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One of the most versatile character actors in the business, Joseph Patrick Carrol Naish (pronounced Nash) was born of Irish descent in New York City. His illustrious ancestors hailed from county Limerick and were listed in Burke's Peerage. He had a Catholic education at St. Cecilia's Academy, but absconded from school at the age of 14 to become a song plugger. He briefly joined a children's vaudeville company run by Gus Edwards. At 16, he enlisted in the Navy, was thrown out, re-enlisted to experience wartime action with the U.S. Army Signals Corps in France, then spent years sailing the world's seas with the Merchant Marine. Around this time, he acquired as many as eight languages and became adept at dialects. J. Carroll then spent some time in Paris singing and dancing with a stage troupe run by musical comedy star Gaby Deslys. Sometime around 1925, he returned to New York for further theatrical work, possibly with Molly Picon's Yiddish Theatre. The following year, he travelled by tramp steamer to California en route to China. The ship suffered mechanical breakdowns and departure was delayed. While ashore, J. Carroll was somehow spotted by a Fox studio talent scout and wound up in Hollywood. He played a few bit roles and then joined a road company production of 'The Shanghai Gesture'. In 1929, he married an Irish stage actress, Gladys Heaney, in what would become one the most enduring of show business unions.
Back in Hollywood from 1930, J. Carroll's gift for dialects were to land him plum character parts as Arabs, Italians, Pacific Islanders, Hindus, Mexicans, African-Americans and Orientals. Villains of the black-hearted variety were his stock-in-trade. Indeed, he was so damn good at his job that Time Magazine referred to him as a 'Hollywood's one-man United Nations'. Ironically, J. Carroll's black hair, moustache and swarthy complexion invariably denied him roles as an Irishman (the sole exception being General Phil Sheridan in Rio Grande (1950)).
On radio, J. Carroll enjoyed one of his most profound successes as the voice of Italian immigrant Luigi Basco. 'Life with Luigi' was broadcast from 1948 to 1954, entertained millions of listeners and helped shape American consciousness about Italian values and the Italian way of life. Of its time, it was also essentially stereotypical. In films, J. Carroll was the consummate scene-stealer who could make even a bad movie look good. There weren't many of those, to be sure. His very best work includes the Italian prisoner Giuseppe in Sahara (1943) (one of his two Oscar-nominated roles), Loretta Young's Chinese father Sun Yat Ming in The Hatchet Man (1932), a Mexican peasant in A Medal for Benny (1945) (his second Oscar nomination), the pirate Cahusac in Captain Blood (1935) and John Garfield's well-meaning father Rudy in Humoresque (1946). He played Lakota medicine man and warrior Sitting Bull twice: in Annie Get Your Gun (1950) and in the title role of Sitting Bull (1954). He was the archetypal evil genius Dr. Daka in the Batman (1943) serial and, in 1956, brought his talents to the small screen as Charlie Chan in The New Adventures of Charlie Chan (1957). Having amassed some 224 screen credits, J. Carroll Naish died of emphysema in January 1973 at the age of 77. Sadly, he never won an Oscar which would have been richly merited. However, A Medal for Benny garnered him a Golden Globe Award as Best Supporting Actor and he is remembered with a star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard.- In a career sadly cut short by his death at 52 Anthony Sagar shared a screen with many of the greats of British cinema - Alec Guinness, Michael Redgrave, Tom Courtenay, John Mills and Richard Burton to name a few. He also popped up in 7 of the Carry On series, a Norman Wisdom film, a Ronnie Corbett film and the big-screen Dad's Army.
He never rose particularly high up the bill in film but could play pretty much any character, in the Carry Ons he was variously a policeman, ambulanceman, cook and bus conductor. Perhaps his best film appearance was in Richard Burton cult classic Villain (1971) his nervous, bootlicking character has some lovely scenes with Burton's vicious Vic Dakin and Nigel Davenport's intelligent, wily Inspector Matthews.
Sagar started fairly late in film and television, at 36 he made his debut in Dixon of Dock Green as Det. Sgt. Brownrigg, a role he reprised 8 times in the popular police series, though he also played two other characters in it in later years. Police series were somewhat of a staple as he subsequently appeared in Z Cars, Special Branch and New Scotland Yard and his last appearance on film was in The Offence, Sidney Lumet's hard-boiled police drama.
If Sagar didn't quite elevate himself to the ranks of John Le Mesurier, Richard Wattis, Roland Culver or Lionel Jeffries he's still worth noting as a diverse and interesting actor.
Other notable appearances are in classic television series Dad's Army, The Avengers and in film The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962). - Soundtrack
Songwriter ("When Irish Eyes Are Smiling"), author and business executive, educated at De Witt Clinton High School. He was a charter member of ASCAP (1914) and his chief musical collaborators included Jesse Deppen, Ernest Ball, Chauncey Olcott, Caro Roma, Annelu Burns, and Arthur Penn. His other popular-song and sacred-music compositions included "As Long as the World Rolls On", "To the End of the World With You", "In the Garden of Tomorrow", "I Love the Name of Mary", "Till the Sands of the Desert Grow Cold", "Teach Me to Pray", "I Come to Thee", "Mother of Pearl", "Little Man", "Who Else But God", and "For the Sake of Auld Lang Syne".- Producer
- Director
- Actor
Earl Eby was born on 25 June 1903 in Hollister, California, USA. He was a producer and director, known for Lux Video Theatre (1950), Mission: Impossible (1966) and Romance in the Rain (1934). He died on 24 January 1973 in Encino, California, USA.