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- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Kay Francis is possibly the biggest of the 'forgotten stars' from Hollywood's Golden Era. Yet, for a while in the 1930s she ranked as one of America's most popular actresses, tagged the 'Queen of Warner Brothers'. By 1935, she earned a yearly salary of $115,000 (compared to Bette Davis with $18,000). The daughter of actress Katherine Clinton and businessman Joseph Gibbs, Kay did not start her working life in show business but sold real estate and arranged extravagant parties for wealthy socialites. Following her marriage in 1922 to James Dwight Francis, the son of a moneyed family, Kay adopted the surname Francis. Her first acting job was in a modernized 1925 version of 'Hamlet' (as the Player Queen), performing as 'Katharine Francis'. She then played Marjorie Grey in the melodrama "Crime" (1927) and appeared in the Ring Lardner play "Elmer the Great" (1928), produced by George M. Cohan and starring Walter Huston as Elmer Kane. On the strength of her stage work, Kay was screen-tested by Paramount and subsequently offered a contract (1929-31). A brief affair with writer/director Edmund Goulding (some time around April 1928) may also have been a contributing factor.
She had a bit in the first Marx Brothers outing, The Cocoanuts (1929), and then graduated to playing sophisticated seductresses opposite stars like William Powell and Ronald Colman. She appeared in the Lubitsch comedy Trouble in Paradise (1932), though being unhappy about being billed below Miriam Hopkins in the picture. One of her best early films was the comedy/drama One Way Passage (1932), in which Kay portrayed a gravely-ill baroness opposite Powell's gentleman burglar. This doomed romance, interlaced with witty dialogue, was described by a reviewer as 'spilled cocktail and love at first sight'.
Paramount, at the time well-stocked with female stars but experiencing financial problems, decided to let Kay move to Warner Brothers. There she would remain for the rest of the decade. A tall, attractive, gray-eyed brunette with undeniable style and poise, she soon acquired a reputation as Hollywood's 'best dressed woman', wearing the most glamorous gowns designed by great studio costumers like Orry-Kelly, Travis Banton and Adrian. Female audiences, in particular, often flocked to see Kay Francis pictures simply to appreciate her sumptuous wardrobe. For her part, Kay spent a lot of time and effort on collaborative efforts with costume designers to select the right clothes for the parts she played. Dorothy Jeakins believed, that Kay possessed an 'innate sense of style'.
By the mid-1930s, Kay earned $5,250 per week and was voted by Variety as Hollywood's sixth most popular star. Numerous magazine articles were written about every detail of her life in and off the studio lot. She had major hits with I Found Stella Parish (1935) and Confession (1937), both excellent money-spinners for the studio. While much was made at the time (and since) of her famous lisp, this had not hitherto been a significant detriment to Kay's career. At least, not until her falling out with the studio executives who thought her salary too excessive. The tight control the studio exercised over the roles she played on screen caused her to file a lawsuit against Warner Brothers in an effort to escape her contract. It had all started to go wrong for her when she was assigned the role of 'women's picture star', effectively typecasting her in sentimental melodramas, earnest biopics (The White Angel (1936), and three-handkerchief tearjerkers like My Bill (1938), her script filled with Rs and Ls as chastisement for bucking the system. Though she still managed to give several good performances, the writing was now on the wall. By the end of the decade, the 'Queen of Warner Brothers' mantle had passed on to Bette Davis.
During the mid-1940s, Kay co-produced several B-movies as vehicles for herself at Monogram, then made a brief return to stage work, acting in summer stock before retiring permanently in 1952. She spent the remainder of her life in virtual seclusion in New York and in her estate near Falmouth, Cape Cod. She left some of her estate (in excess of one million dollars) to an organization training guide dogs for the blind, Seeing Eye Inc. Her surviving personal papers are accessible at the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Dan Duryea was educated at Cornell University and worked in the advertising business before pursuing his career as an actor. Duryea made his Broadway debut in the play "Dead End." The critical acclaim he won for his performance as Leo Hubbard in the Broadway production of "The Little Foxes" led to his appearance in the film version, in the same role.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Bobby Driscoll was a natural-born actor. Discovered by chance at the age of five-and-a-half in a barber shop in Altadena, CA. and then convincing in anything he ever undertook on the movie screen and on television throughout his career spanning 17 years (1943-1960). Includes such notable movie screen appearances as The Fighting Sullivans (1944), Song of the South (1946), So Dear to My Heart (1948), and The Window (1949), which was not only the sleeper of 1949 but even earned him his Academy Award in March 1950 as the outstanding juvenile actor of 1949. For his role as Jim Hawkins in Walt Disney's Treasure Island (1950), he eventually received his Hollywood Star on 1560 Vine Street, and in 1954 he was chosen in a nation-wide poll for a Milky Way Gold Star Award (for his work on TV and radio). But all the more tragic, then, was his fruitless struggle to find a place in a pitiless adolescent world after severe acne had stalled his acting career at 16. When his face was no longer charming and his voice not smooth enough to be used for voice-over jobs, his last big movie hit was the voice of animated Peter Pan (1953), for which he was also the live-action model. When his contract with the Disney studios was prematurely terminated shortly after the release of Peter Pan (1953) in late March 1953, his mother additionally took him from the talent-supporting Hollywood Professional School, which he attended by then. On his new School, the public Westwood University High School, on which he graduated in 1955, all of a sudden his former stardom became more burden than advantage. He successfully continued acting on TV until 1957 and even managed to get two final screen roles; in The Scarlet Coat (1955) and opposite of Mark Damon and Connie Stevens in The Party Crashers (1958). His life became more and more a roller coaster ride that included several encounters with the law and his eventual sentencing as a drug addict in October 1961. Released in early 1962, rehabilitated and eager to make a comeback, Bobby was ignored by the very industry that once had raised and nurtured him, because of his record as a convict and former drug addict. First famous... now infamous. Hoping to revive his career on the stage after his parole had expired in 1964, he eventually traveled to New York, only to learn that his reputation had preceded him, and no one wanted to hire him there, either. After a final appearance in Piero Heliczer's Underground short Dirt (1965) in 1965 and a short art-period at Andy Warhol's so-called Factory, he disappeared into the underground, thoroughly dispirited, funds depleted. On March 30, 1968, two playing children found his dead body in an abandoned East Village tenement. Believed to be an unclaimed and homeless person, he was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave on Hart Island, where he remains.- 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.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Wendell Corey was a hard-working American character actor who appeared in numerous movies and television productions in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. Born on March 20, 1914 in Dracut, Massachusetts, in the northeastern part of the Commonwealth near the New Hampshire border, Corey was the son of a Congregationalist clergyman. After receiving his education, Corey began his acting career in summer stock. During the Depression he worked with the Federal Theater Project, part of the Works Progress Administration that had been created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to put the unemployed to work. It was while working with the Federal Theater Project in the late 1930s that he met his wife, Alice Wiley.
He made his Broadway debut in "Comes the Revelation" in 1942, a flop that lasted only two performances. His next play, "Strip for Action" (1942-43), was more successful, lasting 110 performances. He appeared in more plays in supporting roles from 1943-45, before making his reputation as the cynical newspaperman in Elmer Rice's hit comedy "Dream Girl," which ran for 341 performances in the 1945-46 season. He was discovered during the run of the play by producer Hal B. Wallis, the former head of production at Warner Bros. who was an independent producer affiliated with Paramount Pictures. Wallis, who discovered Burt Lancaster shortly after the war, signed Corey to a Paramount contract.
It was at Paramount that he made his movie debut in Desert Fury (1947). He went on to a career as a supporting player in the '40s and '50s in A-level productions with top Hollywood stars. He also carved a niche for himself in television and in the late 1950s starred in the TV series Peck's Bad Girl (1959). In the 1960s he worked mostly in television.
Like Ronald Reagan, who was then a Democrat, the Republican Corey was interested in politics. He was elected to membership on the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild and served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1961 to 1963. As a Republican, he was elected to the City Council in Santa Monica, California, in 1965. He made a bid for the Republican nomination to contest a seat in Congress in 1966, but was defeated in the primary.
Corey was still serving on the Santa Monica City Council when he died on November 8, 1968 at the Motion Picture & Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. He was 54 years old.- Bearing a strong resemblance to Humphrey Bogart certainly helped in typecasting the handsome, hairy-chested Gerald Mohr into "B" film noir. Born in New York City in 1914, he was the son of Sigmond Mohr and Henrietta Noustadt, a Viennese singer. In 1920 his father was killed in a tragic accident while at work when Mohr was five years old, and he was raised primarily by his mother and maternal grandfather, who was a psychologist and associate of Dr. Sigmund Freud, the famed psychoanalyst. Mohr became a fervent student of Freud as a result of this association. He was taught to ride and play piano at an early age and attended the prestigious Dwight Preparatory School in New York. Even as a teen, Mohr possessed a smooth vocal delivery and landed a job as a staff broadcaster for CBS Radio, which in turn opened the door for him to Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre. Mohr made his Broadway debut in the minor role of a gangster in "The Petrified Forest," the same play that put Bogart on the map.
His first starring role in films came with the serial Jungle Girl (1941), in which he played principal villain Slick Latimer. However, because of his pleasant, distinctive baritone voice, it was radio that became Mohr's meal ticket during the 1940s, and he signed on for a number of popular suspense thrillers such as "The Adventures of Philip Marlowe" and "The Whistler." In 1949, "Radio and Television Life" magazine named Mohr as the Best Male Actor on Radio.
After a number of bit parts, he finally won a noticeable role in Lady of Burlesque (1943) with Barbara Stanwyck, after Welles referred him to the film's director, William A. Wellman. Following WWII service with the Air Force, Mohr returned to acting and found his niche in intrigue, playing the title role in The Notorious Lone Wolf (1946) and its two sequels, along with Passkey to Danger (1946), Dangerous Business (1946) and The Truth About Murder (1946). As much as he wanted to extricate himself from this trenchcoat stereotype, he continued to chug along in the 1950s with the same type of roles represented by The Sniper (1952), Invasion, U.S.A. (1952) and Guns Girls and Gangsters (1959). His final leads were in This Rebel Breed (1960) and the low-grade sci-fi thriller The Angry Red Planet (1959). In 1954-55 he starred as Christopher Storm in 41 episodes of the Swedish-made TV series Foreign Intrigue (1951).
Finding film work scarce in the following decade, he found regular work on TV, guest starring in over 100 dramas, ranging from TV westerns like Maverick (1957), Bronco (1958), Cheyenne (1955) and Bonanza (1959) to action/courtroom series such as 77 Sunset Strip (1958), Hawaiian Eye (1959) and Perry Mason (1957), among many others.
His last movie role came in the top-notch musical Funny Girl (1968) starring Barbra Streisand and Omar Sharif, in which Mohr was featured as Tom Branca, one of Nicky Arnstein's cronies, who offers to help Fanny Brice out by giving the proud but debt-ridden gambler a prime casino job.
Mohr was overseas in Stockholm, Sweden, where he had just completed filming the pilot of a new TV series called "Private Entrance" when he suddenly died of a heart attack at the age of 54. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Scotty Beckett was one of the cutest, most successful child actors of the 1930s and 1940s. His descent into a life of alcoholism, drugs, and crime remains one of the most tragic of Hollywood stories.
Born Scott Hastings Beckett on October 4, 1929, in Oakland, California, he and his family moved to Los Angeles when Scotty was 3 years old. Shortly after arriving in LA, Beckett's father was hospitalized and Scotty would frequently entertain his dad by singing songs. During one such visit, a Hollywood casting director happened to notice the cherubic youngster and told his parents he had movie potential. Scotty made his debut in Gallant Lady (1933) starring Clive Brook and Ann Harding. Scotty played a boy of three in the film, and Dickie Moore played the same character at the age of six. It was the first of several connections between the two child stars. The next year, he filled the hole vacated by Moore in Our Gang, and they later appeared in Heaven Can Wait (1943), portraying Don Ameche's character as a child. He and Moore finally appeared together in Dangerous Years (1947), which was Marilyn Monroe's screen debut.
Scotty appeared in fifteen Our Gang shorts in two years. Hal Roach noted a resemblance to Jackie Coogan and dressed Beckett accordingly, with an oversized cap and turtleneck sweater reminiscent of Coogan's outfit in The Kid (1921). He was paired with George 'Spanky' McFarland as a kind of partnership within the gang, and their sideline observations and wisecracks highlighted the series from 1934 until 1936, just as Porky and Buckwheat sparked the one-reelers from 1936 on.
After leaving Our Gang, Beckett emerged as one of the top child stars of his era, appearing in many films with the top stars of the late '30s and early '40s. Among his major credits were Dante's Inferno (1935) with Spencer Tracy, Anthony Adverse (1936) with Fredric March, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) with Errol Flynn, Conquest (1937) with Greta Garbo, Marie Antoinette (1938) with Norma Shearer, My Favorite Wife (1940) with Cary Grant, and Kings Row (1942) with Claude Rains.
In 1943 Scotty began attending Los Angeles High School and was named treasurer of his freshman class. He also appeared on Broadway that same year in the play "Slightly Married", receiving the only favorable notices of the production, and also played Junior in the hit radio show "The Life of Riley". Adolescence did not slow down his film career, as Scotty continued to win roles in such movies as My Reputation (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck and, most notably, The Jolson Story (1946), wherein he played the young Al Jolson.
He enrolled at USC but dropped out when he began receiving more offers from MGM, beginning with Cynthia (1947) with Elizabeth Taylor, A Date with Judy (1948), again with Taylor and Jane Powell (the future Mrs. Dickie Moore), Battleground (1949) with Van Johnson, Nancy Goes to Rio (1950), again with Powell, and The Happy Years (1950) with fellow child stars Dean Stockwell and Darryl Hickman.
At around the same time, Scotty began to gain notoriety for his nocturnal activities. Part of the young Hollywood set, Beckett was a fixture at parties and would frequently be seen with young stars like Roddy McDowall, Jane Powell, Elizabeth Taylor, and Edith Fellows. His nightlife seemed to become more of a priority than his burgeoning acting career, and it started a trend of reckless, irresponsible behaviors which plagued Beckett the rest of his life. Early success without any sacrifice often breeds a sense of entitlement and a lack of responsibility or consequence. This seems to be an overriding theme, as Beckett began making headlines most Hollywood stars try to avoid.
In 1948 he was arrested for drunk driving after he crashed into another car after attending a frat party where he had "five bourbons". Scotty tried to run from the booking office after being arrested and refused to surrender his possessions. In September of 1949, he eloped with tennis star Beverly Baker. Right from the start, Scotty showed signs that he was not ready for marriage. On their honeymoon in Acapulco, Beckett allegedly threatened to punch a pool bystander in the nose. The couple separated after 5 months of marriage, divorcing in June of 1950. Newspapers covered the divorce, citing Baker's allegations of Beckett's jealousy and controlling, abusive behavior. Scotty tried to get Baker to quit tennis and stop seeing her parents. He also warned her never to have a soft drink "with any boy or man between 6 and 60".
In 1951, Becket met actress Sunny Vickers. Shortly after they began dating , Vickers became pregnant. They married in Phoenix on June 27, 1951, and five months later Scott Hastings Beckett, Jr. was born. The bad publicity of the divorce from Baker plus the forced marriage to Vickers in the conservative 1950s immediately made Beckett a Hollywood outcast. Between 1952 and 1954, Scotty landed only two roles, in relatively minor films, You're Only Young Twice (1952) and Hot News (1953). He was beginning to get desperate.
In early 1954, Beckett landed the role of "Winky" in a low-budget sci-fi show called Rocky Jones, Space Ranger (1954), which today has become a cult classic. However, as former co-stars and ex-friends such as Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Powell emerged as bonafide film stars of the 1950s, a supporting role in a fledgling, unproven industry likely was extremely frustrating for Scotty.
In February of that year, the Cavalier Hotel in Hollywood was robbed of a little more than $130 in cash. The bandit pistol-whipped the desk clerk and disappeared with the loot, or so police thought. Passed out drunk in the basement of the hotel, armed with a gun and a knife, was Scotty Beckett. He was arrested and charged with possession of a weapon, but not with robbery because the money was not found and the clerk could not positively identify the former star as the robber.
After posting bail, Beckett, with his wife and three-year-old son, fled to Mexico. He checked into a Tampico hotel under the name of Sean Bullock, giving Carmel, California as his address. There were two bullet holes in his car that Beckett said were from a gang who tried to rob him south of Juarez.
After running out of cash and options, Scotty wrote several checks on a nonexistent bank to different merchants. After Mexican authorities tracked him to a Ciudad Victoria hotel, he attempted to sneak himself and his family out of the hotel and got into a gunfight with the Mexican police in which 20 shots were exchanged. Miraculously, no one was killed, and Scott and Sunny were eventually captured. Scott Jr. was sent back to Los Angeles.
Scotty served only four months in a Mexican jail before returning to the US in September of 1954. He surrendered to authorities for the weapons charge, pleaded guilty, and amazingly was given only three years' probation. He told newspapers he saw this as an opportunity to pick up the pieces and start over with a clean slate, but it was too little, too late. He was dropped from the Rocky Jones series and replaced with Jimmy Lydon (with whom Beckett had appeared in Cynthia (1947)). A little more than a month later, Beckett was arrested in Las Vegas, once again for bouncing a check.
Scotty re-enrolled at USC to study medicine, but when Our Gang was reissued for TV in 1955 as The Little Rascals, Beckett saw an opportunity to make a comeback in the movies. He appeared in Three for Jamie Dawn (1956) and had walk-ons in The Oklahoman (1957) with Joel McCrea, and Monkey on My Back (1957) with Cameron Mitchell. He proved he could still act and exhibit that same youthful charm, appearing perfectly at ease on camera, particularly in his small role as a Navy corpsman with the Marine Corps in Monkey on My Back (1957). But just when it seemed as though a comeback might happen, Scotty self-destructed again.
In February of 1957, he was caught at a Mexican-US border crossing trying to bring illegal drugs into the US. He said the pills were for his wife, whom he claimed had a nervous ailment. In reality, Sunny Vickers was suffering from alcoholism and had checked herself into Metropolitan State Hospital for treatment. She filed for divorce in August of 1957. After Sunny was awarded custody of Scott Jr., Beckett attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills. He recovered but realized he was finished as an actor. He tried his hand at selling used cars, among other things. He still had his charm, but he could not stay out of trouble.
In April of 1959, Beckett was arrested on a charge of drunk driving. In August of that same year, he was arrested for driving drunk again, but this time he did not emerge unscathed. He smashed his '52 sedan into a tree, fracturing his skull, thigh, and hip and suffering multiple lacerations to his head. Although he was given probation and a suspended sentence, he remained crippled for the rest of his life.
In September of 1963, he was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. Now confined to a wheelchair from the near-fatal drunk driving accident, he attempted to stab his neighbor after a dispute. Scotty's wife of two years, Margaret, a divorcée with a teenage daughter named Susan, assisted in breaking up the fight. Three days later Beckett tried to kill himself by slashing his wrists. He recovered from this second suicide attempt, but by that time Margaret had had enough and moved out, taking Susan with her. As she was moving her belongings out, Scotty tried to stop her. He hit Susan over the head with a crutch that he now used after his car accident and was again arrested. He vowed to the judge at his sentencing "never to drink again".
After that, Scotty stayed out of the headlines for a few years. In 1967 he found employment driving an ambulance, perhaps to be close to the prescription drugs to which he was addicted, perhaps to try to revive his interest in becoming a doctor, perhaps to try to forget that he had once graced the screen with Hollywood's biggest stars before his own star had plummeted to earth, or perhaps because he had run out of alternatives.
On May 8, 1968, he checked into the Royal Palms Hotel, a Hollywood nursing home, after suffering a beating in what may have been a drug deal gone wrong. Two days later, he was dead from an overdose of barbiturates; his third suicide attempt was successful. He left behind a note, a son, and some wonderful films and memories.
Leonard Maltin summed it up best when he wrote, "It was a particularly sad end for someone who, as a child, had shown so much easy charm and talent." Scotty Beckett was not the first child star casualty, and he would not be the last, but his story is certainly one of the saddest.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Nick Adams, best known to audiences as Johnny Yuma of the TV series The Rebel (1959), played leads and supporting parts in many films of the 1950s, often cast in the same "troubled young man" mold as his good friend, James Dean. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Twilight of Honor (1963). He died in 1968 due to an overdose of drugs he was taking for a nervous disorder.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Bea Benaderet had a remarkable career in radio and television. In the earlier days of radio, before television, she provided the voice for numerous names of characters on the radio, on shows like "Fibber McGee and Molly," "My Favorite Husband" with Lucille Ball & "The Jack Benny Show. She was born in New York City but raised in San Francisco and made her radio debut when she was 12 years young. After doing voice-overs and various roles, Orson Welles gave her a regular role on "Campbell Playhouse." Bea made a smooth move from radio to television as she was cast in the role as Blanche Morton in The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950). It was because of her role as Blanche that she could not accept the part of Ethel Mertz in I Love Lucy (1951), which was offered to her by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. She also provided the voice for several Warner Brothers cartoons, usually for females (those Mel Blanc could not do), like Tweety's owner, "Granny". Later, she worked with Blanc again on one of the most famous cartoons, Tweetie Pie (1947). It was 1947's Academy Award winning animation short of the year, featuring "Tweety", (the yellow Canary) & "Sylvester, the Siamese Cat".- Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was born on January 31, 1902 in Huntsville, Alabama. Her father was a mover and shaker in the Democratic Party who served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from June 4, 1936, to September 16, 1940. Tallulah had been interested in acting and, at age 15, started her stage career in the local theater troupes of Huntsville and the surrounding areas. At age 16, she won a beauty contest and, bolstered by this achievement, moved to New York City to live with her aunt and to try her hand at Broadway. She was offered a role in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), but did not take it after she refused John Barrymore's invitation for a visit to the casting couch. Unfortunately, for the young Miss Bankhead, she did not make any headway on the stages of New York, so she pulled up stakes and moved to London, in 1923, to try her luck there.
For the next several years, she was the most popular actress of London's famed West End, the British equivalent of Broadway. After starring in several well-received plays, she gained the attention of Paramount Pictures executives and returned to the United States to try her hand at the film world. Her first two films, Woman's Law (1927) and His House in Order (1928), did not exactly set the world on fire, so she returned to do more stage work. She tried film work again with Tarnished Lady (1931), where she played Nancy Courtney, a woman who marries for money but ultimately gets bored with her husband and leaves him, only to come back to him when he is broke. The critics gave it a mixed reception. Tallulah's personality did not shine on film as Paramount executives had hoped. She tried again with My Sin (1931) as a woman with a secret past about to marry into money. Later that year, she made The Cheat (1931), playing Elsa Carlyle, a woman who sold herself to a wealthy Oriental merchant who brands her like she was his own property and is subsequently murdered. The next year, she shot Thunder Below (1932), Faithless (1932), Make Me a Star (1932) (she had a cameo role along with several other Paramount stars) and Devil and the Deep (1932). The latter film was a star-studded affair that made money at the box-office due to the cast (Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton and newcomer Cary Grant). The films she was making just did not do her talent any justice, so it was back to Broadway--she did not make another film for 11 years. She toured nationally, performing in all but three states.
She was also a big hit at social affairs, where she often shocked the staid members of that society with her "untraditional" behavior. She chain-smoked and enjoyed more than her share of Kentucky bourbon, and made it a "habit" to take her clothes off and chat in the nude. A friend and fellow actress remarked on one occasion, "Tallulah dear, why are you always taking your clothes off? You have such lovely frocks." She was also famous--or infamous--for throwing wild parties that would last for days. She returned to films in 1943 with a cameo in Stage Door Canteen (1943), but it was Lifeboat (1944) for director Alfred Hitchcock that put her back into the limelight. However, the limelight did not shine for long. After shooting A Royal Scandal (1945) she did not appear on film again until she landed a role in Die! Die! My Darling! (1965). Her film and small-screen work consisted of a few TV spots and the voice of the Sea Witch in the animated film The Daydreamer (1966), so she went back to the stage, which had always been first and foremost in her heart. To Tallulah, there was nothing like a live audience to perform for, because they, always, showed a lot of gratitude. On December 12, 1968, Tallulah Bankhead died at age 66 of pneumonia in her beloved New York City. While she made most of her fame on the stages of the world, the film industry and its history became richer because of her talent and her very colorful personality. Today her phrase, "Hello, Dahling" is known throughout the entertainment world. - Actor
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President of the Dramatic Club at Cornell University, Franchot Tone gave up the family business for acting, making his Broadway debut in "The Age of Innocence".
Tone then went into movies for MGM, making his film debut (at Paramount Pictures) in The Wiser Sex (1932). With his theatrical background, Tone became one of the most talented movie actors in Hollywood.- Actor
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Ramon Novarro was born José Ramón Gil Samaniego on February 6, 1899 in Durango, Mexico, to Leonor (Gavilan) and Dr. Mariano N. Samaniego Siqueiros, a prosperous dentist. Ramon and his family moved to Los Angeles in 1913, as refugees from the Mexican Revolution. After stints as a ballet dancer, piano teacher and singing waiter, he became a film extra in 1917. For five years he remained an extra until director Rex Ingram cast him as Rupert in The Prisoner of Zenda (1922). He was cast with Lewis Stone and Ingram's wife, Alice Terry (Ingram was also the person who suggested that he change his name to Novarro). He worked with Ingram in his next four films and was again teamed with Terry in the successful Scaramouche (1923). Novarro's rising popularity among female moviegoers resulted in his being billed as the "New Valentino". In 1925 he appeared in his most famous role, as the title character in Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), and later co-starred with Norma Shearer in The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927). His first talking picture was Call of the Flesh (1930), where he sang and danced the tango. He continued to appear in musicals, but his popularity was slipping. He starred with Greta Garbo in the successful Mata Hari (1931), but his career began to fade fast. In 1935 he left MGM and appeared on Broadway in a show that quickly flopped. His later career, when he was able to find work in films, consisted mostly of cameos. On October 30th, 1968, Ramon Novarro was savagely beaten in his North Hollywood home by two young hustlers. They had heard - in error - that he had thousands of dollars locked away somewhere in his home. They never found any money, and Ramon was discovered dead the next day by his servant.- Actress
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Delightful child/juvenile actress Virginia Anna Adelaide Weidler (her friends called her "Ginny") had that knowing gleam in her eye that usually spelled trouble in one form or another for anyone nearby. She was born in Eagle Rock, California, in 1927, one of six children. Her mother was former Wagnerian opera singer Margarete Radon (born Margarete Therese Louisa Meyer), and her father was architect Alfred Weidler.
Virginia nearly made her acting debut at age 3 in John Barrymore's Moby Dick (1930) but was summarily replaced. A year later, she scored her first small movie bit in Warner Baxter's Surrender (1931) and was on her way. One of her brothers, child actor and musician George Weidler, was Doris Day's first husband (from 1946 to 1949).
RKO picked up young Virginia after learning that she could speak a bit of French. The average-looking youngster was ably cast as rural tomboy types in Laddie (1935) and Freckles (1935), the latter film allowing her to do a dead-on parody of Shirley Temple. She earned her first lead in Girl of the Ozarks (1936) and showed she could easily hold her own. After an unimpressive stint with Paramount, who tried to groom her as a rival to Fox's bratty Jane Withers, she was finally picked up by MGM and her film career blossomed. Co-starring with Mickey Rooney in Love Is a Headache (1938), she proved a natural young comedienne and precocious scene-stealer in such films as Out West with the Hardys (1938) (again with Rooney) and Too Hot to Handle (1938).
Little Virginia could also shine in dramatic outings, as she did with The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt (1939) and Bad Little Angel (1939), but she was never a good choice for sappy roles, as demonstrated when she played Norma Shearer's whiny imp of a daughter in The Women (1939). Virginia's forte was providing comedy relief, and she reached her young peak with two classic MGM films: Young Tom Edison (1940), as Rooney's creative sister, and The Philadelphia Story (1940), as Katharine Hepburn's smart-alecky younger sister. Her tongue-in-cheek rendition of "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" at the piano was just one of many memorable highlights from this vintage classic.
The young actress's career started to slip away from her when the teenage Shirley Temple signed with MGM, abruptly bumping "Plain-Jane" Virginia back to secondary status. After rather disappointing receptions to Born to Sing (1942), The Youngest Profession (1943), and Best Foot Forward (1943), the awkward teen left films and turned to vaudeville as a song-and-dance comedy performer, utilizing her full-scale talents as a mimic. She made her legitimate stage debut in "The Rich Full Life" at the John Golden Theatre in 1945, but the show closed within a month.
Soon after, Virginia retired from show business, married, and had two children. She passed away from a heart ailment at 41. After her death it was learned that she had suffered from rheumatic fever as a child.- Actress
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Fay Bainter's career began as a child performer in 1898. For some time, she was a member of the traveling cast of the Morosco Stock Company in Los Angeles. In 1912, she made her Broadway debut in 'The Rose of Panama', but this and her subsequent play 'The Bridal Path' (1913), were conspicuous failures. She continued in stock and, after forming an association with David Belasco, took another swing at Broadway. She had her first hit with a dynamic performance, which established her as major theatrical star, as Ming Toy in 'East is West', at the Astor Theatre (1918-1920). Alternating between comedy and melodrama, Fay then shone in 'The Enemy' (1925-26) with Walter Abel and gave an outstanding performance of mid-life crisis as the desperate Fran Dodsworth ('Dodsworth',1934-35), opposite Walter Huston as her husband Sam. Fay never had the chance to recreate her stage role on screen - Ruth Chatterton got the part instead. At the same time, now aged 41, she was offered a role in her first motion picture, This Side of Heaven (1934). Co-starring opposite Lionel Barrymore, this was the first of many thoughtful, understanding wives, aunts and mothers she was to play over the next twenty years.
Of stocky build, with expressive eyes and a warm, slightly smoky voice, Fay rarely essayed unsympathetic or hard-boiled characters, with the exception of her Oscar-nominated dowager in The Children's Hour (1961). While not often top-billed, her name remained consistently high in the list of credits throughout her career. Critics applauded her sterling performances in productions like Make Way for Tomorrow (1937) and Quality Street (1937), as Katharine Hepburn's excitable spinster sister. Fay won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for the movie Jezebel (1938). As Bette Davis' stern, reproving Aunt Belle, she excelled in a somewhat meatier role than the genteel or fluttery ladies she had previously been engaged to portray. That same year, she was also nominated (as Best Actress) for her housekeeper, Hannah Parmalee, in White Banners (1938), but lost to Bette Davis. Fay enhanced many more films with her presence during the 1940's, notably as Mrs. Elvira Wiggs, in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1942), Merle Oberon's eccentric aunt from the bayou in Dark Waters (1944) and Danny Kaye's mother in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947). From the 1950's, she alternated stage with acting on television. Her last role of note was as Mary Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's 'Long Day's Journey into Night', on tour with the National Company in 1958.- Actress
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Forever embraced as the mumbling, bumbling Aunt Clara on the Bewitched (1964) television series, endearing character actress Marion Lorne had a five-decade-long career on the stage before ever becoming a familiar TV household name.
Born Marion Lorne MacDougall on August 12, 1883 (other sources list 1885 and 1888), she grew up in her native Pennsylvania, the daughter of Scottish and English immigrants. Trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, she appeared in stock shows, and was on the Broadway boards by 1905. She married English playwright Walter C. Hackett and performed in many of his plays throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including "Hyde Park Corner" and "The Gay Adventure". They at one point settled in England where they co-founded the Whitehall Theater. It was there that Marion began to sharpen and patent her fidgety comedy eccentrics in such plays as "Pansy's Arabian Knight," "Sorry You've Been Troubled," "Espionage" and "London After Dark". Upon Hackett's death in 1944, she returned to the States and again, after a brief retirement, became a hit in such tailor-made stage shows as "Harvey".
Marion made a definitive impression via her movie debut at age 60+ in Alfred Hitchcock's immortal suspenser Strangers on a Train (1951) as murderer Robert Walker's clueless, smothering mother. Surprisingly Hollywood used her only a couple more times on film after that auspicious beginning -- a grievously sad waste of a supremely talented comedienne. Marion wisely turned to TV instead and proved a dithery delight in such sitcoms as Mister Peepers (1952) and Sally (1957), gaining quirky status as well as part of the comedy ensemble on The Garry Moore Show (1958).
It was, however, her role as Elizabeth Montgomery's befuddled, muttering, doorknob-collecting witch-aunt on Bewitched (1964) -- whether bouncing into walls or conjuring up some unintended piece of witchcraft -- that put a lasting sheen on her long career. For that role she deservedly won an Emmy trophy for "Best Supporting Actress" -- albeit posthumously. Montgomery accepted her award. Sadly, Marion succumbed to a heart attack on May 9, 1968, just ten days before the actual ceremony. Elizabeth Montgomery gave a touching acceptance speech on her behalf.- Scottish-born Finlay Currie was a former church organist and choirmaster, who made his stage debut at 20 years of age. It took him 34 more years before making his first film, but he worked steadily for another 30 years after that. Although he was a large, imposing figure, with a rich, deep voice and somewhat authoritarian demeanor, he was seldom cast in villainous parts. He received great acclaim for his role as Magwitch in Great Expectations (1946), and one of his best remembered roles was that of Balthazar in Ben-Hur (1959). He was also Shunderson, Cary Grant's devoted servant with a secret past in People Will Talk (1951). Later in his life he became a much respected antiques dealer, specializing in coins and precious metals (coinage). He died in England at age 90. While his biggest Academy Award-winning film, Ben-Hur (1959) was in its final four+ months of filming, he became a widower when his only wife, Maude Courtney, passed away.
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This popular, baggy-eyed, bald-domed, big lug of a character actor had few peers when called upon to display that special "slow burn" style of comedy few others perfected. But perfect he did -- on stage, film and TV. In fact, he pretty much cornered the market during the 50s and 60s as the dour, ill-tempered guy you loved to hate.
Born Frederick Leonard Clark on March 19 1914, the son of Frederick Clark, a county agriculture commissioner, and Stella (née Bruce) Clark, in Lincoln, California, Fred's initial interest was in medicine and he pursued his pre-med studies at Stanford University. A chance role in the college play "Yellow Jack" change the coarse of his destiny. Earning a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, he paid his dues performing in local community theater and summer stock. By May of 1938, at age 24, he was making his Broadway debut with the short-lived comedy play "Schoolhouse on the Lot". He then returned to Broadway a few months later to appear in the melodrama "Ringside Seat", which also closed early.
Fred's nascent career was interrupted when America entered World War II. He served as a Navy pilot in 1942 but later joined the Army and spent nearly two years with the Third Army in Europe. Clark returned to acting and in during the post-war years broke into films via Hungarian film director Michael Curtiz who cast him in the noir classic The Unsuspected (1947). Able to provide cold-hearted villainy in crime drama as well as dyspeptic humor to slapstick comedy, film work came to Fred in no short order. Ride the Pink Horse (1947), Cry of the City (1948), Flamingo Road (1949), White Heat (1949), Alias Nick Beal (1949), Sunset Blvd. (1950), The Jackpot (1950), The Lemon Drop Kid (1951) and Meet Me After the Show (1951) all made the most of Fred's sour skills. Around this time (1952) he married actress Benay Venuta, whom he met while both were performing on stage in "Light Up the Sky" (1950). The popular couple continued to work together from time to time, which included a 1956 stage production of "Bus Stop" at the La Jolla Playhouse.
Well-established on film by this point, Fred set his sights on TV and earned raves providing weekly bombastic support to George Burns and Gracie Allen on their popular sitcom The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (1950). Joining the cast into its second season (his role had already been played by two other actors), Fred made the role of neighbor/realtor Harry Morton his own, becoming the first definitive Harry on the show. Investing his character with an amusing, child-like grumpiness, he was ideally paired with comedienne Bea Benaderet (as wife Blanche). Together they provided perfect foursome chemistry with Burns and Allen, much in the same way Vivian Vance and William Frawley did for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz on I Love Lucy (1951). Clark, however, would leave the show in the fall of 1953 following a salary dispute, and was replaced by a fourth Harry Morton, Larry Keating, who managed to keep the role until the end in 1958. Fred would find steady but lesser success on TV after this.
With his trademark cigar, scowl, shiny baldness and pencil-thin mustache, Fred continued to be high in demand in film, usually playing some high-ranking military officer, gang boss, shifty politician or executive skinflint. The Martin & Lewis comedy The Caddy (1953), Marilyn Monroe's How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956), Don't Go Near the Water (1957), The Mating Game (1959), Auntie Mame (1958), Bells Are Ringing (1960), Visit to a Small Planet (1960), Boys' Night Out (1962) and Move Over, Darling (1963), all displayed Clark at his blustery best. And on TV he contributed to such comedy shows as The Beverly Hillbillies (1962), I Dream of Jeannie (1965) and The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961). He also received some attention pushing potato chips in commercials.
Fred made a successful stage debut in London with 1963's "Never Too Late" co-starring Joan Bennett and Samantha Eggar, as a cranky middle-aged father-to-be. He would also return infrequently to Broadway with prime roles in "Romanoff and Juliet" (1957), Viva Madison Avenue! (1960) and "Absence of a Cello" (1964). On a sad note, many of Fred's final years were spent in inferior film. Movies such as Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965), I Sailed to Tahiti with an All Girl Crew (1969) and the notorious bomb Skidoo (1968), which was directed by Otto Preminger and starred Jackie Gleason and Carol Channing, were undeserving of his talents.
Divorced from Ms. Venuta in August of 1962, Fred subsequently married a model, Gloria Glaser, in 1966. Fred's sudden death of liver disease two years later on December 5, 1968, at the untimely age of 54, had Hollywood mourning one of its finest comic heavies -- gone way before his time.- Actor
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After his mother died at the age of only 17 he was raised by his father and an aunt, and later a stepmother.
He later went to New York, where he tried to break into showbiz.
He got his first break with Gus Edwards, working later as actor in several shows, among them "The Gingerbread Man" and "When Dreams Come True". During this show he met his first wife, Margaret Grae, with whom he formed up a successful vaudeville team. Although being asked several times to make movies (among them a request by Harold Lloyd), he stayed with vaudeville. In 1926 they divorced and his wife soon married another actor.
In 1927 he was signed by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. for his show "Rio Rita", where he was teamed with Robert Woolsey. They clicked and formed a comedy team that lasted until 1938 when Woolsey died. When Ziegfeld sold the screen rights of Rio Rita to the newly formed RKO studio as their official debut, they were the only actors in the cast who repeated their stage roles. Further more, a young actress named Dorothy Lee joined the team.
During the 1930s, while they made many comedies in Hollywood, Wheeler married and was divorced twice.
After Woolsey's death, he continued as a single, mostly on the stage, but sometimes also on the screen.
His last years were darkened with financial difficulties and failing health.
Furthermore, two weeks before his own death on January 18, 1968 his daughter Patricia died of cancer.- Actress
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Helen Walker was a beautiful and bright actress whose career never reached its full potential, in spite of her evident talent. She was a successful actress on Broadway, and in 1942 her performance in the play "Jason" was so impressive that she was signed up to act in films. She immediately earned good notice and received star billing in her film debut, Lucky Jordan (1942), starring Alan Ladd. During the mid-1940s she had continued success with strong performances in offbeat but entertaining and successful films like The Man in Half Moon Street (1944), the satirical Brewster's Millions (1945), and the murder spoof Murder, He Says (1945), which starred Fred MacMurray. Achieving both artistic and box office success, she was clearly on the brink of major stardom. She won the starring role in the prestigious film Heaven Only Knows (1947). But all that changed on New Year's Eve of 1946 when she picked up three hitchhiking World War II veterans while driving to Los Angeles from Palm Springs, where she had been vacationing. She had a terrible accident, hitting a divider and wrecking the car, which flipped several times. One of the soldiers died and the other two were severely injured. Walker herself was seriously injured, including a broken pelvis. But her career suffered even greater and longer-lasting damage. The survivors of the accident accused her of driving drunk and speeding, and she was brought to trial. She suffered bad press and faced a public that was grateful to World War II veterans for having won the war, and was replaced in Heaven Only Knows (1947). Although she was acquitted of criminal charges, many fans turned against her and major studios were hesitant to hire her. She tried to adapt by portraying ruthless and manipulative women in dark murder mysteries, in which she again showed great talent. She performed with great aplomb in Nightmare Alley (1947), the gritty urban police drama Call Northside 777 (1948), and Impact (1949), an unconventional murder drama that featured a fatal automobile accident her character helped cause. But she could not overcome the stigma of the veteran's death. By the 1950s, she was reduced to low-budget films that received little notice. After winning a minor role in the Cornel Wilde police drama The Big Combo (1955), her film career ended and she only appeared in a few television shows. In 1960, she made her last television appearance, and that same year her house burned down. Some remaining friends from show business helped her, with some fellow actresses staging a benefit for her, which touched her deeply. She faded from the public view and during the 1960s she experienced health problems. In 1968, she died of cancer. She was 47 years old.- Writer
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The illegitimate son of a Danish farmer and his Swedish housekeeper, Carl Theodor Dreyer was born in Copenhagen on the 3th of February, 1889. He spent his early years in various foster homes before being adopted by the Dreyers at the age of two. Contrary to popular belief (perhaps nourished by the fact that his films often deal with religious themes) Dreyer did not receive a strict Lutheran upbringing, but was raised in a household that embraced modern ideas: in his spare time the adoptive father was an avid photographer, and the Dreyers voted for The Danish Social Democrates. When he was baptized the reasoning was culturally, not religiously motivated. Dreyer's childhood was an unhappy one. He did not feel his adoptive parents' love (especially the mother), and longed for his biological mother, whom he never knew.
After working as a journalist, he entered the film industry, and advanced from reading scripts to directing films himself. In the silent era his output was large, but it quickly diminished with the arrival of the talkie. In his lifetime he was recognized as being a fanatical perfectionist amongst producers, and thus difficult to work with. His career was dogged by problems with the financing of his films, which led to large gaps in his output - and after the critics, too, denounced Vampyr (1932), he returned to journalism in 1932, and became a cinema manager in 1952 - though he still made features up to the mid- 1960s, a few years before his death. His films are typically slow, intense studies of human psychology, usually of people undergoing extreme personal or religious crises. He is now regarded as the greatest director ever to emerge from Denmark.- Actor
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Tall, cheerful, outdoorsy leading man of Hollywood B movies who started in show business as an infant accompanying his vaudevillian parents ("Flanagan and Edwards, the Rollicking Twosome") on the stage. In his teens, Dennis started to write film scripts while attending college. He then tried to break into films as an extra, appearing under his birth name Bud Flanagan. His easy-going manner and impudent grin -- possibly reminding Clark Gable of himself (they worked together on Saratoga (1937)) -- led to the star suggesting Bud to MGM management for leading roles. In short order, Bud Flanagan became Dennis O'Keefe, resident tough guy of action dramas and the occasional comedy.
Serious acting was rarely called upon but Dennis handled the material given to him with aplomb and good humour. After his contract with MGM expired in 1940, he free-lanced and appeared in, arguably, three of his best pictures: in support of Roland Young and Joan Blondell in the delightful supernatural murder spoof Topper Returns (1941); in the Val Lewton-produced thriller, The Leopard Man (1943); and in the tense crime melodrama T-Men (1947) which he co-scripted (with John C. Higgins) for Eagle-Lion. This rather unambitious little film for what was essentially considered a 'poverty row' studio proved so successful that it spawned a CBS radio series three years later. Dennis was chosen for the lead (though his character was renamed) and his delivery was perfect for scripts which balanced drama with light comedy.
For most of the period between 1944 and 1952, Dennis alternated roles on radio with film work. He had another lead in the 1945 radio serial "Hollywood Mystery Time" as a movie director-cum-sleuth. On screen, he displayed his penchant for comedy in the funniest version of the much-filmed Brewster's Millions (1945), followed by the forgettable farce Getting Gertie's Garter (1945) (from the same stable). Another fair, marginally off-beat comedy, was The Lady Wants Mink (1953), co-starring Dennis with Ruth Hussey and Eve Arden. In addition, there were scores of 'cheap and cheerful' action films including several made in Europe. Dennis eventually turned his hand to directing with Angela (1954), a crime thriller set in Rome which he also co-scripted under the pseudonym Jonathan Rix. At the end of the decade, Dennis starred in his own short-lived television sitcom about a widowed Los Angeles syndicated columnist. After that, he guested in just a few more TV episodes before his untimely death from lung cancer in August 1968.- A stage actor from 1927, Albert Dekker was an established Broadway star when he made his film debut ten years later. Tall and with rugged good looks, he often played aggressive character roles, a prime example being his double-crossing gang leader in the classic The Killers (1946). From 1944-46 he served a term in the California legislature representing the Hollywood district. As he got older Dekker, unlike many actors, turned to the stage rather than television, and achieved great success there and on the college lecture circuit. His last role, in The Wild Bunch (1969), was one of his most memorable: the tough railroad detective Harrigan, who hires a murderous group of bounty hunters to track down and kill a gang of outlaws who've been robbing his company's trains.
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Rangy, red-headed and straightforward to the bone while possessing distinctively adenoidal vocal tones, this actor with a voracious appetite for high living was a fine cinematic representation of the racy and race-paced style of pre-Code Hollywood. Lee Tracy patented with peerless skill the lightning rod timing and machine gun delivery so identified with that period and would have continued on handsomely in films had severe typecasting, a hair-trigger temper and a notoriously reckless off-camera life not gotten the best of him.
Christened William Lee Tracy on April 14, 1898, the Atlanta-born actor was the son of a traveling railroad superintendent and a former school teacher. Lee attended Western Military Academy in Alton, Illinois, while growing up, and then relocated with his family to upstate New York. Lee may have studied engineering at Union College in 1918, but he also showed an interest in dramatics and was almost immediately asked to join a theater company upon his graduation. WWI interrupted his nascent stage career when he joined the army. Following his discharge, he cast aside thoughts of a theater career and instead became a U.S. Treasury agent. Within two years' time, however, he was back via the vaudeville stage and touring stock companies. This all culminated in a most auspicious Broadway debut in "The Showoff" in 1924.
It took but a couple of years for Tracy to achieve certified stardom with the George Abbott production of "Broadway" (1926), in which he played a song-and-dance man, receiving the New York Drama Critics Award for his efforts. In 1928, following more vaudeville work, Lee found his quintessential role in the form of Hildy Johnson, the hustling, fast-talking newspaperman, in Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht's timeless play "The Front Page". If ever an actor and role fit together like a hand in a glove, this was it, and it was highly unfortunate, with all due respect to actor Pat O'Brien, that Tracy was not afforded the proper chance to transfer this prototype Broadway part to the 1931 film. During this time he was also developing an off-stage reputation as a carouser and heavy drinker.
Nevertheless, Fox Studios immediately signed Tracy and offered up a fine screen debut for him co-starring with Mae Clarke in the early talkie Big Time (1929) as the male half of a husband-and-wife vaudeville team who breaks off with his mate and falls on heavy times while she becomes a star. In Born Reckless (1930), Tracy played the first of his Walter Winchell-like, staccato-styled characters. Tracy went on to perfectly evoke his fast-talking image in such Depression-era films as the drama Liliom (1930) and the ribald comedy She Got What She Wanted (1930).
A highly impulsive man, Tracy abandoned Hollywood at this early stage of the game and returned to his former glory, Broadway, appearing to fine advantage in "Oh, Promise Me" and "Louder, Please" in 1930 and 1931, respectively. But films continued to beg for his services; this time it was Warner Bros. He contributed greatly to both the melodrama The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932) and the horror opus Doctor X (1932) and easily stole the proceedings, this time in a comic mode, as the cynical, scandal-sniffing columnist in Blessed Event (1932). Columbia Studios decided to get in on the action with a three-picture deal. Tracy played a no-holds-barred politico in Washington Merry-Go-Round (1932), the title role in The Night Mayor (1932) and an ex-con in Carnival (1935). In between, however, trouble started brewing with his unrestrained night life and patterned absences from the set.
A fourth big studio, MGM, took him on in 1933 with a contract boost despite his "bad boy" reputation, yet more personality problems surfaced. Despite excellent performances in such films as Clear All Wires! (1933), The Nuisance (1933), Turn Back the Clock (1933), Advice to the Forlorn (1933), and the MGM classics Dinner at Eight (1933) and Bombshell (1933), both showcasing MGM's comedic sex siren Jean Harlow, Tracy went too far. During the filming of Viva Villa! (1934) in Mexico City, Tracy displayed shocking, ungentlemanly behavior that resulted in fisticuffs with the law and a high-profile arrest on public morals charges. MGM not only kicked Tracy off the picture but felt compelled to apologize publicly to the Mexican people for his disrespect and terminate the actor's five-year contract.
Tracy freelanced thereafter, often for RKO, but the quality of his pictures began to slide and his constant rash of quicksilver reporters, columnists and press agents had worn out their welcome. He returned to the stage in both New York ("Bright Star") and London ("Idiot's Delight") and was warmly received. In the midst of it all, he married Helen Thoms Wyse, a nonprofessional, in 1938 and, defying all odds, made the marriage work. She survived him by thirty years.
With his last postwar film at the time being High Tide (1947), Tracy's looks had hardened dramatically and he looked at TV being a possible medium for his talents. Throughout the '50s and early '60s, he appeared on a number of shows, including "Kraft Television Theatre", "Wagon Train" and "Ben Casey". He also took on series leads, such as The Amazing Mr. Malone (1951), Martin Kane (1949), and New York Confidential (1959). And there was always the stage.
Tracy's last hurrah, both on Broadway and in film, was Gore Vidal's blistering political drama The Best Man (1964). Recreating his 1961 Tony-nominated role of the crusty, terminally ill U.S. president, he received his only Oscar nod for this standout part. The rest of his working years went by with less distinction. In the summer of 1968 he was diagnosed with liver cancer and succumbed to the illness on October 18 of that year in a Santa Monica hospital.- Actress
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Vaudevillain, Broadway player and, for one decade from 1929, screen actress often in comedic roles. She also appeared in character parts in a handful of 60s films. She is memorable as the original - and the most believable - Alice Kramden, wife of Ralph Kramden (immortalized by Jackie Gleason), in TV's "The Honeymooners." Kelton's performances took place (ca. 1950-52) when "Honeymooners" had yet to become an independent series but was merely a sporadically scheduled, 10- or 15-minute playlet during Gleason's weekly TV variety show. Although they may yet exist on kinescope only narrowly available, Kelton's wonderful performances as Alice are otherwise essentially lost. She was forced to leave the role after being blacklisted. Audrey Meadows then won the role of Alice Kramden.- Actor
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Slim, often bespectacled comedy performer Tommy Noonan (born Thomas Patrick Noone) started off in experimental theater alongside his half-brother, actor John Ireland, who went on to have an enviable career of his own. The actor then launched his own repertory theatre back in his home state in the early 1940s. His career was interrupted by a stint in the Navy during WWII, but he returned to it following his discharge.
Tommy wound up in New York and briefly displayed his budding talents on Broadway before RKO signed him up for post-war films and he relocated out West. By this time, his half-brother, already a well-known film commodity, had met and married movie actress Joanne Dru, whose brother was singer-actor Peter Marshall. With a solid background in comedy and burlesque, Noonan hooked up with straight-man Marshall to form the 1950s comedy duo of Noonan and Marshall. They appeared with a modicum of success in clubs and on TV, including The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) (aka "Toast of the Town"). Their teaming, however, did not prevent them from boosting their own individual careers. Appearing in a few B-grade comedy film vehicles together, Tommy did better on the large screen in solo performances as a sort of wry, nerdy Tony Randall type in higher-grade films. He not only held his own as Marilyn Monroe's smitten schmuck of a boyfriend in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) but went dramatic as Judy Garland's blunt, piano-playing pal in A Star Is Born (1954) and received some of the best film reviews of his career.
With Marshall, Tommy produced and wrote a couple of meager film vehicles to showcase the comedy team as a second-string Martin and Lewis, but the films, The Rookie (1959) and Swingin' Along (1961), were flat and were barely noticed upon their release. These failures broke the duo up for good. (Peter Marshall successfully went on to host the TV game show The Hollywood Squares (Daytime) (1965) as Peter Marshall). The pickings were slim for Tommy in the 1960s, and he resorted to producing and co-starring in a couple of exploitative "comedy" vehicles. Promises..... Promises! (1963), which showcased a fading Jayne Mansfield, and 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt (1964), which starred an equally unmemorable Mamie Van Doren, were unmitigated disasters. His last producing effort was the thoroughly irredeemable Cottonpickin' Chickenpickers (1967).
The talented actor died five days before his 47th birthday in 1968 of a brain tumor and was survived by his wife, Pokie, and four children. He is not related to actor-writer-director-composer Tom Noonan (born 1951).- Actress
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Kitty Kelly was born on 27 April 1902 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Beginner's Luck (1935), So Proudly We Hail! (1943) and Men of Chance (1931). She died on 29 June 1968 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Actress
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Doris Lloyd was an English actress with a lengthy film career. She appeared in over 150 films between 1920 and 1960. She spent most of her life abroad in the United States.
In 1891, Lloyd was born in Walton, Liverpool. Her parents were Edward Franklin Lloyd and Hessy Jane McCappin. One of her grandfathers was reportedly an amateur actor,.
Lloyd made her theatrical debut c. 1914, Liverpool Repertory Company. She made her film debut in the crime film The Shadow Between (1920), based on a novel by Silas Kitto Hocking (1850-1935).
In the early 1920s, Lloyd traveled to the United States to visit her sister who had settled there. She found work as an actress in the United States, and decided to permanently settle there. Besides film appearances, Lloyd appeared in Broadway theater, in the Ziegfeld Follies, and with touring theaters,
Though mostly playing minor and supporting roles, Lloyd had a few highlights in her film career. She played the sinister Russian spy Mrs. Travers in Disraeli (1929), Mrs. Cutten in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), sympathetic thief Nancy Sikes in Oliver Twist (1933), school superintendent Miss Wetherby in Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (1946), and the "meek housekeeper" Mrs. Watchett in The Time Machine (1960).
Lloyd voiced one of the talking roses in the animated film Alice in Wonderland (1951). Towards the end of her career she had bit parts as an unnamed depositor in Mary Poppins (1964), and as Baroness Ebberfeld in The Sound of Music (1965). Her last film appearance was in the comedy film Rosie! (1967).
Lloyd died in May 1968, at the age of 76. She died in Santa Barbara, California, and was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery of Glendale.- Actor
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Howard Smith was born on 12 August 1893 in Attleboro, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Death of a Salesman (1951), Kiss of Death (1947) and Don't Go Near the Water (1957). He was married to Mildred A. Barker and Lillian Boardman. He died on 10 January 1968 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Francis J. McDonald - not a name to bring ready recognition-but a look at the face reminds one of many old movie roles indeed. His career as an actor literally spanned from early silent films and the great silver screen era of sound film to follow on through the golden age of television. His screen credits, noticeable and small, amount to an amazing nearly 350 roles. Starting on stage, he was a slight but handsome leading man who entered films in 1913 and continued lead and featured romantic roles from contemporary to costume adventure into the 1920s. It was during this period that he married - and divorced - actress Mae Busch, most familiar for the many Laurel and Hardy comedies she did. MacDonald worked on Broadway briefly in only two plays (mid-1918). By the time he did his first totally sound film (late silent movies had intervals of background or short dialog sound), Burning Up (1930), MacDonald had 83 films under his belt. But into the 1930s, being older, his roles were turning toward shady characters of second order - and increasingly uncredited. With dark hair and mustache and beady eyes with a prominent nose, MacDonald fit well into many an ethnic or sneaky villain role and continued in demand. He got to know Cecil B. DeMille and had a regular featured character role in his long history of films beginning with The Plainsman (1936).
Still through the 1930s and 40s MacDonald averaged a steady five to ten films a year-dipping somewhat in the World War II years. Into the 1950s he was increasingly cast in one of his perennial staples, westerns, with roles already familiar to him: weaselly, tin horn gamblers, henchmen, but also dignified Indian chiefs. He was a natural to move into the incredibly popular western phenomenon that burst over the new medium of TV. He showed up in the spectrum of episodic oaters: from early Range Rider, Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok, and The Lone Ranger to later fare, such as, Have Gun-Will Travel, Wanted Dead or Alive, Wagon Train, the whole stable of Warner Bros. westerns at the end of the decade (Maverick, etc.), and The Virginian in the next. In the meanwhile there were some good character pieces in movies. Perhaps the most poignant being his last for DeMille's, The Ten Commandments (1956), where he had the small but showcase role as Simon, the old Jewish slave. Bedraggled and working in the clay pit - with Charlton Heston - he pleads for freedom for the Israelites - and gets a a trowel in the gut from a Egyptian guard for his trouble - dying heroically in Heston's arms - it is classic DeMille. And it was classic MacDonald - always ready to give a skillful and memorable performance. - Martin Melcher was born on 1 August 1915 in North Adams, Massachusetts, USA. He was a producer, known for That Touch of Mink (1962), Pillow Talk (1959) and Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962). He was married to Doris Day and Patty Andrews. He died on 20 April 1968 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Juanita Hall was an American actress from New Jersey. She is primarily remembered for her roles in two Rodgers and Hammerstein stage musicals ("South Pacific" and "Flower Drum Song") and in their respective film adaptations. In 1950, Hall became the first African American actress to win a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress.
In 1901, Hall was born in Keyport, New Jersey to an interracial couple. Her father was African-American and her mother was Irish-American. Hall was orphaned at an early age, but she and her siblings were raised by her maternal grandparents. She received her secondary education at the Keyport High School, a public high school. She then received classical training at the Juilliard School, a private performing arts conservatory located in New York City.
By the early 1930s, Hall served as the assistant director for the Hall Johnson Choir. She went on to become both a leading Broadway performer. and a regular performer in the clubs of Greenwich Village. Her signature role was that of the Vietnamese trader Bloody Mary in "South Pacific". She portrayed the character in 1,925 Broadway performances at the Majestic Theatre.
In 1958. Hall recorded the music album "Juanita Hall Sings the Blues", backed by experienced jazz musicians. That same year, Hall returned to the role of Bloody Mary in the film adaptation of "South Pacific". Due to doubts on whether the aging actress could perform the role's key songs, the opera singer Muriel Smith (1923-1985) was hired as the character's singing voice.
Hall continued her performing career until 1962, when she was forced to leave a road show tour due to poor health. Hall was suffering from diabetes for the last decade of her life, and she lost her eyesight due to complications from diabetes. She retired to the Lillian Booth Actors Home, an assisted-living facility located in Englewood, New Jersey. The Actors Fund of America financed her medical treatments until her death in 1968. Hall died at the age of 66, from complications of diabetes.- Actor
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Nedrick Young was born on 23 March 1914 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The Defiant Ones (1958), Inherit the Wind (1960) and Gun Crazy (1950). He was married to Elizabeth MacRae and Frances Sage. He died on 16 September 1968 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
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Robert Bice was born on 4 March 1914 in Dallas, Texas, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Foxfire (1955), Invasion, U.S.A. (1952) and Burke's Law (1963). He was married to Beverly L Boos, Audrey Daphne Stuart and Louise Weatherford. He died on 8 January 1968 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
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June Collyer was born Dorothea Heermance in New York City on August 19, 1906. She began her career in the film East Side, West Side (1927). After making the successful change to the sound era, June continued to work, something some of her counterparts couldn't do. She appeared on the silver screen until her last meaningful film, A Face in the Fog (1936). From 1950 to 1955, June appeared on the television series The Stu Erwin Show (1950).- This ill-fated British actress was born in the Shepherd's Bush area of London, England, on February 27, 1936. After the outbreak of World War II, young Virginia and her family were evacuated to South Africa. She eventually returned to London and entered a convent school where the pretty, gray-eyed brunette developed an interest in acting.
Virginia attended drama school and finally broke into the business with TV parts, usually playing demure young lasses in assorted dashing action series such as "The Buccaneers" and The Adventures of Robin Hood." Making a minor film debut for director Roy Boulting with Happy Is the Bride (1958), she achieved better notices with her second film. In Our Virgin Island (1958), she played the bride of John Cassavetes who learns to adapt to a Robinson Crusoe-styled existence. Co-starring an up-and-coming Sidney Poitier, the story lightly tinges on racial issues.
On the strength of this, Virginia won a contract with British Lion Pictures and showcased well in The Man Upstairs (1958) with Richard Attenborough, but less so playing a airline stewardess in the mediocre Jet Storm (1959) which also wasted a top-notch cast including Attenborough, Mai Zetterling, Diane Cilento, Stanley Baker and Sybil Thorndike.
Virginia's reticent but sincere approach to films worked remarkably well in an understated way, and she proved just as quietly compelling on stage with a prime role in "The Catalyst" in 1958 with Phil Brown and Renée Asherson. She showed escalating promise and earned BAFTA nominations for her memorable work in Young and Willing (1962) and as Peter Sellers' forlorn wife in Only Two Can Play (1962), but then all filming stopped.
This abrupt end was primarily due to her marriage in 1962 and a change of focus on family life. Other than occasional TV appearances in such popular series as "Danger Man" and "The Prisoner," Virginia was seldom seen. It was learned that following the birth of her second son in February, 1966, she began showing acute signs of post-natal depression.
In the summer of 1967 Virginia returned auspiciously to filming with a remake of the soap drama Interlude (1968) playing the cast-off wife of orchestra conductor Oskar Werner. She suffered a severe nervous breakdown following the film's shoot and never recovered.
On a bitterly cold day on January 24, 1968, Virginia took a major overdose of antidepressants, drove away from her home at Princes Risborough. She was found collapsed in a nearby wooded area the next day suffering from acute hypothermia. Although she was revived briefly, she died shortly after at a nearby hospital.
Virginia won a posthumous National Board of Review award and a BAFTA nomination for her work in "Interlude." During her relatively short career, the actress seemed doomed to play unhappy, sympathetic third parties in romantic triangles. While a notable sadness touched many of Virginia Maskell's roles, her performances are all the more haunting to watch knowing her personal tragedy. - Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-68), US politician, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the third son of Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy and wife Rose Kennedy. He studied at Harvard and at the University of Virginia University Law School, served at sea (1944-46) in World War II, was admitted to the bar (1951), and served on the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities (1957-59), when he prosecuted several top union leaders. An efficient manager of his brother John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign, he was an energetic Attorney General (1961-64), notably in his dealings with civil rights problems. He became senator from New York in 1965. After winning the Californian Democratic presidential primary election, he was shot at a hotel in Los Angeles. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Jordanian-born immigrant, was sentenced to the gas chamber in 1969, but was not executed.
- Charles Chaplin Jr. was born on 5 May 1925 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for The Beat Generation (1959), Fangs of the Wild (1954) and Matinee Theatre (1955). He was married to Martha Brown (nurse) and Susan Magness. He died on 20 March 1968 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Harry Woods was born on 5 May 1889 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for The Viking (1928), Monkey Business (1931) and Colorado Territory (1949). He was married to Helen P. Hookenberry. He died on 28 December 1968 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
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Lilian Harvey was born on January 19th, 1906 in London. Her mother was English and her father was German. When she was eight her family moved to Berlin shortly before the outbreak of WW1. She spent much of the war at school in Switzerland where she broadened her knowledge of languages and classical dance.
After graduating high school in Berlin, she worked in theatre revues before debuting in her first film "Der Fluch" for Robert Land. After many roles in silent films, UFA found great use for her acting, dancing and language skills in many famous light operettas made with the advent of sound. These highly popular films (usually co-starring Willy Fritsch, with whom she became irrevocably associated in the public's mind as the romantic dream-team of the European cinema) were usually made in three different languages at once. The cast would be switched around her for the various takes in German, French and English (Laurence Olivier had his first film role in one of her vehicles).
Her most successful film, 1931's "Der Kongress Tanzt"/"Le congress s'amuse"/"Congress Dances" led to a contract in Hollywood with the Fox Film Company. She dissolved this contract after a few pictures, walking out on a role that was filled by then-unknown Alice Faye and returning to UFA to be with director Paul Martin, with whom she was romantically involved. The Nazi regime had come to power in her absence and Lilian Harvey found it difficult to work under Goebbels.
She was instrumental in helping those persecuted by the Nazis escape until her film popularity waned and she was forced to escape as well. She eventually landed in the USA and spent most of WW2 in Los Angeles working as a volunteer nurse. Her former directors and co-workers like Michael Curtiz and Billy Wilder remained social contacts, but the stigma of having been UFA's biggest star of the early thirties kept her from reigniting her own film career. She did theatre work and continued to work on European stages after the war. She received war reparations in the early sixties and lived on the Riviera until her death on July 27th, 1968.- Howard Petrie was born on 22 November 1906 in Beverly, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Bend of the River (1952) and Walk Softly, Stranger (1950). He was married to Alice Laurie Wood. He died on 24 March 1968 in Keene, New Hampshire, USA.
- Mae Marsh's father was an auditor for the railroad who died when she was four. Her family moved to San Francisco, where her stepfather was killed in the 1906 earthquake. Her great-aunt then took Mae and her sister to Los Angeles. With her show business background, Mae's aunt took them to the various movie studios for work as extras. Mae was a little freckle-faced girl, who came to work one day as an extra at Biograph to substitute for her sick sister. She had blue eyes and her hair color was indeterminate, but she had definite screen presence. She began her film career working for Mack Sennett and D.W. Griffith. Her first leading role was as the bare-legged prehistoric girl in Man's Genesis (1912). By 1913 Mae was being groomed as the successor to Mary Pickford. Most of her film roles were dramatic or tragic, or a combination of both. She appeared in Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). After that film, Samuel Goldwyn signed her to a contract at $2500 per week - far exceeding the $35 per week she got in 1915. Goldwyn was at his best when it came to publicity. It was he who gave Mae the title "The Whim Girl". Other than the publicity, her film career with Goldwyn was a disappointment and she retired on the eve of her marriage in 1918. During the 1920s Mae did a few movies in Hollywood and England, but stayed retired for the most part. It was not until the Wall Street "crash" in 1929 that began the Great Depression that she returned full-time to the screen, as she, like many others, was wiped out financially. After her financial situation improved, she returned to films sporadically, usually out of boredom. She worked in a dozen movies during the 1930s and took a number of roles in the 1940s and 1950s. She was a favorite of director John Ford and appeared in many of his films, such as The Grapes of Wrath (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), My Darling Clementine (1946) and The Quiet Man (1952), and she had a role in A Star Is Born (1954).
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Eddie Baker was born on 17 November 1897 in Davis, West Virginia, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Oranges and Lemons (1923), Rough on Romeo (1922) and Crazy Doings (1929). He was married to Christine J.. He died on 4 February 1968 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Writer
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John Steinbeck was the third of four children and the only son born to John Ernst and Olive Hamilton Steinbeck. His father was County Treasurer and his mother, a former schoolteacher. John graduated from Salinas High School in 1919 and attended classes at Stanford University, leaving in 1925 without a degree. He was variously employed as a sales clerk, farm laborer, ranch hand and factory worker. In 1925, he traveled by freight from Los Angeles to New York, where he was a construction worker. From 1926-1928, he was a caretaker in Lake Tahoe, CA. His first novel, "Cup of Gold," was published in 1929. During the 1930s, he produced most of his famous novels ("To a God Unknown," "Tortilla Flat," "In Dubious Battle," "Of Mice and Men," and his Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Grapes of Wrath"). In 1941, he moved with the singer who would become his second wife to New York City. They had two sons, Thom (b. 1944) and John IV (b. 1946). In 1948, his close friend Ed Ricketts died, he went through a divorce, he took a a tour of Russia, and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His wrote the screenplay for Viva Zapata! (1952), and 17 of his works have been made into movies. He received three Academy Award nominations. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. US President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him the United States Medal of Freedom in 1964, and he was commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp on what would have been his 75th birthday. His ashes lie in Garden of Memories Cemetery in Salinas.- Virginia got her start with a Milwaukee stock company and also did some film work with Essanay Studios in 1917 Chicago. Back in the theater, it would be 3 more years before she was brought out to Hollywood to act as leading lady to Bert Lytell. Virginia would continue to appear in films throughout the decade and she would be an established star at Universal by the mid 20's. The bulk of her films would be between 1924 and 1927. While she had no trouble adjusting to sound in The Isle of Lost Ships (1929), which she made at First National, her big salary and declining appeal both conspired to end her film career. Unable to find a suitable studio, she would make her last film The Last Zeppelin (1930) at Tiffany Studios. In 1931, she married Charles Farrell and retired from the screen to live in Beverly Hills before moving to Palm Springs.
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One of the great British stage actors of his era Donald Wolfit was noted for his magnificent portrayals of King Lear and Tamburlaine. Yet no actor of his generation was surrounded by more controversy. He was temperamental and difficult to deal with, enraged by criticism and tyrannical with the companies he led.
Although his talent was never in any doubt, critics often condemned his companies' poor supporting players and tasteless costumes. Even in death he had his critics.
Wolfit appeared in numerous theatre seasons at the Old Vic and Stratford-upon-Avon but preferred the life of a touring player and as the star of a vagabond troupe. He also appeared in many films and television plays. One of his most barnstorming performances was in the title role of the film Svengali (1954) in which, with his hypnotic real-life stare, he puts Hildegard Knef into a permanent trance.
The money from his film work helped to finance many of his stage productions. Wolfit is best remembered today as the inspiration for the film The Dresser (1983), in which Albert Finney plays a barnstorming actor-manager.- Actress
Joan Tabor was born on 16 September 1932 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA. She was an actress, known for Dante (1960), The Red Skelton Hour (1951) and Espionage: Far East (1961). She was married to Broderick Crawford and Abraham David Gold. She died on 18 December 1968 in Culver City, California, USA.- Douglas Evans was born on 26 January 1904 in Madison, Virginia, USA. He was an actor, known for The Twilight Zone (1959), Dragnet (1947) and Perry Mason (1957). He died on 25 March 1968 in Hollywood, California, USA.
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Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of Alberta Christine (Williams), a schoolteacher, and Martin Luther King Sr. a pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. For Martin the civil rights movement began one summer in 1935 when he was six years old. Two of his friends did not show up to play ball with him and Martin decided to go looking for them. When he went to one of the boys' house, their mother met him at the front door and told him in a rude tone that her son would not be coming out to play with him that day or any other day because they were white and he was black. Years later, Martin admitted that those cruel words altered the direction of his life. As a teenager, Martin went through school with great distinction. He skipped ninth and 12th grades, and excelled on the violin and as as a public speaker. One evening after taking top prize in a debate tournament, he and his teacher were riding home on the bus discussing the event when the driver ordered them to give up their seats for two white passengers who had just boarded. Martin was infuriated as he recalled, "I intended to stay right in my seat and protest," but his teacher convinced him to obey the law and they stood for the remainder of the 90-mile trip. "That night will never leave my memory as long as I live. It was the angriest I had ever been in my life. Never before, or afterward, can I remember myself being so angry," he later recalled.
Martin entered Morehouse College, his father's alma mater, when he was 15 with the intention of becoming a doctor or lawyer. After graduating from Morehouse at the age of 19, he decided to enter Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. This private nondenominational college had only 100 students at the time, and Martin was one of six black students. This was the first time that he had lived in a community that was mostly white. He won the highest class ranking and a $1,200 fellowship for graduate school. In 1951 he entered Boston University School of Theology to to pursue his Ph.D. While at Crozer Martin had attended a lecture by Howard University President Mordecai Johnson, who spoke about Mohandas K. Gandhi, India's spiritual leader whose nonviolent protests helped to free his country from British rule, and that gave Martin the basis for positive change. It was here that he met and married his wife Coretta Scott King, who was a soprano studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1954 Martin accepted a call to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, to be its pastor. Despite Coretta's warning that it would not be safe for them in Alabama, the poorest and most racist state in the US, Martin insisted that they move there. Many local black ministers attended Martin's first sermon at the church, among them the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, who congratulated him on his speech. The two became fast friends and often discussed life in general and the challenges of desegregation in particular. Then an incident changed Martin's life forever.
On the cold winter night of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old black seamstress who worked in a downtown Montgomery department store, boarded a bus for home and sat in the back with the other black passengers. A few stops later, she was ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger who just boarded. She repeatedly refused, prompting the driver to call the police, who arrested her. In response to Mrs. Parks' courage, the town's black leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association and elected Martin as its leader. The first goal of the MIA was to boycott the city's bus system until public transportation laws were changed. The strike was long, bitter and violent, but eventually the city's white merchants began to complain that their businesses were suffering because of the strike, and the city responded by filing charges against Martin. While in court to appeal the charges, he learned that the U.S. Supreme Court had affirmed the decision by the Alabama Supreme Court that the local laws requiring segregation on buses were unconstitutional. The first civil rights battle was won, but for Martin it was the first of many more difficult ones. On November 29, 1959, he offered his resignation to the members of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as several months earlier he had been elected leader of a new organization called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He moved his family to Atlanta and began to establish a regional network of nonviolent organizations.
In April 1961 he coordinated the SCLC and other civil-rights organizations to take two busloads of white and black passengers through the South on a "freedom ride" for publicity reasons. In Virgina and North and South Carolina there were no incidents, but in Anniston, Alabama, the ride became a rolling horror when one bus was burned and its passengers beaten by an angry racist white mob. In Birmingham, angry mobs--with some policemen joining them--greeted the bus with more violence, which was broken up when state police intervened and stopped the chaos. The violence shook Martin and he decided to abandon the freedom rides before someone was killed, but the riders insisted they complete the ride to Montgomery, where they where greeted with more violence. In January 1963 Martin arrived in Birmingham with Ralph Abernathy to organize a freedom march aimed to end segregation. Despite an injunction issued by city authorities against the gathering, the protesters marched and were attacked by the police. Three months later another march was planned with the intent to "turn the other cheek" in response to the violence by the city's police force. As the marchers reached downtown Birmgingham, the police attacked the crowd with high-pressure fire hoses and attack dogs. This time, however, the incident was witnessed across the entire country, as many network TV crews were there and broadcasting live footage of unarmed marchers being blasted to the ground by high-pressure hoses and others being bitten and mauled by snarling attack dogs, and it sparked a national outrage.
The next day, more marchers repeated the walk and more policemen attacked with fire hoses and police dogs, leading to a total of 1,200 arrests. On the third day, Martin organized another march to the city jail. This time, when the marchers approached the police, none of them moved and some even let the marchers through to continue their march. The nonviolent strategy had worked--the strikes and boycotts were cutting deeply into the city merchants' revenues, and they called for negotiations and agreed with local black leaders to integrate lunch counters, fitting rooms, restrooms and drinking fountains within 90 days. Martin was then called for a rally in Washington, DC, near the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. Nearly 200,000 people stood in the intense heat listening to the speeches by the members and supporters of the NACCP. By the time Martin was called as the day's final speaker, the crowd was hot and tired. As he approached the podium, with his papers containing his prepared speech, he suddenly put them aside and decided to speak from the heart. He spoke of freedoms for blacks achieved and not yet achieved. He then spoke the words that echo throughout the world to this day: "I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.' I have that dream." By mid-October 1964 Martin had given 350 civil rights speeches and traveled 275,000 miles across the country and worked for 20 hours a day.
While in an Atlanta hospital after collapsing from exhaustion, his wife brought in his room a telegram notifying him that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. On April 1, 1968, Martin traveled to Memphis, Tennessee to meet with two of his advisers, James Bevel and Jesse Jackson, to discuss organizing a march to Washington in support of a strike by Memphis' city's sanitation workers. In the late afternoon of April 4, he stepped out onto the balcony of the Lorraine Motel where he was staying to speak with Andrew Young. As he saw Jackson and waved to him for a moment, a gunshot rang through the air and Martin Luther King Jr. was hit in the neck and fell dead from a sniper's bullet. He was dead, but the struggle that he started to continue to bring peace and end the racial conflict in the USA continues to this day.- Helen Keller contracted a virulent childhood disease which resulted in complete loss of sight and hearing at nineteen months. Her parents futilely sought help for her, as did family friend Alexander Graham Bell. Finally, when Keller was seven, Annie Sullivan, a young teacher, was hired by the family. Through a system involving a constant physical contact with Sullivan, a touch alphabet "spelled" into Keller's hand, persistence, faith, and love - detailed in The Miracle Worker (1962) - Keller suddenly and amazingly understood; she quickly and efficiently learned language, and the world opened to her. She asked to be taught to speak at the age of ten. With Sullivan's important emotional and intellectual support, Keller's development took off. Keller graduated - cum laude - from Radcliffe College in 1904. Sullivan was her companion until her death in 1936. Helen Keller wrote prolifically, traveled widely, lectured on various personal, political, and academic topics, and was awarded numerous honorary degrees from universities around the world. She died in 1968, one of the most famous and widely-admired women of our time.
- Cathy Lewis was likely best-known as George and Steve Baxter's snobbish sister on Hazel (1961). She played a nemesis of sorts to the show's titular character, Hazel (played by Shirley Booth), the family's busybody domestic who was shunned by Lewis's character (Deirdre Baxter Thompson), an always aspiring socialite who received her self-esteem through the accolades of the upper class, for whose approval and acceptance she yearned. Yet it was Hazel's advice which saved the day.