Classic Horror Scream Queens
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Canadian-born Fay Wray was brought up in Los Angeles and entered films at an early age. She was barely in her teens when she started working as an extra. She began her career as a heroine in westerns at Universal during the silent era. In 1926 the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers selected 13 young starlets it deemed most likely to succeed in pictures. Fay was chosen as one of these starlets, along with Janet Gaynor and Mary Astor. Fame would indeed come to Fay when she played another heroine in Erich von Stroheim's The Wedding March (1928). She continued playing leads in a number of films, such as the good-bad girl in Thunderbolt (1929). By the early 1930s she was at Paramount working with Gary Cooper and Jack Holt in a number of average films, such as Master of Men (1933). She also appeared in such horror films as Doctor X (1932) and The Vampire Bat (1933). In 1933 Fay was approached by producer Merian C. Cooper, who told her that he had a part for her in a picture in which she would be working with a tall, dark leading man. What he didn't tell her was that her "tall, dark leading man" was a giant gorilla, and the picture turned out to be the classic King Kong (1933). Perhaps no one in the history of pictures could scream more dramatically than Fay, and she really put on a show in "Kong". Her character provided a combination of sex appeal, vulnerability and lung capacity as she was stalked by the giant beast all the way to the top of the Empire State Building. That was as far as Fay would rise, however, as this was, after all, just another horror movie. After "Kong", she began a slow decline that put her into low-budget action films by the mid '30s. In 1939 her 11-year marriage to screenwriter John Monk Saunders ended in divorce, and her career was almost finished. In 1942 she remarried and retired from the screen, forever to be remembered as the "beauty who killed the beast" in "King Kong". However, in 1953 she made a comeback, playing mature character roles, and also appeared on television as Catherine, Natalie Wood's mother, in The Pride of the Family (1953). She continued to appear in films until 1958 and television into the 1960s.- Mary Philbin's life should be a lesson to domineering parents. Mary was born on July 16, 1903, in Chicago, Illinois, to John Philbin and his first wife and namesake, Mary. The child was regarded as a little beauty from an early age and her mother was exceedingly proud of her and loved to show her off. Howevr, unlike her gregarious mother (who many regarded as controlling and domineering, to the point of imprinting her strict religious beliefs on the child), Mary took after her shy, quiet and reserved father, whom she adored. Many of her contemporaries remarked how she didn't seem to belong to the current age; her personality was a throwback to the 19th century with her mannerisms and religious, quiet and very gentle nature. Being an only child, Mary grew up quite spoiled by her mother. Her father would take her often to see the plays at local theaters and even, on rare occasion, to see an opera at the Chicago Opera House. She fell in love with the stage immediately and, once home, would re-enact what she saw to her dolls--performing the leading heroine roles. She decided at an early age that she wanted a career in the theater. She took up classical dancing (ballet and waltz) and was quite adept at playing the pipe organ and piano (in her later years she kept her family's pipe organ close at hand), although much to her chagrin, she could not sing. However, she did not train in an acting school and this would ultimately impact on her later career.
Mary's early life was relatively uneventful; her mother's strong nature created friction between her parents and she became even more reserved and quite shy in public when meeting new people. The only real friend she had at that age (who would be her lifelong friend and even colleague in The Phantom of the Opera (1925)) was Carla Laemmle (aka Rebecca Laemmle), the daughter of Joseph Laemmle, brother of Universal Studios mogul Carl Laemmle. Through her friend's uncle Mary became interested in films and put her stage career on hold. Upon seeing her first "Nickelodeon", she was bitten by the film bug and eagerly awaited any new ones that came out. She was particularly fond of the films of Erich von Stroheim, so much so that at the age of 16, when she heard that the director was making his new film Blind Husbands (1919) and a contest was set up to search for talent for the film, Mary tried to sign up. At first she could not find the right photograph worthy of submission, but her mother had taken a picture and submitted it and was allowed to join the contest. The contest was held in Chicago at the Elks Club and was sponsored by her church, with Von Stroheim himself as the judge. The Teutonic director was smitten with her beauty and her eagerness to behave and speak well, and gave her the leading role in one of his films. When finding out she was to move to Los Angeles to make the film, Mary at first had reservations and (as always) consulted her parents. Her parents refused until they found out their old family friends, the Laemmles, were moving out to Los Angeles as well, and they gave consent for Mary to go but only with her parents as her chaperones (due to their fear that the "sheiks" of Los Angeles would corrupt Mary's moral character).
Once in Los Angeles, Mary was under watch all the time by her parents (in particular her mother) and, when working, by her new boss, Carl Laemmle. When arriving at the studio, she found out that she had been replaced in the leading role in "Blind Husbands". Mary was deeply hurt at the time and felt cheated, and was considering going home had it not been for her friend Rebecca (whom was now known as Carla) who recommended her to her uncle, the owner of Universal City, Carl Laemmle, and the man in charge of production, Irving Thalberg. Although Carl Laemmle had met Mary some time earlier and always regarded her as an "angelic, sweet, quiet" young lady, he was none too impressed with her at the time to consider her for a contract, owing mostly to her moralistic and reserved disposition. Thalberg held the same reservations about her. However, after being persuaded by Mary's family and Carla, Carl caved and gave 17-year-old Mary her first big part: "Talitby Millicuddy", the leading lady, in the melodrama The Blazing Trail (1921), directed by Robert Thornby. Mary caught on in films very quickly and was considered by the public, initially at least, in the same league as her bigger contemporaries - Mary Pickford, Florence Lawrence, Mae Marsh and Lillian Gish, one of those "child-woman" actresses particularly noted for her subtle but extraordinary ethereal Irish beauty.
After the moderate success of "The Blazing Trail" she was cast in Danger Ahead! (1921) in the role of Tressie Harlow; the one-reel comedy Twelve Hours to Live (1921); the western Red Courage (1921) as Eliza Fay, and Sure Fire (1921) in an extra part (her earliest known surviving film); and False Kisses (1921) as Mary. In all, she made six films in 1921. After seeing her work in "False Kisses" and in particular "Danger Ahead"; Erich von Stroheim cast Mary for his next film, which would become the most expensive (to that date) production ever for Univeral City (the costs rising up to a million dollars) - the part of the crippled girl (an extra part) in Foolish Wives (1922). Mary can be seen in the film as the little girl on crutches with her back turned, and you only quickly get a darkened glimpse of her face through her curly ringlets. Although her role in the film was just a bit part, Mary relished being under Von Stroheim's tutelage and it was from him, as she always said, she learned about "true" acting in comparison to stage acting. It has always been said of Mary Philbin that when the director was really good (such as von Stroheim, Paul Leni, William Beaudine), people noticed she could be equally as good an actress as her colleagues. However, in the hands less talented directors (such as Rupert Julian', - who would partly direct her later in Merry-Go-Round (1923) and "The Phantom of the Opera"--her lack of acting training became a real handicap for her (this is clearly evident in some of her later films).
Mary began to get more notice from Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg, after Erich von Stroheim's high recommendation of her (and of course the public's approval), and after a minor film, _The Trooper (1922)_ (v), she was given the role of "Ruth" in Human Hearts (1922). Mary began to get even further recognition and it was around this time that her face always was featured on movie magazines as the 'Cover' Girl. But Mary's personal life was darkened by her father's divorce and remarriage to Alice Mead. Mary was shattered by the event, and as a result became even closer to her mother (her biggest mistake), but nevertheless was very loving to her new stepmother and continued to adore her father.
Mary made two more films before she received her first big break as the heroine "Agnes Urban", in von Stroheim's "The Merry-Go-Round" in 1923. The casting for this film was impeccable and many of its stars would later repeat many films with Mary afterward - in particular her leading man, Norman Kerry. He always had a crush on Mary and flirted with her many times on the set, although von Stroheim, Mary's mother and father (who always were on the set with her; her stepmother stayed at home) and even Mary herself kept him from getting too carried away. Mary said in her later years how deep down she always had a great crush on Norman Kerry and considered him "a very handsome, dashing man". Everything was going well in the production until it came to a standstill for the most unusual and even hilarious reason. Erich von Stroheim was known to be a perfectionist in his work, so much so that in the plot of this film (set in the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the time of 'Emperor Franz Josef') he insisted that some of the actors wear underwear embroidered with the Imperial Austrian Royal Family insignia - infuriating Carl Laemmle. After an intense argument with Laemmle the wildly extravagant director was dropped from the picture. The cast was stunned and the two most affected were Wallace Beery (who was originally cast as Agnes' father) and Mary Philbin. Wallace, infuriated with Carl Laemmle's decision walked out, as did many others--even Mary considered it. To clean up the mess quickly, Carl hired Universal actor Rupert Julian to direct (who previously had directed and starred in The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin (1918) with Lon Chaney). Mary, at first, refused until Carl insisted that Julian would be just as good a director as von Stroheim. Not having met or worked with Julian before, she decided to stay and Cesare Gravina (a favorite actor of von Stroheim) was re-cast in Beery's role. However, it became clearly evident that Julian was a novice compared to von Stroheim, although he reportedly considered himself equal to, if not better than, von Stroheim in directorial skills. Much of the original footage was cut or re-filmed upon its release, "The Merry-Go-Round" launched Mary as an "official" Hollywood star.
Although not as popular as her contemporaries, Mary graced many more magazine covers and was the feature girl for various products - even the Victrola Recording Company. During this time, Mary met the love of her life, Universal Studio executive/producer Paul Kohner - through the Laemmles. Paul Kohner was only a year older than Mary and born in Teplitz-Schoenau, Austria-Hungary (now Teplice, Czech Republic). They were immediately smitten with each other - but due to Mary's parents' religion (Roman Catholicism) and the fact that Paul was a Jew - they kept their relationship, in the early years, secret as much as possible. They exchanged love letters to each other (which both of them kept till their deaths).
Mary's film career took off with "Where Is This West?"; "The Age of Desire"; "The Temple of Venus"; "The Thrill Chaser"; among others with Paul Kohner sometimes as the producer (affording her more time to be with him, under the protection from her parents observance). But it wasn't until 1924, after she made good in the role of Marianne in The Rose of Paris (1924) that Mary was to be cast in her next, most famous and best- remembered film role of her entire career.
In 1924, Carl Laemmle was searching among the elite list of Hollywood starlets (among those listed were Lillian Gish, Madge Bellamy, Betty Bronson, Patsy Ruth Miller, Mildred Davis) for the role of the young Swedish soprano Christine Daaé in the film adaption of Gaston Leroux's novella "Le Fantôme de l'Opéra" (The Phantom of the Opera) starring in the leading role of Erik (the Opera Ghost/Phantom of the Opera) was one of Hollywood's best actors - Lon Chaney, fresh from his success in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and, much to the concern of the cast and crew, the director hired for the picture was the temper-mental Rupert Julian. Julian remembered Mary from "The Merry-Go-Round" (he also remembered Norman Kerry and hired him for role of Viscount Raoul de Chagny). Mary was cast in the key role of Christine, the chance of a lifetime. But the production was one of the most difficult for the cast to endure. Although Mary was working alongside of many of her former colleagues and friends (Norman Kerry, Cesare Gravina, John St. Polis, and Carla Laemmle), she had never met Lon Chaney personally before and, in keeping with her nature, was initially very shy and nervous around him.
During the filming Chaney and Julian exchanged heated arguments. Charles Van Enger, the main cameraman for the film, commented on how they "just hated each other" and how Julian was obsessed with Mary; adjusting her clothes, wigs, even the padding on her legs and chest. Mary put up with it - because of not only was her mother on the set most of the time, but Julian's wife Elisie Wilson was an old friend of Mary's. Upon seeing Julian's conduct- Elisie took over Mary's wardrobe and makeup for the film. On the Phantom set Mary seldom worked with Chaney alone, most of the time it was under Julian's supervision - but due to Chaney and his arguments- Chaney would direct his own scenes including several scenes with
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Vivacious, blonde Mae Clarke was exposed to cinema from an early age, her father being an organist in a motion picture cinema. Growing up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, she learned how to dance. At the tender age of 13 she was already performing in nightclubs and amateur theatricals. In 1924, she was one of "May Dawson's Dancing Girls", a New York cabaret act, where she was "discovered" by producer Earl Lindsay and promptly cast in a minor part at the Strand Theatre on Times Square. She then performed as a dancer and burlesque artist at the Strand Roof nightclub, situated above the theatre (which was managed by Lindsay) and at the Everglades Club, earning $40 a week. While there she struck up a lifelong friendship with fellow actress Ruby Stevens, who would later change her name to Barbara Stanwyck.
In 1926, Clarke got her first chance in "legitimate" theater, appearing in the drama "The Noose" with Stanwyck and Ed Wynn. This was followed by the musical comedy "Manhattan Mary" (1927). The following year (1928), at age 17, she married her first husband, Lew Brice, brother of Fanny Brice. After further vaudeville experience, Clarke was screen-tested by Fox and landed her first movie role in 1929. While she was top-billed in films like Nix on Dames (1929), she was clearly headed for B-movie status and left Fox just over a year later. This resulted in better roles for her, though she was generally cast in "hard-luck" roles. She played prostitute Molly Malloy in the hugely successful Lewis Milestone-directed The Front Page (1931)) and, on the strength of this performance, was signed by Carl Laemmle Jr. at Universal and cast to star in Waterloo Bridge (1931) as a ballerina-turned-streetwalker, a part made famous by Vivien Leigh in the sanitized MGM remake, Waterloo Bridge (1940). Reviewer Mordaunt Hall described Clarke's complex performance as "capital" (New York Times, September 5, 1931).
Also in 1931, she had the brief and uncredited (but iconic) role for which she will always be known: the hapless girlfriend on the receiving end of a grapefruit pushed into her face by James Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931). She later appeared with Cagney (a close friend in real life) in still more adversarial scenes, in Lady Killer (1933) and Great Guy (1936). She had some feisty comedy roles in Three Wise Girls (1931) with Jean Harlow, and starring in Parole Girl (1933). She was third-billed in James Whale's Frankenstein (1931), as Elizabeth, the title character's bride-to-be. Her best moment in the film -- one of sheer terror -- comes when she is confronted by the monster (Boris Karloff) in her own bedroom. Sadly, Clarke's career suffered several major setbacks, beginning in 1932, from which it never fully recovered. She had a nervous breakdown in June of that year (and another in 1934), most likely caused by overwork and marital problems. This was followed by a serious car accident in March of 1933. In addition to that, her sexy screen personae became restricted by the new, strict Hollywood Production Code.
When she returned to the screen it was to be in B-pictures. She had some rewarding parts in some films for Republic, notably The House of a Thousand Candles (1936) and the civil war romance Hearts in Bondage (1936), with Lew Ayres. Despite an image change from frizzy blonde to brunette she had few opportunities to shine after 1938, except, perhaps, as heroine of the Republic serial King of the Rocket Men (1949). By the beginning of the 1950's, she was largely reduced to doing cameos and walk-on roles, at best playing minor parts in westerns. She did, however, make several notable appearances on television, particularly on The Loretta Young Show (1953).
Clarke, a star of Pre-Code Hollywood, fell on hard financial times towards the end of her life. After her last film appearance in Watermelon Man (1970), she retired to the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles and devoted her remaining years to her favorite hobby: painting in the style of Swiss abstract artist Paul Klee. She died there of cancer in 1992, aged 81.- Actress
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Elegant, quintessentially British Valerie Hobson was the daughter of a British army officer. She studied dancing at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and appeared onstage for the first time at age 16, but she contracted a case of scarlet fever and decided to give up dancing for acting. She journeyed to Hollywood, but became disillusioned with the studio system and returned to Britain, where she was often cast in aristocratic roles.
She married producer Anthony Havelock-Allan and subsequently appeared in many of his films. They divorced in 1952. She then married politician -- and future notorious sex-and-espionage-scandal figure -- John Profumo and gave up her acting career. She stood strongly by Profumo during that distasteful period. In her later years she was devoted to charity work. She died in 1998, aged 81.- Born Olga Vladimirovna Baklanova, one of six children of Vladimir Baklanoff and his wife Alexandra, later billed as the Russian Tigress in her early talking films, was born August 19, 1893. She graduated from the Cherniavsky Institute in Moscow prior to her selection in 1912 at age 19 to apprentice at the Moscow Art Theatre. During her early years at M.A.T. (1914-1918) she appeared in perhaps 18 films bringing her into contact with Tourjansky, Boleslawski and M. Chekov among others. Her last Russian film, Bread (1918) was the first communist agitprop vehicle. From 1917 she appeared in the "classics" on the parent stage and at the M.A.T. First Studio. Her mentor, Nemirovich-Danchenko, showcased her in avant-garde productions of the newly created M.A.T. Musical Studio from 1920-1925. She was honored with the Worthy Artist Of The Republic by the Soviet regime.
Eight months after her M.A.T. New York debut in December 1925, she declined to return with the M.A.T. company to Russia and subsequently defected. She was noticed by the Hollywood studios while performing on stage in Los Angeles in The Miracle in the role of the nun. Her film debut was a bit in The Dove (1927). Her dramatic Portrayals in The Man Who Laughs (1928), Street of Sin (1928), The Docks of New York (1928) and Forgotten Faces (1928) brought her critical acclaim in 1928. Her subsequent vamp/tramp roles in early Paramount and Fox talking films nearly destroyed her promising start. Stagey mannerisms and a heavy accent relegated her to supporting roles. She appeared to advantage in three films at MGM including the infamous Freaks (1932) with an unrestrained and legendary performance.
After appearing in west coast stage productions in 1931-32, she permanently left for the Broadway stage in 1933 following one last film at Paramount. From 1933 to 1943 she starred in various Broadway productions and then toured in road companies of Cat And The Fiddle, Twentieth Century, Grand Hotel and Idiot's Delight. She debuted on the London stage in 1936 in Going Places. One last big role in Claudia (1943) kept her busy for two years (1941-1943). She returned to Hollywood in 1943 to recreate her stage role. Some summer stock and occasional night club appearances followed as she moved into retirement.
During the mid-1960s Olga was interviewed by Richard Lamparski, Kevin Brownlow and John Kobal who all recognized her unique contributions in the performing arts. Her death occurred at Vevey, Switzerland on September 6, 1974 after a period of declining health. - Helen Chandler is known for The Mission of Mr. Foo (1915).
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Gloria Stuart was born on a dining room table on 4th Street in Santa Monica, California on July 4, 1910. Her early roles as a performing artist were in plays she produced in her home as a young girl. She was the star of her senior class play at Santa Monica High School in 1927. Attending the University of California, at Berkeley, she continued to perform on the stage. Stuart married and move to Carmel, where she performed in a production of "The Seagull" which was transferred to the Pasadena Playhouse in 1932. It was there that talent scouts for both Paramount and Universal saw her. In a famous dispute, the heads of the two studios flipped a coin and Universal won. She played lead roles for director James Whale, including (The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and The Kiss Before the Mirror (1933)). The hard work at the studio estranged her from her first husband (Stuart helped create the Screen Actors Guild). She played the leading lady in Roman Scandals (1933), on the set of which she met her husband Arthur Sheekman. She was dissatisfied with the roles in which she was cast at Universal and played roles in films for other studios. Ultimately, a few years after having her daughter Sylvia (named after the role she was playing when she met Sheekman), she left the cinema and sought roles on the stage in New York. In the 1940s, she opened an art furniture shop where she created decoupage lamps, tables and trays, many of which sold to stars like Judy Garland and others. Later, Stuart took up oil painting and was very prolific, showing and selling her work in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. Her landscapes of The Watts Towers are on permanent collection at The Los Angeles County Museum. She also took up and mastered the art of bonsai and some of her trees are on permanent collection in the Huntington Library Japanese Garden. When her husband fell ill in the 1970s (he died in 1978), she returned to acting doing a range of television series. In 1982, she returned to the screen appearing in a brief dance scene with Peter O'Toole in My Favorite Year (1982).
About this time a friend, she knew half a century earlier in Carmel, who was a master printer, re-entered her life and from him, Stuart learned the craft of fine printing. She established a printing press in her home studio called Imprenta Glorias. where she created a body of fine artist's books. Her greatest book, "Flight of Butterfly Kites" is in permanent collection at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Gloria Stuart won a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Oscar-nomination for her performance as the Old Rose in Titanic (1997). In July 2010, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences honored Gloria Stuart with a Centennial Celebration. She was the first such honoree to be living for a centennial. At 100 years of age, she had completed her greatest artist's book with her great-granddaughter working as her apprentice and also her final appearance on film in her grandson's documentary about her, entitled Secret Life of Old Rose: The Art of Gloria Stuart (2012) when she died at home at the age of 100 on September 26, 2010.- Actress
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Betty May Adams was the daughter of a travelling Iowa cotton buyer with a penchant for alcohol. Growing up in Arkansas, Betty expressed an early interest in acting and made her performing debut in a third grade play of "Hansel and Gretel." Beautiful, talented and determined, the freshly minted 'Miss Little Rock' left home at the age of 19 to live with her aunt and uncle in California. For three days a week she made ends meet working as a secretary. The remainder of her time was spent taking speech and drama lessons (in due course losing her Southern twang) and making the rounds of the various Hollywood casting departments. Her first screen role was (appropriately) as a starlet in Paramount's Red, Hot and Blue (1949). This was followed by an inauspicious leading role in the B-grade Western The Dalton Gang (1949). Over a period of five weeks she appeared in six further quota quickies of the sagebrush variety for Poverty Row outfit Lippert Productions. Since Lippert owned no actual studio facilities, most of the filming took place at the Ray Corrigan ranch in Chatsworth, California. In the summer of 1950, Betty assisted in a screen test for Detroit Lions football star Leon Hart at Universal-International. While Hart's movie career ended up stillborn, Betty clicked with producers who opted to change her first name to 'Julia.' The initial outing for her new studio was entitled Bright Victory (1951), with the budding actress a little underemployed as 'the other girl' in a love triangle involving a blind war veteran (played by Arthur Kennedy). Her career was significantly better served in her next assignment as co-star opposite James Stewart in Anthony Mann's seminal Technicolor western Bend of the River (1952) (Kennedy this time cast as the arch villain). Adams later recalled her part in this film as "a great learning experience" and one of her "fondest Hollywood memories," It also led to a life long friendship with Jimmy Stewart.
Signed to a seven-year contract (and having her legs insured by Universal to the tune of $125,000 by Lloyds of London), Julia seemed destined to remain perpetually typecast as a western heroine. A comely actress with soft, classical features, she often gave affecting performances in what amounted to little more than bread-and-butter pictures. At the very least, she got to play romantic leads opposite some of Universal's top box-office earners: Rock Hudson (in Horizons West (1952) and The Lawless Breed (1952)), Tyrone Power(The Mississippi Gambler (1953)) and Glenn Ford (The Man from the Alamo (1953)). Having played a succession of 'nice girls,' Julia took a turn as leader of an outlaw gang in Wings of the Hawk (1953), set against the background of the Mexican Revolution (Van Heflin was first-billed as a mining engineer, who, having his gold mine taken over by Federales, joins Julia's band of 'insurrectos'). 'Miss Melon Patch' of 1953 was about to experience another important career change, being famously cast as the imperilled heroine Kay Lawrence in Jack Arnolds cultish monster flic Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), a role Adams initially considered turning down. Shot in 3-D on a shoestring budget, the picture was light on script but strong on atmosphere and proved once again that style can succeed over content. The not inconsiderable physical charms of Miss Adams often dominated the scenery and gave the 'Gill Man' a run for his money. Audiences approved and 'Creature' spawned two further sequels, alas without Julia and with diminishing returns.
In 1955, having generated strong box office heat, Julia changed her moniker (with studio approval) to the less gentle-sounding Julie. Accordingly, she was now offered more varied material ranging from tough melodramas, to comedies and lightweight romances. Adams further established her credentials with roles which included a soft porn model who survives a plane crash in the Colorado Rockies in The Looters (1955); as a cop's wife in Six Bridges to Cross (1955) (a crime drama based on Boston's Great Brinks Robbery); a sympathetic school's doctor in the family-oriented comedy The Private War of Major Benson (1955) and as the wife of an assistant D.A. fighting gangland on the New York waterfront in Slaughter on 10th Avenue (1957). After 1957, her contract with Universal having expired, Adams successfully transitioned into television where she remained a firm favorite in westerns and crime dramas, guest-starring in just about every classic prime-time series covering both genres (Perry Mason (1957) being her personal favorite). Latterly, she had a popular recurring role as real estate lady Eve Simpson in Murder, She Wrote (1984). Adams was still in demand for occasional screen appearances well into her 90s.
She was married twice: first, to writer-producer Leonard Stern, and, secondly, to the actor Ray Danton. Julie Adams passed away in Los Angeles on February 3, 2019 at the age of 92. Her autobiography (co-written with her son Mitchell Danton), entitled "The Lucky Southern Star: Reflections from the Black Lagoon" appeared in 2011.- The actress was born Marilyn Watts in Santa Monica, California, 17 years before she put her foot on the bottom step of the show biz ladder, dancing in the back row of the chorus in "Earl Carroll's Revue" at the famed showman's theater-restaurant in Hollywood. Modeling for photographers led to wider exposure and ultimately to TV roles and bit parts in low-budget movies. As a Universal-International contract player, she was in most every type of B picture that the studio made. She gave up acting in the early '60s to concentrate on marriage and motherhood during 17 tumultuous years as the wife of actor Richard Long. Since his 1974 death, she's played supporting parts in her friend Clint Eastwood's movies, just as he played a supporting role in one of hers (Tarantula (1955)).
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Born in Santa Cruz, California, Beverly Garland studied dramatics under Anita Arliss, the sister of renowned stage and screen star George Arliss. She acted in a little theater in Glendale then in Phoenix after her family relocated to Arizona. Garland also worked in radio and appeared scantily-clad in a few risqué shorts before making her feature film debut in a supporting part in D.O.A. (1949). Her husbands include actor Richard Garland, and land developer Fillmore Crank, who built 2 hotels which bear her name. Ms. Garland's longest runs were on Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983) and My Three Sons (1960). Later on she guest-starred on a number of TV shows, including The Guardian (2001), on CBS, and Weakest Link (2001), on NBC, and maintained her continuing roles on 7th Heaven (1996), on the WB (now the CW), and Port Charles (1997), on ABC, which began in the 1990s.
In 1983, Ms. Garland received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2001, in recognition of her 50 years in show business, the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters inducted her into its Hall of Fame. Ms. Garland has two very significant historical television "firsts": she was television's first policewoman as the star of Decoy (1957), and, more importantly, the series gave her the honor of becoming the first actress to star in a television dramatic series. After her husband of 39 years died in 1999, Beverly continued to operate the 255-room Beverly Garland Holiday Inn in North Hollywood (with the assistance of three of her four children). Beverly Garland died at age 82 in her home in the Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, California on 5 December, 2008.- Actress
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Evelyn Ankers, a beautiful movie actress who was a staple of Universal's horror films in the 1940s, was born in Chile to English parents in 1918. Her parents repatriated the family back to England in the 1920s, and it was in Old Blighty that Ankers developed a desire to become an actress.
She began appearing in small roles in English movies in the mid 1930s while she was still in school. She appeared in Fire Over England (1937) with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh and in Bells of St. Mary's (1937). A beauty with talent, she soon won starring roles in the low-budget The Villiers Diamond (1938) and The Claydon Treasure Mystery (1938).
With war clouds darkening the skies over Europe, Ankers emigrated to the United States and was signed to a contract by Universal in 1940. She made her Universal debut in the Abbott and Costello comedy-horror picture Hold That Ghost (1941) before appearing in the horror film classic The Wolf Man (1941) opposite Lon Chaney Jr.. Ankers found herself cast into the horror picture ghetto, appearing in three more Chaney fright films, The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Son of Dracula (1943) and The Frozen Ghost (1945), during a period in which she was cast ashore with a sarong-less Jon Hall in The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944). She also appeared in support of Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) and The Pearl of Death (1944).
Ankers married B-movie hunk Richard Denning in 1942 and made a go articulating the anxieties of the home front while her husband was off to war. Horror flicks were popular during World War II, but after the cessation of hostilities in 1945, they went out of favor with audiences. Ankers' career, mated to the genre at Universal, suffered.
She quit Universal in 1945 and freelanced at Columbia and Poverty Row's Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) and Republic Pictures in dramas and mysteries. Evelyn co-starred with her returned husband, Richard, in the major release Black Beauty (1946) for 20th Century Fox. For PRC, she headlined Queen of Burlesque (1946) and later co-starred with Lex Barker in Tarzan's Magic Fountain (1949).
As the 1950s dawned, a decade of conformity and family values, Ankers quit the movies for married life and motherhood after making The Texan Meets Calamity Jane (1950), in which she was first-billed. She was 32 years old. A decade later, Ankers came out of retirement to make one final screen appearance, in her hubby's No Greater Love (1960).
Evelyn Ankers died of ovarian cancer on August 29, 1985, twelve days after her 67th birthday.- Zita Johann was born on 14 July 1904 in Temesvar, Austria-Hungary [now Timisoara, Timis, Romania]. She was an actress, known for The Mummy (1932), The Sin of Nora Moran (1933) and Tiger Shark (1932). She was married to Bernard Edward Shedd (Schetnitz), John McCormick and John Houseman. She died on 20 September 1993 in Nyack, New York, USA.
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Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was born into an unconventional a family at the turn of the 20th century. Her parents, James "Shamus" Sullivan and Edith "Biddy" Lanchester, were socialists - very active members of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in a rather broad sense - and did not believe in the institution of marriage and being tied to any conventions of legality, for that matter. Her mother had actually been committed to an asylum in 1895 by her father and older brothers because of her unmarried state with James. The incident received worldwide press as the "Lanchester Kidnapping Case."
Elsa had a great desire to become a classical dancer and to that end at age 10 her mother enrolled her at the famed Isadora Duncan's Bellevue School in Paris in 1912. But the uncertainties of WW1 brought her home after only two years. At age 12, she was sent to a co-educational boarding school in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, England, to teach dance classes in exchange for her education and board. In 1918, she was hired as a dance teacher at Margaret Morris's school on the Isle of Wight.
Next to dance, she loved the music halls of the period, so in 1920 she debuted in a music hall act as an Egyptian dancer. About the same time she founded the Children's Theater in Soho, London and taught there for several years. She made her stage debut in 1922 in the West End play "Thirty Minutes in a Street." In 1924 she and her partner, Harold Scott, opened a London nightclub called the Cave of Harmony. They performed one-act plays by Pirandello and Chekhov and sang cabaret songs. She would later collect and record these and many others. The spot was frequented by literati like Aldous Huxley, H.G. Wells and also James Whale, working in London theater and soon to be directing on Broadway and Hollywood's most famous horror films. Lanchester kept busy including, on her own admission, posing nude for artists. During a 1926 comic performance in the Midnight Follies at London's Metropole, a member of the British Royal family walked out as she sang, "Please Sell No More Drink to My Father." She closed her nightclub in 1928 as her film career began in earnest.
Perhaps not beautiful in the more conventional sense, Lanchester was certainly pretty as a young woman with a turned-up nose that gave her a pert, impish expression, all the more striking with her large, expressive dark eyes and full lips. She had a lithe figure that she carried with the assuredness of her dancing background. Her voice was bright and distinctive, and had a delightful rush and trill that had an almost Scottish burr quality. What clicked on stage would do the same in the movies.
Her first film appearance was actually in an amateur movie by friend and author Evelyn Waugh called The Scarlet Woman: An Ecclesiastical Melodrama (1925). Her formal film debut was in the British movie One of the Best (1927). She continued stage work and became associated in 1927 with a rather self-possessed but keenly dedicated actor, Charles Laughton. He appeared with her in three of four films Lanchester did in 1928. (Three of these were written for her by H.G. Wells). They did a few plays as well and wed in 1929. According to Lanchester, after two years, she discovered Laughton was homosexual but they remained married until his death in 1962. Lanchester declared in a 1958 interview that she kept to a separate career path from her husband. They appeared together on occasion, moving through 1931 with several smart play-like films including Potiphar's Wife (1931) with Laurence Olivier. She had done the play "Payment Deferred" in London in 1930 and followed it to Broadway in 1931.
MGM offered her a contract in 1932. In 1933 Alexander Korda was casting his The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and decided that Laughton was the perfect choice - and his wife would be just as perfect as one of Henry's six wives. Her versatility pointed to a part with some comedic elements and fitting more into a caricature. She looked most like Hans Holbein's famous portrait of Anne of Cleves (Henry's fourth wife who was actually somewhat more homely than the painter depicted). In costume Lanchester was charming if not striking. Her interpretation of Anne was a perfect integration with herself, and her scene with Laughton informally playing cards on the marriage bed and deciding on annulment is a high point of the movie.
Of course, it would be hard to mention her film career of the 1930s without mentioning the one role that would forever dog her, Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Having come to Hollywood with Laughton in 1932 (but not permanently until 1939), Lanchester did only a few films up to 1935 and was disappointed enough with Hollywood's reception to return to London for a respite. She was quickly called back by an old friend from London, stage and film associate James Whale, now the noted director of Frankenstein (1931) and The Invisible Man (1933). He wanted her for two parts in Bride: author Mary Shelley and the bride. A central joke of the movie build-up was the tag lines: "WHO will be The Bride of Frankenstein? WHO will dare?"
Indeed, it was no honeymoon for her. For some ten days, Lanchester was wrapped in yards of bandage and covered in heavy makeup. The stand-on-end hairdo was accomplished by combing it over a wire mesh cage. Lanchester was in real agony with her eyes kept taped wide open for long takes - and it showed in her looks of horror. Her monster's screaming and hissing sounds (based on the sounds of Regents Park swans in London) were taped and then run backward to spook-up the effect. She was delightfully melodramatic and picturesque as Wollstonecraft, and her bride would become iconic. Many have considered Bride of Frankenstein (1935) the best of the golden age horror movies.
Lanchester stood out in her next movie with Laughton the next year, Korda's dark Rembrandt (1936), but she only did a few more films for the remainder of the decade. Through the 1940s she was doubly busy - a couple of films per year while regenerating her beloved musical revue sketches. She performed for 10 years at the Turnabout Theater in Hollywood, using old London music hall/cabaret songs and others written for her. Later she would have to split her time further doing a similar act at a supper club called The Bar of Music. By the later 1940s she had become rather matronly, and the roles would settle appropriately. But she always lent her sparkle, as with her charming maid Matilda in The Bishop's Wife (1947). She would be nominated for best supporting actress in Come to the Stable (1949).
She entered the 1950s busy with road touring of her nightclub act with pianist J. Raymond Henderson (who went by "Ray" and who is sometimes confused with popular songwriter Ray Henderson). There was a series of tours to complement Laughton's famous reading tours, called Elsa Lanchester's Private Music Hall which ended in 1952; Elsa Lanchester--Herself which ended in 1961; and once more in 1964 at the Ivar Theater. She was equally busy with a stock of film roles and a large share of TV playhouse theater. She made ten movies with Laughton, the last of which, Witness for the Prosecution (1957) garnered her second supporting actress nomination. But her dizzy Aunt Queenie Holroyd of Bell Book and Candle (1958) is a fond remembrance of that time.
With the two decades from the 1960s to early 1980s, Lanchester was a fixture on episodic TV and an institution in Disney and G-rated fare - perhaps a bit ironic for the unconventional Lanchester. She wrote two autobiographies: "Charles Laughton and I" (1938) and "Elsa Lanchester: Herself" (1983), both recalling her nearly 100 roles before the camera. Lanchester remained humorously reflective in regard to her film career, describing it as "...large parts in lousy pictures and small parts in big pictures." It was the mix of silly, bawdy, and outrageous in her revues that was her great joy: "I was content because I was fully aware that I did not like straight acting but preferred performing direct to an audience. You might call what I do vaudeville. Making a joke, especially impromptu, and getting a big laugh is just plain heaven."- The fourth and youngest child of Horace and Robina Kelly, Jean Brooks spent her early years in her native Texas before relocating to Costa Rica with her mother after her father's death. Her time in Costa Rica enabled her to become fluent in Spanish, and she began her professional career as a singer with Enric Madriguera and Orchestra in New York City. She had a small role in the New York City-filmed The Crime of Doctor Crespi (1935) and the second lead in a state play, "Name Your Poison" (1938), with Lenore Ulric. She was signed by an independent film production company that had gone under by the time she got to Hollywood. She spent several years at Universal as a leading lady in "B" pictures, including several Johnny Mack Brown westerns, but her option was dropped in late 1941. By this time she had married writer (later director) Richard Brooks and, with a certain Broadway hoofer having just signed at MGM, dropped the Kelly and became Jean Brooks. She signed with RKO, where film buffs know her for her three appearances for cult producer Val Lewton, particularly her stunning performance as a haunted devil worshiper in The Seventh Victim (1943).
Her clipped delivery and intense, forceful acting style made her a promising bet for stardom, but RKO lost interest in her by mid-'44 and her roles got gradually smaller until she was dropped in 1946. She and Brooks divorced (his later studio biographies omitted her name as one of his ex-wives). For many years she was listed as a "Lost Player" championed in several magazine articles by writer Doug McClelland. She was eventually located in San Francisco, where she had moved after her film career petered out, and was employed as a classified ad solicitor on the "San Francisco Examiner" newspaper. She had married a printer named Thomas Leddy. Her death at the Kaiser Hospital in Richmond, California, in 1963 of complications resulting from cirrhosis marked a sad ending for a stylish and talented performer who didn't get the breaks she deserved, both personally and professionally. - Actress
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Diminutive, fiery-tempered Simone Simon was born in France, but spent much of her early childhood in Madagascar, where her father managed a graphite mine. Her schooling was somewhat unsettled, her family moving from city to city (Berlin, Budapest, Turin) before finally establishing themselves in Paris in 1930. Simone started as a dress designer, fashion model and occasional performer in stage musicals. She eventually met the director Marc Allégret, who took her under his wing. Her film debut was in 1931 and she had her first major hit as Jean Gabin's co-star in La Bête Humaine (1938), directed by Jean Renoir.
There were two halves to Simone's history in Hollywood. In 1936, Darryl F. Zanuck signed her to a contract at 20th Century Fox on the strength of a picture she had made two years earlier, Allegret's Ladies Lake (1934). She was launched with an expensive publicity campaign which accentuated her continental allure, particularly, her 'sexy pout'. During her tenure, problems surfaced regarding her command of English and also her limited singing skills. Dissatisfied with the roles she was given, Simone returned to France and 'La Bete Humaine'. She made a second attempt at Hollywood, acting in William Dieterle's The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) as Belle, the devil's handmaiden. The New York Times review of October 17 considered her 'completely out of key'. Simone's best work, however, was to come in the shape of the cult horror classic Cat People (1942). Producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur used her triangular-faced feline qualities to best effect in the story of a girl who obsesses about an ancient Balkan curse turning her into a panther. The film was stylish and subtle, creating imagined rather than actual menace. Simone's performance was commensurate with perfectly studied cat-like mannerisms. During the production of 'Cat People', Simone was under FBI surveillance because of her relationship with MI5 spy Dusko Popov. She made two further, less successful, films at RKO, then returned to France for good. Simone made several films there and worked on the stage. In spite of many affairs and relationships, she never married.- Actress
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Her father, Donald Cole, was a consulting engineer, and died in 1926 when Kim was only three years old. Her mother, Grace Lind, once performed as a concert pianist. She had one brother who was eight years older than she, and she was educated at Miami Beach High.
According to an in-depth article on Kim Hunter by Joseph Collura in the October 2009 issue of "Classic Images", Kim was quiet and painfully shy as a child and overcame it through the guidance of a local dramatics teacher, a Mrs. Carmine. Included were diction, voice and posture lessons.
She studied at the Actors Studio and her first professional appearance was as "Penny" in "Penny Wise" in Miami in November 1939. Then, she joined a repertory group called "Theatre of Fifteen", but it disbanded in 1942 when WWII took away most of its male members.
She made her Broadway debut performance as "Stella" in "A Streetcar Named Desire" at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, in December 1947 that was the 1947-1948 season's success and for which she won the Critics Circle and Donaldson awards.
A one-time student of the Pasadena Playhouse, she was appearing in the 1942 production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" when she was discovered by an RKO talent hunter who signed her to a seven-year contract for David O. Selznick's company. Selznick suggested she change her first name to "Kim" and a RKO secretary suggested the last name of "Hunter". A few years later, Irene Mayer Selznick, David's ex-wife by then, recommended Kim for her reprise role of "Stella" in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), for which she won an Oscar.- Actress
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The daughter of a Mexican surgeon, Maria Margarita Guadalupe Teresa Estella Castilla Bolado y O'Donnell was born in Mexico City. As a niece to famous bandleader Xavier Cugat, she performed with his orchestra from the age of nine as a specialty dancer in nightclubs, and, later, on the Starlight Roof of the hotel Waldorf Astoria in New York. When she was fifteen years old, she was head-hunted by writers Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, who saw her dance and cast her in the Claude Rains drama Crime Without Passion (1934). Her debut as Rains' ex-lover who ends up being murdered by him, was well-received, critic Mordaunt Hall describing her performance as 'excellent'. Margo was best-known, however, for her role as the slum girl Miriamne Esdras in both stage and screen version of Maxwell Anderson's play Winterset (1936) and for her poignant performance as the young girl leaving Shangri-La (to her detriment) in Lost Horizon (1937). She also appeared on Broadway in 'Masque of Kings' (1937) and 'The World We Make' (1939) and had another small screen role in The Leopard Man (1943).
Margo was married for 39 years to the actor Eddie Albert, residing in Pacific Palisades, California. In later years, she became involved in the public sector, in 1974 becoming Commissioner for Social Services in Los Angeles.- Actress
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Poised and pretty lead and second lead actress Jane Randolph decorated a number of second-string World War II and post-war 1940's film features. Born Joan Roemer in Youngstown, Ohio on October 30, 1914, her father, a steel-mill designer, moved the family to Kokomo, Indiana when she was still quite young. Following her graduation from high school, she studied at Indiana's DePauw University, where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta. Jane's interest was acting was increasingly prodded during this time and in 1939, she decided to try her luck in Hollywood.
Studying at Max Reinhardt's school, she was eventually tested and picked up by Warner Bros in 1941. Publicized as a WWII pin-up in such Army magazines as Yank, and provided only in bit parts while there, such as a hatcheck girl in Manpower (1941), a singer who warbles the tune "What's New?" in the film Dive Bomber (1941) and a secretary in The Male Animal (1942), RKO Studios saw promise in the nascent actress. Picking up her contract in 1942, the studio immediately handed her two "B" leading lady roles -- as rich, naïve inventor Richard Carlson's love interest in the adventure comedy Highways by Night (1942) and spunky girl reporter Marcia Brooks in the Nazi espionage crime drama The Falcon's Brother (1942) opposite real-life brothers Tom Conway and George Sanders.
Over the years, brown-eyed, auburn-haired Jane would become best known for her benign, classy, but vulnerable femmes in film noir, easy comedy and whodunnits. Her best-remembered role was as poor, tormented co-worker Alice Moore in the atmospheric horror classic Cat People (1942) and its equally successful sequel, The Curse of the Cat People (1944). In both, Jane innocently brings out the revengeful claws of feral lady cat Simone Simon. At one point she was hired by the Disney people as a human model used for the ice-skating sequence with "Bambi" and "Thumper" in their classic film Bambi (1942).
As for subsequent filming, Jane would return to her intrepid girl reporter in The Falcon Strikes Back (1943), again with Conway. She was also featured in a poignant scene with lovely Jeanne Crain in the war-themed film In the Meantime, Darling (1944); is married to Nils Asther but in love with doctor John Loder in the film noir Jealousy (1945); involves herself with the Bowery Boys in Monogram Picture's In Fast Company (1946); played an attractive second lead distraction in the Universal adventure serial The Mysterious Mr. M (1946) and an equally attractive lead in the "Hopalong Cassidy" western entry Fool's Gold (1946).
Jane enjoyed a rare femme fatale role as a conniving beautician and girlfriend of cold-blooded mobster John Ireland in the film noir Railroaded! (1947). She finished her career in two other film noir thrillers, T-Men (1947) and Open Secret (1948), and joined Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in, arguably, their most popular Universal outing, the comedy chiller Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Here, all three are menaced by the classic terror trio of Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolfman, Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Glenn Strange's Frankenstein monster.
Divorced from talent agent Bert D'Armand, Jane married sometime producer Jaime del Amo on April 20, 1949, and retired to move to Spain and live the life of a socialite. In later years, following his death, she returned to Los Angeles, but also maintained a home in Gstaad, Switzerland. She died in Switzerland at age 94, of complications following surgery for a broken hip. She was survived by daughter, Cristina del Amo.- Actress
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American leading lady of the 1930s and 1940s, Virginia Bruce was born in Minnesota but grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and came to California to attend college. Her blond good looks got her an entry into films, and after a few extra roles and bit parts she began to make serious inroads as a leading woman in secondary films and as the "other" woman in more prestigious productions. She married screen legend John Gilbert, then in his decline. Subsequently she was married to director J. Walter Ruben and to Turkish producer/director Ali Ipar, for whom she appeared in some Turkish films all but unseen in America. She died in 1982.- Actress
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The daughter of a clergyman, Anna Lee was born Joan Boniface Winnifrith and encouraged to pursue an acting career by her father. After training at London's Royal Albert Hall, she took to the boards and later began appearing in English films, first as an extra, then working her way up to featured roles and finally earning the unofficial title "The Queen of the Quota Quickies". Lee and her husband, director Robert Stevenson, relocated to Hollywood in the late 1930s, and Lee began starring in stateside productions as well as becoming a fixture of the John Ford stock company (she appeared in How Green Was My Valley (1941), Fort Apache (1948) and a half-dozen others). In 1970, she became the seventh wife of novelist, poet and playwright Robert Nathan (Portrait of Jennie (1948), The Bishop's Wife (1947)); they married three months after they met. Now widowed, Lee continued despite adversity, regularly playing wealthy Lila Quartermaine on the soap opera General Hospital (1963). She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire at the 1982 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to drama. On May 14, 2004, Anna Lee passed away from pneumonia at age 91 at her home in Beverly Hills, California.- Actress
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Dee was born in Los Angeles, where her Army officer father was stationed, and grew up in Chicago after her father was transferred there. In 1929, he was re-assigned to L.A., and, as a lark, the 19 year old Dee began working in motion pictures as an extra. Her debut was in Words and Music (1929) with Lois Moran. After her breakthrough role in Playboy of Paris (1930) opposite Maurice Chevalier, she met Joel McCrea on the set of the 1933 film The Silver Cord (1933).
Following a whirlwind courtship, the two were married later that year in Rye, New York. Their 57-year marriage ended in 1990, when McCrea died. In the 70s, she and McCrea were rumored to be worth between fifty and one hundred million dollars. Dee hasn't acted since the mid-1950s, and said she didn't miss it. The nonagenarian actress was a huge hit at the 1998 Memphis Film Festival in Tunica, Mississippi. She died in 2004.- Actress
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Janet Leigh was the only child of a couple who often moved from town to town. Living in apartments, Janet was a bright child who skipped several grades and finished high school when she was 15. A lonely child, she would spend much of her time at movie theaters. She was a student, studying music and psychology, at the University of the Pacific until she was "discovered" while visiting her parents in Northern California. Her father was working the desk at a ski resort where her mother worked as a maid. Retired MGM actress Norma Shearer saw a picture of Janet on the front desk and asked if she could borrow it. This led to a screen test at MGM and a starring role in The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947). MGM was looking for a young naive country girl and Janet filled the bill perfectly. She would play the young ingénue in a number of films and work with such stars as Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Orson Welles and Judy Garland. She appeared in a number of successful films, including Little Women (1949), Angels in the Outfield (1951), Scaramouche (1952), Houdini (1953) and The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), among others. Janet would appear in a variety of films, from comedies to westerns to musicals to dramas. Of her more than 50 movies, she would be remembered for the 45 minutes that she was on the screen in the small-budget thriller Psycho (1960). Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this 1960 classic would include the shower scene that would become a film landmark. Even though her character is killed off early in the picture, she would be nominated for an Academy Award and receive a Golden Globe. Her next film would be The Manchurian Candidate (1962), in which she starred with Frank Sinatra. For the rest of the decade, her appearances in films would be rare, but she worked with Paul Newman in Harper (1966). In the 1970s she appeared on the small screen in a number of made-for-TV movies. In 1980, she appeared alongside her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in The Fog (1980), and later, in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998). Janet Leigh died at age 77 in her home in Beverly Hills, California on October 3, 2004.- Actress
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Born in Boise City, Oklahoma, Vera Miles attended school in Pratt, Kansas and Wichita, Kansas. The patrician beauty of Miss Miles won her the title of "Miss Kansas" in 1948, leading soon to small roles in Hollywood films and television series. Fame came to the forthright, spirited Miles when she attracted the attention of two master directors, Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford. Ford cast her in the classic western The Searchers (1956) and Hitchcock, who put her under personal contract and hailed her as his "new Grace Kelly", paired her with the great Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man (1956). Hitchcock cast Miles in the potentially star-making role of Judy Barton in Vertigo (1958), but Miles withdrew from the film when she became pregnant. Hitchcock gave Miles a supporting role in another masterpiece Psycho (1960), as did Ford when he cast her opposite John Wayne and James Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), She also starred in such films as Beau James (1957) opposite Bob Hope, The FBI Story (1959) opposite Stewart, Back Street (1961) opposite Susan Hayward and John Gavin and Sergeant Ryker (1968) opposite Lee Marvin, as well as showing her consistently remarkable and versatile talent on dozens of popular television movies and series including The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962), The Twilight Zone (1959), The Outer Limits (1963), The Fugitive (1963), My Three Sons (1960), Bonanza (1959), Columbo (1971) and Murder, She Wrote (1984). In 1983, she reprised her role as "Lila Crane" in the film sequel Psycho II (1983), starring Anthony Perkins. Although, too often, the stunningly beautiful Miles' gifts were underutilized, before her retirement in 1995, hers was a most intriguing and enduring Hollywood career.- Actress
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Carolyn Sue Jones was born in 1930, in Amarillo, Texas, to homemaker Chloe (or Cloe) Jeanette Southern (1906-1979), and Julius Alfred Jones (1897-1979), a barber. Her sister was Bette (later Mrs. Moriarty). Carolyn was an imaginative child, much like her mother; she and her mother shared the same birthday (April 28).
In 1934, her father abandoned the family and her mother moved them in with her own parents, also in Amarillo. As a child, Carolyn suffered from severe asthma. Although she loved movies, she was often too sick to attend, so she listened to her favorites, Danny Kaye and Spike Jones and read as many movie fan magazines as she could. She dreamed of attending the famed Pasadena Playhouse and received many awards at school for speech, poetry, and dramatics. In 1947, she was accepted as a student at the Pasadena Playhouse, and her grandfather agreed to pay for her classes. She worked in summer stock to supplement her income, graduating in 1950.
She gave herself a complete head-to-toe makeover, including painful cosmetic nose surgery to make herself ready for movie roles. Working as an understudy at the Players Ring Theater, she stepped in when the star left to get married. She was seen by a talent scout from Paramount and given a screen test, which went well. She made her first appearance in The Turning Point (1952). She did some other work during her 6-month contract, but when it ended, Paramount, suffering from television's impact, let it lapse. She quipped, "They let me and 16 secretaries go!"
She started working in television but kept busy on stage as well. There, she met a fellow Texan, a young man named Aaron Spelling, and they became a couple. She made a breakthrough in the 3-D movie House of Wax (1953) and garnered excellent reviews. Aaron was still struggling, so he felt he wasn't able to propose to Carolyn; she finally proposed to him. They were married in April 1953. Neither was earning much, but they really enjoyed each other and their life. Many saw them as an ideal couple. She decided against having children as she felt she could not juggle the demands of both a career and a family.
Columbia Pictures saw her and wanted to test her for the part of prostitute Alma Burke in From Here to Eternity (1953), but she got extremely sick with pneumonia and the part went to Donna Reed, nine years older, who won an Academy Award. Jones did, however, achieve success in the science-fiction classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), a subtle allegory of the times (McCarthyism). And the famous filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock cast her in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) opposite James Stewart and Doris Day. Meanwhile, Aaron had little success as an actor and Carolyn pushed him to become a writer, even threatening to leave him. She constantly promoted his scripts whenever she could and he was ultimately hired by Dick Powell. Carolyn, meanwhile, was successful once more in The Bachelor Party (1957) (famous line, "Just say you love me--you don't have to mean it!"). For this role, she surprised cast members by dyeing her hair black and cutting it short. This stunning look served her well for a number of roles. For her eight minutes on screen, she received glowing reviews and was nominated for an Academy Award but lost. However, she did win the Golden Globe Award and the Laurel Award for Marjorie Morningstar (1958). She followed this with an impressive appearance in King Creole (1958), generally regarded as Elvis Presley's best film. She then gave arguably her best performance ever in Career (1959), but the film was not commercially successful. She played a serious role in this, leaving the kooky role she might have played to Shirley MacLaine.
As Aaron's career soared, the marriage started to fail. They separated in October 1963 and amicably divorced in August 1965, with Carolyn asking for no alimony. They remained friends. She worked at various roles including two episodes of Burke's Law (1963) for which she received a Golden Globe nomination. Soon, she got the part for which she will best be remembered, that of Morticia Addams in The Addams Family (1964). She spent two years in this role. Her costume was designed to copy the cartoon drawings and no doubt inspired such imitators as Cassandra Peterson (Elvira, Mistress of the Dark). The show went head-to-head with The Munsters (1964) and Bewitched (1964).
The show was a hit and she received all the fame she had craved. However, the network decided to cancel the show, despite its success, after only two years. Typecast as Morticia but without the income that a few more years would have provided, she found life difficult and roles few. While acting on the road, she married her voice coach, Herbert Greene, a well-known and respected Broadway conductor and musical director, and they moved together to Palm Springs, California. After seven years, she left him and returned to Hollywood, determined to try to restart her career. She was surprisingly successful and performed in several shows, including Wonder Woman (1975), where she played Hippolyta, the mother of Wonder Woman (Lynda Carter) and Wonder Girl (Debra Winger). She also appeared in the landmark miniseries Roots (1977). She appeared in four episodes of Fantasy Island (1977) and one episode of The Love Boat (1977), two shows produced by her former husband, Aaron Spelling. In 1979, both of Jones's parents died; her mother from pancreatic cancer. She took on the role of Myrna Clegg on the soap Capitol (1982) from 1982 to 1983, despite having been diagnosed with colon cancer in 1981. She underwent aggressive treatment for the cancer, but it returned during her time on the show and she was told it was terminal.
She played some scenes despite being confined to a wheelchair and working in great pain. Knowing time was short, she married her boyfriend of five years, Peter Bailey-Britton, in September 1982. She died on August 3, 1983, aged 53. She had told her sister Bette that she wanted her epitaph to be "She gave joy to the world." She certainly had many friends who loved her greatly, and many fans who enjoyed her wonderful performances.- The sexy Barbara Shelley was born Barbara Kowin on February 13, 1932 in London, England. With her beautiful looks and stature, she worked as a model during her salad days. Her film career began in Italy in the mid-1950s in such tempting fare as Luna nova (1955) and Nero's Mistress (1956), but when this seemed like she was going to remain in the minor ranks, she returned to England to attempt to better her career. After appearing in the minor sex farce The Little Hut (1957) with Stewart Granger, David Niven and Ava Gardner, Barbara caught notoriety in the title role of Cat Girl (1957), a low budget production in which she played a woman possessed by a family curse who develops psychic links with a leopard.
This paid off and she quickly evolved into a popular Gothic glamour woman at Hammer Studios. Starting things off with The Camp on Blood Island (1958) and Blood of the Vampire (1958), the lovely actress proceeded to stake out her own lucrative territory in the horror genres. Through the 1960s, she co-starred in the classic Village of the Damned (1960), along with The Shadow of the Cat (1961), The Gorgon (1964), The Secret of Blood Island (1965), Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), Rasputin: The Mad Monk (1966) and Quatermass and the Pit (1967). However, Barbara's film career had fallen aside by the late 1960s and she turned to television.
In her retirement, she pursued interior decorating. Whether playing female monsters or their intended victims, Barbara played them straight and handled them all with requisite style and grace. For this, she was occasionally seen by motion picture fans at conventions as an integral figure of camp horror history. - Actress
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The most beautiful star of the greatest horror masterpiece of Italian film, Black Sunday (1960): Barbara Steele was born on December 29, 1937 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England. Barbara is loved by her fans for her talent, intelligence, and a dark mysterious beauty that is unique; her face epitomizes either sweet innocence, or malign evil (she is wonderful to watch either way). At first, Barbara studied to become a painter. In 1957, she joined an acting repertory company. Her feature acting debut was in the British comedy Bachelor of Hearts (1958). At age 21, this strikingly lovely lady, with the hauntingly beautiful face, large eyes, sensuous lips and long dark hair got her breakout role by starring in Black Sunday (1960), the quintessential Italian film about witchcraft (it was the directorial debut for cinematographer Mario Bava; with his background, it was exquisitely photographed and atmospheric).
We got to see Barbara, but did not hear her; her voice was dubbed by another actress for international audiences. After its American success, AIP brought Barbara to America, to star in Roger Corman's The Pit and the Pendulum (1961); (though the film was shot entirely in English, again Barbara's own voice was not used). By now, Barbara was typecast by American audiences as a horror star. In 1962, she answered an open-casting call and won a role in Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963); she only had a small role, but it was memorable. Reportedly, Fellini wanted to use her more in the film, but she was contracted to leave Rome to start work on her next horror movie, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962). Being a slow and meticulous director, Fellini's 8½ (1963) was not released until 1963. (Later, when Barbara was cast in lesser roles in lesser movies, she would tell the directors: "I've worked with some of the best directors in the world. I've worked with Fellini!")
More horror movies followed, such as The Ghost (1963), Castle of Blood (1964), An Angel for Satan (1966) and others; this success lead to her being typecast in the horror genre, where she more often than not appeared in Italian movies with a dubbed voice. The nadir was appearing in The Crimson Cult (1968), which was mainly eye candy, with scantily-clad women in a cult. Unfortunately, Barbara got sick of being typecast in horror movies. One of the screen's greatest horror stars, she said in an interview: "I never want to climb out of another freakin' coffin again!" This was sad news for her legion of horror fans; it was also a false-step for Barbara as far as a career move. Back in America, she met screenwriter James Poe; they got married, and remained together for many years.
James Poe wrote an excellent role for Barbara in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). The role ended up going to Susannah York, and Barbara wouldn't act in movies again for five years. Barbara returned to movies in Caged Heat (1974); she was miscast: a few years before, Barbara would have been one of the beautiful inmates, not the wheelchair-bound warden, but her performance won positive reviews. In 1977, she appeared in a film by Roger Corman, based on the true story of a mentally ill woman, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden (1977). Unfortunately, her scenes wound up on the cutting room floor. Barbara appeared in Pretty Baby (1978), but she was in the background the whole time, and her talents were mostly wasted. Barbara would appear in two more unmemorable movies. She and James Poe got divorced in 1978, he died two years later.
Barbara appeared in the independent film The Silent Scream (1979). Maybe because her ex-husband was now dead, or because her acting career was going nowhere, Barbara retired from acting for a decade. However, she had a great deal of success as a producer. She was an associate producer for the miniseries The Winds of War (1983), and produced War and Remembrance (1988), for which she got an Emmy Award. Her horror fans were delighted when Barbara showed up again, this time on television in Dark Shadows (1991), a revival of the beloved 1960s supernatural soap opera. And she has developed a relative fondness along with a sense of ironic humor about her horror queen status, which was evident in her appearance in Clive Barker's documentary A-Z of Horror (1997).- Actress
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As a child she studied at Seattle's Cornish School. Still in her early twenties, after several years of stock work in New York, she joined Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theater where she won critical praise for her title role in "Alice in Wonderland." She came to Hollywood in 1934 under contract with Warners, debuting in Happiness Ahead (1934). She co-starred with Paul Muni in The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936) and played in many small roles, both in films - e.g., the phony U.N. ambassador's wife in North by Northwest (1959) - and television: The Twilight Zone (1959), Gunsmoke (1955), and Perry Mason (1957) in the fifties and sixties. She died at Manhattan's Florence Nightingale Nursing Home, aged 94.- Actress
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Laura La Plante was 15 years old when she entered films as a Christie Comedy Bathing Beauty. By 1921, she had played a number of roles including a Tom Mix Western called The Big Town Round-Up (1921) for Fox and The Old Swimmin' Hole (1921) for First National. Laura, now 17, next signed with Universal, where she appeared in shorts, serials and many supporting roles. Over the next few years, she would become one of the leading stars at Universal and acted in in dramas, mysteries and comedies. Some of her more important films were the adventure Crooked Alley (1923), the comedy Sporting Youth (1924), the drama Smouldering Fires (1925) and the mystery The Cat and the Canary (1927). One of her successful comedies, Skinner's Dress Suit (1926), was directed by her husband, William A. Seiter. When sound came to Universal, she was one of the silent film stars who made the transition. She played a leading role in the sound film Show Boat (1929) and made her first all-talking picture with Hold Your Man (1929). By 1930, she decided that she had enough and left Universal, which terminated her contract. She went to England, where she would appear in a few more films over the years. Laura returned to Hollywood in 1935, where she again retired from the screen.- Actress
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Colorado-born leading lady Julie Bishop, who also acted under her birth name of Jacqueline Wells and the stage name Diane Duval, started off as a silent movie child actress, working with such legends as Clara Bow and Mary Pickford.
The daughter of a wealthy banker and oilman, she was raised in Texas and, eventually Los Angeles, following her parents' divorce. She was signed by Warner Bros in 1940 and played a dutiful sweethearts opposite filmdom's top male stars, notably Errol Flynn in Northern Pursuit (1943), Humphrey Bogart in Action in the North Atlantic (1943), John Wayne in both Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and The High and the Mighty (1954), and Alan Ladd in The Big Land (1957), her last picture. But, for the most part, she was never given anything challenging enough to become a top-flight star.
She also appeared on stage in "Hamlet" and "The Merchant of Venice". A licensed private pilot, Julie painted still lifes and staged several exhibitions in her post-career years. She died at age 87, on her birthday.- One of the many "also rans" or "might-have-beens" in 1930's Hollywood was a blonde beauty queen of Swedish/Austrian ancestry, named Irene Ware. She was actually born Irene Ahlberg in Pelham, New York and first plied her trade as a stenographer before other endeavours piqued her interest. Aged eighteen, she ran second in an International Beauty Contest (which went by the misnomer of 'Miss Universe') in Galveston, Texas. The $1000 prize money would have gone a long way to enabling her start in showbiz. She duly made it that very year, joining the ensemble of Earl Carroll's Sketchbook on Broadway. Irene seemed to have possessed just the right blend of talent, charisma and sex appeal, since she managed to replace Lillian Roth for a top-billed spot in the 1930 edition of the "Vanities". Before the show had even run its course, Irene Ahlberg signed a two-year contract with Fox and changed her surname to Ware.
In only her second Hollywood outing, she was assigned the role of the female lead in Chandu the Magician (1932), opposite co-stars Edmund Lowe (as Chandu) and Bela Lugosi (as the evil Roxor). The picture itself was critically derided as naive and implausible, but most reviewers found the newcomer's performance refreshingly unaffected (this was by no means commonplace: the practice of overacting and histrionics persisted for years after the advent of sound, a holdover from previous decades). The New York Times critic praised Irene as "a charming juvenile". Ultimately, that meant little. For her next ten outings with Fox, she was destined for ornamental second leads in bad pictures or barely glimpsed in uncredited bits in average ones. When her contract expired in 1934, she signed with Universal but fared no better. Her single role of note saw her paired with Lugosi once again, this time as a dancer obsessed over by a maniacal Poe-fixated surgeon in The Raven (1935). Reviews called this "the season's worst horror film", and a tepid affair it definitely was. Irene's performance may have been one of few redeeming qualities, her Jean Thatcher being rather less annoyingly helpless and fragile than the typical heroines of the genre. "The Raven" spelled the end of her career. In its aftermath came B-movies with Poverty Row outfits like Monogram and Invincible. In 1940, Irene Ware called it quits and faded into obscurity, to be seen in pictures 'nevermore'. - Frances Drake was born on 22 October 1912 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Mad Love (1935), The Preview Murder Mystery (1936) and The Invisible Ray (1935). She was married to David Brown and Lt. Cecil John Arthur Howard. She died on 18 January 2000 in Irvine, California, USA.
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Dolores Fuller first got the idea that she wanted to get into the picture business at the age of ten, when she was an extra in the motel sequence of It Happened One Night (1934). She acted in school plays, modeled and landed a few jobs on TV. In the early 1950s, she and her actress-friend, Mona McKinnon, went to a casting call where they met producer-director Edward D. Wood Jr., who became Fuller's boyfriend. Wood's real-life passion for wearing women's clothes was focused upon in the filmmaker's semi-autobiographical Glen or Glenda (1953), in which Wood starred as a cross-dresser and Fuller played his girlfriend. Fuller also appeared in Wood's Jail Bait (1954) and Bride of the Monster (1955) before his drinking caused a split. Fuller turned songwriter, wrote tunes for a number of movies (including Elvis Presley's Blue Hawaii (1961) and Kid Galahad (1962)), founded her own record company (Dee Dee Records) and helped to launch the careers of Johnny Rivers and Tanya Tucker. Fuller is vocal in her dislike of the way she was depicted by Sarah Jessica Parker in director Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994).- Actress
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The original glamour ghoul herself, "Vampira", of late night 1950s television, was actually born Maila Syrjäniemi (later changed to the easier surname Nurmi) on December 11, 1922 in Gloucester, Massachusetts (not Finland as she often claimed). Her uncle was the multiple Olympic medal runner Paavo Nurmi.
It was director Howard Hawks, of all people, who discovered Maila while she was performing in Mike Todd's Grand Guignol midnight show "Spook Scandals". Hawks escorted the lovely blonde beauty to Hollywood with the hopes of grooming her into the next Lauren Bacall. Cast in the film version of the Russian novel "Dreadful Hollow", the project was put on hold so many times that Maila walked out of her contract in frustration. She became a cheesecake model and an Earl Carroll dancer for several years in his revues, sharing a chorus line at one time with future burlesque stripper Lili St. Cyr.
Married at the time to child actor-turned-screenwriter Dean Riesner, she came up with the idea of "Vampira" at a masquerade contest where she based her costume on Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons. Heavily painted up with long fingernails, a mane of raven-colored hair, and slim-waisted black attire, the Morticia gimmick won the best costume award that night... and more. She caught the attention of local television and was placed under contract to Channel 7 in Hollywood to see if she could encourage late night viewers to stay up and watch its regular programming of cheapjack horror schlock. The macabre madam was a genuine hit (for one season, at least, in 1954-55), adding a sexy nuance and silly double entendres to her campy horror set.
She earned an Emmy Award nomination in 1954 for "Most Outstanding Female Personality". Fan clubs sprouted up all over the world. She appeared in "Life", "TV Guide" and "Newsweek" magazine articles, and could be seen around and about town and in Las Vegas judging contests and making variety special appearances. Songs were written about the "Queen of Horror". She even appeared with arms outstretched and ghoulishly attired in the worst cinematic failure of all time, Edward D. Wood Jr.'s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), as Bela Lugosi's zombie-like mate, for which she is infamously associated. Lugosi actually was a huge fan of hers and had always wanted to work with her. Wood shot some footage of her years later as a tribute to Lugosi (he died in 1956 during filming) and added it before the film's release.
By the late 1950s, Maila's extended "15 minutes" of fame was over. With her career at stake (pun intended), she stretched things out with haphazard appearances in abysmal movies [The Beat Generation (1959); Sex Kittens Go to College (1960)] before closing the lid permanently on "Vampira". In later years, Maila divorced her writer/husband and became passionately involved in animal protection rights. A painter on the sly, she created some "Vampira" portraits that became a collector's item. Living very modestly in Southern California, she appeared in a small gag cameo in the film I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (1998). Malia Nurmi died at age 85 of natural causes at her home in Los Angeles, California on January 10, 2008.- Hollywood leading lady in B-movies, and supporting actress in big budget films. Although remembered for her portrayal of "Mme. Zola" in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), she is most memorable for her chilling-yet-beauteous performance as Dracula's Daughter (1936). She had another memorable role in director Tod Browning's Miracles for Sale (1939).
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Marguerite Churchill was born on 26 December 1910 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. She was an actress, known for The Big Trail (1930), Riders of the Purple Sage (1931) and The Walking Dead (1936). She was married to George O'Brien. She died on 9 January 2000 in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, USA.- Actress
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Massachusetts-born Jean Rogers had hoped to study art in New York and Europe upon graduation from high school, but her plans changed when she won a national beauty contest in 1933 and was offered a contract by a Hollywood producer. She was soon signed by Warner Bros., and a year later jumped ship to Universal. She began appearing in several of the studios' serials, with 1936's "Flash Gordon" being her most fondly remembered role. Given her delicate blond beauty and the skimpy outfits she wore, it was no wonder she was lusted after so fiercely by archvillain Ming the Merciless (and most of the male audience). Universal took her out of the serial unit and put her in a string of B pictures. Unsatisfied with the way her career was going, and the fact that the studio refused to give her a raise, she left Universal for 20th Century Fox in 1939. Two years later the spunky Rogers left Fox for the same reasons she left Universal, and signed with MGM, where she found the treatment more to her liking. She walked off the Culver City lot in 1943 when studio boss Louis B. Mayer discovered that she planned to get married, and forbade her to do so. Althugh she freelanced over the next few years, nothing much really came of it, and after making "The Second Woman" in 1951, she retired to raise her family.- Dorothy Arnold was a nightclub singer and budding movie star when she married baseball great Joe DiMaggio in 1940. She had made several films for Universal starting in 1938, but after her marriage to DiMaggio she gave up acting. Although the two divorced in 1944, Arnold did not try to resume her career and only made one other film, Lizzie (1957).
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Slender, strikingly beautiful strawberry blonde Anne Gwynne arrived in Hollywood a typical starry-eyed model looking to for top stardom. Not quite achieving her goal, she did become one of Universal Studio's favorite and revered cover girls while earning notoriety as one of cinema's finest screamers in 40's "B" horror films. She was able to extend her talents to include adventure stories, westerns, film noir and musical comedies before retiring in 1959.
The hazel-eyed beauty was born Marguerite Gwynne Trice in Waco, Texas, on December 18, 1918, the daughter of Pearl (née Guinn) and Jefferson Benjamin Trice, a clothing manufacturer. The family moved to St. Louis, Missouri when she was still a child. Following high school graduation, she studied drama at Stephens College. Accompanying her father to Los Angeles, she stayed and found work in a number of local community productions. She also supplemented her income as a swimsuit model for Catalina. A Universal studio talent agent happened to catch her in one of her theatre endeavors and the 20-year-old was tested and signed up in 1939.
Appearing in a few starlet bit parts as chorus girls or nurse types, Anne quickly earned her first female lead that same year with the western Oklahoma Frontier (1939) opposite cowboy star Johnny Mack Brown and continued on as a gorgeous co-star/second lead for such handsome leading men as Richard Arlen in Man from Montreal (1939); Robert Stack in Men of Texas (1942); she is best remembered, however, as a decorative lure for the monstrous antics of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Lon Chaney Jr., among others, in such movie chillers as Black Friday (1940), The Black Cat (1941), The Strange Case of Doctor Rx (1942), Weird Woman (1944), House of Frankenstein (1944) and Murder in the Blue Room (1944).
Anne certainly had the looks and talent but not the luck, seldom rising above second-string film fare. She nevertheless proved quite popular with the servicemen as a WWII wall pin-up and, as with many other lovely actresses, found TV and commercials to be viable mediums for her as her film career waned. She, in fact, co-starred in TV's first filmed series, the noirish crime series Public Prosecutor (1947) as D.A. John Howard's legal secretary and guested on such action-filled 50's programs as "Ramar of the Jungle," "Death Valley Days" and "Northwest Passage."
Later sporadic appearances on film included The Blazing Sun (1950), Call of the Klondike (1950) and Breakdown (1952), the last-mentioned effort executive produced by her husband Max M. Gilford. She returned to the horror film fold once more as the star of the quickly dismissed, "poverty row" cult programmer Teenage Monster (1957). Here Anne plays a caring mother whose home is hit by a meteor. This results in the death of her husband and the monstrous mutation of her son. She tries to shield her boy from outside forces to save him. After a decade of retirement, Anne returned to make a brief, matronly appearance in the film Adam at Six A.M. (1970).
Married to Gilford in 1945, the pair had two children. Daughter/actress Gwynne Gilford is married to actor Robert Pine. Her grandson is actor Chris Pine. Anne's health began to deteriorate in the '90s; a widow by this time, she was moved to the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, California, where she died of complications from a stroke on March 31, 2003.- Actress
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Anne Nagel's life could be summed up in two words: pretty miserable. Born to devoutly religious Bostonian parents who had long encouraged her to become a nun, she had been enrolled in a preparatory school for just that purpose. As a young teenager she worked part-time as a photographer's model, and by her mid-teens, she had become more interested in a life in Hollywood than in a convent and had joined a Boston theater company. By this time, her mother had remarried and her new stepfather, a Technicolor expert, had been hired by Tiffany, a bottom-rung Poverty Row studio. The family journeyed to California and Anne's first film experience was in several Technicolor experimental shorts directed by her stepfather. She soon graduated to features as a dancer. Her striking beauty and pleasant voice made her a natural for talkies. She landed a contract at Warner Brothers and made her film debut in 1932, enjoying a string of steady, if unspectacular, roles in lower- and medium-budget pictures. Life began to unravel for her in 1936 when she married Ross Alexander. He committed suicide in 1937, and it affected Nagel deeply. Universal, with whom she was under contract by 1941, placed her in some of its serials and featured her in several of its lower-rank horror pictures and B westerns. She soon left Universal and struck out on her own, but unfortunately, she was able to land roles only at Poverty Row studios such as Republic, Monogram, and the nadir of the film industry, PRC. Ironically, her last film, Armored Car Robbery (1950), a taut, highly regarded little thriller now considered a classic of the genre, was easily the best picture she had done in years, and a good one to go out on. She had married an Army Air Corps officer, James H. Keehan, in 1941, but the marriage was increasingly unhappy and they divorced in 1951. Stories spread about her having an alcohol problem, and she spent the last years of her life virtually penniless. Sadly, she died from cancer on 7/6/66 at only 50.- Actress
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In a world weary of war and dispirited by the ravages of the Great Depression, Hollywood at the turn of the 1940s concocted a wildly popular, effective lot of escapist fare (though often cheaply made) to regale the sick at heart worldwide. Universal Pictures, more often than not, led in producing such films. We know about the monster movies: wolf men, invisible men -- and invisible women too, for that matter. We know about Sherlock Holmes chasing not killer hounds in 1890 but chasing killer Nazis a half- century later. Such were among typical Universal "B" productions. Enter Maria de Santo Silas -- Maria Montez. This daughter of a Spanish diplomat traveled extensively after being educated in the Canary Islands and attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to establish herself as a stage actress in Europe. In 1940 she found herself in New York City, a model. Her screen career began in 1941, with Universal casting her in bit parts. On account of her strikingly exotic looks and her exotic accent, the studio soon paired her with other "exotics" (Sabu and Turhan Bey), and usually with a more "home-style" hero (Jon Hall), in a series of low-budget adventures, filmed in Technicolor and situated in fantasy lands, with Montez herself often situated in revealing dress. With Montez threatened by all manner of nastiness -- from evil caliphs to man-eating sharks to her own cobra-worshipping twin sister (!) -- her pictures soon became immensely popular, even though she could not really act, could not dance and could not sing. Audiences flocked to see her films, just to witness the trials and endurance of an alluring beauty in distress (as well, perhaps, as to glimpse some scantily clad, beauteous flesh). The Depression having long since passed, the end of World War II meant also the end of flying carpets and sand dunes and deadly reptiles as potential subjects for attracting moviegoers. That bit of history, plus a bit of girth added to Montez's frame, led her and her husband, the actor Jean-Pierre Aumont, to abandon Hollywood for Europe, where she would appear in a handful of French and Italian adventure films. On 7 September 1951 Maria Montez was discovered drowned in her bath, possibly having first suffered a heart attack.- Actress
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Mary Jeanette Moran was born in Clinton, Iowa. The daughter of Louise Moran, a dancer with the famous Denishawn Dancers, and the celebrated artist Earl Moran, whose paintings graced many a barracks wall during World War II. One of Earl's favorite models was Norma Jean Baker, who later changed her name to Marilyn Monroe. Peggy never modeled for Earl, although a publicity still of the two of them was taken in Earl's atelier with Peggy posing.
From early childhood, she was called by the nickname, "Peggy". Peggy's mother took six-year-old Peggy to the office of Derio, a famous psychic of the time. Louise wanted her fortune told. Derio did not have the time for them but, when he came out of his office into the hall, he passed Peggy and her mother. Looking down at Peggy, he caressed her cheek, and said, "Hmm... an actress". From that moment on, Peggy knew she was destined to act.
Peggy appeared in some plays at school. She attended Hollywood High, where she was squired by Mike Stokey, founder of the original TV show, Stump the Stars (1947). She also attended John Marshall High for a time. There, she appeared in every play or show she could.
Hollywood soon beckoned. Peggy went to the front door of Warner Brothers and told the startled guard that she wanted to get into the lot because she was going to be a movie star. The guard introduced her to a producer who introduced her to an agent, and her career was started. She acted in a few clunkers at the beginning, playing mostly bit parts and minor roles. Among them was Ernst Lubitsch's masterpiece, Ninotchka (1939), in which Peggy appeared in two scenes as a cute cigarette girl. Later, when the picture was released, it appeared in Clinton, Iowa's only movie theatre under the marquee: "Clinton's Own Peggy Moran starring in Ninotchka (1939), with Greta Garbo". Peggy moved from Warner Brothers to Universal Pictures in the late 1930s. In between, she played the female lead in a Gene Autry western entitled Rhythm of the Saddle (1938). Working now at Universal, she met the producer, Joe Pasternak, who introduced her to his director, Henry Koster. It was love at first sight. Henry cast her first in a Deanna Durbin film, First Love (1939). She played Deanna's schoolmate. In the meantime, Universal was keeping Peggy busy starring in many of their "B" films. During this time, also, she starred in her most famous movie, the one for which she would always be remembered, The Mummy's Hand (1940). Even up to her passing, she received four or five fan letters a week from people who wanted photos of her from that film though it was produced over sixty years ago. Henry had discovered two comedians, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, and their first movie, One Night in the Tropics (1940), starred Alan Young, Nancy Kelly, Robert Cummings, and Peggy Moran. Henry did not direct that one, or any other Abbott and Costello film, but he was responsible for their introduction to Hollywood, and Peggy was their first film character foil. Peggy was also tapped to star with Franchot Tone in Trail of the Vigilantes (1940), a Western that had all the other contract players from Universal, whether they were cowboys or not, including Broderick Crawford and Mischa Auer.
A year or so later, Henry and Peggy were married. Conrad Veidt was best man at the wedding in Las Vegas. Peggy was soon pregnant with her first son. Just after that, she was hired by Republic Pictures to play the female lead, opposite Roy Rogers, in King of the Cowboys (1943). Henry encouraged her to take the role even though she was pregnant. After that, whenever she saw the movie with her son, Nicolas Koster, she always told him, "You were there!".
That was Peggy's last film appearance except for some very recent films about stars of the early era. Peggy's life with Henry was the picture of marital bliss. They had two children, Nicolas Koster, who also acted in several of Henry's films, and Peter Koster, who works in Contra Costa County. Henry passed away in 1988. Peggy was quite active during these last fourteen years, playing billiards, dancing, entertaining, and traveling around the country to attend movie nostalgia conventions, where she invariably amazed and impressed everyone from hardened veterans of movies to new fans, with her wit, charm, intelligence and beauty. She was also active in her church, the Camarillo Church of Religious Science, where she studied to become a practitioner. On 26 August 2002, she was being driven from a friend's apartment in Ventura back to her apartment in Woodland Hills when the driver lost control of the car on the freeway. Peggy never recovered from the terrible damage that accident caused. She finally left us on 24 October, one day after her 84th birthday.