In Memoriam: Deaths in the 1980s
A list of famous people who died in the 1980s ranging from 1980 to 1989.
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- Music Artist
- Composer
- Actor
John Winston (later Ono) Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool, England, to Julia Lennon (née Stanley) and Alfred Lennon, a merchant seaman. He was raised by his mother's older sister Mimi Smith. In the mid-1950s, he formed his first band, The Quarrymen (after Quarry Bank High School, which he attended) who, with the addition of Paul McCartney and George Harrison, later became The Beatles.
After some years of performing in Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany, "Beatlemania" erupted in England and Europe in 1963 after the release of their singles "Love Me Do" and "Please Please Me". That same year, John's first wife Cynthia Lennon welcomed their only son Julian Lennon, named after John's mother. The next year the Beatles flew to America to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) (aka The Ed Sullivan Show), and Beatlemania spread worldwide. Queen Elizabeth II granted all four Beatles M.B.E. medals in 1965, for import revenues from their record sales; John returned his four years later, as part of an antiwar statement. John and the Beatles continued to tour and perform live until 1966, when protests over his calling the Beatles phenomenon "more popular than Jesus" and the frustrations of touring made the band decide to quit the road. They devoted themselves to studio work, recording and releasing albums such as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", "Magical Mystery Tour" and the "White Album". Instead of appearing live, the band began making their own "pop clips" (an early term for music videos), which were featured on television programs of the time.
In the late 1960s John began performing and making albums with his second wife Yoko Ono, as the Beatles began to break up. Their first two albums, "Two Virgins" and "Life With The Lions", were experimental and flops by Beatles standards, while their "Wedding Album" was almost a vanity work, but their live album "Live Peace In Toronto" became a Top Ten hit, at the end of the 1960s.
In the early 1970s John and Yoko continued to record together, making television appearances and performing at charity concerts. After the release of John's biggest hit, "Imagine", they moved to the US, where John was nearly deported because of his political views (a late-'60s conviction for possession of hashish in the U.K. was the excuse given by the government), but after a four-year legal battle he won the right to stay. In the midst of this, John and Yoko separated for over a year; John lived in Los Angeles with personal assistant May Pang, while Yoko dated guitarist David Spinozza. When John made a guest appearance at Elton John's Thanksgiving 1974 concert, Yoko was in the audience, and surprised John backstage. They reconciled in early 1975, and Yoko soon became pregnant. After the birth of their son Sean Lennon, John settled into the roles of "househusband" and full-time daddy, while Yoko became his business manager; both appeared happy in their new life together.
After a five-year break from music and the public eye, they made a comeback with their album "Double Fantasy", but within weeks of their re-emergence, Lennon was murdered on the evening of December 8, 1980 by Mark David Chapman, a one-time Beatles fan angry and jealous over John's ongoing career, who fatally shot Lennon four times in the back outside his apartment building, The Dakota, as Lennon was returning from a recording session. Within minutes after being shot, John Lennon was dead at age 40. His violent death was a sudden and tragic end to the life of a talented singer and musician who wanted to make a difference in the world.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Mel Blanc, known as "The Man of Thousand Voices" is regarded as the most prolific actor to ever work in Hollywood with over a thousand screen credits. He developed and performed nearly 400 distinct character voices with precision and a uniquely expressive vocal range. The legendary specialist from radio programs, television series, cartoon shorts and movie was rarely seen by his audience but his voice characterizations were famous around the world.
Blanc under exclusive contract until 1960 to Warner Brothers voiced virtually every major character in the Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoon pantheon. Characters including Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Wile E. Coyote,The Roadrunner, Yosemite Sam, Sam the Sheepdog, Taz the Tazmanian Devil, Speedy Gonzales, Marvin the Martian, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé la Pew, Charlie the Dog, Blacque Jacque Shellacque, Pussyfoot, Private Snafu among others were voiced by Blanc.
After 1960, Blanc continued to work for Warner Brothers but began to work for other companies once his exclusive contract ended. He worked for Hanna-Barbera voicing characters including Barney Rubble, Dino the Dinosaur, Cosmo Spacely, Secret Squirrel, Captain Caveman, Speed Buggy, Wally Gator among others. He provided vocal effects for Tom & Jerry in the mid 1960's working with fellow Warner Bros. alum, Chuck Jones at what would become MGM Animation. In the mid 1960's, Blanc originated and voiced Toucan Sam for the Kellogg's Fruit Loops commercials. He would later go to originate and voice Twiki for Buck Rogers and Heathcliff in the late 1970's and early 1980's.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Tex Avery was a descendant of Judge Roy Bean and Daniel Boone, but all his grandma ever told him about it was "Don't ever mention you are kin to Roy Bean. He's a no good skunk!!" After graduating from North Dallas High School in 1927, Avery moved to Southern California in 1929 and got a job in the harbor. After showing samples of his artwork he got a job at Walter Lantz Studios in 1929 as animator. His contributions during the years at Walter Lantz Studios were minor. From 1936 to 1941 he worked as supervisor - another word for cartoon director - of some 60 titles in the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes series for Leon Schlesinger at Warner's. From 1942 to 1954 Avery worked as director of cartoons at MGM. He was responsible for practically every MGM Cartoon that did not feature Tom and Jerry. In 1955 he did four cartoons, again for Walter Lantz Studios, before leaving the field for advertising, where, alas, his unique sense of humor went largely unappreciated, but primarily because commercials are not credited for the viewing audience (perhaps his best known commercial work was for Raid bug spray, which always featured the cartoon bugs screaming "Raid!" before getting smashed.)
Among the many cartoon characters Avery created are Daffy Duck, Droopy, Screwy Squirrel, George and Junior and Chilly Willy. Tex Avery is also credited with creating the basic personality of Bugs Bunny. He was the one who coined the phrase "What's up, Doc?"- Director
- Animation Department
- Writer
Born in San Diego, California, the young Robert Clampett was monumentally moved as a child by the film The Lost World (1925), inspiring him to create a sea-serpent sock-puppet that he used in puppet shows to entertain the neighborhood kids. This led him to create a stuffed Mickey Mouse toy, which became a prototype for the first mass-produced Mickey Mouse doll.
Between 1931 and 1947 Clampett was an animator and later director for the legendary Leon Schlesinger Productions (later Warner Brothers Animation) where alongside his one time boss Tex Avery he became known as the wackiest and most archetypally cartoonish of all the directors.
During this time he also developed a test for a animated adaptation of 'John Carter of Mars' however, despite the support of the author Edgar Rice Burroughs it failed to materialize.
Amongst his famous fare was the Dalí inspired Porky in Wackyland (1938), his loving adaption of the Dr. Seuss book Horton Hatches the Egg (1942), the controversial all-black cast musical Snow White parody Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs (1943), the Fantasia (1940) parody A Corny Concerto (1943) and John Kricfalusis's favorite cartoon The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946) featuring the acerbic irreverence of Daffy Duck -- easily the most Clampett-esque of all his characters.
Clampett, at the time the longest serving employee at the animation studio, finally left in 1947. After a brief stint at Columbia, and a one-off cartoon at Republic It's a Grand Old Nag (1947) he was inspired by the new innovation of television to resurrect his old sea-serpent puppet, and created the phenomenally successful Time for Beany (1949)_ puppet television show, which was acclaimed by the likes of Albert Einstein and Groucho Marx, and even inspired the AC/DC line "Dirty Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap".
Clampett later returned to animation as a supervising producer on a cartoon series based on the characters of his puppet show Matty's Funnies with Beany and Cecil (1959).- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Vic Morrow was born in the Bronx, New York, to Jean (Kress) and Harry Morrow, an electrical engineer. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Morrow dropped out of high school at 17 to join the U.S. Navy. When he left the Navy, he used the G.I. Bill to study pre-law at Florida State. While Morrow was working on his degree in Law, he also took part in a school play and found that he preferred stage acting to courtroom acting. When he went to New York, Morrow enrolled in the Actors' Workshop to improve his skills. After graduating, he was cast in the summer stock production of "A Streetcar Named Desire". His screen debut came when he was signed by MGM to play a tough-talking, surly street punk in Blackboard Jungle (1955). The good news was that he was now in the movies, but the bad news was that he became typecast as a heavy. Disappointed with this situation, Morrow left MGM after a few years and headed back to school to study directing at USC. He made some appearances on television and in 1962 found a role that brought him fame and made him the "hero": the TV series Combat! (1962), in which he played Sgt. Chip Saunders, veteran squad leader. Due to his demands, the show quickly went from an alternating showcase between platoon leader Lt. Hanley (Rick Jason) and Sgt. Saunders to one featuring mainly Saunders. With the success of the show, Morrow put to use what he had learned at USC and directed some episodes. In 1965 he and his wife divorced, and two years later the series ended. These two events put him into a personal and professional slide. By 1969 he began almost a decade of making made-for-TV movies, with an occasional foray into features. Most of his roles, though, put him back as a "heavy", although he did have a good part as a tough L.A. cop going up against out-of-town mobsters in a two-part episode of Police Story (1973) that was later released as a telefeature. While he worked in the theater and looked forward to the big screen, most of his roles were in "B" pictures such as Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974) and Treasure of Matecumbe (1976). He got good reviews playing Walter Matthau's nemesis in the hit comedy The Bad News Bears (1976), but was not involved in any of the following sequels, and he seemed to be stuck in a rut of "B" features and average made-for-TV films. With the failure of his second marriage, the death of his mother and the scarcity of good parts, Morrow hit the bottle, which did his career even less good. In 1982, however, he refocused his drive and made a comeback in Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), but was unfortunately killed on the early morning hours of July 23, 1982 in a tragic, freak accident on the set while filming a scene involving a helicopter which crashed right on top of him and two young children.
Vic was the father of Carrie Ann Morrow and actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock (born 1892). Raised as a strict Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits, Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. His first job outside of the family business was in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in movies began at around this time, frequently visiting the cinema and reading US trade journals.
Hitchcock entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. It was there that he met Alma Reville, though they never really spoke to each other. It was only after the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923) fell ill and Hitchcock was named director to complete the film that he and Reville began to collaborate. Hitchcock had his first real crack at directing a film, start to finish, in 1923 when he was hired to direct the film Number 13 (1922), though the production wasn't completed due to the studio's closure (he later remade it as a sound film). Hitchcock didn't give up then. He directed The Pleasure Garden (1925), a British/German production, which was very popular. Hitchcock made his first trademark film in 1927, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) . In the same year, on the 2nd of December, Hitchcock married Alma Reville. They had one child, Patricia Hitchcock who was born on July 7th, 1928. His success followed when he made a number of films in Britain such as The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Jamaica Inn (1939), some of which also gained him fame in the USA.
In 1940, the Hitchcock family moved to Hollywood, where the producer David O. Selznick had hired him to direct an adaptation of 'Daphne du Maurier''s Rebecca (1940). After Saboteur (1942), as his fame as a director grew, film companies began to refer to his films as 'Alfred Hitchcock's', for example Alfred Hitcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976), Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972).
Hitchcock was a master of pure cinema who almost never failed to reconcile aesthetics with the demands of the box-office.
During the making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife Alma suffered a paralyzing stroke which made her unable to walk very well. On March 7, 1979, Hitchcock was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award, where he said: "I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen and their names are Alma Reville." By this time, he was ill with angina and his kidneys had already started to fail. He had started to write a screenplay with Ernest Lehman called The Short Night but he fired Lehman and hired young writer David Freeman to rewrite the script. Due to Hitchcock's failing health the film was never made, but Freeman published the script after Hitchcock's death. In late 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. On the 29th April 1980, 9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. His funeral was held in the Church of Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Father Thomas Sullivan led the service with over 600 people attended the service, among them were Mel Brooks (director of High Anxiety (1977), a comedy tribute to Hitchcock and his films), Louis Jourdan, Karl Malden, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh and François Truffaut.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
First wife Jeanne died in 1943. Wed second wife, Marjorie Little after 16 year courtship when she was 39 and he 67 Marjorie Little had been the hatcheck girl at the Copacabana. Durante and his second wife adopted a baby girl, Cecelia Alicia on Christmas day 1961. Durante doted on "CeCe" until his death.- Actor
- Writer
- Music Department
John Belushi was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA, on January 24, 1949, to Agnes Demetri (Samaras) and Adam Anastos Belushi, a restaurant owner. His father was an Albanian immigrant, from Qytezë, and his mother was also of Albanian descent. He grew up in Wheaton, where the family moved when he was six. Though a young hellion in grade school, John became the perfect all-American boy during his high school years where he was co-captain of the Wheaton Central High School football team and was elected homecoming king his senior year. He also developed an interest in acting and appeared in the high school variety show. Encouraged by his drama teacher, John decided to put aside his plans to become a football coach to pursue a career in acting.
After graduation in 1967, John performed in summer stock in rural Indiana in a variety of roles from "Cardinal Wolsey" in "Anne of a Thousand Days" to a comic detective in "Ten Little Indians". In the fall of his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, John changed his image into a bad-boy appearance by growing his hair long and began to have problems with discipline and structure of attending classes.
Dropping out of Wisconsin, John spent the next two years at the College of DuPage, a junior college a few miles from his parents' Wheaton home, where his father began persuading him to become a partner in his restaurant, but John still preferred acting. While attending DuPage, John helped found the "West Compass Players", an improv comedy troupe patterned after Chicago's famous "Second City" ensemble.
In 1971, John made the leap to "Second City" itself where he performed in various on-stage comic performances with others, who included Harold Ramis and Joe Flaherty. John loved his life at "Second City" where he performed six nights a week, perfecting the physical "gonzo" style of comedy he later made famous.
A year later, John and his live-in girlfriend from his high school years, Judith Belushi-Pisano, moved to New York because John had joined the cast of National Lampoon's Lemmings, an off-Broadway rock musical revue that was originally booked for a six-week run but played to full crowds for nearly 10 months.
In 1973, John was hired as a writer for the syndicated National Lampoon's Radio Hour which became the National Lampoon Show in 1975. John's big break came that same year when he joined the ground-breaking TV variety series Saturday Night Live (1975) which made him a star. The unpredictable, aggressively physical style of humor that he began on "Second City" flowered on SNL.
In 1978, while still working on Saturday Night Live (1975), John appeared in the movie Goin' South (1978) which starred and was directed by Jack Nicholson. It was here that director John Landis noticed John and decided to cast him in his movie National Lampoon's National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). John's minor role as the notorious, beer-swilling "Bluto" made it a box-office smash and the year's top grossing comedy. Despite appearing in only a dozen scenes, John's performance stole the movie, which portrays college fraternity shenanigans at a small college set in the year 1962.
In 1979, John along with fellow SNL regular Dan Aykroyd quit the series to pursue movie projects. John and Dan Aykroyd appeared in minor roles in Steven Spielberg's financially unsuccessful 1941 (1979) and, the following year, in John Landis' The Blues Brothers (1980). Around this time, John's drug use began escalating. Cocaine, which was ubiquitous in show-business circles in the 1970's, became his drug of choice. After he first experimented with cocaine in the mid 1970s, John almost immediately became addicted to it. His frequent cocaine sniffing binges became a source of friction between him and Judy, whom he married in 1976.
John's love for blues and soul music inspired the "Blues Brothers". He and Aykroyd first appeared as Joliet Jake and Elwood Blues, a pair of white soul men dressed in black suits, skinny ties, fedora hats and Rayban sunglasses, as a warm-up act before the telecasts of Saturday Night Live (1975). Building on the success of their acts and the release of their album "A Briefcase Full of Blues", John and Dan Aykroyd starred in the movie, which gave John a chance to act with his favorite musical heroes including Ray Charles, James Brown and Aretha Franklin.
Although John's reputation for being an off-screen party animal is legendary, his generous side is less well known. Using some of his money, he bought his father a ranch outside San Diego for him to live. John helped set up some of his Chicago friends with their own businesses and even financially helped his younger brother, Jim Belushi, who followed his older brother's path to both "Second City" and Saturday Night Live (1975).
In 1981, John appeared in the movie Continental Divide (1981), playing a hard-nosed Chicago newspaperman who finds romance in Colorado with eagle expert Blair Brown. That same year, John and Dan Aykroyd appeared again in the movie Neighbors (1981), which gave them a chance to reverse roles, with John playing a straight-arrow family man whose life is turned upside down when a wild family man (Aykroyd) moves in next door.
In January 1982, John began work on the screenplay for another movie to be titled "Noble Rot". Also, John had checked into a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont, a popular celebrity hotel in Los Angeles. John's drug use had been steadily increasing for over a year now, which alarmed his wife and friends, but he continued to promise Judy that he would quit someday. On March 5, 1982, John Belushi was found dead in his hotel room at the age of 33. The local coroner gave the cause of death as a lethal injection of cocaine and heroin. Several years later, John's drug dealing/drug user companion during his final weeks, Cathy Evelyn Smith, was tried and sentenced to three years in prison for supplying John with the drugs. Close friend James Taylor sang "That Lonesome Road" at a memorial service at Martha's Vineyard cemetery where John was buried.- Producer
- Actress
- Production Manager
The woman who will always be remembered as the crazy, accident-prone, lovable Lucy Ricardo was born Lucille Desiree Ball on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York, the daughter of Desiree Evelyn "DeDe" (Hunt) and Henry Durrell "Had" Ball. Her father died before she was four, and her mother worked several jobs, so she and her younger brother were raised by their grandparents. Always willing to take responsibility for her brother and young cousins, she was a restless teenager who yearned to "make some noise". She entered a dramatic school in New York City, but while her classmate Bette Davis received all the raves, she was sent home; "too shy". She found some work modeling for Hattie Carnegie's and, in 1933, she was chosen to be a "Goldwyn Girl" and appear in the film Roman Scandals (1933).
She was put under contract to RKO Radio Pictures and several small roles, including one in Top Hat (1935), followed. Eventually, she received starring roles in B-pictures and, occasionally, a good role in an A-picture, like in Stage Door (1937) or The Big Street (1942). While filming Too Many Girls (1940), she met and fell madly in love with a young Cuban actor-musician named Desi Arnaz. Despite different personalities, lifestyles, religions and ages (he was six years younger), he fell hard, too, and after a passionate romance, they eloped and were married in November 1940. Lucy soon switched to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where she got better roles in films such as Du Barry Was a Lady (1943); Best Foot Forward (1943) and the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy vehicle Without Love (1945). In 1948, she took a starring role in the radio comedy "My Favorite Husband", in which she played the scatterbrained wife of a Midwestern banker. In 1950, CBS came knocking with the offer of turning it into a television series. After convincing the network brass to let Desi play her husband and to sign over the rights to and creative control over the series to them, work began on the most popular and universally beloved sitcom of all time.
With I Love Lucy (1951), she and Desi promoted the 3-camera technique now the standard in filming sitcoms using 35mm film (the earliest known example of the 3-camera technique is the first Russian feature film, "Defence of Sevastopol" in 1911). Desi syndicated I Love Lucy. Lucille Ball was the first woman to own her own studio as the head of Desilu Productions.
Lucille Ball died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, age 77, of an acute aortic aneurysm on April 26, 1989 in Los Angeles, CA.- Actress
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Rebecca began modeling at the age of 16, going off to New York on her own to begin her career. Four months later, she found herself in Japan, modeling. Eventually, she landed a co-starring role on My Sister Sam (1986), for which she is now best known. In 1989 she also became a spokesperson for Thursday's Child, a charity for at-risk teens.
In April of that same year, having missed a signing due to filming, she reluctantly went to a girls' shelter to sign autographs. "No one will recognize me", she insisted, "or want my autograph," but as it turned out all of them did. In fact, the girls were so in awe that they invited her to the Renaissance Fair in May; Rebecca accepted.
Only two months later, she lay dead on the pavement in front of her new apartment in West Hollywood, having been shot to death by a paranoid schizophrenic fan around her age, Robert John Bardo, who came to her apartment asking for an autograph. She obliged, even though she was busy rehearsing in her apartment for the most important role of her short career. He later said he felt rejected by her because she didn't spend more time with him at her door.
He returned a few minutes later, pressed the buzzer, and when she again opened the door for him, he shot her once in the chest, placing the bullet directly into her heart. Rebecca screamed out, "Why?" then fell backward in the doorway, and was pronounced dead at Cedars-Sinai hospital within minutes of arriving there by ambulance after the shooting.
The killer fled to Tucson, AZ, and the next morning the previously diagnosed "psychiatric patient" was found walking blindly, appearing to be hoping to be hit and killed by a car or truck on a major highway. He was subsequently arrested, transferred back to Los Angeles, and plea-bargained for a life sentence without the possibility of parole, with a then-young assistant district attorney named Marcia Clark, who later became famous for her failed attempt to convict O.J. Simpson of murder. There was a trial by Judge that lasted a month, because the obsessed fan changed his mind about the plea bargain agreement, and pleaded an 'insanity defense'. He was found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.- Actress
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Gilda Radner was one of the great comic geniuses of the 20th century, ranked with Lucille Ball and other comedy legends of the highest caliber. She was born on June 28, 1946, in Detroit, Michigan, the younger of two children of Henrietta (Dworkin), a legal secretary, and Herman Radner, a businessman.
She had an older brother, Michael. Her family were Jewish immigrants (from Russia, Poland, and Lithuania). Radner grew up with a nanny she always called Dibby, on whom she based her famous Saturday Night Live (1975) character, hard-of-hearing news correspondent Emily Litella.
She was very close to her father, not as close to her mother, and tragically, her father died when she was 14, leaving her heartbroken. She was very overweight as a child, and because of this, she suffered from anorexia and bulimia and became very thin. She overcame these disorders by 16 and was normal weight, yet if you watch some of her episodes of Saturday Night Live (1975) you can see that her weight sometimes goes down very low and she looks anorexic again.
She graduated from the Liggett school for Girls and enrolled at the University of Michigan but dropped out and followed a boyfriend to Canada, where she made her stage debut in Godspell. In 1975, Gilda was the first person ever cast for Saturday Night Live (1975), the show that would make her famous.
She stayed on SNL for 5 years, from 1975 to 1980 and had a brief marriage to the SNL band guitarist G.E. Smith. On this show, she created characters like Emily Litella, loudmouthed Roseanne Roseannadanna, nerd Lisa Loopner, and Baba Wawa, a talk show host with a speech impediment.
Gilda left the show in 1980 and married actor Gene Wilder, whom she met on a movie set and fell in love with nearly on the spot. A short while after, Gilda started having pains in her upper legs, and she was eventually diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
She went through lots of chemotherapy and treatment, and finally her doctors told her that she was in remission. In this period of time, Gilda wrote her autobiography, called "It's Always Something," about her battles with cancer.
However, cancer was found in her liver and her lungs after a more comprehensive check a while later. Now it was too late to do anything. Gilda died in her sleep on May 20, 1989.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Laurence Olivier could speak William Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them", said English playwright Charles Bennett, who met Olivier in 1927. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England, to Agnes Louise (Crookenden) and Gerard Kerr Olivier, a High Anglican priest. His surname came from a great-great-grandfather who was of French Huguenot origin.
One of Olivier's earliest successes as a Shakespearean actor on the London stage came in 1935 when he played "Romeo" and "Mercutio" in alternate performances of "Romeo and Juliet" with John Gielgud. A young Englishwoman just beginning her career on the stage fell in love with Olivier's Romeo. In 1937, she was "Ophelia" to his "Hamlet" in a special performance at Kronborg Castle, Elsinore (Helsingør), Denmark. In 1940, she became his second wife after both returned from making films in America that were major box office hits of 1939. His film was Wuthering Heights (1939), her film was Gone with the Wind (1939). Vivien Leigh and Olivier were screen lovers in Fire Over England (1937), 21 Days Together (1940) and That Hamilton Woman (1941).
There was almost a fourth film together in 1944 when Olivier and Leigh traveled to Scotland with Charles C. Bennett to research the real-life story of a Scottish girl accused of murdering her French lover. Bennett recalled that Olivier researched the story "with all the thoroughness of Sherlock Holmes" and "we unearthed evidence, never known or produced at the trial, that would most certainly have sent the young lady to the gallows". The film project was then abandoned. During their two-decade marriage, Olivier and Leigh appeared on the stage in England and America and made films whenever they really needed to make some money.
In 1951, Olivier was working on a screen adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie" (Carrie (1952)) while Leigh was completing work on the film version of the Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She won her second Oscar for bringing "Blanche DuBois" to the screen. Carrie (1952) was a film that Olivier never talked about. George Hurstwood, a middle-aged married man from Chicago who tricked a young woman into leaving a younger man about to marry her, became a New York street person in the novel. Olivier played him as a somewhat nicer person who didn't fall quite as low. A PBS documentary on Olivier's career broadcast in 1987 covered his first sojourn in Hollywood in the early 1930s with his first wife, Jill Esmond, and noted that her star was higher than his at that time. On film, he was upstaged by his second wife, too, even though the list of films he made is four times as long as hers.
More than half of his film credits come after The Entertainer (1960), which started out as a play in London in 1957. When the play moved across the Atlantic to Broadway in 1958, the role of "Archie Rice"'s daughter was taken over by Joan Plowright, who was also in the film. They married soon after the release of The Entertainer (1960).- Actor
- Music Department
- Producer
Ricky Nelson was born on May 8, 1940 in Teaneck, New Jersey, USA as Eric Hilliard Nelson. He was an actor, known for The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet (1952) and Rio Bravo (1959). He was married to Kristin Harmon. He died on December 31, 1985 in De Kalb, Texas, USA.- Music Artist
- Music Department
- Composer
Roy Kelton Orbison (April 23, 1936 - December 6, 1988) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician known for his impassioned singing style, complex song structures, and dark, emotional ballads. His music was described by critics as operatic, earning him the nicknames "The Caruso of Rock" and "The Big O." Many of Orbison's songs conveyed vulnerability at a time when most male rock-and-roll performers chose to project masculinity. He performed while standing motionless and wearing black clothes to match his dyed black hair and dark sunglasses, which he wore to counter his shyness and stage fright.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Often credited as the greatest comedian of all time, Peter Sellers was born Richard Henry Sellers to a well-off acting family in 1925 in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth. He was the son of Agnes Doreen "Peg" (Marks) and William "Bill" Sellers. His parents worked in an acting company run by his grandmother. His father was Protestant and his mother was Jewish (of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi background). His parents' first child had died at birth, so Sellers was spoiled during his early years. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force and served during World War II. After the war he met Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine, who would become his future workmates.
After the war, he set up a review in London, which was a combination of music (he played the drums) and impressions. Then, all of a sudden, he burst into prominence as the voices of numerous favorites on the BBC radio program "The Goon Show" (1951-1960), and then making his debut in films in Penny Points to Paradise (1951) and Down Among the Z Men (1952), before making it big as one of the criminals in The Ladykillers (1955). These small but showy roles continued throughout the 1950s, but he got his first big break playing the dogmatic union man, Fred Kite, in I'm All Right Jack (1959). The film's success led to starring vehicles into the 1960s that showed off his extreme comic ability to its fullest. In 1962, Sellers was cast in the role of Clare Quilty in the Stanley Kubrick version of the film Lolita (1962) in which his performance as a mentally unbalanced TV writer with multiple personalities landed him another part in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) in which he played three roles which showed off his comic talent in play-acting in three different accents; British, American, and German.
The year 1964 represented a peak in his career with four films in release, all of them well-received by critics and the public alike: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), for which he was Oscar nominated, The Pink Panther (1963), in which he played his signature role of the bumbling French Inspector Jacques Clouseau for the first time, its almost accidental sequel, A Shot in the Dark (1964), and The World of Henry Orient (1964). Sellers was on top of the world, but on the evening of April 5, 1964, he suffered a nearly fatal heart attack after inhaling several amyl nitrites (also called 'poppers'; an aphrodisiac-halogen combination) while engaged in a sexual act with his second wife Britt Ekland. He had been working on Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). In a move Wilder later regretted, he replaced Sellers with Ray Walston rather than hold up production. By October 1964, Sellers made a full recovery and was working again.
The mid-1960s were noted for the popularity of all things British, from the Beatles music (who were presented with their Grammy for Best New Artist by Sellers) to the James Bond films, and the world turned to Sellers for comedy. What's New Pussycat (1965) was another big hit, but a combination of his ego and insecurity was making Sellers difficult to work with. When the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967) ran over budget and was unable to recoup its costs despite an otherwise healthy box-office take, Sellers received some of the blame. He turned down an offer from United Artists for the title role in Inspector Clouseau (1968), but was angry when the production went ahead with Alan Arkin in his place. His difficult reputation and increasingly erratic behavior, combined with several less successful films, took a toll on his standing. By 1970, he had fallen out of favor. He spent the early years of the new decade appearing in such lackluster B films as Where Does It Hurt? (1972) and turning up more frequently on television as a guest on The Dean Martin Show (1965) and a Glen Campbell TV special.
In 1974, Inspector Clouseau came to Sellers rescue when Sir Lew Grade expressed an interest in a TV series based on the character. Clouseau's creator, writer-director Blake Edwards, whose career had also seen better days, convinced Grade to bankroll a feature film instead, and The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) was a major hit release during the summer of Jaws (1975) and restored both men to prominence. Sellers would play Clouseau in two more successful sequels, The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), and Sellers would use his newly rediscovered clout to realize his dream of playing Chauncey Gardiner in a film adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's novel "Being There". Sellers had read the novel in 1972, but it took seven years for the film to reach the screen. Being There (1979) earned Sellers his second Oscar nomination, but he lost to Dustin Hoffman for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).
Sellers struggled with depression and mental insecurities throughout his life. An enigmatic figure, he often claimed to have no identity outside the roles that he played. His behavior on and off the set and stage became more erratic and compulsive, and he continued to frequently clash with his directors and co-stars, especially in the mid-1970s when his physical and mental health, together with his continuing alcohol and drug problems, were at their worst. He never fully recovered from his 1964 heart attack because he refused to take traditional heart medication and instead consulted with 'psychic healers'. As a result, his heart condition continued to slowly deteriorate over the next 16 years. On March 20, 1977, Sellers barely survived another major heart attack and had a pacemaker surgically implanted to regulate his heartbeat which caused him further mental and physical discomfort. However, he refused to slow down his work schedule or consider heart surgery which might have extended his life by several years.
On July 25, 1980, Sellers was scheduled to have a reunion dinner in London with his Goon Show partners, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. However, at around 12 noon on July 22, Sellers collapsed from a massive heart attack in his Dorchester Hotel room and fell into a coma. He died in a London hospital just after midnight on July 24, 1980 at age 54. He was survived by his fourth wife, Lynne Frederick, and three children: Michael, Sarah and Victoria. At the time of his death, he was scheduled to undergo an angiography in Los Angeles on July 30 to see if he was eligible for heart surgery.
His last movie, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980), completed just a few months before his death, proved to be another box office flop. Director Blake Edwards' attempt at reviving the Pink Panther series after Sellers' death resulted in two panned 1980s comedies, the first of which, Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), deals with Inspector Clouseau's disappearance and was made from material cut from previous Pink Panther films and includes interviews with the original casts playing their original characters.- Actress
- Make-Up Department
- Producer
Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but then she discovered the stage, and gave up dancing for acting. To her, it presented much more of a challenge.
After graduation from Cushing Academy, she was refused admittance to Eva Le Gallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory. She enrolled in John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School and was the star pupil. She was in the off-Broadway play "The Earth Between" (1923), and her Broadway debut in 1929 was in "Broken Dishes". She also appeared in "Solid South". Late in 1930, she was hired by Universal, where she made her first film, called Bad Sister (1931). When she arrived in Hollywood, the studio representative who went to meet her train left without her because he could find no one who looked like a movie star. An official at Universal complained she had "as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville" and her performance in "Bad Sister" didn't impress.
In 1932, she signed a seven-year deal with Warner Brothers Pictures. Her first film with them was The Man Who Played God (1932). She became a star after this appearance, known as the actress that could play a variety of very strong and complex roles. More fairly successful movies followed, but it was the role of Mildred Rogers in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) that would give Bette major acclaim from the film critics. She had a significant number of write-in votes for the Best Actress Oscar, but didn't win. Warner Bros. felt their seven-year deal with Bette was more than justified. They had a genuine star on their hands. With this success under her belt, she began pushing for stronger and more meaningful roles. In 1935, she received her first Oscar for her role in Dangerous (1935) as Joyce Heath.
In 1936, she was suspended without pay for turning down a role that she deemed unworthy of her talent. She went to England, where she had planned to make movies, but was stopped by Warner Bros. because she was still under contract to them. They did not want her to work anywhere. Although she sued to get out of her contract, she lost. Still, they began to take her more seriously after that.
Returning after losing her lawsuit, her roles improved dramatically. In 1938, Bette received a second Academy Award win for her work in Jezebel (1938) opposite the soon-to-be-legendary Henry Fonda. The only role she didn't get that she wanted was Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Warners wouldn't loan her to David O. Selznick unless he hired Errol Flynn to play Rhett Butler, which both Selznick and Davis thought was a terrible choice. It was rumored she had numerous affairs, among them George Brent and William Wyler, and she was married four times, three of which ended in divorce. She admitted her career always came first.
She made many successful films in the 1940s, but each picture was weaker than the last and by the time her Warner Brothers contract had ended in 1949, she had been reduced to appearing in such films as the unintentionally hilarious Beyond the Forest (1949). She made a huge comeback in 1950 when she replaced an ill Claudette Colbert in, and received an Oscar nomination for, All About Eve (1950). She worked in films through the 1950s, but her career eventually came to a standstill, and in 1961 she placed a now famous Job Wanted ad in the trade papers.
She received an Oscar nomination for her role as a demented former child star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). This brought about a new round of super-stardom for generations of fans who were not familiar with her work. Two years later, she starred in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Bette was married four times.
In 1977 she received the AFI's Lifetime Achievement Award and in 1979 she won a Best Actress Emmy for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979). In 1977-78 she moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles and filmed a pilot for the series Hotel (1983), which she called Brothel. She refused to do the TV series and suffered a stroke during this time.
Her last marriage, to actor Gary Merrill, lasted ten years, longer than any of the previous three. In 1985, her daughter Barbara Davis ("B.D.") Hyman published a scandalous book about Bette called "My Mother's Keeper." Bette worked in the later 1980s in films and TV, even though a stroke had impaired her appearance and mobility. She wrote a book, "This 'N That", during her recovery from the stroke. Her last book was "Bette Davis, The Lonely Life", issued in paperback in 1990. It included an update from 1962 to 1989. She wrote the last chapter in San Sebastian, Spain.
Sadly, Bette Davis died on October 6, 1989, of metastasized breast cancer, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Many of her fans refused to believe she was gone.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Mae West was born August 17, 1893 in Brooklyn, New York, to "Battling Jack" West and Matilda Doelger. She began her career as a child star in vaudeville, and later went on to write her own plays, including "SEX", for which she was arrested. Though her first movie role, at age 40, was a small part in Night After Night (1932), her scene has become famous. A coat check girl exclaims, "Goodness! What lovely diamonds!", after seeing Mae's jewelry. Mae replies, "Goodness had nothing to do with it". Her next film, in which she starred, came the following year. She Done Him Wrong (1933) was based on her earlier and very popular play, "Diamond Lil". She went on to write and star in seven more films, including My Little Chickadee (1940) with W.C. Fields. Her last movie was Sextette (1977), which also came from a play. She died on November 22, 1980.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Harland Sanders was born on 9 September 1890 in Henryville, Indiana, USA. He was an actor, known for Blast-Off Girls (1967), The Phynx (1970) and What's My Line? (1950). He was married to Claudia Ledington and Josephine King. He died on 16 December 1980 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA.- The only child of Jozsef Barsi and Maria Benko, Judith Eva Barsi beat 10,000-to-1 odds when she was discovered at a San Fernando Valley skating rink at age 5 1/2 in 1983 and mistaken for a three-year-old. Her first commercial was for Donald Duck Orange Juice and she went on to appear in anywhere between fifty and a hundred commercials, several episodes of various T.V. series, and three major motion pictures. Her mother Maria was the main thrust of her career as a Hollywood starlet, but also took great pains to try to give her a normal, happy childhood; bringing her Hungarian meals like duck for her school lunch. But this happy childhood did not last long. Beginning in 1985, Jozsef would often be home drunk instead of working as a plumber, and he refused to let Maria work. As a result, the family briefly went on welfare until Judith's career took off in 1986 and 1987. By the time she entered fourth grade, she was pulling in an estimated $100,000 a year, which bought her family a nice four-bedroom house on a quiet street in West Hill. As her career soared, her father became an increasingly abusive recluse who constantly threatened to kill his wife and daughter. In stressful moods Judith bit her nails and plucked out her eyebrows and eyelashes and her cats' whiskers. C.P.S. was called in numerous times, but as Maria was reluctant to press charges and many of the reports/accounts were emotional and not physical abuse, the case was not pursued.
On Wednesday, July 27th, Eunice Daly, a next-door neighbor, heard a loud bang next door while watering her plants. The house had been set on fire, and later the Barsis' bodies were discovered shot dead. All of Judith's toys that were not destroyed by the fire were given to the local Goodwill, and her best friend continued to feed her cats for months afterward. - Actor
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His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was orphaned at 15 after his father's death in 1930 and became the ward of Dr. Maurice Bernstein of Chicago. In 1931, he graduated from the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois. He turned down college offers for a sketching tour of Ireland. He tried unsuccessfully to enter the London and Broadway stages, traveling some more in Morocco and Spain, where he fought in the bullring.
Recommendations by Thornton Wilder and Alexander Woollcott got him into Katharine Cornell's road company, with which he made his New York debut as Tybalt in 1934. The same year, he married, directed his first short, and appeared on radio for the first time. He began working with John Houseman and formed the Mercury Theatre with him in 1937. In 1938, they produced "The Mercury Theatre on the Air", famous for its broadcast version of "The War of the Worlds" (intended as a Halloween prank). His first film to be seen by the public was Citizen Kane (1941), a commercial failure losing RKO $150,000, but regarded by many as the best film ever made. Many of his subsequent films were commercial failures and he exiled himself to Europe in 1948.
In 1956, he directed Touch of Evil (1958); it failed in the United States but won a prize at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. In 1975, in spite of all his box-office failures, he received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1984, the Directors Guild of America awarded him its highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award. His reputation as a filmmaker steadily climbed thereafter.- Actor
- Composer
- Soundtrack
William John Clifton Haley - better known as Bill Haley, leader of the first-ever rock & roll band The Comets - is probably the greatest musical pioneer of the 20th century. He was the first white artist to record a rhythm & blues hit - the 1951 "Rocket 88" for Dave Miller's subsidiary label Holiday - and scored a rockabilly hit in 1952 with "Rock The Joint" (Essex) long before the term was known and the style was adopted by Sam Phillips on Sun Records, when Phillips recorded artists like Elvis Presley and Charlie Feathers. In 1953 Haley entered the Billboard & Cashbox Top 20 with his composition "Crazy Man Crazy". Some historians believe this song is the first rock & roll record, and other historians disagree, but there's no doubt that it was definitely the first to enter the pop charts. In 1954 Haley enjoyed two million-sellers with "Dim Dim The Lights" and "Shake, Rattle & Roll" for the major label Decca (now MCA). His recording of "Rock Around The Clock" was used in the MGM movie Blackboard Jungle (1955) starring Glenn Ford and a young Sidney Poitier, as well as the underrated Vic Morrow, who was heavily criticized for his allegedly Marlon Brando-like performance, but who was just doing what most every young actor in the US--including James Dean, who oddly enough was never criticized for it--did, which was display Brando's at the time refreshing rebelliousness. It gave Haley his first #1 hit, which at this writing is the greatest-selling single record of all time. From 1955 to 1960 Haley enjoyed 22 Top 30 Hits and appeared in four movies - a short called Round Up of Rhythm (1954), then Rock Around the Clock (1956) and Don't Knock the Rock (1956), and in a German film, Hier bin ich - hier bleib' ich (1959) alongside Caterina Valente, with whom he sang the duet "Viva La Rock & Roll".
In 1960 Haley, embroiled in major legal problems relating to his divorce, fled to Mexico, where he became known as the "Spanish King Of Twist" and had a best-selling record in Latin America with "Florida Twist". He also starred in three movies there, before having a major worldwide comeback in 1968, when "Rock Around The Clock" made the international charts again, scoring #1 in England and the UK. In 1970 he recorded an artistically highly successful album in Nashville entitled "Rock Around The Country" (Sonet), and starred in the Peter Clifton-directed The London Rock and Roll Show (1973) along with Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Little Richard. He appeared in Let the Good Times Roll (1973) and toured extensively with the Richard Nader Revival Package Shows. He also recorded the theme song for the hit TV series Happy Days (1974) starring Henry Winkler and Ron Howard. In 1976 his saxophonist for 25 years, Rudy Pompilli, died of lung cancer; after that Haley retired for three years. "I was out of the business for the past three years," he explained, "because my saxophone player died. We were together for 25 years, and we had a pact--if he died first I would stop playing, and if I died first he would not play. But now I feel the mourning period is over, and I'm about 80% ready to go back on the road." In 1979 he toured the UK and Germany, also playing a command performance for the Queen. It was at this time that he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and a few years later, on February 9 1981, he passed away after a tour of South Africa. Currently there are four bands playing under "The Comets" banner, one being the official one led by Al Rappa, who is the only musician of this lineup who has any Haley connection, having played bass for him between 1959 and 1969. Another band is led by Joe E. Rand, who once fronted a Comet lineup consisting of musicians who actually played with Haley. A third band feature drummer John "Bam Bam" Lane, who worked for Haley between 1962 and 1969. The "original" band, however, is still playing, and consists of Englishman Jacko Buddin doing a nice job on the Haley vocals and featuring all the original Comets: Franny Beecher (lead guitar), Joey Ambrose (sax), Dick Richards (drums) and Marshall Lytle (double bass), and they recently recorded an outstanding album for the Las Vegas based Rollin Rock label of Ronny Weiser. They're still rocking around the clock !!!- Music Artist
- Music Department
- Actor
Bob Marley was born on February 6, 1945, in Nine Miles, Saint Ann, Jamaica, to Norval Marley and Cedella Booker. His father was a Jamaican of English descent. His mother was a black teenager. The couple were married in 1944 but Norval left for Kingston immediately after. Norval died in 1957, seeing his son only a few times.
Bob Marley started his career with the Wailers, a group he formed with Peter Tosh and Bunny Livingston in 1963. Marley married Rita Marley in February 1966, and it was she who introduced him to Rastafarianism. By 1969 Bob, Tosh and Livingston had fully embraced Rastafarianism, which greatly influence Marley's music in particular and on reggae music in general. The Wailers collaborated with Lee Scratch Perry, resulting in some of the Wailers' finest tracks like "Soul Rebel", "Duppy Conquerer", "400 Years" and "Small Axe." This collaboration ended bitterly when the Wailers found that Perry, thinking the records were his, sold them in England without their consent. However, this brought the Wailers' music to the attention of Chris Blackwell, the owner of Island Records.
Blackwell immediately signed the Wailers and produced their first album, "Catch a Fire". This was followed by "Burnin'", featuring tracks as "Get Up Stand Up" and "I Shot the Sheriff." Eric Clapton's cover of that song reached #1 in the US. In 1974 Tosh and Livingston left the Wailers to start solo careers. Marley later formed the band "Bob Marley and the Wailers", with his wife Rita as one of three backup singers called the I-Trees. This period saw the release of some groundbreaking albums, such as "Natty Dread", "Rastaman Vibration".
In 1976, during a period of spiraling political violence in Jamaica, an attempt was made on Marley's life. Marley left for England, where he lived in self-exile for two years. In England "Exodus" was produced, and it remained on the British charts for 56 straight weeks. This was followed by another successful album, "Kaya." These successes introduced reggae music to the western world for the first time, and established the beginning of Marley's international status.
In 1977 Marley consulted with a doctor when a wound in his big toe would not heal. More tests revealed malignant melanoma. He refused to have his toe amputated as his doctors recommended, claiming it contradicted his Rastafarian beliefs. Others, however, claim that the main reason behind his refusal was the possible negative impact on his dancing skills. The cancer was kept secret from the general public while Bob continued working.
Returning to Jamaica in 1978, he continued work and released "Survival" in 1979 which was followed by a successful European tour. In 1980 he was the only foreign artist to participated in the independence ceremony of Zimbabwe. It was a time of great success for Marley, and he started an American tour to reach blacks in the US. He played two shows at Madison Square Garden, but collapsed while jogging in NYC's Central Park on September 21, 1980. The cancer diagnosed earlier had spread to his brain, lungs and stomach. Bob Marley died in a Miami hospital on May 11, 1981. He was 36 years old.- Actress
- Music Department
- Additional Crew
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.- Writer
- Director
- Animation Department
Tezuka Osamu was born on November 3, 1928 in Toyonaka, Japan as the first child of Fumiko & Yutaka Tezuka. At 5, he & his family moved to the village of Kohama in Hyogo prefecture (present day city of Takarazuka). When he was 7, he entered Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka. Due to his diminutive stature, he was bullied a lot in school. His mother was a good story teller & would tell stories to him. His father was a big comic & animated movies fan. Therefore, he would do a private showing of movies he bought at his house. This influence would later inspire him to write story length comics that was as exciting as watching a movie. He drew his first comic when he was in 3rd grade titled Bin Bin Namachan, a story of a bald-headed boy that was modeled after himself. During those days, he read comics such as Norakuro & Nakamura Manga Library. He even drew a story about martians called Kaseijin Kuru! He also invented his famous character Hyotantsugi in a work he titled Fuku-chan to Uotsuri. . Another one of his works called Shina no Yoru caused quite a sensation.
His other love in life was insects. He would roam around the fields to study them & he would draw his own encyclopedia. One day, he found an insect named Osamushi, which resembled his name. Therefore, he adopted Osamushi as his pen name. He started to draw using pen & ink as well as write comics when he was 15. He self-published 13 books that year. In 1945, he entered Osaka University's medical division. The following year, he made his professional debut w/ the comic Maachan no nikki-cho in an Osaka children's newspaper. Later that year, he met Nanama Sakai at the Kansai manga club meeting & was asked to draw a feature length cartoon. W/ Sakai as story writer, he published Shin Takarajima the following year, selling 400,000 copies. He then went on to win 1st place at the YMCA for his piano performance. He was also a member of the university's acting club during & dabbled in school plays. What separated him from artists before him was that his comic had a 3-dimensional feel to his pictures & more lively motion to his characters.
In 1950, he began writing Jungle Taitei, which was published in the magazine Manga Shonen. After graduating from Osaka University the following year, he wrote the pilot episode for Tetsuwan Atom titled Atom Taishi, which was featured in the magazine Shounen. In 1952, he passed the exam to become a practicing physician. Atom Taishi ended in March & is renamed Tetsuwan Atom w/ syndication continuing until March 1968. He was in a dilemma as to which profession he would choose as his career: to be a manga artist or a doctor. He consulted his mother about his career choice & she advised him to choose whichever he loved the most. Encouraged by this, he chose manga.
In 1953, he moved to the now legendary Tokiwaso apartment where many young comic talents from all over Japan lived to start their career. Most of them were not only younger, but considered him as their guru, becoming a mentor. In 1959, he married Etsuko Okada. That same year, Tetsuwan Atom airs on Fuji TV featuring live actors. In 1961, he started his own animation production company called Tezuka Osamu Production Animation Department & beginning work on the pilot of animated version of Tetsuwan Atom. On January 1, 1963 Tetsuwan Atom starts airing on Fuji TV & is broadcasted by NBC as Astro Boy in the U.S. the following year. He followed up w/ the animated version of his comic Big X & W 3. In 1965, he created his 1st color anime Jungle Taitei, later airing in the Americas as Kimba the White Lion. His works from late the 60s such as Magma Taishi & 70s such as Mitsume ga tooru & Black Jack aren't as well known outside Japan, but he continued to draw at a prolific pace during those years. In 1972, due to internal strife, Mushi pro disintegrates. He later created another production company named after himself called Tezuka pro. During the 80s his work load slowly declined & he was more of a cultural icon, becoming a guest on many social events & TV interviews. He was also busy running his production company.
In 1988, he felt pain in his abdomen & underwent surgery. Not knowing this was due to stomach cancer as his his physician chose not to reveal his terminal illness, he was heard saying, "This doctor doesn't understand my question" as he asked about his condition. He passed away on February 9, 1989. Magazine headlines read Manga Taitei iku. Now, he's remembered as the greatest manga artist of all time, single-handedly jump starting both genre of modern day manga & anime with many manga artists were influenced by Tezuka's works. He was also 1 of the most prolific artist in the field w/ over 700 stories spanning over 170,000 pages to his credit . His impact on the entire social culture of Japan's also seen as immeasurable as he influenced so many different areas of art & society through his comics. Never in history has a comic artist influenced the society of a single country the way he did. He'll be remembered as the founding father of modern day manga.- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Jay Ward (born as Joseph Ward Cohen Jr.) was an American creator and producer of animated television series. He was the eponymous founder of the animation studio Jay Ward Productions (1948-), one of the earliest American studios to market its productions to television audiences. Ward co-created "Crusader Rabbit" (1950-1959), the first animated series produced specifically for television. His subsequent productions included "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends" (1959-1964), "Hoppity Hooper" (1964-1967), "George of the Jungle" (1967), and "The Dudley Do-Right Show" (1969-1970). In the 1960s, Ward's studio started producing animated television commercials for the Quaker Oats Company. Its best known project in this field were the commercials featuring the cartoon mascot Cap'n Crunch, depicted as an 18th-century naval captain.
In 1920, Ward was born in San Francisco. His parents were Joseph Ward Cohen (1890-1967) and his wife Mercedes Juanita Troplong Ward (1892-1972). He was primarily raised in Berkeley California, and his family name had changed to "Ward" by his teen years. He attended the Frances E. Willard Intermediate School in Berkeley.
Ward received his college education at the University of California, Berkeley, and gained an undergraduate degree. He pursued further studies at the Harvard Business School, graduating in 1947 with a Master of Business Administration (MBA). Following his graduation, Ward opened his first real estate office. It was profitable, but Ward was soon injured when a runaway truck crashed into his office building.
During his recuperation period, decided to invest profits from his real estate business into opening a new animation studio. He partnered up with the animator Alex Anderson (1920-2010), who was his childhood friend. Anderson had previous experience working with the animation studio Terrytoons (1929-1972), and happened to be a nephew of the studio founder Paul Terry (1887-1971).
Ward and Anderson developed the pilot film "The Comic Strips of Television" to market a new group of characters to television producers. The characters included Crusader Rabbit (a short but intelligent adventurer), Hamhock Bones (a parody version of Sherlock Holmes) and Dudley Do-Right (a bumbling Canadian Mountie). Nobody was interested in Hamhock and Dudley, but producer Jerry Fairbanks (1904-1995) was interested in financing an entire series about Crusader. Ward and Anderson produced the first seasons of the Crusader Rabbit series from 1950 to 1952, developing Rags the Tiger as Crusader's dimwitted sidekick. The episodes followed a comedy adventure format, with cliffhangers at the end of each episode. This version of the series lasted for 195 episodes.
In 1953, Fairbanks declared bankruptcy. His inventory of filmed, low-budget productions from past decades was considered outdated, and he could not find a market for it. Ward and Anderson entered a legal battle in an attempt to secure their rights to the "Crusader Rabbit" series, but lost. When the series was revived in 1956, a new producer had hired a different production team. By that time, Ward was trying to develop the script for a new series. It was to be called "The Frostbite Falls Revue" , and was intended to feature an entire cast of eccentric characters. This project never materialized, but two characters developed for it became the next big stars for Ward's animation studio: Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose.
Ward found television success with the "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends", which recycled some of the adventure comedy ideas from "Crusader Rabbit". The new series benefited from having a talented group of animators working of it (Ward had hired veterans from the United Productions of America/UPA), from its witty scripts by Bill Scott, Chris Hayward, and Allan Burns, and from its frequent use of self-referential humor.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ward's animation studio largely ended its production of new animated series. Ward had recurring problems with finding network executives interested in his ideas, while his television commercials were a more stable source of profit for the studio. Ward also operated his own gift shop, "Dudley Do-Right Emporium" (1971-2005). It marketed toys and souvenirs based on the studio's past productions.
Ward died in October 1989, due to renal cancer. He was 69-years-old at the time of his death. His family continued operating the studio and the gift store for several years.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Hans Conried was born in Baltimore and raised both there and in New York City. He studied acting at Columbia University, and played many major classical roles onstage. After having been a member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre Company, he was heard as Prof. Kropotkin on the radio show "My Friend Irma" and had various roles on the "Edgar Bergen - Charlie McCarthy Show". He was in the original cast of Cole Porter's 1953 Broadway hit "Can-Can" and stayed with the show for more than a year. Known for his sharp wit, Conried was in demand as an actor, panelist and narrator, appearing frequently in television series and movies throughout the 1960s and 1970s.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Bill Scott was born on 2 August 1920 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The Bullwinkle Show (1959), Hoppity Hooper (1964) and The Crazy World of Laurel and Hardy (1966). He was married to Dorothy Scott. He died on 29 November 1985 in Tujunga, California, USA.- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Daws Butler spent the greater part of his career as one of the premier voice-over actors in Hollywood- providing the voices for such well- known characters as Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick-Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, Jinks the cat, Dixie the mouse, Augie Doggie, Peter Potamus, Wally Gator, Hokey Wolf, Super Snooper, Blabber Mouse, Cogswell Cogs, Elroy Jetson and many others. He also provided the voices for such long-running commercial characters as Snap, diminutive companion of Crackle and Pop of noisy cereal fame, as well as Cap'n Crunch, spokesman for a somewhat quieter breakfast treat.
Butler was born in Toledo, Ohio and spent his formative years in Oak Park, Illinois. Although his initial ambition was to be a cartoonist, he had a talent for vocal humor and mimicry as well. Paradoxically, he was also quite shy. As a sort of self- imposed therapy, he forced himself to address large audiences by entering local amateur contests and performing impersonations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rudy Vallee and a Model T Ford starting on a cold morning (an audience favorite). He found that the laughter and applause he got in response was well worth the effort and it clinched his decision to pursue an acting and performing career. Eschewing the last few months of his senior year in high school, he began appearing in Chicago theaters and nightclubs along with two other impersonators he had met along the way. Because they all maxed out at around five feet, two inches in height and primarily did impressions of radio personalities, they billed themselves as "The Three Short Waves."
After two years in the Navy during World War II, during which he met and married Myrtis Martin of Albemarle, N.C. (whose next-door neighbor provided the inspiration for what would later become the southern drawl of Huckleberry Hound), Butler ferried his wife and son out to Hollywood. He finally broke into radio, performing in dramatic as well as comedy programs and specializing in dialects and a wide range of vocal characterizations.
In 1949, Butler and Stan Freberg were featured in a new television puppet show called "Time for Beany." Butler was the voice of a propeller-capped kid named Beany while Freberg voiced his best pal, Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent. During five years of five shows a week, they were honored with two Emmy awards.
At Capitol Records in the early 1950s, Butler and Freberg co-wrote and co-voiced a comedy record takeoff on the TV show "Dragnet," called "St. George and the Dragonet." Not only was Jack Webb flattered and amused by the record, but it was the first comedy record to sell more than a million copies. Butler's and Freberg's partnership produced several other comedy platters beloved by disc jockeys across the country, even today. Butler was also a part of Freberg's comedy ensemble on the Stan Freberg Radio Show in the summer of 1957 and on a later and very popular comedy single called "Christmas Dragnet."
After lengthy and very productive collaborations with famed animators/directors Tex Avery and Walter Lantz, Butler embarked on yet another inspired partnership, with William Hanna and Joseph Barbera at Hanna-Barbera Productions. There, beginning in the late 50s, Butler created his most famous cartoon characterizations, aided and abetted by another gifted voice actor, Don Messick-Boo Boo and Ranger Smith to Butler's Yogi Bear and Pixie the Mouse to his Dixie, among others.
For legendary cartoon producer Jay Ward, Butler, along with fellow actors and friends June Foray and Bill Scott, performed in two animated series, "Fractured Fairy Tales" and "Aesop and Son." His long-running Cap'n Crunch character was also a Jay Ward creation.
In his later years, Butler established a popular and respected actors' workshop in his home, training talented students not only in voice- over techniques, but in all areas of acting, including the physical. On that subject, especially, one had only to witness Butler's histrionic physicality when voicing Yogi Bear or his laid- back, sleepy-eyed mien as he became Huckleberry Hound to understand why he considered facial expression and physical movement as essential as sound in producing a living, breathing character. One of Butler's star workshop students was Nancy Cartwright, later the voice of Bart Simpson on "The Simpsons." Daws Butler passed away on May 19, 1988 of a heart attack, having just completed three Yogi Bear films and 15 new half-hour Yogi Bear cartoon shows. He also lived to see the rebirth of The Jetsons for a new generation, voicing 30 of the new shows along with all the members of the original cast. During his longest- standing creative collaboration, the 30-odd years with Hanna-Barbara Productions, Daws Butler performed in the neighborhood of 40 different characters. In the years that followed his death, seven actors were required to replace them all.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
George O'Hanlon was born on 23 November 1912 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Rocky (1976), So You Want a Television Set (1953) and So Your Wife Wants to Work (1956). He was married to Nancy Owens, Martha Stewart and Inez Yvonne Witt. He died on 11 February 1989 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
- Art Department
Wally Wood was born on 17 June 1927 in Menahga, Minnesota, USA. He was a writer, known for Mars Attacks! (1996), T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Weddings and Babies (1958). He was married to Tatjana Wood. He died on 2 November 1981 in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
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
- 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.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
On November 12, 1929, Grace Patricia Kelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to wealthy parents. Her girlhood was uneventful for the most part, but one of the things she desired was to become an actress which she had decided on at an early age. After her high school graduation in 1947, Grace struck out on her own, heading to New York's bright lights to try her luck there. Grace worked some as a model and made her debut on Broadway in 1949. She also made a brief foray into the infant medium of television. Not content with the work in New York, Grace moved to Southern California for the more prestigious part of acting -- motion pictures. In 1951, she appeared in her first film entitled Fourteen Hours (1951) when she was 22. It was a small part, but a start nonetheless. The following year she landed the role of Amy Kane in High Noon (1952), a western starring Gary Cooper and Lloyd Bridges which turned out to be very popular. In 1953, Grace appeared in only one film, but it was another popular one. The film was Mogambo (1953) where Grace played Linda Nordley. The film was a jungle drama in which fellow cast members, Clark Gable and Ava Gardner turned in masterful performances. It was also one of the best films ever released by MGM. Although she got noticed with High Noon, her work with director Alfred Hitchcock, which began with Dial M for Murder (1954) made her a star. Her standout performance in Rear Window (1954) brought her to prominence. As Lisa Fremont, she was cast opposite James Stewart, who played a crippled photographer who witnesses a murder in the next apartment from his wheelchair. Grace stayed busy in 1954 appearing in five films. Grace would forever be immortalized by winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Georgie Elgin opposite Bing Crosby in The Country Girl (1954). In 1955, Grace once again teamed with Hitchcock in To Catch a Thief (1955) co-starring Cary Grant. In 1956, she played Tracy Lord in the musical comedy High Society (1956) which also starred Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. The whimsical tale ended with her re-marrying her former husband, played by Crosby. The film was well received. It also turned out to be her final acting performance. Grace had recently met and married Prince Rainier of the little principality of Monaco. By becoming a princess, she gave up her career. For the rest of her life, she was to remain in the news with her marriage and her three children. On September 14, 1982, Grace was killed in an automobile accident in her adoptive home country. She was just 52 years old.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Will Lee was born on 6 August 1908 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Daniel (1983), Sesame Street (1969) and Melody Lane (1941). He died on 7 December 1982 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Margaret Hamilton was born December 9, 1902 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Jennie (Adams) and Walter Hamilton. She later attended Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and practiced acting doing children's theater while a Junior League of Cleveland member. Margaret had already built her resume with several performances in film before she came to her most memorable and astronomically successful role, Almira Gulch / The Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939). The character is considered to be one of the screen's greatest and most memorable villains of all time.- Writer
- Visual Effects
Virgil Partch was born on 17 October 1916 in St. Paul Island, Alaska, USA. He was a writer, known for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), The Flintstone Comedy Show (1980) and Duck Pimples (1945). He was married to Helen Marie Aldridge. He died on 10 August 1984 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Animation Department
- Art Department
- Actor
Milt Kahl was a veteran animator from San Francisco. He became one of "Disney's Nine Old Men", a board of supervising animators who headed the production staff of the Walt Disney Animation Studios from c. 1945 to 1977.
In 1909, Kahl was born in San Francisco. His parents were the saloon bartender Erwin Kahl and his wife Grace. Kahl was one of several young animators hired by the Disney studio in the mid-1930s. He worked on the animated feature film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), animating various forest animals. He is also thought to have worked in scenes involving the film's unnamed prince.
Kahl was noticed by the studio's executives while working in the subsequent film "Pinocchio" (1940). Kahl insisted that the eponymous sentient puppet should primarily look as a "cute little boy", and not as a real puppet. Kahl was allowed to design the film's version of Pinocchio, as a boy with a Tyrolean hat and Mickey Mouse-type gloves on his hands. Walt Disney embraced Kahl's vision and urged the writers to evolve Pinocchio into a more innocent figure that would match Kahl's design. In the film itself, Kahl animated several scenes involving Pinocchio himself, Jiminy Cricket, and Gepetto.
Kahl served as a supervising animator in "Bambi" (1942), working on scenes involving Bambi and Thumper. In "Saludos Amigos", Kahl animated a sequence which depicted Donald Duck riding a llama. Kahl was one of the animators in two segments of "Make Mine Music" (1946): "The Martins and the Coys" and "All the Cats Join In". Kahl directed the Tar Baby sequence in "Song of the South" (1946), a film adaptation of the short story "Tar-Baby" (1881) which featured a doll made of tar and turpentine. Kahl worked on the Bongo segment of the anthology film "Fun and Fancy Free" (1947). He was responsible for animating both the female lead Lulubelle and the villain Lumpjaw.
Kahl was one of the directing animators in the anthology film "Melody Time" (1948). He was responsible for the scenes depicting Johnny Appleseed, Johnny's guardian angel, Pecos Bill, Widowmaker (Pecos' horse), and Slue Foot Sue (Pecos' love interest). Kahl worked as a directing animator in both segments of the anthology film "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" (1949). He worked on animating characters from both "The Wind in the Willows" (1908) by Kenneth Grahame and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820) by Washington Irving.
In "Cinderella" (1950), Kahl animated scenes involving the Fairy Godmother, the Prince Charming, the King, and the Grand Duke. In "Alice in Wonderland" (1951), Kahl was responsible for scenes involving Alice herself, the White Rabbit, and the Dodo. In "Peter Pan" (1953), Kahl animated scenes involving Peter Pan, Wendy Darling, John Darling, Michael Darling, Mr. Darling, Mrs. Darling, and their dog Nana. In "Lady and the Trump" (1955), Kahl worked on scenes involving Lady, the Tramp, and the supporting character Trusty.
In "Sleeping Beauty" (1959), Kahl animated the co-protagonist Prince Philip, and the supporting characters King Hubert and King Stefan. In "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" (1961), Kahl worked on scenes involving the main characters Roger, Anita, Pongo, and Perdita. Kahl worked as both a directing animator and a character designer for the Arthurian film "The Sword in the Stone" (1963). Among several other characters, in this film, Kahl worked on scenes involving the witch Madame Mim.
In "The Jungle Book" (1967), Kahl worked on scenes involving most of the film's main characters, including Mowgli, Baloo, Bagheera, Shere Khan, King Louie, and, Kaa. In "The Aristocats" (1970), Kahl worked on scenes involving Thomas O'Malley, Duchess, Madame Bonfamille, and Edgar. In "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (1971), Kahl animated King Leonidas. In "Robin Hood" *(1973), Kahl worked on nearly every major character in the cast, including Robin Hood himself and Maid Marian.
In "The Rescuers" (1977), Kahl worked primarily on scenes involving the villain Madame Medusa and the orphan girl Penny. It was the last time Kahl was credited as a directing animator. Kahl went into semi-retirement in the late 1970s, though he is thought to have done uncredited work as a character designer in the early 1980s. Kahl was brought out of retirement during the production phase of "The Black Cauldron" (1985). The Disney studio wanted him to provide new character designs for Taran, Eilonwy, and Fflewddur Fflam.
In April 1987, Kahl died due to pneumonia. He was 78-years-old at the time of his death, and he had survived several of the other members of the Nine Old Men. In 2009, the centenary of his birth was celebrated with a tribute entitled "Milt Kahl: The Animation Michelangelo".- Animation Department
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Eric Cleon Larson was born on September 3, 1905 in Cleveland, Utah, to Peter and Nora Larson. In 1915 his family moved to Salt Lake City, where he became interested in journalism and also secretly took drawing lessons. In 1925, he entered the University of Utah, later moving to Los Angeles to look for a job in journalism and writing, unfortunately unsuccessfully. He then decided to rekindle his ambition to become an artist, and was offered a job at Walt Disney Productions in 1933, as an `in-betweener'. Later the same year, he married Gertrude Jannes (although sadly, the couple remained childless).
Animator Hamilton Luske recognized Larson's talent and promoted him to assistant animator; Luske, who had joined the studio two years previously, later became his mentor. Further promotion followed, with Eric as animator on Walt Disney's first feature length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937); along with future veteran animators Milt Kahl and James Algar, he animated the forest animals that followed Snow White throughout. In 1940, he was promoted to animation director for Pinocchio (1940), and in that film he created the kitten, Figaro, who became one of his favorite characters. In Fantasia (1940), he created the centaurs and the horses in the "Pastoral Symphony" segment of the musical feature.
By 1942, he had become a supervising animator for Bambi (1942) along with fellow workers Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas, and Milt Kahl, with whom he had worked on Snow White. In Bambi, he created Friend Owl, and subsequently worked on birds for the next two assignments, creating the mad Aracuan Bird in The Three Caballeros (1944), and Sasha the Bird in Make Mine Music (1946). Larson also worked on Fun and Fancy Free, Song of the South, Melody Time, and _So Dear to My Heart (1949)_. He later became part of the Animation Board, and Walt Disney appointed him as one of his Nine Old Men, who consisted of Les Clark, Woolie Reitherman, Eric Larson, Ward Kimball, Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, John Lounsbery and Marc Davis; all considered to be Walt's most trusted associates.
On Cinderella (1950), Eric assisted fellow directing animator Marc Davis animate Cinderella herself. He was directing animator on Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953), animating the caterpillar in the former and the flight to Neverland in the latter, and also working on Peg, the canine in Lady and the Tramp (1955). For Sleeping Beauty (1959), Larson was promoted to Sequence Director with Les Clark and Woolie Reitherman, and for the classic One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), he became a Directing Animator, helping to create some of the puppies. Sadly, for the next three features, The Sword in the Stone (1963), Mary Poppins (1964) and _Jungle Book, The (1967)_, he was demoted to Character Animator; The Jungle Book (1967), was the final film made by Walt, who died later that same year.
After Walt's death, it became evident that the veteran animators were either dying or retiring swiftly, and Eric was placed in charge of finding and training new talent in addition to his character animating work. He trained many successful members of today's animation world, including Andreas Deja, Glen Keane, John Pomeroy, Gary Goldman, Betsy Baytos, and others. He worked as an animator on _Aristocats, The (1970)_ and on Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), moving on to animate Robin Hood (1973) and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977). In 1977, for the feature The Rescuers, Eric assisted veteran story men Mel Shaw and Burny Mattinson with the opening sequence titles.
By 1981, almost all of the Nine Old Men were gone; Les Clark and John Lounsbery were dead, and Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, Ollie Johnston, Frank Thomas and Woolie Reitherman had retired. Eric was the only one remaining, although no longer a working animator. A new generation of artists came into being for The Fox and the Hound (1981), although Larson remained as an animation consultant for The Black Cauldron (1985), and The Great Mouse Detective (1986). Eric retired in September 1986; sadly his wife, Gertrude, had died of cancer in 1975. He retired to his home in La Canada Flintridge, near Glendale in Los Angeles, and died October 25, 1988. In 1989 he was posthumously awarded the Disney Recognition of Honor by Roy Disney, Walt's nephew.- 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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Danny Kaye left school at the age of 13 to work in the so-called Borscht Belt of Jewish resorts in the Catskill Mountains. It was there he learned the basics of show biz. From there he went through a series of jobs in and out of the business. In 1939, he made his Broadway debut in "Straw Hat Revue," but it was the stage production of the musical "Lady in the Dark" in 1940 that brought him acclaim and notice from agents. Also in 1940, he married Sylvia Fine, who went on to manage his career. She helped create the routines and gags, and wrote most of the songs that he performed. Danny could sing and dance like many others, but his specialty was reciting those tongue-twisting songs and monologues.
Samuel Goldwyn had been trying to sign Kaye to a movie contract for two years before he eventually agreed. Goldwyn put him in a series of Technicolor musicals, starting with Up in Arms (1944). His debut was successful, and he continued to make hit movies such as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and The Inspector General (1949). In 1954, he appeared with Bing Crosby in White Christmas (1954), which was based on the Irving Berlin song of the same name. In 1955, he made what many consider his best comedy, The Court Jester (1955), with the brilliant Pellet with the Poison routine. Like all things, however, the lifespan of a comedian is limited and his movie career waned. In 1960, he began doing specials on television and this led to his own TV series, The Danny Kaye Show (1963), which ran from 1963 to 1967.
Some of his last roles were also his most memorable, such as an intense Holocaust survivor in Skokie (1981) and as a kind but goofy dentist in an episode of The Cosby Show (1984). He also worked tirelessly for UNICEF.- Writer
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"I am too old to die young, and too young to grow up," Marty Feldman told a reporter -- a week before he died.
This beloved comedian, who poked fun at himself, as well as others, was born Martin Alan Feldman on July 8, 1934, in London, England. His parents were of Ukrainian Jewish heritage (from Kiev). He was the son of Cecilia (née Crook) and Myer Feldman, a gown manufacturer. Marty spent his childhood in the poverty-stricken London East End and left school at the age of 15, hoping for a career as a jazz trumpeter (his appearance in a Variety show earned him the title "the worst trumpeter in the world"). He had just started his comedy career, as a writer for BBC radio programs and TV shows in the late 1950s, when he married Lauretta Sullivan in January 1959 (they would stay married until his death in 1982). There's a saying: "Your face is your fortune"; Marty had received a double-whammy. His nose was mangled in his youthful years in a boxing match; his walleyed orbs were the result of both a hyperactive thyroid and a botched operation after a car accident before his 30th birthday, in 1963. American audiences first saw Marty in Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers (1968), where he did comedy skits with Susie Ewing and the Golddiggers. He appeared in a number of movies, his most-remembered role being that of Igor (pronounced Eye-Gor) in Young Frankenstein (1974). Besides acting, he made his directorial debut in The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977). Beloved and popular, it seemed Marty was to enjoy a long career in the entertainment field. However, he died of a massive heart attack, caused by shellfish food poisoning, while filming Yellowbeard (1983) in Mexico City, on December 2, 1982... he was only 48.- Actor
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Referred to by some as a dadaistic comedian, Andy Kaufman took comedy and performance art to the edges of irrationality and blurred the dividing line between reality and imagination. Born in New York City on January 17, 1949, the first son of Stanley and Janice Kaufman, Andy grew up on New York in the town of Great Neck. He began performing for family and friends at the age of 7, and by the time he was 9 was being hired to entertain at children's parties. After a year at a Boston junior college, Andy began performing his unique brand of stand-up comedy at coffee shops and nightclubs on the east coast. Discovered by Improvisation comedy club owner Bud Friedman, Andy quickly earned a reputation as a talented, yet eccentric performer. Impressed by his abilities, Lorne Michaels asked Kaufman to appear on the inaugural broadcast of Saturday Night Live (October 11, 1975). Best known for his work as Latka Gravas on the TV sitcom Taxi, Andy appeared in several TV shows and movies, on Broadway, did a one man show at Carnegie Hall, enjoyed a brief professional wrestling career and performed in concerts nation-wide.- Composer
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Joe Raposo was born on 8 February 1937 in Fall River, Massachusetts, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for Sesame Street (1969), The Great Muppet Caper (1981) and The Incredible Hulk (2008). He was married to Pat Collins. He died on 5 February 1989 in Bronxville, New York, USA.- Writer
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Tennessee Williams met long-term partner Frank Merlo in the summer of 1948 (Merlo died of lung cancer in the fall of 1963). Though separated briefly in 1961 and again in 1962, the two were partners for 15 years. Merlo acted as his personal manager/secretary.
Williams spent much of his most prolific years in Rome, Italy, and his enduring friendship with Italian stage and screen legend Anna Magnani lasted 24 years and inspired both "The Rose Tattoo" and "Orpheus Descending". Magnani realized the lead parts of these two plays, which were written for her, in their film versions. The turbulent and inspirational friendship shared between Williams and Magnani is the subject of the internationally acclaimed play "Roman Nights" by Franco D'Alessandro.
Aside from his published "Memoirs", the only authorized biographical book on Williams is by Bruce Smith, entitled "Costly Performances - Tennessee Williams; The Last Stage." This book deals with the last four years of Williams' life (1979-1983).- Writer
- Art Department
Born under the name Georges Remi on May 22, 1907 in Brussels, Belgium. As a child, Herge had a gift for drawing but never had any formal training in the visual arts. He attended both school and the boy scouts during the World War 1 and post-World War 1 Era. After he finished school Herge published his first ever cartoon: "The Adventures of Totor" for Le Boy-Scout Belge (a scouting magazine).
In 1928, he became in charge of the producing material for Le Petit Vingtieme (The Little Twentieth) a youth supplement newspaper. He began illustrating "The Adventures of Flup", "Nenesse", "Poussette", "Cochonnet", etc. January 10, 1929, Herge introduced a cartoon about a traveling Belgium reporter (Tintin) accompanied by his fox terrier (Snowy) traveling the Soviet Union. By 1930, Herge published the very first Tintin book: "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets". Tintin soon became Herge's "ligne claire" (French for clear line) legacy.
The later adventures of Tintin involved other locations of the world from China all the way to America. Within the next 50 years Tintin became one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century, due to its well-researched plots, appealing characters, humor, political thrillers, & real world settings. After completing 23 books, Herge passed away on March 3, 1983, leaving "Tintin and Alph-Art" (the 24th book) unfinished. Despite Herge not being able to give his Tintin series the proper end, all of his works along with Tintin will continue to inspire artists and enchant readers from the years to come.- Slim Pickens spent the early part of his career as a real cowboy and the latter part playing cowboys, and he is best remembered for a single "cowboy" image: that of bomber pilot Maj. "King" Kong waving his cowboy hat rodeo-style as he rides a nuclear bomb onto its target in the great black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Born in Kingsburg, near Fresno in California's Central Valley, he spent much of his boyhood in nearby Hanford, where he began rodeoing at the age of 12. Over the next two decades he toured the country on the rodeo circuit, becoming a highly-paid and well-respected rodeo clown, a job that entailed enormous danger. In 1950, at the age of 31, Slim married Margaret Elizabeth Harmon and that same year he was given a role in a western, Rocky Mountain (1950). He quickly found a niche in both comic and villainous roles in that genre. With his hoarse voice and pronounced western twang, he was not always easy to cast outside the genre, but when he was, as in "Dr. Strangelove", the results were often memorable. He died in 1983 after a long and courageous battle against a brain tumor. He was survived by his wife Margaret and children.
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Johnny Weissmuller was born as Peter Johann Weißmüller in Freidorf, today a district of the city of Timisoara in Romania, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Weissmuller would later claim to have been born in Windber, Pennsylvania, probably to ensure his eligibility to compete as part of the US Olympic team. Weissmüller was one of two boys born to Petrus Weissmuller, a miner, and his wife Elisabeth Kersch, who were both Banat Swabians, an ethnic German population in Southeast Europe. A sickly child, he took up swimming on the advice of a doctor. He grew to be a 6' 3", 190-pound champion athlete - undefeated winner of five Olympic gold medals, 67 world and 52 national titles, holder of every freestyle record from 100 yards to the half-mile. In his first picture, Glorifying the American Girl (1929), he appeared as an Adonis clad only in a fig leaf. After great success with a jungle movie, MGM head Louis B. Mayer, via Irving Thalberg, optioned two of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan stories. Cyril Hume, working on the adaptation of Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), noticed Weissmuller swimming in the pool at his hotel and suggested him for the part of Tarzan. Weissmuller was under contract to BVD to model underwear and swimsuits; MGM got him released by agreeing to pose many of its female stars in BVD swimsuits. The studio billed him as "the only man in Hollywood who's natural in the flesh and can act without clothes". The film was an immediate box-office and critical hit. Seeing that he was wildly popular with girls, the studio told him to divorce his wife and paid her $10,000 to agree to it. After 1942, however, MGM had used up its options; it dropped the Tarzan series and Weissmuller, too. He then moved to RKO and made six more Tarzans. After that he made 13 Jungle Jim (1948) programmers for Columbia. He retired from movies to run a private business in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.- Actor
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Legendary masked Mexican wrestler / actor who achieved icon status via his highly colorful wrestling career and starring appearances in nearly 60 motion pictures. Born Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta on September 23rd, 1917 in Hidalgo, Mexico, he was the fifth of seven children and the family moved to Mexico City in the 1920s where Rodolfo became keenly interested in several sports including baseball, gridiron and eventually wrestling. Wrestling took off in the early 1930s in Mexico after several promoters had witnessed events in Texas, and in Mexico the sport eventually became known as "Luche Libre", literally "free fight," Mexico's version of professional wrestling. Rodolfo's first wrestling appearance was alleged to have been at Arena Peralvillo Cozumel on June 28th, 1934, and he soon became an active figure on the Mexican wrestling circuit under various names including "El Hombre Rojo", "Rudy Guzman", "El Demonio Negro" and "El Murcielago II". After initially competing as a "rudo" ( bad or "heel" wrestler ), Rodolfo became a "técnico" (good or "babyface" wrestler) and that's the way he remained for the next fifty years.
In 1942, his manager, Don Jesus Lomeli, was assembling a team of masked silver wrestlers, and wanted Rodolfo to join the ensemble. He was given the choice of three stage names, "El Diablo" (The Devil), "El Santo" (The Saint) or "El Angel" (The Angel). Rodolfo chose "El Santo" and first wrestled under that name at Arena Mexico on June 26th, 1942. During the 1950s, a Mexican artist named Jose Guadalupe Cruz seized upon Santo's popularity with the local populace and began a "fumetti" style "Santo" comic book that was to run for over 35 years and had Santo fighting villains both real and supernatural!
Santo had resisted previous advances to appear in serials or motion pictures, however he finally reneged and his first film appearance's were in the ultra low budget Santo vs. the Zombies (1962), Santo vs. the Evil Brain (1961) and Santo vs. Infernal Men (1961), all shot in Cuba just prior to Fidel Castro seizing power! The Mexican fans flocked to see Santo in his role as a crime fighting super hero on the cinema screen, and his movie career literally exploded overnight! Over the next three decades Santo starred in dozens of films, often teaming to fight evil with fellow masked wrestler the Alejandro Cruz (aka "Blue Demon). Santo's most popular films include Santo vs. the Vampire Women (1962), Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monsters (1970) and Santo and Blue Demon vs. Dr. Frankenstein (1974).
However, their was a change of power in Mexican government in 1976, and the new administration frowned upon the masked wrestler genre, and film funding was canceled which effectively spelled the demise of the genre.
Santo's final film appearance was in The Fury of the Karate Experts (1982) filmed in Florida, and Santo officially retired from wrestling/acting on July 26th, 1982 (at the age of 65!). After nearly fifty years years of never being seen without his trademark mask, Santo appeared on the Mexican TV talk show "Contrapunto" on January 26th 1984, and without warning, he unmasked and revealed his face. Sadly, Santo passed away from a heart attack less than two weeks later on February 5th, 1984. The Mexican people were shattered by the death of their idol, and his funeral was attended by tens of thousands of fans, plus many wrestling identities, and Santo was finally laid to rest at a mausoleum in Mexico City wearing his beloved silver mask.
Santo had married twice during his life. Firstly to Maria de los Angeles Rodriguez Montano and then secondly to Eva Enriquetta Vallejo Vadager, and he fathered eleven children. More than an actor or wrestler, he was a much loved and venerated cultural icon to the Mexican people and beyond.- Music Artist
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Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. (known professionally as Marvin Gaye; April 2, 1939 - April 1, 1984) was an American singer and songwriter. He helped to shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player and later as a solo artist with a string of successes, earning him the nicknames "Prince of Motown" and "Prince of Soul".
Gaye's Motown songs include "Ain't That Peculiar", "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)", and "I Heard It Through the Grapevine". Gaye also recorded duets with Mary Wells, Kim Weston, Tammi Terrell, and Diana Ross. During the 1970s, Gaye recorded the albums What's Going On and Let's Get It On and became one of the first artists in Motown to break away from the reins of a production company.
His later recordings influenced several contemporary R&B sub-genres, such as quiet storm and Neo-Soul. He was a tax exile in Europe in the early 1980s; he released "Sexual Healing" in 1982, which won him his first two Grammy Awards on the album Midnight Love. Gaye's last televised appearances were at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game, where he sang "The Star-Spangled Banner"; Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever; and Soul Train.
On April 1, 1984, the eve of his 45th birthday, Gaye was shot and mortally wounded by his father, Marvin Gay Sr., at their house in Hancock Park, Los Angeles, after an argument. Gay Sr. later pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter, and received a six-year suspended sentence and five years of probation. Many institutions have posthumously bestowed Gaye with awards and other honors including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and inductions into the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.- Actor
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He began imitating birds and various barnyard animals as a child growing up in Watonga, Oklahoma. In his teens his family moved to Southern California where he got a promotional job with a dairy company and in between jobs performed animal imitations at various Los Angeles schools. In 1934 hearing that Walt Disney was looking for bird and animal recordings for his cartoons Clarence went to the studios and went through his repertoire of voices during which Walt walked in and said "That fellow sounds like a duck, lets keep him in mind if we ever create a duck character"
It wasn't long after that , that Donald Duck made his debut in "The Wise Little Hen" with Clarence providing his voice. When the film was finished and shown Donald stood out so prominently that he was put into the Mickey Mouse film "Orphan's Benefit" and soon after was getting star billing in his own films and has been in more than Mickey.
With the help of language coaches Clarence has quacked in Spanish, French, German, Swedish, Dutch, Portugese and Japanese.- Writer
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Graham Chapman was born on January 8, 1941 in Leicester, England while a German air raid was in progress. Graham's father was a chief police inspector and probably inspired the constables Graham often portrayed later in comedy sketches. Graham studied medicine in college and earned an M.D., but he practiced medicine for only a few years.
At Cambridge, he took part in a series of comedy revues and shortly after completing his medical studies at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Graham realized what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to perform comedy. In 1969, Graham along with University friends John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and American Terry Gilliam formed their own comedy group called Monty Python. Their BBC TV series Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969), which aired a short while later was a an instant hit. Their often self-referential style of humor was delightfully original but completely accessible to most audiences in the UK.
Before the show appeared on public television in the US, many people assumed that Americans would find Monty Python much too British to consider it funny. But PBS never had a larger audience than when stations began to air it during the early 1970s. The classic routines have since become standard college humor.
So enduring was the Python humor that fans know entire sketches such as "The Pet Shop," "Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink," "Argument Clinic," and "Penguin on the Telly." Graham was a standout of the group with his tall, blond profile and his zany characters (one of the more memorable was Colonel Muriel Volestrangler, a vaguely military-type character who would stop a sketch because it was "much too silly").
Graham was openly gay long before it was socially acceptable, and was open about his long-term relationship with writer David Sherlock, who lived with him for 24 years. He even adopted and raised a teenage runaway named John Tomiczek. Graham played the title role in the movie Life of Brian (1979) as well as King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). By the late 1970s, most of the Python members were pursuing independent movie projects and the group was slowly fading into obscurity after their last successful effort The Meaning of Life (1983). Also in 1983, Graham co-wrote and starred in the movie Yellowbeard (1983), which received negative reviews.
In 1988, Graham began working on another series when his health began to decline. A longtime alcoholic, who suffered liver damage before he stopped drinking for good in 1977, Graham began to have trouble concentrating at work. In November 1988, a routine visit to a dentist revealed a malignant tumor on one of his tonsils which was surgically removed. A visit to the doctor a few months later revealed another tumor on his spine which had to be removed which confined him to a wheelchair. During most of 1989, he underwent a series of surgical operations and radiation therapy but for every tumor that was found and removed, another would form either along his spine or in his throat. By July 1989, his cancer was declared terminal and that he would not survive the year, yet he continued to pursue treatments which included chemotherapy. In his wheelchair, he attended the September 1989 taping for the Monty Python's 20th anniversary special. But on October 1, he was hospitalized after a massive stroke which turned into a hemorrhage. He died at the Maidstone hospital at age 48 on October 4, 1989 from complications of the stroke as well as throat and spinal cancer.- Actor
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His parents were actors, but Jack decided to pursue his love of art. He got a job as an inbetweener (rookie animator) at the Fleischer studio. Dave Fleischer happened to hear him singing the Popeye theme song in a funny voice, and asked Jack to try voicing one cartoon. He later became a writer at the Fleischer studio.- Actor
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Jim Backus was born James Gilmore Backus on February 25, 1913 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was one of the few actors to do it all: radio, Broadway, movies, television and cartoons. After attending preparatory school in his hometown Cleveland, Backus enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Art, to ply his trade. While waiting for parts, he did radio and became friends with such future notables as Garson Kanin and Keenan Wynn. Backus stuck it out and soon was doing motion pictures in addition to radio. He was typecast in roles as "rich types" but broke the mold when he portrayed James Dean's father in the classic Rebel Without a Cause (1955). With his career in full swing, Backus also tackled two roles that he would be best known for, Mr. Magoo in cartoons and Thurston Howell III in Gilligan's Island (1964). After the series' run ended, he continued doing guest spots on television and movies, before passing away on July 3, 1989.- Music Department
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Comedian, actor, composer and conductor, educated in New York public schools. He was a master of ceremonies in amateur shows, a carnival barker, daredevil driver and a disc jockey, and later a comedian in night clubs. By the mid-1950s he had turned to writing original music and recording a series of popular and best-selling albums with his orchestra for Capitol Records. Joining ASCAP in 1953, his instrumental compositions include "Melancholy Serenade", "Glamour", "Lover's Rhapsody", "On the Beach" and "To a Sleeping Beauty", among numerous others.- Music Department
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Legendary bluesman and one of the originators of the Mississippi Delta blues style, Son House was born Eddie Jones Jr. in 1902 in Riverton, MS, a small impoverished town in the Mississippi Delta. He sang in his local Baptist church as a youth and actually became a preacher at 20 years of age. His affinity for women and alcohol, however, interfered with his pastoral duties and he eventually decided that the secular world was more to his liking. He also discovered the blues while living in Louisiana in the early 1920s, and when he returned to Mississippi in 1926 he learned how to play the guitar. He worked the Delta juke joint and house party scene for the next few years. In 1928 he got into an altercation with another man and shot and killed him. Although he claimed self-defense, he was tried for the killing and sent to prison. However, a year later a judge re-examined the case and decided that House did indeed act in self-defense and ordered his release.
After getting out of prison he traveled to Lula, MS, where he ran into bluesmen Charley Patton and Willie Brown. The three teamed up and traveled and played together. In 1930 they recorded some sides for Paramount Records. One of the songs House recorded, "Preachin' the Blues", was about his leaving the church to play the blues. The three continued to perform together until Patton's death in 1934. House and Brown still played together on occasion after that, but both also went solo on occasion.
In 1942 record producer Alan Lomax recorded House in Washington, DC, for the Library of Congress, and the next year he traveled to Mississippi to record House again. In 1943 House moved to Rochester, NY, and abruptly left the music business. He surfaced again in 1964 when young white folk-music aficionados discovered his music and urged him to return to performing, which he eventually did. He performed at the 1964 Newport Folk Festivalm, played New York's Carnegie Hall and signed a contract with CBS Records. His album for that label, "Father of the Folk Blues", was a major critical and financial success and led to House's further appearances at folk and blues festivals in both the US and Europe. In 1969 he was the subject of a documentary film, "Son House".
House's health began to have serious health problems in 1971, and although he did perform occasionally over the next few years, his ill health pretty much ended his career. In 1976 he moved to Detroit, MI, and in 1980 he was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1983.
He died in Detroit of Alzheimers Disease in 1988.- Actor
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Kay Kyser was born on 18 June 1905 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, USA. He was an actor, known for You'll Find Out (1940), That's Right - You're Wrong (1939) and Playmates (1941). He was married to Georgia Carroll. He died on 23 July 1985 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.- Music Department
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Irving Berlin was born Israel Isidor Baline on May 11, 1888 in Mogilev, Belarus, Russian Empire. Towering composer, songwriter, ("God Bless America", "Always", "Blue Skies", "White Christmas") author and publisher, he came to the United States at age 5 and was educated in New York's public schools. His earliest musical education was from his father, a cantor. He earned Honorary degrees from Bucknell University and Temple University. Beginning his career as a song-plugger for publisher Harry von Tilzer, Berlin worked as a singing waiter in Chinatown. In 1909, he was hired as a staff lyricist by the Ted Snyder Company, and became a partner to that firm four years later.
In 1910, he began doing vaudeville appearances in the United States and abroad, and also appeared with Snyder in the Broadway musical "Up and Down Broadway", that ran for 72 performances. He joined ASCAP as a charter member in 1914, and served on its first board of directors between 1914-1918. Berlin enlisted the United States Army infantry in World War I, and was a sergeant at Camp Upton, New York. After the war, he established his own public-relations firm, and in 1921, he built the 1025-seat Music Box Theatre (at 239 W. 45th Street, New York) with Sam H. Harris. After Harris' death in 1941, Berlin assumed full ownership and the theatre remains a Broadway institution to this day.
Among his many awards was the Medal for Merit for his 1942 all-soldier show "This Is the Army", which toured the United States, Europe and South Pacific battle zones; all proceeds were assigned to Army Emergency Relief and other service agencies. Berlin was also a member of the French Legion of Honor and held the Congressional Medal of Honor for "God Bless America", the proceeds from which went to the God Bless America Fund. His songs were sung by Fred Astaire, Al Jolson, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Dick Powell, Alice Faye and many others. Irving Berlin died at the age of 101 of natural causes on September 22, 1989 in New York City.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Fred Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Johanna (Geilus) and Fritz Austerlitz, a brewer. Fred entered show business at age 5. He was successful both in vaudeville and on Broadway in partnership with his sister, Adele Astaire. After Adele retired to marry in 1932, Astaire headed to Hollywood. Signed to RKO, he was loaned to MGM to appear in Dancing Lady (1933) before starting work on RKO's Flying Down to Rio (1933). In the latter film, he began his highly successful partnership with Ginger Rogers, with whom he danced in 9 RKO pictures. During these years, he was also active in recording and radio. On film, Astaire later appeared opposite a number of partners through various studios. After a temporary retirement in 1945-7, during which he opened Fred Astaire Dance Studios, Astaire returned to film to star in more musicals through 1957. He subsequently performed a number of straight dramatic roles in film and TV.- Actor
- Music Department
- Composer
The King of Swing! Famed clarinetist, composer ("Stompin' at the Savoy") and conductor, educated at the Lewis Institute in Chicago and a student of Schillinger and Schoepp. He was a clarinetist with the orchestras of Bix Beiderbecke, Jules Herbuveaux, Arnold Johnson and Ben Pollack, and also played in Broadway theater orchestras. He began to lead his own orchestras in 1934 at the Billy Rose Music Hall, then conducted the orchestra on the weekly radio program "Let's Dance" in 1934-1935, and played at numerous hotels, colleges and theaters. Expanding his musical efforts, he performed in chamber music concerts, later touring throughout the US, Europe, the Far East, South America and the USSR and made many recordings. Joining ASCAP in 1945, his chief musical collaborators included Count Basie, Harry James, Mitchell Parish, Andy Razaf, Edgar M. Sampson, Chick Webb, and Teddy Wilson. Some of his other popular songs and instrumental compositions include "Lullaby in Rhythm," "Don't Be That Way," "Seven Come Eleven," "Flying Home," "Two O'Clock Jump," "Air Mail Special," "Dizzy Spells," "If Dreams Come True," "Georgia Jubilee," "Four Once More," and "The Kingdom of Swing".- Music Department
- Actor
- Composer
The famed composer ("One O'Clock Jump", "Two O'Clock Jump", "Jumpin' at the Woodside"), pianist, songwriter and bandleader began as an accompanist to vaudeville acts. He joined the Bennie Moten orchestra in Kansas City, later organizing his own orchestra and performing on radio. In 1936 he came to New York, appearing in hotels, night clubs, theatres and jazz festivals. He toured the US, and also, in 1954, Europe. He was elected to the Down Beat Magazine's Hall of Fame in 1958, and has made many records. Joining ASCAP in 1943, his chief musical collaborators included Mack David, Jerry Livingston, James Rushing, Andy Gibson, Eddie Durham, and Lester Young. His songs and instrumentals also include "Good Morning Blues"; "Every Tub"; "John's Idea"; "Basie Boogie"; "Blue and Sentimental"; "Gone With the Wind"; "I Ain't Mad at You"; "Futile Frustration"; "Good Bait"; "Don't You Miss Your Baby?"; "Miss Thing" "Riff Interlude"; "Panassie Stomp: "Shorty George"; "Out the Window"; "Hollywood Jump: "Nobody Knows"; "Swinging at the Daisy Chain"; and "I Left My Baby".- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Comedian, composer, songwriter ("At Dusk", "I Came to Say Goodbye"), author and trombonist, educated in high school, then a trombonist with the Columbia Symphony (1931-1936). He was a member of the Bob Hope radio program, and appears in many films. Joining ASCAP in 1956, his other songs include "Life of a Sailor", "Sleighbells in the Sky", "Take Your Time", and "One Day".- Producer
- Director
- Animation Department
Hugh Harman was one of the pioneers of animation. While not a great animator, (compared to co-worker, Rudolf Ising) he was present during the early days. He began his work with Walt Disney in 1922, working on Disney's early Laugh-o-Gram toons. When that company went bankrupt, Harman and partner Rudolf Ising tried to start a new series based on the Arabian Nights, but were unable to obtain funding. Disney called them back when he began work for Charles Mintz, producing the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. After a dispute over pricing, Mintz forced out Disney and kept Harman and Ising on for another year, when they in turn were forced out (and replaced by a young Walter Lantz). Harman, Ising, and a few other ex-Disney animators put together a pilot short, "Bosko the Talkink Kid", which was used by producer Leon Schlesinger to obtain a contract with Warner Brothers' studios to produce animated cartoons. Harman and Ising started the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons, and produced them for several years. After another argument over money (this time with Schlesinger), Harman and Ising left Warner Brothers for MGM in 1933. They produced quite a few "Happy Harmonies" for MGM until yet again they left over another financial arrangement. After MGM, Harman & Ising formed their own studio, but was not successful. MGM hired them back, but by this time their faux-Disney style of animation was out of fashion, and they found themselves eclipsed by the works of William Hanna & Joseph Barbera (whom they had hired) & Fred Tex Avery. In the 40s and 50s, both men did some work for Walter Lantz Studios.- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
London-born character actor George Richard Haydon was noted for his put-on nasal delivery and pompous, fussy manner. Haydn had a laborious start to his show business career, selling tickets in the box office of London's Daly Theatre. This was followed by an unsuccessful stint with a comedy act in musical revue. For a change of pace, he became overseer of a Jamaican banana plantation only to see it wiped out by a hurricane.
Returning home, he appeared in the 1926 West End production of 'Betty of Mayfair' and, soon after, also began to act on radio. It was in this medium where he first found success, creating his signature character: the perpetually befuddled nasally-voiced fish expert and mother's boy Edwin Carp. Haydn later immortalized the titular character in a book, titled "The Journal of Edwin Carp". The Carp routine opened the door for Haydn to appear with Beatrice Lillie on Broadway in Noël Coward's 'Set to Music' (1939) and this, in turn, resulted in a contract with 20th Century Fox.
While his first major screen role in Charley's Aunt (1941) was relatively straight-laced, he was more often seen in comedic roles where his lugubrious face and dignified, sometimes unctuous presence could be employed to scene-stealing effect. His notable characterizations in this vein include the over-enunciating Professor Oddly in Ball of Fire (1941), Rogers (the butler) in And Then There Were None (1945) and Mr. Wilson in Cluny Brown (1946). He essayed a rare villainous role as the odious Earl of Radcliffe in the period drama Forever Amber (1947) and was back to his usual form as Mr. Appleton in Sitting Pretty (1948). In The Late George Apley (1947), he played the character of Horatio Willing "with a broad edge of wheezy burlesque" (so wrote Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, March 21, 1947).
In the late 40s, Haydn made a brief foray into directing. Of his three films for Paramount, the Bing Crosby vehicle Mr. Music (1950) enjoyed the best critical reviews. Among his later appearances on screen, that of Trapp family friend and promoter Max Detweiler in The Sound of Music (1965), is the one which most often comes to mind. Over the years, he also made an impression as a voice actor in animated cartoons, notably on Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and as the Caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland (1951). He had frequent guest roles on television and starred in one of the best-remembered episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone (1959) ("A Thing About Machines"), as the arrogant machine-hating pedant Bartlett Finchley who loses a pitched battle with his household appliances, in particular his car. Haydn also caricatured a Japanese businessman in an episode of Bewitched (1964).
In private life, Haydn was a rather reclusive individual who liked horticulture and shunned interviews.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Stepin Fetchit remains one of the most controversial movie actors in American history. While he was undoubtedly one of the most talented physical comedians ever to do his schtick on the Big Screen, achieving the rare status of being a character actor/supporting player who actually achieved superstar status in the 1930s (becoming a millionaire to boot), his characterization as a lazy, slow-witted, jive-talkin' "coon" offended African-Americans at the time he was a major attraction in motion pictures (primarily the 1930s) and still offends African-Americans in the 21st century, more than 50 years after he had faded from the screen. Yet some African-Americans claim him as the first Black superstar, and thus a trailblazer for others of his "race". The controversy over Stepin Fetchit remains alive to this day, with two biographies published about him in 2005.
Stepin Fetchit was the stage name of Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry, who was born May 30, 1902, as confirmed by the 1910 census, in Key West, Florida to West Indian immigrant parents. Sometime in his teens Perry became a comic performer. A literate and very intelligent man who wrote for the premier African-American newspaper "The Chicago Defender," Perry evolved a character called "The Laziest Man In the World" as part of a two-man vaudeville act that broke through to play the white circuits. Eventually, he went solo; "Stepin Fetchit" likely was the original name of the act covering both performers, as "Step 'n Fetchit," and he kept the name as a solo.
While some believe that his stage name is a contraction of "step and fetch it", implying a servile persona (the so-called "Tom") that is synonymous with degrading racial stereotypes in popular entertainment in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, Perry claimed he got the name from a race horse. However, it's important to make the distinction that African-American cultural historians do (while at no time condoning Perry's career): rather than a servile Tom (named after Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom"), Stepin Fetchit was an evolution of a later construction, the "coon" who undermined his white oppressors by denying his labor and cooperation through an act of defiance that included the appearance of being lazy and stupid. Essential to the "coon" persona was talking in what to white ears is gibberish (at which Perry excelled), but which Black folk can understand--and which contains barbed insults to "The Man". What rankles so badly (since the Coon remains a stereotype that resonates in African-American culture) is that white audiences swallowed Perry's Stepin Fetchit act whole, as a true representation of a "Negro".
The "Coon" persona mitigated the low status accorded African-Americans by whites by feigning near-idiocy in order to frustrate whites by ironically fulfilling their low expectations (the "Tom," by contrast, is praised by whites for his good work and loyalty. A parallel racial caricaturization of black men by whites, the "buck," is the repository of their racial and sexual fears, and can still be seen in blaxploitation movies of the 1970s and, more recently, in the "gangsta" rapper). Perry used this mitigation stratagem when dealing with whites in real life, allegedly maintaining a coon persona while auditioning for a role in "In Old Kentucky" (1938), where he stayed in the Stepin Fetchit character before and after the audition. Often, while making movies in which he found the lines offensive, Perry would skip or mumble lines he did not like, pretending to be too stupid to comprehend the script.
The "Coon" stereotype existed long before Perry decided to adopt it (its prevalence as a defiance stratagem intensified after the gains that African-Americans had made in the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era were rolled back by segregationist Jim Crow laws, when an "uppity" African-American could well wind up hanging from a tree at the end of a rope). However, he was such a hit with white audiences that his Stepin Fetchit persona popularized the "Coon" image to an unprecedented degree in the medium of film, and many stereotypical Black movie characters, including the child Stymie in the "Our Gang" comedy series, were based upon Stepin Fetchit to cash in on his popularity.
Perry reached the apex of his career co-starring with Will Rogers in several films, including John Fords Steamboat Round the Bend (1935). When viewed objectively today (without revulsion), Perry's Stepin Fetchit character can be seen as more than holding his own with the great Rogers, achieving some kind of inverse parity with his white "massa" through the sheer forcefulness of his personality. Rogers clearly is fond of Perry (if not Stepin Fetchit), although he is liable to denigrate the Stepin Fetchit character unmercifully. In a way, it provides a window on race relations in that Southern and other white Americans could experience fondness for black folk, but would "put them in their place" at any time, for any reason.
Stepin Fetchit became the first African-American actor to become a millionaire, but he mishandled his fortune through lavish overspending and was bankrupt by 1947. In the 1940s his career in mainstream "white" cinema was essentially over, and he crossed over into "race" films, movies made specifically for (and sometimes by) African-Americans, where he essentially played the same schtick. By 1960 he was a charity case in Chicago.
Perry had been denounced by the same civil rights leaders that eventually forced CBS to mothball the popular TV series The Amos 'n Andy Show (1951), as they didn't want any stereotypes pandering to the inherent racism of whites while they were trying to obtain equality. Cast out and an exile in the 1960s, Perry was rehabilitated by heavyweight champion Cassius Clay--the symbol of African-American racial pride who had become Muhammad Ali--making him one of his entourage after Perry allegedly showed him a punch that Ali successfully used during a fight. Following Ali's example, Perry converted to the 'Honorable Elijiah Muhammad''s Lost-Found Nation of Islam (the so-called "Black Muslims"). He was saved.
Because of the degrading image Stepin Fetchit represents to many African-Americans, Perry's appearances in mainstream movies typically are cut out of the picture, regardless of the narrative logic. Most of his films have not been widely released on video. However, near the end of his life, Perry achieved redemption. He appeared in a bit at the beginning of the Moms Mabley comedy Amazing Grace (1974), in which he warned a white train conductor to not mistreat Moms. Later in the film, Mabley and her co-star Slappy White--two stalwart black entertainers of the "Chitlin' Circuit" whose characters in the film represent the pre-Black Power generation that reached maturity during the World War II era--have been humiliated by both the Black bourgeoisie and the new generation. With a haunting vocal by Perry on the soundtrack, a song about a young black man (obviously of another era) stealing "hair grease," the downcast Mabley and humiliated White walk down a street, stepping on a poster of Stepin Fetchit cast away in the street. It's a remarkable scene.
The film says that respect is due these people who did blaze the trail for a younger generation, at great cost to themselves (Moms' character, a widow, had lost her son during the war, a war in which African-American men were segregated from whites and suffered egregious discrimination, all the while enlisted in the fight against Adolf Hitler's racist Third Reich--whose racial laws had been modeled on the Jim Crow laws of the American South!).
And respect was duly paid.
The Hollywood chapter of the NAACP (whose national organization had made Perry its bete noire, along with "Amos 'n Andy") awarded him a Special Image Award in 1976 for his pioneering movie career that was rationalized as helping to open doors for blacks in the movie industry. Two years later he was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.
Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry died on November 19, 1985.- Director
- Producer
- Cinematographer
George Pal was born on February 1, 1908, in Cegled, Austria-Hungary. Later, when he was still a child, his stage-entertainer parents divorced, and he was raised by his grandparents.
In 1928, Pal graduated from the Budapest Academy of Arts with a degree in Architecture and highly developed drawing skills. There were no opportunities for an Architect when he left the University, so, putting his other talents to work, he found employment at Hunnia Films in Budapest. Later on, through his films, Pal became an architect of worlds, but first...
At Hunnia, Pal drew lobby posters and created embellished titles for silent movies. He also quickly learned the craft of motion picture cartooning.
In 1930, George married Elisabeth Josepha (Zsoka) Grandjean, with whom he later had two sons, David (born, 1937) and Peter (born, 1941). Seeking work with better pay, the young couple moved to Berlin, a center for film innovation. Pal's talents were soon noticed.
From 1931-1932, Pal worked at UFA Studios in Berlin where he became head of the cartoon department. Then, he set up his own film studio elsewhere in Berlin. His credentials attracted orders from companies for animated advertising. Instead of the cartoon approach, he developed his own take on making inanimate objects move, even dance, using the still evolving art of stop-motion photography. Advertisements featuring, for instance, Overstolz cigarettes, outfitted with faces, arms, and legs, were shown on theater screens strutting and singing as if drawn by a cartoonist. These "puppets" without strings would later evolve into animated characters made of wood who would have names and star in their own films.
When the Nazi regime installed itself in Germany, George and Zsoka left for Prague for a short time. Then it was on to Paris where they received an invitation from Sies Neuman, head of Philips Radio's advertising, to move to Eindhoven, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands, and work there. Before long, he had his own studio and made commercials for Dutch, English, and American firms.
It was in Eindhoven that George and American film maker, Dave Bader, invented a name for the three-dimensional cartoons that George was also now producing: "Puppetoons." George made many films in Holland, including "The Ship of the Ether." He changed his last name from Marczincsak to Pal, and, in 1937, George and Zsoka's first son, David, was born.
During the 1930s, George and Zsoka applied for an American emigration visa, only to be told each time that the small Hungarian quota was filled. Then, in 1939, the American consulate granted a visa for them and their young son to leave for New York.
First, Pal made a solo trip to New York. Not long after arriving, Columbia University offered him a lectureship on the process of making stop-motion films. Coincidentally, Barney Baliban, the president of Paramount Pictures' New York office, saw one of Pal's Puppetoon films at a party. He was so impressed by it that he contacted Pal and offered him a contract to make them for Paramount, either in New York or at their animation studio in Florida.
Pal returned to Holland and made arrangements for his family to leave Europe and move to America. Then, Frank Freeman, the President of Paramount Studios in Hollywood offered him a studio of his own and a staff of 25 film makers. The Pals arrived in New York early in 1940 and were soon settled in Beverly Hills, California.
In 1941, George and Zsoka's second son, Peter, was born.
From 1941 to 1947, Pal created more than 40 Puppetoon films, and received a special Academy Award in 1943. His studio staffers included Willis H. O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Wah Chang, and Gene Warren. He was also close friends with animation producer, Walter Lantz, as well as film pioneer, Walt Disney.
From 1948 to 1949, he began work on his first full-length motion pictures that combined live action with special photographic and sound effects. In the 1950s and 1960s, six of his films received Academy Awards. He worked with many gifted talents, including: director Byron Haskin; writers Robert A. Heinlein, Barré Lyndon, and David Duncan; cinematographers George Barnes, and Paul Vogel; visual-effects masters Gordon Jennings and his crew at Paramount, plus A. Arnold Gillespie, Wah Chang, and Gene Warren at MGM.
Pal also worked with sound-effects wizards Gene Garvin, Harry Lindgren, Franklin Milton, and Van Allen James; art directors Albert Nozaki, Hal Pereira, Ernst Fegté, and William Ferrari; film editors Everett Douglas and George Tomasini; composers Leith Stevens and Russell Garcia; space artist Chesley Bonestell; many animation craftsmen, including his son, David Pal, (who brought the elves to life in "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm") and Don Sahlin who would later go on to design the original Muppet characters; plus countless actors and actresses, many of whom are remembered to this day.
Throughout the 1970s, Pal worked on several film proposals, but only one was distributed. He passed away on May 2, 1980 while working on "The Voyage of the Berg" for AIP Filmways. It was never finished, but his other films endure.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Ray Bolger was born Raymond Wallace Bolger on January 10, 1904 in Dorchester, Massachusetts, to Anne C. (Wallace) and James Edward Bolger, both Irish-Americans. Ray began his career in vaudeville. He was half of a team called "Sanford and Bolger" and also did numerous Broadway shows on his own. Like Gene Kelly, he was a song-and-dance man as well as an actor. He was signed to a contract with MGM and his first role was as himself in The Great Ziegfeld (1936). This was soon followed by a role opposite Eleanor Powell in the romantic comedy Rosalie (1937). His first dancing and singing role was in Sweethearts (1938), where he did the "wooden shoes" number with redheaded soprano/actress Jeanette MacDonald. This got him noticed by MGM producers and resulted in his being cast in his most famous role, the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz (1939).
Surprisingly, even though the film was a success, Bolger's contract with MGM ended. He went to RKO Radio Pictures to make the romantic comedy Four Jacks and a Jill (1942). After this, Bolger went to Broadway, where he received his greatest satisfaction. In 1953, he turned to television and received his own sitcom, Where's Raymond? (1953), later changed to "The Ray Bolger Show". After his series ended, Bolger guest starred on many television series such as Battlestar Galactica (1978) and Fantasy Island (1977), and had some small roles in movies. In 1985, he co-hosted the documentary film That's Dancing! (1985) with Liza Minnelli. Ray Bolger died of bladder cancer in Los Angeles, California on January 15, 1987, five days after his 83rd birthday.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Paul Lynde was born in 1926 in Mount Vernon, Ohio (one of six children and the middle of four boys). His father was a local police officer and the sheriff of the Mount Vernon Jail for two years. Lynde got his inspiration to become an actor at the age of four or five after his mother took him to see the original silent film Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925). After graduating from Northwestern University, Lynde relocated to New York City where his first break came from being a stand-up comedian at the Number One Fifth Avenue nightclub. Then came an appearance on a Broadway show, "New Faces of 1952".
Lynde also had a two-year run on TV with Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall (1948) and the Broadway and film versions of Bye Bye Birdie (1963). Throught his life, Lynde appeared in the Broadway plays "The Impossible Years", "Don't Drink the Water", and "Plaza Suite". His many film credits include New Faces (1954), Send Me No Flowers (1964), and Rabbit Test (1978). One of his most memorable roles was a recurring role on Bewitched (1964) playing the sneering, sarcastic Uncle Arthur. He appeared on TV's The Dean Martin Show (1965), The Kraft Music Hall (1967), Donny and Marie (1975), and both the prime-time and daytime versions of the game show The Hollywood Squares (Daytime) (1965) where he occupied the famous center square. He had two TV series of his own, The Paul Lynde Show (1972) and The New Temperatures Rising Show (1972). Paul Lynde's witty, wisecracking one-liners and his novel line delivery made him one of Hollywood's funniest and best loved entertainers. Paul Lynde died under mysterious circumstances when he was found dead in his bed after possibly suffering a heart attack in January 1982 at age 55. He had been in ill-health for over a year with cancer or some other illness that was never fully revealed to the public before or after his death.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Karen Carpenter moved with her family to Downey, California, in 1963. Karen's older brother, Richard Carpenter, decided to put together an instrumental trio with him on the piano, Karen on the drums and their friend Wes Jacobs on the bass and tuba. In a battle of the bands at the Hollywood Bowl in 1966, the group won first place and landed a contract with RCA Records. However, RCA did not see a future in jazz tuba, and the contract was short-lived.
Karen and Richard formed another band, Spectrum, with four other fellow students from California State University at Long Beach that played several gigs before disbanding. In 1969, Karen and Richard made several demo music tapes and shopped them around to different record companies; they were eventually offered a contract with A&M Records. Their first hit was a reworking of The Beatles hit "Ticket to Ride", followed by a re-recorded version of Burt Bacharach's "Close to You", which sold a million copies.
Soon Richard and Karen became one of the most successful groups of the early 1970s, with Karen on the drums and lead vocals and Richard on the piano with backup vocals. They won three Grammy Awards, embarked on a world tour, and landed their own TV variety series in 1971, titled Make Your Own Kind of Music! (1971).
In 1975 the story came out when The Carpenters were forced to cancel a European tour because the gaunt Karen was too weak to perform. Nobody knew that Karen was at the time suffering from anorexia nervosa, a mental illness characterized by obsessive dieting to a point of starvation. In 1976 she moved out of her parents' house to a condo of her own.
While her brother Richard was recovering from his Quaalude addiction, Karen decided to record a solo album in New York City in 1979 with producer Phil Ramone. Encouraged by the positive reaction to it in New York, Karen was eager to show it to Richard and the record company in California, who were nonplussed. The album was shelved.
In 1980, she married real estate developer Thomas J. Burris. However, the unhappy marriage really only lasted a year before they separated. (Karen was to sign the divorce papers the day she died).
Shortly afterward, she and brother Richard were back in the recording studio, where they recorded their hit single "Touch Me When We're Dancing". However, Karen was unable to shake her depression as well as her eating disorder, and after realizing she needed help, she spent most of 1982 in New York City undergoing treatment. By 1983, Karen was starting to take control of her life and planning to return to the recording studio and to make public appearances again. In February of 1983, she went to her parents' house to sort through some old clothes she kept there when she collapsed in a walk-in closet from cardiac arrest. She was only 32. Doctors revealed that her long battle with anorexia nervosa had stressed her heart to the breaking point.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Probably best-remembered for his turbulent personal life with Elizabeth Taylor (whom he married twice), Richard Burton was nonetheless also regarded as an often brilliant British actor of the post-WWII period.
Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins in 1925 into a Welsh (Cymraeg)-speaking family in Pontrhydyfen to Edith Maude (Thomas) and Richard Walter Jenkins, a coal miner. The twelfth of thirteen children, his mother died while he was a toddler and his father later abandoned the family, leaving him to be raised by an elder sister, Cecilia. An avid fan of Shakespeare, poetry and reading, he once said "home is where the books are". He received a scholarship to Oxford University to study acting and made his first stage appearance in 1944.
His first film appearances were in routine British movies such as Woman of Dolwyn (1949), Waterfront Women (1950) and Green Grow the Rushes (1951). Then he started to appear in Hollywood movies such as My Cousin Rachel (1952), The Robe (1953) and Alexander the Great (1956), added to this he was also spending considerable time in stage productions, both in the UK and USA, often to splendid reviews. The late 1950s was an exciting and inventive time in UK cinema, often referred to as the "British New Wave", and Burton was right in the thick of things, and showcased a sensational performance in Look Back in Anger (1959). He also appeared with a cavalcade of international stars in the World War II magnum opus The Longest Day (1962), and then onto arguably his most "notorious" role as that of Marc Antony opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the hugely expensive Cleopatra (1963). This was, of course, the film that kick-started their fiery and passionate romance (plus two marriages), and the two of them appeared in several productions over the next few years including The V.I.P.s (1963), The Sandpiper (1965), the dynamic Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Taming of The Shrew (1967), as well as box office flops like The Comedians (1967). Burton did better when he was off on his own giving higher caliber performances, such as those in Becket (1964), the film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play The Night of the Iguana (1964), the brilliant espionage thriller The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) and alongside Clint Eastwood in the World War II action adventure film Where Eagles Dare (1968).
His audience appeal began to decline somewhat by the end of the 1960s as fans turned to younger, more virile male stars, however Burton was superb in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) as King Henry VIII, he put on a reasonable show in the boring Raid on Rommel (1971), was over the top in the awful Villain (1971), gave sleepwalking performances in Hammersmith Is Out (1972) and Bluebeard (1972), and was wildly miscast in the ludicrous The Assassination of Trotsky (1972).
By the early 1970s, quality male lead roles were definitely going to other stars, and Burton found himself appearing in some movies of dubious quality, just to pay the bills and support family, including Divorce His - Divorce Hers (1973) (his last on-screen appearance with Taylor), The Klansman (1974), Brief Encounter (1974), Jackpot (1974) (which was never completed) and Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). However, he won another Oscar nomination for his excellent performance as a concerned psychiatrist in Equus (1977). He appeared with fellow acting icons Richard Harris and Roger Moore in The Wild Geese (1978) about mercenaries in South Africa. While the film had a modest initial run, over the past thirty-five years it has picked up quite a cult following. His final performances were as the wily inquisitor "O'Brien" in the most recent film version of George Orwell's dystopian 1984 (1984), in which he won good reviews, and in the TV mini series Ellis Island (1984). He passed away on August 5, 1984 in Celigny, Switzerland from a cerebral hemorrhage.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Rock Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois, to Katherine (Wood), a telephone operator, and Roy Harold Scherer, an auto mechanic. He was of German, Swiss-German, English, and Irish descent. His parents divorced when he was eight years old. He failed to obtain parts in school plays because he couldn't remember lines. After high school he was a postal employee and during WW II served as a Navy airplane mechanic. After the war he was a truck driver. His size and good looks got him into movies. His name was changed to Rock Hudson, his teeth were capped, he took lessons in acting, singing, fencing and riding. One line in his first picture, Fighter Squadron (1948), needed 38 takes. In 1956 he received an Oscar nomination for Giant (1956) and two years later Look magazine named him Star of the Year. He starred in a number of bedroom comedies, many with Doris Day, and had his own popular TV series McMillan & Wife (1971). He had a recurring role in TV's Dynasty (1981) (1984-5). He was the first major public figure to announce he had AIDS, and his worldwide search for a cure drew international attention. After his death his long-time lover Marc Christian successfully sued his estate, again calling attention to the homosexuality Rock had hidden from most throughout his career.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant", Grant is said to have replied, "So would I."
Cary Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904 in Horfield, Bristol, England, to Elsie Maria (Kingdon) and Elias James Leach, who worked in a factory. His early years in Bristol would have been an ordinary lower-middle-class childhood, except for one extraordinary event. At age nine, he came home from school one day and was told his mother had gone off to a seaside resort. However, the real truth was that she had been placed in a mental institution, where she would remain for years, and he was never told about it (he would not see his mother again until he was in his late 20s).
He left school at age 14, lying about his age and forging his father's signature on a letter to join Bob Pender's troupe of knockabout comedians. He learned pantomime as well as acrobatics as he toured with the Pender troupe in the English provinces, picked up a Cockney accent in the music halls in London, and then in July 1920, was one of the eight Pender boys selected to go to the United States. Their show on Broadway, "Good Times", ran for 456 performances, giving Grant time to acclimatize. He would stay in America. Mae West wanted Grant for She Done Him Wrong (1933) because she saw his combination of virility, sexuality and the aura and bearing of a gentleman. Grant was young enough to begin the new career of fatherhood when he stopped making movies at age 62.
One biographer said Grant was alienated by the new realism in the film industry. In the 1950s and early 1960s, he had invented a man-of-the-world persona and a style - "high comedy with polished words". In To Catch a Thief (1955), he and Grace Kelly were allowed to improvise some of the dialogue. They knew what the director, Alfred Hitchcock, wanted to do with a scene, they rehearsed it, put in some clever double entendres that got past the censors, and then the scene was filmed. His biggest box-office success was another Hitchcock 1950s film, North by Northwest (1959) made with Eva Marie Saint since Kelly was by that time Princess of Monaco.
Although Grant retired from the screen, he remained active. He accepted a position on the board of directors at Faberge. By all accounts this position was not honorary, as some had assumed. Grant regularly attended meetings and traveled internationally to support them. The position also permitted use of a private plane, which Grant could use to fly to see his daughter wherever her mother Dyan Cannon, was working. He later joined the boards of Hollywood Park, the Academy of Magical Arts (The Magic Castle - Hollywood, California), Western Airlines (acquired by Delta Airlines in 1987) and MGM.
Grant expressed no interest in making a career comeback. He was in good health until almost the end of his life, when he suffered a mild stroke in October 1984. In his last years, he undertook tours of the United States in a one-man-show, "A Conversation with Cary Grant", in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. On November 29, 1986, Cary Grant died at age 82 of a cerebral hemorrhage in Davenport, Iowa.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Grant the second male star of Golden Age of Hollywood cinema (after Humphrey Bogart). Grant was known for comedic and dramatic roles; his best-known films include Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959) and Charade (1963).- Actor
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One of Hollywood's preeminent male stars of all time, James Cagney was also an accomplished dancer and easily played light comedy. James Francis Cagney was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, to Carolyn (Nelson) and James Francis Cagney, Sr., who was a bartender and amateur boxer. Cagney was of Norwegian (from his maternal grandfather) and Irish descent. Ending three decades on the screen, he retired to his farm in Stanfordville, New York (some 77 miles/124 km. north of his New York City birthplace), after starring in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961). He emerged from retirement to star in the 1981 screen adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel "Ragtime" (Ragtime (1981)), in which he was reunited with his frequent co-star of the 1930s, Pat O'Brien, and which was his last theatrical film and O'Brien's as well). Cagney's final performance came in the title role of the made-for-TV movie Terrible Joe Moran (1984), in which he played opposite Art Carney.- Producer
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Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III was born in Santiago, Cuba on March 2, 1917. His father was the mayor of Santiago. The 1933 revolution led by Fulgencio Batista had landed his father in jail and stripped the family of its wealth, property and power. His father was released because of the intercession of U.S. officials who believed him to be neutral during the revolt. The family fled to Miami, Florida. One of Desi's first jobs in America consisted of cleaning canary cages. However, after forming his own small band of musicians, he was hired by Xavier Cugat, the "king" of Latin music.
Desi soon left Cugat, formed his own Latin band, and literally launched the conga craze in America. He was cast in the Broadway play "Too Many Girls" and then brought to Hollywood to make the film version of the play. It was on the set of Too Many Girls (1940) that he and Lucille Ball met. They soon married and approximately 10 years later formed Desilu Productions and began the I Love Lucy (1951) shows. Desi and Lucille had two children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr.. At the end of the I Love Lucy (1951) run, which included The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957), the two divorced. Desi later wrote an autobiography entitled "A Book." In 1986 he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died on December 2, 1986 at age 69.- Heather Michele O'Rourke was born on December 27, 1975 in Santee, San Diego, California, to Kathleen, a seamstress, and Michael O'Rourke, a construction worker. She had German, Danish, English, and Irish ancestry.
Heather entered American cinematic pop-culture before first grade. She was sitting alone in the MGM Commissary waiting for her mother when a stranger approached her asking her name. "My name is Heather O'Rourke," she said. "But you're a stranger, and I can't talk to you". When her mother returned, the stranger introduced himself as Steven Spielberg. She failed her first audition when she laughed at a stuffed animal Spielberg presented her with. He thought she was just too young (she had just turned five), and he was actually looking for a girl at least 6 years old, but he saw something in her and asked her to come in a second time with a scary story book. He asked her to scream a lot. She screamed until she broke down in tears. The next day at the commissary, Spielberg told her and her family, "I don't know what it is about her, but she's got the job." She instantly became a star overnight and was easily recognized at her favorite theme park, Disneyland, and everywhere in California. In the years that followed, Heather was a familiar face on TV in Happy Days (1974) (1982-1983), Webster (1983) (1983-1984), and The New Leave It to Beaver (1983) (1986-1987), three shows in which she had recurring roles. In 1986, the highly anticipated sequel to her first movie, Poltergeist (1982), Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) debuted in theaters; it was her riveting performance in this film that cemented her a place in Hollywood history. In January 1987, Heather began to have flu-like symptoms and her legs and feet swelled. She was taken to Kaiser Hospital, and they confirmed it was only the flu, but when symptoms continued, they diagnosed her as having Crohn's Disease, a chronic inflammation of the intestine. She was on medication throughout the filming of her next project, Poltergeist III (1988), and her cheeks were puffy in some scenes. She never complained during filming and did not appear sick to fellow cast members.
When filming was completed in June, Heather and her family went on a road trip from Chicago, to New Orleans, to Orlando and all the way back to Lakeside where they lived at the time. Heather was well until January 31, 1988, Super Bowl Sunday. She was unable to keep anything in her stomach and crawled into bed with her parents that night, saying that she didn't feel well. The next morning, February 1, sitting at the breakfast table, she couldn't swallow her toast or Gatorade. Her mother noticed her fingers were blue and her hands were cold. Kathleen called the doctor's and was getting ready to put her clothes on when Heather fainted on the kitchen floor. When the paramedics came in, Heather insisted that she was "really okay" and was worried about missing school that day. In the ambulance, Heather suffered cardiac arrest and died on the operating table at 2:43 p.m. at the tender age of 12. Of all her achievements, Heather was proudest of being elected student body president of her 5th grade class in 1985. - Francis 'Dick' Scobee was born on 19 May 1939 in Cle Elum, Washington, USA. He was married to June Scobee Rodgers. He died on 28 January 1986 in over Atlantic Ocean.
- Michael J. Smith was born on 30 April 1945 in Beaufort, North Carolina, USA. He died on 28 January 1986 in over Atlantic Ocean.
- Ellison Onizuka was born on 24 June 1946 in Kealakekua, Kona, Hawaii, USA. He was married to Lorna Leiko Yoshida. He died on 28 January 1986 in over Atlantic Ocean.
- Judith A. Resnik was born on 5 April 1949 in Akron, Ohio, USA. She was married to Michael Oldak. She died on 28 January 1986 in over Atlantic Ocean.
- Ron McNair was born on 21 October 1950 in Lake City, South Carolina, USA. He was married to Cheryl Moore. He died on 28 January 1986 in over Atlantic Ocean.
- Gregory Jarvis was born on 24 August 1944 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He died on 28 January 1986 in over Atlantic Ocean.
- Christa McAuliffe was born on 2 September 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. She was married to Steven McAuliffe. She died on 28 January 1986 in over Atlantic Ocean.
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A blessing or a curse? Every silver lining has a cloud, yet sadly Andrew Roy Gibb had to find that out the hard way. Born the fifth and final child to parents Barbara (17 November 1920-12 August 2016) and Hugh Gibb (15 January 1916-6 March 1992) Andy grew up with his three older siblings dominating the music charts, collectively known as The Bee Gees. Performing at clubs from the age of 13, it was suspected that Andy was to join The Bee Gees, yet Andy always wanted to be his own personality.
Victimised at the many schools he went to by other students who were convinced he had a superiority complex due to his famous brothers, Andy escaped into his music. But it all came too fast and too soon. Andy was performing and making music by the time he was 20 years old, and it was virtually impossible to break away from his brothers shadows when older brother Barry wrote 90% of his songs, and the Bee Gees sang back up vocals on half of his songs. Andy got it all too fast, and his life was intermingled with years of depression that he tried to stay away with booze, drugs and women. While they all may have provided temporary relief, Andy was plagued by depression and the fact that no matter what he did, he could never escape his heritage. Toward the end of his life, Andy vowed to change and reform. He planned to clean up his act and reform. he was dabbling in stage musicals and TV, and he had a new album planned for release. On his 30th birthday he promised the people most dear to him: He was a changed man. Sadly Andy's heart and Andy's body were two very different things, and five days after his 30th birthday his body finally succumbed to the seemingly endless years of alcohol abuse. Andy may have been dead for almost two decades, but his music lives on. Andy Gibb was a legendary music figure, and when listening to some of his hit songs, such as '(Our Love) Don't throw it all away', 'man on fire' and 'I just want to be your everything' you don't hear death, you hear life.- 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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William Powell was on the New York stage by 1912, but it would be ten years before his film career would begin. In 1924 he went to Paramount Pictures, where he was employed for the next seven years. During that time, he played in a number of interesting films, but stardom was elusive. He did finally attract attention with The Last Command (1928) as Leo, the arrogant film director. Stardom finally came via his role as Philo Vance in The Canary Murder Case (1929), in which he investigates the death of Louise Brooks, "the Canary." Unlike many silent actors, sound boosted Powell's career. He had a fine, urbane voice and his stage training and comic timing greatly aided his introduction to sound pictures. However, he was not happy with the type of roles he was playing at Paramount, so in 1931 he switched to Warner Bros. There, he again became disappointed with his roles, and his last appearance for Warners was as Philo Vance in The Kennel Murder Case (1933). In 1934 Powell went to MGM, where he was teamed with Myrna Loy in Manhattan Melodrama (1934). While Philo made Powell a star, another detective, Nick Charles, made him famous. Powell received an Academy Award nomination for The Thin Man (1934) and later starred in the Best Picture winner for 1936, The Great Ziegfeld (1936). Powell could play any role with authority, whether in a comedy, thriller, or drama. He received his second Academy Award nomination for My Man Godfrey (1936) and was on top of the world until 1937, when he made his first picture with Jean Harlow, Reckless (1935). The two clicked, off-screen as well as on-screen, and shortly became engaged. One day, while Powell was filming Double Wedding (1937) on one MGM sound stage, Harlow became ill on another. She was finally taken to the hospital, where she died. Her death greatly upset both Powell and Myrna Loy, and he took six weeks off from making the movie to deal with his sorrow. After that he traveled, not making another MGM film for a year. He eventually did five sequels to "The Thin Man," the last one in 1947. He also received his third Academy Award nomination for his work in Life with Father (1947). His screen appearances became less frequent after that, and his last role was in 1955. He had come a long way from playing the villain in 1922.- Actor
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George Jessel gained fame in vaudeville, where it was not uncommon for him--and other performers, such as Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor--to perform in blackface, and in fact at age 11 Jessel was Cantor's vaudeville partner. Jessel acted in several movies in the '30s and became a respected film producer. He was also a prolific songwriter, and was noted for his renditions of "Sonny Boy" and "My Yiddishe Mama". In his later years he made many guest appearances (always as himself) on radio, in occasional movies and on TV. He was nicknamed "The Toastmaster General" due to his appearances at many testimonial functions and dinners for various celebrities.- Writer
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- Animation Department
During the heyday of cartoon slapstick in Hollywood, one basic tenet held precedence: namely, that an inseparable connection existed between perennial antagonists like Tom and Jerry, Sylvester and Tweetie, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam (or Elmer Fudd). In other words, one could not work without the other. Few people understood that better than Michael Maltese, one of the unsung heroes of animation, and, arguably, the best cartoon writer to emerge from this period. The son of Italian immigrant parents, Maltese learned his craft at the National Academy of Design in New York and began his career in animation in 1935, working on Betty Boop cartoons for Max Fleischer as an opaquer (colouring animation cels) and assistant animator. After two years, he moved to the West Coast and hooked up with Leon Schlesinger's studio at Warner Brothers (following his wife who had been hired as an 'in-betweener' for $20 a week). By August 1939, he had become an integral member of the story department. Maltese was briefly associated with Friz Freleng's unit but ended up spending the better part of his tenure at Warners (1946-58) as the indispensable gag man and storyboard artist for Chuck Jones.
Maltese had a zany sense of humour and was the wit behind many innovative Looney Tunes in-jokes and gags (especially those involving the Acme company !). As a character designer, he and Jones created Pepe Le Pew as a composite of French-born Hollywood star Charles Boyer (the archetypal romantic lover) and fellow animator Tedd Pierce (the skunk -- Pierce, an avid party animal, had a reputation for turning up at work unwashed and hung-over). Another Maltese-Jones creation, Yosemite Sam (whose 'real' cartoon name was -- amazingly -- Samuel Michelangelo Rosenbaum), was designed as the alter-ego of Friz Freleng, a guy notorious for his volatile temper and short fuse. Maltese was similarly instrumental in the evolution of the Road Runner/Coyote cartoons, having devised the concept of the 'ultimate chase' inaugurated by the episode Fast and Furry-ous (1949). Maltese derived the Road Runner's famous sound from layout artist Paul Julian, who had a habit of shouting 'beep-beep' to get people to scurry out of his way while carrying large paintings through the halls and passages of 'Termite Terrace'. For One Froggy Evening (1955), Maltese co-created the top-hatted vaudevillian Michigan J. Frog, a character for whom he also wrote an original piece of music, 'The Michigan Rag'.
In 1958, Maltese departed Warner Brothers (for reasons unknown) to work for newcomers Hanna-Barbera. As head of their story department, he was charged with writing a half-hour episode each week, helping in the development and success of Quick Draw McGraw (1959) (he originated the catchphrase "Exit, stage right" -- or left -- voiced by Snagglepuss), The Yogi Bear Show (1961) and The Flintstones (1960).
Beginning in the 1940's, Maltese frequently sidelined as author of comic book stories for Sangor, Dell (Daffy Duck cartoons) and Western Publishing (often featuring Bugs Bunny, Road Runner/Coyote or Pink Panther). In addition to providing his voice to several Looney Tunes creations, he also appeared as a real-life security guard in You Ought to Be in Pictures (1940), chasing an animated Porky Pig around the studio lot. Maltese never won an Oscar, though he would have made a most deserving recipient. Three years after his retirement in 1973, he was finally honoured with a Winsor McKay Award for lifetime achievement in animation. Warner Brothers paid him a little homage with a Sylvester & Tweetie cartoon, The Maltese Canary (1995) (a send-up of the classic 'Maltese Falcon') in which a store is named 'Mike Maltese's canaries'.- Actress
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She won a beauty contest at age fourteen. In 1920 her mother, Edith Shearer, took Norma and her sister Athole Shearer (Mrs. Howard Hawks) to New York. Ziegfeld rejected her for his "Follies," but she got work as an extra in several movies. She spent much money on eye doctor's services trying to correct her cross-eyed stare caused by a muscle weakness. Irving Thalberg had seen her early acting efforts and, when he joined Louis B. Mayer in 1923, gave her a five year contract. He thought she should retire after their marriage, but she wanted bigger parts. In 1927, she insisted on firing the director Viktor Tourjansky because he was unsure of her cross-eyed stare. Her first talkie was in The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929); four movies later, she won an Oscar in The Divorcee (1930). She intentionally cut down film exposure during the 1930s, relying on major roles in Thalberg's prestige projects: The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) and Romeo and Juliet (1936) (her fifth Oscar nomination). Thalberg died of a second heart attack in September, 1936, at age 37. Norma wanted to retire, but MGM more-or-less forced her into a six-picture contract. David O. Selznick offered her the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939), but public objection to her cross-eyed stare killed the deal. She starred in The Women (1939), turned down the starring role in Mrs. Miniver (1942), and retired in 1942. Later that year she married Sun Valley ski instructor Martin Arrouge, eleven years younger than she (he waived community property rights). From then on, she shunned the limelight; she was in very poor health the last decade of her life.- Actress
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She was dubbed "The Songbird of the South" and would be forever etched in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans as a true American symbol of World War II, especially after giving voice to Irving Berlin's classic song "God Bless America." Her inspiring rendition went on to sell millions of war bonds and even helped a hockey team in the 1970s win the Stanley Cup.
Singing patriot Kate Smith was born Kathryn Elizabeth Smith on May 1, 1907. As a child she showed a devoted interest toward singing and dancing, initially appearing in jazz nightclubs before opting for a standard music career. Discovered by the famed singer/dancer Eddie Dowling, Kate made her Broadway debut in his musical comedy "Honeymoon Lane" in 1926. Double-chinned and exceedingly heavyset, she served as the plump, singing slapstick foil to the star, and continued in that same predictable vein with the subsequent tour of "Hit the Deck" and in "Flying High" the 1930 Broadway show headlining Bert Lahr.
Unhappy at being made fun of in burlesque comedy and preferring to focus on her natural singing ability, Kate quickly joined forces with Columbia Records vice president Ted Collins who subsequently became her partner, protector and manager. Pointing her in the direction of radio, Kate made her debut in 1931 and her stardom was secured by year's end. She went on to break the record for longevity at the renown Palace Theatre. Her radio celebrity prompted a guest cameo role in the Paramount musical film The Big Broadcast (1932) singing what would become her signature piece "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain" (she had co-written the lyrics).
This, in turn, led to her first and only film vehicle. In Hello, Everybody! (1933), Kate Smith literally played Kate Smith, a meek, plus-sized radio singer who unabashedly tends to her farm in between jobs while losing the man of her dreams (Randolph Scott) to her svelte-looking sister, played by Sally Blane. As expected, Kate's character finds true happiness not in the arms of a man but in the helping and caring of others. True to form, Kate never married. Realizing she was not at all film material, Kate wisely stuck with radio and recordings, appearing in a film only one other time--as a guest singing "God Bless America" in the Warner Bros. star-studded variety show This Is the Army (1943).
She began making records in 1926 and over the years her best-selling hits would include "River, Stay 'Way From My Door" (1931), "The Woodpecker Song" (1940), "The White Cliffs of Dover" (1941), "I Don't Want to Walk Without You" (1942), "There Goes That Song Again" (1944), "Seems Like Old Times" (1946), "Now Is the Hour" (1947) and "How Great Thou Art (1965).
Kate had one of the most popular radio variety shows with "The Kate Smith Hour", which aired weekly from 1937-1945. At the same time she fronted the top daytime radio show with the midday "Kate Smith Speaks," a news and commentary program. She made a grand and memorable entrance at Carnegie Hall in 1963 and performed for Arthur Fiedler and his Boston Pops in 1967.
Television was also a successful medium for the singing star with a Monday-Friday afternoon variety show The Kate Smith Hour (1950) which ran four years. The show proved so popular that NBC handed her the prime time The Kate Smith Evening Hour (1951) to host as well. A variety show favorite, she appeared for Ed Sullivan, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Jack Paar, Dean Martin, Andy Williams, Tony Orlando, and Carol Burnett.
During her last productive decade, she gave live concerts and performed in clubs all over the country. Illness would intervene in the 1970s and diabetes forced her to retire, eventually crippling her and confining her to a wheelchair. 79-year-old Kate died of major complications in Raleigh, North Carolina, on June 17, 1986.- Actor
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George Raft was born and grew up in a poor family in Hell's Kitchen, at the time one of the roughest, meanest areas of New York City. He was born George Ranft, and was the son of Eva (Glockner) and Conrad Ranft, a department store deliveryman. His parents were both of German descent. In his youth, he showed a great interest in, and aptitude for, dancing. That, combined with his dark good looks and sharp dressing, made him a local favorite at such spots as the El Fey Club with Texas Guinan. In 1928, Raft went to Hollywood to try his luck at acting. His first big role was as the coin-tossing henchman in Scarface (1932). His career was marked by numerous tough-guy roles, often a gangster or convict. The believability with which he played these, together with his lifelong associations with such real-life gangsters as Owney Madden and Bugsy Siegel, added to persistent rumors that he was also a gangster. The slightly shady reputation may have helped his popularity early on, but it made him somewhat undesirable to movie executives later in his career. He somewhat parodied his gangster reputation in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959).- Actress
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Rita Hayworth was born Margarita Carmen Cansino on October 17, 1918, in Brooklyn, New York, into a family of dancers. Her father, Eduardo Cansino Reina, was a dancer as was his father before him. He emigrated from Spain in 1913. Rita's American mother, Volga Margaret (Hayworth), who was of mostly Irish descent, met Eduardo in 1916 and were married the following year. Rita, herself, studied as a dancer in order to follow in her family's footsteps. She joined her family on stage when she was eight years old when her family was filmed in a movie called La Fiesta (1926). It was her first film appearance, albeit an uncredited one. Sotted by Fox studio head Winfield R. Sheehan, she signed her first studio contract, and make her film debut at age sixteen, in Dante's Inferno (1935), followed by Cruz Diablo (1934). She continued to play small bit parts in several films under the name of "Rita Cansino". Fox dropped her after five small roles, but expert, exploitative promotion by her first husband Edward Judson soon brought Rita a new contract at Columbia Pictures, where studio head Harry Cohn changed her surname to Hayworth and approved raising her hairline by electrolysis. She played the second female lead, Judy McPherson, in Only Angels Have Wings (1939). After thirteen minor roles, Columbia lent her to Warner Bros. for her first big success, The Strawberry Blonde (1941); her splendid dancing with Fred Astaire in You'll Never Get Rich (1941) made her a star. This was the film that exuded the warmth and seductive vitality that was to make her famous. Her natural, raw beauty was showcased later that year in Blood and Sand (1941), filmed in Technicolor.
Rita was probably the second most popular actress after Betty Grable. In You'll Never Get Rich (1941) with Fred Astaire, was probably the film that moviegoers felt close to Rita. Her dancing, for which she had studied all her life, was astounding. After the hit Gilda (1946) (her dancing had made the film and it had made her), her career was on the skids. Although she was still making movies, they never approached her earlier success. The drought began between The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Champagne Safari (1954). Then after Salome (1953), she was not seen again until Pal Joey (1957). Part of the reasons for the downward spiral was television, but also Rita had been replaced by a new star at Columbia, Kim Novak.
Rita, herself, said, "Men fell in love with Gilda, but they wake up with me". In person, Rita was shy, quiet and unassuming; only when the cameras rolled did she turn on the explosive sexual charisma that in Gilda (1946) made her a superstar. To Rita, though, domestic bliss was a more important, if elusive, goal, and in 1949 she interrupted her career for marriage - unfortunately an unhappy one almost from the start - to the playboy Prince Aly Khan. Her films after her divorce from Khan include perhaps her best straight acting performances, Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) and They Came to Cordura (1959).
After a few, rather forgettable films in the 1960s, her career was essentially over. Her final film was The Wrath of God (1972). Her career was really never the same after Gilda (1946). Perhaps Gene Ringgold said it best when he remarked, "Rita Hayworth is not an actress of great depth. She was a dancer, a glamorous personality, and a sex symbol. These qualities are such that they can carry her no further professionally." Perhaps he was right but Hayworth fans would vehemently disagree with him.
Beginning in 1960 (age 42), early onset of Alzheimer's disease (undiagnosed until 1980) limited Rita's ability. The last few roles in her 60-film career were increasingly small. With 20 years of symptoms, Rita was cared for by her daughter, Yasmin Khan, until Rita's death at age 68 on May 14, 1987, in New York City.- Actor
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Ian Curtis was born in Old Trafford, Manchester, at the Memorial Hospital. He grew up listening to The Who and The Rolling Stones, and other heroes of his teenage years included David Bowie, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and James Dean. He especially liked musicians whose lyrics spoke of death, or those who had died at their peak. He attended the King's School in Macclesfield, where he took his first overdose with a friend. During their customary "social services" hours on Wednesdays, they would visit the homes of elderly pensioners, and would usually take drugs out of their medicine cabinets. With friend Oliver Cleaver, Ian took an accidental overdose of chlorpromazine hydrochloride, brand name Largactil, which was used to treat schizophrenia. Both had their stomachs pumped, and were kept from being expelled when Oliver said he had been trying to kill himself.
Ian met his future wife Deborah in 1972. After he quit school and his family moved to New Moston, Manchester, Ian stopped experimenting with drugs. He and Deborah were married on August 23, 1975. During several moves from different houses, Ian and Deborah spent short periods of time living in his grandparents' basement. On 20 July 1976, Ian saw the Sex Pistols play at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall. He had missed their first show, but was inspired just as much by the second. Always having been a music fan, Ian felt driven to join a band. After moving back to Macclesfield, Ian found his place in the band Joy Division, then called Warsaw. The band consisted of Bernard Sumner on guitar, Peter Hook on bass, and Stephen Morris on drums. During the years of 1977-1980, the band took off and became a part of Tony Wilson's label, Factory records. They released one EP, "An Ideal for Living," in January 1977, and two official albums: "Unknown Pleasures" in June 1979, and "Closer," released posthumously in July 1980. Ian first discovered that he suffered from epilepsy in December 1978, while his wife was pregnant with their daughter Natalie. The pills he took to help his epilepsy are believed by many to be the cause of Ian's intense depression from that point up until his death. Another major contributing factor was Ian's ongoing affair with a woman named Annik Honore, who he first met in late 1979. With a wife and daughter at home, Ian usually saw Annik at Joy Division gigs and on their tours, where wives were not allowed. On April 7, 1980, Ian took an overdose of Phenobarbitone, which he announced to his wife. She rushed him to the hospital. He had his stomach pumped, and was pronounced not suicidal. The day following his suicide attempt, he performed with Joy Division at Derby Hall, Bury. Ian had only sung two songs when a riot broke out. Tony Wilson found Ian crying upstairs, and to comfort him, reminded him about the Lou Reed gig at the Free Trade Hall where there had also been a bottle-throwing riot. The last Joy Division performance was May 2, at Birmingham University. Ian spent the last few months of his life moving back and forth between other people's houses, rarely staying at home. When he did return home, it was to watch the film Stroszek (1977), by one of his heroes, Werner Herzog. He had been living with his parents at the time, and wouldn't want to upset them by watching such a dark film. He wrote a letter to his wife Deborah, which spoke of the troubles in his life, and the love he felt for her and Natalie. He did write that he wished he was dead, but did not speak of any intentions to kill himself. After this, he is believed to have taken photographs of his daughter and wife down to look at, and to have listened to Iggy Pop's "The Idiot." He was discovered in the morning by his wife, Deborah, having committed suicide by hanging. The date of his death was May 18, 1980.- Actor
- Composer
- Music Department
Ronald Belford Scott was born on July 9, 1946 in Kirriemuir, Scotland, UK. In 1952, the Scott family relocated to Australia. Bon's strong distaste for authority led him to quit his studies at the age of 15. Bon's earliest musical efforts were both on vocals and drums. His first "real" job in the music business was in a pop band called The Valentines, whose single "Every Day I Have To Cry" reached the top five of the local charts. On September 1969, however, The Valentines were arrested for dope possession which shattered their clean-cut image beyond repair, and the band officially called it quits a few months later. Within six months of The Valentine's dissolution, Bon joined a new blues-rock band called Fraternity; the efforts of the band to achieve some success in Europe were largely fruitless and they returned to Australia slightly disillusioned. After returning home, Bon was involved in a motorbike accident that left him in a coma for three days and in the hospital for several months, ending his association with Fraternity. Now based in Adelaide, Bon was reduced to taking on casual work until the day he was offered the chance to drive the bus for this new and really young rock band called AC/DC around. But Bon harboured ambitions to front the band. He persuaded the Young brothers that the band needed a better frontman and he suggested himself as the ideal replacement. And when former singer Dave Evans failed to turn up for a show, Bon seized his chance. With Bon Scott as a frontman, AC/DC got into sharp focus and the next five and a half years saw them getting more popular with each passing year, ultimately achieving world-wide success with their million-selling "Highway To Hell". The band's legendary status is believed to be largely due to the period spent with Bon Scott as the band's lead singer. Yet Bon Scott was also an excessive drinker and this would ultimately lead to tragedy. After a night of heavy drinking, Bon died in a car parked outside a friend's flat in South London sometime on February 19, 1980. He was prononced dead on arrival at Kings College Hospital. Bon Scott lies in the Fremantle Cemetery's Memorial Garden in Australia.- Music Department
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- Composer
John Bonham is still regularly voted in polls as the greatest and most influential rock drummer of all time, an opinion which has also been expressed by the likes of Roger Taylor of Queen, Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
He started playing drums at the age of five using a makeshift kit and later progressed to real drums. His influences included great American jazz drummers such as Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. He played in a series of bands and formed an association with Robert Plant through Band of Joy, who combined blues, psychedelics and extended musical workouts. According to Plant: "Bonzo was totally and absolutely devoted to getting it right. Everything that he listened to he could go beyond, not only could he recreate it but he could take it somewhere new. He knew that he was a powerhouse among drummers... we seemed to have a great affinity for each other."
Although Bonham and Plant went their separate ways after Band of Joy, they reunited in The Yardbirds, which already featured Jimmy Page. John Paul Jones joined and this led to the formation of Led Zeppelin, who released their first album in 1969. They went on to become the biggest rock band of the 1970s, achieving extraordinary success in the United States in particular.
Bonham died aged 32 in 1980. He had a reputation as a heavy drinker and had consumed too much vodka in the 24 hours before his death, which caused vomiting and asphyxiation. The coroner returned a verdict of accidental death. Led Zeppelin announced they were finished as a band. According to Page, the band could not have continued without him, he was so integral to their sound. They didn't play again as Led Zeppelin until Live Aid (1985), which included Plant's solo drummer Phil Collins and The Power Station's Tony Thompson replacing him in a performance which has been disowned by the band. Bonham's son, Jason Bonham, has become a successful drummer himself and a member of Led Zeppelin for subsequent reunion performances.- Composer
- Soundtrack
Clifford Lee Burton was born on February 10, 1962 in Castro Valley, California, to Janet (Morgen) and Ray Herbert Burton. He had two siblings. His mother was from a German Jewish family, and his father was of British Isles descent.
As a youngster, Clifford always liked music, listening to genres such as blues, classical, country and jazz, and he even liked the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He loved all kinds of music, and when he attended college he became educated in music theory. At the age of six he learned to play his first instrument, the piano. When he became a teenager he learned to play the bass guitar and took lessons from September 1978 to January 1980. He had played in several bands before he joined a band that would later go on to become one of the most popular and successful bands of all time.
In 1982 he played at the Whiskey A-Go-Go in Los Angeles and was spotted by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, who were forming a heavy metal band and were searching for a new bassist with creativity. The two had gone to the Whiskey A-Go-Go at the recommendation of Brian Slagel of Metal Blade Records. Hetfield and Ulrich were greatly impressed with Burton's bass playing and asked him to join their band, Metallica. At first Burton didn't want to join Metallica, but agreed to join if the band was willing to relocate to San Francisco, which they did. Burton went on to perform on the band's first three albums ("Kill 'Em All", "Ride The Lightning" and "Master of Puppets"), which all became hits, and with these three albums he instantly became a favorite musician amongst many music fans, with his impressive bass playing, powerful stage presence and very opinionated and honest personality. Things were looking bright for Burton but, sadly, his life was cut tragically short in 1986. After Metallica had finished touring with Ozzy Osbourne in 1985 they began touring in 1986. On the morning of September 27 the bus the band was touring in was driving from Stockholm, Sweden, to Copenhagen, Denmark, to perform some more gigs, and it went into a slide on some icy roads. Burton was thrown out of the bus' window and the bus fell on its side and crushed him. His Metallica bandmates were devastated over Burton's death, as were the band's fans. Burton was a powerful force in Metallica and his loss is seen by many as one of the most tragic losses in the history of music, which it is, because Burton was extremely talented and helped to contribute to some of Metallica's most successful songs. Not only that, but his live performances were also very powerful and he was very friendly and down-to-earth, very honest and opinionated and always willing to express his thoughts and feelings.
Metallica paid tribute to Burton by releasing the home video _Cliff 'Em All (1987) (V)_ and by using several unused riffs and a poem of his on their song "To Live Is To Die", which appeared on their acclaimed 1988 album "...And Justice For All". Burton may be gone, but he'll never be forgotten, and he will always be remembered by both Metallica and their fans, as well as music fans in general, and his contributions to the music industry are some of the finest that were made.- Composer
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Muddy Waters (born McKinley Morganfield) was one of the major forces in contemporary blues. He was instrumental in bringing the sound of the Mississippi Delta to Chicago in the 1940s, where his recordings for the Chess label exerted an enormous influence on both blues and rock musicians from the mid-'50s to the present day. Muddy made his first recordings for the Library of Congress in the early 1940s, offering a style that was highly influenced by the legendary Robert Johnson. It was after World War II that Muddy, who had relocated to Chicago, began recording electric versions of his blues. Such well-known classics as "I Can't Be Satisfied", "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Got My Mojo Workin'", "I Just Want To Make Love To You" and many more redefined the sound of blues for modern audiences. Over the years his band included such musicians as Otis Spann, Little Walter (aka Little Walter Jacobs), James Cotton, Junior Wells, Willie Dixon and numerous legends of the blues. He also inspired legions of young, white musicians to try their hand at the blues, including Mike Bloomfield, Johnny Winter, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Paul Butterfield, many of whom covered Muddy's music.- Writer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Randy Rhoads was born on 6 December 1956 in Santa Monica, California, USA. He was a writer, known for Ghost Rider (2007), Megamind (2010) and Tag (2018). He died on 19 March 1982 in Leesburg, Florida, USA.- Actor
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- Music Department
Raul Santos Seixas 28 June 1945 - 21 August 1989) was a Brazilian rock composer, singer, songwriter and producer. He is sometimes called the "Father of Brazilian Rock" and "Maluco Beleza", the last one roughly translated as "Groovy Nutcase". He was born in Salvador (Bahia), Brazil. Every year on Seixas' birthday, legions of fans, including thousands of impersonators (many even changing their last name to Seixas as a sign of passionate admiration), throw a parade in his honor in downtown São Paulo.[1]
His body of work consists of 21 albums released throughout his 26-year career. His musical style is varied, though Rock'n'Roll, folk, and ballads form much of his oeuvre. Raul Seixas also wrote songs that blended non-Anglo styles, including variations of rhythms typical of his native Northeast Brazil like Forró, Baião, Maxixe, Candomblé drumming, and in fact, often used more than one style in the same song, such as in "Let Me Sing, Let Me Sing". 'Canto para minha morte' (Song for my death) is a rock-tango of deep spiritual resonance. His debut album, Raulzito e os Panteras, was produced when he was part of a band of the same name. However, he only gained prominence and critical audience with songs from the album Krig-Há, Bandolo! (1973), such as "Ouro de Tolo" ("Fool's Gold"), 'Mosca na Sopa' ("Fly in the Soup"), and 'Metamorfose Ambulante' ("Walking Metamorphosis"). Raul Seixas developed a musical style that emphasized the free-spirit and the mystic. His album Gita (1974), influenced by figures such as Aleister Crowley, expresses his views directly. Although Raul Seixas never described himself as an adept of Tropicália (Os Mutantes, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom Zé, Gal Costa, Jorge Ben Jor, etc), his openness to exploring and mingling sounds and rhythms of different times and cultures with an iconoclastic shows that Tropicália did seem to have a degree of influence in Raul Seixas' artistic output.
Many songs in Gita were co-written with his frequent collaborator, then-fellow mystic and future worldwide bestselling author Paulo Coelho. Raul was interested in philosophy (especially metaphysics and ontology), psychology, history, literature and Latin. In October 2008, nineteen years after his death, Raul Seixas was placed in 19th position in a list of one hundred greatest artists of Brazilian music sponsored by the Brazilian edition of Rolling Stone magazine,[2] topping the likes of Milton Nascimento, Maria Bethânia, Heitor Villa-Lobos and others, demonstrating the influence that Seixas' music continues to hold today.- My-ca Dinh Le was born on 8 January 1975 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He died on 23 July 1982 in Indian Dunes, California, USA.
- Renee Chen was born on 1 April 1976 in Taiwan. She died on 23 July 1982 in Indian Dunes, California, USA.
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Cartoonist Otto Messmer was born in Union City (then known as West Hoboken), NJ, on Aug. 16, 1892. He showed an aptitude for drawing as early as grammar school, and his teachers encouraged him to follow that path. After graduating he took a correspondence course in art and attended the Thomas School of Art in New York City. He took a job with an advertising agency, illustrating fashion catalogs, but never lost his passion for drawing. One day his brother took him to a vaudeville act that showed the films of pioneering animator Winsor McCay and Messmer knew what career path he was going to follow. He began drawing his own comic strips and submitting them to newspapers. He also applied to several animation studios in New York for work as a set painter. Producer Jack Cohn at Universal saw Messmer's comic strips, however, liked them and hired him as an animator.
Messmer devised a character called "Motor Mat", a daredevil race driver, and brought it to Cohn. Cohn showed it to well-known animators Pat Sullivan and Henry 'Hy' Mayer, who were so impressed with it that they both asked Messmer to work with them. Messmer chose Mayer and helped him animate his series "The Travels of Teddy", based on the exploits of Mayer's friend Theodore Roosevelt. After Messmer finished that project he went to work for Pat Sullivan. Unfortunately for both of them, Sullivan was arrested for rape in 1917, convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. Messmer went back to Hy Mayer, but was soon drafted into the army and fought in World War I, returning to the US in 1919. By that time Sullivan was out of prison, and the two went back to making animated films.
Later that year Sullivan and Messmer received an order from Paramount Screen Magazine, which made news, travelogue and cartoon shorts, to create a cartoon character (the animator it had originally contracted with was late turning it in) and Sullivan told Messmer to do it on his own. Messmer made the character a sassy, all-black cat and called the cartoon "Feline Follies". It was quite successful and Paramount ordered an entire series of the cat's adventures. Messmer originally called the character "Master Tom" but by the third entry in the series the name had changed to Felix (a combination of "feline" and "felicity").
In 1921 Paramount Pictures decided to close down its Screen Magazine division, and Sullivan managed to get back the rights to Felix the Cat, which had actually belonged to Paramount (even though Sullivan's studio had created it). He then went to Warner Bros. to try to get a distribution deal, but the studio wasn't interested. However, M.J. Winkler, the secretary to Harry Warner, was interested and she and Sulivan eventually signed a production/distribution deal for the Felix the Cat series.
The first entry under the deal was Felix Saves the Day (1922), and it wasn't long before the series was an even bigger hit than it was under Paramount, even managing to secure distribution in Canada. The Messmer/Winkler Felix cartoons were praised for their imagination, humor, puns and intelligence. The success of the series resulted in the company securing an international distribution deal in 1922 that required more than double the number of entries from the previous year, with the resultant expansion of the studio.
Felix was a huge hit with the public, which took him to heart. In 1923 the company turned Felix into a comic strip, which ran until 1943. The strip was popular, but never achieved the status of the cartoons. In addition, the international distribution made the character a worldwide hit.
Felix's popularity began to wane with the coming of sound. Rather than jump wholeheartedly into sound cartoons, as Walt Disney did, Sullivan simply added sound effects to some new Felix films (and went back and did the same to some older entries). The result was shoddy and not up to the standards of the Disney sound cartoons. By 1931 Felix had been eclipsed by a new character, which incorporated both sound effects and dialogue as integral parts of the film, and not just add-ons: Mickey Mouse.
Television revived Felix's career, and new cartoons were created especially for that medium. This time he didn't carry the films alone--he was accompanied by his bulldog Rock Bottom, the eccentric Professor, his somewhat nerdy nephew Poindexter and his "Magic Bag of Tricks".
Otto Messmer died on October 28, 1983, in Fort Lee, NJ, at 91 years of age.