If TCM Remembered 1980
What if Turner Classic Movies was around in 1980? Who would be included in their TCM Remembers tribute at the end of that year? Here are the people I think would make the cut, in alphabetical order.
For Raoul Walsh, see If TCM Remembered 1981.
For Raoul Walsh, see If TCM Remembered 1981.
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- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Tex Avery was a descendant of Judge Roy Bean and Daniel Boone, but all his grandma ever told him about it was "Don't ever mention you are kin to Roy Bean. He's a no good skunk!!" After graduating from North Dallas High School in 1927, Avery moved to Southern California in 1929 and got a job in the harbor. After showing samples of his artwork he got a job at Walter Lantz Studios in 1929 as animator. His contributions during the years at Walter Lantz Studios were minor. From 1936 to 1941 he worked as supervisor - another word for cartoon director - of some 60 titles in the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes series for Leon Schlesinger at Warner's. From 1942 to 1954 Avery worked as director of cartoons at MGM. He was responsible for practically every MGM Cartoon that did not feature Tom and Jerry. In 1955 he did four cartoons, again for Walter Lantz Studios, before leaving the field for advertising, where, alas, his unique sense of humor went largely unappreciated, but primarily because commercials are not credited for the viewing audience (perhaps his best known commercial work was for Raid bug spray, which always featured the cartoon bugs screaming "Raid!" before getting smashed.)
Among the many cartoon characters Avery created are Daffy Duck, Droopy, Screwy Squirrel, George and Junior and Chilly Willy. Tex Avery is also credited with creating the basic personality of Bugs Bunny. He was the one who coined the phrase "What's up, Doc?"Animator / Director- Cinematographer
- Special Effects
- Director
Italian director Mario Bava was born on July 31, 1914 in the coastal northern Italian town of Sanremo. His father, Eugenio Bava (1886-1966), was a cinematographer in the early days of the Italian film industry. Bava was trained as a painter, and when he eventually followed his father into film photography his artistic background led him to a strong belief in the importance of visual composition in filmmaking.
Other than a series of short films in the 1940s which he directed, Bava was a cinematographer until 1960. He developed a reputation as a special effects genius, and was able to use optical trickery to great success. Among the directors for whom Bava photographed films were Paolo Heusch, Riccardo Freda, Jacques Tourneur and Raoul Walsh. While working with Freda on Lust of the Vampire (1957) in 1956, the director left the project after an argument with the producers and the film mostly unfinished. Bava stepped in and directed the majority of the movie, finishing it on schedule. This film, also known as "The Devil's Commandment", inspired a wave of gothic Italian horror films. After a similar incident occurred on Freda's Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959), and Bava's having been credited with "saving" Tourneur's The Giant of Marathon (1959), Galatea urged Bava to direct any film he wanted with their financing.
The film that emerged, Black Sunday (1960), is one his most well known as well as one of his best. This widely influential movie also started the horror career of a beautiful but then unknown British actress named Barbara Steele. While Black Sunday is a black and white film, it was in the color milieu that the director excelled. The projects which followed began to develop stunning photography, making great use of lighting, set design, and camera positioning to compliment mise-en-scenes bathed in deep primaries. Through works such as Hercules in the Haunted World (1961), The Whip and the Body (1963), and Planet of the Vampires (1965), Bava's films took on the look of works of art. In the films The Evil Eye (1963) and Blood and Black Lace (1964), he created the style and substance of the giallo, a genre which would be perfected in the later films of Dario Argento.
Bava worked in many popular genres, including viking films, peplum, spaghetti westerns, action, and even softcore, but it is his horror films and giallo mystery films which stand out and for which he is best remembered. Recommended are Black Sunday (1960), The Whip and the Body (1963), Blood and Black Lace (1964), Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966), A Bay of Blood (1971), and Lisa and the Devil (1973). Bava's son Lamberto served as his assistant on most of his films since 1965, and since 1980 has been a director himself. Lamberto Bava's films include Macabre (1980), Demons (1985) and Body Puzzle (1992).
But after the commercial failure of his later films, as well as the unreleased works of Rabid Dogs (1974), Bava went into a decline and by 1975, retired from filmmaking all together. He was persuaded to come out of retirement at the request of his son, Lamberto, to direct Shock, as well as a made-for-Italian television movie. Mario Bava died from a sudden heart attack on April 27, 1980 at age 65. With his death, an era in Italian filmmaking had come to a close.Filmmaker- Actress
- Soundtrack
With blonde hair, big blue eyes and a big smile, Joan Blondell was usually cast as the wisecracking working girl who was the lead's best friend.
Joan was born Rose Blondell in Manhattan, New York, the daughter of Katie and Eddie Blondell, who were vaudeville performers. Her father was a Polish Jewish immigrant, and her mother was of Irish heritage. Joan was on the stage when she was three years old. For years, she toured the circuit with her parents and joined a stock company when she was 17. She made her New York debut with the Ziegfeld Follies and appeared in several Broadway productions.
She was starring with James Cagney on Broadway in "Penny Arcade" (1929) when Warner Brothers decided to film the play as Sinners' Holiday (1930). Both Cagney and Joan were given the leads, and the film was a success. She would be teamed with Cagney again in The Public Enemy (1931) and Blonde Crazy (1931) among others. In The Office Wife (1930), she stole the scene when she was dressing for work. While Warner Brothers made Cagney a star, Joan never rose to that level. In gangster movies or musicals, her performances were good enough for second leads, but not first lead. In the 1930s, she made a career playing gold-diggers and happy-go-lucky girlfriends. She would be paired with Dick Powell in ten musicals during these years, and they were married for ten years. By 1939, Joan had left Warner Brothers to become an independent actress, but by then, the blonde role was being defined by actresses like Veronica Lake. Her work slowed greatly as she went into straight comedy or dramatic roles. Three of her better roles were in Topper Returns (1941), Cry 'Havoc' (1943), and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945). By the 50s, Joan would garner an Academy Award nomination for The Blue Veil (1951), but her biggest career successes would be on the stage, including a musical version of "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."
In 1957, Joan would again appear on the screen as a drunk in Lizzie (1957) and as mature companion to Jayne Mansfield in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957). While she would appear in a number of television shows during the 50s and 60s, she had the regular role of Winifred on The Real McCoys (1957) during the 1963 season. Her role in the drama The Cincinnati Kid (1965) was well received, but most of her remaining films would be comedies such as Waterhole #3 (1967) and Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971). Still in demand for TV, she was cast as Lottie on Here Come the Brides (1968) and as Peggy on Banyon (1971).Actress
Blondell died too late in 1979 to be included in a hypothetical TCM Remembers for that year.- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
Gower Champion was born on 22 June 1921 in Geneva, Illinois, USA. He was an actor and director, known for An Evening with Julie Andrews and Harry Belafonte (1969), Lovely to Look At (1952) and Hello, Dolly! (1969). He was married to Karla Most and Marge Champion. He died on 25 August 1980 in New York City, New York, USA.Actor / Dancer- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
London-born piano child prodigy Adolph Deutsch trained at the Royal Academy of Music from the age of eight and composed his first piece, a waltz for piano, entitled "La Charmeuse", two years later. He moved to the U.S. in 1910 and got his first job working for a publishing house, during which time he took pains to attend musical recitals and rehearsals and fully immerse himself into the art of orchestration and composition. During the 1920's and early 30's, Deutsch free-lanced variously as arranger and musical director in New York and Chicago, turning out numerous top-flight arrangements for leading dance bands of the day. He spent five years as arranger/conductor with Paul Ash's semi-symphonic orchestra, which performed regularly at the Oriental and Paramount theatres. This was followed by a 39-week stint on The Kraft Music Hall radio show and a year with legendary bandleader Paul Whiteman's Musical Varieties network radio broadcast.
In 1937, Deutsch was signed to a personal contract by director Mervyn LeRoy for Warner Brothers. Six years later, he founded the Screen Composer's Association and eventually served ten years (1943-53) as its president and another two years as Professor Emeritus. During his tenure at Warners he composed often subtle music for many of the studio's moody, low key films noir and melodramas. They included The Maltese Falcon (1941), Lucky Jordan (1942), The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) and the haunting score for High Sierra (1940), reminiscent of Max Steiner, and complete with a rousing, up-beat finale. His regular orchestrators during this period were Jerome Moross and Arthur Lange.
Since Ray Heindorf handled the relatively few musicals made at Warners, Deutsch did not have a lot to do with the genre until he joined MGM in 1948, as a replacement for the ailing Herbert Stothart. Handed an eight-year contract, Deutsch first assisted on the musical Luxury Liner (1948) and then received several prestige assignments, beginning with the Technicolor re-make of Little Women (1949). He was subsequently promoted to musical director for MGM's lavish musicals Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Show Boat (1951) and The Belle of New York (1952). He won three Oscars for Best Score, the first for "Annie Get Your Gun", the other two for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Oklahoma! (1955).
In addition to his studio work, Deutsch composed a symphonic work, "The Scottish Suite" (1936) and a "Prelude and Salute to Oscar" for the 18th Academy Award Presentation in 1946. His instrumental compositions include the numbers 'Clarabelle', 'Three Sisters', 'Skyride', 'Margo', 'Stairway' and 'Lonely Room' (the main theme from The Apartment). From 1946 to 1947, Deutsch also served as musical director on Hedda Hopper's weekly national radio broadcast of "This Is Hollywood".Composer
TCM included Deutsch in their 1995 tribute for some unexplained reason, so surely they would feature him the year he actually died.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
First wife Jeanne died in 1943. Wed second wife, Marjorie Little after 16 year courtship when she was 39 and he 67 Marjorie Little had been the hatcheck girl at the Copacabana. Durante and his second wife adopted a baby girl, Cecelia Alicia on Christmas day 1961. Durante doted on "CeCe" until his death.Actor / Singer- Director
- Editor
- Editorial Department
Terence Fisher was born in Maida Vale, England, in 1904. Raised by his grandmother in a strict Christian Scientist environment, Fisher left school while still in his teens to join the Merchant Marine. By his own account he soon discovered that a life at sea was not for him, so he left the service and tried his hand at a succession of jobs ashore. It was during this time that he discovered the cinema, entering the film industry as "the oldest clapper boy in the business." One day, almost as a lark, he applied to J. Arthur Rank Studios to become a film editor. To his astonishment, he was accepted. In 1947, at the age of 43, he made his directorial debut with a supernatural comedy called Colonel Bogey (1948)--a foreshadowing of things to come.
For the next few years he switched between "A"-film assignments (Noël Coward's _The Astonished Heart (1948)_, So Long at the Fair (1950) with Jean Simmons and Dirk Bogarde and Lost Daughter (1949) with Herbert Lom) and a succession of "B" films, which enabled him to support his wife and daughter. Typical of these programmers are Three Stops to Murder (1953) and Spaceways (1953), efficient but uninspired films that show little in the way of personality.
His break came in 1956 when, at the age of 52, he was asked to helm Hammer Studios' remake of Frankenstein (1931). The result, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), broke box-office records and enraged critics worldwide who were unaccustomed to its plethora of hearty bloodletting. The Eastmancolor shocker set a new standard for horror films and helped to make Fisher, Hammer and stars Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee into bankable commodities. With its emphasis on realistic character interplay over melodramatic conventions, the film established Fisher's personal approach to horror, which stood in direct defiance to the old Universal films--in fact, Fisher flatly refused to watch James Whale's 1931 version for fear that it might influence his vision.
More remakes followed. Fisher actively sought to remake Dracula (1931), and the results proved to be both aesthetically and commercially superior to "Curse of Frankenstein". Horror of Dracula (1958) proved to be universally popular and is commonly held as Fisher's--and Hammer's--finest work. It may or may not be, but it does remain the freshest and most vibrant big-screen reworking of the story; even Francis Ford Coppola in his remake failed to recapture its vigor and sense of urgency.
Fisher's subsequent films tended to place less emphasis on shock effects and more on complex emotional interplay. For example, the titular characters of The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) and The Phantom of the Opera (1962) are more sympathetic than the so-called "normal" characters, while Fisher's fascinating Freudian take on the Dr. Jekyll story--The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)--offers a homely old Dr. Jekyll who transforms into a virile man about town named Edward Hyde. Similarly, The Gorgon (1964) disappointed schlock fans by offering a haunting story of doomed love in place of the conventional Hammer-style shocker. Following the commercial failure of "Phantom"--Hammer's most expensive film to that point--Fisher was booted out for a brief period. During this time lesser talents like Freddie Francis were entrusted with the franchises that Fisher had helped to establish. Invariably the results were inferior. Despite his hatred for sci-fi, which stood in contrast to his confessed love for horror, Fisher made good work of The Devil Rides Out (1968) precursor The Earth Dies Screaming (1964) (with Dennis Price), while Night of the Big Heat (1967) (again with Lee and Cushing) benefited from his ability to suggest pent-up passion and paranoia.
Back at Hammer after this brief hiatus, Fisher resurrected Christopher Lee's count in the under-rated, poetic Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) before detailing the further adventures of Baron Frankenstein in Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) and his last film, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974). All three films offer subtle variations on the character of the Baron, played by the impeccable Cushing, thus emphasizing Fisher's unique ability to lend complex, credible characterization to seemingly formula-bound material. "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed", an unusually bitter film which mirrors the nihilism of the late 1960s, remains Fisher's finest, most multi-layered work, despite its lack of popularity. At the center of Fisher's work is a fascinating moral dilemma: the seductive appeal of evil vs. the overzealous, frequently close-minded representatives of good. The consistency of theme in Fisher's work, coupled with a distinctive style achieved through precise framing and a dynamic editing style, refutes the idea that he was merely a hack for hire, while lending his films a recognizable signature.
Best films: "So Long at the Fair", Lost Daughter (1949), "Dracula", The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Mummy (1959), The Stranglers of Bombay (1959), "Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll", The Brides of Dracula (1960), "Curse of the Werewolf", The Phantom of the Opera (1962), "The Gorgon", "The Earth Dies Screaming", "Dracula--Prince of Darkness" and "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed".
Terence Fisher died in 1980 at the age of 76.Director / Editor- Actor
- Soundtrack
Enjoyably larger-than-life character actor Hugh Emrys Griffith was born in Marianglas, Anglesey, North Wales, to Mary (Williams) and William Griffith. Griffith left the world of banking (having been employed as a teller) after winning a scholarship to study acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Though he graduated a gold medalist, top of his class of 300, the war put the brakes on his career and he enlisted in the Army in 1940, serving with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in India for six years. Following the war, he enjoyed a successful career on the stage, appearing in Shakespearean plays in Stratford-upon-Avon with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was particularly noteworthy as "Falstaff" and, his favourite role, "King Lear", which he played both in English and in his native Welsh. On the other side of the Atlantic, he made his Broadway debut in 1951 and had a hit starring in "Look Homeward Angel" (1957-59) with Anthony Perkins and Jo Van Fleet. The play ran for 564 performances and earned Griffith a Tony Award nomination for the part of "W.O. Gant". He later jokingly remarked, that, when the producers asked him to play a man from the deep south, he (Griffith) had understood that to mean a man from the deep south of Wales.
Griffith started his film career proper in 1948 with films like Dulcimer Street (1948), followed by the wonderful black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) at Ealing in 1949. A portly, thickly-bearded character with bushy eyebrows, ruddy complexion and a resonant voice, Griffith made a lasting impression for his many portrayals of eccentric, bucolic and, sometimes, raucous types. In 1959, he won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his "Sheikh Ilderim", who supplies Charlton Heston with the chariot race-winning white stallions in Ben-Hur (1959). He was equally memorable as the lecherous "Squire Western" in Tom Jones (1963), a role for which he was nominated for both an Oscar and a BAFTA Award as Best British Actor. He later appeared in the critically-acclaimed musical version of Oliver! (1968), as a hilarious "King Louis" in Start the Revolution Without Me (1970) and one of Vincent Price's many victims in Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972). On television, he was a noteworthy, rolling-eyed "Long John Silver" in a 1960 version of "Treasure Island", Treasure Island (1960), and roving-eyed funeral director "Caradog Lloyd-Evans" in the comedy Grand Slam (1978).
Griffith was a lifelong friend (and drinking companion) of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.Actor- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock (born 1892). Raised as a strict Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits, Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. His first job outside of the family business was in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in movies began at around this time, frequently visiting the cinema and reading US trade journals.
Hitchcock entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. It was there that he met Alma Reville, though they never really spoke to each other. It was only after the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923) fell ill and Hitchcock was named director to complete the film that he and Reville began to collaborate. Hitchcock had his first real crack at directing a film, start to finish, in 1923 when he was hired to direct the film Number 13 (1922), though the production wasn't completed due to the studio's closure (he later remade it as a sound film). Hitchcock didn't give up then. He directed The Pleasure Garden (1925), a British/German production, which was very popular. Hitchcock made his first trademark film in 1927, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) . In the same year, on the 2nd of December, Hitchcock married Alma Reville. They had one child, Patricia Hitchcock who was born on July 7th, 1928. His success followed when he made a number of films in Britain such as The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Jamaica Inn (1939), some of which also gained him fame in the USA.
In 1940, the Hitchcock family moved to Hollywood, where the producer David O. Selznick had hired him to direct an adaptation of 'Daphne du Maurier''s Rebecca (1940). After Saboteur (1942), as his fame as a director grew, film companies began to refer to his films as 'Alfred Hitchcock's', for example Alfred Hitcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976), Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972).
Hitchcock was a master of pure cinema who almost never failed to reconcile aesthetics with the demands of the box-office.
During the making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife Alma suffered a paralyzing stroke which made her unable to walk very well. On March 7, 1979, Hitchcock was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award, where he said: "I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen and their names are Alma Reville." By this time, he was ill with angina and his kidneys had already started to fail. He had started to write a screenplay with Ernest Lehman called The Short Night but he fired Lehman and hired young writer David Freeman to rewrite the script. Due to Hitchcock's failing health the film was never made, but Freeman published the script after Hitchcock's death. In late 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. On the 29th April 1980, 9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. His funeral was held in the Church of Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Father Thomas Sullivan led the service with over 600 people attended the service, among them were Mel Brooks (director of High Anxiety (1977), a comedy tribute to Hitchcock and his films), Louis Jourdan, Karl Malden, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh and François Truffaut.Filmmaker- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Boris Kaufman, the Oscar-winning cinematographer who shot Jean Vigo's oeuvre and helped introduce a neo-realistic style into American films, was born on August 24, 1897, in Bialystok, Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. The youngest son of librarians, the Soviet directors Denis Kaufman (a.k.a. Dziga Vertov, meaning "Spinning Top") and Mikhail Kaufman were his older brothers. Dziga Vertov was one of the great innovators in Soviet cinema, the father of the agit-prop film, who directed Man with a Movie Camera (1929), and his brother Boris imitated his beloved camera tricks when he shot the documentary À Propos de Nice (1930) for Vigo.
The Kaufmans' parents decided to move to Moscow at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, and Denis went to school in St. Petersburg. In 1917, Russia experienced two revolutions, one which overthrew the Czar and the later, the "October" Revolution, which overthrew the bourgeois democracy and established the Bolshevik Party as the new rulers of what they called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Denis and his brother Mikhail were enamored of the October Revolution and volunteered their services as filmmakersto the new socialist state.
During the revolutionary period, Kaufman's parents moved back to Poland, which after World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, became independent from the Soviet Union. They took along Boris, who was much younger than his brothers. Poland and the Soviet Union eventually fought a border war, and the young Kaufman's parents sent him to Paris to be educated. Their son Denis, now Dziga Vertov, whose new name connoted the speed of the new medium and of his new life as a revolutionary artist, as well as the revolutions of a film reel, become a cinema philosopher as well as director. Dziga Vertov issued manifestos calling for filmmakers to take a formative role in shaping the new socialist order, replacing "dream films" with movies articulating "Soviet actuality."
Boris Kaufman, who eventually emigrated to France in 1927, later credited his brother Mikhail with his education as a cameraman. "Mikhail taught me cinematography by mail," he told Columbia University Professor Erik Barnouw.
After the Kaufman brothers' parents died, Mikhail had taken on a paternal responsibility for Boris, writing him regularly, and informing him about his film work. Though the brothers never met again after 1917, they did stay in touch via the mails throughout their lives. Boris viewed his brother's films in Paris and was drawn to similar work with Jean Vigo.
A photographer himself, Vigo had acquired a movie camera in order to make films, but he couldn't master it. Vigo had the great luck of meeting and collaborating with Kaufman, who was to evolve into one of the masters of black-and-white cinematography. It was Kaufman who is responsible for the wintry style of L'Atalante (1934), Vigo's sole feature film, as well as the imagery of his other filmed worked, such as Zero for Conduct (1933). As a cinematographer, Kaufman was instrumental in helping Vigo realize his vision on film. The films Kaufman shot for Vigo are both romantic and surreal, infused with a dream-like quality.
Vigo, a consumptive, died of tuberculosis in October 1934, ending their great collaboration that had started with À Propos de Nice (1930), and had continued with the documentary about the swimmer Jean Taris, Taris (1931). The latter documentary featured underwater visuals captured by Kaufman that underscored the dreamy quality of swimming, of being underwater. Vigo and Kaufman enhanced this dreaminess by utilizing slow-motion photography, to serve as correlative for the natural slowing of the body in swimming and to elucidate the glow of skin under water.
The collaborators moved on to fiction with Zero for Conduct (1933), a short film drawn from Vigo's memories of an authoritarian boarding school. The movie influenced the directors of the French New Wave, particularly François Truffaut and his The 400 Blows (1959), and was the inspiration for Lindsay Anderson's If.... (1968). The great classic "L'Atalante" (1934) finished up the collaboration, one of the greatest between a director and a cinematographer. The realization of Vigo's genius would have been unthinkable without Kaufman.
Kaufman shot Lucrezia Borgia (1935) for Abel Gance, but with the passing of Vigo, he temporarily lost his direction. He shot two shorts for the avant-garde director Dimitri Kirsanoff and was the director of photography on four films with director Léo Joannon.
After serving in the French Army during the sitzkrieg and the Battle of France, Kaufman emigrated to Canada as a war refugee. He was hired by John Grierson to be a cameraman for the National Film Board of Canada. Kaufman moved to the United States in 1942, where he eventually became a citizen. Locked out of feature work by the guild system, Kaufman supported himself shooting short subjects and documentaries before Elia Kazan chose him to shoot On the Waterfront (1954). The Kazan film, for which Kaufman won an Academy Award for cinematography, was his first American feature.
Kazan had wanted Kaufman, with his roots in the documentary, as a collaborator as he planned to inject realism on the order of the Italian neo-realists into American film. Kazan, in his autobiography "A Life" says it was his collaboration with Kaufman that taught him that cinematographers were artists in their own right. (Interestingly, being a former Russian/Soviet citizen and the brother of two prominent Soviet directors, Kuafman was under suspicion during the Cold War of communist sympathies. It was likely that his correspondence with his brother in the USSR was read by U.S. intelligence agents. His lack of career progression until Kazan picked him to shoot On the Waterfront (1954) may have been a result of anti-red paranoia. Thus, only someone like Kazan -- one of the few directors, and the most prominent filmmaker to testify as a friendly witness before the Houe Un-American Activities Committee -- having established his anti-communist credentials, could have employed Boris Kaufman during the height of the post-World War II Red Scare. And, of course, the film Kaufman shot for Kazan is a not-so-thinly veiled anti-communist apologia for informing.)
Kaufman also photographed Baby Doll (1956) (for which he received a second Oscar nomination) in B+W and Splendor in the Grass (1961) in color for Kazan. He was the director of photography on Sidney Lumet's first film, 12 Angry Men (1957), and he also shot The Fugitive Kind (1960), Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962) and the gritty The Pawnbroker (1964) for Lumet, all in B+W.
Interestingly, Kaufman shot the landmark nudist film Garden of Eden (1954), which led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision (Excelsior Pictures Corp. v. Regents of University of New York State), in which the majority held that the film was not obscene or indecent, and that nudity was not itself obscene. A decade later, he shot Nobel Prize-winning author Samuel Beckett's sole foray into film, Film (1965), which was directed by Alan Schneider from Beckett's screenplay. These two movies are testimonials to his adventuresome and iconoclastic spirit, rooted in the experimental cinema.
Boris Kaufman retired in 1970, after shooting for Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970) for Otto Preminger. He died on June 24, 1980, in New York, New York.Cinematographer- Music Artist
- Composer
- Actor
John Winston (later Ono) Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool, England, to Julia Lennon (née Stanley) and Alfred Lennon, a merchant seaman. He was raised by his mother's older sister Mimi Smith. In the mid-1950s, he formed his first band, The Quarrymen (after Quarry Bank High School, which he attended) who, with the addition of Paul McCartney and George Harrison, later became The Beatles.
After some years of performing in Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany, "Beatlemania" erupted in England and Europe in 1963 after the release of their singles "Love Me Do" and "Please Please Me". That same year, John's first wife Cynthia Lennon welcomed their only son Julian Lennon, named after John's mother. The next year the Beatles flew to America to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) (aka The Ed Sullivan Show), and Beatlemania spread worldwide. Queen Elizabeth II granted all four Beatles M.B.E. medals in 1965, for import revenues from their record sales; John returned his four years later, as part of an antiwar statement. John and the Beatles continued to tour and perform live until 1966, when protests over his calling the Beatles phenomenon "more popular than Jesus" and the frustrations of touring made the band decide to quit the road. They devoted themselves to studio work, recording and releasing albums such as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", "Magical Mystery Tour" and the "White Album". Instead of appearing live, the band began making their own "pop clips" (an early term for music videos), which were featured on television programs of the time.
In the late 1960s John began performing and making albums with his second wife Yoko Ono, as the Beatles began to break up. Their first two albums, "Two Virgins" and "Life With The Lions", were experimental and flops by Beatles standards, while their "Wedding Album" was almost a vanity work, but their live album "Live Peace In Toronto" became a Top Ten hit, at the end of the 1960s.
In the early 1970s John and Yoko continued to record together, making television appearances and performing at charity concerts. After the release of John's biggest hit, "Imagine", they moved to the US, where John was nearly deported because of his political views (a late-'60s conviction for possession of hashish in the U.K. was the excuse given by the government), but after a four-year legal battle he won the right to stay. In the midst of this, John and Yoko separated for over a year; John lived in Los Angeles with personal assistant May Pang, while Yoko dated guitarist David Spinozza. When John made a guest appearance at Elton John's Thanksgiving 1974 concert, Yoko was in the audience, and surprised John backstage. They reconciled in early 1975, and Yoko soon became pregnant. After the birth of their son Sean Lennon, John settled into the roles of "househusband" and full-time daddy, while Yoko became his business manager; both appeared happy in their new life together.
After a five-year break from music and the public eye, they made a comeback with their album "Double Fantasy", but within weeks of their re-emergence, Lennon was murdered on the evening of December 8, 1980 by Mark David Chapman, a one-time Beatles fan angry and jealous over John's ongoing career, who fatally shot Lennon four times in the back outside his apartment building, The Dakota, as Lennon was returning from a recording session. Within minutes after being shot, John Lennon was dead at age 40. His violent death was a sudden and tragic end to the life of a talented singer and musician who wanted to make a difference in the world.Musician- Actor
- Soundtrack
American character actor who achieved considerable fame in the last decade of his life. A native of Kokomo, Indiana, Strother Martin Jr. was the youngest of three children of Strother Douglas Martin, a machinist, and Ethel Dunlap Martin. His family moved soon after his birth to San Antonio, Texas, but quickly returned to Indiana. Strother Jr. grew up in Indianapolis and in Cloverdale, Indiana. He excelled at swimming and diving, and at 17 won the National Junior Springboard Diving Championship. He attended the University of Michigan as diving team member. He served in the U.S. Navy as a swimming instructor in World War II. Nicknamed "T-Bone" Martin for his diving style, his 3rd place finish in the adult National Springboard Diving Championships cost him a place on the 1948 Olympic team. He moved to California to become an actor, but worked in odd jobs and as a swimming instructor to Marion Davies and the children of Charles Chaplin. He found work as a swimming extra in several films and as a leprechaun on a local children's TV show, "Mabel's Fables." Bit parts came his way, leading to television work with Sam Peckinpah, which led to a lifelong relationship. He also found memorable roles for John Ford and by the 1960s was a familiar face in American movies. With Cool Hand Luke (1967) in 1967 came new acclaim and a place among the busiest character actors in Hollywood. He worked steadily and in substantial roles throughout the 1970s and seemed at the peak of his career when he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1980.Actor- Actor
- Producer
- Stunts
He was the ultra-cool male film star of the 1960s, and rose from a troubled youth spent in reform schools to being the world's most popular actor. Over 40 years after his untimely death from mesothelioma in 1980, Steve McQueen is still considered hip and cool, and he endures as an icon of popular culture.
McQueen was born in Beech Grove, Indiana, to mother Julian (Crawford) and father William Terence McQueen, a stunt pilot. His first lead role was in the low-budget sci-fi film The Blob (1958), quickly followed by roles in The St. Louis Bank Robbery (1959) and Never So Few (1959). The young McQueen appeared as Vin, alongside Yul Brynner, in the star-laden The Magnificent Seven (1960) and effectively hijacked the lead from the bigger star by ensuring he was nearly always doing something in every shot he and Brynner were in together, such as adjusting his hat or gun belt. He next scored with audiences with two interesting performances, first in the World War II drama Hell Is for Heroes (1962) and then in The War Lover (1962). Riding a wave of popularity, McQueen delivered another crowd pleaser as Hilts, the Cooler King, in the knockout World War II P.O.W. film The Great Escape (1963), featuring his famous leap over the barbed wire on a motorcycle while being pursued by Nazi troops (in fact, however, the stunt was actually performed by his good friend, stunt rider Bud Ekins).
McQueen next appeared in several films of mixed quality, including Soldier in the Rain (1963); Love with the Proper Stranger (1963) and Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965). However, they failed to really grab audience attention, but his role as Eric Stoner in The Cincinnati Kid (1965), alongside screen legend Edward G. Robinson and Karl Malden, had movie fans filling theaters again to see the ice-cool McQueen they loved. He was back in another Western, Nevada Smith (1966), again with Malden, and then he gave what many consider to be his finest dramatic performance as loner US Navy sailor Jake Holman in the superb The Sand Pebbles (1966). McQueen was genuine hot property and next appeared with Faye Dunaway in the provocative crime drama The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), next in what many consider his signature role, that of a maverick, taciturn detective in the mega-hit Bullitt (1968), renowned for its famous chase sequence through San Francisco between McQueen's Ford Mustang GT and the killer's black Dodge Charger.
Interestingly, McQueen's next role was a total departure from the action genre, as he played Southerner Boon Hogganbeck in the family-oriented The Reivers (1969), based on the popular William Faulkner novel. Not surprisingly, the film didn't go over particularly well with audiences, even though it was an entertaining and well made production, and McQueen showed an interesting comedic side of his acting talents. He returned to more familiar territory, with the race film Le Mans (1971), a rather self-indulgent exercise, and its slow plot line contributed to its rather poor performance in theaters. It was not until many years later that it became something of a cult film, primarily because of the footage of Porsche 917s roaring around race tracks in France. McQueen then teamed up with maverick Hollywood director Sam Peckinpah to star in the modern Western Junior Bonner (1972), about a family of rodeo riders, and again with Peckinpah as bank robber Doc McCoy in the violent The Getaway (1972). Both did good business at the box office. McQueen's next role was a refreshing surprise and Papillon (1973), based on the Henri Charrière novel of the same name, was well received by fans and critics alike. He played a convict on a French penal colony in South America who persists in trying to escape from his captors and feels their wrath when his attempts fail.
The 1970s is a decade remembered for a slew of "disaster" movies and McQueen starred in arguably the biggest of the time, The Towering Inferno (1974). He shared equal top billing with Paul Newman and an impressive line-up of co-stars including Fred Astaire, Robert Vaughn and Faye Dunaway. McQueen does not appear until roughly halfway into the film as San Francisco fire chief Mike O'Halloran, battling to extinguish an inferno in a 138-story skyscraper. The film was a monster hit and set the benchmark for other disaster movies that followed. However, it was McQueen's last film role for several years. After a four-year hiatus he surprised fans, and was almost unrecognizable under long hair and a beard, as a rabble-rousing early environmentalist in An Enemy of the People (1978), based on the Henrik Ibsen play.
McQueen's last two film performances were in the unusual Western Tom Horn (1980), then he portrayed real-life bounty hunter Ralph "Papa' Thorson (Ralph Thorson) in The Hunter (1980). In 1978, McQueen developed a persistent cough that would not go away. He quit smoking cigarettes and underwent antibiotic treatments without improvement. Shortness of breath grew more pronounced and on December 22, 1979, after he completed work on 'The Hunter', a biopsy revealed pleural mesothelioma, a rare lung cancer associated with asbestos exposure for which there is no known cure. The asbestos was thought to have been in the protective suits worn in his race car driving days, but in fact the auto racing suits McQueen wore were made of Nomex, a DuPont fire-resistant aramid fiber that contains no asbestos. McQueen later gave a medical interview in which he believed that asbestos used in movie sound stage insulation and race-drivers' protective suits and helmets could have been involved, but he thought it more likely that his illness was a direct result of massive exposure while removing asbestos lagging from pipes aboard a troop ship while in the US Marines.
By February 1980, there was evidence of widespread metastasis. While he tried to keep the condition a secret, the National Enquirer disclosed that he had "terminal cancer" on March 11, 1980. In July, McQueen traveled to Rosarito Beach, Mexico for an unconventional treatment after American doctors told him they could do nothing to prolong his life. Controversy arose over McQueen's Mexican trip, because McQueen sought a non-traditional cancer treatment called the Gerson Therapy that used coffee enemas, frequent washing with shampoos, daily injections of fluid containing live cells from cows and sheep, massage and laetrile, a supposedly "natural" anti-cancer drug available in Mexico, but not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. McQueen paid for these unconventional medical treatments by himself in cash payments which was said to have cost an upwards of $40,000 per month during his three-month stay in Mexico. McQueen was treated by William Donald Kelley, whose only medical license had been (until revoked in 1976) for orthodontics.
McQueen returned to the United States in early October 1980. Despite metastasis of the cancer through McQueen's body, Kelley publicly announced that McQueen would be completely cured and return to normal life. McQueen's condition soon worsened and "huge" tumors developed in his abdomen. In late October, McQueen flew to Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico to have an abdominal tumor on his liver (weighing around five pounds) removed, despite warnings from his American doctors that the tumor was inoperable and his heart could not withstand the surgery. McQueen checked into a Juarez clinic under the alias "Sam Shepard" where the local Mexican doctors and staff at the small, low-income clinic were unaware of his actual identity.
Steve McQueen passed away on November 7, 1980, at age 50 after the cancer surgery which was said to be successful. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea. He married three times and had a lifelong love of motor racing, once remarking, "Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting.".Actor- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Lewis Milestone, a clothing manufacturer's son, was born in Bessarabia (now Moldova), raised in Odessa (Ukraine) and educated in Belgium and Berlin (where he studied engineering). He was fluent in both German and Russian and an avid reader. Milestone had an affinity for the theatre from an early age, starting as a prop man and background artist before traveling to the US in 1914 with $6.00 in his pocket. After a succession of odd jobs (including as a dishwasher and a photographer's assistant) he joined the Army Signal Corps in 1917 to make educational short films for U.S. troops. Following World War I, having acquired American citizenship, he went on to Hollywood to meet the director William A. Seiter at Ince Studios. Seiter started him off as an assistant cutter. Milestone quickly worked his way up the ranks to become editor, assistant director and screenwriter on many of Seiter's projects in the early 1920s, experiences that would greatly influence his directing style in years to come.
Milestone directed his first film, Seven Sinners (1925), for Howard Hughes and two years later won his first of two Academy Awards for the comedy Two Arabian Knights (1927). He received his second Oscar for what most regard as his finest achievement, the anti-war movie All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque. The film, universally praised by reviewers for its eloquence and integrity, also won the Best Picture Academy Award that year. A noted Milestone innovation was the use of cameras mounted on wooden tracks, giving his films a more realistic and fluid, rather than static, look. Other trademarks associated with his pictures were taut editing, snappy dialogue and clever visual touches, good examples being the screwball comedy The Front Page (1931), the melodrama Rain (1932)--based on a play by W. Somerset Maugham--and an adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (1939). When asked in 1979 about the secret behind his success, he simply declared "Arrogance, chutzpah--in the old Hollywood at least that's the thing that gave everybody pause" (New York Times, September 27, 1980). Milestone had a history of being "difficult", having clashed with Howard Hughes, Warner Brothers and a host of studio executives over various contractual and artistic issues. Nonetheless, he remained constantly employed and worked for most of the major studios at one time or another, though never on long-term contracts. While he was not required to testify before HUAC, Milestone was blacklisted for a year in 1949 because of left-wing affiliations dating back to the 1930's. His output became less consistent during the 1950s and his career finished on a low with the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and its incongruously cast, equally headstrong star Marlon Brando.
Milestone must be credited with a quirky sense of humor: when the producer of "All Quiet on the Western Front", Carl Laemmle Jr., demanded a "happy ending" for the picture, Milestone telephoned, "I've got your happy ending. We'll let the Germans win the war".
Having suffered a stroke, Lewis Milestone spent the last ten years of his life confined to a wheelchair. He died September 25, 1980, at the University of California Medical Center in Los Angeles.Director- Barbara O'Neil was an American actress, mostly remembered for playing Ellen O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind" (1939). She was once nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress .
O'Neil was born in St. Louis, Missouri to a prominent family. Her father was businessman David O'Neil (1874-1947), president of the O'Neil Lumber Company. David was also a poet and theatrical actor. O'Neil's mother was suffrage leader Barbara Blackman O'Neil (1880-1963), president of the Equal Suffrage League. O'Neil's maternal grandmother was portrait painter Carrie Horton Blackman (1856-1935).
O'Neil was mostly raised in Europe, where had father had retired. She was educated at the Sarah Lawrence College, a liberal arts college in Yonkers, New York. She received her acting education in Yale School of Drama, where her mentor was drama teacher George Pierce Baker (1866-1935).
Baker recommended O'Neil as an actress to the University Players (1928-1932), a summer stock theater company who was seeking a new leading lady. O'Neil made her theatrical debut in 1931, and her Broadweay debut in 1932. Her first Broadway performance was a play depicting the life of Carrie Nation (1846-1911), a radical member of the temperance movement. The real-life nation had become famous for attacking taverns with her hatchet.
After several years as a theatrical actress, O'Neil made her film debut in the drama film "Stella Dallas" (1937). She acted alongside female lead Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990), and secondary lead Anne Shirley (1918-1993).
O'Neil found steady work in films during the late 1930s. Her films included the adultery-themed drama "Love, Honor and Behave" (1938), the American Civil War-themed drama "The Toy Wife" (1938), the racketeering-themed crime drama "I Am the Law" (1938), the British Empire-themed drama "The Sun Never Sets" (1939), and the adultery-themed romantic drama "When Tomorrow Comes" (1939), O'Neil played the historical figure Elizabeth Woodville (c. 1437-1492), Queen consort of England in the period film "Tower of London" (1939).
O'Neil received her most prominent Ellen O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind" (1939). As in the source novel by Margaret Mitchell, Ellen is still a young woman who has three daughters, and is married to a much-older man. In the film, the role of the elderly husband Gerald O'Hara was played by Thomas Mitchell, daughter Scarlett O'Hara was played by Vivien Leigh, daughter Suellen O'Hara was played by Evelyn Keyes, and daughter Carreen O'Hara was played Ann Rutherford. O'Neil was actually only three years older than Leigh, six years older than Keyes, and 7 years older than Rutherford.
O'Neil's next prominent film role was that of murder victim Françoise, duchesse de Praslin (1807-1847) in the period film "All This, and Heaven Too" (1940). O'Neil was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for this role. The award was instead won by rival actress Jane Darwell (1879-1967).
O'Neil's next films included the medical missionary-themed drama "Shining Victory" (1941), the Bluebeard-themed psychological thriller "Secret Beyond the Door" (1947), the immigrant-themed drama "I Remember Mama" (1948), the film noir "Whirlpool" (1950), the film noir "Angel Face" (1953), and the film noir "Flame of the Islands" (1956).
O'Neil's last prominent film role was that of Mother Didyma in the convent-themed film "The Nun's Story" (1959). She largely retired from film at the age of 49. She briefly returned with a supporting role in "Lions of St. Petersburg" (1970), which was her final role in any form.
O'Neil continued living in retirement until her death in 1980, due to a heart attack. She was 70-years-old.Actress - Director
- Producer
- Cinematographer
George Pal was born on February 1, 1908, in Cegled, Austria-Hungary. Later, when he was still a child, his stage-entertainer parents divorced, and he was raised by his grandparents.
In 1928, Pal graduated from the Budapest Academy of Arts with a degree in Architecture and highly developed drawing skills. There were no opportunities for an Architect when he left the University, so, putting his other talents to work, he found employment at Hunnia Films in Budapest. Later on, through his films, Pal became an architect of worlds, but first...
At Hunnia, Pal drew lobby posters and created embellished titles for silent movies. He also quickly learned the craft of motion picture cartooning.
In 1930, George married Elisabeth Josepha (Zsoka) Grandjean, with whom he later had two sons, David (born, 1937) and Peter (born, 1941). Seeking work with better pay, the young couple moved to Berlin, a center for film innovation. Pal's talents were soon noticed.
From 1931-1932, Pal worked at UFA Studios in Berlin where he became head of the cartoon department. Then, he set up his own film studio elsewhere in Berlin. His credentials attracted orders from companies for animated advertising. Instead of the cartoon approach, he developed his own take on making inanimate objects move, even dance, using the still evolving art of stop-motion photography. Advertisements featuring, for instance, Overstolz cigarettes, outfitted with faces, arms, and legs, were shown on theater screens strutting and singing as if drawn by a cartoonist. These "puppets" without strings would later evolve into animated characters made of wood who would have names and star in their own films.
When the Nazi regime installed itself in Germany, George and Zsoka left for Prague for a short time. Then it was on to Paris where they received an invitation from Sies Neuman, head of Philips Radio's advertising, to move to Eindhoven, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands, and work there. Before long, he had his own studio and made commercials for Dutch, English, and American firms.
It was in Eindhoven that George and American film maker, Dave Bader, invented a name for the three-dimensional cartoons that George was also now producing: "Puppetoons." George made many films in Holland, including "The Ship of the Ether." He changed his last name from Marczincsak to Pal, and, in 1937, George and Zsoka's first son, David, was born.
During the 1930s, George and Zsoka applied for an American emigration visa, only to be told each time that the small Hungarian quota was filled. Then, in 1939, the American consulate granted a visa for them and their young son to leave for New York.
First, Pal made a solo trip to New York. Not long after arriving, Columbia University offered him a lectureship on the process of making stop-motion films. Coincidentally, Barney Baliban, the president of Paramount Pictures' New York office, saw one of Pal's Puppetoon films at a party. He was so impressed by it that he contacted Pal and offered him a contract to make them for Paramount, either in New York or at their animation studio in Florida.
Pal returned to Holland and made arrangements for his family to leave Europe and move to America. Then, Frank Freeman, the President of Paramount Studios in Hollywood offered him a studio of his own and a staff of 25 film makers. The Pals arrived in New York early in 1940 and were soon settled in Beverly Hills, California.
In 1941, George and Zsoka's second son, Peter, was born.
From 1941 to 1947, Pal created more than 40 Puppetoon films, and received a special Academy Award in 1943. His studio staffers included Willis H. O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Wah Chang, and Gene Warren. He was also close friends with animation producer, Walter Lantz, as well as film pioneer, Walt Disney.
From 1948 to 1949, he began work on his first full-length motion pictures that combined live action with special photographic and sound effects. In the 1950s and 1960s, six of his films received Academy Awards. He worked with many gifted talents, including: director Byron Haskin; writers Robert A. Heinlein, Barré Lyndon, and David Duncan; cinematographers George Barnes, and Paul Vogel; visual-effects masters Gordon Jennings and his crew at Paramount, plus A. Arnold Gillespie, Wah Chang, and Gene Warren at MGM.
Pal also worked with sound-effects wizards Gene Garvin, Harry Lindgren, Franklin Milton, and Van Allen James; art directors Albert Nozaki, Hal Pereira, Ernst Fegté, and William Ferrari; film editors Everett Douglas and George Tomasini; composers Leith Stevens and Russell Garcia; space artist Chesley Bonestell; many animation craftsmen, including his son, David Pal, (who brought the elves to life in "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm") and Don Sahlin who would later go on to design the original Muppet characters; plus countless actors and actresses, many of whom are remembered to this day.
Throughout the 1970s, Pal worked on several film proposals, but only one was distributed. He passed away on May 2, 1980 while working on "The Voyage of the Berg" for AIP Filmways. It was never finished, but his other films endure.Filmmaker- Producer
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Cold, calculating and hard-as-nails is probably the best definition of Gail Patrick's femmes on the 30s and 40s silver screen, and the actress herself was no softie in real life. The tall, slender, patrician beauty was born with the equally stately-sounding name Margaret LaVelle Fitzpatrick in Birmingham, Alabama, on June 20, 1911. She received a B.A. and was a dean of women at her alma mater, Howard College, for a time. She was studying pre-law at the University of Alabama at the time she, by happenstance, became a finalist in a nationwide contest for a Paramount film role (which she did not get). This led her to go to Hollywood and, despite her loss, the studio wound up offering her a studio contract at $50 a week (she managed to finagle her way to $75).
After the usual grooming in bit parts, Gail moved stealthily up the ladder to featured roles in a wide assortment of genres including the fantasy Death Takes a Holiday (1934), the melodramatic thriller The Crime of Helen Stanley (1934), the musical Mississippi (1935) and the easy comedy Early to Bed (1936). Just as quickly she began essaying the occasional co-star or leading lady -- that of a woman lawyer in Disbarred (1939) and a romantic diversion in the Zane Grey western adaptations of Wagon Wheels (1934) and Wanderer of the Wasteland (1935). She was most identified, however, in manipulative second leads while usually tangling with the star femme as the "other woman," haughty socialite or scheming villainess.
Gail participated grandly in three well-known film classics. In the screwball comedy My Man Godfrey (1936), she was at odds with Carole Lombard as a spoiled, treacherous sister; in Stage Door (1937), she engaged in some marvelous cat-fights with Ginger Rogers as a cynical wannabe actress, and in My Favorite Wife (1940) she played Cary Grant's exacting second wife who must contend with the reappearance of his first, supposedly dead wife Irene Dunne. Gail exuded wit, confidence, assertiveness and elegance in all her characters, nothing less, and her male co-stars were the sturdiest assortment Hollywood could offer -- Bing Crosby, Randolph Scott, Richard Dix, John Howard, Preston Foster, Dean Jagger and George Sanders.
In 1947, she did an abrupt about-face and left her highly respectable career following her third marriage. After involving herself successfully in clothing design, she became (as Gail Patrick Jackson) the executive producer of the Perry Mason (1957) TV series (1957-1966), alongside producer and husband (Thomas) Cornwell Jackson, who was a literary agent to author/creator Erle Stanley Gardner. The courtroom "whodunnit" was a long and highly successful run. She and Jackson divorced in 1969, and one of her few failures in life was in her attempt to revive the series with The New Perry Mason (1973) in 1973, but Monte Markham was a mighty pale comparison to Raymond Burr in the title role and the show quickly tanked. Divorced three times, she and Mr. Jackson had two adopted children. She was married to her fourth husband John Velde Jr., at the time of her death in 1980 of leukemia. She was 69.Actress- Actor
- Soundtrack
George Raft was born and grew up in a poor family in Hell's Kitchen, at the time one of the roughest, meanest areas of New York City. He was born George Ranft, and was the son of Eva (Glockner) and Conrad Ranft, a department store deliveryman. His parents were both of German descent. In his youth, he showed a great interest in, and aptitude for, dancing. That, combined with his dark good looks and sharp dressing, made him a local favorite at such spots as the El Fey Club with Texas Guinan. In 1928, Raft went to Hollywood to try his luck at acting. His first big role was as the coin-tossing henchman in Scarface (1932). His career was marked by numerous tough-guy roles, often a gangster or convict. The believability with which he played these, together with his lifelong associations with such real-life gangsters as Owney Madden and Bugsy Siegel, added to persistent rumors that he was also a gangster. The slightly shady reputation may have helped his popularity early on, but it made him somewhat undesirable to movie executives later in his career. He somewhat parodied his gangster reputation in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959).Actor- Actress
- Soundtrack
Beautiful, swift and tough-tongued British character actress Rachel Roberts gained notice for her roles on the English stage, before she hit it largely in films. Born in Wales and married to actor Rex Harrison in 1962, Roberts made her film debut in a key role in J. Lee Thompson's Young and Willing (1954) a drama film about the life of women in prison. Around the early sixties, it wasn't uncommon to see a British actress in feature films, usually such an actress would remain on the British screen for such time, but Roberts continued going strong, she's hard to forget as the cankerous housewife in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960).
After her divorce from Rex Harrison in 1971, Roberts continued such supporting roles usually as tough authority women characters or villainous beauties in films including Doctors' Wives (1971), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Foul Play (1978), When a Stranger Calls (1979) and Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981). Although never far from the screen, she was occasionally seen on television, such as Mrs. Bonnie McClellan in the 1976 series The Tony Randall Show (1976). She probably achieved her greatest success as Richard Harris's love interest in the film This Sporting Life (1963) which earned her an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress. Rachel Roberts committed suicide in November of 1980 of a "barbiturate overdose" at her home in Studio City, California. Roberts was only 53 years old.Actress- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
He met Lorenz Hart in 1918 who was to write lyrics for Richard for the next 25 years. The produced many successful songs and musicals such as 'Pal Joey' and 'The Boys From Syracuse'. In 1943 Richard teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein to make a musical version of the play 'How Green Was Your Valley' which became 'Oklahoma' Richard also provided the music for 'Carousel', 'South Pacific'. The King and I' and 'The Sound of Music'.Composer
Rodgers died too late in 1979 to be included in a hypothetical TCM Remembers for that year.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Often credited as the greatest comedian of all time, Peter Sellers was born Richard Henry Sellers to a well-off acting family in 1925 in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth. He was the son of Agnes Doreen "Peg" (Marks) and William "Bill" Sellers. His parents worked in an acting company run by his grandmother. His father was Protestant and his mother was Jewish (of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi background). His parents' first child had died at birth, so Sellers was spoiled during his early years. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force and served during World War II. After the war he met Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine, who would become his future workmates.
After the war, he set up a review in London, which was a combination of music (he played the drums) and impressions. Then, all of a sudden, he burst into prominence as the voices of numerous favorites on the BBC radio program "The Goon Show" (1951-1960), and then making his debut in films in Penny Points to Paradise (1951) and Down Among the Z Men (1952), before making it big as one of the criminals in The Ladykillers (1955). These small but showy roles continued throughout the 1950s, but he got his first big break playing the dogmatic union man, Fred Kite, in I'm All Right Jack (1959). The film's success led to starring vehicles into the 1960s that showed off his extreme comic ability to its fullest. In 1962, Sellers was cast in the role of Clare Quilty in the Stanley Kubrick version of the film Lolita (1962) in which his performance as a mentally unbalanced TV writer with multiple personalities landed him another part in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) in which he played three roles which showed off his comic talent in play-acting in three different accents; British, American, and German.
The year 1964 represented a peak in his career with four films in release, all of them well-received by critics and the public alike: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), for which he was Oscar nominated, The Pink Panther (1963), in which he played his signature role of the bumbling French Inspector Jacques Clouseau for the first time, its almost accidental sequel, A Shot in the Dark (1964), and The World of Henry Orient (1964). Sellers was on top of the world, but on the evening of April 5, 1964, he suffered a nearly fatal heart attack after inhaling several amyl nitrites (also called 'poppers'; an aphrodisiac-halogen combination) while engaged in a sexual act with his second wife Britt Ekland. He had been working on Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). In a move Wilder later regretted, he replaced Sellers with Ray Walston rather than hold up production. By October 1964, Sellers made a full recovery and was working again.
The mid-1960s were noted for the popularity of all things British, from the Beatles music (who were presented with their Grammy for Best New Artist by Sellers) to the James Bond films, and the world turned to Sellers for comedy. What's New Pussycat (1965) was another big hit, but a combination of his ego and insecurity was making Sellers difficult to work with. When the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967) ran over budget and was unable to recoup its costs despite an otherwise healthy box-office take, Sellers received some of the blame. He turned down an offer from United Artists for the title role in Inspector Clouseau (1968), but was angry when the production went ahead with Alan Arkin in his place. His difficult reputation and increasingly erratic behavior, combined with several less successful films, took a toll on his standing. By 1970, he had fallen out of favor. He spent the early years of the new decade appearing in such lackluster B films as Where Does It Hurt? (1972) and turning up more frequently on television as a guest on The Dean Martin Show (1965) and a Glen Campbell TV special.
In 1974, Inspector Clouseau came to Sellers rescue when Sir Lew Grade expressed an interest in a TV series based on the character. Clouseau's creator, writer-director Blake Edwards, whose career had also seen better days, convinced Grade to bankroll a feature film instead, and The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) was a major hit release during the summer of Jaws (1975) and restored both men to prominence. Sellers would play Clouseau in two more successful sequels, The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), and Sellers would use his newly rediscovered clout to realize his dream of playing Chauncey Gardiner in a film adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's novel "Being There". Sellers had read the novel in 1972, but it took seven years for the film to reach the screen. Being There (1979) earned Sellers his second Oscar nomination, but he lost to Dustin Hoffman for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).
Sellers struggled with depression and mental insecurities throughout his life. An enigmatic figure, he often claimed to have no identity outside the roles that he played. His behavior on and off the set and stage became more erratic and compulsive, and he continued to frequently clash with his directors and co-stars, especially in the mid-1970s when his physical and mental health, together with his continuing alcohol and drug problems, were at their worst. He never fully recovered from his 1964 heart attack because he refused to take traditional heart medication and instead consulted with 'psychic healers'. As a result, his heart condition continued to slowly deteriorate over the next 16 years. On March 20, 1977, Sellers barely survived another major heart attack and had a pacemaker surgically implanted to regulate his heartbeat which caused him further mental and physical discomfort. However, he refused to slow down his work schedule or consider heart surgery which might have extended his life by several years.
On July 25, 1980, Sellers was scheduled to have a reunion dinner in London with his Goon Show partners, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. However, at around 12 noon on July 22, Sellers collapsed from a massive heart attack in his Dorchester Hotel room and fell into a coma. He died in a London hospital just after midnight on July 24, 1980 at age 54. He was survived by his fourth wife, Lynne Frederick, and three children: Michael, Sarah and Victoria. At the time of his death, he was scheduled to undergo an angiography in Los Angeles on July 30 to see if he was eligible for heart surgery.
His last movie, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980), completed just a few months before his death, proved to be another box office flop. Director Blake Edwards' attempt at reviving the Pink Panther series after Sellers' death resulted in two panned 1980s comedies, the first of which, Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), deals with Inspector Clouseau's disappearance and was made from material cut from previous Pink Panther films and includes interviews with the original casts playing their original characters.Actor- Actor
- Soundtrack
Billie Thomas was an African-American child actor who was best-known for appearing in the "Our Gang" film series from 1934 to its end in 1944.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Thomas auditioned for an "Our Gang" role when he was three years old. He was cast as a background player in the short films "For Pete's Sake!", "The First Round-Up", and "Washee Ironee", all from 1934.
With the short film "Mama's Little Pirate" (1935), Thomas became the third actor to portray the character "Buckwheat", who had at first been depicted as a bowed-pigtailed female character at first, portrayed by Carlena Beard (1929-1972) and Willie Mae Walton (1918-2018); Thomas was effectively cross-dressing for the role. Buckwheat eventually became a more masculine character, and was first credited as male in "The Pinch Singer" (1936). He gained an entirely-new costume for "Pay as You Exit" (1936), where he played a slave in search of a master. Thomas kept this new look--overalls, striped shirt, oversized shoes, and a large, unkempt Afro--for the duration of playing this role, until 1944.
Thomas performed in "Our Gang" for 10 years. During this time, he was only absent for a single film, "Feed 'em and Weep" (1938), because he was ill. His character was paired with that of Eugene "Porky" Lee: they were "the little kids" who outsmarted "the big kids": George "Spanky" McFarland and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer.
As a young child, Thomas had a speech impediment; this was transferred to his character and used as a comic device. Both Buckwheat and Porky spoke in "garbled dialogue" and pronounced "OK" as "O-tay!"
The series' original short films were produced by Hal Roach Studios, but production was taken over by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1938. From 1938 to 1944, MGM produced 52 "Our Gang" short films and Thomas was the only cast member to appear in all of them. He was the only holdover from the Hal Roach era to remain in the series until its end.
Thomas' team-up with Eugene Lee ended when Lee was replaced by new cast member Robert Blake. By 1940 Thomas had outgrown his speech impediment, and Buckwheat started speaking clearly as well. The series' final film was "Dancing Romeo" (1944), and Thomas was 12 years old during its production.
While Buckwheat became synonymous with the "pickaninny" stereotype of African-American children, Thomas himself was well-liked for being depicted as a playmate and equal to the white children of the series. "Our Gang" featured a desegregated cast during the Jim Crow Era.
Thomas largely retired from acting following the 1940s. He served in the United States Army from 1954 to 1956 and received both a National Defense Service Medal and a Good Conduct Medal. Following his discharge, Thomas was offered new acting roles but he rejected them. He viewed an acting career as "a rat race ... with no security". Instead, he chose a more modest career as a film lab technician for the Technicolor corporation.
In the summer of 1980, surviving "Our Gang" cast members appeared in the second annual meeting of the fraternal organization the Sons of the Desert (named after a Laurel and Hardy film). Thomas received a spontaneous standing ovation by 500 fans, and cried in response. On October 10, 1980, he suffered a heart attack and died. He was 49 years old.
Thomas was survived by his son William Thomas Jr. In 1992, the younger Thomas created the Buckwheat Memorial Scholarship for students of California State Northridge University. The scholarship was named in honor of his father and his best-known role.Actor- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Mae West was born August 17, 1893 in Brooklyn, New York, to "Battling Jack" West and Matilda Doelger. She began her career as a child star in vaudeville, and later went on to write her own plays, including "SEX", for which she was arrested. Though her first movie role, at age 40, was a small part in Night After Night (1932), her scene has become famous. A coat check girl exclaims, "Goodness! What lovely diamonds!", after seeing Mae's jewelry. Mae replies, "Goodness had nothing to do with it". Her next film, in which she starred, came the following year. She Done Him Wrong (1933) was based on her earlier and very popular play, "Diamond Lil". She went on to write and star in seven more films, including My Little Chickadee (1940) with W.C. Fields. Her last movie was Sextette (1977), which also came from a play. She died on November 22, 1980.Actress- Producer
- Writer
- Production Manager
One of the kingpins of Hollywood's studio system, Zanuck was the offspring of the ill-fated marriage of the alcoholic night clerk in Wahoo, Nebraska's only hotel and the hotel owner's daughter. Both parents had abandoned him by the time he was 13. At 15, he joined the U.S. Army, and he fought in Belgium in World War I. Mustered out, he kept himself alive with a series of desultory jobs -- steelworker, foreman in a garment factory, professional boxer -- while pursuing a career as a writer. He turned his first published story (for "Physical Culture, " a pulp magazine) into a film scenario for William Russell; his next important sale was to Irving Thalberg. Although often described as barely literate, Zanuck turned out to have a knack for movie plots. After a well-paid apprenticeship with Mack Sennett, Syd Chaplin and Carl Laemmle, Zanuck hit his stride by devising (with Malcolm St. Clair) the Rin Tin Tin series of police-dog movies for Warner Brothers. For Warner, under his own name and three pseudonyms, he ground out as many as 19 scripts a year and became head of production at age 23. He helped forge that studio's style with such films as The Jazz Singer (1927), The Public Enemy (1931) and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932). In 1933, after the Warners made it clear that Zanuck would never be more than an employee, he quit to form Twentieth Century Films (with backing from Louis B. Mayer and Joseph M. Schenck). In 1935, Twentieth absorbed a bankrupt giant, Fox. Zanuck ruled the combined studio for decades. He became known as the most "hands-on" of the major studio bosses, taking particular pride in his talent for remaking movies in the cutting room. His signature productions were such sentimental, content-laden dramas as How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), and Twelve O'Clock High (1949). In the late fifties, Zanuck relinquished day-to-day control of the studio, left his wife, and moved to Europe to concentrate on producing. Many of his later films were designed in part to promote the careers of his successive girlfriends, Bella Darvi, Juliette Gréco, Irina Demick and Geneviève Gilles -- none of whom found much favor with directors or audiences. After the success of The Longest Day (1962), Zanuck returned to run 20th Century-Fox; he promoted his son, Richard D. Zanuck, to head of production, then engineered his firing in a messy boardroom brawl. Within a few months, in May 1971, Zanuck himself was deposed. He was the last studio boss of his era to go down.Producer
Zanuck died too late in 1979 to be included in a hypothetical TCM Remembers for that year.