Tunes of Glory (1960) Premiere
December 19,1960
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Alec Guinness was an English actor. He is known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984).
Guinness is really most remembered for his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy for which he receive a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In 1959, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. In the 1970s, Guinness made regular television appearances in Britain, including the role of George Smiley in the serialisations of two novels by John le Carré: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley's People (1982). In 1980 he received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement.
Guinness was also one of three British actors, along with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, who made the transition from Shakespearean theatre in England to Hollywood blockbusters immediately after the Second World War.
Guinness died on 5 August 2000, from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex.- Actor
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Sir John Mills, one of the most popular and beloved English actors, was born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills on February 22, 1908, at the Watts Naval Training College in North Elmham, Norfolk, England. The young Mills grew up in Felixstowe, Suffolk, where his father was a mathematics teacher and his mother was a theater box-office manager. The Oscar-winner appeared in more than 120 films and TV movies in a career stretching over eight decades, from his debut in 1932 in Midshipmaid Gob (1932) through Bright Young Things (2003) and The Snow Prince (2009).
After graduating from the Norwich Grammar School for Boys, Mills rejected his father's academic career for the performing arts. After brief employment as a clerk in a grain merchant's office, he moved to London and enrolled at Zelia Raye's Dancing School. Convinced from the age of six that performing was his destiny, Mills said, "I never considered anything else."
After training as a dancer, he started his professional career in the music hall, appearing as a chorus boy at the princely sum of four pounds sterling a week in "The Five O'Clock Revue" at the London Hippodrome, in 1929. The short, wiry song-and-dance man was scouted by Noël Coward and began to appear regularly on the London stage in revues, musicals and legitimate plays throughout the 1930s. He appeared in a score of films before the war, "quota quickies" made under a system regulating the import of American films designed to boost local production. He was a juvenile lead in The Ghost Camera (1933), appeared in the musical Car of Dreams (1935), and then played lead roles in Born for Glory (1935), Nine Days a Queen (1936) and The Green Cockatoo (1937). His Hollywood debut was in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) with Robert Donat, but he refused the American studios' entreaties to sign a contract and stayed in England.
Mills relished acting in films, finding it a challenge rather than the necessary economic evil that many English actors at the time, such as Laurence Olivier, felt it was, and it was the cinema that would make him an internationally renowned star. He anchored his film career in military roles, such as those in his early pictures Born for Glory (1935) (a.k.a. "Forever England") and Raoul Walsh's You're in the Army Now (1937). He appeared in the classic In Which We Serve (1942), where he worked with his mentor Coward and with Coward's co-director David Lean, who would go on to direct Mills in some of his most memorable performances.
Throughout his film career Mills played a wide variety of military characters, portraying the quintessential English hero. He later tackled more complex characterizations, such as the emotionally troubled commander in Tunes of Glory (1960). He also played Field Marshal Haig in the satire Oh! What a Lovely War (1969) that mocked the entire genre. However, it was in his World War II films, which included We Dive at Dawn (1943), Waterloo Road (1945) and Johnny in the Clouds (1945), that Mills established himself as an innovative English film star.
With his ordinary appearance and everyman manner, Mills seemed "the boy-next-door," but the Mills hero was decent, loyal and brave, as well as tough and reliable under stress. In his military roles, he managed throughout his career to include enough subtle variations on the Mills heroic type to avoid appearing typed. He could play such straight heroes as Scott of the Antarctic (1948) as well as deconstruct the type in Ice Cold in Alex (1958) and "Tunes of Glory." The latter film features one of his finest film roles, that of the brittle Col. Basil Barrow, the new commander of a Scots battalion. Mills superbly played an emotionally troubled martinet in a role originally slated for Alec Guinness, his Great Expectations (1946) co-star, who decided to take the flashier role of the colonel's tormentor. It was one of Mills' favorite characters.
No male star of English cinema enjoyed such a long and rewarding career as a star while appearing predominantly in English films. As an actor, Mills chose his roles on the basis of the quality of the script rather than its propriety as a "star" turn. Because of this, he played roles that were more akin to character parts, such as shoemaker Willy Mossop in Hobson's Choice (1954). As he aged, his proclivity for well-written roles enabled him to make a seamless transition from a lead to character lead to character actor from the 1950s to the 1960s.
Almost 40 years after his film debut, Mills won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for playing the mute village idiot in Lean's Ryan's Daughter (1970), an uncharacteristic part. In addition to "In Which We Serve" and "Ryan's Daughter," Lean had also directed Mills in memorable performances in This Happy Breed (1944) and "Hobson's Choice". He gave one of his finest turns as Pip in Lean's masterpiece "Great Expectations", in which Mills' performance was central to the success of the picture.
Other significant films in which Mills appeared include The Rocking Horse Winner (1949), King Vidor's War and Peace (1956), The Chalk Garden (1964), King Rat (1965), The Wrong Box (1966), Lady Caroline Lamb (1972), Young Winston (1972) and Stanley Kramer's Oklahoma Crude (1973). He also appeared with his daughter Hayley Mills in Tiger Bay (1959) and The Family Way (1966) and had a cameo in her Disney hit The Parent Trap (1961). Mills appeared in a Disney hit of his own, Swiss Family Robinson (1960), as the paterfamilias. He had one of the better cameo parts in producer Mike Todd's epic Around the World in 80 Days (1956), playing a carriage driver, and appeared in a non-speaking part as Old Norway in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996).
In 1967 he appeared in the short-lived American TV series Dundee and the Culhane (1967) on CBS. In the hour-long series Mills played an English lawyer named Dundee who roamed the Wild West with a young American lawyer named Culhane, who was also a fast draw with a six-gun. The network was disappointed with the quality of the show's writing and cancelled it after 13 episodes. One of the series' directors was Ida Lupino, who played Mills' sister in "The Ghost Camera" over 30 years before (Lupino also directed Hayley in The Trouble with Angels (1966)). Mills' most famous television role was probably the title character in ITV's Quatermass (1979).
He appeared on Broadway during the 1961-62 season as the lead character in Terence Rattigan's "Ross," a fictionalization of the life of T.E. Lawrence, for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Tony Award. His only other Broadway appearance was in the 1987 revival of George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," in which he played Alfred Doolittle. The play was nominated for a Tony for Best Revival, and Amanda Plummer, playing his character's daughter, Eliza, also received a Tony nomination.
After divorcing Aileen Raymond, whom he had married at the age of 19, Mills married playwright Mary Hayley Bell on January 16, 1941. Since he was serving in the army, they could not have a church service, and they renewed their vows at St. Mary's Church, next to their home, Hills House, in Denham, England, in 2001.
Mills has worked as both producer and director: in 1966, he directed daughter Hayley in Gypsy Girl (1966) (a.k.a. "Gypsy Girl), from a script written by his wife. He produced "The Rocking Horse Winner" and The History of Mr. Polly (1949), the latter film featuring his older daughter Juliet Mills as a child. Whistle Down the Wind (1961) in which Hayley's character mistakes a runaway convict played by Alan Bates for Jesus Christ, was based on a novel written by Mary.
Living in Hollywood during the 1960s where his daughter Hayley enjoyed her own Oscar-winning career as a child star, Mills and his wife became very popular with members of the movie colony. After Hayley grew out of her child actress roles, Mills returned to England, where he continued his film work. He became a council member of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and a life patron of the Variety Club.
Mills was appointed a Commander of the British Empire in 1960 and was knighted in 1976. Although he suffered from deafness and failing eyesight and went almost completely blind in 1990, he continued to act, playing both blind and sighted characters with his customary joie de vivre and panache. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts honored him with a Special Tribute Award in 1987 and a Fellowship, its highest award, in 2002. He was honored with a British Film Institute Fellowship in 1995 and was named a Disney Legend by The Walt Disney Co.
After a brief illness, Sir John Mills died at the age of 97 on April 23, 2005, in Denham, Buckinghamshire, England. He was survived by his widow (who survived him by eight months), his son Jonathan, his daughters Juliet and Hayley, and his grandson Crispian Mills, the lead singer of the hit pop music group Kula Shaker. He was the author of an autobiography, "Up in the Clouds, Gentleman Please," published in 1981.- Actress
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Anne Bancroft was born on September 17, 1931 in The Bronx, NY, the middle daughter of Michael Italiano (1905-2001), a dress pattern maker, and Mildred DiNapoli (1907-2010), a telephone operator. She made her cinema debut in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) in 1952, and over the next five years appeared in a lot of undistinguished movies such as Gorilla at Large (1954), Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), New York Confidential (1955), Nightfall (1956) and The Girl in Black Stockings (1957). By 1957 she grew dissatisfied with the scripts she was getting, left the film business and spent the next five years doing plays on Broadway. She returned to screens in 1962 with her portrayal of Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker (1962), for which she won an Oscar. Bancroft went on to give acclaimed performances in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Slender Thread (1965), Young Winston (1972), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), The Elephant Man (1980), To Be or Not to Be (1983), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) and other movies, but her most famous role would be as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967). Her status as the "older woman" in the film is iconic, although in real life she was only eight years older than Katharine Ross and just six years older than Dustin Hoffman. Bancroft would later express her frustration over the fact that the film overshadowed her other work. Selective for much of her intermittent career, she appeared onscreen more frequently in the '90s and early '00s, playing a range of characters in such films as Love Potion No. 9 (1992), Point of No Return (1993), Home for the Holidays (1995), G.I. Jane (1997), Great Expectations (1998), Keeping the Faith (2000) and Up at the Villa (2000). She also started to make some TV films, including Deep in My Heart (1999) for which she won an Emmy. Sadly, on June 6, 2005, Bancroft passed away at the age of 73 from uterine cancer. Her death surprised many, as she had not disclosed her illness to the public. Among her survivors was her husband of 41 years, Mel Brooks, and their son Max Brooks, who was born in 1972. Her final film, the animated feature Delgo (2008), was released posthumously in 2008 and dedicated to her memory.- Actor
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Probably best-remembered for his turbulent personal life with Elizabeth Taylor (whom he married twice), Richard Burton was nonetheless also regarded as an often brilliant British actor of the post-WWII period.
Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins in 1925 into a Welsh (Cymraeg)-speaking family in Pontrhydyfen to Edith Maude (Thomas) and Richard Walter Jenkins, a coal miner. The twelfth of thirteen children, his mother died while he was a toddler and his father later abandoned the family, leaving him to be raised by an elder sister, Cecilia. An avid fan of Shakespeare, poetry and reading, he once said "home is where the books are". He received a scholarship to Oxford University to study acting and made his first stage appearance in 1944.
His first film appearances were in routine British movies such as Woman of Dolwyn (1949), Waterfront Women (1950) and Green Grow the Rushes (1951). Then he started to appear in Hollywood movies such as My Cousin Rachel (1952), The Robe (1953) and Alexander the Great (1956), added to this he was also spending considerable time in stage productions, both in the UK and USA, often to splendid reviews. The late 1950s was an exciting and inventive time in UK cinema, often referred to as the "British New Wave", and Burton was right in the thick of things, and showcased a sensational performance in Look Back in Anger (1959). He also appeared with a cavalcade of international stars in the World War II magnum opus The Longest Day (1962), and then onto arguably his most "notorious" role as that of Marc Antony opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the hugely expensive Cleopatra (1963). This was, of course, the film that kick-started their fiery and passionate romance (plus two marriages), and the two of them appeared in several productions over the next few years including The V.I.P.s (1963), The Sandpiper (1965), the dynamic Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Taming of The Shrew (1967), as well as box office flops like The Comedians (1967). Burton did better when he was off on his own giving higher caliber performances, such as those in Becket (1964), the film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play The Night of the Iguana (1964), the brilliant espionage thriller The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) and alongside Clint Eastwood in the World War II action adventure film Where Eagles Dare (1968).
His audience appeal began to decline somewhat by the end of the 1960s as fans turned to younger, more virile male stars, however Burton was superb in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) as King Henry VIII, he put on a reasonable show in the boring Raid on Rommel (1971), was over the top in the awful Villain (1971), gave sleepwalking performances in Hammersmith Is Out (1972) and Bluebeard (1972), and was wildly miscast in the ludicrous The Assassination of Trotsky (1972).
By the early 1970s, quality male lead roles were definitely going to other stars, and Burton found himself appearing in some movies of dubious quality, just to pay the bills and support family, including Divorce His - Divorce Hers (1973) (his last on-screen appearance with Taylor), The Klansman (1974), Brief Encounter (1974), Jackpot (1974) (which was never completed) and Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). However, he won another Oscar nomination for his excellent performance as a concerned psychiatrist in Equus (1977). He appeared with fellow acting icons Richard Harris and Roger Moore in The Wild Geese (1978) about mercenaries in South Africa. While the film had a modest initial run, over the past thirty-five years it has picked up quite a cult following. His final performances were as the wily inquisitor "O'Brien" in the most recent film version of George Orwell's dystopian 1984 (1984), in which he won good reviews, and in the TV mini series Ellis Island (1984). He passed away on August 5, 1984 in Celigny, Switzerland from a cerebral hemorrhage.- Pamela Charles was born on 10 June 1930 in Croydon, Surrey, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Water Gipsies (1955), The Benny Hill Show (1955) and The Ed Sullivan Show (1948). She died on 18 April 2018 in England, UK.
- Sandra Church was born on 13 January 1938 in San Francisco, California, USA. She is an actress, known for The DuPont Show of the Month (1957), The Adventures of Taura: Prison Ship Star Slammer (1986) and The Ugly American (1963). She was previously married to Norman Twain.
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Dick Van Dyke was born Richard Wayne Van Dyke in West Plains, Missouri, to Hazel Victoria (McCord), a stenographer, and Loren Wayne Van Dyke, a salesman. His younger brother was entertainer Jerry Van Dyke. His ancestry includes English, Dutch, Scottish, German and Swiss-German. Although he had small roles beforehand, Van Dyke was launched to stardom in the musical "Bye-Bye Birdie" (1960), for which he won a Tony Award, and, then, later in the movie based on that play, Bye Bye Birdie (1963). He has starred in a number of films through the years including Mary Poppins (1964), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and Fitzwilly (1967), as well as a number of successful television series which won him no less than four Emmy Awards and three made-for-CBS movies. After separating from his wife, Margie Willett, in the 1970s, Dick later became involved with Michelle Triola. Margie and Dick had four children born during the first ten years of their marriage: Barry Van Dyke, Carrie Beth Van Dyke, Christian Van Dyke and Stacy Van Dyke, all of whom are now in their sixties and seventies, and married themselves. He has seven grandchildren, including Shane Van Dyke, Carey Van Dyke, Wes Van Dyke and Taryn Van Dyke (Barry's children) and family members often appear with him on Diagnosis Murder (1993).- Actor
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This remarkable, soft-spoken American began in films as a diffident juvenile. With passing years, he matured into a star character actor who exemplified not only integrity and strength, but an ideal of the common man fighting against social injustice and oppression. He was born in Grand Island, Hall, Nebraska, the son of Herberta Elma (Jaynes) and William Brace Fonda, who was a commercial printer, and proprietor of the W. B. Fonda Printing Company in Omaha, Nebraska. His distant ancestors were Italians who had fled their country and moved to Holland, presumably because of political or religious persecution. In the mid-1600s, they crossed the Atlantic and settled in upstate New York where they founded a community with the Fonda name.
Growing up, Henry developed an early interest in journalism after having a story published in a local newspaper. At the age of twelve, he helped in his father's printing business for $2 a week. Following graduation from high school in 1923, he got a part-time job in Minneapolis with the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company which allowed him at first to pursue journalistic studies at the University of Minnesota. As it became difficult to juggle his working hours with his academic roster, he obtained another position as a physical education instructor at $30 a week, including room and board. By this time, he had grown to a height of six foot one and was a natural for basketball.
In 1925, having returned to Omaha, Henry reevaluated his options and came to the conclusion that journalism was not his forte, after all. For a while, he tried his hand at several temporary jobs, including as a mechanic and a window dresser. Then, despite opposition from his parents, Henry accepted an offer from Gregory Foley, director of the Omaha Playhouse, to play the title role in 'Merton of the Movies'. His father would not speak to him for a month. The play and its star received fairly good notices in the local press. It ran for a week, after which Henry observed "the idea of being Merton and not myself taught me that I could hide behind a mask". For the rest of the repertory season, Henry advanced to assistant director which enabled him to design and paint sets as well as act. A casual trip to New York, however, had already made him set his sights on Broadway.
In 1928, he headed east and briefly played in summer stock before joining the University Players, a group of talented Princeton and Harvard graduates among whose number were such future luminaries as James Stewart (who would remain his closest lifelong friend), Joshua Logan and Kent Smith. Before long, Henry played leads opposite Margaret Sullavan, soon to become the first of his five wives. Both marriage and the players broke up four years later. In 1932, Henry found himself sharing a two-room New York apartment with Jimmy Stewart and Joshua Logan. For the next two years, he alternated scenic design with acting at various repertory companies. In 1934, he got a break of sorts, when he was given the chance to present a comedy sketch with Imogene Coca in the Broadway revue New Faces. That year, he also hired Leland Hayward as his personal management agent and this was to pay off handsomely.
It was Hayward who persuaded the 29-year old to become a motion picture actor, despite initial misgivings and reluctance on Henry's part. Independent producer Walter Wanger, whose growing stock company was birthed at United Artists, needed a star for The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935). With both first choice actors Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea otherwise engaged, Henry was the next available option. After all, he had just completed a successful run on Broadway in the stage version. The cheesy publicity tag line for the picture was "you'll be fonder of Fonda", but the film was an undeniable hit. Wanger, realizing he had a good thing going, next cast Henry in a succession of A-grade pictures which capitalized on his image as the sincere, unaffected country boy. Pick of the bunch were the Technicolor outdoor western The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), the gritty Depression-era drama You Only Live Once (1937) (with Henry as a back-to-the-wall good guy forced into becoming a fugitive from the law by circumstance), the screwball comedy The Moon's Our Home (1936) (with ex-wife Sullavan), the excellent pre-civil war-era romantic drama Jezebel (1938) and the equally superb Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), in which Henry gave his best screen performance to date as the 'jackleg lawyer from Springfield'. Henry made two more films with director John Ford: the pioneering drama Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940), with Henry as Tom Joad, often regarded his career-defining role as the archetypal grassroots American trying to stand up against oppression. It also set the tone for his subsequent career. Whether he played a lawman (Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (1946)), a reluctant posse member (The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), a juror committed to the ideal of total justice in (12 Angry Men (1957)) or a nightclub musician wrongly accused of murder (The Wrong Man (1956)), his characters were alike in projecting integrity and quiet authority. In this vein, he also gave a totally convincing (though historically inaccurate) portrayal in the titular role of The Return of Frank James (1940), a rare example of a sequel improving upon the original.
Henry rarely featured in comedy, except for a couple of good turns opposite Barbara Stanwyck -- with whom he shared an excellent on-screen chemistry -- in The Mad Miss Manton (1938) and The Lady Eve (1941). He was also good value as a poker-playing grifter in the western comedy A Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966). Finally, just to confound those who would typecast him, he gave a chilling performance as one of the coldest, meanest stone killers ever to roam the West, in Sergio Leone's classic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Illness curtailed his work in the 1970s. His final screen role was as an octogenarian in On Golden Pond (1981), in which he was joined by his daughter Jane. It finally won him an Oscar on the heels of an earlier Honorary Academy Award. Too ill to attend the ceremony, he died soon after at the age of 77, having left a lasting legacy matched by few of his peers.- Actress
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Slim, pixie-like, two-time Tony Award winner Tammy Grimes who put on marvelously quirky Cowardesque airs and captivated audiences with her inimitably throaty, raspy voice was actually not British but born in Lynn, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1934, the daughter of Eola Willard (née Niles), a naturalist and spiritualist, and Luther Nichols Grimes, an innkeeper, country-club manager, and farmer. She attended the all-girls Beaver Country Day School in nearby Chestnut Hill and later received entry at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, before relocating to New York for professional acting purposes.
Grimes studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse and made her NY debut there in "Jonah and the Whale" in 1955. Broadway offers came shortly after, first as a standby for Kim Stanley as Cherie in "Bus Stop" in June 1955. In 1956, she appeared in the off-Broadway production "The Littlest Revue," performed in a cross-country tour of "The Lark," made an Obie-winning appearance in the off-Broadway play "Clerambard," and in 1959 nabbed the lead role in Noël Coward's play "Look After Lulu!" on Broadway after the renowned playwright discovered her distinctive style of singing at Julius Monk's Downstairs at the Upstairs nightclub in New York. She won a Theatre World Award for that. She later was guest star at the New York City Opera in a revival of "The Cradle will Rock," recreating the role of Moll. On the classical side, Tammy starred with the American Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Connecticut, as Mistress Quickly in "Henry IV", and Mopsa in 'The Winter's Tale".
Earning the role of the indomitable, rags-to-riches, Titanic-surviving Molly Brown in the 1960 musical comedy "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", Grimes won a Tony Award as "Best Featured Actress in a Musical" (due to below the title rules at the time). She followed this with the 1963 play "Rattle of a Simple Man" in 1963. On TV she appeared twice on the popular series "Route 66" and is fondly remembered for her performance in four TV specials: "Four for Tonight" with Cyril Ritchard, Beatrice Lillie and Tony Randall; "Hollywood Sings" with Eddie Albert; "The Datchet Diamonds" with Rex Harrison, and Archy and Mehitabel (1960) with Eddie Bracken.
Grimes was originally offered the part of Samantha Stevens in the sitcom Bewitched (1964) but was released from her contract when friend Noël Coward asked her to star on Broadway as Elvira in "High Spirits", a musical directed by Coward himself and based on his own comedic play, "Blithe Spirit." The role of Samantha in Bewitched (1964) went to Elizabeth Montgomery and the series was a smash hit.
1966-67 were tepid years for the actress. After "Bewitched", Grimes finally received her own ABC television series, The Tammy Grimes Show (1966), playing a wealthy heiress but the show was not well-received and dropped quickly, making it one of the shortest series shown in TV history. That same year she was featured in her first film, Three Bites of the Apple (1967), a diverting comedy starring British actor David McCallum and Italian actress Sylva Koscina. The film helped showcase Grimes's quirky talents, but it made no impression on the public and pretty much put the bite on a leading lady career. Later she was sporadically and sometimes bizarrely featured into such films as Play It As It Lays (1972), Somebody Killed Her Husband (1978), The Runner Stumbles (1979), America (1986), Mr. North (1988), Slaves of New York (1989), A Modern Affair (1995), and High Art (1998).
Grimes became the toast of New York when she appeared in a revival of Noël Coward's "Private Lives" as "Amanda", winning her second Tony Award, this time for "Best Actress". During her career, she also spent several seasons at the Stratford Festival in Canada. In addition to night clubs, she has also recorded several albums of songs, recited poetry, and hosted CBS Radio Mystery Theater.
In 2003, Grimes was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame and later that year was invited by The Noel Coward Society (she later became its vice president) to be the first celebrity to lay flowers on the statue of Sir Coward at The Gershwin Theatre in Manhattan to celebrate the playwright's 104th birthday. In 2007, the septuagenarian returned to the cabaret stage in a critically acclaimed one-woman show at the Plush Room, "An Evening with Miss Tammy Grimes."
Grimes was married three times. First to actor Christopher Plummer in August 1956, by whom she had actress Amanda Plummer. The couple were divorced in 1960. Her second husband was actor Jeremy Slate, whose marriage in 1966 lasted but a year. Her 1971 union to Canadian composer Richard Jameson Bell, was a great success and lasted until his death in 2005.
Tammy Grimes died on October 30, 2016, aged 82, in Englewood, New Jersey, from undisclosed causes. She was survived by her brother, Luther Nichols "Nick" Grimes Jr., and her Tony-winning actress/daughter Amanda.- Actress
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One of the finest classical and contemporary leading ladies ever to grace the 20th century American stage, five-time Tony Award winner Julie Harris was rather remote and reserved on camera, finding her true glow in front of the theatre lights. The freckled, red-haired actress not only was nominated for a whopping total of ten Tony awards and was a Sarah Siddons Award recipient for her work on the Chicago stage, she also earned awards in other areas of the entertainment industry, including three Emmys (of 11 nominations), a Grammy and an Academy Award nomination. (Note: Harris would hold the record for the most competitive Tony performance wins (five) for a couple of decades. Angela Lansbury finally caught up with her in 2009 and singer/actress Audra McDonald surpassed them both in 2014 with six). While Harris certainly lacked the buoyancy and glamor usually associated with being a movie star, she certainly made an impact in the early to mid 1950s with three iconic leading roles, two of which she resurrected from the Broadway stage. After that she pretty much deserted film.
Born Julie Ann Harris on December 2, 1925, in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, she was the daughter of William Pickett, an investment banker, and Elsie L. (née Smith) Harris, a nurse. Graduating from Grosse Pointe Country Day School, an early interest in the performance arts was encouraged by her family. Moving to New York City, Julie attended The Hewitt School and later trained as a teenager at the Perry-Mansfield Performing Arts School & Camp in Colorado. A mentor there, Charlotte Perry, saw great hope for young Julie and was insistent that her protégé study at the Yale School of Drama. Julie did just that -- for about a year.
Also trained at the New York School of Drama and one of the earliest members of the Acting Studio, young Julie made her Broadway debut in 1945 at age 19 in the comedy "It's a Gift". Despite its lukewarm reception, the demure, diminutive (5'3"), and delicate-looking thespian moved on. She apprenticed on Broadway for the next few years with ensemble parts in "King Henry IV, Part II" (1946), "Oedipus Rex" (1946), "The Playboy of the Western World" (1946), "Alice in Wonderland" (as the White Rabbit) (1947), and Macbeth" (1948).
More prominent roles came her way in such short-lived Broadway plays as "Sundown Beach" (1948), "The Young and Fair" (1948), "Magnolia Alley" (1949) and "Montserrat (1949). This led to her star-making theatre role at age 24 as sensitive 12-year-old tomboy Frankie Addams in the classic drama "The Member of the Wedding" (1950) opposite veteran actress Ethel Waters and based on the Carson McCullers novel. The play ran for over a year. The Member of the Wedding (1952) would eventually be transferred to film and, despite being untried talents on film, director Fred Zinnemann wisely included both Harris and young Brandon De Wilde (as young John Henry) to reenact their stage triumphs along with Ms. Waters. Harris, at 27, received her first and only Academy Award nomination as the coming-of-age Georgian tomboy.
It wasn't long before Julie's exceptional range and power won noticed nationwide. In 1952, she received her first "Best Actress" Tony Award for creating the larger-than-life role of Sally Bowles in "I Am a Camera," the stage version of one of Christopher Isherwood's Berlin stories ("Goodbye to Berlin" (1939). (Note: In the 1960s, Isherwood's play would be transformed successfully into the Broadway musical "Cabaret".) Harris again was invited to repeat her stage role in I Am a Camera (1955) with Laurence Harvey and Shelley Winters, winning the BAFTA "Best Foreign Actress" Award. That same year Harris starred opposite the highly emotive James Dean (she had top billing) as his love interest in the classic film East of Eden (1955), directed by Elia Kazan from the John Steinbeck novel. Strangely, Julie's brilliance in the role of Abra was completely overlooked come Oscar time...a terrible miscarriage of justice in this author's view.
After this vivid film exposure, Julie's love for the theatre completely dominated her career focus. She continued to increase her Broadway prestige with such plays as "Mademoiselle Colombe" (title role) (1954), "The Lark" (Tony Award: as Joan of Arc) (1955), "The Country Wife" (1957), "The Warm Peninsula" (1959), "Little Moon Over Alban" (1960) (which she took to Emmy-winning TV), "A Shot in the Dark" (1961), "Ready When Your Are, C.B.!" (1964), "Skyscraper" (1965), "Forty Carats" (Tony Award) (1968), "And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little" ) (1971), "The Au Pair Man" (1973) and "In Praise of Love" (1974). In between she gave stellar performances on TV with her Joan of Arc in The Lark (1957); title role in Johnny Belinda (1958); Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House (1959); Catherine Sloper in The Heiress (1961); title role in Victoria Regina (1961) (for which received an Emmy award); Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion (1963), and title role in Anastasia (1967).Be
In later years Harris reaped praises and honors for her awe-inspiring one-woman touring shows based on the lives of certain distaff historical figureheads. Her magnificently tormented, Tony-winning "First Lady" Mary Lincoln in "The Last of Mrs. Lincoln" (1972) was the first to be seen on stage and TV, followed by another Tony (and Grammy) Award-winning performance as poetess Emily Dickinson in "The Belle of Amherst" (1976) (directed by close friend Charles Nelson Reilly, as well as her early 1980s solo portrait of author Charlotte Brontë in "Bronte," which started out as a radio play. Julie was now placed among the theatre's luminous "ruling class" alongside legendary veterans Helen Hayes, Katharine Cornell and Judith Anderson.
As time wore on, Harris would become equally respected on film and TV for her portrayals of over-the-edge neurotics, wallflowers and eccentric maiden aunt types as witnessed by her co-starring roles in the films The Haunting (1963), Hamlet (1964) (as Ophelia), Harper (1966), You're a Big Boy Now (1966), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), The Bell Jar (1979), and the TV-movies How Awful About Allan (1970) and Home for the Holidays (1972). Perhaps a step down performance wise, the veteran actress, after a period of ill health, became a household name with her regular series work as Lilimae on the TV soap Knots Landing (1979).
At age 60, Harris continued to impress on Broadway with her 1990's versions of Amanda Wingfield in "The Glass Menagerie" and Fonsia Dorsey in "The Gin Game" for which she received her tenth and final Tony nomination. She also toured successfully with a production of "Lettice and Lovage". Unlike many other actors whose film roles disintegrated with appearances in bottom-of-the-barrel lowbudgets, Julie's final two supporting films roles were in two nicely constructed period romantic comedies -- The Golden Boys (2008) and The Lightkeepers (2009).
Ill health dogged Julie's later years (she battled breast cancer in 1981 and suffered two strokes -- one in 2001 (while performing in the Chicago play "Fossils") and again in 2010). Nevertheless, she continued to work almost until the end, including narrating five historical documentaries and giving Emmy-winning voice to such women suffragettes as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Married and divorced three times, Julie had one son by her second marriage -- Peter, who became a theatre critic. She also spent time enjoying the benefits of receiving special awards and honors for her full body of work. Among these, she was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1979, was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994, received a "Special Lifetime Achievement" Tony Award in 2002 and was a 2005 Kennedy Center honoree.
Harris died on August 24, 2013, of congestive heart failure at her home in West Chatham, Massachusetts. She was 87.- Actress
- Producer
- Executive
Angela Lansbury was born in 1925 into a prominent family of the upper middle class living in the Regent's Park neighborhood of London. Her father was socialist politician Edgar Isaac Lansbury (1887-1935), a member of both the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and the Labour Party. Edgar served as Honorary Treasurer of the East London Federation of Suffragettes (term 1915), and Mayor of Poplar (term 1924-1925). He was the second Communist mayor in British history, the first being Joe Vaughan (1878-1938). Lansbury's mother was Irish film actress Moyna Macgill (1895-1975), originally from Belfast. During the first five years of Angela's life, the Lansbury family lived in a flat located in Poplar. In 1930, they moved to a house located in the Mill Hill neighborhood of north London. They spend their weekends vacationing in a farm located in Berrick Salome, a village in South Oxfordshire.
In 1935, Edgar Lansbury died from stomach cancer. Angela reportedly retreated into "playing characters", as a coping mechanism to deal with the loss. The widowed Moyna Macgill soon became engaged to Leckie Forbes, a Scottish colonel. Moyna moved into his house in Hampstead.
From 1934 to 1939, Angela was a student at South Hampstead High School. During these years, she became interested in films.. She regularly visited the local cinema, and imagined herself in various roles. Angela learned how to play the piano, and received a musical education at the Ritman School of Dancing.
In 1940, Lansbury started her acting education at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art, located in Kensington, West London. She made her theatrical debut in the school's production of the play "Mary of Scotland" (1933) by Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959). The play depicted the life of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587, reigned 1542-1567), and Lansbury played one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting.
Also in 1940, Lansbury's paternal grandfather, George Lansbury, died from stomach cancer. When the Blitz started, Moyna Macgill had reasons to fear for the safety of her family and few remaining ties to England. Macgill moved to the United States to escape the Blitz, taking her three youngest children with her. Isolde was already a married adult, and was left behind in England.
Macgill secured financial sponsorship from American businessman Charles T. Smith. She and her children (including Angela) moved into Smith's house in Mahopac, New York, a hamlet in Putnam County. Lansbury was interested in continuing her studies, and secured a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing. From 1940 to 1942, Lansbury studied acting at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art, located in New York City. She appeared in performances organized by the school.
In 1942, Lansbury moved with her family to a flat located in Morton Street, Greenwich Village. She soon followed her mother in her theatrical tour of Canada. Lansbury secured her first paying job in Montreal, singing at the nightclub Samovar Club for a payment of 60 dollars per week. Lansbury was 16 years old at the time, but lied about her age and claimed to be 19 in order to be hired.
Lansbury returned to New York City in August, 1942, but Moyna Macgill soon moved herself and her family again. The family moved to Los Angeles, where Moyna was interested in resurrecting her film career. Their first home there was a bungalow in Laurel Canyon, a neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills.
Lansbury helped financially support her family by working for the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles. Her weekly wages were only 28 dollars, but she had a secure income while her mother was unemployed. Through her mother, Lansbury was introduced to screenwriter John Van Druten (1901-1957), who had recently completed his script of "Gaslight" (1944). He suggested that young Lansbury would be perfect for the role of Nancy Oliver, the film's conniving cockney maid. This helped secure Lansbury's first film role at the age of 17, and a seven-year contract with the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She earned 500 dollars per week, and chose to continue using her own name instead of a stage name.
In 1945, Lansbury married actor Richard Cromwell (1910-1960), who was 15 years older than she. The troubled marriage ended in a divorce in 1946. The former spouses remained friends until Cromwell's death.
In 1946, Lansbury started a romantic relationship with aspiring actor Peter Shaw (1918-2003), who was 7 years older than her. Shaw had recently ended his relationship with actress Joan Crawford (c. 1908-1977). The new couple started living together, while planning marriage. They wanted to be married in the United Kingdom, but the Church of England refused to marry two divorcees. They were married in 1949, in a Church of Scotland ceremony at St. Columba's Church, located in Knightsbridge, London. After their return to the United States, they settled into Lansbury's home in Rustic Canyon, Malibu. In 1951, both Lansbury and Shaw became naturalized citizens of the United States, while retaining their British citizenship.
Meanwhile, Lansbury continued appearing in MGM films. She appeared in 11 MGM films between 1945 and 1952. MGM at times loaned Lansbury to other film studios. She appeared in United Artists' "The Private Affairs of Bel Ami" (1947), and Paramount Pictures' "Samson and Delilah" (1949). In 1948, Lansbury made her debut in radio roles, followed by her television debut in 1950.
In 1952, Lansbury requested the termination of her contract with MGM, instead of its renewal. She felt unsatisfied with her film career as an MGM contract player. She then joined the East Coast touring productions of two former Broadway plays. By 1953, Lansbury had two children of her own and was also raising a stepson. She and her family moved into a larger house, located on San Vincente Boulevard in Santa Monica. In 1959, she and her family moved into a house in Malibu. The married couple were able to send their children to a local public school.
Meanwhile she continued her film career as a freelance actress, but continued to be cast in middle-aged roles. She regained her A-picture actress through well-received roles in the drama film "The Long, Hot Summer" (1958) and the comedy film "The Reluctant Debutante" (1958). She also appeared regularly in television roles, and became a regular on game show "Pantomime Quiz" (1947-1959).
In 1957, Lansbury made her Broadway debut in a performance of "Hotel Paradiso". The play was an adaptation of the 1894 "L'Hôtel du libre échange" ("Free Exchange Hotel"), written by Maurice Desvallières (1857-1926) and Georges Feydeau (1862-1921). Lansbury's role as "Marcel Cat" was critically well received. She continued appearing in Broadway over the next several years, most notably cast as the verbally abusive mother in "A Taste of Honey". She was cast as the mother of co-star Joan Plowright (1929-), who was only four years younger.
In the early 1960s, Lansbury was cast as an overbearing mother in "Blue Hawaii" (1961). The role of her son was played by Elvis Presley (1935-1977), who was only 10 years than her. The film was a box office hit, it finished as the 10th-top-grossing film of 1961 and 14th for 1962 on the "Variety" national box office survey. It gained Lansbury renewed fame, at a difficult point of her career.
Lansbury gained critical praise for a sympathetic role in the drama film "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1960), and the role of a manipulative mother in the drama film "All Fall Down" (1962). Based on her success in "All Fall Down", she was cast in a similar role in the Cold War-themed thriller "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962). She was cast as Eleanor Iselin, the mother of her co-star Laurence Harvey (1928-1973), who was only 3 years younger than she. This turned out to be one of the most memorable roles in her career. She received critical acclaim and was nominated for a third time for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The award was instead won by Patty Duke (1946-2016).
Lansbury made a comeback in the starring role of Mame Dennis in the musical "Mame" (1966), by Jerome Lawrence (1915-2004) and Robert Edwin Lee (1918-1994). The play was an adaptation of the novel "Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade" (1955) by Patrick Dennis (1921-1976), and focused on the life and ideas of eccentric bohemian Mame Dennis. The musical received critical and popular praise, and Lansbury won her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Lansbury gained significant fame from her success, becoming a "superstar".
Her newfound fame led to other high-profile appearances by Lansbury. She starred in a musical performance at the 1968 Academy Awards ceremony, and co-hosted the 1968 Tony Awards. The Hasty Pudding Club, a social club for Harvard students. elected her "Woman of the Year" in 1968.
Lansbury's next theatrical success was in 1969 "The Madwoman of Chaillot" (1945) by Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944). The play concerns an eccentric Parisian woman's struggles with authority figures. Lansbury was cast in the starring role of 75-year-old Countess Aurelia, despite her actual age of 44. The show was well received and lasted for 132 performances. Lansbury won her second Tony Award for this role.
In 1970, Lansbury's Malibu home was destroyed in a brush fire. Lansbury and her husband decided to buy Knockmourne Glebe, an 1820s Irish farmhouse, located near the village of Conna in rural County Cork.
Her film career reached a new height. She was cast in the starring role of benevolent witch Eglantine Price in Disney's fantasy film "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (1971). The film was a box-office hit; it was critically well received, and introduced Lansbury to a wider audience of children and families.
In 1972, Lansbury returned to the British stage, performing in London's West End with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1973, Lansbury appeared in the role of Rose in London performances of the musical "Gypsy" (1959) by Arthur Laurents. It was quite successful. In 1974, "Gypsy" went on tour in the United States. with the same cast. For her role, Lanbury won the Sarah Siddons Award and her third Tony Award. The musical had its second tour in 1975.
Tired from musicals. Lansbury next sought Shakespearean roles in the United Kingdom. From 1975 to 1976, she appeared as Queen Gertrude in the National Theatre Company's production of Hamlet. In November 1975, Lansbury's mother Moyna Macgill died at the age of 79. Lansbury arranged for her mother's remains to be cremated, and the ashes scattered near her own County Cork home.
In 1976, Lansbury returned to the American stage. In 1978, Lansbury temporarily replaced Constance Towers (1933-) in the starring role of Anna Leonowens (1831-1915) in The King and I. While Towers was on a break from the role, Lansbury appeared in 24 performances.
In 1978, Lansbury appeared in her first film role in seven years, as the novelist and murder victim Salome Otterbourne in the mystery film "Death on the Nile" (1978). The film was an adaptation of the 1937 novel by Agatha Christie (1890-1976); Otterbourne was loosely based on real-life novelist Elinor Glyn (1864-1943). The film was a modest box-office hit, and Lansbury befriended her co-star Bette Davis (1908-1989).
In 1979, Lansbury was cast in the role of meat pie seller Mrs. Lovett in the musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (1979), by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler (1912-1987). The musical was loosely based on the penny dreadful serial novel "The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance" (1846-1847), which first depicted fictional serial killer Sweeney Todd. Lansbury remained in the role for 14 months, and was then replaced by Dorothy Loudon (1925-2003). Lansbury won her fourth Tony Award for this role. She returned to the role for 10 months in 1980.
Lansbury's next prominent film role was that of Miss Froy in "The Lady Vanishes" (1979), a remake of the 1938 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). She was next cast in the role of amateur sleuth Miss Jane Marple in the mystery film "The Mirror Crack'd" (1980), an adaptation of the novel "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side" (1962) by Agatha Christie. The novel was loosely inspired by the life of Gene Tierney (1920-1991). The film was a modest commercial success. There were plans for at least two sequels, but they ended in development hell.
In 1982, Lansbury was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, She appeared at the time in the new play "A Little Family Business" and a revival of "Mame", but both shows were commercial failures. In film, Lansbury voiced the witch Mommy Fortuna in the animated fantasy film "The Last Unicorn" (1982). The film was critically well received, but was not a box-office hit.
Lansbury played Ruth in the musical comedy "The Pirates of Penzance" (1983), a film adaptation of the 1879 comic opera by William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900). The film was a box office bomb, earning about 695,000 dollars.
Lansbury's next film role was that of Granny in the gothic fantasy film "The Company of Wolves" (1984), based on a 1979 short story by Angela Carter (1940-1992). Lansbury was cast as the grandmother of protagonist Rosaleen (played by Sarah Patterson), in a tale featuring werewolves and shape-shifting. The film was critically well received, but barely broke even at the box office.
At about that time, Lansbury appeared regularly in television films and mini-series. Her most prominent television role was that of Jessica Fletcher in the detective series "Murder, She Wrote" (1984-1996). Jessica was depicted as a successful mystery novelist from Maine who encounters and solves many murders. The character was considered an American counterpart to Miss Marple. The series followed the "whodunit" format and mostly avoided depictions of violence or gore.
The series was considered a television landmark for having an older female character as the protagonist. It was aimed primarily at middle-aged audiences, but also attracted both younger viewers and senior citizen viewers. Ratings remained high for most of its run. Lansbury rejected pressure from network executives to put her character in a relationship, as she believed that Fletcher should remain a strong single female.
In 1989, Lansbury co-founded the production company Corymore Productions, which started co-producing the television series with Universal Television. This allowed Lansbury to have more creative input on the series. She was appointed an executive producer. By the time the series ended in 1996, it tied with the original "Hawaii Five-O" (1968-1980) as the longest-running detective drama series in television history.
Her popularity from "Murder, She Wrote" made Lansbury a much-sought figure for advertisers. She appeared in advertisements and infomercials for Bufferin, MasterCard and the Beatrix Potter Company.
Lansbury's highest-profile film role in decades was voicing the character of singing teapot Mrs. Potts in Disney's animated fantasy film "Beauty and the Beast" (1991). Lansbury performed the film's title song, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.
During the late 1980s and 1990s, Lansbury lived most of the year in California. In 1991, she had Corymore House, a farmhouse at Ballywilliam, County Cork, built as her new family home. She spend Christmases and summers there.
Following the end of "Murder, She Wrote", Lansbury returned to a career as a theatrical actress. She temporarily retired from the stage in 2001, to take care of her husband Peter Shaw, whose health was failing. Shaw died in 2003, from congestive heart failure at the couple's Brentwood, California home. Their marriage had lasted for 54 years (1949-2003).
Lansbury felt at the time that she could not take on any more major acting roles, but that she could still make cameos. She moved back to New York City in 2006, buying a condominium in Manhattan. Her first prominent film role in years was that of Aunt Adelaide in the fantasy film "Nanny McPhee" (2005). She credits her performance in the film with pulling her out of depression, a state of mind which had lasted since her husband's death.
Lansbury returned to performing on the Broadway stage in 2007, after an absence of 23 years. In 2009, she won her fifth Tony Award. She shared the record for most Tony Award victories with Julie Harris (1925-2013). In the 2010s, she continued regularly appearing in theatrical performances. In 2014, she returned to the London stage, after an absence of nearly 40 years.
In 2015, Lansbury received her first Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress. At age 89, she was among the oldest first-time winners. Also in 2015, November 2015 was awarded the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.
In 2017, she was cast as Aunt March in the mini-series "Little Women". The mini-series was an adaptation of the 1868-1869 novel of the same name by Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888). The series lasted for 3 episodes, and was critically well received.
In 2018, Lansbury gained her next film role in Disney's fantasy film "Mary Poppins Returns" (2018), a sequel to "Mary Poppins". Lansbury was cast in the role of the Balloon Lady, a kindly old woman who sells balloons at the park. The films was a commercial hit, earning about 350 million dollars at the worldwide box office.
In 2019, Lansbury performed at a one-night benefit staging of Oscar Wilde's play "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895). a farce satirizing Victorian morals. She was cast in the role of society lady Lady Bracknell, mother to Gwendolen Fairfax.
By 2020, Lansbury was 95 years old, one of the oldest-living actresses. She has never retired from acting, and remains a popular icon.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Square-jawed, intense, no-nonsense Frank Lovejoy played a succession of detectives, street cops, reporters, soldiers and such over his career. Born in the Bronx, New York, in 1912, he worked on Wall Street as a teenager, but the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929 cost him his job, and to make ends meet he got into acting. He played in touring companies throughout the Northeast before making his Broadway debut in 1934. His gritty, authoritative voice was perfect for radio, and he became a staple on such shows as "Gangbusters", "Night Beat" and "Damon Runyon Theater". Making his film debut in 1948, he worked steadily, mainly in supporting parts but also as a first or second lead (one of his best roles was as one of the hunters kidnapped by murderous psychopath William Talman in the classic The Hitch-Hiker (1953), directed by Ida Lupino). He played soldiers in such war pictures as Breakthrough (1950) and Retreat, Hell! (1952) and even showed up in a western or two. During the 1950s he starred in his own TV shows, Man Against Crime (1956) and The Adventures of McGraw (1957). He died of a heart attack in New York City in 1962.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Originally a dance instructor, she came to Broadway during the Depression to begin her career as a professional actress. A daughter of Texas, she originally began work as a dance instructor until a local evangelical-adherent burned down her studio citing her work as being too sinful for human nature. Coming to New York City, she appeared on Broadway introducing the song "My Heart Belongs to Daddy". She later made a name for herself in several Hollywood musicals during the 1940s and later in her career enjoyed huge success as Peter Pan, which she cited as her favorite role.- Actress
- Writer
- Director
Elaine May (born under the name Elaine Iva Berlin) is an American actress, comedian, film director, playwright, and screenwriter from Philadelphia. Her professional career started in the 1950s and is still ongoing. She has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. She is best remembered for directing the Cold War-themed action comedy "Ishtar" (1987). She won the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director, but the film has had a vocal minority of critics who defend its quality.
In 1932, May was born to a Jewish-American family. Both her parents were theatrical actors. Her father Jack Berlin was also a theater director and led his own traveling Yiddish theater company. Her mother was actress Ida Aaron. May made her stage debut c. 1935, at the age of 3. Her father had decided to include her in his performances. As a a child actress, she was reportedly cast in the roles of boys.
The theater company toured extensively, and May was part of their tours. She kept changing schools, enrolling for a few weeks and then moving to another city. May reputedly hated school, but loved reading books on her own. Her favorite topics were fairy tales and mythology.
Jack Berlin died c. 1942, and May's career as a child actress consequently ended. She was left in the custody of her mother. The duo settled in Los Angeles, and May eventually enrolled in Hollywood High School. In 1946, May dropped out of school. In 1948, she married her her first husband, the toy inventor Marvin May. She was only 16-years-old at the time of her marriage. She would later keep her husband's surname as her professional name.
In 1949, May had her only child, Jeannie Brette May. Jeannie would later become a professional actress in her own right, under the name Jeannie Berlin. May and her husband separated c. 1950, and she received a divorce in 1960. She started supporting herself through a series of odd jobs.
In 1950, May was interested in attending college, but most colleges in California required applicants to have high school diplomas. As a high school dropout, she did not have the necessary diploma. Learning that the University of Chicago did not use this requirement, she hitch-hiked her way to Chicago, At the time her personal fortune consisted of 7 dollars.
Once she arrived in Chicago, May started informally taking classes at the university by auditing, sitting in without enrolling. She habitually engaged in discussions with her instructors. She once had a fight with a philosophy instructor because of their different interpretations of the motives behind Socrates' apology. May was introduced to aspiring actor Mike Nichols (1931-2014),who was also attending the University. They bonded over their shared passion for the theater.
In 1955, May became one of the charter members of the Compass Players, a Chicago-based improvisational theater group. Nichols joined the group shortly after. The two of them formed a working partnership, jointly developing improvised comedy sketches. May helped the Compass Players to become a highly popular comedy troupe, due to her talent for satire. She helped in the training of novice members of the group.
In 1957, Nichols was asked to leave the Compass Players. His popularity had outshone most members of the group, and had caused internal conflicts. May left the group with him. They then decided to form their own stand-up comedy team, "Nichols and May". Their improvisational skills, and ability to come up with fresh material allowed them to impress their audience.
In 1960, the comedy duo made their Broadway debut, with the show "An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May". A recording of the show won the 1962 "Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album". "Nichols and May" became very popular in New York City, performing in sold-out shows. They also started making appearances in radio and television, and even recorded commercials.
May was reportedly surprised with her own success. She had spend much of her adult life in near-poverty, but she was now earning a regular income from show business. She joked in an interview that she was practically barefoot when she arrived in New York, and now had to get used to wearing high heels.
In 1961, the duo was at the height of their fame. But they decided to dissolve their partnership in order to pursue solo careers. Nichols started working as a Broadway stage director, while May started her new career as a playwright. Her most successful play was "Adaptation" (1969), which she also directed. For her work as a theatrical director, she won the 1969 "Outer Critics Circle Award, Best Director".
May made her debut as a film director with the black comedy "A New Leaf" (1971). It was an adaptation of a short story by Jack Ritchie (1922-1983), depicting the story of an impoverished patrician who marries a wealthy heiress for her money. The main character initially considers murdering his wife to inherit her wealth, but first he has to protect her from other predators who were after her money.
Her first film found little success at the box office, but was praised by critics and was nominated for the "Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy". It later earned a reputation as a cult classic, and in 2019 it was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry.
Her second film was the romantic comedy "The Heartbreak Kid" (1972). It concerns a newlywed man who falls madly in love with a younger woman while on his honeymoon. He pursues his romantic interest obsessively despite all signs that his love is unrequited, and despite the disapproval of the woman's protective father. The film was critically acclaimed, and has at times been listed in retrospectives concerning the funniest American films.
In an unusual career move, her third film was not a comedy. It was the rather bleak gangster film "Mikey and Nicky" (1976). It depicts a small-time mobster whose life is in danger, resorting to asking for help from his childhood friend. While creating this film, May got involved in a legal dispute with the film studio Paramount Pictures. The studio eventually decided to only allow a limited release for the film. The film found a niche audience in the home video market, but May's career as a director suffered from this dispute. She was effectively blacklisted.
May decided to focus on her screenwriting career. She found success with the script to the fantasy-comedy "Heaven Can Wait" (1978), about the afterlife of a man who died prematurely. The film was based on a 1938 play by Harry Segall (1892-1975), and also served as a remake to the classic film "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941) which was based on the same play. The film earned about 99 million dollars at the worldwide box office, and was a critical hit. May was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, but the award was instead won by rival screenwriter Oliver Stone (1946-).
During the early 1980s, May mainly worked as an uncredited script doctor. She "polished" scripts by other screenwriters. Her greatest success in this role was the romantic comedy "Tootsie" (1982), for which she wrote several additional scenes. She attempted her comeback as a director with the action comedy "Ishtar" (1987), which became a box office flop for the film studio Columbia Pictures. The film's failure reportedly convinced Columbia's parent company Coca-Cola to sell the under-performing studio to Sony.
"Ishtar" was derided at the time as the worst film of its era by many critics, but was also defended by a vocal minority of critics. It has since attracted a cult audience, who consider this to be a great film. However the film's failure ended May's career as a film director and damaged her reputation. She also ceased working as a screenwriter for several years, reduced to working as an actress again.
May made her comeback as a screenwriter with the comedy film "The Birdcage" (1996), a remake of the European comedy "La Cage aux Folles" (The Cage of Madwomen, 1978). In the film, the openly gay parents to a young man have to pretend to be straight in an attempt to impress their son's prospective in-laws. The film earned about 185 million dollars at the worldwide box office, the greatest hit in May's career up to that point. She was nominated for the "Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay", but the award was instead won by rival screenwriter Billy Bob Thornton (1955-).
May found more critical success with her next screenplay, for the political film "Primary Colors" (1998). It was an adaptation of the roman à clef novel "Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics" (1996) by Joe Klein (1946-). The novel itself was a fictionalized version of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign, and depicts an idealistic campaign worker's disillusionment with the politician. The film's cast were nominated for several awards. May herself received her second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, but the award was instead won by rival screenwriter Bill Condon (1955-).
May largely retired from screenwriting since the end of the 1990s. As an actress, she had a supporting role in the crime-comedy "Small Time Crooks" (2000). The film concerned nouveau riche criminals, who attempt to socialize with the American upper class. For this role, she won the "Best Supporting Actress Award" at the National Society of Film Critics Awards.
May lived in retirement until joining the cast of the television mini-series "Crisis in Six Scenes" (2016), her first television role in several decades. The series was created by Woody Allen (1935-), who happened to be an old friend of May.
In 2018, May made a theatrical comeback in Broadway. She played the elderly gallery owner Gladys Green in a revival of the play "The Waverly Gallery" (2000) by Kenneth Lonergan (1962-). In the play, Gladys shows early signs of Alzheimer's disease, and her family has to deal with her mental decline. May received critical acclaim for this role. For this role, she won the 2019 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. At age 87, she was the second-oldest winner of a Tony Award for acting.
As of 2021, May is 89-years-old. She is no longer very active, but she reportedly has plans to direct another film. She remains a popular actress.- Actress
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Born in the Astoria section of Queens, New York City, Ethel Merman surely is the pre-eminent star of 'Broadway' musical comedy. Though untrained in singing, she could belt out a song like quite no one else, and was sought after by major songwriters such as Irving Berlin and Cole Porter. Having debuted in 1930 in "Girl Crazy, " she is yet remembered for her marvelous starring appearances in so many great musicals that were later adapted to the silver screen. Among the film versions, Merman herself starred in Anything Goes (1936) and Call Me Madam (1953). That wonderfully boisterous blonde, Betty Hutton, had the Merman lead in both Red, Hot and Blue (1949) and Annie Get Your Gun (1950). Besides Betty Hutton, other Merman screen stand-in roles include Lucille Ball, (in Du Barry Was a Lady (1943)), Ann Sothern, (in Panama Hattie (1942)), Vivian Blaine (in Something for the Boys (1944)) and Rosalind Russell (in Gypsy (1962)). (Russell could never render Stephen Sondheim and Jule Styne's "Everything's Coming Up Roses" the way the immortal Merman did, over and over again.) Ethel Merman's lifetime facts: her dare of birth, was on Thursday, January 16th, 1908 & her life expired on Wednesday, February 15th, 1984. Thursday, January 16th, 1908 & Wednesday, February 15th, 1984, differ 27,789 days, equaling 3,969 weeks & 6 days.- Actress
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A disarming character lady quite capable of scene-stealing, Mildred Natwick was a well-rounded talent with distinctively dowdy features and idiosyncratic tendencies who, over a six-decade period, assembled together a number of unforgettable matrons on stage and (eventually) film and TV. Whimsical, feisty, loony, stern, impish, shrewish, quizzical, scheming -- she greatly enhanced both comedies and dramas and, thankfully, her off-centered greatness was captured perfectly on occasion by such film directors as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Neil Simon.
A short, plumpish, oval-eyed figure with a unique flowery, honey-glazed voice, Natwick was born on June 19, 1905 (some sources list 1908) to Joseph (a businessman) and and Mildred Marion Dawes Natwick. The Baltimore native graduated from both the Bryn Mawr School (in Baltimore) and also from Bennett College in Dutchess County, N.Y., where she majored in drama. Breaking into the professional field touring on stage, Miss Natwick joined the Vagabonds in the late 1920s, a non-professional group from Baltimore. She later became part of the renowned University Players at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, whose rising performers at the time included Henry Fonda, Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart.
Natwick made her Broadway bow in the 1932 melodrama "Carry Nation," directed by Blanche Yurka with Esther Dale in the title role. In the cast was Joshua Logan, whom she befriended and later collaborated with when he turned director. She then continued her momentum on 1930s Broadway with "Amourette" (1933), "Spring in Autumn" (1933), "The Wind and the Rain" (1934), "The Distaff Side" (1934) "End of Summer" (1936), "Love from a Stranger" (1936), "The Star-Wagon" (1937), "Missouri Legend" (1938), "Stars in Your Eyes" (1939) (directed by Logan), and "Christmas Eve" (1939).
Natwick did not come to films until middle age (35) with the John Ford classic The Long Voyage Home (1940), in which she played a Cockney floozie. Despite her fine work in this minor part, she did not make another film until her landlady role five years later in The Enchanted Cottage (1945) supporting Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young. Not a great beauty by Hollywood standards, Natwick learned quickly in Hollywood that if she were to succeed, it would be as a character performer. Ford himself picked up on her versatility and used her repeatedly in several of his post-war classics -- 3 Godfathers (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and The Quiet Man (1952).
Never abandoning the theater for long, Natwick excelled as Miss Garnett in George Bernard Shaw's "Candida" and as the buoyant medium in Noël Coward's "Blithe Spirit". As for the big screen, she was sporadically seen in such films as Yolanda and the Thief (1945), The Late George Apley (1947), A Woman's Vengeance (1948), The Kissing Bandit (1948), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and Against All Flags (1952). Making use of even the tiniest of roles, none of them did much to improve her stature in Hollywood. With her delicious turn, however, in Hitchcock's eccentric black comedy The Trouble with Harry (1955), which starred Shirley MacLaine (in her film debut), John Forsythe, Kris Kringle's Edmund Gwenn, little Jerry Mathers (of "Leave It to Beaver"), and another famous Mildred, Mildred Dunnock, Natwick enjoyed one of her best roles ever on film. This was followed by her scheming and furtive sorceress in the Danny Kaye vehicle The Court Jester (1955) in which she, Kaye and Glynis Johns participate in the memorable tongue-twisting "The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle..." comedy routine. This, in turn, led to a couple of more, albeit lesser, films, including Teenage Rebel (1956) and Tammy and the Bachelor (1957).
Preferring the theatre to movies, MIldred received her first Tony nomination for her sharp, astute work in Jean Anouilh's "Waltz of the Toredors" in 1957 and recreated her character in a TV special. She seemed to move effortlessly from the classics ("Medea," "Coriolanus") to chic comedy ("Ladies in Retirement," "The Importance of Being Earnest"). Receiving great applause as the beleaguered, overly-winded mother in Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park" on Broadway in 1963, she transferred the role to film four years later. The cinematic Barefoot in the Park (1967) earned Mildred a well-deserved Oscar nomination for "best supporting actress". She switched things up again with Harold Pinter's theatrical "Landscape," and then again in 1971 when she made her debut in a singing role in the John Kander-Fred Ebb musical, "70, Girls, 70" (1971) in which she earned a second Tony nomination. Her last Broadway show came as a replacement in "Bedroom Farce" in 1979.
With only the slightest of gesture, look or tone of voice, Mildred's characters could speak volumes and she became an essential character player during the 1970s as an offbeat friend, relative or elderly on TV and film. She was awarded the Emmy for her playing of one of The Snoop Sisters (1972)_ alongside the equally delightful Helen Hayes in the short-lived TV series. Both played impish Jessica Fletcher-type mystery writers who solve real crimes on the sly. She also played Rock Hudson's quirky mother in McMillan & Wife (1971) and a notable dying grandmother in a guest appearance of the critically-lauded TV series drama Family (1976). Her final film came with a small regal role as Madame de Rosemonde in Dangerous Liaisons (1988) with Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Never married, Mildred was called "Milly" by close friends and family and was the first cousin of Myron 'Grim' Natwick, the creator of Betty Boop for the Max Fleischer cartoon studio and prime animator for Disney's Snow White character. She died of cancer at age 89 in New York City.- Director
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He, along with the other members of the "Compass Players" including Elaine May, Paul Sills, Byrne Piven, Joyce Hiller Piven and Edward Asner helped start the famed "Second City Improv" company. They used the games taught to them by fellow cast mate, Paul Sills 's mother, Viola Spolin. He later worked in legitimate theater as an actor before entering into a very successful comedy duo with Elaine May. The two were known as "the world's fastest humans".- Actor
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Laurence Olivier could speak William Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them", said English playwright Charles Bennett, who met Olivier in 1927. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England, to Agnes Louise (Crookenden) and Gerard Kerr Olivier, a High Anglican priest. His surname came from a great-great-grandfather who was of French Huguenot origin.
One of Olivier's earliest successes as a Shakespearean actor on the London stage came in 1935 when he played "Romeo" and "Mercutio" in alternate performances of "Romeo and Juliet" with John Gielgud. A young Englishwoman just beginning her career on the stage fell in love with Olivier's Romeo. In 1937, she was "Ophelia" to his "Hamlet" in a special performance at Kronborg Castle, Elsinore (Helsingør), Denmark. In 1940, she became his second wife after both returned from making films in America that were major box office hits of 1939. His film was Wuthering Heights (1939), her film was Gone with the Wind (1939). Vivien Leigh and Olivier were screen lovers in Fire Over England (1937), 21 Days Together (1940) and That Hamilton Woman (1941).
There was almost a fourth film together in 1944 when Olivier and Leigh traveled to Scotland with Charles C. Bennett to research the real-life story of a Scottish girl accused of murdering her French lover. Bennett recalled that Olivier researched the story "with all the thoroughness of Sherlock Holmes" and "we unearthed evidence, never known or produced at the trial, that would most certainly have sent the young lady to the gallows". The film project was then abandoned. During their two-decade marriage, Olivier and Leigh appeared on the stage in England and America and made films whenever they really needed to make some money.
In 1951, Olivier was working on a screen adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie" (Carrie (1952)) while Leigh was completing work on the film version of the Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She won her second Oscar for bringing "Blanche DuBois" to the screen. Carrie (1952) was a film that Olivier never talked about. George Hurstwood, a middle-aged married man from Chicago who tricked a young woman into leaving a younger man about to marry her, became a New York street person in the novel. Olivier played him as a somewhat nicer person who didn't fall quite as low. A PBS documentary on Olivier's career broadcast in 1987 covered his first sojourn in Hollywood in the early 1930s with his first wife, Jill Esmond, and noted that her star was higher than his at that time. On film, he was upstaged by his second wife, too, even though the list of films he made is four times as long as hers.
More than half of his film credits come after The Entertainer (1960), which started out as a play in London in 1957. When the play moved across the Atlantic to Broadway in 1958, the role of "Archie Rice"'s daughter was taken over by Joan Plowright, who was also in the film. They married soon after the release of The Entertainer (1960).- Actress
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Dame Joan Ann Plowright, the Baroness Olivier, is one of the most distinguished actors of her generation. She may be best remembered as the third wife and widow of Laurence Olivier, generally considered the greatest anglophone actor of the 20th Century, but she had a distinguished career of her own on stage and screen spanning six decades.
Born in Brigg, Lincolnshire on October 28, 1929, she received her training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and made her professional stage debut at Croydon in 1948. Her London debut came in 1954, and two years later, she joined George Devine's English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre, which would change her life just as the drama at the Royal Court revolutionized the English theater.
The Royal Court's 1956 production of John Osborne's _Look Back In Anger' was a watershed in English theatrical history, ushering in the 'Angry Young Man" era in British cultural life. In 1957, Plowright first co-starred with her future husband Olivier in the Royal Court's production of Osborne's The Entertainer (1960) when she took over the role of Archie Rice's daughter Jean Rice when the play transferred to a commercial venue in the West End. She recreated the role in Tony Richardson's 1960 film of the play.
To escape the notoriety from Olivier's divorce from Vivien Leigh, Plowright and Olivier went to New York, where they appeared on Broadway, he in Becket (1964) and she in A Taste of Honey (1961). For her performance as Josephine, which Rita Tushingham played in the movie version, she won a 1961 Tony Award as Best Actress in a Play. (She had first appeared on Broadway in a twin bill of Eugène Ionesco's "The Chairs" and "The Lesson" in January 1958, a month before she appeared with Olivier in "The Entertainer".) When his divorce from Leigh came through, they were married in March 1961 in New York with Richard Burton as Larry's best man.
From 1963 onward, she was a member of the National Theatre, which was headed by Olivier. Plowright created a distinguished stage career and was acclaimed when she began appearing more frequently in movies and television starting in the the 1980s. She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire, the female equivalent of a knighthood, in the 2004 Queen's New Year Honours.
Plowright divorced her first husband, the actor Roger Gage, to marry Olivier in 1961 and they had three children, Richard Kerr Olivier, Tamsin Olivier and Julie Kate Olivier.- Actor
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Anthony Quinn was born Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca (some sources indicate Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca) on April 21, 1915, in Chihuahua, Mexico, to Manuela (Oaxaca) and Francisco Quinn, who became an assistant cameraman at a Los Angeles (CA) film studio. His paternal grandfather was Irish, and the rest of his family was Mexican.
After starting life in extremely modest circumstances in Mexico, his family moved to Los Angeles, where he grew up in the Boyle Heights and Echo Park neighborhoods. He played in the band of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson as a youth and as a deputy preacher. He attended Polytechnic High School and later Belmont High, but eventually dropped out. The young Quinn boxed (which stood him in good stead as a stage actor, when he played Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" to rave reviews in Chicago), then later studied architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright at the great architect's studio, Taliesin, in Arizona. Quinn was close to Wright, who encouraged him when he decided to give acting a try. Made his credited film debut in Parole! (1936). After a brief apprenticeship on stage, Quinn hit Hollywood in 1936 and picked up a variety of small roles in several films at Paramount, including an Indian warrior in The Plainsman (1936), which was directed by the man who later became his father-in-law, Cecil B. DeMille.
As a contract player at Paramount, Quinn's roles were mainly ethnic types, such as an Arab chieftain in the Bing Crosby-Bob Hope comedy, Road to Morocco (1942). As a Mexican national (he did not become an American citizen until 1947), he was exempt from the draft. With many other actors in military service during WWII, he was able to move up into better supporting roles. He married DeMille's daughter Katherine DeMille, which afforded him entrance to the top circles of Hollywood society. He became disenchanted with his career and did not renew his Paramount contract despite the advice of others, including his father-in-law, with whom he did not get along (whom Quinn reportedly felt had never accepted him due to his Mexican roots; the two men were also on opposite ends of the political spectrum) but they eventually were able to develop a civil relationship. Quinn returned to the stage to hone his craft. His portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" in Chicago and on Broadway (where he replaced the legendary Marlon Brando, who is forever associated with the role) made his reputation and boosted his film career when he returned to the movies.
Brando and Elia Kazan, who directed "Streetcar" on Broadway and on film (A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)), were crucial to Quinn's future success. Kazan, knowing the two were potential rivals due to their acclaimed portrayals of Kowalski, cast Quinn as Brando's brother in his biographical film of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, Viva Zapata! (1952). Quinn won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for 1952, making him the first Mexican-American to win an Oscar. It was not to be his lone appearance in the winner's circle: he won his second Supporting Actor Oscar in 1957 for his portrayal of Paul Gauguin in Vincente Minnelli's biographical film of Vincent van Gogh, Lust for Life (1956), opposite Kirk Douglas. Over the next decade Quinn lived in Italy and became a major figure in world cinema, as many studios shot films in Italy to take advantage of the lower costs ("runaway production" had battered the industry since its beginnings in the New York/New Jersey area in the 1910s). He appeared in several Italian films, giving one of his greatest performances as the circus strongman who brutalizes the sweet soul played by Giulietta Masina in her husband Federico Fellini's masterpiece The Road (1954). He met his second wife, Jolanda Addolori, a wardrobe assistant, while he was in Rome filming Barabbas (1961).
Alternating between Europe and Hollywood, Quinn built his reputation and entered the front rank of character actors and character leads. He received his third Oscar nomination (and first for Best Actor) for George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind (1957). He played a Greek resistance fighter against the Nazi occupation in the monster hit The Guns of Navarone (1961) and received kudos for his portrayal of a once-great boxer on his way down in Rod Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). He went back to playing ethnic roles, such as an Arab warlord in David Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and he played the eponymous lead in the "sword-and-sandal" blockbuster Barabbas (1961). Two years later, he reached the zenith of his career, playing Zorba the Greek in the film of the same name (a.k.a. Zorba the Greek (1964)), which brought him his fourth, and last, Oscar nomination as Best Actor. The 1960s were kind to him: he played character leads in such major films as The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) and The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969). However, his appearance in the title role in the film adaptation of John Fowles' novel, The Magus (1968), did nothing to save the film, which was one of that decade's notorious turkeys.
In the 1960s, Quinn told Life magazine that he would fight against typecasting. Unfortunately, the following decade saw him slip back into playing ethnic types again, in such critical bombs as The Greek Tycoon (1978). He starred as the Hispanic mayor of a southwestern city on the short-lived television series The Man and the City (1971), but his career lost its momentum during the 1970s. Aside from playing a thinly disguised Aristotle Onassis in the cinematic roman-a-clef The Greek Tycoon (1978), his other major roles of the decade were as Hamza in the controversial The Message (1976) (a.k.a. "Mohammad, Messenger of God"); as the Italian patriarch in The Inheritance (1976); yet another Arab in Caravans (1978); and as a Mexican patriarch in The Children of Sanchez (1978). In 1983, he reprised his most famous role, Zorba the Greek, on Broadway in the revival of the musical "Zorba" for 362 performances (opposite Lila Kedrova, who had also appeared in the film, and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance). His career slowed during the 1990s but he continued to work steadily in films and television, including an appearance with frequent film co-star Maureen O'Hara in Only the Lonely (1991).
Quinn lived out the latter years of his life in Bristol, Rhode Island, where he spent most of his time painting and sculpting. Beginning in 1982, he held numerous major exhibitions in cities such as Vienna, Paris, and Seoul. He died in a hospital in Boston at age 86 from pneumonia and respiratory failure linked to his battle with throat cancer.- Elizabeth Seal was born on 28 August 1933 in Genoa, Italy. She is an actress, known for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life (2003), Mack the Knife (1989) and BBC Play of the Month (1965).
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Rangy, red-headed and straightforward to the bone while possessing distinctively adenoidal vocal tones, this actor with a voracious appetite for high living was a fine cinematic representation of the racy and race-paced style of pre-Code Hollywood. Lee Tracy patented with peerless skill the lightning rod timing and machine gun delivery so identified with that period and would have continued on handsomely in films had severe typecasting, a hair-trigger temper and a notoriously reckless off-camera life not gotten the best of him.
Christened William Lee Tracy on April 14, 1898, the Atlanta-born actor was the son of a traveling railroad superintendent and a former school teacher. Lee attended Western Military Academy in Alton, Illinois, while growing up, and then relocated with his family to upstate New York. Lee may have studied engineering at Union College in 1918, but he also showed an interest in dramatics and was almost immediately asked to join a theater company upon his graduation. WWI interrupted his nascent stage career when he joined the army. Following his discharge, he cast aside thoughts of a theater career and instead became a U.S. Treasury agent. Within two years' time, however, he was back via the vaudeville stage and touring stock companies. This all culminated in a most auspicious Broadway debut in "The Showoff" in 1924.
It took but a couple of years for Tracy to achieve certified stardom with the George Abbott production of "Broadway" (1926), in which he played a song-and-dance man, receiving the New York Drama Critics Award for his efforts. In 1928, following more vaudeville work, Lee found his quintessential role in the form of Hildy Johnson, the hustling, fast-talking newspaperman, in Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht's timeless play "The Front Page". If ever an actor and role fit together like a hand in a glove, this was it, and it was highly unfortunate, with all due respect to actor Pat O'Brien, that Tracy was not afforded the proper chance to transfer this prototype Broadway part to the 1931 film. During this time he was also developing an off-stage reputation as a carouser and heavy drinker.
Nevertheless, Fox Studios immediately signed Tracy and offered up a fine screen debut for him co-starring with Mae Clarke in the early talkie Big Time (1929) as the male half of a husband-and-wife vaudeville team who breaks off with his mate and falls on heavy times while she becomes a star. In Born Reckless (1930), Tracy played the first of his Walter Winchell-like, staccato-styled characters. Tracy went on to perfectly evoke his fast-talking image in such Depression-era films as the drama Liliom (1930) and the ribald comedy She Got What She Wanted (1930).
A highly impulsive man, Tracy abandoned Hollywood at this early stage of the game and returned to his former glory, Broadway, appearing to fine advantage in "Oh, Promise Me" and "Louder, Please" in 1930 and 1931, respectively. But films continued to beg for his services; this time it was Warner Bros. He contributed greatly to both the melodrama The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932) and the horror opus Doctor X (1932) and easily stole the proceedings, this time in a comic mode, as the cynical, scandal-sniffing columnist in Blessed Event (1932). Columbia Studios decided to get in on the action with a three-picture deal. Tracy played a no-holds-barred politico in Washington Merry-Go-Round (1932), the title role in The Night Mayor (1932) and an ex-con in Carnival (1935). In between, however, trouble started brewing with his unrestrained night life and patterned absences from the set.
A fourth big studio, MGM, took him on in 1933 with a contract boost despite his "bad boy" reputation, yet more personality problems surfaced. Despite excellent performances in such films as Clear All Wires! (1933), The Nuisance (1933), Turn Back the Clock (1933), Advice to the Forlorn (1933), and the MGM classics Dinner at Eight (1933) and Bombshell (1933), both showcasing MGM's comedic sex siren Jean Harlow, Tracy went too far. During the filming of Viva Villa! (1934) in Mexico City, Tracy displayed shocking, ungentlemanly behavior that resulted in fisticuffs with the law and a high-profile arrest on public morals charges. MGM not only kicked Tracy off the picture but felt compelled to apologize publicly to the Mexican people for his disrespect and terminate the actor's five-year contract.
Tracy freelanced thereafter, often for RKO, but the quality of his pictures began to slide and his constant rash of quicksilver reporters, columnists and press agents had worn out their welcome. He returned to the stage in both New York ("Bright Star") and London ("Idiot's Delight") and was warmly received. In the midst of it all, he married Helen Thoms Wyse, a nonprofessional, in 1938 and, defying all odds, made the marriage work. She survived him by thirty years.
With his last postwar film at the time being High Tide (1947), Tracy's looks had hardened dramatically and he looked at TV being a possible medium for his talents. Throughout the '50s and early '60s, he appeared on a number of shows, including "Kraft Television Theatre", "Wagon Train" and "Ben Casey". He also took on series leads, such as The Amazing Mr. Malone (1951), Martin Kane (1949), and New York Confidential (1959). And there was always the stage.
Tracy's last hurrah, both on Broadway and in film, was Gore Vidal's blistering political drama The Best Man (1964). Recreating his 1961 Tony-nominated role of the crusty, terminally ill U.S. president, he received his only Oscar nod for this standout part. The rest of his working years went by with less distinction. In the summer of 1968 he was diagnosed with liver cancer and succumbed to the illness on October 18 of that year in a Santa Monica hospital.- Gig Young was born Byron Barr to parents John and Emma Barr in Minnesota, and raised in Washington, DC, where he developed a passion for theatre while appearing in high school plays. After gaining some amateur experience, he applied for and received a scholarship to the acclaimed Southern California's Pasadena Community Playhouse. While acting in "Pancho", a south-of-the-border play by Lowell Barrington, he was spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout, leading to his signing contracts with the studio. Still acting under his given name, Byron Barr, he played bits and extra roles. He experimented with varying screen names because there was already another actor with the same name (see Byron Barr). In 1942, in the picture The Gay Sisters (1942), he was given the role of a character whose name was Gig Young, which he liked well enough to finally adopt it as his permanent stage name. His intermittent roles and, therefore, income, required Young to supplement his income working at a gas station, but success in The Gay Sisters (1942) eventually allowed him the freedom to become a full-time actor. Although service in the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II interrupted his ascension, after discharge he quickly established himself as a reliable light leading man, usually the second male lead to stars who were established box office draws. A dramatic part in Come Fill the Cup (1951) resulted in his being nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar; a second Supporting Actor nomination followed seven years later for his comedic performance in Teacher's Pet (1958). A prolific television career later complemented his film work. In 1969, his surprisingly seedy portrayal of a dance-marathon emcee in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) finally brought him that Supporting Actor Oscar. A succession of marriages, including one to actress Elizabeth Montgomery, failed. In 1978, only three weeks after marrying German actress Kim Schmidt, Young apparently shot her to death in their New York City apartment and then turned the gun on himself. The precise motivation for the sad and grisly murder-suicide remains unclear. Young was not quite 65, his bride, 31.