Nogales, Arizona, on a train travelling between Mexico and Arizona. Movita began her acting career singing the Carioca to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire's first dance number in the first film in which the famous duo appeared together, Flying Down to Rio (1933). She continued playing exotic women in American and Spanish language films in the 1930s, most notably as a Tahitian girl, Tehanni in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) alongside Clark Gable and Franchot Tone.
After appearing in a few more minor westerns and a few television parts, she met the actor Marlon Brando in the late 1950s, after his breakup with Anna Kashfi. They married in 1960, and they had two children. Brando played the role of Fletcher Christian in the 1962 remake of the 1935 film in which Movita had played a Tahitian girl, Tehanni. Brando then married his co-star Tarita Teriipaia.
Castaneda died on February 12, 2015 at the age of 98.
Six months later, Marlon's first wife, Anna Kashfi, died on August 16, 2015, at the age of 80.American actress
Born: December 4, 1917
Age: 95- Actress
- Soundtrack
Elyse Knox, the actress best known for starring in The Mummy's Tomb (1942) and for being Heisman Award-winner Tom Harmon's wife and actor Mark Harmon's mother, was born Elsie Lillian Kornbrath on December 14, 1917 in Hartford, Connecticut, to Austrian parents Hermine Sophie (Muck) and Frederick Kornbrath, from Vienna.
Knox's first love was not acting but art: she began painting in oils during high school, and painting remained a passion throughout her life. She had an exhibition of her work in 1981.
After graduating from New York City's Traphagen School of Fashion, she got a job in a New York design studio as an artist's assistant intent on becoming a fashion designer. When a model did not arrive as scheduled, she filled in and soon became a top fashion model herself, appearing in all the major magazines. She modeled some of her own creations in "Vogue Magazine" in 1937. That and an appearance as a fashion model in a newsreel landed her a Hollywood contract from 20th Century-Fox.
She made her debut in an uncredited bit part in Wake Up and Live (1937), starring gossip columnist Walter Winchell, in 1937. Knox would not appear again on-screen for another three years, until Free, Blonde and 21 (1940) in 1940. In all, she made 39 movies in the 1940s.
Knox bounced around between studios, including Paramount and Universal. While at Paramount, she met Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon, to whom she became engaged. The engagement was broken off when he went off to WWII and she married another man, but that marriage proved short-lived. When Harmon returned from the war, she married him in 1944.
She was a contract player at Universal in the 1940s, where she made the "Mummy" movie with Lon Chaney Jr. who - having had to carry her in a kidnapping scene - thanked her for being petite. The real-life love of a genuine sports hero, she also played Anne Howe, girl friend of fictional boxer "Joe Palooka," in a series of B-movies at Monogram.
After having two children with Harmon, she retired in 1949. "I'm just a mother at heart," she said, "so I decided it was time to retire from the screen."
Her son Mark, born in 1951, played for UCLA as a quarterback and became a top TV star. One of her daughters, Kristin Harmon (1945-2018), was an actress who married singer/actor Ricky Nelson (1940-1985). The twin singer-songwriters Gunnar Nelson and Matthew Nelson are her grandchildren.
Elyse Knox died on February 16, 2012 in Los Angeles. She was 94 years old.American actress
Born: December 14, 1917
Age: 95- Actress
- Soundtrack
Janet Waldo provided the quintessential voice of the swooning, overly dramatic teenager for numerous generations -- from the 1940s swinging babysitters to the 1960s groovy chick. A bouncy, perennially-youthful brunette, Janet Marie Waldo was born on February 4, 1919, in Grandview, Washington, and began entertaining in church plays as a youth. Urged on by her singer mother, she studied at the University of Washington and performed in plays. She was discovered by none other than Paramount star Bing Crosby, when he and his talent scouts conducted a contest and invited her to try out for it, which she won. Crosby next invited Janet (accompanied by her mother) to California and the rest is history.
Janet met a Paramount talent scout that signed her up for small roles in movies, including the Crosby films, Sing, You Sinners (1938) and The Star Maker (1939). Unable to completely break out of her bit-part cycle as assorted hat-check girls, receptionists, and telephone operators, she did manage a few co-starring roles in such Tim Holt westerns, such as The Bandit Trail (1941) and Land of the Open Range (1942) before setting her career sights on radio in 1943.
It was Crosby himself who introduced her to radio and she fell in love with the medium and its possibilities. As the eternal teen in "Meet Corliss Archer", her voice became a household sound and it was obvious that. her vocal talents would become her biggest moneymaker. She also performed on radio's "One Man's Family", "The Gallant Heart", and "Star Playhouse". She played the cigarette girl on both Red Skelton and Art Linkletter's programs, and teenager Emmy Lou on Ozzie Nelson on both his radio and TV shows. In 1952, she filmed one classic I Love Lucy (1951) episode, The Young Fans (1952) playing an extremely lovesick teenaged girl, who fell for Ricky Ricardo, although she was past 30 at the time.
In 1948 Janet married writer-director-producer Robert E. Lee of "Inherit the Wind" and "Auntie Mame" fame. She curtailed her career activities sharply for some time in order to raise her two children. She even turned down the opportunity to return to her popular role of Corliss Archer when the radio series was revamped for TV in 1951, and Lugene Sanders from the "Life of Riley" series took on the part instead. After sporadic appearances on stage, Janet established herself as one of the top female voice artists in the early 1960s when she gave vocal life to hip high schooler Judy Jetson in the prime-time Hanna-Barbera cartoon series The Jetsons (1962), a role that she would go on to play well past the age of 70. Her vocal range led her to become a Hanna-Barbera staple for over three decades, providing hundreds and hundreds of voices, old and young, to both Saturday morning and feature film cartoons. Some of her better known characters include Granny Sweet, Penelope Pitstop, Superman's Lana Lang, the Addams Family's Morticia Addams, the title role in Josie and the Pussycats (1970) and Princess on Sandy Frank's Battle of the Planets (1978).
Janet was a member of the California Artists Radio Theatre (CART) and performed frequently on the smaller L.A. stages over the years. The woman with a thousand voices continued doing radio shows and commercial voice-overs (Electrosol), and making personal appearances. Long married to playwright/TV writer Robert E. Lee until his death in 1994, the couple had two children (Jonathan, Lucy). Diagnosed with a benign but inoperable brain tumor in 2011, she died five years later, age 97, on June 12, 2016, in Encino, California. She is interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills.American actress
Born: February 4, 1918
Age: 95- Actor
- Soundtrack
Allan Arbus was born on 15 February 1918 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for M*A*S*H (1972), Coffy (1973) and Damien: Omen II (1978). He was married to Mariclare Costello and Diane Arbus. He died on 19 April 2013 in Los Angeles, California, USA.American actor
Born: February 15, 1918
Age: 95- Actress
- Soundtrack
Fay Eunice McKenzie was born February 19, 1918 into a show business family where she was the youngest of two sisters and an actress cousin, and made her screen debut at only ten weeks old in "Station Content" (1918) in which she was carried in the arms of Gloria Swanson. Her parents, Eva & Bob "Pops" McKenzie were already veteran performers and apparently wanted their daughter to get an early start in films. She nearly stole the show from Oliver Hardy as "the baby" in the Alice Howell short "Distilled Love" (filmed in 1918 but released two years later). By the time she was six, Fay was considered an old hand, having played diverse parts in her father's stock company. Among her early films was the 1924 Photoplay Medal Winner, "The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln."
A native of Hollywood, she got most of her schooling on movie sets including the famous Little Red Schoolhouse at MGM. Her classmates included Betty Grable, Ann Rutherford and June Storey. As a teenager in the early 1930's Fay appeared in a number of low budget westerns with Wally Wales and Buddy Roosevelt as well as the all-star MGM musical "Student Tour" (1934). In 1937 she starred in the cult propaganda film about the dangers of marijuana entitled "Assassin of Youth". She also had a small part in the 1939 classic "Gunga Din". Her first Broadway venture was at age 17 and in 1940 she appeared as Miss Hollywood in "Meet the People", a popular review of that season starring Jack Gilford and Jack Albertson.
But she is probably best remembered for her work with Gene Autry at Republic Studios, where she was the feminine interest in "Down Mexico Way" (1941), "Sierra Sue" (1941), "Home in Wyomin'" (1942), "Heart of the Rio Grande" (1942) and "Cowboy Serenade" (1942). Finally getting the leading lady roles she deserved, the raven-haired beauty was an immediate hit with audiences. In 1942 Republic co-starred her with Don 'Red' Barry in the war-time flag waver, "Remember Pearl Harbor!" During WWII she toured with the Hollywood Victory Caravan and appeared in dozens of USO shows with various show biz legends including Frank Sinatra, Phil Silvers and Desi Arnaz. At the same time she could be heard on radio in "Pabst's Blue Ribbon Town" starring Groucho Marx. Featured film roles continued to come her way with Universal's "The Singing Sheriff" (1944), Warner Bros' "Night and Day" (1946) and "Murder in the Music Hall" (1946), the latter filmed at her home studio of Republic.
In 1946 she married the dark, husky actor Steve Cochran, but their union was short lived and they divorced two years later. She went back to Broadway to appear opposite comedian Bert Lahr (best known as The Cowardly Lion in "The Wizard of Oz") in the 1946 revival of "Burlesque." During the 1950's she studied with Sanford Meisner and at The Actor's Studio with Lee Strasberg in NYC. She was seen to favorable advantage on a number of TV shows including "The Millionaire" (1959), "Mr. Lucky" (1960), "Bonanza" (1961), and "Experiment in Terror" (1962).
She also appeared in a number of films for close friend and director Blake Edwards, including "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961) as the party guest laughing in the mirror, "The Party" (1968) and "S.O.B." (1981). She was especially proud of "The Party" with Peter Sellers and agreed to play the cameo role of Alice Clutterbuck (the hostess of the party) because the script was co-written by her husband, Tom Waldman. She and Waldman married in 1949 and had two children Tom Jr. and Madora. Waldman Sr. passed away in 1985. Her older sister Ella "Lolly" McKenzie was also an actress and was married to well-known comedian Billy Gilbert. Her other sister Ida Mae McKenzie started in silent films as well and went on to work behind the scenes of popular game shows including the original "Hollywood Squares".
McKenzie traveled extensively as a Christian Science Practitioner, lecturing all over the country and in Europe. In 2012 she received the Career Achievement Award at the Cinecon Classic Film Festival and in 2017 she was on-hand to present some of her family's home movies at the TCM Film Festival (those films are now housed the Academy Film Archive in Hollywood). During the summer of 2018 she made a cameo appearance alongside her son Tom as Mrs. Van Proosdy in the film "Kill A Better Mousetrap". Her performance marks the first century-spanning career in motion picture history. She passed away peacefully in her sleep on the morning of April 16th at the age of 101. She is survived by her son, actor Tom Waldman, Jr., daughter Madora McKenzie Kibbe and her two grandchildren.American actress
Born: February 19, 1918
Age: 95- Actor
- Soundtrack
Don Pardo was born on 22 February 1918 in Westfield, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Radio Days (1987), Stay Tuned (1992) and 'Weird Al' Yankovic: The Ultimate Video Collection (2003). He was married to Catherine Anne (Kay) Lyons. He died on 18 August 2014 in Tucson, Arizona, USA.American actor
Born: February 22, 1918
Age: 95- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Ted Post first began thinking about a career in show business in 1938, when he was working as a weekend usher at the Loew's Pitkin Theater in Brooklyn, New York, and getting so caught up in the movies that he would sometimes forget to escort the patrons to their seats. He received some acting training at the workshop of Tamara Daykarhanova, but later set aside the dream of becoming a performer and segued into directing summer theater. In the mid- to late 1940s, Post made a name for himself in the theater and then moved into the adventurous arena of early television.
He has since directed numerous segments of TV's top series (Gunsmoke (1955), Perry Mason (1957), The Twilight Zone (1959), "Columbo," many more) and feature films ranging from Clint Eastwood's Hang 'Em High (1968) and Magnum Force (1973) to Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970). Returning to his theater roots, Post recently directed the 2001-02 Festival of the Arts at Bel-Air's University of Judaism.American director
Born: March 31, 1918
Age: 94- Actress
- Soundtrack
Mary Healy was born on 14 April 1918 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. She was an actress, known for The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1953), Lookin' to Get Out (1982) and 20, 000 Men a Year (1939). She was married to Peter Lind Hayes. She died on 3 February 2015 in Calabasas, California, USA.American actress
Born: April 14, 1918
Age: 98- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Writer
A.C. Lyles was born on 17 May 1918 in Jacksonville, Florida, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for The Hunt for Red October (1990), Here's Boomer (1980) and Rogue's Gallery (1968). He was married to Martha Troetscher Schaefer and Martha Vickers. He died on 27 September 2013 in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California, USA.American producer
Born: May 17, 1918
Age: 94- Ivy Bethune was born on 1 June 1918 in Sevastopol, Russia [now Crimea, Ukraine]. She was an actress, known for Back to the Future (1985), Get Smart (2008) and Will to Die (1971). She was married to Stuart Lancaster and William Charles Bethune. She died on 19 July 2019 in Woodland Hills, California, USA.American actress
Born: June 1, 1918
Age: 94 - Actress
- Soundtrack
Patachou was born Henriette Ragon on 10 June 1918. Born and brought up in Paris she had many jobs, including typist, shop assistant, and antique dealer. In 1948, she and her husband Jean Billon opened a nightclub in Montmarte called Patachoi. She began her singing career there, so journalists gave her the nickname Patachou after the establishment. A mentor to many younger singers, she was principally known as an international vocalist, but she made a handful of films before her death in 2015.French actress/singer
Born: June 10, 1918
Age: 94- Maxine Stuart was born on 28 June 1918 in Deal, New Jersey, USA. She was an actress, known for The Twilight Zone (1959), Private Benjamin (1980) and NYPD Blue (1993). She was married to David Shaw, Frank Maxwell and Alfred Gordon. She died on 6 June 2013 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.American actress
Born: June 28, 1918
Age: 94 - Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (July 18, 1918 - December 5, 2013) was the former leader of the African National Congress (ANC). He was known for his lifelong struggle against apartheid (enforced racial separation), which was instituted in South Africa in 1948. The ANC was soon declared a terrorist organization and banned by the South African government. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and imprisoned for life on "terrorist" charges, but in 1990, he was freed by South African president F.W. de Klerk. In 1994, Mandela was elected president of South Africa.
Two biographical films were made and Mandela and de Klerk (1997) focused on Mandela's life's struggles.South African activist/writer (one time actor)
Born: July 18, 1918
Age: 94- Ruth Duccini was born on 23 July 1918 in Rush City, Minnesota, USA. She was an actress, known for Under the Rainbow (1981), The Daily Show (1996) and The Making of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz (2013). She was married to Fred Duccini. She died on 16 January 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.American actress
Born: July 23, 1918
Age: 94 - Actress
- Soundtrack
Poised and lovely Marjorie Lord started her long and varied career on the Broadway stage and in "B" films as a sweet-natured ingénue. Born Marjorie F. Wollenberg, of German and Czech heritage, on July 26, 1918 in San Francisco, California, her family transported themselves to New York City when she was 15. Here she enrolled in both acting and ballet at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Chaliff School of Dance, respectively.
Marjorie's first job (billed as Marjorie Lord) was as a 17-year-old replacement on Broadway in "The Old Maid" starring Judith Anderson in 1935. Film parts from recently-signed RKO Studio started coming her way in 1937 with the Harry Carey western Border Cafe (1937); the murder mystery Forty Naughty Girls (1937); the Wheeler & Woolsey musical comedy High Flyers (1937); and a top role in the family drama The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair (1939).
She met actor John Archer after they appeared together in the stage production of "The Male Animal" and married at the end of 1941, they settled in Hollywood after playing Los Angeles in a stage tour of "Springtime for Henry" with Edward Everett Horton in 1942. The couple had two children before divorcing in 1953. Son Gregg avoided show business and became an airline pilot while daughter Anne Archer followed in her parents' footsteps as an actress.
Marjorie earned a Universal contract in the process and throughout the 1940s and 1950s and would alternate between theater and film assignments. She returned to Broadway with the plays "Signature" in 1945 and "Little Brown Jug" a year later, returning a decade later as a replacement in the popular Moss Hart comedy "Anniversary Waltz" in the mid-1950s. Most of Marjorie's films were inconsequential and set her up as a pretty diversion -- Escape from Hong Kong (1942), Moonlight in Havana (1942) and The Adventures of Smilin' Jack (1943). Some of her better films of that period included a loan-out, Johnny Come Lately (1943), with James Cagney, and Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943) starring the irrepressible sleuthing team of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.
Freelancing from the late 1940s on, Marjorie was the co-star or second lead in such films as the jazzy musical drama New Orleans (1947) for Hal Roach Studios; the Universal crimers The Strange Mrs. Crane (1948) and The Argyle Secrets (1948) as a femme fatale; the Columbia action adventure Air Hostess (1949); the Tim Holt RKO western Masked Raiders (1949) in an interesting shady role; Monogram's Bomba the Jungle Boy offering The Lost Volcano (1950); the Columbia action drama Chain Gang (1950); and the amusing crime comedy Stop That Cab (1951).
Moving more into the new 1950s medium of TV, Marjorie had guest parts on such shows as "Racket Squad," "The Adventures of Kit Carson," "China Smith," "Ramar of the Jungle," "Hopalong Cassidy," "The Loretta Young Show" and "Wagon Train," along with the anthology series "Four Star Playhouse," "Schlitz Playhouse," "Fireside Theatre," and "'Cavalcade of America." Marjorie greatest exposure, however, came in 1957 when she was cast as the second wife of widower/entertainer Danny Thomas in the long-established comedy hit The Danny Thomas Show (1953). She lucked into the role when Danny's "first wife" (played by actress Jean Hagen, best known for her classic role as screechy "Lina Lamont" in Singin' in the Rain (1952)) asked to leave the series and the writer had her character "die." Marjorie proved an able sparring partner for the comedian for seven more seasons, but was unsparingly typecast as the wholesome wife thereafter.
Following this Marjorie appeared in a number of dinner theater productions for work, but would indelibly remain Kathy ("Clancy") Williams in the public eye and appeared very sparsely on TV ("Love, American Style") and film (fifth billed as the wife of Bob Hope in the comedy Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966)). As a result, she graciously returned to Danny Thomas and her famous TV wife role in the sequel series Make Room for Granddaddy (1970).
Marjorie gently phased her career out for the most part after her third marriage in 1977, but could be seen from time to time in such programs as "Fantasy Island" and "The Love Boat." In 1987, she returned for a short-lived run on the domestic sitcom Sweet Surrender (1987) starring Dana Delany and Mark Blum, as the latter's mother. Her last camera appearance was a featured part in the "grumpy old men"-styled TV movie Side by Side (1988) starring Milton Berle, Sid Caesar and her TV husband Danny Thomas.
Made a widow by her second and third husbands, Marjorie published her memoir, "A Dance and a Hug," in 2005. She died on November 28, 2015, age 97, in Beverly Hills, California, of natural causes.American actress
Born: July 26, 1918
Age: 94- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
John Zacherle (later known as John Zacherley) was born September 26, 1918 in Philadelphia, PA, the youngest of four children. He went to high school in the Germantown area, then enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving a Bachelor's Degree. During World War II, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and served as a quartermaster in North Africa and Europe, and after the war he returned to Philadelphia, joining a local repertory theater company.
In 1954, he appeared as an actor at WCAU-TV in the western "Action in the Afternoon," playing several roles (including an undertaker). It was produced by the station and aired in the New York City market. Three years later, he was hired as the host of WCAU's "Shock Theater," which debuted on October 7, 1957. As the host, Zacherle appeared as the character Roland (pronounced Ro-LAND), wearing a long black undertaker's coat and who lived with his wife (known as "My Dear") and his lab assistant, Igor. It involved numerous stylized horror-comedy gags that have since become a standard to countless horror film hosts. In the opening sequence, Zacherle would descend a long staircase to the crypt. The producers erred on the side of goriness, showing fake severed heads with chocolate syrup blood. The show sometimes featured live "cut-ins" during the movie, in which the soundtrack continued to play on the air, while the visual feed switched briefly to a shot of Zacherle in the middle of a humorous stunt, such as riding a tombstone. The show ran for 92 broadcasts until 1958.
He was a close colleague of "American Bandstand" host Dick Clark, and he sometimes filled in on road touring shows of "Bandstand" in the 1960s. Dick reportedly gave Zacherle the nickname of "The Cool Ghoul," and in 1958, partly with the assistance of Clark, he recorded "Dinner with Drac" for Cameo Records, backed by Dave Appell. At first, it was thought that the recording was too gory to play on "Bandstand," and Zacherle returned to the studio to cut a second, tamer version. Eventually, both versions was released simultaneously as backsides of the same 45rpm record, and it broke the top ten nationally. Zacherle later released several LPs mixing horror sound effects with novelty songs.
In 1958, CBS purchased WCAU-TV, which prompted Zacherle to leave Philadelphia for WABC-TV in New York. He continued in the same format as "Shock Theater," but the studio added a "y" to the end of his name (to help with pronunciation), and in March 1958, they changed the title to "Zacherley at Large." His Roland character became Zacherley and "My Dear" became Isobel. He also began appearing in motion pictures, including "Key to Murder" (1958), alongside several of his "Action in the Afternoon" colleagues.
In 1960, Zacherley moved to WOR-TV, and in a promotional gimmick, he staged a presidential campaign. His "plaform" recording can be found on the album "Spook Along with Zacherley" (1960), which originally included a "Zacherley for President" book and poster set, which is highly collectible today. He's the only horror host to appear on the cover of "Famous Monsters of Filmland" twice.
In 1963, he was the first host/performer of WPIX-TV, Channel 11, New York City, hosting "Chiller Theater," "The Mighty Hercules Cartoon Show" (seen weekday evenings from September to November, 1963), and "The Three Stooges Show" until January of 1964. He then moved to WNJU-TV in Newark and hosted a teenage dance show called "Disc-O-Teen," appearing in full costume and using the teenage participants in his skits, attracting bands like The Lovin' Spoonful, The Young Rascals and The Doors (Zacherle recalls, "Jim Morrison looked at our weird set and mumbled, 'This is the damnedest TV show I've ever seen.'") He was a morning radio host for WNEW-FM in 1967, and two years later he became the station night broadcaster (10pm-2am) with a progressive rock format. The success of the show led to the use of the same format in Philadelphia.
As "Zacherley," he hosted several rock concerts in New York City's Central Park in the 60's and 70's. On February 14, 1970, he appeared at Fillmore East music hall in New York to introduce The Grateful Dead, and his introduction of the band can be heard on their album "Dick's Picks - Volume 4." In 1971, he switched his show to WPLJ-FM in New York, where he stayed for ten years.
In the early 1980's, he played a wizard on Captain Kangaroo, appearing without his costume and makeup. He continued to perform in character at Halloween broadcasts in the New York and Philadelphia areas throughout the 80's and 90's, and once narrated Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" which was backed up by the Philadelphia Orchestra. In 1986, he hosted a direct-to-video program called "Horrible Horror," where he performed monologues between clips from public domain sci-fi and horror films.
In 1988, he struck up a friendship with B-movie horror director Frank Henenlotter, and voiced one of the lead characters in his horror comedy "Brain Damage," playing Aylmar, a slug-like, drug-dealing, brain-eating parasite. He also a cameo in Henelotter's "Frankenhooker," appropriately playing a TV weatherman who specializes in forecasts for mad scientists.
In late 1992, Zacherley joined the staff of "K-Rock," WXRK-FM, at a time when the roster included other free-form luminaries as Vin Scelsa (with whom he'd worked at WPLJ) and Meg Griffin. However, in January of 1996, the station switched to an alternative rock format and hired all new disc jockeys.
He was inducted into the Horror Host Hall of Fame in 2011, and has lived in a one-bedroom, rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan for the past 50 years.American actor
Born: September 26, 1918
Age: 94- Actress
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Silent moppet star Jackie Coogan, immortalized as Charles Chaplin's The Kid (1921), had only one screen rival during the early 1920s, and that was none other than Baby Peggy. She was "discovered" while visiting the Century Studios lot on Sunset Boulevard with her mother when she was a mere 19 months old and went on to appear in nearly 150 shorts (between 1920 and 1923) and nine feature films during her silent heyday. Often considered a precursor to Shirley Temple, Baby Peggy's most popular film vehicle was the child classic Captain January (1924), which would be made a decade later as a vehicle for Temple.
She was born Peggy-Jean Montgomery in 1918 in San Diego, California, of acting stock. She was the daughter of Marian (Baxter), from Wisconsin, and Jack Montgomery, a Nebraska-born cowboy for years all over the western states. He ended up in the movies as a stuntman and extra, driving stagecoaches and buckboards. He supported himself as Tom Mix's double, but never achieved the rugged stardom he yearned for. In fact, his daughter was the one who became the celebrity and chief breadwinner for the family.
Many of Baby Peggy's popular comedies were parodies of movies that grown-up stars had made, and she delightfully imitated such legends as Rudolph Valentino, Pola Negri, Mary Pickford and Mae Murray. Her first feature-length film was Penrod (1922); her first film with Universal, The Darling of New York (1923), shot when she was 3-1/2 years old, was a solid hit. A few more, including Helen's Babies (1924), were also certifiable winners. However, by the age of 8, she was finished.
Her fortune reportedly was depleted by her father Jack's stepfather, a banker to whom she had entrusted all her money. Within a short time, she was forced to turn to the vaudeville circuit for survival. A comeback in early talkies with the new moniker Peggy Montgomery was very short-lived. Her credits, as a result, are often mixed up with another actress named Peggy Montgomery, who was a western ingénue for many years.
The former child star lived in dire straits and suffered from nervous breakdowns and near poverty for many years until she found a new and unexpectedly successful career as a book publisher and writer, using the pseudonym "Diana Serra Cary". As the author of "Hollywood Posse" (1975) and (later) "Hollywood's Children", she wrote about her youthful career, post-stardom years, child stars in general, and Hollywood history in all its fascinating glory. Her own autobiography, "Whatever Happened to Baby Peggy?", was released in 1996.
In 2016, Diana was inducted into the Classic Film Hall of Fame at the Rheem Theater in Moraga, CA. Diana was present, at age 98, to receive the honor and answer questions. She is considered to have been the last living star of the silent film era. Per Robert Garfinkle, a board member of the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in Fremont, CA, Diana now has the longest acting career of all time, from 1920 to 2015. Her last film was a silent film she made at the above-referenced museum. The film was actually made using one of their antique hand-cranked cameras!
Baby Peggy died on February 24, 2020 in Gustine, California. She was 101.American actress
Born: October 26, 1918
Age: 94- Actor
- Soundtrack
It's hardly surprising that the son of renowned Russian-born concert violinist Efrem Zimbalist Sr. (1889-1985) and Romanian-born opera singer Alma Gluck (1884-1938) would desire a performing career of some kind. Born in New York City on November 30, 1918, surrounded by people of wealth and privilege throughout his childhood, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. received a boarding school education. Acting in school plays, he later trained briefly at the Yale School of Drama but didn't apply himself enough and quit. As an NBC network radio page, he auditioned when he could and found minor TV and stock theatre parts while joining up with the Neighborhood Playhouse.
Following WWII war service with the Army infantry in which he was awarded the Purple Heart after being wounded, a director and friend of the family, Garson Kanin, gave the aspiring actor his first professional role in his Broadway production of "The Rugged Path" (1945) which starred Spencer Tracy. With his dark, friendly, clean-scrubbed good looks and a deep, rich voice that could cut butter, Zimbalist found little trouble finding work. He continued with the American Repertory Theatre performing in such classics as "Henry VIII" and "Androcles and the Lion" while appearing opposite the legendary Eva Le Gallienne in "Hedda Gabler".
Zimbalist then tried his hand as a stage producer, successfully bringing opera to Broadway audiences for the first time with memorable presentations of "The Medium" and "The Telephone". As producer of Gian Carlo Menotti's "The Consul", he won the New York Drama Critic's Award and the Pulitzer Prize for best musical in 1950. An auspicious film debut opposite Edward G. Robinson in House of Strangers (1949) brought little career momentum due to the untimely death of his wife Emily (a onetime actress who appeared with him in "Hedda Gabler" and bore him two children, Nancy and Efrem III) to cancer in 1950. Making an abrupt decision to abandon acting, he served as assistant director/researcher at the Curtis School of Music for his father and buried himself with studies and music composition.
In 1954, Efrem returned to acting and copped a daytime television soap lead (Concerning Miss Marlowe (1954)). It was famed director Joshua Logan who proved instrumental in helping Zimbalist secure a Warner Bros. contract. Despite forthright second leads in decent films such as Band of Angels (1957) with Clark Gable and Yvonne De Carlo; Too Much, Too Soon (1958) starring Dorothy Malone and Errol Flynn; Home Before Dark (1958) with Jean Simmons and Rhonda Fleming; The Crowded Sky (1960) with Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, Troy Donahue and Anne Francis; A Fever in the Blood (1961) opposite Angie Dickinson and (his best) Wait Until Dark (1967) with Audrey Hepburn, it was television that made the better use of his refined, unshowy acting style. His roles as smooth private investigator Stu Bailey on 77 Sunset Strip (1958) and dogged inspector Lewis Erskine on The F.B.I. (1965) would be his ultimate claims to fame.
A perfect gentleman on and off camera, Zimbalist's severest critics tend to deem his performances bland and undernourished. Managing to override such criticisms, he maintained a sturdy career for nearly six decades. In 1991, he made fun of his all-serious reputation and pulled off a Leslie Nielsen-like role in the comedy parody Hot Shots! (1991). In addition to theater projects over the years, he has made fine use of his mellifluous baritone performing narrations and cartoon voiceovers, including that of Alfred the butler on a "Batman" animated series.
In 2003, he completed his memoirs, entitled "My Dinner of Herbs". The father of three, grandfather of four and great-grandfather of three, he settled in Santa Barbara and later in Solvang, California with longtime second wife Stephanie until her death in 2007 of cancer. Their daughter, also named Stephanie (Stephanie Zimbalist), is the well-known actress who appeared with Pierce Brosnan in the Remington Steele (1982) television series, in which Zimbalist had a recurring role. He and his daughter also appeared on stage together in his later years, their first being "The Night of the Iguana". His eldest daughter Nancy died in 2012.
Zimbalist died peacefully at his Solvang home of natural causes at the age of 95 on May 2, 2014; he had been outside watering his lawn at his Solvang, Calif., ranch when a handyman found him lying dead in the grass. "He was healthy, playing golf three days a week, and always in his garden," Zimbalist's son said.American actor
Born: November 30, 1918
Age: 94- Actress
- Soundtrack
One is certainly hard-pressed to think of another true "bad girl" representative so closely identifiable with film noir than hard-looking blonde actress Audrey Totter. While she remained a "B"-tier actress for most her career, she was an "A" quality actress and one of filmdom's most intriguing ladies. She always managed to set herself apart even in the most standard of programming.
Born to an Austrian father and Swedish mother on December 20, 1917, in Joliet, Illinois, she treaded lightly on stage ("The Copperhead," "My Sister Eileen") and initially earned notice on the Chicago and New York radio airwaves in the late 1930s before "going Hollywood." MGM developed an interest in her and put her on its payroll in 1944. Still appearing on radio (including the sitcom "Meet Millie"), she made her film bow as, of course, a "bad girl" in Main Street After Dark (1945). That same year the studio usurped her vocal talents to torment poor Phyllis Thaxter in Bewitched (1945). Her voice was prominent again as an unseen phone operator in Ziegfeld Follies (1945). Audrey played one of her rare pure-heart roles in The Cockeyed Miracle (1946). At this point she began to establish herself in the exciting "film noir" market.
Among the certified classics she participated in were The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) in which she had a small role as John Garfield's blonde floozie pick-up. Things brightened up considerably with Lady in the Lake (1946) co-starring Robert Montgomery as detective Philip Marlowe. The film was not well received and is now better remembered for its interesting subjective camera technique. Audrey's first hit as a femme fatale co-star came on loanout to Warner Bros. In The Unsuspected (1947), she cemented her dubious reputation in "B" noir as a trampy, gold-digging niece married to alcoholic Hurd Hatfield. She then went on a truly enviable roll with High Wall (1947), as a psychiatrist to patient Robert Taylor, The Saxon Charm (1948) with Montgomery (again) and Susan Hayward, Alias Nick Beal (1949) as a loosely-moraled "Girl Friday" to Ray Milland, the boxing film The Set-Up (1949) as the beleaguered wife of washed-up boxer Robert Ryan, Any Number Can Play (1949) with Clark Gable and as a two-timing spouse in Tension (1949) with Richard Basehart.
Although the studio groomed Audrey to become a top star, it was not to be. Perhaps because she was too good at being bad. The 1950s film scene softened considerably and MGM began focusing on family-styled comedy and drama. Audrey's tough-talking dames were no longer a commodity and MGM soon dropped her in 1951. She signed for a time with Columbia Pictures and 20th Century Fox as well but her era had come and gone. Film offers began to evaporate. At around this time she married Leo Fred, a doctor, and instead began focusing on marriage and family.
TV gave her career a slight boost in the 1960s and 1970s, including regular roles in Cimarron City (1958) and Our Man Higgins (1962) as a suburban mom opposite Stanley Holloway's British butler. After a period of semi-retirement, she came back to TV to replace Jayne Meadows in the popular television series Medical Center (1969) starring Chad Everett and James Daly. She played Nurse Wilcox, a recurring role, for four seasons (1972-1976). The 70-year-old Totter retired after a 1987 guest role on "Murder, She Wrote." Her husband died in 1996. On December 12, 2013, Audrey Totter died at age 95 in West Hills, California.American actress
Born: December 20, 1918
Age: 94- Murray Westgate was born on 16 April 1918 in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. He was an actor, known for Countdown to Looking Glass (1984), Happy Birthday to Me (1981) and Blue City Slammers (1988). He was married to Alice Hill. He died on 27 August 2018 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.Canadian actor
Born: 1918
Age: 94? - A statuesque and striking actress with vaguely reptilian aspects, at once sinister and alluring; a smile never more than a whisker away from a sneer and a commanding, imperious presence suggesting innate superiority. Difficult to cast, Patricia Laffan seemed destined to portray the villainous or the eccentric. The daughter of Irish rubber planter Arthur Charles Laffan (1870-1948) and London-born Elvira Alice née Vitali (1896-1979), Patricia was schooled at the Institut français du Royaume-Uni in London and trained in dramatic arts at the prestigious Douglas-Webber School. She emerged on stage in 1937 and made her screen debut by 1945. In between a cluster of nondescript or uncredited roles, we remember her for two indelible cinematic performances: first, as that sumptuously decadent, scheming, malicious Empress Poppaea in MGM's epic blockbuster Quo Vadis (1951) -- sardonic and disdainful in her delivery, at times running close to overshadowing even the great Peter Ustinov in his most famous role as Nero. One of her lavish outfits included a 14 carat gold dress designed by Herschel McCoy. A contemporary BBC interview with Laffan also recounts an incident during the making of Quo Vadis. In this, the actress, while reclining on a divan next to a couple of cheetahs at the end of a love scene with Robert Taylor, was set upon by one of the not so tame cats but managed to escape with a torn dress (the gold one ?) -- "on the other hand, the lions in the arena scene were so bored that they went to sleep in the shade instead of looking hungrily at the Christians".
Laffan's other fondly remembered showing on screen was in the campy Devil Girl from Mars (1954), a typically low-budget Danziger Brothers attempt at emulating the success of The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Justifiably derided at the time (for such valid reasons as inane writing, lacklustre direction and props acutely reminiscent of kitchen appliances), it has become a surprising cult touchstone for sci-fi aficionados. Why? Certainly because of the picture's sole meritorious component: Patricia Laffan as the Martian invader Nyah, exotically made up, outfitted in PVC jumpsuit, miniskirt, Darth Vader-style cape and skullcap and making the most of her scenes, delivering her lines with practised cold, languid authority.
Sadly underused, there were to be few other roles of note for this commanding actress in the wake of 'Devil Girl', except, perhaps, for an integral bit in the enjoyable psychological thriller 23 Paces to Baker Street (1956). Subsequent TV appearances saw her mostly confined to conventional aristocratic ladies in period or crime dramas. Patricia Laffan retired from the screen in 1965, apparently to a quiet life in Chelsea, London, where she may have pursued her passions for fast cars, story-writing and breeding bull terriers.English actress
Born: March 19, 1919
Age: 93 - Joachim Tomaschewsky was born on 1 April 1919 in Chemnitz, Saxony, Germany. He was an actor, known for The Reader (2008), Archiv des Todes (1980) and Jeder stirbt für sich allein (1970). He was married to Gisela Morgen. He died on 8 February 2019 in Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany.German actor
Born: March 31, 1919
Age: 93 - Than Wyenn was an actor born on May 2, 1919 in New York City, New York, USA. He had a long career and was especially known for Being There (1979), Splash (1984), and Imitation of Life (1959). He died on January 29, 2015 in Woodland Hills, Los Angles, CA, USA at the age of 95.American actor
Born: May 2, 1919
Age: 93 - Allen Joseph was born on 29 May 1919 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. He was an actor, known for Eraserhead (1977), Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979) and Marathon Man (1976). He died on 30 November 2012 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.American actor
Born: May 29, 1919
Age: 93 - Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Albert was born on June 24, 1919 to Raffaele Molinaro and Teresa Marrone. His father was born in Calabria, Italy and immigrated to the US when he was 15 years old and worked as a water boy with a railroad crew going west from New York. He ended up in Kenosha Wisconsin where he met and married Albert's mother Teresa on December 22, 1901. His father named Albert after his favorite Italian Prince, Umberto II who was born 15 years earlier. A school teacher later suggested that "Albert" might be more suitable. His mother chose his middle name Fransico after Santo Francisco since he was born on Saint Francis Day. The midwife who's English was only slightly better than Albert's parents spelled his middle name with a feminine "A" at the end which was never corrected. His legal named remained Umberto Francisca Molinaro. He was the ninth child of what would later become a family of ten children, eight boys and 2 girls. At 19 years of age Albert became a union leader at the Vincent-McCall furniture spring factory after working there for only 4 months. He later became the special assistant to the Kenosha City Manager when he was 20. At this time Albert's best friend from Kenosha, Mills Tenuta, who had moved to Southern California to work in an aircraft plant, began harassing him to come out to Hollywood. He was sure that Albert could be a movie star. Albert left a promising career with the city after only a year to head to Hollywood to become an actor. Albert had many jobs while pursuing his acting career. His first job was at Reginald Denny's Hobby shop in Hollywood. He spent 2 years as a live action animator at George Pal's studios. If Technicolor hadn't gone on a sympathy strike with the Studio Carpenters union he might have spent his career as an animator. He managed the M&G Grand Variety Store for a year and then became a bill collector for the "Collection Agency of America" in downtown LA. He quickly learned the art of bill collecting and was able to become a salesman who procured collection accounts for another agency which he later purchased. This gave him flexible hours and a steady income so he could focus again on his dreams of Hollywood. Even after his acting career took off he kept his Bill Collection business until he retired. Albert married Jacqueline Martin in 1948. They moved into a home in Granada Hills, CA and adopted their son Michael Molinaro. Albert and Jacqueline were divorced in 1980. Albert then married Betty Sedillos in 1981 and they lived in Glendale CA until his death in 2015. Albert had two step children, Jim Sedillos & Victoria Sedillos and a total of 6 grandchildren and 2 great-grand children. Albert's movie debut happened when he was 25 years old. After appearing as the lead in a Chekhov play called "The Bear" at the old Sartu Theater that used to be on the corner of Hollywood Blvd. and La Brea Ave. A movie producer saw the performance and cast him in a picture that had three separate stories, one of the stories was Chekhov's play "The Bear" but changed from a Russian setting to a Spanish locale. The movie was titled "Love Me Madly". Albert was not told that some of the scenes they shot without him were R rated in today's standards but X rated for 1954's standards. He was surprised and upset during the movies premiere and vowed to never again be in a film that his mother couldn't watch. During the early 1950's Albert began producing live television shows for local televisions stations channel 5 KTLA, channel 9 KHJ & channel 11 KTTV. He Co-created "Insomnia" a late night live show and a "Ski Show" in which Warren Miller allowed him to use some of his skiing footage. He created "Star Finder" a pre-teen amateur show, "Square Dance Party" and "The Tiny Late Show" which was his own late night one man show that filled the few minutes of time between the end of the late night movie and the station signing off for the night.
All the time Albert was working to pay his bills he was also acting in small plays in theaters all over Hollywood. After 25 years of theater acting he was convinced to play a small part in a play directed by his friend, Leo Matranga, at the Hollywood Horseshoe Theater. After the show, a commercial agent named Don Schwartz offered to represent him. Albert swore off acting and never called Don. One year later, Don called Albert telling him that he already set up an appointment for him and convinced him to audition for a national commercial. Albert got the commercial for the Volvo 140. You can see his commercial debut on youtube "Volvo 140 advertising". It's 3 min. & 30 seconds into the video (they have strung many vintage Volvo ads together). Take a look at his first commercial and you will see the face that went on to land over 100 commercials. 42 of them were nationals. He also landed a 10 year deal with "Encore" frozen dinners becoming their spokesperson. A friend from George Pal's Studios named Glenn Grossman cast Albert whenever he could in the industrial films that he would make from time to time. It was while working on one of Glenn's films that Albert met another working actor named Harvey Lembeck. When Harvey wasn't acting he ran an actor's workshop. Harvey convinced Albert that he could help him with his comedy timing. Gary Marshall's sister Penny was also a member of Harvey's workshop. One night Penny asked her brother to come down and see Albert. Gary was in the process of producing a movie starring Jacquiline Bissett called "The Grasshopper" and wanted Al to play the part of a truck driver. Albert did not play the part because the shooting dates conflicted with a Pepto-Bismol commercial he was scheduled to shoot in Phoenix. A year later, when Albert learned from his writer friend, John Rappaport, that Garry Marshall was casting for The Odd Couple TV show, John convinced him that he would be perfect to play one of the poker players. Albert first refused to call Gary but John badgered him enough to finally make him call. Albert made numerous phone calls but got no response so he decided to dress up like a delivery man and deliver a 2'x3' card with many pictures of himself glued to it stating that "Al Molinaro is a Poker Player. ...Assorted Poker Faces ... More faces available upon demand. Just Call (his Phone #) Dear Gary, If you don't call me for an audition, I'll put a curse on you to make you sterile for life. Sincerely, Al Molinaro. The delivery outfit did not get him past the guard at the Paramount gate but it did get the card delivered and Albert got an audition and landed the part of Murray the Cop. Later, Gary stated that, "Although we thought Albert was wrong for the part, we decided to take a chance on Al because of all the men who we auditioned, he was the funniest. Albert spent 5 years on The Odd Couple and when it finished, due to the fact that Jack Klugman wanted to do drama, he was offered the roll of the Malt Shop Owner on Gary's new show "Happy Days". Albert turned down the role feeling he did not want to work with a "bunch of kids". After the first season of Happy Days, Pat Morita, who was cast in the role of the malt shop owner, was offered his own show so Gary once again asked Albert to work on the show. Albert asked Gary that if he didn't like working on the show, could he quit whenever he wanted. Gary said he couldn't put that in writing but that they would shake on it. Albert enjoyed 10 years on "Happy Days" from 1974 to 1984 and 1 more year on "Joanie Loves Chachi. He guest starred on many television shows during and after the filming of the Odd Couple and Happy Days. He also worked on a short lived sitcom called "The Family Man" from 1990-1991 but decided to stop taking roles by the mid 90's. He completed his 10 year contract with Encore Frozen Foods and as his last job he surprisingly accepted an offer to be in a music video with Wheezer.
Albert was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in the mid 90's and lived with the illness for 20 years. Early diagnosis and careful medication allowed Albert to enjoy life until he had a small heart attack in May of 2015. He was a wonderfully kind man. He taught himself to play the piano, clarinet and ukulele and even had a few real gigs in Reno playing the clarinet in his youth. His family believes that his improvisational skills allowed him to mask his Alzheimer's disease from most people until just before he died. He continued to personally answer his fan mail until his health did not allow it. In June he celebrated his 96th birthday but he was declining quickly. He developed a gall stones and due to his age and the recent heart attack, surgery was not recommended. Albert died on October 30th 2015.American actor
Born: June 24, 1919
Age: 93- Actor
- Soundtrack
Born in 1919 in Jerusalem, Nehemiah Persoff emigrated with his family to America in 1929.
Following schooling at the Hebrew Technical Institute of New York, he found a job as a subway electrician doing signal maintenance until an interest in the theater altered the direction of his life.
He joined amateur groups and subsequently won a scholarship to the Dramatic Workshop in New York. This led to what would have been his Broadway debut in a production of "Eve of St. Mark", but he was fired before the show opened. He made his official New York debut in a production of "The Emperor's New Clothes" in 1940.
WWII interrupted his young career in 1942, when he was inducted into the United Sates Army, returning to the stage after his hitch was over in 1945, three years later. He sought work in stock plays and became an intern of Stella Adler and, as a result, a strong exponent of the Actor's Studio. Discovered by Charles Laughton and cast in his production of "Galileo" in 1947, Persoff made his film debut a year later with an uncredited bit in The Naked City (1948).
Short, dark, chunky-framed and with a distinct talent for dialects, Persoff became known primarily for his ethnic villainy, usually playing authoritative Eastern Europeans.
In a formidable career which had him portraying everything from cab drivers to Joseph Stalin, standout film roles would include Leo in The Harder They Fall (1956) with Humphrey Bogart, Gene Conforti in Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1956), Albert in This Angry Age (1958) and gangster Johnny Torrio in Al Capone (1959). That same year he played another gangster, the small role of Little Bonaparte, in Some Like It Hot (1959).
He was a durable performer during TV's "Golden Age" (Gunsmoke (1955), The Twilight Zone (1959)) and well beyond (Chicago Hope (1994), Law & Order (1990)), playing hundreds of intense, volatile and dominating characters.
In later years, his characters grew a bit softer as Barbra Streisand's Jewish father in Yentl (1983) and the voice of Papa Mousekewitz in the An American Tail (1986) will attest. Later stage work included well-received productions of "I'm Not Rappaport" and his biographical one-man show "Sholem Aleichem".
After declining health and high blood pressure forced him to slow down, Persoff took up painting in 1985, studying sketching in Los Angeles. Specializing in watercolor, he created more than 100 works of art, many of which have been exhibited up and down the coast of California. He celebrated his 100th birthday in 2019.Israeli-American actor
Born: August 2, 1919
Age: 93- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
One of the great dancer and choreographers in both movies and stage, Marge Champion was best known as the former wife of Gower Champion, when they worked together as a highly successfully dancing team in the MGM musical years. After retiring from movies, Champion worked as a dance teacher and as a choreographer in New York.American actress/dancer/choreographer
Born: September 2, 1919
Age: 93- Doris Singleton was born on 29 September 1919 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Angel (1960), The Red Skelton Hour (1951) and I Love Lucy (1951). She was married to Charles Isaacs. She died on 26 June 2012 in Los Angeles, California, USA.American actress
Born: September 28, 1919
Age: 93 - Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Character actor Jason Wingreen was born on October 9, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York City. The son of a Jewish tailor father, Wingreen grew up in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens. Jason attended John Adams High School and majored in English and Speech at Brooklyn College (he initially planned on being a sportswriter and wrote about high school sporting events for the daily newspaper the Brooklyn Eagle during his high school years). While at Brooklyn College Wingreen caught the acting bug after taking a mandatory speech course and joined the undergraduate theater group the Masquers, which he became president of in his senior year at college. Following graduation from Brooklyn College in June, 1941, Jason got his first show business job with a marionette company.
Wingreen went on to serve in the armed forces during World War II as a member of the 81st Fighter Squadron, 50th Fighter Group, 9th Air Force. In the wake of his tour of duty, Jason returned to Howard Beach and went to the New School on the G.I. Bill. Wingreen helped to found the famed Circle in the Square Theatre company in Greenwich Village in the early 1950's and in 1954 acted for the first time on Broadway in the plays "Fragile Fox" and "The Girl on the Via Flaminia." Jason acted on his first TV show in 1955 and acted in his first movie shortly thereafter. In addition, Wingreen was a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since the early 1960's. Jason died at age 95 at his home in Los Angeles, California on December 25, 2015. He's survived by his son Ned, two grandchildren, and his sister Harriett Wingreen, who was the orchestra pianist for the New York Philharmonic for several decades.American actor
Born: October 9, 1919
Age: 93- Rico Alaniz was born on 25 October 1919 in Juarez, Mexico. He was an actor, known for The Magnificent Seven (1960), War of the Colossal Beast (1958) and Wolf Larsen (1958). He died on 9 March 2015 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Mexican actor
Born: October 25, 1919
Age: 93 - Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Nova Pilbeam was a famous child actress on stage and screen in the UK. Her biggest successes were her two movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and this film. She married director Pen Tennyson in 1939, but unfortunately she was widowed less than two years later when he died in WWII. She retired from movies in 1951.British actress
Born: November 15, 1919
Age: 93- Joseph Wapner was born on 15 November 1919 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for The People's Court (1981), Sliders (1995) and Malcolm & Eddie (1996). He was married to Mildred (Mickey) Nebenzahl. He died on 26 February 2017 in Los Angeles, California, USA.American actor
Born: November 15, 1919
Age: 93 - Actor
- Writer
- Director
Alan Young was born in Northern England in 1919, but his Scots father moved the family to Edinburgh, Scotland, when Young was a toddler and then to Canada when Young was about 6 years old. As a boy, he suffered from severe asthma, which kept him bedridden for long periods of time but encouraged his love of radio. By age 13, Young had become a radio performer, and by age 17, he was writing and performing in his own radio show for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The show was broadcast in the U.S. and led to an invitation to New York, initiating Young's career as an "All-American boy," despite his non-American origins and a vestigial Scots accent. He became popular on American radio from 1944 to 1949 with his "Alan Young Radio Show," but when radio began to lose its popularity and his show was canceled, Young decided to put together a comedy act and tour the U.S. theater circuit. After this experience, he wrote a television pilot for CBS in 1950, which resulted in The Alan Young Show (1950). The show was a well-received live revue that ran for 3 years, earned a couple of Emmy Awards, and garnered Young a star on the "Walk of Fame." However, the strain of writing and performing a weekly show got to Young, and the quality of the show declined, leading to his departure from the show and its cancellation. In the meantime, based on his popularity on radio and television, Young had established a film career, starting with his debut in Margie (1946) followed by Chicken Every Sunday (1949), Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick (1952), Androcles and the Lion (1952), Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955), Tom Thumb (1958), and The Time Machine (1960).
In the early 1960s, Young landed his best-known role, Wilbur Post, in the popular television series Mister Ed (1961), which ran for 5 years. Since then, Young has made a number of television and film appearances but is known primarily for his voice characterizations in cartoons, especially as Scrooge McDuck in DuckTales (1987).English-American actor
Born: November 19, 1919
Age: 93- Louise Watson was born on 22 November 1919 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Bingles (1992), Angel Baby (1995) and Stark (1993). She died on 5 June 2018 in Burbank, California, USA.American actress
Born: November 22, 1919
Age: 93 - Actor
- Writer
Douglas Wilmer was born on 8 January 1920 in London, England, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for Octopussy (1983), Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and El Cid (1961). He was married to Anne Harding and Elizabeth Joan Melville. He died on 31 March 2016 in Ipswich, Suffolk, England, UK.English actor
Born: January 8, 1920
Age: 93- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Elliott Reid was born on 16 January 1920 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Inherit the Wind (1960) and Vicki (1953). He died on 21 June 2013 in Studio City, Los Angeles, California, USA.American actor
Born: January 16, 1920
Age: 93- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Stunts
Born to Italian emigrant parents, Emilio Marenghi and Raffaella Scanzillo, young Jerry took dancing lessons when he was young and aspired to be an actor. In November 1938, standing just 3' 4", he met up with the Oz-bound group of little people in New York and went by bus to California. There he was chosen to be the Munchkin who hands Dorothy a welcoming lollipop.American actor
Born: January 24, 1920
Age: 93- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Actor
London-born Michael Anderson began his career in films as an office boy at Elstree studios. By 1938, he had progressed up the ladder to become assistant director for distinguished film makers Noël Coward, David Lean and Anthony Asquith. Shortly after, during wartime with the Royal Signals Corps (Army Kinematograph Service), Anderson made the acquaintance of Peter Ustinov. Upon demobilisation, the 24-year old up-and-coming director secured the release from the military of his 'favourite corporal' and mentor to work as first assistant on Secret Flight (1946) and Vice Versa (1948). For Ustinov's third venture, Private Angelo (1949), Anderson both co-directed and co-wrote the screenplay, but the picture that first put him on the map was to be the patriotic wartime drama The Dam Busters (1955), based on true events. Britain's most successful film of 1955, in turn, led to Anderson being hired by Mike Todd to direct the all-star blockbuster Around the World in 80 Days (1956). A hugely popular box-office hit and winner of five Academy Awards, it elevated Anderson into the realm of more ambitious international productions.
His strong visual style -- in no small way complemented by a fruitful and long-standing collaboration with the cinematographer Erwin Hillier -- became ideally suited for suspenseful thrillers and action subjects like Chase a Crooked Shadow (1958), the sub-Hitchcockian psychological whodunnit The Naked Edge (1961) or the underrated maritime drama The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959) (based on a novel by Hammond Innes and originally intended for Alfred Hitchcock who went on to do North by Northwest (1959) instead). Another little gem is the intricately plotted spy thriller The Quiller Memorandum (1966), tautly directed and noteworthy for supremely well captured Berlin exteriors (a familiarity which stemmed from Anderson having spent some of his early childhood in Berlin and Hillier having worked at Ufa in the 20s before collaborating on Fritz Lang's classic thriller M (1931)). According to Hillier, Anderson also had a reputation for being "superb at handling actors". This is reflected in his films which have often featured big name stars like Gary Cooper, Charlton Heston, Laurence Olivier or Alec Guinness.
Moving into science fiction, Anderson made style triumph over content with his (for the time) expensively made dystopian thriller Logan's Run (1976). Though not a big success with critics, the picture won at the box office and helped MGM out of its financial doldrums. Also in this genre, but with less distinction, Anderson directed Millennium (1989) and a miniseries, The Martian Chronicles (1980). A foray into the world of comic strip heroes, Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975), proved to be one of his rare failures. His more recent work of note has included the Gemini Award-winning TV movie Young Catherine (1991), based on the early life of Russia's Catherine the Great. Vanessa Redgrave, who played Empress Elizabeth, was also nominated for a Primetime Emmy in the Supporting Actress category.
In 1957, Anderson received the Silver Medallion for outstanding work from the Screen Director's Guild of America and was in 2012 also honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of Canada. A Canadian resident since the 1970s, Anderson passed away at his home on the Canadian Sunshine Coast in British Columbia on April 25 2018 at the age of 98.English director
Born: January 30, 1920
Age: 93- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Pran was one of the leading character actors of Indian cinema. He was born on 12 February,1920 at Delhi. Pran was educated at different places namely Kapurthala, Unnao, Meerut, Dehradun and Rampur as his father late Lala Kewal Krishnan Sikand was a Government Civil Contractor for the construction of roads and bridges. Pran started his career by learning photography in Lahore. A chance meeting with a film producer, got him his first break in 'Yamla Jat' in 1940.
Married in 1945 to Shukla, he had two sons Arvind and Sunil, and one daughter Pinky. At partition in 1947, Pran came to Mumbai and restarted his film career after a brief struggle. He acted in over 400 films in a variety of roles. As a villain, in films like 'Ram Aur Shyam' people shuddered with fear and hated him, and yet loved him as the good, unforgettable 'Mangal chacha' in 'Upkar'. He went on to star in films with the leading actors of various decades from Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand, Rajendra Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra to Sanjay Dutt, Sunny Deol and Salman Khan. He was among the highest paid and most sought after character actors of his time, starring in some of the biggest and most acclaimed films of all time.
Being a sports lover and a good sportsmen he had his own football team "Dynamos Football Club" which he financed for a number of years in the fifties. Along with his film career he had been engaged in a number of Social activities, including the Chief Minister's Relief Fund, Maratha Sikshan Sanatha, Film Industry Welfare Trust. He had organised charity events and cricket matches, as well as the 'Hope 86' and 'Hope 87' shows for the needy people in the film industry.
Under the patronage of the Late, His Excellency Nawab Ali Yawar Jung, Pran presented a number of charity shows for the refugees of Bangladesh and for the deaf and dumb.
In an illustrious career of over six decades, Pran was bestowed with many awards including 4 Filmfare Awards, Villain of the Millennium honour from Stardust, Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian award from the Government of India in 2000 and the DadaSaheb Phalke Award for Lifetime Achievement (highest honour for cinema in India) from the Government of India in 2012. He died on 12 July 2013 at the age of 93 after a prolonged illness in Mumbai's Lilavati Hospital.Indian actor
Born: February 12, 1920
Age: 93