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Jacinto Taras Riddick was born in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Cop Out (2010), In the Cut (2003) and A Brother's Whisper (2022).- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Before signing with director Stanley Donen to play Michael Caine's libidinous best friend in Blame It on Rio (1984), Joe Bologna netted rave reviews for his Sid Caesar send-up in the well-received comedy My Favorite Year (1982) with Peter O'Toole. Well known as both a writer and an actor, Bologna dates his interest in the theater from his student days at Brown University, when a casting notice called for "non-actor" types to fill roles in a stage production of "Stalag 17." He landed the leading part but did not act again for ten years. Bologna graduated from Brown with a degree in art history, and a tour with the Marines followed. When he was discharged from the service, he started directing short films and writing special comedy material. "A monologue is the hardest thing in the world to write, because you're only as good as your last joke," explains Bologna. "That's why comedians are so neurotic." Bologna made his Broadway debut as the star and co-author of the comedy smash "Lovers and Other Strangers." Together with his wife Renée Taylor, he wrote and starred in Made for Each Other (1971). His other film credits include roles in Cops and Robbers (1973), Honor Thy Father (1973), The Big Bus (1976) and Chapter Two (1979). He also co-starred with Taylor in the Emmy-winning television special Acts of Love and Other Comedies (1973), which they wrote together, and then starred in the made-for-television movie Torn Between Two Lovers (1979) with Lee Remick, before reuniting with Taylor in the critically acclaimed Broadway hit "It Had To Be You." From there it was back to television for the CBS TV movie One Cooks, the Other Doesn't (1983) with Suzanne Pleshette. In 1991 he starred with Matt LeBlanc in Top of the Heap (1991), a spin-off from the hit series Married... with Children (1987), but it didn't click with audiences the way "MWC" did and was canceled rather quickly.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Multi-talented actress Lynne Thigpen was born Cherlynne Thigpen in Joliet, Illinois, on December 22, 1948. She performed in community theater and university theater productions while attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Following graduation, she taught high-school English for a short time, but her interest in acting eventually prevailed over teaching. Her desire to act professionally was further fueled by a strong set of vocal chops.
Moving to New York, Lynne subsequently won a singing role as part of the ragtag disciple ensemble in the hip, flower-powered musical "Godspell" in 1971. Two years later she transferred her role to film along with several other members of the original stage cast. Godspell (1973) opened a major door for the actress as a performer of boundless energy and vocal power, as exemplified by her rousing version of "O Bless the Lord My Soul."
Lynne continued on the 1970s musical stage with roles in "The Magic Show" and the blue-collar piece "Working," and in 1981 earned a Tony nomination for her powerhouse performance in "Tintypes." She eventually reasoned, however, that if she was to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress, she would need to refocus her energies. She then abandoned her tuneful ways and ventured assertively into films and TV.
During her 30-year career, Lynne went on to appear in nearly 40 movies and numerous television series, usually secondary in nature but alternately fiery and dignified in character. Lynne became a strong, set-jawed figure in social and urban drama as she managed to avoid the easy pitfalls of typecasting. Though most of her early film parts seemed small and insignificant, she continued to grow and gain a more assured footing while appearing in such popular features as Tootsie (1982), Sweet Liberty (1986), Hello Again (1987), and Running on Empty (1988).
Every now and then she was given a chance to shine, as with her volatile school parent in Lean on Me (1989). TV was a more palpable and productive medium for her with a stand-out recurring role as a judge on L.A. Law (1986) and a long-running part on the daytime soap All My Children (1970). She also committed herself to wholesome viewing for children, portraying the unnamed Chief on the PBS children's series Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (1991) and Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? (1996), earning four Emmy nominations in the process.
Throughout the years, Lynne remained a vital force on the stage. She won a Los Angeles Drama Critics award for her performance in August Wilson's "Fences," two off-Broadway Obies for Athol Fugard's "Boesman and Lena" (1992) and "Jar the Floor" (2000), and a Tony for "Best Supporting Actress" for her portrayal of a half-Black, half-Jewish feminist in "An American Daughter" (1997).
Other strong theater roles came with "A Month of Sundays" (1987) and as a spunky 101-year-old maiden woman in "Having Our Say." Lynne's dusky-voiced command was also utilized to narrate more than 20 socially relevant books on tape. Her last regular TV series role was as police clerk and computer expert Ella Farmer on The District (2000), a role she played until her sudden death.
Lynne was found unconscious at her home in Marina del Rey, California, by a friend. She died on March 12, 2003, age 54, of a cerebral hemorrhage. Her final film Anger Management (2003), which starred Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson, was released posthumously.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
George Furth wrote eleven one-act plays planned for Kim Stanley as each of the separate leads. Hollywood actor Anthony Perkins, interested in directing, asked Sondheim to read the material. After Sondheim read the plays, Sondheim asked Harold Prince for his opinion; Prince thought the plays could form the basis for a musical. The theme would be New York marriages with a central character to examine those marriages. Originally titled "Threes", its plot revolves around Bobby, a single man unable to commit fully to a steady relationship, let alone marriage, four married couples, and one single couple, who are his best friends, and also includes Bobby's three free-wheeling girl friends.
Unlike most book musicals, which follow a clearly delineated plot, "Company" is a concept musical composed of short vignettes, presented in no particular chronological order, linked by a celebration for Bobby's 35th birthday. "Company" was among the first musicals to deal with adult themes and relationships. As Sondheim puts it, "Broadway theater has been for many years supported by upper-middle-class people with upper-middle-class problems. These people really want to escape that world when they go to the theatre, and then here we are with 'Company' talking about how we're going to bring it right back in their faces." "Company" opened in Boston in out-of-town tryouts, receiving mixed reviews, from the Boston Evening Globe "Brilliant", to Variety Magazine "The songs are for the most part undistinguished" and "As it stands now it's for ladies' matinees, homos and misogynists." The book was by Furth; Lyrics and music was by Stephen Sondheim; direction was by Prince.
"Company" opened on April 26, 1970, at the Alvin Theatre in New York City, where it ran for 705 performances after seven previews. Musical staging was by Michael Bennett, assisted by Bob Avian. The set design by Boris Aronson consisted of two working elevators and various vertical platforms that emphasized the musical's theme of isolation. "Company" was honored with the following theatre awards: the 1971 New York Drama Desk Award for (1) Outstanding Book of a Musical awarded to Furth; (2) Outstanding Director of a Musical awarded to Harold Prince; (3) Outstanding Lyrics and (4) Outstanding Music awarded to Stephen Sondheim; (5) Outstanding Set Design was awarded to Boris Aronson. The New York Theatre World Award was awarded to actor Susan Browning. In an unusual move, the Tony Awards committee deemed Larry Kert eligible for a nomination, an honor usually reserved for the actor (Dean Jones, in this case) who technically originates a role.
The musical was nominated for a record setting 14 Tony Award Nominations and won six. "Company" won the (1) Tony Award for Best Musical; (2) Tony Award Best Score (music) and (3) Tony Award Best Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; (4) Tony Award Best Book of a Musical by George Furth; (5) Tony Award Best Direction for a Musical by Harold Prince; (6) Tony Award Best Scenic Design by Boris Aronson; Nominated for Tony Award Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical (7) Larry Kert; Nominated for Tony Award Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical (8) Elaine Stritch and (9) Susan Browning; Nominated for Tony Award Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical (10) Charles Kimbrough; Nominated for Tony Award Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical (11) Barbara Barrie and (12) Pamela Myers; Nominated for Tony Award Best Choreography (13) Michael Bennett; Nominated for Tony Award Best Lighting Design (14) Robert Ornbo. (In the early 1990s, Furth and Sondheim revised the libretto, cutting and altering dialogue that had become dated and rewriting the end to act one.)- Sandy Ward was born on 12 July 1926 in Alamosa, Colorado, USA. He was an actor, known for The Perfect Storm (2000), Under Siege (1992) and Airplane II: The Sequel (1982). He was married to Roxann Michael and Irene Krinsky. He died on 6 March 2005 in Orange County, California, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
The son of Edwin Schallert, drama editor of the "Los Angeles Times" and the dean of West Coast critics, William Schallert became interested in an acting career while at UCLA in 1942. After graduation, he became involved with the Circle Theater (eventually becoming one of its owners) and made his film debut in The Foxes of Harrow (1947). He then became ubiquitous in movies and TV ever since, and from 1979 to 1981, he was president of the Screen Actors Guild. He stayed active with SAG projects and said he never gave retirement a thought.- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Wayne Tippit was born on 19 December 1932 in Lubbock, Texas, USA. He was an actor and assistant director, known for JFK (1991), Dancer, Texas Pop. 81 (1998) and Nurse Betty (2000). He was married to Carole Macho. He died on 28 August 2009 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
- Producer
- Production Manager
Actress with a notable career in films and television. Born and raised in Hollywood, she moved to New York at eighteen to study acting with Charles Conrad and ballet with Nina Fonaroff. She continued her training in Los Angeles at the Estelle Harman Workshop, securing a contract with Twentieth Century Fox. Baker's first film assignment was a true prestige picture: legendary director George Stevens cast her as Margot Frank, older sister of Anne, in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). Baker remained at Fox as a contract player performing in films such as Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), The Best of Everything (1959) and Nine Hours to Rama (1963). After her contract ended, she worked on a pair of distinguished projects at Universal Studios: Mirage (1965) with Gregory Peck and Marnie (1964) for director Alfred Hitchcock.
Baker was also a reliable performer in episodic television. She produced sensitive, affecting work in Rod Serling's touching They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar/The Last Laurel (1971) and, in a colorful turn as an unstable dipsomaniac, in Last Salute to the Commodore (1976).
While continuing to perform, Baker moved into producing small, independent films such as Portrait of Grandpa Doc (1977) with director Randal Kleiser and Never Never Land (1980) with Petula Clark, and larger projects such as the Emmy-nominated television miniseries adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance (1984) with Deborah Kerr.
More recently, she distinguished herself essaying the role of clan matriarch Rose Kennedy in the CBS miniseries Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (2000) and performed memorably with Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) as the distraught Senator Ruth Martin and, with Jim Carrey and Matthew Broderick, in The Cable Guy (1996).
In 2005, she acted with Frank Langella in the HBO series Unscripted (2005) directed by George Clooney. She also teaches acting courses in the School of Motion Pictures, Television, and Acting at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Ken Swofford was born on 25 July 1933 in Du Quoin, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Annie (1982), The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Black Roses (1988). He was married to Barbara Ann Biggs. He died on 1 November 2018 in Pacific Grove, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
A man of all mediums, this veteran, Manhattan-born character actor was named after his great-grandfather, Lincolnesque Congressman William Windom. Born in 1923, the son of Paul Windom, an architect, and the former Isobel Wells Peckham, Bill attended Williams College and the University of Kentucky, among others, before serving in the Army during WWII. After the war, he studied at both Fordham and Columbia universities in New York City before settling on an acting career. Trained at the American Repertory Theatre (1946-1961), he made his minor Broadway debut with the company in November of 1946 with revolving productions of "Henry VIII", "What Every Woman Knows", "John Gabriel Borkman" and "Androcles and the Lion". The following year, he continued building up his Broadway resume with roles in "Yellow Jack" and as the "White Rabbit" in a production of "Alice in Wonderland".
In the early 1950s, a new avenue opened up to Bill: television. For the duration of the decade, he shifted between stage, which included Broadway roles in "A Girl Can Tell" (1953), "Mademoiselle Colombe" (1954), "Fallen Angels" (1956), "The Greatest Man Alive" (1957) and "Viva Madison Avenue!" (1960), and TV drama, with stalwart work in such programs as Robert Montgomery Presents (1950) and Hallmark Hall of Fame (1951).
Major attention came Windom's way on TV moving into the following decade. In addition to hundreds of guest appearances on the most popular shows of the day (Combat! (1962), The Fugitive (1963), All in the Family (1971), Dallas (1978), Highway to Heaven (1984)), his standout work included a co-starring role opposite the luminous Inger Stevens in the popular light comedy series The Farmer's Daughter (1963). On the show, Windom portrayed widower "Glen Morley", a decent congressman who eventually falls in love with his pert and pretty Swedish governess "Katy Holstrum" (played by Stevens). Prior to this success, both he and Ms. Stevens had been singularly recognized for their sterling performances on various episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959). Following this success, Windom enjoyed critical notice as the cartoonist/protagonist whose vivid imagination causes problems on the homefront on the Thurberesque weekly series My World and Welcome to It (1969). Despite the show's critical merit and Windom's "Best Actor" Emmy win, the show, years ahead of its time, lasted only one season. Decades later, Windom would play James Thurber on stage in one-man shows.
The native New Yorker went on to essay a number of loungy Southerners and down-home types with incredible ease--both heroes and villains. He offered strong support in his film debut as Gregory Peck's opposing counsel in the Alabama-based To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), and went on to play prelate Norman Vincent Peale's father in One Man's Way (1964) starring Don Murray. Windom demonstrated the maturity to carry off the character even though he was only 5 years older than Murray. He also delivered a variety of pungent roles in such films as The Detective (1968) (as a closeted gay married man), Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud (1970) (as a political blowhard facing a series of murders) and The Man (1972) (as a racist politician).
Growing slier and stockier over the years, Windom provided TV audiences with a colorful gallery of characters, ranging from avuncular and ingratiating, to cantankerous and unscrupulous. He became a regular for over a decade on the Angela Lansbury whodunit series Murder, She Wrote (1984), joining the show in its second season as "Dr. Seth Hazlitt". He briefly left "Murder" to work on another series, Parenthood (1990), which was based on the highly popular 1989 movie starring Steve Martin. Here, Ed Begley Jr. took over the Martin part and Windom assumed Jason Robards's patriarchal role as Begley's father. The show was off the air within a few months, however, and Windom was invited back to the mystery series -- a semi-regular until the show folded in 1997.
In addition, Windom reprised a Star Trek (1966) portrayal as "Commodore Matt Decker," appeared in scores of mini-movies, has given voice to various book readings, presented a second one-man show (this time that of combat reporter Ernie Pyle), and continued to film at age 80+, his latest being Yesterday's Dreams (2005).
The five-times-married Windom was wed (for 36 years) to writer Patricia Veronica Tunder at the time of his death of congestive heart failure at age 88. A chess, tennis and sailing enthusiast, he is survived by four children: Rachel, Heather Juliet, Hope and Rebel Russell.Two step-daughters, Debora and Maggie as well as four grandchildren. He died at his home in Woodacre, California, on August 16, 2012.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Ken Howard was elected the National President of The Screen Actors Guild on September 24, 2009. He was a working member of SAG for over forty years. The Tony and two-time Emmy Award-winning actor, most recently received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie playing Phelan Beale in critically-acclaimed Grey Gardens (2009). The Emmy and Golden Globe-winning film starred Golden Globe-winner Drew Barrymore and fellow Emmy-winner Jessica Lange.
He starred opposite Jimmy Smits in the CBS drama Cane (2007) as "Joe Samuels". Howard portrayed the world-wise retired Detective Lieutenant "Max Cavanaugh" on NBC's Crossing Jordan (2001) and is perhaps best known for his performance as a street-savvy teacher in the classic drama The White Shadow (1978). He taught master classes at the American Repertory Theatre Institute and was an instructor at Harvard University and Harvard Law School. His teaching experience helped form the basis for his book, ACT NATURAL: How to Speak to Any Audience, published by Random House in 2003.
In 1968, two years into the three-year program at the Yale School of Drama, he accepted a small role on Broadway in Neil Simon's "Promises, Promises". He originated the role of Thomas Jefferson in the Tony-winning musical 1776 (1972), directed by Peter H. Hunt, receiving a Theatre World Award. Howard earned his Tony for his work as a young gym coach at a Catholic Boys' school in "Child's Play". He starred on Broadway in "Seesaw", "The Norman Conquests", "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" and the national tour of "Equus". In 2008, Howard starred in the one-man play, "According to Tip". His award-winning performance as Tip O'Neill was critically acclaimed.
His feature-film debut was in Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970), opposite Liza Minnelli. Additional films: 1776 (1972), Such Good Friends (1971), Clear and Present Danger (1994), The Net (1995), At First Sight (1999), 2:13 (2009), A Numbers Game (2010) and The Beacon (2009). He delighted movie audiences in 2005 with his work in FOX 2000's In Her Shoes (2005), with Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley MacLaine, and in Dreamer (2005), for Dreamworks, co-starring Kurt Russell and Dakota Fanning. He starred with Sylvester Stallone in Rambo (2008) (aka "Rambo IV"), Michael Clayton (2007) with George Clooney and Smother (2008) opposite Diane Keaton. He became firmly established in the public's mind as "Coach Ken Reeves" on MTM's prestigious The White Shadow (1978), a series which he co-created, based on his own experiences as the only white player on his high school basketball team. "White Shadow" fans can revisit the critically-acclaimed series of seasons 1 and 2 on DVD. He co-starred on the series It's Not Easy (1982), The Colbys (1985) and Dynasty (1981). He guest-starred in numerous prime-time shows: Boston Legal (2004), Dirty Sexy Money (2007), Eli Stone (2008), Cold Case (2003), Brothers & Sisters (2006), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), Arli$$ (1996), The West Wing (1999), Conviction (2006), Ghost Whisperer (2005), George Lopez (2002) and Showtime's Huff (2004), opposite his dear friend, Blythe Danner. He had a recurring role on Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000) and The Practice (1997). He starred in Sacrifices of the Heart (2007) for the Hallmark Channel. Miniseries include Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: JonBenét and the City of Boulder (2000), The Thorn Birds (1983), Rage of Angels (1983), OP Center (1995), Mastergate (1992), He's Not Your Son (1984), The Country Girl (1982), Murder in New Hampshire: The Pamela Smart Story (1991), Memories of Midnight (1991). Howard's first Emmy Award was for the on-camera narration of "Facts for Boys: The Body Human". His voice can be heard on more than 30 best-selling books on tape. A kidney transplant success (the gift of longtime friend and stunt-woman Jeannie Epper), Howard was appointed Chancellor of the National Kidney Foundation, and worked with their efforts to encourage people to donate their organs. He was a member of the Board of the Los Angeles Alzheimer's Committee and, along with his wife, Linda, served as Board members of Shambala Animal Preserve. He was also the national spokesperson for the Onyx and Breezy Foundation. Howard resided in Los Angeles, with his wife, retired stunt-woman Linda Fetters Howard Howard, and their recently rescued dogs, Harley Hoops and Hannah Henrietta.- Utilitarian actor Lonny Chapman remains one of those highly familiar character faces to which you can't quite place the name. While he appeared in over 30 films and well over 300 TV programs over a five-decade career, the theater remained his first and foremost passion and for which he is best remembered. From 1973 until his death 34 years later, he was artistic director of the Group Repertory Theatre (GRT), a North Hollywood non-profit acting organization for which he also served as producer, writer, director and actor. It was a place to which scores and scores of L.A.-based actors would, and did, call "home". The facility, which is still running today, was renamed the Lonny Chapman Group Repertory Theatre (LCGRT) in 1999 in loving tribute.
He was born Lon Leonard Chapman on October 1, 1920, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but grew up in the city of Joplin, Missouri. His interest in acting started while fairly young. Following his graduations from Joplin High School (1938) and Joplin Junior College (1940), the athletically-inclined Lonny attended the University of Oklahoma on a track scholarship. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, interrupted his college studies, joining the Marines the very next day. He saw major action in the South Pacific, including Guadalcanal. During his 5-year tour of duty, he contracted malaria; frequent recurrences would plague him the rest of his life. The track star returned to his Oklahoma college following war duty and graduated with a BFA in Drama in 1947.
While at college Lonny became best friends with actor Dennis Weaver, who was also a talented track-and-field athlete and fellow drama student. The two young hopefuls hitchhiked together to New York City where they began their respective careers. Within a year (1948) Lonny was appearing as "Wiley" in the Chicago company of "Mister Roberts", directed by Joshua Logan. The year after that, he made his Broadway debut in "The Closing Door", directed by Lee Strasberg. During this time, he also established strong ties with the prestigious Group Theatre and Actors Studio. It was at the Actors Studio that he forged lifelong friendships with director Mark Rydell, and character actors Martin Landau, R.G. Armstrong, Pat Hingle and Logan Ramsey, among others.
Arguably, the peak of Lonny's early stage career occurred in 1950, when he co-starred in the award-winning drama "Come Back, Little Sheba", William Inge's first play to be produced on Broadway. Art imitated life in this case as Lonny portrayed the second lead role of "Turk", a college student and star athlete. Coincidentally, friend Dennis Weaver became his understudy and eventually took over the role. Starring Tony winners Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer, only Ms. Booth went on to recreate her role in the film version for which she won the Oscar. Lonny, who had yet to make a movie, was replaced by the already-established Richard Jaeckel as "Turk" in the film version.
Lonny continued to solidify his reputation on Broadway with "The Chase" (1952), produced and directed by José Ferrer and starring Actors Studio exponents Kim Stanley and Kim Hunter; "Whistler's Grandmother" (1952), co-starring Josephine Hull; "The Ladies of the Corridor" (1953), directed by renowned "Group Theatre" member Harold Clurman; and the Horton Foote-penned "The Traveling Lady" (1954), again starring Ms. Stanley. Elsewhere, he earned excellent notices as "Tom" opposite Franchot Tone's "Joe" in a revival of William Saroyan's "The Time of Your Life" and as the "Gentleman Caller" in the first national tour of "The Glass Menagerie" starring Helen Hayes. By this time, Lonny had begun appearing on early TV, making his debut in an episode of Captain Video and His Cartoon Rangers (1956). His first film was a featured role in the tuneful Doris Day/Frank Sinatra drama Young at Heart (1954) in which he shared secondary scenes with Elisabeth Fraser. Actor Studio preeminent Elia Kazan took a strong liking to Lonny as an actor and looked for no one else to play the role of "Roy", the auto mechanic, in the classic John Steinbeck film East of Eden (1955), which catapulted James Dean to cult status. Kazan then gave Lonny a plum role in his film Baby Doll (1956).
In the late 1950s, Chapman began to show promise as a mover and shaker in the theater. In 1959, and for eight seasons following, he and co-founder Curt Conway devoted their summer seasons to the Cecilwood Theatre in Fishkill, New York, where he directed over 80 productions and performed in nearly thirty. Those up-and-comers who received their Equity union card under his guidance included Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall. As a playwright, Lonny saw two of his own works produced off-Broadway -- "The Buffalo Skinner" and "Cry of the Raindrop".
Lonny migrated to Los Angeles in the 1960s in order to pursue film and TV roles and, along with Martin Landau, helped form the West branch of the Actors Studio out there. His gritty look, trademark dusky voice, earnest demeanor and solid Midwest upbringing was his meal ticket for getting Hollywood work. Tailor-made for earthy, blue-collar roles, he was most at home playing unpretentious folk. One would be hard-pressed to see him donning tie and tails in highly elegant settings when he obviously appeared more at home in a plaid shirt with rolled up sleeves or, at the most, a tweed sport coat with loose tie. He provided stark authenticity to a number of westerns, crimers and small-town dramas. In Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), he portrayed the concerned diner operator who tends to Tippi Hedren's head wound after her first gull attack. He subsequently played a secondary but pivotal role in director/friend Mark Rydell's picture The Reivers (1969) set in Mississippi with Steve McQueen, and also one of Sally Field's chauvinistic bosses in the down-home drama Norma Rae (1979). He showed remarkable versatility with a top, change-of-pace supporting part in the early Woody Allen comedy classic Take the Money and Run (1969).
In 1973, he formed the Group Repertory Theatre and served as its first and only artistic director (until his death). Under his strong leadership, the non-profit organization staged over 350 productions, 45 of which were world premieres of original works. Sean Penn and Jennifer Tilly are former members of the company.
Quite visible on TV, he appeared to good advantage in prime-time programming. Headlining one TV series that never got firmly off the ground, The Investigator (1958), in which he played a private detective, he also co-starred with William Shatner and Jessica Walter in the "Law and Order" precursor For the People (1965). During the 60s, 70s and 80s, the gruff, bushy-browed actor could always be spotted somewhere on a topnotch crime show (Perry Mason (1957), The Defenders (1961) (recurring role), Judd for the Defense (1967), Mission: Impossible (1966), Mannix (1967), Ironside (1967), Quincy M.E. (1976), Matlock (1986)). He was given just as much footage sitting tall in the saddle in various western series (Laredo (1965), The Rifleman (1958), The Virginian (1962), Bonanza (1959)). He also appeared more than a few times on Gunsmoke (1955) and McCloud (1970), which starred his good friend Dennis Weaver. One particular highlight was his patriarchal role in an above-par TV-movie adaptation of The Rainmaker (1982) co-starring Tommy Lee Jones and Tuesday Weld.
A modest, down-to-earth kind of guy with a generous heart and spirit who preferred not to call attention to himself, Chapman was a sturdy film and TV presence over the years playing a hefty number of heroes, villains, boss types and confidantes. Although he worked consistently throughout the years, he never found the one role that might have moved him up the pecking order and propel him to the very top of the character echelon. In the twilight of his film career, he showed eerie countenance in his elderly watchman role in Nightwatch (1997), and last graced the screen as an octogenarian in Reindeer Games (2000), directed by John Frankenheimer and The Hunted (2003), directed by William Friedkin.
The last few years of his life were marred by failing health and the increasingly frail actor had to eventually be placed in a Sherman Oaks (California) care facility. He died there of complications from pneumonia and heart disease a little more than a week after his 87th birthday, on October 12, 2007. He was survived by his steadfast wife (of nearly 65 years), the former Erma Dean Gibbons, and their son Wyley Dean. - Actor
- Additional Crew
Ismael 'East' Carlo was born on 29 January 1942 in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. He is an actor, known for Eraser (1996), Patch Adams (1998) and Bandidas (2006).- Actor
- Sound Department
- Soundtrack
Raymond Cruz is perhaps best-known for his portrayal of the frighteningly lethal Tuco Salamanca in AMC's critically acclaimed show Breaking Bad (2008), a character he later reprised for the first two episodes of the spin-off Better Call Saul (2015). The role garnered him a Best Performance in a Television Series nomination from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films. Cruz recently wrapped his sixth and final season of TNT's Major Crimes (2012) as Julio Sanchez, a detective within the Los Angeles Police Department's Major Crimes Division, a role which originated on TNT's The Closer (2005) and which offered Cruz a nomination of Best Supporting Actor from the Imagen Foundation Awards. Other TV work includes Cleveland Abduction (2015), the TV movie in which he starred as kidnapper Ariel Castro, a role he felt personally connected to having known the victims of his crime personally. Other TV work includes CSI: Miami (2002), Lauren (2012), White Collar (2009), and Los Americans (2011), among others. Cruz has appeared in numerous films, including the highly touted Collateral Damage (2002), Training Day (2001), and Alien: Resurrection (2000).- Actor
- Soundtrack
Julius Carry was born on 12 March 1952 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for The Last Dragon (1985), The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (1993) and The New Guy (2002). He was married to Kathy Smith and Naomi. He died on 19 August 2008 in Studio City, California, USA.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Richardson Morse was born on 29 December 1938 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Contact (1997), National Security (2003) and House Made of Dawn (1972). He died on 14 March 2021 in Santa Barbara, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Jon Cypher was born on 13 January 1932 in New York City, New York, USA. He is an actor, known for Masters of the Universe (1987), Spontaneous Combustion (1989) and Favorite Son (1988). He is married to Carol Rosin. He was previously married to Ruth Wagner.- Actor
- Producer
Don is probably best remembered for his role as "Ernie Kaltenbrunner" in the 1985 comedy horror The Return of the Living Dead (1985). Don's career spans over 40 years in both film and TV. Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Ozone Park Queens, and later West Hempstead, Long Island, Don Calfa was originally interested in a career in the fine arts. He got the acting bug after seeing films such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Vertigo (1958). After dropping out of high school to study at Erwin Piscotor's "The Dramatic Workshop", (he finished his degree in night school), Calfa spent two years in summer stock which enabled him to join Actors Equity and eventually get his SAG card.
Don has starred alongside some of cinema's greats including Warren Beatty in Bugsy (1991), Michael Douglas in The Star Chamber (1983), Jack Nicholson in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), and many more.
Among Don's most memorable roles were as "Mr. Pitts" on the TV series Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990), "Ralph Wilum" in Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (1989) (aka "Chopper Chicks in Zombietown"), "Paulie" in Weekend at Bernie's (1989), "Scarface" in Foul Play (1978). His stage work includes extensive off-off-Broadway work, and he appeared on Broadway in "Lenny".
Nowadays, Don still works in the movie business and works the convention circuit in the USA, alongside his friend, Beverly Randolph, who he met on the set of The Return of the Living Dead (1985). Don recently, along with the rest of "The Return of the Living Dead" cast, recorded a cast commentary for a new special edition release of "The Return of the Living Dead". Plans are in motion for a "Return of the Living Dead" cast reunion in the United Kingdom in November 2007 at Birmingham's NEC Memorabilia event.- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Graham Greene was born on 22 June 1952 in Six Nations Reserve, Ontario, Canada. He is an actor and writer, known for The Green Mile (1999), Wind River (2017) and Dances with Wolves (1990). He has been married to Hilary Blackmore since 20 December 1990. They have two children.- Actor
- Director
- Location Management
Robert Pine is an American actor who is best known as Sgt. Joseph Getraer on the television series CHiPs (1977-1983). Including CHiPs, Pine has appeared in over 400 episodes of television. Pine was born in New York City on July 10, 1941, the son of Virginia (née Whitelaw) and Granville Martin Pine, a patent attorney. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1963. He is married to Gwynne Gilford, who appeared in several episodes of CHiPs as Betty Getraer, the wife of Pine's character. They have two children, actors Chris and Katie.- Kevin Kilner was born on 3 May 1958 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He is an actor, known for Raising Helen (2004), A Cinderella Story (2004) and Earth: Final Conflict (1997). He has been married to Jordan Baker since 10 October 1998.
- James Joseph Sloyan was born on February 24, 1940 in Indianapolis, Indiana; his family moved to Europe when he was a young boy, living in Rome, Capri, Milan, Switzerland, and Ireland.
When he was 17, his family moved back to the United States and settled in upstate New York, where he managed a theater. He received a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and after two years he went to work for Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival.
In 1962, he was drafted into the United States Army; after four years he returned to the NYSF and performed in 28 plays and choreographed all the onstage fights. He also appeared in the original off-Broadway stage version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". - Veteran theater actor James Sutorius has performed for the most prestigious regional and repertory companies in the country including California's Old Globe, La Jolla Playhouse, Center Theatre Group, Huntington Hartford, South Coast Repertory, and Pasadena Playhouse, as well as Lincoln Center, Yale Repertory, Seattle Repertory, Long Wharf Theatre, Cleveland Playhouse, Asolo State Theatre, Cleveland Playhouse, Arizona Repertory and Cherry Lane Theatre. While he has displayed his talents in scores of TV and film assignments over a three-decade period, his heart has remained true to the theater. Most recently he was seen on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre in Aaron Sorkin's new play "The Farnsworth Invention" that was directed by Des McAnuff and produced by Steven Spielberg. In 2007 he won two San Diego Theatre Critics Awards for his memorable performance as George in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" and for his multiple supporting roles in John Strand's play "Lincolnesque". Prior to that he was selected to co-star in Arthur Laurents "2 Lives" at the George Street Playhouse in New York and in Charles L. Mee Jr.'s play "A Perfect Wedding" at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles.
James was born in Ohio but raised in Wheaton, Illinois, the youngest of three sons born to an advertising executive and a homemaker. Attending the same Wheaton high school as John Belushi and Bob Woodward, James was quite active in sports. It was a leading role in a school production of "The Desperate Hours," however, that altered his career ambitions. Studying at Illinois' Wesleyan University, James had played the first of his three Hamlets by the time he received his BFA. He went on to train at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Michigan for two years before relocating to New York City to try his luck.
He didn't have to wait long or pay the bills by waiting tables or opening hotel doors. His deep, classically-trained voice was perfectly suited for voiceover work and almost immediately he had the good fortune of landing a 17-year job as the voice for Ragu Spaghetti Sauce and spawning the national catchphrase "Now, THAT'S Italian!" Voice-over work continues to this day pitching other products such as Coca Cola and Wrangler Jeans. He also lends his distinctive voice to audio books and short story anthologies on tape.
James made an auspicious Broadway debut in 1973 with "The Changing Room." In his very first entrance as a member of a rugby team, he had to walk downstage and strip off all his clothes! Instead of finding the experience terrifying, he actually found it liberating. Two years later he was playing Laertes at the Vivian Beaumont opposite Sam Waterston's Hamlet, and alongside a rising cast of stars that included Jane Alexander, Mandy Patinkin, George Hearn and John Heard. Following that in 1978 he played the son of Cameron Mitchell and Jan Sterling in "The November People" at the Billy Rose Theatre.
In the mid-1970s James broke into TV. With his intense good looks, he was deemed to play a number of no-nonsense professional types as well as heavies in dramatic programs. After guest roles on such shows as "Cannon" and "Kojak," he found series regular work supporting Bob Crane on his short-lived sitcom The Bob Crane Show (1975). His break, however, came when he nabbed the starring role of investigative reporter Mike Andros in the one-season The Andros Targets (1977), which filmed on the streets of New York. This success convinced him to make a decisive move to Los Angeles. Appearing in a number of notable TV movies including A Death in Canaan (1978), A Question of Love (1978), Skokie (1981), Space (1985) and On Wings of Eagles (1986), he went on to guest star on the most popular series of the day ("St. Elsewhere," "Family Ties," "21 Jump Street," "Murder, She Wrote," "L.A. Law," "The X Files", "Judging Amy"). He also found occasional recurring stints on such shows as "Dynasty". Sporadic film work came along in the form of I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (1982) starring Jill Clayburgh and Windy City (1984) with John Shea and Kate Capshaw.
It is his classical and contemporary work in theatre, however, that has sustained him over the years -- his multiple Hamlets and Macbeth, as well as his John Proctor in "The Crucible," Trigorin in "The Seagull," Astrov in "Uncle Vanya," Valmont in "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," McMurphy in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Sir Thomas More in "A Man for All Seasons," Dick Dudgeon in "The Devil's Disciple" and Marchbanks in "Candida." One special highlight was his highly successful return to Broadway in 1992 when he replaced "Monk" actor Tony Shalhoub as son Charlie in the hard-hitting, Tony Award-winning play "Conversations with My Father" opposite Judd Hirsch. - Actor
- Soundtrack
A 1960s pioneer of Asian-American theatre, Soon Tek Oh (aka Sun-Taek Oh, Soon-Tek Oh or Soon-Taik Oh) was born on June 29, 1932, in Mokpo, Korea at the time the country was under Imperial Japanese rule. He attended high school at Gwangju, South Korea, and went on to study at Yonsei University in Seoul. His family (including one sister) moved to the United States in 1959, where they settled in Southern California.
Oh studied at USC before attending UCLA and receiving his Masters of Fine Arts in acting and playwriting. Trained in performance at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse, his mounting of a California production of "Rashomon" led to his co-founding (along with fellow actors Mako, James Hong , Beulah Quo and five others) of the renowned Los Angeles' East West Players theatre company in 1965.
Breaking into TV that same year with a minor role on "I Spy," Oh resolved to work against the restrictive servile Asian stereotypes he found himself playing on such 60s TV programs as "The Wild, Wild West," "The Invaders" and "It Takes a Thief." Via the stage, he strove to broaden the types of roles available, which included other theatre troupes he founded or guided (i.e., Korean American Theatre Ensemble). As such, his companies went on to produce a variety of plays from Ibsen ("A Doll's House") and Shakespeare ("Twelfth Night") to Tony-winning vehicles ("Pippin," "Equus, "Sweeney Todd") to original contemporary pieces, several written by Oh himself.
Following unbilled parts as secret agent types in such films as Murderers' Row (1966) and The President's Analyst (1967), he achieve a degree of notoriety in the James Bond feature The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) as Lt. Hip, an intelligence operative. He continued sporadically in films with featured parts in Good Guys Wear Black (1978), The Final Countdown (1980), Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985), Steele Justice (1987), Bialy smok (1987), Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987), Collision Course (1989), A Home of Our Own (1993), Red Sun Rising (1994), Beverly Hills Ninja (1997), Yellow (1997) (the first film by and featuring Korean-Americans) and gave voice to Fa Zhou, the father, in the Disney animated classic Mulan (1998). TV roles continued to come his way with several episodes of "Kung Fu," "Hawaii Five-0," "M*A*S*H" and "Magnum P.I.,, as well as a recurring part as a lieutenant on Charlie's Angels (1976) and the quality mini-series East of Eden (1981) and Marco Polo (1982).
Oh and Mako both made their Broadway debuts in Stephen Sondheim's "Pacific Overtures" in 1976. His later stage performances include "The Woman Warrior (1994) and "The Square" (2000). He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008 by the San Diego Asian Film Festival.
Making his last on-camera appearance featured in the action film Gang-jeok (2006), Oh was later diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and forced to retire. He died of complications in Los Angeles, on April 4, 2018, at age 85.- Allan Miller is an actor, director, teacher and writer. He has acted in over two hundred films and television productions, and dozens of plays. His last film was Bad Words directed by Jason Bateman. He's also appeared in Star Trek III, The Champ, MacArthur, Bound for Glory, Fun with Dick and Jane, Cruising, Two Minute Warning and Baby Blue Marine.
On stage, he was most recently in Curve of Departure at South Coast Rep, Awake and Sing at the Odyssey Theatre, and before that Broadway Bound at La Mirada Theater, Three Views of the Same Object at Rogue Machine Theatre and played Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman at South Coast Rep. He also co-starred in the Broadway production of Broadway Bound, and Brooklyn Boy by Donald Margulies.
He teaches acting and coaches privately. Students can sign up for his free weekly Zoom class on his website: allanmiller.org. He's taught at The Actors Studio, where he was a moderator as well as an instructor, and at the Yale School of Drama, New York University's MFA professional program, the Focus Theatre in Dublin, and the International Actors group in Rome. He is the author of "A Passion for Acting, now in its third printing and recently released digitally on Amazon, and a DVD "The Craft of Acting: Auditioning."
Mr. Miller was artistic director of the Back Alley Theatre for ten years, for which he received the LADCC Margaret Hartford Award for Distinguished Achievement. At the Back Alley he directed more than a dozen productions, including Are You Now or Have You Ever Been... and The Fox, for which he received a LADCC award for direction. Other directing credits include The Fox Off-Broadway at the Roundabout Theatre and at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. He has directed nine productions at the Odyssey Theatre, including most recently, Juno and the Paycock, This Lime Tree Bower, Taking Steps, and First Love. He also directed Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf for the Actors Studio West.
He wrote the play The Fox, based on the novella by D. H. Lawrence, which has been produced by theatres in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Seattle, Fort Worth, Austin, San Francisco, San Diego, most of the fifty states, including the territory of Puerto Rico, and has been optioned internationally in France, Germany, Belgium, Hong Kong, Canada, and Argentina. The play has toured England and Australia and has been translated into French, Spanish, German, and Chinese. It has been published by Samuel French in an acting edition, Doubleday for the Fireside Book Club, and the California Arts Council's West Coast Plays.
Mr. Miller is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, has served on the Board of Directors of the Screen Actors Guild, and has been a panelist for the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department and the California Arts Council. He studied with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, Uta Hagen at HB Studio, and Erwin Piscator at the Dramatic Workshop. - Actor
- Director
Trained professionally at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, a graduate of Dartmouth College, a Ph.D. in Dramatic Literature from Indiana University and, during his teaching days, a tenured Associate Professor, Stephen Macht is one of the best-educated working actors in America, today.
Stephen Robert Macht was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Janette (Curlenjik) and Jerome Irving Macht. He is of Russian Jewish descent.
He starred as "Proctor" in "The Crucible", "Orsino" in "12th Night", and "Dunois" in "Saint Joan" at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada, where he was scouted and signed by Universal Television to come to Hollywood to begin his film career. Since then, he has played leading men in plays and dozens of television movies and feature films from "Yoni Netanyahu" in Raid on Entebbe (1976) to "Warwick" in Stephen King's Graveyard Shift (1990), and from "Dan Lavetta" in The Immigrants (1978) to "David Keeler", Sharon Gless' love interest on Cagney & Lacey (1981). He has recurred on Boston Public (2000), Jack & Jill (1999) and Boomtown (2002). Soap Opera Digest nominated Stephen as "2007 Villain of the Year, for Trevor Lasing", on General Hospital (1963), a role he played through 2008.
Opposite Charlton Heston, Stephen played "King Henry VIII" in "A Man For All Seasons" at the Ahmansohn Theatre, and prosecutor "Challee" in "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial" at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He was "Henry II" in "Lion in Winter" at the Cleveland Playhouse and, most recently, "Lyman Felt" in Arthur Miller's "Ride Down Mt. Morgan" at the Will Geer Theatre in what Variety called "a juicy star turn, appropriate for a character defined as a recklessly sexual, splendidly hungry man".
Stephen taught at Smith College, was a tenured professor at Queens College in New York and has directed theatre and television in Los Angeles. Together with his wife, he is the father of actor Gabriel Macht, and of three other children, and also has eight grandchildren and counting. His greatest hobby and future plans are to provide a lot of entertainment for years to come. Through the years, Macht has participated in and supported various charitable causes, serving as an Honorary Board Member of the Parkinson's Resource Organization and its Master of Ceremonies for the past ten years. In 1981 and 1982, he was the original moderator of the Los Angeles Jewish Federation's JTV. He has been spokesman for the Jewish National Fund, M.C. for several Israeli Consulate functions and is a board member of The Center For Jewish Culture and Creativity under leadership of Ruth and John Rauch. In 2013 Stephen earned his M.A. in Jewish Studies at the Academy for the Jewish Religion, Ca. and is an ordained Chaplain. He officiates at weddings, baby namings, and funerals by private arrangement.- A highly engaging, charismatic, and reliable character actor with a long and distinguished career spanning half a century, Jerry Hardin has been gracing both the big and small screen, and stage, with many enjoyable performances, highlighted by a relaxed and pleasing Southern twang. Born November 20, 1929, in Dallas, Texas, where his father was a rancher, Hardin was raised outside the city, where he first began acting in school productions. This would lead to a scholarship to Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and a Fulbright scholarship to the Royal Academy for Dramatic Art in London. He had his first (uncredited) film role in the classic drive-in flick, Thunder Road (1958), starring Robert Mitchum, and, by 1961, had racked up an impressive amount of over 75 theatre credits. He became incredibly prolific in the 1970s, when his film career really took off, and he also started appearing regularly on TV series, including Gunsmoke (1955), Starsky and Hutch (1975), The Streets of San Francisco (1972), Little House on the Prairie (1974), The Rockford Files (1974), Miami Vice (1984), L.A. Law (1986), Melrose Place (1992), Murder, She Wrote (1984) and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993). A particularly memorable performance, by Mr. Hardin in this medium, was that of Mark Twain in episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). He would also prove to be in high demand for film roles, appearing in the likes of Wolf Lake (1979), Heartland (1979), 1941 (1979), Honky Tonk Freeway (1981), Reds (1981), Missing (1982), Honkytonk Man (1982), Cujo (1983), The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), Warning Sign (1985), Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Wanted: Dead or Alive (1986), The Hot Spot (1990), The Firm (1993), Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), Hidalgo (2004) and Are We There Yet? (2005). His performance as one of the subtly sinister senior partners in The Firm (1993) impressed The X-Files (1993) creator Chris Carter enough that Carter would create the character of "Deep Throat" with him in mind, and it's this role that is definitely one of Hardin's most famous. A noteworthy stage performance of his was in the play, "The Rainmaker", working alongside Jayne Atkinson, Woody Harrelson and David Aaron Baker.
Hardin's wife is actress and acting teacher Diane Hardin (her students have included Leonardo DiCaprio, Hilary Swank, Stephen Dorff, River Phoenix, Kellie Martin and Christopher Masterson), his daughter is actress Melora Hardin, and his son Shawn Hardin was chief operating officer, in-charge-of product, for NBC-1 in San Francisco. - Ned Romero was born on 4 December 1926 in Franklin, Louisiana, USA. He was an actor, known for I Will Fight No More Forever (1975), Star Trek (1966) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). He was married to Gwyneth E. Howard Coty and Jolene Lontere. He died on 4 November 2017 in Palm Desert, California, USA.
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- Writer
William Talman is best known for his role as Hamilton Burger, the district attorney who perpetually lost to Perry Mason in the long-running series Perry Mason (1957). Talman was an accomplished screenwriter and stage and screen actor, and appeared in numerous roles on television as a character actor from the mid-'50s until his death from lung cancer in August of 1968.
He was born William Whitney Talman Jr. on February 4, 1915, in Detroit, Michigan, the first son of William Talman Sr. and Ada B. Talman. His father was vice-president of an electrical company that manufactured industrial heat-measuring recording devices and yachts. During an interview with "TV Guide" in April of 1963, Talman told writer Richard Gehman that his father made a good deal of money, "enough to send me to school in a limousine each day. Public school. That meant I had to fight my way in and out." In school Talman developed an avid interest in athletics, especially boxing and baseball. He furthered his interest in boxing early in life by fighting on the local parish boxing team of the Episcopal Church. At one point in his life he played semi-professional baseball. He was educated at Cranbrook School and later attended Dartmouth College, where his interest in acting first took hold. He left Dartmouth in his sophomore year after an incident in which a freshman he knew "loaned" him a car so that he could go visit a girlfriend at Smith College. A bus forced the car off of the road and it hit a tree. A boy who was with them was killed and it later turned out that the car was stolen. Talman was asked to resign from Dartmouth, which he did. Although invited back the next year, he never returned.
Talman began his acting career on Broadway in the early 1940s. His first roles were in "Beverly Hills", "Yokel Boy" and "Of Mice and Men." He was appearing in "Spring Again" at Henry Miller's Theatre in January of 1942 when he received his draft notice for induction into the US army. Prior to leaving for active duty he married actress Lynne Carter. He entered the army as a private and saw 30 months of service in the Pacific, where he won a commission and eventually was promoted to the rank of major. During the war his assignments included the managing of a school that trained soldiers to put on shows. At one point he was in charge of training boxing and baseball teams. He was proud of the fact that his teams won both the boxing and baseball championships of the Western Pacific. Talman returned to Broadway after the war. Two of his more notable postwar roles were in Joseph M. Hyman's and Bernard Hart's production of "Dear Ruth" in 1946 and Henry Adrian's production of "A Young Man's Fancy" in 1947. In 1949 the actor moved to Hollywood and began making films. His first picture was Red, Hot and Blue (1949), in which he played gangster Bunny Harris. Other movie and television roles soon followed. In 1951 his wife sued him for divorce, citing extreme cruelty. She claimed that Talman had criticized her publicly in front of their friends. The divorce was granted in September of 1952 with custody of the couple's three-year-old daughter, Lynda, and 24% of Talman's income awarded to his former spouse. He went on to perform in over 17 films, several of which he starred in. Some of his more notable films include The Racket (1951), Armored Car Robbery (1950), Smoke Signal (1955), Big House, U.S.A. (1955), One Minute to Zero (1952) and Two-Gun Lady (1955). His best known role was as escaped killer and kidnapper Emmett Myers in the classic film noir The Hitch-Hiker (1953), directed by Ida Lupino. He also co-wrote two feature films, I've Lived Before (1956) and Joe Dakota (1957).
Talman married actress Barbara Read in 1952. The couple had two children, Barbie and Billy, but they separated in September of 1959. In a tragic turn of events, his former wife took her own life in December of 1963 by closing up her house and turning on the gas jets. Notes she left behind blamed ill health for her action. In March of 1960 Talman made headlines when he was arrested during a police raid of an alleged "wild nude party" being held at the home of an acquaintance, Richard Reibold. The incident caused CBS to invoke a morals clause in his contract that cost him his job on "Perry Mason." The charges were eventually dropped after a trial that was closely followed by the newspapers and sensationalized by the tabloids. Talman always maintained his innocence, and following the trial the judge in the case criticized the police for arresting him. He remained off the show until December of 1960, when CBS reinstated him after a flood of fan mail from supporters. He married Margaret (Peggy) Flanigan and adopted her two children from a previous marriage, Steve and Debbie. After the "Perry Mason" show ended in 1966, Talman went on a six-week tour of Vietnam to entertain the troops. Upon his return home, it was discovered that he had lung cancer. His last film was The Ballad of Josie (1967), with Doris Day.
Near the end of his life, Talman did something that, while common nowadays, was an extraordinarily courageous thing for an actor to do at that time. A heavy smoker for most of his life, he was angered by a newspaper article he read about actors being afraid to make anti-smoking messages for fear of losing opportunities to make lucrative cigarette commercials. He decided to do something about it. Talman volunteered to make a short film for the American Cancer Society, part of which was shown in late 1968 and 1969 as a television anti-smoking commercial. He was the first actor to ever make such a commercial. When the message was being filmed, Talman knew he was dying, was in a great deal of pain and was in fact under heavy sedation for it. The short film begins, "Before I die I want to do what I can to leave a world free of cancer for my six children . . . ",
William Talman died of cardiac arrest due to complications from lung cancer at West Valley Community Hospital in Encino, California, on August 30, 1968, at the age of 53. Although his life was short, he left an enduring legacy through his writing, his acting, his heroism and his never-ending championing of the underdog.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Veteran stage and TV actor David Ackroyd was born on May 30, 1940 in Orange, New Jersey, the son of Arthur, an insurance adjuster, and Charlotte (nee Henderson) Ackroyd. He studied at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania where he received his BA in 1962 as a ROTC student. Following his graduation he appeared in community theater productions while serving in Arizona with the military. He then focused on the arts as a career after enrolling at the Yale Drama School where he earned his Masters of Fine Arts in 1968.
Ackroyd garnered early credits at Yale Repertory Theatre (for three seasons) and Williamstown Theatre Festival (for six seasons). He also found challenging and varied stage work outside the U.S., in Taiwan, Russia, Poland, Germany, France, and the former Czechoslovakia. Dark and handsome, he extended his stage career onscreen in the early 1970s, beginning with the daytime soap operas The Secret Storm (1954) and Another World (1964). He progressed to prime-time work as Gary Ewing in Dallas (1978) until Ted Shackelford successfully took over the role when the character moved front and center with the spin-off drama Knots Landing (1979).
A durable guest star for decades on such popular TV series as Lou Grant (1977), Trapper John, M.D. (1979), St. Elsewhere (1982), Cagney & Lacey (1981), MacGyver (1985), Highway to Heaven (1984), Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989), Murder, She Wrote (1984), Walker, Texas Ranger (1993), and Xena: Warrior Princess (1995), Ackroyd had recurring roles as Dr. Boyer in AfterMASH (1983) and Dr. Bart Langley in A Peaceable Kingdom (1989). He provided strong support in the two-part TV special The Dark Secret of Harvest Home (1978) (starring Bette Davis) as well as such made-for-television movies as And I Alone Survived (1978), Women in White (1979), Deadly Lessons (1983), When Your Lover Leaves (1983), The Children of Times Square (1986), Hell Hath No Fury (1991), The Fear Inside (1992), and Against the Wall (1994) and four exceptional mini-series (The Word (1978), Nutcracker: Money, Madness & Murder (1987), Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story (1987), and Windmills of the Gods (1988)). Ackroyd also appeared in feature films, including The Mountain Men (1980), The Sound of Murder (1982), Wrestling with God (1990), Dark Angel (1990), Love, Cheat & Steal (1993), Dead On (1994), Raven (1996), and No Strings Attached (1997).
Prone to playing intelligent, upscale types or white-collar professionals (senators, doctors, lawyers, etc.), David continued to prevail on the stage with potent performances in 'Unlikely Heroes' (his 1971 Broadway debut), 'The Rivals', 'Juno and the Paycock', 'Hamlet' (as Rosencrantz), 'Private Lives', 'Children of a Lesser God' (replacing original star John Rubinstein), 'A Soldier's Play', 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?', 'Six Characters in Search of an Author', and an 2003 off-Broadway appearance in 'It Just Catches'. A well-seasoned narrator in documentary stories for the History Channel, he has sometimes utilized his well-modulated vocals for such animated cartoons as 'Johnny Quest' and 'Captain Planet and the Planeteers'. Much of his most recent professional work has been voice work.
Long married to wife Ruth Liming, a college admissions officer, the couple has two daughters, Jessica and Abigail. He is a professor of drama at Flathead Valley Community College (Kalispell, Montana) and a founding member of the Alpine Theatre Project which produces plays for the Whitefish Theatre Company.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Taylor Nichols was born on 3 March 1959 in Lansing, Michigan, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Metropolitan (1989), Barcelona (1994) and Boiler Room (2000). He has been married to Margarita de Eguilior since 1995.- A solid, reliable working actor since the early 70s, Frederick Coffin was born January 16, 1943 to actress Winnie Collins, as one of five siblings. Educated at Western Reserve Academy, in Hudson, Ohio, Coffin was both an excellent athlete and student. It was at WRA that he first began theater studies; he graduated in 1961 with a BA in theater. He enrolled at the University of Michigan in 1962 intending to play football, but changed his focus to acting after deciding to perform in a musical. He would graduate from the U of M with a Masters in Theater. In the early 70s, he would begin to perform in plays including "Much Ado About Nothing", "As You Like It", and "King Lear". He would also start doing guest shots on TV series around this time, amassing a great many credits in the medium, appearing on such shows as Kojak (1973), Hill Street Blues (1981), Moonlighting (1985), The Twilight Zone (1985), Dallas (1978), Hunter (1984) and L.A. Law (1986) - to name only several. In the late 70s, he would start to lend his engaging, professional, stolid presence to such features as King of the Gypsies (1978), Mother's Day (1980) (in which he was billed as 'Holden McGuire') and Alone in the Dark (1982), graduating to major supporting parts in films such as The Bedroom Window (1987), Shoot to Kill (1988), Hard to Kill (1990) (in which he was particularly fine as Steven Seagals old friend), Wayne's World (1992) and Identity (2003), which would sadly turn out to be his final feature film. He would die on July 31, 2003 in Los Angeles of lung cancer, survived by wife Barbara Monte-Britton, whom he married in 1977, and by his three brothers.
- Jay Acovone is a versatile actor who is best known for his ability to play authoritative characters such as Mafia bosses, villains, police/military, and lawyers. He was born in NYC; his parents later moved to Mahopac, NY, where he graduated from Mahopac High School. While he was always an avid movie fan, it was a chance encounter with a friend, urging him to take part in a play, that set him on a path for a career in acting.
Acovone attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA) and the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York. His break came when he was cast to play "Skip Lee", opposite Al Pacino, in the controversial movie Cruising (1980) (written and directed by William Friedkin). He spent the next few years working on daytime television in NYC, but moved to Los Angeles when he landed a co-starring role in Hollywood Beat.
Acovone went on to have several supporting roles in film and television including Women of Valor (1986) and Cold Steel (1987) before being recruited to be a series regular on Beauty and the Beast (1987). After Beauty and the Beast ended, he continued to have multiple supporting or lead roles in TV and films including: Out for Justice (1991), Lookin' Italian (1994), Matlock (1986) and Friends (1994). The mid-1990s brought a role in the blockbuster hit Independence Day (1996) and a major recurring role in the TV series Stargate SG-1 (1997). Stargate-SG1 won multiple awards, including the Saturn Award for Best Syndicated/Cable Television Series for three different years.
The following decade led to a role in Cast Away (2000), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), and S.W.A.T. (2003); recurring roles in Silk Stalkings (1991), Sliders (1995), NYPD Blue (1993), and The X-Files (1993); guest-starring roles in CSI: NY (2004), Monk (2002), Criminal Minds (2005), and 24 (2001). In recent years, Acovone saw a brief return to daytime television with a recurring role on General Hospital (1963) (Maurice Benard), and then went on to guest-star on multiple hit TV dramas including: The Mentalist (2008), Leverage (2008), CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000), Vegas (2012), and NCIS (2003). In 2016, he acted in the motion capture video game Mafia III (2016), playing Mafia boss Sal Marcano.
In 2017, Acovone was asked to perform the audiobook version of George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones (2011))'s novel, "Wildcards-Dead Man's Hand", along with Adrian Paul.
Acovone lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their cat. - Robert Desiderio was born on 9 September 1951 in New York City, New York, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Knots Landing (1979), Liberal Arts (2012) and Ryan's Hope (1975). He has been married to Judith Light since 1 January 1985.
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- Producer
Stan Shaw was born on 14 July 1952 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for The Monster Squad (1987), Daylight (1996) and Cutthroat Island (1995). He has been married to Dr. Zoe Shaw since 30 June 1994. They have four children.- Actor
- Writer
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The Canadian-American actor Peter Donat had a 50-year-long career in TV, motion pictures and theater. So respected was Donat, that Francis Ford Coppola considered casting him in the role of Tom Hagen in The Godfather (1972) that went to Robert Duvall.
The nephew of Oscar-winning actor Robert Donat, Peter was born Pierre Collingwood Donat on January 20, 1928 in Kentville, Nova Scotia. His father, landscape gardener Philip Donat, was Anglo-Canadian while his Marie (née Bardet) was French-Canadian.
In 1950, the 22-year-old Donat moved to the United States to study drama at Yale. A naturalized U.S. citizen, Donat frequently returned to Canada for acting work, appearing in the lead in a 1961 production of Donald Jack's play "The Canvas Barricade" at the Stratford Festival. He was also in the Canadian TV serial Moment of Truth (1964), which was broadcast on commercial TV in the States.
Peter Donat was married for 16 years to Emmy-winning actor Michael Learned. The couple, who divorced in 1972, had three children: Caleb, Christopher, and Lucas.- He had an unsettled childhood, his family never staying in one place for very long. The youngest of three brothers, Joel Anthony Fabiani was born to an Italian-Austrian father (Ernest Fabiani, 1902-1988) and an Irish and Native American mother (Bessie Fabiani, née Holcomb, 1903-1992). He attended seventeen different schools, eventually joining the army and then majoring in English at Santa Rosa Junior College. There, Joel was bitten by the acting bug and this led to a two year-long stint at the Actor's Workshop in San Francisco where he learned stagecraft. From there, he moved to New York and began his professional career in summer stock and off-Broadway. One of his first roles was as a court's clerk in the play One Way Pendulum at the now defunct East 74th Street Theatre. During this performance he met his second wife, the actress Audree Rae (his first marriage to fellow work shop alumnus Katharine Ross had ended in divorce after two and a half years in 1962). Joel made his debut Broadway appearance in a revival of Beyond the Fringe '65.
On screen from 1964, he featured in the pilot episode for Ironside (1967) and had a small recurring part in the medical soap The Doctors (1963). He also made a series of cigarette commercials as a debonair tuxedo-wearing James Bond-type character. This seemed to fit the bill for ITC producer Monty Berman who was scouting in the U.S. for an American actor to star in a projected espionage/crime series filmed in Britain. Before long, Joel and his wife relocated to the U.K. where the actor went on to make his name in a career defining role. As Stewart Sullivan, he was cast as the leader of a three-member team comprising the fictional Interpol sub-branch Department S (1969), solving the most enigmatic and perplexing cases, alongside Peter Wyngarde (as flamboyant crime writer Jason King) and Rosemary Nicols (as down-to-earth computer expert Annabelle Hurst). Joel's character, an ex-FBI agent, was most adept at handling himself in a fight and also the only member of the trio to interact directly and receive the team's assignments from the head of the department, a cultured diplomat with far-reaching contacts (played by Dennis Alaba Peters). Department S was a polished entertainment with global syndication and has long since attained cult status. Curiously, its brief run consisted of just one season and 28 episodes. A sequel, Jason King (1971), proved rather less successful.
Upon his return to the U.S., Joel (in his own words) "wanted to go out and conquer Hollywood, which is what I immediately set out to do - and didn't - but I had an awful lot of fun trying". Largely maintaining his suave Stewart Sullivan image, he went on to guest-star in numerous prime time shows (often for Quinn Martin Productions). In these, he played anything from murder victims to priests, from military brass to ill-fated spies, from attorneys and politicians to murderers and from private eyes to psychiatrists. Joel had recurring roles in the soaps Dallas (1978) (publisher Alex Ward), and Dynasty (1981) (the scheming King Galen of Moldavia), plus a decade-long tenure on All My Children (1970) (lawyer Barry Shire). Though occasionally seen in mainstream cinematic productions (Reuben, Reuben (1983), Tune in Tomorrow... (1990), Snake Eyes (1998)), he had higher profile roles in made-for-TV films (the best of these being, arguably, the suspense thriller One of My Wives Is Missing (1976) and the Emmy Award-winning prison drama Attica (1980), co-starring Henry Darrow and Morgan Freeman).
For much of the 1970s, Joel continued to act on the New York stage. He also made TV and radio commercials for Sony. From the mid-80s, he diversified into the field of narration for audio books ("A River Runs Through It", "The Light in the Forest", "Aces and Eights") and worked as announcer on Barbara Walters specials until 2003. He retired from acting a decade later and resides in New York with his current wife Charna Greenburg. - Actor
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Martin Sam Milner was born December 28, 1931 in Detroit, Michigan. His mother, Jerre Martin, originally from Oregon, was a dancer with the Paramount Theater circuit. His father, Sam Gordon Milner, a Polish Jewish immigrant, was a film distributor. The Milners moved to Seattle when Martin was a baby and to Los Angeles soon after. At age 15, Martin's father got him an agent and he was chosen to play the role of "John Day" in Life with Father (1947), Warner Bros.' version of Clarence Day, Jr.'s popular Broadway play. Milner contracted polio shortly after filming was completed and his career was put on hold for a year as he recovered from the illness. After graduating from North Hollywood High School and studying for one year at the University of Southern California, Milner worked steadily in films during the years 1949-1960. He appeared in films such as Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Marjorie Morningstar (1958) and Sweet Smell of Success (1957). He put his career on hold again when he was inducted into the Army in 1952 for two years. Shortly after joining the Army, he was assigned to the Human Research Division, where he directed military training films and served as Master of Ceremonies for a touring show based at Fort Ord, California. Milner married television actress and singer Judy Jones in 1957 and they have four children--Amy, Molly, Stuart, and Andrew.
Milner met Jack Webb during the filming of Halls of Montezuma (1951) and later worked with him on his "Dragnet" radio show as well as the TV series Dragnet (1951). Milner appeared as 17-year-old high school student "Stephen Banner" in the episode "The Big Producer" in 1952. According to Webb's biography "Just the Facts, Ma'am", Webb owed Milner money from a card game. When Webb called him to the studio to pay him back, he offered Milner a role in the "Dragnet" radio show. After that, Webb continued to find roles for Milner until he offered him the role of "Pete Malloy" on Adam-12 (1968). Milner continued to appear in films throughout the 1970s and 1980s and made many guest appearances on television shows such as Murder, She Wrote (1984), the "Columbo" made-for-TV movies, MacGyver (1985), and Diagnosis Murder (1993). Milner was an avid fisherman and has been co-host of the syndicated radio talk show "Let's Talk Hook-up" since 1993. He also hosts fishing trips through "Let's Talk Hook-Up."
Apart from the Webb connection, Milner starred as "Tod Stiles" in his own groundbreaking CBS-TV series, Route 66 (1960). The series was notable for its coast-to-coast location shooting, eloquent scripts by co-creator Stirling Silliphant and others, impressive guest casts, and a distinctive theme song by Nelson Riddle. The series allowed Milner to explore a range of characterizations as his nomadic travels in a Corvette convertible took him from job to job all over the United States, where he dug deeply into the lives of the people he encountered there -- with traveling companions "Buz Murdock" (George Maharis) and, after Maharis left the show, "Lincoln Case" (Glenn Corbett).- Actress
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Beth Grant has the unique honor of having co-starred in three Academy Award winning Best Pictures - Barry Levinson's Rain Man, the Coen Brothers's No Country For Old Men and Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist. Furthering her reputation as an Oscar lucky charm was her work with Johnny Depp in Gore Verbinski's Rango, the Academy's Best Animated Feature. Grant received the Screen Actors Best Ensemble Award for No Country For Old Men and Dayton-Faris's Little Miss Sunshine.
Grant co-starred in David O. Russell's Amsterdam, playing Robert De Niro's wife, opposite Margot Robbie, Christian Bale and John David Washington. As a Southerner she is particularly proud of her critically acclaimed role as "Addy Bundren" in Faulkner's As I Lay Dying directed by James Franco, premiering at Cannes. Grant enjoys cult status with hits Donnie Darko, To Wong Foo and Sordid Lives.
Grant had a blast in a five-episode arc on the final season of Amazon's Goliath where she gave hell to Billy Bob Thornton, Nina Arianda, Bruce Dern, Jena Malone, and J.K. Simmons. Grant stars as Carlotta Mayfair on Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches on AMC, AMC+, two seasons as "Cat Lady" in Dollface with Kat Dennings on Hulu, and 6 seasons as fan favorite "Beverly" on The Mindy Project now on Fox, Hulu and Netflix.
Her 140+ films include Lucky with Harry Dean Stanton and David Lynch, Pablo Larrain's Jackie, starring Natalie Portman, Words On Bathroom Walls with Charlie Plummer and Taylor Russell, Ridley Scott's Matchstick Men starring Nic Cage, and her four movies with Sandra Bullock - Speed, A Time To Kill, All About Steve and Bullock directed Making Sandwiches.
Grant delights in having created so many well known and popular, if often wacky, characters who she remembers as dear friends. Among her favorites are characters in Friends, Child's Play 2, Flatliners, CSI, Criminal Minds, The X-Files, Coach and recurring roles on Elmore Leonard's Maximum Bob, and Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events both directed by Barry Sonnenfeld.
She adored working with writer/director Todd Holland on The Wizard, Malcolm In The Middle, and Wonderfalls, co-created with Bryan Fuller who also wrote roles for her on Pushing Daisies, Mockingbird Lane and American Gods.
Beth Grant loves doing theatre! She received the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, LA Stage Alliance Ovation, LA Weekly Award, Backstage West Award for Lead Actress in Del Shores's The Trials And Tribulations Of Trailer Trash Housewife. Grant starred Off Broadway in Tony George's Tricks The Devil Taught Me at The Minetta Lane Theater. Grant has won three Ovation Awards, including Lead Actress for Grace And Glorie at The Colony Theatre directed by Cameron Watson who also directed her in his beloved feature Our Very Own opposite Allison Janney, Robert Carradine and Jason Ritter.
Theatre credits also include world premieres by Maya Angelou, Romulus Linney, Horton Foote and Mark V. Olsen. Grant had two stints at The Ahmanson in Picnic with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Gregory Harrison and Summer And Smoke, directed by renowned Broadway director Marshall Mason, starring Christopher Reeve.
Grant enjoys claiming several hometowns in the South from Ft. Payne, Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia to Wilmington, North Carolina. She was a Page in the North Carolina Senate, attended the NC Governor's School for Gifted And Talented, was a two term president of the College Democrats at her Alma Mater, East Carolina University, and was Governor Robert Scott's appointee to Arts and Recreation Commission at age 19. Early on she studied film acting with Clu Gulager. In later year years she found an acting home as student of Milton Katselas's Master Class.
Grant is a co-executive producer on upcoming release of Flannery O'Connor's Wildcat directed by Ethan Hawke. She produced and plays the title role in Del Shores' film Blues For Willadean, co-starring with Octavia Spencer and Dale Dickey.
Grant directed a multi-award winning short, The Perfect Fit, also starring Spencer along with Lauren Miller Rogen, Ahna O'Reilly, Frances Fisher, Jennifer Zaborowski and Grant's daughter, Mary Chieffo.
Chieffo graduated with honors from The Juilliard School and is the first female Chancellor of The Klingon Empire on Star Trek: Discovery. Grant and her daughter produced Operation Othello with Julius Tennon and Viola Davis's JuVee Productions and Oculus Story Studio, wherein Chieffo re-imagined Shakespeare's Othello, playing his nemesis "Iago" as a woman.
Beth Grant has been married to Mary's father, actor Michael Chieffo, for 37 years. She attributes much of her success to them and to her family of origin, brother Bubba Grant, his wife Dr. Mary Grant, and Beth's always beloved and remembered parents, activist Southern Belle Libba and mild-mannered Southern Gentleman William Grant, all of whom supported her wild and crazy dreams. Beth Grant says she is the luckiest woman in Hollywood.- Dark-haired, Ivy League-looking Bradford Dillman, whose white-collar career spanned nearly five decades, possessed charm and confident good looks that were slightly tainted by a bent smile, darting glance and edgy countenance that often provoked suspicion. Sure enough, the camera picked up on it and he played shady, highly suspect characters throughout most of his career.
The actor was born in San Francisco on April 14, 1930, to Dean and Josephine Dillman. Yale-educated, he graduated with a B.A. in English Literature. Following this he served with the US Marines in Korea (1951-1953) before focusing on acting as a profession. Studying at the Actors Studio, he spent several seasons apprenticing with the Sharon (CT) Playhouse before making his professional acting debut in "The Scarecrow" in 1953.
Dillman took his initial Broadway bow in Eugene O'Neill's play "Long Day's Journey Into Night" in 1956, originating the author's alter ego character Edmund Tyrone and winning a Theatre World Award in the process. This success put him squarely on the map and 20th Century-Fox took immediate advantage by placing the darkly handsome up-and-comer under contract. Cast in the melodrama A Certain Smile (1958), he earned a Golden Globe for "Most Promising Newcomer" playing a Parisian student who loses his girl (Christine Carère) to the worldly Italian roué Rossano Brazzi. He followed this with a strong ensemble appearance in In Love and War (1958), which featured a cast of young rising stars including Hope Lange and Robert Wagner. More acting honors followed after completing the film Compulsion (1959), which told the true story of the infamous 1920s kidnapping/murder case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. He went on to share a "Best Actor" award at the Cannes Film Festival with fellow co-stars Dean Stockwell, who played the other youthful murderer, and veteran Orson Welles.
Though he was a magnetic player poised for stardom, Dillman's subsequent films failed to serve him well and were generally unworthy of his talent. Though properly serious and stoic as the title character in Francis of Assisi (1961), the film itself was stilted and weakly scripted. Circle of Deception (1960) was a misguided tale of espionage and intrigue, but it did introduce him to his second wife, supermodel-cum-actress Suzy Parker. While A Rage to Live (1965) with Suzanne Pleshette was trashy soap material, The Plainsman (1966) was rather a silly, juvenile version of the Gary Cooper western classic. As a result of these missteps--and others--he began to top-line lesser quality projects or play supporting roles in "A" pictures. His nothing role as Robert Redford's college pal-turned Hollywood producer in The Way We Were (1973) and his major roles in the ludicrous The Swarm (1978) and Lords of the Deep (1989) became proof in the pudding. His last good film role was in O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (1973), although he did play an interesting John Wilkes Booth in the speculative re-enactment drama The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977) and had a fun leading role in the Jaws (1975)-like spoof Piranha (1978).
Dillman bore up very well on TV over the years, subsisting on a plethora of mini-movies and guest spots on popular series, playing everything from turncoats to frauds and from adulterers to psychotics. He earned a Daytime Emmy for his appearance in Last Bride of Salem (1974) and starred in two series--Court Martial (1965), as a military lawyer, and King's Crossing (1982), as an alcoholic parent and teacher attempting to straighten out. He also spent a season on the established nighttime soap Falcon Crest (1981) in 1982.
A narrator, director and teacher of acting in later years. Bradford launched a late-in-the career sideline as an author. The football fan inside him compelled him to write "Inside the New York Giants" (1995), a book that rated players drafted by the team since 1967. Two years later he published his memoirs, the curiously-titled "Are You Somebody?: An Actor's Life." He retired from the screen after a few guest star shots on "Murder, She Wrote" in the mid-90s.
From 1956 to 1962, Dillman was married to Frieda Harding, and had two children, Jeffrey and Pamela. Following their divorce, he met well-known model-turned-actress Suzy Parker during the production of Circle of Deception (1960) and the couple married on April 20, 1963. They had three children, Dinah, Charles, and Christopher. Daughter Pamela Dillman has worked as an actress. Dillman was made a widower when Parker died on May 3, 2003. He lived for many years in Montecito, California, and helped raise money for medical research. He died in Santa Barbara, California on January 16, 2018, aged 87, from complications of pneumonia. - Actress
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Molly Hagan was born the seventh child of Jack and Betty Hagan in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At the age of 4 the entire family moved to Ft. Wayne, Indiana. She grew up among cornfields and limestone quarries. Molly always wanted to be an actor. She toiled with her sister, Lucy Hagan, to create the best living room theatre a family could watch. But had her first real break as Glinda the good witch in "The Wizard of Oz" at St. Therese's Elementary School. After crushing it, doing the best Billie Burke she could, Molly went on to be kicked out of High School drama. She then attended Northwestern University.- Judith Woodward Hoag is an American actress from Newburyport, Massachusetts who is known for playing April O'Neil from the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film and Gwen Piper from Halloweentown. She acted in other films including Michael Bay's 1998 film Armageddon, A Nightmare on Elm Street, a deleted scene of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, I Am Number Four and Hitchcock.
- Actor
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Originally from Kentucky, Sean O'Bryan moved to Los Angeles over ten years ago and has worked extensively in film and TV. Some major key TV guest appearances include Chicago Hope, Beverly Hills 90210, and Felicity. Sean has done several major films including, Phenomenon (1996), Exit to Eden (1994), The Princess Diaries (2001), and Frankie and Johnny (1991). Not only has he focused on working in front of the camera, he's also done several theatrical performances, including: The Lisbon Traviata, It's Only a Play, Money and Friends et al.
In 1995, Sean married Samantha Follows (sister to Megan Follows - star of Anne of Green Gables) and they currently have two children. In 2001, Sean joined the entire Follows family to perform in Noel Coward's "Hay Fever" at the Gravenhurst Opera House in Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada. As all the Follows are Canadian, Sean was the only American on stage in this British play; however, his character was the only American character so he had it made!
Sean can be seen in the new kids flick, Big Fat Liar (2002) starring Frankie Muniz.- Beefy, Philadelphia-born Charles Hallahan was often cast as cops, both good and bad, mainly because the map of Ireland was written all over his face. A graduate of Rutgers University, he earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Temple University in his hometown. After spending some time in regional theater, he headed west to Los Angeles to break into films and television. He spent a good deal of time on stage in L.A., and quickly began racking up television and movie credits. He was a regular on the detective series Hunter (1984) - as, what else, a cop - and turned in a standout performance as a corrupt, racist detective in a story arc on Hill Street Blues (1981). He also appeared in such films as Silkwood (1983), Kidco (1984), Executive Decision (1996) and Dante's Peak (1997). He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles in 1997.
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- Soundtrack
Acclaimed actress Jessica Walter was born on January 31, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Esther (Groisser), a teacher, and David Walter (his original surname was Warshawsky), a musician who was a member of the NBC Symphony Orchestra and the NYC Ballet Orchestra. She was of Russian Jewish descent, the sister of screenwriter and Chairman of the UCLA Screenwriting program Richard Walter. Their uncle was stage and screen actor Jerry Jarrett. Raised in Queens, Walter was a graduate of New York's High School of the Performing Arts and the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. She first acted in summer stock and her extensive subsequent career on the stage included productions both on- and off-Broadway.
On Broadway, Walter appeared in Peter Ustinov's "Photo Finish" (which earned her the Clarence Derwent Award as Most Promising Newcomer), "A Severed Head", "Advise and Consent", "Night Life" and Neil Simon's "Rumors". Off-Broadway, she acted in a 1986 Los Angeles Theater Center production of "Tartuffe" opposite Ron Leibman (to whom she was married from 1983 until his death in 2019).
After guesting on several TV series in the early and mid-1960s, Walter made her move to feature films where she attracted attention for her role as the brash Libby in Sidney Lumet's The Group (1966). This seemed to set the tone for her next screen personae as bitchy, difficult or dangerously vindictive women, the most memorable of which was Evelyn in Clint Eastwood's directorial debut film, Play Misty for Me (1971). This earned Walter a richly deserved Golden Globe nomination. Another stand-out role was Pat, the bored ex-glamour model wife of one racing driver (Brian Bedford) and troublesome girlfriend of another (James Garner) in Grand Prix (1966). Walter's numerous TV roles included the enchantress Morgan LeFay in the rarely seen telemovie Dr. Strange (1978). Of her many screen villainesses she later said: "those are the fun roles. They're juicy, much better than playing the vanilla ingénues".
By the 1980s, Walter had turned increasingly towards comedy, both on the big screen (The Flamingo Kid (1984)) and the small (Three's a Crowd (1984)). However, she never shied away from other genres, whether playing an EarthGov senator on the cult sci-fi series Babylon 5 (1993) or providing the voice for the leading female character in the animated sitcom Dinosaurs (1991). Walter received an Emmy Award for Best Dramatic Actress in the Ironside (1967) spin-off Amy Prentiss (1974) and was nominated for guest-starring roles in episodes of Trapper John, M.D. (1979) and The Streets of San Francisco (1972). She found a new audience among younger viewers as the devious matriarch Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development (2003).
Jessica Walter died in her sleep on March 24, 2021 from undisclosed causes at the age of 80. Riverside Memorial Chapel and Funeral Home in New York City completed her final arrangements. She was cremated and her ashes are with her daughter.- Cynthia Harris was most famed for her roles in L.A. Law (1986), Edward & Mrs. Simpson (1978), and Mad About You (1992). She made her Broadway debut in 1963. In 1971, she appeared on Broadway in the Landmark Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical, "Company." She was a founding member and co-artistic director of The Actors Company Theatre. In 1978, she received a BAFTA nomination for her performance as "Wallis Simpson" in Edward & Mrs. Simpson (1978).
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Joseph Cali was born on 30 March 1950 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He is an actor, known for Saturday Night Fever (1977), Suicide Kings (1997) and The Lonely Lady (1983).- Actor
- Music Department
- Producer
Gregg Henry has worked with many well-known filmmakers. For James Gunn: Slither (2006), Super (2010), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017). For Brian De Palma: Scarface (1983), Body Double (1984). Raising Cain (1992), Femme Fatale (2002), The Black Dahlia (2006), and Casualties of War (1989). For Paul Greengrass: United 93 (2006), and Jason Bourne (2016). Henry also stars in Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), and is maybe best known for the role of Val Resnick in Payback (1999).
Henry has numerous TV credits, notably as Hollis Doyle in Scandal (2012); Hit & Run (2021) for Netflix; The Riches (2007); The Killing (2011); The Following (2013); Chicago Med (2015); Hung (2009); Hell on Wheels (2011); Gilmore Girls (2000); Law & Order: Organized Crime (2021). In a chilling portrayal of the infamous Dennis Rader, Henry starred in the critically acclaimed The Hunt for the BTK Killer (2005).
On stage, Henry most recently played the titular character in the brilliant and controversial production of Julius Caesar by the Public Theater and Oskar Eustis in Central Park. He's also performed at Seattle Rep, ACT Seattle, South Coast Rep, Old Globe Theater San Diego, and the Denver Center Theater. Henry has won thirteen Drama-Logue Awards, an L.A. Weekly Award, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for his stage work as producer and actor.
A composer and lyricist, Henry wrote both music and lyrics for Little Egypt: The Musical, which had a successful LA run and was accepted into the NYMF festival in NYC. He composed and wrote lyrics for two additional musicals, work-shopped at the LAByrinth Theater Summer intensives.
Henry plays the piano and has recorded several albums, as a professional singer and songwriter. Dwight Yoakam's cover of Henry's song, "The Back of Your Hand" for his album Population Me, reached #1 on CMT. Henry lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife Lisa James, a noted director for the American Theater.- Actor
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- Writer
Award-winning American actor, writer and director, Chris Mulkey has a long and diverse career in film, television and stage. Chris is best known for On the Basis of Sex (2018), Whiplash (2014), Captain Phillips (2013), Twin Peaks (1990), Castle Rock (2018), Broken Trail (2006), Any Day Now (1998) and Boardwalk Empire (2010).
Chris grew up in the Midwest, majored in acting at the University of Minnesota and spent four years as a company member of the Children's Theatre of Minneapolis. While in Minnesota, Chris starred in Loose Ends (1975), the Grand Prize winner at the USA film Festival. Chris moved to Hollywood 1975, married actress/artist Karen Landry and they moved to Venice Beach. The couple wrote and starred in Patti Rocks (1988), an independent film that won the Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival. Chris and Karen often worked together in film and on stage in LA, New York, and the Twin Cities.
Chris is also a songwriter with original songs featured in films and television and can be seen playing around the country with his band Chris Mulkey and Deluxe.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
George DiCenzo was an American character actor, voice actor, and acting teacher from New Haven, Connecticut. His acting career lasted for about 30 years, and he had previously served as an associate producer for the gothic soap opera "Dark Shadows" (1966-1971). His best-remembered live-action role was portraying Sam Baines (Marty McFly's maternal grandfather) in the time-travel-themed science fiction film "Back to the Future" (1985). As a voice actor, he is primarily remembered for portraying stranded astronaut John Blackstar in "Blackstar" (1981) and the tyrant Hordak in "She-Ra: Princess of Power" (1985-1986).
DiCenzo received his acting training from Milton Katselas (1933- 2008), the acting instructor who founded the Beverly Hills Playhouse. He later served as an apprentice teacher under Katselas, before branching out on his own. He used both New York City and Philadelphia as his home-base at various points in his teaching career.
Towards the end of his career, DiCenzo voiced roles in a few video games. His better known role in the field was voicing crime lord Ennio Salieri in the crime-themed video game "Mafia" (2002). In the video game, Salieri eliminates a rival crime lord and becomes the de facto ruler of a fictional city in 1930s Illinois. He starts mistreating his own henchmen, until one of them turns against him and betrays Salieri to the authorities. The game had a number of sequels, but DiCenzo never had a chance to voice Salieri again.
DiCenzo had his final film role in the drama film "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" (2006). The film was an adaptation of a memoir by film director Dito Montiel, concerning the troubling experiences which convinced him to abandon his family and few remaining friends in 1986. DiCenzo effectively retired afterwards, due to his declining health.
DiCenzo died in August 9, 2010 due to sepsis (blood poisoning). He was 70-years-old at the time of his death, and was living in Pennsylvania. He was buried in the North and Southampton Churchyard, located at Churchville, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. DiCenzo is fondly remembered for a number of memorable roles in his career, but he was better known for his voice rather than his face.- Handsome, rugged, versatile and charismatic character actor Tom Atkins was born on November 13, 1935 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Atkins initially became an avid horror film fan in his childhood days; Howard Hawks' immortal classic The Thing from Another World (1951) made an especially strong impression on him as a kid. Tom attended Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and was a member of the Gamma Phi Fraternity. Atkins made his film debut as a rookie police officer in the Frank Sinatra private eye-outing The Detective (1968); it was the first of many police officer roles he has played throughout the years. Tom appeared in two films for director John Carpenter: he is very likable as Nick Castle in the spooky ghost film The Fog (1980) and solid as Rehme in the fantastic futuristic sci-fi/action cult film Escape from New York (1981). Atkins had a nice small role as a disapproving and overbearing father in the wrap-around segments of the immensely enjoyable fright feature anthology Creepshow (1982). He made for a touchingly flawed hero as Dr. Daniel Challis in the unjustly maligned Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982).
Tom gave a smack dead-on-the-money terrific performance as weary, cynical and suicidal Detective Ray Cameron in the delightful Night of the Creeps (1986) (this movie is Tom's personal favorite among all the horror films he has acted in). He was once again excellent as the similarly burnt-out Lt. Frank McCrae in the fine Maniac Cop (1988) and impressive as the guilt-ridden heroin smuggler Michael Hunsaker in the exciting blockbuster Lethal Weapon (1987). Atkins had a recurring part as Lt. Alex Diehl on the television series The Rockford Files (1974); he reprised this character in several spin-off made-for-TV movies. Among the television series Tom has done guest spots on are Oz (1997), Xena: Warrior Princess (1995), Walker, Texas Ranger (1993), The Equalizer (1985), Spenser: For Hire (1985), The Fall Guy (1981), Lou Grant (1977), Baretta (1975) and M*A*S*H (1972). Outside of his film and television work, Atkins has had a long and distinguished stage career. He has acted on Broadway in the plays "The Changing Room" (Tom won a 1973 Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Performer), "Keep It in the Family" and "The Unknown Soldier and His Wife". His off-Broadway credits include "Vikings", "Long Days Journey Into Night", "Whistle in the Dark" and "Nobody Hears a Broken Drum". Tom frequently acts in plays held at the Pittsburgh Public Theater; he has garnered plenty of accolades for his outstanding portrayal of Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney in the acclaimed one-man show "The Chief". Tom Atkins resides in Peters Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania. - Actor
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Andrew Jordt Robinson was born in New York City and attended the University of New Hampshire, later receiving his B.A. in English from the New School for Social Research in NYC. After graduation, he spent a year in England at the London Academy for Music and Dramatic Arts on a Fulbright Scholarship. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Mr. Robinson performed a wide variety of theater, movie and television roles. These included the infamous Scorpio killer in Dirty Harry (1971), a stint on Ryan's Hope (1975), which earned him an Emmy nomination, and the title role in a TV movie about Liberace. He was chosen for the continuing guest role of "Elim Garak", the Cardassian tailor/spy on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993), after first reading for the part of "Odo"! In the early 90s, Mr. Robinson helped found The Matrix Theatre Company in Los Angeles. In addition to acting in several of the company's productions, in 1995 and 1996 his direction of "Endgame" and "The Homecoming" at the Matrix earned him two Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards. This led to his TV directing debut on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993), and Mr. Robinson has since gone on to direct episodes of Star Trek: Voyager (1995). 1997-1998 directorial projects at The Matrix were "Dangerous Corner" and "A Moon for the Misbegotten".- Actor
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James Stephens was born on 18 May 1951 in Mount Kisco, New York, USA. He is an actor and director, known for The Getaway (1994), Empire of Ash (1988) and Two of a Kind (1983). He has been married to Priscilla Taylor since 1973.- Actor
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David Ogden Stiers was born in Peoria, Illinois, to Margaret Elizabeth (Ogden) and Kenneth Truman Stiers. He moved with his family to Eugene, Oregon, where he graduated from North Eugene High School in 1960. At the age of twenty, he was offered $200 to join the company of the Santa Clara Shakespeare Festival for three months. He ended up staying for seven years, in due course playing both King Lear and Richard III. In 1969, he moved to New York to study drama at Juilliard where he also trained his voice as a dramatic baritone. He joined the Houseman City Center Acting Company at its outset, working on such productions as The Beggar's Opera, Measure for Measure, The Hostage and the hit Broadway musical The Magic Show for which he created the character 'Feldman the Magnificent'. He lent his voice to animated films, with Lilo & Stitch (2002) being his 25th theatrically-released Disney animated film. He was also an avid fan of classical music and conducted a number of orchestras, including the Yaquina Chamber Orchestra in Newport, Oregon, where was the principal guest conductor.
His other theatrical work included performances with the Committee Revue and Theatre, the San Francisco Actor's Workshop, The Old Globe Theatre Festival in San Diego and at the Pasadena Playhouse in Love Letters with Meredith Baxter. As a drama instructor, he worked at Santa Clara University and also taught improvisation at Harvard. In addition to his long-running role in M*A*S*H (1972), Stiers' work on television also included the excellent mini-series North & South: Book 1, North & South (1985), North & South: Book 2, Love & War (1986), The First Olympics: Athens 1896 (1984) and roles in such productions as Anatomy of an Illness (1984), The Bad Seed (1985), J. Edgar Hoover (1987), The Final Days (1989), Father Damien: The Leper Priest (1980) and Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry (1986). Among his screen credits were The Accidental Tourist (1988), The Man with One Red Shoe (1985), Creator (1985), Harry's War (1981), Magic (1978) and Oh, God! (1977).
Above all, the prodigious talent that was David Ogden Stiers will be most fondly remembered as the pompous, ever-so articulate Major Charles Emerson Winchester III in M*A*S*H. He had found that taking on the role was -- from the beginning -- an easy choice. Stiers saw and loved the movie version. Moreover, he had a fond regard of fellow actor Harry Morgan (who played the character of Colonel Potter) as a kind of fatherly role model. In retrospect, Stiers viewed his experiences with the show as a career highlight, saying "No matter how much you read about the M*A*S*H company, the evolution of it, the quite beautiful human stance it takes, you will not know how much it means ". In his spare time on the set he often annoyed the security guards by skateboarding at 25 miles an hour and "cheerfully thumbing his nose at them".
David died of bladder cancer on March 3, 2018, in Newport, Oregon. He was 75.- James Christopher Read was born on July 31, 1953 and was raised in Schenectady, New York. He gained his first experience as an actor in an amateur production while still in high school, but entered the University of Vermont as a forestry major in 1971. He dropped out of college after a year to work and travel abroad, and eventually resumed his education at the University of Oregon performing in numerous theatrical productions before graduating in 1976. He began his professional career in New York City, and then in regional theaters (primarily Denver, Colorado) before moving in Los Angeles in 1981. In 1982 James was cast as a series regulars in Remington Steele (1982). He left that show after the first season and appeared in a quick succession of other tv series and movies before landing the starring role of George Hazard in "North and South" (1985), a twelve-hour epic which became one of the most popular and successful mini-series of all time. During rehearsals on that project, he met and fell in love with Wendy Kilbourne, the actress who was cast to play his love interest in the series. After marrying for the first time on film, they officially tied the knot in 1988 and remain married today. Read played Hazard again in the 12 hour sequel, North & South: Book 2, Love & War (1986), and once again in "Heaven and Hell: North & South, Book III" (1994). James has performed in dozens of other movies and series through his career, notably in "Beaches" (1988), "Eight Men Out" (1988), and as Cary Grant opposite Farrah Fawcett in "Poor Little Rich Girl" (1987). He recently spent four seasons as a regular on the TV series "Wildfire" (2005-2008) where he also directed for the first time. James was granted a Master's degree in Psychology from Pepperdine University in 1997. He and Wendy have a son Jackson (born 1990) and a daughter Sydney (1995). They live in California.
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Sam Anderson was born on 2 April 1947 in South Dakota, USA. He is an actor, known for Forrest Gump (1994), Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) and Water for Elephants (2011). He has been married to Barbara Ann Hancock since 17 August 1985. They have two children.- Actor
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Robert Curtis Brown has forged a career playing unique, diverse and interesting characters. This talented, Yale-trained actor has an intriguing, accessible screen presence and a depth of feeling and humor. The complexity that Robert brings to his characters may have its origins in his upbringing in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, his years at Yale College, his education at The Yale School of Drama or his experiences traveling the world for work and pleasure. Regardless, since his first professional role fresh out of Yale, Robert has tapped into the ability to embody the essence of whatever character he portrays. From his early work in New York with Joseph Papp, David Hare, Al Pacino, Martin Sheen, Kate Nelligan, John Landis, Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd, Robert has been singled out for his ability to portray a broad range of characters.
Robert has a sterling reputation as an actor from producers, directors and audiences across the country. In his three most recent feature films, It's Complicated (2009), Halloween II (2009) and The Men Who Stare at Goats (2009), Robert portrays three very different characters. In "It's Complicated", he plays "Peter", Meryl Streep's architect and friend who will introduce him to "Adam", played by Steve Martin. This funny romantic comedy includes an all-star cast, including Alec Baldwin and John Krasinski. "Halloween 2", directed by Rob Zombie, is a terrifying horror film in which Robert portrays the heart-wrenching father, of a murdered girl, who confronts Malcolm McDowell. Robert shares the screen with George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey in "The Men Who Stare At Goats", in which he portrays an Army General bent on staying ahead of the Russians!
Robert has over 120 television and film roles to his credit including: "President Kennedy" in Big Love (2006), "Warden Davis Ollenstein" in CSI: NY (2004), "Morgan Ride" in Shark (2006), "Miles Bainbridge" in Big Time Rush (2009), "Dan, The Weatherman" in the Showtime series, Look (2010) and "Vance Evans" (Sharpay and Ryan's Dad) in the smash hit, "High School Musical" movies for Disney.
Robert's acting work has extended beyond film and television and counts himself among the lucky actors who continue to work in the theatre. His long association with the South Coast Repertory and the Pasadena Playhouse are sources of great pride and artistic expression. Robert was also recently nominated for a Los Angeles Ovation award for his lyrics for "Mutt House".
Robert devotes his spare time to several charitable organizations including the "Pediatric Aids Foundation", "Helping Hands for the Blind" and his local schools. In his spare time, he plays softball, bike rides and enjoys gardening, scuba diving and traveling.- Actor
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From February 2014 Dakin is taking on the iconic role of Mickey, the grizzled no-mercy trainer in ROCKY, THE MUSICAL at Broadway's Winter Gardens Theatre. This role was originally played by veteran screen actor Burgess Meredith in the original 1976 movie and he received an Academy award nomination for his achievement.- From his breakout role in "The Boy Who Could Fly to 'Sonny Bono' in "The Sonny and Cher Story" to appearances at the Sundance Film Festival, Jay Underwood has enjoyed a career of much diversity both in the parts he's played and the mediums he's played in.
Underwood began his theatrical pursuits while growing up in the San Francisco Bay area and then went to a performing arts high school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was there that Underwood received his "big break" into the movie business when he was chosen from a national casting search to play opposite Annabeth Gish, and Jon Voight in executive producer Robert Redford's "Desert Bloom." From there he moved to 'tinseltown' where, for over 20 years, he made his living as a working actor.
Underwood's film credits include three Sundance Film Festival participants "Dancing in September", "Valerie Flake", and "Possums." Other highlights are Billy Graham's "Road to Redemption", Alan Rudolph's "Afterglow", the Roger Corman cult classic "The Fantastic Four" (as Johnny Storm, The Human Torch), 'Bug' in "Uncle Buck," with John Candy, and Underwood's personal favorite, the title character in "The Boy Who Could Fly."
On the small screen Underwood had the incredible opportunity of portraying 'Sonny Bono' in "The Sonny and Cher Story" for ABC. He also is remembered for that lovable android 'Chip' in the Disney Channel trilogy "Not Quite Human". Other favorites would include young 'Ernest Hemingway' in "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles," the mini-series "Blind Faith" with Robert Urich and "Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone" with the original marshal himself, Hugh O'Brien. Notable guest appearances include "Miracles", "X-Files," "E.R.," "The West Wing," "Star Trek Voyager" and "Millennium." And finally, (but certainly not least), the voice of 'Chester' the Goat in the classic animated Christmas special "The Legend of the Candy Cane."
His theater highlights include studying and performing at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco as well as the Minneapolis Children's Theater Company. In Los Angeles he was seen in "Grand Junction" and "Fortune in Men's Eyes" both at the Coast Playhouse and had a devilish good time playing 'Geoffrey' in the Pasadena Playhouse production of "The Lion in Winter."
More recently, Underwood felt God's call on his life to pursue full time Christian ministry. After starting seminary in 2003, he became a youth pastor and then after graduation in 2007, a full time pastor in a small northern California mountain town. He now lives in "God's country" with his wife, six children and a menagerie of pets. Says Underwood, "I imagine someday standing before the Lord and if He were to ask me what I did with the life that He gave me, I don't want to merely list off my acting credits which are things that really don't have a lot of eternal value, but I want to hear those words from Jesus, "Well done good and faithful servant" because I used the gifts that He gave me to serve Him." That being said, Underwood was convinced to come out of "retirement" to participate in the Christian movie "No Greater Love," produced by Coram Deo Studios, of which he is particularly proud to be a part of. To God be the glory! - Cute, tiny, and prolific little old lady character actress Frances Bay worked constantly in both films and TV shows alike after making her debut at the age of 59 in life with a small part in the comedy Foul Play (1978) in 1978.
She frequently portrayed eccentric elderly women and good-hearted grandmothers in all kinds of pictures and television programs. Frances acted several times for David Lynch: she's Kyle MacLachlan's sweet doddery aunt in Blue Velvet (1986), a gruff, profane whorehouse madam in Wild at Heart (1990), and the spooky Mrs. Tremond in the cult TV series Twin Peaks (1990) and its spin-off feature Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). Frances popped up in two movies for director Stuart Gordon: she's a kind witch in The Pit and the Pendulum (1991) and a fortune teller in Edmond (2005).
Other notable film roles include a snippy librarian in The Attic (1980), a mysterious blind nun in the offbeat Nomads (1986), another librarian in In the Mouth of Madness (1994), and Adam Sandler's loving grandmother in the hit comedy Happy Gilmore (1996). Frances had the unique distinction of guesting on the final episodes of the TV shows Happy Days (1974), Who's the Boss? (1984), and Seinfeld (1989).
Among the many TV series Bay had guest spots on are Charmed (1998), ER (1994), Matlock (1986), The X-Files (1993), Murder, She Wrote (1984), The Commish (1991), L.A. Law (1986), Hill Street Blues (1981), Touched by an Angel (1994), The Golden Girls (1985), and Amazing Stories (1985).
She won a Gemini Award for her performance in the Disney TV program Avonlea (1990). Frances was also in the music video for Jimmy Fallon's "Idiot Boyfriend." In addition to her substantial movie and TV credits, Bay also acted in both Off-Broadway stage productions and regional theater; these plays include "Finnegan's Wake," "Grease," "Genuis," "The Caucasion Chalk Circle," "Number Our Days," "Uncommon Women," "Sarcophagus," and "The Pleasure of His Company." Frances won two DramaLogue Awards and was nominated for a Los Angeles Dramatic Critics' Award.
In 2002 Bay was the unfortunate victim of an automobile accident which resulted in having part of her right leg amputated. Her husband Charles sadly died in 2002 as well.
In real life Frances Bay was a very practical and unassuming woman with an avid love for jazz music. - Actor
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Ed Nelson was aiming for a career in the legal profession until he caught the acting bug during his second year of college. In 1952, he headed off to New York City, where he studied direction and production at the School of Radio Technique. He returned to his native New Orleans where he worked as an assistant director at WDSU-TV; he also narrated (and sometimes wrote) episodes of the New Orleans-made TV series N.O.P.D. (1955) with Stacy Harris. Nelson made the acquaintance of Roger Corman when the maverick movie-maker came to Louisiana to shoot the feature Swamp Women (1956); Nelson says he did "everything" on the picture, from playing a part and working as a location manager to wrestling an alligator(!). Nelson worked in many other Corman movies on Corman's Hollywood home turf, including Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), where Nelson played the crab. In later years, Nelson became one of TV's hottest stars via the nighttime soap opera Peyton Place (1964).- Actor
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Born and raised in Manhattan, a graduate of Brown University, Michael comes from a long line of filmmakers. His grandfather, Oscar-winning screenwriter Sidney Buchman, ran Columbia Pictures under Harry Cohn throughout the 1930s and 1940s and wrote and produced such films as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), The Talk of the Town (1942), The Awful Truth (1937) Sahara (1943), A Song to Remember (1945), Holiday (1938), Lost Horizon (1937), The Jolson Story (1946), Cleopatra (1934), Theodora Goes Wild (1936) and more than 20 others. He was blacklisted in 1951 but continued to write from Cannes until his death in 1975.
Michael's sister, Amanda Silver, wrote The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and she and her husband, Rick Jaffa, wrote and produced Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, among others. They are currently writing Avatar 2, due 2016.- Lyman Ward was born on 21 June 1941 in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. He is an actor, known for Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), Not Another Teen Movie (2001) and Independence Day (1996). He was previously married to Cindy Pickett, Leigh Heine and Cathy Gelbart.
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Born in San Francisco and raised in the agricultural heartland of California's San Joaquin Valley, Fuller became passionate about acting while attending UC Berkley, where he received a degree in English literature. After graduating, he made the move to Los Angeles with everything he owned stuffed into the back seat of a Dodge Dart (including a king size foam rubber mattress). For the next ten years he was a Realtor by day and a stage actor by night. Then, in 1986, he created the leading role in Steven Berkhoff's explosively successful "Kvetch", earning rave reviews on both coasts.
Fuller has gone on to have a very successful career, working with some of Hollywood's best directors, including David O. Russell, Tony Scott, Harold Ramis, and Ivan Reitman, among others. His numerous film credits include "Auto Focus," "Ray," "Pushing Tin," "The Jack Bull," "Ghostbusters II," "Mr. Woodcock," "Nailed" and "The Pursuit of Happyness."
Kurt still returns to the stage occasionally, most recently in the acclaimed "Greedy" for Red Dog squadron. He's also worked at the La Jolla Playhouse and the Mark Taper Forum.
He is married to Jessica Hendra, a published author. They have two daughters, Julia and Charlotte. His birthday is September 16.- Michael Lerner was an American actor from New York City, the older brother of actor Ken Lerner. He was once nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the domineering studio head Jack Lipnick in "Barton Fink" (1991). Other well-known roles include crime boss Arnold Rothstein (1882-1928) in "Eight Men Out" (1988), Mayor Ebert in "Godzilla" (1998), and Senator Brickman in "X-Men: Days of Future Past" (2014).
In 1941, Lerner was born to a family of Romanian-Jewish descent. His father was George Lerner, a fisherman and antiques dealer. Lerner was primarily raised in Solon, Ohio (a suburb of Cleveland), and in the port area of Red Hook, Brooklyn. Red Hook was the site of a shack city for the homeless during the 1930s, and had a reputed connection to organized crime for most of the 20th century.
Lerner started his acting career as a theatrical actor. During the 1960s, he performed with the American Conservatory Theater (ACT), a nonprofit theater company based in San Francisco, California. He made his film debut in the comedy-drama "Alex in Wonderland" (1970). The film concerns a film director who has had only one box-office hit in his career, and is uncertain about his options in life.
Over the following years, Lerner mostly played supporting roles in various films. He enjoyed some success in horror films, portraying the Deputy Commissioner of the New York City Police Department in "Maniac Cop 2" (1990), and a private detective in "Omen IV: The Awakening" (1991). The most acclaimed role in his career was portraying Jack Lipnick in "Barton Fink" (1991). His character was the head of a film studio who constantly switched between flattering and threatening his employees, but maintained complete control over them. Lerner was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, but the award went to veteran actor Jack Palance. Lerner did, however, win the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Lerner found steady work in films throughout the 1990s. He portrayed bank president Edward H. Biderman in the comedy "Blank Check" (1994), where the bank is used for money laundering. He portrayed a short-tempered police lieutenant in the comedy thriller "Radioland Murders" (1994), with his character ultimately unable to prevent the serial killer of the film from pursuing his agenda. He portrayed Professor Marcus in "Tale of the Mummy" (1998), a respected scholar who is manipulated into killing someone.
Lerner was still active in the 2000s. He portrayed a doctor in "Mockingbird Don't Sing" (2001), a fictionalized depiction of the life of the feral child Genie (1957-). He portrayed domineering CEO Fulton Greenway in the Christmas comedy "Elf" (2003). He portrayed father figure Harvey Wiener in the comedy-drama "Life During Wartime" (2009).
Lerner had relatively few new roles in the 2010s, but some were still memorable. He portrayed ruthless politician Wesley Mouch in the science fiction film "Atlas Shrugged: Part I" (2011), based on Ayn Rand's iconic novel.
Lerner portrayed the Baron in the fantasy comedy "Mirror Mirror" (2012), an elite courtier who has won the favor of the wicked queen played by Julia Roberts. He portrayed Senator Brickman in the superhero film "X-Men: Days of Future Past", a politician who votes to sever funding for the Sentinel program. Lerner portrayed real-life producer/MGM studio executive Louis B. Mayer in "First Oscar" (2022). - Actor
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The son of a Dallas wholesale coal dealer, Noble spent much of his youth attending pool halls and movie houses. He retained his expertise with a pool cue throughout his life, while his stronger interest in acting (fueled by movies) manifested itself in local stage productions and drama studies at Southern Methodist University. Following Navy service in World War II, Noble went to New York to study at the Actors Studio, then went on to a stage revival of Pygmalion wherein he met his future wife, actress Carolyn Coates. The actor appeared on such TV soap operas as As the World Turns (1956), A World Apart (1970) and such Broadway productions as "1776" (a role he took to the movie 1776 (1972)), spending much of his spare time in psychotherapy to handle his ongoing feelings of self-doubt. In films from the mid '70s, Noble principally played small roles as authority figures and politicians (Being There (1979), The Nude Bomb (1980)), with occasional larger roles. such as Bo Derek's father in 10 (1979). In 1979, Noble was cast as the genially absent-minded "Governor Gene Gatling" on the sitcom, Benson (1979), a role in which he remained until the series' 1986 cancellation. Two years later, he resurfaced on TV in the role of a Nebraska-based recording engineer on the very short-lived sitcom, First Impressions (1988).- Actor
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Jason Bernard was born on 17 May 1938 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Liar Liar (1997), WarGames (1983) and While You Were Sleeping (1995). He was married to Carol Joy Pacanda and Debra Jean Wilson. He died on 16 October 1996 in Burbank, California, USA.- Name a soap opera and invariably character actor Nicholas Pryor has appeared on it. Playing the quirky professor Victor Collins on the daytime drama Port Charles (1997), the tall, rangy, silver-haired player was born Nicholas David Probst and is a native of Baltimore, with early training received from his many productions with the local Drummond Players.
Pryor made his TV debut on the New York-based soap drama "The Brighter Day" in 1958, while studying at Yale University. Around the same time he earned some roles on the Broadway stage with "The Egghead" (1957), "Love Me a Little" (1958), "Howie" (1958) and "The Highest Tree" (1959).
He became a sturdy, familiar face on 1960s and 1970s TV soap dramas with Young Dr. Malone (1958) as Ernest Cooper; Another World (1964) as Tom Baxter; The Secret Storm (1954) as Johnny Ellis; The Nurses (1965) as Ken Alexander; All My Children (1970) as Lincoln Tyler and The Edge of Night (1956) as Joel Gantry. In the evening he appeared in several anthology series such as "Kraft Theatre," "Armstrong Circle Theatre," "Dupont Show of the Month" and "Startime." He also graced a number of popular TV shows including "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "Coronet Blue."
It wasn't until his mid-career that Nicholas started checking out films. He began as the starring protagonist undergoing a mid-life crisis in the little seen film The Way We Live Now (1970). From there he served as a support actor with parts in such films as Man on a Swing (1974) and The Happy Hooker (1975). One of his best roles came as Barbara Feldon's hapless husband in the cult film Smile (1975). His parts have varied but he did play a number of father figure parts. He played Tom Cruise's dad in Risky Business (1983) and Robert Downey Jr.'s in Less Than Zero (1987). Nicholas also returned to Broadway in the early 1970's with replacement roles in both "That Championship Season" and "Thieves."
From the 1980's on, Nicholas' movie output has been sporadic, appearing as professional or authoritarians (doctors, ministers, judges, attorneys, politicians) in such offerings as Airplane! (1980), The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), Pacific Heights (1990), Hoffa (1992), Sliver (1993), Hail Caesar (1994), The Chamber (1996), Molly (1999).
Television, however, has been a strong medium of choice with hundreds of appearances on such shows as "Trapper John," "Simon & Simon," "Little House on the Prairie," "Silver Spoons," "Crazy Like a Fox," "Hill Street Blues," "Dallas," "Dynasty," "The Colbys," "St. Elsewhere," "Falcon Crest," "Moonlighting," "Who's the Boss," "227," "Growing Pains," "Murder, She Wrote," "L.A. Law," "Matlock," "Picket Fences," "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," "Diagnosis Murder." He also had a regular role on The Bronx Zoo (1987) and recurring ones on Eight Is Enough (1977), Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990) and Party of Five (1994). He graced such acclaimed mini-series as The Adams Chronicles (1976), Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977) and East of Eden (1981).
He continues a steady pace into the millennium, particularly on TV, with parts on the popular shows "American Tragedy," "That's Life," "Gideon's Crossing," "The West Wing," "NYPD Blue," "Nashville" and "The Outsider." Feature film work includes the Arnold Schwarzenegger action thriller Collateral Damage (2002); the supernatural thriller The List (2007); the dramedy A Short History of Decay (2014); the mystery thriller Buster's Mal Heart (2016) starring Rami Malek and the horror fantasy Doctor Sleep (2019).
Married four times, he is married to actress Christine Belford, a prominent TV actress. - Kathleen Lloyd was born on 13 September 1948 in Santa Clara, California, USA. She is an actress, known for The Car (1977), The Missouri Breaks (1976) and Equal Justice (1990). She is married to John Steven Mansfield . She was previously married to Peter Joseph Jenvay.
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Harry Caesar was born on 18 February 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for A Few Good Men (1992), The Longest Yard (1974) and Bird on a Wire (1990). He was married to Marion Kane Bernot. He died on 12 June 1994 in Los Angeles County, California, USA.- Actor
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Fair, light-haired 1970s and 1980s TV actor Gary Sandy was born in 1945 and raised in Ohio. He attended Ohio's Wilmington College and later improved on his chances of an acting career by moving to New York City, studying at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While there he made his professional debut in 1970 with a soap opera part written especially for him. Following his short stint on "As The World Turns," he visited a number of soap sets during a seven-year period as assorted, often menacing -- "Another World," "Somerset" and "The Secret Storm."
In between his soap trysts Gary made his Broadway bow in "Saturday, Sunday, Monday" (1974), which was directed by Franco Zeffirelli of "Romeo and Juliet" film fame. A couple of small movie parts eventually led to noticeable turns on TV, especially with Norman Lear's short-lived All That Glitters (1977). This, in turn, segued into his best known character on TV, that of hunky radio program director Andy Travis in the four-season sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati (1978). While Gary was a firm anchor and enjoyed top billing as the good-looking, All-American 'nice guy' lead, he was frequently overshadowed by his flashy supporting cast, which included 'hip' DJ Howard Hesseman and blonde bombshell Loni Anderson. The show would return in syndication in 1991 but without Gary and most of the others.
Gary is the perfect example of a committed and talented actor willing to persevere through good times and bad, despite a lack of offers after his big TV series success, Gary maintained for a time as a TV guest star on such shows as "L.A. Law," "Murder, She Wrote," "Diagnosis: Murder," "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch" and had a brief regular role in 2001 on the daytime soap The Young and the Restless (1973). He then reverted back to his first love -- the theatre.
Musical roles have since ranged from the slick and preening (The Pirate King in Broadway's "The Pirates of Penzance" and Billy Flynn in "Chicago") to playing the down-home charmer (Harold Hill in "The Music Man" and Will Rogers in "Will Rogers Follies"). During this time Gary also appeared in a few musical misfires based on critically successful plays. "Sheba", the musical adaptation of Come Back, Little Sheba, and "Windy City" based on "The Front Page," went nowhere. In 2004, he even opened in a Texas-styled musical version of Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor. One of his finest hours on stage was in the challenging one-man 1985 production "Billy Bishop Goes to War" in which he enacted 17 roles.
Seen here and there on camera, including the horror film Mommy's Day (1997) with grown-up demonic "Bad Seed" Patty McCormack, the crime drama Against the Law (1997), and the intense thriller The Insider (1999), Gary last appeared in the TV movies Lightning: Fire from the Sky (2001) starring John Schneider and A Place Called Home (2004), a family drama starring Ann-Margret.- Actor
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Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada to Seymour and Dorothy Zelniker. After graduating from Dawson College's Conservatory Acting School (Dome Theatre), Zelniker re-located to Toronto where he began working in many of Canada's finest theaters, including the National Arts Centre, the St. Lawrence Centre, Manitoba Theatre Centre, the Neptune Theatre, Toronto Free Theatre, Factory Theatre Lab, the Globe Theatre and Bathurst Street Theatre. Plays performed in include "American Buffalo", "Henry V", "Mother Courage", "Streamers", "Total Eclipse" and "Stepdance". Zelniker's favorite theatre role is Mozart in "Amadeus" which he performed at the Wool Warehouse Theatre in New Mexico. As his movie and television career began taking off, Zelniker moved to Los Angeles appearing in more than 20 feature films and countless times on television. Some noteworthy starring roles are Red Rodney in Clint Eastwood's "Bird", Allen Ginsberg in David Cronenberg's "Naked Lunch" and James Bertram Collip in PBS's "Glory Enough For All". He starred opposite Robert Duvall in "The Terry Fox Story", for which he won a Canadian Academy Award (Genie Award), with John Malkovich and Kevin Bacon in "Queen's Logic" and with Christopher Plummer in the ABC mini-series "Crossings". Guest starring on series television such as "Murder She Wrote", "Chicago Hope", "Millennium", "Profiler", "In the Heat of the Night" and "Dead Zone". Zelniker co-wrote, produced and starred in the festival award winning feature, "Stuart Bliss". He also co-wrote, produced, and directed the low budget experimental feature, "Falling...", which won the 2012 Best of Festival Award at Indie Fest USA International Film Festival. While working on a series of one act plays at the Coast Playhouse in Los Angeles, he met Dea Lawrence, leading to their getting married two years later. Their company, Aion Pictures, produces movies and theatre. From 2013-2018, Zelniker taught Acting for Film and Technique at the New York Film Academy (NYFA), after teaching and directing at AMDA, College and Conservatory for the Performing Arts from 2004 - 2013. As a lifetime environmentalist, in August 2018, Zelniker proudly joined Al Gore's Climate Reality Project's Leadership Corps serving as the Los Angeles Chapter Co-Chair for 2.5 years. "The Issue with Tissue - a boreal love story", the documentary that Michael wrote, produced, edited and directed, about the boreal forests and the Indigenous Peoples who call it home, held its world premiere at Cinefest Sudbury International Film Festival on September 18, 2022. It will be released to the general public beginning in December 2022 in Montreal at La Cinematheque Quebecoise.- Actor
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Rick Lenz was born on 21 November 1939 in Springfield, Illinois, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Cactus Flower (1969), Hec Ramsey (1972) and The Shootist (1976). He has been married to Linda Kurth since 15 May 1982. He was previously married to Jessica Rains.- Actor
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A third-generation actor, Spencer is the son of actress Kathleen Nolan, a former two-term president of the Screen Actors Guild. Father is Richard Heckenkamp, former head of Film Artists Associates, a talent agency. Spencer was raised in New York and Los Angeles and attended Duke and Fordham Universities before embarking on his theatrical studies with acclaimed teacher Sanford Meisner.- Actor
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A graduate of the University of Iowa, Getz is one of four siblings raised in Iowa and in the Mississippi River Valley of Northern Illinois. After doing a number of plays at the University of Iowa he was encouraged to try acting as a profession. A children's theater production in Napa led to New York which led to Getz's first East Coast play at LaMaMa with Danny DeVito and Peter Riegert. He later spent one season (1970-71) with the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) in San Francisco, joined Actor's Equity, and a year later helped found the Napa Valley Theater Company in Yountville, California. One of Getz's earliest roles was as "Shampoo Man" in a Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo commercial shot in the late 1970s. He appeared in the workshop and very first production of the musical "The Robber Bridegroom".- Don McManus was born on 8 November 1959 in San Diego, California, USA. He is an actor, known for Vice (2018), Sorry for Your Loss (2018) and Mom (2013).
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Bruce McGill grew up in San Antonio, Texas. His mother, Adriel Rose (Jacobs) is an artist, and his father, Woodrow Wilson McGill, is a real estate and insurance agent. He graduated from Douglas MacArthur High School San Antonio, where he acted in the department of theatre, and from The University of Texas at Austin with a degree in drama. His love for acting stems back to elementary school. He is related to former Texas State Senator A.R. Schwartz. McGill has starred in many films. His role as "D-Day" in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), taken out of desperation as a young unemployed actor, ended up being his most well known. His long acting career also includes films, Wildcats, The Last Boy Scout, My Cousin Vinny, Cliffhanger, Timecop, The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Sum of All Fears, along with many others. McGill starred in many television roles, including portraying the Boston Police Homicide Detective Vince Korsak on the TNT television crime drama, Rizzoli & Isles. The character of Korsak is the mentor and friend of Detective Jane Rizzoli, portrayed by Angie Harmon. Director Michael Mann,considers McGill a favorite, having worked with him on The Insider, Ali and Collateral. He has also appeared in four HBO TV films, CIA Director George Tenet in Oliver Stone's film W and, also, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. McGill has been married to his wife Gloria since 1994.- James Allen Preston was born in Washington, District of Columbia, USA on November 13, 1932. He attended public schools in the nation's capital and earned a track scholarship to a college in North Carolina. J. A. married Merilyn Alsop in 1957. His acting career accelerated to recurring TV series roles when he moved from New York to California in 1976. He is best known for roles as Allen Brooks in All's Fair, Ozzie Cleveland in Hill Street Blues, Leo Daltry in Dallas, and Richard Matthews in Santa Barbara. He played many magistrates in films, most notably Judge Julius Alexander Randolph in A Few Good Men. He lives in retirement in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Christine Belford was born on 14 January 1949 in Amityville, New York, USA. She is an actress, known for Christine (1983), Outlaws (1986) and The Greatest American Hero (1981). She has been married to Nicholas Pryor since July 1993.- Actor
- Soundtrack
John Bennett Perry has enjoyed a diverse and successful career that spans over the last few decades. Born in 1941 in Williamstown, Massachusetts, he started a band with his brother Tony and enjoyed local success. His acting roots were firmly planted in New York, where he appeared on Broadway. Dividing his time on both coasts, he appeared in numerous commercials, and became recognizable as the "Old Spice" sailor in the 1970s. He went on to appear in a long list of dramatic and comedic features using both his sarcastic wit and emotional depth to gain fans of moviegoers and critics everywhere.
In 1988, he won a Western Heritage Award for his work on Independence (1987). He had a recurring role as Sheriff Floyd Gilmore on the primetime soap Falcon Crest (1981) and appeared as Frank Arnett in the TV series Air America (1998). He and his real-life son, Matthew Perry, have played father and son on TV in Scrubs (2001) and on the big screen in Fools Rush In (1997). He enjoys touring with his folk/country/comedy band "The Ojai Boys". He lives in Ojai , California, with his wife Debbie, two dogs, a couple of horses and about five chickens.- Actress
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Brynn Thayer has been working in the industry since the 1970s. She's been nominated for a Daytime Emmy and wrote and performed her one-woman show, The Eulogy, which the Los Angeles Times called "Sardonic, Funny and Accessible...Thayer's a singular talent in peak form." She directed, wrote and produced the Worst Day series of short films with her partner Shahaub Roudbari, which toured the festival circuit and won many awards. Her latest films are Love and Debt, Collusions and Good Grief. Recent television appearances include Fatal Attraction and Suits.- Actress
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The very lovely, vivacious and smart-looking Joanna Cassidy was born in Camden, New Jersey, and raised in nearby Haddonfield, a borough located in Camden County. She grew up in a creative environment as the daughter and granddaughter of artists. At an early age she engaged in painting and sculpture and went on to major in art at Syracuse University in New York. During her time there she married Kennard C. Kobrin in 1964, a doctor in residency, and found work as a fashion model to help work his way to a degree. The couple eventually moved to San Francisco, where her husband set up a psychiatric practice; Joanna continued modeling and gave birth to a son and daughter. Following their divorce ten years later, she decided to move to Los Angeles in a bid for an acting career.
In between modeling chores and occasional commercial gigs, the reddish-haired beauty found minor, decorative work as an actress in such action fare as Steve McQueen's thriller Bullitt (1968), the Jason Robards drama Fools (1970), The Laughing Policeman (1973) starring Walter Matthau and The Outfit (1973) with Robert Duvall. Her first co-starring role came opposite George C. Scott in the offbeat comedy caper The Bank Shot (1974).
Television became an important medium for her in the late 1970s, with guest parts on all the popular shows of the time, both comedic and dramatic, including Dallas (1978). Trapper John, M.D. (1979), Taxi (1978), Starsky and Hutch (1975), Charlie's Angels (1976), Lou Grant (1977) and a recurring role on Falcon Crest (1981). A regular on the sketch/variety show Shields and Yarnell (1977), which showcased the popular mime couple, Joanna languished in three failed series attempts--The Roller Girls (1978), 240-Robert (1979) and The Family Tree (1983)--before hitting the jackpot with the sitcom Buffalo Bill (1983) opposite Dabney Coleman, in which she finally had the opportunity to demonstrate her flair for offbeat comedy. The show became that's season's critical darling, with Coleman playing a vain, sexist, obnoxious talk show host (a variation of his popular 9 to 5 (1980) film character) and Joanna received a Golden Globe for her resourceful portrayal of Jo Jo White, the director of his show and romantic foil for Coleman, who stood toe-to-toe with his antics.
The 1980s also brought about positive, critical reception for Joanna on film as well, especially in a number of showy portrayals, notably her snake-dancing replicant in the futuristic sci-fi thriller Blade Runner (1982), her radio journalist involved with Nick Nolte and Ed Harris in the political drama Under Fire (1983) and her co-starring role in a wacky triangle with Bob Hoskins and a hyperkinetic hare in the highly ambitious part toon/part fantasy film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). Back on the TV front she was seen in recurring roles on L.A. Law (1986), Diagnosis Murder (1993), The District (2000) and Boston Legal (2004).
Since then Joanna has juggled a number of quality film and TV assignments, a definitive highlight being her Emmy-nominated recurring role as a quirky, capricious mother/psychiatrist in the cult cable series Six Feet Under (2001). More recently she has taken part in more controversial film work that contain stronger social themes such as Anthrax (2001), a Canadian political thriller whose storyline feeds on the fear of terrorism; The Virgin of Juarez (2006), which chronicled the murders of hundreds of Mexican women; and the gay-themed pictures Kiss the Bride (2007) and Anderson's Cross (2010).
Off-camera Joanna is devoted to her art (painting, sculpting) and is a dedicated animal activist as well as golfer and antique collector. She presently resides in the Los Angeles area with her dogs.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
John D'Aquino was born on 14 April 1958 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Cory in the House (2007), 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996) and Xena: Warrior Princess (1995).- Noble Willingham appeared in more than 30 feature films, including Up Close & Personal (1996), Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), Chinatown (1974), City Slickers (1991), and The Distinguished Gentleman (1992).
He was born in the small town of Mineola, Texas, east of Dallas. After graduating from North Texas State College in 1953, he earned a master's degree in educational psychology from Baylor University. Willingham was a teacher before following his long-time dream of becoming an actor. Willingham auditioned for a part in the Academy Award-winning film The Last Picture Show (1971), which was filmed in Texas. He won the role, which led to another, in the Academy Award-winning comedy Paper Moon (1973).
On television, he had recurring roles on Home Improvement (1991) and Walker, Texas Ranger (1993), and appeared as a guest star on other television series, including Matlock (1986), L.A. Law (1986), Quantum Leap (1989), Murder, She Wrote (1984), and Northern Exposure (1990), as well as such films and made-for-television movies as Men Don't Tell (1993), Woman with a Past (1992), The Alamo: Thirteen Days to Glory (1987), and Unconquered (1989). - William Newman made his film debut in the Stuart Rosenberg film Brubaker (1980), starring Robert Redford, and followed this up with The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) opposite Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
Acting roles continued through out the 1980s with roles in the Stephen King horror film Silver Bullet (1985) alongside Gary Busey and Corey Haim, the drama The Mosquito Coast (1986) with Harrison Ford and River Phoenix, and the Chevy Chase comedy Funny Farm (1988). He played a sheriff in the The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James (1986) and appeared in George A. Romero's Monkey Shines (1988) proving that, as a character actor, he has the ability to adapt to various genres.
During the 1990s, work for Newman did not slow down. He appeared in: Leprechaun (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Stephen King's The Stand (1994) opposite Rob Lowe, The Craft (1996) and Touch (1997), the latter two films with Skeet Ulrich.
Newman has since worked steady in film, but is also a familiar face on TV, his roles including Eerie, Indiana (1991) episode 'Mr Chaney', Picket Fences (1992), and My Name Is Earl (2005). - Phillip Morris is an African-American actor from Ohio who is known for playing Jackie Chiles from Seinfeld. He is also known for playing Dr. Joshua Sweet from Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Merc from Ratchet: Deadlocked, Martian Manhunter from Smallville, Silas Stone from Doom Patrol, Vandal Savage from Justice League Doom and Doc Saturday from The Secret Saturdays. He is married to Carla Gittelson and has two children.
- Actor
- Producer
Character actor Paul Gleason was adept at playing tough guys and white collar sleazebags, making his film debut in Winter A-Go-Go (1965). He made a name for himself portraying these unlikeable characters. A native of Jersey City, New Jersey, Gleason studied extensively at the Actor's Studio in New York City in the mid-60s with Lee Strasberg (his mentor) and was seen in a handful of Roger Corman productions before landing a a three-year role on the TV soap opera All My Children (1970). He appeared in over 60 films, with key roles in Trading Places (1983), Die Hard (1988), Miami Blues (1990), Boiling Point (1993) and National Lampoon's Van Wilder (2002). However, he is perhaps best remembered for his role as the no-nonsense principal "Richard Vernon" in The Breakfast Club (1985). He also guest-starred in numerous television series, including Hill Street Blues (1981), Dawson's Creek (1998) and Friends (1994). Gleason passed away of mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer at a Burbank, California hospital on May 29th 2006 at the age of 67.- Actor
- Director
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Philip Casnoff was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Strong Medicine (2000), Sinatra (1992) and The Post (2017). He has been married to Roxanne Hart since 7 August 1983. They have two children.- Jim Ortlieb was born on 19 June 1956 in Hazlet, New Jersey, USA. He is an actor, known for Contagion (2011), Flatliners (1990) and A Mighty Wind (2003). He is married to Mimi Devens-Ortlieb. They have two children.
- Actor
- Writer
Son of 1940s and 1950s band leader Frankie Kaye and former nationally known radio personality during the 1960s during Top-40 radio era under the names "Lee Vaunce" at KGFJ in Los Angeles and "Mike Sheppard" at both San Francisco's KDIA and New York's WWRL. While a DJ at KPOI in Honolulu, Gwynne broke the Guinness Book of Records for nonstop drumming (92 hours) at the 1965 "Drum-A-Thon". He went on to sit in at the drums with many R&B bands of that era.
Arriving in Hollywood in 1969 to visit a friend, he met a man at a party who said he was the Universal Studios producer Jerrold Freedman. They hit it off over jazz music and radio, Gwynne even expressing an interest in acting and Freedman saying they would work together. Realizing he was at a "Hollywood" party, Gwynne did not believe the man was really a producer and dismissed the whole thing.
Three weeks later, Gwynne received a telegram instructing him to be at Freedman's office at Universal. Seems he really was a producer and when Gwynne arrived at the appointed hour, he was introduced to a man name Bob Edmiston who silently shook his hand then left the room. Gwynne gradually realized he was being offered a part on a show called The Bold Ones: The Senator (1970) directed by Daryl Duke, with whom he was to work in several other movies including Payday (1973) with Rip Torn, his first big break into features in 1971.
Soon after that first meeting, he met an excitable young man through an ex-girlfriend. He was looking for a break as a director. Freedman was again involved and the new director, Steven Spielberg was offered a TV show called "Par for the Course" and Gwynne was delighted to work with him playing a psychiatrist with Roy Thinnes and Clu Gulager. The beginning of a lifelong career in acting for radio, TV and the big screen had begun.
Gwynne is (2016) currently writing scripts and living happily in the woody Westchester region of New York, just above Manhattan where he still plays the drums from time to time sitting in at Showman's Club in Harlem.- Peter MacLean was born on 2 January 1936 in Dorchester, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Squirm (1976), Days of Our Lives (1965) and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984). He was married to Dorothy Constantine. He died on 28 May 2003 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Ivor Francis, besides his many roles on television and at the movies, acted on radio as well in shows like "Fibber McGee and Molly"; on Broadway in shows such as "J.B." with Christopher Plummer, and came west to California when New York plays turned mostly to musicals. He worked in films, television and in day-time soaps as well. In addition, he operated the Ivor Francis Actors Workshop in West Hollywood and, among the class members, were Ben Murphy (Alias Smith and Jones (1971)); Linda Haynes (Brubaker (1980) & The Drowning Pool (1975)); Mary Douvan (Sandra Dee's mother) and the Goldrup brothers, Tom Goldrup and Jim Goldrup, who appear on stage in Santa Cruz County, California, stage productions.
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- Camera and Electrical Department
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Although Richard Kiley's rich baritone and strong vocal talent was much in evidence and received due respect with his award of a Tony for "Man of La Mancha", it was little used in his television and movie appearances. Won two Tony Awards as Best Actor (Musical): in 1959 for "Redhead" and in 1966 for his signature role, "Man of La Mancha". He was also nominated in the same category in 1962 for "No Strings" and, in 1987, as as Best Actor (Play) for a revival of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons".- Lloyd Bochner had that wonderfully sonorous type of voice that was always tailor-made for radio or for the stage. Unsurprisingly then, by the time he was eleven, Lloyd was already employed as part-time voiceover artist and reader of drama serials by radio stations in Vancouver.
Lloyd Wolfe Bochner was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Frieda (Kenen) and Charles Abraham Bochner. He was of Russian Jewish and Ukrainian Jewish descent. He made his acting debut as a youth with the Joseph Barrington Juveniles. Lloyd's education at the University of Toronto was interrupted in 1943 by wartime service in the Royal Canadian Navy. However, in 1947, he graduated with a B.A. and a few years later moved to New York to further hone his acting skills. In 1953, he returned to Canada to participate in the inaugural season of the Stratford Festival getting to enact choice Shakespearean roles from Horatio in "Hamlet" to Orsino in "Twelfth Night".
Having made his screen bow in a small Canadian production, The Mapleville Story (1946), Lloyd's first significant exposure in television was as British army officer Nicholas Lacey in the half-hour NBC serial One Man's Family (1949), which had first been performed on radio and starred Bert Lytell and Marjorie Gateson. His real breakthrough came quite a few years later, once having moved to Hollywood, as co-star of the studio-bound crime series Hong Kong (1960). He played local British police-chief Neil Campbell, solving crime in tandem with an American newspaper correspondent (played by Australian actor Rod Taylor). This, in turn, led to other key roles including his almost legendary appearance in the classic The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "To Serve Man" in 1962 (at one time voted 11th in a TV guide poll of 100 best TV episodes of all time). Based on a short story by Damon Knight written in 1950, "To Serve Man" unfolds in flashback as narrated for the viewer by Lloyd's decoding expert Michael Chambers. It has all the elements of great television, with an excellent cast (including Richard Kiel, later known as 'Jaws' from the 'James Bond' movies; and Theodore Marcuse as Citizen Grigori giving an indelible impression of Nikita Khrushchev); and an unexpected and disturbing denouement when it turns out that the supposedly altruistic alien Kanamits have come to earth to harvest humans for food. Lloyd repeated his famous punch-line, "it's a cook book!", years later as a spoof in Leslie Nielsen's The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991).
For most of the 1960s and 1970s, Lloyd was cast in supporting roles, often as mellifluous, meticulously-attired, upper-class snobs, practically guaranteed to harbour treacherous intent. He appeared in several motion pictures, notably as the malicious, smooth villain Frederick Carter who unsuccessfully tangles with Lee Marvin in Point Blank (1967), and in the same year, as homosexual drug dealer Vic Rood on the receiving end of the beating from Frank Sinatra in Tony Rome (1967). However, on the whole, Lloyd's preferred medium was television. He had a recurring role in the long-running soap-opera Dynasty (1981) as Blake Carrington's manipulative rival, Cecil Colby, in league with archvillain Alexis Carrington (Joan Collins). A versatile character actor, Lloyd's clean-cut, aquiline features and quiet air of authority lent themselves to portraying a vast gallery of medical men, soldiers, politicians and executives. Some of these were men of integrity, but like many a good actor, Lloyd rather enjoyed the challenge of playing the scoundrel.
During his half century-long acting career, Lloyd Bochner garnered two Liberty Awards as best television actor, Canada's equivalent of the Emmy Awards. He was also an active member in the Association of Canadian Radio and Television Artists. He died at age 81 of cancer on October 29, 2005 in Santa Monica, California. His children are actors Hart Bochner, Paul Bochner, and Johanna Courtleigh. - Actor
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John McLiam was born on 24 January 1918 in Hayter, Alberta, Canada. He was an actor and writer, known for First Blood (1982), In Cold Blood (1967) and Sleeper (1973). He was married to Roberta Claire Robinson. He died on 16 April 1994 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
John McMartin was born on 21 August 1929 in Warsaw, Indiana, USA. He was an actor, known for Blow Out (1981), All the President's Men (1976) and No Reservations (2007). He was married to Cynthia Baer. He died on 6 July 2016 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Keene Curtis was born on 15 February 1923 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. He was an actor, known for Sliver (1993), I.Q. (1994) and Heaven Can Wait (1978). He died on 13 October 2002 in Bountiful, Utah, USA.- Actor
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John Cullum was born on 2 March 1930 in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Northern Exposure (1990), All Good Things (2010) and 1776 (1972). He has been married to Emily Frankel since 5 May 1959. They have one child.- Peter Haskell was born on 15 October 1934 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Child's Play 3 (1991), Child's Play 2 (1990) and Bracken's World (1969). He was married to Dianne Tolmich and Annie Compton. He died on 12 April 2010 in Northridge, California, USA.
- This durable, granite-faced actor with the matching steel-edged voice was one of the most interesting and recognisable leads in 1950s and 1960s television. He was born Marvin Jack Richman in South Philadelphia to paper and roofing contractor Benjamin Richman and his wife Yetta Dora (née Peck), the youngest of five siblings. His childhood was -- by his own account -- 'horrendous'. The family was not well off and money was hard to come by. For two years he played football until sidelined by a knee injury. Richman also studied at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, from which he graduated in 1951 as a fully qualified pharmacist. He briefly worked in that field, though his interest had always been in the performing arts, spurred on by regular childhood visits to the nearby Alhambra Theater and performances in high school dramatics. Between 1952 and 1954, Richman trained at the Actor's Studio in New York under Lee Strasberg, having already made his stage debut in 1947. Until 1996, he acted on and off-Broadway and on the West Coast, as well as touring nationally in seminal plays like Mister Roberts, The Rainmaker and A Hatful of Rain. For most of his early career he was billed as 'Mark Richman' but in 1971 changed his moniker to Peter Mark Richman because of his abiding belief in Subud, an Eastern spiritualist philosophy.
An amazingly prolific screen actor, Richman was first brought to Hollywood by famed director William Wyler to appear in Friendly Persuasion (1956). There were a few subsequent big screen outings, but the lean, edgy and coldly handsome actor reserved his best for the small screen. By the early 60s, he starred in his own series at NBC, Cain's Hundred (1961). His character was a former syndicate lawyer, Nick Cain, who, after wanting to 'go straight' is targeted for a hit. When his fiancée gets killed in the crosshairs instead, Cain swears revenge and joins an FBI task force to bring down the top 100 mobsters by various legal means. While the series only ran to 30 episodes, it firmly established Richman in the medium. He was henceforth to alternate between nasty villains, stern authority figures and stoic heroes and become one of the most often killed guys on TV. His numerous roles have included appearances in The Twilight Zone (1959), The Fugitive (1963), The Virginian (1962), Mission: Impossible (1966), Longstreet (1971) (as James Franciscus' cynical boss, Duke Paige), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) (as a rather camp THRUSH operative) and -- having lost none of his edge -- in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). Standouts have included The Probe (1965) in which Richman plays a scientist determined to explore another dimension at any cost, and the first of two guest spots on The Invaders (1967) as an ally of the chief protagonist David Vincent. Richman was almost clipped by a helicopter blade during this episode and lucky to survive the experience. He continued to perform on screen well until his late eighties.
In addition to his work on front of the camera, Richman was something of a Renaissance man: a noted humanitarian (for which he was awarded a Silver Medallion from The Motion Picture and Television Fund) and an accomplished painter from an early age, trained at the Philadelphia Sketch Club. Describing himself as a 'figurative expressionist', Richman has had at least seventeen successful one-man exhibitions on the West Coast and in New York (primarily portraits of oil on canvas). He has also written two novels and several stage plays, of which his solo show 4 Faces and the one act play A Medal for Murray were the most acclaimed. His wife of 67 years was the actress Helen Richman (née Landess).