People who have ties to Kansas
Even as backwards as Kansas seems to be, something good can hail from there. Here is a list of people who are part of popular culture who were born, spent some of their childhood there, attended college, or currently reside there.
Most notably, the 1918 flu pandemic began in Kansas. The first known cases were in soldiers at Fort Riley. The Spanish Flu (January 1918 – December 1920) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus. It infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—three to five percent of the world's population —making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill juvenile, elderly, or already weakened patients; in contrast the 1918 pandemic predominantly killed previously healthy young adults. [Wikipedia]
After the plane crash that killed Knute Rockne near Bazaar KS, national outcry over the air disaster that killed Rockne (and the 7 others) triggered sweeping changes to airliner design, manufacturing, operation, inspection, maintenance, regulation and crash-investigation—igniting a safety revolution that ultimately transformed airline travel worldwide, from the most dangerous form of travel to the safest form of travel.[Wikipedia] Amazing that Tornados (via "The Wizard of Oz") are not the only way Kansas affected the world.
I also have ties to Kansas, Mostly in Gove County. If you open a Quinter KS phone book half of those people are related to me. I also lived in several Kansas towns. I finally moved because KS Social Services abuses men and fathers.
Here is a link to part of my story http://www.divinecaroline.com/life-etc/culture-causes/my-so-called-life-so-far-part-1
Most notably, the 1918 flu pandemic began in Kansas. The first known cases were in soldiers at Fort Riley. The Spanish Flu (January 1918 – December 1920) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus. It infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—three to five percent of the world's population —making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill juvenile, elderly, or already weakened patients; in contrast the 1918 pandemic predominantly killed previously healthy young adults. [Wikipedia]
After the plane crash that killed Knute Rockne near Bazaar KS, national outcry over the air disaster that killed Rockne (and the 7 others) triggered sweeping changes to airliner design, manufacturing, operation, inspection, maintenance, regulation and crash-investigation—igniting a safety revolution that ultimately transformed airline travel worldwide, from the most dangerous form of travel to the safest form of travel.[Wikipedia] Amazing that Tornados (via "The Wizard of Oz") are not the only way Kansas affected the world.
I also have ties to Kansas, Mostly in Gove County. If you open a Quinter KS phone book half of those people are related to me. I also lived in several Kansas towns. I finally moved because KS Social Services abuses men and fathers.
Here is a link to part of my story http://www.divinecaroline.com/life-etc/culture-causes/my-so-called-life-so-far-part-1
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Best known for his starring role as Det. Sonny Crockett on the hugely successful TV series Miami Vice (1984), Don Johnson is one of the stars who really defined the 1980s. As James "Sonny" Crockett he went toe-to-toe with drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, assassins, illegal arms-dealers and crooked cops on a weekly basis from 1984 to 1989, appearing in a grand total of 110 episodes. The show, which was executive-produced by four time Oscar-nominated director, producer and writer Michael Mann, paired Johnson with the equally cool Philip Michael Thomas as Det. Ricardo Tubbs and the calm and stoic presence of Edward James Olmos as Lt. Martin Castillo. It revolutionized television with its modern fashion, pop music, unique style and use of real locations. Johnson typically wore $1000 Armani, Versace and Hugo Boss suits over pastel cotton T-shirts, drove a Ferrari 365 GTS/4 Daytona (later a Ferrari Testarossa) and lived on an Endeavour 42-foot sailboat named "St. Vitus' Dance" with his pet alligator Elvis. He also had full use of an offshore powerboat. Still, "Miami Vice" had not only style but substance, and his portrayal of the Vietnam veteran turned vice detective turned Sonny Crockett into the world's favorite cop. For his work on "Miami Vice" Johnson won a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a TV Series in 1986, and was nominated in the same category a year later. He also picked up an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1985.
Johnson was born in Flat Creek, Missouri, the son Eva Lea "Nell" (Wilson), a beautician, and Wayne Fred Johnson, a farmer. As a kid, he wanted to become a professional bowler. Later, after a few brushes with the law at a young age, he discovered acting. After working on the stage for a while he ventured into films and television, but was not able to break into stardom despite, among other things, starring in the sci-fi cult classic A Boy and His Dog (1975).
Johnson starred in four failed TV pilots before landing his career-high role on "Miami Vice", which propelled him to superstardom. He directed four highly praised episodes of the show. He balanced his work on the series by appearing in a praised TV-movie adaption of the William Faulkner novel The Long Hot Summer (1985) and the feature Sweet Hearts Dance (1988) with Susan Sarandon. After the series ended he focused solely on his film career. Although movies like Dead Bang (1989), The Hot Spot (1990) and Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991) did not fare well with the critics, quite a few of them have obtained a considerable cult following, with fans praising them as all being quality contributions to their genre. His film work has given Johnson the opportunity to work with legendary filmmakers like John Frankenheimer, Sidney Lumet and Dennis Hopper.
After working steadily, Johnson returned to TV in 1996 with the cop show Nash Bridges (1996). The show, which Johnson created and produced, did very well. It co-starred Cheech Marin and Jodi Lyn O'Keefe. Johnson played the title role, a captain in the San Francisco PD's Special Investigations Unit. He was again paired with a flashy vehicle, this time an electric-yellow 1971 Plymouth Barracuda convertible. After "Nash Bridges" went off the air Johnson kept a low profile, but continued to appear in films and on television. He starred in the failed WB courtroom drama Just Legal (2005), which was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and traveled to Europe to make the Norwegian screwball comedy Lange flate ballær II (2008) and the Italian films Bastardi (2008) and Torno a vivere da solo (2008). As a supporting actor, he's been seen in mainstream films such as Machete (2010), Django Unchained (2012) and Knives Out (2019).
Johnson had two pre-fame marriages that were annulled within a matter of days. In the early 1970s, he lived with rock groupie Pamela Des Barres. In 1972, Tippi Hedren, his co-star in The Harrad Experiment (1973), allowed him to date her daughter Melanie Griffith despite the fact she was only 14 and he was 22; the relationship culminated in a six-month marriage during 1976. From 1981 to 1985, he lived with actress Patti D'Arbanville and they had one son together. After short-lived liaisons with Cybill Shepherd, Barbra Streisand and a barely legal Uma Thurman, he remarried Griffith in 1989. The couple divorced again in 1996, after she left him for Antonio Banderas. Johnson was engaged to "Nash Bridges" co-star O'Keefe, but broke it off before they made it to the altar. Since 1999 he's been married to former debutante Kelley Phleger, with whom he has three children.- Actor
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Jon Ecklund has a BFA from the University of Texas and an MFA from Yale. Jon is a volunteer at Manhattan Theatre Source, a non profit arts service and producing organization in New York's West Village. He is also a founding member of Yale Cabaret Hollywood, an organization devoted to promoting artistic collaboration and networking for Yale School of Drama Alumni.- Pamela Horton was born in Whittier, CA and moved to the Wichita, KS area at the age of 9. She attended Wichita State University with a major in Psychology after graduating from Clearwater High School in 2006.
Pamela modeled professionally from 2006 to 2015 where she was featured in a broad range of digital and print media and is most known for her appearance as Bayonetta for the Bayonetta 2 promotional marketing campaign with Nintendo and Playboy.
As a gamer, Pamela has been playing video games since she was 5 years old. Her favorites include Chrono Trigger, EarthBound and Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.
As of July 2017, Pamela resides in Los Angeles where she works as a gaming content creator for her personal YouTube and Twitch as well as for Collider Video [Awesometacular]. - Director
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Dakota Miller graduated from Coffeyville Community College in Coffeyville, Kansas in 2008. He attended Avila University in Kansas City, Missouri for one several months. Dakota has been making films since 2004 and has made about dozens of short films.
His first film to be accepted into a film festival was "Next in Line". It was accepted into the Tallgrass Film Festival in the Spotlight on Kansas Filmmakers division and was well received. It was a favorite in the of a local Wichita film critic.
Dakota now lives in Wichita, KS working on new film projects.- Actress
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Quirky and introverted, Abby spent most of her childhood admiring the classic sitcoms of the 80s and 90s. Quoting scenes from Seinfeld to her dad instead of playing princesses with friends on the playground. In high school, she was signed with Advantage Talent Agency in Nashville and began auditioning and taking numerous acting classes. As Abby learned more about the entertainment business, she realized her love for performing extended to the whole creative process. From idea to page to screen. Immediately after graduating high school at 16, Abby wrote her first sitcom pilot. Then, she got her driver's license. By 18, this project garnered attention from production companies in Nashville and well-known comedians. After an unexpected move with her family and a diagnosis of a genetic disorder, Abby took a step back from the entertainment industry. Since then, she has written numerous articles for many faith-based organizations and graduated from Bible college with a Certificate of Biblical Studies. As well as screenwriting for faith-based children's show, Konnect HQ. After finding a measure of healing Abby is excited to be back in the Nashville area and is ready to create roles for herself and other quirky individuals.- Actor
Wyatt Earp was a lawman, gambler, businessman, saloon owner and gunfighter of great repute in the American West. He had been a police officer in Wichita, KS, and later in Dodge City, KS, during the mid-1870s, after which he became a shotgun rider with Wells Fargo. In Tombstone, AZ, in the wake of a stagecoach robbery, Earp (who had been running for sheriff) became involved in the notorious gunfight at the OK Corral of October 26, 1881, which resulted in the death of suspects Tom McLaury, Frank McLaury and Billy Clanton and the wounding of Earp's brothers Morgan and Virgil and his friend "Doc" Holliday. The gunfight only caused more trouble, setting into motion a series of events that included the assassination of town marshal Morgan Earp and murder charges being filed against Wyatt and others for the shooting deaths of two suspects in that crime. Wyatt left for Colorado and points west, eventually retiring to San Francisco and later Los Angeles, CA, where he occasionally worked as a consultant on various early silent-era westerns (in the days before accurate credits were maintained, so it's not known exactly what films he worked on). He was close friends with another western icon, William Barclay 'Bat' Masterson, and later with cowboy actors William S. Hart and Tom Mix and, according to some accounts, he met and befriended a young John Wayne on the set of a silent western on which Wayne was an unbilled extra.
Wyatt Earp died in Los Angeles on January 13, 1929, at age 80. Hart and Mix were pallbearers at his funeral.- Born in Topeka, KS, Carson has degrees in History and Theatre from the University of Kansas. He holds an MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Acting Program. He has also studied improvisation and performed at the Upright Citizens Brigade, IOWest, and The Peoples Improv Theatre. His career as an actor spans every aspect of stage and screen. His work is as varied as independent hits like Kissing Jessica Stein and summer blockbusters like The Wedding Crashers. On stage he's performed at the nation's most prestigious resident theaters, Shakespeare in the park, American premiers, and Broadway shows, including 5 Tony Award winning Peter And The Starcatcher.
- Nate McGee is the youngest of three children. He is the son of Virginia Lovell and Nat McGee. He has an older brother named Charles "Chuck" Simms and a sister named Monica Lovell. Nate was born on January 30, 1986 in Hinsdale, Illinois. He later moved to Bolingbrook IL, and Topeka KS, before finally settling in Newton Ks. He attended high school at Newton Senior High School, and went on to graduate with a bachelor's degree in Psychology at Wichita State University. During his college years he became a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity. Additionally during this year he undertook the 10 Week Challenge sponsored by ABC Family in conjunction with the ABC Family show Greek. He became a finalist and was cast on the show Rush'd. Following his experiences in Los Angeles, Nate completed his Master's Degree in School Counseling at Wichita State University.
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Born to Lisa and Richard Barton in a small Kansas farm community, Nicholas and his brother grew up playing several sports, singing, enjoying the outdoors, and performing community theatre. Barton earned his degree in philosophy in 2006, followed by an M.A. in Communication from Kansas State University. While working at the Boys & Girls Clubs during school, he competed on the Debate and Speech Team. During this time, he gained notoriety as the national runner-up in Dramatic Interpretation as well as other interpretative and speech-based events. Nicholas began his film and video career in 2008 as a producer for CMT and A&E and compiled producing and editing stints for ESPN, HBOsports, NatGeo, TLC, TVGN, NFL Network, Showtime, and Discovery. In 2013, he wrote and directed his first feature film "Wichita." Two years later, he wrote and directed the feature film "Hyde Park" based on the true story of one of the bloodiest gunfights in the Wild west. The film was acquired by Grindstone Entertainment (a division of Lionsgate) for worldwide distribution and is released under the international title "Deadman Standing." His upcoming feature "Death Alley" tells the story of the infamous Dalton Gang's last ride.
A stubbornly-independent filmmaker, Barton enjoys being hands-on, immersing into almost every facet of the production process. As co-owner of Wrecking Crew Productions, Prestigious Films, and Pin Oak Productions, he remains constantly in motion. An avid sports fan, a gardener, and a lifelong wildlife enthusiast, Barton spends what little free time he has, with his family, in the gym or with his dog. A proud new Texan, Barton resides in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.- Originally from Salina, KS, Ben attended Kansas-State University in Manhattan, KS, the "Little Apple." Ben has been working in film, television, commercials and theatre for many years. He is an eager beaver, enjoys reading, his dog Maggie, his 3 year old niece and the GREAT outdoors. Ben finds that as cultural attention spans wane he finds classical music increasingly comforting and recommends KUSC in L.A.
"Hensley is a wonderfully atypical Jefferson, a Jon Stewart with acting chops." - L.A. TIMES - Actor
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Charles Moss has land spots in various independent film projects, and has appeared on several television shows.
Charles David Moss III was born in Kansas City, KS. He began expressing his creative talents in writing at a young age having his first short story published in the local newspaper while only in the 2nd grade. Charles continued to express his creativity in theater at school, church, and local theater groups including becoming a "Gem Player" at the historic Gem Theater on 18th in Vine in Kansas City, MO.
After graduating college, with a degree in Commercial Art from the University of Central Missouri, Charles made the decision to move to Los Angeles, CA and continue perusing his creative endeavors in the entertainment industry.
Charles continues to study and hone his craft with each project he takes on along with writing his own projects for production. When not working, Charles enjoys hiking, working out and traveling.- Sound Department
- Actor
Grew up in Westheight, Kansas City, Kansas, Wyandotte County. Parents Robert E. and Anna L. Michalski still reside in Kansas City, KS. Kansas City Punk/Hardcore Scene 1985-1992. Worked for Kansas City Comets Indoor Soccer Team of the MISL 1984-1986. Rockhurst High School Graduate Class of 1987. Kansas University Alum 1992. Singer with Punk Band Bzar-Bzar. Toured with Grunge Band PAW 1992-1994. Relocated to Los Angeles June 1995. Joined the eternal search for Film and Television Sound work. Joined IATSE Local 695 Sound Union 1996-Present. Cinema Audio Society Member. Resides in Valley Village, California with wife Arlene and daughter Mina.- Producer
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LB McGill has been a musician, designer, singer, performer, writer, director, and most importantly, an artist for the last 30 years.
Loralie "LB" McGill began her theater career in 1979 as a singer/songwriter/performer. One of her first performances was a lead roll in original play "Carla", performed for the American College Theatre Festival in Kansas City, KS. Her talents and improvisation skills in stage production were enhanced by other 'On the Road'performances as a song writer and singer throughout the USA. She moved to San Diego with an extensive background in the theatre, having participated in a number of productions, both on the road and in theatre. Arriving in San Diego in 1982, she worked with Lorelei's Singing Telegrams, San Diego, CA, as a Singer, Performer, and sought after Costume Designer. She successfully wrote a video script for Keith Green's "The Prodigal Son," 1984, and then moved on to produce fashion shows for Neil West Productions, San Diego, CA and De La Siren Productions San Diego, CA. In 1991 she worked as a professional clown with a children's entertainment company Nugget's Window, San Diego, CA. She also served as a director and production manager for Nugget's Window productions. She has written a succession of stage shows, including, 'The Boots & Riley TV Show, 1992; several shows for the Del Mar Fair. San Diego, CA, 1993; and a video script hearing impaired children in sign language entitled "All Beyond Castle Dark," that was registered with Writers Guild of America, west, Inc, 1995. She was also a salaried entertainer at the Del Mar Fair, Carlsbad, CA. The North Coast Repertory Theater offered Loralie a position as their stage manager for "I Hate Hamlet" 1994 and costume designer for "Shadowlands," 1995. "I Hate Hamlet" and "Shadowlands" were performed at the North Coast Repertory Theatre, San Diego, CA.
Loralie owned and operated PaperAnimals.com 1997-2005, where she perfected her Paper Mache art and has written a children's book called "Winkie and The Sunflower". She founded Classic Youth Theater, Inc in 2005, in Carlsbad California, where she served as CEO and Production Director. Her first production, "A Street Car Named Desire" was performed in March of 2004. She has produced and directed over 30 productions including "Harvey", "Cyrano de Bergerac", "Arsenic And Old Lace", "You Can't Take It With You", "Midsummer Night's Dream", "Blithe Spirit, "The Odd Couple" (the female version), "Barefoot In The Park", Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", "The Matchmaker", "Pygmalion", "Hamlet", "Abie's Irish Rose", "Saint Joan", "The Importance of Being Earnest", and "Dracula". She also adapted and directed "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", "Peter Rabbit", and "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe". In 2011, she wrote, directed, and produced the original comedy "At a Bar in South Park", a play about the meeting, courtship, and engagement to her husband, Brian Ardolino.
In 2012, Loralie and Brian launched Tin KB Coffee Co. Pictures. Loralie would write the adaptation, direct, and produce their first featurette, "Venus & Adonis: Curse of Love." "Dead Serious" is the second production from Tin KB to be filmed in 2013. In 2012, Loralie also recently wrote the original screenplay "Cameo Appearance" for a Slovenian actress. In 2013, Tin KB plans to start pre-production on the film, "The Watcher".
LB McGill was born Laura Beth McGill in 1963 to Graham and Patricia McGill in Amsterdam, NY. She was the youngest of three children. In 1965, she became part of a broken home, when her mother left her father in the dead of night with the children. In part to her mother attending school, working as a single mother, and the tragic death of one of her older brothers in 1969, she was mostly left to her own devices through her childhood. "Laurie" as she was known by family, maintained a happy and outgoing spirit in the Chicago area where she was raised. As a child, she took ballet lessons, guitar lessons, loved to sing, taught herself to sew, rode horses in the summers, and loved the theatre. Spending a great deal of time alone, she would lose herself in movies and make-believe as a way to escape.
A restless soul, LB would run away at 15 and spend the next 3 years living with friends or relatives and hitch hiked cross country 3 times during that period. She spent time in California, New York, Illinois, and New Mexico. In 1981, at 18, she married, had 3 children, she left the marriage in 1991, married again in 1997, had 2 more children, she left her second husband in 2004, and she married her current husband and partner, Brian, in 2009.
Through the gauntlet of her difficult childhood, troubled marriages, and large family, LB McGill has developed into a visionary and original artist. She has beautiful voice, creative mind, loving heart, and untamable spirit. We can only wait to see what she will have in store for her next chapter in filmmaking.- Actor
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Paul Stephen Rudd was born in Passaic, New Jersey. His parents, Michael and Gloria, both from Jewish families, were born in the London area, U.K. He has one sister, who is three years younger than he is. Paul traveled with his family during his early years, because of his father's airline job at TWA. His family eventually settled in Overland Park, Kansas, where his mother worked as a sales manager for TV station KSMO-TV. Paul attended Broadmoor Junior High and Shawnee Mission West High School, from which he graduated in 1987, and where he was Student Body President. He then enrolled at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, majoring in theater. He graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts-West in Los Angeles and participated in a three-month intensive workshop under the guidance of Michael Kahn at the British Drama Academy at Oxford University in Britain. Rudd helped to produce the Globe Theater's production of Howard Brenton's "Bloody Poetry," which starred Rudd as Percy Bysshe Shelley.- Actress
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Jeri Ryan was born Jeri Lynn Zimmerman on February 22, 1968 in Munich, West Germany, to Gerhard Florian Zimmerman, a Master Sergeant in the United States Army, and his wife Sharon, a social worker. She and her older brother Mark grew up on several military bases, including Kansas, Maryland, Hawaii, Georgia and Texas. Finally, at age 11, her father retired from the Army and her family settled down in Paducah, Kentucky. After graduating from Lone Oak High School in 1986, she attended Northwestern University Chicago as a National Merit Scholar. While studying there, she won a number of beauty contests (a.o.- sixth annual Miss Northwestern Alpha Delta Phi Pageant in 1989).
With a B.S. degree in Theatre, she came to Los Angeles, California and since then she has been on several television series and films - including popular series like Matlock (1986), Melrose Place (1992) and Star Trek: Voyager (1995) as well as Dark Skies (1996). Her television experience also includes roles in a variety of telefilms including Nightmare in Columbia County (1991), NBC's In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco (1993), Co-ed Call Girl (1996), The Sentinel (1996), Men Cry Bullets (1998), Dracula 2000 (2000), The Last Man (2000) and Down with Love (2003). Jeri Ryan resides in an area of Los Angeles, California with her husband chef Christophe Eme, her son Alex and daughter Gisele.- Actress
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Annette Bening was born on May 29, 1958 in Topeka, Kansas, the youngest of four children. Her family moved to California when she was young, and she grew up there. She graduated from San Francisco State University and began her acting career with the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, eventually moving to New York where she acted on the stage (including a Tony-award nomination in 1987 for her work in the Broadway play "Coastal Disturbances") and got her first film roles, in a few TV movies.
As is so often the case, her first big-screen role was in a forgettable movie, this one The Great Outdoors (1988), in which she had little screen time. However, her next work onscreen was in Milos Forman's Valmont (1989), a film adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' "Les Liaisons Dangereuses". Unfortunately, de Laclos' story had also just served as the source of a more Hollywoodized and successful movie version, Dangerous Liaisons (1988), which had been released the previous year, and Foreman's treatment went little noticed. Bening's career turned an important corner the following year when she co-starred with Anjelica Huston and John Cusack in Stephen Frears's powerful, entertaining screen adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel The Grifters (1990), and her artful turn as a con artist gained her the first of several Academy award nominations. On the strength of this performance Warren Beatty cast Bening as Virginia Hill, Bugsy Siegel's fiery actress moll, in his Bugsy (1991), the story of Siegel's founding of Las Vegas. Although the movie itself did not fare well, it resulted in a relationship with Beatty which led to Bening's pregnancy and then her marriage to Beatty in 1992 - it was the second marriage for Bening, who had been separated from her first husband since 1986 but did not finalize her divorce until 1991. The couple then collaborated on the extravagant flop Love Affair (1994), though the next year her career rebounded with her turn as Queen Elizabeth in the highly-regarded 1995 production of Richard III (1995). Notable performances have since included an obsessive, pushy real estate agent in American Beauty (1999), and as the eponymous character in István Szabó's screen adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel Being Julia (2004) - both were duly noted by the Academy, with Oscar nominations.
Bening has great poise and screen presence and, at her best, can turn in a very strong performance. Although her resume often features long stretches of mediocre productions before the next good part turns up, when it does, it proves worth the wait. Bening has four children with Beatty.- Actor
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Scott Stewart Bakula was born on October 9, 1954 in St. Louis, Missouri, to Sally (Zumwinkel) and J. Stewart Bakula, a lawyer. He is of German, as well as Czech, Austrian, Scottish and English ancestry. He comes from a musical family. In the fourth grade, he started a rock band and wrote songs for them, he later sang with the St. Louis Symphony. He studied Law at the University of Kansas until his sophomore year when he left to pursue acting. In 1976, he was first hired professionally in the role of Sam in "Shenandoah" and went to New York. After several small roles on television, he starred opposite Dean Stockwell in the science fiction series Quantum Leap (1989). Bakula played Dr. Sam Beckett, a physicist who was trapped by a malfunction of his time machine to correct things gone wrong in the past. He won a Golden Globe in 1992 for Best Performance by an Actor in a TV series - Drama for Quantum Leap (1989) and was nominated for a Tony Award in 1988. He also starred in the prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise (2001) as Jonathan Archer, the captain of Earth's first long-range starship. Today, he lives in Los Angeles, California and has a farm in upstate New York.- Jeremy Davies attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, California. He made his film debut starring in David O. Russell's acclaimed first film, the Indy classic, "Spanking the Monkey", which became a surprise Sundance Film Festival winner, earning Jeremy an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Debut Performance.
Davies' portrayal of Tom Hanks' interpreter, 'Corporal Upham', in Steven Spielberg's Academy Award winning film, "Saving Private Ryan" also earned him considerable critical acclaim and subsequent Oscar buzz.
Davies' other film credits include Steven Soderbergh's "Solaris", with George Clooney and Viola Davis; "Going All the Way" with Ben Affleck; "The Locusts" with Vince Vaughn; Wim Wenders' "Million Dollar Hotel"; Lars von Trier's acclaimed avant-garde films, "Dogville" and "Manderlay" with Nicole Kidman and Stellan Skarsgard; "Rescue Dawn" with Christian Bale and Steve Zahn, and directed by the legendary Werner Herzog; "Nell" with Jodie Foster and Liam Neeson; "Half Nelson" writer/directors Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden's "It's Kind of a Funny Story"; "Guncrazy" with Drew Barrymore, and Jan de Bont's "Twister" with Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
In television, Davies was invited to join the cast of JJ Abram's groundbreaking show, "Lost", and soon after, his character, 'Daniel Faraday', quickly became an integral part of the "Lost" mythology and a favorite of critics and fans (to the extent that ABC began selling Faraday bobbleheads).
After "Lost", Davies joined Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins and Margo Martindale on Graham Yost's acclaimed, Emmy winning FX show, "Justified", based on a short story by the great Elmore Leonard. Wildly against his better judgment, Yost generously granted Jeremy unusual freedom to develop the character of Mags Bennett's middle son, and Davies' subsequent ferocious and fragile Richard the Third-esque portrayal of Harlan, Kentucky outlaw 'Dickie Bennett' was so far removed from 'Daniel Faraday', his work earned him an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor.
Davies' television work also includes the Emmy-honored HBO film, "The Laramie Project".
Davies was raised without television, and experienced a vividly nomadic (non-military brat), low-income childhood, growing up throughout the US and abroad, including Vermont, Seattle, Oregon, Kansas, Michigan, New Orleans, Latin America, Canada, Denmark, Sweden and the Kingdom of California. - Actor
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Comedian, actor and United States Marine Corps Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Robert Allen Riggle, Jr. was born April 21, 1970 in Louisville, Kentucky, to Sandra (Shrout) and Robert Allen Riggle, who worked in insurance. Riggle has amassed notable television credits and has also earned roles in many feature films, including The Lorax (2012) and 21 Jump Street (2012). After graduating from the University of Kansas with a B.A. in Theater and Film, Riggle joined the Marines and earned a Master's degree from Webster University in Public Administration. Riggle had intentions of becoming a Marine Corps pilot, but eventually left the military to pursue a career in comedy. A featured cast member on Saturday Night Live (1975) during the 2004/2005 season, Riggle then joined Comedy Central's The Daily Show (1996) in 2006 as a correspondent. Riggle's numerous television appearances, including credits on Arrested Development (2003), Chappelle's Show (2003), 30 Rock (2006) and The Office (2005) would lead to big-screen roles in Step Brothers (2008), The Hangover (2009) and The Other Guys (2010). When he is not on set or traveling across the United States performing stand-up comedy, Rob Riggle lives in Los Angeles.- Actress
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Jamie Anne Brown was born in Parsons, Kansas. The eldest of five siblings, from a very early age, Brown dreamed of becoming an actress. Pursuing this dream, she moved to Los Angeles.
One of her very first roles was a recurring part on The Shield (2002). Soon after, she made her feature film debut with a supporting role in The Notebook (2004) as "Martha Shaw". Later, known as Jamie Allman, she booked roles on top television series, including Monk (2002), Bones (2005), Saving Grace (2007), CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000), and The Closer (2005), among others. In addition to season two of The Killing (2011), she was seen in the independent feature films The Last Rites of Joe May (2011) and Any Day Now (2012).
In her spare time, Allman supports a variety or organizations involving mentally disabled adults. She resides with her husband, actor Marshall Allman (whom she married in 2006) and three children in Los Angeles.- Actress
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Cassandra Peterson was born in Manhattan, Kansas, and grew up in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She began her career at age 17 as the youngest showgirl in Las Vegas history in the show "Vive Les Girls" at the Dunes Hotel. After receiving advice from "The King" himself, Elvis Presley, she traveled to Europe where she pursued a career as a singer and actor. She worked in several Italian films, including Federico Fellini's Roma (1972) and performed throughout Europe as lead singer of an Italian rock band.
Upon returning to the United States, she toured the country as star of her own musical-comedy show, "Mama's Boys". She eventually settled in Hollywood, where she spent four and a half years with L.A.'s foremost improvisational comedy group, The Groundlings. In 1981, she auditioned for the role of horror hostess on a local Los Angeles television station. Her show, Elvira's Movie Macabre (1981), and her newly created character, Elvira, became an overnight sensation.
Cassandra has used Elvira's celebrity status to bring attention to many worthy causes and organizations over the years, including her well-known work for animal welfare and raising money and awareness for the prevention of HIV/AIDS. In addition to co-writing and performing in both the local L.A. and nationally syndicated television versions of "Movie Macabre", she co-wrote, produced and starred in two feature films, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988) and Elvira's Haunted Hills (2001). In 2010, she returned to syndicated television in a reboot of her original series, Elvira's Movie Macabre (2010). She returned in 2014 in a similar show format for Hulu's 13 Nights of Elvira. Her latest endeavors include producing, writing and starring in Elvira's 40th Anniversary, Very Scary, Very Special, Special - a 2021 four-hour special streaming on Shudder, and Dr. Elvira, a Halloween promotional mini-series for Netflix.
Cassandra Peterson has spent over four decades solidifying the Elvira brand that has become synonymous with Halloween and the horror genre.- Actress
- Soundtrack
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.- Actor
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William Shockley is an American actor, writer, producer (p.g.a.) and director.
Shockley is a partner in Tiki Tane Pictures along with Allen Gilmer and Tom Brady, a film production company based in Los Angeles and Austin, TX. Tiki Tane is represented by UTA Independent Film Group. They are in post-production on Long Shadows, an American period piece directed by Shockley, starring Blaine Maye, Sarah Cortez, Jacqueline Bisset, Dominic Monaghan and Dermot Mulroney.
As an actor, Shockley will next be seen in Haunting of the Queen Mary, starring Alice Eve, directed by Gary Shore; Natty Knocks with Robert England and Bill Mosley, directed by Dwight Little; Far Haven with Bailey Chase, directed by Gary Wheeler; and Martingale with Kelly Sullivan, directed by Jeremy Berg.
Shockley made his directorial debut with the short film, Common Threads, starring Nancy Stafford, a period western set in Tucson, Arizona, 1887. Common Threads won 8 Film Festival Awards, including 'Best Short Film - Family' at the 2017 'IFS Film Festival' in Los Angeles. At the 2017 'Best Shorts Awards Competition' in La Jolla, CA, Common Threads won 6 Awards of Excellence, including Short Film, Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Family Programming and Ensemble Cast. And at the 2017 Lady's First International Film Festival in Cork, Ireland, Common Threads won Best Production Design.
In 1986, while doing theatre in Dallas, Texas, Shockley had his first audition, and was cast by Paul Verhoeven in Robocop. His next decision was easy. Sell everything and move to Los Angeles.
After just a few months of living in LA, Shockley landed a slew of episodic and movie-of-the-week roles. He was then cast in the feature films Howling: Rebirth with Phil Davis, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane with Andrew Dice Clay, and The Joyriders with Martin Landau and Kris Kristofferson. Paul Verhoeven cast Shockley again in the cult classic, Showgirls.
Shockley has also worked in numerous television projects. He won over audiences for six years as 'Hank Lawson', the saloon-keeper in CBS' highly regarded drama, "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman", starring Jane Seymour. Shockley was given a development deal by CBS and starred in his own series, "California", a Dr. Quinn spin-off. Shockley also starred opposite Whoopi Goldberg in the CBS sitcom, "Bagdad Cafe", and opposite Teri Garr in the critically acclaimed ABC series, "Good & Evil ".
Shockley has co-written 12 feature scripts that have been produced, and has also produced 10 feature films and 3 TV movies.
Aside from acting, Shockley does extensive voice over work in television and radio advertising. He has voiced campaigns for AT&T, Enterprise, Sony, Sprint, Bausch & Lomb, Toyota, Siemens, Cisco Systems, Isuzu, Fruit of the Loom and XM Satellite Radio, to name a few.
In the world of on air radio, Shockley hosted 52 weeks of "The Road", a syndicated country music program airing in 200 cities. The program featured live country music concert tracks mixed with interviews with the artists. "The Road" was nominated by Billboard Magazine as Best Syndicated Radio Program.- Rebecca Staab was born in Hays, Kansas and grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. Excelling in academics, Rebecca had a 4.0 GPA in both high school and college, and placed in the top five finalists in the Miss USA pageant as Miss Nebraska.
Rebecca can presently be seen in Netflix's #1 series, The Night Agent, working with Gabriel Basso. She just completed the season 3 finale of Superman and Lois, working primarily with Michael Cudlidz and Dylan Walsh. Rebecca's other recent work includes the #1 Netflix comedy film "Love Hard" starring alongside Nina Dobrev, Jimmy O. Yang, Harry Shum Jr, and James Saito.
Movie theater audiences can see Rebecca co-starring in the film "Breakthrough" alongside Chrissy Metz (This is Us), Topher Grace, Josh Lucas, and Mike Colter; as well as the film "The Miracle Season," alongside William Hurt and Helen Hunt.
ABC thriller series "Somewhere Between" features Rebecca as series regular "Colleen Dekizer," working with the likes of Devon Sawa and Paula Patton.
On "The Chronicle Mysteries" series, Rebecca plays the newspaper's Society Editor/Know-It-All as series regular "Eileen Bruce."
Rebecca also stars as a series regular lead in the project "Manopause."
Not every girl gets the chance to be a Marvel Comic superhero, but Rebecca starred in the first cult-hit film version of "The Fantastic Four" as the original "Susan Storm -- The Invisible Girl."
She is enthusiastically remembered by many fans of the film "Love Potion No. 9," for her famous "verbally castrating" bar room scenes with Tate Donovan, and is also recognized frequently for the "top funniest commercials of the year" TAG body spray, as the Mrs. Robinson-MILF who seduces her daughter's boyfriend.
Rebecca played the title role in the Indy film "A House on a Hill", starring with Philip Baker Hall, and worked on the critically acclaimed film "A Perfect Ending" with John Heard.
Some of Rebecca's other series regular roles include the sex-crazed anchorwoman Sherry Beck on the newsroom drama "Live Shot"; innocent vampire Daphne Collins on the revised "Dark Shadows" with Ben Cross; the first lesbian television character Ellen Sommers on NBC's "Trade Winds"; and the billionaire widow/vampire/fashion designer Elizabeth Barrington on "Port Charles."
Rebecca has most recently been seen on several top-rated Hallmark Channel films, as well as the award-winning shows Masters of Sex, Dexter, Glee, Fairly Legal, Criminal Minds, The Mentalist, CSI, CSI: NY, NCIS, and Nip/Tuck. Rebecca is also recognized from network classics Cheers, Seinfeld, Ellen, The Wonder Years, Columbo, Beverly Hills, 90210, and The Drew Carey Show, to name only a few.
After college, Rebecca spent three years as a professional model based in Paris, and worked nonstop on location all over the world including Italy, Germany, and Japan, accumulating covers, features in fashion magazines, billboards, and international campaigns. She moved on to New York and continued working with the Ford Modeling agency.
Booking her very first acting audition, Rebecca started her acting career as punk-rocker Cecelia Thompson on ABC's "Loving," followed by the series regular 'good girl,' Jessie Matthews, on "Guiding Light."
An avid traveler, Rebecca has been from Russia to Costa Rica, Italy to Bali, Japan to Austria, France to Singapore, Estonia to Kauai, Crete to Zihuatanejo, Istanbul to Hong Kong, Helsinki to the Canary Islands, Tunisia to St. Barts, Tahiti to Tulum, and most places in between! She excels at every outdoor adventure sport - her garage looks like a miniature "Sports Chalet."
Another passion of Rebecca's is architectural restoration -- hands-on, she recently completed a top-to-bottom inside-out year-long project of restoring a 100-year-old home from a "haunted crack house" to the historic jewel it deserves to be appreciated as. Having reconstructed every house she's ever lived in, Rebecca is always looking for the next restoration project. Rebecca also applies her construction and handiwork skills to projects for Habitat for Humanity.
She and her longtime partner, William deVry, are very active in dog rescue. They foster four-legged friends who are slated for euthanasia, rehabilitate them, and find them qualified forever homes. They presently have five dogs of their own, but there's frequently an extra one or two in transition. They live in a registered historic home in the Hollywood Hills where Rebecca excels in landscape architecture, interior design, and gourmet cooking.
Rebecca studied in New York City with Uta Hagen at the HB Studios, and in Los Angeles with Larry Moss. - Jay Karnes was born in Omaha, NE and attended the University of Kansas, where he studied theatre, history, and political science. He has performed extensively in the regional theater, including in The Tempest, Two Noble Kinsman, Richard II, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Love's Labor's Lost, and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, as a company member at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Dealing with Claire, The Birthday Party, The Seagull, Dangerous Corner, and The Tavern, with the Matrix Theater Company in Los Angeles; Richard III, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Jekyll, and The Tempest, at the Missouri Repertory Theatre; Neil LaBute's Filthy Talk for Troubled Times, directed by the author at the Westside dance project in New York; as well as roles at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, South Coast Repertory Theater, Nebraska Shakespeare Festival, and the California Shakespeare Festival, among others.
In the late 1990s, Jay began working in television and film, and is perhaps best known for his portrayal of detective Holland "Dutch" Wagenbach in the Golden Globe winning drama "The Shield."
Jay is married to actress Julia Campbell and the couple have twins, a boy and a girl. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Betsy Randle was born on 24 June 1955 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She is an actress, known for Boy Meets World (1993), The Nightmare Room (2001) and Urban Mythology (2000). She is married to John Randle. They have two children.- Actor
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Drago was well known for his villainous parts (leading or supporting), and his rugged yet scary looks and evil smile. He was born William Eugene Burrows in Hugoton, Kansas. He became interested in acting and took his mother's maiden name "Drago" as a stage name. At first he worked as a stuntman in Kansas, then attended the University of Kansas. After graduating he worked as a radio host before joining an acting crew that led him to New York. He began his acting career at the end of 1970s.
After appearing in multiple TV series as a guest actor, he appeared in such low-budget films as: Windwalker (1980), Vamp (1986), Hunter's Blood (1986), Freeway (1988), Dark Before Dawn (1988), Gwang tin lung fo wooi (1989), True Blood (1989), Martial Law II: Undercover (1991), Lady Dragon 2 (1993) and Cyborg 2: Glass Shadow (1993). He also appeared in Walker, Texas Ranger (1993). Other well-known appearances were in: Mad Dog Time (1996), Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004) and The Hills Have Eyes (2006) (the remake), as the leader of mutant nomads. He did an extensive work on TV, most notably on Charmed (1998). He also produced an instructional acting video with his wife, Silvana Gallardo.- Actor
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Everett McGill was the leader of a popular Kansas City dance band prior to becoming an accomplished stage actor with more than 1300 performances on Broadway to his credit. He first acquired wide attention in film with his starring role in Jean-Jacques Annaud's Oscar-winning saga of primitive man, Quest for Fire. He went on to star in a broad range of movie genres playing characters that have been described in every way from malevolent to lovable. He is best known to fans of filmmaker David Lynch as the owner of Big Ed's Gas Farm in the town of Twin Peaks. He replayed the lovelorn Ed Hurley for the Showtime series Twin Peaks: The Return. He studied dance at the Kansas City Conservatory of Music and earned a BA in Speech and Theatre from the University of Missouri.- Actress
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Taryn Southern is a digital personality, writer, producer, director and songwriter with more than 500 million views across her internet videos. In 2018, she produced the world's first pop album composed with artificial intelligence (I AM AI) and wrote and produced a Streamy-nominated immersive virtual reality series for Google/YouTube VR. In addition, her directorial debut, I AM HUMAN, premiered at The Tribeca Film Festival in May 2019.
Taryn got her start on American Idol before landing guest starring roles in television shows such as Rules of Engagement (CBS), New Girl (NBC), Legit (F/X) and Guys with Kids (CBS) and writing comedy for digital networks (Heavy.com, MovieTickets.com) and television ( "Private High Musical" for MTV.) As a frequent television host, Taryn was a correspondent for the highest rated late night series on Discovery Channel in 2013/2014 (Shark After Dark/Naked After Dark), as well as a correspondent for NBC's The X Factor and host/producer for AT&T U-Verse, "Project MyWorld" for DirecTV, and a correspondent for VH1, G4, MTV and more.
In 2012, Taryn launched a YouTube channel, growing more than 500,000 subscribers by 2014, and digital production company, Happy Cat Media. Through the channel, Taryn returned to comedy and music, landing a comedy song ("Crush") on the US radio charts and hosting her own countdown show on Sirius XM Radio.Her production company Happy Cat Media focused on high-end, influencer based content for brands and distributors such as Marriott, MovieTickets.com, Conde Nast, Snapchat, Vimeo, HTC Vive, and more. In 2017, she was featured as one of three women leaders in media for Ford's national "She's Got Drive" campaign and named one of the Top 20 Women in VR.- Actor
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After becoming an award-winning, platinum-selling writer, producer/director Willie Aames took a 5-year hiatus and became a 6-star cruise director spending his time circling the globe and visiting over 127 countries. Recently Aames returned to his roots in acting and film making, splitting his time between Los Angeles and Vancouver, BC, with his wife, Winnie Hung. Aames has two children, Christopher and Harleigh.- Actress
- Producer
Christina Chang was born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan, by her Chinese-Filipino father and American mother. At 17 she moved to the United States to study Theatre & Film in her mother's home state of Kansas and later studied acting in Seattle, USA. Chang went on to gain a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Washington in Seattle, where she won her first professional acting job in the play "Naomi's Road" at the Seattle Children's Theater. From there, she progressed to the off-Broadway production of Tina Landau's the "Trojan Women."
Once in New York, Chang gained several guest and recurring roles on various programs including Cosby, Guiding Light, and As the World Turns. She appeared in the feature films Random Hearts (1999), 28 Days (2000), Deadline (2000) and Girls Club (2002). She also hosted Globe Trekker, also known as Globe Trekker (1994).
Chang's other interests include working with children, following in the footsteps of her mother who is a school counselor. She speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, has studied the trapeze, and has an interest in social work.- Actor
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Excellent, prolific and dependable character actor Terry Kiser was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Terry attended the University of Kansas on both football and dramatic scholarships. He graduated with a degree in Industrial Engineering and worked for three years in this profession in his hometown of Omaha. Kiser also acted in some 50 plays around this same time. Terry then moved to New York and studied his craft at the Actors Studio, where he was mentored by legendary Method acting teacher Lee Strasberg. Following several gigs in television commercials, he made his film debut as a preacher in the film Rachel, Rachel (1968). Although often cast as sleazy and unlikable scoundrels, Terry has shown on occasion that he can portray more sympathetic parts with equal skill and conviction.
Kiser gave an especially strong and engaging performance in a rare substantial starring role in the little seen drama Lapin 360 (1972). Best known as the deceased, but still active Bernie Lomax in the hilarious "Weekend at Bernie's" films, Terry's other memorable roles include Chuck Norris' ill-fated cop partner Dave Pierce in the exciting An Eye for an Eye (1981), shady businessman Freddy Barrett in the entertaining science fiction disaster film Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land (1983), petty worthless hoodlum Jesse Hardwick in the superior horror anthology opus From a Whisper to a Scream (1987), sneaky psychiatrist Dr. Crews in Friday the 13th: The New Blood (1988), and the evil Count Gunther Spretzle in Mannequin: On the Move (1991). Kiser had a recurring part on the daytime soap opera The Doctors (1963).
Among the many television series Terry has done guest spots on are Will & Grace (1998), Walker, Texas Ranger (1993), Baywatch Nights (1995), Dream On (1990), The Golden Girls (1985), L.A. Law (1986), Hunter (1984), Murder, She Wrote (1984), Riptide (1984), Knight Rider (1982), The Fall Guy (1981), Magnum, P.I. (1980), Hill Street Blues (1981), CHiPs (1977), Diff'rent Strokes (1978), All in the Family (1971), Maude (1972), Hawaii Five-O (1968), The Bionic Woman (1976), The Six Million Dollar Man (1974), and Baretta (1975). In addition to his film and television work, Kiser has acted on stage in the Broadway plays "God's Favorite" (Terry received a Tony Award nomination for his performance in this Neil Simon comedy), "Shelter", "The Castro Complex", and "Paris Is Out!". Terry won both an Obie and a Theater World Award for his exemplary acting in the dramatic play "Fortune and Men's Eyes".
Terry currently resides in Colorado and co-founded the premiere acting school The Actors Arena in Austin Texas with Joy Leigh.- Writer
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Acclaimed and highly discussed filmmaker Neil LaBute has made himself a force to be reckoned with and a name to watch. With his true-to-life cynical and self-absorbed characters and all-too-true social themes, he has firmly established himself as an unforgiving judge of the ugliest side of human nature.
LaBute was originally a playwright. He attended Brigham Young University and took theater as his major. Many say that Pulitzer-Prize winner David Mamet was a strong influence on him. He chose to attack subjects that many people don't really want to talk about and showed the way that people really talk among themselves. His first stage piece, an off-off-Broadway play which was entitled "Filthy Talk for Troubled Times", debuted in 1989 and it featured two men just sitting around a bar and making small talk and ridiculing women, minorities, homosexuals and their ways, in a manner not unlike the conversations in his In the Company of Men (1997). The foul-mouthed play was, not unsurprisingly, a hit with the critics.
After LaBute graduated from the University of Kansas and New York University, he got a scholarship to London's Royal Court Theatre in the US in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City. Then he got into cinema. He made his films like his plays: showing characters just sitting and talking and revealing how evil, scared, ignorant, arrogant, emotionally wounded, delusional, disillusioned and cynical they are.
LaBute made his first major mark with the low-budget (and frighteningly realistic) cautionary fable In the Company of Men (1997), about two sexist male office co-workers fed up with what they believe is the way women have taken over American society and how it is no longer a man's world. They set out to find a vulnerable woman - one looking for male attention - and wine her, dine her, then cruelly dump her, just to gain some "dignity" for their gender. Shot for $25,000 in less than two weeks, the film won the Sundance Filmmaker's trophy, awards for LaBute's screenplay and the star Aaron Eckhart's performance as a heartless and misogynist creep with ambition and cockiness to spare.
His next movie and sophomore cinema effort, Your Friends and Neighbors (1998), was considerably less well-received (a casualty of what is often referred to as "the sophomore jinx"). The film was about a group of six very different, but misanthropic people (three men and three women) connected by their relationships; when unhappy in them, they begin to shamelessly lie and cheat on one another with their lovers, and even with their friends. The movie got some strong reviews, but other reviewers felt LaBute was pretty much repeating himself. The prevailing attitude seeming to be that this time he had made an entire movie with all of its characters being nothing but villains, so why should anyone care about or want these six unlikable people to ever find happiness?
Nurse Betty (2000) was LaBute's next directorial effort, from a script he didn't write himself. It was was a radical departure from LaBute's other work, about a sweet-natured waitress obsessed with a particular soap opera and especially the show's star, George McCord (Greg Kinnear). The film received the Cannes Film Festival's Best Screenplay trophy for its authors. Renée Zellweger was honored with a Golden Globe Award. LaBute had finally made a good-nature, mainstream film, and a damn good one, but he didn't spend ALL his time basking - he had put out several other things that year, such as a TV movie based on his "Bash" plays and another original work entitled Tumble (2000), none of which got wide recognition.
In 2002 LaBute got himself noticed again with another less-caustic movie - a costume period piece called Possession (2002), based on the best-selling novel, which many believed to be about his love for early English culture. It starred LaBute stalwart Eckhart and Gwyneth Paltrow, who specializes in having the most authentic sounding British accent around. It wasn't a huge box-office success, but it did have many fervent admirers.
In 2003 LaBute brought to the screen another adaptation of his own work, a play he wrote and directed and had performed in England. He brought his original cast (Paul Rudd, Rachel Weisz, Gretchen Mol and Frederick Weller) back to appear in this one. It was entitled The Shape of Things (2003), about how a seductive art student, named Evelyn, takes Paul, a nerdy, insecure, out-of-shape guy, and begins molding him to look more and more desirable, much to the confusion of his friends. He enjoys being desirable, but is unaware of where all this remodeling will lead as Evelyn gets more and more possessive and controlling.
With pieces like "In the Company of Men" and Your Friends and Neighbors (1998), LaBute has proven that he has his hand on the pulse and minds of everyday and ordinary people (not heroes or villains), just average people who sound and behave horribly for no reason, and you cringe all the more because you know and identify with those characters. With "Nurse Betty" and "Possession", however, LaBute has shown that he has more than just one really incredibly note. He's no one-hit wonder. Here is a man whose entire body of work should be watched and studied by all.- Actor
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Character actor Milburn Stone, the beloved "Doc Adams" on TV's long-running western classic Gunsmoke (1955), was born in Kansas on July 5, 1904. Acting must have been in his blood as the nephew of Broadway comedian Fred Stone for Milburn left home as a teenager to find work with touring repertory troupes. Emulating his famous uncle Fred, he appeared in vaudeville as part of a song-and-dance team called "Stone and Strain."
Following a minor appearance on Broadway in "The Jayhawkers," Milburn moved to Los Angeles in 1935 to try his luck in films. He toiled for years in mostly unbilled parts for 'poverty row' Monogram Pictures and a few major studios, apprenticing in a number of background roles as both benign fellows (clerks, reporters, sailors, detectives) and bad guys (convicts, robbers, henchmen) in such films as Ladies Crave Excitement (1935), The Fighting Marines (1935), The Princess Comes Across (1936), Banjo on My Knee (1936) and They Gave Him a Gun (1937)
Out of the blue he would occasionally nab a heroic film lead in films as the crime drama Federal Bullets (1937) and The Judge (1949) or serial thrillers as The Great Alaskan Mystery (1944) and The Master Key (1945), then would invariably go right back to unbilled status in his very next role. One memorable featured part (which was also unbilled) was as debater Stephen A. Douglass in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). In addition he played a regular support role as pal/co-pilot "Skeeter Milligan" in the "Tommy Tailspin" airborne film quickies Mystery Plane (1939), Sky Patrol (1939) and Danger Flight (1939).
Other higher visible support roles occurred in such films as the Roy Rogers western Colorado (1940), as well as Captive Wild Woman (1943), The Frozen Ghost (1945), Roadblock (1951), Black Tuesday (1954), Smoke Signal (1955). He also went on to appear in a couple of John Ford's later features such as Simone Bär and The Long Gray Line (1955).
When the crusty but lovable role of "Doc Adams" finally landed at his feet in 1955, Milburn was only too appreciative to experience a steady paycheck. He became an "overnight" star and, along with Matt Dillon's James Arness, earned an Emmy Award for "supporting actor" and stayed a citizen of Dodge City throughout its entire 20-year run (500 episodes). In 1971, Stone was temporarily sidelined by a heart attack and briefly replaced by another "doc" played by Pat Hingle. The ever-durable Stone missed only seven episodes, however, and did return on a more limited basis.
Fully retired to his ranch in 1975 after the show's cancellation, he was eventually awarded an honorary doctorate from St. Mary of the Plains College in (of course) Dodge City, Kansas. Married to Jane Garrison, the 75-year-old veteran died of a heart attack on June 12, 1980 in La Jolla, California. His wife passed away much later in 2002.- Actor
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The burly character actor Gordon Jump will probably be best remembered for the role of the radio station manager Arthur Carlson in the TV sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati (1978). This is coincidental since, in the first part of his working life, he was found either behind a microphone or camera in stints with radio and TV stations in the Midwest, including producing jobs at stations in Kansas and Ohio.
Moving to Los Angeles in 1963, he quickly became involved in stage productions with Nathan Hale and Ruth Hale, a couple who had opened a small theater in Glendale, California, several years earlier, in order to make ends meet. The Hales preferred the stage to film, and they abandoned Hollywood film hopes when their theater was successful. Others developing their acting talents with the Hales included Mike Farrell and Connie Stevens. Jump always credited Ruth Hale for the real start of his career as an actor, and it has been said that Jump remained most passionate about acting in live theater.
He soon started appearing in numerous TV series, including Daniel Boone (1964), Get Smart (1965), and Green Acres (1965). Through his association with the Hale clan, he became a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which led to appearances in educational and religious short films produced and directed by Judge Whitaker at Brigham Young University in the 1960s. He played a Mormon bishop in "You Make the Difference", a thoughtful husband in Marriage: What Kind for You? (1967), and even the Apostle Peter in Mormon Temple Film (1969). Ruth was instrumental in getting Jump to give up smoking, and she also admonished him to turn down offers to do beer commercials. To the end of his life, he took his membership in his faith seriously, including its health codes. He also was in other LDS church films including When Thou Art Converted 1967, What about Thad? 1969, The Guilty 1978 and Families are Forever 1982.
Gordon remained predominantly a television actor throughout a long career in the arts, but he did appear in some small parts in feature films such as Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972). He also had a cameo appearance in The Singles Ward (2002), a comedy involving young Latter-Day Saint cultural experiences, which was written and directed by Kurt Hale, the grandson of Ruth and Nathan.
Beyond his acting career, Gordon produced The Tony Randall Show (1976) and directed an episode of WKRP in Cincinnati (1978). In the last years of his life, he was readily recognizable as the lonely Maytag Washer repairman in commercials that ran on television for several years starting in 1989. He effectively portrayed Ol' Lonely until retiring from the role just before his death. (The repairman was lonely because the machines never broke down.) As is often the case for actors with a flair for comedy, he was also adept at playing dramatic roles. As is also often the case with character actors, his face is recognizable to many who never knew his name.- Actor
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Steve was born and raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, Montana. Son of Curley and Lila Reevis, he is the 4th of 6 siblings. He graduated from Flandreau High School and attended Haskell Indian Junior College in Lawrence, Kansas where he received a degree in arts. After junior college, he left the reservation in Montana to try to begin an acting career in Los Angeles. He lived on the beach in his car, a 1971 Ford Torino, for many months before he began to have a more steady income. He and his wife Macile, an artist and clothing designer, have three children.
In 1996 Steve received an award from First Americans in the Arts (FAITA) for his supporting roles in both the critically acclaimed movie Fargo and in the made for television movie Crazy Horse. In 2004 he repeated this honor for his work on the ABC series Line of Fire.- Actor
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David Dastmalchian is originally from Kansas. He moved to Chicago, IL, to study acting at The Theatre School, DePaul University. After college, David worked as a professional fisherman in Alaska, a circus performer, movie theatre usher and playwright. He is an ensemble member of Shattered Globe Theatre Company and Caffeine Theatre in Chicago.- Sean Lowe (born in Arlington, Texas on November 16, 1983) is an insurance salesman from Dallas, Texas. Sean grew up in Irving, TX with his parents and older sister. In high school, Sean played football and was a linebacker for the Irving High Tigers. He transferred to Lamar High School in Arlington and played football for them as well. In Spring 2002, Sean accepted a full football scholarship to Kansas State University. After graduating KSU, he moved back to Dallas and began his career as an insurance salesman while pursuing fitness modeling on the side. He appeared on the 8th season of The Bachelorette (2003) with Emily Maynard Johnson. Sean was sent home, after making it to the top 3 on the show. Sean starred in Season 17 of The Bachelor (2002).
- A native of Sylmar, California, Gbewonyo played high school basketball at Kennedy High. He began his college career at College of the Canyons (Calif.), where he earned All-Western State Conference honors and was named the team's Most Valuable Player as a sophomore in the 2000-01 season. He averaged 21 points and eight rebounds that season.
After two seasons at Canyons, Gbewonyo transferred to Washburn (Kansas) University, where he was a part-time starter and key component for the Ichabods in 2001-02. He started 14 of 26 games played, and averaged 7.7 points and 4.0 rebounds, as WU advanced to the MIAA Tournament semifinals.
He moved onto Henderson (Ark.) State University for his senior season in 2002-03. He averaged 9.0 points and 6.0 rebounds in 35 games for the Reddies, helping them advance to the NCAA Division II South Region finals. - Actor
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Lorin McCraley was born in Kingman, Arizona. As a child, he grew up in a myriad of locations across the American Southwest, before landing in Cottonwood, Arizona. While there, he was an All-Conference football and baseball player at Mingus Union High School. A football scholarship took him to Scottsdale Community College, where a fist fight and a resulting broken hand, forced him to miss his sophomore season, but indirectly led to his discovery of acting. He received his B.A. in Theatre from Ottawa University in Ottawa Kansas. At Ottawa he was a Captain on the football team and received All-KCAC honors. He left the M.F.A. professional acting program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City early to pursue a career in Los Angeles. In his first month in LA he received his SAG card after the impromptu stealing of a purse as an extra during a take of the television show "Double Rush". After being immediately fired by the 1st AD, he was invited back by the director, Michael Lembeck. Upon arriving on set the next morning, he was given his first line on television: "All right Rock-n-Roll!", and the coveted SAG card. Years of treading the boards on the stages of LA eventually led to Lorin carving out his own niche on screen as a Hollywood heavy. Arguably one of the few Little League baseball coaches in America whose day job consists of being a serial killer, a wanna-be vampire, and a homicidal cowboy. In addition to his flourishing career as an actor, Lorin, along with writing partner Edward Cieplinski, has three screenplays (Boone Helm Kentucky Cannibal, Jersey City German Shepherd, and Most Popular Corpse) in various levels of development.- Actor
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Wilton Norman Chamberlain was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Olivia Ruth (Johnson), a domestic worker, and William Chamberlain, a welder, custodian, and handyman. Wilt didn't come from a race of giants as many thought. Both his parents were no bigger than 5-9, but as a young boy he began a growth spurt which would eventually stop when he reached 7-1. That height made him legendary in sports history as arguably the greatest basketball player ever. Chamberlain played at Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, and collegiately at Kansas University, where he led the Jayhawks to the NCAA finals. Kansas lost in title game to North Carolina and that game haunted Chamberlain throughout his career and gave birth to the unfair image of him as a "loser." He left Kansas as an underclassman to play professionally for the Harlem Globetrotters, and after a year with them, signed to play with his hometown team in the NBA, the then-named Philadelphia Warriors. With the Warriors he performed some astonishing feats that no NBA player before or since accomplished.- An actor with an international flair and a distinguished voice, Cástulo Guerra was born in Córdoba, Argentina, August 24, 1945, to Cástulo Guerra and María Sola, and was nicknamed Pericles by medical students at the pension where they lived. He grew up in pre-Andean Salta in northern Argentina. In 1961, while attending high school at the Colegio Nacional, he became dazzled with film while watching Taras Bulba (1962) with Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis being shot on the rolling hills of Salta. He proceeded to become a pre-med student at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina, but soon quit medical school to study Drama and English. With the Teatro Universitario de Tucumán he was cast in the role of The Player in the memorable production of 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead', which traveled to the renowned Teatro Cervantes in Buenos Aires in 1971. The same year he was awarded a Fulbright fellowship for graduate studies in International Theater at the University of Kansas. He again performed The Player in 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead', this time in English, with Mandy Patinkin starring as Rosencrantz. He moved to New York City in 1972, where he devoted himself to experimental theater. Funded by a Ford foundation grant he created and directed the Free Theater Lab, which performed works by Fernando Arrabal, T.S. Eliot and others at non-conventional venues such as Theater at Saint Clement's, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and Union Theological Seminary. In 1975, Guerra returned to Argentina with his solo piece, 'Holiday for a Unicorn', which he presented under political scrutiny during the military dictatorship. Upon his return to New York, he performed at the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park in 1979, next to Raul Julia' and Richard Dreyfuss in _Othello (1979)(V)_, and with Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington in Coriolanus (1979). He was the drummer in the band Tragic Flaw along with Steve Anderson on lead guitar and vocals and Christy Risska on bass; they often played at their neighborhood bar, the historic CBGB's on the Bowery. His Equity membership came along with the play 'Watch On The Rhine' at Baltimore's Center Stage. He also performed in 'Much Ado About Nothing' in Baltimore, and in 'Galileo,' 'The Suicide,' 'Undiscovered Country,' and 'Animal Crackers' at Washington, D.C.'s Arena Stage. His first film Two of a Kind (1983) brought him to Los Angeles. In 1986, he performed in the ensemble production of 'Green Card' at the Mark Taper Forum, and in 1987, he was Prospero in 'The Tempest' at La Jolla Playhouse. Along with film and TV work he has kept in touch with the theater through his portrayal of The Bishop in LATC's annual multimedia production of 'La Virgen de Guadalupe' at the Cathedral of Nuestra Señora de Los Angeles. His polished voice has given him a parallel career in commercials, promos, trailers, animation and documentaries. His unique versatility has opened him to a many-faceted path as an actor. His children Clarity and Ian crown his many blessings.
- Natalie Makenna is an actor and opera singer in Los Angeles. She has appeared in over 100 films and commercials and has hosted over 50 episodes of shows focusing on travel, music, and sports. Most recently she was nominated for Best Actress in a Feature Film for her work in Osprey at the 2018 Nice International Film Festival. You may also recognize her as "Megan", the face (and teeth) of ACT Mouthwash. She has shared the screen with Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender, and Al Pacino. In addition to portraying an opera singer on screen, she holds a degree with honors in vocal performance from the University of Kansas. Though she was born and raised in Kansas, Natalie now lives over the rainbow in California.
- Kip Niven was raised in Prairie Village, Kansas (a suburb of Kansas City in affluent Johnson County), and graduated in 1963 from Shawnee Mission East High School. After spending a year at Baylor University, he changed his mind and entered the theater program at The University of Kansas, where he performed in dozens of plays.
Niven had an impressive resume that includes films such as Magnum Force (1973), Earthquake (1974) and Midway (1976). He had performed on countless television shows, including memorable parts on The Waltons (1972), Law & Order (1990) and Walker, Texas Ranger (1993). He had roles on Broadway, in regional theater and episodic radio shows. He was probably best known for his three-year stint as Steve Marsh on the TV sitcom Alice (1976). Niven and the star of that series, (actress Linda Lavin), married in 1982. The marriage was turbulent and they subsequently divorced.
Kip was first married to Susan and had two children Jim and Kate. She tragically died in a car accident in 1981. He and his 3rd wife Beth lived in Kansas and had a daughter Maggie, who was born in 1994. He also had two grandsons.
In 1995 Kip returned to the Kansas City area where he grew up. He continued to work in local theater and on a comedy radio show. - Actress
- Producer
Paige Ellen Peterson was born May 2nd, 1980, in Lawrence, Kansas. At an early age she developed a love for the spotlight. First performing in dance competitions and later in community theater productions. By her mid teen years Paige convinced her mother to allow her to leave Kansas and head for the hills of Hollywood. After intense acting lessons she soon landed an agent and then began life as a professional actress. Paige currently resides in the San Fernando Valley but makes plenty of trips home to the midwest each year.- Actor
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American character actor in scores of films after substantial stage experience. He was born in DeSoto, Missouri, but raised in Atchison, Kansas. The son of a railroad worker and law clerk (some publicity material states the father was a physician, but family and census records show otherwise), he wavered between various careers including oil exploration, but found his way after an introduction to the stage with the Atchison Civic Theatre and Kansas City Civic Theatre. He briefly attended the University of Kansas (where he was a fraternity brother of future newsman John Cameron Swayze). He moved from Kansas to California in 1930, where he lived with his grandparents and worked in the lemon groves near Pomona prior to opening a tire-repair shop in that city. He also helped found a theatre company in Pomona. He joined the Pasadena Community Playhouse, where he was spotted by a Warner Bros. talent scout looking for someone with a resemblance to Henry Clay, for the Warners short film The Monroe Doctrine (1939). He signed with Warners as a contract player and was thereafter virtually never without work. He played in an enormous number of films over the next three decades, mostly in small supporting roles. He was equally adept at playing businessmen, attorneys, or historical figures, and was a familiar face on screen and on television for his entire career, though most people would have been unable to identify him by name. Perhaps his greatest fame came in the TV role of oil company president John Brewster on The Beverly Hillbillies (1962). During the last years of his life, he was co-owner of a popular restaurant/bar in Encino, California, called The Oak Room. Wilcox died in 1974.- Fred Meyers was born in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Currently lives in Burbank, California. Fred made his breakthrough in the popular Disney Channel television series Even Stevens (2000). He also played a bad boy in Suspended Animation (2001).
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Bill Allen was born in Wichita, Kansas, November 7, 1962. He moved to Dallas, Texas at the age of four. Having made his acting debut in a junior high school production of Ray Bradbury's "Dandelion Wine", he attended various acting workshops at Richardson High School. After graduation, he began to seriously pursue his chosen career under the tutelage of Bryan O'Byrne, his mentor and acting coach. He won a starring role in a movie called "And They're Off", about horse-racing. Unfortunately, the movie was never released. Bill was signed by Director Robert Altman for a part in the movie "Streamers" with Matthew Modine, playing "Lieutenant Townsend". Arriving in Los Angeles in 1983, he bussed tables in a sandwich shop, and managed to land some television parts in "Hill Street Blues" (where Hal Needham first saw him), "Hotel", "Family Ties" and "Amazing Stories". Although not a professional BMX rider, he was good enough in "Rad" to fool nearly anyone familiar with the sport.- Actor
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Born in Minden, Nebraska, the youngest of three sons. Grew up in Hays, Kansas and Richmond, Kentucky. Graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Colorado College in International Political Economics. Played basketball in college, setting the single season scoring record his senior year. Started his professional career in the theater in New York City. An original founding member of The New Group Theater Company. He splits his time between New York City and rural Pennslyvania. He is the proud father of two children from a previous marriage, Zebulon Jeremiah (b2003)and Zoe Chinook (2004). And a third child, Flynn Zachariah (2012) with his wife, Mandy Bruno.- Spencer Hill is the son of Don Hill, a Representative in the Kansas state legislature and pharmacist, and Robbie Hill. He has an older sister, Holly Stone, who has two children, Rylie and Jackson. Spencer graduated from Emporia High School and Kansas State University and played football at both Kansas State University and Emporia State University while in college. He also began modeling while in school and moved to Los Angeles in 2003 and began his acting career with several roles in short films and commercials. He was also voted one of America's 50 most eligible bachelors in 2003 by cosmopolitan magazine. He then appeared in HBO's Six Feet Under (2001) as well as the movie Sacrifice (2005) and continued to model for companies such as McDonald's, Target, Coors Light, Dr. Pepper, Bud Light, Pinnacle supplements, and many others. His acting career continues to build speed as he has appeared in episodes of CSI:NY, Criminal Minds, and most recently, Knight Rider and the David Twohy film A Perfect Getaway due out in 2009.
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Born in 1942 in Wichita, Kansas, Laurel Goodwin was a child model, and made her film debut in Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962) opposite Elvis. She only made a few more movies, but appeared in many TV series; and she was in the "pilot" (Star Trek: The Cage, 1965, which has an actual copyright date of 1964) for the Star Trek (1966) TV series (this was part of a two-hour show, Star Trek: The Menagerie: Part II (1966), which had parts of "The Cage" in "flashback" and was finally aired in its entirety in 1986). She married, in 1971, businessman Walter Wood, and the two lived in Palm Springs. She was involved with home-nursing, and attended Elvis Presley "reunions" and Star Trek conventions.- Actor
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Nominated for the Stellae Award for Best Actor at the 2014 Pan Pacific Film Festival, Richard E. Wilson received critical acclaim for his performance in the lead role of Henry Dean in the feature film, Noble Fir (2014). Critics wrote: Henry Dean is "played with stunning sensitivity and insight" (The Independent Critic), "Wilson is thoroughly remarkable" (Influx Magazine), and "Brilliantly played by Richard E. Wilson" (Christian Review).
Wilson grew up in the Kansas City area (Overland Park, KS) and credits his parents, C. Emmett Wilson and Vonnie Wilson, with imputing the empathy required to portray various roles. He has lived in five different regions in the U.S., as well as Tokyo and northern Japan. Wilson lives and works mostly in Los Angeles, California.
Wilson's most recent work is in Kain to Aberu (2016) (Japan), The Colors of Emily (2017), and Blue Call (2021). He appeared in The Vancouver Asahi (2014) ("The Vancouver Asahi"), a major Japanese film directed by Japan Academy Award winning Yuya Ishii, and Mission Improbable (2016).
In earlier years, Wilson had aspirations as a soccer player and before that as a tennis player, so he continues to stay active. He worked as a civil engineer before moving to Japan to teach English in universities. He began his acting career there, in the footsteps of his daughters. In Wilson's first film, Uchu Kyodai (Space Brothers - 2012), filmed in Japan, he appears as a NASA staff member. He also appears in The Good Book (2014) as The Preacher. Wilson has appeared in several national commercials in Japan, including COCO Juku language schools (with over 900,000 views on Youtube after TV airing was completed). Wilson is recognizable across Japan as the CEO in a series of 9 Daikin air conditioner commercials that were broadcast nationally from 2013 to 2015.
Wilson resides and works in Los Angeles, and frequently travels to Tokyo.- Actress
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When Kansas-born Patrice Wymore was only six years of age, she began touring with her family in tent shows and in vaudeville, her mother being a pianist and singer on the circuit. In contrast, her father was a trucking line exec. Trained in voice, the lovely, fair-haired teenager gambled on a try in New York and it paid off. Performing in "Up in Central Park" in 1947, she made her Broadway debut a year later in the musical "Hold It!" and won the Theatre World Award for "promising actress." Following her Broadway role in another musical, "All for Love" in 1949, the wide set-eyed beauty was handed a starlet contract by Warner Bros. and headed west to seek her fame and fortune. She found a little bit of both.
Patrice made her debut in a singing role in the nostalgic Doris Day/Gordon MacRae tunefest Tea for Two (1950). Fate took a hand when she was cast opposite the much older Errol Flynn in Rocky Mountain (1950), one of the aging actor's lesser-known efforts. Patrice became the final Mrs. Errol Flynn in October of 1950 after a hasty marriage in Monaco. Daughter Arnella, who later would become a model in Europe, was born in 1953. The couple moved to Jamaica and also traveled by yacht overseas. By the time of his marriage, Flynn was already in a severe decline both physically and mentally and the marriage was a difficult one. After typically playing the "other woman" in several other Warner efforts, including I'll See You in My Dreams (1951), She's Working Her Way Through College (1952), The Big Trees (1952), She's Back on Broadway (1953), and in the British-made King's Rhapsody (1955).
Patrice felt compelled to retire in order to tend to her ailing husband and the raising of their daughter. His drug/alcohol addictions, however, became too overwhelming, and she eventually was forced to separate from Flynn. They never divorced by the time he died at age 50 in October of 1959, although he was living with someone else. Patrice never remarried.
Following Flynn's passing, Wymore attempted a comeback and began performing in a nightclub act in Vegas and in stock musicals such as "Carnival," Guys and Dolls," "Irma La Douce," and "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." On camera she was cast in the short-lived soap opera Never Too Young (1965) and appeared secondarily in the films Ocean's Eleven (1960) and Chamber of Horrors (1966).
Patrice eventually retired again in the late 1960s and returned to Jamaica with her daughter to the mansion Flynn built and bequeathed to her along with a cattle ranch and 2,000-acre coconut plantation. She also went into business operating a boutique and wicker furniture manufacturing plant. Patrice also continued to be active in her late husband's estate and attends tributes and dedications to him.
Tragedy struck when her daughter Arnella, who gave Patrice a grandson (actor Luke Flynn), died of a drug overdose in 1998. Patrice herself died of pulmonary complications on March 22, 2014.- Sound Department
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Richard (Rick) Partlow was born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1948, the youngest of two boys, to Mr and Mrs. James E. Partlow. His Mother, Norma Jane VanDervort, born in 1921, a graduate of Ohio University, was an artist, singer, poet, lyricist, author (under Norma Kalina) and reporter. His Father, James Edwin Partlow, a graduate of North Carolina State University, was a corporate businessman and served as a Captain during World War II in the Army Signal Corps, Intelligence Division.
One year after his birth the family moved to Oakland, California and the at age three to Houston, Texas where Richard was introduced to swimming, boating, water skiing, crabbing and Saturday Morning Serials at the movies like Buck Rogers and Commander Cody. That is where his imagination took root. At age 9 the family moved to Pennsylvania. His parents bought a modest farm house on ten acres a few miles from the village of Chester Springs where Richard attended fifth and sixth grades in a two room school house. Richard graduated at the top of his class of five students. He and older brother, Jamie, attended amid graduated from Downingtown High School, Richard in 1966. Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, 80 miles west of Philadelphis, was idyllic for Richard. No young child or teenager could wish for any greater experience. Friendships were forged that exist to this day. Football, track, gymnastics and swimming took up a lot of his time. But the four seasons of the year held so much more. Summer was rope swings over the swimming hole, a three acre honeysuckle canopied pine forest as his private domain, and a one half acre asparagus patch as his summer cash cow when sold to the local farmers market. Fall was sports, riding horses and roaming the forest . Winter was snow forts, sledding, ice hockey on the local pond and for cash, using his Dads 1948 Jeep with plow to clear snow from the long country lanes. Spring was planting veggie gardens, building homemade go-carts and dreaming of summer.
Richard was somewhat rebellious during his last year of High School so his Father insisted he spend his first year of college at Valley Forge Military Academy Jr. College. From there a year at The University of Miami and a semester at Villanova University which is when Richard joined the Marines. Following his stint in the Marines Richard had no idea of what he wanted to do with his life. During summer breaks in high school and college he spent alot of his time playing guitar, singing and writing music with partner Jim Richards. They played mostly in coffee houses and cafés in Phila. and on the Jersey Shore.
So following the Marines, with his parents divorced, the farm sold, Richard moved back to Philly, working as a bartender, bank teller, retail sales and finally with a detective agency as a flagman on a road crew where he was placed to track stolen equipment. With only two weeks on the job a car stopped. A man and woman got out and asked Richard if he wanted to be in a play at a local community theatre. He got the lead in the play in the role of Tom Lee, in 'Tea and Sympathy'. Richard was hooked. During the limited run of the show he was seen by a producer of a local CBS children's show and signed a one year contract where he played characters in history such as young Ben Franklin and young Thomas Edison.- Actor
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When amiable Columbia Pictures actor Larry Parks was entrusted the role of entertainer Al Jolson in the biopic The Jolson Story (1946), his career finally hit the big time. Within a few years, however, his bright new world crumbled courtesy of the House Un-American Activities Committee after the actor admitted under pressure that he was once affiliated with the Communist Party. Although he unwillingly testified in 1951, he was still (unofficially) blacklisted. Never-say-die Larry managed to continue his career in years to come - both here and abroad, on stage and in nightclubs - alongside steadfast wife Betty Garrett. His film career, however, literally came to a standstill and would never be the same again.
Samuel Klausman Lawrence Parks was born in Olathe, Kansas, on December 13, 1914, of German and Irish descent. As a child growing up in Joliet, Illinois, he was plagued by a variety of illnesses, including rheumatic fever, but persevered with physical exercise and sheer strength of will. Majoring in science at the University of Illinois, his plans to become a doctor dissolved when, to the dismay of his parents, he found a passionate sideline in college dramatics.
He began appearing in touring shows, then made the big move to New York, finding initial employment as an usher at Carnegie Hall and a tour guide at Radio City. Following a number of summer stock shows, he made an inauspicious 1937 Broadway debut with a minor role in the Group Theatre's presentation of "Golden Boy". Developing a close-knit relationship with the Group, he was just beginning to build up his resumé in such Broadway outings as "All the Living", "My Heart's in the Highlands" and "Pure in Heart" when he had to return to his Illinois home following the death of his father.
He toiled for a time in Chicago as a Pullman inspector on the New York Central Railroad until the possibility of a film role had him re-setting his acting sights on Los Angeles. Although the film deal fell through, Larry stayed in L.A. and somehow made ends meet working construction. Columbia expressed interest in the fledgling actor and signed him up in 1941 after a favorable screen test. He stayed for nine years. His buildup was slow-moving, taking his first small step with a minor role in Mystery Ship (1941). Time, however, did not increase the tempo or quality of his movies. Either he was oddly cast, such as his role as an Indian opposite exotic Yvonne De Carlo in The Deerslayer (1943), or completely dismissed, as co-star of such obscurities as The Black Parachute (1944), Sergeant Mike (1944) or She's a Sweetheart (1944).
His association with the Group Theatre back in New York led to a chance introduction to musical actress Betty Garrett and the couple married in 1944. Larry had settled by this time in Hollywood but Betty was a hot item on Broadway. MGM finally offered her a contract and she relocated to Los Angeles to join her husband. The couple eventually had two children, one of whom, Andrew Parks, became a fine actor in his own right. Their other son, Garrett Parks, served as composer for the film Diamond Men (2000).
Larry scored an Oscar nomination playing Jolson (which was originally offered to both James Cagney and Danny Thomas), and hoped for equally challenging roles. His hopes were dashed as the studio instead continued casting him haphazardly in mild-mannered comedies and swashbuckling adventures. Other than the box-office sequel Jolson Sings Again (1949), most of Larry's films were hardly worthy of his obvious talent. To compensate somewhat, he managed to find a creative outlet in summer stock, and both he and Betty put together a successful vaudeville act with one tour ending up playing London's Palladium.
Following the completion of Love Is Better Than Ever (1952) with Elizabeth Taylor, the political scandal erupted and erased all of his chances to do film. One of many casualties of Hollywood "blacklisting", he was forced to end his association with Columbia, and he and Betty, whose own career was damaged, traveled to Europe to find work.
He found some TV parts after the controversy died down, and Betty and Larry were a delightful replacement for Judy Holliday and Sydney Chaplin on Broadway in "Bells Are Ringing". During the many meager times, he concentrated on becoming a successful businessman, including building apartment complexes. He made only two more films, last playing a doctor in the Montgomery Clift starrer Freud (1962). By the time he died of a heart attack on April 13, 1975, at age 60, Larry had long faded from view. Betty, however, managed to revitalize her career on TV sitcoms with regular roles on All in the Family (1971), Laverne & Shirley (1976), and roles on numerous other TV series before passing on February 12, 2011.- Writer
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Mickey Spillane, the king of the pulp novelists in the post-WW II period, sold an estimated 200 million copies globally. He was born Frank Morrison Spillane in Brooklyn, New York. Young Frank's mother was a Protestant who bestowed on him his middle name "Morrison", but his Irish Catholic father, barkeep John Joseph Spillane, allegedly had his son baptized with the middle name "Michael", a traditional name for Irishmen (so common, in fact, that the nickname derived from it, "Mick", served as a derogatory term for Irishmen in both the US and England). "Women liked the name Mickey", Spillane said, explaining why he chose the moniker that eventually became one of the world's best-selling novelists. In 1980 seven of the top 15 all-time bestselling fiction books published in the U.S. had been written by Spillane.
Despite the fact that his books were international bestsellers, as a writer Spillane was almost universally reviled by literary critics. He and his novels were attacked not only for their alleged illiteracy but were denounced by the U.S. Senate's Kefauver Commission as promoting juvenile delinquency. Explaining the extraordinary appeal of his novels, Spillane simply said, "People like them." He countered his critics by saying they were jealous of his success. "I'm a writer, not an author," was Spillane's mantra all through his literary life. "The difference is a writer makes money." As late as 1999 Spillane told an audience at London's National Film Theatre, "Authors write, writers get paid." When he was asked about his literary influences, Spillane replied, "Dollars".
Spillane was brought up in the grimy industrial town of Elizabeth, NJ, in what he described as a "very tough" neighborhood. His mother provided him with balance inside the confines of the home, where he became a voracious reader, devouring all of the works of Alexandre Dumas and Herman Melville by the time he was 11 years old. While still a high school student, he "went professional" at the age of 14, writing for the Elizabeth Daily Journal. In 1935 he began submitting his work to magazines before aiming lower and learning his craft by writing for comic books, including such popular titles as "Batman", "Captain Marvel", "Captain America" and "Superman". "[It was] a great training ground for writers," Spillane explained. "You couldn't beat it."
After high school Spillane went to Kansas State College on a football scholarship before dropping out. He joined the Army Air Corps the day after Pearl Harbor, but never left the US, spending the war years flying fighter planes and teaching air cadets how to fly. Still a civil pilot after the war, Spillane claimed he had put in 11,000 hours in the air by 1999. In 1945 he married Mary Ann Pearce, the first of his three wives. The couple had two sons and two daughters.
After leaving the military, he briefly worked in the Barnum and Bailey Circus as a trampoline artist and adept knife-thrower. Subsequently he worked for the FBI as an undercover operative to crack a narcotics ring (the subject of the novel "Kiss Me, Deadly", not the atomic bomb plot of the movie). He claimed in interviews that he had been shot twice and had been knifed once. Eventually he went back to writing.
Influenced by Carroll John Daly, the pulp writer who created the seminal private eye Race Williams, Spillane made the P.I. genre his own. His work was in the vein of the "hard-boiled" Black Mask school of pulp fiction of the 1930s. As a pulp writer, Spillane's mantra was "violence will outsell sex every time." By combining them he created a formula for success that begat a book publishing phenomenon.
Spillane's innovation was to inject gory violence into P.I. stories for a generation of 16 million men who had just been through the most violent war in history. After the war, the popularity of slick magazines was eroding due to the booming market in paperbacks, pulp fiction that sold for 25 cents a copy. These new mass-market novels featured lurid covers that would attract a customer at what became the ubiquitous steel-wire racks filled with paperbacks that sprouted up at bus stations, lunch counters, shops and newsstands all over the world.
Spillane's style was perfect for the new post-war fiction market. He attributed his success to Roscoe Fawcett of Fawcett Gold Medal Books, who envisioned a market for original novels instead of the reprints of classic works that dominated the paperback market during World War II. Gold Medal started to market novels written directly for paperback, and by injecting gore into the PI genre, both Fawcett and Spillane won a gold medal for their staggering sales.
Second wife Sherri Malinou was a model who Spillane noticed when she was featured on the cover of one of his books.
Raymond Chandler said of Spillane, "Pulp writing at its worst was never as bad as this stuff." Spillane's books always featured a great hook in the opening pages, as he believed that "the first page sells the book". His narratives are first-person spoken monologues, directly addressed to the reader. Hammer is less a detective in the guise of Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op or Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe than he is a vigilante, always ready to partake in a bit of the old ultra-violence.
Spillane published his first Mike Hammer pulp, the infamous "I, the Jury', in 1947. Written in nine days, the book introduces Hammer as a tough-talking, hard-drinking bruiser.
Other Hammer books with the same formula of murderous mugs and even more dangerous, double-crossing malevolent dames followed: "Vengeance in Mine" (1950), "My Gun is Quick" (1950), "The Big Kill" (1951), and "Kiss Me, Deadly" (1952). Hammer was not only a two-fisted he-man, but each of those mailed fists typically clutched a large-caliber automatic. No dainty .32 Colts--the pistol of choice for the sophisticated detectives of the '20s and '30s--for Mike Hammer. His hirsute ham-fist sported a .45 ACP, the service pistol of the GI generation.
Mike Hammer was a true bellwether of the times, for rather than just go after criminals or garden-variety gangsters like self-respecting operatives of the '30s, he went after "Reds" and "Commies", the nation's bogeymen, and women who were stealing atomic secrets, adulterating Hollywood films with Red propaganda. In the potboiler "One Lonely Night" (1951), hammer wields a "Chicago typewriter" - a submachine gun - to tap out one-way tickets to heaven for 40 Commie heavies and fellow-travelers.
Though he eschewed politics in real life, he regarded himself as a patriot and was admired by prominent right-wingers for his anti-Communist stand. Novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand extolled Spillane, while movie cowboy John Wayne gave him a Jaguar XK140 roadster in 1956, a car he still had a half-century later (and in top working order). While Cold War critics often tried to make a link between Spillane and notorious Red-baiter Sen. Joseph McCarthy, when asked in 1999 if he approved of what McCarthy had done, Spillane replied, "McCarthy was a nit-head. He didn't know what was going on. He was a slob."
Spillane stopped writing for nearly a decade after converting to the Jehoavah's Witnesses in 1952. At this point he didn't need to write, as the royalties from the millions of copies of his books earned him a substantial income. In 1961 he returned to writing with "The Deep", arguably the best of the Mike Hammer novels. With the "Day of the Guns" in 1964 Spillane created a new series featuring secret agent Tiger Mann, a globetrotting spy who was America's answer to James Bond. Like Hammer, Mann was anti-Communist in the extreme and wiped out Reds with relish during the Cold War years of the 1960s. However, during Spillane's absence during the 50s, Ian Fleming (whom Spillane dismissed as "a gourmet") and other writers had stolen his thunder: the Tiger Mann series and Spillane's other non-series novels did not enjoy the vast sales of the '50s. The second part of Spillane's formula - sex - had lost its steam in the 1960s, after the collapse of censorship led to a proliferation of raw pornography and the availability of much more graphic, though serious, novels for the more thoughtful reader.
The Hammer novels did well in the visual media: there were two television series and multiple movies. The only distinguished film made from Spillane's works was Robert Aldrich's late noir Kiss Me Deadly (1955), now a cult classic. Spillane hated the film, which transmogrified the narcotics dealer plot of the novel into the theft of an atomic bomb (a true Cold War plot), which he found ludicrous.
Spillane took another hiatus from writing novels between 1973 and 1989, although he did write at two well-reviewed children's books, "The Day the Sea Rolled Back" (1979) and "The Ship That Never Was" (1982). He wrote the novels from the point of view of a child, he said, which explained their success. Though no longer a best-selling author, Spillane retained his fame during the 1970s due to his appearances in Miller Lite beer TV commercials. Although not a teetotaler, Spillane did not drink much, preferring an occasional beer over hard liquor, and he never smoked. He revived the Hammer franchise with "The Killing Man" in 1989, but Spillane, now in his 70s, was not a big seller. His last novel, "Black Alley" (1996), was published in 1996.
In retirement Spillane reportedly suffered a stroke. He lived, until his death, in Myrtle Beach, SC, with third wife Jane Rodgers Johnson, whom he married in 1983. He was an active Jehovah's Witness into his 80s, going from house to house to spread his faith and distribute copies of the "The Watchtower." He died on July 17, 2006, in Myrtle Beach from cancer. He was 88 years old.- Actor
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Ben is currently one of the creators, producers and stars of the hit gay web series, "Where the Bears Are!" The award-winning comedy mystery is a worldwide success with over 50 MILLION VIEWS online and was named "Best Gay Web Series" of 2012 and 2018 by Queerty.com. He also creates original comedy content for his youtube channel.
He's also the original writer of the Sony PIctures movie, "Jack and Jill" starring Adam Sandler, Al Pacino and Katie Holmes. Ben's other feature projects include Tom, Dick and Harry, and Weddingville for New Line, Housemom for MGM, My Gay Ghost for Patriot Pictures, and I Hate Valentine's Day for Revolution Studios.
For television, Ben co-wrote two sketch comedy pilots with Joey Soloway and Faith Soloway of Transparent, including Headcheese for MTV, and Mall-o-rama for ABC. He also wrote and performed in Bob Odenkirk's sketch pilot for FOX entitled, Next!
Ben is best known for his work in the Chicago Improv and Theatre scene, as well as the Los Angeles Alternative Comedy scene. Born and raised in Kansas, he went on to attend Indiana University, where he studied Music and Theatre. After graduation, he moved to Chicago, where he studied improvisation at the famed Second City.
He was also a founding member of Chicago's Annoyance Theatre, where, under the direction of Improv God, Mick Napier, he co-wrote and performed in such hits as, The Real Live Brady Bunch, That Darn Anti-Christ and Manson: The Musical. He also co-wrote and directed the highly successful, Tippi Portrait of a Virgin: An Afterschool Special Gone Bad. While there, Ben performed with Jon Favreau, Andy Richter, Steve Carrell, Melanie Hutsell, Jane Lynch, Matt Walsh, Kate Flannery, and Jeff Garlin, among many talented others.
After performing in The Real Live Brady Bunch in New York, L.A. and San Francisco, Ben moved to Los Angeles, where he co-wrote, directed, and performed in several stage hits including, Not Without My Nipples!, with Janeane Garofalo and Molly Shannon, Baby Jesus and his Holiday Pixies with Ana Gasteyer, Theatre a Go-Go's production of Valley of the Dolls, and the runaway hit, Phoxes, a stage version of the 1980 Jodie Foster cult movie.
Ben was also a fixture in the Los Angeles Alternative Comedy scene where he performed regularly with people like Jack Black, Will Ferrell, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Sarah Sliverman, Zack Galifinakis, and Fred Armisen among others, in hit shows like Laura Milligan's Tantrum, Character Assassination, Beachwood Palace Jubilee, Media Whore, For Entertainment Purposes Only, and Slap and Tickle, among others.
Ben is also the head writer/director of the highly successful sketch comedy group, Margot's Bush, along with fellow performers Sam Pancake, Melanie Hutsell, Pat Towne, Loretta Fox, Joe Liss, Brett Paesel and Eliza Coyle.
Ben and writing partner, Stephen Falick, co-wrote and co-directed the 80s dance spoof, Can't Stop Dancing!, which featured Ben, along with Janeane Garofalo, Noah Wyle, Ileanna Douglas, Kathy Griffin, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Fred Willard, Anthony Edwards and Margaret Cho. The film was an audience favorite at The Palm Springs Film Festival, The Seattle Film Festival and Outfest.
Ben also starred in the indie feature comedy, The Thin Pink Line, along with Jason Priestley, David Schwimmer, Jennifer Aniston, and Mike Myers among others.- Born Laura Elizabeth Ingalls in Wisconsin in 1867, she spent her childhood as a "pioneer girl, " settling in Wisconsin (twice), Missouri, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, and South Dakota by the time she was twelve years old. Her family stayed in South Dakota, or Dakota Territory as it was known, and in 1885, she married Almanzo Wilder. She called him "Manly" and he called her "Bess". The following year, they had a daughter, Rose, later to become the author Rose Wilder Lane. In 1894, the three of them left De Smet and traveled to the Ozark mountains of Missouri, where they settled in the town of Mansfield. Laura and Manly remained there for the rest of their lives. In the 1930's and 1940's, encouraged and aided by Rose, Laura set pen to paper and wrote a series of books about her childhood on the frontier. Called the "Little House" books, they were published every year or so from 1932 to 1943, describing Laura's experiences from her earliest memories of the big woods of Wisconsin and the Kansas prarie to the golden year in which she married Almanzo. The books were immensely popular with children, for whom they were written, and adults alike. Except for the occasional book tour, Laura's life as a farm wife in Mansfield still remained relatively unchanged, however, though she did receive much more mail than she ever had before! She died in 1957, shortly after her 90th birthday. Even after her death, Rose found more of her writings. These included a diary she kept detailing the journey to Mansfield in 1894, letters she wrote to Almanzo while visiting Rose in San Francisco in 1915, and even a new, unfinished "Little House" book, about the first four years after her marriage to Almanzo. Her major contribution to movies and television has been her books, for they were the inspiration for the long-running TV series "Little House on the Prairie" (1974-1983), and its various TV-movie sequels. Currently (1999), a TV-movie entitled "Beyond the Prarie," is in production. It purports to be "the true story of Laura Ingalls Wilder."
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Vivian Schilling is an accomplished novelist, screenwriter, actor and filmmaker. Born and raised in Kansas, she attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Los Angeles and also studied under the legendary Stella Adler before embarking upon a multifaceted career. Working both in front and behind the camera, she began writing and starring in her own films at the age of 23.
With her first feature, the low-budget cult-classic Soultaker (1990), she became known for her original ideas and deft hand with complex supernatural subjects. "A very intriguing premise distinguishes the thriller 'Soultaker'. Young star-scripter Vivian Schilling earns high marks for this effort her innovation for horror/fantasy fans, creating a new myth about potential afterlife," said Larry Cohn of Variety. In spite of its limited budget, the film earned Schilling the Saturn Award in 1992 alongside that year's The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).
Schilling went on to star in a variety of independent films, including Germans (1996), a World War II drama based on the renowned stage play by Leon Kruczkowski, directed by Academy Award nominee Zbigniew Kaminski. Schilling portrays heroine Ruth Sonnenbruch, a German nightclub singer who comes to the aid of a Jewish refugee. Her role as a gunslinger in the western Savage Land (1994) garnered her the Diamond Dove and the Blockbuster Rising Star Award. In 2006 Schilling portrayed feminist and author Gertrude Atherton (1857-1948) opposite Campbell Scott's Ambrose Bierce (1842-1915?) in the anthology Ambrose Bierce: Civil War Stories (2006). In 2012 she was engaged by Paris-based Eurocine Films as the writer, producer and director of the English adaptation "Toys in the Attic", based on the stop-motion animated feature Toys in the Attic (2009) by legendary Czech director Jirí Barta.
Schilling has penned two novels to date, both released to critical acclaim: "Quietus" (Penguin-Putnam) and "Sacred Prey" (St. Martin's Press), which earned Schilling the Golden Scroll for Outstanding Achievement in Literature.
A long-standing advocate of animal welfare and conservation, Schilling recently completed work as co-writer and producer of the French documentary Bonobos: Back to the Wild (2011). The film, by noted documentarian Alain Tixier, chronicles the important work of naturalist 'Claudine Andre' )qv_, the film's proceeds to benefit the Lola Ya Bonobo Rescue Sanctuary founded by Andre in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Schilling continues to divide her time between literary and film efforts.- Actor
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Cooper hails from Wichita, Kansas, and grew up there, attending Wichita Collegiate School, a private college preparatory school from pre-school all the way through 12th grade where he graduated with honors. Cooper was heavily involved in the fine arts in Wichita, primarily in Music Theatre. He performed in 18 musicals, 9 of which he performed as the lead. Roles included Troy Bolton in High School Musical II at Music Theatre of Wichita, Roger Davis in Rent, Ren in Footloose, Tony in West Side Story, Danny Zuko in Grease, Joseph in Technicolor Dreamcoat, and many others. In his Junior year, Cooper was one of 22 young men nominated to compete in the National High School Music Theatre Awards in New York City. He also won two Jester awards for leading actor in Kansas. At Collegiate, Cooper won the Forrest C. Lattner Endowment Award (for persistence and diligence) as a Junior, and the Mandy Shoaf Memorial Award (for achievement in the fine arts and being a friend to all) as a Senior. Shortly after moving to Los Angeles to begin his career as an actor, Cooper was selected as a Warbler on Glee.- Actress
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Karyn Lucy O'Bryan was born and raised in Overland Park, Kansas. She came to Hollywood in pursuit of a career in politics but fell into acting when she went on her first audition for Private Resort with Johnny Depp. She then pursued an acting career landing roles on The A-Team, Family Ties, and Josie & the Pussycats. As a single mom, she chose to make the switch to commercial actress, enabling her to be more available to her kids. Karyn then went on to do over 50 National spots for Coca Cola, Michelob, Nabisco, Black Angus, Kelloggs, etc.
Eventually she was able to set the acting aside and follow her greatest passion: Photography and Human Rights issues. She found her calling in the refugee camps of the Kosovo War in 1999. Since then her photography has taken her to some of the worlds most dangerous places, including Haiti, Bosnia, Albania, and Cuba. Now she dedicates all of her energy to exposing Human Rights abuses, in particular, modern day slavery and human trafficking. She is the mother of three wonderful children and loves to travel with them off the beaten path.- Actress
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The daughter of husband-and-wife vaudevillians, Randy Stuart was born in southeastern Iola, Kansas and traveled throughout the South and Midwest with her itinerant parents before making her own stage debut with them at the ripe old age of three. The family eventually settled in California where Randy attended college, acted in school plays and caught the eye of Hollywood talent scouts; she enacted a scene from the play "The Women" in a screen test which impressed 20th Century-Fox executives enough to put her under contract. She made her film debut with an uncredited part in The Foxes of Harrow (1947) starring Maureen O'Hara (I) and Rex Harrison.
In 1950, the blonde, smoky-voiced actress made a brief impression as the calculating telephone roommate of Eve Harrington (played by Anne Baxter (I) in the classic backstage film All About Eve (1950). She then moved up front and center as the distaff part of a husband-and-wife spy team in "Biff Baker, U.S.A." (1952) which also starred Alan Hale Jr. (I). Randy later was given her best-remembered role in the cult sci-fi The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957). as Louise Carey, the concerned wife of tiny Scott Carey, played by Grant Williams (I).
The next year she was cast as Nancy Dawson in the western film Man from God's Country (1958) opposite George Montgomery which was followed by a guest-star appearance in Montgomery's short-lived television western series "Cimarron City" (1958). She also had a one-season (1959-60) regular role on the western series "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp" (1955).
After this she would remain focused on 1960s' TV, wherein she sporadically appeared in a number of popular series, mostly crime dramas and westerns, such as "Bonanza," "Maverick," "Peter Gunn," "Cheyenne" and "77 Sunset Strip." Retiring by the mid 1960s, she was spotted only a couple of times after that. In the series "Dragnet" she appeared a couple of times as co-star Harry Morgan (I)' and she made a single appearance in a mid 70s "Marcus Welby" episode.
She died in 1996 at age 71.- Actress
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Laura Kirk grew up in rural Kansas where she attended high school and got her degree in theater and film from the University of Kansas. In New York, she studied with Wynn Handman, Suzanne Esper, and improv with Alan Arkin.
Her debut was as co-writer and star in the critically acclaimed film Lisa Picard Is Famous, directed by Griffin Dunne. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was featured in many international and American festivals. After its premiere at the Film Forum in New York City, Lisa Picard Is Famous was called "hilarious" by Stephen Holden of The New York Times and "squirmingly funny" by Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly. It is included in John Gaspard's book Fast, Cheap and Under Control ...Lessons Learned from the Greatest Low Budget Movies of All Time.
Laura has continued acting and producing independent films in Kansas where she now lives.- Additional Crew
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Stephen Bridgewater was born in Hutchinson, Kansas and attended high school in Buhler, Kansas; a Mennonite community. He attended college at Hutchinson Community College and studied film at UCLA. Mr. Bridgewater began a professional career in radio broadcasting at age 14. From age 14 until age 32, Mr. Bridgewater was the top morning Disc Jockey in Atlanta, Chicago, Knoxville and Nashville, Tennessee.
While working as a broadcaster, Bridgewater acted in and wrote many regional and national commercials. In 1987, he landed his first behind the scenes film job as a coach to Jeff Bridges for director Terry Gilliam.
Mr. Bridgewater has credits as an actor, producer, director, 2nd unit director, stunts, writer and drama coach.- Actor
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Despite growing up in a small town in New Jersey, Keith Loneker knew early in life that he had bigger things in store for him. You'd never know by his hulking body that this giant is an underdog. Loneker has overcome many personal obstacles to defy the odds his entire life. In high school he endured a painful hip injury. Doctors said he would never play sports again. Keith decided not to accept the doctor's opinion. He became a gym rat working out 3 hours a day to rehabilitate his ailing hip. After a year of training, Loneker proved doctors wrong when he stepped onto a football field for the first time in 2 years. Loneker, who was just happy to be back among his pals playing ball, was not aware that his raw talent on the football field would land him a Division 1 scholarship with the University of Kansas. The scholarship also did not come easy to Loneker. Many local Division 1 football programs passed on Loneker. They said he was too short, injury prone, or he just didn't have the talent. Glen Mason, the former head coach of the University of Kansas, balked at Loneker's critics and offered him a full scholarship. It was apparent early in Loneker's college career that he was a special player. He played as a true freshman. Loneker was an all Big Eight tackle three years at the University of Kansas. After graduation Loneker prepared for the NFL draft. His agent and many publications projected he would be a third round draft choice. Loneker had a party at his house in New Jersey on draft day with family and close friends. Loneker was shocked when after eight rounds his name was not called by an NFL club. His family and friends could see the disappointment in his eyes after the NFL draft had finished. Then as everyone thought he may get upset, Keith turned his misfortune into fuel.. Not getting drafted made Loneker hungry to prove his critics wrong once again. He walked on with the LA Rams and immediately began turning heads with vicious play on the field. The coaches knew they had plucked a gem and Loneker not only made the team but went on to start by the end of his rookie season. Keith enjoyed his five years in the NFL and is thankful he had the chance to fulfill his childhood dream. Keith didn't realize that his football career was about to transition into a movie career. A former teammate who was working in Hollywood as an agent called Loneker and told him he had a part that he thought he'd fit perfect. Loneker had never acted before, but decided to make a tape for an audition. The producers of the film hired him off his tape alone. To Keith's surprise he landed the role of "White Boy Bob" in a Steven Soderbergh film "Out Of Sight". The part was small, but Loneker got to showcase his talent with stars like George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, and Ving Rhames. Loneker continued his career in film and landed a small part in, "Rock Star" with Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Anniston. Nothing has come easy for Loneker during his life, but that doesn't stop this man from trying to fulfill all of his dreams. This small town Jersey boy has shown all his critics who judged him that nothing can stand in the way of a motivated man. Some people might call Loneker's success luck, but those who know him say it is character, hard work, and a big heart that made this underdog what he is today.- Actor
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Darin Cooper was born in the rural town of Oakley, Kansas, the son of a plumber and a beautician. He attended Fort Hays State University before transferring as a senior and graduating from Kansas State University with a Bachelor's of Fine Arts degree. However, knowing his true passion was to be an actor, he immediately moved to Los Angeles. Cooper began a career in graphic design working as a freelance artist but within three months attended a commercial workshop with a college buddy and quickly picked up an agent. Not able to get off for auditions he quit designing and became a bartender on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California, for most of the 1990's. From 1993-1997 he diligently studied with the legendary acting teacher, Larry Moss. He has been working consistently since his first role on J.A.G. as a young Terry O'Quinn.- Director
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Patrick Rea is a prolific, award-winning independent filmmaker recognized for his innovative storytelling and creative directing style in horror and suspense. His feature film, "Nailbiter", won Best Director and/or Best Feature Film awards in several film festivals in 2012, "Nailbiter" was released on May 28, 2013 through Lionsgate Home Entertainment on DVD/VOD, Redbox and Digital Downloads. It has since aired on FearNet, the Chiller Network and The Horror Channel in the UK.
Rea's stylized short films have screened in over a hundred film festivals around the world. In the summer of 2008, Rea's short film "Woman's Intuition" won a Heartland Emmy Award. In 2009, Rea was co-director on the "Jake Johanssen, I Love You" comedy special, which aired on Showtime throughout 2010. Rea won his second Heartland Emmy Award with the short "Get Off My Porch". He has also been nominated for two Mid-America Emmy Awards.
Other directorial efforts include the recent 6 part docu-series on Kansas City's Children's Mercy Hospital titled "Inside Pediatrics" narrated by Paul Rudd, which received a 2015 Mid-America Emmy Award. His 2010 short film "Do Not Disturb" was featured in the "The Invoking 2" which was released in the Redbox on Oct 6th, 2015 through Image Entertainment.
Rea's latest horror feature "Arbor Demon" (formally "Enclosure") executive produced by Warren Ostergard and Marcel Sarmiento, and starring Fiona Dourif and Jake Busey had its World Premiere at FrightFest in the UK and was released on February 3rd, 2017 in North America through Gravitas Ventures and is currently available on platforms such as Redbox On Demand, Amazon, iTunes, Vudu.
In 2017, Rea co-wrote 7 episodes for Seasons 3 and 4 of CBS's Daytime Emmy Winning show "The Inspectors". He also directed two episodes for Season 3 which both aired in the spring of 2018.
Rea's recent feature, the family drama, "Belong to Us" was released on DVD in Walmart nationwide and on Video on Demand, August 6, 2019 from Archstone Distribution. His current horror feature, "I Am Lisa" is in post-production with an expected 2020 release.- Actress
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Jennifer Besser was born in California and later moved to Kansas after her parents separated. It was there that she found acting at Buhler High School. She was picked out of 5000 to be one of 50 to go to New York. Unfortunately she was unable to go when her mother got very sick and later died 2 1/2 years later. After moving to Texas and having three beautiful children, she was finally able to make her acting dream a reality in 2009 when a photographer discovered her. In just 2 short years, she has been in 7 fashion shows, 14 films, 5 television shows--The Good Guys, The Deep End, Chase, Friday Night Lights, and GCB--as well as several commercials. She has recently written several short and feature films and has several more roles in future productions. She started her own production company, Athena Pictures, in 2012 and has already produced, directed, wrote, and starred in the first production a short film 'Faith'. With Athena Pictures going strong she has several of her writings that she's working hard to bring to life. Her ambition and drive make her someone to watch, while her daily role of mother make her a force to be reckoned with.- Actor
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Solomon Trimble (Mescalero Apache, Lakota) was born in Wichita Kansas. Solomon has been a traditional Native American Grass Dancer since the age of 3. Between the ages of 3-13, Solomon was also a member of a Northwest Native American champion youth drum group "The Young Spirit Singers". After the group disbanded, Solomon moved to New Mexico to be closer to his Grandfather and to attend the Native American Preparatory School. This was where Solomon found the love for poetry and math (though his grades did not reflect as great a love). Solomon's family could not afford his tuition and travel expenses for him to complete high school in New Mexico, so he returned to Portland and was recruited by the Dance West Dance Guild, the then Dance West Dance Company. Solomon studied Jazz, Tap and Ballet, under Terry Brock and Julane Stites, and helped choreograph a marriage between ballet and Native American dance which gave him the opportunity to travel to Canada and Japan, with Dance West.
For his senior year, Solomon decided to finish high school while living on the Lummi Reservation in Bellingham, Washington, with his older Sister and to be closer to his now infamous younger brother. This was also where he became more familiar with northwest tribal customs and learned to play the guitar. Trimble returned to Portland upon graduation and continued his education at Portland Community College, pursuing guitar and voice as a music major, to become a rock star. His love for mathematics and music were equal. Solomon could not afford to be classically trained to continue towards a degree in music, so he graduated in 2005, with an Associates of Science in Mathematics and graduated this spring 2008 from Portland State University with a Bachelors in Mathematics, and a Philosophy Minor. Solomon was a member of United Indian Students in Higher Education and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society; and is now acting as alum for both. For the past three years he has been a K through12 student teacher. Before accepting his role as Sam Uley, Trimble was considering attending graduate school for a masters in school administration or Lewis & Clarke Law School. He still hopes to become an attorney focused on Native American Issues. Trimble spends his free time connecting with Elders in his city, learning traditional songs of all tribes and participating in Native American ceremonies as invited in his area. He also tutors Native American youth in math, and culture to facilitate transitions from reservation life to the city.- Actor
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Michael was born the youngest of four to Michael Lee Kimel Sr. and Hwa Sun Kimel in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Once his father retired from the military, his family decided to settle down in North Carolina where he excelled in martial arts and became an Eagle Scout. He went on to attend school at Appalachian State University majoring in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. After college, he pursued a number of professions including being a sales representative in a call center, working as a substitute teacher, and even participating in a laboratory experiment as a human test subject. Realizing that perhaps a conventional job wasn't for him, he decided to follow more creative outlets. It was during this time that he met his current acting coach, Burgess Jenkins, and joined the Carolina Actor's Group.
Under Jenkins's tutelage, Michael discovered his true passion of acting. By honing his skills and dedicating himself towards his training, Michael has developed into a versatile actor that is truly a force to be reckoned with on camera. During the summer of 2012, his hard work paid off by gaining representation, booking roles in several independent films and commercials, and landing a role as "NATE" in the hit television series "THE VAMPIRE DIARIES". With his continual devotion towards his craft and unique looks, Michael is sure to impact the film and television world in a big way.- Actor
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Raised in Scottsdale, Arizona and Overland Park, Kansas. Moved more than 22 times. 12 of those happening before graduating high school.
Andrew's first experience performing was as Pacman singing "Pacman Fever" at a second grade talent show. His best friend at the time (who was the Blue Ghost) and he, pretty much swept the elementary school contest. Also, Andrew's older brother, Timothy Ralston, who as a child idolized Steven Spielberg, cast him in most of his short films using his super 8 camera.
Was a fine arts major before switching to theatre.- Actress
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Born in Kansas and raised on the Shoreline in Connecticut. Highly competitive gymnast from the age of seven. First big acting gig was being pulled on stage at a U2 concert at age 16. Tried to repeat this many times.
Double major in Psychology and Performing Arts from Trinity College. Received her Master's Degree in Clinical Neuropsychology. And did a Fellowship at Yale University studying Attention-deficit, and Obsessive-compulsive disorders.
Moved to California where she managed and raised funds for The Laurel Theater - home to the Rubicon Theatre Company. Now manages Human Resources for a premiere entertainment law firm while she pursues her passion.- Buxom, shapely, and attractive blonde bombshell Suzee Slater was born on June 13 in Goodland, Kansas. Slater was raised in Omaha, Nebraska. Suzee was a cheerleader in high school and attended the University of Nebraska. Slater worked as a flight attendant for MGM Grand airlines prior to embarking on an acting career in the mid-1980's. Often cast for her physical attributes and sensuous screen presence, Suzee was especially memorable as the slutty and enticing Leslie Todd in the deliciously cheesy horror cult favorite "Chopping Mall." She retired from the acting profession in the mid-1990's.
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Blessed with a magnetic voice, the talented Barrett developed an early interest in performing when he use to frequent his aunt's local movie house. Born in Quinter, Kansas in 1957, he won the lead in his high school's production of "Calamity Jane" and was sold after that. He studied at Carnegie-Mellon and then eventually made his move to the New York scene.
He made his Broadway bow in 1980 when he was selected by Jerome Robbins to play Tony in the revival of "West Side Story." He ventured on in both hits ("March of the Falsettos") and misses ("Dance a Little Closer") until 1983 when he earned the role of the handsome but dangerously off-centered Tony Barclay in daytime's New York-based soap All My Children (1970). As the third party in a romantic triangle, his character managed to drive a wedge between one of daytime's best loved couples at the time -- Jenny (Kim Delaney) and Greg (Laurence Lau). Brent himself received much flak from soap viewers after his character accidentally killed their favorite sweetheart while he was trying to kill off the boyfriend. Other lesser soap roles followed and he turned in a small but eye-catching cameo in the popular gay art-house film classic Longtime Companion (1989) as a soap actor who performs a hot and heavy kissing scene on the tube.
Brent's focus throughout his career, however, has been singing and a live theater audience. A sturdy performer who admittedly is a step behind when it comes to dancing, he has maintained his longstanding leading man status on sheer vocal power alone. He has a penchant for playing colorfully artificial characters and plays them with a grand theatricality reminiscent of the former matinée idols Howard Keel and Alfred Drake. Aided by his rich tenor and classic vibrato, his slick con men, shallow lovers, vainglorious thespians and eager jet-setters have boosted such 90s musicals as "Grand Hotel," "Chicago" and "Kiss Me Kate."
Other sporadic film and TV credits include a guest role in an episode of the TV series "Hustlin" and the small, featured part as Brian the set designer in the filming of Mel Brooks' smash Broadway musical hit The Producers (2005). He also continues to present himself in concert form and with CD efforts.- Actress
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Born in Tarrytown, New York and raised in Overland Park, Kansas, Kimberly began her performance career at the age of 3, when she began studying acting and dance. She studied at a performing arts high school, graduated from the University of Kansas, and moved to Los Angeles.
Additional to working as an actor on numerous TV shows, films, and commercials, Kimberly has written and produced many of her own projects.
Kimberly has over 17 years of martial arts experience, including black belts in Tae Kwon Do and Shotokan. She is an accomplished athlete and yogi. She is also well known on the beaches of Santa Monica Muscle Beach on the Traveling Rings.- Director
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Colorado-born Herk Harvey majored in theater at Kansas University, directing and acting in stage productions and later returning to the school in a teaching capacity. He broke into the film business as an actor in some of the movies being made by Centron Corporation of Lawrence, Kansas, an educational and industrial film production company for which he subsequently went to work as a director. In 1961 he took a working vacation from Centron to try his hand at feature filmmaking, producing, directing and co-starring in the creepy horror film Carnival of Souls (1962), shot in Kansas and Utah.- James is a graduate of Kansas State University, with an MFA from West Virginia University. As a former member of Moving Arts Theatre Company in Los Angeles, James had the opportunity to work with many talented people on exclusive world premiere plays, such as Lee Wochner's "Size of Pike" and "Happy Fun Family" (for which he won a Dramalogue Award). An LA Weekly Award nomination followed for his work in "The Superhumans." James went on to study with Robert D'Avanzo, with whom he has performed many times at the Tamarind Theatre.
On film and television, James has been fortunate to work with another extensive group of talent, including Billy Campbell, Neal McDonough, Roxanne Dawson, Andrew Robinson, Jillian Armanante, Dom Deluise, Mark Fauser, Heather Tom, Greg Evigan, Maxwell Caulfield and Paula Abdul.
In his spare time, James enjoys mountain biking, annual triathlons, and brushing up on his mountaineering skills. He's no expert, but he's reached the summits of many mountains, including the 20,000 foot peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro in East Africa. - Producer
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Duane Johnson was born in Junction City, Kansas on October 11, 1968 and has lived in Kansas, Missouri, Louisiana, and Texas. Mr. Johnson has an MFA in Studio Art from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana with a concentration in printmaking.
Mr. Johnson acted in theatre productions while in college and his first professional acting experience was as an extra for "Friday Night Lights." He directed and acted in a short film, "Laura is Cool," filmed on location in San Antonio, Texas in 2007 as part of the 48 Hour Film Festival. He appeared in the Twitchy Dolphin Flix film "Strike Team Archangel" and as an extra in "Ninja James and the Beast Boy" in 2008 and also directed another short "Left Lane Closed" for the Austin 48 Hour Film Festival. In 2009, he appeared in Serial Rabbit III: Splitting Hares for Ponderous Productions. After a short hiatus from acting, Duane is back in 2011 with a scheduled appearance in two Twitchy Dolphin Flix productions, "Abrahm's Hand" and "Goin' Guerrilla" the latter appearing as himself. In 2011 he founded and is co-host with his brother Dennis "Arts Talk with the Johnson Brothers" internet radio program and "Arts Vu" a documentary series.
His artwork has been included in over one hundred juried international and national exhibitions throughout the United States and is in several museum and university public art collections. Mr. Johnson has a home and studio south east of Austin, Texas.- Francis Vaselle Aiello was born June 6, 1915, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, New York. He worked many odd jobs after graduating High School, including working with his father, Carmine, who owned a tailoring shop. He earned the nickname "The earl of Warwick" because of his persistence trying to obtain a job at the most luxurious hotel in town, The Warwick Hotel (he sat in the lobby for weeks every day). However, he was a "newspaper seller" when he first saw 'James Cagney' on film and became an immediate fan. He imitated Cagney for a long time to his friends and family, much to their approval, before deciding to hitchhike to Hollywood to get an interview with Cagney, but this attempt failed, so he returned home to New York. Later he tried it again, and this time he landed a job on the vaudeville circuit doing impressions of Cagney. A Warner Bros. talent scout saw his act and hired him for the role of the young version of Cagney's "Rocky Sullivan" in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938). After that he made 17 films until he disappeared from the celebrity circuit in 1941. His whereabouts from 1941 to about 1961 are unknown, but sometime in the early 1960s, he decided to ride the rails as what he, himself, called a "Hobo" until he became too ill and was taken from a train when it pulled into Junction City, Kansas. He was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and sent to a long term care facility in Chapman, Kansas where he passed away only weeks later on April 7th, 1983.
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The youngest of three children, Kelsey Pribilski was born into a military family in Augusta, Georgia. Her family relocated several times, to Arizona, Virginia, and Kansas and back home to Texas in the late 1990's where Kelsey has spent most of her life. She has always had a love of performing. Beginning with dance lessons at the age of four, she continued ballet until her early teens. She was involved in school choir programs from elementary school through high school and loved being on stage. Kelsey's love of acting began when she would tag along with her brother to local theater productions. She auditioned for, and was cast in, the role of Beezus in "Ramona" at Vive Les Arts, the community theater in Killeen, Texas, and has been working at her craft ever since. After graduating High School, Kelsey attended a local college. She soon felt the need to relocate so she could be closer to, and more involved in, the Austin acting scene. Kelsey has worked on various television, web, film productions in addition to her early theater work.- Actress
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Studied under the late, great Sanford Meisner who told her "You may very well be a true character actress and can hold your own with anyone". Other Acting teachers include: Gene Bua, Silvana Gallardo, Sam Christensen (in LA), Floyd King at Folger Theatre (Shakespeare Theatre) in DC
Lived in Europe eight years, fluent in French, speaks some German. Won "Best Actress" award senior year at Yorktown High School, Arlington, Virginia, for "Eliza" in My Fair Lady 1970. Starred in all-original musical 'Sun, Son' at University of Kansas (won BMI Award 1970). Played "Chava" opposite Mandy Patinkin in 'Fiddler On The Roof' at University of Kansas, 1971.
Won "Paul Parady Memorial Award" 1981 GWU for "Outstanding Contributions to the University Theatre" (also played "Jenny" in Three Penny Opera 1981 GWU). Played opposite MASH's William Christopher in Marilyn Monroe role of "The Girl" in 'Seven Year Itch' at Hayloft Dinner Theatre,Manassas, Virginia 1986 and in The Nerd as "Tansy" at the American Heartland Theatre 1986-87. Sung / Performed one-woman show (in French and English) "Passions et Tendresses" at John F. Kennedy Center, "Inside Out" 1986. Won first prize at fabled Palomino in North Hollywood, California singing "Stand By Your Man" 1987. Was original French chanteuse at Moonlight Tango Cafe in Sherman Oaks, California, 1988. Sings/appears regularly with Catahoula in Hollywood at such venues as B B King's at Universal City Walk, Molly Malone's, Roxy, Whisky and Troubadour.
Also appears with Catahoula in Artie (2002). Soon stars as "Lady Macbett" in Ionesco's Macbett at Globe Theatre W. Hollywood, co-exec produced by Peter Dowling - http://www.macbettatglobe.org.- Actress
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Kimleigh Smith is an actress and director, known for Bad Words (2013), Lincoln Heights (2007-2008), Safe Harbour (2007) and Princess Diaries (2001). Kimleigh spent the first 10 years of her life in Japan, which still holds a special place in her heart. After Japan it was off to Leavenworth, Kansas, where she spent the remainder of her school years cheering and taking the world by storm. She attended Emporia State University, became Miss Emporia, and received a BS in Psychology.
Despite her education, she always wanted to be a dancer, so after graduation she moved to Chicago to pursue her dream. She danced at several prestigious Chicago dance companies including Gus Giordano Dance and Joel Hall Dance. But dancing simply whet her appetite - she wanted more. On a dare, she auditioned for a play. She got the part and never looked back.
Kimleigh has graced the stages of Chicago's most renowned theaters: The Goodman Theatre, Lookingglass Theatre, and The Steppenwolf Theatre, where she performed in "A Clockwork Orange", "Crumbs from the Table of Joy," and "Puddn'Head Wilson," to name a few.
Upon moving to Los Angeles, she had the pleasure of reprising her role in "Puddn'Head Wilson" at Garry Marshall's, Falcon Theatre. This production was honored with a "LA Weekly" Theatre Award. Garry Marshall fell in love with Ms. Smith and cast her in her first major motion picture, "The Princess Diaries."
Kimleigh is a member of SAG-AFTRA & AEA. She has written and continues to perform her Multi-Award Winning solo show, T-O-T-A-L-L-Y! She is a Sexual Assault Awareness Advocate and the founder of the Embrace Your Cape Philosophy.- Writer
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- Actor
The son of teacher Carrie Langston and James Nathaniel Hughes, James Mercer "Langston" Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri. His father abandoned the family and left for Cuba, then Mexico, due to enduring racism in the United States. Young Langston was left to be raised by his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas. After her death, he went to live with family friends. Due to an unstable early life, his childhood was not a happy one but it heavily influenced the poet he would become. Later, he lived again with his mother--who had remarried--in Lincoln, Illinois, and eventually in Cleveland, Ohio. During high school he wrote for the school newspaper, edited the yearbook and began to write short stories, poetry, and dramatic plays. His first piece of jazz poetry, "When Sue Wears Red," was written during his high school years. Hughes was influenced by American poets Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman. He also briefly lived in Mexico with his father, who did not support his son's desire to be a writer. Langston studied engineering at Columbia University for a year (1921-22), eventually leaving because of racial prejudice at the school as well as his growing desire to return to Harlem and write poetry.
Hughes worked various odd jobs, including a brief tenure as a crewman aboard the SS Malone in 1923, spending six months traveling to West Africa and Europe. In Europe he stayed for a while in Paris, becoming part of the black American expatriate community. In November 1924 he returned to the US to live with his mother in Washington, DC. While working as a busboy at a restaurant, Hughes tucked a few of his poems under the dinner plate of then-reigning poet Vachel Lindsay. Lindsay shared the poems during his reading that night, and in the morning Hughes was crowned Lindsay's new discovery, the "busboy poet."
The following year Hughes enrolled at historically black Lincoln University, where he became a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity and befriended classmate Thurgood Marshall. Hughes received a B.A. in 1929 and a Litt.D. in 1943. Except for travels to the Caribbean and West Indies, Harlem was Hughes' primary home for the rest of his life.
Hughes achieved fame as a literary luminary during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. In 1930 his first novel, "Not Without Laughter", won the Harmon gold medal for literature. Hughes was particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the 1920s through the 1960s. His work was also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in "Montage of a Dream Deferred." His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance. Unlike other notable black poets of the period, Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experiences and the common experience of black America. He told stories of people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including their suffering and their love of music, laughter and language itself.
In addition to leaving us a large body of poetic work, Hughes wrote 11 plays and countless works of prose, including the well-known "Simple" books: "Simple Speaks His Mind," "Simple Stakes a Claim," "Simple Takes a Wife," and "Simple's Uncle Sam." He edited numerous poetry anthologies, wrote an acclaimed autobiography ("The Big Sea"), and co-wrote the play "Mule Bone" with Zora Neale Hurston.
In 1967 Hughes died from complications following abdominal surgery, related to prostate cancer, at the age of 65. His ashes are interred beneath the foyer floor of the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. The design on the floor medallion reads, "My soul has grown deep like the rivers."- Actress
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Julia was born in Florianopolis but grew up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2001, she was in the theater production "Journey to the Center of the Earth" produced by Marcelo Serrado, which won the Shell Award (Premio Shell), comparable to the Tony Award in the U.S. She also worked as an actress and assistant director for acclaimed director Augusto Boal at CTO-Rio, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 2008. In recognition of her work, she was invited to represent the United Nations (UNESCO) as a resident artist in India working with a theater group in Chennai. She then received an acting scholarship from the University of Kansas, which prompted her move to the U.S. and allowed her to graduate with a B.A. in Theater & Film, and a B.S. in Journalism. She has worked as an actress, producer and writer in movies, TV shows and theater productions in the U.S. and Brazil.- Producer
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The youngest of four children, Julie has moved 17 times - and not just around the corner. Born in Germany to American parents, Julie's done a lot of packing. She's lived in Italy, Nebraska, Kansas, Maryland, Virginia, Alabama, Florida, and now, California. Daniels' family moved to Cordignano, Italy when she was age 8, and partly to keep her ear attuned to English, her dad played cassettes of Broadway musicals; 'Les Mis, and 'Phantom on the tape player. It grabbed Julie right away.
Julie's maturity and soul-deep accessibility were forged by personal tragedy, the illness of her mother, and the deaths of her brother and her father. With the support of her family, she attended Florida Atlantic University, earning her BFA in Theatre Performance. Julie's unflinching introspection and survival skills gave her confidence for fearless auditions. Julie delivered award-winning performances in The Balcony and Three Sisters.- Producer
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Christina was born in Texas to her mom, Janice and father, Don, a Frito Lay Mechanic. Her family moved to Nebraska and later Kansas, where she lived, until moving to California to attend college. Christina was an editor at the student run paper, The State Hornet, and held multiple offices in her sorority, Gamma Phi Beta. After graduation, Christina went on to work for lobbyist, Charles Halnan. Her work there included producing a monthly newsletter for the California Gaming Association and monitoring bills for legislative clients, including Kimberly Clark and Amazon. After a job offer from a global technology firm, CGI, she worked as an IT business consultant. She helped to successfully implement the customer service overhaul for child support in California, a 26 million dollar project. It was here that she gained substantial background in systems implementation, including site setup, training, change management and testing. She later moved on to help implement a project at CalPERS, the state's retirement and health benefits system for public employees, retirees and their families. She moved to Los Angeles in late 2011 to pursue a career in the entertainment business. After a recommendation from a friend, Christina scheduled a meeting with TCD Studios. Believing her extensive business background would marry well with the 4-year-old startup; she joined staff full time in June of 2012. She sees the potential of having dedicated web content production and believes this is the future of television.- Actress
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Bevin Hamilton is a native of Kansas. Known for her roles in Tim Timebomb's RockNRoll Theatre, Private Practice, and Confessions of A Teenage Jesus Jerk. She grew up in a family without any showbiz connections, yet always knew she wanted to perform. Her first love was ballet, but by age 7 she had landed her first theatrical role in "Singing In The Rain". Bevin continued to perform in theatre productions throughout her collegiate career. An accomplished singer, she has performed in many musicals and can sing in three languages. After making the move to Los Angeles, she auditioned and got her first gig. The role of Koda in the unscripted, musically driven Indie flick "Dying Days". The movie shoot inspired her to begin to write original songs, some of which ended up in the final cut of the film. In 2018 she made her directorial debut with the short film "Incall" In which she was a writer, director and producer. She recently released her second solo album entitled "Mirrors and Echoes"- Actor
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Ryan was born at St. Francis Regional Medical Center in Wichita, Kansas. He was raised in the small suburb nearby of Derby. It was here where Ryan first set foot on the stage. He has played everything from Chino in "West Side Story" to Algernon in "The Importance of Being Earnest". His love for the theater brought him out to the West coast to pursue his acting dream on the big screen.- Actress
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- Casting Department
Born in Kansas, Giana has lived her entire life as an "Army Brat" moving to a new place virtually every year. Youngest of three and the only girl, Giana grew up playing sports but also had a strong interest in the visual arts, mainly drawing and painting. It wasn't until high-school, however, that she discovered her passion for acting and film. Giana also graduated with honors from the University of Central Florida where she received her Bachelor's degree in Economics.- Actor
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Whit Spurgeon was born in Wichita, KS, grew up in Muncie, IN and received his Acting degree from Syracuse University, which included training with LAMDA in London and classes with teachers such as Richard Fancy and world-renowned dialect coach Andrew Jack. He's had featured roles on network TV shows and in feature films including "Fresh Off the Boat," "Victor Crowley," "Chastity Bites," "Liza On Demand" and "Cougar Town." Prior to his TV and film work, Whit spent 20 years in Chicago theatre, appearing in dozens of plays -- including originating roles in two Rebecca Gilman world premieres, "The Glory of Living" and "The Crime of the Century" at Circle Theatre, and playing Myron in the Jeff-Award winner for Best Production and Best Ensemble, "Awake and Sing" at Timeline Theatre. Just prior to moving to Los Angeles in 2009, he played Alderman Tom Keane in the long-running hit "Hizzoner" at Prop Thtr. Whit has also starred in numerous short films, and in dozens of commercials for clients including Pick & Save Supermarkets, Citgo, and Verizon Wireless. He occasionally directs a short film, and is Co-Director of the We Make Movies International Film Festival.- Writer
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Jim Houck is known for "The Writer" which he wrote and directed, "Karma" and "Pinstripes on the Prairie". He is a former professional bullrider and outlaw biker, having written for motorcycle industry mags like "Easyriders" for over ten years. Jim divides his time with his family between his residences in Miami, Paris, Kansas and Slovakia.- Director
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- Editor
Born in Chicago in 1943, of a military family, Jost grew up in Georgia, Kansas, Japan, Italy, Germany, and, Virginia. Expelled from college in 1963, He began making 16mm films. He is self-taught. He has made some 20 shorts and 16 feature films, all of which he has conceived, written, photographed, directed, and edited. In 1965 Jost was imprisoned by US Federal authorities for 2 years and 3 months for refusal to cooperate with the Selective Service System. On release, he quickly became engaged in political activities, helping start the Chicago branch of what became NEWSREEL, the New Left film production and distribution group, as well as working for the draft and the Chicago Mobilization. Jost made his first feature-length film in 1974, and has since devoted to the making of a wide-ranging series of films, largely focused on specifically American topics, in form ranging from essays, to essay-fictions, to avant-garde and new narrative forms. His work has shown widely in museums, film archives and festivals since 1975. In 1991, The MOMA in New York assembled and presented a complete retrospective of Jost's work encompassing 11 features and 5 programs of shorts.- Producer
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Parkinson is known within the industry primarily for his film marketing and distribution skills, especially with respect to the U.S. Home Video Market. As a film distributor, he has handled the release of over 1,500 titles, including major hits such as "The Terminator", "Little Nemo" and "Highlander 2". During Parkinson's tenure as C.E.O. of Hemdale - a major independent production & distribution company - he earned over 100 RIAA / ITA Gold or Platinum Best Selling video awards, with 8 titles hitting # 1 on the Billboard video charts. As Hemdale Studio CEO, he has studio honorary credit behind the Best Picture Oscar winners, "Platoon" and "The Last Emperor." Schooled primarily in film production (University of Kansas and later at the University of Arkansas), Parkinson is also a skilled filmmaker, with extensive production credits, and a directorial (feature) debut ("Wildfire") just completed with a nationwide USA theatrical release set for late summer, 2024. Parkinson is currently directing and co-starring in the historic western epic, "Indian Territory."
As C.E.O. of Hemdale, Parkinson was responsible for paying off over $58-million in corporate debt that the company was carrying prior to his engagement - as well as the placement of the company's impressive film library within the MGM-UA family of companies. In 2002, he purchased Truman Press, Inc. d/b/a "Hannover House" and added DVD products to the book publishing line. As of 2010, "Hannover House" was merged to become a publicly traded company (symbol OTC: HHSE). Parkinson has been the CEO of Hannover House since 2002. Hannover House has released over 450 titles to the DVD market during its first 20 years in the home media sector... and recently the company began to refocus efforts towards the release of theatrical feature films as the DVD business for independent titles grew increasingly competitive. The company has aligned some aspects of home video, streaming and television product distribution through major studio partners, but maintains its direct access to the major theatre circuits in North America.
Parkinson is active as a Producer and Executive Producer of films, with current projects ranging from the $500,000 budget for Wildfire to the $15-mm budget for the upcoming action-comedy feature, Meltdown; Parkinson is also developing a high-profile, live-action family fantasy feature for production in Autumn, 2024, planned for production in Malta.- Actress
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Set Decorator
Aubree Bowen was born and raised in Kansas, where she graduated with a degree in Theatre and Film from the University of Kansas.
Now in LA, Aubree keeps busy acting, writing, and directing, having made her stage directorial debut this Spring with a highly praised production of "Mr. Marmalade". She is currently pitching her web series, "Pillow Talk", that she wrote and stars in, and just wrapped "Canticles", a high fantasy action series.
Aubree studies with Stuart Rogers at Stuart Rogers' Studios. When she's not on set or writing, she enjoys hiking and spending time with her dog.- Actor
- Editorial Department
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Kris grew up in a small town in Kansas and went to University in the Midwest, studying theatre. He trained further as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. As a drummer he played and recorded with the band Transforming Apollo. He currently lives in New York.- Actress
- Casting Director
Accomplished and inspiring, Arriane combines her irresistible star quality with a dynamic energy that people can't get enough of. With over a decade of experience hosting, singing, acting and always making people laugh, Arriane didn't set out to be an actor in Hollywood.
Originally a Cowgirl from Kansas and Oklahoma, she started out as an Exec in the Fashion business, creating and executing events and workshops all over the country for thousands of people. Her debut into the entertainment business began with her hit one-woman cabaret show... "Big, Blonde & Beautiful". Through powerful song and story, Arriane wove the musical tale of a 6-foot tall and single blonde bombshell's journey of self-acceptance, sushi and love.
You have seen her on TV Shows such as People Vs O.J. Simpson, Grey's Anatomy, Justified, S.W.A.T., and more. She has been the host of "What's Happening LA" on LA36 for over 10 years, and has done stand-up at The Comedy Store, Flapper's and The Ice House.
Arriane embodies living Big, Blonde and Beautiful, and is an expert on lipgloss, laughing and all things sparkly.- Actor
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Shawn Lecrone was born May 2, 1979 in Wichita, Kansas, United States of America. Shawn grew up in a divorce torn family and moved around the country well into his teenage years. Always the new kid in school, Shawn Lecrone dropped out of High School and took his GED, which he graduated in the upper 10% in the state. Lecrone attended New Mexico State University around 1998-99 and later joined the United States Navy and only served for a year before gaining a medical discharge. Years later, Lecrone returned to New Mexico State University were he graduated with honors, Phi Theta Kappa, Dean's List, Crimson Scholar's Honors and making the National Deans List of the top 10% of students in the country.
While working as a fire fighter through college, Lecrone was hired on his first Hollywood film Transformers; playing two roles of soldiers, who die in the Qatar Base attack by the Decepticon Blackout. Soon after this, Lecrone's interest in acting grew, and having acted in plays for the majority of his life, and Lecrone soon began acting in other Hollywood features such as The Spy Next Door and Transformers 2. His latest films include Only the Brave.- Actor
- Producer
As one of football's most colorful personalities, John Riggins is best known for his days as a running back for the Washington Redskins. His bruising, punishing style of play wore down opponents and brought new meaning to the concept of the power running game. He is equally remembered as a renegade for sporting a Mohawk early in his career and for telling U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor to "lighten up".
John was born August 4, 1949 in Seneca, Kansas as Robert John Riggins. He attended Centralia High School in the small town of Centralia, Kansas, but his skills as a football player would elevate him to the big-time. He played football for the Jayhawks at the University of Kansas, where he twice earned all conference honors and broke school records once held by NFL Hall of Famer Gale Sayers.
His professional football career began with the New York Jets, where he played for five years and generated some respectable numbers, having broken the 1,000 yard level in his final season with the Jets in 1975. The following season, he played for the Washington Redskins, but did not have a breakout year until 1978, when he eclipsed 1,000 yards rushing and repeated the accomplishment in 1979. Unfortunately, Riggins sat out the 1980 season over a contract dispute.
In 1981 Riggins said "I'm bored, I'm broke, and I'm back" and returned to play for Washington, but did not have the kind of year he had in 1979. Although his playing time was reduced by the players' strike during the 1982 season, Riggins' performance in the post season is what most likely put him in the Hall of Fame. His most memorable performance came in Super Bowl XVII with 166 yards rushing, including the game winning 43 yard touchdown run in the Redskins' 27-17 win over the Miami Dolphins.
Riggins finished out his career in Washington after the 1985 season with 11,352 career rushing yards, and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1992. He has since worked in broadcasting and recently started a new career in acting.- Actor
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Peter Zhmutski was born in the former Soviet Union, in what is today the country of Kazakhstan. Growing up in the capital city of Almaty with a population over 2 million people, Zhmutski's life has always included diverse forms of art. His extensive educational background includes graduating from six different schools. Zhmutski studied and mastered the crafts of music, sports, foreign languages, acting, film, video and television, and even professional writing.
Zhmutski came to the United States of America in 1998 having completed an 8-year music degree and holding a diploma from the Linguistic Gymnasia of Almaty. From childhood, Zhmutski has always been active in stage performances. In Kansas he studied theatre and received his Associate degree from Fort Scott Community College, graduating Summa Cum Laude.
Zhmutski moved on to Pittsburg State University to study Communications with an emphasis in Broadcasting. Back home in Kazakhstan, Zhmutski hosted National Television shows for children, which made him feel quite at home with the craft of Broadcasting. After producing several TV shows at PSU, winning the highest awards for his Public Service Announcements and receiving his bachelor degree Magna Cum Laude, Zhmutski opened his own production company "PZ Production" and began making films.
"PZ Production" started in 2002. Zhmutski has already directed and produced 13 shorts, 3 feature films, 3 documentaries, 1 mini series, numerous corporate, training, television projects and music videos. As an actor in major roles, he has participated in more than 25 films and 10 television and web projects. Several of Zhumtski's 20 international merits and awards were presented in Oklahoma at the Barebones International Film Festival and Script-2-Screen International Film Festival. Zhmutski also received 2 Platinum Remi, 1 Gold Remi, and 1 Silver Remi awards in Houston at the 3rd oldest International Film Festival - Worldfest where such directors as Spielberg, Lynch, Cohen Brothers, Ang Lee, Ridley Scott and many others have been recognized with awards.
Zhmutski moved to Oklahoma in 2003. He received his Master of Professional Writing diploma from the University of Oklahoma where Zhmutski also taught film and video courses for two years. In Oklahoma, Zhmutski produced films together with Golden Wing Films, Darkwood Productions, New Ad Age International, National Film Studios, National Film Project Co., Gon Productions and V-DIGI Media.
Zhmutski also produced 15 original individual music CDs and scored 16 films. Over the past 7 years, Zhmutski has also given concerts of his original solo performances, most of which were done as benefit events. His last big performance was a Hurricane Katrina Benefit Concert held in Norman, Oklahoma in December of 2005.
Zhmutski has been invited to develop projects for different production companies across the United States. In 2006 he worked as a creative producer/director at 21st-Century Studios in Jacksonville Florida. From 2007 to 2009 he developed projects for Hollywood companies in California.
Zhmutski returned to Norman, Oklahoma in January 2009 with his wife and daughter. He is a published writer. Today Zhmutski is teamed up with internationally acclaimed Oscar-winning filmmakers to develop and produce projects in the motion picture industry.
In 2013 Zhmutski produced and directed another feature film in Oklahoma called "Project Ghost Town" which will premiere in 2014. In February 2013 Zhmutski produced the first 3D feature film shot in Oklahoma called "Higher Mission" starring Casper Van Dien and Catherine Oxenberg.- Actress
- Make-Up Department
Tall (5'8"), slim, and busty blonde bombshell Susie Diane Owens was born on May 28, 1956 in Arkansas City, Kansas. Owens worked for a while as a trained nurse; she did everything from delivery room duty to cardiology and oncology. Susie eventually quit nursing and started her own fitness business called FemLine, which offered personalized counseling for women in the Dallas, Texas area. Owens first appeared in "Playboy" in the pictorial "Women in White" in the November, 1983 issue. She was the Playmate of the Month in the March, 1988 issue of the famous men's magazine. Susie appeared in a handful of "Playboy" videos and posed for a bunch of newsstand special editions. In 1993 Owens was used as the model for the comic book heroine Flaxen, but despite public appearances in costume this character failed to catch on with the public at large. Her sole foray into film acting was a sizable co-starring role as Katie in the tongue-in-cheek schlocky low-budget horror spoof "They Bite." Susie has a daughter named Shauna Darlene.