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- Actress
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Ingrid Bergman was one of the greatest actresses from Hollywood's lamented Golden Era. Her natural and unpretentious beauty and her immense acting talent made her one of the most celebrated figures in the history of American cinema. Bergman is also one of the most Oscar-awarded actresses, tied with Meryl Streep and Frances McDormand, all three of them second only to Katharine Hepburn.
Ingrid Bergman was born on August 29, 1915 in Stockholm, Sweden, to a German mother, Frieda Henrietta (Adler), and a Swedish father, Justus Samuel Bergman, an artist and photographer. Her mother died when she was only two and her father died when she was 12. She went to live with an elderly uncle.
The woman who would be one of the top stars in Hollywood in the 1940s had decided to become an actress after finishing her formal schooling. She had had a taste of acting at age 17 when she played an uncredited role of a girl standing in line in the Swedish film Landskamp (1932) in 1932 - not much of a beginning for a girl who would be known as "Sweden's illustrious gift to Hollywood." Her parents died when she was just a girl and the uncle she lived with didn't want to stand in the way of Ingrid's dream. The next year she enrolled at the Royal Dramatic Theatre School in Stockholm but decided that stage acting was not for her. It would be three more years before she would have another chance at a film. When she did, it was more than just a bit part. The film in question was The Count of the Old Town (1935), where she had a speaking part as Elsa Edlund. After several films that year that established her as a class actress, Ingrid appeared in Intermezzo (1936) as Anita Hoffman. Luckily for her, American producer David O. Selznick saw it and sent a representative from Selznick International Pictures to gain rights to the story and have Ingrid signed to a contract. Once signed, she came to California and starred in United Artists' 1939 remake of her 1936 film, Intermezzo (1939), reprising her original role. The film was a hit and so was Ingrid.
Her beauty was unlike anything the movie industry had seen before and her acting was superb. Hollywood was about to find out that they had the most versatile actress the industry had ever seen. Here was a woman who truly cared about the craft she represented. The public fell in love with her. Ingrid was under contract to go back to Sweden to film Only One Night (1939) in 1939 and June Night (1940) in 1940. Back in the US she appeared in three films, all well-received. She made only one film in 1942, but it was the classic Casablanca (1942) opposite Humphrey Bogart.
Ingrid was choosing her roles well. In 1943 she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), the only film she made that year. The critics and public didn't forget her when she made Gaslight (1944) the following year--her role of Paula Alquist got her the Oscar for Best Actress. In 1945 Ingrid played in Spellbound (1945), Saratoga Trunk (1945) and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), for which she received her third Oscar nomination for her role of Sister Benedict. She made no films in 1947, but bounced back with a fourth nomination for Joan of Arc (1948). In 1949 she went to Italy to film Stromboli (1950), directed by Roberto Rossellini. She fell in love with him and left her husband, Dr. Peter Lindstrom, and daughter, Pia Lindström. America's "moral guardians" in the press and the pulpits were outraged. She was pregnant and decided to remain in Italy, where her son was born. In 1952 Ingrid had twins, Isotta and Isabella Rossellini, who became an outstanding actress in her own right, as did Pia.
Ingrid continued to make films in Italy and finally returned to Hollywood in 1956 in the title role in Anastasia (1956), which was filmed in England. For this she won her second Academy Award. She had scarcely missed a beat. Ingrid continued to bounce between Europe and the US making movies, and fine ones at that. A film with Ingrid Bergman was sure to be a quality production. In her final big-screen performance in 1978's Autumn Sonata (1978) she had her final Academy Award nomination. Though she didn't win, many felt it was the most sterling performance of her career. Ingrid retired, but not before she gave an outstanding performance in the mini-series A Woman Called Golda (1982), a film about Israeli prime minister Golda Meir. For this she won an Emmy Award as Best Actress, but, unfortunately, she did not live to see the fruits of her labor.
Ingrid died from cancer on August 29, 1982, her 67th birthday, in London, England.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
On November 12, 1929, Grace Patricia Kelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to wealthy parents. Her girlhood was uneventful for the most part, but one of the things she desired was to become an actress which she had decided on at an early age. After her high school graduation in 1947, Grace struck out on her own, heading to New York's bright lights to try her luck there. Grace worked some as a model and made her debut on Broadway in 1949. She also made a brief foray into the infant medium of television. Not content with the work in New York, Grace moved to Southern California for the more prestigious part of acting -- motion pictures. In 1951, she appeared in her first film entitled Fourteen Hours (1951) when she was 22. It was a small part, but a start nonetheless. The following year she landed the role of Amy Kane in High Noon (1952), a western starring Gary Cooper and Lloyd Bridges which turned out to be very popular. In 1953, Grace appeared in only one film, but it was another popular one. The film was Mogambo (1953) where Grace played Linda Nordley. The film was a jungle drama in which fellow cast members, Clark Gable and Ava Gardner turned in masterful performances. It was also one of the best films ever released by MGM. Although she got noticed with High Noon, her work with director Alfred Hitchcock, which began with Dial M for Murder (1954) made her a star. Her standout performance in Rear Window (1954) brought her to prominence. As Lisa Fremont, she was cast opposite James Stewart, who played a crippled photographer who witnesses a murder in the next apartment from his wheelchair. Grace stayed busy in 1954 appearing in five films. Grace would forever be immortalized by winning the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Georgie Elgin opposite Bing Crosby in The Country Girl (1954). In 1955, Grace once again teamed with Hitchcock in To Catch a Thief (1955) co-starring Cary Grant. In 1956, she played Tracy Lord in the musical comedy High Society (1956) which also starred Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. The whimsical tale ended with her re-marrying her former husband, played by Crosby. The film was well received. It also turned out to be her final acting performance. Grace had recently met and married Prince Rainier of the little principality of Monaco. By becoming a princess, she gave up her career. For the rest of her life, she was to remain in the news with her marriage and her three children. On September 14, 1982, Grace was killed in an automobile accident in her adoptive home country. She was just 52 years old.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
This remarkable, soft-spoken American began in films as a diffident juvenile. With passing years, he matured into a star character actor who exemplified not only integrity and strength, but an ideal of the common man fighting against social injustice and oppression. He was born in Grand Island, Hall, Nebraska, the son of Herberta Elma (Jaynes) and William Brace Fonda, who was a commercial printer, and proprietor of the W. B. Fonda Printing Company in Omaha, Nebraska. His distant ancestors were Italians who had fled their country and moved to Holland, presumably because of political or religious persecution. In the mid-1600s, they crossed the Atlantic and settled in upstate New York where they founded a community with the Fonda name.
Growing up, Henry developed an early interest in journalism after having a story published in a local newspaper. At the age of twelve, he helped in his father's printing business for $2 a week. Following graduation from high school in 1923, he got a part-time job in Minneapolis with the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company which allowed him at first to pursue journalistic studies at the University of Minnesota. As it became difficult to juggle his working hours with his academic roster, he obtained another position as a physical education instructor at $30 a week, including room and board. By this time, he had grown to a height of six foot one and was a natural for basketball.
In 1925, having returned to Omaha, Henry reevaluated his options and came to the conclusion that journalism was not his forte, after all. For a while, he tried his hand at several temporary jobs, including as a mechanic and a window dresser. Then, despite opposition from his parents, Henry accepted an offer from Gregory Foley, director of the Omaha Playhouse, to play the title role in 'Merton of the Movies'. His father would not speak to him for a month. The play and its star received fairly good notices in the local press. It ran for a week, after which Henry observed "the idea of being Merton and not myself taught me that I could hide behind a mask". For the rest of the repertory season, Henry advanced to assistant director which enabled him to design and paint sets as well as act. A casual trip to New York, however, had already made him set his sights on Broadway.
In 1928, he headed east and briefly played in summer stock before joining the University Players, a group of talented Princeton and Harvard graduates among whose number were such future luminaries as James Stewart (who would remain his closest lifelong friend), Joshua Logan and Kent Smith. Before long, Henry played leads opposite Margaret Sullavan, soon to become the first of his five wives. Both marriage and the players broke up four years later. In 1932, Henry found himself sharing a two-room New York apartment with Jimmy Stewart and Joshua Logan. For the next two years, he alternated scenic design with acting at various repertory companies. In 1934, he got a break of sorts, when he was given the chance to present a comedy sketch with Imogene Coca in the Broadway revue New Faces. That year, he also hired Leland Hayward as his personal management agent and this was to pay off handsomely.
It was Hayward who persuaded the 29-year old to become a motion picture actor, despite initial misgivings and reluctance on Henry's part. Independent producer Walter Wanger, whose growing stock company was birthed at United Artists, needed a star for The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935). With both first choice actors Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea otherwise engaged, Henry was the next available option. After all, he had just completed a successful run on Broadway in the stage version. The cheesy publicity tag line for the picture was "you'll be fonder of Fonda", but the film was an undeniable hit. Wanger, realizing he had a good thing going, next cast Henry in a succession of A-grade pictures which capitalized on his image as the sincere, unaffected country boy. Pick of the bunch were the Technicolor outdoor western The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), the gritty Depression-era drama You Only Live Once (1937) (with Henry as a back-to-the-wall good guy forced into becoming a fugitive from the law by circumstance), the screwball comedy The Moon's Our Home (1936) (with ex-wife Sullavan), the excellent pre-civil war-era romantic drama Jezebel (1938) and the equally superb Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), in which Henry gave his best screen performance to date as the 'jackleg lawyer from Springfield'. Henry made two more films with director John Ford: the pioneering drama Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940), with Henry as Tom Joad, often regarded his career-defining role as the archetypal grassroots American trying to stand up against oppression. It also set the tone for his subsequent career. Whether he played a lawman (Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (1946)), a reluctant posse member (The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), a juror committed to the ideal of total justice in (12 Angry Men (1957)) or a nightclub musician wrongly accused of murder (The Wrong Man (1956)), his characters were alike in projecting integrity and quiet authority. In this vein, he also gave a totally convincing (though historically inaccurate) portrayal in the titular role of The Return of Frank James (1940), a rare example of a sequel improving upon the original.
Henry rarely featured in comedy, except for a couple of good turns opposite Barbara Stanwyck -- with whom he shared an excellent on-screen chemistry -- in The Mad Miss Manton (1938) and The Lady Eve (1941). He was also good value as a poker-playing grifter in the western comedy A Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966). Finally, just to confound those who would typecast him, he gave a chilling performance as one of the coldest, meanest stone killers ever to roam the West, in Sergio Leone's classic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Illness curtailed his work in the 1970s. His final screen role was as an octogenarian in On Golden Pond (1981), in which he was joined by his daughter Jane. It finally won him an Oscar on the heels of an earlier Honorary Academy Award. Too ill to attend the ceremony, he died soon after at the age of 77, having left a lasting legacy matched by few of his peers.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Vic Morrow was born in the Bronx, New York, to Jean (Kress) and Harry Morrow, an electrical engineer. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Morrow dropped out of high school at 17 to join the U.S. Navy. When he left the Navy, he used the G.I. Bill to study pre-law at Florida State. While Morrow was working on his degree in Law, he also took part in a school play and found that he preferred stage acting to courtroom acting. When he went to New York, Morrow enrolled in the Actors' Workshop to improve his skills. After graduating, he was cast in the summer stock production of "A Streetcar Named Desire". His screen debut came when he was signed by MGM to play a tough-talking, surly street punk in Blackboard Jungle (1955). The good news was that he was now in the movies, but the bad news was that he became typecast as a heavy. Disappointed with this situation, Morrow left MGM after a few years and headed back to school to study directing at USC. He made some appearances on television and in 1962 found a role that brought him fame and made him the "hero": the TV series Combat! (1962), in which he played Sgt. Chip Saunders, veteran squad leader. Due to his demands, the show quickly went from an alternating showcase between platoon leader Lt. Hanley (Rick Jason) and Sgt. Saunders to one featuring mainly Saunders. With the success of the show, Morrow put to use what he had learned at USC and directed some episodes. In 1965 he and his wife divorced, and two years later the series ended. These two events put him into a personal and professional slide. By 1969 he began almost a decade of making made-for-TV movies, with an occasional foray into features. Most of his roles, though, put him back as a "heavy", although he did have a good part as a tough L.A. cop going up against out-of-town mobsters in a two-part episode of Police Story (1973) that was later released as a telefeature. While he worked in the theater and looked forward to the big screen, most of his roles were in "B" pictures such as Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974) and Treasure of Matecumbe (1976). He got good reviews playing Walter Matthau's nemesis in the hit comedy The Bad News Bears (1976), but was not involved in any of the following sequels, and he seemed to be stuck in a rut of "B" features and average made-for-TV films. With the failure of his second marriage, the death of his mother and the scarcity of good parts, Morrow hit the bottle, which did his career even less good. In 1982, however, he refocused his drive and made a comeback in Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), but was unfortunately killed on the early morning hours of July 23, 1982 in a tragic, freak accident on the set while filming a scene involving a helicopter which crashed right on top of him and two young children.
Vic was the father of Carrie Ann Morrow and actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Romy Schneider was born on 23 September 1938 in Vienna, Austria into a family of actors. Making her film debut at the age of 15, her breakthrough came two years later in the very popular trilogy Sissi (1955). Her mother, supervising her daughter's career, immediately approved Romy's participation in Christine (1958), the remake of Max Ophüls's Playing at Love (1933), where Magda Schneider once starred herself. During the shooting, she fell in love with her co-star Alain Delon and eventually moved with him to Paris. At that time, she started her international career collaborating with famous directors such as Luchino Visconti and Orson Welles. After Delon had broken up with her in 1964, she married Harry Meyen shortly after. Although she gave birth to a boy, David-Christopher, their relationship was difficult, so they divorced in 1975. Being unsatisfied with her personal life, she turned to alcohol and drugs, but her cinematic career -especially in France- remained intact. She was the first actress, receiving the new created César Award as "Best Actress" for her role in That Most Important Thing: Love (1975). Three years later, she was awarded again for A Simple Story (1978). After a short marriage to her former secretary Daniel Biasini, being the father of her daughter Sarah Biasini, she suffered the hardest blow of her life when her son was impaled on a fence in 1981. She never managed to recover from this loss and died on 29 May 1982 in Paris. Although it was suggested she committed suicide caused by an overdose of sleeping pills, she was declared to have died from cardiac arrest.- Actor
- Writer
- Music Department
John Belushi was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA, on January 24, 1949, to Agnes Demetri (Samaras) and Adam Anastos Belushi, a restaurant owner. His father was an Albanian immigrant, from Qytezë, and his mother was also of Albanian descent. He grew up in Wheaton, where the family moved when he was six. Though a young hellion in grade school, John became the perfect all-American boy during his high school years where he was co-captain of the Wheaton Central High School football team and was elected homecoming king his senior year. He also developed an interest in acting and appeared in the high school variety show. Encouraged by his drama teacher, John decided to put aside his plans to become a football coach to pursue a career in acting.
After graduation in 1967, John performed in summer stock in rural Indiana in a variety of roles from "Cardinal Wolsey" in "Anne of a Thousand Days" to a comic detective in "Ten Little Indians". In the fall of his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, John changed his image into a bad-boy appearance by growing his hair long and began to have problems with discipline and structure of attending classes.
Dropping out of Wisconsin, John spent the next two years at the College of DuPage, a junior college a few miles from his parents' Wheaton home, where his father began persuading him to become a partner in his restaurant, but John still preferred acting. While attending DuPage, John helped found the "West Compass Players", an improv comedy troupe patterned after Chicago's famous "Second City" ensemble.
In 1971, John made the leap to "Second City" itself where he performed in various on-stage comic performances with others, who included Harold Ramis and Joe Flaherty. John loved his life at "Second City" where he performed six nights a week, perfecting the physical "gonzo" style of comedy he later made famous.
A year later, John and his live-in girlfriend from his high school years, Judith Belushi-Pisano, moved to New York because John had joined the cast of National Lampoon's Lemmings, an off-Broadway rock musical revue that was originally booked for a six-week run but played to full crowds for nearly 10 months.
In 1973, John was hired as a writer for the syndicated National Lampoon's Radio Hour which became the National Lampoon Show in 1975. John's big break came that same year when he joined the ground-breaking TV variety series Saturday Night Live (1975) which made him a star. The unpredictable, aggressively physical style of humor that he began on "Second City" flowered on SNL.
In 1978, while still working on Saturday Night Live (1975), John appeared in the movie Goin' South (1978) which starred and was directed by Jack Nicholson. It was here that director John Landis noticed John and decided to cast him in his movie National Lampoon's National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). John's minor role as the notorious, beer-swilling "Bluto" made it a box-office smash and the year's top grossing comedy. Despite appearing in only a dozen scenes, John's performance stole the movie, which portrays college fraternity shenanigans at a small college set in the year 1962.
In 1979, John along with fellow SNL regular Dan Aykroyd quit the series to pursue movie projects. John and Dan Aykroyd appeared in minor roles in Steven Spielberg's financially unsuccessful 1941 (1979) and, the following year, in John Landis' The Blues Brothers (1980). Around this time, John's drug use began escalating. Cocaine, which was ubiquitous in show-business circles in the 1970's, became his drug of choice. After he first experimented with cocaine in the mid 1970s, John almost immediately became addicted to it. His frequent cocaine sniffing binges became a source of friction between him and Judy, whom he married in 1976.
John's love for blues and soul music inspired the "Blues Brothers". He and Aykroyd first appeared as Joliet Jake and Elwood Blues, a pair of white soul men dressed in black suits, skinny ties, fedora hats and Rayban sunglasses, as a warm-up act before the telecasts of Saturday Night Live (1975). Building on the success of their acts and the release of their album "A Briefcase Full of Blues", John and Dan Aykroyd starred in the movie, which gave John a chance to act with his favorite musical heroes including Ray Charles, James Brown and Aretha Franklin.
Although John's reputation for being an off-screen party animal is legendary, his generous side is less well known. Using some of his money, he bought his father a ranch outside San Diego for him to live. John helped set up some of his Chicago friends with their own businesses and even financially helped his younger brother, Jim Belushi, who followed his older brother's path to both "Second City" and Saturday Night Live (1975).
In 1981, John appeared in the movie Continental Divide (1981), playing a hard-nosed Chicago newspaperman who finds romance in Colorado with eagle expert Blair Brown. That same year, John and Dan Aykroyd appeared again in the movie Neighbors (1981), which gave them a chance to reverse roles, with John playing a straight-arrow family man whose life is turned upside down when a wild family man (Aykroyd) moves in next door.
In January 1982, John began work on the screenplay for another movie to be titled "Noble Rot". Also, John had checked into a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont, a popular celebrity hotel in Los Angeles. John's drug use had been steadily increasing for over a year now, which alarmed his wife and friends, but he continued to promise Judy that he would quit someday. On March 5, 1982, John Belushi was found dead in his hotel room at the age of 33. The local coroner gave the cause of death as a lethal injection of cocaine and heroin. Several years later, John's drug dealing/drug user companion during his final weeks, Cathy Evelyn Smith, was tried and sentenced to three years in prison for supplying John with the drugs. Close friend James Taylor sang "That Lonesome Road" at a memorial service at Martha's Vineyard cemetery where John was buried.- Larger than life, Laughtonesque, and with an eloquent, king-sized appetite for maniacal merriment, a good portion of the work of actor Victor Buono was squandered on hokey villainy on both film and television. Ostensibly perceived as bizarre or demented, seldom did Hollywood give this cultivated cut-up the opportunity to rise above the deliciously hammy arrogance that flowed through so many of his cartoonish characters. He loved to make people laugh and while he could have approached his career with more serious attention, the real money was in his madness. In the end, the actor's chronic weight and accompanying health problems took their toll -- a fatal heart attack at the untimely age of 43 -- and a wonderful actor/writer/poet/chef had exited way before his time.
Born on February 3, 1938 in San Diego, California, the son of Victor Francis Buono and Myrtle Belle (née Keller), his interest in entertainment was originally encouraged by his grandmother, Myrtle Glied (1886-1969), who had once been a vaudevillian on the Orpheum Circuit. It was she who taught Victor how to sing and recite in front of company. His initial choice of career was somewhere in the direction of medicine but the pure joy he experienced from several high school performances (playing everything from Aladdin's evil genie to Hamlet himself) led him to dismiss such sensible thinking and take on the bohemian life style of an actor.
The already hefty-framed hopeful started appearing on local radio and television stations in San Diego. At age 18, he became a member of the Globe Theater Players where he was cast in Shakespeare and the classics ["Volpone", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Knight of the Burning Pestle", "The Man Who Came to Dinner", "Witness for the Prosecution", "Henry IV, Part I (as Falstaff)", "As You Like It", "Hamlet" (as Claudius)].
In 1959, a Warner Bros. agent happened to scope out the talent at the Globe Theatre and caught Victor's wonderfully robust portrayal of Falstaff (a role he would return to now and then) and gave him a screen test. Looking older than he was, the studio set upon using Victor in weird and wacky ways, such as his bearded poet Bongo Benny in an episode of 77 Sunset Strip (1958). His wry and witty demeanor, fixed stare, huge girth and goateed mug was guaranteed to put him in nearly every television crime story needing an off-the-wall character or outlandish villain.
Following an unbilled appearance in The Story of Ruth (1960), Victor was intriguingly cast by director Robert Aldrich to play Edwin Flagg, the creepy musical accompanist and opportunist who tries to use one-time child celebrity Bette Davis for his own piggy bank in the gothic horror classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). He held his own beautifully opposite the scenery-chewing Davis and was nominated for a Best Supporting Oscar for his efforts. This role also set the tone for the increasingly deranged characters he would go on to play.
Cast as the title menace in The Strangler (1964), Victor delved wholeheartedly into the sick mind of a mother-obsessed murderer and offered a startling, tense portrayal of a child-like monster who gives new meaning to the art of "necking" with women. Director Aldrich used Victor again (albeit too briefly) for his Southern-baked "Grand Guignol" horror Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) this time as Ms. Davis' crazed father. Victor also showed up in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) starring Max von Sydow where he flamboyantly took on the High Priest Sorak role in this epic but criticized retelling of Jesus.
He enhanced a number of lightweight 1960s movies including 4 for Texas (1963), Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964), The Silencers (1966) and Who's Minding the Mint? (1967) with his clever banter and gleeful menace. The lurid title said it all when Victor gamely took on the horror movie The Mad Butcher (1971) [aka The Strangler of Vienna] wherein he played a former mental patient preying on women again. This deranged low-budget German/Italian co-production added a "Sweeney Todd" meatpie tie in.
Victor's hearty, scene-stealing antics dominated late 1960s television series. Recurring madmen included his Count Carlos Manzeppi on The Wild Wild West (1965) and King Tut who habitually wreaked havoc on Gotham City on Batman (1966). One could always find his unsympathetic presence somewhere on a prime-time channel (Perry Mason (1957), Get Smart (1965), I Spy (1965)) but his roles ended up more campy than challenging. However, one heartfelt, serious portrayal was his portrayal of President William Howard Taft in the epic miniseries Backstairs at the White House (1979). Elsewhere, he recorded a self-effacing comedy album ("Victor Buono: Heavy!") and even wrote comic poetry ("Victor Buono: It Could Be Verse". He was indeed a sought-after raconteur on daytime and nighttime talk shows.
Continuing with the theatre but on a more infrequent basis, his one-man stage shows included "Just We Three", "Remembrance of Things Past" and "This Would I Keep". He also appeared as Pellinore opposite Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence in a 1975 performance of "Camelot" and earned minor cult status for his memorable performance in the play "Last of the Marx Brothers' Writers" in a return to the Old Globe Theatre in 1977.
The never-married actor felt compelled to conceal his homosexuality. A well-regarded gourmet chef and an expert on Shakespeare, he died of a massive heart attack at his ranch in Apple Valley, California on January 1, 1982. Before his death was announced, Buono had just been cast in the Broadway-bound play "Whodunnit?" by Anthony Shaffer. The show finally arrived in New York without him and almost a year to his death (December 30, 1982). - Writer
- Actor
- Script and Continuity Department
"I am too old to die young, and too young to grow up," Marty Feldman told a reporter -- a week before he died.
This beloved comedian, who poked fun at himself, as well as others, was born Martin Alan Feldman on July 8, 1934, in London, England. His parents were of Ukrainian Jewish heritage (from Kiev). He was the son of Cecilia (née Crook) and Myer Feldman, a gown manufacturer. Marty spent his childhood in the poverty-stricken London East End and left school at the age of 15, hoping for a career as a jazz trumpeter (his appearance in a Variety show earned him the title "the worst trumpeter in the world"). He had just started his comedy career, as a writer for BBC radio programs and TV shows in the late 1950s, when he married Lauretta Sullivan in January 1959 (they would stay married until his death in 1982). There's a saying: "Your face is your fortune"; Marty had received a double-whammy. His nose was mangled in his youthful years in a boxing match; his walleyed orbs were the result of both a hyperactive thyroid and a botched operation after a car accident before his 30th birthday, in 1963. American audiences first saw Marty in Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers (1968), where he did comedy skits with Susie Ewing and the Golddiggers. He appeared in a number of movies, his most-remembered role being that of Igor (pronounced Eye-Gor) in Young Frankenstein (1974). Besides acting, he made his directorial debut in The Last Remake of Beau Geste (1977). Beloved and popular, it seemed Marty was to enjoy a long career in the entertainment field. However, he died of a massive heart attack, caused by shellfish food poisoning, while filming Yellowbeard (1983) in Mexico City, on December 2, 1982... he was only 48.- Brenda Benet, born Brenda Ann Nelson in Los Angeles, California, on August 14, 1945, was a classic example of the modern-day Hollywood tragedy. As a television actress with good dramatic scope, she managed to piece together a wide and impressive portfolio of guest shots in a career spanning just over 16 years before taking her life at the age of 36. She spent her childhood and early teenage years feeling awkward and self-conscious because her complexion was darker than those of her siblings. Because of this, she felt that she did not fit in with her family, and often fantasized about being adopted.
Brenda attended UCLA for a brief time, majoring in languages. In 1962 she entered show business; her breakthrough role came in 1964 when she was selected to play the part of Jill McComb in The Young Marrieds (1964). After that came stints on various comedy and drama series in the '60s and '70s, usually playing ethnic, exotic types. She was probably best known for her role as the kind-hearted prostitute in Walking Tall (1973). During this time she married and divorced actor Paul Petersen. She began a relationship with Bill Bixby and moved in with him in 1969, and they married in 1971. By the late '70s, however, they were divorced.
Brenda retired from the business in the mid-'70s to raise a family, and in late 1974 she gave birth to a boy, Christopher Sean Bixby. Tragically, Christopher died in 1981 during a winter ski vacation in California. It was believed that this and her divorce from Bixby were the events which caused Brenda's life to spin out of control. On April 7, 1982, Brenda went into the bathroom of her West Los Angeles home, lit and arranged some candles in a circle on the floor and lay down. She then placed a Colt .38-cal. revolver into her mouth and pulled the trigger. She died instantly. - Actor
- Music Department
- Stunts
Warren Oates was an American character actor of the 1960s and 1970s and early 1980s whose distinctive style and intensity brought him to offbeat leading roles.
Oates was born in Depoy, a very small Kentucky town. He was the son of Sarah Alice (Mercer) and Bayless Earle Oates, a general store owner. He attended high school in Louisville, continuing on to the University of Louisville and military service with the U.S. Marines.
In college he became interested in the theatre and in 1954 headed for New York to make his mark as an actor. However, his first real job in television was, as it had been for James Dean before him, testing the contest gags on the game show Beat the Clock (1950). He did numerous menial jobs while auditioning, including serving as the hat-check man at the nightclub "21".
By 1957 he had begun appearing in live dramas such as Studio One (1948), but Oates' rural drawl seemed more fitted for the Westerns that were proliferating on the big screen at the time, so he moved to Hollywood and immediately stared getting steady work as an increasingly prominent supporting player, often as either craven or vicious types. With his role as one of the Hammond brothers in the Sam Peckinpah masterpiece Ride the High Country (1962), Oates found a niche both as an actor and as a colleague of one of the most distinguished and distinctive directors of the period. Peckinpah used Oates repeatedly, and Oates, in large part due to the prominence given him by Peckinpah, became one of those rare character actors whose name and face is as familiar as those of many leading stars. He began to play roles which, while still character parts, were also leads, particularly in cult hits like Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974).
Although never destined to be a traditional leading man, Oates remained one of Hollywood's most valued and in-demand character players up until his sudden death from a heart attack on April 3, 1982 at the age of 53. His final two films, Tough Enough (1983) (filmed in early 1981) and Blue Thunder (1983) (filmed in late 1981), were released over one year after his death and were dedicated to his memory.- Actor
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Paul Lynde was born in 1926 in Mount Vernon, Ohio (one of six children and the middle of four boys). His father was a local police officer and the sheriff of the Mount Vernon Jail for two years. Lynde got his inspiration to become an actor at the age of four or five after his mother took him to see the original silent film Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925). After graduating from Northwestern University, Lynde relocated to New York City where his first break came from being a stand-up comedian at the Number One Fifth Avenue nightclub. Then came an appearance on a Broadway show, "New Faces of 1952".
Lynde also had a two-year run on TV with Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall (1948) and the Broadway and film versions of Bye Bye Birdie (1963). Throught his life, Lynde appeared in the Broadway plays "The Impossible Years", "Don't Drink the Water", and "Plaza Suite". His many film credits include New Faces (1954), Send Me No Flowers (1964), and Rabbit Test (1978). One of his most memorable roles was a recurring role on Bewitched (1964) playing the sneering, sarcastic Uncle Arthur. He appeared on TV's The Dean Martin Show (1965), The Kraft Music Hall (1967), Donny and Marie (1975), and both the prime-time and daytime versions of the game show The Hollywood Squares (Daytime) (1965) where he occupied the famous center square. He had two TV series of his own, The Paul Lynde Show (1972) and The New Temperatures Rising Show (1972). Paul Lynde's witty, wisecracking one-liners and his novel line delivery made him one of Hollywood's funniest and best loved entertainers. Paul Lynde died under mysterious circumstances when he was found dead in his bed after possibly suffering a heart attack in January 1982 at age 55. He had been in ill-health for over a year with cancer or some other illness that was never fully revealed to the public before or after his death.- Writer
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Above all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a rebel whose life and art was marked by gross contradiction. Openly homosexual, he married twice; one of his wives acted in his films and the other served as his editor. Accused variously by detractors of being anticommunist, male chauvinist, antiSemitic and even antigay, he completed 44 projects between 1966 and 1982, the majority of which can be characterized as highly intelligent social melodramas. His prodigious output was matched by a wild, self-destructive libertinage that earned him a reputation as the enfant terrible of the New German Cinema (as well as its central figure.) Known for his trademark leather jacket and grungy appearance, Fassbinder cruised the bar scene by night, looking for sex and drugs, yet he maintained a flawless work ethic by day. Actors and actresses recount disturbing stories of his brutality toward them, yet his pictures demonstrate his deep sensitivity to social misfits and his hatred of institutionalized violence. Some find his cinema needlessly controversial and avant-garde; others accuse him of surrendering to the Hollywood ethos. It is best said that he drew forth strong emotional reactions from all he encountered, both in his personal and professional lives, and this provocative nature can be experienced posthumously through reviewing his artistic legacy.
Fassbinder was born into a bourgeois Bavarian family in 1945. His father was a doctor and his mother a translator. In order to have time for her work, his mother frequently sent him the movies, a practice that gave birth to his obsession with the medium. Later in life, he would claim that he saw a film nearly every day and sometimes as many as three or four. At the age of 15, Fassbinder defiantly declared his homosexuality, soon after which he left school and took a job. He studied theater in the mid-sixties at the Fridl-Leonhard Studio in Munich and joined the Action Theater (aka, Anti-Theater) in 1967. Unlike the other major auteurs of the New German Cinema (e.g., Schlöndorff, Herzog and Wenders) who started out making movies, Fassbinder acquired an extensive stage background that is evident throughout his work. Additionally, he learned how to handle all phases of production, from writing and acting to direction and theater management. This versatility later surfaced in his films where, in addition to some of the aforementioned responsibilities, Fassbinder served as composer, production designer, cinematographer, producer and editor. [So boundless was his energy, in fact, that he appeared in 30 projects of other directors.] In his theater years, he also developed a repertory company that included his mother, two of his wives and various male and female lovers. Coupled with his ability to serve in nearly any crew capacity, this gave him the ability to produce his films quickly and on extremely low budgets.
Success was not immediate for Fassbinder. His first feature length film, a gangster movie called Love Is Colder Than Death (1969) was greeted by catcalls at the Berlin Film Festival. His next piece, Katzelmacher (1969), was a minor critical success, garnering five prizes after its debut at Mannheim. It featured Jorgos, an emigrant from Greece, who encounters violent xenophobic slackers in moving into an all-German neighborhood. This kind of social criticism, featuring alienated characters unable to escape the forces of oppression, is a constant throughout Fassbinder's diverse oeuvre. In subsequent years, he made such controversial films about human savagery such as Pioneers in Ingolstadt (1971) and Whity (1971) before scoring his first domestic commercial success with The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972). This moving portrait of a street vendor crushed by the betrayal and his own futility is considered a masterpiece, as is his first international success Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) (Fear Eats the Soul). With a wider audience for his efforts, however, some critics contend that Fassbinder began to sell out with big budget projects such as Despair (1978), Lili Marleen (1981) and Lola (1981). In retrospect, however, it seems that the added fame simply enabled Fassbinder to explore various kinds of filmmaking, including such "private" works as In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) and The Third Generation (1979), two films about individual experience and feelings. His greatest success came with The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) (The Marriage of Maria Braun), chronicling the rise and fall of a German woman in the wake of World War II. Other notable movies include The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Fox and His Friends (1975), Satan's Brew (1976) and Querelle (1982), all focused on gay and lesbian themes and frequently with a strongly pornographic edge.
His death is a perfect picture of the man and his legend. On the night of June 10, 1982, Fassbinder took an overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills. When he was found, the unfinished script for a version of Rosa Luxemburg was lying next to him. So boundless was his drive and creativity that, throughout his downward spiral and even in the moment of his death, Fassbinder never ceased to be productive.- Actor
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Beaumont began his career in show business by perfoming in theatres, nightclubs, and on the radio in 1931. He attended the University of Chattanooga, but left when his position on the football team was changed. He later attended the University of Southern California, and graduated with a Master of Theology degree in 1946. He was visiting his son Hunter, a Psychology Professor in Munich, at the time of his sudden death.- Marlowe was born Hugh Hipple in Philadelphia, and began his stage career in the 1930s at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He performed extensively on radio, stage, television and film with credits including off-Broadway productions of "The Deer Park" in 1967 and "All My Sons" in 1974.
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Hans Conried was born in Baltimore and raised both there and in New York City. He studied acting at Columbia University, and played many major classical roles onstage. After having been a member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre Company, he was heard as Prof. Kropotkin on the radio show "My Friend Irma" and had various roles on the "Edgar Bergen - Charlie McCarthy Show". He was in the original cast of Cole Porter's 1953 Broadway hit "Can-Can" and stayed with the show for more than a year. Known for his sharp wit, Conried was in demand as an actor, panelist and narrator, appearing frequently in television series and movies throughout the 1960s and 1970s.- Actress
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Dominique Dunne was born in Santa Monica, California, the daughter of Ellen Beatriz Griffin Dunne and Dominick Dunne, a producer, actor, and writer. Actor Griffin Dunne is her brother. After her parents' divorce, she moved first to New York, and then to Beverly Hills. Upon graduation from high school, Dominique went to the University of Colorado to study acting, leaving after one year to pursue her career. Three weeks after arriving in Hollywood, she landed her first gig. Other roles soon followed, notably her role as Dana Freeling, the eldest daughter in Poltergeist (1982), and Dominique was soon well known in the Hollywood social scene. Well-liked by all who knew her, Dominique seemed to be at the top of the world. Then, at a party, she met John Thomas Sweeney, the chef at popular LA nightspot "Ma Maison." The two began a relationship, which turned stormy. Sweeney was uncontrollable and abusive (so abusive that Dominique did not need makeup to play the role of an abuse victim on Hill Street Blues (1981)). Dominique ended the relationship on October 30, 1982. That same night, a distraught Sweeney raced to her house, where she and actor David Packer were rehearsing a scene from V (1983), dragged her outside, and strangled her, leaving her brain-dead. Five days later, she was removed from life support and died, cutting short a brilliant career and leaving behind scores of shocked and angry loved ones.- Writer
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John Randolph Webb was born in Santa Monica, California, to Margaret (Smith) and Samuel Chester Webb. His father left home before he was born; Webb would never know him. He was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother in dire poverty that preceded the Depression. Making things worse, Webb suffered from acute asthma from age six until adulthood, somewhat surprising for a man whose cigarette intake reached three packs a day at its peak. Webb's great love was movies, and his dream was to direct them. He began in radio, first as a disc jockey then as host of a comedy show (Believe It or Not!), finally as "Pat Novak, Private Eye", his first true success. A small role in the film noir classic He Walked by Night (1948) led to the creation of "Dragnet". During production, Webb befriended a LAPD police consultant assigned to the film and became fascinated with the cases he heard told. He successfully pitched the idea of a radio series to NBC using stories drawn from actual LAPD files. "Dragnet" first aired over NBC radio on June 3, 1949, and came to TV (Dragnet (1951)) on December 16, 1951. The show was one of the monster hits of early TV and was honored with satires by comics and even Bugs Bunny (!) during it's run, which lasted until September, 1959. The series' popularity could have ensured its continuation indefinitely but, by then, Webb had become a film director and would helm (and star in) five features: Dragnet (1954), Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), The D.I. (1957), -30- (1959), and The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961). The last two were box office flops, and Webb returned to TV in 1962. In February, 1963, he became Head of Production for Warner Bros. Television, a job he was fired from that December when his revision of 77 Sunset Strip (1958) sent its ratings into a death spiral. After two years of unemployment, a new opportunity arose, the made-for-TV film, of which Universal was then sole supplier. Coincidentally, they owned the rights to Dragnet (1951) and invited Webb to do a new "Dragnet" as a TV movie. It turned out so well in industry previews (oddly not broadcast until 1969) that NBC and Universal persuaded him to do a new Dragnet 1967 (1967) TV series, which lasted three-and-a-half seasons and went on to smash success in syndicated reruns. This later incarnation (co-starring Harry Morgan as "Officer Bill Gannon") is probably what Webb is best known for and unlike the 50's version, it was produced in color and increasingly focused on his personal conservative social agenda. Over the next five seasons, he regularly blasted marijuana, LSD (which was legal at the time of the revamped series debut), hippies, juvenile delinquency and disrespect for law enforcement. To be fair, the series was equally intolerant of police corruption and went to great lengths to show LAPD's self-disciplinary process as it was at the time. Webb was known as an extremely economical TV producer: his Mark VII productions routinely used minimal sets, even more minimal wardrobes (Friday and Gannon seem to wear the same suits over entire seasons, which minimized continuity issues.) and maintained a relatively tight-knit stock company that consisted of scale-paid regulars who routinely appeared as irate crime victims, policewomen, miscreants, and clueless parents of misguided youth. While the passing decades haven't been kind to all of the episodes--- several now seem camp, the manpower expended investigating some seemingly minor crimes is laughable and the outcome of many of the trials would be vastly different today--- they remain entertaining while representing somewhat fictionalized docudramas of 1960's police operations. With renewed wealth and industry status, Webb was also determined not to repeat his past debacle as a producer/studio boss. He parlayed Dragnet's renewed popularity into a second hit series, Adam-12 (1968), and scored an even bigger hit with Emergency! (1972) (casting his ex-wife Julie London and her husband Bobby Troup), a show that inspired thousands of kids to become EMT/paramedics for generations, perhaps Webb's greatest legacy. During the production of Dragnet 1967 (1967), he maintained a rigorous daily work schedule while ignoring his health. He loved chili dogs and cigarettes, enjoyed late nights playing cards and drinking with cast members, who were amazed to find him fully alert at 7:00 a.m. the next day, expecting the same from them. The combined effect of this lifestyle made him appear older than he actually was by the late 60s. Unbeknownst to fans, he possessed a healthy sense of humor (His 1968 "Copper Clapper" appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962) remains a classic.), and he was a jazz fanatic, amassing one of the world's greatest collections. Webb's sense of humor didn't extend to his self-image, however. In 1977, director John Landis approached him with an offer to appear as "Dean Wormer" in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) and recalled Webb sitting stone-faced and unimpressed at the offer. Sadly, he rejected it as being too counter to his public persona. Webb managed to keep his company solvent until his untimely, yet not unexpected, death from a massive heart attack on December 23, 1982 at age 62. Webb was married four times: to Julie London (1947-54), Dorothy Towne (1955-1957), Jackie Loughery (1958-64), and to Opal Wright (1980-death). He had two daughters by London: Stacey Webb (1950-96) and Lisa Webb (born 1952).- Actor
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Famed acting teacher Lee Strasberg was born Israel Strassberg in Budzanov, Austria-Hungary (now Budanov, Ukraine). Brought to America as a child, he had a brief acting career, before becoming one of the founders of the Group Theatre in 1931, directing a number of plays there. His greatest influence, however, was through the Actors Studio, where he became director in 1950. A proponent of "method" acting, which he adapted from the "system" brought to America by Konstantin Stanislavski's disciple--and Marlon Brando's mentor--Stella Adler, he influenced several generations of actors, from James Dean to Dustin Hoffman. Film audiences would know him best as gangster Hyman Roth in The Godfather Part II (1974).- Actor
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James Joseph Broderick III was an American actor of English and Irish descent. Broderick was born in Charlestown, New Hampshire to James Joseph Broderick II (1895-1959) and his wife Mary Elizabeth Martindale. His father, a highly-decorated veteran of World War I, was of Irish descent and his mother had both English and Irish ancestry.
Broderick attended Manchester Central High School, in Manchester, New Hampshire. He then attended the University of New Hampshire, where he took pre-medical courses. In 1945, the 18-year-old Broderick interrupted his studies to join the United States Navy during the closing months of World War II, enlisting as a pharmacist. He was discharged in 1947 during the post-World War II demobilization of the United States armed forces.
In 1947, Broderick returned to his studies at the University of New Hampshire, as junior pre-med student. His life changed course when Broderick auditioned for a pat in a theatrical production of the University. His acting skills gained him the leading role of Captain Bluntschli,the cynical mercenary officer in the play "Arms and the Man" (1894) by George Bernard Shaw.
J. "Joe" Donald Batcheller served as Faculty advisor to the student drama club, and was impressed with Broderick. Batcheller arranged a meeting between Broderick and the experienced actor Arthur Kennedy (1914-1990), who happened to be an old friend of Batcheller. Kennedy gave Broderick a few acting tips, and advised him to attend the "Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre", a full-time professional conservatory for actors in New York City. The faculty there included Sanford Meisner (1905-1997), the acting teacher who developed the so-called "Meisner technique" of acting.
Following his acting studies, Broderick was ready for a professional career. He was mostly a theatrical actor, but started appearing in television productions in the 1950s. He was cast in the leading role of Officer Ernie Brenner in the crime drama "Brenner" (1959-1964). The series featured a father-son duo of New York City police officers. The father was Roy Brenner (played by Edward Binns), a hardened, cynical veteran of the police force, with over 20 years of service. The son was Ernie Brenner (played by Broderick), an optimistic young man who was was only starting his career.
Another highlight of Broderick's television career was the episode "On Thursday We Leave for Home"(1963) in the anthology series "The Twilight Zone". In the episode, the residents of a failed space colony request transportation back to Earth. But the colony's leader desperately tries to keep them there, unwilling to relinquish power. Broderick played the character Al Baines, the engineering officer who unsuccessfully tries to rescue the former leader, after everyone else abandons him.
In the 1960s, Broderick started appearing in theatrical films. Highlights of his film career include the roles of the bohemian-commune leader Ray Brock in "Alice's Restaurant" (1969), the motorman (rail vehicle operator) Denny Doyle in the hijacking-themed film "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (1974), and the FBI agent Sheldon in the crime drama "Dog Day Afternoon".
In the late 1970s, Broderick gained a new leading in television, playing the lawyer and proverbial pater familias Doug Lawrence in the drama series "Family" (1976-1980). The series mainly focused on the family problems of the Lawrence family. Doug's wife Kate had quit a promising academic career to get married, and felt frustrated with the life of a homemaker. The elder daughter Nancy had divorced a philandering husband and was struggling as a single mother. Younger daughter Letitia (nicknamed "Buddy") had body-image issues, and considered herself abnormal. The family's only living son Willie was a high-school dropout and had no intention of getting a full-time job. The family mentioned to be still mourning another son, Timothy, who had died years earlier.
Broderick's last acting role was the television film "The Shadow Box" (1980), an adaptation of a play by Michael Cristofer. In the film, Broderick plays Joe, a man dying from an incurable disease and, trying to understand why his wife and son refuse to keep him company.
In the early 1980s, Broderick himself suffered from cancer, and his poor health prevented him from accepting more roles. He died in 1982, due to cancer. He was survived by his wife, painter Patricia Biow Broderick (1925-2003), and their three children. Broderick's son Matthew Broderick (1962 - ) followed in his father's footsteps and became an actor.- Actor
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Handsome, dapper Argentine-born actor who came to Hollywood as a romantic lead in several colourful MGM extravaganzas and then succeeded in living up to his Latin Lover image in real life. Lamas studied drama at school in his native country and later enrolled in a law course at college. His strong leaning towards athletic pursuits prevailed and he abandoned his studies to take up horse riding, winning trophies fencing and boxing (middleweight amateur title) and becoming the South American Freestyle Swimming Champion of 1937. While still in his teens he appeared on stage, then on radio, and by the age of 24 in his first motion picture.
All this sporting publicity aroused interest in Hollywood and, in 1951, Lamas was signed by MGM to charm the likes of Lana Turner and Esther Williams in A-grade productions like The Merry Widow (1952) and Dangerous When Wet (1953). He also spent time 'on loan' to Paramount who featured him in several Pine-Thomas B-movies, such as the 3-D Technicolour Sangaree (1953) and Jivaro (1954). His sole appearance on Broadway was in the 1957 play 'Happy Hunting'. There was considerable friction between him and co-star Ethel Merman, both on and off-stage. Lamas was nonetheless nominated for a Tony Award as Best Actor, but had the misfortune of coming up against Rex Harrison's Professor Higgins in 'My Fair Lady'.
In real life, Lamas proudly lived up to his reputation as a ladies man. With two ex-wives back in Argentina, he conducted well-publicised affairs with most of his female co-stars, including one with Lana Turner which began while filming 'The Merry Widow'. Actress Arlene Dahl, who appeared with him in 'Sangaree' and The Diamond Queen (1953), became his third wife, and fellow swimming champion Esther Williams his fourth.
In 1963, Lamas directed the Spanish film Magic Fountain (1963), with himself and wife Esther Williams playing the lead roles. From then on, he began to concentrate on television, alternating between acting (notable in a recurring role as playboy Ramon de Vega in Run for Your Life (1965) and directing episodes of shows like Mannix (1967), Alias Smith and Jones (1971), The Rookies (1972) and House Calls (1979).- Actor
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Victor Jory was born in Dawson City, Yukon, Canada. His burly physique made him a wrestling and boxing champion during his military service in the United States Coast Guard. After a few appearances on Broadway, he made his way into Hollywood in the early 1930s. His acting career spanned exactly 50 years, during which he played in nearly 200 films and TV series. In his early years he was cast in romantic roles, but it wasn't long before he began playing villainous parts, likely due to his "black eyes" which could easily give the impression of intimidation. He is remembered for his role as the ruthless overseer Jonas Wilkerson in Gone With the Wind, and his role as Lamont Cranston in The Shadow. He also played Oberon in the 1935 film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Among these many co-starring roles, he also appeared in 7 Hopalong Cassidy films between the years 1941 and 1943, usually cast as the villain or a right hand man. The only Hopalong film in which he did not play a 'bad guy' was in Riders of the Timberlane where he played a hot blooded, broad-shouldered lumberjack. During his film career, Victor's voice also offered him the an extensive career in radio. He was the lead role in the radio series, Dangerously Yours, and he also narrated "Tubby the Tuba" and "Bumpo the Ballerina" for children. In the 1950s and 1960s, he began acting in television series while remaining in the film industry. He played the lead role of Detective Howard Finucane in the police drama series, Manhunt, which ran from 1959 to 1961. In 1962 he played Helen Keller's father in the film, The Miracle Worker, for which his co-stars Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft won Oscars. In 1964, he along with fellow actors Susan Seafourth and Coleen Gray testified before the United States Congress as part of Project Prayer, arguing in favor of an amendment which would restore school prayer, something which the United States had eliminated in the early 1960s. Victor Jory continued acting until he retired in 1980. He was married to Jean Inness Jory from 1928 until her death in 1978. Together they had two children, Jon and Jean. At age 79, Victor died of a heart attack on February 12, 1982, in Santa Monica, California.- Actor
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Tom Drake was an American actor with a relatively lengthy career. Drake was born in 1918, in Brooklyn, New York. His real name was Alfred Sinclair Alderdice. He was educated at the Iona Preparatory School in New Rochelle, New York, and Mercersburg Academy in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania,
He started his acting career in 1938, with theatrical performances in Broadway, New York City. He appeared in the plays "Run Sheep Run" (1938) and "Clean Beds" (1939), He initially used the stage name "Richard Alden", but later changed his stage name to "Tom Drake".
In the early 1940s, Drake started appearing in theatrical films. Following a number of uncredited parts as an extra, his first film credit was in the film "The Howards of Virginia" (1940), as the character James Howard. The setting of the film was 18th-century Virginia. In the film, the protagonist Matt Howard (played by Cary Grant) is a war orphan. His father was killed in the Braddock Expedition (1755), a failed British campaign during the French and Indian War. The impoverished Howard gains the favor and political patronage of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), and uses this connection to acquire land and wealth, and build a new dynasty of plantation owners. But this family is undermined by the class difference and tensions between "new money" Matt and the "old money" heiress which he married.
In 1942, Drake received his first taste of fame by starring in the hit Broadway play "Janie". Afterwards, he was signed to a full contract with the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Drake was 24 years old, but was found ineligible for military service in World War II; his medical exams diagnosed a heart disease.
Drake's most memorable role during the War was the character John Truett in the musical "Meet Me in St. Louis". Truett was the boy next door, who served as the love interest for the character Esther Smith (played by Judy Garland). Following the War, Drake appeared in over 30 films and several television series. He broke out of typecasting in 1959, when playing gang leader Abe McQuown in the Western film "Warlock".
By the early 1970s, Drake's career was in decline. His final film role was the character Dr. Adam Forrest in the horror film "The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe" (1974), Drake died in 1982, suffering from lung cancer. He was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.- Actor
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Kenneth Gilbert More C.B.E. (20 September 1914 - 12 July 1982) was one of Britain's most successful and highest paid actors of his generation, with a multi award-winning career in theatre, film and television spanning over 4 decades.
At the height of his fame during the 1950's More appeared in some of the most memorable feature films of the decade including Genevieve (1953), Doctor in the House (1954), The Deep Blue Sea (1955), Reach for the Sky (1956), Paradise Lagoon (1957), A Night to Remember (1958), The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958), North West Frontier (1959) and The 39 Steps (1959).
Starting out as the lovable, happy-go-lucky gentleman with boyhood charm and cheerful optimism, he would later refine his acting style into a leading man who could articulate a whole range of emotions in serious dramatic performances. More managed to embody courage and a sense of moral certitude with a relaxed, informal manner that made audiences warm to him immediately.
From very early on in his career More was very conscious of his talents, what parts suited him as an actor and what did not. More would have been the first to admit there were other actors that could better perform the works of Shakespeare than he. More was probably being self-deprecating. He had more range than he sometimes gave himself credit for, but he knew how best to appeal to an audience.
Born in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, Kenneth More was the son of a civil engineer, a profession he initially pursued but with little success. More was not a trained actor and had not gone into show business to tread the boards. He was merely looking for work and happened to walk past the Windmill Theatre in London's West End one day and saw a sign above the door 'General Manager - Vivian Van Damm'. More had remembered that a man called Van Damm had known his father and so he asked for a job. More was soon a stagehand earning two pounds and ten shillings a week, shifting scenery and helping to get the nude female performers off the stage during their risqué performances. One day he was called upon to help comic Ken Douglas on stage with a sketch, More playing the small part of a Policeman. It was this experience and the subsequent taste of the audience's laughter which made him want to pursue a career in acting. He was soon an actor in his own right appearing on stage as Ken More in comedy sketches. Following 2 years at the Windmill he moved into repertory theatre with seasons at Byker's, Grand Theatre in Newcastle, and the Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton.
With the outbreak of war, and following a stint with the Merchant Navy, More joined Royal Navy cruiser HMS Aurora (R12) . It would end up having the greatest impact on his character and his acting style during wartime. As ship's Action Commentator he found an opportunity to hone his craft as an actor, keeping steady nerves when reporting action during conflict to the crew below decks. He also got on well with his shipmates by helping them to write wonderfully romantic love letters home to their ladies. Aurora would journey across the Atlantic and Mediterranean seeing its fair share of action. Wartime missions aboard Aurora, and later with aircraft carrier HMS Victorious (R38) would lead him to receive medals, including campaign stars for Africa, Italy, the Atlantic and Pacific.
After being demobbed from the Navy More returned to England and signed with agent Harry Dubens, who was seeking actors who had served in the forces. More went into 'The Crimson Harvest' (1946) at the Gateway Theatre in Notting Hill, and it was there that BBC producer Michael Barry saw him and offered him a contract to play in small television roles at the Alexandra Palace to help restart the BBC.
Jenny Laird and John Fernald's 'And No Birds Can Sing' (1946) marked More's West End debut at the Aldwych Theatre, playing the part of the Reverend Arthur Platt. Within a year he was back on stage in 'Power Without Glory' (1947) by Michael Clayton Hutton at the New Lindsey, Notting Hill Gate. It was so well received that it led to a live version being broadcast on the BBC. That same year Noël Coward cast More as a British Resistance Leader in 'Peace in Our Time' at the Lyric Theatre; a story of what might have happened if Britain had lost the Second World War. More and Coward got on well and stayed friends throughout their lives. 1950 saw More in 'The Way Things Go' by Frederick Lonsdale at the Phoenix Theatre, alongside a cast which included Michael Gough, Glynis Johns, Ronald Squire and Janet Burnell.
His first breakthrough came on stage at The Duchess Theatre in 1952 playing the role of Freddie Page alongside Peggy Ashcroft in Terence Rattigan's 'The Deep Blue Sea'. It was noted actor Roland Culver who had put More forward for the part having known Rattigan. The production was an enormous success and Kenneth More received great critical acclaim. He would often cite it as his favourite stage performance.
It was whilst More was performing in 'The Deep Blue Sea' that filmmaker Henry Cornelius came back stage to offer him a part which would change his career forever, the role of Ambrose Claverhouse in a film called Genevieve (1953). Cornelius had remembered More from a screen test he had directed him in for the part of Lt. E.G.R. (Teddy) Evans in Scott of the Antarctic (1948). This had been More's first attempt to break into cinema which had not come to fruition although plenty of film work followed. Cornelius was sure More was the Claverhouse he needed for 'Genevieve' and he was not disappointed. More's perfect comic timing was made for the part and he won the audience immediately making him a rising star overnight. 'Genevieve' was the second most popular movie that year and went onto become a British comedy classic, winning Best British Film at the British Film Academy Awards.
More channelled the same energy and zest for life he had shown as Claverhouse in his next performance as student Doctor Richard Grimsdake in the first of the much-loved Doctor in the House (1954) film series. It was a winning formula becoming the most popular film at the box office in 1954 securing More Best Actor at the British Film Academy Awards.
1955 saw More returning to the role of Freddie Page in a big screen version of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, playing alongside Vivien Leigh. Incidentally, he had brought the role back to life the previous year for BBC Sunday-Night Theatre (1950) series. The screen adaptation was produced by Alexander Korda and directed by Anatole Litvak. More's performance was once again praised by audiences and critics alike, leading to being awarded the prestigious Volpi cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival, as well as nominations for Best Actor at the British Film Academy Awards. Further honours were bestowed by the Variety Club of Great Britain as Most Promising International Star of 1955. He had finally made his mark.
It was a serious leading role initially turned down by Richard Burton which would make More a major star. Playing the legless, real-life fighter pilot Douglas Bader in Reach for the Sky (1956) was the role of a lifetime. He felt the part of Bader was one he was born to play as he mentioned in his autobiography, 'More or Less': "Bader's philosophy was my philosophy. His whole attitude to life was mine." More had met Bader at Gleneagles where they played a round of golf together, Bader winning each time. They got on well which was somewhat surprising in that Bader was not that keen on actors. Not wanting to caricature him More kept his distance whilst preparing for the role, only meeting him on a handful of occasions for dinner with his friend, actor Ronald Squire. 'Reach for the Sky' became a smash hit upon release and the most popular British film of 1956, winning a British Film Academy award for Best Film. Playing Bader also garnered a Best Actor award for More from popular cinema publication, Picturegoer magazine.
'Reach for the Sky' did something much greater for his career, it showed British audiences that Kenneth More was not just suited to comic roles, he had range as a leading man in dramatic performances. In later years More called several of his films 'favourites' in the press, but it is the belief that 'Reach for the Sky' remained his preferred choice and greatest accomplishment on screen.
Hugely popular films The Admirable Crichton (1957), A Night to Remember (1958), The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (1958), North West Frontier (1959) and The 39 Steps (1959) galvanized his status as one of Britain's most sought-after actors of the decade. Once he was a £5 a week actor in rep, now he was commanding £50,000 a film.
At the height of his fame More was offered several opportunities to go to Hollywood but with the success he was enjoying at home he did not see the point, or even what he had to offer Tinseltown at this juncture.
The 1960s saw More continue as a leading man in Sink the Bismarck! (1960), Loss of Innocence (1961) and We Joined the Navy (1962). He would cite The Comedy Man (1964) as one of his most favourite roles playing down and out middle-aged actor Chick Byrd. This character resonated with him on two levels. The first was how it represented the experiences he had as a struggling young actor, the second was how he was coming to terms with the present, his own age and the shifting trends of the industry. It would be More's last leading role on the silver screen. Further successes on film came but in cameo or supporting roles, including The Longest Day (1962), Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Battle of Britain (1969), Scrooge (1970) and The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella (1976).
More finally achieved worldwide fame as leading man on the small screen in a BBC adaptation of John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga (1967). He had been working steadily on television throughout the 1960's in starring roles, but The Forsyte Saga caught the world's imagination and was a huge, phenomenal success. The series managed to achieve that rare cult-like status and helped introduce Kenneth More to a whole new audience, many who had not seen his earlier work. Several years late More took on another famous literary character playing the part of a Catholic priest who was adept at solving mysteries in G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown (1974). The TV Times awarded him Best Actor for his performance.
Kenneth More had returned to the theatre as early as 1963, playing the part of Peter Pounce alongside Celia Johnson in Giles Cooper's 'Out of the Crocodile' at the Phoenix Theatre. A year later he appeared in a musical version of 'The Admirable Crichton' co-starring with Millicent Martin in 'Our Man Crichton' at the Shaftesbury Theatre. By the end of the 1960s he had received great critical praise as Hugh in a production of 'The Secretary Bird' (1968) by William Douglas-Home at the Savoy Theatre. It turned out to be the biggest stage success of his career. Terence Rattigan's 'The Winslow Boy' (1970), Alan Bennett's award-winning 'Getting On' (1971), Jeremy Kingston's 'Sign of the Times' (1973) and Frederick Lonsdale's 'On Approval' (1977) followed, all of which reinforced More's popularity in his later years.
He was made a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in the Queen's New Year's Honours list of 1970. The Kenneth More Theatre, a regional playhouse named in his honour opened in Redbridge in 1974. The Variety Club of Great Britain bestowed More with a special silver heart in 1975 for 40 years in show business. He had been a great supporter of the club over the years taking part in a great deal of charitable events. A special, televised ceremony was held in the Lancaster ballroom of the Savoy Hotel and was attended by many of the industry's best-known names, including Sir. Douglas Bader who More had remained friends with throughout the years.
1978 saw the release of his autobiography 'More or Less', reported to have sold 100,000 copies almost immediately upon release. It received widespread critical and public praise and showed that his appeal had not diminished after 4 decades in the business, despite how times had changed. More was considered an 'institution in British entertainment' according to presenter Michael Parkinson whilst introducing him on his chat show in 1978.
More announced his retirement in 1980 due to illness, at the time he was diagnosed with Parkinson's. It is now very likely that he was suffering from Multiple System Atrophy (MSA), due in part to the age of onset and the speed at which the condition progressed. Kenneth More passed away on July 12th, 1982. His wife Angela Douglas was by his side having nursed him in his final years.
Kenneth More's memorial service was held at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 20 September 1982, which also marked his birthday. The service was packed with family and friends alike, including Lauren Bacall, Dame Anna Neagle and Lady Joan Bader, widow of Sir Douglas Bader who had passed away the same year. A plaque was erected at St. Paul's Church Covent Garden, known more commonly as the Actor's Church.
It is almost 40 years since his passing, yet Kenneth More's performances have endured, continuing to screen worldwide on television and home entertainment. What greater legacy can there be for an actor than to be able to continue to thrill audiences long after one has taken their final bow.- Japanese character actor Takashi Shimura was one of the finest film actors of the 20th century and a leading member of the "stock company" of master director Akira Kurosawa. A native of southern Japan, Shimura was a descendant of the samurai warrior class. Following university training, he founded a theatre company, Shichigatsu-za ("July Theatre"). In 1930 he joined a professional company, Kindai-za ("Modern Theatre"). Four years later he signed with the Kinema Shinko film studio. He found a niche playing samurai roles for various studios, then signed a long-term contract with Toho Studios in 1943. He appeared in an average of six films a year for Toho over the next four decades. His greatest critical acclaim came in more than 20 roles for Kurosawa, though he is almost as well recognized outside Japan for his kindly doctor role in the original "Godzilla" (Godzilla (1954)). Shimura's triumph was his unforgettable performance as a dying bureaucrat in Kurosawa's To Live (1952). He continued to act steadily, in good films and bad, almost until his death, culminating with Kurosawa's Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980). He is often described as filling the spot for Kurosawa that Ward Bond filled for John Ford--an ever-present and reliable character player who consistently supplied a solidity and strength to whatever film he appeared in. Shimura was definitely a finer actor than Bond, of the most versatile "chameleons" in the world cinema, a great artist with enormous range in sublime interpretations, from To Live (1952)'s diffident clerk to the leader of the Seven Samurai in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954). He died in 1982, a reluctant icon of Japanese cinema.
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Eleanor Powell was born in 1912 in Springfield, Massachussetts, and got her professional start in Atlantic City clubs, from where she moved into in revue in New York at the Ritz Grill and Casino de Paris at the age of sixteen. She started her career on Broadway in 1929, where her machine-gun foot work gained her the title of world champion in tapping. In 1935 she came to Hollywood where she starred in the great MGM musicals in the late 1930s, establishing herself as a Queen of Ra-Ta-Taps. In spite of the fact that she was primarily a solo performer she also danced with Fred Astaire and George Murphy. After her marriage she wasn't seen on the screen, except for a short number in the Duchess of Idaho (1950). After her divorce she started a short but successful night-club career.- Short, dapper Jay Novello specialized in playing ethnic types, sometimes Spanish, Greek or Mexican but usually Italian--not surprising, since his parents were Italian immigrants and he grew up speaking the language before he learned English. Born in Chicago in 1904, he came from a very diverse neighborhood and, in addition to speaking Italian and English, also picked up a working knowledge of German and Greek. He got a job acting with various theater companies in the Chicago area, and his facility with languages got him work in radio as a dialect specialist. He soon moved to Hollywood and got work in the radio industry there, and made his film debut in an uncredited bit part in 1930. He played in everything from westerns to action pictures to serials (in one of which, The Adventures of Smilin' Jack (1943), he played a Japanese spy!). He did much television work, and one of his best known roles was as the scheming Mayor Lugato in the Ernest Borgnine comedy series McHale's Navy (1962). He died of lung cancer in North Hollywood in 1982.
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Curd Jürgens (commonly billed as "Curt Jurgens" in anglophone countries) was one of the most successful European film actors of the 20th Century. He was born Curd Gustav Andreas Gottlieb Franz Jürgens on December 13, 1915, in Solln, Bavaria, in Hohenzollern Imperial Germany, a subject of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Of Franco-German parentage, Jürgens -- who was born during the closing days of the second year of the First World War -- would abandon the country of his birth after the end of World War II: Jürgens became an Austrian citizen in 1945 and lived part-time in France.
Jürgens entered the journalism profession after receiving his education, and married Louise Basler, an actress. Basler, the first of his five wives, encouraged him to switch careers and become an actor. He learned his new profession on the Vienna stage, which retained his loyalty even after he became an global film star. Jürgens was sent to a concentration camp for "political unreliables" in 1944, due to his anti-Nazi opinions. It was this experience in Nazi Germany that led him to become an Austrian citizen after the war.
His appearance in The Devil's General (1955) ("The Devil's General" (1955)), established him as a star of German cinema, and his role as Brigitte Bardot's older lover in Roger Vadim's ...And God Created Woman (1956) (And God Created Woman (1956)) made him an international star. Always interested in multilingual European actors with good looks and talent, Hollywood beckoned the 6' 4" Jürgens, casting him in The Enemy Below (1957) as a WWII German U-boat commander in a duel with American destroyer commander Robert Mitchum. He constantly was in demand to play Germany military officers (e.g., The Longest Day (1962), the most expensive black-and-white film ever made) -- indeed, his last role was as "The General" in the miniseries Smiley's People (1982) -- and Germanic villains (e.g., "Cornelius", the cowardly and treacherous trading company representative, in Lord Jim (1965)) for the rest of his life. One of his most famous roles in the English-language cinema was as the James Bond villain, "Karl Stromberg", in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977); it was Moore's favorite Bond film.
Jürgens considered himself primarily a stage actor and often performed on the Vienna stage. Though the world knew him as a cinema actor, he also directed several films and wrote several screenplays and an autobiography, "Sixty and Not Yet Wise" (1975). His death from a heart attack in 1982 in Vienna was front-page news across Austria and Germany.- Dan Tobin's career in Hollywood as a small part supporting player spanned three decades, beginning in 1939. Adding to his slightly shifty appearance -- squinty eyes, high cheekbones and generally sporting a thin moustache -- was a fussy, bumptious manner, which made him ideal typecasting as supercilious, miserly, smugly conceited or obsequious types. Though Tobin's screen personae could be sinister, or at least underhanded, they also often provided comic relief, as, for instance, his somewhat camp, bow-tied employee Gerald Howe in Woman of the Year (1942). On stage, he had his biggest hit in Philip Barry's classic comedy play "The Philadelphia Story" (Broadway (1939-40), playing the part of Alexander 'Sandy' Lord.
By the mid-1950's, Tobin had drifted from films towards guest appearances in early anthology series and sitcoms on television. He had a regular spot in the final season of Perry Mason (1957) as Raymond Burr's restaurateur friend Terrance Clay. As the ideal character to be deflated, he was also employed to good comic effect in several episodes of Bewitched (1964) and The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (1968). Tobin retired from acting in 1977 and died five years later at the age of 72. He had been married to TV scriptwriter Jean Holloway. - Jill Banner's early life was somewhat nomadic. Her father died when she was 2, and her mother moved from Washington to South Dakota and Iowa before settling in Glendale, California. Jill attended the Hollywood Professional School (one of her classmates was Peggy Lipton). Her debut film, Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told (1967), was shot in 1964 but not released until 1968. When the film finally came out she received rave reviews for her performance as one of a pair of crazed sisters in this dark tale of cannibalism and incest. Between the shooting of the film and its release, Banner did a few films and much TV work. She was regularly used by producer/director Jack Webb in his police shows Dragnet 1967 (1967) and Adam-12 (1968), often playing a blissed-out hippie. In the 1970s she soured on the Hollywood life and moved to New Mexico, where she sold real estate. After a few years, though, she returned to California to try to resume her career. On August 7, 1982, she was driving on the Ventura Freeway, between the Tujunga and Laurel Canyon Blvd. off-ramps, when her car was hit by a truck whose driver was drunk. Not wearing a seat belt, she was ejected from the car and hit her head on the center divider. She went into a coma, and died at a local hospital, never having come out of it. At the time of her death she was employed by Marlon Brando and was developing scripts for him.
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Philip Kindred Dick was born in Chicago in December 1928, along with a twin sister, Jane. Jane died less than eight weeks later, allegedly from an allergy to mother's milk. Dick's parents split up during his childhood, and he moved with his mother to Berkeley, California, where he lived for most of the rest of his life. Dick became a published author in 1952. His first sale was the short story "Roog." His first novel, "Solar Lottery," appeared in 1955. Dick produced an astonishing amount of material during the 1950s and 1960s, writing and selling nearly a hundred short stories and some two dozen or so novels during this period, including "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?," "Time Out Of Joint," "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch," and the Hugo-award winning "The Man In The High Castle." A supremely chaotic personal life (Dick was married five times) along with drug experimentation, sidetracked Dick's career in the early 1970s. Dick would later maintain that reports of his drug use had been greatly exaggerated by sensationalistic colleagues. In any event, after a layoff of several years, Dick returned to action in 1974 with the Campbell award-winning novel "Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said." Perhaps more importantly, though, this same year Dick would have a profound religious experience that would forever alter his life. Dick's final years were haunted by what he alleged to be a 1974 visitation from God, or at least a God-like being. Dick spent the rest of his life writing copious journals regarding the visitation and his interpretations of the event. At times, Dick seemed to regard it as a divine revelation and, at other times, he believed it to be a sign of extreme schizophrenic behaviour. His final novels all deal in some way with the entity he saw in 1974, especially "Valis," in which the title-character is an extraterrestrial God-like machine that chooses to make contact with a hopelessly schizophrenic, possibly drug-addled and decidedly mixed-up science fiction writer named Philip K. Dick. Despite his award-winning novels and almost universal acclaim from within the science-fiction community, Dick was never especially financially successful as a writer. He worked mainly for low-paying science-fiction publishers and never seemed to see any royalties from his novels after the advance had been paid, no matter how many copies they sold. In fact, one of the reasons for his extreme productivity was that he always seemed to need the advance money from his next story or novel in order to make ends meet. But towards the very end of his life, he achieved a measure of financial stability, partly due to the money he received from the producers of Blade Runner (1982) for the rights to his novel "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" upon which the film was based. Shortly before the film premiered, however, he died of a heart attack at the age of 53. Since his death, several other films have been adapted from his works (incuding Total Recall (1990)) and several unpublished novels have been published posthumously.- Born in Armagh, Northern Ireland, Patrick Magee is a classic example of how certain actors rate the stage far more highly than the screen. He was a favorite actor of Samuel Beckett, one of whose greatest plays, 'Krapp's Last Tape', was written specifically for him. He did outstanding work on film, most notably in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) as the crippled writer Mr. Alexander, and in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), as the chevalier. He also appeared in Joseph Losey's The Servant (1963), Peter Brook's Marat/Sade (1967) and William Friedkin's The Birthday Party (1968). He also appeared in films by such cult directors as Roger Corman, Lucio Fulci and Walerian Borowczyk.
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Reta Shaw is best known to television audiences as Hope Lange's housekeeper in the TV series The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (1968). Disney fans will remember her as one of the singing domestics in the Oscar-winning masterpiece Mary Poppins (1964). While she never achieved stardom as a leading lady, she earned her place as a solid supporting player in a variety of popular, much-loved cinematic classics. She created the comic part of Mabel when the musical "The Pajama Game" opened on Broadway in 1954, a role she repeated in the film version.- Writer
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The comic genius Jacques Tati was born Taticheff, descended from a noble Russian family. His grandfather, Count Dimitri, had been a general in the Imperial Army and had served as military attaché to the Russian Embassy in Paris. His father, Emmanuel Taticheff, was a well-to-do picture framer who conducted his business in the fashionable Rue de Castellane and had taken a Dutch-Italian woman, Marcelle Claire van Hoof, as his wife. To Emmanuel's lasting dismay, Jacques had no intention of following in the family trade of framing and restoration. Instead, he went on to pursue an education (specialising in arts and engineering) at the military academy of Lycée de Saint Germain-en-laye. After graduating, his main preoccupation became sports. He already boxed and played tennis and was introduced to rugby during a sojourn in London. Back in Paris, he joined the Racing Club de France (1925-30), and for some time seriously contemplated a career as a professional rugby player. However, Jacques also had an uncanny talent for pantomime, imitating athletes at his school to the amusement of classmates and teachers. By the time he had reached the age of 24, encouraged by his success as an entertainer in the annual revue of the Racing Club, he suddenly decided to combine his two passions and, without further ado, entered the world of show business.
From 1931, Jacques toured the Parisian music halls, theatres and circuses with his impersonations, acrobatics, drunk waiter and comic tennis routines (the latter would be famously re-enacted by his alter ego, Monsieur Hulot). He had by this time changed his name to 'Tati' in order to accommodate theatre bills.The French magazine "Le Jour" was among the first to acknowledge his growing popularity, describing Jacques as "a clown of great talent". At the same time, he made his screen debut in a series of short featurettes, tailored to show off his practised gags, notably Oscar, champion de tennis (1932) and Watch Your Left (1936) ("Watch your left", a very funny boxing sketch). The Second World War, military service and inherent strictures resulting from the German occupation put a temporary halt to his career. Then, in 1946, through a friend, the writer-director Claude Autant-Lara, Jacques obtained a small role in the whimsical fantasy Sylvie et le fantôme (1946), about a girl (Odette Joyeux) in love with a ghost (Tati).
The small township of Sainte-Sévère, where Tati had taken refuge during the occupation, served as inspiration for his first film, initially conceived as a one-reeler entitled "L'Ecole des facteurs" (School for Postmen). Unable to find widespread distribution, Tati decided to re-shoot the bucolic comedy --with himself in the central role -- as a feature film, using the villagers as extras and filming everything on location. And thus, Jour de Fête (1949) and Francois the village postman came into being. However, the film was soon overshadowed by his next enterprise and a critic of the satirical publication Le Canard Enchainé even proposed to fight a duel with anyone who would prefer "Jour de Fete" to Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953)!
With "Holiday", Tati reinvented the visual comedy of the silent era in a style not dissimilar to that of Max Linder. There is hardly any dialogue, except for background chatter, but natural and human noises are enhanced whenever required for the desired comic effect. The film is almost plotless, essentially comprised of a series of vignettes (to the recurring musical motif of Alain Romans's breezy 1952 composition "Quel temps fait-il à Paris?") at a seaside resort frequented by assorted holiday makers. All are stereotypical of their respective social class, as are the villagers themselves. Their inability to escape social conditioning and the stress they endure in the process of 'enjoying themselves' are observed with a keen satirical eye through their interaction with each other. At the centre is the ever-present character of the bumbling Monsieur Hulot, who arrives in a rickety 1924 Amilcar. Tall and reedy, clad in a poplin coat, wearing a crumpled hat, striped socks, trousers which are patently too short, rolled umbrella, a pipe firmly clenched between his teeth and perambulating with an odd stiff-legged gait, Hulot cuts an ungainly, yet hilarious figure. Well-meaning though he is, he invariably leaves disaster in his wake and departs the scene quickly as things go wrong, letting others sort out the mess. "Holiday" is more than just a brilliant collection of sight gags, but also an ironic observation of the foibles of human nature. Tati acknowledged the influence of both Buster Keaton and W.C. Fields in the creation of Hulot. Very much like Keaton or Charles Chaplin, he was also a consummate perfectionist who micro-managed each scene with unerring precision. Comedy for Tati was a serious business.
In Tati's subsequent ventures, Hulot became relegated from being the focus of the story to merely subordinate to its concept. As just one of many characters, Hulot weaves in and out of My Uncle (1958) and Playtime (1967), his simple, old-fashioned world contrasted sharply against the coldness of mechanisation, obsessive consumerism and the growing uniformity of houses and cities. "Playtime", shot in 70mm, took six years to make and required the creation of a massive glass and concrete high-rise set with myriad corridors and cubicles (dubbed 'Tativille' and built at a cost of $800,000) which raised the picture's total budget to $3 million and left Tati bankrupt. His next project, Trafic (1971), a satire of modern man's love of cars, failed to recoup these losses. Creditors impounded Tati's films, which were not re-released until 1977, when a canny Parisian distributor expunged his outstanding debts. Throughout his career, Tati remained obdurately committed to his artistic integrity and to his independence as a film maker. He was one of few directors who consistently employed non-professional actors. He turned down offers from Hollywood for a 15-minute series of television comedies, following the success of "Mon Oncle". He summed it all up by declaring "I could have satisfied the producers of the world by making a whole series of little Hulot films, and I would have made a lot of money. But I would not have been able to do what I like - work freely". (NY Times, November 6, 1982)- Actress
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When, at 50, Mabel Albertson was given the supporting role of Mrs. Carter, young actress Aileen Stanley Jr.'s mother in a Warner Bros. Technicolor musical romance, little did she know that she was starting out a movie and TV career in which she would shine as "the ultimate haughty judgmental (often wealthy) mother-in-law (or mother, or stepmother, or auntie)" in an impressive series of films, TV films or TV series episodes. Mabel Albertson's comic gifts helped her to make these generally obnoxious characters hilarious. She is indeed memorable as Jerry Lewis' mother-in-law in Don't Give Up the Ship (1959), as George Hamilton's mother in All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960) or the domineering mother-in-law of poor Anthony Franciosa in Period of Adjustment (1962). On television, Tom Ewell, Dick Van Dyke and Dick Sargent, among others, were given the same treatment by their screen mother.
Even at 50 years of age, Mabel Albertson was no newcomer to the business. In fact, she had been a successful vaudeville performer in the 1920s, a radio star in the 1930s and a theater actress and director in the 1940s. She had tried her hand in films twice (in 1928 and 1940) but without much success. Ironically, it was the film business that had previously rejected her which would make her unforgettable from the early 1950s to the late 1970s when Alzheimer's Disease put an and end to a long and fruitful career.- Actor
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While in Vietnam entertaining troops with Bob Hope and others touring with the USO, Thomas Tully contracted a filarial worm, similar to the worm which can lead to elephantiasis. After returning to the U.S. his condition was diagnosed after a blood clot in a major leg vein cut off circulation so severely his left leg was amputated very close to the hip. This was circa 1971. The amputation was performed in Laguna Beach, California, close to his home in San Juan Capistrano. Complications to this surgery caused pleuritis, deafness and serious debilitation. His death was due, in great part, to these serious medical conditions. He should be remembered as a true patriot who sacrificed his life to entertain our troops during the Vietnam War.- Philip Ober's bald head, stern bearing and booming voice made him a natural for the roles of business executives, high-ranking military officers and other authority figures he played so well. A Princeton University graduate, Ober spent years as an advertising executive for several different national magazines before switching careers to acting. He spent many years on Broadway and in stock companies before breaking into films. His best remembered roles would probably be that of the murder victim who dies in Cary Grant's arms in North by Northwest (1959) and the bullying officer whose wife is having an affair with his subordinate, Burt Lancaster, in From Here to Eternity (1953). He also did much television work, including appearances on his wife's show, I Love Lucy (1951) (he was married to Vivian Vance at the time). He retired from acting and went into the U.S. diplomatic service, and, while working at the U.S. consulate in Mexico City, died of a heart attack in 1982.
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American leading actor who began his career as a juvenile in the 1930s. The son of a stock broker, he attended Los Angeles and Hollywood High Schools. Upon graduation, he trained for stagecraft at the Pasadena Playhouse School having by then already debuted on screen, aged eight, in an uncredited bit part. In 1927, William spent a year at Punaho College in Honolulu where he befriended the Olympic swimming champion and surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku who would later help secure him his first job in talking pictures. By 1928, he worked as stage manager for David Belasco and Guy Bates Post, and, five years later, was signed by 20th Century Fox to a five-year contract. It was at first intended that he be given the stage name of 'William Lawrence', but, in the end, 'Bill Henry' was the name that stuck. The early part of his career in the movies consisted mainly of playing callow youths, an image he managed to shake off in later years when he became a star of B-westerns. He was a frequent presence in the films of John Ford as one of this director's unofficial stock company of players. William's favorite hobby was collecting books. According to at least one account, he reinvented himself as a landscape gardener after his retirement from films in the mid-70s.- Actor
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Harry H Corbett (he added the "H" to avoid being confused with Sooty's friend) was born in Burma in 1925. His father was an officer in the army. His mother died when he was very young and he moved to England as a child and was brought up in Manchester by an aunt.
After his war service, he joined a repertory company and during the 1950s appeared in many stage productions. At the end of this period he made the move to the big screen and appeared in about twenty movies (mostly 'B' pictures) during the years from 1959 to 1980, including the starring role of Detective Sergeant Bung in Carry on Screaming! (1966), Rattle of a Simple Man (1964) and the two "Steptoe and Son" movies in the early 1970s. He suffered a series of heart attacks between 1979 and 1982, before his premature death aged 57.- Actress
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Better known for her scandalous private life than for her mild film input, the story goes that blonde, extremely well-endowed Dolores Moran was checked out at an annual Sacramento Elks Lodge picnic in 1941 by a Warner Brothers talent scout in the early 40s and a starlet was born.
Born in Stockton, California in 1926, this bombshell looker, a one-time drive-in car hop, had started collecting beauty titles as a teen ("Queen of the Butte County Fair") by the time the major studio took notice of her and signed her up. The studio immediately promoted the darker-haired-now-platinum blonde as a WWII pin-up and her cover-girl appearances on magazines became a favorite with GI soldiers. Beginning in 1942, she would start out as set decoration (including Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)) and would typically be utilized in small, decorative film parts. She achieved a bit of distinction, or perhaps distraction, in a couple of larger roles -- Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins' tearjerker Old Acquaintance (1943), Bogie and Bacall's To Have and Have Not (1944), and Jack Benny's The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945).
Moran's reputation of having affairs with married film heavyweights had already preceded her by the time the 22-year-old began dating 42-year-old producer Benedict Bogeaus, who was married to starlet Mimi Forsythe at the time. Bogeaus divorced his wife and married Moran in late 1946. Two years later Dolores bore him a son. Sadly, in 1952, Bogeaus' former wife committed suicide.
Secondary roles followed for Moran with Too Young to Know (1945) and the film noir The Man I Love (1946). Dolores first worked with her producer/husband in the film Christmas Eve (1947). Her film career sagged after that as her Svengali-like husband insisted she appear strictly in his pictures from Johnny One-Eye (1950) and Count the Hours! (1953) to her last role as a burlesque queen in Silver Lode (1954), often giving her roles that showed off her "bad girl" image. In between she appeared on TV: "Dangerous Assignment," "My Hero" and Mr. & Mrs. North".
The turbulent marriage of Dolores and Benedict finally came to an end in 1962. Moran decided to lay low after this and, as such, little was heard about her until newspapers reported her death from cancer at age 56 in 1982.- The most famous henchman of the entire James Bond series of spy thrillers, Harold Sakata will forever be remembered as the villainous "Odd Job" in the ultimate Bond film, Goldfinger (1964), with his lethal martial arts and steel-brimmed bowler hat. He was born Toshiyuki Sakata in Hawaii, of Japanese descent. From a young age he was a proficient sportsman who developed a keen interest in wrestling, and won a Silver Medal in weightlifting for the light heavyweight division of the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. Sakata then went on to become a professional wrestler, and appeared under the name "Tosh Togo" where he became a "bad guy" wrestler who allegedly threw salt in his opponent's eyes.
Although he had no acting background, Sakata came to the attention of Bond producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli when they were casting for the key role of the mute Asian villain "Odd Job". Sakata's steely gaze and powerful physique made him perfect for the role as Auric Goldfinger's (Gert Fröbe) deadly bodyguard, and the fight sequence between Sean Connery and Sakata in a glittering, gold-filled Fort Knox remains one of the highlights of the Bond series.
Unfortunately, Sakata never broke free of the "Odd Job" stereotype, and his remaining film appearances saw him cast as military figures, muscle-bound brutes or further mute bodyguards. He died from cancer in 1982, but had assured himself a very unique place in modern film history. - Rudolph Bond was raised in Philadelphia. He got his start at the Neighborhood Players. After World War II, he was invited by Elia Kazan to be a student at the famed "Actors Studio" in New York, working with such future stars as Paul Newman, James Dean, and Marlon Brando. His first big break was a role in the stage production of "A Streetcar Named Desire". Rudy's career included the theater, motions pictures and television.
- Actor
- Writer
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Stanley Holloway was a British actor and singer, primarily known for comic monologues and songs. In 1890, Holloway was born in Manor Park, Essex. In 1965, Manor Park was incorporated into Greater London, as part of an administrative reform. It is now part of the London Borough of Newham, in East London.
Holloway's parents were lawyer's clerk George Augustus Holloway (1860-1919) and Florence May Bell (1862-1913). His mother primarily worked as a housekeeper and dressmaker. Holloway's paternal grandfather was Augustus Holloway (1829-1884), a relatively wealthy shopkeeper from Poole, Dorset, who owned his own brush-making business. Holloway's maternal grandfather was lawyer Robert Bell, the boss of George Holloway. Through his mother's side of the family, Stanley Holloway was a great-nephew to theatrical actor Charles Bernard (1830-1894), the father of famous modernist architect Oliver Percy Bernard (1881-1939).
Holloway was named "Stanley", after the famous journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1909). George Holloway, his father, abandoned his wife and family in 1905, forcing the 15-year-old Stanley Holloway to drop out of school and start working for a living. Stanley received training as a carpenter, but then found a better job as an office clerk. At his free time, he sang at a local choir. He also started a minor singing career, performing sentimental songs such as "The Lost Chord" (1877) by Arthur Sullivan.
In 1907, Holloway started his military service, as an infantry soldier for the London Rifle Brigade. In 1910, Holloway made his theatrical debut, performing in "The White Coons Show", a concert party variety show. From 1912 to 1914, he regularly performed at the West Cliff Gardens Theatre of Clacton-on-Sea, as a baritone singer. In 1913, Holloway was hired as a supporting actor in a concert party headed by then-famous comedian Leslie Henson (1891-1957). Holloway studied Henson's performance style, and came to regard Henson as his mentor.
In 1914, Holloway interrupted his stage career to officially join the British Army, during World War I. He served in the Connaught Rangers, the Irish line infantry regiment. He first taste of military action was fighting against Irish insurrectionists in the Easter Rising (April, 1916). Later in 1916, Holloway was transferred to France and got to experience trench-warfare first-hand. Late in the War, the military decided to use his acting experience to have Holloway perform in army revues, theatrical shows intended to boost the morale of the troops. Holloway was discharged from the Army in May, 1919. World War I was over, and the British Army was demobilizing.
Holloway soon resumed his acting and singing career, and found success in musicals performed at West End theaters. He made his film debut in the silent film "The Rotters" (1921). The first major hit of his theatrical career was becoming a leading performed in the concert party "The Co-Optimists" (1921-1927). Holloway appeared in 1,568 performances of this show over eight years and resumed his part in its 1929 film adaptation.
Holloway's newfound fame opened some new career opportunities for him. In 1923, he was hired as regular performer for BBC Radio, and in 1924 he recorded some of his hit songs for release in gramophone discs. In 1928, he started performing on-stage comic monologues. He created the stage character of "Sam Small", a working-class soldier of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). Small was very popular with audiences, and Holloway performed this role both on stage and in film.
In the 1930s, Holloway regularly performed in theatrical films by the Ealing Studios, while continuing his successful theatrical career. In 1939, World War II started. At age 49, veteran soldier Holloway was considered too old to re-enlist in the Army. He was hired, however, by the British Film Institute and Pathé News to narrate war-time propaganda films, educational films, and documentaries. Later in the 1940s, he narrated the documentary film series "Time To Remember" for Pathé News. It was a retrospective of British and world history from 1915 to 1942.
In the early 1950s, Holloway appeared in a number of successful films by the Ealing Studios, such as ''The Lavender Hill Mob'' (1951) and ''The Titfield Thunderbolt'' (1953). The company terminated its relationship with him in 1953 (for unclear reasons), and was taken over by the BBC in 1955.
In 1956, Holloway created the role of "Alfred P. Doolittle" in the Broadway production of a new musical play, "My Fair Lady" (1956) by Alan Jay Lerner. The play was an adaption of the play "Pygmalion" (1913) by George Bernard Shaw. Holloway was Lerner's first choice for the role, though Lerner was concerned whether the 66-year-old Holloway still had his resonant singing voice. Holloway relieved Lerner's concerns with an improvised singing performance during their lunch meeting. Doolittle became one of Holloway's most famous roles, and he was hired to reprise the role in the 1964 film adaptation of the musical.
In the 1960s, Holloway was still popular and continued to receive offers for more roles. He had a starring role in the short-lived American sitcom "Our Man Higgins" (1962-1963). He was cast as Higgins, a traditional English butler who found himself employed by a "modern" American suburban family. The series was based on the culture clash between employer and employee from much different backgrounds.
In 1967, Holloway was cast in the British sitcom "Blandings Castle", an adaptation of a series of books by P. G. Wodehouse. The series was popular at the time, but critics felt that Holloway was miscast. The series is considered lost, since BBC erased its tapes of the episodes.
In the early 1970s, Holloway continued regularly appearing in film, but his advanced age limited his potential for notable roles. His last film role was as a crime suspect in the Canadian thriller "Journey into Fear" (1975). He continued regularly appearing in theatre, but poor health forced him into retirement in 1980. He was 90-years-old, when he last performed at the Royal Variety Performance, at the London Palladium.
In January, 1982, Holloway suffered a stroke and died at the Nightingale Nursing Home in Littlehampton, West Sussex. He was buried at St Mary the Virgin Church in East Preston, West Sussex. His second wife, the actress Violet Marion Lane (1913-1997), was eventually buried beside him.
Holloway was married twice. He had four children from his first marriage to Alice "Queenie" Foran, and one child from his marriage to Violet Marion Lane. He was the father of actor Julian Holloway (1944-), and paternal grandfather of the author Sophie Dahl (1977-).- Celia Johnson was an English actress, once nominated for an Academy Award. Johnson was born in the town of Richmond, Surrey in 1908. Richmond was incorporated into Greater London in 1965, as part of an administrative reform. Celia's parents were John Robert Johnson and Ethel Griffiths. Neither of them was involved in show business.
In 1916, 8-year-old Johnson made her theatrical debut, at a performance of the play "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid". It was a charity performance, to help raise funds for then-ongoing World War I. Nobody intended for her to become a professional actress, but she liked the stage experience.
Johnson attended St Paul's Girls' School in West London, from 1919 to 1926. She graduated at the age of 18. During her school years, Johnson often had acting parts in school plays, and played music in the school's orchestra. Her music teacher at the school was Gustav Holst (1874-1934), a relatively well-known classical composer.
In the late 1920s, Johnson studied acting at both the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and the Comédie-Française in Paris. One of her teachers was French actor Pierre Fresnay (1897-1975). One of her classmates in London was Margaretta Scott (1912-2005)
In 1928, Johnson made her professional debut, cast in a performance of the play "Major Barbara" (1905) by George Bernard Shaw. In 1929, she first performed in London, and in 1931 she first performed in New York City. She made a name for herself as a theatrical actress throughout the 1930s, and married journalist Peter Fleming (1907-1971).
Johnson's career and personal life were derailed by World War II. A hit role as the second Mrs. Winter in a 1940 theatrical adaptation of "Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier, was cut short. The theatre where Johnson was performing was damaged through London's bombing by the Luftwaffe. Johnson's widowed sister and sister-in-law moved in with her, bringing their kids with. Having to care for 7 kids (both her own children and her nephews), left Johnson with no time to spare for theatrical tours.
Seeking a way to supplement her income during the War, Johnson started appearing in theatrical films. She started with small parts, but got her first major hit with the family drama "The Happy Breed" (1944), which followed the ups-and-downs in the life of a (fictional) family over a period of several decades. For this role, Johnson received a National Board of Review Award for Best Actress.
In 1945, Johnson was starring in another hit film, the romantic drama "Brief Encounter". It featured her in the role of Laura Jesson, a housewife trapped in a dull and monotonous marriage. Laura falls in love with a new man in her life, Dr. Alec Harvey, and he falls in love with her. With circumstances keep this relationship platonic, until Harvey leaves the country to work abroad. Laura contemplates suicide, but is forced to return to her monotonous life. The role gained Johnson a New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress, and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
For most of the late 1940s, Johnson was in semi-retirement. She had given birth to two daughters and felt that she needed to devote more time to her family. From the 1950s to her death, Johnson was primarily appearing in theatrical plays and television roles. Her film roles were few, but critically well-received.
In 1982, the 76-year-old Johnson was busy with another theatrical tour. During a day-off from the tour, Johnson returned to her home in Nettlebed, Oxfordshire. She invited friends over to play bridge, but suffered a stroke during the game. She died a few hours later, while still in her home. She left an estate worth £150,557. She was survived by three children.
Johnson's fame as a theatrical actress faded away following her death, as there were few filmed versions of her performances. However, her film roles became available on the home video market, and they have helped introduce Johnson to new generations of fans. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Actress Barbara Lang was a beautiful, brassy "B"-level blonde of the 50s in the Barbara Payton mold. Lang's life was certainly not as reckless as that of Payton, who also flourished during the 1950s, but it did have its share of roller coaster rides. She also did not make as many films as Payton -- three to be exact.
Born Barbara Jean Bly on March 2, 1928, Barbara was the daughter of a silent movie dancer, Esther Kaufman, who went by the name Maureen Knight, and a non-professional father, Leonidis Bly. Born in Pasadena, California, she was raised in the Los Angeles area and started out her teen years toiling as a jewelry sales girl and used her nubile features and curvy figure to her advantage as a part-time model. She also earned tips as a cocktail lounge singer and piano player but avoided nightclubs per se because of the propositioning male clientèle that frequented them.
Out of nowhere Lang woke up one day in late 1953 unable to move. Stricken by polio, her speech was affected and her legs and facial muscles paralyzed. Told that she might never walk again, she miraculously recovered after months and months of treatment but the lingering effects of her illness robbed her of much of her stamina and she would tire easily for the rest of her life.
After her recovery she pursued an acting career, and one of Barbara's earliest acting jobs was on a few episodes of "Death Valley Days" in 1955 and 1956. Barbara met her first husband, actor and co-star Alan Wells, on one of those episodes. The couple married in 1956. A talent scout happened to catch Barbara's appearance on the show and MGM took an interest. As a result, she signed with the studio and began taking dramatic lessons. The starlet's first role was a bit part in Hot Summer Night (1957). She then progressed to the lead role in the prison noir House of Numbers (1957) as the wife of jailbird Jack Palance, which was actually filmed inside the walls of Folsom Prison. It seemed Barbara was on her way.
A huge disappointment then for Barbara was when she lost out on the co-starring role opposite Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock (1957). After being initially named by the studio for the part, Judy Tyler was given the coveted role instead. Tragically, Ms. Tyler was killed in a car crash shortly after the filming. Instead Barbara went on to play the supporting role of Ginger D'Amour, a 30's gangster-styled showgirl in the film noir Party Girl (1958) starring veteran MGM stars 'Robert Taylor' and Cyd Charisse
In the meantime Barbara tried to keep on track with TV guest roles playing sexy foils in both crime drama ("Maverick," "77 Sunset Strip") and comedy ("The Bob Cummings Show," "Car 54, Where Are You?") but things soon slowed down to a halt. With her annulment from Wells finalized in 1958 and a career going into an abrupt tailspin, Barbara attempted suicide in 1959 with an overdose of sleeping pills.
She recovered but her career did not. She later married and divorced a second time. Little was heard from Barbara until her reported death from pneumonia at the relatively young age of 54 in Los Angeles.- Actress
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Marjorie Bennett was an Australian actress, who spend most of her career working in the United Kingdom and the United States. She was born in York, Western Australia, a town that was an important stop for miners and travelers during the Australian gold rushes of the late 19th century. York is located 97 kilometers (60 miles) east of Perth, Western Australia's capital and largest city.
Bennett made her film debut in the film "The Girl, Glory" (1917). She had a few credited roles in silent films of the 1910s. such as "Naughty, Naughty!", "Hugon, the Mighty", and "The Midnight Patrol". None of them had a lasting impact
She resumed her film career in 1946, with the uncredited part of a shop assistant in the mystery film "Dressed to Kill". The film was another adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes series on film, and was the 14th and final entry in a film series which cast Basil Rathbone as Sherlock. Bennet started appearing regularly in minor film roles in the late 1940s, with films such as the black comedy "Monsieur Verdoux" (1947), the romantic comedy "June Bride" (1948), and the horror comedy "Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff" (1949).
By the 1950s, Bennett was quite established as a character actress in both film and television. She played the gruff landlady Mrs. Alsop in "Limelight" (1952), appeared in several more "Abbot and Costello" films, and had a recurring role in the television series "Lassie".
In the 1960s, Bennett had her first known role as a voice actress, as the character "Duchess" in the animated film "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" (1961). Duchess is one of the cows who offers shelter for the night and warm milk to the starving puppies, following their escape from villains Horace and Jasper.
Bennett continued regularly appearing in film throughout the 1960s. She had small roles in both "Mary Poppins" (1964) and "My Fair Lady" (1964). Her credits included psychological thriller "The Night Walker" (1964) and the horror film "Billy the Kid Versus Dracula" (1966), She also made several more television appearances.
In the 1970s, Bennett had a more substantial role in the mystery film "Stacey" (1973). She played aging heiress Florence Chambers, who hired private investigator Stacey Hanson to examine whether the surviving members of Florence's family were worthy to be included in her will. Chambers eventually learns that one of her would-be heirs is homosexual, a second one is having extramarital affairs, and a third one belongs to a Manson Family-style religious cult.
Bennett's other film roles in this decade included the crime thriller "Charley Varrick" (1973), the disaster film "Airport 1975" (1974), the black comedy "I Wonder Who's Killing Her Now?" (1975), and the crime comedy "The North Avenue Irregulars" (1979). In the television film "Sherlock Holmes in New York" (1976), Bennett played Mrs. Martha Hudson, Holmes' landlady. In the television film "Better Late Than Never" (1979), Bennett played Marjorie Crane, one of the residents of a nursing home who revolt against oppressive rules.
In 1980, Bennet finally retired, due to poor health. Her final television appearance was in an episode of the sitcom "Barney Miller" (1975-1982). Bennett died in 1982, and her ashes were interred in the Great Mausoleum's Columbarium of Dawn at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale.
According to a 1977 article by "The Los Angeles Times", Bennett was one of the busiest of Hollywood's veteran character actresses. Her face was familiar to many Americans due to Bennett's numerous starring roles in television commercials.- Actor
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Harvey Lembeck was an American actor of Jewish descent, primarily known for comedic roles. Early in his life, Lembeck had worked as a dancer, and radio announcer.
Lembeck was born in Brooklyn, New York City in 1923, and attended New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn.. In 1939, the 16-year-old Lembeck started working as a dancer, part of a dance team known as The Dancing Carrolls. The team performed at the New York World's Fair (April, 1939-October, 1940). Lembeck started dating his teammate, the female dancer Caroline Dubs. Lembeck and Dubs eventually married each other, and remained married until Lembeck's death in 1982.
During World War II, Lembeck served in the United States Army. He was discharged at the end of the War, and soon after started college studies at New York University. He graduated in 1947, with a degree at radio arts. He intended to work as sports radio announcer, but his teacher Robert Emerson advised Lembeck to try his hand at an acting career. Emerson had seen Lembeck perform at the University's theatrical productions and had seen potential in him.
From 1948 to 1951, Lembeck performed at the hit Broadway play "Mister Roberts" by Joshua Logan. The play was an adaptation of a novel by Thomas Heggen, and dramatized life aboard a ship of the United States Navy during the Pacific War campaign of World War II. Based on his Broadway success, Lembeck was offered his first film roles by the a California-based film studio, called 20th Century Fox.
In 1951, Lembeck played parts in three new films: the military-themed comedy "You're in the Navy Now", the film noir "Fourteen Hours", and the scuba-diving- themed war film "The Frogmen". However, he was cast in small parts in each of them. Back in Broadway, Lembeck had more success with the hit play "Stalag 17" by co-writers Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski. The play depicted the life of the inmates in a Gernan prisoners-of-war camp during World War II.
In 1953, a film adaptation of "Stalag 17" was produced by Paramount Pictures, and Lembeck was hired to reprise his role. The film became a surprise box office hit, and Lembeck won the Theater Owners of America's Laurel Award for outstanding comedy performance. Afterwards Lembeck received more offers for film roles, though he was typecast into military roles for most of these films.
In 1955, Lembeck had a main-cast role in a television sitcom "The Phil Silvers Show" (1955-1959). The show featured the misadventures of Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko of the United States Army, a self-serving con-man and swindler. Lembeck played the part of Corporal Rocco Barbella, one of Bilko's sidekicks and partners-in-crime. The sitcom lasted four years, and the final episode featured both Bilko and Barbella being arrested for an embezzling scheme and incarcerated.
In the early 1960s, Lembeck played recurring parts in various sitcoms. He was eventually cast in co-starring role in the short-lived military comedy series "Ensign O'Toole" (1962-1963). He continued to appear in films, and had a minor hit with with the comedy film "Beach Party" (1963). He played the film's sympathetic villain, the outlaw biker Eric Von Zipper. Zipper was an affectionate parody of Marlon Brando's character Johnny Strabler from "The Wild One" (1953).
From 1964 to 1966, Lembeck reprise the role of Eric Von Zipper in five sequels to "Beach Party". They were "Bikini Beach" (1964), "Pajama Party" (1964), "Beach Blanket Bingo" (1965), "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" (1965) and "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini" (1966). He also played another, unnamed, "motorcycle thug" in the comedy "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine" (1965), which spoofed the then-new "James Bond" series of films.
For most of the late 1960s, Lembeck was preoccupied with his theatrical career. In 1964, Lembeck succeeded Jack Kosslyn at the leadership of an actors' workshop. He initially focused on working with comedy scripts, but later started training actors in improvisational comedy. In his view, improvisation was one of the best ways to develop the comedy skills of an actor.
Lembeck had another hit theatrical role in the 1960s, as Sancho Panza in the play "Man of La Mancha" (1965) by Dale Wasserman. The play was itself a loose adaptation of the two-part novel "Don Quixote" (1605, 1615) by Miguel de Cervantes.
For most of the late 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, Lembeck appeared in guest star roles in television, with infrequent appearances in film. His last film appearance was a bit part in the comedy "The Gong Show Movie" (1980), a notorious flop of its era. He continued to both perform and teach acting.
In January 1982, Lembeck was performing in an episode of the sitcom "Mork & Mindy" (1978-1982), when he suddenly felt ill. Soon after, he had a heart attack and died in the studio set of the show. He was only 58-years-old. Lembeck's children were the actor Michael Lembeck and actress Helaine Lembeck.- Actor
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- Music Department
Popular but troubled renegade French actor Patrick Dewaere was christened Jean-Marie Patrick Bourdeaux on January 26, 1947, at Saint-Brieuc in Britanny in the north-west region of France. The third of six children born to actress Mado Maurin (1915-2011), his mother made acting a family affair. All of his siblings -- Jean-Pierre Maurin (1941-1996), Yves-Marie Maurin (1944-2009), Dominique Maurin (1949- ), Jean-François Vlerick (also known as Jean-Francois Maurin) (1957- ) and Marie-Véronique Maurin (1960- ) -- all became thespians. Patrick made his film debut at the age of four under the name Patrick Maurin in Amazing Monsieur Fabre (1951).
While growing up, he was taunted by his schoolyard friends for his young film endeavors, he learned sensitivity and isolation at an early age. Other films during this adolescent period of time included his playing an unbilled child role in Gene Kelly's The Happy Road (1957).
As a young adult in the early 1960s Patrick appeared on French television, then joined the "Café de Gare" theatrical troupe in 1968 where he remained for nearly a decade. It was during these stage years that he changed his stage name to Dewaere, the maiden name of his great grandmother. He also met and became romantically involvement with fellow troupe member Miou-Miou. A child, Angele, was born to this liaison in 1974, but the couple broke up after only two years. Another daughter, Lola, was born in the early 1980s from a later marriage.
After numerous film bits, stardom was finally his with the leading rebel-like role of Pierrot in Bertrand Blier's anarchic comedy Going Places (1974) [Going Places], which also starred up-and-coming actor Gérard Depardieu and lady love Miou-Miou. He and Depardieu earned instant "anti-hero" stardom in this tale of two wanderlust petty thugs. Patrick's genius for dark, offbeat comedy was apparent in the number of black comedies that came his way. Catherine & Co. (1975) [Catherine & Co.] co-starred Patrick with Jane Birkin, a social commentary on the prostitution business. He followed this with the crime drama The French Detective (1975) [The French Detective] as Lino Ventura's inspector sidekick. Dewaere earned high marks for his off-balanced role in La meilleure façon de marcher (1976) [The Best Way], then paired up again with Depardieu in the Oscar-winning cross-over comedy Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978) [Get Out Your Handkerchiefs].
Infinitely more interested in searching out complex roles than fame, his work in films were more often than not experimental, low budget and quirky in style. He appeared innately drawn to playing sensitive, scruffy, miserable neurotics, misfits and losers, as exemplified by his characters in Hothead (1979) [Hothead], Serie Noire (1979), Heat of Desire (1981) [Heat of Desire], Hotel America (1981) [Hotel America] which co-starred Catherine Deneuve, and the critically-acclaimed Beau-père (1981).
This obsession may have triggered a deep and profound suffering in his own off-screen personal life. Unlike his counterpart Depardieu, Patrick's fame never branched out internationally, but he was recognized consistently throughout Europe for his superlative portrayals. Amazingly, he was nominated for seven César awards (the French equivalent of the "Oscar") but never won.
Patrick's career ended in tragic and still mysterious circumstances. Shortly after the release of the film Paradis pour tous (1982) [Paradise for All], a dark comedy in which his character commits suicide, the 35-year-old actor decided to end his own life by shooting himself with a rifle in his Paris home on July 16, 1982. At the time he was working on the Claude Lelouch's film Edith and Marcel (1983). A shocking, inexplicable end to friends, fans and family alike, Dewaere later became the subject of a full-length French documentary Patrick Dewaere (1992), which was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. The Patrick Dewaere Award was established in France in 1983.- Director
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King Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter of Hungarian descent. He was born in Galveston, Texas to lumberman Charles Shelton Vidor and his wife Kate Wallis. King's paternal grandfather Károly (Charles) Vidor had fled Hungary as a refugee following the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1848 (1849-1849). The Kingdom of Hungary had attempted to gain independence from the Austrian Empire, but the revolutionary troops failed against the allied armies of the Austrian Empire and the Russian Empire. After the restoration of Habsburg power, Hungary was placed under brutal martial law. Karoly fled the country and settled in Galveston, Texas by the early 1850s.
During his childhood, King Vidor was a witness of the 1900 Galveston hurricane, the deadliest natural disaster in United States history. The hurricane caused between 6,000 and 12,000 fatalities in the United States, based on varying estimates. Most of these deaths occurred in the vicinity of Galveston. Every house in the city sustained damage, about 3600 houses were completely destroyed, and an estimated 10,000 people were left homeless, out of a population of about 38,000. King Vidor would later give a somewhat fictionalized account of his hurricane experience in a 1935 interview.
By the early 1910s, Vidor was working as a freelance newsreel cameraman and cinema projectionist. In 1913, he directed the short film "The Grand Military Parade", his directing debut. In 1915, Vidor moved to Hollywood, California and was hired as a screenwriter and short-film director by Judge Willis Brown (1881-1931), owner of the Boy City Film Company in Culver City. Brown had gained fame as a judge of the Utah Juvenile Court and a progressive expert on boys' reformation, but had been kicked out of service when it was discovered that he did not actually have a law degree. Brown had established himself as a film producer in order to produce films depicting his main concerns about American society: juvenile delinquency and racial discrimination. Vidor served as a screenwriter and director of at least 10 films with these topics, while working for Brown.
In 1919, Vidor directed his first feature film: "The Turn in the Road". It was a silent drama film, depicting a businessman who loses his faith in God and any interest in industry, when his beloved wife dies in childbirth. Vidor's first major hit was the feature "Peg o' My Heart" (1922), an adaptation of a popular Broadway theatrical play. Following this success, Vidor was signed to a long-term contract for the studio Goldwyn Pictures. The studio was under the administration of Polish-American producer Samuel Goldwyn (1879-1974). In 1924, Goldwyn Pictures merged with Metro Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures into a new company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Vidor remained on contract with this new company.
In the 1920s, Vidor's most famous silent feature films were the war film "The Big Parade" (1925), the Academy-Award nominated drama "The Crowd" (1928), the comedy "Show People"" (1928), and the comedy-drama "The Patsy" (1928). His first sound film was the drama "Hallelujah" (1929), about the life of sharecroppers. It was one of the first Hollywood films with a cast consisting fully of African-Americans. Vidor expressed an interest in "showing the Southern Negro as he is" and attempted to depict African-American life beyond the popular stereotypes of the era.
Vidor faced no problem in transitioning from silent film to sound film, and continued regularly working on feature films until the late 1950s. His last major film was the Biblical-romance "Solomon and Sheba" (1959), featuring love, court intrigues, and military invasions during the reign of legendary Solomon, King of Israel (estimated to the 10th century BC). Afterwards he worked on short films and documentaries, his last film being the documentary "The Metaphor" (1980). The 86-year-old Vidor chose to retire from filmmaking in 1980.
In 1982, Vidor died at his ranch in Paso Robles, California, from an unspecified heart disease. He was 88-years-old and well past his prime. His remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered in his ranch.
Vidor was nominated 5 times for the Academy Award for Best Director, without ever winning. He was nominated for the feature films "The Crowd" (1928), "Hallelujah" (1929), "The Champ" (1931), "The Citadel" (1938), and "War and Peace" (1956). He won an Academy Honorary Award in 1979. Part of his modern fame rests on an uncredited part as an assistant director. Vidor directed the scenes set in Kansas for the novel adaptation "The Wizard of Oz" (1939).- Ulla Jacobsson was an International Swedish Actress and became world-famous with the film One Summer of Happiness (1951) (English title: "One Summer of Happiness", German title: "Sie tanzte nur einen Sommer") and Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) ("Smiles of a Summer Night"), which Zarah Leander made as a musical in Vienna and also the Swedish version in Stockholm. She became better known in the UK for her part of the daughter of a missionary (played by Jack Hawkins) in Zulu (1964). She married an Austrian doctor and lived in Vienna, where she died of cancer in 1982.
- Barney Phillips was an American actor of German descent. He was born in 1913 in St. Louis, Missouri, under the name "Bernard Philip Ofner". His father was Harry Nathan Ofner, a salesman employed in the leather industry. His mother was Leona "Lonnie" Frank, a German emigrant who became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
In 1935, Phillips moved to Los Angeles, California, in hopes of working in the film industry. His film debut was the Western film "Black Aces" (1937), a B-movie produced by Universal Pictures. He had no other credited role in films for several years, though he had several theatrical credits.
In 1941, Phillips enlisted in the United States Army. He served in the signal corps during World War II. Following the war, he returned to the film industry, working mostly as an extra.
The first notable role of his career was the recurring character Sergeant Ed Jacob in the police procedural television series "Dragnet" (1951-1959). He voiced the recurring character of police sergeant Hamilton J. Finger in the radio series "Rocky Fortune" (1953-1954). The main character of the series was amateur sleuth Rocco "Rocky Fortune" Fortunato (played by Frank Sinatra).
Phillips was a prolific character on film and television for the following decades, though he was often typecast as a police officer in these roles. In the early 1960s, Phillips appeared in several episodes of the anthology television series "The Twilight Zone": "The Purple Testament" (1960), "A Thing about Machines" (1960) , "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" (1961), and "Miniature" (1963). He is most remembered for the "Real Martian" episode, where he played the cook Haley. In the episode, Haley helps thwart an invasion of Earth from Martians. But reveals that he is an agent from planet Venus, and that he is preparing the Earth for colonization by his own planet.
Phillips was cast in the war-themed series" Twelve O'Clock High" (1964-1967) as one of the main characters, Doc Kaiser. The series featured the missions of the fictional 918th Bombardment Group (Heavy) of the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) in World War II.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Phillips often worked as a voice actor for animated series. He voiced the powerful genie Shazzan in "Shazzan" (1967-1969), he voiced the strongman Porthos in the "The Three Musketeers" (1968-1969), and provided additional voices in "The Funky Phantom" (1971-1972).
In the late 1970s, Phillips was part of the main cast in the short-lived sitcom "The Betty White Show" (1978-1979). He played the character Fletcher Huff, a struggling actor co-starring in a police-procedural show-within-a-show, Phillips also played the recurring character of Judge Buford Potts in the action comedy "The Dukes of Hazzard" (1979-1985).
Phillips died in 1982, due to cancer, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. A few years following his death, Phillips received his final film credit, as the character Dr. Batt in the psychological drama "Beyond Reason". The film had been produced in 1977, but was not released until 1985. The film was mainly notable as a rare directing credit for actor Telly Savalas (1922-1994).