Planet of the Apes 1968 premiere
Monday February 5th, Fox’s Preview Theater 444 W 56th St, New York, NY 10019
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A grand, robust, highly theatrical British classical actor, Maurice Evans was born on June 3, 1901, in Dorchester, England, the son of a justice of the peace who enjoyed amateur play writing on the side. In fact, his father adapted several adaptations of Thomas Hardy's novels and Evans would often appear in them. Early interest also came in London choirs as a boy tenor.
Making his professional stage debut in 1926, Evans made do during his struggling years by running a cleaning and dyeing store. He earned his first triumph three years later in the play "Journey's End." When his resulting attempts as an early 1930's romantic film lead and/or second lead in White Cargo (1929), Raise the Roof (1930), The Only Girl (1933), The Path of Glory (1934), Bypass to Happiness (1934) and Checkmate (1935) didn't pan out, he refocused on the stage.
Following a season with the Old Vic theatre company, he arrived in America and proceeded to conquer Broadway, establishing himself as one of the world's more illustrious interpreters of Shakespeare. His eloquent, florid portrayals of Romeo, Hamlet, Macbeth and Richard II are considered among the finest interps. He was also deemed a master of Shavian works which included superlative performances in "Major Barbara", "Man and Superman" and "The Devil's Disciple".
As a U.S. citizen (1941), Maurice was placed in charge of the Army Entertainment Section, Central Pacific Theater during WWII and left military service with the rank of major. His post-war career included a handful of character film roles, notably Kind Lady (1951), Androcles and the Lion (1952), Gilbert and Sullivan (1953) (as composer Sir Arthur Sullivan), The War Lord (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968), and as "Dr. Zaius" in the Planet of the Apes (1968) series.
Films would never be Evans' strong suit, earning much more stature on TV. More importantly, he brought Shakespeare and Shaw to 1950's TV, adapting (and directing) a number of his stage classics including King Richard II (1954), The Taming of the Shrew (1956), Man and Superman (1956), Twelfth Night (1957), The Tempest (1960). He won an Emmy award in 1960 for his Macbeth (1960).
Interestingly, for all his legendary performances under the theatre lights and stirring TV classics, the ever-regal stage master is probably best known to generations for his delightful, Shakespeare-spouting appearances on the Bewitched (1964) TV series, as Elizabeth Montgomery's irascible warlock father. Following guest shots on such popular TV shows as "Medical Center," "The Big Valley," "Columbo," "Streets of San Francisco," "Fantasy Island" and "The Love Boat," he made his final on-camera appearance in the TV movie A Caribbean Mystery (1983).
Evans returned to England to live out his remaining years and died there on March 12, 1989, in a Sussex nursing home of heart failure as a result of a bronchial infection, aged 87.- Music Artist
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Barbra Streisand is an American singer, actress, director and producer and one of the most successful personalities in show business. She is the only person ever to receive all of the following: Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Golden Globe, Cable Ace, National Endowment for the Arts, and Peabody awards, as well as the Kennedy Center Honor, American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement honor and the Film Society of Lincoln Center Chaplin Award.
She was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1942 to Diana Kind (née Ida Rosen), a singer turned school secretary, and Emanuel Streisand, a high school teacher. Her father died when she was 15 months old. She has a brother, Sheldon, and a half-sister, Roslyn Kind, from their mother's remarriage. As a child she attended the Beis Yakov Jewish School in Brooklyn. She was raised in a middle-class family and grew up dreaming of becoming an actress (or even an actress / conductor, as she happily described her teenage years at one of her concerts).
After a period as a nightclub singer and off-Broadway performer in New York City she began to attract interest and a fan base, thanks to her original and powerful vocal talent. She debuted on Broadway in the 1962 musical comedy "I Can Get It For You Wholesale" by Harold Rome, receiving a Tony Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress and a New York Drama Critics Poll award. The following year she reached great commercial success with her first Columbia Records solo releases, "The Barbra Streisand Album" (multiple Grammy winner, including "Best Album of the Year") and "The Second Barbra Streisand Album" (her first RIAA Gold Album); these albums, mostly devoted to composer Harold Arlen, brought her critical praise and, most of all, public acclaim all over the US. In 1964 she had another smash Broadway hit when she portrayed legendary Broadway star Fanny Brice in "Funny Girl" by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill; the show's main song, "People", became her first hit single and she appeared on the cover of Time magazine. After many TV appearances as a guest on various music and variety shows (such as an episode of The Judy Garland Show (1963), for which she was nominated for an Emmy), she signed an exclusive contract with CBS for a series of annual TV specials. My Name Is Barbra (1965) (which won an Emmy) and Color Me Barbra (1966) were extremely successful.
After a brief London stage period and the birth of her son Jason Gould (with then-husband Elliott Gould), in summer 1967 she gave a memorable free concert in New York City, "A Happening in Central Park", that was filmed and later broadcast (in an edited version) as a TV special; then she flew to Hollywood for her first movie, Funny Girl (1968), a filming of her stage success. The picture, directed by William Wyler, opened in 1968 and became a hit in the US and abroad, making her an international "superstar" and multiple award winner, including the Best Actress Oscar. After a series of screen musicals, such as Gene Kelly's Hello, Dolly! (1969) and Vincente Minnelli's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970), she wanted to try comedies, resulting in such films as The Owl and the Pussycat (1970) and What's Up, Doc? (1972). She turned to dramas and turned out Up the Sandbox (1972) and the classic The Way We Were (1973), directed by Sydney Pollack and co-starring Robert Redford. The song "The Way We Were" (written by Marvin Hamlisch and Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman) became one of her biggest hits and most memorable and famous songs.
She returned to TV for a new special conceived as a musical journey covering many world musical styles, Barbra Streisand and Other Musical Instruments (1973), then returned (for contractual reasons) to her Fanny Brice role in a sequel to her hit "Funny Girl" film, Funny Lady (1975), and the next year turned out one of her most personal film projects, A Star Is Born (1976), one of the biggest hits of the year for which she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress and her second Oscar, for the song "Evergreen". Always extremely busy on the discography side, averaging one album a year throughout the '70s and '80s, she had a string of successful singles and albums, such as "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" (duet with Neil Diamond), "Enough is Enough" (with Donna Summer), "The Main Event" (from her film The Main Event (1979) with her friend Ryan O'Neal) and the album "Guilty", written for her by The Bee Gees' Barry Gibb, which sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
She debuted as a director with the musical drama Yentl (1983), in which she also portrayed a Jewish girl who is forced to pass herself off as a man to pursue her dreams. The movie received generally positive reviews and the beautiful score by Michel Legrand and lyricists Marilyn Bergman and Alan Bergman stands up as one of Streisand's finest musical works. The film received several Oscar nominations, winning in two categories, but she was not nominated as Best Director, which disappointed both her and her fans, many of whom consider this the Academy's biggest "snub".
In 1985 her album "The Broadway Album" was an unexpected runaway success, winning a Grammy Award and helping to introduce a new generation to the world of American musical theater. In 1986 she performed in a memorable concert, after 19 years of stage silence, "One Voice". She returned to the screen in Nuts (1987), a drama directed by Martin Ritt, in the role of a prostitute accused of murder who fights to avoid being labeled "insane" at her trial. In 1991 she appeared in The Prince of Tides (1991), which many consider to be the pinnacle of her screen career, playing a psychiatrist who tries to help a man (Nick Nolte) to find the pieces of his past life. The film received seven Oscar nominations (but again NOT for Best Directing), but she did receive a nomination from the DGA (Directors Guild of America) for Best Director. In 1994 she returned to the stage after 27 years for a series of sold-out concerts (for the televised version of one of these, she won another Emmy).
In the 1990s she broke several personal records: with two #1 albums ("Back to Broadway" in 1993 and "Higher Ground" in 1997) and became the only artist to achieve a #1 album on the Billboard charts in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s (she extended this record into the 21st century in 2009 with the jazz album "Love is the Answer"). In 1996 she starred in her third picture as director, The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), with Jeff Bridges and Lauren Bacall. The film had a "the girl got the guy" ending, and the same happened to her in real life--the next year she married well known TV actor James Brolin.
In 2000 she focused her career again on concerts ("Timeless") and in 2006-07 with a European tour. She made only two more films--a supporting role as a sex therapist mother in the Ben Stiller comedy Meet the Fockers (2004) and its sequel, Little Fockers (2010), alongside Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. She published a book, "Passion for Design", in 2010 and celebrated her friendship with the Bergmans with an entire album of their songs, "What Matters Most" (2011), that debuted in the top 10.
After a long break from filming, she returned in a starring role for the 2012 holiday season with The Guilt Trip (2012), a mother/son picture co-starring Seth Rogen and directed by Anne Fletcher, and is working on putting together a film version of the well-known Jule Styne musical "Gypsy". In almost 50 years of career, Streisand has contributed to the show business industry in a personal and unique way, collecting a multi-generational fan base; she has a powerful and recognize vocal range, and a raucous and often self-deprecating sense of humor, which doesn't prevent her from showing the serious and dramatic sides of her personality. Her strong political belief in social justice infuses her professional career and personal life, and she makes no bones about what she believes; her willingness to put her money where her mouth is has resulted in some truly vicious attacks by many who hold opposite political views, but that hasn't stopped her from acting on her beliefs. She has been honored with the Humanitarian Award from the Human Rights Campaign, an Honorary Doctorate in Arts and Humanities from Brandeis University in 1995, an Honorary Doctorate of Philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2013 and the bestowing by the government of France the title of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters. She supports many humanitarian causes through the Streisand Foundation and has been a dedicated environmentalist for many years; she endowed a chair in environmental studies in 1987 and donated her 24-acre estate to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. In addition, she was the lead founder for the Clinton Climate Change Initiative. This effort brought together a consortium of major cities around the world to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. She is a leading spokesperson and fund-raiser for social and political causes close to her heart and has often dedicated proceeds from her live concert performances to benefit programs she supports.- 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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Lee Remick was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, to Gertrude Margaret (Waldo), an actress, and Francis Edwin Remick, a department store owner. She had Irish and English ancestry. Remick was educated at Barnard College, studied dance and worked on stage and TV, before making her film debut as a sexy Southern majorette in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957). Her next role was also southern: Eula Varner in The Long, Hot Summer (1958). She emerged as a real star in the role of an apparent rape victim in Anatomy of a Murder (1959). And she won an Academy Award nomination for her role as the alcoholic wife of Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses (1962). After more work in TV and movies, she moved to England in 1970, making more movies there. In 1988 she formed a production company with partners James Garner and Peter K. Duchow.- Actor
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Actor, raconteur, art collector and connoisseur of haute cuisine are just some of the attributes associated with Vincent Price. He was born Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. in St. Louis, Missouri, to Marguerite Cobb "Daisy" (Wilcox) and Vincent Leonard Price, who was President of the National Candy Company. His grandfather, also named Vincent, invented Dr. Price's Baking Powder, which was tartar-based. His family was prosperous, as he said, "not rich enough to evoke envy but successful enough to demand respect." His uniquely cultivated voice and persona were the result of a well-rounded education which began when his family dispatched him on a tour of Europe's cultural centres. His secondary education eventually culminated in a B.A. in English from Yale University and a degree in art history from London's Courtauld Institute.
Famously, his name has long been a byword for Gothic horror on screen. However, Vincent Price was, first and foremost, a man of the stage. It is where he began his career and where it ended. He faced the footlights for the first time at the Gate Theatre in London. At the age of 23, he played Prince Albert in the premiere of Arthur Schnitzler 's 'Victoria Regina' and made such an impression on producer Gilbert Miller that he launched the play on Broadway that same year (legendary actress Helen Hayes played the title role). In early 1938, he was invited to join Orson Welles 's Mercury Theatre on a five-play contract, beginning with 'The Shoemaker's Holiday'. He gave what was described as "a polished performance". Thus established, Vincent continued to make sporadic forays to the Great White Way, including as the Duke of Buckingham in Shakespeare's 'Richard III' (in which a reviewer for the New Yorker found him to be "satisfactorily detestable") and as Oscar Wilde in his award-winning one man show 'Diversions and Delights', which he took on a hugely successful world-wide tour in 1978. While based in California, Vincent was instrumental in the success of the La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, starring in several of their bigger productions, including 'Billy Budd' and 'The Winslow Boy'. In 1952, Vincent joined the national touring company of 'Don Juan in Hell' in which he was cast as the devil. Acting under the direction of Charles Laughton and accompanied by noted thespians Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead, he later recalled this as one of his "greatest theatrical excitements".
As well as acting on stage, Vincent regularly performed on radio network programs, including Lux Radio Theatre, CBS Playhouse and shows for the BBC. He narrated or hosted assorted programs ranging from history (If these Walls Could Speak) to cuisine (Cooking Price-Wise). He wrote several best-selling books on his favourite subjects: art collecting and cookery. In 1962, he was approached by Sears Roebuck to act as a buying consultant "selling quality pictures to department store customers". As if that were not enough, he lectured for 15 years on art, poetry and even the history of villainy. He recorded numerous readings of poems by Edgar Allan Poe (nobody ever gave a better recital of "The Raven"!), Shelley and Whitman. He also served on the Arts Council of UCLA, was a member of the Fine Arts Committee for the White House, a former chairman of the Indian Arts & Crafts Board and on the board of trustees of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
And besides all of that, Vincent Price remained a much sought-after motion picture actor. He made his first appearance on screen as a romantic lead in Service de Luxe (1938), a frothy Universal comedy which came and went without much fanfare. After that, he reprized his stage role as Master Hammon in an early television production of 'The Shoemaker's Holiday'. For one reason or another, Vincent was henceforth typecast as either historical figures (Sir Walter Raleigh, Duke of Clarence, Mormon leader Joseph Smith, King Charles II, Cardinal Richelieu, Omar Khayyam) or ineffectual charmers and gigolos. Under contract to 20th Century Fox (1940-46), Laura (1944) provided one of his better vehicles in the latter department, as did the lush Technicolor melodrama Leave Her to Heaven (1945) which had Vincent showcased in a notably powerful scene as a prosecuting attorney. His performance was singled out by the L.A. Times as meriting "attention as contending for Academy supporting honors".
His first fling with the horror genre was Dragonwyck (1946), a Gothic melodrama set in the Hudson Valley in the early 1800's. For the first time, Vincent played a part he actually coveted and fought hard to win. His character was in effect a precursor of those he would later make his own while working for Roger Corman and American-International. As demented, drug-addicted landowner Nicholas Van Ryn, he so effectively terrorized Gene Tierney's Miranda Wells that the influential columnist Louella Parsons wrote with rare praise: "The role of Van Ryn calls for a lot of acting and Vincent admits he's a ham and loves to act all over the place, but the fact that he has restrained himself and doesn't over-emote is a tribute to his ability". If Vincent was an occasional ham, he proved it with his Harry Lime pastiche Carwood in The Bribe (1949). Much better was his starring role in a minor western, The Baron of Arizona (1950), in which he was convincingly cast as a larcenous land office clerk attempting to create his own desert baronetcy.
With House of Wax (1953) , Vincent fine-tuned the character type he had established in Dragonwyck, adding both pathos and comic elements to the role of the maniacal sculptor Henry Jarrod. It was arduous work under heavy make-up which simulated hideous facial scarring and required three hours to apply and three hours to remove. He later commented that it "took his face months to heal because it was raw from peeling off wax each night". However, the picture proved a sound money maker for Warner Brothers and firmly established Vincent Price in a cult genre from which he was henceforth unable to escape. The majority of his subsequent films were decidedly low-budget affairs in which the star tended to be the sole mitigating factor: The Mad Magician (1954), The Fly (1958) (and its sequel), House on Haunted Hill (1959), the absurd The Tingler (1959) (easily the worst of the bunch) and The Bat (1959). With few exceptions, Vincent's acting range would rarely be stretched in the years to come.
Vincent's association with the genial Roger Corman began when he received a script for The Fall of the House of Usher, beginning a projected cycle of cost-effective films based on short stories by Edgar Allen Poe. As Roderick Usher, Vincent was Corman's "first and only choice". Though he was to receive a salary of $50,000 for the picture, it was his chance "to express the psychology of Poe's characters" and to "imbue the movie versions with the spirit of Poe" that clinched the deal for Vincent. He made another six films in this vein, all of them box office winners. Not Academy Award stuff, but nonetheless hugely enjoyable camp entertainment and popular with all but highbrow audiences. Who could forget Vincent at his scenery chewing best as the resurgent inquisitor, luring Barbara Steele into the crypt in The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)? Or as pompous wine aficionado Fortunato Luchresi in that deliriously funny wine tasting competition with Montresor Herringbone (Peter Lorre) in Tales of Terror (1962)? Best still, the climactic battle of the magicians pitting Vincent's Erasmus Craven against Boris Karloff's malevolent Dr. Scarabus in The Raven (1963) (arguably, the best offering in the Poe cycle). The Comedy of Terrors (1963) was played strictly for laughs, with the inimitable combo of Price and Lorre this time appearing as homicidal undertakers.
For the rest of the 60s, Vincent was content to remain in his niche, playing variations on the same theme in City in the Sea (1965) and Witchfinder General (1968) (as Matthew Hopkins). He also spoofed his screen personae as Dr. Goldfoot and as perennial villain Egghead in the Batman (1966) series. He rose once more to the occasion in the cult black comedy The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) (and its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)) commenting that he had to play Anton Phibes "very seriously so that it would come out funny". The tagline, a parody of the ad for Love Story (1970), announced "love means never having to say you're ugly".
During the 70s and 80s, Vincent restricted himself mainly to voice-overs and TV guest appearances. His final role of note was as the inventor in Edward Scissorhands (1990), a role written specifically for him. The embodiment of gleeful, suave screen villainy, Vincent Price died in Los Angeles in October 1993 at the age of 82. People magazine eulogized him as "the Gable of Gothic." Much earlier, an English critic named Gilbert Adair spoke for many fans when he said "Every man his Price - and mine is Vincent."- Adele and her brother Fred were the toast of Broadway in the 1920s and early thirties with such shows as Lady be Good and Funny Face. Many thought Adele was the greater entertainer of the pair, comparing her to Fanny Brice and Imogene Coca. Fred was far more serious about his craft and would rehearse tirelessly while his sister would refer to him as "Moaning Minnie" because he was seldom satisfied. After Adele married an English lord in 1932, Fred did one more show without her (The Gay Divorcee) then headed for Hollywood to begin his legendary career. One can't help wondering whether his stardom would have been as great without the early success of his partnership with Adele.
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Hume Cronyn was a Canadian actor with a lengthy career. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in "The Seventh Cross" (1944).
Cronyn was born to a prominent family. His father was politician Hume Blake Cronyn (1864-1933), Member of Parliament for London, Ontario (term 1917-1921). The elder Cronyn was a grandson of both Benjamin Cronyn, first bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Huron (1802-1871) and politician William Hume Blake (1809-1870), first Chancellor of Upper Canada.
Cronyn's mother was Frances Amelia Labatt, heiress of the Labatt Brewing Company. Labatt remains the largest brewing company of Canada. Frances' father was businessman John Labatt (1838-1915), and her grandfather was company founder John Kinder Labatt (1803-1866). The Labatts were a prominent Irish-Canadian family, claiming descent from a French Huguenot family which settled in Ireland.
Cronyn was sent to a boarding school in Ottawa, where he studied from 1917 to 1921. The school was at the time called "Rockliffe Preparatory School", but has since been renamed to Elmwood School. Elmwood has become a school for girls. Cronyn attended first Ridley College in St. Catharines, and then McGill University in Montreal.
During his university years, Cronyn was a featherweight boxer. He was nominated for Canada's Olympic Boxing team for the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Cronyn was studying pre-law in the University, but switched his major to acting. He then enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he studied under theatrical director Max Reinhardt (1873-1943).
Cronyn made his Broadway debut in 1934, in the play "Hipper's Holiday". He had the minor role of a janitor. After a decade as a theatrical actor, Cronyn made his film debut in the psychological thriller "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943). He played crime fiction buff Herbie Hawkins. This was Cronyn's first collaboration with director Alfred Hitchcock. Cronyn later acted in "Lifeboat" (1944), and served as a screenwriter for both "Rope" (1948) and "Under Capricorn" (1949).
Cronyn was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Paul Roeder in the concentration camp themed film "The Seventh Cross" (1942). Roeder is a common factory worker in Nazi Germany, who risks his life and family to assist his old friend George Heisler (played by Spencer Tracy) to flee the country. While Cronyn's role was well-received, the award was instead won by rival actor Barry Fitzgerald (1888-1961).
In 1942, Cronyn married actress Jessica Tandy, and for many years they appeared together in theatre, film and television. The duo headlined the radio series "The Marriage" (1953-1954), depicting the difficulties of a professional woman in transitioning to the roles of housewife and mother. The duo also appeared in a television adaptation of the radio series, but it only lasted for 8 episodes.
Cronyn acting career mostly included supporting roles, but he found himself in the spotlight for the role of Joe Finley in the science fiction film "Cocoon". It became a surprise box office hit, and Cronyn was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actor. The award was instead won by a much younger actor, Michael J. Fox (1961-).
Cronyn returned to the role of Joe Finley in the sequel "Cocoon: The Return" (1988). While less successful than its predecessor, Cronyn's role was well-received. He was again nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Actor, but again lost to a younger actor. The award was won by Tom Hanks (1956-).
Jessica Tandy died in 1994, and the widowed Cronyn married writer Susan Cooper in 1996. Cronyn had one of his last prominent roles in the film "Marvin's Room" (1996). He played the incapacitated and bed-ridden Marvin Wakefield, who has to be taken care of by his adult daughters. The cast of the film was collectively nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
Cronyn's last film role was the role of con-artist Sam Clausner in the television film "Off Season" (2001). Cronyn died in 2003 from prostate cancer. He was 91-years-old.- Actor
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With features chiseled in stone, and renowned for playing a long list of historical figures, particularly in Biblical epics, the tall, well-built and ruggedly handsome Charlton Heston was one of Hollywood's top leading men of his prime and remained active in front of movie cameras for over sixty years. As a Hollywood star, he appeared in 100 films over the course of 60 years. He played Moses in the epic film, The Ten Commandments (1956) , for which he received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. He also starred in Touch of Evil (1958) with Orson Welles; Ben-Hur, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor (1959); El Cid (1961); and Planet of the Apes (1968). He also starred in the films The Greatest Show on Earth (1952); Secret of the Incas (1954); The Big Country (1958); and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). A supporter of Democratic politicians and civil rights in the 1960s, Heston later became a Republican, founding a conservative political action committee and supporting Ronald Reagan. Heston's most famous role in politics came as the five-term president of the National Rifle Association, from 1998 to 2003.
Heston was born John Charles Carter on October 4, 1923, in No Man's Land, Illinois, to Lila (Charlton) and Russell Whitford Carter, who operated a sawmill. He had English and Scottish ancestry, with recent Canadianforebears.
Heston made his feature film debut as the lead character in a 16mm production of Peer Gynt (1941), based on the Henrik Ibsen play. In 1944, Heston enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces. He served for two years as a radio operator and aerial gunner aboard a B-25 Mitchell stationed in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands with the 77th Bombardment Squadron of the Eleventh Air Force. He reached the rank of Staff Sergeant. Heston married Northwestern University student Lydia Marie Clarke, who was six months his senior. That same year he joined the military.
Heston played 'Marc Antony' in Julius Caesar (1950), and firmly stamped himself as genuine leading man material with his performance as circus manager 'Brad Braden' in the Cecil B. DeMille spectacular The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), also starring James Stewart and Cornel Wilde. The now very popular actor remained perpetually busy during the 1950s, both on TV and on the silver screen with audience pleasing performances in the steamy thriller The Naked Jungle (1954), as a treasure hunter in Secret of the Incas (1954) and another barn storming performance for Cecil B. DeMille as "Moses" in the blockbuster The Ten Commandments (1956).
Heston delivered further dynamic performances in the oily film noir thriller Touch of Evil (1958), and then alongside Gregory Peck in the western The Big Country (1958) before scoring the role for which he is arguably best known, that of the wronged Jewish prince who seeks his freedom and revenge in the William Wyler directed Ben-Hur (1959). This mammoth Biblical epic running in excess of three and a half hours became the standard by which other large scale productions would be judged, and its superb cast also including Stephen Boyd as the villainous "Massala", English actor Jack Hawkins as the Roman officer "Quintus Arrius", and Australian actor Frank Thring as "Pontius Pilate", all contributed wonderful performances. Never one to rest on his laurels, steely Heston remained the preferred choice of directors to lead the cast in major historical productions and during the 1960s he starred as Spanish legend "Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar" in El Cid (1961), as a US soldier battling hostile Chinese boxers during 55 Days at Peking (1963),played the ill-fated "John the Baptist" in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), the masterful painter "Michelangelo" battling Pope Julius II in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), and an English general in Khartoum (1966). In 1968, Heston filmed the unusual western Will Penny (1967) about an aging and lonely cowboy befriending a lost woman and her son, which Heston has often referred to as his favorite piece of work on screen. Interestingly, Heston was on the verge of acquiring an entirely new league of fans due to his appearance in four very topical science fiction films (all based on popular novels) painting bleak futures for mankind.
In 1968, Heston starred as time-traveling astronaut "George Taylor", in the terrific Planet of the Apes (1968) with its now legendary conclusion as Heston realizes the true horror of his destination. He returned to reprise the role, albeit primarily as a cameo, alongside fellow astronaut James Franciscus in the slightly inferior sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970). Next up, Heston again found himself facing the apocalypse in The Omega Man (1971) as the survivor of a germ plague that has wiped out humanity leaving only bands of psychotic lunatics roaming the cities who seek to kill the uninfected Heston. And fourthly, taking its inspiration from the Harry Harrison novel "Make Room!, Make Room!", Heston starred alongside screen legend Edward G. Robinson and Chuck Connors in Soylent Green (1973). During the remainder of the 1970s, Heston appeared in two very popular "disaster movies" contributing lead roles in the far-fetched Airport 1975 (1974), plus in the star-laden Earthquake (1974), filmed in "Sensoround" (low-bass speakers were installed in selected theaters to simulate the earthquake rumblings on screen to movie audiences). He played an evil Cardinal in the lively The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974), a mythical US naval officer in the recreation of Midway (1976), also filmed in "Sensoround", an LA cop trying to stop a sniper in Two-Minute Warning (1976) and another US naval officer in the submarine thriller Gray Lady Down (1978). Heston appeared in numerous episodes of the high-rating TV series Dynasty (1981) and The Colbys (1985), before moving onto a mixed bag of projects including TV adaptations of Treasure Island (1990) and A Man for All Seasons (1988), hosting two episodes of the comedy show, Saturday Night Live (1975), starring as the "Good Actor" bringing love struck Mike Myers to tears in Wayne's World 2 (1993), and as the eye patch-wearing boss of intelligence agent Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies (1994). He also narrated numerous TV specials and lent his vocal talents to the animated movie Hercules (1997), the family comedy Cats & Dogs (2001) and an animated version of Ben Hur (2003). Heston made an uncredited appearance in the inferior remake of Planet of the Apes (2001), and his last film appearance to date was in the Holocaust-themed drama of My Father (2003).
Heston narrated for highly classified military and Department of Energy instructional films, particularly relating to nuclear weapons, and "for six years Heston [held] the nation's highest security clearance" or Q clearance. The Q clearance is similar to a DoD or Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) clearance of Top Secret.
Heston was married to Lydia Marie Clark Heston since March 1944, and they have two children. His highly entertaining autobiography was released in 1995, titled appropriately enough "Into The Arena". Although often criticized for his strong conservative beliefs and involvement with the NRA, Heston was a strong advocate for civil right many years before it became fashionable, and was a recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, plus the Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2002, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and did appear in a film or TV production after 2003. He died in April 2008, a memorable figure in the history of US cinema.- Actress
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Her father, Donald Cole, was a consulting engineer, and died in 1926 when Kim was only three years old. Her mother, Grace Lind, once performed as a concert pianist. She had one brother who was eight years older than she, and she was educated at Miami Beach High.
According to an in-depth article on Kim Hunter by Joseph Collura in the October 2009 issue of "Classic Images", Kim was quiet and painfully shy as a child and overcame it through the guidance of a local dramatics teacher, a Mrs. Carmine. Included were diction, voice and posture lessons.
She studied at the Actors Studio and her first professional appearance was as "Penny" in "Penny Wise" in Miami in November 1939. Then, she joined a repertory group called "Theatre of Fifteen", but it disbanded in 1942 when WWII took away most of its male members.
She made her Broadway debut performance as "Stella" in "A Streetcar Named Desire" at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, in December 1947 that was the 1947-1948 season's success and for which she won the Critics Circle and Donaldson awards.
A one-time student of the Pasadena Playhouse, she was appearing in the 1942 production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" when she was discovered by an RKO talent hunter who signed her to a seven-year contract for David O. Selznick's company. Selznick suggested she change her first name to "Kim" and a RKO secretary suggested the last name of "Hunter". A few years later, Irene Mayer Selznick, David's ex-wife by then, recommended Kim for her reprise role of "Stella" in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), for which she won an Oscar.- Director
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Andrew Warhol's father, Ondrej, came from the Austria-Hungary Empire (now Slovakia) in 1912, and sent for his mother, Julia Zavackyová Warholová, in 1921. His father worked as a construction worker and later as a coal miner. Around some time, the family moved to Pittsburgh. During his teenage years, Andy suffered from several nervous breakdowns. Overcoming this, he graduated from Schenley High School in Pittsburgh in 1945, and enrolled in the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon University), graduating in June 1949. During college, he met Philip Pearlstein, a fellow student.
After graduation, Andy Warhol (having dropped the letter 'a' from his last name) moved to New York City, and shared an apartment with Pearlstein at St. Mark's Place off of Avenue A for a couple months. During this time, he moved in and out of several Manhattan apartments. In New York, he met Tina Fredericks, art editor of Glamour Magazine. Warhol's early jobs were doing drawings for Glamour, such as the Success is a Job in New York, and women's shoes. He also drew advertising for various magazines, including Vogue, Harper's Bazzar, book jackets, and holiday greeting cards.
During the 1950s, he moved to an apartment on East 75th Street. His mother moved in with him, and Fritizie Miller become his agent. In 1952, his first solo exhibition was held at Hugo Gallery, New York, of drawings to illustrate stories by Truman Capote. He started illustrating books, beginning with Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Book of Etiquette. Around 1953-1955, he worked for a theater group on the Lower East Side, and designs sets. It is around that time that he dyed his hair silver. Warhol published several books, including Twenty Five Cats Named Sam, and One Blue Pussy. In 1956, he traveled around the world with Charles Lisanby, a television-set designer. In April of this year, he was included in his first group exhibition, Recent Drawings USA, held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He began receiving accolades for his work, with the 35th Annual Art Directors Club Award for Distinctive Merit, for an I.Miller shoe advertisement. He published In The Bottom Of My Garden later that year. In 1957, received 36th Annual Art Directors Club Medal and Award of Distinctive Merit, for the I.Miller show advertisements, and Life Magazine published his illustrations for an article, "Crazy Golden Slippers".
In 1960, Warhol began to make his first paintings. They were based on comic strips in the likes of Dick Tracy, Popeye, Superman, and two of Coca-Cola bottles. In 1961, using the Dick Tracy comic strip, he designed a window display for Lord & Taylor, at this time, major art galleries around the nation begin noticing his work. In 1962, Warhol made paintings of dollar bills and Campbell soup cans, and his work was included in an important exhibition of pop art, The New Realists, held at Sidney Janis Gallery, New York. In November of this year, Elanor Ward showed his paintings at Stable Gallery, and the exhibition began a sensation. In 1963, he rented a studio in a firehouse on East 87th Street. He met his assistant, Gerard Malanga, and started making his first film, Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort of (1964). Later, he drove to Los Angeles for his second exhibition at the Ferus Gallery. In November of that year, he found a loft at 231 East 47th Street, which became his main studio, The Factory. In December, he began production of Red Jackie, the first of the Jackie series. In 1964, his first solo exhibition in Europe, held at the Galerie Ileana Sonnebend in Paris, featured the Flower series. He received a commission from architect Philip Johnson to make a mural, entitled Thirteen Most Wanted Men for the New York State Pavilion in the New York World's Fair. In April, he received an Independent Film Award from Film Culture magazine. In November, his first solo exhibition in the US was held at Leo Castelli Gallery. And at this time, he began his self portrait series.
In the summer of 1965, Andy Warhol met Paul Morrissey, who became his advisor and collaborator. His first solo museum exhibition was held at the Institute of Contempary Art, at the University of Pennsylvania. During this year, he made a surprise announcement of his retirement from painting, but it was to be short lived. He would resume painting again in 1972. It was around this time that he met Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Maureen Tucker (collectively known as The Velvet Underground), and a German-born model turned chanteuse called Nico. He paired Nico with the Velvets, and they developed a close bond with Warhol. This was an alliance that forever changed the face of world culture. Warhol produced the group's first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, which has been called "the most influential record ever" by many critics. Later, a multimedia show developed (called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable), managed, and produced by Warhol, featuring the Velvet Underground.
In the summer of 1966, Warhol's film Chelsea Girls (1966) became the first underground film to be shown at a commercial theater. In 1967, Chelsea Girls opened in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and six of his Self Portraits were shown at Expo 67 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. In August of this year, he gave a lecture at various colleges in the Los Angeles area, his persona is so popular that some colleges hire Allen Midgette to impersonate him for lectures. Later, Warhol moved The Factory to 33 Union Square West, and met Fred Hughes, who later became President of Enterprises, and Interview Magazine. In 1968, Warhol's first solo European museum exhibition was held at Moderna Museet, Stockholm. But later that year on June 3, 1968, Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas, an ultra-radical and member of the entourage surrounding Warhol. Solanis was the founder of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Fortunately, Warhol survived the assassination attempt after spending two months in a hospital. This incident is the subject of the film, I Shot Andy Warhol (1996). Afterwards, Andy Warhol dropped out of the filmmaking business, but now and then continued his contribution to film and art. He never emotionally recovered from his brush with death.
During the 1970s and 80s, Andy Warhol's status as a media icon skyrocketed, and he used his influence to back many younger artists. He began publishing of Interview magazine, with the first issue being released in fall of 1969. In 1971, his play, entitled Pork, opened at London at the Round House Theatre. He resumed painting in 1972, although it was primarily celebrity portraits. The Factory was moved to 860 Broadway, and in 1975, he bought a house on Lexington Street. A major retrospective of his work is held in Zurich. In 1976, he did the Skulls, and Hammer and Sickle series. Throughout the late 70s and 80s, a retrospective exhibition was held, as Warhol began work on the Reversals, Retrospectives, and Shadows series. The Myths series, Endangered Species series, and Ads series followed through the early and mid 1980s. On 22 February 1987, a "day of medical infamy", as quoted by one biographer, Andy Warhol died following complications from gall bladder surgery. He was 58 years old.- Actor
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Elliott Gould is an American actor known for his roles in M*A*S*H (1970), his Oscar-nominated performance in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), and more recently, his portrayal of old-time con artist Reuben Tishkoff in Ocean's Eleven (2001), Ocean's Twelve (2004) and Ocean's Thirteen (2007). Gould was born Elliott Goldstein on August 29, 1938 in Brooklyn, NY, to Lucille (Raver), who sold artificial flowers, and Bernard Goldstein, a textiles buyer in the garment industry. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Romania, Belarus, and Russia).
Gould's portrayal of Trapper John in Robert Altman's M*A*S*H (1970) marked the beginning of perhaps the most prolific period of his career, highlighted by such roles as Philip Marlowe in Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973) and Robert Caulfield in Capricorn One (1977).
On television Gould has the distinction of having hosted Saturday Night Live (1975) six times and helmed E/R (1984), a situation comedy set in Chicago about a divorced physician working in an emergency room, which aired for one season. He also co-starred in the series Nothing Is Easy (1986) about a couple raising an adopted Chinese boy.
Gould appeared regularly on television and in film throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, including cameos in The Muppet Movie (1979) and The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984). His most prominent recent television role was a recurring part on Friends (1994), on which he played Monica and Ross Geller's father Jack. More recently he voiced the character of Mr. Stoppable on the Disney Channel animated series Kim Possible (2002). In film Gould received critical acclaim for his portrayal of an older mobster in Warren Beatty's Bugsy (1991), and make a noteworthy appearance in American History X (1998). His next major TV role will be in Showtime's drama Ray Donovan (2013) starring Liev Schreiber.
Gould has been married three times, twice to Jennifer Bogart, and once to Barbra Streisand. He has three children.- Producer
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Mort Abrahams was born on 26 March 1916 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and production manager, known for Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Planet of the Apes (1968) and Tom Corbett, Space Cadet (1950). He was married to Dorothy Bernstein. He died on 28 May 2009 in Sherman Oaks, California, USA.- Actor
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Emanuel Goldenberg arrived in the United States from Romania at age ten, and his family moved into New York's Lower East Side. He took up acting while attending City College, abandoning plans to become a rabbi or lawyer. The American Academy of Dramatic Arts awarded him a scholarship, and he began work in stock, with his new name, Edward G. Robinson (the "G" stood for his birth surname), in 1913. Broadway was two years later; he worked steadily there for 15 years. His work included "The Kibitzer", a comedy he co-wrote with Jo Swerling. His film debut was a small supporting part in the silent The Bright Shawl (1923), but it was with the coming of sound that he hit his stride. His stellar performance as snarling, murderous thug Rico Bandello in Little Caesar (1931)--all the more impressive since in real life Robinson was a sophisticated, cultured man with a passion for fine art--set the standard for movie gangsters, both for himself in many later films and for the industry. He portrayed the title character in several biographical works, such as Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940) and A Dispatch from Reuters (1940). Psychological dramas included Flesh and Fantasy (1943), Double Indemnity (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944)and Scarlet Street (1945). Another notable gangster role was in Key Largo (1948). He was "absolved" of allegations of Communist affiliation after testifying as a friendly witness for the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy hysteria of the early 1950s. In 1956 he had to sell off his extensive art collection in a divorce settlement and also had to deal with a psychologically troubled son. In 1956 he returned to Broadway in "Middle of the Night". In 1973 he was awarded a special, posthumous Oscar for lifetime achievement.- Arthur P. Jacobs is best known for producing the "Planet of the Apes" series. He bought the rights to Pierre Boulle's novel Monkey Planet in 1963. Many film studios passed on the project, stating that the concept was unfilmable. Jacobs persevered, and the film was released in 1968 to wide popular acclaim. Jacobs cast his wife, starlet Natalie Trundy, in various roles in the four Apes sequels. Jacobs suffered from heart problems and died at the age of 51 in 1973, shortly after the final Apes film hit the theaters. An excellent character study of Jacobs can be found in John Gregory Dunne's The Studio.
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Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall was born in Herne Hill, London, to Winifriede Lucinda (Corcoran), an Irish-born aspiring actress, and Thomas Andrew McDowall, a merchant seaman of Scottish descent. Young Roddy was enrolled in elocution courses at age five. By age 10, he had appeared in his first film, Murder in the Family (1938), playing Peter Osborne, the younger brother of sisters played by Jessica Tandy and Glynis Johns.
His mother brought Roddy and his sister to the U.S. at the beginning of World War II, and he soon got the part of "Huw", the youngest child in a family of Welsh coal miners, in John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941), acting alongside Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara and Donald Crisp in the film that won that year's best film Oscar. He went on to many other child roles, in films like My Friend Flicka (1943) and Lassie Come Home (1943) until, at age eighteen, he moved to New York, where he played a long series of successful stage roles, both on Broadway and in such venues as Connecticut's Stratford Festival, where he did Shakespeare. He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1949.
In addition to making many more movies (over 150), McDowall acted in television, developed an extensive collection of movies and Hollywood memorabilia, and published five acclaimed books of his own photography. He died at his Los Angeles home, aged 70, of cancer. He never married and had no children.- Actor
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Born on October 1, 1921, in White Plains, New York, gruff veteran character actor James Whitmore earned early and widespread respect with his award-winning dramatic capabilities on Broadway and in films. He would later conquer TV with the same trophy-winning results.
The son of James Allen Whitmore and Florence Crane, he was educated at Connecticut's Choate School after receiving a football scholarship. He later earned his BA from Yale University in 1944 before serving with the Marines in World War II. Following his honorable discharge he prepared for the stage under the G.I. bill at the American Theatre Wing, where he met first wife Nancy Mygatt. They married in 1947 and went on to have three sons together -- Steve, Dan and actor/director James Whitmore Jr..
Applause and kudos came swiftly for Whitmore while under both the Broadway and film banners. After appearing with the Peterborough, New Hampshire, Players in the summer of 1947 in "The Milky Way," Whitmore made a celebrated Broadway debut as Tech Sergeant Evans in "Command Decision" later that year. His gritty performance swept the stage acting trifecta -- Tony, Donaldson and Theatre World awards. In later years Whitmore would often comment that most of his satisfaction came from performing on the live stage.
Hollywood soon took notice of Whitmore. Clark Gable happened to be starring in the film version of Command Decision (1948), and it was hoped that Whitmore would get to recreate his award-winning role. But it was not to be. Song-and-dance star Van Johnson, who was looking for straight, serious roles after a vastly successful musical career, was given the coveted part. The disappointment didn't last long, however, and Whitmore made an auspicious film bow the following year with a prime role in the documentary-styled crime thriller The Undercover Man (1949) starring Glenn Ford and Nina Foch. Whitmore scored brilliantly with his second film as well. Battleground (1949), another war picture, was highly praised and the actor became the talk of the town upon its initial release, grabbing both the Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for "supporting actor" for his efforts.
Hardly the handsome, matinée lead type, Whitmore nevertheless primed himself up for leading roles in a character vein and found a fine range of material come his way. He showed off his soft inner core as a religious, moral-minded family man opposite Nancy Reagan [Reagan] in the inspirational drama The Next Voice You Hear... (1950); featured his usual saltier side alongside Marjorie Main in Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone (1950); ably portrayed a hunchbacked crook in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and displayed customary authority as a security chief in the stoic military drama Above and Beyond (1952) starring Robert Taylor. Elsewhere, he played it strictly for laughs as a Runyonesque gangster partnered with Keenan Wynn in the classic MGM musical Kiss Me Kate (1953); portrayed a valiant cop fighting off gigantic mutant ants in the intelligent sci-fi thriller Them! (1954); a hard-hitting social worker in Crime in the Streets (1956) and even made the most of his small role as Tyrone Power's manager in The Eddy Duchin Story (1956).
By 1959, the craggy-faced actor known for his trademark caterpillar eyebrows, turned more and more toward the small screen, with memorable roles in The Twilight Zone (1959), The Detectives (1959) (working again with Robert Taylor), Ben Casey (1961) and a host of live theater dramas. He also starred in his own series as attorney Abraham Lincoln Jones in The Law and Mr. Jones (1960), which lasted two seasons.
Every so often a marvelous character would rear its pretty head and interest him back to the big screen. Notable of these were his white man passing for black in the controversial social drama Black Like Me (1964); his weary veteran cop in Madigan (1968); and his brash, authoritative simian in the classic sci-fi Planet of the Apes (1968).
Divorced from wife Nancy after more than two decades, Whitmore married actress Audra Lindley, best known on TV as Mrs. Roper of Three's Company (1976) fame, in 1972. The couple forged a strong acting partnership as well, particularly on stage, and maintained a professional relationship long after their 1979 divorce. Whitmore and Lindley were lauded for their appearances together in such plays as "The Magnificent Yankee," "On Golden Pond," "The Visit," "Foxfire" and "Love Letters," among others.
In the 1970s the actor transformed into a magnificent one-man-show machine playing such celebrated and inspiring historical/entertainment icons as Will Rogers, Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt. He disappeared into these historical legends so efficiently that even the powers-that-be had the good sense to preserve them on film and TV in the form of Will Rogers' USA (1972); Give 'em Hell, Harry! (1975), which earned him his second Oscar nomination; and Bully: An Adventure with Teddy Roosevelt (1978).
In his twilight years, Whitmore showed he still had what it took to touch movie audiences, most notably as the fragile prisoner-turned-parolee who cannot adapt to his late-life freedom in the classic film The Shawshank Redemption (1994). On TV he continued to win awards, copping a TV Emmy for a recurring part on The Practice (1997) in the late 1990s. A household face in commercials as well, one of his passions was gardening and he eventually became the spokesman for Miracle-Gro plant food.
Whitmore remarried (and re-divorced, 1979-1981) his first wife Nancy briefly before finding a lasting union with his fourth wife, actress-turned-author Noreen Nash, whom he married broaching age 80 in 2001. Whitmore died of lung cancer on February 6, 2009, after having been diagnosed in mid-November 2008.- Actor
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Distinguished character player James Firman Daly first appeared on stage in his home town of Wisconsin Rapids in 1928. He was set on acting from an early age, and was strongly encouraged by his parents. His father was in the fuel business and his mother at one time a CIA employee. Upon leaving school, Daly studied dramatic arts at various Midwestern colleges, eventually graduating from Grinnell in Iowa. His acting career was then put on hold as a result of the war and he served in all three of the service branches, the last four years spent in the navy as an ensign.
Daly's acting career got off to a good start once he arrived in New York in 1946, landing a part as understudy to Gary Merrill in the long-running hit play "Born Yesterday" on Broadway. By the time he appeared in his third play, "Man and Superman" (1949), he was billed third in the cast and won a Daniel Blum Award for his performance. Subsequently, Daly had a busy time on stage, both on and off-Broadway. He co-starred three times with the legendary Helen Hayes, most famously in "The Glass Menagerie" in 1950. That same year he also collected the Theater Guild Award as the star of "Major Barbara". His other theatrical roles of note included "Billy Budd", "Saint Joan", "The Merchant of Venice" and (on tour with Colleen Dewhurst) "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?".
A hard-working actor and intent on diversifying into different media, Daly clearly understood the potential of live television drama. He made his small screen debut in the late 1940s and soon starred in early Playhouse productions. Within a few years he featured in his own weekly syndicated series, Foreign Intrigue (1951), about a family of foreign correspondents in Europe. This was one of the first TV shows to be shot on location and it necessitated his and his family's temporary relocation to Paris and Stockholm. Throughout the next twenty years, Daly remained much in demand as a reliable leading television actor with 'gravitas', often playing tragic or despairing figures. He was commanding as the titular star of Give Us Barabbas! (1961). Four years later, he picked up an Emmy for his role in the Hallmark Hall of Fame (1951) episode "The Eagle and the Cage".
Another memorably poignant portrayal was in The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "A Stop at Willoughby", with Daly as a salesperson driven to the brink of a nervous breakdown, desperately escaping his world to a fantasy town in his own mind where life is perpetually simple and peaceful. He was also David Vincent's ill-fated business partner and friend in the pilot episode "Beach-Head", one of the first victims of The Invaders (1967). Many viewers will remember Daly as 'Flint', the solitary near-immortal from the Star Trek (1966) episode "Requiem for Methuselah". There were countless other guest starring roles and even a few choice movie parts, such as Planet of the Apes (1968). Daly enjoyed another recurring role in the long-running (170 episodes) Medical Center (1969) as resident 'elder statesman' to young surgeon Chad Everett. He had just completed filming on an episode of "Roots: The Next Generations" and was scheduled to appear in the play "Equus" at the historic Westchester Theatre, Tarrytown Music Hall, when he died of a heart attack at the age of 59.- Actress
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A native of Berlin, Maryland, Linda Harrison was Miss Berlin at 16, then a model in New York's Garment Center. Homesickness brought her back to Maryland, where she entered and won the state beauty pageant. During the finals in the Miss International contest (held in Long Beach, California), she was "spotted" by talent scout Mike Medavoy and presented at 20th Century-Fox. Throughout her acting years at Fox, and amidst movie roles in Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) and others, she dated studio boss Richard D. Zanuck and married him in 1968. They were divorced in 1978, but she's appeared in three of his movies since then.- Robert Gunner was born on 27 July 1931 in North Plainfield, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for Planet of the Apes (1968), The Jackals (1967) and The Green Hornet (1966). He died on 18 December 2001 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Lou Wagner was born on 14 August 1940 in San Jose, California, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Planet of the Apes (1968), Airport (1970) and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972).- Parfrey was born Sydney Woodrow Parfrey in New York City, New York, to Hazel (James) and Sidney Parfrey, both Welsh immigrants. One of the most interesting character actors to emerge on American film and television in the 1960s, Parfrey brought a quirky charisma to every role he played, from shopkeepers to space-age simians. His noted turn as the unbalanced informer in Broadway's "Advise and Consent" (1961) set the standard for his offbeat, conspiratorial persona in dozens of TV and movie appearances into the 1980s. Always a supporting player receiving inconsistently deferential billing, Parfrey did manage some focal TV guest-star roles, mainly in the late sixties, and a few big A-movie parts, most notably as one of the wretched prisoners in Papillon (1973). Parfrey's association with that film's director, Franklin Schaffner, also included his bit as one of the three "See No Evil" orangutan judges in Planet of the Apes (1968) (he would don the prosthetics again for the pilot of the spinoff TV series). In addition, Parfrey also turned up in the unofficial repertory companies of both Clint Eastwood and Don Siegel. His determination to bring that edgy "something extra" to his profession lives on in his son, the "underground" publisher Adam Parfrey.
- Jeff Burton was born on 28 March 1924 in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Planet of the Apes (1968), Black Hooker (1974) and Coffy (1973). He died on 18 January 1988 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
- Buck Kartalian was born on 13 August 1922 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for Planet of the Apes (1968), The Rock (1996) and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972). He was married to Margaret Poloshjian and Mary E. Bannister. He died on 24 May 2016 in Mission Hills, California, USA.
- Norman Burton graduated from The Actor's Studio in New York. He appeared in NY onstage in professional stage productions of "Sound of Hunting", "Anna Christie", and José Quintero's production of Brendan Behan's "The Quare Fellow". He appeared in such notable films as Towering Inferno, Save the Tiger (1973), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), Bloodsport (1988), Planet of the Apes (1968), and Planet of the Apes (1974).
Burton moved from Prescott, Arizona to Ajijic, Mexico. He was killed in a car crash on the California/Arizona border while returning to his home in Mexico in late 2003, six days before what would have been his 80th birthday. A widower, Burton was survived by his daughter, two grandsons, a niece and a nephew. - Prolific supporting actor, arguably best known for his two guest appearances on Rod Serling 's The Twilight Zone (1959). In one of his later roles he played the chimpanzee veterinarian Dr. Galen in Planet of the Apes (1968) which was also co-scripted by Serling. Wright King studied drama at the St Louis School of Theater, graduating in 1941. During the Second World War he served for three years with the U.S.Navy, stationed in the South Pacific. After being honorably discharged he continued his drama studies in New York at the Actors Studio and at the American Theatre Wing. He did not make his screen debut until 1949. A string of walk-on parts was followed by a critically acclaimed supporting role in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire (1947-49) as well as in the subsequent motion picture. King enjoyed a lengthy career, featuring in stage plays on both sides of the Atlantic and popping up in numerous television episodes (especially westerns). In one season of Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958) he played the sidekick of bounty hunter Josh Randall, played by Steve McQueen (1960) .
A close friend of Eileen Heckart until her death in 2001, King left the acting profession in 1987. With his wife June, he retired to Portland, Oregon. More recently, he resided in Woodland Hills, California, where he died at the venerable age of 95 on November 25 2018. His son is actor Meegan King . - Veteran character actor Paul Lambert was born in El Paso, Texas, and brought up in Kansas City. He was an Army Air Corps lieutenant in World War II. Using the G.I. Bill, he attended the Actors Lab in Los Angeles and several acting schools in New York. He made his motion picture debut in Spartacus (1960). He began his acting career on the New York stage in the 1950s. His stage credits include a role in the Broadway production of "A Little Night Music". In addition to being an actor, he was also a playwright and stage director, and wrote, directed and acted in his own play, "Interior Hollywood Day". In addition, he was in a record 14 productions of the prestigious Playhouse 90 (1956).
- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Franklin J. Schaffner was one of the most innovative creative minds in the early days of American network television, utilizing a moving camera in the days when most television directors kept the camera static. His eye for visuals was developed in the dozens of live television programs he directed on prestigious shows such as Studio One (1948) and Playhouse 90 (1956), not to mention his work in news and public affairs on "March of Time" and as one of the directors of TV coverage of the 1948 political conventions in Philadelphia. His visual sense came to be one of the important attributes of his work in feature films, such as the trek taken across the desert by the astronauts at the start of Planet of the Apes (1968). In addition to his Oscar and DGA Awards for Patton (1970), Schaffner also won Sylvania Awards in 1953 and 1954, Emmy Awards in 1954, 1955 and 1962 and a Variety Critics Poll Award in 1960.- Michael Wilson was born on 1 July 1914 in McAlester, Oklahoma, USA. He was a writer, known for Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and 5 Fingers (1952). He was married to Zelma Wilson. He died on 9 April 1978 in Los Angeles County, California, USA.
- Writer
- Actor
- Producer
A former boxer, paratrooper and general all-around angry young man, Rod Serling was one of the radical new voices that made the "Golden Age" of television. Long before The Twilight Zone (1959), he was known for writing such high-quality scripts as "Patterns" and "Requiem for a Heavyweight," both later turned into films (Patterns (1956) and Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)). The Twilight Zone (1959) featured forays into controversial grounds like racism, Cold War paranoia and the horrors of war. His maverick attitude eventually drove him from regular network television.- Music Department
- Composer
- Additional Crew
Born on February 10, 1929, Jerry Goldsmith studied piano with Jakob Gimpel and composition, theory, and counterpoint with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. He also attended classes in film composition given by Miklós Rózsa at the Univeristy of Southern California. In 1950, he was employed as a clerk typist in the music department at CBS. There, he was given his first embryonic assignments as a composer for radio shows such as "Romance" and "CBS Radio Workshop". He wrote one score a week for these shows, which were performed live on transmission. He stayed with CBS until 1960, having already scored The Twilight Zone (1959). He was hired by Revue Studios to score their series Thriller (1960). It was here that he met the influential film composer Alfred Newman who hired Goldsmith to score the film Lonely Are the Brave (1962), his first major feature film score. An experimentalist, Goldsmith constantly pushed forward the bounds of film music: Planet of the Apes (1968) included horns blown without mouthpieces and a bass clarinetist fingering the notes but not blowing. He was unafraid to use the wide variety of electronic sounds and instruments which had become available, although he did not use them for their own sake.
He rose rapidly to the top of his profession in the early to mid-1960s, with scores such as Freud (1962), A Patch of Blue (1965) and The Sand Pebbles (1966). In fact, he received Oscar nominations for all three and another in the 1960s for Planet of the Apes (1968). From then onwards, his career and reputation was secure and he scored an astonishing variety of films during the next 30 years or so, from Patton (1970) to Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and from Chinatown (1974) to The Boys from Brazil (1978). He received 17 Oscar nominations but won only once, for The Omen (1976) in 1977 (Goldsmith himself dismissed the thought of even getting a nomination for work on a "horror show"). He enjoyed giving concerts of his music and performed all over the world, notably in London, where he built up a strong relationship with London Symphony Orchestra.
Jerry Goldsmith died at age 75 on July 21, 2004 after a long battle with cancer.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Leon Shamroy, born Leon Shamroyevsky, was an American film cinematographer. He is best known for The Black Swan (1942),Wilson (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), David and Bathsheba (1951), The Robe (1953), Cleopatra (1963), The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) and Planet of the Apes (1968).
He and Charles Lang share the record for most number of Academy Award nominations for Cinematography. During his five-decade career, he gained eighteen nominations with four wins, sharing the record with Joseph Ruttenberg.
Shamroy died in 1974 at the age of 72.- Editor
- Editorial Department
Hugh S. Fowler was born on 24 July 1912 in Missouri, USA. He was an editor, known for Patton (1970), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Planet of the Apes (1968). He died on 2 August 1975 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
A former song-and-dance man and veteran of vaudeville, burlesque and Broadway, Jack Albertson is best known to audiences as "The Man" in the TV series Chico and the Man (1974), for which he won an Emmy. In 1968 Albertson, the brother of actress Mabel Albertson, won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in The Subject Was Roses (1968), a part which also won him the Tony award during its Broadway run.- Gordon Anderson was born on 2 August 1944 in Batesville, Arkansas, USA. He is an actor, known for A Reflection of Fear (1972), Ratboy (1986) and The 41st Annual Academy Awards (1969). He was previously married to Sondra Locke.
- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Alan Arkin was an Academy Award-winning American actor who was also an acclaimed director, producer, author, singer and composer.
He was born Alan Wolf Arkin on March 26, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. His family were Jewish emigrants from Russia and Germany. In 1946, the Arkins moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, California. His father, David I. Arkin, was an artist and writer, who worked as a teacher, and lost his job for merely refusing to answer questions about his political affiliation during the 1950s Red Scare. His father challenged the politically biased dismissal and eventually prevailed, but unfortunately it was after his death. His mother, Beatrice (Wortis) Arkin, a teacher, shared his father's views. Young Arkin was fond of music and acting, he was taking various acting classes from the age of 10. He attended Franklin High School, in Los Angeles, then Los Angeles City College from 1951 - 1953, and Bennington College in Vermont from 1953 - 1954. He sang in a college folk-band, and was involved in a drama class. He dropped out of college to form the folk music group The Tarriers, in which Arkin was the lead singer and played guitar. He co-wrote the 1956 hit "The Banana Boat Song" - a Jamaican calypso folk song, which became better known as Harry Belafonte's popular version, and reached #4 on the Billboard chart. At that time Arkin was a struggling young actor who played bit parts on television and on stage, and made a living as a delivery boy, repairman, pot washer and baby sitter. From 1958 - 1968 he performed and recorded with the children's folk group, The Babysitters. He has also recorded an entire album for the Elektra label titled "Folksongs - Once Over Lightly."
In 1957 Arkin made his first big screen appearance as a lead singer with The Tarriers in Calypso Heat Wave (1957). Then he made his Off-Broadway debut as a singer in "Heloise" (1958). Next year he joined the Compass Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri. There he caught the eye of stage director Bob Sills and became the original member of the "Second City" troupe in Chicago. In 1961 Arkin made his Broadway debut in musical "From the Second City", for which he wrote lyrics and sketches, then starred as David Kolowitz in the Broadway comedy "Enter Laughing" (1963), for which he won a Tony Award. He starred in a Broadway musical "From the Second City production, then returned to Broadway as Harry Berlin in "Luv" (1964). Arkin made his directorial debut with an Off-Broadway hit called "Eh?" (1966), which introduced the young actor, named Dustin Hoffman. He won a Drama Desk Award for his direction of the Off-Broadway production of "Little Murders" (1969), and another Drama Desk Award for "The White House Murder Case" (1970). He also directed the original version of Neil Simon's hilarious smash, "The Sunshine Boys" (1972), which ran over 500 performances.
Arkin earned his first Academy Award nomination as Best Actor for his feature acting debut in a comedy The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966), by director Norman Jewison, co-starring as Lt. Rozanov, a Soviet submariner who is mistaken for a spy after his boat accidentally wrecks aground in New England. Arkin demonstrated his dramatic range as the psychopathic killer Roat in suspense film Wait Until Dark (1967), opposite Audrey Hepburn. He reinvented himself as the sensitive deaf-mute in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), for which he received his second Academy Award Nomination as Best Actor in the Leading role. He followed with what remained his best known role as Captain Yossarian in Catch-22 (1970), directed by Mike Nichols and based on the eponymous anti-war novel by Joseph Heller. In it Arkin arguably gave his strongest performance, however, his career suffered because the film initially did not live up to expectations. After a few years of directorial work on television, Arkin made a comeback with an impressive portrayal of doctor Sigmund Freud in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976). In the early 1980s he acted in three movies that were family affairs, written by his wife, Barbara Dana, and co-starring his son, Adam Arkin.
During the 1990s he turned out several notable performances, such as a bitter former baseball player in TNT's Cooperstown (1993), and as a hilarious psychiatrist opposite John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank (1997). He won raves for his portrayal of a divorced father who struggles to keep his kids enrolled in the Beverly Hills school system in Slums of Beverly Hills (1998). Arkin gave a brilliant performance opposite Robin Williams in Jakob the Liar (1999), a film about the Nazi occupation of Poland. He also returned to the New York stage co-starring with his son, Tony Arkin and Elaine May in "Power Plays", which he also co-authored. His most recent comeback as a heroin-snorting, sex-crazed, foul-mouthed grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine (2006), earned him his third Academy Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, and his first Academy Award.
Alan Arkin had been a modern Renaissance man. In addition to his achievements as an actor, director, and producer, he made his mark as a singer-songwriter with his popular-song compositions "Banana Boat Song", "Cuddle Bug," "That's Me," and "Best Time of the Year." Arkin also authored several books, including science-fiction and some children's stories, such as "The Clearing", "The Lemming Condition" and "Cassie Loves Beethoven" among his other publications. He was a father of three sons, Adam Arkin, Matthew Arkin, and Anthony Arkin, and a grandfather of Molly Arkin.
Alan Arkin was a strong supporter of an organic way of living and also a proponent for preservation of the environment and natural habitat. He avoided the show-biz-milieu and was known as an actor who does not really care about prestigious awards, but values having a good job and being acknowledged by his peers. In Arkin's own words he wanted to "Stay home for three months. Living as quietly as humanly possible." Arkin was given an Indian name, Grey Wolf, by his Native American friends in New Mexico.
Alan Arkin died in California on June 29, 2023 at the age of 89. He is survived by his three sons - Adam, Matthew, and Anthony Dana Arkin, and with Dana, Alan Arkin is survived by third wife, Suzanne Newlander Arkin, whom he married in 1999.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Senta Berger was born in 1941 in Vienna, Austria to her father Josef Berger who was a musician and her mother Therese Berger, a school teacher. Senta and her father performed together when she was just four years old. She sang and her dad played the piano. At five years old, she took ballet lessons and at 14, Berger turned to acting taking private lessons. She left her private school education at 16. In 1957, Berger was discovered by famous director Willi Forst and played a small role in a film. She was accepted to the Max Reinhardt Seminar. In 1958, Berger was the youngest member at the Vienna Theater in Josefstadt. Director Bernhard Wicki and producer Artur Brauner sought after Senta producing the film The Good Soldier, by Heinz Rühmann. It succeeded and Brauner used her in several films. In 1962, Berger moved to Hollywood and starred with Charlton Heston, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Richard Harris, George Hamilton, Kirk Douglas, John Wayne and Yul Brynner. In 1969 she returned to Europe and was seen during the 1970's in Italian productions of various genres. In 1967, she returned to the silver screen with an Alain Delon film. In 1968, Berger played in the three-part thriller Babeck by Herbert Reinecker. 1970 was her debut as Producer of her own company. As director she put her husband's film before the camera. Further, international successful of films of her production company have included The White Rose, The Nasty Girl and Mother Courage. In addition, Berger expanded her European career in France and Italy. The birth of her two sons, Simon (b. 1972) and Luca (b. 1979) prompted Berger to turn back to the theater. In 1985/86, she managed her TV comeback in front of the German-speaking audience in the television series Kir Royal co-starring with Franz Xaver Kroetz , Dieter Hildebrandt and Billie Zöckler. Many TV series guest appearances followed.- Music Department
- Writer
- Composer
Prolific songwriter ("Nice 'n' Easy", "Yellow Bird"), composer and author, educated at UCLA and the University of Northern Carolina (BA). During WW II, he wrote and directed Special Services shows, then directed TV shows for CBS in Philadelphia, PA from 1945-1953. He joined ASCAP in 1955 and wrote TV production numbers for Jo Stafford special shows, and songs for Fred Astaire and Marge and Gower Champion. He also wrote songs for revues and night club acts. His stage scores include "That's Life" (Los Angeles), "Ice Capades of 1957" and "Something More!" (Broadway). His chief musical collaborators include his wife Marilyn Bergman , Lew Spence, Norman Luboff, Paul Weston, Sammy Fain and Alex North. His other song compositions include "Cheatin' Billy", "Don't Know Where I'm Goin'", "I've Never Left Your Arms", "Marriage-Go-Round", "Sentimental Baby", "Sleep Warm", "Sogni D'Oro", "That Face", "Baby, The Ball Is Over", "Ol' MacDonald", "That's Him Over There" and "If I Were In Love". His albums include "Never Be Afraid" and "Aesop's Fables".- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Ingrid Bergman was one of the greatest actresses from Hollywood's lamented Golden Era. Her natural and unpretentious beauty and her immense acting talent made her one of the most celebrated figures in the history of American cinema. Bergman is also one of the most Oscar-awarded actresses, tied with Meryl Streep and Frances McDormand, all three of them second only to Katharine Hepburn.
Ingrid Bergman was born on August 29, 1915 in Stockholm, Sweden, to a German mother, Frieda Henrietta (Adler), and a Swedish father, Justus Samuel Bergman, an artist and photographer. Her mother died when she was only two and her father died when she was 12. She went to live with an elderly uncle.
The woman who would be one of the top stars in Hollywood in the 1940s had decided to become an actress after finishing her formal schooling. She had had a taste of acting at age 17 when she played an uncredited role of a girl standing in line in the Swedish film Landskamp (1932) in 1932 - not much of a beginning for a girl who would be known as "Sweden's illustrious gift to Hollywood." Her parents died when she was just a girl and the uncle she lived with didn't want to stand in the way of Ingrid's dream. The next year she enrolled at the Royal Dramatic Theatre School in Stockholm but decided that stage acting was not for her. It would be three more years before she would have another chance at a film. When she did, it was more than just a bit part. The film in question was The Count of the Old Town (1935), where she had a speaking part as Elsa Edlund. After several films that year that established her as a class actress, Ingrid appeared in Intermezzo (1936) as Anita Hoffman. Luckily for her, American producer David O. Selznick saw it and sent a representative from Selznick International Pictures to gain rights to the story and have Ingrid signed to a contract. Once signed, she came to California and starred in United Artists' 1939 remake of her 1936 film, Intermezzo (1939), reprising her original role. The film was a hit and so was Ingrid.
Her beauty was unlike anything the movie industry had seen before and her acting was superb. Hollywood was about to find out that they had the most versatile actress the industry had ever seen. Here was a woman who truly cared about the craft she represented. The public fell in love with her. Ingrid was under contract to go back to Sweden to film Only One Night (1939) in 1939 and June Night (1940) in 1940. Back in the US she appeared in three films, all well-received. She made only one film in 1942, but it was the classic Casablanca (1942) opposite Humphrey Bogart.
Ingrid was choosing her roles well. In 1943 she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), the only film she made that year. The critics and public didn't forget her when she made Gaslight (1944) the following year--her role of Paula Alquist got her the Oscar for Best Actress. In 1945 Ingrid played in Spellbound (1945), Saratoga Trunk (1945) and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), for which she received her third Oscar nomination for her role of Sister Benedict. She made no films in 1947, but bounced back with a fourth nomination for Joan of Arc (1948). In 1949 she went to Italy to film Stromboli (1950), directed by Roberto Rossellini. She fell in love with him and left her husband, Dr. Peter Lindstrom, and daughter, Pia Lindström. America's "moral guardians" in the press and the pulpits were outraged. She was pregnant and decided to remain in Italy, where her son was born. In 1952 Ingrid had twins, Isotta and Isabella Rossellini, who became an outstanding actress in her own right, as did Pia.
Ingrid continued to make films in Italy and finally returned to Hollywood in 1956 in the title role in Anastasia (1956), which was filmed in England. For this she won her second Academy Award. She had scarcely missed a beat. Ingrid continued to bounce between Europe and the US making movies, and fine ones at that. A film with Ingrid Bergman was sure to be a quality production. In her final big-screen performance in 1978's Autumn Sonata (1978) she had her final Academy Award nomination. Though she didn't win, many felt it was the most sterling performance of her career. Ingrid retired, but not before she gave an outstanding performance in the mini-series A Woman Called Golda (1982), a film about Israeli prime minister Golda Meir. For this she won an Emmy Award as Best Actress, but, unfortunately, she did not live to see the fruits of her labor.
Ingrid died from cancer on August 29, 1982, her 67th birthday, in London, England.- Music Department
- Writer
- Composer
Prolific songwriter ("Nice 'n' Easy", "Yellow Bird"), composer and author Marilyn Bergman wrote several theme songs for television and songs for revues, night clubs, and films. Joining ASCAP in 1953, her chief musical collaborators included her husband Alan Bergman, Lew Spence, Norman Luboff, Paul Weston, Sammy Fain, and Alex North. Her other song compositions included "Cheatin' Billy", "Don't Know Where I'm Goin'", "I've Never Left Your Arms", "Never Be Afraid", "Outta My Mind", "The Right Approach" (for film), "Marriage-Go-Round" (for film), "Sentimental Baby", "Sleep Warm", "Sogni D'Oro", "That Face", "Baby, the Ball is Over", "Ol' MacDonald", "If I Were in Love" (for film) and "That's Him Over There."- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky on June 28, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York. He served in WWII, and afterwards got a job playing the drums at nightclubs in the Catskills. Brooks eventually started a comedy act and also worked in radio and as Master Entertainer at Grossinger's Resort before going to television.
He was a writer for, Your Show of Shows (1950) Caesar's Hour (1954) and wrote the Broadway show Shinbone Alley. He also worked in the creation of The 2000 Year Old Man (1975) and Get Smart (1965) before embarking on a highly successful film career in writing, acting, producing and directing.
Brooks is famous for the spoofs of different film genres that he made such as Blazing Saddles (1974), History of the World: Part I (1981), Silent Movie (1976), Young Frankenstein (1974), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), High Anxiety (1977), Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995), and Spaceballs (1987).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Lynn Carlin was born on 31 January 1938 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress, known for Faces (1968), Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) and Tick, Tick, Tick (1970). She has been married to John Wolfe since 12 July 1983. She was previously married to Edward Carlin and Peter Blair Hall.- Actress
- Soundtrack
One of television's premier African-American series stars, elegant actress, singer and recording artist Diahann Carroll was born Carol Diann (or Diahann) Johnson on July 17, 1935, in the Bronx, New York. The first child of John Johnson, a subway conductor, and Mabel Faulk Johnson, a nurse; music was an important part of her life as a child, singing at age six with her Harlem church choir. While taking voice and piano lessons, she contemplated an operatic career after becoming the 10-year-old recipient of a Metropolitan Opera scholarship for studies at New York's High School of Music and Art. As a teenager she sought modeling work but it was her voice, in addition to her beauty, that provided the magic and the allure.
When she was 16, she teamed up with a girlfriend from school and auditioned for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts show using the more exotic sounding name of Diahann Carroll. She alone was invited to appear and won the contest. She subsequently performed on the daily radio show for three weeks. In her late teens, she began focusing on a nightclub career and it was here that she began formulating a chic, glamorous image. Another TV talent show appearance earned her a week's engagement at the Latin Quarter.
Broadway roles for black singers were rare but at age nineteen, Diahann was cast in the Harold Arlen/Truman Capote musical "House of Flowers". Starring the indomitable Pearl Bailey, Diahann held her own quite nicely in the ingénue role. While the show itself was poorly received, the score was heralded and Diahann managed to introduce two song standards, "A Sleepin' Bee" and "I Never Has Seen Snow", both later recorded by Barbra Streisand.
In 1954 she and Ms. Bailey supported a riveting Dorothy Dandridge as femme fatale Carmen Jones (1954) in an all-black, updated movie version of the Georges Bizet opera "Carmen." Diahann later supported Ms. Dandridge again in Otto Preminger's cinematic retelling of Porgy and Bess (1959). During this time she also grew into a singing personality on TV while visiting such late-nite hosts as Jack Paar and Steve Allen and performing.
Unable to break through into the top ranks in film (she appeared in a secondary role once again in Paris Blues (1961), a Paul Newman/Joanne Woodward vehicle), Diahann returned to Broadway. She was rewarded with a Tony Award for her exceptional performance as a fashion model in the 1962 musical "No Strings," a bold, interracial love story that co-starred Richard Kiley. Richard Rodgers, whose first musical this was after the death of partner Oscar Hammerstein, wrote the part specifically for Diahann, which included her lovely rendition of the song standard "The Sweetest Sounds." By this time she had already begun to record albums ("Diahann Carroll Sings Harold Arlen" (1957), "Diahann Carroll and Andre Previn" (1960), "The Fabulous Diahann Carroll" (1962). Nightclub entertaining filled up a bulk of her time during the early-to-mid 1960s, along with TV guest appearances on Carol Burnett, Judy Garland, Andy Williams, Dean Martin and Danny Kaye's musical variety shows.
Little did Diahann know that in the late 1960s she would break a major ethnic barrier on the small screen. Though it was nearly impossible to suppress the natural glamour and sophistication of Diahann, she touchingly portrayed an ordinary nurse and widow struggling to raise a small son in the series Julia (1968). Despite other Black American actresses starring in a TV series (i.e., Hattie McDaniel in "Beulah"), Diahann became the first full-fledged African-American female "star" -- top billed, in which the show centered around her lead character. The show gradually rose in ratings and Diahann won a Golden Globe award for "Best Newcomer" and an Emmy nomination. The show lasted only two seasons, at her request.
A renewed interest in film led Diahann to the dressed-down title role of Claudine (1974), as a Harlem woman raising six children on her own. She was nominated for an Oscar in 1975, but her acting career would become more and more erratic after this period. She did return, however, to the stage with productions of "Same Time, Next Year" and "Agnes of God". While much ado was made about her return to series work as a fashionplate nemesis to Joan Collins' ultra-vixen character on the glitzy primetime soap Dynasty (1981), it became much about nothing as the juicy pairing failed to ignite. Diahann's character was also a part of the short-lived "Dynasty" spin-off The Colbys (1985).
Throughout the late 1980s and early 90s she toured with her fourth husband, singer Vic Damone, with occasional acting appearances to fill in the gaps. Some of her finest work came with TV-movies, notably her century-old Sadie Delany in Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years (1999) and as troubled singer Natalie Cole's mother in Livin' for Love: The Natalie Cole Story (2000). She also portrayed silent screen diva Norma Desmond in the musical version of "Sunset Blvd." and toured America performing classic Broadway standards in the concert show "Almost Like Being in Love: The Lerner and Loewe Songbook." She then had recurring roles on Grey's Anatomy (2005) and White Collar (2009).
Diahann Carroll died on October 4, 2019, in Los Angeles, California.- Actor
- Cinematographer
- Additional Crew
Seymour Cassel, the veteran character actor who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as the hippie swinger Chet in John Cassavetes' Faces (1968), studied acting at the American Theatre Wing and at the Actors Studio. He made his movie debut in Cassavetes' first film, Shadows (1958), on which he also served as associate producer.
Seymour Joseph Cassel was born on January 22, 1935 in Detroit, Michigan, to Pancretia Ann (Kearney), a performer, and Seymour Joseph Cassel, who owned a night club. His father was of Russian Jewish and German Jewish descent, and his mother was of Irish heritage. Cassel's early career was tied to Cassavetes, who himself had a flourishing career as an actor on television and in major Hollywood productions in addition to becoming, arguably, the first great independent movie director after the collapse of the studio system in the late 1950s/early 1960s. As for Cassel, after his uncredited role in "Shadows," he co-starred with Cassavetes in The Webster Boy (1962) and Too Late Blues (1961) before winding up in support of his friend in Don Siegel's drama The Killers (1964), a movie shot for TV that had to be released theatrically due to its heightened violence (it was also Ronald Reagan's last movie). Cassel primarily made his living on TV in the 1960s, frequently typecast as beatniks and hippies. He had a supporting role in the Cassavetes-directed episode "A Pair of Boots" (1962) for The Lloyd Bridges Show (1962) as well as appearing on such popular programs as 12 O'Clock High (1964), Combat! (1962) and The F.B.I. (1965) before scoring with his aging hippie in "Faces" at the end of that tumultuous decade.
Along with "Shadows," "Faces" remained his favorite Cassavettes film. In addition to acting, Cassel was also a crew member on the film, as the technical staff numbered all of seven. He helped shoot the film as a second cameraman, as well as adjusting the lighting. As the film was financed by Cassavettes himself, there were no union regulations to deal with, nor a studio schedule to keep.
Several of Cassavettes' films were shot in continuity, so the actors could develop a character in sequence--similar to stage acting--rather than the traditional method of film making, which is shot out of sequence. Cassel had stated that this technique enhanced the success of his works by eliminating the "fourth wall" between the audience and the actors. He believed that acting tells the film's story, not the images and that what is important is how the audience relates to the characters on screen.
As their careers matured, Cassel also co-starred with Cassavetes in two TV movies, Nightside (1973) and Nightside (1973) and appeared in supporting roles in three more Cassavetes-directed films: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), Opening Night (1977) and Love Streams (1984).
In addition to appearing in studio films, Cassel remained prominent in the American independent film community since the death of his friend and collaborator. He contributed a cameo appearance in the directorial debut of Steve Buscemi (with whom he appeared as a co-star in the black comedy In the Soup (1992)), Trees Lounge (1996), and has appeared in three films by Wes Anderson: Rushmore (1998), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004).
Cassel was prized by independent directors for two things: his positive nature, and his (perhaps) facetious declaration that he'd be in any independent film for the price of a plane ticket if he liked the script.
He died on April 7, 2019 in Los Angeles, California.- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
Gower Champion was born on 22 June 1921 in Geneva, Illinois, USA. He was an actor and director, known for An Evening with Julie Andrews and Harry Belafonte (1969), Lovely to Look At (1952) and Hello, Dolly! (1969). He was married to Karla Most and Marge Champion. He died on 25 August 1980 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
One of the great dancer and choreographers in both movies and stage, Marge Champion was best known as the former wife of Gower Champion, when they worked together as a highly successfully dancing team in the MGM musical years. After retiring from movies, Champion worked as a dance teacher and as a choreographer in New York.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, 1906, in San Antonio, Texas, to Anna Belle (Johnson) and Thomas E. LeSueur, a laundry laborer. By the time she was born, her parents had separated, and by the time she was a teenager, she'd had three stepfathers. It wasn't an easy life; Crawford worked a variety of menial jobs. She was a good dancer, though, and -- perhaps seeing dance as her ticket to a career in show business -- she entered several contests, one of which landed her a spot in a chorus line. Before long, she was dancing in big Midwestern and East Coast cities. After almost two years, she packed her bags and moved to Hollywood. Crawford was determined to succeed, and shortly after arriving she got her first bit part, as a showgirl in Pretty Ladies (1925).
Three films quickly followed; although the roles weren't much to speak of, she continued toiling. Throughout 1927 and early 1928, she was cast in small parts, but that ended with the role of Diana Medford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), which elevated her to star status. Crawford had cleared the first big hurdle; now came the second, in the form of talkies. Many stars of the silents saw their careers evaporate, either because their voices weren't particularly pleasant or because their voices, pleasing enough, didn't match the public's expectations (for example, some fans felt that John Gilbert's tenor didn't quite match his very masculine persona). But Crawford wasn't felled by sound. Her first talkie, Untamed (1929), was a success. As the 1930s progressed, Crawford became one of the biggest stars at MGM. She was in top form in films such as Grand Hotel (1932), Sadie McKee (1934), No More Ladies (1935), and Love on the Run (1936); movie patrons were enthralled, and studio executives were satisfied.
By the early 1940s, MGM was no longer giving her plum roles; newcomers had arrived in Hollywood, and the public wanted to see them. Crawford left MGM for rival Warner Bros., and in 1945 she landed the role of a lifetime. Mildred Pierce (1945) gave her an opportunity to show her range as an actress, and her performance as a woman driven to give her daughter everything garnered Crawford her first, and only, Oscar for Best Actress. The following year she appeared with John Garfield in the well-received Humoresque (1946). In 1947, she appeared as Louise Graham in Possessed (1947); again she was nominated for a Best Actress from the Academy, but she lost to Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter (1947). Crawford continued to choose her roles carefully, and in 1952 she was nominated for a third time, for her depiction of Myra Hudson in Sudden Fear (1952). This time the coveted Oscar went to Shirley Booth, for Come Back, Little Sheba (1952). Crawford's career slowed after that; she appeared in minor roles until 1962, when she and Bette Davis co-starred in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Their longstanding rivalry may have helped fuel their phenomenally vitriolic and well-received performances. (Earlier in their careers, Davis said of Crawford, "She's slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie", and Crawford said of Davis, "I don't hate [her] even though the press wants me to. I resent her. I don't see how she built a career out of a set of mannerisms instead of real acting ability. Take away the pop eyes, the cigarette, and those funny clipped words, and what have you got? She's phony, but I guess the public really likes that.")
Crawford's final appearance on the silver screen was in the flop Trog (1970). Turning to vodka more and more, she was hardly seen afterward. On May 10, 1977, Joan died of a heart attack in New York City. She was 71 years old. She had disinherited her adopted daughter Christina and son Christopher; the former wrote a tell-all book called "Mommie Dearest", The Sixth Sense published in 1978. The book cast Crawford in a negative light and was cause for much debate, particularly among her friends and acquaintances, including Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Crawford's first husband. (In 1981, Faye Dunaway starred in Mommie Dearest (1981) which did well at the box office.) Crawford is interred in the same mausoleum as fellow MGM star Judy Garland, in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Tall, slim and exceedingly good-looking American leading man Robert Culp, a former cartoonist in his teen years, appeared off-Broadway in the 1950s before settling into polished, clean-cut film leads and "other man" supports a decade later. Hitting the popular TV boards in the hip, racially ground-breaking espionage program I Spy (1965), he made a slick (but never smarmy), sardonic name for himself during his over five-decade career with his sly humor, casual banter and tongue-in-cheek sexiness. Though he had the requisite looks and smooth, manly appeal (not to mention acting talent) for superstardom, a cool but cynical and somewhat detached persona may have prevented him from attaining it full-out.
He was born Robert Martin Culp on August 16, 1930, in Oakland California. The son of attorney Crozie Culp and his wife, Bethel Collins, who was employed at a Berkeley chemical company, he offset his only-child loneliness by playacting in local theater productions. Culp also showed a talent for art while young and earned money as a cartoonist for Bay Area magazines and newspapers in high school, but the fascination with becoming an actor proved much stronger. He attended Berkeley High School and graduated in 1947. The athletically-inclined Culp dominated at track and field events and, as a result, earned athletic scholarships to six different universities. He selected the relatively minor College of the Pacific in Stockton, California primarily because of its active theater department. Transferring to various other colleges of higher learning (including San Francisco State in 1949), he never earned a degree. After performing in some theatre in the San Francisco area, he moved to Seattle and then New York in 1951.
Studying under famed teacher Herbert Berghof and supporting himself during this time teaching speech and phonetics, Bob eventually found work on the theatre scene, making his 1953 Broadway debut (as Robert M. Culp) in "The Prescott Proposals" with Katharine Cornell. He eventually returned to Broadway with "Diary of a Scoundrel" starring Blanche Yurka and Roddy McDowall in 1956 and with a strong role in "A Clearing in the Woods" (alongside Kim Stanley) a year later. He earned an off-Broadway Obie Award for his very fine work in "He Who Gets Slapped" in 1956, and also appeared in the plays "Daily Life" and "Easter".
Gracing a few live-TV dramas during his New York days, he returned to his native California for his first major TV role. It was an auspicious one as post-Civil War Texas Ranger "Hoby Gilman" in the western series Trackdown (1957). He earned widespread attention in the series that based many of its stories from actual Texas Ranger files, and the show itself received the official approval not only of the Rangers themselves but by the State of Texas. The series led to a CBS spin-off of its own: Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958), which made a TV star out of Steve McQueen.
From there, Culp guested on a number of series dramas: Bonanza (1959), The Rifleman (1958), Rawhide (1959), The Detectives (1959), Ben Casey (1961), The Outer Limits (1963), Naked City (1958) and Combat! (1962). He also starred in the two-part Disney family-styled program "Sammy the Way Out Seal" (1962), which was subsequently released as a feature in Europe. He and Patricia Barry played the hapless parents of precocious Bill Mumy and Michael McGreevey whose "adopted" pet animal unleashes major chaos in their suburban neighborhood.
During this time, Bob began to seek lead and supporting work in films. Despite his co-starring with Cliff Robertson, Rod Taylor and the very perky Jane Fonda (as her straight-laced boyfriend) in the sparkling Broadway-based sexcapade Sunday in New York (1963); playing Robertson's naval mate in the popular John F. Kennedy biopic PT 109 (1963); recreating the legendary "Wild Bill" Hickok in the western tale The Raiders (1963); and heading up the adventurous cast of the Ivan Tors' African yarn Rhino! (1964) (which included Harry Guardino and the very fetching British import Shirley Eaton), Culp wasn't able to make a serious dent in the medium.
TV remained his best arena and gave him more lucrative offers, professionally. It rewarded him quite richly in 1965 with the debonair series lead "Kelly Robinson", a jet-setting, pro-circuit tennis player who leads a double life as an international secret agent in I Spy (1965). Running three seasons, Culp co-starred with fellow secret agent Bill Cosby, who, as "Alexander Scott", posed as Culp's tennis trainer. The role was tailor-made for the suave, Ivy-League-looking actor. He looked effortlessly cool posing in sunglasses amid the posh continental settings and remained handsomely unflinching in the face of danger. It was the first U.S. prime-time network drama to feature an African-American actor in a full-out starring role and the relationship between the two meshed perfectly and charismatically on screen. Both were nominated for acting Emmys in all three of its seasons, with Cosby coming out the victor each time. Filmed on location in such cities as Hong Kong, Acapulco and Tokyo, Culp also wrote and directed certain episodes of the show He also met his third wife, the gorgeous Eurasian actress France Nuyen, while on the set. They married in 1967 but divorced three years later. At this stage, the actor already had four children (by second wife, sometime actress Nancy Ashe).
Following the series' demise, Culp took on perhaps his most-famous and controversial film role as Natalie Wood's husband "Bob" in the titillating but ultimately teasing "flower power" era film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), with Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon as the other-half couple who examine the late 60s "free love" idea of wife-swapping. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards (two went to supporting actors Gould and Cannon). The movie did not reignite Culp's popularity on the large screen, but it did lead to his rather strange pairing with buxom Raquel Welch in the violent-edged western Hannie Caulder (1971) and a reunion with his I Spy (1965) pal Cosby in the far-more entertaining Hickey & Boggs (1972), which reestablished their great tongue-in-cheek rapport as two weary-eyed private eyes. Culp also directed the film while his real-life wife, actress Sheila Sullivan, played his screen wife as well.
The late 1970s produced a flood of routine mini-movies and B-pictures, the latter including Inside Out (1975), Sky Riders (1976), Breaking Point (1976), The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976), Flood (1976), Goldengirl (1979) and Hot Rod (1979). While he remained a sturdy and standard presence in such mini-movies as Houston, We've Got a Problem (1974), Spectre (1977) and Calendar Girl Murders (1984), his better TV-movie roles were in A Cold Night's Death (1973), Outrage (1973), A Cry for Help (1975) and as "Lyle Pettyjohn" in the acclaimed mini-series sequel Roots: The Next Generations (1979).
Bob returned to series TV as stern FBI Special Agent "Bill Maxwell", whose job was to work with handsome William Katt, who starred as an ersatz The Greatest American Hero (1981). The show lasted three seasons. Other series guest spots, both comedic and dramatic, included Hotel (1983), Highway to Heaven (1984), The Golden Girls (1985) and an episode of his old buddy's show The Cosby Show (1984). He was also a guest murderer in three of the "Columbo" episodes. Although he was relegated to appearing in such film fodder as Turk 182 (1985), Big Bad Mama II (1987) and Pucker Up and Bark Like a Dog (1989), the 1990s offered him one of his best film roles in years as the ill-fated President in the Denzel Washington/Julia Roberts political thriller The Pelican Brief (1993). A year later, he again reteamed with Cosby in the TV-movie I Spy Returns (1994).
Culp became very active in the 1960s Civil Rights movement and later became a prominent face in local civic causes, joining in a lawsuit to cease construction of an elephant exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo and accusing officials there of mistreatment. In the long run, however, the construction was given the green light. Culp also married a fifth time to Candace Faulkner and, by her, had daughter Samantha Culp in 1982. Older sons Jason Culp (born 1961) and Joseph Culp (born 1963) became actors, while another son, Joshua Culp (born 1958), entered the visual effects field. Daughter Rachel, an outré clothing designer for rock stars, was born in 1964.
In later years, Culp could be seen occasionally as Ray Romano's father-in-law on the hugely popular Everybody Loves Raymond (1996). His last film, the family drama The Assignment (2010), was unreleased at the time of his death. On March 24, 2010, the 79-year-old Culp collapsed from an apparent heart attack while walking near the lower entrance to Runyon Canyon Park, a popular hiking area in the Hollywood Hills. Found by a hiker, Culp was transported to a nearby hospital where he died from the head injuries he sustained in the fall. Five grandchildren also survive.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz, the eldest of three children of Helen (Klein) and Emanuel Schwartz, Jewish immigrants from Hungary. Curtis himself admits that while he had almost no formal education, he was a student of the "school of hard knocks" and learned from a young age that the only person who ever had his back was himself, so he learned how to take care of both himself and younger brother, Julius. Curtis grew up in poverty, as his father, Emanuel, who worked as a tailor, had the sole responsibility of providing for his entire family on his meager income. This led to constant bickering between Curtis's parents over money, and Curtis began to go to movies as a way of briefly escaping the constant worries of poverty and other family problems. The financial strain of raising two children on a meager income became so tough that in 1935, Curtis's parents decided that their children would have a better life under the care of the state and briefly had Tony and his brother admitted to an orphanage. During this lonely time, the only companion Curtis had was his brother, Julius, and the two became inseparable as they struggled to get used to this new way of life. Weeks later, Curtis's parents came back to reclaim custody of Tony and his brother, but by then Curtis had learned one of life's toughest lessons: the only person you can count on is yourself.
In 1938, shortly before Tony's Bar Mitzvah, tragedy struck when Tony lost the person most important to him when his brother, Julius, was hit by a truck and killed. After that tragedy, Curtis's parents became convinced that a formal education was the best way Tony could avoid the same never-knowing-where-your-next-meal-is-coming-from life that they had known. However, Tony rejected this because he felt that learning about literary classics and algebra wasn't going to advance him in life as much as some real hands-on life experience would. He was to find that real-life experience a few years later, when he enlisted in the navy in 1942. Tony spent over two years getting that life experience doing everything from working as a crewman on a submarine tender, the USS Proteus (AS-19), to honing his future craft as an actor performing as a sailor in a stage play at the Navy Signalman School in Illinois.
In 1945, Curtis was honorably discharged from the navy, and when he realized that the GI Bill would allow him to go to acting school without paying for it, he now saw that his lifelong pipe dream of being an actor might actually be achievable. Curtis auditioned for the New York Dramatic Workshop, and after being accepted on the strength of his audition piece (a scene from "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in pantomime), Curtis enrolled in early 1947. He then began to pay his dues by appearing in a slew of stage productions, including "Twelfth Night" and "Golden Boy". He then connected with a small theatrical agent named Joyce Selznick, who was the niece of film producer David O. Selznick. After seeing his potential, Selznick arranged an interview for Curtis to see David O. Selznick at Universal Studios, where Curtis was offered a seven-year contract. After changing his name to what he saw as an elegant, mysterious moniker--"Tony Curtis" (named after the novel Anthony Adverse (1936) by Hervey Allen and a cousin of his named Janush Kertiz)--Curtis began making a name for himself by appearing in small, offbeat roles in small-budget productions. His first notable performance was a two-minute role in Criss Cross (1949), with Burt Lancaster, in which he makes Lancaster jealous by dancing with Yvonne De Carlo. This offbeat role resulted in Curtis's being typecast as a heavy for the next few years, such as playing a gang member in City Across the River (1949).
Curtis continued to build up a show reel by accepting any paying job, acting in a number of bit-part roles for the next few years. It wasn't until late 1949 that he finally got the chance to demonstrate his acting flair, when he was cast in an important role in an action western, Sierra (1950). On the strength of his performance in that movie, Curtis was finally cast in a big-budget movie, Winchester '73 (1950). While he appears in that movie only very briefly, it was a chance for him to act alongside a Hollywood legend, James Stewart.
As his career developed, Curtis wanted to act in movies that had social relevance, ones that would challenge audiences, so he began to appear in such movies as Spartacus (1960) and The Defiant Ones (1958). He was advised against appearing as the subordinate sidekick in Spartacus (1960), playing second fiddle to the equally famous Kirk Douglas. However, Curtis saw no problem with this because the two had recently acted together in dual leading roles in The Vikings (1958).- Writer
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Dahl was born in Wales in 1916. He served as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War II. He made a forced landing in the Libyan Desert and was severely injured. As a result, he spent five months in a Royal Navy hospital in Alexandria. Dahl is noted for how he relates suspenseful and sometimes horrific events in a simple tone.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Cass Elliot was born Ellen Naomi Cohen on September 19, 1941, in Baltimore, Maryland. She grew up in the Washington D.C. environs and in her senior year of high school, performed in a summer stock production of "The Boyfriend" at the Owings Mills Playhouse, where she played the French nurse who sings "It's Nicer, Much Nicer in Nice." After this experience, even though her family anticipated her seeking a college education in pursuit of a career, Cass forged ahead in the performing arts. She made a splash in New York and began an acting career, competing with Barbra Streisand for the Miss Marmelstein part in "I Can Get It for You Wholesale" in 1962.
She toured in a production of Meredith Willson's "The Music Man." Elliot also produced a play at Cafe La Mama in New York. However, by early 1963 she had met up with Tim Rose and John Brown and formed a folk trio initially dubbed The Triumvirate, but later known as The Big 3 when Brown was replaced by James Hendricks. The Big 3 were a progressive and innovative folk trio who recorded two albums and made appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), Hootenanny (1963) and The Danny Kaye Show (1963). In 1964 the group had begun to fall apart and it metamorphosized into a foursome called "Cass Elliot and The Big Three" which included Canadians Denny Doherty and Zal Yanovsky (Rose had left at this point). Soon this foursome became The Mugwumps who operated out of The Shadows nightclub in Washington. They released a single for Warner Brothers and stayed together through the end of 1964, until they, too, began to disintegrate. Cass began to work as a solo single in Washington, D.C.
At this point Doherty had joined John Phillips and Michelle Phillips and the three were performing as The New Journeymen. Soon they left for the Virgin Islands, where Cass subsequently joined them, and the four began to sing together in mid-1965--thus, the superstar group The Mamas and The Papas was born. From 1965 to 1968 the Mamas and Papas recorded a series of top-ten hits including "Monday, Monday," "California Dreamin'," "I Saw Her Again," and "Dedicated to the One I Love."
The group's last hit was a launching number for Cass Elliot. "Dream A Little Dream Of Me" became her theme song and, beginning in 1968, she embarked on her own short-lived but solid solo career. Her distinct voice had always emerged from the groups in which she sang. In 1969 she scored big with "It's Getting Better" and 1970 yielded the hits "Make Your Own Kind of Music" and "New World Coming." In 1970, Elliot also appeared in the film Pufnstuf (1970) and recorded an album with rock singer Dave Mason. Recently, the issue of the soundtrack of Monte Walsh (1970) turned up four different versions of her theme song, "The Good Times Are Coming", composed by John Barry and Hal David.
Elliot had two prime-time television specials of her own in 1969 and 1973, but most people remember her scores of television appearances throughout the early 1970s with Mike Douglas, Julie Andrews, Andy Williams, Johnny Cash, Red Skelton, Ed Sullivan, Tom Jones, Carol Burnett and others. She guest-hosted "The Tonight Show", had successful stints in Las Vegas and continued to record for RCA during these years, too. Cass had one daughter, Owen Vanessa, in April 1967 and she was married twice, first (1963-68) to fellow Big Three and Mugwumps member Jim Hendricks and second to Baron Donald von Wiedenman (1971). In 1974, she traveled to London where she had a two-week engagement at the London Palladium. After performing to sellout crowds and basking in repeated ovations, Cass tragically succumbed to a heart attack on July 29, 1974 in London, following this successful concert tour (and NOT, as is commonly believed, from choking on a sandwich).
In 1998, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Cass Elliot and her fellow band-mates from The Mamas and The Papas into that institution. Her daughter Owen represented her mother and accepted her award.- Music Artist
- Composer
- Actor
José Feliciano was born on 10 September 1945 in Lares, Puerto Rico. He is a music artist and composer, known for Moulin Rouge! (2001), Fargo (1996) and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978). He has been married to Susan Omillian since 2 August 1982. They have three children. He was previously married to Hilda Perez.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Born in New York City to legendary screen star Henry Fonda and Ontario-born New York socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw, Jane Seymour Fonda was destined early to an uncommon and influential life in the limelight. Although she initially showed little inclination to follow her father's trade, she was prompted by Joshua Logan to appear with her father in the 1954 Omaha Community Theatre production of "The Country Girl". Her interest in acting grew after meeting Lee Strasberg in 1958 and joining the Actors Studio. Her screen debut in Tall Story (1960) (directed by Logan) marked the beginning of a highly successful and respected acting career highlighted by two Academy Awards for her performances in Klute (1971) and Coming Home (1978), and five Oscar nominations for Best Actress in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969), Julia (1977), The China Syndrome (1979), The Morning After (1986) and On Golden Pond (1981), which was the only film she made with her father. Her professional success contrasted with her personal life, which was often laden with scandal and controversy. Her appearance in several risqué movies (including Barbarella (1968)) by then-husband Roger Vadim was followed by what was to become her most debated and controversial period: her espousal of anti-establishment causes and especially her anti-war activities during the Vietnam War. Her political involvement continued with fellow activist and husband Tom Hayden in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the 1980s she started the aerobic exercise craze with the publication of the "Jane Fonda's Workout Book". She and Hayden divorced, and she married broadcasting mogul Ted Turner in 1991.- Music Artist
- Actress
- Composer
Grammy-winning Queen of Soul and the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Aretha Louise Franklin was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Barbara Vernice (Siggers) and C. L. Franklin, a Baptist minister, who preached at the New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit for over thirty years. Known as the man with the "Million-Dollar Voice", her father was one of the most respected and prominent ministers in the country, and Aretha grew up singing in church, and surrounded by local and national celebrities. She learned how to play piano by ear and soon understood the correct tones and pitches.
Aretha released her first single at the age of eighteen, under Columbia Records, it reached number ten on the BillBoard charts and her first record was released in January of 1961. While working for the label, she managed to score two more R&B hits, Operation Heartbreak and Won't Be Long. However the people at Columbia often felt they didn't understand the direction Aretha wanted to go with her music, and ultimately failed to bring out her potential. In 1966, Aretha signed a contract with Atlantic Records, where she released her first legendary single, Respect, written by The King Of Soul, Otis Redding. With this single, Franklin would trigger a new vocal skill called, "call and response," which would help liven up many of her singles. While signed with Atlantic, she released three additional top ten hits, Baby I Love You, A Natural Women,and Chain Of Fools, and won her first two Grammy awards, and eight consecutive Grammys for best female R&B vocal category.
Franklin had not only achieved her dream of becoming a musical sensation but stood out in the civil rights movement for her single with Otis Redding, Respect. The song helped send a message to Americans about equality, peace, and justice. Franklin continued to release pop hits throughout the decade, such as Think, I Say A Little Prayer, and Ain't No Way. After these amazing hits to many listeners she was seen as The Queen Of Soul. In the 1970s, she started recording gospel hits such as Don't Play That Song, Rocksteady, and Daydreaming. It was foreseeable that Franklin would soon stumble upon a masterpiece which became the best selling gospel album of all time, which she did in 1972 with her album Amazing Grace.
In the mid '70s, even though she was releasing hit songs, she began to lose touch with her soul-pop audiences due to the disco genre making its entrance into mainstream music. In 1979, she released an album in order to gain the audience of disco lovers called, La Diva. La Diva sold less than 50,000 copies and was marked as the lowest point in Franklin's career. On June 10, 1979, her father Clarence was shot by a mugger. This left Clarence in a coma for five years and Aretha decided to move back to Detroit to take care of her father. Clarence Franklin died on July 27, 1984.
In 1980, along with several other musicians such as Ray Charles and James Brown, Aretha Franklin appeared in the hit feature film The Blues Brothers. In 1982, she returned to the R&B top ten charts with her hit album Jump To It, featuring Luther Vandross. It sold more than 600,000 copies and was gold-certified, managing to stay on number one for seven weeks. In 1985, Franklin released an album which featured a unique never before heard element of rock. The album, "Who's Zoomin Who?", and soon went on to receive platinum-certified success. The album also featured a hit song with George Michael called I Know You Were Waiting For Me, and went on to sell more than one million copies. In 1987, Aretha sang the theme song to A Different World, a sitcom created by Bill Cosby, and in 1989, she released a pop album which featured Elton John, James Brown, The Four Tops, Kenny G, and Whitney Houston, called Through The Storm. In 1992, Franklin sang the song Someday We'll All Be Free for the soundtrack to the biopic film Malcolm X (1992). In 1993, Aretha sang at Bill Clinton's inauguration. At a slower rate in the mid-late '90s, she continued to release albums and singles, working with new artists such as BabyFace, Jermaine Dupri, Sean "P Diddy" Combs, and Lauryn Hill along with her label, Arista Records.
In 2003, she had ended the 23 year relationship with Arista and opened her own label, Aretha. Franklin released her first album on the label, A Woman Falling Out Of Love, in 2011. It marked her fifty years in show business.
Aretha Franklin died of advanced pancreatic cancer on August 16, 2018, in Detroit, Michigan. She will be known as one of the most influential singers of all time, and as an activist who spoke of the world through her music, and used music as a tool for truth, justice, and soul.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
When Ruth Gordon convinced her father, a sea captain, to let her pursue acting she came to New York and studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She acted in a few silents made at Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 1915. She made her Broadway debut in "Peter Pan" as Nibs the same year. The next 20 years she spent on stage, even appearing at the Old Vic in London in the successful run of "The Country Wife" in 1936. Nearly 25 years after her film debut, she returned to movies briefly. Her most memorable role during this period in the early 1940s was as Mary Todd in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940).
She left Hollywood to return to theater. Back in New York, she married Garson Kanin in 1942 (her first husband Gregory Kelly, a stage actor, died in 1927). She began writing plays, and, later, her husband and she collaborated on screenplays for Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, whose screen relationship was modeled on their own marriage. She returned to film acting during the 1960s. It is during this last period of her career that she became a movie star, with memorable roles in Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Harold and Maude (1971). She wrote several books during the mid-1970s and appeared on TV. She won an Emmy for her role on Taxi (1978) in 1979.- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Charles Guggenheim was born into a wealthy Cincinnati family (his father was a furniture manufacturer). While studying agriculture in college in 1943, Guggenheim was drafted into the army. Upon discharge from the service he decided against an agricultural career and moved to New York to pursue a career in broadcasting. He founded Charles Guggenheim and Associates, a film production company. He developed an interest in politics, and soon moved the company from New York to Washington, DC, where he became a media adviser to many Democratic political figures. After Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, Guggenheim put together a tribute to him culled from the thousands of feet of film he had shot of Kennedy over the years. The resulting film, Robert Kennedy Remembered (1968), won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short. Although Guggenheim occasionally ventured into feature film production, he stayed mostly with documentaries, where he received his first Academy Award for 1964's Nine from Little Rock (1965), about the desegregation effort in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. He won two more Oscars for documentary filmmaking, in 1989 and 1994. His last documentary, Berga: Soldiers of Another War (2003), was about a group of 350 American soldiers captured by the Nazis during the Battle of the Bulge who, because they were either Jewish or the Nazis thought they "looked Jewish", were sent to concentration camps instead of POW camps (Guggenheim had been assigned to the unit that was captured, but a severe illness resulted in his being left behind when it was sent to the front lines so he was not with them when the men were captured). He finished the film just a few months before his death in October of 2002.- Editor
- Director
- Editorial Department
Anthony Harvey was born on 3 June 1930 in London, England, UK. He was an editor and director, known for The Lion in Winter (1968), Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) and Dutchman (1966). He died on 23 November 2017 in Southampton, New York, USA.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Comedian Bob Hope was born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, London, England, the fifth of seven sons of Avis (Townes), light opera singer, and William Henry Hope, a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. His maternal grandmother was Welsh. Hope moved to Bristol before emigrating with his parents to the USA in 1908. After some years onstage as a dancer and comedian, he made his first film appearance in The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938) singing "Thanks for the Memory", which became his signature tune.
In partnership with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, he appeared in the highly successful "Road to ..." comedies (1940-52), and in many others until the early 1970s. During World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars he spent much time entertaining the troops in the field. For these activities and for his continued contributions to the industry he received five honorary Academy Awards.- Editor
- Editorial Department
Frank P. Keller was born on 4 February 1913 in Pennsylvania, USA. He was an editor, known for Bullitt (1968), The Hot Rock (1972) and Pocketful of Miracles (1961). He died on 25 December 1977 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Tall, graceful, supremely accomplished American actress, singer, dancer and choreographer Paula Kelly was born in Jacksonville, Florida, one of three daughters, to Ruth and Lehman Kelly. The family moved to Harlem in New York when she was six years old. Unlike her siblings, she had strong musical inclinations which were recognised early on by her father (himself a jazz musician), who enrolled her in the Fiorello LaGuardia High School of Music & Art. Paula excelled as a star pupil. This opened doors to an audition at the prestigious Juilliard School and led to a four-year scholarship. Having trained under the academy's first director of dance, Martha Hill, she graduated in 1964 and that same year made her debut on Broadway. During much of the 1960s, specialising in modern dance, she performed with such luminaries as Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey and went on tour as a dancer with Harry Belafonte.
The inevitable breakthrough to popular success came when she was cast as Helene (taxi dancer at the Fandango Ballroom) in London's West End production of "Sweet Charity" (1967), directed and choreographed by Bob Fosse. Paula ended up winning the London Variety Award for Best Supporting Actress. The play itself enjoyed a healthy run but was ultimately eclipsed by the motion picture Sweet Charity (1969), for which Paula was able to recreate her stage role. Now firmly established on the screen, she went on to sing and dance in a number of musical television specials and/or variety shows headlining Gene Kelly (with whom she performed a duet), Dean Martin, Quincy Jones, Richard Pryor and former Sweet Charity co-star Sammy Davis Jr.. She also appeared as Tiger Lily, teaming up with Danny Kaye and Mia Farrow for the BBC production of Peter Pan (1976), as well as taking on the dual role of co-choreographer. In 1971, she starred in a Los Angeles stage production of the all-singing, all-dancing musical revue "Don't Bother Me, I Can't Cope", for which she won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award.
Since the popularity of musicals had waned by the early 1970s, Paula had little choice but to take on straight dramatic acting roles. On several occasions she provided the female interest in a series of fashionable, sassy, tough blaxploitation films, playing cool, happening chicks opposite action men like Robert Hooks, Paul Winfield and Thalmus Rasulala (and often rising above the routine dramatic material afforded her). She was Leggy Peggy in the cult comedy Uptown Saturday Night (1974) with Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor and had featured roles in the sci-fi classics The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Soylent Green (1973). She also appeared in many television guest spots, with notable recurring roles in The Streets of San Francisco (1972), Police Woman (1974) and the sitcom Night Court (1984), for which she received the first of two Emmy Award nominations. She retired from acting in 1999. Her husband was the British film and television director Don Chaffey, who predeceased her in 1990.
Paula Kelly died of heart failure on February 9, 2020 at age 77.- Actress
- Soundtrack
In addition to being Miss New Orleans in 1931, Dorothy Lamour worked as a Chicago elevator operator; band vocalist for her first husband, band leader Herbie Kaye; and radio performer. In 1936 she donned her soon-to-be-famous sarong for her debut at Paramount, The Jungle Princess (1936), and continued to play female Tarzan-Crusoe-Gauguin-girl-with make-up parts through the war years and beyond. The most famous of these was in the popular Bob Hope/Bing Crosby "Road" pictures - a strange combination of adventure, slapstick, ad-libs and Hollywood inside jokes. Of these she said, "I was the happiest and highest-paid straight woman in the business." As she aged, however, the quality of her films dropped. Among her serious films were Johnny Apollo (1940) and A Medal for Benny (1945).- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Burt Lancaster, one of five children, was born in Manhattan, to Elizabeth (Roberts) and James Henry Lancaster, a postal worker. All his grandparents were immigrants from the north of Ireland. He was a tough street kid who took an early interest in gymnastics. He joined the circus as an acrobat and worked there until he was injured. In the Army during WWII he was introduced to the USO and to acting. His first film was The Killers (1946), and that made him a star. He was a self-taught actor who learned the business as he went along. He set up his own production company in 1948 with Harold Hecht and James Hill to direct his career. He played many different roles in pictures as varied as The Crimson Pirate (1952), From Here to Eternity (1953), Elmer Gantry (1960) and Atlantic City (1980).
His production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, produced such films as Paddy Chayefsky's Marty (1955) (Oscar winner 1955) and The Catered Affair (1956). In the 1980s he appeared as a supporting player in a number of movies, such as Local Hero (1983) and Field of Dreams (1989). However, it will be the sound of his voice, the way that he laughed, and the larger-than-life characters he played that will always be remembered.- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Additional Crew
Mark attended stage school in London, England as a young child and made his film debut in The Counterfeit Constable (1964) at the age of six. He made countless TV appearances and became very well known in England. Worldwide fame developed as a result of his portrayal of a stuttering child in Our Mother's House (1967). Producers of Oliver! (1968) auditioned 250 child actors for the title role and finally chose him. Many roles for TV, film and stage followed. His last major film was Crossed Swords (1977). He now lives with his wife and two children in Cheltenham, England. He and his wife are osteopaths.- Actress
- Music Department
- Composer
Abbey Lincoln was born on 6 August 1930 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was an actress and composer, known for Nothing But a Man (1964), For Love of Ivy (1968) and Drugstore Cowboy (1989). She was married to Max Roach. She died on 14 August 2010 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.- Actress
- Director
- Producer
Sondra Locke was born May 28, 1944 as Sandra Louise Smith, in Shelbyville, Tennessee, a quiet little town about 60 miles southeast of Nashville. She was the daughter of Raymond Smith, a military man stationed at nearby Tullahoma, and Pauline Bayne. Smith departed the scene before Sondra's birth. In 1945, her mother wed William B. Elkins, and together they had a son, Donald, on April 26, 1946. The short union ended in divorce. In 1948, Bayne remarried. Alfred Locke bestowed his surname on Pauline's children and raised them as his own. Sondra's stepfather was a carpenter; her mother worked in a pencil factory. For the smart, fanciful Locke, "My childhood felt as if I had been dropped off at an extended summer camp from which I was waiting to be picked up." The bright girl loved to read, which puzzled her simple mother, who was always pushing her to spend more time outside. Sondra's happiest moments occurred on weekend visits to the local movie theater.
Locke was a cheerleader in junior high and graduated valedictorian of Shelbyville Mills' 1957-1958 eighth grade class. At Shelbyville Central High School, the "classroom was the one place where I felt like I had a chance to prove myself and I continued to excel. I felt safe there and I liked it." Her best friend was classmate Gordon Anderson, the son of a teacher, whose family had relocated to the area from Arkansas around 1953. He was a fey young man, who shared many of Sondra's fanciful hopes about the future and was her collaborator in devising harmless ways to make their lives in Shelbyville more magical. One of the duo's frequent activities was making home movies with Gordon's Super 8 camera.
When Gordon attended Middle Tennessee State University (in Murfreesboro, about 30 miles from Nashville) in 1962, Sondra enrolled there too. Upon completing freshman year, Sondra had a blowup with her mother, left home, and did not return to college. Instead, she worked in Nashville as a promotions assistant for WSM-TV, with occasional modeling and voiceover work. While in Nashville, Locke began acting in community theater as a member of Circle Players Inc. Along the way she dated George Crook, a cameraman from WSM, and Brad Crandall, head of the station's public relations department. She also enjoyed a romance with law student Gary Gober, whom she had been in plays with. Meanwhile, Gordon revealed to her that he was homosexual. He went off to Manhattan to study acting and, for a while, had a lover there. Anderson was talented but unfocused about his theater craft and eventually returned to Tennessee. Because of Locke's spiritual kinship with Anderson, she and Gordon decided to wed. The mixed-orientation couple were married at First Presbyterian Church in Nashville on September 25, 1967. (Reputedly, the marriage was never consummated.)
If Gordon was unable to launch his own acting career, he had no such problems igniting Sondra's. Months before their wedding, he learned that Warner Bros. was holding a nationwide search for a young actress to play a key role in the screen adaptation of Carson McCullers' novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968). Anderson helped Locke research the part of Mick, a teenage waif in a southern town who befriends a suicidal deaf-mute (Alan Arkin) boarding at the house where she lives. For the audition, in Birmingham, Alabama, Gordon bleached her eyebrows, bound her bosom and carefully fixed her hair, makeup and outfit so that she would instantly impress casting agents. The ploy succeeded, and, after several callbacks, Locke -- who lied about her age to seem younger -- was hired. The movie was released in the summer of 1968 and earned respectful reviews from critics, although many filmgoers found the picture too arty. Sondra was Oscar-nominated for her sensitive portrayal.
Next, Sondra moved to Los Angeles, with Gordon in tow. She hoped to parlay her Academy Award nomination into further movie assignments. The big-eyed, wiry bottle blonde found it difficult to win choice roles, making her accept lesser projects, the most famous of which was Willard (1971), a film about marauding rats. Cover Me Babe (1970), A Reflection of Fear (1972) and The Second Coming of Suzanne (1974) faded into cinematic obscurity. In the lattermost, Locke played a Christ figure and had torrid love scenes with Paul Sand. Episodic television provided steadier acting opportunities: the anthology program Night Gallery (1969) and dramatic series including The F.B.I. (1965), Cannon (1971), Kung Fu (1972) and Barnaby Jones (1973). Thanks in part to the limited media of the time, she was able to maintain the ruse of younger age, which no doubt extended her shelf-life amid professional lulls. It was in 1972 that she first met rising kingpin Clint Eastwood when he was preparing to direct his second feature film, Breezy (1973). For the title role, Locke was passed over in favor of nine-years-younger Kay Lenz.
For half of the 1970s, the Andersons resided at West Hollywood's Andalusia condominium complex whilst seeing other people. For a time, Sondra was involved with Bruce Davison, her co-star from Willard (1971). While working on the teleplay Gondola (1974), she gained a new boyfriend, sandy-haired actor Bo Hopkins. He was once divorced and shared her penchant for falsifying birthdates. In the spring of 1974, she visited the set of Hopkins' current project, The Killer Elite (1975), and networked with composer Jerry Fielding, who was about to score a new Western showcase for Clint Eastwood. The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) had a role that Locke thought could revitalize her career. This time, Eastwood was responsive and hired the 31-year-old to play his romantic interest. In early October 1975, the complementary pair fell hard for each other on location in Page, Arizona. "We were almost living together from the very first days of the film," Locke remembered. Besotted Clint confided he'd never been in love before and wrote a poem for his new mate: "She made me monogamous." This serially philandering megastar was 14 years her senior and a foot taller than she.
The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) was indeed a hit, with Sondra sparking a flurry of interest among male viewers as virtually nonspeaking eye candy. Yet she stopped pursuing film roles on her own initiative to assume wifely duties, appearing on the big screen exclusively in Eastwood-controlled projects thereon. The sole exception to this was The Shadow of Chikara (1977), an Arkansas-lensed Western with burly Joe Don Baker. (The home invasion thriller Death Game (1977), though released after Locke and Eastwood became an item, was actually shot in 1974.) "Clint wanted me to work only with him," she said. "He didn't like the idea of me being away from him."
Over the next few years, Locke had two abortions from her relationship with Eastwood. In 1979, she underwent a tubal ligation at UCLA to prevent further pregnancies. She and Clint settled into a $1.12 million, seven-bedroom Spanish-style Bel-Air mansion originally built in 1931, which she spent months renovating and decorating, and which she believed would be hers for life. She continued to spend platonic time with Gordon, whom she never divorced, nurtured by their spiritual relationship. Gordon moved in and out of gay relationships, and sometimes he and a boyfriend would socialize with Clint and Sondra. As for the professional side of things, Locke and Eastwood reteamed for his action opus The Gauntlet (1977), slapstick adventure-comedy Every Which Way But Loose (1978), its sequel Any Which Way You Can (1980), the quirky satire Bronco Billy (1980) and the fourth, darkest, most ambitious "Dirty Harry" vehicle, Sudden Impact (1983). All were stellar box office performers and cemented the twosome as filmdom's most visible couple.
During this period, Sondra took a few TV roles when Clint was starring in a movie that had no part for her to play (such as Escape from Alcatraz (1979) or Firefox (1982)). The first time she worked apart from him for any length of time since The Shadow of Chikara (1977) in 1976 was Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story (1982). (Rosemary Clooney personally asked Locke to star in the CBS biopic on the strength of her performance in Bronco Billy (1980).) She later made an appearance on Britain's Tales of the Unexpected (1979) series. For the most part, however, she found herself sitting on the sidelines waiting for Eastwood to cast her in something.
By the mid-1980s, Sondra, over 40 but still refusing to admit it, was acutely aware that in Hollywood terms her leading lady days were just about finished. She had long been interested in film directing and had observed carefully how Eastwood and others directed the pictures she was in. With his blessing, she found a property that intrigued her and that his Malpaso production company would package, and developed it into a project for Warner Bros. She made Ratboy (1986), but despite good reviews, the film received scant distribution. In retrospect, Locke concluded that her exertion of authority over the project caused her longtime paramour to turn away from her, to find someone who was more compliant. (In an unpublicized affair with stewardess Jacelyn Reeves, Eastwood sired two legally fatherless children born in 1986 and 1988, in Monterey -- an "evil betrayal" Locke was unaware of.)
The showdown between Sondra and Clint occurred on December 29, 1988 at their mountain hideaway in Sun Valley, Idaho. After an unpleasant screaming match, Eastwood suggested Locke go back to Los Angeles. She sensed their relationship had passed a point of reconciliation, a fact confirmed when she scarcely saw Eastwood in subsequent months and when industry friends they knew in common shunned her. As she admitted later, "In my head I guess I knew it was over, but in my heart Clint and I were still not severed." On April 10, 1989, while she was directing a demanding sequence in a new police procedural, Impulse (1990), Eastwood had the locks changed on their house in Bel-Air. He also ordered her possessions to be boxed and put in storage. A letter addressed to "Mrs. Gordon Anderson," imperatively telling her not to come home, was delivered to her lawful husband's doorstep. When Gordon telephoned Sondra on the set and read her the letter, she fainted dead away in front of the cast and crew.
On April 26, 1989, Sondra filed a palimony lawsuit against her domestic partner of 14 years. Her "brazenness" in taking on the powerful Eastwood amazed and shocked Tinseltown and titillated the public. Her action sought unspecified damages and an equal division of the property she and Eastwood had acquired during their relationship. Locke asked for title to the Bel-Air home they had shared and to the Crescent Heights (West Hollywood) place Eastwood had purchased in 1982 (in which Gordon lived). The closed hearing was held on May 31, 1989, before a private judge. Before any court decision could be made, a private settlement was reached between the parties. Locke received $450,000, the Crescent Heights property, and a $1.5 million multiyear development-directing pact at Warner Bros. In return, she dropped her suit. By then, the fall of 1990, she was happy to end the hassle. (In the past months she had been diagnosed with cancer, undergone a double mastectomy, and endured chemotherapy.)
For the next three years Locke submitted over 30 projects to Warner Bros., but none received a green light to move ahead. Moreover, the studio refused to assign her to direct any of their in-house projects. In the mid-1990s, Sondra discovered evidence that Eastwood had arranged to reimburse Warner Bros. for her three-year studio contract -- a matter that he had never mentioned to her. It became obvious that the studio's negative professional attitude toward her had little or nothing to do with her directing or project-finding abilities. On June 5, 1995, Locke sued Eastwood again, alleging fraud and breach of fiduciary duty. She claimed that Clint's behind-the-scene actions had sent a message "to the film industry and the world at large ... that Locke was not to be taken seriously." (According to Sondra's lawyer, the situation was Clint's "way of terminating the earlier palimony suit.")
While Locke's case was revving up at the Burbank Courthouse, Eastwood begged her to settle. On September 24, 1996 -- the morning jurors were set to begin a second day of deliberation -- Sondra announced her decision to drop her suit against Clint for an undisclosed monetary reward. One contingency was laid down: she would not reveal the settlement amount. The jubilant plaintiff said, "This was never about money. It was about my fighting for my professional rights." According to the victor, "I didn't enjoy it. But sometimes you have to do things you don't enjoy." Locke added, "In this business, people get so accustomed to being abused, they just accept the abuse and say, 'Well, that's just the way it is.' Well, it isn't."
But Locke was not finished. She had a pending action against Warner Bros. for allegedly harming her career by agreeing to the sham movie-directing deal that Eastwood had purportedly engineered. On May 24, 1999, just as jury selection was beginning (and four days before Locke turned 55), the studio reached an out-of-court settlement with Sondra.
In the decade following her courtroom saga, Sondra did not direct another movie. She did make a brief return to acting with cameo roles in back-to-back low-budget independent features, The Prophet's Game (2000) and Clean and Narrow (2000), both of which failed to secure a theatrical release. In 2001, she sold her home in the Hollywood Hills and moved to another part of L.A. After interim flings with producer Hawk Koch and John F. Kennedy's nephew Robert Shriver, she had a live-in relationship with one of the physicians who had treated her during her cancer siege. Dr. Scott Cunneen, described by Locke as "Herculean," was 17 years her junior, his mother only three years older than Sondra. She eventually split up with him.
In 2016, preceded by a protracted absence from the public eye, trade press reported that Locke would come out of retirement to co-star in Alan Rudolph's Ray Meets Helen (2017) opposite Keith Carradine. The film was booked for a limited run in spring 2018. No longer able to hide her true year of birth in the post-internet era, Sondra was playing a romantic lead at the unheard of age of 74.
Locke died on November 3, 2018, of cardiac arrest stemming from metastatic breast cancer. It was not publicized until mid-December. The mysterious six-week delay raised a lot of eyebrows, especially since the belated news leaked opening day of the latest Eastwood blockbuster, The Mule (2018). According to a death certificate obtained by the media, her cancer had returned in 2015 and spread to her bones. Locke's remains were cremated at Westwood (Village) Mortuary and the ashes entrusted to her husband of 51 years. Rosanna Arquette, Frances Fisher and Evan Rachel Wood were among the celebrities who paid tribute. Despite the acrimony that followed the collapse of her famous relationship, Locke will be long remembered for her prominent roles in some of Eastwood's most popular works -- and perhaps dichotomously, as a pioneer for the rights of independent working women.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, but brought up in Pennsylvania, where he played the flute in a local band, as a youth, before sending some arrangements to Benny Goodman. Goodman offered him a job and, after serving in WWII, he joined the rearranged Glenn Miller band. In 1952, he was given a two-week assignment at Universal to work on an Bud Abbott and Lou Costello film and ended up staying for six years. Success with The Glenn Miller Story (1954) allowed him to score many other films, helping along the way to change the style of film background music by injecting jazz into the traditional orchestral arrangements of the 1950s. He was nominated for 18 Oscars and won four; in addition, he won 20 Grammys and 2 Emmys, made over 50 albums and had 500 works published. Mancini collaborated extensively with Blake Edwards -- firstly on TV's Peter Gunn (1958), then on Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), which won him two Oscars; he won further Oscars for the titles song for Days of Wine and Roses (1962) and the score for Victor/Victoria (1982); he will be best-remembered for the theme tune for The Pink Panther (1963).- Actor
- Soundtrack
Daniel Massey was an English actor of Canadian descent, best known for portraying his godfather Noël Coward (1899-1973) in the critically acclaimed film "Star!" (1968). For this role he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. It was his only Academy Award nomination.
Massey was the son of Canadian actor Raymond Massey (1896-1983) and English actress Adrianne Allen (1907-1993). He was raised by his mother, following his parents' divorce. His paternal uncle was Canadian diplomat Vincent Massey (1887-1967), who became the first Canadian-born Governor General of Canada (term 1952-1959).
Massey was educated at Eton College and King's College, Cambridge. He made his film debut as a child actor, in the war film "In Which We Serve" (1942). The film depicted the Battle of Crete (1941) and its aftermath.
Massey did not return to film roles until the late 1950s. His early roles included the comedy film "Girls at Sea" (1958), the military-themed comedy "Operation Bullshine" (1959), the comedy-drama "Upstairs and Downstairs" (1959), the music-hall themed drama and "The Entertainer" (1960). He played the leading role of John Fellowes (Daniel Massey), an officer in the Grenadier Guards, in the military-themed drama "The Queen's Guards" (1961).
His next major role was as an incompetent thief in the crime comedy "Go to Blazes" (1962). He had a supporting role in the historical comedy "The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders" (1965), which was an adaptation of the novel "Moll Flanders" (1722) by Daniel Defoe (c. 1660-1731).
Massey received his best known role in the film "Star!" (1968), and received his nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The Award was instead won by rival actor Jack Albertson (1907-1981). Massey's next found a critically acclaimed role in television. He played the openly gay character Daniel in the historical drama "The Roads to Freedom" (1970). The series was an adaptation of a trilogy of novels: "The Age of Reason" (1945), "The Reprieve" (1945) and "Troubled Sleep" (1949) by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980). They depicted the last years of the interwar period in France and the Fall of France (1940) in World War II.
Massey played the historical figure Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (1532-1588) in the historical film "Mary, Queen of Scots" (1971). In the film. Dudley was depicted as a court favorite of Elizabeth I of England, (played by Glenda Jackson) and as a suitor for Mary I of Scotland (played by .Vanessa Redgrave).
Massey next has a role in the anthology horror film "The Vault of Horror " (1973), which adapted several classic horror stories published by EC Comics. It was his first appearance in a comic book adaptation. He played the French dramatist Victorien Sardou (1831-1908) in the biographical film "The Incredible Sarah" (1976).
Massey was mostly reduced to supporting roles in the religious drama "The Devil's Advocate" (1977), the fantasy film "Warlords of Atlantis" (1978), and the horror comedy "The Cat and the Canary" (1979). He only appeared in a hand full of films in the 1980s, but played the historical judge Mervyn Griffith-Jones (1909-1979) in "Scandal" (1989). The film was loosely based on the political scandal Profumo affair, which had damaged the reputation of the Conservative Party in the early 1960s.
Massey was in poor health in the 1990s, and his career consequently suffered. His last film role was voicing Jesus' disciple Cleopas in the animated Biblical drama "The Miracle Maker" (1999). The film was an an adaptation of the Gospels of the New Testament, and was released following Massey's death.
Massey died in March 1998, suffering from Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer affecting the white blood cells. He was buried at Putney Vale Cemetery in southwest London. The cemetery is located at the small community of Putney Vale, within the London Borough of Wandsworth.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Walter Matthau was best known for starring in many films which included Charade (1963), The Odd Couple (1968), Grumpy Old Men (1993), and Dennis the Menace (1993). He often worked with Jack Lemmon and the two were Hollywood's craziest stars.
He was born Walter Jake Matthow in New York City, New York on October 1, 1920. His mother was an immigrant from Lithuania and his father was a Russian Jewish peddler and electrician from Kiev, Ukraine. As a young boy, Matthau attended a Jewish non-profit sleep-away camp. He also attended Surprise Lake Camp. His high school was Seward Park High School.
During World War II, Matthau served in the U.S. Army Air Forces with the Eighth Air Force in Britain as a Consolidated B-24 Liberator radioman-gunner, in the same 453rd Bombardment Group as James Stewart. He was based at RAF Old Buckenham, Norfolk during this time. He reached the rank of staff sergeant and became interested in acting.
Matthau appeared in the pilot of Mister Peepers (1952) alongside Wally Cox. He later appeared in the Elia Kazan classic, A Face in the Crowd (1957), opposite Patricia Neal and Andy Griffith, and then appeared in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), with Kirk Douglas, a film Douglas has often described as his personal favorite. Matthau then appeared in Charade (1963) with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. In 1968, Matthau made his big screen appearance as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple (1968) alongside Jack Lemmon. The two were also in the sequel (The Odd Couple II (1998)) as well as Grumpy Old Men (1993) and Grumpier Old Men (1995). Matthau was in Dennis the Menace (1993), alongside Mason Gamble. On July 1, 2000, Matthau died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California. He was 79 years old.- Actress
- Soundtrack
A veteran scene stealer in the cynical tradition of Thelma Ritter and known for her own inimitably dry, poker-faced delivery, Kay Medford was born Margaret Kathleen Regan in the Bronx, New York City on September 14, 1919, the daughter of Irish folk James and Mary Regan. Her mother was, at one time, a Shakespearean actress on the road. Kay attended both public and Catholic schools growing up, her parents both dying while she was in her teens.
Kay quickly gravitated towards humor and show business as a respite from those sad times. She began as a nightclub waitress and worked herself up a comedy routine eventually. She officially began her career entertaining at summer resorts on the Borscht circuit in the Catskill Mountains. Moving to Hollywood in an effort to break into war-era films (1942-1945), Kay only managed atmospheric, unbilled bits (secretaries, waitresses, phone operators), for the most part in such MGM fare as Maisie Gets Her Man (1942), Random Harvest (1942), Three Hearts for Julia (1943), Whistling in Brooklyn (1943) Broadway Rhythm (1944), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) and Adventure (1945). The only minor speaking role of any significance or substance was in the film Swing Shift Maisie (1943).
In 1949, Kay toured with a nightclub routine in which she did impersonations of Hollywood celebrities. She returned to films in the post-war with featured roles in The Undercover Man (1949), the film noir Guilty Bystander (1950) and Mr. Walkie Talkie (1952). But it was as one of New York and London's most enjoyable cabaret performers that the comedienne earned a huge following. This built-in reputation eventually led her to the Broadway musical stage in 1951, where, at the age of 37, she played Cherry in "Paint Your Wagon." More popular shows made use of her reliable name, including "John Murray Anderson's Almanac" (1953), "Lullaby" (winning a Theatre World Award) (1954), "Mr. Wonderful" (1956), "A Hole in the Head" (1957), and "Carousel" (1957) (as Mrs. Mullin). TV anthologies also earned her some attention ("Philco Television Playhouse," "United States Steel Hour," "Studio One in Hollywood") as well as a couple films, especially her role as the first wife of grasping, increasingly ruthless guitar player-turned-politician Andy Griffith in the acclaimed drama A Face in the Crowd (1957) directed by Elia Kazan and her comedy relief role as the landlady in the NYC tenement drama The Rat Race (1960).
Often playing older than she was, Kay won the New York Drama Critic's Award for her hilarious turn as Dick Van Dyke's emasculating mother in the classic 1960 musical "Bye, Bye Birdie". However, she lost out on the Mama role to Maureen Stapleton when it transferred to film. By this time, she had pretty much patented her meddling, overbearing Brooklynesque characters and it all culminated in the role of a lifetime as the sermonizing Jewish mom in both the Broadway stage (1964) and film versions of the hit musical Funny Girl (1968), the highly fictionalized bio of entertainer Fanny Brice. Kay was the only one in the cast who managed to keep up with Barbra Streisand and her star-making brilliance. Her spot-on, stone-faced comic timing grabbed its share of laughs and earned her well-deserved Tony and Oscar nominations. Her last appearance on Broadway was in the Woody Allen comedy "Don't Drink the Water."
Later sporadic films, both comedic and dramatic, included supports in BUtterfield 8 (1960), Ensign Pulver (1964), A Fine Madness (1966), The Busy Body (1967), Angel in My Pocket (1969), Fire Sale (1977) and Windows (1980). Surprisingly, she was not utilized and was sorely missed in the "Funny Girl" sequel Funny Lady (1975). Appearing frequently on TV with both comedic and dramatic roles, Kay continued in her busybody mama vein with Dean Martin on his long-running variety show. And in recurring mode, she also enjoyed playing nosy relative characters in the light TV series That's Life (1968) and To Rome with Love (1969).
While comedy was Kay's forte, appearing in such established sitcoms ("The Partridge Family, "Love American Style"), she often provided comedy relief in heavy TV dramas and at times played dead serious as well -- "Ben Casey," "Medical Center," "Marcus Welby," "Kojak".
Falling ill in her final years, Kay, who remained unmarried, made her last on-camera appearance in a 1980 episode of "Barney Miller." She died of cervical cancer on April 10, 1980, age only 60, in her Manhattan apartment.- Actor
- Writer
- Composer
Equipped with a crooked, leering smirk and devilish gleam in his eye, actor Ron Moody will be most assuredly remembered for one signature role, despite the fact that the talented comedian had much, much more to offer. Carol Channing may have had her Dolly Levi and Yul Brynner his King of Siam, but Moody would become the most delightfully mischievous, engagingly musical villain of all time.
The son of a plasterer born in London in 1924, Ron never gave much of a look at pursuing the acting field until age 29. Prior to that he had entertained thoughts of becoming an economist or sociologist (trained at the London School of Economics). But, changing his destiny on the way, he became a top stand-up and improv revue artist in England (from 1952), making an inauspicious film bow in 1957 in an unbilled bit. It was the British musical stage that offered him his first taste of stardom with the London company of Leonard Bernstein's "Candide" in 1959. Although it was not a great success, however, it did lead to the role of a lifetime the following year as Fagin, the loveable, rapscallious pickpocket in the musical version of "Oliver Twist" simply entitled Oliver!.
Moody later bandied about in other roguish roles too in such TV series as The Avengers (1961) and in the comedies The Mouse on the Moon (1963) and Murder Most Foul (1964), both starring Margaret Rutherford. But in 1968, Ron was given the opportunity to transfer his Dickensian stage thief to film. Oliver! (1968) allowed him to steal a well-deserved Golden Globe trophy and Oscar nomination in the process, not to mention Hollywood interest. Although he never again matched the success of Oliver! (1968), Moody's portrayal of Uriah Heep in a TV version of Charles Dickens's David Copperfield (1970) became another a great success. Other offbeat cinematic roles, both dramatic and sharply comic, included such films as The Twelve Chairs (1970), Flight of the Doves (1971), Legend of the Werewolf (1975), Dogpound Shuffle (1975), Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979) (aka: Unidentified Flying Oddball, as Merlin), Wrong Is Right (1982), Where Is Parsifal? (1984), Emily's Ghost (1992), A Kid in King Arthur's Court (1995) (as Merlin), The 3 Kings (2000), Revelation (2001), Paradise Grove (2003) and Lost Dogs (2005).
Despite his fine work elsewhere, the role of Fagin would be Moody's long-lasting claim to fame. He reprised the part at a 1985 in a Royal Variety Performance at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, before Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh. Throughout his TV career, Moody's presence and/or voice graced several children's series including the adaptations of Into the Labyrinth (1981) and The Telebugs (1986), and he was occasionally on TV here in the U.S., including 80s episodes of "Hart to Hart," "Highway to Heaven" and "Murder, She Wrote."
The endearing Ron Moody died at age 91 in London.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Patricia Neal, the Oscar and Tony Award-winning actress, was born Patsy Louise Neal in Packard, Kentucky, where her father managed a coal mine and her mother was the daughter of the town doctor. She grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she attended high school. She was first bit by the acting bug at the age of 10, after attending an evening of monologues at a Methodist church. She subsequently wrote a letter to Santa Claus, telling him, "What I want for Christmas is to study dramatics". She won the Tennessee State Award for dramatic reading while she was in high school.
She apprenticed at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia, when she was 16-years-old, between her junior and senior years in high school. After studying drama for two years at Northwestern University, she headed to New York City and landed the job as an understudy in The Voice of the Turtle (1947). It was the producer of the play that had her change her name from Patsy Louise to Patricia. After replacing Vivian Vance in the touring company of "Turtle", she won a role in a play that closed in Boston and then appeared in summer stock. She won the role of the teenage "Regina" in Lillian Hellman's play, Another Part of the Forest (1948), for which she won a Tony Award in 1947. Subsequently, she signed a seven-year contract with Warner Bros.
In the first part of her film career, her most impressive roles were in The Fountainhead (1949), opposite Gary Cooper, with whom she had three-year-long love affair, and in director Robert Wise's sci-fi classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), which she made at 20th Century-Fox. Warners hadn't been thrilled with her and let her go before her contract was up, so she signed with Fox. With her film career stagnating, she returned to Broadway and achieved the success that eluded her in films, appearing in the revival of Hellman's play, The Children's Hour (1961), in 1952. She met and married writer, Roald Dahl, in 1953, and they would have five children in 30 years of marriage.
In 1957, she had one of her finest roles in Elia Kazan's parable about the threat of mass-media demagoguery and home-grown fascism in A Face in the Crowd (1957). Before she had appeared in the movie, Neal had taken over the role of "Maggie" in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), the Broadway smash that had been directed by Kazan. Returning to the stage, she appeared in the London production of Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) and co-starred with Anne Bancroft in the Broadway production of The Miracle Worker (1962).
After appearing in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), she had what was arguably her finest role, as Alma the housekeeper, in Hud (1963) opposite Paul Newman. The film was a hit and Neal won the Best Actress Oscar. In 1965, she suffered a series of strokes that nearly killed her. She was filming John Ford's film, 7 Women (1965), at the time, and had to be replaced by Anne Bancroft (who would later take a role she turned down, that of "Mrs. Robinson" in The Graduate (1967)). Neal was pregnant at the time.
She underwent a seven-hour operation on her brain and survived, later delivering her fifth child. She underwent rehabilitation supervised by her husband. She had turned down The Graduate (1967) as she had not recovered fully from her stroke. When she returned to the screen, in 1968 in The Subject Was Roses (1968), she suffered from memory problems. According to her director, Ulu Grosbard, "The memory element was the uncertain one. But when we started to shoot, she hit her top level. She really rises to the challenge. She has great range, even more now than before".
She received an Oscar nomination for her work. Subsequently, new acting roles equal to her talent were sparse. She did receive three Emmy nominations, the first for originating the role of "Olivia Walton" in the 1971 TV movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971), that gave birth to the TV show The Waltons (1972).
Patricia Neal died on August 9, 2010 in Edgarton, Massachusetts from lung cancer. She was 84 years old.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Screen legend, superstar, and the man with the most famous blue eyes in movie history, Paul Leonard Newman was born on January 26, 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio, the second son of Arthur Sigmund Newman (died 1950) and Theresa Fetsko (died 1982). His elder brother was Arthur S. Newman Jr., named for their father, a Jewish businessman who owned a successful sporting goods store and was the son of emigrants from Poland and Hungary. Newman's mother (born Terézia Fecková, daughter of Stefan Fecko and Mária Polenak) was a Roman Catholic Slovak from Homonna, Pticie (former Austro-Hungarian Empire), who became a practicing Christian Scientist. She and her brother, Newman's uncle Joe, had an interest in the creative arts, and it rubbed off on him. He acted in grade school and high school plays. The Newmans were well-to-do and Paul Newman grew up in affluent Shaker Heights. Before he became an actor, Newman ran the family sporting goods store in Cleveland, Ohio.
By 1950, the 25-year-old Newman had been kicked out of Ohio University, where he belonged to the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, for unruly behavior (denting the college president's car with a beer keg), served three years in the United States Navy during World War II as a radio operator, graduated from Ohio's Kenyon College, married his first wife, Jacqueline "Jackie" Witte (born 1929), and had his first child, Scott. That same year, his father died. When he became successful in later years, Newman said if he had any regrets it would be that his father was not around to witness his success. He brought Jackie back to Shaker Heights and he ran his father's store for a short period. Then, knowing that wasn't the career path he wanted to take, he moved Jackie and Scott to New Haven, Connecticut, where he attended Yale University's School of Drama.
While doing a play there, Newman was spotted by two agents, who invited him to come to New York City to pursue a career as a professional actor. After moving to New York, he acted in guest spots for various television series and in 1953 came a big break. He got the part of understudy of the lead role in the successful Broadway play "Picnic". Through this play, he met actress Joanne Woodward (born 1930), who was also an understudy in the play. While they got on very well and there was a strong attraction, Newman was married and his second child, Susan, was born that year. During this time, Newman was accepted into the much admired and popular New York Actors Studio, although he did not actually audition.
In 1954, a film Newman was very reluctant to do was released, The Silver Chalice (1954). He considered his performance in this costume epic to be so bad that he took out a full-page ad in a trade paper apologizing for it to anyone who might have seen it. He had always been embarrassed about the film and reveled in making fun of it. He immediately wanted to return to the stage, and performed in "The Desperate Hours". In 1956, he got the chance to redeem himself in the film world by portraying boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), and critics praised his performance. In 1957, with a handful of films to his credit, he was cast in The Long, Hot Summer (1958), co-starring Joanne Woodward.
During the shooting of this film, they realized they were meant to be together and by now, so did his then-wife Jackie, who gave Newman a divorce. He and Woodward wed in Las Vegas in January 1958. They went on to have three daughters together and raised them in Westport, Connecticut. In 1959, Newman received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). The 1960s would bring Newman into superstar status, as he became one of the most popular actors of the decade, and garnered three more Best Actor Oscar nominations, for The Hustler (1961), Hud (1963) and Cool Hand Luke (1967). In 1968, his debut directorial effort Rachel, Rachel (1968) was given good marks, and although the film and Woodward were nominated for Oscars, Newman was not nominated for Best Director. However, he did win a Golden Globe Award for his direction.
1969 brought the popular screen duo of Newman and Robert Redford together for the first time when Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) was released. It was a box office smash. Through the 1970s, Newman had hits and misses from such popular films as The Sting (1973) and The Towering Inferno (1974) to lesser known films as The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) to a cult classic Slap Shot (1977). After the death of his only son, Scott, in 1978, Newman's personal life and film choices moved in a different direction. His acting work in the 1980s and on is what is often most praised by critics today. He became more at ease with himself and it was evident in The Verdict (1982) for which he received his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination and, in 1987, finally received his first Oscar for The Color of Money (1986), almost thirty years after Woodward had won hers. Friend and director of Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), Robert Wise accepted the award on Newman's behalf as the actor did not attend the ceremony.
Films were not the only thing on his mind during this period. A passionate race car driver since the early 1970s (despite being color-blind), he was co-founder of Newman-Haas racing in 1982, and also founded "Newman's Own", a successful line of food products that has earned in excess of $100 million, every penny of which Newman donated to charity. He also started The Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, an organization for children with serious illness. He was as well known for his philanthropic ways and highly successful business ventures as he was for his legendary actor status.
Newman's marriage to Woodward lasted a half-century. Connecticut was their primary residence after leaving Hollywood and moving East in 1960. Renowned for his sense of humor, in 1998 he quipped that he was a little embarrassed to see his salad dressing grossing more than his movies. During his later years, he still attended races, was much involved in his charitable organizations, and in 2006, he opened a restaurant called Dressing Room, which helps out the Westport Country Playhouse, a place in which Newman took great pride. In 2007, while the public was largely unaware of the serious illness from which he was suffering, Newman made some headlines when he said he was losing his invention and confidence in his acting abilities and that acting was "pretty much a closed book for me". A smoker for many years, Newman died on September 26, 2008, aged 83, from lung cancer.- Actress
- Music Department
- Composer
"Loverly" soprano Marni Nixon ensured herself a proper place in film history although most moviegoers would not have recognize her had they passed her on the street. But if you had heard her, that might be a horse of a different color. She was one of those unsung (or "much sung") talents given short shrift at that time.
For those who think film superstars such as Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood, and Audrey Hepburn possessed not only powerhouse dramatic talents but amazing singing voices as well ... think again. Kerr's Anna Leonowens in The King and I (1956), Natalie's Maria in West Side Story (1961), and Audrey's Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady (1964) were all dubbed by the amazing but uncredited Nixon.
Born Margaret Nixon McEathron on February 22, 1930, in Altadena, California, she was a child actress. Once a soloist with the Roger Wagner Chorale in the beginning, she trained in opera. Possessing a versatile voice for pop music and easy standards as well, she not only sang for Arnold Schönberg and Igor Stravinsky, but also recorded light songs. During the war era, she appeared uncredited in the musicals Born to Sing (1942) and The Bashful Bachelor (1942), and later voiced one of the singing flowers in the Disney film Alice in Wonderland (1951).
Marni made her Broadway musical debut in 1954 in a show that lasted two months but nothing came from it. In 1955, the singer contracted to dub Deborah Kerr in The King and I (1956) was killed in a car accident in Europe and a replacement was needed. Marni was hired...and the rest is history. Much impressed, the studios brought her in to "ghost" Kerr's voice again in the classic tearjerker An Affair to Remember (1957). From there, she went on to make Natalie Wood and Audrey Hepburn sound incredibly good with such classic songs as "Tonight" and "Wouldn't It Be Loverly."
Providing the voice of the geese in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964), she finally appeared on screen in the box-office musical The Sound of Music (1965), starring Julie Andrews, who physically resembled Marni. The role was a minor one, however, and she was only given a couple of ensemble scenes and solo lines in "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" as a singing nun.
Marni's vocal career in films dissolved by the mid 1960s, but she continued on with concerts and in symphony halls, while billing herself as "The Voice of Hollywood" in one-woman cabaret shows. Throughout the years, she has played on the legit stage, including the lead roles in "The King and I" and "The Sound of Music," and in her matronly years has been seen as Fraulein Schneider in "Cabaret," and in the musicals "Follies" and "70 Girls 70."
Appearing very sporadically on the small screen, Marni appeared on such programs as "The Mothers-in-Law" (as herself), appeared in a filmed TV record of an off-Broadway musical entitled Taking My Turn (1985) and was featured in the romantic comedy film I Think I Do (1997) and made a final visual appearance on an episode of "Law & Order: SVU." Her last singing voice on film was as the grandmother in the animated feature Mulan (1998).
Married three times, twice to musicians, one of her husbands, Ernest Gold, by whom she had three children, was a film composer best known for his Academy Award-winning epic Exodus (1960). She died of breast cancer on July 24, 2016, in New York City, aged 86.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Hugh O'Brian had the term "beefcake" written about him during his nascent film years in the early 1950s, but he chose to avoid the obvious typecast as he set up his career.
O'Brian was born Hugh Charles Krampe on April 19, 1925, in Rochester, New York, to Ohio-born parents Edith Lillian (Marks) and Hugh John Krampe, a United States Marine Corps officer. His paternal grandparents were German immigrants, while his mother was of half German Jewish and half English/Scottish descent. O'Brian first attended school at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, then Kemper Military School in Booneville, Missouri. Moving from place to place growing up, he managed to show off his athletic prowess quite early. By the time he graduated from high school, he had lettered in football, basketball, wrestling and track. Originally pursuing law, he dropped out of the University of Cincinnati in 1942 (age 19) and enlisted in the Marine Corps. Upon his discharge he ended up in Los Angeles. Hugh joined a little theater group and a Santa Barbara stock company, where he developed his acting chops and slowly built up his résumé. He was discovered for TV by director/actress Ida Lupino, which opened the door to his signing with Universal Studios for films.
Hugh's gentlemanly ruggedness, similar to a James Garner or a Gene Barry, was ideal for pictures, and his lean physique and exceptionally photographic mug had the modest, brown-eyed, curly-haired looker plastered all over the movie magazines. He rebelled against the image for the most part and, as a result, his years with Universal were not as fruitful as they could have been. For the duration, he was pretty much confined as a secondary player to standard action pictures such as The Return of Jesse James (1950), The Cimarron Kid (1952), The Battle at Apache Pass (1952), Red Ball Express (1952), Son of Ali Baba (1952), The Lawless Breed (1952), Seminole (1953), Saskatchewan (1954) and Drums Across the River (1954). It was Rock Hudson who earned all of the Universal glamour guy roles and the out-and-out stardom that could easily have been Hugh's. In 1954, he left Universal to freelance but did not fare any better with more serviceable roles in White Feather (1955) and The Twinkle in God's Eye (1955).
Hugh finally earned top status in the "B" action adventure The Brass Legend (1956) but it did little to advance his film career. Offered the starring role in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955) on TV, a year later, it became a mainstay hit and Hugh an "overnight" star. During his six-year run on the western classic, he managed to show off his singing talents on variety shows and appeared on Broadway, replacing Andy Griffith for a week in the musical "Destry Rides Again" in January of 1960.
The hirsutely handsome bachelor remained a durable talent throughout the 60s and 70s with plentiful work on the big screen, including Come Fly with Me (1963), Love Has Many Faces (1965), Ten Little Indians (1965), Ambush Bay (1966), Africa: Texas Style (1967), Strategy of Terror (1969), John Wayne's last film The Shootist (1976), and Bruce Lee's last film Game of Death (1978), as well as with the TV-movies Wild Women (1970), Harpy (1971), Murder on Flight 502 (1975), Benny and Barney: Las Vegas Undercover (1977), Murder at the World Series (1977), Cruise Into Terror (1978). He also starred in the crime adventure series Search (1972), but never got the one role to earn the critical attention he merited. In addition, he kept busy on the summer stock circuit.
In later years, he appeared in the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Danny DeVito comedy "Twins"; returned as "Wyatt Earp" in the TV movies The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991) and Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone (1994); and made guest appearances on such TV shows as "Fantasy Island," "The Love Boat," "Matt Houston," "Murder, She Wrote," "L.A. Law" and made his last on-camera appearance on the series "Call of the Wild" in 2000.
A sports enthusiast, his hobbies included sailing, tennis, swimming and long-distance bicycling, and his many philanthropic efforts did not go unrecognized. His proudest achievement was the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY), which he founded in 1958 after spending considerable time with Dr. Albert Schweitzer and his clinic in Africa. Struck by the impassioned work being done by Schweitzer, O'Brian set up his own program to help develop young people into future leaders. O'Brian was awarded honorary degrees by several prestigious institutions of higher learning. The perennial bachelor finally "settled down" and tied the knot at age 81 with longtime companion Virginia Barber, who was close to three decades his junior. They lived in his Benedict Canyon home.
Hugh died on September 5, 2016, in Beverly Hills, California, of natural causes.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Eldred Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916 in La Jolla, California, to Bernice Mae (Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, a chemist and druggist in San Diego. He had Irish (from his paternal grandmother), English, and some German, ancestry. His parents divorced when he was five years old. An only child, he was sent to live with his grandmother. He never felt he had a stable childhood. His fondest memories are of his grandmother taking him to the movies every week and of his dog, which followed him everywhere. He studied pre-med at UC-Berkeley and, while there, got bitten by the acting bug and decided to change the focus of his studies. He enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and debuted on Broadway after graduation. His debut was in Emlyn Williams' play "The Morning Star" (1942). By 1943, he was in Hollywood, where he debuted in the RKO film Days of Glory (1944).
Stardom came with his next film, The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Peck's screen presence displayed the qualities for which he became well known. He was tall, rugged and heroic, with a basic decency that transcended his roles. He appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) as an amnesia victim accused of murder. In The Yearling (1946), he was again nominated for an Academy Award and won the Golden Globe. He was especially effective in westerns and appeared in such varied fare as David O. Selznick's critically blasted Duel in the Sun (1946), the somewhat better received Yellow Sky (1948) and the acclaimed The Gunfighter (1950). He was nominated again for the Academy Award for his roles in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), which dealt with anti-Semitism, and Twelve O'Clock High (1949), a story of high-level stress in an Air Force bomber unit in World War II.
With a string of hits to his credit, Peck made the decision to only work in films that interested him. He continued to appear as the heroic, larger-than-life figures in such films as Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) and Moby Dick (1956). He worked with Audrey Hepburn in her debut film, Roman Holiday (1953). Peck finally won the Oscar, after four nominations, for his performance as lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). In the early 1960s, he appeared in two darker films than he usually made, Cape Fear (1962) and Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), which dealt with the way people live. He also gave a powerful performance as Captain Keith Mallory in The Guns of Navarone (1961), one of the biggest box-office hits of that year.
In the early 1970s, he produced two films, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972) and The Dove (1974), when his film career stalled. He made a comeback playing, somewhat woodenly, Robert Thorn in the horror film The Omen (1976). After that, he returned to the bigger-than-life roles he was best known for, such as MacArthur (1977) and the monstrous Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele in the huge hit The Boys from Brazil (1978). In the 1980s, he moved into television with the miniseries The Blue and the Gray (1982) and The Scarlet and the Black (1983). In 1991, he appeared in the remake of his 1962 film, playing a different role, in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991). He was also cast as the progressive-thinking owner of a wire and cable business in Other People's Money (1991).
In 1967, Peck received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He was also been awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. Always politically progressive, he was active in such causes as anti-war protests, workers' rights and civil rights. In 2003, his Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch was named the greatest film hero of the past 100 years by the American Film Institute. Gregory Peck died at age 87 on June 12, 2003 in Los Angeles, California.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Sidney Poitier was a native of Cat Island, Bahamas, although born, two months prematurely, in Miami during a visit by his parents, Evelyn (Outten) and Reginald James Poitier. He grew up in poverty as the son of farmers, with his father also driving a cab in Nassau. Sidney had little formal education and at the age of 15 was sent to Miami to live with his brother, in order to forestall a growing tendency toward delinquency. In the U.S., he experienced the racial chasm that divides the country, a great shock to a boy coming from a society with a majority of African descent.
At 18, he went to New York, did menial jobs and slept in a bus terminal toilet. A brief stint in the Army as a worker at a veterans' hospital was followed by more menial jobs in Harlem. An impulsive audition at the American Negro Theatre was rejected so forcefully that Poitier dedicated the next six months to overcoming his accent and improving his performing skills. On his second try, he was accepted. Spotted in rehearsal by a casting agent, he won a bit part in the Broadway production of "Lysistrata", for which he earned good reviews. By the end of 1949, he was having to choose between leading roles on stage and an offer to work for Darryl F. Zanuck in the film No Way Out (1950). His performance as a doctor treating a white bigot got him plenty of notice and led to more roles. Nevertheless, the roles were still less interesting and prominent than those white actors routinely obtained. But seven years later, after turning down several projects he considered demeaning, Poitier got a number of roles that catapulted him into a category rarely if ever achieved by an African-American man of that time, that of leading man. One of these films, The Defiant Ones (1958), earned Poitier his first Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. Five years later, he won the Oscar for Lilies of the Field (1963), the first African American to win for a leading role.
He remained active on stage and screen as well as in the burgeoning Civil Rights movement. His roles in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and To Sir, with Love (1967) were landmarks in helping to break down some social barriers between blacks and whites. Poitier's talent, conscience, integrity, and inherent likability placed him on equal footing with the white stars of the day. He took on directing and producing chores in the 1970s, achieving success in both arenas.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
On January 30, 1937, renowned theatre actor Michael Redgrave was performing in a production of Hamlet in London. During the curtain call, the show's lead, Laurence Olivier, announced to the audience: "tonight a great actress was born". This was in reference to his co-star's newborn daughter, Vanessa Redgrave.
Vanessa was born in Greenwich, London, to Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, both thespians. Three quarters of a century after her birth (despite numerous ups and down) this rather forward expectation has definitely been lived up to with an acclaimed actress that has won (among many others) an Academy Award, two Emmys, two Golden Globes, two Cannes Best Actress awards, a Tony, a Screen Actors Guild award, a Laurence Olivier theatre award and a BAFTA fellowship.
Growing up with such celebrated theatrical parents, great expectations were put on both herself, her brother Corin Redgrave and sister Lynn Redgrave at an early age. Shooting up early and finally reaching a height just short of 6 foot, Redgrave initially had plans to dance and perform ballet as a profession. However she settled on acting and entered the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1954 and four years later made her West End debut. In the decade of the 1960s she developed and progressed to become one of the most noted young stars of the English stage and then film. Performances on the London stage included the classics: 'A Touch of Sun', 'Coriolanus', 'A Midsummer's Night Dream', 'All's Well that Ends Well', 'As You Like It', 'The Lady from the Sea', 'The Seagull' and many others. By the mid 1960s, she had booked various film roles and matured into a striking beauty with a slim, tall frame and attractive face. In 1966 she made her big screen debut as the beautiful ex-wife of a madman in an Oscar nominated performance in the oddball comedy Morgan! (1966), as well as the enigmatic woman in a public park in desperate need of a photographer's negatives in the iconic Blow-Up (1966) and briefly appeared in an unspoken part of Anne Boleyn in the Best Picture winner of the year A Man for All Seasons (1966).
She managed to originate the title role in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" the same year on the London stage (which was then adapted for the big screen a few years later, but Maggie Smith was cast instead and managed to win an Oscar for her performance). Her follow up work saw her play the lead in the box office hit adaptation Camelot (1967), a film popular with audiences but dismissed by critics, and her second Academy Award nominated performance as Isadora Duncan in the critically praised Isadora (1968).
Her rise in popularity on film also coincided with her public political involvement, she was one of the lead faces in protesting against the Vietnam war and lead a famous march on the US embassy, was arrested during a Ban-the-Bomb demonstration, publicly supported Yasar Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and fought for various other human rights and particularly left wing causes. Despite her admirably independent qualities, most of her political beliefs weren't largely supported by the public. In 1971 after 3 films back to back, Redgrave suffered a miscarriage (it would have been her fourth, after Natasha Richardson, Joely Richardson and Carlo Gabriel Nero) and a break up with her then partner and father of her son, Franco Nero. This was around the same time her equally political brother Corin introduced her to the Workers Revolutionary Party, a group who aimed to destroy capitalism and abolish the monarchy. Her film career began to suffer and take the back seat as she became more involved with the party, twice unsuccessfully attempting to run as a party member for parliament, only obtaining a very small percentage of votes.
In terms of her film career at the time, she was given probably the smallest part in the huge ensemble who-dunnit hit, Murder on the Orient Express (1974) and given another thankless small part as Lola Deveraux in the Sherlock Holmes adventure The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976).
After a celebrated Broadway debut, she created further controversy in 1977 with her involvement in two films, firstly in Julia (1977) where she acted opposite Jane Fonda as a woman fighting Nazi oppression and narrated and featured in the documentary The Palestinian (1977) where she famously danced holding a Kalashnikov rifle. She publicly stated her condemnation of what she termed "Zionist hudlums", which outraged Jewish groups and as a result a screening of her documentary was bombed and Redgrave was personally threatened by the Jewish Defense League (JDL). Julia (1977) happened to be a huge critical success and Redgrave herself was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, but Jewish support groups demanded her nomination to be dropped and at the event of the Academy Awards burned effigies of Redgrave and protested and picketed. Redgrave was forced to enter the event via a rear entrance to avoid harm and when she won the award she famously remarked on the frenzy causes as "Zionist hoodlums" which caused the audience to audibly gasp and boo. The speech reached newspapers the next morning and her reputation was further damaged.
It came as a surprise when CBS hired her for the part of real life Nazi camp survivor Fania Fenelon in Playing for Time (1980), despite more controversy and protesting (Fenelon herself didn't even want Redgrave to portray her) she won an Emmy for the part and the film was one of the highest rating programs of the year. Her follow up film work to her Oscar had been mostly low key but successful, performances in films such as Yanks (1979), Agatha (1979), The Bostonians (1984), Wetherby (1985) and Prick Up Your Ears (1987) further cemented her reputation as a fine actress and she received various accolades and nominations.
However mainly in the 1980s, she focused on TV films and high budget mini-series as well as theatre in both London and New York. She made headlines in 1984 when she sued the Boston Symphony Orchestra for $5 million for wrongful cancellation of her contract because of her politics (she also stated her salary was significantly reduced in Agatha (1979) for the same reason). She became more mainstream in the 1990s where she appeared in a string of high profile films but the parts often underused Redgrave's abilities or they were small cameos/5-minute parts. Highlights included Howards End (1992), Little Odessa (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Cradle Will Rock (1999), as well as her leading lady parts in A Month by the Lake (1995) and Mrs Dalloway (1997).
In 2003 she finally won the coveted Tony award for her performance in 'The Long Day's Journey Into Night' and followed up with another two Tony nominated performances on Broadway, her one woman show 'The Year of Magical Thinking' in 2007 and 'Driving Miss Daisy' in 2010 which not only was extended due to high demand, but was also transferred to the West End for an additional three months in 2011.
Vanessa continues to lend her name to causes and has been notable for donating huge amounts of her own money for her various beliefs. She has publicly opposed the war in Iraq, campaigned for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, supported the rights of gays and lesbians as well as AIDs research and many other issues. She released her autobiography in 1993 and a few years later she was elected to serve as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. She also famously declined the invitation to be made a Dame for her services as an actress. Many have wondered the possible heights her career could have reached if it wasn't for her outspoken views, but being a celebrity and the artificial lifestyle usually attached doesn't seem to interest Redgrave in the slightest.
Vanessa has worked with all three of her children professionally on numerous occasions (her eldest daughter, Natasha Richardson tragically died at the age of 45 due to a skiing accident) and in her mid 70s she still works regularly on television, film and theatre, delivering time and time again great performances.- Director
- Producer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Carol Reed was the second son of stage actor, dramatics teacher and impresario founder of the Royal School of Dramatic Art Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. Reed was one of Tree's six illegitimate children with Beatrice Mae Pinney, who Tree established in a second household apart from his married life. There were no social scars here; Reed grew up in a well-mannered, middle-class atmosphere. His public school days were at King's School, Canterbury, and he was only too glad to push on with the idea of following his father and becoming an actor. His mother wanted no such thing and shipped him off to Massachusetts in 1922, where his older brother resided on--of all things--a chicken ranch.
It was a wasted six months before Reed was back in England and joined a stage company of Dame Sybil Thorndike, making his stage debut in 1924. He forthwith met British writer Edgar Wallace, who cashed in on his constant output of thrillers by establishing a road troupe to do stage adaptations of them. Reed was in three of these, also working as an assistant stage manager. Wallace became chairman of the newly formed British Lion Film Corp. in 1927, and Reed followed to become his personal assistant. As such he began learning the film trade by assisting in supervising the filmed adaptations of Wallace's works. This was essentially his day job. At night he continued stage acting and managing. It was something of a relief when Wallace passed on in 1932; Reed decided to drop the stage for film and joined historic Ealing Studios as dialog director for Associated Talking Pictures under Basil Dean.
Reed rose from dialog director to second-unit director and assistant director in record time, his first solo directorship being the adventure Midshipman Easy (1935). This and his subsequent effort, Laburnum Grove (1936), attracted high praise from a future collaborator, novelist/critic Graham Greene, who said that once Reed "gets the right script, [he] will prove far more than efficient." However, Reed would endure the sort of staid, boilerplate filmmaking that characterized British "B" movies until he left this behind with The Stars Look Down (1940), his second film with Michael Redgrave, and his openly Hitchcockian Night Train to Munich (1940), a comedy-thriller with Rex Harrison. It has often been seen as a sequel to Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938) with the same screenwriters and comedy relief--Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, who would just about make careers as the cricket zealots Charters and Caldicott, from "Vanishes".
The British liked these films and, significantly, so did America, where Hollywood still wondered whether their patronage of the British film industry was worth the gamble of a payoff via the US public. Dean was just one of several powerhouse producers rising in Britain in the 1930s. Other names are more familiar: Alexander Korda and J. Arthur Rank stand out. For Reed, who would wisely decide to start producing his own films in order to have more control over them, finding his niche was still a challenge into the 1940s. He was only too well aware that the film director led a team effort--his was partly a coordinator's task, harmonizing the talents of the creative team. The modest Reed would admit to his success being this partnership time and again. So he gravitated toward the same scriptwriters, art directors and cinematographers as his movie list spread out.
There were more thrillers and some historical bios: The Remarkable Mr. Kipps (1941) with Redgrave and The Young Mr. Pitt (1942) with Robert Donat. He did service and war effort fare through World War II, but these were more than flag wavers, for Reed dealt with the psychology of transitioning to military life. His Anglo-American documentary of combat (co-directed by Garson Kanin), The True Glory (1945), won the 1946 Oscar for Best Documentary. With that under his belt, Reed was now recognized as Britain's ablest director and could pick and choose his projects. He also had the clout--and the all-important funds--to do what he thought was essential to ensure realism on a location shoot, something missing in British film work prior to Reed.
Odd Man Out (1947) with James Mason as an IRA hit man on the run did just that and was Reed's first real independent effort, and he had gone to Rank to do it. All too soon, however, that organization began subjugating directors' wishes to studio needs, and Reed made perhaps his most important associative decision and joined Korda's London Films. Here was one very important harmony--he and Korda thought along the same lines. Though Anthony Kimmins had scripted four films for Reed, it was time for Korda to introduce the director to Graham Greene. Their association would bring Reed his greatest successes. The Fallen Idol (1948) was based on a Greene short story, with Ralph Richardson as a do-everything head butler in a diplomatic household. Idolized by the lonely, small son of his employer, he becomes caught up in a liaison with a woman on the work staff, who was much younger than his shrewish wife. It may seem slow to an American audience, but with the focus on the boy's wide-eyed view of rather gloomy surroundings, as well as the adult drama around him, it was innovative and a solid success.
What came next was a landmark--the best known of Reed's films. The Third Man (1949) was yet another Greene story, molded into a gem of a screenplay by him, though Reed added some significant elements of his own. The film has been endlessly summarized and analyzed and, whether defined as an international noir or post-war noir or just noir, it was cutting-edge noir and unforgettable. This was Reed in full control--well, almost-- and the money was coming from yet another wide-vision producer, David O. Selznick, along with Korda. Tension did develop in this effort keep a predominantly Anglo effort in this Anglo-American collaboration.
There were complications, though. For one thing, Korda--old friend and somewhat kindred spirit of wunderkind director Orson Welles--had a gentlemen's agreement with the latter for three pictures, but these were not forthcoming. Korda could be as evasive as Welles was known to be, and Welles had come to Europe to further his inevitable film projects after troubles in Hollywood. Always desperate for seed money, Welles was forced to take acting parts in Europe to build up his bank account in order to finance his more personal projects. He thus accepted the role of the larger-than-life American flim-flam man turned criminal, Harry Lime. The extended time spent filming the Vienna sewer scenes on location and at the elaborate set for them at Shepperton Studios in London, entailed the longest of the ten minutes or so of Welles' screen time. Here was a potential source of directorial intimidation if ever there was one. Welles took it upon himself to direct Reed's veteran cinematographer Robert Krasker with his own vision of some sewer sequences in London (after leaving the location shoot in Vienna), using many takes. Supposedly, Reed did not use any of Welles' footage, and in fact whatever there was got conveniently lost. Yet Citizen Kane (1941)'s shadow was so looming that Welles was given credit for a lot of camera work, atmospherics and the chase scenes. He had referred to the movie as "my film" later on and had said he wrote all his dialog. Some of the ferris wheel dialog with its famous famous "cuckoo clock" speech (which Reed and Greene both attributed to him) was probably the essence of Welles' contributions.
Krasker's quirky angles under Reed's direction perfectly framed the ready-made-for-an-art designer bombed-out shadows and stark, isolated street lights of postwar Vienna and its underworld. Unique to cinema history, the whole score (except for some canned incidental café music) was just the brilliant zither playing of Anton Karas, adding his nuances to every dramatic transition. Krasker won an Oscar, and Karas was nominated for one.
Reed's attention to detailed casting also paid off, particularly in casting German-speaking actors and background players. Selznick insisted on Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, the benighted protagonist, and his clipped and sharp voice and subterranean drawl were perfect for the part. Reed had wanted James Stewart--definitely a different perception than Americans of its leading men. Selznick parted ways with Reed on other issues, however; there was a laundry list of reasons for his re-editing and changing some incidentals for the shorter American version, partly based on negative comments from sneak preview responses. Perhaps it was the constant interruptions from the other side of the Atlantic that drove Reed to personally narrate the introduction describing Martins in the British version of the film (given the basic tenets of noir films, the star always played narrator to introduce the story and voice over where appropriate). Selznick showed himself--in this instance, anyway--to have a better directorial sense by substituting Cotten introducing himself in the American cut. It made far more sense and was much more effective. On the other hand, Selznick's editing of the pivotal railway café scenes with Cotten and Alida Valli had continuity problems.
Nonetheless, the film was an international smash, and all the principal players reaped the rewards. Reed did not get an Oscar, but he did win the Cannes Film Grand Prix. Greene was motivated enough to take the story and expand it into a best-selling novel. Even Welles, with his minimum screen time--he was spending most of his time in Europe trying to obtain financing for his newest project, Othello (1956)--milked the movie for all it was worth. He did not deny directorial influences (though in a 1984 interview he did), and even developed a Harry Lime radio show back home.
However, the movie had its detractors. It was called too melodramatic and too cynical. The short scenes of untranslated German dialog were also criticized, yet that lent to the atmosphere of confusion and helplessness of Martins caught in a wary, potentially dangerous environment--something the audience inevitably was able to share. It was all too ironic that Reed, now declared by some as the greatest living director of the time, found his career in decline thereafter. Of his total output, four were based on plays, three on stories and 15 on novels. With less than half of them to go, he was to be disappointed for the most part. His The Man Between (1953) with James Mason was too much of a "Third Man" reprise, and A Kid for Two Farthings (1955) was too sentimental.
By now Reed was being sought by enterprising Hollywood producers. He had--as he usually did--the material for a first-rate movie with two popular American actors, Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis for Trapeze (1956). However, it suffered from a slow script, as would the British-produced The Key (1958), despite another international cast. Things finally picked up with his venture into another Greene-scripted film from his novel, with Alec Guinness in the lead in the UK spy spoof Our Man in Havana (1959) with yet another winning international cast.
When Hollywood called again, the chance at such a British piece of history as Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) with a mostly British cast and Marlon Brando seemed bound for success. It was the second version of the movie produced by MGM (the first being the Clark Gable starrer Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)). However, Brando's history of being temperamental was much in evidence on location in Tahiti. Reed shot a small part of the picture but finally left, having more than his fill of the star's ego (and, evidently, being allowed too much artistic control by the studio) and the film was finished by Lewis Milestone. Reed would ultimately be branded as a failure in directing historical movies, but it was an unfair appraisal based on the random aspect of film success and such forces of nature as Brando, not artistic and technical expertise.
The opportunity to make another film came knocking again with Reed and American money forming the production company International Classics to produce Irving Stone's best-selling story of Michelangelo and the painting of the Sistine Chapel, The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). Here is perhaps the prime example of Reed being given short shrift for a really valiant effort at an historical, artistically significant and cultural epic because it was a "flop" at the box office. Shot on location in Rome and its environs, the film had a first-rate cast headed by Charlton Heston doing his method best as the temperamental artist with Rex Harrison, an effortless standout as the equally volatile Pope Julius II. Diane Cilento did fine work as the Contessina de Medici, with the always stalwart Harry Andrews as architect rival Donato Bramante. Most of the other roles were filled by Italians dubbed in English, but they all look good.
Reed's attention to historical detail provided perhaps the most accurate depiction of early 16th-century Italy--from costumes and manners to military action and weapons (especially firearms)--ever brought to the screen. The script by Philip Dunne was brisk and always entertaining in the verbal battle between the artist and his pontiff. Yet by the 1960s costume epics were going out of style and bigger flops, such as Cleopatra (1963) (talk about agony) despite the wealth of stars which included Harrison, tended to spread like a disease to those few that came later. Despite a high-powered distribution campaign by Twentieth Century-Fox, Reed's exemplary effort would ultimately be appreciated by art scholars and historians--not the stuff of Hollywood's money mentality.
For Reed the only remaining triumph was, of all things, a musical--his first and only--yet again he was working with children. However, the adaptation of the great Charles Dickens novel "Oliver Twistt" top the screen (as Oliver! (1968)) was a sensation with a lively script and music amid a realistic 19th-century London that was up to Reed's usual standards. The film was nominated for no less than 11 Oscars, wining five and two of the big ones--Best Picture and Best Director. Reed had finally achieved that bit of elusiveness. He could never be so simplistically stamped with an uneven career; Reed had always kept to a precise craftsman's movie-making formula.
Fellow British director Michael Powell had said that Reed "could put a film together like a watchmaker puts together a watch". It was Graham Greene, however, who gave Reed perhaps the more important personal accolade: "The only director I know with that particular warmth of human sympathy, the extraordinary feeling for the right face in the right part, the exactitude of cutting, and not least important the power of sympathizing with an author's worries and an ability to guide him."- Animation Department
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Wolfgang Reitherman was a German-born American animator who was one of Disney's Nine Old Men.
He began working for Disney in 1933, along with future Disney legends Ward Kimball and Milt Kahl. The three worked together on a number of classic Disney shorts.
Reitherman directed several Disney animated feature films including: One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), The Sword in the Stone (1963), The Jungle Book (1967), The Aristocats (1970), Robin Hood (1973), The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh (1977), and The Rescuers (1977).
He died in a car accident in 1985 at the age of 75. In 1989 Reitherman was posthumously named a Disney Legend, a hall of fame program that recognizes individuals who have made an extraordinary and integral contribution to The Walt Disney Company.- Actor
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Donald Jay Rickles was born May 8, 1926 in New York. Following the Golden Era of Hollywood, he remained active until early 2017. He got his start in night clubs, toiling for over 20 years, until 1958, when he made his film debut in Run Silent Run Deep (1958). The movie was a big hit. Afterward, Rickles continued acting, starring in films like X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963), Bikini Beach (1964), Enter Laughing (1967), and Kelly's Heroes (1970). In 1973, Don became a regular on Dean Martin's Celebrity Roasts.
From 1973-84, he appeared frequently on Dean's show, paying tribute to some of his friends, like Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, and was even the roast master on the roast for Dean Martin himself. In 1976, he had his own TV series CPO Sharkey (1976), which enjoyed a two year run. After 1984, he slowed down, appearing in a few minor film roles. In 1995, he made a comeback, appearing with Tom Hanks and Tim Allen in Toy Story (1995) in the role of the grouchy Mr. Potato Head. In 1999, he returned as Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story 2 (1999). He died on April 6, 2017, in Los Angeles, California, aged 90. He is interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California, in the Courts of Tanach.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Tall, suave and sophisticated Cesar Romero actually had two claims to fame in Hollywood. To one generation, he was the distinguished Latin lover of numerous musicals and romantic comedies, and the rogue bandit The Cisco Kid in a string of low-budget westerns. However, to a younger generation weaned on television, Romero was better known as the white-faced, green-haired, cackling villain The Joker of the camp 1960s TV series Batman (1966), and as a bumbling corporate villain in a spate of Walt Disney comedies, such as chasing a young Kurt Russell in the fun-packed The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969). Fans and critics alike agreed that Romero was a major talent who proved himself an enduring and versatile star in an overwhelming variety of roles in a career as an actor, dancer and comedian that lasted nearly 60 years.
Cesar Romero was born of Cuban parents in New York City in February 1907. He attended the Collegiate School and Riverdale Country School before working as a ballroom dancer. He first appeared on Broadway in the 1927 production of Lady Do, and then in the stage production of Strictly Dishonorable. His first film role was in The Shadow Laughs (1933), after which he gave strong performances in The Devil Is a Woman (1935) and in the Shirley Temple favorite, Wee Willie Winkie (1937).
Critics and fans generally agree that Romero's best performance was as the Spanish explorer Cortez in Captain from Castile (1947). However, he also shone in the delightful Julia Misbehaves (1948) and several other breezy and lighthearted escapades. In 1953 he starred in the 39-part espionage TV serial Passport to Danger (1954), which earned him a considerable income due to a canny profit-sharing arrangement. Although Romero became quite wealthy and had no need to work, he could not stay away from being in front of the cameras. He continued to appear in a broad variety of film roles, but surprised everyone in Hollywood by taking on the role of "The Joker" in the hugely successful TV series Batman (1966). He refused to shave his trademark mustache for the role, and close observation shows how the white clown makeup went straight on over his much loved mustache! The appearances in Batman were actually only a small part of the enormous amount of work that Romero contributed to television. He guest-starred in dozens of shows, including Rawhide (1959), 77 Sunset Strip (1958), Zorro (1957), Fantasy Island (1977) and Murder, She Wrote (1984). However, it was The Joker for which his TV work was best remembered, and Romero often remarked that for many, many years after Batman ended, fans would stop him and ask him to chuckle and giggle away just like he did as The Joker. Romero always obliged, and both he and the fans just loved it!
With a new appeal to a younger fan base, Romero turned up in three highly popular Disney comedies: The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), Now You See Him, Now You Don't (1972) and The Strongest Man in the World (1975) as corrupt but inept villain A.J. Arno. Throughout the remainder of the 1980s Romero remained busy, and even at 78 years of age the ladies still loved his charm, and he was cast as Jane Wyman's love interest in the top-rated prime-time soap opera Falcon Crest (1981), playing Peter Stavros from 1985 to 1987.
Although Romero stopped acting in 1990, he remained busy, regularly hosting classic movie programs on cable television. A talented and much loved Hollywood icon, he passed away on New Year's Day 1994, at the age of 86.- Actress
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The middle of seven children, she was named, not for the heroine of "As You Like It" but for the S.S. Rosalind on which her parents had sailed, at the suggestion of her father, a successful lawyer.
After receiving a Catholic school education, she went to the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York, having convinced her mother that she intended to teach acting. In 1934, with some stock company work and a little Broadway experience, she was tested and signed by Universal. Simultaneously, MGM tested her and made her a better offer. When she plead ignorance of Hollywood (while wearing her worst-fitting clothes), Universal released her and she signed with MGM for seven years.
For some time she was used in secondary roles and as a replacement threat to limit Myrna Loy's salary demands. Knowing she was right for comedy, she tested five times for the role of Sylvia Fowler in The Women (1939). George Cukor told her to "play her as a freak". She did and got the part. Her "boss lady" roles began with the part of reporter Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday (1940), through whose male lead, Cary Grant, she met her future husband, Grant's house-guest at the time.
In her forties, she returned to the stage, touring "Bell, Book and Candle" in 1951 and winning a Tony Award for "Wonderful Town" in 1953. Columbia, worried the public would think she had the female lead in Picnic (1955), billed her "co-starring Rosalind Russell as Rosemary." She refused to be placed in the Best Supporting Actress category when Columbia Pictures wanted to promote her for an Academy Award nomination for her role in Picnic (1955). Many felt she would have won had she cooperated. "Auntie Mame" kept her on Broadway for two years followed by the movie version.
Oscar nominations: My Sister Eileen (1942), Sister Kenny (1946), Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), and Auntie Mame (1958). In 1972, she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for contributions to charity.- Music Artist
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Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Italian immigrants Natalina Della (Garaventa), from Northern Italy, and Saverio Antonino Martino Sinatra, a Sicilian boxer, fireman, and bar owner. Growing up on the gritty streets of Hoboken made Sinatra determined to work hard to get ahead. Starting out as a saloon singer in musty little dives (he carried his own P.A. system), he eventually got work as a band singer, first with The Hoboken Four, then with Harry James and then Tommy Dorsey. With the help of George Evans (Sinatra's genius press agent), his image was shaped into that of a street thug and punk who was saved by his first wife, Nancy Barbato Sinatra. In 1942 he started his solo career, instantly finding fame as the king of the bobbysoxers--the young women and girls who were his fans--and becoming the most popular singer of the era among teenage music fans. About that time his film career was also starting in earnest, and after appearances in a few small films, he struck box-office gold with a lead role in Anchors Aweigh (1945) with Gene Kelly, a Best Picture nominee at the 1946 Academy Awards. Sinatra was awarded a special Oscar for his part in a short film that spoke out against intolerance, The House I Live In (1945). His career on a high, Sinatra went from strength to strength on record, stage and screen, peaking in 1949, once again with Gene Kelly, in the MGM musical On the Town (1949) and Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949). A controversial public affair with screen siren Ava Gardner broke up his marriage to Nancy Barbato Sinatra and did his career little good, and his record sales dwindled. He continued to act, although in lesser films such as Meet Danny Wilson (1952), and a vocal cord hemorrhage all but ended his career. He fought back, though, finally securing a role he desperately wanted--Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953). He won an Oscar for best supporting actor and followed this with a scintillating performance as a cold-blooded assassin hired to kill the US President in Suddenly (1954). Arguably a career-best performance--garnering him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor--was his role as a pathetic heroin addict in the powerful drama The Man with the Golden Arm (1955).
Known as "One-Take Charlie" for his approach to acting that strove for spontaneity and energy, rather than perfection, Sinatra was an instinctive actor who was best at playing parts that mirrored his own personality. He continued to give strong and memorable performances in such films as Guys and Dolls (1955), The Joker Is Wild (1957) and Some Came Running (1958). In the late 1950s and 1960s Sinatra became somewhat prolific as a producer, turning out such films as A Hole in the Head (1959), Sergeants 3 (1962) and the very successful Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964). Lighter roles alongside "Rat Pack" buddies Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. were lucrative, especially the famed Ocean's Eleven (1960). On the other hand, he alternated such projects with much more serious offerings, such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962), regarded by many critics as Sinatra's finest picture. He made his directorial debut with the World War II picture None But the Brave (1965), which was the first Japanese/American co-production. That same year Von Ryan's Express (1965) was a box office sensation. In 1967 Sinatra returned to familiar territory in Sidney J. Furie's The Naked Runner (1967), once again playing as assassin in his only film to be shot in the U.K. and Germany. That same year he starred as a private investigator in Tony Rome (1967), a role he reprised in the sequel, Lady in Cement (1968). He also starred with Lee Remick in The Detective (1968), a film daring for its time with its theme of murders involving rich and powerful homosexual men, and it was a major box-office success.
After appearing in the poorly received comic western Dirty Dingus Magee (1970), Sinatra didn't act again for seven years, returning with a made-for-TV cops-and-mob-guys thriller Contract on Cherry Street (1977), which he also produced. Based on the novel by William Rosenberg, this fable of fed-up cops turning vigilante against the mob boasted a stellar cast and was a ratings success. Sinatra returned to the big screen in The First Deadly Sin (1980), once again playing a New York detective, in a moving and understated performance that was a fitting coda to his career as a leading man. He made one more appearance on the big screen with a cameo in Cannonball Run II (1984) and a final acting performance in Magnum, P.I. (1980), in 1987, as a retired police detective seeking vengeance on the killers of his granddaughter, in an episode entitled Laura (1987).- Actor
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"Straight Shooting" -- whether skeet shooting, or portraying Eliot Ness -- Robert Stack always told it like it was, and shot straight. Born in Los Angeles, California, the younger son of James Langford Stack (1860-1928), the owner of an advertising agency, and Mary Elizabeth Modini Wood (1891-1975), he was originally named Charles Langford Modini Stack at birth by his mother but his father soon changed the name to Robert Langford Stack. (The name Robert reportedly referred to no one in particular.) His elder brother and only sibling was James Langford Stack (1916-2006).
His parents had divorced when he was one-year-old, and his mother took him to Europe when he was three. He did not learn to speak English until he was six years old. His brother, James Langford Stack Jr., stayed in the United States with their father. Young Robert spoke fluent Italian and French, but had to learn English when they returned to Los Angeles. His mother and father remarried in 1928. Robert took drama courses at USC. He was not interested in team sports, so he took up skeet shooting. In 1935, he came in second in the National Skeet Shooting Championship (held in Cleveland) and, in 1936, his 5-man team broke the standing record at the National Skeet Championships (held in St. Louis).
Stack arrived at Universal City Studios in 1939, when the movie studio (once riding high on the successes of movies such as Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931)) was in financial trouble, and looking for a superstar. That superstar was Deanna Durbin (acquired from MGM), and Stack made his screen debut as her lover in First Love (1939). At first, he did not want to listen to the makeup man who had told him, "no blond has ever made it as a leading man", and insisted on dyeing his hair black and uncurling it. That makeup man was genius and Oscar winner, Jack P. Pierce (who had done all the monsters for Universal), and Stack became a matinee idol, overnight. After two more movies, he was teamed with Durbin again, in Nice Girl? (1941). he was now a bona-fide star, but Universal was still only paying him $150 a week. For the next 10 years, Stack did Westerns, war movies and romantic comedies.
Stack had fond memories for Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), a movie produced by his friend, John Wayne, which meant 12 weeks filming in sunny Mexico. The movie had a great script; unfortunately, two bullfighters were gored while filming. There were several weeks of delays, they could not get a crew or a sound stage, until they realized that, in Mexico, it is necessary to bribe the local union; some money was passed and filming started, immediately. There were wild times, and lots of tequila. Robert became a local legend; when some Mexicans asked him what he did in the War, Robert said: "I taught machine gun." The rumor spread: "Roberto teaches chingas!" (that's Spanish for "hookers"). In 1952, he made movie history (much like Al Jolson had done in 1927, being in the first "talkie") -- he starred in Bwana Devil (1952), the first 3-D movie. This gave startling effects to the story, which was based on real-life lion attacks in Africa.
Stack attended the premiere, and recalled people's reactions to the 3-D lion scenes: "People in the audience jumped out of their seats, some even fainted." The movie broke box office records, and immediately started the demand to film more movies in 3-D (such as House of Wax (1953)). Around 1955, Robert (Hollywood's most eligible bachelor) was introduced to Rosemarie Bowe, by mutual agent Bill Shiffrin. Rosemarie had been under contract to MGM and Columbia, making such movies as Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) and The Golden Mistress (1954). The couple wed two years later and had two children: Elizabeth Stack and Charles Stack. The former perennial bachelor found out he liked being married and being a father. His onscreen fame had grown and, for Written on the Wind (1956), he received an Academy Award nomination. Unfortunately, this did not sit well with 20th-Century Fox, which had him under contract, and had lent him to Universal for this picture. His contract with Fox came to an end. Stack made the transition to the new medium that was sweeping the country: television. He delivered breakout performances in his signature role as T-man (Treasury agent) Eliot Ness on The Untouchables (1959) which, after the pilot, ran for four seasons (118 episodes). And there was also the television movie, The Scarface Mob (1959).
There were some funny behind-the-scenes anecdotes, such as this one: there is no scene which stood out more as the most potentially evil, and risky in terms of audience acceptance, as the "bacio di morte" ("kiss of death"), the Sicilian gesture whenever a Capo (Neville Brand) kissed a Mafia soldier (Frank DeKova) to send him out as an executioner. The two actors were nervous enough about this scene (two guys had never kissed on television before), but then some crewman decided to be a prankster and told each star, in private, just before filming, "look out -- your co-star likes kissing guys" (a complete deception, of course). There were some unfortunate anecdotes: Joseph Wiseman was a fine actor, but trained to work on the New York stage with props; he was not accustomed to real Hollywood sets. In a 1960 episode of "The Untouchables", Stack was supposed to take an axe and smash up a brewery. He hit a real pipe, the axe ricocheted off the metal, and cut through his Achilles tendon. "I never felt so sorry for anyone in my life", Stack commented. They wrote a role for Wiseman as a crippled, renegade chemist a few weeks later in "The Antidote", which Stack noted, "was one of our half-dozen top shows". Stack went on to do television series, such as The Name of the Game (1968) alternating lead with Gene Barry and Anthony Franciosa, then later Most Wanted (1976), and he pleasantly surprised everyone with his flair for comedies in movies like 1941 (1979) and Airplane! (1980).
Stack hosted Unsolved Mysteries (1987) and did more zany humor in Caddyshack II (1988), Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) and BASEketball (1998). He also provided the voice of the character Ultra Magnus in The Transformers: The Movie (1986). He portrayed the no-nonsense G-man Ness again in The Return of Eliot Ness (1991). Stack was being treated for prostate cancer when he died at age 84 on May 14, 2003 at his home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, after suffering a heart attack.- Director
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Michael Verhoeven was born on 13 July 1938 in Berlin, Germany. He was a director and writer, known for The Nasty Girl (1990), My Mother's Courage (1995) and Sonntagskinder (1980). He was married to Senta Berger. He died on 22 April 2024 in Grünwald, Bavaria, Germany.- Actress
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A new reigning 1960s international sex symbol took to the cinematic throne as soon as Raquel Welch emerged from the sea in her purposely depleted, furry prehistoric bikini. Tantalizingly wet with her garb clinging to all the right amazonian places, One Million Years B.C. (1966), if nothing else, captured the hearts and libidos of modern men (not to mention their teenage sons) while producing THE most definitive and best-selling pin-up poster of that time.
She was born Jo Raquel Tejada on September 5, 1940 in Chicago, Illinois, the first of three children of Bolivian-born Armando Carlos Tejada, an aerospace engineer, and his wife, Josephine Sarah (Hall). The family moved to San Diego, California (her father was transferred) when Raquel was only two. Taking dance lessons as a youngster, she grew up to be quite a knockout and nailed a number of teen beauty titles ("Miss Photogenic," "Miss La Jolla," "Miss Contour," "Miss Fairest of the Fair" and "Miss San Diego").
With her sights set on theater arts, she studied at San Diego State College on a scholarship starting in 1958 and married her first husband, high school sweetheart James Welch, the following year. They had two children: Damon Welch (born 1959), who later became an actor/production assistant, and actress Tahnee Welch (born 1961). Tahnee went on to take advantage of her own stunning looks as an actress, most notably with her prime role in Cocoon (1985).
Off campus, she became a local TV weather girl in San Diego and eventually quit college. Following the end of her marriage in 1962 (although Raquel and James Welch didn't divorce until 1964), she packed up her two children and moved to Dallas, Texas, where she modeled for Neiman-Marcus and worked as a barmaid for a time.
Regrouping, she returned to California and made the rounds of film/TV auditions. She found work providing minor but sexy set decoration on the small screen (Bewitched (1964), McHale's Navy (1962) and The Virginian (1962)) as well as the large screen (Elvis Presley's Roustabout (1964) and Doris Day's Do Not Disturb (1965)). Caught in the midst of the "beach party" craze, it's not surprising to find out that her first major film role was A Swingin' Summer (1965), which concentrated more on musical guests The Righteous Brothers and Gary Lewis & The Playboys than on Welch's outstanding assets. But 20th Century-Fox certainly took notice and signed her up.
With her very first film under contract (actually, she was on loan out to Britain's Hammer Studios at the time), she took on One Million Years B.C. (1966) (the remake of One Million B.C. (1940), in the role originated by Carole Landis), and the rest is history. Welch remained an international celebrity in her first few years of stardom. In England, she was quite revealing as the deadly sin representing "lust" for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in their vehicle Bedazzled (1967), and as the title secret agent in the spy spoof Fathom (1967). In Italy, she gained some exposure in primarily mediocre vehicles opposite such heartthrobs as Marcello Mastroianni.
Back in the U.S., however, she caused quite a stir in her groundbreaking sex scenes with black athlete Jim Brown in the "spaghetti western" 100 Rifles (1969), and as the transgender title role in the unfathomable Myra Breckinridge (1970). Adapted from Gore Vidal's novel, she created some unwelcome notoriety by locking horns with septuagenarian diva Mae West on the set. The instant cult movie certainly didn't help Welch's attempt at being taking seriously as an actress.
Box office bombs abounded. Try as she might in such films as Kansas City Bomber (1972) and The Wild Party (1975), which drew some good reviews for her, her sexy typecast gave her little room to breathe. With determination, however, she partly offset this with modest supporting roles in larger ensemble pieces. She showed definite spark and won a Golden Globe for the swashbuckler The Three Musketeers (1973), and appeared in the mystery thriller The Last of Sheila (1973). She planned on making a comeback in Cannery Row (1982), even agreeing to appear topless (which she had never done before), but was suddenly fired during production without notice. She sued MGM for breach of contract and ultimately won a $15 million settlement, but it didn't help her film career and only helped to label her as trouble on a set.
TV movies became a positive milieu for Welch as she developed sound vehicles for herself such as The Legend of Walks Far Woman (1980) and Right to Die (1987), earning a Golden Globe nomination for the latter project. She also found a lucrative avenue pitching beauty products in infomercials and developing exercise videos (such as Jane Fonda).
Welch took advantage of her modest singing and dancing abilities by performing in splashy Las Vegas showroom acts and starring in such plausible stage vehicles as "Woman of the Year" and "Victor/Victoria". She spoofed her own image on occasion, most memorably on Seinfeld (1989). Into the millennium, she co-starred in the Hispanic-oriented TV series American Family (2002) and the short-lived comedies Welcome to the Captain (2008) and Date My Dad (2017), along with the movies Tortilla Soup (2001), Legally Blonde (2001), Forget About It (2006) and How to Be a Latin Lover (2017).
Her three subsequent marriages were to producer/agent Patrick Curtis (who produced her TV special, Raquel (1970)), director André Weinfeld (who directed her in several fitness videos), and pizza parlor owner Richie Palmer, who was 14 years her junior. All these unions ended in divorce.
She died at 2:25 a.m. on February 15, 2023, aged 82, at her Los Angeles home after suffering a cardiac arrest. She had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease.- Actor
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Born September 30, 1952, in Royton, near Oldham, England, Jack Wild was discovered by talent agent June Collins, mother of rock star Phil Collins. His breakthrough came when he landed the role of Oliver in the London stage production of "Oliver!" When it came to casting the film, the role of the Artful Dodger went to Jack, a role that resulted in his getting an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Fresh from this success, Jack was offered the lead role in the American television series H.R. Pufnstuf (1969). This Sid Krofft and Marty Krofft production featured Wild as a boy marooned in an enchanted land with puppets and actors in elaborate costumes. The success of this program led to Wild reprising the role for the film version, Pufnstuf (1970). Other roles followed, including Melody (1971) and Flight of the Doves (1971). Around the same time, Wild released three albums ("The Jack Wild Album"; "Everything's Coming up Roses", featuring along with cover numbers a couple of new songs written by up-and-coming songwriter Lynsey de Paul; and "Beautiful World"). By 1972, however, he was already being demoted to the role of supporting actor for The Pied Piper (1972). He also appeared in Our Mutual Friend (1976). He returned to films in two small roles: the miller's son in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) and a peddler in Basil (1998). Wild underwent surgery for oral cancer in July 2004, and had some vocal cords and part of his tongue removed. Unfortunately, the cancer proved untreatable and he died on 1 March 2006.- Actor
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When he was 11, he wanted to be a comedian like Sid Caesar. Then, when he was 15 and saw Lee J. Cobb in 'Death of a Salesman,' he decided he would be a comedy actor and found that Mel Brooks was a great influence on his screen writing. He combined both talents with directing in The World's Greatest Lover (1977), followed by The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975).- Actress
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Natalie Wood was an American actress of Russian and Ukrainian descent. She started her career as a child actress and eventually transitioned into teenage roles, young adult roles, and middle-aged roles. She drowned off Catalina Island on November 29, 1981 at age 43.
Wood was born July 20, 1938 in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents: housewife Maria Gurdin (née Zoodiloff), known by multiple aliases including Mary, Marie and Musia, and second husband Nick Gurdin (née Zacharenko), a janitor and prop builder. Nicholas was born in Primorsky Krai, son of a chocolate-factory worker. Maria was born in Barnaul, southern Siberia to a wealthy industrialist. Natalie's maternal grandfather owned soap and candle factories.
Wood's parents had to migrate due to the Russian Civil War. Her paternal grandfather joined the anti-Bolshevik civilian forces early in the war and was killed in a street fight between Red and White Russian soldiers. This convinced the Zacharenkos to migrate to Shanghai, China, where they had relatives. Wood's paternal grandmother remarried in 1927 and moved the family to Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1933 they resettled along the U.S. West Coast. Nicholas met Wood's mother, four years his senior, while she was still married to Alexander Tatuloff, an Armenian mechanic she divorced in 1936.
Mary Tatuloff, Wood's mother, had unfulfilled ambitions of becoming a ballet dancer. She grew up in the Chinese city of Harbin and had married Alexander there in 1925. The Tatuloffs had one daughter, Ovsanna, before coming to America in 1930. After marrying Nicholas Zacharenko in 1938, five months before Wood's birth, Mary (now calling herself Marie) transferred her dream of stardom onto her second child. Marie frequently took a young Wood with her to the cinema, where she could study the films of Hollywood child stars.
Wood's parents changed the family name to Gurdin upon obtaining U.S. citizenship, and her pseudonymous mother finally settled on a permanent first name: Maria. In 1942 they bought a house in Santa Rosa, where young Natalie was noticed by members of a crew during a film shoot. She got to audition for roles as an actress, and the family moved to Los Angeles to help seek out roles for her. RKO Radio Pictures' executives William Goetz and David Lewis chose the stage name Wood for her, in reference to director Sam Wood. Natalie's younger sister Svetlana Gurdin would eventually follow an acting career as well, under the stage name Lana Wood.
Wood made her film debut in Happy Land (1943). She was only five years old, and her scene as the "Little Girl Who Drops Ice Cream Cone" lasted 15 seconds. Wood somehow attracted the interest of film director Irving Pichel who remained in contact with her family. She had few job offers over the following two years, but Pichel helped her get a screen test for a more substantial role in the romance film Tomorrow Is Forever (1946). Wood passed through an audition and won the role of Margaret Ludwig, a post-World War II German orphan. At the time, Wood was unable to "cry on cue" for a key scene, so her mother tore a butterfly to pieces in front of her, giving her a reason to cry for the scene.
Wood started appearing regularly in films following this role and soon received a contract with 20th Century Fox. Her first major role was that of Susan Walker in the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street (1947), which was a commercial and critical hit. Wood got her first taste of fame, and afterwards Macy's invited her to appear in the store's annual Thanksgiving Day parade. Following her early success, Wood receive many more film offers. She typically appeared in family films, cast as the daughter of such stars as Fred MacMurray, Margaret Sullivan, James Stewart, Joan Blondell, and Bette Davis. Wood found herself in high demand and appeared in over twenty films as a child actress.
The California laws of the era required that until reaching adulthood, child actors had to spend at least three hours per day in the classroom. Wood received her primary education on the studio lots, receiving three hours of school lessons whenever she was working on a film. She was reportedly a "straight A student." Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz was quite impressed by Wood's intellect. After school hours ended, Wood would hurry to the set to film her scenes.
While Wood acquired the services of agents, her early career was micromanaged by her mother. An older Wood gained her first major television role in the short-lived sitcom The Pride of the Family (1953). At the age of 16, she found more success with the role of Judy in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). She played the role of a teenage girl who wears makeup and dresses up in racy clothes to attract the attention of a father who typically ignores her. The film's success helped Wood make the transition from child actress to an ingenue. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Her next significant film was The Searchers (1956), a western in which she played the role of abduction victim Debbie Edwards, niece of John Wayne's character. The film was a commercial and critical hit, and has since become regarded as a masterpiece. Also in 1956, Wood graduated from Van Nuys High School. She signed a contract with Warner Brothers, where she was kept busy with several new films. To her disappointment, she was typically cast as the girlfriend of the protagonist and received roles of little depth. For a while, WB had her paired with teen heartthrob Tab Hunter. The studio was hoping that the pairing would serve as a box-office draw, but this did not work out. One of Wood's only serious roles from this period was the title character in Marjorie Morningstar (1958), as a young Jewish girl whose efforts to create her own identity and career path clash with the expectations of her family. The film was a critical success, and fit well with other films exploring the restlessness of youth in the '50s.
Wood's first major box office flop was the biographical film All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960), examining the rags to riches story of jazz musician Chet Baker without actually using his name. The film's box office earnings barely covered the production costs, and MGM recorded a loss of $1,108,000. For the first time. Wood's appeal to the audience was in doubt. With her career in decline following this failure, Wood was seen as "washed up" by many in the film community. But director Elia Kazan gave her the chance to audition for the role of the sexually-repressed Wilma Dean Loomis in his upcoming film Splendor in the Grass (1961). Kazan cast Wood as the female lead, because he found in her (in his words): a "true-blue quality with a wanton side that is held down by social pressure." Kazan is credited for producing Wood's most powerful moment as an actress. The film was a critical success, with Wood nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Wood's next important film was West Side Story (1961), where she played Maria, a restless Puerto Rican girl. Wood was once again called to represent the restlessness of youth, this time in a story involving youth gangs and juvenile delinquents. The film was a great commercial success with about $44 million gross, the highest-grossing film of 1961. It was also critically acclaimed, and is still regarded as one of the best films of Wood's career. Her next film was Gypsy (1962), playing the role of burlesque entertainer and stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Film historians credit the film as an even better role for Wood than that of Maria, with witty dialogue, a greater emotional range, and complex characterization. The film was the eighth highest-grossing release of 1962, and was well-received critically.
Wood's next significant role was that of Macy's salesclerk Angie Rossini in Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). In the film, Angie has a one-night-stand with musician Rocky Papasano, played by Steve McQueen, finds herself pregnant and desperately seeks an abortion. The film under-performed at the box office but was critically well-received. Wood received her third (and last) nomination for an Academy Award. At age 25, Wood was tied with Teresa Wright as the youngest person to score three Oscar nominations. Wood held that designation until 2013, when Jennifer Lawrence achieved her third nomination at age 23.
Wood continued her successful film career until 1966, but her health status was not as successful. She was suffering emotionally and had sought professional therapy. She paid Warner Bros. $175,000 to cancel her contract and was able to retire for a while. She also fired her entire support team: agents, managers, publicist, accountant, and attorneys. She took a three-year hiatus from acting.
Wood made her comeback in the comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) with the themes of sexual liberation and wife swapping. It was a box office hit. Wood decided to gamble her $750,000 fee on a percentage of the gross, earning a million dollars in profits. She chose not to capitalize on the film's success, however, and did not take another acting job for five years.
In 1970, Wood was married to the screenwriter Richard Gregson and was expecting her first child, Natasha Gregson Wagner. She went into semi-retirement to be a stay-at-home mom, appearing in only four more theatrical films before her death. These films were the mystery comedy Peeper (1975), the science fiction film Meteor (1979), the comedy The Last Married Couple in America (1980), and the posthumously-released science fiction film Brainstorm (1983).
In the late '70s, Wood found success in television roles, appearing in several made-for-TV movies and the mini-series From Here to Eternity (1979). Her project received high ratings, and she had plans to make her theatrical debut in a 1982 production of Anastasia.
On November 28, 1981, Wood joined her last husband Robert Wagner, their married friend Christopher Walken, and captain Dennis Davern on a weekend boat trip to Catalina Island. Conspicuously absent from the group was Christopher's wife, casting director Georgianne Walken. The four of them were on board the Wagners' yacht "Splendour." Earwitness Marilyn Wayne heard cries for help around 11:05 P.M. and a "man's voice slurred, and in aggravated tone, say something to the effect of, 'Oh, hold on, we're coming to get you,' and not long after, the cries for help subsided." On the morning of November 29, Wood's corpse was recovered 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away from the boat, near small Valiant-brand inflatable dinghy beached nearby. The toxicology report revealed her blood alcohol level was at .14, over the legal limit of .10. Wood was buried on December 2 at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Nine days later, the LACSD officially closed the case.- Actress
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Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward was born on February 27, 1930, in Thomasville, Georgia, to Wade Woodward and Elinor Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward in a modest household. Her one older brother, Wade Jr., who was the favorite of her father, eventually became an architect. Elinor Woodward was a quite a movie buff and enjoyed going to picture shows often. Joanne claims she was nearly born in the middle of a Joan Crawford movie (Our Modern Maidens (1929)). Her mother wanted to name her Joan, but being Southern, she changed it to Joanne.
Thomasville was a typical small town in southern Georgia, around ten miles from the Florida border. Joanne was born right into the Great Depression. Her father was an administrator in the Thomasville school system, and her family was raised Episcopalian. Joanne's mother being an avid movie lover, it wasn't a surprise that Joanne wanted to go into the acting profession. Her father wasn't too keen on the idea, but her mother saw it coming and was thrilled. Joanne and her mother both adored the movie Wuthering Heights (1939) starring Laurence Olivier, and in 1939 Elinor took her daughter to the premiere of Gone with the Wind (1939) in Atlanta. Pulling up in a limo with the love of his life, Vivien Leigh (who starred in Gone with the Wind (1939)), Laurence Olivier was shocked when 9-year-old Joanne hopped right into the limo and sat in his lap without any warning. Years later when Joanne was famous, Olivier keenly remembered this incident. She later worked with Olivier in Come Back, Little Sheba (1977).
In her teens, Joanne entered and won many Georgia beauty contests. Her mother said that "she was the prettiest girl in town". But all Joanne wanted to do was act, and she saw beauty contests as the first step toward her dream. When she was of age, she enrolled in Louisiana State University, majoring in drama. After graduation and doing small plays, Joanne headed to New York and studied acting with Sanford Meisner. The first thing he tackled was Joanne's southern drawl.
Soon, Joanne was starring in television productions and theater. One day, she was introduced by her agent to another young actor at her level by the then-unknown name of Paul Newman. Paul's first reaction was, "Jeez, what an extraordinarily pretty girl". Joanne, while admitting that he was very good-looking, didn't like him at first sight, but she couldn't resist him. Soon they were working closely together as understudies for the Broadway production of "Picnic" and got along very well. They would have long conversations about anything and everything. Then both their movie careers took off: Joanne with Count Three and Pray (1955) and Paul with The Silver Chalice (1954). Also adding to the tension was Paul's wife, Jackie, who refused to get a divorce when Paul asked her for one. He wanted to marry Joanne; Jackie would simply not have it. Eventually, Jackie saw the anguish this was causing Paul and agreed to a divorce. Less than a week after the divorce was final, Paul married Joanne in Las Vegas on January 29, 1958, just months before Joanne won her Best Actress Oscar for The Three Faces of Eve (1957), in which she plays a woman with multiple personality disorder.
On April 8, 1959, Joanne gave birth to their first child, Elinor Teresa Newman, named after her and Paul's mothers. They both continued on with their careers, doing movies both together and apart. Two more children followed: Melissa Steward Newman on September 17, 1961, and Claire Olivia Newman on April 21, 1965. Since then, Joanne has been extremely busy in theater, film and television as well as ballet performances and very involved with charities and taking care of her family. In 2003, Joanne starred in a movie with Paul on HBO.- Producer
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John Woolf was born on 15 March 1913 in London, England, UK. He was a producer, known for Oliver! (1968), The Day of the Jackal (1973) and Room at the Top (1958). He was married to Ann Saville, Edana Romney and Dorothy Vernon. He died on 28 June 1999 in London, England, UK.- Actress
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Jane Wyman was born Sarah Jane Mayfield on January 5, 1917, in St. Joseph, Missouri (she was also known later as Sarah Jane Fulks). When she was only eight years old, and after her parents filed for divorce, she lost her father prematurely. After graduating high school she attempted, with the help of her mother, to break into films, but to no avail. In 1935, after attending the University of Missouri, she began a career as a radio singer, which led to her first name change to Jane Durrell. In 1936 she signed a contract with Warner Bros. Pictures and that led to another name change, the more familiar one of Jane Wyman. Under that name she appeared in "A" and "B" pictures at Warners, including two with her future husband, Ronald Reagan: Brother Rat (1938) and its sequel, Brother Rat and a Baby (1940). In the early 1940s she moved into comedies and melodramas and gained attention for her role as Ray Milland's long-suffering girlfriend in The Lost Weekend (1945). The following year she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her role as Ma Baxter in The Yearling (1946), and won the coveted prize in 1949 as deaf-mute rape victim Belinda MacDonald in Johnny Belinda (1948). She followed that with a number of appearances in more prestigious films, such as Alfred Hitchcock's Stage Fright (1950), Frank Capra's Here Comes the Groom (1951), Michael Curtiz's The Story of Will Rogers (1952) and the first movie version of The Glass Menagerie (1950). She starred opposite Bing Crosby in the musical Just for You (1952). She was Oscar-nominated for her performances in The Blue Veil (1951) and Magnificent Obsession (1954). She also starred in the immensely popular So Big (1953), Lucy Gallant (1955), All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Miracle in the Rain (1956). In addition to her extensive film career, she hosted TV's Jane Wyman Presents the Fireside Theatre (1955) and starred in most of the episodes of the show, which ran for three seasons. She came back to the big screen in Holiday for Lovers (1959), Pollyanna (1960) and her final film, How to Commit Marriage (1969). Although off the big screen, she became a presence on the small screen and starred in two made-for-TV movies, including The Incredible Journey of Doctor Meg Laurel (1979). In early 1981, in the 49th year of her career, she won the role of conniving matriarch Angela Channing Erikson Stavros Agretti in the movie "The Vintage Years", which was the unaired pilot for the prime-time soap opera Falcon Crest (1981), later in the year. For nine seasons she played that character in a way that virtually no other actress could have done, and became the moral center of the show. The show was a ratings winner from its debut in 1981, and made stars out of her fellow cast members Robert Foxworth, Lorenzo Lamas, Abby Dalton and Susan Sullivan. At the end of the first season the story line had her being informed that her evil son, played by David Selby, had inherited 50% of a California newspaper company, and the conflicts inherent in that situation led to even bigger ratings over the next five years. Wyman was nominated six times for a Soap Opera Digest Award, and in 1984 she won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series Drama. By the show's eighth season, however, she was emotionally drained and the strain of constantly working to keep up the quality of a hit show took its toll on her. In addition, there was friction on the set among cast members. All of these events culminated in her departure from the show after the first two episodes of the ninth season (her character was hospitalized and slipped into a coma) for health reasons. After a period of recuperation, she believed that she had recovered enough to guest-star in the last three episodes of the season (her doctor disagreed, but she did it anyway). She then guest-starred as Jane Seymour's mother on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993) and three years later appeared in Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick (1995). In the late 1990s she purchased a home in Rancho Mirage, California, where she lived in retirement. Her daughter, Maureen Reagan (who died in August 2001), was a writer who also involved herself in political issues and organized a powerful foundation. Also, she placed her 3200-sq.-ft. Rancho Mirage condominium on the market. Jane Wyman died at the age of 90, at her Palm Springs, California home, on September 10, 2007, having long suffered from arthritis and diabetes. It was reported that Wyman died in her sleep of natural causes at the Rancho Mirage Country Club.- Actress
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Sweet, sweeter, sweetest. No combination of terms better describes the screen persona of lovely Loretta Young. A&E's Biography (1987) has stated that Young "remains a symbol of beauty, serenity, and grace. But behind the glamour and stardom is a woman of substance whose true beauty lies in her dedication to her family, her faith, and her quest to live life with a purpose."
Loretta Young was born Gretchen Young in Salt Lake City, Utah on January 6, 1913, to Gladys (Royal) and John Earle Young. Her parents separated when Loretta was three years old. Her mother moved Loretta and her two older sisters to Southern California, where Mrs. Young ran a boarding house. When Loretta was 10, her mother married one of her boarders, George Belzer. They had a daughter, Georgianna, two years later.
Loretta was appearing on screen as a child extra by the time she was four, joining her elder sisters, Polly Ann Young and Elizabeth Jane Young (later better known as Sally Blane), as child players. Mrs. Young's brother-in-law was an assistant director and got young Loretta a small role in the film The Only Way (1914). The role consisted of nothing more than a small, weeping child lying on an operating table. Later that year, she appeared in another small role, in The Primrose Ring (1917). The film starred Mae Murray, who was so taken with little Loretta that she offered to adopt her. Loretta lived with the Murrays for about a year and a half. In 1921, she had a brief scene in The Sheik (1921).
Loretta and her sisters attended parochial schools, after which they helped their mother run the boarding house. In 1927, Loretta returned to films in a small part in Naughty But Nice (1927). Even at the age of fourteen, she was an ambitious actress. Changing her name to Loretta Young, letting her blond hair revert to its natural brown and with her green eyes, satin complexion and exquisite face, she quickly graduated from ingenue to leading lady. Beginning with her role as Denise Laverne in The Magnificent Flirt (1928), she shaped any character she took on with total dedication. In 1928, she received second billing in The Head Man (1928) and continued to toil in many roles throughout the '20s and '30s, making anywhere from six to nine films a year. Her two sisters were also actresses but were not as successful as Loretta, whose natural beauty was her distinct advantage.
The 17-year-old Young made headlines in 1930 when she and Grant Withers, who was previously married and nine years her senior, eloped to Yuma, Arizona. They had both appeared in Warner Bros.' The Second Floor Mystery (1930). The marriage was annulled in 1931, the same year in which the pair would again co-star on screen in a film ironically titled Too Young to Marry (1931). By the mid-'30s, Loretta left First National Studios for rival Fox, where she had previously worked on a loan-out basis, and became one of the premier leading ladies of Hollywood.
In 1935, she made Call of the Wild (1935) with Clark Gable and it was thought they had an affair where Loretta got pregnant thereafter. Because of the strict morality clauses in their contracts - and the fact that Clark Gable was married - they could not tell anybody except Loretta's mother. Loretta and her mother left for Europe after filming on The Crusades finished. They returned in August 1935 to the United States, at which time Gladys Belzer announced Loretta's 'illness' to the press. Filming on Loretta's next film, Ramona, was also cancelled. During this time, Loretta was living in a small house in Venice, California, her mother rented. On November 6, 1935, Loretta delivered a healthy baby girl whom she named Judith. It wasn't until the 1990s when she was watching Larry King Live where she first heard the word 'date rape' and upon finding out exactly what it was, professed to her friend and biographer Edward Funk and her daughter-in-law Linda Lewis, that she had gone through the same with Clark Gable. "That's what happened between me and Clark."
In 1938, Loretta starred as Sally Goodwin in Kentucky (1938), an outstanding success. Her co-star Walter Brennan won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Peter Goodwin.
In 1940, Loretta married businessman Tom Lewis, and from then on her child was called Judy Lewis, although Tom Lewis never adopted her. Judy was brought up thinking that both parents had adopted her and did not know, until years later, that she was actually the biological daughter of Loretta and Clark Gable. Four years after her marriage to Tom Lewis, Loretta had a son, Christopher Lewis, and later another son, Peter Charles.
In the 1940s, Loretta was still one of the most beautiful ladies in Hollywood. She reached the pinnacle of her career when she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in The Farmer's Daughter (1947), the tale of a farm girl who rises through the ranks and becomes a congresswoman. It was a smash and today is her best remembered film. The same year, she starred in the delightful fantasy The Bishop's Wife (1947) with David Niven and Cary Grant. It was another box office success and continues to be a TV staple during the holiday season. In 1949, Loretta starred in the well-received film, Mother Is a Freshman (1949) with Van Johnson and Rudy Vallee and Come to the Stable (1949). The latter garnered Loretta her second Oscar nomination, but she lost to Olivia de Havilland in The Heiress (1949). In 1953, Loretta made It Happens Every Thursday (1953), which was to be her final big screen role.
She retired from films in 1953 and began a second, equally successful career as hostess of The Loretta Young Show (1953), a half-hour television drama anthology series which ran on NBC from September 1953 to September 1961. In addition to hosting the series, she frequently starred in episodes. Although she is most remembered for her stunning gowns and swirling entrances, over the broadcast's eight-year run she also showed again that she could act. She won Emmy awards for best actress in a dramatic series in 1954, 1956 and 1958.
After the show ended, she took some time off before returning in 1962 with The New Loretta Young Show (1962), which was not so successful, lasting only one season. For the next 24 years, Loretta did not appear in any entertainment medium. Her final performance was in a made for TV film Lady in the Corner (1989).
By 1960, Loretta was a grandmother. Her daughter Judy Lewis had married about three years before and had a daughter in 1959, whom they named Maria. Loretta and Tom Lewis divorced in the early 1960s. Loretta enjoyed retirement, sleeping late, visiting her son Chris and daughter-in-law Linda, and traveling. She and her friend Josephine Alicia Saenz, ex-wife of John Wayne, traveled to India and saw the Taj Mahal. In 1990, she became a great-grandmother when granddaughter Maria, daughter of Judy Lewis, gave birth to a boy.
Loretta lived a quiet retirement in Palm Springs, California until her death on August 12, 2000 from ovarian cancer at the home of her sister Georgiana and Georgiana's husband, Ricardo Montalban.- Actor
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Blue-eyed and well-built Italian actor in international cinema, Franco Nero, was a painting photographer when he was discovered as an actor by director John Huston. He has since appeared in more than 200 movies around the world, working with Europe's top directors, such as Luis Buñuel, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Claude Chabrol, Sergey Bondarchuk, Michael Cacoyannis, Elio Petri, Marco Bellocchio, Enzo G. Castellari, among many others.
Nero was born in Parma (Northern Italy), in the family of a strict police sergeant. His inclination for acting had already become obvious in his teenage years, when he began organizing and participating in student plays. After a short stint at a leading theater school, he moved to Rome, where he joined a small group of friends for the purpose of making documentaries. Still unsure of his ultimate vocation, he worked various jobs on the crew. He studied economics and trade in Milan University, and appeared in popular Italian photo-novels. This gave him a chance to gain a little role in Carlo Lizzani's La Celestina P... R... (1965).
A year later, the handsome face of Nero was noticed by Huston, who chose him for the role of "Abel" in The Bible in the Beginning... (1966) (aka La Bibbia). But success came after he got the role of the lonely gunfighter, dragging a coffin, in one of the best spaghetti-westerns; Sergio Corbucci's Django (1966). Nero then filmed a few other westerns of that style as Ferdinando Baldi's Texas, Adios (1966) and Lucio Fulci's Massacre Time (1966).
In 1967, Joshua Logan cast him in the film version of the musical Camelot (1967) (Warner Bros.), opposite Vanessa Redgrave, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe award. During filming of Camelot, he met actress Vanessa Redgrave, who become his long-time partner (they married decades later). He played with Catherine Deneuve in Luis Buñuel's Tristana (1970) and was directed by Sergey Bondarchuk in the war drama The Battle of Neretva (1969). Later, director Bondarchuk cast Nero for the role of famous American reporter "John Reed" in two-part "Krasnye kolokola II" (1982). In the late 60s and during the 70s, Nero played many different roles, but most of them connected with political and criminal genre, which criticized the Italian justice system.
In the early 80s, Nero was chosen for the role of the white ninja, "Cole", in Enter the Ninja (1981) and in 1990 as terrorist "Gen. Esperanza", opposite Bruce Willis, in Renny Harlin's Die Hard 2 (1990). He has also payed the roles of leading national heroes, such as "Garibaldi" (Italy), "Arpad" (Hungary), and "Banovic Strahinja" (Yugoslavia). In the USA, he has been in successful mini-series, such as "The Pirate" (Warner Bros), "The Last Days of Pompeii" (CBS), "Young Catherine" (TNT), "Bella Mafia" (CBS), "The Painted Lady", "Saint Augustine", and movies such as "The Legend of Valentino", "21 Hours to Munich", "Force 10 from Navarone", "Enter the Ninja", "The Versace Murder", and Letters to Juliet (2010).
He worked with the top European directors from Carlo Lizzani, Damiano Damiani, Luigi Zampa, Luis Buñuel, Elio Petri, Michael Cacoyannis, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Claude Chabrol, 'Vatroslav Mimica', Marco Bellocchio, etc. At the beginning of the 80s, he also began producing, writing and directing. Between films, he participates in various theatrical events.
Apart from his cinematographic work, Nero also works for charitable organizations. Over the last 45 years, he has been a benefactor of the Don Bosco orphanage in Tivoli. He has received many awards and, in 1992 for his artistic merits, a knighthood of the Italian Republic was bestowed on him by the President of Italy. In 2011, he was honored by Brunel University of London with the honorary degree of doctor of Letters honoris causa and, in Toronto, with a star on the Walk of Fame.- Producer
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Patrick Curtis was born on 15 June 1939 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a producer and actor, known for A Swingin' Summer (1965), The Sorcerers (1967) and The Day the Earth Got Stoned (1979). He was married to Annabel Little, Margolyn Curtis and Raquel Welch. He died on 24 November 2022 in St. George, Utah, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Academy Award-winner Maureen Stapleton was born June 21, 1925 in Troy, New York, to Irene (née Walsh) and John P. Stapleton. Her family was of Irish descent. Maureen moved to New York City at the age of eighteen and did modeling to pay the bills. Already a Tony Award-winner, she made her Academy Award-nominated film debut in Lonelyhearts (1958) supporting four-time Academy Award-nominee Montgomery Clift, and Myrna Loy in Lonelyhearts (1958). Maureen was was nominated for an Oscar again for her performance in Airport (1970). She played the wife of D. O. Guerrero (played by Academy Award-winner Van Heflin). Eight years later she went on to earn a third Oscar nomination for her performance as Diane Keaton, Kristen Griffith, and Mary Beth Hurt's stepmother Pearl, in the Woody Allen drama Interiors (1978). Apparently, four times worked as a charm when Maureen took the Oscar home for her performance in which she portrayed the Lithuanian-born anarchist Emma Goldman in Warren Beatty's Reds (1981).- Actress
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Joan Collins is an English actress from Paddington, London. She is most famous for playing the role of vengeful schemer Alexis Carrington Colby in the soap opera "Dynasty" (1981-1989). In 1997, She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to drama. In 2015, She was promoted to the rank of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to charity.
She was the daughter of talent agent Joseph William Collins (1902-1988) and his wife, dance teacher Elsa Bessant, (1906-1962). Joseph was born in South Africa, and of Jewish descent. As a talent agent, his most famous clients were Shirley Bassey, the Beatles, and Tom Jones. Elsa was born in the United Kingdom to an Anglican family.
Collins was educated at Francis Holland School in London, an independent day school for girls. She made her theatrical debut c. 1942, as a child actress. She had a role in a performance of the play "A Doll's House" (1879) by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). In 1949, She started training as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. In 1950, she signed a contract with a British film studio, the Rank Organisation of businessman Joseph Arthur Rank, 1st Baron Rank (1888-1972).
Collins made her film debut in the short film "Facts and Fancies" (1951), and her feature film debut in "Lady Godiva Rides Again" (1951), where she played an unnamed Beauty Queen Contestant. She had supporting roles as the Greek maid Marina in "The Woman's Angle" (1952) and gangster's moll Lil Carter in "Judgment Deferred" (1952).
Collins had her big break when cast as juvenile delinquent Norma Hart in prison drama "I Believe in You" (1952). She was hailed as Britain's new "bad girl" and started being offered high-profile roles in British films. The next stage in her career started when cast as Princess Nellifer of Egypt in the historical epic "Land of the Pharaohs" (1955), an international production . While the film was not successful at the box office, it became a cult classic and Nellifer was one of her most recognizable roles. Studio executive Darryl Francis Zanuck (1902-1979) was sufficiently impressed to offer her a 7-year-long contract with American studio 20th Century Fox. She took the offer.
Collins' first American film was the historical drama "The Virgin Queen" (1955), where she shared the top-billing with established stars Bette Davis and Richard Todd. She then played the leading role of actress Evelyn Nesbit (1884/1885-1967) in the biographical film "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" (1955). The role was intended for established actress Marilyn Monroe, but she replaced Monroe based on a studio decision.
Collins was placed on loan to studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for her next role, that of gold digger Crystal in "The Opposite Sex" (1956). She received the top billing in the refugee-themed film "Sea Wife" (1956), and enjoyed box-office success with the interracial-love themed drama "Island in the Sun" (1957). In the drama film "The Wayward Bus" (1957), she received top-billing over her co-star Jayne Mansfield. Her next films included the spy thriller "Stopover Tokyo" (1957), the Western "The Bravados" (1958), the comedy "Rally Round the Flag, Boys" (1959), the caper film "Seven Thieves" (1960), and the biblical epic Esther and the King (1960).
By 1960, Collins was one of 20th Century Fox's biggest stars, but she demanded a release from her studio contract. She had campaigned for the title role in the upcoming production of "Cleopatra", but the studio chose to cast Elizabeth Taylor in the role. Collins felt slighted. As a freelance actress for most of the 1960s, she had few film roles. Among her most notable roles was playing the leading lady in "The Road to Hong Kong" (1962), the last film in the long-running "Road to ..." series. The male leads for the entire series were Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, but their usual leading lady Dorothy Lamour was considered too old for the role. Collins replaced Lamour.
Collins started appearing frequently on television guest star roles. Among her most notable television roles was the villainous Siren in "Batman", and pacifist spokeswoman Edith Keeler in "Star Trek: The Original Series". "Road to ..." played in only one episode of Star Trek, the time-travel episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" (1967). However the episode is regarded among the best episodes in the entire Star Trek franchise, with Collins considered one of the most memorable guest stars in the original series.
In 1970, Collins returned to her native United Kingdom. She started appearing frequently in British thriller and horror films of the decade. Among her films was revenge-themed drama "Revenge" (1971),science fiction film "Quest for Love" (1972), horror anthology "Tales from the Crypt" (1972), psychological horror "Fear in the Night" (1972), thriller "Dark Places", horror anthology "Tales That Witness Madness" (1973), and horror film "I Don't Want to Be Born" (1975).
Collins appeared in a few comedies in-between horror films, but none was particularly successful. She returned to the United States in order to play a role in the giant monster film "Empire of the Ants" (1977). She then returned to mostly appearing in thriller roles. She was catapulted back to stardom with the lead role of nymphomaniac Fontaine Khaled in the erotic drama "The Stud" (1978), an adaptation of a novel written by her younger sister Jackie Collins. The film was a surprise box office hit, earning 20 million dollars at the worldwide box office. "Road to ..." returned to the role of Fontaine in the sequel film ''The Bitch'' (1979), which was also a hit.
Collins found herself in high demand in both stage and film. But she gained more notoriety with the television role of Alexis Carington in "Dynasty". She started appearing in the role in the second season of the soap opera. Her performance is credited with the subsequent rise of the show's Nielsen's ratings. She became a household name, and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1983.
By 1985, "Dynasty" was the number-one show in the United States, beating out rival soap opera "Dallas". Collins was nominated six times for a Golden Globe Award for her role, winning once in 1983. She was also once nominated for an Emmy as Best Actress in a Drama Series. Collins was viewed as a sex symbol at the time, and in 1983 appeared in a 12-page photo layout for Playboy magazine. She was 50-years-old, unusually old for a Playboy model.
Collins appeared in a total of 195 episodes of "Dynasty". The series was canceled with the last episode of its 9th season, due to falling ratings. New ABC entertainment president Bob Iger (1951-) is credited with ending the series as soon as possible. The show had a cliffhanger ending, and several of its subplots were not resolved. Collins returned to the role of Alexis in the sequel mini-series "Dynasty: The Reunion" (1991). The miniseries only lasted for 2 episodes, but resolved several subplots and was a ratings hit.
Throughout the 1990s., Collins returned to guest star roles in television. She appeared in (among others) "Roseanne", "Egoli: Place of Gold", and "The Nanny", She had the recurring role of Christina Hobson in the short-lived soap opera "Pacific Palisades" (1997). She appeared in 7 of its 13 episodes. Her next notable soap opera role was that of so-called "rich bitch" Alexandra Spaulding in 2002 episodes of the long-running series "Guiding Light". Collins was the third actress to play this role. following Beverlee McKinsey and Marj Dusay.
In film, Collins played Pearl Slaghoople, Wilma Flintstone's mother, in "The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas" (2000). It was the second live-action film based on the popular animated series "The Flintstones". In 2006, she toured the United Kingdom with "An Evening with Joan Collins", an one-woman show where she narrated the highs and lows of her career and life. She later toured the word with both this show and its sequel "Joan Collins Unscripted".
Collins had a notable guest star-role as Ruth Van Rydock in the television film "Agatha Christie's Marple: They Do It with Mirrors" (2009). The film was an adaptation of the 1952 novel by Agatha Christie, where Ruth is an old school friend of Jane Marple, who assigned Jane to investigate a home for juvenile delinquents.
Collins played herself in three episodes of the sitcom "Happily Divorced" (2011-2013). She had the recurring role of Crystal Hennessy-Vass in the sitcom "Benidorm" (2007-2018). She had another recurring role as Alexandra, Grand Duchess of Oxford in the soap opera "The Royals" (2015-2018).
Collins had two different roles in the horror anthology series "American Horror Story". She played wealthy grandmother Evie Gallant, and witch Bubbles McGee. She appeared in a total of four episodes in 2018.
By 2024, Collins was 90-years-old. She has never retired from acting, and she continues to appear in new roles.- Producer
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Robert Evans was born in New York City, to Florence (Krasne) and Archie Shapera, a dentist with a thriving practice in Harlem. His family was of Russian Jewish descent. He was raised on Manhattan's Upper West Side. He began his show-business career as a teenage radio actor. After flopping in his first attempt at movie acting, he took a job promoting sales of ladies' slacks for Evan-Picone, the clothing company founded and run by his brother. Some years later, Norma Shearer spotted him hanging around the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel; she successfully touted him for the role of Irving Thalberg in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). In a New York nightclub, Evans also caught the eye of Darryl F. Zanuck, who cast him as a bullfighter in The Sun Also Rises (1957). By the end of the fifties, Evans writes, "I was sure of one thing: I was a half-assed actor." He determined to recast himself as a producer.Before launching his first picture, though, he was hired by Charlie Bluhdorn, head of the Gulf + Western conglomerate, as part of a shakeup of Paramount Pictures.
Within months Evans was head of production. In the late 1960s and early '70s, he became the quintessential "new Hollywood" executive, with: slickly packaged productions like Rosemary's Baby (1968), Love Story (1970) and The Godfather (1972) revived Paramount. (The latter film and Chinatown (1974) are the artistic highlights of Evans' Paramount career, though the amount of credit he deserves for them has been debated for decades.) Eased out of Paramount, he saw The Cotton Club (1984) turn from a musical "Godfather" into a fiasco of front-page proportions. Evans righted his career with a new Paramount deal in the 1990s, with his last producing credit having been on the blockbuster romantic comedy How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003).
He died on October 26, 2019.- Actress
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An incredible piece of 1960s eye candy, Jill St. John absolutely smoldered on the big screen, a trendy presence in lightweight comedy, spirited adventure and spy intrigue who appeared alongside some of Hollywood's most handsome male specimens. Although she was seldom called upon to do much more than frolic in the sun and playfully taunt and tempt as needed, this tangerine-topped stunner managed to do her job very, very well. A remarkably bright woman in real life, she was smart enough to play the Hollywood game to her advantage and did so for nearly two decades before looking elsewhere for fun and contentment.
Jill St. John was actually born Jill Oppenheim in 1940 in Los Angeles. On stage and radio from age five, she was pretty much prodded by a typical stage mother. Making her TV debut in The Christmas Carol (1949), Jill began blossoming and attracting the right kind of attention in her late teens. She signed with Universal Pictures at age 16 and made her film debut as a perky support in Summer Love (1958) starring then-hot John Saxon. Moving ahead, she filled the bill as a slightly dingy love interest in such innocuous fun as The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker (1959), Holiday for Lovers (1959), Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1963), Who's Minding the Store? (1963) and Honeymoon Hotel (1964).
Whether the extremely photogenic Jill had talent (and she did!) or not never seemed to be a fundamental issue with casting agents. By the late '60s she had matured into a classy, ravishing redhead who not only came equipped with a knockout figure but some sly, suggestive one-liners as well that had her male co-stars (and audiences) more than interested. She skillfully traded sexy quips with Anthony Franciosa in the engaging TV pilot to the hit series The Name of the Game (1968) and scored a major coup as the ever-tantalizing Tiffany Case, a ripe and ready Bond girl, in Diamonds Are Forever (1971) opposite Sean Connery's popular "007" character. She also co-starred with Bob Hope in the dismal Eight on the Lam (1967), but the connection allowed her to be included in a number of the comedian's NBC specials over the years. A part of Frank Sinatra's "in" crowd, she worked with him on both Come Blow Your Horn (1963) and Tony Rome (1967).
On camera, Jill's glossy femme fatales had a delightfully brazen, tongue-in-cheek quality to them. Off-camera, she lived the life of a jet-setter and was known for her romantic excursions with such eligibles as Jack Nicholson, David Frost, Joe Namath, Bill Hudson, Roman Polanski and even Henry Kissinger. Of her four marriages, which included laundry heir Neil Dubin, the late sports car racer Lance Reventlow, son of Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton, and easy-listening crooner Jack Jones, she seems to have found her soulmate in present husband Robert Wagner, whom she married in 1990 after an eight-year courtship. Jill first met Wagner when they were both just beginning their careers as contract players at 20th Century Fox. The couple share credits on several productions, notably Banning (1967) as well as the top-tier TV movies How I Spent My Summer Vacation (1967) and Around the World in 80 Days (1989).
Abandoning acting out of boredom, she has returned only on rare occasions. She played against type as a crazed warden in the prison drama The Concrete Jungle (1982) and has had some fun cameos alongside Wagner both on film (The Player (1992)) and even TV (Seinfeld (1989)). In the late 1990s they started touring together in A.R. Gurney's popular two-person stage reading of "Love Letters." Jill's lifelong passion for cooking (her parents were restaurateurs) has turned profitable over the years. She has written a cookbook and appeared as a TV chef and "in-house" cooking expert on Good Morning America (1975). She also served as a food columnist for the USA Weekend newspaper. On the philanthropic front, she is founder of the Aunts Club, a Rancho Mirage-based group of special women who contribute at least $1,000 per year to provide financial support for a child.
She was glimpsed more recently in the films The Calling (2002) and The Trip (2002) and she and Wagner had small roles as Santa and Mrs. Claus in the TV movie Northpole (2014). The Wagners make their home in Aspen.- Don Marshall's heyday was on the small screen in the 60's and 70's. The athletic and clean cut actor is best remembered as first officer and co-pilot Dan Erickson in Irwin Allen's ground-breaking science-fiction series Land of the Giants (1968). Having excelled at football, pole vaulting and other sports at college, he happily undertook most of his own stunt work. Along with Nichelle Nichols (Star Trek (1966)) and Greg Morris (Mission: Impossible (1966)), Don was one of the precious few African-American actors of that period to be regularly featured as a prime time lead on screen. 'Land of the Giants' ran for a mere two seasons (51 episodes in all) and went off the air simply because the props became too expensive to produce. Over the years it acquired a steady cult following among science-fiction aficionados.
Don had started out as an engineering student in the mid-50's and took up acting on the advice of a friend. He studied drama at the workshop of Hollywood acting coach Robert Gist and pursued theatre arts at Los Angeles City College. Following brief stage experience, he then segued into television. His acting career still nascent, he landed a small role (as a marine engaged to Nichelle Nichols) in an episode of The Lieutenant (1963), a short-lived venture produced by Gene Roddenberry. A few years later, he was again recruited by Roddenberry to play the part of astrophysicist Boma for the Star Trek episode "The Galileo Seven" (reuniting him with Bob Gist who served as director). Don was given the chance to show his acting credentials in several powerful scenes interacting with Leonard Nimoy.
In subsequent years, he busied himself with roles on many diverse kinds of TV shows ranging from Daktari (1966) and Ironside (1967) to Julia (1968). On the big screen, he acted in the violent 'blaxploitation' prison drama Terminal Island (1973) and was one of the leads in the schlock sci-fi outing The Thing with Two Heads (1972). By the mid-70's, plum roles became relatively scarce and Don focused on running his own production company (DJM Productions) which specialized in turning out commercials and documentary subjects. Latterly, Don became a regular attendee of sci-fi conventions who always spoke appreciatively of the genre and of Roddenberry in particular. He died on October 30, 2016 in Los Angeles, Calif. aged, 80. - Actress
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Eva Gabor was born on February 11, 1919 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman) and Vilmos Gabor (born Farkas Miklós Grün), a soldier. Her older siblings were Magda Gabor, an actress, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, an actress and socialite. Her parents were both from Jewish families. She went to Hollywood, California, to act in the 1930s. Her mother escaped from Nazi-occupied Budapest in the 1940s, also settling in the U.S.
Eva appeared both in films and on Broadway in the 1950s, as well as in several "A"-movies, including The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), starring Elizabeth Taylor, and Artists and Models (1955), which featured Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
In 1953, she was given her own television talk show, The Eva Gabor Show (1953). Throughout the rest of the 1950s and early 1960s, she appeared on television and in movies. She appeared on one episode of the mystery series Justice (1954), and was on the game show What's My Line? (1950) as the "mystery challenger". Her film appearances during this period include a remake of My Man Godfrey (1957), Gigi (1958) and It Started with a Kiss (1959).
However, she is best remembered as Lisa Douglas, the socialite turned farm wife on Green Acres (1965) with co-star Eddie Albert playing her attorney husband Oliver Wendell Douglas. Eva Gabor died at age 76 from respiratory failure and pneumonia on July 4, 1995 in Los Angeles, California.