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- Emile Gaboriau has been described both as the father of the detective novel and the Edgar Allan Poe of France. His fictional detective, Monsieur Lecoq, is thought to have been based on the "Mémoires" (1828-29) of Eugène-François Vidocq, a reformed petty criminal who helped establish the Police de Sûreté in Paris. Lecoq is considered a precursor of Sherlock Holmes. Gaboriau wrote 21 novels altogether.
- Adopted by strict Methodist parents as a child, Georgia Sothern was discovered via a beauty pageant and became a burlesque artist in 1935. Her specialties were a 20-minute dance with two boa constrictors, "Elmer" and "Oscar", and her "Dance of the Wandering Hands". It was only in 1954 that she stopped stripping, to run a number of different nightclubs in the New York and Miami areas. Although she taught younger girls routines, she refused to divulge the secrets of her famous snake dance. She appeared intermittently in films throughout her career. In 1974 she retired to Florida, where she bred Persian cats.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Zoie Palmer is an English-Canadian actress, born in Calne, Wiltshire, England, to parents of Irish and British descent. She earned her B.F.A. at York University in Toronto, Canada, in 2001; and has since been featured in a variety of film and television projects, including the critically acclaimed The Reagans (2003) as Patti Reagan and Out of the Ashes (2003) as Didi Goldstein; and starred as Abby in Devil's Perch (2005). Palmer has guest-starred in several television series, such as The CW action drama Nikita (2010) in the episode "Girl's Best Friend" as Anya Vimer; in the HBO Canada comedy Call Me Fitz (2010) episode "Don of Differently Abled" as Laura (2011); and the CTV crime drama The Listener (2009) episode "The Shooting" as Staff Sgt. McCoy (2012). She had a recurring role in the popular CTV music drama Instant Star (2004) as rock singer Patsy Sewer (2006-2007); was a co-lead in the Global drama The Guard (2008) as Carly Greig; and starred as Dr. Lauren Lewis in the groundbreaking Showcase supernatural drama Lost Girl (2010). Zoie played the main role of The Android in the science fiction series Dark Matter (2015). Film work includes the award winning short Terminal Venus (2003) as Annabelle; horror thriller Devil (2010) as Cheryl; crime thriller Cold Blooded (2012) as officer Frances Jane; comedy Sex After Kids (2013) as Lou; and the fantasy adventure Patch Town (2014) as Bethany. In 2011, Zoie Palmer was nominated for "Outstanding Performance - Female" by ACTRA for her performance as Haley in The Untitled Work of Paul Shepard (2010). She was awarded "Best Actor" for "Terminal Venus" at the 2004 Baja Film Festival (Mexico), and the "Gold Medallion Acting Award for Best Actress in a Feature Film" for "Cold Blooded" by the 2012 BareBones International Film Festival (US). In 2014, Palmer received the "Fan Choice Award for Favourite Canadian Screen Star" by the Canadian Screen Awards.- Poet, playwright, novelist and screenwriter Zoë Akins was born on the day before Halloween in 1886 in Humansville, Missouri. She was home-schooled before attending the Monticello Seminary in Godfrey, Illinois, and Hosmer Hall in St. Louis for her education. Akins lived in St. Louis for many years, writing poetry and contributing criticism to the magazine "Reedy's Mirror". As a writer she developed into a successful contributor to the leading magazines of the day.
Akins wrote 40 plays, starting with the sophisticated comedy "Papa" in 1914. "The Magical City", which was part of the repertory of the Washington Square Players' 1915-16 season, was her first Broadway production, opening on October 4, 1915. There were to be another 17 original plays of hers produced on Broadway over the next 30 years.
Her first big hit was "Declassée", which starred Ethel Barrymore and ran for 257 performances in the 1919-20 season. She did not have another big hit until "The Greeks Had a Word for It", which ran for 253 performances in the 1930-21 season. Her most famous play, "The Old Maid"--an adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel--ran for 305 performances from January through September 1935. The play brought Akins the 1935 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. None of her plays has ever been revived on Broadway.
Her play "Daddy's Gone A-Hunting" was the first to be adapted by Hollywood, serving as the basis for the 1925 film of the same name (Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1925)) directed by Frank Borzage. Hollywood also bought "Declassée" (which it adapted twice, as a 1925 silent 0Déclassé (1925)] and as a 1928 sound film, Her Private Life (1929)) and "The Moon-Flower", which was turned into Eve's Secret (1925). In 1930 she became a screenwriter herself, writing the dialogue for Sarah and Son (1930), a "woman's picture" directed by Dorothy Arzner, the sole woman director to successfully make the transition from silents to sound in Hollywood. Akins and Arzner would also collaborate on Anybody's Woman (1930), Working Girls (1931) and Christopher Strong (1933), Katharine Hepburn's second film; her debut was in Morning Glory (1933), based on an Akins play that did not make it to Broadway. The role brought Hepburn the first of her four Academy Awards as Best Actress.
Apart from the movies made from her plays and her novel "Pardon My Glove" (adapted as Ladies Love Brutes (1930)), Akins wrote, adapted or contributed the story to 15 motion pictures. Her most famous film, as a contributing writer, was the classic Camille (1936), which she worked on along with James Hilton and Frances Marion.
Zoë Atkins died in Los Angeles, California, on October 29, 1958, one day before what would have been her 72nd birthday. - Zena Keefe was born in San Francisco, California, on June 26, 1896. The actress who was to make a total of 28 films started her career at the age of 16 when she played a bit part in The Hieroglyphic (1912). After The Gamblers (1912) later that year, four years elapsed before she would appear onscreen again, in The Rail Rider (1916). Her first real meaty role, however, came later that year when she played "Mary Winslow" in Her Maternal Right (1916). For the rest of her career she was not as busy as she would have liked--in the film industry's early years it was not unusual for performers to make 20 films a year, but Zena was turning out only three or four. She stayed with her craft throughout the 1920s, making her final film in 1924, Trouping with Ellen (1924).
On November 16, 1977, Zena Keefe died at the age of 81 in Danvers, Massachusetts. - Art Director
Tse-tung Mao, along with Yat-sen Sun and Kai-Shek Chiang, was one of the most important figures to modern Chinese history. Born to a peasant family--his father was a farmer--in Shaoshan, China, on December 26, 1893, Mao was raised in the grinding poverty of rural Hunan province, where he developed a hatred of the Imperial Chinese government while still a boy. In 1911 Mao left school to join the revolution against Manchu rule. In the years that followed, Mao grew increasingly more radical, and in 1921 became one of the founding members of the Chinese Communist Party. When a power struggle between the Communists and Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists erupted into open warfare in 1927, Mao proclaimed "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun" and eagerly joined the fight. Badly outnumbered by Chaing's army, the Communists were slowly driven out of eastern China and, on the brink of defeat, Mao led a retreat to the mountains of the northwest in 1934, a 6,000-mile trek that became known as "The Long March". Mao emerged as one of the top field commanders and became the chairman of the Chinese People's Communist Party.
After forming a new headquarters at Yenan, Mao remodeled the shattered Red Army into a powerful guerrilla force. By 1937 they were fighting the invading Japanese army from their bases in Manchuria. Striking a truce with the Nationalists, the Communists formed an uneasy alliance with Chaing's army to fight the invading Japanese. After the defeat of Japan in World War II in 1945, Mao's forces soon renewed their struggle against the Nationalists for control of China. By striking where Chiang was weak and cultivating the support of the rural peasants, the Communists were able to negate the Nationalist army's overwhelming superiority in men and materials, and by late 1948 the tide had turned against Chiang. In January 1949 Peking fell to the Red Army, forcing Chaing to flee into exile in Taiwan. In October, 1949 Canton, the last Nationalist stronghold, surrendered and on December 7, 1949, the last Nationalists fled to Taiwan, leaving Mao as the undisputed leader of the newly formed People's Republic of China.
Mao established control on China with a "rule of law" similar to the one in the Soviet Union and began to rebuild the war-torn country. A cunning, intelligent and frequently ruthless leader, Mao slowly helped China grow to become a world power. Relations with the US remained cold, and Mao sent Chinese "volunteers"--who were actually regular troops of the Chinese army--to fight with his Communist allies in North Korea in the early 1950s when they were on the verge of defeat after having initially invaded South Korea. Relations remained cold after China tested its first nuclear weapon in the late 1950s. Mao's so-called "five-year plans" to rebuild the farming and industrial economy cost the lives of millions of peasants and political opponents who spoke out against his policies. As relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated in the late 1960s, relations with the US slowly improved and in 1972 the US and China officially established diplomatic relations, with the US officially recognizing the People's Republic of China.
As he got older, Mao's legendary large appetite resulted in his being grossly overweight by age 60, and his being a heavy smoker also contributed to his growing health problems, but he still remained in firm control of his country. Mao died in 1976 at age 82.- Director
- Cinematographer
- Writer
Zbigniew Rybczynski (Rib-chin-ski) was born on January 27, 1949, in Lodz, Poland, but was raised in Warsaw, where he attended an arts high school and was trained as a painter. He went on to study cinematography at the world-renowned Lodz Film School, where he began experimenting with the film medium. His first projects were Kwadrat (1972) and "Take Five" (1972). Along with his other works, they broke new ground in the use of pixelation, optical printing, animation and other compositional film devices. "Zbig", as he's known, was active in the avant-garde group Warsztat Formy Filmowej and he cooperated with Se-Ma-For Studios in Lodz, where his art movies were shot, including Plamuz (1973), Zupa (1975), Nowa ksiazka (1976) and Tango (1981). At the same time he worked as a cinematographer on several feature films, including shorts by 'Andrzej Baranski', Piotr Andrejew and the acclaimed The Dancing Hawk (1977) by 'Grzegorz Krolikiewicz'.
Between 1977 and 1983 Rybczynski worked in Austria, where Weg Zum Nachbarn (1977) and Mein Fenster (1979) were made. He also set up a visual effects studio in Vienna for Austrian TV. As the director of photography, co-writer and editor, he contributed to the cult horror feature Angst (1983) (also known as "Fear"), directed by Gerald Kargl. In the meantime, Zbig was involved in the Solidarity (Solidarnosc) movement in Poland. When martial law was declared, he received political asylum in Austria and it was there that he learned of his Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film nomination for "Tango". After winning the Oscar for that film in 1983, Zbig and his family emigrated to the US and settled in New York City. At his Manhattan and Hoboken (NJ) studios, equipped with state-of-the-art high definition video, Rybczynski conceived and produced - as the first filmmaker ever- pioneer video films using HD technology. In 1984 he was assigned by
- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Worthington Miner is not a name always mentioned in the histories written about the earliest days of network television in America; he hasn't always received the acclaim often accorded to writers like Rod Serling and Paddy Chayefsky and directors like Franklin J. Schaffner and Sidney Lumet. This is no minor historical oversight, for Miner was one of the true pioneers of television. He not only wrote, produced and directed important television programs from the earliest days of the medium, but he also developed many of the crew positions still used in television productions to this day. Miner left CBS for NBC over a contract dispute in 1952, ending his fabled reign at Studio One (1948), one of the most impressive shows during the first decade of network television. At NBC his creative skills were never fully utilized and by the time he left the network he had become disenchanted with the path television was taking.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Winter Williams (formally known as Ashley C. Williams) is an American actress known for playing leads in the cult horror film The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009), the award winning revenge thriller Julia (2014) and Albanian Gangster (2018). She grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, and began acting on stage professionally at the age of ten.
Winter was unschooled during her high school years while pursuing acting full time. She then moved to New York City to attend The American Academy of Dramatic Arts (where she received the Charles Jehlenger Award for Excellence in Acting). Winter has "trod the boards" at New York's Off Broadway stages including The Ellen Stewart Theater, the Cherry Lane Theaters, 59E59 Theaters and Center Stage NY.- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
Winston Miller began his film career as a juvenile actor in silent films. He attended Pinceton University and, in 1937, went to work for Republic Pictures as a screenwriter. He assisted David O. Selznick in rewriting the screenplay for Gone with the Wind (1939), later taking time out of his career to serve in the Marines during WWII. Leaving the film industry in 1959, he joined Universal Studios in 1960, where he produced for television, and was a producer for the series Cannon (1971) from 1971-75. In 1966 Miller chaired the Permanent Charities Committee and also served on the Motion Picture and Television Fund board of directors.
He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles in 1994.- Writer
- Actor
- Director
Independent writer/producer/director William Winckler comes from a show-business background. His late father, Robert Winkler--aka "Bobby" Winkler--was a famous child actor during the Golden Age of Hollywood. As an adult he became a successful entertainment attorney. He followed in his father's footsteps, but in a slightly different path.
William studied acting and directing at UCLA with the late Don Richardson, director/teacher to Anne Bancroft, Grace Kelly, Zero Mostel, John Cassavetes, Elizabeth Montgomery and countless other stars. He learned a great deal from Don, and applied it to his acting and directing career.
From the mid to the late 1980s, William worked as an actor in various TV series, films and theater. He then wrote and produced two syndicated series of his own, the animated sci-fi show Tekkaman the Space Knight (1984) and the all-dwarf comedy/variety series Short Ribbs (1989), starring the late Billy Barty. When the internet boom hit, William was head of development for a science-fiction entertainment company, developing star-driven feature films and shorts for internet webcast and DVD.
The late Jonathan Harris, best known for his starring role as "Dr. Smith," in the classic TV series Lost in Space (1965), was William's close mentor throughout the 1990s and taught him a great deal about the business.
Winckler formed William Winckler Productions Inc., in 2001 to write, produce and direct low-budget feature films in the sci-fi, fantasy, horror and adventure genres. His sexy action comedy, The Double-D Avenger (2001) has been a great creative and financial success for him, being a top cult movie best seller in America, and internationally in France and French-speaking Europe, in Japan, and many other countries.
William Winckler continues to produce feature films. He absolutely loves classic sci-fi, horror and fantasy films from the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and he has a huge collection of related memorabilia, toy robots, action figures, etc., in his personal collection.- Actor
- Writer
William Talman is best known for his role as Hamilton Burger, the district attorney who perpetually lost to Perry Mason in the long-running series Perry Mason (1957). Talman was an accomplished screenwriter and stage and screen actor, and appeared in numerous roles on television as a character actor from the mid-'50s until his death from lung cancer in August of 1968.
He was born William Whitney Talman Jr. on February 4, 1915, in Detroit, Michigan, the first son of William Talman Sr. and Ada B. Talman. His father was vice-president of an electrical company that manufactured industrial heat-measuring recording devices and yachts. During an interview with "TV Guide" in April of 1963, Talman told writer Richard Gehman that his father made a good deal of money, "enough to send me to school in a limousine each day. Public school. That meant I had to fight my way in and out." In school Talman developed an avid interest in athletics, especially boxing and baseball. He furthered his interest in boxing early in life by fighting on the local parish boxing team of the Episcopal Church. At one point in his life he played semi-professional baseball. He was educated at Cranbrook School and later attended Dartmouth College, where his interest in acting first took hold. He left Dartmouth in his sophomore year after an incident in which a freshman he knew "loaned" him a car so that he could go visit a girlfriend at Smith College. A bus forced the car off of the road and it hit a tree. A boy who was with them was killed and it later turned out that the car was stolen. Talman was asked to resign from Dartmouth, which he did. Although invited back the next year, he never returned.
Talman began his acting career on Broadway in the early 1940s. His first roles were in "Beverly Hills", "Yokel Boy" and "Of Mice and Men." He was appearing in "Spring Again" at Henry Miller's Theatre in January of 1942 when he received his draft notice for induction into the US army. Prior to leaving for active duty he married actress Lynne Carter. He entered the army as a private and saw 30 months of service in the Pacific, where he won a commission and eventually was promoted to the rank of major. During the war his assignments included the managing of a school that trained soldiers to put on shows. At one point he was in charge of training boxing and baseball teams. He was proud of the fact that his teams won both the boxing and baseball championships of the Western Pacific. Talman returned to Broadway after the war. Two of his more notable postwar roles were in Joseph M. Hyman's and Bernard Hart's production of "Dear Ruth" in 1946 and Henry Adrian's production of "A Young Man's Fancy" in 1947. In 1949 the actor moved to Hollywood and began making films. His first picture was Red, Hot and Blue (1949), in which he played gangster Bunny Harris. Other movie and television roles soon followed. In 1951 his wife sued him for divorce, citing extreme cruelty. She claimed that Talman had criticized her publicly in front of their friends. The divorce was granted in September of 1952 with custody of the couple's three-year-old daughter, Lynda, and 24% of Talman's income awarded to his former spouse. He went on to perform in over 17 films, several of which he starred in. Some of his more notable films include The Racket (1951), Armored Car Robbery (1950), Smoke Signal (1955), Big House, U.S.A. (1955), One Minute to Zero (1952) and Two-Gun Lady (1955). His best known role was as escaped killer and kidnapper Emmett Myers in the classic film noir The Hitch-Hiker (1953), directed by Ida Lupino. He also co-wrote two feature films, I've Lived Before (1956) and Joe Dakota (1957).
Talman married actress Barbara Read in 1952. The couple had two children, Barbie and Billy, but they separated in September of 1959. In a tragic turn of events, his former wife took her own life in December of 1963 by closing up her house and turning on the gas jets. Notes she left behind blamed ill health for her action. In March of 1960 Talman made headlines when he was arrested during a police raid of an alleged "wild nude party" being held at the home of an acquaintance, Richard Reibold. The incident caused CBS to invoke a morals clause in his contract that cost him his job on "Perry Mason." The charges were eventually dropped after a trial that was closely followed by the newspapers and sensationalized by the tabloids. Talman always maintained his innocence, and following the trial the judge in the case criticized the police for arresting him. He remained off the show until December of 1960, when CBS reinstated him after a flood of fan mail from supporters. He married Margaret (Peggy) Flanigan and adopted her two children from a previous marriage, Steve and Debbie. After the "Perry Mason" show ended in 1966, Talman went on a six-week tour of Vietnam to entertain the troops. Upon his return home, it was discovered that he had lung cancer. His last film was The Ballad of Josie (1967), with Doris Day.
Near the end of his life, Talman did something that, while common nowadays, was an extraordinarily courageous thing for an actor to do at that time. A heavy smoker for most of his life, he was angered by a newspaper article he read about actors being afraid to make anti-smoking messages for fear of losing opportunities to make lucrative cigarette commercials. He decided to do something about it. Talman volunteered to make a short film for the American Cancer Society, part of which was shown in late 1968 and 1969 as a television anti-smoking commercial. He was the first actor to ever make such a commercial. When the message was being filmed, Talman knew he was dying, was in a great deal of pain and was in fact under heavy sedation for it. The short film begins, "Before I die I want to do what I can to leave a world free of cancer for my six children . . . ",
William Talman died of cardiac arrest due to complications from lung cancer at West Valley Community Hospital in Encino, California, on August 30, 1968, at the age of 53. Although his life was short, he left an enduring legacy through his writing, his acting, his heroism and his never-ending championing of the underdog.- Production Manager
- Producer
- Actor
William Self was born June 21, 1921, in Dayton, Ohio. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in Political Science in 1943. He worked a year in advertising before beginning a career in acting in 1944. From 1944 to 1952 he acted in over 30 films, one of his largest roles being that of Cpl. Barnes in Howard Hawks' The Thing from Another World (1951).
In 1952 Self began his producing career as an Assistant Producer on the TV series China Smith (1952). Later that same year he was named Associate Producer of the Schlitz Playhouse (1951), which aired on CBS. In 1953 his title was elevated to Producer, reflecting the fact that there had never been any other producer during his time on the series. During his tenure he produced 208 episodes. He also directed four episodes: The Last Out (1955), The Careless Cadet (1955), The Night They Won the Oscar (1956) and The Letter (1956). In 1957 Self produced The Frank Sinatra Show (1957) on ABC. Upon completion of that project, he was employed by CBS as a program executive. His first job was to produce the pilot for The Twilight Zone (1959).
In 1958 he moved to 20th Century-Fox Television as an Executive Producer. Over a period of 15 years with Fox, Self was promoted to Vice President in Charge of Production for Television, to Executive Vice President for Television, to President 20th Century-Fox Television,and finally to Vice President 20th Century-Fox Corp. During this period Fox supplied 44 series to the networks, including M*A*S*H (1972), Batman (1966), Peyton Place (1964), Lost in Space (1965) and 12 O'Clock High (1964).
In 1975 Self joined Mike Frankovich in forming Frankovich/Self Productions. The partnership resulted in two feature films: The Shootist (1976) starring John Wayne, Lauren Bacall and James Stewart, and From Noon Till Three (1976) starring Charles Bronson. Self returned to CBS in 1975 as Vice President Head of the West Coast. Later he was named Vice President in Charge of Movies and Miniseries. While in this position, he produced over 250 movies and many miniseries. In 1982 he was offered the position of President of CBS Theatrical Film Division. Ten films were produced under his supervision.
He left CBS in 1985 to form Self Productions, Inc. Hallmark Hall of Fame sponsored his first production, The Tenth Man (1988) starring Anthony Hopkins. Later Self partnered with Glenn Close to form a new production company, Sarah Productions. This company provided Hallmark Hall of Fame with three television movies: Sarah, Plain and Tall (1991), Skylark (1993) and Sarah, Plain & Tall: Winter's End (1999).
Bill married Margaret Flynn in 1941. They remained together until her death in 2007. He has two children, Edwin and Barbara. Self is a Trustee of the Motion Picture and Television Fund, the John Tracy Clinic for Deaf Children, and The Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. He is also a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the Directors Guild of America, and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.- Prolific and versatile character actor William Sanderson was born on January 10, 1944, in Memphis, Tennessee. His mother was an elementary school teacher and his father was a landscape designer. William served two years in the US Army. Following his military service he attended Southern Methodist University. He earned both a BBA degree and a JD law degree from Memphis State University. William went to New York to try his luck as an actor. He studied his craft with Herbert Berghof and William Hickey.
Sanderson began his acting career in off-Broadway stage productions and appeared in several independent pictures. He gave a superbly lively and intense performance as vicious racist and escaped convict Jessie Lee Kane in the brutal exploitation feature Fight for Your Life (1977). William was likewise marvelous as gentle toymaker J.F. Sebastian in the fantastic science-fiction cult favorite Blade Runner (1982). He has played his fair share of loathsome bad guys (he refers to these particular characters as "prairie scum"), such as nasty lout Calvin in Raggedy Man (1981), lowlife hick Lee Dollarhide in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980) and weaselly criminal Snow in Lone Wolf McQuade (1983). Not surprisingly, considering his distinctive Southern drawl, he has also appeared in such westerns as the comedy Wagons East (1994), Crossfire Trail (2001), Monte Walsh (2003), Andersonville (1996), Gods and Generals (2003) and the acclaimed TV mini-series Lonesome Dove (1989) (one of several projects in which Sanderson has acted alongside Tommy Lee Jones). Sanderson gave a lovely and touching portrayal in a rare lead role as emotionally dysfunctional recovering alcoholic ukulele minstrel Stanley Myer in the poignant indie drama Stanley's Gig (2000). He achieved his greatest popularity, however, as flaky backwoodsman Larry on the hit sitcom Newhart (1982) on which he uttered the memorable catchphrase, "I'm Larry. This is my brother Darryl and this is my other brother Darryl." More recently Sanderson had a terrific role as conniving hotel proprietor E.B. Farnum on the sensationally gritty cable western TV series Deadwood (2004). Among the TV shows William has done guest spots on are The Practice (1997), The Pretender (1996), ER (1994), The X-Files (1993), Walker, Texas Ranger (1993), Sirens (1993), Matlock (1986), Babylon 5 (1993), Married... with Children (1987), The Twilight Zone (1985), Knight Rider (1982), Coach (1989), The Dukes of Hazzard (1979) and Starsky and Hutch (1975).
He has also done voices for numerous cartoon characters, radio commercials and books on tape. Outside of his substantial film and TV credits, William has acted on stage in productions of such plays as "The Taming of the Shrew," "When Ya Comin' Back, Red Ryder?," "Insect Comedy," "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Dutchman," "Fishing," "Authentic Life of Billy the Kid," "Tobacco Road," and "Scotch Rocks." William Sanderson lives in Burbank, California, with his wife Sharon Wix. - Producer
- Additional Crew
- Writer
William Mishkin was a major distributor of sex-oriented exploitation films in New York in the 1950s and '60s. His companies, William Mishkin Motion Pictures and Constitution Films, were responsible for distributing and in some cases financing films by 'Gerald Intrator' (The Orgy at Lil's Place (1963) and The Sexperts: Touched by Temptation (1965)) and several now lost films by Andy Milligan. He was a significant distributor of burlesque films in the New York market in the 1950s and was famous for importing relatively tame European features and dressing them up for US release with salacious titles and lurid advertising campaigns. Essentially conservative, his career tapered off around the time of the rise of hardcore. His son Lew Mishkin took control of the company during the 1970s and quickly drove it into the ground.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Born and raised in Lansing, Michigan, William Malone was inspired by films during weekly trips to the Lucian Theater to see the latest releases of horror films. By age 14 he was making home movies with an 8mm camera and designing monster masks for himself and friends to wear for Halloween.
Malone moved to Los Angeles at age 19 to become a rock star, but a friend's request drew him back into mask-making, which led him to a job with Don Post Studios in makeup and costume, as well as mask making. It was Malone who designed and sculpted the mask used for the character of Michael Myers for Halloween (1978), which he used from the mold of a previous design used by William Shatner.
Malone also worked as a make up artist for Dan Curtis NBC TV movie The Norliss Tapes (1973) and even acted in a few credited and uncredited parts in films, mostly notably playing Beatle George Harrison in I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978), which recreated the Fab Four's 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948). Malone also developed a reputation as a collector of old movie props left over from various science-fiction films.
After attending classes at UCLA to study directing under the tutelage of Gilbert Cates--a former DGA president--Malone decided to make a gamble with his first movie. Scraping together around $74,000, he wrote and directed the sci-fi horror shocker Scared to Death (1980), which was clearly inspired by the Ridley Scott movie film Alien (1979), which was a terror tale of a genetic creature haunting the sewers of Los Angeles. Despite being a mild box-office his, Malone was not recognized by major film studios. In 1984, with grant of more than $1 million, Malone went back to the director's chair with Creature (1985) (aka "Titan Find"), which starred Klaus Kinski and was also inspired by "Alien". The film was nominated for a Saturn Award at the 1985 Academy of Science Fiction and Horror films.
Malone spent the next 14 years as a director for episodic TV series, beginning with such projects as the anthology series Freddy's Nightmares (1988) and a few episodes of the HBO series Tales from the Crypt (1989). He also directed a short-lived TV series called Sleepwalkers (1997) as well as the made-for-TV movie W.E.I.R.D. World (1995). In 1999 Joel Silver and Robert Zemeckis hired Malone to direct the SFX-studded House on Haunted Hill (1999). a remake of the Vincent Price film House on Haunted Hill (1959), which Malone clearly remembered from repeated viewings from his childhood and was happy to come on board as director.
In 2002 Malone pressed ahead with his own feature Feardotcom (2002), about a police detective's investigation of a website that kills its viewers. Malone's work on that film gave him the opportunity to join the Director's Guild, where in 2005 he was invited by Masters of Horror (2005) creator Mick Garris to direct an episode for the series, "The Fair Haired Child", adapted from a screen play my Matt Greenberg.
He is currently in development of Thallium's Box, a new independent feature film that will shoot in the winter of 2019.- Writer
- Additional Crew
- Producer
William Marien Conselman was at the time of his death one of Hollywood's best-paid writers. Like many others, he came from the ranks of newspaper writers, having worked on papers in both Los Angeles and New York. In 1925 Conselman, along with artist Charles Plumb, started the daily comic strip "Ella Cinders", a modern version of the Cinderella story. The strip would stay in syndication until 1961. Conselman's entrance into the film industry as a gag writer came as a result of work he did in the mid-20s for a Hollywood studio publicity department.
Conselman was the oldest of three children born to Henry and Marian Connely Conselman. His father was originally from Pennsylvania, where his parents settled after arriving from Germany. Henry was employed in the theater districts in New York as a carpenter. Marian was born in Ireland and came to America at an early age.
Conselman and his wife Mina were both collectors. He loved to cook and had a large collection of dishes, while her passion was acquiring sculptured hands. They had two children: daughter Diedre was, for a while, married to tennis champion Don Budge and son William Conselman Jr. who would also have a career in Hollywood. William Marien Conselman died at home after a month's illness. His early death at the age of 43 was attributed to a liver ailment.- Handsome William Joyce was born on October 21, 1930, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and raised in New Rochelle, New York. His childhood dream was to become a major-league baseball pitcher (he even worked out with the New York Yankees in 1947). However, Joyce was introduced to acting after he entered the army and became the star, writer and producer of "Camp Pickett Reveille Roundup." He made his film debut in 1954 with an uncredited bit part as a dancer in the comedy musical Top Banana (1954) (he had previously appeared in an early 1950s Broadway stage production of this particular musical).
William had his only lead role as hunky pulp adventure novelist Tom Harris in the low-budget zombie horror picture I Eat Your Skin (1971). He had secondary parts in Lifeguard (1976), The Parallax View (1974) (in one of his customary politician roles) and The Young Nurses (1973). He was a regular recurring cast member on the daytime soap operas Somerset (1970) and Days of Our Lives (1965). Among the many TV shows William did guest spots on are Hunter (1984), Knots Landing (1979), Falcon Crest (1981), Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983), Knight Rider (1982), Lou Grant (1977), Barnaby Jones (1973), The Rockford Files (1974), The F.B.I. (1965), Cannon (1971), The Real McCoys (1957), Lawman (1958), The Rifleman (1958), Rawhide (1959), The Restless Gun (1957) and Conflict (1956).
Outside of his film and television work, Joyce acted in Broadway stage productions of "Damn Yankees" and "Bye Bye Birdie."
He retired from acting in the late 1980s, and died at age 67 on September 3, 1998, in Encino, California. - Director
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A former juvenile stage actor, Canadian-born William James Craft came to Hollywood in the early 1900s as an actor, eventually giving up acting to work as a cameraman, then became a director. He served as a photographer during World War I, and after the war he concentrated on directing, working often for Universal Pictures.
He died in an auto accident in Hollywood in 1931.- Writer
- Actor
- Producer
William (Motter) Inge brought small-town life in the American Midwest to Broadway with four successive dramatic triumphs: "Come Back Little Sheba" (1950), "Picnic" (1953; Pulitzer Prize), "Bus Stop" (1955) and "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1957). With the exception of his Academy Award-winning screenplay for Splendor in the Grass (1961), his later plays and prose never achieved the success of his early work. Convinced he could no longer write, Inge fell into a paralyzing depression, which resulted in his suicide.- William Hartnell was born on 8 January 1908, just south of St. Pancras railway station in London. In press materials in the 1940s he claimed that his father was a farmer and later a stockbroker; it turns out that he had actually been born out of wedlock, as his biography "Who's There?" states.
At age 16 he was adopted by Hugh Blaker, a well-known art connoisseur, who helped him to get a job with Sir Frank Benson's Shakespearean Company. He started as a general dogsbody--call-boy, assistant stage manager, property master and assistant lighting director--but was occasionally allowed to play small walk-on parts. Two years later he left Benson's group and went off on tour, working for a number of different theatre companies about Britain. He became known as an actor of farce and understudied renowned performers such as Lawrence Grossmith, Ernest Truex, Bud Flanagan and Charles Heslop. He played repertory in Richmond, Harrogate, Leeds and Sheffield and had a successful run as the lead in a touring production of "Charley's Aunt." He also toured Canada in 1928-29, acquiring much valuable experience.
On his return to England, Hartnell married actress Heather McIntyre. He starred in such films as I'm an Explosive (1933), The Way Ahead (1944), Strawberry Roan (1944), The Agitator (1945), Query (1945) and Appointment with Crime (1946).
His memorable performance on the television series The Army Game (1957) and the movie This Sporting Life (1963) led to him being cast as the Doctor on Doctor Who (1963), for which he is best remembered. His son-in-law is agent Terry Carney. His granddaughter is Jessica Carney (real name Judith Carney), who authored a biography of her grandfather, "Who's There?", in 1996. - Writer
- Actor
Handsome American actor, playwright and stage director/producer William Gillette was born in Hartford, CT, in 1853. His father Francis was a former United States Senator and crusader for women's suffrage and the abolition of slavery; his mother Elisabeth Daggett Hooker is a descendant of Rev. Thomas Hooker, who either wrote or inspired the first written constitution in history to form a government.
In 1873 William left Hartford to begin his apprenticeship as an actor, briefly working for a stock theatre company in New Orleans and then returning to New England. He made his debut at the Globe Theatre in Boston with Mark Twain's play "The Guilded Age" in 1875. His first major Civil War drama, "Hold by the Enemy", was a major step forward to modern theatre in that it abandoned many crude devices of Victorian melodrama and introduced realism into the sets, props, costumes, sound effects and performances; it was a critical and commercial success in America and Britain.
Gillette is probably best remembered, however, as the first actor to be universally acclaimed for portraying Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famed detective Sherlock Holmes, playing the role first on stage in 1899 and continuing for more than 35 years. He also wrote many stage versions from Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels and even starred in the film version, Sherlock Holmes (1916), directed by Arthur Berthelet for the Essanay Film Co. He had previously appeared in two other films, his debut being in J.P. McGowan's The Battle at Fort Laramie (1913) and the following year he played support as Jack Lane in The Delayed Special (1914), both of which starred Helen Holmes and were made for the Kalem Film Co. Gillette also became popular on radio, performing the first radio serial version of Sherlock Holmes in 1930 and in 1935. His last stage appearance was in Austin Strong's "Three Wise Fools" in 1936. He wrote 13 original plays, seven adaptations and some collaborations, encompassing farce, melodrama and novel adaptation. He also wrote two pieces based on the US Civil War, "Held by the Ememy" and "Secret Service", which were highly acclaimed. In 1882 he married Helen Nichols, who died in 1888 from peritonitis; he never remarried.
Gillette died from pulmonary hemorrhage in Connecticut in 1937 at age 83.- Actor
- Producer
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Dynamically entertaining heavyset US actor with piercing eyes, William Forsythe has a superb talent for playing some truly unlikable and downright nasty characters that dominate the films in which he appears! If you're cast as the hero against Forsythe's villain, then you have your work cut out for you, as Forsthye's raw energy and menace on screen is second to none. He started out in a couple of minor film roles and guest appearances in high-rated TV shows including CHiPs (1977), Hill Street Blues (1981) and T.J. Hooker (1982). He quickly moved into high-quality feature films, including playing a small-time hoodlum in Once Upon a Time in America (1984), an hilariously funny performance as a bumbling jail escapee alongside John Goodman in the knockout Raising Arizona (1987) and as a renegade soldier in Extreme Prejudice (1987).
The energetic Forsythe portrayed comic book villain "Flattop" in Dick Tracy (1990), was foolish enough to tangle with vengeful cop Steven Seagal in the hyper-violent Out for Justice (1991) and locked horns with ex-NFL linebacker Brian Bosworth in the biker action film Stone Cold (1991). With his expertise in playing icy villains, Forsythe was perfect to portray Prohibition mobster Al Capone in the short-lived '90s revival of the classic '60s crime show, The Untouchables (1993), and he continued the motif of playing edgy, nefarious individuals in the thought-provoking The Waterdance (1992), the oily film noir piece Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995), as real-life mobster Sammy Gravano, aka "The Bull", in Gotti (1996) and supporting another ex-NFL player's foray into film acting, when L.A. Raider Howie Long debuted in Firestorm (1998).
Forsythe has remained perpetually busy in the new century with a plethora of feature film, telemovie and TV series appearances, and has developed a minor cult following amongst film fans for his attention grabbing dramatic skills - check out his performances in City by the Sea (2002), The Devil's Rejects (2005) and Halloween (2007).- William J. Fadiman, longtime Hollywood story editor, literary critic and producer, was educated at the University of Wisconsin and the Sorbonne. While still in college he wrote a literary game called "Poetic Posers" that was published regularly in the New York Herald. From the 1940s to the 1970s he supervised script development and story editors at several major studios, including MGM, RKO and Columbia. In 1970 he was hired as a literary consultant at Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. His producing credits included Bad for Each Other (1953), )Jubal (1956)_, _The Last Frontier (1956)_ and Rampage (1963). Fadiman taught screenwriting at UCLA and the American Film Institute and wrote three books, "Hollywood Now," "Shivering in the Sun" and "The Clay Oscar". He is the brother of noted writer Clifton Fadiman.
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Born in Ludwigshafen, Germany, Wilhelm Dieterle was the youngest of nine children of parents Jacob and Berthe Dieterle. They lived in poverty, and when he was old enough to work, young Wilhelm earned money as a carpenter and a scrap dealer. He dreamed of better things, though, and theater caught his eye as a teen. By the age of 16 he had joined a traveling theater company. He was ambitious and handsome, both of which opened the door to leading romantic roles in theater productions. Though he had acted in his first film in 1913, it was six more years before he made another one. In that year he was noticed by producer/director/designer/impresario Max Reinhardt, the most influential proponent of expressionism in theater; while in Berlin, Reinhardt hired him as an actor for his productions. Dieterle resumed German film acting in 1920, becoming a popular and successful romantic lead and featured character actor in the mix of German expressionist/Gothic and nature/romanticism genres that imbued much of German cinema in the silent era. He was interested in directing even more than acting, however, and he had the iconic Reinhardt to provide inspiration. Dieterle had acted in nearly 20 movies before he also began directing in 1923, his first female lead being a young Marlene Dietrich.
With his wife Charlotte Hagenbruch he started his own film production . He was said to have tired of acting; he appeared in nearly 50 films over the course of his career, mainly in the 1920s, and in several of his films he also functioned as director. As an actor he worked with some of the greatest names in German film, such as directors Paul Leni (in Waxworks (1924) [Waxworks]) and F.W. Murnau (in Faust (1926)) and actors Conrad Veidt and Emil Jannings. By 1930, however, he had emigrated to the US--now rechristened as William Dieterle--with an offer from Warner Brothers to direct their German-language versions of the studio's popular hits for the German market. In that capacity he made Those Who Dance (1930), The Way of All Men (1930) and Die heilige Flamme (1931) (aka "The Holy Flames"). He even stood before the camera for another of these, Dämon des Meeres (1931) (aka "Demon of the Sea", a version of "Moby Dick") in 1931, in which he played Capt. Ahab. The film was directed by another European who was soon to become one of Warners' most successful directors: the Hungarian Michael Curtiz.
Having taken to the Hollywood brand of filmmaking with ease--helped by his own brilliance in defining and executing the telling of a story--into 1931, he was soon promoted to directing some of Warners' "regular" films (his first, The Last Flight (1931), is now regarded as a masterwork) and he wold average directing six pictures a year for the studio through 1934. In that year Reinhardt came to the US, the Nazi threat finally having driven him off the Continent. He arrived with a flourish, ready to stage William Shakespeare's "A Midsummers Night's Dream"--an extravaganza at the Hollywood Bowl that would become legend. It was impressive enough to interest the execs of Warner Bros. They opted for a film version in 1935 with the great Reinhardt--even studio boss Jack L. Warner knew who he was--reunited with his disciple, Dieterle, as co-director. Reinhardt knew nothing about Hollywood and had to learn via Dieterle's diplomacy the differences between the overemphasis of stage and the subtlety of the camera. He learned from other directors as well about the realities of making films, in particular ratchet down the tendency that stage directors had to let their actors perform "too" much. It was all for naught, however, as the film was a major box-office flop, but it was one of the great moments in the evolution of film. Dieterle would direct Paul Muni for Warners in three first-rate bio movies: The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and Juarez (1939) and all received Oscar nominations. After that Dieterle moved on to do The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) at RKO with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo. This was one of Dieterle's best efforts, both in its romantic style and the great dark scenes of the Parisian medieval underworld with dramatic minimal lighting that gave vent to his expressionist roots.
Through the 1940s Dieterle moved around among Hollywood's studios, turning out vigorously wrought pictures, such as his two 1940 bios with Edward G. Robinson at Warner's. He became associated with independent producer David O. Selznick and actor Joseph Cotten, first with his direction of I'll Be Seeing You (1944). His romantic fires as a director had been restoked, as it were, and kept burning in the subsequent series of films with them which included the wonderful acting talents of Selznick's soon-to-be-wife (1949), Jennifer Jones: Love Letters (1945), Duel in the Sun (1946)--for which he shared directing but not credit with King Vidor--and the ethereal Portrait of Jennie (1948). "Jennie" was one of Dieterle's masterpieces, bringing into play a fusion of all his artistic fonts. The romantic fantasy with edges of darkness from the novel by Robert Nathan was just the vehicle to challenge Dieterle. His use of light and dark and gauzed--at one point the textured field of a painting canvas--backdrops conveyed the dreamlike state and netherworld atmosphere of the story of lovers from different times. Certainly the film influenced others to follow with similar themes.
Through the 1950s Dieterle's work--two more with Joseph Cotten--though sturdily in the director's hands, came off like good Hollywood fare, but were inspired more by the films' tight shooting schedules than by any artistic pretensions. His output during that decade was small, and that was partly due to bane of McCarthyism. He was never blacklisted as such, but his film Blockade (1938) was too libertarian to keep him completely away from the shadow of suspicion as a "socialist" / "communist" sympathizer. In 1958 he returned to Germany and directed a few films there and in Italy before retiring in 1965.
Though regrettably not as well known as his German and European directorial compatriots in Hollywood, he had great artistic style and worked with much energy in providing some of Hollywood's and the world's crown jewels of cinematic art.- Director
- Special Effects
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William C. McGann was an American director of second features. He began his film career as assistant cameraman and graduated to cinematographer for Douglas Fairbanks in the late 1910s. He had a long tenure as director with the Warner Bros. "B" unit, 1930-39. Afterwards, he had brief spells with Paramount and RKO. Well-regarded as a second-unit director, his features as director were mostly routine.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
William Byron Hillman was raised in Chicago, Denver and Oklahoma City. He attended the Oklahoma Military Academy and UCLA. He began his Hollywood career as an actor in Ice Station Zebra (1968) with Rock Hudson and Ernest Borgnine and made appearances in the TV series Bewitched (1964) and the soap opera Days of Our Lives (1965).
He eventually stepped behind the camera and has become a complete filmmaker. He has directed, produced and written 14 feature films, numerous TV commercials, several music videos and has sold 32 screenplays, of which over half have been produced. Bill has developed 4 TV series, directed two series pilots and directed, wrote, produced and narrated the award-winning feature documentary "Money". Bill has lectured at many major college campuses on filmmaking, and is an active member of The Directors Guild of America (DGA), The Writers Guild of America west (WGA) and The Screen Actors Guild (SAG).- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Writer
William Beaudine, the director of nearly 350 known films (nearly one for every day of the year; some listings of his work put his output at 500 movies and hundreds of TV episodes) and scores of television episodes, enjoyed a directing career that stretched across seven decades from the 'Teens to the '70s (he also was a screenwriter, credited on 26 films and one TV series). His movies, ranging from full-length features to one- and two-reel shorts, included the notorious Mom and Dad (1945) of 1945--the Gone with the Wind (1939) of the hygiene/exploitation genre--for infamous producer Kroger Babb, one of the notorious "Forty Thieves" of the exploitation circuit. His final, as well as very likely best-known, films were the grind-house/drive-in horror classics Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966) and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966) (in 1966, when he made these two cheapies, he was the oldest active director in Hollywood, at 74). Beaudine was prolific not only because he mastered efficient filmmaking but also because he started in the early days of the film industry, when one- and two-reelers were ground out like sausages, and that's how he learned to make them. Although he was responsible for some prestigious pictures in the silent era--i.e., Mary Pickford's Sparrows (1926)--after 1937 he worked primarily churning out programmers at Poverty Row studios. When producers needed an efficiently-made potboiler shot on a two-week (or less) schedule, William Beaudine was the go-to guy, and he remained so through the mid-'60s.
William Washington Beaudine was born January 15, 1892, in New York City, an advantageous location for a tyro filmmaker at the turn of the last century, because the original "Hollywood" of America was located in nearby Ft. Lee, NJ (Thomas A. Edison, the inventor of the first motion picture production device and, more importantly, holder of several of its most important patents, was headquartered there. The patent monopoly he helped found did not want filmmakers operating too far away, as it wanted to oversee the industry to ensure it did not use pirated equipment that infringed its patents. California arose as a major production center in the 'Teens because it was far away from the prying eyes of the Edison trust, which was not averse to hiring thugs to wreck the equipment and beat up the employees of companies that defied it). Beaudine started in the industry as a $10-per-week prop boy, factotum and extra in 1909 with American Mutoscope and the Biograph Co., where he first worked with D.W. Griffith, the father of the American film. He began appearing as an actor in Mack Sennett's Biograph films in 1912 and continued to work behind the camera while appearing in front of it in 44 films through 1915. From 1911-14 he was an assistant director or second-unit director on 55 movies. He wed Marguerite Fleischer in October 1914 (they remained married until his death in 1970), the same year he moved to California. Although hired by the Kalem Co. as an actor, he got his first chance to direct while working on the studio's "Ham and Bud" comedy series in 1915. He directed at least five films in 1915, and served as an assistant to Griffith on his seminal masterpiece The Birth of a Nation (1915) and its follow-up, the aptly named Intolerance (1916). By 1916 Beaudine was making $100 per week as a director, and turned out as many as 150 short comedies before graduating to feature film assignments in 1922. Beaudine, like fellow director John Ford, was known for "editing in the camera", i.e., shooting only those scenes that are absolutely necessary, which saved time and raw stock. He did not shoot full coverage of scenes, with master shots and alternate takes (his contemporary William A. Wellman, another master of editing in the camera, did Beaudine--who was known as "One-Shot"--one better as "Two-Shot"--he would film two shots of a scene in case one was ruined in the developing lab), but no more than what he knew was necessary, and since he worked almost exclusively on low-budget "quickies" for the last 30 years of his career (he directed over half of the Bowery Boys films), producers valued him for his ability to make pictures quickly and economically, despite the gaffes (which likely would not be noticed by the audiences for these movies anyway). His attitude towards most of the films he was shooting at the time can be summed up by an incident in the 1940s, when he was informed that an East Side Kids quickie he was making for Monogram was falling behind schedule. His reply was, "You mean someone out there is actually waiting to see this . . . ?".
Beaudine churned out low-budget films by the gross, in a wide variety of genres. That's why it may be difficult for some to believe that, in the silent days, he was one of the more respected directors in the industry, and had established himself as a seasoned comedy director with a light but sure touch for such major studios as Goldwyn, Metro, First National and Warner Bros. He was renowned for his skill at working with children, which won him two assignments directing films for Mary Pickford at United Artists: Little Annie Rooney (1925) and the above-mentioned "Sparrows", a Gothic suspense thriller that is an ur-The Night of the Hunter (1955) (it reportedly influenced "Hunter" director Charles Laughton). Beaudine's finest silent film is generally considered to be The Canadian (1926), based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham.
By the time talkies arrived, Beaudine was a top director in Hollywood, his salary increasing from $1,250 a week in 1925 to $2,000-$2,500 a week in 1926. For directing the "Izzy and Mike" (Jewish/Irish comedy) The Cohens and the Kellys in Paris (1928) in 1928, he earned $20,000 (approximately $215,000 in 2006 terms), which was not bad considering the speed at which he turned out his films. Even after the Great Depression hit in 1929, as late as 1931 Beaudine was commanding $2,000 a week. Unfortunately, like many other Americans, he was heavily leveraged in the stock market and was virtually wiped out by the Crash of '29. He moved to England in 1935 and directed more than a dozen films there before returning to the US. Once home, however, he discovered that during his absence Hollywood got along just fine without him, and he couldn't find a job for two years. When he was finally offered work it was near the bottom of the Hollywood food chain, at low-rent studios like Monogram or PRC. By 1940 his once flourishing career had declined to the point that, where he had once commanded $2500 a week, he was now lucky to get jobs paying $500 a picture, and was turning out bottom-of-the-double-bill films like Desperate Cargo (1941) and the The Ape Man (1943). The lowest point of his career is generally considered to be the aforementioned "Mom and Dad" for Kroger Babb (an independent producer who often released through Monogram, for whom Beaudine did much work). "Mom and Dad" was a "hygiene" picture, featuring footage of a live birth, that Babb "four-walled" in territories across the U.S. ("four-walling" was the practice of renting an entire theater outright, which meant that after the rental fee was paid, all money taken in went to the exhibitor). Babb was a master showman, and his practice of having screenings for males and females at separate times, and providing a "doctor" and two "nurses" (who were in reality actors) to give a hygiene lecture and sell sex hygiene books at inflated prices (the money being collected by the "nurses", who ostensibly were there lest anyone faint from such a frank divulging of "the facts of life") was a masterful touch, capitalizing on the extreme sexual repression of the era to titillate and make a barrel full of money while doing it. These tactics were also helpful in keeping local authorities at bay--after all, who could close down a theater that showed such an "educational" film?
Some cinema historians say that "Mom and Dad" may well have been, on a return-on-investment basis, the most profitable film in history, grossing as much as $100 million. Babb later recounted that each one of his investors got back $63,000 for each $1,000 invested in the film. In a pre-"Kinsey Report" world filled with ignorance and misinformation--deliberate and otherwise--about biology and sex, "Mom, and Dad" filled a void and turned a handsome profit while doing so (it was playing at drive-ins in the South and Midwest at least until 1977, long after the sexual revolution of the "Swinging Sixties", so potent was the "birth of a baby" come-on to the rural audiences for whom it was made). "Mom and Dad" was likely the top-grossing picture of 1947. The film was so heavily promoted that "Time" magazine commented that the ad campaign "left only the livestock unaware of the chance to learn the facts of life." Until the advent of The Blair Witch Project (1999), many film historians regarded "Mom and Dad" as the purest and most successful exploitation film in history.
By the end of the 1940s Beaudine had churned out 60 movies. Still, he was regarded highly enough as a man who could make a movie quickly and efficiently to command a salary of $3,000 per week for The Lawton Story (1949), an adaptation of a Passion Play staged in Lawton, OK (which was re-released in 1951 by Babb's Hallmark company). His paced slowed somewhat in the 1950s, when he made only 23 films, most of them for Allied Artists (formerly Monogram). A quarter-century after directing superstar Mary Pickford, Beaudine was reduced to piloting a washed-up, drug-addicted former Dracula and two Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis clones in the pathetic Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), with Lugosi, Duke Mitchell (the Martin clone) and Sammy Petrillo (the Lewis clone). In the "plot", Mitchell is turned into--what else?--a singing gorilla. Beaudine, who had worked with Lugosi in 1943's "The Ape Man" and the East Side Kids entry Ghosts on the Loose (1943) (most memorable for featuring a young Ava Gardner), wrapped the film in nine days on a budget of $50,000. In fact, during his preparation for playing Lugosi in Ed Wood (1994), the chronicle of another director of bad movies, Martin Landau watched "Brooklyn Gorilla" three times. Landau, who would earn an Oscar for his turn as Lugosi, said that it was so bad "it made the Ed Wood films look like 'Gone with the Wind'".
In 1947, two years after giving the world the landmark naughty picture "Mom and Dad", Beaudine was contracted by an evangelical Christian organization, the Protestant Film Commission, to make a religious-themed movie (beginning in the late 1940s, evangelist Billy Graham had done quite well in converting non-believers with movies made specifically for that purpose). It was successful and the PFC hired him on a regular basis to make more films. By 1955 Beaudine had directed ten of them for the Commission, all crafted to spread the word of God and convert non-believers to Christianity. Ironically, Beaudine himself reportedly was an atheist, who took the jobs solely for the money.
Beaudine's ability to overlook almost anything in order to get film into the can would prove a huge advantage in television. In the 1950s he moved into that medium, directing hundreds of episodes of popular series, including shows for Walt Disney. By the 1960s he was one of the principal directors on Lassie (1954), eventually passing the baton on to his son, William Beaudine Jr., upon his retirement from the show (proving the adage that the fruit really doesn't fall far from the tree). At the time of his retirement in 1967, William Beaudine was the oldest active director in Hollywood. He died in Canoga Park, CA, on March 18, 1970, with a record so prolific that it's unlikely to be ever matched again.
In 2005 the "labor of love" brought into the world by William Beaudine and Kroger Babb, two of Hollywood's most prolific sons, was honored by the Library of Congress' National Film Registry with the inclusion of "Mom and Dad" on the list of the nation's cinematic treasures.- Director
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- Producer
William Wellman, the Oscar-winning screenwriter-director of the original A Star Is Born (1937), was called "Wild Bill" during his World War I service as an aviator, a nickname that persisted in Hollywood due to his larger-than-life personality and lifestyle.
A leap-year baby born in 1896 on the 29th of February in Brookline, MA, Wellman was the great-great-great grandson of Francis Lewis, one of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence. Wellman's father was a stockbroker and his mother, the former Cecilia McCarthy, was born in Ireland. Despite an upper-middle-class upbringing, the young Wellman was a hell-raiser. He excelled as an athlete and particularly enjoyed playing ice hockey, but he also enjoyed joyriding in stolen cars at nights.
Cecilia Wellman served as a probation officer for "wayward boys" (juvenile delinquents) for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and was such a success in her field that she was asked to address Congress on the subject of delinquency. One of her charges was her own son, as the young Bill was kicked out of school at the age of 17 for hitting his high school principal on the head with a stink bomb. He tried making a living as a candy salesman and a cotton salesman, but failed. He worked for a lumber yard but was fired after losing control of a truck and driving it through the side of a barn. Eventually he wound up playing professional ice hockey in Massachusetts. While playing at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, an actor named Douglas Fairbanks took note of him. Impressed by Wellman's good looks and the figure he cut on ice, the soon-to-be silent-film superstar suggested to him that he had what it took to become a movie actor. Wellman's dream was to become an aviator, but since his father "didn't have enough money for me to become a flier in the regular way . . .I went into a war to become a flier."
When he was 19 years old, through the intercession of his uncle, Wellman joined the air wing of the French Foreign Legion, where he learned to fly. In France he served as a pilot with the famous Lafayette Flying Corps (better known as the Lafayette Escadrille), where he won his nickname "Wild Bill" due to his devil-may-care style in the air. He and fellow pilot Tom Hitchcock, the great polo player, were in the Black Cat group. Wellman was shot down by anti-aircraft fire and injured during the landing of his plane, which had lost its tail section. Out of 222 Escadrille pilots 87 were killed, but Wellman was fated to serve out the duration of the war. In the spring of 1918 he was recruited by the US Army Air Corps, joining "because I was broke, and they were trying to get us in." Commissioned an officer, he was sent back to the US and stationed at Rockwell Field, in San Diego, CA, to teach combat fighting tactics to the new AAC pilots.
Wellman would fly up to Hollywood and land on Fairbanks' polo fields to spend the weekend. Fairbanks told the returning hero that he would help him break into the movies when the war was over, and he was as good as his word. Fairbanks envisioned Wellman as an actor and cast him as the juvenile in The Knickerbocker Buckaroo (1919) and as a young officer in Evangeline (1919), but acting was something Wellman grew to hate, a hatred he later transferred to actors in his employ. He was fired by fellow macho director Raoul Walsh from "Evangeline" for slapping the lead actress, who Wellman didn't know was Walsh's wife. Disgusted with acting, Wellman told Fairbanks he wanted to be a director, and Fairbanks helped him into the production end of the business. It was a purely financial decision, he later recalled, as directors made more money than supporting actors at the time.
Goldwyn Pictures hired him as a messenger in 1920 and he soon worked his way up the ladder, first as an assistant cutter, then as an assistant property man, property man, assistant director and second-unit director before making his uncredited directorial debut later that year at Fox with Twins of Suffering Creek (1920) starring Dustin Farnum (the silent film B-Western star whom Dustin Hoffman's star-struck mother named the future double-Oscar winner after). Wellman later remembered the film as awful, along with such other B-Westerns as Cupid's Fireman (1923), starring Buck Jones, whose westerns he began directing in 1923 after serving his apprenticeship.
Fox Films gave Wellman his first directing credit in 1923 with the Buck Jones western Second Hand Love (1923) and, other than the Dustin Farnum picture The Man Who Won (1923), he turned out Jones pictures for the rest of his time at Fox. The studio fired him in 1924 after he asked for a raise after completing The Circus Cowboy (1924), another Buck Jones film. Moving to Columbia, he helmed When Husbands Flirt (1925), then went over to MGM for the slapstick comedy The Boob (1926) before landing at Famous Players-Lasky (now known as Paramount Pictures after its distribution unit), where he directed You Never Know Women (1926) and The Cat's Pajamas (1926). It was as a contract director at the now renamed Paramount-Famous Players-Lasky Corp. that he had his breakout hit, due to his flying background. Paramount entrusted its epic WW I flying epic Wings (1927) to Wellman, and the film went on to become the first Academy Award-winning best picture.
Paramount paid Wellman $250 a week to direct "Wings". He also gave himself a role as a German pilot, and flew one of the German planes that landed and rolled over. The massive production employed 3,500 soldiers, 65 pilots and 165 aircraft. It also went over budget and over schedule due to Wellman's perfectionism, and he came close to being fired more than once. The film took a year to complete, but when it was released it turned out to be one of the most financially successful silent pictures ever released and helped put Gary Cooper, whom Wellman personally cast in a small role, on the path to stardom. "Wings" and Wellman's next flying picture, The Legion of the Condemned (1928)--in which Cooper had a starring role--initiated the genre of the World War One aviation movie, which included such famous works as Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels (1930) and Howard Hawks' The Dawn Patrol (1930). Despite his success in bringing in the first Best Picture Oscar winner, Paramount did not keep Wellman under contract.
Wellman's disdain for actors already was in full bloom by the time he wrapped "Wings". Many actors appearing in his pictures intensely disliked his method of bullying them to elicit an performance. Wellman was a "man's man" who hated male actors due to their narcissism, yet he preferred to work with them because he despised the preparation that actresses had to go through with their make-up and hairdressing before each scene. Wellman shot his films fast. The hard-drinking director usually oversaw a riotous set, in line with his own lifestyle. He married five women, including a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl, before settling down with Dorothy Coonan Wellman, a former Busby Berkeley dancer. Wellman believed that Dorothy saved him from becoming a caricature of himself. She appeared as a tomboy in Wild Boys of the Road (1933), a Depression-era social commentary picture made for the progressive Warner Bros. studio (and which is a favorite of Martin Scorsese). It came two years after Wellman's masterpiece, The Public Enemy (1931), one of the great early talkies, one of the great gangster pictures and the film that made James Cagney a superstar. Scorsese says that Wellman's use of music in the film influenced his own first gangster picture, Mean Streets (1973) .
Wellman was as adept at comedy as he was at macho material, helming the original A Star Is Born (1937) (for which he won his only Oscar, for best original story) and the biting satire Nothing Sacred (1937)--both of which starred Fredric March--for producer David O. Selznick. Both movies were dissections of the fame game, as was his satire Roxie Hart (1942), which reportedly was one of Stanley Kubrick's favorite films.
During World War Two Wellman continued to make outstanding films, including The Ox-Bow Incident (1942) and Story of G.I. Joe (1945), and after the war he turned out another war classic, Battleground (1949). In the 1950s Wellman's best later films starred John Wayne, including the influential aviation picture The High and the Mighty (1954), for which he received his third and last best director Oscar nomination. His final film hearkened back to his World War One service, Lafayette Escadrille (1958), which featured the unit in which Wellman had flown. He retired as a director after making the film, reportedly enraged at Warner Bros.' post-production tampering with a film that meant so much to him.
Other than David O. Selznick, not many people in Hollywood particularly liked the hell-raising iconoclast Wellman. Louis B. Mayer's daughter Irene Mayer Selznick, the first wife of David O. Selznick, said that Wellman was "a terror, a shoot-up-the-town fellow, trying to be a great big masculine I-don't-know-what". The Directors Guild of America in 1973 honored him with its Lifetime Achievement Award.
William Wellman died (from leukemia) in 1975.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Originally a writer and artist, William A. Seiter entered films with Selig. He worked from 1915 as a stunt double and bit player at Keystone and quickly graduated to directing comedy shorts. He moved up to features in the 1920s. He married actress Laura La Plante, who he directed in several films, such as Skinner's Dress Suit (1926), He was at his best, though, in charge of comic teams such as Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (he directed what many believe to be their finest film, Sons of the Desert (1933)), Bud Abbott and Lou Costello (Little Giant (1946)) and The Marx Brothers.
Most of his early work was under contract to Universal (1924-28) and Warner Brothers (1928-29). He successfully made the transition to sound and remained much in demand for light comedy, working for RKO (1931-34), 20th Century-Fox (1934-38), Universal (1939-41 and again from 1945-49). He retired in 1954. He is perhaps best remembered for "Sons of the Desert" and the musical Roberta (1935) with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Whit Bissell came to Hollywood in the 1940s, and by the time he retired he had appeared in more than 200 movies and scores of TV series. He is best known for playing the evil scientist who turned Michael Landon into a half beast in the 1957 cult classic film I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). Bissell specialized in playing doctors, military officers and other authority figures. On television he was a regular on Bachelor Father (1957) and The Time Tunnel (1966). He also served on the Screen Actors Guild board of directors for 18 years and represented the actors branch in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences board of governors.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Writer/actor/producer Wes Bishop frequently collaborated with exploitation filmmaker Lee Frost on a bunch of enjoyably down-'n'-dirty drive-in features made throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Bishop was born as Charles Pelletieri on September 12, 1932, in Nashville, Tennessee. He served a hitch in the US army as a paratrooper and intelligence officer in the Korean War. He and Frost first crossed paths in the early 1960s on the tongue-in-cheek softcore horror comedy House on Bare Mountain (1962). Their subsequent cinematic ventures include the trailblazing Nazisploitation outing Love Camp 7 (1969), the gritty Chain Gang Women (1971), the passable biker opus Chrome and Hot Leather (1971), the hilariously campy The Thing with Two Heads (1972), the immensely fun Policewomen (1974), the gnarly blaxploitation winner The Black Gestapo (1975) and the rowdy redneck romp Dixie Dynamite (1976). In addition, Frost often had sizable supporting roles in their movies; he's especially memorable as trouble-making convict Coleman in "Chain Gang Women" and sleazy mobster Ernest in "The Black Gestapo." In addition, Frost and Bishop wrote the witty and inspired script for Jack Starrett's terrific Satan-worship/car-chase horror/action treat Race with the Devil (1975); Bishop also produced the picture and appears in a minor part as a small-town deputy.
Bishop did guest spots on such TV series as Perry Mason (1957), Combat! (1962), Bonanza (1959) and The High Chaparral (1967). Wes Bishop died at age 60 from a liver ailment on June 25, 1993.- Actress
- Script and Continuity Department
Wendy Wells is both a Texas and Arizona native. Her senior year of high school in 1980 she had her first opportunity to work on the TV series Little House on the Prairie. She recalls, Michael Landon as one of the coolest directors to have had the pleasure to work with!" In 1981 she left her home town and enlisted for a hitch in US Navy. When her six-year enlistment was up, she moved to Hollywood to work in TV and film 1987/1988. In January 1989 Wendy left Hollywood to serve another six years with the Navy, while serving on board the flagship for the Seventh fleet in Yokosuka Japan, she found her passion in writing movie scripts. She is now focusing on screenwriting and is the creator and writer for St. Justice, an Anti Bully Justice League.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Wendy Raquel Robinson was born July 25, 1967, in Los Angeles, California. She is of African-American and Native American descent. Robinson is a cum laude graduate of Howard University of the School of Fine Arts and received her B.F.A. in drama. She's appeared in several plays, such as "The Vagina Monologues", "Black Woman's Blues", "Agnes of God", "A Midsummer's Night Dream", "The Colored Museum" and "Vanities"; all have done very well. In addition, she has made guest appearances in several television series, including Martin (1992), The Sinbad Show (1993), Thea (1993), The Parkers (1999) and All of Us (2003). She is mostly known, though, for her role in the sitcom The Steve Harvey Show (1996), which she played Principal Regina "Piggy" Grier.
Wendy has also been in many films, including Two Can Play That Game (2001), Rebound (2005) and Something New (2006) with Sanaa Lathan. Wendy also appeared in The Game (2006) as "Tasha Mack" on the new network The CW. She also founded a theatre arts school in Los Angeles in 1995 for children called Amazing Grace Conservatory. She married Marco Perkins in 2003 and they live in Los Angeles. Wendy has received three NAACP Image Award nominations for Best Actress in a Comedy for her work on "The Steve Harvey Show".- Actor
- Soundtrack
Blue-eyed soul singer Wayne Cochran was born in 1939 in Thomaston, Georgia. He started his first band in 1955 and was kicked out of high school for refusing to cut his flamboyant pompadour hairstyle. Cochran recorded his debut single, "My Little Girl", for the Scottie label in 1959. He went on to record a slew of singles throughout the '60s for such labels as Gala ("Funny Feeling," "Liza Jane"), Confederate ("Linda Lu"), Aire ("Cindy Marie"), King ("Little Orphan Annie") and Mercury ("Goin' Back to Miami," which rates as one of his single most incendiary R&B songs and was later covered by The Blues Brothers).
In the early '60s he wrote and recorded the morbid teen death item "Last Kiss," which became a huge #2 Billboard pop chart hit for 'J. Frank Wilson & the Cavaliers' in 1964. In 1963 he formed his own group called Wayne Cochran and the C.C. Ryders ("Cochran's Circuit Riders"). The band amassed an enormous following in the South and Midwest by extensively touring and performing at clubs, lounges and seedy dives all over the region. Cochran was famous for his massive white pompadour, outrageous outfits and full-throttle, raw-throated hoarse-'n'-ragged vocals. The band was the immensely popular house band at the Miami (FL) club the Barn. 'Jackie Gleason' in particular was a big fan of Cochran's music and wrote the liner notes for his 1967 debut album. Cochran and the C.C. Riders appear as themselves in the biker exploitation flick C.C. & Company (1970). Moreover, Wayne not only made guest appearances on such TV programs as The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), The Merv Griffin Show (1962), The Dinah Shore Chevy Show (1956), You're in the Picture (1961), [error], Tomorrow Coast to Coast (1973) and The Mike Douglas Show (1961) but also had straight acting roles on episodes of the TV series The Wild Wild West (1965) and The Duke (1979).
Cochran eventually became a born-again Christian and started his own ministry in 1981. He and the C.C. Riders performed at two reunion shows in 2001: they did a gig on July 26 in Miami, Florida, and did a second reunion show on August 1 in Hollywood, Florida. Wayne lived in Miami, Florida with his wife Monica (who died in February, 2017). Cochran died at age 78 from cancer on November 21, 2017.- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Born in Linkou, Taiwan to a multiracial family. Raised on the coast of Maine. Graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Law School. Prior to becoming a screenwriter, practiced corporate finance and sports law, including spending six seasons as Deputy General Counsel for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Lives in Los Feliz, California with his family.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Warner Oland was born Johan Verner Olund in the small village of Nyby in Bjurholm parish in the county of Vasterbotten, Sweden, on October 3, 1879. Bjurholm is situated about 60 kilometers outside the town of Umea. His family emigrated to the US on October 15, 1892. His father Jonas was a shopkeeper and his mother was Maria Johanna (nee Forsberg).
After finishing grade school and working on Broadway during his 20s, Oland settled in California in the early 1910s, where he worked odd jobs. The movie industry was in its beginning stages in Hollywood, and Johan Olund--changing his name to the more Americanized "Warner Oland"--worked as a stage actor for a while before getting small parts in films in the 1910s and 1920s. As Hollywood made the transition from silent to sound pictures in the late 1920s (Oland co-starred in Warner Brothers' groundbreaking part-talkie The Jazz Singer (1927)), he began landing more prominent roles.
His greatest success came in 1931 when he was cast in the role of Charlie Chan, a Honolulu-based Chinese-American police detective in Charlie Chan Carries On (1931), based on the popular detective mystery series by Earl Derr Biggers [1884-1933] which was produced by Fox Films. His performance as the seemingly mild-mannered but razor-sharp Asian detective won him critical acclaim, which resulted in his playing Chan again in the sequel, The Black Camel (1931).
The success of the Chan character turned into a cash cow for Fox Studios and Oland became a valuable property. It seems incredible today, but in Fox's pre-Shirley Temple period, Oland was considered the only guaranteed profit maker on the lot. He became wealthy and bred miniature schnauzers. Although seemingly happy, Oland became increasingly dependent upon alcohol and exhibited bizarre delusional behavior after periods of drinking.
Oland appeared in a total of 16 Charlie Chan feature films from 1931 to 1937. The Chan films were budgeted approaching 1930s A-picture levels (approximately $275,000) and were usually shot within tight 30-day schedules, three films per year (sadly, a number of these have apparently been lost). The series was pretty much the only guaranteed profit-maker the ailing studio could bank on during the days leading to its takeover by ex-Warner's production chief Darryl F. Zanuck in 1935, that resulted in its transformation from Fox Films into Twentieth Century-Fox.
From 1931 to 1935 Oland did other films besides the Chan series, but he was increasingly relegated to roles that didn't vary much beyond mysterious Asians, and in mid-1935 he became so identified as Charlie Chan that he was assigned to the series exclusively. His last eight films were all Chan entries, usually co-starring Keye Luke, who played Chan's Number One Son. While considered somewhat stereotypical today, these films were met with wide critical acclaim and all were hugely profitable. The best of the series is generally considered to be Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936), featuring lavish set design and a particularly effective menacing villain in Boris Karloff.
Oland's physical and mental problems slowly began to catch up to him, and in 1937 he was said to have suffered a nervous breakdown apparently due to some kind of mental dementia. The Fox executives, knowing that Oland was one of its biggest money earners, kept his alcoholism and mental problems hidden from the public. In November 1937, Edith, his wife of 30 years, filed for divorce. In January 1938 "Charlie Chan at (the) Ringside" began production at Fox's Western Avenue lot under the direction of James Tinling with an increasingly erratic Oland. After a few days shooting inside Studio 6, Oland walked out and never returned. He was heard complaining the studio was possessed by voodoo and feared contracting pneumonia. Over the next month there were numerous negotiations between Oland and SAG (Oland had been an early member) and production was briefly resumed, then suspended after Oland again failed to report to work. He was hospitalized and released, then decided to return to his mother's home in Sweden. Oland's film career, unbeknown to him, was over. In the interim, producer Sol M. Wurtzel, desperate to salvage the property, ordered the Chan picture reworked as Mr. Moto's Gamble (1938), with minor supporting cast changes. Successful negotiations were made with the Biggers' estate and the film was quickly shot with Peter Lorre and released April 7, 1938. The film itself remains an anachronism in the Moto series, as it contains much Chan-like dialog, tacked on Moto-esque action scenes and a guest-starring role by Keye Luke. Regardless, it was also a hit.
During his visit to Sweden, Oland negotiated a reconciliation with Edith but contracted bronchial pneumonia and died there on August 6, 1938, at age 57. Ironically, Fox contract (and Chan series) director John G. Blystone died the same day.
Numerous actors were tested to fill Oland's shoes as Charlie Chan, among them Cy Kendall, Walter Connolly, J. Edward Bromberg, Noah Beery Jr., Michael Visaroff and Leo Carillo (Kendall and Connelly had played Chan on radio). The series continued at Fox for another 11 entries with Sidney Toler, who was signed by Zanuck in mid-October 1938. Toler injected more humor into the character as scripts became somewhat more pedestrian. By 1942 Fox considered the series exhausted and it would ultimately be sold to low-budget studio Monogram Pictures and continue on even after Toler's death in 1947 with Roland Winters in the role through six dismal films into 1949.
In a postscript, Fox director Norman Foster paid a subtle tribute to Oland in the next Moto film, Mr. Moto's Last Warning (1938). During that movie's production in August 1938, cast and crew learned of Oland's passing in his native Sweden. Over the title Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938), on the bill of the Sultana Theatre of Variety, they placed the banner "Last Day."- Actor
- Soundtrack
Warner Baxter claimed to have an early pre-disposition toward show business: "I discovered a boy a block away who would eat worms and swallow flies for a penny. For one-third of the profits, I exhibited him in a tent." When he was age 9, his widowed mother moved to San Francisco where, following the earthquake of 1906, his family lived in a tent for two weeks "in mortal terror of the fire." By 1910 he was in vaudeville and from there went on to Broadway plays and movies. A matinée idol in the silents, he came to prominence as the Cisco Kid with In Old Arizona (1928), for which he won an Oscar. He went on to star with Myrna Loy in Penthouse (1933) and to what many consider his best role, that of the doctor who treated Abraham Lincoln's assassin, in The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936). That year his $284,000 income topped the industry. In 1943, after slipping into a string of B-pictures, he began his Dr. Ordway "Crime Doctor" series with Crime Doctor (1943). He had suffered a nervous breakdown, and these pictures were easy on him (studio sets for one month, two films a year). Following a lobotomy to relieve pains of arthritis, he died of pneumonia.- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Born in Lucknow, India, Waris Hussein moved to England at age nine with his parents. He later attended Cambridge and at 21 started as a trainee director with BBC, where his mother, the late Attia Hussein, worked. In addition to reading news in Hindi, she was also the station's dramatic star--translating William Shakespeare in Urdu and Hindi--as well as an author. Young Hussein, too, was influenced by his mother's artistic abilities and knew very early on that he wanted to be a director. After starting in television with work on Doctor Who (1963) (including directing the very first episode, An Unearthly Child (1963)), Hussein moved on to film, directing such legends as Lord Laurence Olivier, Bette Davis and Joan Plowright.
While considering himself a British filmmaker, Hussein has worked both sides of the Atlantic, as well as in the country of his birth, India.- Wanda Hawley was a popular leading lady of the silent era who specialized in sweet romantic comedies and romantic dramas. Due to Wanda's petite status, she billed herself as Wanda Petit for a brief period in her career. She rose to stardom in Cecil B. DeMille films and later starred in films for director Sam Wood. Wanda Hawley had a contract dispute with Paramount and, starting in 1923, began bouncing from studio to studio, her fame and box office appeal steadily declining. Her last screen appearance was in 1932.
- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Emmy- and Golden Globe-winner and ten-time Oscar-nominee Walter Scharf was born and raised in New York City, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants. He started playing music at an early age, helping his uncle play the piano in theaters for silent films. His mother Bessie Zwerling was a well-known comedian in New York's Yiddish theater.
He got his first real Broadway gig at the age of 17, orchestrating George Gershwin's "Girl Crazy." He also played in several college shows written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Later he worked as a session musician in the early years of recording, along with Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Jimmy Dorsey. He took his earnings and studied at New York University, even spending a year and a half studying in Berlin, witnessing the rise of the Nazis in 1932.
Back in New York he became the accompanist for the legendary chanteuse Helen Morgan, who introduced him to the world of film with Manhattan Melodrama (1934). Her sometime substitute, Alice Faye, coaxed him to join Rudy Vallee's orchestra, playing at the Embassy Club, and eventually going to Hollywood with them to make Sweet Music (1935) at Warner Brothers. Throughout the 1930s he wrote music for over a dozen films, mostly without receiving screen credit. His first Oscar nomination came for the score of Mercy Island (1941), and his film music career continued through six decades. He worked extensively with stars such as Shirley Temple, Al Jolson, Irving Berlin, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand' and Michael Jackson.
Other Oscar nominations came for his work on Hans Christian Andersen (1952), Funny Girl (1968), Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) and Ben (1972), but he never won. His Emmy award came for his work on a National Geographic television special, and his Golden Globe award was won for his work on "Ben". He shared a credit for co-writing the "Ben" title song with Don Black.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Walter Pidgeon, a handsome, tall and dark-haired man, began his career studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He then did theater, mainly stage musicals. He went to Hollywood in the early 1920s, where he made silent films, including Mannequin (1926) and Sumuru (1927). When talkies arrived, Pidgeon made some musicals, but he never received top billing or recognition in these. In 1937 MGM put him under contract, but only in supporting roles and "the other man" roles, such as in Saratoga (1937) opposite Jean Harlow and Clark Gable and in The Girl of the Golden West (1938) opposite Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Although these two films were big successes, Pidgeon was overlooked for his contributions to them. MGM lent him out to Fox, where he finally had top billing, in How Green Was My Valley (1941). When he returned to MGM the studio tried to give him bigger roles, and he was cast opposite his frequent co-star Greer Garson. However, Garson seemed to come up on top in Blossoms in the Dust (1941) and Mrs. Miniver (1942), although Pidgeon did receive an Academy Award nomination for his role in the latter film.
Pidgeon remained with MGM through the mid-'50s, making films like Dream Wife (1953) and Hit the Deck (1955) with Jane Powell and old pal Gene Raymond. In 1956 Pidgeon left the movies to do some work in the theater, but he returned to film in 1961.
Pidgeon retired from acting in 1977. He suffered from several strokes that eventually led to his death in 1984.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Walter Hampden was one of the great American stage actors and the only performer, aside from Maurice Evans, to play Hamlet three times on Broadway in the post-World War I-era. Born Walter Hampden Dougherty on June 30, 1879, in Brooklyn, New York, he learned his craft in London, where he made his debut as a professional actor in 1901 with the Frank Benson Stock Company. He spent six years apprenticing in England, where he was thoroughly trained as a classical actor. When he returned to the US in 1907, he toured with the great Russian actress Alla Nazimova in a presentation of the plays of Henrik Ibsen.
Hampden played "Hamlet" on Broadway in 1918-1919, in 1925 (with Ethel Barrymore as his Ophelia at his own Hampden's Theatre), and in 1934. His greatest role was that of Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac," a part he first performed in 1923 and that he repeated four more times on the Great White Way.
In 1925 he took over management of the Colonial Theatre, a vaudeville house on Upper Broadway, and renamed it Hampden's Theatre. After christening his house with his second Hamlet on October 10, 1925, he played there with his own company through 1930. Later, Hampden helped launch the American Repertory Theatre, playing Cardinal Wolsey in William Shakespeare's "Henry VIII."
Hampden became revered as the grand old man of the American theater. He was president of the Players' Club for 27 years. His last distinguished role on Broadway was in Arthur Millers parable of McCarthyism, "The Crucible," capping a career that spanned a half-century.
Walter Hampden died on June 11, 1955, just three weeks shy of his 76th birthday.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Producer
Director Wallace Fox has sort of been forgotten in time, though he does have a few films that have become cult favorites. There isn't much known about Fox, but he was born 3/9/1895 in Purcell, OK, and began directing in the silent era (his first film was The Bandit's Son (1927)). He worked mainly on "B" films for "B" studios, especially "Poverty Row" studio Monogram Pictures, for whom he made such films as Bowery at Midnight (1942) and The Corpse Vanishes (1942)--both with Bela Lugosi-- and Pillow of Death (1945), which starred Lon Chaney Jr. and was made for Universal (Universal in the 1940s was more of a "minor major", but was still several steps above Poverty Row). He made quite a few films with the East Side Kids, all at Monogram.
Fox specialized in low-budget westerns, with quite a few to his credit, for a variety of studios including RKO and Universal. In the 1950s he began doing episodic TV, as the market for "B" pictures began to dry up because of television. In 1951 he directed his final film, Montana Desperado (1951), and thereafter turned exclusively to TV. His final directing job was Bull's Eye (1954), after which he retired.
He died on 6/30/1958 at age 63.- Additional Crew
- Producer
- Actor
W. Ray Johnston had years of silent film production experience (at Florida's Thanhouser Company and Syndicate Pictures) behind him when he became an independent producer, founding Big Productions Corp. in 1924 and, later, Rayart. These companies paved the way for his entry into sound pictures at the dawn of the Great Depression, forming Monogram Pictures in October of 1929. Falling back on his distribution background, Johnston set about lining up a group of film exchanges covering 39 key geographical areas of North America. For an independent film producer, distribution to rural and second-run theaters was crucial for success (typically a first-run "B" picture would be shown with an older second-run major studio release, or a smaller theater would choose two new Bs as a double feature. In those pre-TV days, theaters would change their bills completely three times a week! The demand for product in second-run theaters was insatiable until the end of WWII). Johnston assigned production responsibilities to his longtime friend and partner Trem Carr, who was a very capable manager. In the beginning Monogram had no real production facilities, operating similarly to the way United Artists operated later, albeit without the prestige and production budget. Johnston's and Carr's extensive distribution network became a magnet for a number of independent producers, and collecting franchise fees enabled them to begin producing their own low-budget features. Despite it being the darkest days of the Great Depression, Monogram succeeded, releasing its first small number of features in 1931. That grew to 32 releases in 1932 and 24 in 1933. Monogram had a roster of veteran producers under its banner, including Paul Malvern, Herbert Brenon, I.E. Chadwick, and M.H. Hoffman. Johnston and Carr could literally squeeze the buffalo off a nickel; their headquarters were nominally out of the old Talisman lot at 4516 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and were not put under contract but hired on a per-film basis. With a heavy emphasis on westerns--some of them starring a young John Wayne--many of its pictures were shot on locations near the studio itself, keeping overhead costs to a bare minimum. Silent-film mogul Mack Sennett went bankrupt in 1933 and his sprawling studio was an attractive target for several ambitious "Poverty Row" producers. Mascot Pictures chief Nat Levine, who ran his modest serial empire in rented space above a contractor's office, was the first to come up with a workable plan: buy an option, locate someone with deep pockets and attract experienced production staff. Levine approached Johnston and Carr (who initially snubbed the offer, fearing the overhead) and the head of a major film processing company, the overbearing but wealthy Herbert J. Yates of Consolidated Film Industries (CFI). Yates, relatively inexperienced in production, had his mind set on becoming a film mogul. A deal was dangled at Johnston and Carr in which they would serve as rotating chiefs with "autonomy" and the pair agreed to enlist. The result was Republic Pictures, which was formed in 1935.
The idea must have seemed great--on paper. The Monogram name was shelved and Johnston was installed as the nominal studio chief, a title that initially rotated among the three lesser partners. But principal stockholder Yates made it crystal clear--he was in charge and he ruled with an iron fist. Johnston and Carr almost immediately clashed with Yates (Levine preferred to remain out of the fray, quietly and competently churning out modest, yet successful, films that mirrored his earlier Mascot productions; Yates bought him out in 1939 and his career in movies would be soon over), and it wasn't long--1937, actually--before things got so bad that Johnston and Carr left the company in disgust and resurrected Monogram. They quickly ramped up production to 20 features for the remainder of 1937, working out of rented office space at Universal Pictures (Carr actually produced a handful of "B" pictures for Universal while he was there), itself in its tumultuous post-Carl Laemmle period. If they learned anything from their experience at Republic, it was that having actual studio facilities had its advantages, and they finally located a production facility at Sunset Dr. and Hoover St. The little reborn studio specialized on producing two-week quickies that emphasized action, with many stories designed to capitalize on current events (such as Dick Merrill's trans-Atlantic flight), radio show tie-ins and venerable westerns. Johnston and Carr also saw a gold mine in pressing on with the major studios' cast-off programmers, correctly calculating that the Dead End Kids and Charlie Chan still had money left to wring out of them. With the major studios drastically reducing their "B" units in the 1940s, Monogram saw its niche expanding. Even so, the spunky little studio's average profit per picture into the mid-'40s was embarrassingly small (a mere $1932.12 in 1942, a figure that would cause even a short-subject producer at a major studio to howl with laughter), which may explain the rough edges, recycled music and continuity lapses ignored by the stable of hack directors Monogram hired to make its films. Continuing to operate more as a collection of independent producers under one brand, Monogram gained two notable additions, the colorful and legendary tight-fisted Sam Katzman (a man so cheap that he would rip out unfilmed pages of a script whenever a production fell behind) and the always parsimonious agent-turned-"B"-mogul Jan Grippo, who morphed Samuel Goldwyn's delinquent Dead-End Kid cast-offs into the East Side Kids and later as the Bowery Boys (the series would last well into the late 1950s in ever-cheaper-looking installments that seemed to get oddly more endearing the less money was thrown at them and the older and more complacent they became). The same can't be said for the Chan series, which suffered greatly in the move. Lifted from Fox nearly whole, with aging Sidney Toler pressing on in increasingly (and exponentially embarrassingly) cheap productions and replaced by the ineffective Roland Winters after his death in 1947.
Monogram's product remained decidedly B-level; overall, its releases were generally fast-paced and satisfied the lower half of a three-day double bill in thousands of independent movie theaters making them, if not art, than at least profitable. Sadly, Trem Carr died of a heart attack in 1946. In November 1946 Johnston moved to merge Monogram into Allied Artists, a name more fitting the true nature of the company (with Steve Broidy), first with AA as a subsidiary company. The Monogram name increasingly became associated with cheap and shoddy product, and the company sought to increase its standing in the industry and the company eventually dropped the Monogram name in favor of Allied Artists. While loftier sounding, Allied Artists would continue to release the same low-budget product, with few exceptions, into the next decade.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Vivian Schilling is an accomplished novelist, screenwriter, actor and filmmaker. Born and raised in Kansas, she attended the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Los Angeles and also studied under the legendary Stella Adler before embarking upon a multifaceted career. Working both in front and behind the camera, she began writing and starring in her own films at the age of 23.
With her first feature, the low-budget cult-classic Soultaker (1990), she became known for her original ideas and deft hand with complex supernatural subjects. "A very intriguing premise distinguishes the thriller 'Soultaker'. Young star-scripter Vivian Schilling earns high marks for this effort her innovation for horror/fantasy fans, creating a new myth about potential afterlife," said Larry Cohn of Variety. In spite of its limited budget, the film earned Schilling the Saturn Award in 1992 alongside that year's The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).
Schilling went on to star in a variety of independent films, including Germans (1996), a World War II drama based on the renowned stage play by Leon Kruczkowski, directed by Academy Award nominee Zbigniew Kaminski. Schilling portrays heroine Ruth Sonnenbruch, a German nightclub singer who comes to the aid of a Jewish refugee. Her role as a gunslinger in the western Savage Land (1994) garnered her the Diamond Dove and the Blockbuster Rising Star Award. In 2006 Schilling portrayed feminist and author Gertrude Atherton (1857-1948) opposite Campbell Scott's Ambrose Bierce (1842-1915?) in the anthology Ambrose Bierce: Civil War Stories (2006). In 2012 she was engaged by Paris-based Eurocine Films as the writer, producer and director of the English adaptation "Toys in the Attic", based on the stop-motion animated feature Toys in the Attic (2009) by legendary Czech director Jirí Barta.
Schilling has penned two novels to date, both released to critical acclaim: "Quietus" (Penguin-Putnam) and "Sacred Prey" (St. Martin's Press), which earned Schilling the Golden Scroll for Outstanding Achievement in Literature.
A long-standing advocate of animal welfare and conservation, Schilling recently completed work as co-writer and producer of the French documentary Bonobos: Back to the Wild (2011). The film, by noted documentarian Alain Tixier, chronicles the important work of naturalist 'Claudine Andre' )qv_, the film's proceeds to benefit the Lola Ya Bonobo Rescue Sanctuary founded by Andre in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Schilling continues to divide her time between literary and film efforts.- Virginia Hunter grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and studied dancing and ballet from age 8. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1940 and Virginia was under contract to MGM from 1940-1945. She then moved over to Columbia Pictures, working there until the late 1940s. She had started modeling in the late 1940s and was offered a job by the I. Magnin department-store chain in Pasadena. She accepted the position and worked her way up to store manager of several branch stores. She retired from her business career in La Jolla in 1985 after 33 years with the company. She lived with an older brother in Las Vegas until her death in 2012. Among her credits are four "Durango Kid" westerns with Charles Starrett at Columbia Pictures and a number of shorts with The Three Stooges, also at Columbia.
- Vinícius Meres is known for being half-brother of the Brazilian actor and singer Alan Miller. He is brother of Lucas Meres, and son of Maria Helena Farias. He was born in the city of São Paulo, and raised in a small town in the northern part of the state of São Paulo, near the city of Ribeirão Preto.
- Actress
- Producer
- Executive
Principal is the elder daughter of Ree (née Veal) and Victor Rocco Principal. Her paternal grandparents were Italian, while her mother's family was from Gordon, Georgia, and South Carolina. Her father, a United States Air Force sergeant, was often transferred to different duty stations, so the family constantly moved, and Victoria grew up in London, Florida, Puerto Rico, Massachusetts, and Georgia, among other places. She and her sister attended 17 different schools. Victoria's acting career began when she made a commercial at age five, and she began modeling in high school. She enrolled at Miami-Dade Community College, and wanted to study chiropractic medicine. However, being seriously injured in a car crash at age 18 made her refocus her energy on her love of acting. She moved to New York City, where she worked as a model and actress. She then studied at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and moved to Los Angeles, California in 1971.
Her first film was as a Mexican mistress in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), starring Paul Newman. Four years later, she became so disappointed with her career that she quit acting and spent the next three years working as an agent. In 1978, she planned on going to law school and later become a studio executive, but Aaron Spelling offered her a year's tuition to accept a role in the pilot of Fantasy Island (1977). She agreed, and soon after that, she landed the role of Pamela Barnes Ewing on CBS' long-running soap opera Dallas (1978). She left the series after nine years, and began her own production company, Victoria Principal Productions. She continues to work as an actress and producer, and has also created a line of skin care products and written three books about beauty and skin-care.- Actress
- Art Department
Victoria Alynette Fuller was born on December 11, 1970 in Santa Barbara, California. She hails from three generations of artists on both sides of her family. At age two she was already drawing Snoopy cartoons off the funny pages with crayons. Victoria took numerous art classes throughout high school and won first place in a major art competition. Following graduation from high school she became a fitness model, taking art classes at night and working out at the gym during the day. She was discovered by "Playboy" magazine on a modeling shoot. Victoria was the Playmate of the Month in the magazine's January 1996 issue, and did a follow-up pictorial in the May 2005 issue.
Victoria made a guest appearance on an episode of Married... with Children (1987) and had a role in the made-for-TV movie The Scorned (2005). Among the TV shows she has appeared as herself on are The Girls Next Door (2005), The Tyra Banks Show (2005), Dr. Phil (2002), The Howard Stern Show (1990), The Amazing Race (2001), Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1998), The Man Show (1999) and Work Out (2006). Fuller married actor/director/producer Jonathan Baker in 2001. Victoria gave birth to daughter Trease Alynette on October 6, 2006. Fuller and Baker owned and operated Skin Spa, a day spa in Encino, California. (Fuller and Baker have since divorced.) Victoria continues to pursue a career producing pop art paintings, prints, and sculptures based on the Playboy world. In fact, she has the distinction of being the only artist to receive permission from Playboy to use its famous trademarks in her artwork.