Actors/Actresses I Love!!!!!
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Henry Hull, the actor who created the role of Jeeter on Broadway in "Tobacco Road," was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on October 13, 1890, the son of a drama critic. Originally intending to become an engineer, Hull became an actor and made his Broadway debut in "Green Stockings" less than two weeks before his 21st birthday, on October 2, 1911. Two years later he appeared again on Broadway in support of John Barrymore in "Believe Me, Xantippe." He then quit the stage to go prospecting for gold, using his skills as a mining engineer. When he failed to find his El Dorado, Hull turned back to acting, appearing in "The Man Who Came Back" in 1916. He made his first films at the nearby World Pictures in 1917, most famously starring as the ill-fated Aleksandr Kerensky in Rasputin, the Black Monk (1917). The following year he appeared in the second film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's famous novel Little Women (1918).
Although he appeared in about a dozen films from just after World War One to the mid '30s, Hull concentrated on the stage until he went to Hollywood to appear as Magwitch in Great Expectations (1934). He even had a play he wrote produced on Broadway, "Manhattan," which made its debut on August 15, 1922, at the Playhouse Theatre and ran for a respectable (for the time) 86 performances.
Hull made his mark in the history of the horror film, one of Hollywood's most venerable genres, by appearing in the title role in Werewolf of London (1935). Six feet tall and slender, Hull had a rich and cultured voice, which put him in demand as a supporting player in the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was, however, somewhat of a mannered actor in a style that went out of favor after the death of John Barrymore, and he often gave a performance, such as that of the newspaper editor in The Return of Frank James (1940), that was a thick slice of ham. However, his mannerisms and plummy voice were perfect for certain roles such as the obnoxious millionaire conceived by populist John Steinbeck for Lifeboat (1944).
Hull's greatest success as an actor was on Broadway, limning Erskine Caldwell's Jeeter in "Tobacco Road," which still ranks as the longest-running drama in the Great White Way's history, opening on December 4, 1933, and closing on May 31, 1941, after 3,182 total performances. (Hull, of course, did not play the entire run; Jeeter was also played by James Barton and Will Geer). By early 1936 Hull was starring on Broadway in Maxwell Anderson's "The Masque of Kings". When John Ford went looking to cast roles in his film version of the play Tobacco Road (1941), he chose lovable old coot Charley Grapewin for Jeeter; Grapewin had been memorable as Grandpa Joad the year before in Ford's classic adaptation of Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath (1940).
Henry Hull's last film appearance was as a sort of chorus along with Jocelyn Brando in The Chase (1966). He was the brother of actor Shelly Hull, the brother-in-law of Shelly's wife Josephine Hull and the father of producer Shelley Hull with his wife, actress Juliet Fremont, with whom he had appeared on Broadway in 1916 in "The Man Who Came Back." Their son Henry Hull Jr. had a minor career on Broadway, appearing in and serving as assistant stage manager in his father's "The Masque of Kings," as well as appearing in the ensemble in the legendary "Hamlet" of John Gielgud that was on Broadway in 1936.- Robby was the brainchild of, and designed by industrial designer, Japanese-American engineer Robert Kinoshita. It was built in mid-1955 by the MGM prop department, at a reported cost of $125,000, to 'star' in the epic science fiction classic Forbidden Planet (1956) and its B-movie followup The Invisible Boy (1957) a year later. Robby the Robot has become one of the most popular robot icons in the history of movies and media, as recognizable as George Lucas' erstwhile comedy team of R2-D2 and C-3PO who 'co-starred' in his epic sci-fi fantasy Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).
- Actress
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Hattie Noel was born on 2 February 1893 in Saint Martin Parish, Louisiana, USA. She was an actress, known for King for a Day (1934), Cracked Nuts (1941) and I'm Nobody's Sweetheart Now (1940). She was married to Antina Parker. She died on 13 November 1969 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
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One of Hollywood's finest character actors and most accomplished scene stealers, Barry Fitzgerald was born William Joseph Shields in 1888 in Dublin, Ireland. Educated to enter the banking business, the diminutive Irishman with the irresistible brogue was bitten by the acting bug in the 1920s and joined Dublin's world-famous Abbey Players. He subsequently starred in the Abbey Theatre production of Sean O'Casey's Juno And The Paycock, a role that he recreated in his film debut for director Alfred Hitchcock in 1930. He was coaxed to the U.S. in 1935 by John Ford to appear in Ford's film adaptation of another O'Casey masterpiece, The Plough and the Stars (1936). Fitzgerald took up residence in Hollywood and went on to give outstanding performances in such films as The Long Voyage Home (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), None But the Lonely Heart (1944), And Then There Were None (1945), Two Years Before the Mast (1946) and what is probably the role for which he is most fondly remembered, The Quiet Man (1952). He won the Academy Award For Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of gruff, aging Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way (1944). He was also nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for the same role and was the only actor to ever be so honored. Barry Fitzgerald died in his beloved Dublin in 1961.- Actor
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Matthew 'Stymie' Beard was born on 1 January 1925 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Dogs Is Dogs (1931), Love Business (1931) and Free Wheeling (1932). He was married to Annie. He died on 8 January 1981 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
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Theresa Harris appeared with more stars of the Golden Era of Hollywood than anyone else. She sang, she danced, she appeared in movies and TV. She graced the screen with her magnetic presence and most times stole scenes from the top stars of the day every chance she got and made a lot of dull films worthwhile. Although stereotyped by receiving only maid roles, Theresa stepped outside the stereotype any chance she got, to show she was glamorous, classy, beautiful, and a true actress. While she often played maids, she always showed dignity, grace, and demanded respect. Theresa didn't exactly fit the mammy/maid stereotype fore she was a petite beauty, a stark contrast from Louise Beavers and Hattie McDaniel, and Theresa was one of the very few black women to not fit that stereotype on screen.
There were quite a few movies in which Theresa got a chance to let her light shine and make you forget her maid costume and see her as a talented actress. In the pre-Code classic Baby Face (1933), she and Barbara Stanwyck had equal screentime, which was rare between black and white actors at that time. Playing Chico, Stanwyck's friend and co-worker, Harris gave a moving and memorable performance that contributed to the film becoming one of the essentials of the classic genre. Theresa was allowed to be sexy, glamorous, and her own person, not simply a servant who jumped at her employer's every beck and call, a rarity for a black actress in a maid part in the 1930s, and a true friendship was shared between Stanwyck and Harris' characters, another rarity. In Professional Sweetheart (1933), Harris played a spunky, sexy maid who teaches Ginger Rogers a thing or two about being "hot", and ends up replacing Rogers as a singer, singing a hot song on the radio that turns on the white male listeners, another shocker and rarity at the time for a black actress. But pre-Code movies usually pushed the envelope, which shows in both 'Baby Face' and 'Professional Sweetheart'. Though Theresa played maid roles most of her movie career, she had showed moments of excellence in many other films such as Hold Your Man (1933), Black Moon (1934), Gangsters on the Loose (1937), Jezebel (1938), The Toy Wife (1938), Tell No Tales (1939), Buck Benny Rides Again (1940), Love Thy Neighbor (1940), Blossoms in the Dust (1941), Cat People (1942), and I Walked with a Zombie (1943), among others.
Theresa was a versatile talent; besides acting, she could sing beautifully and dance divinely, when she had the chance in such movies as Thunderbolt (1929), 'Baby Face', 'Professional Sweetheart', Banjo on My Knee (1936), 'Buck Benny Rides Again', What's Buzzin', Cousin? (1943), and The French Line (1953). When Theresa got the chance to show her beauty and sex appeal, it was often with her screen boyfriend, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson; they were dynamic on screen together in 'Buck Benny Rides Again' and 'What's Buzzin', Cousin?'. In the former, they sing and dance tap, classical, Spanish, and swing in a musical number, "My, My".
Theresa Harris was perhaps the hardest-working woman in Hollywood, appearing in close to 90 films, working at every major studio with most of the big stars. She was respected by studio executives, producers, directors, and co-workers alike, who sometimes went out of their way to get her more lines and screentime. Harris married a doctor and retired from the movies in the late 1950s, living comfortably after having carefully invested the money she made during her career in the films. She was a patient woman who never gave up hope that there would come a time when she would be able to play more than just maid parts. Nevertheless, in every role, she displayed class, dignity, beauty, and true acting talent, not simply the old stereotypes associated with black actors at that time.- Actor
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Lew Payton was born on 27 June 1874 in Huntington, West Virginia, USA. He was an actor, known for On Such a Night (1937), Jezebel (1938) and Lady for a Night (1942). He died on 27 May 1945 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- The son of a minstrel and circus tightrope walker, Eddie Anderson developed a gravel voice early in life which would become his trademark to fame. He joined his older brother Cornelius as members of "The Three Black Aces" during his vaudeville years, singing for pennies in the hotel lobby. He eventually moved his way up to the Roxy and Apollo theaters in New York, which led to the Los Angeles Cotton Club in the west.
He began to appear in films, typically in servile bits, his best being the featured role of "Noah" in The Green Pastures (1936). He continued in that vein until a chance pairing with comedy star Jack Benny on his radio program in 1937 put him on the map. He only had a bit part on Benny's Easter show as a Pullman porter, but his scratchy voice, superb timing and comic reaction to Benny's banter earned him a fixed spot. He then was heard as Benny's personal valet, Rochester Van Jones, and the role became so popular that he became billed as Eddie "Rochester" Anderson.
In between radio assignments, he found the time to appear in both film drama and comedies, including You Can't Take It with You (1938), Kentucky (1938), Jezebel (1938), and three with Benny - Man About Town (1939), Buck Benny Rides Again (1940) and Love Thy Neighbor (1940). After the films Brewster's Millions (1945) and The Show-Off (1946), Anderson concentrated on his partnership with Jack Benny, following him into television and working with him for a total of 23 years. He returned to the screen for It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) but ill health eventually forced him into retirement. He died of long-standing heart problems in 1977. - Actress
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Delightful character actress who held her own against such acting heavyweights as Charles Laughton, Boris Karloff, Tyrone Power, Barbara Stanwyck, and Sydney Greenstreet. Often cast by studio heads as comic relief thanks to her thick Irish accent and rubber-faced expressions, most notably in Universal's horror classics, Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and The Invisible Man (1933). Her final role was as the devoted housekeeper in Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution (1957), a role she originated on stage. Her hilarious testimony during the trial is one of the film's highlights.- Actor
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Composer, songwriter, conductor, singer, and actor Jester Hairston was educated at Tufts University, Juilliard, and the University of the Pacific (hon. Mus.D.). He acted on radio and television besides on film, and played Leroy on the "Amos 'n Andy" radio series for 15 years. He directed the Federal Theatre Project and was assistant- conductor of the 'Hall Johnson Choir' in New York for 15 years and trained choirs for radio and Broadway musicals. He went to Hollywood in 1936, he sang and appeared with the Hall Johnson Choir in the film The Green Pastures (1936). Organizing his own choir in 1943, he arranged and conducted film background music and conducted choral groups in colleges and high schools, touring Europe for the State Department in 1961. He joined ASCAP in 1956 and wrote such popular-song compositions as "Mary's Boy Child," "Poor Man Lazarus," and many Gospel songs including "In Dat Great Gittin'-Up Mornin'," "Amen," and "Gossip, Gossip."- Actress
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After working as early as the 1910s as a band vocalist, Hattie McDaniel debuted as a maid in The Golden West (1932). Her maid-mammy characters became steadily more assertive, showing up first in Judge Priest (1934) and becoming pronounced in Alice Adams (1935). In this one, directed by George Stevens and aided and abetted by star Katharine Hepburn, she makes it clear she has little use for her employers' pretentious status seeking. By The Mad Miss Manton (1938) she actually tells off her socialite employer Barbara Stanwyck and her snooty friends. This path extends into the greatest role of her career, Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). Here she is, in a number of ways, superior to most of the white folk surrounding her. From that point her roles unfortunately descended, with her characters becoming more and more menial. She played on the "Amos and Andy" and Eddie Cantor radio shows in the 1930s and 1940s; the title in her own radio show "Beulah" (1947-51), and the same part on TV (Beulah (1950)). Her part in Gone with the Wind (1939) won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, the first African American actress to win an Academy Award, it was presented to her by Fay Bainter at a segregated ceremony, she had to sit at the back away from the rest of the cast.- Actor
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This remarkable, soft-spoken American began in films as a diffident juvenile. With passing years, he matured into a star character actor who exemplified not only integrity and strength, but an ideal of the common man fighting against social injustice and oppression. He was born in Grand Island, Hall, Nebraska, the son of Herberta Elma (Jaynes) and William Brace Fonda, who was a commercial printer, and proprietor of the W. B. Fonda Printing Company in Omaha, Nebraska. His distant ancestors were Italians who had fled their country and moved to Holland, presumably because of political or religious persecution. In the mid-1600s, they crossed the Atlantic and settled in upstate New York where they founded a community with the Fonda name.
Growing up, Henry developed an early interest in journalism after having a story published in a local newspaper. At the age of twelve, he helped in his father's printing business for $2 a week. Following graduation from high school in 1923, he got a part-time job in Minneapolis with the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company which allowed him at first to pursue journalistic studies at the University of Minnesota. As it became difficult to juggle his working hours with his academic roster, he obtained another position as a physical education instructor at $30 a week, including room and board. By this time, he had grown to a height of six foot one and was a natural for basketball.
In 1925, having returned to Omaha, Henry reevaluated his options and came to the conclusion that journalism was not his forte, after all. For a while, he tried his hand at several temporary jobs, including as a mechanic and a window dresser. Then, despite opposition from his parents, Henry accepted an offer from Gregory Foley, director of the Omaha Playhouse, to play the title role in 'Merton of the Movies'. His father would not speak to him for a month. The play and its star received fairly good notices in the local press. It ran for a week, after which Henry observed "the idea of being Merton and not myself taught me that I could hide behind a mask". For the rest of the repertory season, Henry advanced to assistant director which enabled him to design and paint sets as well as act. A casual trip to New York, however, had already made him set his sights on Broadway.
In 1928, he headed east and briefly played in summer stock before joining the University Players, a group of talented Princeton and Harvard graduates among whose number were such future luminaries as James Stewart (who would remain his closest lifelong friend), Joshua Logan and Kent Smith. Before long, Henry played leads opposite Margaret Sullavan, soon to become the first of his five wives. Both marriage and the players broke up four years later. In 1932, Henry found himself sharing a two-room New York apartment with Jimmy Stewart and Joshua Logan. For the next two years, he alternated scenic design with acting at various repertory companies. In 1934, he got a break of sorts, when he was given the chance to present a comedy sketch with Imogene Coca in the Broadway revue New Faces. That year, he also hired Leland Hayward as his personal management agent and this was to pay off handsomely.
It was Hayward who persuaded the 29-year old to become a motion picture actor, despite initial misgivings and reluctance on Henry's part. Independent producer Walter Wanger, whose growing stock company was birthed at United Artists, needed a star for The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935). With both first choice actors Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea otherwise engaged, Henry was the next available option. After all, he had just completed a successful run on Broadway in the stage version. The cheesy publicity tag line for the picture was "you'll be fonder of Fonda", but the film was an undeniable hit. Wanger, realizing he had a good thing going, next cast Henry in a succession of A-grade pictures which capitalized on his image as the sincere, unaffected country boy. Pick of the bunch were the Technicolor outdoor western The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), the gritty Depression-era drama You Only Live Once (1937) (with Henry as a back-to-the-wall good guy forced into becoming a fugitive from the law by circumstance), the screwball comedy The Moon's Our Home (1936) (with ex-wife Sullavan), the excellent pre-civil war-era romantic drama Jezebel (1938) and the equally superb Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), in which Henry gave his best screen performance to date as the 'jackleg lawyer from Springfield'. Henry made two more films with director John Ford: the pioneering drama Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940), with Henry as Tom Joad, often regarded his career-defining role as the archetypal grassroots American trying to stand up against oppression. It also set the tone for his subsequent career. Whether he played a lawman (Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (1946)), a reluctant posse member (The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), a juror committed to the ideal of total justice in (12 Angry Men (1957)) or a nightclub musician wrongly accused of murder (The Wrong Man (1956)), his characters were alike in projecting integrity and quiet authority. In this vein, he also gave a totally convincing (though historically inaccurate) portrayal in the titular role of The Return of Frank James (1940), a rare example of a sequel improving upon the original.
Henry rarely featured in comedy, except for a couple of good turns opposite Barbara Stanwyck -- with whom he shared an excellent on-screen chemistry -- in The Mad Miss Manton (1938) and The Lady Eve (1941). He was also good value as a poker-playing grifter in the western comedy A Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966). Finally, just to confound those who would typecast him, he gave a chilling performance as one of the coldest, meanest stone killers ever to roam the West, in Sergio Leone's classic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Illness curtailed his work in the 1970s. His final screen role was as an octogenarian in On Golden Pond (1981), in which he was joined by his daughter Jane. It finally won him an Oscar on the heels of an earlier Honorary Academy Award. Too ill to attend the ceremony, he died soon after at the age of 77, having left a lasting legacy matched by few of his peers.- Actress
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Kathryn Card was born on 4 October 1892 in Butte, Montana, USA. She was an actress, known for I Love Lucy (1951), Born to Kill (1947) and The Hucksters (1947). She was married to Erwin Foster Card. She died on 1 March 1964 in Costa Mesa, California, USA.- Actress
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Born Angela Maxine O'Brien on January 15, 1937 in San Diego, California. Her film debut was one-minute shot in MGM's Babes on Broadway (1941). Her big moment came when she was cast in Journey for Margaret (1942). This film shot her into instant stardom and also resulted in Angela changing her name to Margaret. Throughout the 1940s Margaret was a major child star. Her unforgettable performance as "Tootie" in Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) won her an Academy Award as "Outstanding Child Actress" of her day. She gave brilliant performances in such films as The Canterville Ghost (1944), Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945), The Secret Garden (1949) and Little Women (1949). By the early 1950s Margaret had made a mint for MGM and earned a personal fortune. Then she brilliantly graduated into adolescent roles and she never retired from the screen. She also remained active on TV and on the dinner-theater circuit. She frequently is appearing at prestigious events as Celebrity Host or Guest Star and popular Public Speaker.- Actress
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Best known for the role of Florida Evans on the 1970s sitcoms Maude (1972) and Good Times (1974), African-American actress Esther Rolle proved to be as spirited and iron-willed off-camera as well. The gap-toothed actress with the gravelly voice was born in Pompano Beach, Florida, the 10th child of 18 born to Caribbean farming immigrants. Her first important work came with the Negro Ensemble Company and over the years would earn a solid careworn reputation in such theater plays as "The Blacks", "Blues for Mister Charlie", "The Amen Corner", "A Raisin in the Sun" and "A Member of the Wedding". Ironically, her father insisted she promise him that she would never become a servant or maid in real life. She didn't, and however Esther would have her biggest successes playing just those types of roles. She caught the attention of television producer Norman Lear while performing on stage who cast her in the Maude (1972) supporting role in 1972. Audiences loved her so much as the feisty domestic who stood her ground, and then some, against her volatile and liberal-minded employer Maude Findley (Bea Arthur), that Esther earned her own spin-off series with Good Times (1974). Compelled to fight racial stereotypes, she insisted before accepting the series that a strong father figure be central in the show (actor John Amos). And while she still played the role of a lower middle-class maid, the show's emphasis was to be on her home and family life, not her outside work. Still, Esther left the show for one season when she was unhappy about the negative role model perpetuated by Jimmie 'JJ' Walker's jive-talking character J.J., but later returned after the producers assured her that more responsibility would be taken. In other assignments, she won an Emmy Award for the television movie Summer of My German Soldier (1978) and gained further respect for her work in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1979) and for her film work in Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and Rosewood (1997). Two of her sisters, Estelle Evans and Rosanna Carter, were also character actresses. Afflicted with diabetes, Esther's health failed in the 1990s and toward the end of her life she was on kidney dialysis. The actress, who was divorced and had no children, died nine days after her 78th birthday on November 17, 1998.- Actress
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Rosemary Shirley DeCamp was the quintessential small-town American mother, a calming and steadying presence in scores of films in the 1940s and 1950s. She came to Hollywood after a successful career on the stage and in radio, making her film debut in 1941. Though she worked for many studios, she was most closely associated with Warner Bros., for whom she made many pictures, often playing a young mother or the friend or sister of the heroine. Her best-known role was probably as the mother of George M. Cohan (played by James Cagney) in the classic Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). She also did a lot of work on television; she was a regular on The Bob Cummings Show (1961) and played Marlo Thomas's mother on That Girl (1966).- Shizuko Hoshi is known for Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), M. Butterfly (1993) and M*A*S*H (1972). She was previously married to Mako.
- Actress
Eileen Saki was the final and longest-running actress to play Rosie, proprietor of Rosie's Bar in the television series M*A*S*H. She also had a small but memorable role in the season 5 premiere episode as the head Madam of a coquettish group of prostitutes.
The switching of actresses in the role of Rosie mimics the actual handing over of the real-life Rosie's Bar during the Korean War from mother to daughter. Alan Alda became aware of this when he received a letter from the real Rosie Jr. about the incident in the early 1980s, a copy of which is available in the book The Last Days of M*A*S*H by Alan and Arlene Alda.
Saki died in Los Angeles, California on May 1, 2023, at the age of 79- Actor
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Singer, songwriter ("Merrily We Roll Along"), comedian, author and actor, educated in public schools. He made his first public appearance in Vaudeville in 1907 at New York's Clinton Music Hall, then became a member of the Gus Edwards Gang, later touring vaudeville with Lila Lee as the team Cantor & Lee. He made Broadway stage appearances in "Canary Cottage," "Broadway Brevities of 1920," "Make It Snappy," "Kid Boots," "Whoopee," "Banjo Eyes," and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1917, 1918, 1919 and 1927. He had his own radio program in the 1930s, appeared often on television in the 1950s, and made many records. Joining ASCAP in 1951, and his popular-song compositions also include "Get a Little Fun Out of Life," "It's Great to Be Alive," and "The Old Stage Door." Eddie Cantor also wrote the books "Ziegfeld, the Great Glorifier" and "As I Remember Them," and the autobiographies "My Life Is In Your Hands" and "Take My Life."- Actress
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Carmen Mathews' film credits include BUtterfield 8 (1960), A Rage to Live (1965), Sounder (1972) Daniel (1983). She also appeared in several TV movies and is still seen in reruns as Col. Lillian Rayborn in an episode of the TV series M*A*S*H (1972). She has teamed on the Broadway stage with such stars as Don Ameche, Angela Lansbury and Joanne Woodward. Her last role was in The Last Best Year (1990) with Mary Tyler Moore and Bernadette Peters.- Actor
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Actor and stuntman Terry Wilson was born on September 3, 1923 in Huntington Park, California. A football star during his high school days, Wilson originally planned on becoming a veterinarian and attended California Polytechnic School on a football scholarship. Terry enlisted and served in the Marine Corps from 1943 to 1946. Following his tour of duty, Wilson was chosen by Warner Brothers from amongst a group of athletes to be trained for the stunt profession with his initial specialties being fistfights and work with horses. Among the notable actors that Terry doubled are John Wayne, Ward Bond, and Forrest Tucker. Terry's career as both an actor and stuntman in Westerns spanned several decades. Outside of his work in film and television, Wilson and his fellow stuntman friend Frank McGrath were big hits together on the rodeo circuit (they also appeared at many prison rodeos). Moreover, Terry in the wake of retiring from the film business went on to run a location ranch in Simi Valley, California and was the vice president of a construction firm in Southern California. Wilson died at age 75 on March 30, 1999. He was survived by his wife Mary Ann Wilson and three children.- Actress
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Nichelle Nichols was one of 10 children born to parents Lishia and Samuel Nichols in Robbins, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. She was a singer and dancer before turning to acting and finding fame in her groundbreaking role of Lt. Nyota Uhura in the Star Trek (1966) series.
As long as she could remember, she wanted to do nothing but sing, dance, act and write despite no one else in her family following any of those tracks; although her father could tap dance. He not only became mayor of their town, Robbins, IL, but also a magistrate. On stage, Nichelle was twice nominated for the Sarah Siddons Award as Best Actress of the Year; while on film she danced with Sammy Davis, Jr. in Porgy and Bess, and opposite James Garner in Mister Budwing (1965). In a complete changearound soon after the Star Trek television series came to an end, she played a blousey madam, then co-starred with Lynn Redgrave n Antony and Cleopatra. She was been married twice and had a son, Kyle Johnson, from her first marriage to a tap dancer.- Actress
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Gwen Verdon was born to the theater. Her mother, Gertrude, was a vaudevillian and dancer. Her father, Joseph, was an MGM studio electrician. She had to wear corrective boots as a child to straighten out her legs, which were misshapen by childhood illness. Nonetheless, she first appeared as a tapper on stage at age 6. She got her break in Bob Fosse's "Damn Yankees" in 1955. She married Fosse in 1960 and separated from him, although never divorcing him, in the mid-'70s. More stage and screen work quickly followed with highlights in "New Girl In Town", "Redhead", "Sweet Charity", and "Chicago". She and her daughter, Nicole Fosse, created the current stage musical "Fosse". Upon her death, Broadway dimmed all of its marquee lights in tribute.- Actress
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Ann Doran appeared in over 500 motion pictures and 1000 television shows, by one count. Starting at the age of four, she appeared in hundreds of silent films under assumed names so her father's family wouldn't find out. Rarely a featured player (although Charles Starrett's Rio Grande (1938) is a notable exception), she provided many a wonderful performance in support of the leads.- Actress
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Agnes was born of Anglo-Irish ancestry near Boston, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister (her mother was a mezzo-soprano) who encouraged her to perform in church pageants. Aged three, she sang 'The Lord is my Shepherd' on a public stage and seven years later joined the St. Louis Municipal Opera as a dancer and singer for four years. In keeping with her father's dictum of finishing her education first (then being permitted to do whatever she wished with her career), Agnes attended Muskingum College (Ohio), and, subsequently, the University of Wisconsin. She graduated with an M.A. in English and public speaking and later added a doctorate in literature from Bradley University to her resume. When her family moved to Reedsburg, Wisconsin, where her father had a pastorate, Agnes taught public school English and drama for five years. In between, she went to Paris to study pantomime with Marcel Marceau.
In 1928, she began training at the American Academy for Dramatic Arts and graduated with honors the following year. In order to supplement her income , Agnes had turned to radio early on. She had her first job in 1923 as a singer for a St. Louis radio station. Her love for that medium remained with her all her life. From the 1930s to the 50s, she appeared on numerous serials, dramas and children's programs. She was Min Gump in "The Gumps" (1934), the 'dragon lady' in "Terry and the Pirates" (1937), Margot Lane of classic comic strip fame in "The Shadow", Mrs.Danvers in "Rebecca" and the bed-ridden woman about to meet her end in "Sorry, Wrong Number". Acting on the airwaves was so important to her that she would insist on its continuation as a precondition of a later contract with MGM. Significantly, through her radio work on "The Shadow"and "March of Time" in 1937, she met and befriended fellow actor Orson Welles. Welles soon invited her to join him and Joseph Cotten as charter members of his Mercury Theatre on the Air. Agnes was involved in the famous "War of the Worlds" broadcast of 1938 which attracted nationwide attention and resulted in a lucrative $100,000 per picture deal with RKO in Hollywood. The Mercury players (the other principals were Ray Collins, Everett Sloane, Paul Stewart and George Coulouris) packed up and went west.
An ebullient and versatile character actress, Agnes was impossible to typecast: she could play years older than her age, appear as heroine or villainess, tragedienne or comedienne. In her first film, the iconic Citizen Kane (1941), she played the titular character's mother. She received her greatest critical acclaim for her emotive second screen performance as Aunt Fanny Minafer in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). In addition to being voted the year's best female performer by the New York Film Critics she was also nominated for an Academy Award. Through the years, Agnes would be nominated three more times: for her touching portrayal of the jaded but sympathetic Baroness Conti in Mrs. Parkington (1944); for her role as the title character's Aunt Aggie in Johnny Belinda (1948) and for playing Velma, the hard-boiled, suspicious housekeeper of Bette Davis in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), co-starring her old friend Joseph Cotten. Other notable film appearances included Jane Eyre (1943), with Orson Welles, The Woman in White (1948) as Countess Fusco), The Lost Moment (1947) (as a 105-year old woman) and Dark Passage (1947), a classic film noir in which she had third billing behind Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall as the treacherous , malevolent Madge Rapf. She had a rare starring role in the campy horror flick The Bat (1959), giving (according to the New York Times of December 17) 'a good, snappy performance'.
On Broadway, she appeared in such acclaimed plays as "All the King's Men" and "Candlelight". She enjoyed success with "Don Juan in Hell", touring nationally: the first time (1951-2) with Charles Laughton and Cedric Hardwicke, the second time (though receiving fewer critical plaudits) with Ricardo Montalban and Paul Henreid in 1973. She also starred with Joseph Cotten in "Prescription Murder" (1962). While not a great critical success, this was much liked by audiences and it introduced a famous detective named Lieutenant Columbo. From 1954, she also toured the U.S. and Europe with her own a one-woman show entitled "The Fabulous Redhead". Agnes performed numerous times on television before landing the role of Endora on Bewitched (1964). One particularly interesting part came her way through the director Douglas Heyes who remembered her from "Sorry, Wrong Number". He cast her in the starring - and indeed, only role in The Invaders (1961). As the lonely old woman confronted by tiny alien invaders in her remote farmhouse, Agnes never utters a single word and cleverly acts her scenes as a pantomime of unspoken terror.
Of course, the genial Agnes Moorehead has been immortalized as Elizabeth Montgomery's flamboyant witch-mother, Endora, although that was not a role the actress wished to be remembered for (in spite of several Emmy Award nominations). Indeed, she had thought this whole witchcraft theme to be rather far-fetched and was somewhat taken aback by the show's huge popularity. Agnes had a special clause inserted in her contract which limited her appearances to eight out of twelve episodes which gave her the opportunity to also work on other projects. Commenting on the acting profession in one of her many interviews (New York Times, May 1, 1974), she found the key to success in being " sincere in your work " and to "just go right on whether audiences or critics are taking your scalp off or not".- Actress
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A disarming character lady quite capable of scene-stealing, Mildred Natwick was a well-rounded talent with distinctively dowdy features and idiosyncratic tendencies who, over a six-decade period, assembled together a number of unforgettable matrons on stage and (eventually) film and TV. Whimsical, feisty, loony, stern, impish, shrewish, quizzical, scheming -- she greatly enhanced both comedies and dramas and, thankfully, her off-centered greatness was captured perfectly on occasion by such film directors as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Neil Simon.
A short, plumpish, oval-eyed figure with a unique flowery, honey-glazed voice, Natwick was born on June 19, 1905 (some sources list 1908) to Joseph (a businessman) and and Mildred Marion Dawes Natwick. The Baltimore native graduated from both the Bryn Mawr School (in Baltimore) and also from Bennett College in Dutchess County, N.Y., where she majored in drama. Breaking into the professional field touring on stage, Miss Natwick joined the Vagabonds in the late 1920s, a non-professional group from Baltimore. She later became part of the renowned University Players at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, whose rising performers at the time included Henry Fonda, Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart.
Natwick made her Broadway bow in the 1932 melodrama "Carry Nation," directed by Blanche Yurka with Esther Dale in the title role. In the cast was Joshua Logan, whom she befriended and later collaborated with when he turned director. She then continued her momentum on 1930s Broadway with "Amourette" (1933), "Spring in Autumn" (1933), "The Wind and the Rain" (1934), "The Distaff Side" (1934) "End of Summer" (1936), "Love from a Stranger" (1936), "The Star-Wagon" (1937), "Missouri Legend" (1938), "Stars in Your Eyes" (1939) (directed by Logan), and "Christmas Eve" (1939).
Natwick did not come to films until middle age (35) with the John Ford classic The Long Voyage Home (1940), in which she played a Cockney floozie. Despite her fine work in this minor part, she did not make another film until her landlady role five years later in The Enchanted Cottage (1945) supporting Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young. Not a great beauty by Hollywood standards, Natwick learned quickly in Hollywood that if she were to succeed, it would be as a character performer. Ford himself picked up on her versatility and used her repeatedly in several of his post-war classics -- 3 Godfathers (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and The Quiet Man (1952).
Never abandoning the theater for long, Natwick excelled as Miss Garnett in George Bernard Shaw's "Candida" and as the buoyant medium in Noël Coward's "Blithe Spirit". As for the big screen, she was sporadically seen in such films as Yolanda and the Thief (1945), The Late George Apley (1947), A Woman's Vengeance (1948), The Kissing Bandit (1948), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and Against All Flags (1952). Making use of even the tiniest of roles, none of them did much to improve her stature in Hollywood. With her delicious turn, however, in Hitchcock's eccentric black comedy The Trouble with Harry (1955), which starred Shirley MacLaine (in her film debut), John Forsythe, Kris Kringle's Edmund Gwenn, little Jerry Mathers (of "Leave It to Beaver"), and another famous Mildred, Mildred Dunnock, Natwick enjoyed one of her best roles ever on film. This was followed by her scheming and furtive sorceress in the Danny Kaye vehicle The Court Jester (1955) in which she, Kaye and Glynis Johns participate in the memorable tongue-twisting "The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle..." comedy routine. This, in turn, led to a couple of more, albeit lesser, films, including Teenage Rebel (1956) and Tammy and the Bachelor (1957).
Preferring the theatre to movies, MIldred received her first Tony nomination for her sharp, astute work in Jean Anouilh's "Waltz of the Toredors" in 1957 and recreated her character in a TV special. She seemed to move effortlessly from the classics ("Medea," "Coriolanus") to chic comedy ("Ladies in Retirement," "The Importance of Being Earnest"). Receiving great applause as the beleaguered, overly-winded mother in Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park" on Broadway in 1963, she transferred the role to film four years later. The cinematic Barefoot in the Park (1967) earned Mildred a well-deserved Oscar nomination for "best supporting actress". She switched things up again with Harold Pinter's theatrical "Landscape," and then again in 1971 when she made her debut in a singing role in the John Kander-Fred Ebb musical, "70, Girls, 70" (1971) in which she earned a second Tony nomination. Her last Broadway show came as a replacement in "Bedroom Farce" in 1979.
With only the slightest of gesture, look or tone of voice, Mildred's characters could speak volumes and she became an essential character player during the 1970s as an offbeat friend, relative or elderly on TV and film. She was awarded the Emmy for her playing of one of The Snoop Sisters (1972)_ alongside the equally delightful Helen Hayes in the short-lived TV series. Both played impish Jessica Fletcher-type mystery writers who solve real crimes on the sly. She also played Rock Hudson's quirky mother in McMillan & Wife (1971) and a notable dying grandmother in a guest appearance of the critically-lauded TV series drama Family (1976). Her final film came with a small regal role as Madame de Rosemonde in Dangerous Liaisons (1988) with Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Never married, Mildred was called "Milly" by close friends and family and was the first cousin of Myron 'Grim' Natwick, the creator of Betty Boop for the Max Fleischer cartoon studio and prime animator for Disney's Snow White character. She died of cancer at age 89 in New York City.- Actress
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Character actress Beulah Bondi was a favorite of directors and audiences and is one of the reasons so many films from the 1930s and 1940s remain so enjoyable, as she was an integral part of many of the ensemble casts (a hallmark of the studio system) of major and/or great films, including The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Our Town (1940) and Penny Serenade (1941). Highly respected as a first-tier character actress, Bondi won two Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominations, for The Gorgeous Hussy (1936) and Of Human Hearts (1938), and an Emmy Award in 1976 for her turn in the television program The Waltons (1972).
She was born Beulah Bondy on May 3, 1888, in Chicago, and established herself as a stage actress in the first phase of her career. She made her Broadway debut in Kenneth S. Webb's "One of the Family" at the 49th Street Theatre on December 21, 1925. The show was a modest hit, racking up 238 performances. She next appeared in another hit, Maxwell Anderson's "Saturday's Children," which ran for 326 performances, before appearing in her first flop, Clemence Dane's "Mariners" in 1927. Philip Barry's and Elmer Rice's "Cock Robin" was an extremely modest hit in 1928, reaching the century mark (100 performances), but it was Bondi's performance in Rice's "Street Scene," which opened at the Playhouse Theatre on Jamuary 10, 1929, that made her career. This famous play won Rice the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was a big hit, playing for 601 performances. Most importantly, though, it brought Bondi to the movies at the advanced age of 43. She made her motion picture debut in 1931 in the movie adaptation (Street Scene (1931)), recreating the role she had originated on the Broadway stage. The talkies were still new, and she had the talent and the voice to thrive in Hollywood.
Bondi appeared in four more Broadway plays from 1931 to 1934, only one of which, "The Late Christopher Bean", a comedy by Sidney Howard, was a hit. Her last appearance on Broadway for a generation was in a flop staged by Melvyn Douglas, "Mother Lode" (she made two more appearances on the Great White Way, in "Hilda Crane" (1950) and "On Borrowed Time" in 1953; neither was a success). For the rest of her professional life, her career lay primarily in film and television.
She was typecast as mothers and, later, grandmothers, and played James Stewart's mother four times, most famously as "Ma Bailey" in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Her greatest role is considered her turn in Leo McCarey's Depression-era melodrama Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), in which she played a mother abandoned by her children.
Beulah Bondi died on January 1, 1981, from complications from an accident, when she broke her ribs after falling over her cat. She was 92 years old.- One of the tallest actors ever, he held various odd jobs before his debut on the silver screen. He worked for Spike Jones and his City Slickers, Ardens Dairy (in California,) as a Cowboy for Public Relations and at Knotts Berry Farm, (in California) also as a Cowboy. It was while he was working as a doorman at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood that his height was noticed and because of it he was chosen for the role of Gort. He also hosted a children's TV show in the Los Angeles area in the 50s called 'The Gentle Giant'. He was not a very strong man for his size. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California.
- Everett Brown was born on 1 January 1902 in Smith County, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for Gone with the Wind (1939), Danger Island (1931) and Tim Tyler's Luck (1937). He died on 14 October 1953 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Peggy Rea was born on 31 March 1921 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress and casting director, known for Grace Under Fire (1993), The Dukes of Hazzard (1979) and Love Field (1992). She died on 5 February 2011 in Toluca Lake, California, USA.- Actor
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A Corsicana native, Rex (Clifford) Ingram was the son of Mack and Mamie Ingram. He graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in medicine before launching a brilliant acting career which spanned 50 years. Ingram made his screen debut during the silent era in Tarzan of the Apes (1918). He won widespread acclaim for his portrayal of De Lawd in The Green Pastures (1936), Ingram also appeared on the Broadway stage and in television productions, bringing skill and dignity to every performance. Actor probably best remembered for his portrayal of Jim, the fugitive slave, opposite Mickey Rooney in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939). He died September 19, 1969 and was buried in California.- Beah Richards left her native Vicksburg, Mississippi, for New York City in 1950. She would not acquire a significant role on stage until 1955,when she appeared in the off-Broadway show "Take a Giant Step" convincingly portraying an 84-year-old grandmother without using theatrical makeup. In 1962 she appeared in writer James Baldwin's "The Amen Corner" directed by noted actor/director/activist Frank Silvera, who told Richards "Don't act, just be." She credited Silvera with helping her further develop the subtlety and quiet dignity that distinguished all of her performances.
A prolific actress, poet and playwright, her first authored play was "All's Well That Ends" that delved into the issues of racial segregation. Always ahead of her time, she defined herself as "Black" when the term "Negro" was the preferred ethnic/racial label of Black Americans. Richards would bring her salutary satisfaction with being "Black" and her immense acting talents to the role of the peacemaking mother in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), a role for which she was nominated for an Oscar. Additionally, she appeared in "Purlie Victorious" by Ossie Davis and "The Little Foxes" by Lillian Hellman.
In 1988, she won an Emmy Award for her performance in Frank's Place (1987). Although stricken with emphysema, she delivered a tour-de-force performance on the ABC legal drama The Practice (1997) in 2000; she received her second Emmy Award for this performance three days before her death in her native Vicksburg. - Actor
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Sidney Poitier was a native of Cat Island, Bahamas, although born, two months prematurely, in Miami during a visit by his parents, Evelyn (Outten) and Reginald James Poitier. He grew up in poverty as the son of farmers, with his father also driving a cab in Nassau. Sidney had little formal education and at the age of 15 was sent to Miami to live with his brother, in order to forestall a growing tendency toward delinquency. In the U.S., he experienced the racial chasm that divides the country, a great shock to a boy coming from a society with a majority of African descent.
At 18, he went to New York, did menial jobs and slept in a bus terminal toilet. A brief stint in the Army as a worker at a veterans' hospital was followed by more menial jobs in Harlem. An impulsive audition at the American Negro Theatre was rejected so forcefully that Poitier dedicated the next six months to overcoming his accent and improving his performing skills. On his second try, he was accepted. Spotted in rehearsal by a casting agent, he won a bit part in the Broadway production of "Lysistrata", for which he earned good reviews. By the end of 1949, he was having to choose between leading roles on stage and an offer to work for Darryl F. Zanuck in the film No Way Out (1950). His performance as a doctor treating a white bigot got him plenty of notice and led to more roles. Nevertheless, the roles were still less interesting and prominent than those white actors routinely obtained. But seven years later, after turning down several projects he considered demeaning, Poitier got a number of roles that catapulted him into a category rarely if ever achieved by an African-American man of that time, that of leading man. One of these films, The Defiant Ones (1958), earned Poitier his first Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. Five years later, he won the Oscar for Lilies of the Field (1963), the first African American to win for a leading role.
He remained active on stage and screen as well as in the burgeoning Civil Rights movement. His roles in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and To Sir, with Love (1967) were landmarks in helping to break down some social barriers between blacks and whites. Poitier's talent, conscience, integrity, and inherent likability placed him on equal footing with the white stars of the day. He took on directing and producing chores in the 1970s, achieving success in both arenas.- Actor
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Though a native of South Africa, Cecil Kellaway spent many years as an actor, author and director in Australian live theatre until he tried his luck in Hollywood in the 1930s. Finding he could get only gangster bit parts, he got discouraged and returned to Australia. Then William Wyler called and offered him a part in Wuthering Heights (1939). From then on Kellaway was always in demand when the part called for a twinkling, silver-haired leprechaun.- Actor
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Seasoned London-born character actor, who had a lengthy career in American films and on television. The son of an Anglo-Italian music professor, Cyril also had a secondary career in Hollywood as a respected drama coach, engaged by Douglas Fairbanks, James Craig, and others. He appears to have divided the remainder of his time between films and the stage. For some time, around 1936, he was director in charge of production at the Little Theatre in Houston, Texas. Most of his movie roles, beginning in 1931, were uncredited bits. He appeared primarily in serials and 'B-horrors', for which dignified English gentlemen were continuously in demand as undertakers, coroners or townsfolk. Television offered him better opportunities in the early 1950's. Skeletal of build, with a heavily-lined face and a shock of white hair, Cyril always appeared rather older than his years. Something of a specialist in Cockney impersonations, his nonplussed features were also regularly glimpsed as assorted shopkeepers, accountants, butlers or academic types. He popped up to particularly good effect in four episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959), displaying deft comedic abilities as day-dreaming bank employee, Mr. Smithers, in "A Penny for Your Thoughts" (1961). However, Cyril's best on-screen moment came courtesy of The Night of the Iguana (1964), as Deborah Kerr's elderly grandfather Nonno - 'the oldest working poet in the world' - for which he received a Golden Globe Award nomination.- Lois Foraker was born in 1945 in Everett, Washington. She is an actress, known for Gremlins (1984), Child's Play 3 (1991) and The Exorcist III (1990).
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Fay Bainter's career began as a child performer in 1898. For some time, she was a member of the traveling cast of the Morosco Stock Company in Los Angeles. In 1912, she made her Broadway debut in 'The Rose of Panama', but this and her subsequent play 'The Bridal Path' (1913), were conspicuous failures. She continued in stock and, after forming an association with David Belasco, took another swing at Broadway. She had her first hit with a dynamic performance, which established her as major theatrical star, as Ming Toy in 'East is West', at the Astor Theatre (1918-1920). Alternating between comedy and melodrama, Fay then shone in 'The Enemy' (1925-26) with Walter Abel and gave an outstanding performance of mid-life crisis as the desperate Fran Dodsworth ('Dodsworth',1934-35), opposite Walter Huston as her husband Sam. Fay never had the chance to recreate her stage role on screen - Ruth Chatterton got the part instead. At the same time, now aged 41, she was offered a role in her first motion picture, This Side of Heaven (1934). Co-starring opposite Lionel Barrymore, this was the first of many thoughtful, understanding wives, aunts and mothers she was to play over the next twenty years.
Of stocky build, with expressive eyes and a warm, slightly smoky voice, Fay rarely essayed unsympathetic or hard-boiled characters, with the exception of her Oscar-nominated dowager in The Children's Hour (1961). While not often top-billed, her name remained consistently high in the list of credits throughout her career. Critics applauded her sterling performances in productions like Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) and Quality Street (1937), as Katharine Hepburn's excitable spinster sister. Fay won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for the movie Jezebel (1938). As Bette Davis' stern, reproving Aunt Belle, she excelled in a somewhat meatier role than the genteel or fluttery ladies she had previously been engaged to portray. That same year, she was also nominated (as Best Actress) for her housekeeper, Hannah Parmalee, in White Banners (1938), but lost to Bette Davis. Fay enhanced many more films with her presence during the 1940's, notably as Mrs. Elvira Wiggs, in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1942), Merle Oberon's eccentric aunt from the bayou in Dark Waters (1944) and Danny Kaye's mother in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947). From the 1950's, she alternated stage with acting on television. Her last role of note was as Mary Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's 'Long Day's Journey into Night', on tour with the National Company in 1958.- Actor
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Wally Cox was a beloved character actor who made his mark in television and ranks as one of the medium's most memorable performers. His ability to show his range likely was limited by his short stature, slight frame, and high-pitched voice, which along with his talent for being very funny, made him ideal for comedy parts such as his memorable turn as Professor P. Caspar Biddle in "The Bird-Watchers" episode of The Beverly Hillbillies (1962) in 1966. His television persona was that of a shy, timid man in horn-rimed glasses who spoke in a tentative, though distinctly enunciated, voice. It was a persona that his long-time friend Marlon Brando said was completely at odds with the real man.
Born Wallace Maynard Cox on December 6, 1924, in Detroit, Michigan, his family moved to Evanston, Illinois, when he was a child, and he became friends with the young Brando. The child Marlon once tied Wally to a fence as a prank and left him in bondage overnight. After World War II, Cox moved to New York City and studied metal-working, becoming a master craftsman. In New York, he met up again with Brando, and the two rekindled their friendship and became roommates, with Cox eventually moving out as he reportedly could not abide Russell, Marlon's pet raccoon. Brando interested Cox in acting, and he studied with Brando's mentor Stella Adler. Cox and Brando both shared a delight in book-reading and learning, though Cox was the more accomplished intellectual.
After appearing in many TV productions in the 1940s and early '50s, Cox achieved fame as the mild-mannered teacher on the live television sitcom Mister Peepers (1952) (1952-55), a summer replacement show that was inserted into the regular line-up after receiving good reviews and strong ratings. The episode in which Peepers married his girlfriend, the school nurse Nancy, was one of the highest rated TV shows of 1954. Although the role made him a star and won him two Emmy nominations, one as Best Comedian of 1953 and one as Best Male Star of a Regular Series in 1954, Wally Cox hated Robinson Peepers. He always referred to the character as "Mr. Goodboy" and insisted he was nothing like him, that in fact, he was a "terrible person." His persona on the The Hollywood Squares (Daytime) (1965), a quiet man with a thinly veiled layer of sarcasm, probably was more like the real Cox. Outside of performing, Cox liked to ride motorcycles and take long nature walks.
After the show's cancellation due to declining ratings, Cox appeared as the lead in the TV series The Adventures of Hiram Holliday (1956) for the 1956-57 season. Although he never again headlined a live-action series, he played character roles in a score of theatrical and TV movies and frequently guest-starred on series television. He also remained prominent in the public eye as a regular panelist on the television game show The Hollywood Squares (Daytime) (1965), appearing in the upper left-hand cubicle from the series' debut in 1966 until his death in 1973. While many of the stars' responses were actually scripted, Wally Cox apparently wasn't one of them, more often using sarcasm and responding with an ironic attitude as with a witty one-liner.
He was introduced to a generation of children as the voice of the animated cartoon character Underdog on Underdog (1964) (1964-1973). He was also a singer, cutting a memorable record of "There Is a Tavern in the Town" in 1953, sung in a unique style featuring "tremulous yodeling" that was truly one of a kind. Wally also made a memorable appearance on the syndicated show Tom Smothers' Organic Prime Time Space Ride (1971) as a singer/yodeler, singing the cowboy song "That's How the Yodel Was Born."
Cox always will be remembered as the eponymous "Mr. Peepers" and the voice of "Underdog," but he was an actor of wider talents seldom used by the industry, as can be seen in his turns as the sonar operator in The Bedford Incident (1965) and as the potential suicide Wally Haverstraw in The Bill Cosby Show (1969) episode "Goodbye, Cruel World" in 1970. Dying unexpectedly on February 15, 1973, from what some newspapers described as an accidental overdose of sedatives but which Marlon Brando in his autobiography said was a heart attack, Wally Cox's cremated remains were kept hidden in a closet by his old friend for three decades. According to Brando's son Miko, both his father's and Cox's ashes were scattered at the same time in Death Valley, California, in a ceremony following Brando's death, thus reuniting the lifetime friends.- Actor
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Born in Japan, Makoto Iwamatsu was living there with his grandparents while his parents studied art in the United States, when Japan and the U.S. went to war in 1941. His parents remained in the U.S., working for the Office of War Information, and, at the cessation of the conflict, were granted U.S. residency by Congress. "Mako", as he became known, joined his parents in New York and studied architecture.
He entered the U.S. Army in the early 1950s and acted in shows for military personnel, discovering a talent and love for the theatre. He abandoned his plans to become an architect and instead enrolled at the famed Pasadena Community Playhouse. Following his studies there, he appeared in many stage productions and on television. In 1966, he won an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his first film role, as the coolie "Po-Han" in The Sand Pebbles (1966). He worked steadily in feature films since.
He appeared on Broadway in the leading role in Stephen Sondheim's "Pacific Overtures", and co-founded and served as artistic director for the highly-acclaimed East-West Players theatre company in Los Angeles.
Following a long battle with cancer, Mako passed away on July 21, 2006, at the age of 72. He was survived by his wife, Shizuko Hoshi (who co-starred in episodes of M*A*S*H (1972)) as well, and his children and grandchildren.- Actress
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Virginia Gregg was born on 6 March 1916 in Harrisburg, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for Operation Petticoat (1959), Police Story (1973) and Crime in the Streets (1956). She was married to Jaime Del Valle. She died on 15 September 1986 in Encino, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
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The child of a teenage rape victim, Ethel Waters grew up in the slums of Philadelphia and neighboring cities, seldom living anywhere for more than a few weeks at a time. "No one raised me, " she recollected, "I just ran wild." She excelled not only at looking after herself, but also at singing and dancing; she began performing at church functions, and as a teenager was locally renowned for her "hip shimmy shake". In 1917 she made her debut on the black vaudeville circuit; billed as "Sweet Mama Stringbean" for her tall, lithe build, she broke through with her rendition of "St. Louis Blues", which Waters performed in a softer and subtler style than her rivals, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Beginning with her appearances in Harlem nightclubs in the late 1920s, then on the lucrative "white time" vaudeville circuit, she became one of America's most celebrated and highest-paid entertainers. At the Cotton Club, she introduced "Stormy Weather", composed for her by Harold Arlen: she wrote of her performance, "I was singing the story of my misery and confusion, the story of the wrongs and outrages done to me by people I had loved and trusted". Impressed by this performance, Irving Berlin wrote "Supper Time", a song about a lyncing, for Waters to perform in a Broadway revue. She later became the first African-American star of a national radio show. In middle age, first on Broadway and then in the movies, she successfully recast herself as a dramatic actress. Devoutly religious but famously difficult to get along with, Waters found few roles worthy of her talents in her later years.- Actor
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One of the hard-working, unappreciated African-American actors of Hollywood's "Golden Era" who produced good work with what he was given. He starred alongside some of film's great comedians including the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, Laurel and Hardy and three films with Shirley Temple. Best is sometimes confused with William "Pat" Best, a musician and writer of (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons.. After a drug arrest ended his film career, he worked in television for a while before retiring to obscurity. He passed away at the Motion Picture Country Home and is buried in North Hollywood, California.
Best was one of the victims of the racist attitudes of the era, never given the opportunity to fully flex his comedic muscle beyond the stereotyped porter and janitor roles that dominated his career. Sadly he was also a victim of backlash for these same roles during the Civil Rights movement and it is hard to watch many of his films without cringing, despite his ability.- Actress
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Kellye Nakahara was born on 16 January 1948 in Oahu, Hawaii, USA. She was an actress, known for Clue (1985), M*A*S*H (1972) and Doctor Dolittle (1998). She was married to David Wallett. She died on 16 February 2020 in Pasadena, California, USA.- Kathryn Givney was born on 27 October 1896 in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, USA. She was an actress, known for Daddy Long Legs (1955), My Friend Irma (1949) and A Place in the Sun (1951). She was married to J. George Stutzman and Francis Alton Connolly. She died on 16 March 1978 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Actress
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Nancy Reagan was born on 6 July 1921 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Hellcats of the Navy (1957), Night Into Morning (1951) and Donovan's Brain (1953). She was married to Ronald Reagan. She died on 6 March 2016 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Ethel Barrymore was the second of three children seemingly destined for the actor's life of their parents Maurice and Georgiana. Maurice Barrymore had emigrated from England in 1875, and after graduating from Cambridge in law had shocked his family by becoming an actor. Georgiana Drew of Philadelphia acted in her parents' stage company. The two met and married as members of Augustin Daly's company in New York. They both acted with some of the great stage personalities of the mid Victorian theater of America and England. The Barrymore children were born and grew up in Philadelphia. Though older brother Lionel Barrymore began acting early with his mother's relatives in the Drew theater company, Ethel, after a traditional girl's schooling, planned on becoming a concert pianist.
The lure of the stage was perhaps congenital, however. She made her debut as a stage actress during the New York City season of 1894. Her youthful stage presence was at once a pleasure, a strikingly pretty and winsome face and large dark eyes that seemed to look out from her very soul. Her natural talent and distinctive voice only reinforced the physical presence of someone destined to command any role set before her. After the opportunity to appear on the London stage with English great Henry Irving in "The Bells" (1897) and later in "Peter the Great" (1898), she returned to New York to star in the Clyde Fitch play "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines" (1901) (produced by her friend and benefactor Charles Frohman), which brought her initial American acclaim. Lead roles, such as Nora in Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" (1905) and starring in "Alice By the Fire" (also 1905), "Mid-Channel" (1910) and "Trelawney of the Wells" (1911) proved her popularity as a warm and charismatic star of American stage. In the meantime she married stockbroker Russell Griswold Colt in 1909 and gave birth to three children while continuing her acting career.
Although the stage was her first love, she did heed the call of the silver screen, and though not achieving the matinée idol image that younger brother John Barrymore garnered in silent movies after similar chemistry on stage, she won over audiences from her first film appearance in The Nightingale (1914). However, her early film roles, steady through 1919, took a back seat to continued stage triumphs: "Declassee" (1919), her impassioned Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet" (1922), "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" (1924) and, especially, "The Constant Wife" (1926).
She harnessed her considerable talents in the role of an activist as well, being a bedrock supporter of the Actors Equity Association and, in fact, had been a prominent figure in the actors strike of 1919. By 1930 she was entering middle age and her movie roles reflected this. Except for Rasputin and the Empress (1932) with her brothers, the roles were elderly mothers and grandmothers, dowager ladies and spinster aunts. Perhaps wisely she put off Hollywood for over a decade, with stage work that included her most endearing role in "The Corn is Green" (a tour that lasted from 1940 to 1942). She finally moved to Southern California in 1940.
Yet the consummate actress glowed still in the films that came steadily in the mid-'40s and through much of the 1950s. As the mother of Cary Grant in the pensive None But the Lonely Heart (1944) she started off her late film career brilliantly by receiving the Oscar for Best Actress in a supporting role, though she was not satisfied with that effort. Her engaging wit and humanity stood out in even supporting roles, such as, the politically savvy mother of Joseph Cotten in The Farmer's Daughter (1947) and, once again with Cotton, as sympathetic art dealer Miss Spinney, with those eyes, in the haunting screen adaptation of Robert Nathan's novel Portrait of Jennie (1948). There was also a mingling of some TV work to round out her last movies in the late 1950s. In 1955 she saw her book "Memories, An Autobiography" see publication. For the enduring legacy she had already begun years before, a theater named for her was dedicated in New York in 1928. When she passed away in 1959, she was interred near her brothers at Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles. - Actor
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Johnny Yune was born on 22 October 1936 in Eumseong County, North Chungcheong Province, South Korea. He was an actor and writer, known for They Call Me Bruce (1982), They Still Call Me Bruce (1987) and The Cannonball Run (1981). He was married to Julia Yune. He died on 8 March 2020 in Alhambra, California, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Actress Enid Kent was born on January 14, 1945, in Los Angeles, California to the late William Kent and late actress Irene Tedrow. Her father, a Polish immigrant, was a lawyer while her mother, originally from Denver, Colorado, was a well-known radio and stage actress who later on went on to film and television.
Enid is Hollywood High School graduate (and classmate of actress Swoosie Kurtz).
Enid also appeared as a replacement actress in the Broadway play "Our Town" with her mother, late actress Irene Tedrow, actor Ed Begley and the late legendary actor Henry Fonda in late 1969.
Kent is best known for her role as "Nurse Bigelow" on the hit CBS-TV series M*A*S*H*, from 1976 until 1983. She also appeared in the final M*A*S*H* TV movie "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen".- Missouri-born Jane Darwell was born Patti Woodard, the daughter of William Robert Woodard, president of the Louisville Southern Railroad, and Ellen (Booth) Woodard, in Palmyra, Missouri, where she grew up on a ranch . She nursed ambitions to be an opera singer, but put it off because of her father's disapproval (she eventually changed her name to Darwell from the family name of Woodard so as not to "sully" the family name). Making her stage debut at age 33, she was almost 40 when she made her first film, a silent, in 1913.
She easily made the transition from silents to talkies, and specialized in playing kindly, grandmotherly types. Her most famous role was as Ma Joad, the glue that held the Joad family together, in the classic The Grapes of Wrath (1940), for which she won the Academy Award. She was, however, memorably cast against type in The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), as the shrewish, cackling Ma Grier, a lynch mob leader, and again in Caged (1950), as the unsympathetic prison matron in charge of the isolation ward.
She made over 200 films. Her last, Mary Poppins (1964), was made at the express request of Walt Disney; she had retired and was living at the Motion Picture Country Home and Disney came out personally to ask her to appear in the film, after which she went back into retirement. She died in 1967 after suffering a stroke and a heart attack, and was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. - A marvelously quirky and distinctive 4' 3" character actress, with a larger-than-life presence on film and TV, Zelda Rubinstein gave up a long and stable career in the medical field as a lab technician in order to strive for something more self-fulfilling as middle age settled in. At the age of 45, the feisty lady gave up the comfort of a stable paycheck and attempt an acting career, a daunting task for anyone but especially someone of her stature and type. Within a few years, she had beaten the odds and became a major movie celebrity thanks to one terrific showcase in a Steven Spielberg horror classic. In the process, she served as an inspiration to all the "little people" working in Hollywood who are forced to toil in cruel and demeaning stereotypes.
Zelda May Rubinstein was born on May 28, 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Dolores and George Rubinstein, who were Polish Jewish immigrants. Zelda was the youngest of three children, and the only "little person" in the family. Her childhood and teenage years were decidedly difficult in terms of coping with her "interesting variation," which was caused by a pituitary gland deficiency. With no designs on acting at the time, she went the normal route of college and received a scholarship to study at the University of Pittsburgh. She earned her degree in bacteriology and worked for a number of years as a lab technician in blood banks. In 1978, Zelda, in a pursuit of something more creative in her life, abandoned her cushy but mundane job and threw herself completely into acting. She made her movie debut as one of the little people in the Chevy Chase slapstick comedy Under the Rainbow (1981). It all came together so quickly with her second film Poltergeist (1982) in the scene-stealing role of Tangina, the saucy, self-confident, prune-faced "house cleaner" with the whispery, doll-like voice who is brought in to rid a suburban home of demonic possession. Co-writer/producer Spielberg claims he designed the psychic role specifically for a "little person". The film became an instant summertime hit and Zelda created absolute magic and wonderment with the testy role, receiving some of the movie's best reviews. The character actress went on to appear in the two "Poltergeist" sequels. The "Poltergeist" movie projects were eventually dubbed "cursed" due to the untimely deaths of some of its performers, particularly two of the three children of film parents Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams. 22-year-old Dominique Dunne was slain in 1982 by a jealous ex-boyfriend only a few months after the first film's release, and angelic little Heather O'Rourke, age 12, died of an intestinal obstruction just months before Poltergeist III (1988) made it to the screen.
Although Zelda would not find a role quite up to the standards and popularity of Tangina, her subsequent career remained surprisingly active with a number of weird parts woven into both comedies and chillers -- often variations of her eccentric Tangina role. She played a mental patient in the Frances Farmer biopic Frances (1982), which showcased Jessica Lange in the Oscar-nominated title role; a squeaky-shoed organist in John Hughes sweet-sixteen comedy classic Sixteen Candles (1984) co-starring Brat Packers Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall; the demented mom in the gruesome, Spanish-made horror-thriller Anguish (1987) [aka Anguish], which has since reached cult status; a mentor witch in the comic fantasy Teen Witch (1989); a hermit in a National Lampoon-based slapstick Last Resort (1994); a betting clerk in the Sci-Fi adventure Timemaster (1995); an ill-fated nun in the thriller Little Witches (1996), and; a theatre director in the flick Critics and Other Freaks (1997).
Into the millennium, she made some odd, slapdash appearances in such minor fare as Maria & Jose (2000), Wishcraft (2002), Cages (2005), Angels with Angles (2005), Unbeatable Harold (2006) and Southland Tales (2006). In her last film, she furthered her horror icon status with a small cameo in the slim-budgeted indie Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) that also featured Robert Englund of "Freddy Krueger" fame. Zelda also found an "in" doing voiceovers, her doll-like tones ideal for cartoons and such, and in commercials promoting such items as Skittles candy. She enjoyed extended popularity on TV with a regular series role on the first couple of seasons of Picket Fences (1992). Her character later was killed off in a freakish accident (fell into a freezer!). In her last years she narrated, and "Exorcist" child star Linda Blair hosted, TV's Scariest Places on Earth (2000). The actress also appeared on stage in such productions as "Deathtrap" (as a psychic, of course), "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Suddenly, Last Summer," "The Slab Boys" and "Black Comedy". She also appeared as Yente in a production of "Fiddler on the Roof".
An outspoken social activist, Zelda was a staunch advocate for the rights of little people who formed the nonprofit Michael Dunn Memorial Repertory Theater Company in Los Angeles in 1985. The actress gained additional attention and respect, if not popularity (her career suffered for a time as a result), as an early and outspoken HIV/AIDS activist. As the poster mom for AIDS awareness, she valiantly appeared in a series of maternal newspaper/billboard advertisements imploring her gay son to practice safe sex. The series of ads ran from the mid-to-late 1980s. Zelda also participated in the first AIDS Project Los Angeles AIDS Walk and attended the 25th Anniversary Walk on October 12, 2009.
A couple of months before her death on January 27, 2010, Zelda suffered a heart attack. Complications set in (kidney and lung failure) and she passed away at age 76 on January 27, 2010, at Barlow Respiratory Hospital in Los Angeles, California. - Actor
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Jack Palance quite often exemplified evil incarnate on film, portraying some of the most intensely feral villains witnessed in 1950s westerns and melodrama. Enhanced by his tall, powerful build, icy voice, and piercing eyes, he earned two "Best Supporting Actor" nominations early in his career. It would take a grizzled, eccentric comic performance 40 years later, however, for him to finally grab the coveted statuette.
Of Ukrainian descent, Palance was born Volodymyr Ivanovich Palahniuk (later taking Walter Jack Palance as his legal name) on February 18, 1919 (although some sources, including his death certificate, cite 1920) in Lattimer Mines, Pennsylvania (coal country), one of six children born to Anna (nee Gramiak) and Ivan Palahniuk. His father, an anthracite miner, died of black lung disease. Palance worked in the mines in his early years but averted the same fate as his father. Athletics was his ticket out of the mines when he won a football scholarship to the University of North Carolina. He subsequently dropped out to try his hand at professional boxing. Fighting under the name "Jack Brazzo", he won his first 15 fights, 12 by knockout, before losing a 4th round decision to future heavyweight contender Joe Baksi on December 17, 1940.
With the outbreak of World War II, his boxing career ended and his military career began, serving in the Army Air Force as a bomber pilot. Wounded in combat and suffering severe injuries and burns, he received the Purple Heart, Good Conduct Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal. He resumed college studies as a journalist at Stanford University and became a sportswriter for the San Francisco Chronicle. He also worked for a radio station until he was bit by the acting bug.
Palance made his stage debut in "The Big Two" in 1947 and immediately followed it understudying Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in the groundbreaking Broadway classic "A Streetcar Named Desire", a role he eventually took over. Following stage parts in "Temporary Island" (1948), "The Vigil" (1948), and "The Silver Tassle" (1949), Palance won a choice role in "Darkness of Noon" and a Theatre World Award for "Promising New Personality." This recognition helped him secure a 20th Century-Fox contract. The facial burns and resulting reconstructive surgery following the crash and burn of his WWII bomber plane actually worked to his advantage. Out of contention as a glossy romantic leading man, Palance instead became the archetypal intimidating villain equipped with towering stance, imposing glare, and killer-shark smile.
He stood out among a powerhouse cast that included actors such as Richard Widmark, Zero Mostel and Paul Douglas in his movie debut in Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets (1950), as a plague-carrying fugitive. He was soon on his way. Briefly billed as Walter Jack Palance before eliminating the first name, the actor made fine use of his former boxing skills and war experience for the film Halls of Montezuma (1951) as a boxing Marine in Richard Widmark's platoon. He followed this with the first of his back-to-back Oscar nods. In Sudden Fear (1952), only his third film, he played rich-and-famous playwright Joan Crawford's struggling actor/husband who plots to murder her and run off with gorgeous Gloria Grahame. Finding just the right degree of intensity and menace to pretty much steal the proceedings without chewing the scenery, he followed this with arguably his finest villain of the decade, that of sadistic gunslinger Jack Wilson who takes on Alan Ladd's titular hero, played by Shane (1953), in a classic showdown.
Throughout the 1950s, Palance doled out strong leads and supports such as those in Man in the Attic (1953) (his first lead), The Big Knife (1955) and the war classic Attack (1956). Mixed in were a few routine to highly mediocre parts in Flight to Tangier (1953), Sign of the Pagan (1954) (as Attila the Hun), and the biblical bomb The Silver Chalice (1954). In between filmmaking were a host of television roles, none better than his down-and-out boxer in Requiem for a Heavyweight (1956), a rare sympathetic role that earned him an Emmy Award.
Back and forth overseas in the 1960s and 1970s, Palance would dominate foreign pictures in a number of different genres -- sandal-and-spear spectacles, biblical epics, war stories and "spaghetti westerns." Such films included The Battle of Austerlitz (1960), The Mongols (1961), Barabbas (1961), Night Train to Milan (1962), Contempt (1963), The Mercenary (1968), Marquis de Sade's Justine (1969), The Desperados (1969), It Can Be Done Amigo (1972), Chato's Land (1972), Blood and Bullets (1976), Welcome to Blood City (1977). Back home, he played Fidel Castro in Che! (1969) while also appearing in Monte Walsh (1970), Oklahoma Crude (1973) and The Four Deuces (1975).
On the made-for-television front, Jack played a number of nefarious nasties to perfection, ranging from Mr. Hyde (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1968)) to Dracula in Dracula (1974) to Ebenezer Scrooge in a "Wild West" version of the Dickens classic Ebenezer (1998). He also played one of the Hatfields in The Hatfields and the McCoys (1975). Jack switched gears to star as a "nice guy" lieutenant in the single-season TV cop drama Bronk (1975). In later years, the actor mellowed with age, as exemplified by roles in Bagdad Cafe (1987), but could still display his bad side as he did as an evil rancher, crime boss or drug lord in, respectively, Young Guns (1988), Batman (1989) and Tango & Cash (1989). Into his twilight years he showed a penchant for brash, quirky comedy capped by his Oscar-winning role in City Slickers (1991) and its sequel. He ended his film career playing Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1999).
His three children by his first wife, actress Virginia Baker -- Holly Palance, Brooke Palance, and Cody Palance -- all pursued acting careers and appeared with their father at one time or another. A man of few words off the set, he owned his own cattle ranch and displayed other creative sides as a exhibited painter and published poet.
His last years were marred by both failing health and the 1998 death of his son Cody from melanoma. He was later diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died at the Santa Barbara County home of his daughter, Holly Palance, in 2006.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Sophia Loren was born as Sofia Scicolone at the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome on September 20, 1934. Her father Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry her mother Romilda Villani, despite the fact that she was the mother of his two children (Sophia and her younger sister Maria Scicolone). Growing up in the slums of Pozzuoli during the second World War without any support from her father, she experienced great sadness in her childhood. Her life took an unexpected turn for the best when, at age 14, she entered into a beauty contest and placed as one of the finalists. It was here that Sophia caught the attention of film producer Carlo Ponti, some 22 years her senior, whom she later married. Perhaps he was the father figure she never experienced as a child. Under his guidance, Sophia was put under contract and appeared as an extra in ten films beginning with Le sei mogli di Barbablù (1950), before working her way up to supporting roles. In these early films, she was credited as "Sofia Lazzaro" because people joked her beauty could raise Lazzarus from the dead.
By her late teens, Sophia was playing lead roles in many Italian features such as La favorita (1952) and Aida (1953). In 1957, she embarked on a successful acting career in the United States, starring in Boy on a Dolphin (1957), Legend of the Lost (1957), and The Pride and the Passion (1957) that year. She had a short-lived but much-publicized fling with co-star Cary Grant, who was nearly 31 years her senior. She was only 22 while he was 53, and she rejected a marriage proposal from him. They were paired together a second time in the family-friendly romantic comedy Houseboat (1958). While under contract to Paramount, Sophia starred in Desire Under the Elms (1958), The Key (1958), The Black Orchid (1958), It Started in Naples (1960), Heller in Pink Tights (1960), A Breath of Scandal (1960), and The Millionairess (1960) before returning to Italy to star in Two Women (1960). The film was a period piece about a woman living in war-torn Italy who is raped while trying to protect her young daughter. Originally cast as the more glamorous child, Sophia fought against type and was re-cast as the mother, displaying a lack of vanity and proving herself as a genuine actress. This performance received international acclaim and was honored with an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Sophia remained a bona fide international movie star throughout the sixties and seventies, making films on both sides of the Atlantic, and starring opposite such leading men as Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck, and Charlton Heston. Her English-language films included El Cid (1961), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Arabesque (1966), Man of La Mancha (1972), and The Cassandra Crossing (1976). She gained wider respect with her Italian films, especially Marriage Italian Style (1964) and A Special Day (1977), both of which co-starred Marcello Mastroianni. During these years she received a second Oscar nomination and won five Golden Globe Awards.
From the eighties onward, Sophia's appearances on the big screen came few and far between. She preferred to spend the majority of her time raising sons Carlo Ponti Jr. (b. 1968) and Edoardo Ponti (b. 1973). Her only acting credits during the decade were five television films, beginning with Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (1980), a biopic in which she portrayed herself and her mother. She ventured into other areas of business and became the first actress to launch her own fragrance and design of eyewear. In 1982 she voluntarily spent nineteen days in jail for tax evasion.
In 1991 Sophia received an Honorary Academy Award for her body of work, and was declared "one of world cinema's greatest treasures." That same year, she experienced a terrible loss when her mother died of cancer. Her return to mainstream films in Ready to Wear (1994) was well-received, although the film as a whole was not. She followed this up with her biggest U.S. hit in years, the comedy Grumpier Old Men (1995), in which she played a sexy divorcée who seduces Walter Matthau. Over the next decade Sophia had plum roles in a few independent films like Soleil (1997), Between Strangers (2002) (directed by Edoardo), and Lives of the Saints (2004). Still beautiful at 72, she posed scantily-clad for the 2007 Pirelli Calendar. Sadly, that same year she mourned the death of her 94-year-old spouse, Carlo Ponti. In 2009, after far too much time away from film, she appeared in the musical Nine (2009) opposite Daniel Day-Lewis. These days Sophia is based in Switzerland but frequently travels to the states to spend time with her sons and their families (Eduardo is married to actress Sasha Alexander). Sophia Loren remains one of the most beloved and recognizable figures in the international film world.- Actor
- Producer
Don Collier made over 200 credited movie and television appearances. He performed with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Anthony Quinn, Dean Martin, Tom Selleck, James Arness, and even Elvis Presley. His first role was as an extra in 1948 in the western Massacre River (1949). This was followed by two more westerns -- Davy Crockett, Indian Scout (1950) and Fort Apache (1948) with John Wayne. He later appeared in three more John Wayne movies.
In 1959, Collier won the leading role of U.S. Deputy Marshal Will Foreman in the NBC series, Outlaws (1960). Starring with Don were Barton MacLane and Jock Gaynor. The second season of Outlaws (1960) found Will Foreman as a full-fledged Marshal. New characters were played by Bruce Yarnell, Slim Pickens, and Judy Lewis.
Collier kept busy appearing on all the other western TV shows, such as Bonanza (1959), Gunsmoke (1955), Wagon Train (1957), Branded (1965), and Death Valley Days (1952). In 1968, he was cast as the foreman of the ranch The High Chaparral (1967) in David Dortort's latest western series of the same name. Working alongside a extremely talented and experienced cast, his portrayal of Sam Butler was fundamental to the success of the highly acclaimed show, which ran until 1971. Even his commercials took advantage of his cowboy persona, when he became a 1980s icon as The Gum Fighter for Hubba Bubba Bubble Gum. More movies and TV kept him busy. Then he went further back in time when he was called on play the recurring role of William Tompkins in The Young Riders (1989).
He continued to guest star on TV in and out of the west in Little House on the Prairie (1974), two made-for-TV Gunsmoke movies (Gunsmoke: To the Last Man (1992) and Gunsmoke: One Man's Justice (1994)), a made-for-TV Bonanza movie (Bonanza: Under Attack (1995)), Banacek (1972), The Waltons (1972), Highway to Heaven (1984) and such big-screen movies as Tombstone (1993).
He worked on a western radio drama series titled West of the Story and was sidekick to Fred Imus on Sirius Radio's weekly show, Fred's Trailer Park Bash until Imus' death in 2011. He remained active with public appearances at Western and nostalgia shows like Western Legends Roundup in Kanab, Utah; Territorial Days in Tombstone, Ariz.; and the 50th Anniversary of The High Chaparral event being hosted in Sept. 2017 in Hollywood.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Gruff, burly American character actor. Born in 1903 in Benkelman, Nebraska (confirmed by Social Security records; sources stating 1905 or Denver, Colorado are in error.) Bond grew up in Denver, the son of a lumberyard worker. He attended the University of Southern California, where he got work as an extra through a football teammate who would become both his best friend and one of cinema's biggest stars: John Wayne. Director John Ford promoted Bond from extra to supporting player in the film Salute (1929), and became another fast friend. An arrogant man of little tact, yet fun-loving in the extreme, Bond was either loved or hated by all who knew him. His face and personality fit perfectly into almost any type of film, and he appeared in hundreds of pictures in his more than 30-year career, in both bit parts and major supporting roles. In the films of Wayne and Ford, particularly, he was nearly always present. Among his most memorable roles are John L. Sullivan in Gentleman Jim (1942), Det. Tom Polhaus in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and the Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnson Clayton The Searchers (1956). An ardent but anti-intellectual patriot, he was perhaps the most vehement proponent, among the Hollywood community, of blacklisting in the witch hunts of the 1950s, and he served as a most unforgiving president of the ultra-right-wing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. In the mid-'50s he gained his greatest fame as the star of TV's Wagon Train (1957). During its production, Bond traveled to Dallas, Texas, to attend a football game and died there in his hotel room of a massive heart attack.- The multi-faceted Polish-born performer Lili Valenty appeared in a dozen or so Broadway plays in the 30s, 40s and 50s, then went on to enliven a number of routine on-camera projects in her twilight years. Born at the turn of the century, she received her start on the German stage where she became a star. In the early 1930s she emigrated to America and tried to parlay her European success into stardom here. Although she fell quite short, she did launch a moderately successful career on both radio and the Broadway stage. Some of her NY theater productions included "Bitter Stream" (her debut) 1936, "Cue for Passion" (1940), "The Land Is Bright" (1941), "Sky Drift" (1945), and "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep" (1950). In 1955 she was a replacement in the role of Baroness Livenbaum in the successful Broadway production of "Anastasia" starring Viveca Lindfors and Eugenie Leontovich, which later went on tour. Lili later transitioned into the film and TV mediums, predominantly in decorative fluff unworthy of her talents. Although she made her film debut in support of Anna Magnani in the melodrama Wild Is the Wind (1957), she continued rather inauspiciously from there with a minor dowager role in Can-Can (1960), and typical ethnic parts in The Story of Ruth (1960), the Troy Donahue / Suzanne Pleshette romantic excursion Rome Adventure (1962), one of Elvis Presley's weaker vehicles Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), and the Jayne Mansfield "comedy" It Happened in Athens (1962). Sometimes billed as "Lili Valenti", she appeared sparingly after this as various mamas, madames, gypsies, nuns, ballet teachers, and the like on episodic TV. She died in Los Angeles in 1987 at age 86 and left no survivors.