Viva Zapata! 1952 premiere
Wednesday March 12th, TCL Chinese Theatre 6925 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90028
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- Actress
- Soundtrack
Green-eyed beauty Jean Elizabeth Peters flashed across the screen as a bright star during her relatively brief tenure in Hollywood. After just seven years under contract to 20th Century-Fox (1947-54), she joined in the reclusive lifestyle of her eccentric billionaire husband, Howard Hughes, and all but vanished from public view.
Jean was born in Canton, Ohio, in October of 1926. Her father died when she was ten years old. Her mother owned a tourist camp on the outskirts of town and there was enough money around to send Jean to college. She received the latter part of her tertiary education at Ohio State University and graduated with a diploma qualifying her as an English teacher. A campus popularity contest she won ended her plans as an English teacher because it came with a trip to Hollywood and a screen test. In short order, "Miss Ohio State University" was offered a seven-year contract at 20th Century-Fox with a starting salary of $150 a week.
After being picked by Darryl F. Zanuck to co-star opposite Tyrone Power in the studio's splashy big-budget swashbuckler Captain from Castile (1947), Jean came to the attention of Howard Hughes. She discreetly dated him for the remainder of the decade and continued to live an unpretentious lifestyle, rarely seen in public and eschewing the Hollywood nightlife and parties. A self-confessed tomboy, she rarely wore make-up in private and preferred to dress in jeans rather than glamorous gowns. She and her mother lived in a smallish bungalow in Bel-Air, paid for by Hughes. After relative success in her second feature, Deep Waters (1948), she became increasingly dissatisfied with the prissy roles she was assigned in her subsequent efforts. She was no shrinking violet when it came to defending her interests: she refused outright to appear in Yellow Sky (1948) (a part she thought as "too sexy") and Sand (1949), and her contract was consequently terminated. She returned to farm life in Ohio, but was back in New York in 1951 to be screen-tested by Elia Kazan for the epic biopic of Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata! (1952), shot on location in Mexico with Marlon Brando in the lead.
Fox wisely used Jean during the next few years for similarly unglamorous outdoor roles, notably as the titular heroine of Anne of the Indies (1951), a tempestuous girl living in the Georgia swamps in Lure of the Wilderness (1952), a gum-chewing dame innocently involved in espionage in Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street (1953) and as Burt Lancaster's Indian squaw in the hard-hitting western Apache (1954). She got good notices in all of these films and was now recognized as a major star. As a result, she was cast in the prestigious film noir Niagara (1953), opposite Joseph Cotten and Marilyn Monroe (both of whom she befriended) and the Spencer Tracy western Broken Lance (1954). Under a new contract with Fox, Jean was now no longer in a position to refuse an assignment and, though basically unhappy with her part in Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), the picture proved to be one of her most popular pictures to date. Her next film, A Man Called Peter (1955), was to be her swan song. Following a 33-day marriage to a Texan oilman which ended in a whirlwind divorce, Jean finally married Howard Hughes in a secret ceremony and left public life for the next 13 years. She never gave interviews and retreated to an isolated hilltop mansion above the Santa Monica Mountains. In 1969 she resurfaced, studying for a degree in sociology at UCLA under an assumed name.
When Jean's marriage to Hughes ended in June 1971, the actress settled for the relatively modest sum of $70,000 a year and happily waived any further claims on the estate. That same year she got married for the third time, to 20th Century-Fox vice-president Stan Hough. Her screen career was briefly resuscitated when she was cast in the miniseries Arthur Hailey's the Moneychangers (1976) and she was last seen in an episode of Murder, She Wrote (1984). She devoted her final years to charitable causes and never spoke in public about her years with Howard Hughes.- Alexander Crichlow Barker Jr. was a direct descendant of the founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, and of Sir William Henry Crichlow, historical Governor-General of Barbados. Barker attended the Fessenden School and Phillips-Exeter Academy, where he excelled in football and track. He went to Princeton, but left to become an actor. A year later he was spotted while working in summer stock theatre, and received a contract offer from 20th Century Fox. World War II intervened; he enlisted as an infantry private, and rose to the rank of major.
Although later signed by Fox and then Warner Bros, he was too tall for supporting parts and too unknown for leads. Tarzan's Magic Fountain (1949) (RKO) provided his first starring role. After five Tarzan films, he went into other adventure films. After 16 non-Tarzan films, mostly westerns, he went to Europe in 1957 (he spoke French, Spanish, Italian, and German). He went on to make more than 50 more films worldwide: Brazil, Germany, Spain, Yugoslavia, Italy, Lebanon, France, as well as the USA. He became very popular in Germany owing to his roles as "Old Shatterhand", "Kara Ben Nemsi", and "Dr. Karl Sternau", in films based on books written by Karl May, a popular German writer of adventure literature. Barker won Germany's Bambi Award as Best Foreign Actor of 1966. - Actor
- Soundtrack
This owl-faced comic actor enjoyed his first featured film role in the RKO production Too Many Girls (1940), in which he reprised the role of "JoJo Jordan" that he had played in the Broadway stage version of that musical. (Into the pantheon of pop-music standards came one that Bracken had introduced in "Too Many Girls", the melancholy "I Didn't Know What Time It Was"). But the then 20-year-old Eddie Bracken was by no means new to show business in general or Hollywood in particular. He had played in vaudeville and performed in nightclubs by the time he was 9, and had just later appeared on screen in four of the Hal Roach "Our Gang" comedy two-reeler film shorts. It was on account of his appearances in musicals and comedies as a shy, giggling, clumsy, stammering, sentimental, self-effacing, would-be hero that Bracken achieved popularity, not to say star status, among movie audiences of the 1940s. The director Preston Sturges served up those attributes of Eddie Bracken particularly well in two of Sturges's more memorable comedies. As "Norval Jones" in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943) (filmed in 1942; released 1944), Bracken portrays a man whose destiny others have foisted upon him. A certain "Trudy Kockenlocker" (played by Betty Hutton), having attended a party for military servicemen, later finds herself to be pregnant but has no recollection of who the father might be. So she persuades the always-befuddled Norval to take credit for the child and marry her. Somehow, Norval emerges a true hero in the end, but you'll have to see the film to discover why. As Norval Jones was physically unfit for military service, so also was "Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith", with Eddie Bracken in the role, in Preston Sturges's Hail the Conquering Hero (1944). Solely on the basis of his father's reputation as a World War I U.S. Marine hero, a group of saloon-hopping World War II-era U.S. Marines, led by a crusty senior-level sergeant (played to a tee by William Demarest), elevate the physical reject Truesmith into a modern, combat-decorated veteran, and then usher him into an election campaign for Truesmith's hometown mayoralty. The complications, including a love interest (in the person of actress Ella Raines, are by now well under way. As Eddie Bracken's age increased his popularity -- or perhaps that of the genre of film vehicles that was his forte -- decreased, and in 1953 he essentially retired from the screen, moving on to pursue theatrical ventures. But he would return to Hollywood eventually, and we have been fortunate to see him in character roles in theatrical and TV films through the 80's and 90's.- Actor
- Soundtrack
He had the manly good looks and rugged appeal to make it to top stardom in Hollywood and succeeded quite well as a sturdy leading man of standard action on film and TV. Born in Brooklyn on September 13, 1924, Irish-American Scott Brady was christened Gerard Kenneth Tierney (called Jerry) by parents Lawrence and Maria Tierney. His father, chief of New York's aqueduct police force, had always had show business intentions and later did print work after retiring from the force. Both Scott's older and younger brothers, Lawrence Tierney and Edward Tierney went on to become actors as well. Lawrence's promising film noir "bad guy" career was sabotaged by a severe drinking disorder that led to numerous skirmishes with the law. Scott himself faced a narcotics charge in 1957 (charges were dropped, Scott maintained that he was framed) and later (1963) was involved in illegal bookmaking activities. Fortunately, Scott was more cool-headed and wound up avoiding the pitfalls that befell his older brother, making a very lucrative living for himself in Hollywood throughout the 1950s and early 1960s.
Scott grew up in Westchester County and attended Roosevelt and St. Michael's High Schools. Like his older brother Lawrence, Scott he was an all-round athlete in school and earned letters for basketball, football and track and expressed early designs on becoming a football coach or radio announcer. Instead he enlisted before graduating from high school and served as a naval aviation mechanic overseas. During his term of duty he earned a light heavyweight boxing medal. He was discharged in 1946 and decided to head for Los Angeles where his older brother Lawrence was making encouraging strides as an actor. Toiling in menial jobs as a cabbie and day-time laborer, the handsome, blue-eyed looker was noticed having lunch in a café by producer Hal B. Wallis and offered a screen test. The test did not fare well but, not giving up, he enrolled in the Bliss-Hayden drama school under his G.I. Bill, studied acting, and managed to rid himself of his thick Brooklyn accent.
He signed with a minor league studio, Eagle-Lion, and made his debut of sorts in the poverty-row programmer In This Corner (1948) utilizing his boxing skills from his early days in the service. He showed more promise with his second and third films Canon City (1948) and He Walked by Night (1948), the latter as a detective who aids in nabbing psychotic killer Richard Basehart. Scott switched over to higher-grade action stories for Fox and Universal over time. Westerns and crime stories would be his bread-winning genres with The Gal Who Took the West (1949) opposite Yvonne De Carlo and John Russell and Undertow (1949), with Russell again, being prime examples. He frequently switched from hero to heavy during his peak years. In one film he would romance a Jeanne Crain in The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951) or a Mitzi Gaynor in Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952), while in the next beat Shelley Winters to a pulp in Untamed Frontier (1952). A favorite pin-up hunk in his early years, he hit minor cult status as a bad hombre, The Dancin' Kid, in the offbeat western Johnny Guitar (1954). He and the other manly men, however, were somewhat overshadowed in the movie by the Freudian-tinged gunplay between Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge. Other roles had him sturdily handling the action scenes while giving the glance over to such diverting female costars as Barbara Stanwyck, Mala Powers and Anne Bancroft.
Scott would mark the same territory in TV -- westerns and crimers -- finding steadier work on the smaller screen into the 1960s. He starred as the title hero in the western series Shotgun Slade (1959). Stage too was a sporadic source of income with such productions as "The Moon Is Blue", "Detective Story" and "Picnic" under his belt before making his Broadway bow as a slick card sharp opposite Andy Griffith in the short-lived musical "Destry Rides Again" in 1959. He later did the national company of the heavyweight political drama "The Best Man" with his portrayal of a senator.
The seemingly one-time confirmed bachelor decided to settle down after meeting and marrying Mary Tirony in 1967 at age 43. Prior to this he had been linked with such luminous beauties as Gwen Verdon and Dorothy Malone. The couple had two sons. Parts dwindled down in size in later years and he gained considerable weight as he grew older and balder, but he still appeared here-and-there as an occasional character heavy or hard-ass cop in less-important movies such as Doctors' Wives (1971), $ (1971), The Loners (1972) and Wicked, Wicked (1973). Minor TV roles in mini-movies also came his way at a fair pace. Towards the end he was seen in such high-profile big-screen movies as The China Syndrome (1979) and Gremlins (1984). Scott had a collapse in 1981 and was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive respiratory disease. He later relied on an oxygen tank. He died of the disease four years later and was interred at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Rory Calhoun was born Francis Timothy McCown in Los Angeles, the son of Elizabeth Cuthbert and Floyd McCown. Rory starred in over 80 films and 1,000 television episodes. Before becoming an actor he worked as a boxer, a lumberjack, a truck driver and a cowpuncher. Tall and handsome, he benefited from a screen test at 20th Century-Fox, arranged for him by Sue Carol, a Hollywood agent and the wife of actor Alan Ladd, who is said to have spotted Calhoun while he was riding a horse in a Los Angeles park. He debuted on screen in Something for the Boys (1944), with Carmen Miranda, billed as "Frank McCown". David O. Selznick changed his name to Rory Calhoun, and after playing small parts for a while, he graduated to starring in western films, including River of No Return (1954) with Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum. Calhoun's better-known pictures include How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Lauren Bacall, Monroe and Betty Grable, and With a Song in My Heart (1952) with Susan Hayward.
From 1959 to 1960 he starred in the CBS television series The Texan (1958). More than two decades later he returned to CBS for five years as Judge Judson Tyler on the daytime serial Capitol (1982). His final appearance, 70 years old but handsome as ever, was as Ernest Tucker in Pure Country (1992). Calhoun has two stars on Hollywood's Walk of Fame: one for motion pictures, and one for television.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Petite, seductive French leading lady who underwent several early career changes before settling on the acting profession. Corinne Calvet first studied criminal law at France's renowned Sorbonne, but then turned her attention to interior decoration specializing in fine arts and antiques. After studying at the L'Ecole du Cinema in Paris, she made her debut on the stage and also worked as a radio hostess. Small film roles followed. From the time Corinne was 'discovered' by famous producer Hal B. Wallis, brought to America, and signed to a contract with Paramount in 1947, her life developed into a decade-long roller-coaster of feuds, lawsuits, publicity stunts and even an attempted suicide by sleeping pills.
Corinne's Hollywood career got off to a turbulent start, the fiery actress heatedly challenging Wallis over the size of her salary. In spite of growing animosity between her and the producer, she was eventually cast in her first Paramount picture, Rope of Sand (1949) , a film noir set in South Africa and co-starring Burt Lancaster and Paul Henreid. The film emphasized Corinne's sultry appeal and her sexy, somewhat husky voice. She played a nightclub singer, which worked well since she could actually sing (and did so at the famed Manhattan night club Le Cupidon in 1952). The New York Times review (August 4th, 1949) remarked that the cast, though playing somewhat shady characters, were "all products of good acting, and therefore are strangely interesting".
"Rope of Sand" garnered mostly good reviews and was certainly one of the better roles Corinne was to find in Hollywood. Though she featured opposite a number of big-name stars, such as Danny Kaye and James Cagney, she was largely consigned to be the ornamental French dessert. Of her part in On the Riviera (1951), Bosley Crowther commented that she was "pretty, but neglected" (NY Times May 24th, 1951). Corinne (Miss Golden Globe 1952), later gave vent to her frustration at having never been given a proper chance to display her acting range in her 1983 memoir 'Has Corinne Been a Good Girl?'.
The headlines made in her private life often overshadowed her screen career. One highly publicized (and apparently staged) incident had her suing actress Zsa Zsa Gabor over a statement made to, among others, a newspaper columnist, claiming that Corinne's French background was a studio invention. In another, more bizarre, instance in 1967, her then-boyfriend claimed in court that she had 'used voodoo on him' in order to gain control of his finances. There were also two acrimonious and very public divorces from actors John Bromfield and Jeffrey Stone.
From the mid 1950's, Corinne began to appear in international co-productions, dividing her time between Los Angeles and her lavishly furnished top floor apartment at the Avenue MacMahon, near the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris. After the publication of her memoir in 1983, Corinne retired from acting and re-invented herself as a therapist, specializing in hypnosis. She settled down in Santa Monica, California, where she died in June 2001.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Cyd Charisse was born Tula Ellice Finklea on March 8, 1922, in Amarillo, Texas. Born to be a dancer, she spent her early childhood taking ballet lessons and joined the Ballet Russe at age 13. In 1939, she married Nico Charisse, her former dance teacher. In 1943, she appeared in her first film, Something to Shout About (1943), billed as Lily Norwood. The same year, she played a Russian dancer in Mission to Moscow (1943), directed by Michael Curtiz. In 1945, she was hired to dance with Fred Astaire in Ziegfeld Follies (1945), and that uncredited appearance got her a seven-year contract with MGM. She appeared in a number of musicals over the next few years, but it was Singin' in the Rain (1952) with Gene Kelly that made her a star. That was quickly followed by her great performance in The Band Wagon (1953). As the 1960s dawned, musicals faded from the screen, as did her career. She made appearances on television and performed in a nightclub revue with her second husband, singer Tony Martin. Cyd Charisse died at age 86 of a heart attack on June 17, 2008 in Los Angeles, California.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Effective light comedian of '30s and '40s films and '50s and '60s TV series, Robert Cummings was renowned for his eternally youthful looks (which he attributed to a strict vitamin and health-food diet). He was educated at Carnegie Tech and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Deciding that Broadway producers would be more interested in an upper-crust Englishman than a kid from Joplin, Missouri, Cummings passed himself off as Blade Stanhope Conway, British actor. The ploy was successful. Cummings decided that if it worked on Broadway, it would work in Hollywood, so he journeyed west and assumed the identity of a rich Texan named Bruce Hutchens. The plan worked once more, and he began securing small parts in films. He soon reverted to his real name and became a popular leading man in light comedies, usually playing well-meaning, pleasant but somewhat bumbling young men. He achieved much more success, however, in his own television series in the '50s, The Bob Cummings Show (1955) and My Living Doll (1964).- Actress
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Costume Designer
Elegance and femininity are fitting descriptions for Arlene Dahl. She is considered to be one of the most beautiful actresses to have graced the screen during the postwar period. Audiences were captivated by her breathtaking beauty and the way she used to it to her advantage, progressing from claimer to character roles.
Of Norwegian extraction, Miss Dahl was born in Minneapolis. Following high school she joined a local drama group, supporting herself with a variety of jobs, including modeling for a number of department stores. Arriving in Hollywood in 1946, she signed a brief contract with Warner Brothers, but she is best remembered for her work at MGM. The Bride Goes Wild (1948) was her first work at Metro. It was an odd but rather humorous love story, which starred Van Johnson and June Allyson.
Although her beauty captivated audiences, it ultimately limited her to smaller roles, and the mark she made at MGM was small. Some of her best films were Reign of Terror (1949), which actually required some acting and she acquitted herself quite well, Three Little Words (1950), Woman's World (1954), Slightly Scarlet (1956) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959).
Leaving films behind her in 1959, her typecasting would pay off financially as she became a beauty columnist and writer. She later established herself as a businesswoman, founding Arlene Dahl Enterprises which marketed lingerie and cosmetics.
She was married six times, two of whom were actors, Lex Barker and Fernando Lamas. She is the mother of actor / action star Lorenzo Lamas, and actually made a guest appearance in his film Night of the Warrior (1991).- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
Born in New York City, Dan Dailey started his career in vaudeville, later making his Broadway debut in the stage version of "Babes in Arms".
When signed to MGM, the studio initially casted him as a Nazi in The Mortal Storm (1940). The studio realized their mistake and cast him in musical films, thereafter. Then, after serving in World War II, Dailey later returned to acting to make more musicals.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Always bright and beaming from ear to ear, Irish singer Dennis Day's name and career remains synonymous with that of Jack Benny's, working with the star comedian on radio and TV for the entire duration. It was Jack who gave him his break in 1939 and Jack who kept him employed as a singer and naive comic sidekick (his "Gee, Mr. Benny!" became a well-known catchphrase on the show). Dennis in fact would play second-banana to the comedian until Benny's death in 1974.
Dennis was christened Owen Patrick McNulty on May 21, 1917 in Bronx, New York, the son of an Ireland-born stationary engineer. The strength and promise of his lilting tenor was first discovered while performing with his glee club at St. Patrick's Cathedral High School. Graduating from Manhattan College, he first had designs on a law career and starting singing in order to earn money for tuition. By himself, he recorded "I Never Knew Heaven Could Speak" and distributed the song out to various radio producers, one of whom presented it to Mary Livingston, Benny's wife. She was so taken that she insisted he be considered for her husband's popular radio show "The Jack Benny Show". When the show's then-tenor Kenny Baker objected to being a featherbrained foil to Benny on the show and gave notice, Dennis auditioned and won a regular spot, and the idea of law school became a thing of the past. Making his debut on the Benny show on October 8, 1939, Dennis' innocent-eyed teenager (he was actually 21 at the time) often drew more laughs than Benny himself in their rapport together. His career was interrupted by World War II when he served with the Navy. He was discharged in 1946.
His cherry-cheeked, wide-eyed charm delighted scores of radio fans and the fame Dennis received from the show drew invitations to other radio programs, and eventually his own radio show "A Day in the Life of Dennis Day" in 1946. Here he played (naturally) a naive soda jerk. But he never left Benny, staying true-blue to the comedian when The Jack Benny Program (1950) transferred to TV and became an institution for a decade and a half. Dennis also showed great flair as a mimic, impersonating a number of illustrious stars such as Ronald Colman, Jimmy Durante and James Stewart on the Benny program. Dubbed "America's Favorite Irish Tenor", The Dennis Day Show (1952) took life just two years after the Benny program went on the air. It enjoyed two seasons on TV before it was canceled.
Dennis also appeared in support of Benny on film. Buck Benny Rides Again (1940), marked Dennis' movie debut and in it he sang "My Kind of Country." Other sporadic filming emphasizing his vocal prowess were for the most part "B"-level musical entertainment. He co-starred with Judy Canova in the cornball comedy Sleepy Lagoon (1943); Anne Shirley in the romantic Music in Manhattan (1944); June Haver and Gloria DeHaven in I'll Get By (1950), in which he sang "McNamara's Band" and "There Will Never Be Another You", and; the Civil War-themed Golden Girl (1951) headlining Mitzi Gaynor as entertainer Lotta Crabtree in which Dennis crooned "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" and "California Moon." Despite these agreeable outings, he never came close to becoming a musical film star perhaps because he was too identified with his cheery, naive image on radio and TV. Once he finished The Girl Next Door (1953) which again starred Ms. Haver, Dennis was nowhere to be seen on celluloid for at least another two decades. Walt Disney also welcomed Dennis' sunny tenor in his animated features The Legend of Johnny Appleseed (1948), in which Dennis sang the title song, and Melody Time (1948).
Best known for his recording of Irish tunes, including such novelty songs as "Clancy Lowered the Boom", Dennis won over the ladies with his romantic covers of such ballads as "Mam'selle," "Dear Hearts and Gentle People" and "Mona Lisa." Occasionally he was given dramatic work on TV but nothing really came of it, coming off much better as a guest in musical variety shows.
Dennis legally adopted his professional name in 1944 against his family's wishes. The strict Irish-Catholic married Peggy Almquist in 1948 and the couple had ten children (six daughters, four sons). Dennis and his family settled in Los Angeles where he became an honorary mayor of Mandeville Canyon. He and his wife also owned an antique shop in Santa Monica for a time. He continued to perform at conventions and fairs throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and was seen only occasionally in film and TV parts as he refused any work he deemed objectionable. He died at age 72 in Los Angeles from Lou Gehrig's disease.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
One of America's most loved actresses was born Doris Mary Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Alma Sophia (Welz), a housewife, and William Joseph Kappelhoff, a music teacher and choir master. Her grandparents were all German immigrants. She had two brothers, Richard, who died before she was born and Paul, a few years older.
Her parents divorced while she was still a child, and she lived with her mother. Like most little girls, Doris liked to dance. At fourteen, she formed a dance act with a boy, Jerry Doherty, and they won $500 in a local talent contest. She and Jerry took a brief trip to Hollywood to test the waters. They felt they could succeed, so she and Jerry returned to Cincinnati with the intention of packing and making a permanent move to Hollywood. Tragically, the night before she was to move to Hollywood, she was injured riding in a car hit by a train, ending the possibility of a dancing career.
It was a terrible setback, but after taking singing lessons she found a new vocation, and at age 17, she began touring with the Les Brown Band. She met trombonist Al Jorden, whom she married in 1941. Jorden was prone to violence and they divorced after two years, not long after the birth of their son Terry. In 1946, Doris married George Weidler, but this union lasted less than a year. Day's agent talked her into taking a screen test at Warner Bros. The executives there liked what they saw and signed her to a contract (her early credits are often confused with those of another actress named Doris Day, who appeared mainly in B westerns in the 1930s and 1940s).
Her first starring movie role was in Romance on the High Seas (1948). The next year, she made two more films, My Dream Is Yours (1949) and It's a Great Feeling (1949). Audiences took to her beauty, terrific singing voice and bubbly personality, and she turned in fine performances in the movies she made (in addition to several hit records). She made three films for Warner Bros. in 1950 and five more in 1951. In that year, she met and married Martin Melcher, who adopted her young son Terry, who later grew up to become Terry Melcher, a successful record producer.
In 1953, Doris starred in Calamity Jane (1953), which was a major hit, and several more followed: Lucky Me (1954), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and what is probably her best-known film, Pillow Talk (1959). She began to slow down her filmmaking pace in the 1960s, even though she started out the decade with a hit, Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960).
In 1958, her brother Paul died. Around this time, her husband, who had also taken charge of her career, had made deals for her to star in films she didn't really care about, which led to a bout with exhaustion. The 1960s weren't to be a repeat of the previous busy decade. She didn't make as many films as she had in that decade, but the ones she did make were successful: Do Not Disturb (1965), The Glass Bottom Boat (1966), Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968) and With Six You Get Eggroll (1968). Martin Melcher died in 1968, and Doris never made another film, but she had been signed by Melcher to do her own TV series, The Doris Day Show (1968). That show, like her movies, was successful, lasting until 1973. After her series went off the air, she made only occasional TV appearances.
By the time Martin Melcher died, Doris discovered she was millions of dollars in debt. She learned that Melcher had squandered virtually all of her considerable earnings, but she was eventually awarded $22 million by the courts in a case against a man that Melcher had unwisely let invest her money. She married for the fourth time in 1976 and since her divorce in 1980 has devoted her life to animals.
Doris was a passionate animal rights activist. She ran Doris Day Animal League in Carmel, California, which advocates homes and proper care of household pets.
Doris died on May 13, 2019, in Carmel Valley Village, California. She was 97.- Actor
- Soundtrack
A rare breed this guy. Paul Douglas became an unlikely middle-aged cinema star by simply capitalizing on his big, burly, brash and boorish appeal to the nth degree. The 5'11", 200 lb. actor was a bold, unabashed risk taker. He forsook an extremely successful career as one of the country's top radio/sports announcers to prove his value as an actor. The risk paid off when he found immediate award-winning success on the Broadway comedy stage.
Later, despite being a raw new talent in Tinseltown, he had the audacity to turn down the Hollywood powers-that-be to revive his Broadway success to film because he felt they had "reduced" his role too much. Somehow again, the risk paid off. He defied the odds once again and became an unlikely overnight smash with his very first film(!) Moreover, he went on to prove he was no one trick pony, cementing his stardom in a number of prime vehicles in both broad comedy and melodrama. And, on top of that, the homely actor managed to have many of the top Hollywood dolls falling for his big lug appeal on screen -- Linda Darnell, Judy Holliday, Celeste Holm, Joan Bennett, Jean Peters, Janet Leigh and Ruth Roman among them. It, in fact, would take an early and sudden death to end all this wildly successful risk-taking.
The bombastic, blue-collar persona Douglas exhibited naturally on stage and screen was actually quite a contrast to his own family background. He was born in an upper-class section of Philadelphia to a well-to-do doctor on April 11, 1907, and was christened Paul Douglas Fleischer. An interest in acting sparked while he was a student at West Philadelphia High School. Following graduation, his thoughts turned to college. He went on to take entrance examinations at Yale but never attended the college. Instead Paul made a minor dent as a professional football player with Philly's Frankford Yellow Jackets team.
In 1928, he parlayed his passion for athletics into a highly successful sportscasting and commentating career and grew in respect as one of the country's top sports announcers and master of ceremonies. He started at the CBS radio station WCAU in Philly and relocated to the CBS headquarters in New York in 1934 where Douglas co-hosted its popular swing music program "The Saturday Night Swing Club" from 1936-39. But it wasn't enough. The acting bug bit again. After appearing in a few stock and small theatre plays, he made his Broadway acting debut in November of 1936 as a radio announcer in the comedy satire "Double Dummy" at the John Golden Theatre, but it closed the next month and he returned to radio, eventually landing a cozy niche as an announcer and straight man opposite the likes of Jack Benny (he was Benny's first announcer), Fred Allen and the team of George Burns and Gracie Allen in their respective series. He also found work narrating a host of pre-WWII documentary shorts.
Douglas became a highly recognized personality by this radio success ($2,500/week), but brashly decided to give it all up and accept a paltry weekly salary ($250 per week) when writer Garson Kanin offered him the lead role as chauvinistic moneybags Harry Brock in his Broadway play "Born Yesterday" in 1946. Co-starring Judy Holliday and Gary Merrill, the show was a huge comedy smash and Douglas the toast of New York in a highly unappealing role. He nabbed both the Theatre World and Clarence Derwent acting prizes for his hot-tempered junkman. The relatively inexperienced actor wisely remained with the show through all 1,024 performances before leaving to seek out Hollywood roles. He exploded onto the Hollywood scene with his very first film, the classic Joseph L. Mankiewicz drama A Letter to Three Wives (1949). There was pure electricity in his scenes with the equally earthy scene-stealing Linda Darnell. The new film star was immediately tapped to host the 22nd annual Academy Awards in March 1950.
In a surprise move, Douglas had the nerve to rebuff a Hollywood offer to recreate his Harry Brock role when Born Yesterday (1950) was turned into a film, starring his Broadway co-star Judy Holliday. After reading the film script, he was put off that his part had been minimalized to the point of favoring his leading lady and to meet the demands of the other male superstar in the picture, William Holden. Columbia used their own manic human dynamo, Broderick Crawford, to take over the film role. As brilliant as Crawford was, and as Douglas himself predicted, it was Holliday who received the lion's share of the attention with an Academy Award-winning tour de force.
Douglas instead concentrated on his own star vehicles. His chemistry was so good with Linda Darnell in his first film that the pair was signed to co-star in two more film showcases within a short span of time, Everybody Does It (1949) and The Guy Who Came Back (1951). He also found a way to pay tribute to his former roots in sports starring in two worthy baseball comedy films, It Happens Every Spring (1949), and Angels in the Outfield (1951). His string of hits continued with the cop thriller Panic in the Streets (1950) in which he partnered with Richard Widmark and Fourteen Hours (1951). He gave a sympathetic performance as the naive fisherman husband of adulterous Barbara Stanwyck in Clash by Night (1952); and re-teamed with "Born Yesterday (1950)" co-star Judy Holliday successfully in a different vehicle, the comedy The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956) in which he again plays a gruff, self-made businessman.
In other media, Douglas gave himself the chance to recreate his Harry Brock to video with a Hallmark Hall of Fame episode of Born Yesterday (1956) opposite Mary Martin and Arthur Hill. Douglas also made a return to Broadway with the moderate 1957 hit play, "A Hole in the Head", co-starring David Burns, Lee Grant and Kay Medford and again directed by his playwright/friend Garson Kanin. In between he continued to find work here and there as a radio announcer (for Ed Wynn)) and was the first host of NBC Radio's "Horn & Hardart Children's Hour".
Divorced from non-actors Sussie Welles, Elizabeth Farnesworth and Geraldine Higgins, Douglas's final two marriages were to actresses, with each one producing a child. In early 1942 he married fourth wife/actress Virginia Field. Separated in December 1945, they divorced the following year. He later met actress Jan Sterling and married her on June 22, 1950. This marriage proved happy and lasted until his death.
Douglas's final movie was another in a career of comedy highlights as the fun-loving bucolic in The Mating Game (1959), co-starring with Debbie Reynolds and Tony Randall. In April 1959, Douglas enjoyed a special guest star turn on the highly-popular The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957), as the dingy redhead's TV morning show boss, in a Connecticut episode entitled Lucy Wants a Career (1959).
Paul had just completed filming The Twilight Zone (1959) episode, The Mighty Casey (1960), in a baseball manager role, specifically written for him by Rod Serling, based on Douglas's memorable Angels in the Outfield (1951) role, when the 52-year-old Douglas collapsed and died of a massive heart attack as he got out of bed on the morning of September 11, 1959. With Serling unable to reshoot parts in which Douglas looked especially drawn and haggard, the entire episode had to be re-filmed (at Serling's own expense) with Jack Warden taking over the lead part. In addition, Billy Wilder had recently cast Douglas as Jack Lemmon's philandering boss Sheldrake in the hit film, The Apartment (1960). The film, which was about set to film, recast Fred MacMurray in the role.- Actress
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The daughter of a West Virginia druggist, Joanne Dru came to New York in 1940. In New York she worked as a model and was cast by Al Jolson as one of the showgirls in his Broadway play "Hold Onto Your Hats." When the show closed in 1941, she married popular singer Dick Haymes and went with him to Hollywood. Discovered by a talent scout while working in the theater, Joanne made her screen debut in Abie's Irish Rose (1946), and that picture almost ended her career. Two years later she "redeemed" herself with her role in the classic Howard Hawks western Red River (1948). She followed that with another western, John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), again playing opposite John Wayne. Unfortunately, her success in those two classics resulted in the scripts being submitted to her consisting of mostly westerns, and she got typecast (this from a woman who said, "I simply hated horses...").
In 1950 she was cast in another John Ford western, Wagon Master (1950), which became the basis for the Ward Bond TV series Wagon Train (1957). Even though she played in films other than westerns--All the King's Men (1949), The Pride of St. Louis (1952) and Hell on Frisco Bay (1955), for example--it was the westerns for which she was remembered. By the late 1950s westerns were running out of steam and so was her screen career, so she turned to TV, where she appeared on shows such as Playhouse 90 (1956).
In 1960 Joanne was cast in the role of the Eastern owner of a dude ranch in the comedy series Guestward Ho! (1960). Perhaps even funnier is that she would play an Easterner after all those westerns is the fact that her character name was Babs. The show ended in 1961.- Actress
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A native-born Californian, Rhonda Fleming attended Beverly Hills public and private schools. Her father was Harold Cheverton Louis (1896-1951). Her mother, Effie Olivia Graham (1891-1985), was a famous model and actress in New York. She has a son (Kent Lane), two granddaughters (Kimberly and Kelly) and four great-grandchildren (Wagner, Page, Lane and Cole). She has appeared in over 40 films, including David O. Selznick's Spellbound (1945), directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past (1947); and Robert Siodmak's The Spiral Staircase (1946). She later got starring roles in such classics as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Home Before Dark (1958), Pony Express (1953), Slightly Scarlet (1956), While the City Sleeps (1956) and The Big Circus (1959). While she was always a competent actress, she was more renowned for her exquisite beauty, and the camera absolutely adored her. One time a cameraman on one of her films remarked on how he was so struck by her beauty that, as a gag, he intentionally tried to photograph her badly; he was astonished to discover that no matter how deliberately he botched it, she still came out looking ravishing.
Among her co-stars over the years were Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston, Glenn Ford, Burt Lancaster, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Rock Hudson and Ronald Reagan (with whom she made four films). In addition to motion pictures, Fleming made her Broadway debut in Clare Boothe Luce's "The Women", essayed the role of "Lalume" in "Kismet" at the Los Angeles Music Center and toured as "Madame Dubonnet" in "The Boyfriend". She made her stage musical debut in Las Vegas at the opening of the Tropicana Hotel's showroom. Later she appeared at the Hollywood Bowl in a one-woman concert of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin compositions. She also starred in a national ten-week concert tour with Skitch Henderson, featuring the music of George Gershwin. She has guest-starred on numerous television series, including Wagon Train (1957), Police Woman (1974), The Love Boat (1977), Last Hours Before Morning (1975) and a two-hour special of McMillan & Wife (1971). Waiting for the Wind (1991) reunited her with former co-star Robert Mitchum.
In private life she resides in Century City, California, and was married for 23 years to Ted Mann, a producer and chairman of Mann Theatres, until his death in January 2001. She is a member and supporter of Childhelp USA, ARCS (Achievement Rewards For College Scientists); a Life Associate of Pepperdine University; a Lifetime Member of the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge; a Founding Member of the French Foundation For Alzheimer Research; a Benefactor of the Los Angeles Music Center: and a Member of the Center's Blue Ribbon Board of Directors. She is a Member of the Advisory Board of Olive Crest Treatment Centers for Abused Children and serves as a Board of Directors Trustee of World Opportunities International. Along with her husband she helped build the Jerusalem Film Institute in Israel. She also is a member of the Board of Trustees of The UCLA Foundation and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Revlon/UCLA Women's Health Research Program. In addition, she created at the City of Hope Hospital The Rhonda Fleming Mann Research Fellowship to further advance research and treatment associated with women's cancer.
In 1991, she and her husband established the Rhonda Fleming Mann Clinic for Women's Comprehensive Care at UCLA Medical Center. This clinic provides a full range of expert gynecologic and obstetric care to women. Since 1992, she has devoted her time to a second facility at UCLA - the Rhonda Fleming Mann Resource Center for Women with Cancer, which opened in early 1994. This Center is the fulfillment of her vision to create a safe, warm place where women cancer patients and their families might receive the highest quality psychosocial and emotional care as well as assistance with the complex practical problems that arise with cancer. In August 1997, the Center opened "Reflections", a unique retail store and consultation suite that carries wigs, head coverings, breast prostheses and other items to help men, women and children deal with the physical appearance changes brought on by cancer and its treatments. The staffs of the clinic, center and store are guided by her belief that caring, compassion, communication and commitment are essential components of the healing process.- Actress
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Anne Francis got into show business quite early in life. She was born on September 16, 1930 in Ossining, New York (which is near Sing Sing prison), the only child of Phillip Ward Francis, a businessman/salesman, and the former Edith Albertson. A natural little beauty, she became a John Robert Powers model at age 6(!) and swiftly moved into radio soap work and television in New York. By age 11, she was making her stage debut on Broadway playing the child version of Gertrude Lawrence in the star's 1941 hit vehicle "Lady in the Dark". During this productive time, she attended New York's Professional Children's School.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer put the lovely, blue-eyed, wavy-blonde hopeful under contract during the post-war World War II years. While Anne appeared in a couple of obscure bobbysoxer bits, nothing much came of it. Frustrated at the standard cheesecake treatment she was receiving in Hollywood, the serious-minded actress trekked back to New York where she appeared to good notice on television's "Golden Age" drama and found some summer stock work on the sly ("My Sister Eileen").
Discovered and signed by 20th Century-Fox's Darryl F. Zanuck after playing a seductive, child-bearing juvenile delinquent in the low budget film So Young, So Bad (1950), Anne soon starred in a number of promising ingénue roles, including Elopement (1951), Lydia Bailey (1952), and Dreamboat (1952) but she still could not seem to rise above the starlet typecast. At MGM, she found promising leading lady work in a few noteworthy 1950s classics: Bad Day at Black Rock (1955); Blackboard Jungle (1955); and the science fiction cult classic Forbidden Planet (1956). While co-starring with Hollywood's hunkiest best, including Paul Newman, Dale Robertson, Glenn Ford and Cornel Wilde, her roles still emphasized more her glam appeal than her acting capabilities. In the 1960s, Anne began refocusing strongly on the smaller screen, finding a comfortable niche on television series. She found a most appreciative audience in two classic The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes and then as a self-sufficient, Emma Peel-like detective in Aaron Spelling's short-lived cult series Honey West (1965), where she combined glamour and a sexy veneer with judo throws, karate chops and trendy fashions. The role earned her a Golden Globe Award and Emmy Award nomination.
The actress returned to films only on occasion, the most controversial being Funny Girl (1968), in which her co-starring role as Barbra Streisand's pal was heartlessly reduced to a glorified cameo. Her gratuitous co-star parts opposite some of filmdom's top comics' in their lesser vehicles -- Jerry Lewis' Hook, Line and Sinker (1969) and Don Knotts' The Love God? (1969) -- did little to show off her talents or upgrade her career. For the next couple of decades, Anne remained a welcome and steadfast presence in a slew of television movies (The Intruders (1970), Haunts of the Very Rich (1972), Little Mo (1978), A Masterpiece of Murder (1986)), usually providing colorful, wisecracking support. She billed herself as Anne Lloyd Francis on occasion in later years.
For such a promising start and with such amazing stamina and longevity, the girl with the sexy beauty mark probably deserved better. Yet in reflection, her output, especially in her character years, has been strong and varied, and her realistic take on the whole Hollywood industry quite balanced. Twice divorced with one daughter from her second marriage, Anne adopted (as a single mother) a girl back in 1970 in California. She has long been involved with a metaphysical-based church, channeling her own thoughts and feelings into the inspirational 1982 book "Voices from Home: An Inner Journey". Later, she has spent more time off-camera and involved in such charitable programs as "Direct Relief", "Angel View" and the "Desert AIDS Project", among others. Her health declined sharply in the final years. Diagnosed with lung cancer in 2007, the actress died on January 2, 2011, from complications of pancreatic cancer in a Santa Barbara (California) retirement home.- Actress
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It is perhaps ironic that the film for which this performer is best remembered was also her musical swansong and one of her very last motion picture appearances. That was, of course, South Pacific (1958), with Mitzi Gaynor famously cast as feisty Ensign Nellie Forbush, warbling "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair". She had not been first choice for the role: director Joshua Logan wanted Elizabeth Taylor while Richard Rodgers was fixated on Doris Day. Since neither was available, they had to settle on Mitzi. In retrospect, her performance (she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award) was perhaps the best thing about the movie. Hers was the only voice (other than that of Ray Walston) that was not dubbed in post- production. South Pacific was marred by Logan's lethargic direction and by garish hues, due to the use of colour filters in several lengthy sequences. The picture nonetheless became one of the highest grossing films of the 50s.
She was born Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber of Hungarian aristocratic ancestry. Her father was violinist, cellist and music director Henry de Czanyi von Gerber, her mother Pauline was a dancer. Mitzi began performing in public from the age of four. Her family moved from Detroit to Hollywood when she was eleven. There, she was trained as a ballerina in the corps de ballet. Just three years later, she was on stage as a singer and dancer with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Company in a production of Roberta. While playing the lead in Victor Herbert's Naughty Marietta, Gaynor was discovered by a 20th Century Fox talent scout, auditioned and signed to a seven year contract. She made her screen debut as a dancer in My Blue Heaven (1950), singing 'Live Hard, Work Hard, Love Hard'. The studio kept her initials but changed her name from Gerber to Gaynor, likely in deference to Janet Gaynor, one of their major box-office stars of the 20s and 30s.
Aged 19, vivacious, blonde, slightly snub-nosed and undeniably cute, Mitzi began her career as a lead performer in musicals, acting alongside some of the genre's most prominent names. Now a headliner in her own right, she portrayed 19th century entertainer Lotta Crabtree in the biopic Golden Girl (1951), a South Sea Islander in Down Among the Sheltering Palms (1952) and the 'Queen of Vaudeville', Eva Tanguay, in The I Don't Care Girl (1953). All were minor box-office hits. Arguably her best role was that of Emily Ann Stackerlee in Damon Runyon's Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952), with Gaynor at her exuberant best, dancing and singing "Bye Low". Her final picture -- before Fox dropped her contract-- was the star-studded extravaganza There's No Business Like Show Business (1954). In this, she played second fiddle to Ethel Merman, Marilyn Monroe, Donald O'Connor and Dan Dailey.
That same year (1954) and not long away from the limelight, Gaynor married the very savvy talent agent and public relations executive Jack Bean. Bean soon quit his job with MCA to set up his own agency, Bean & Rose, which was largely about shepherding and rejuvenating Gaynor's career. She signed a new contract with Paramount in 1955 which resulted in a trio of films, the best of which was The Joker Is Wild (1957), starring Frank Sinatra as vaudevillian and night club entertainer Joe E. Lewis and Gaynor as his chorus girl wife. Next up, she played another showgirl in Les Girls (1957). This stodgy and confusingly scripted enterprise was chiefly notable for being Gene Kelly 's final appearance in a major musical and for the show-stopping number "Why Am I So Gone About That Gal?" performed by Kelly and Gaynor (both dressed as bikers, effectively lampooning Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953)).
After South Pacific (a part which her husband managed to secure for her) Gaynor made only a handful of films. Her last effort was For Love or Money (1963), a matrimonial comedy starring Kirk Douglas. In 1963, Gaynor retired from films, explaining that she felt 'kind of ordinary' as an actress. She considered her talents to be better suited to the stage, to live performances. Consequently, the latter part of her career was spent on the nightclub circuit (especially in Las Vegas) and in television specials. In the 90s, Gaynor's career found a new lease of life as a featured columnist for The Hollywood Reporter, chronicling the golden years.
Gaynor's many accolades have included a Golden Laurel (1958). She received a star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard in 1960, and, in 2017, she was inducted into the Great American Songbook Hall of Fame. Jack Bean, her husband of 52 years died of pneumonia at the couple's Beverly Hills home on December 4 2006.- Actress
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Elizabeth Ruth Grable was born on December 18, 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri, to Lillian Rose (Hofmann) and John Conn Grable, a stockbroker. She had German, English, Irish, and Dutch ancestry. Her mother was a stubborn and materialistic woman determined to make her daughter a star. Elizabeth, who later became Betty, was enrolled in Clark's Dancing School at the age of three. With her mother's guidance, Betty studied ballet and tap dancing.
Betty and her mother set out for California with the hopes of stardom. She attended the Hollywood Professional school but Lillian lied about her daughter's age and Betty (real age 13), landed several minor parts as a chorus girl in early musicals (Whoopee! (1930), New Movietone Follies of 1930 (1930), Happy Days (1929) and Let's Go Places (1930)), initially billed as 'Frances Dean'. In 1932 (real age 15), she signed with RKO Radio Pictures and began to use the moniker 'Betty Grable'. The bit parts continued for the next three years. Betty finally landed a substantial part in By Your Leave (1934). One of her big roles was in College Swing (1938). Unfortunately, the public did not seem to take notice.
The following year, she married former child star Jackie Coogan. They briefly toured on vaudeville and his success boosted hers, but they divorced in 1940. When she landed the role of Glenda Crawford in Down Argentine Way (1940), the public finally took notice of this shining bright star. Stardom came in such comedies as Coney Island (1943) and Sweet Rosie O'Grady (1943).
The public was enchanted with Betty. Her famous pin-up pose during World War II adorned barracks all around the world. With that pin-up and as the star of lavish musicals, Betty became the highest-paid star in Hollywood. After the war, her star continued to rise. In 1947, the United States Treasury Department noted that she was the highest paid star in America, earning about $300,000 a year - a phenomenal sum even by today's standards. Later, 20th Century-Fox, who had her under contract, insured her legs with Lloyds of London for a million dollars. She continued to be popular until the mid-1950s, when musicals went into a decline. Her last film was How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955).
She then concentrated on Broadway and nightclubs. In 1965, she divorced band leader Harry James, whom she had wed in 1943. Her life was an active one, devoid of the scandals that plagued many stars in one way or another. She cared more for her family than stardom.
Betty Grable died at age 56 of lung cancer on July 2, 1973 in Santa Monica, California, five days before Veronica Lake's death. She was interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery.- Actor
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Louis Jourdan was born Louis Robert Gendre in Marseille, France to Yvonne (née Jourdan) and hotel owner Henry Gendre. He was educated in France, Britain, and Turkey. He trained as an actor with René Simon at the École Dramatique. He debuted on screen in 1939, going on to play cultivated, polished, dashing lead roles in a number of French romantic comedies and dramas.
After his father, the manager of the Cannes Grand Hôtel, was arrested by the Gestapo during World War II, Louis and his two brothers (Pierre Jourdan and Robert Gendre, both of whom became film directors) joined the French underground; his film career came to a halt when he refused to act in Nazi propaganda films.
In 1948, David O. Selznick invited him to Hollywood to appear in The Paradine Case (1947); he remained in the USA and went on to star in a number of Hollywood films. After 1953, he appeared in international productions and, in 1958, appeared in Gigi (1958), his best-known film by American audiences. He also made numerous appearances on American television.
Jourdan died at his home in Beverly Hills, California in 2015, at age 93.- Actor
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Danny Kaye left school at the age of 13 to work in the so-called Borscht Belt of Jewish resorts in the Catskill Mountains. It was there he learned the basics of show biz. From there he went through a series of jobs in and out of the business. In 1939, he made his Broadway debut in "Straw Hat Revue," but it was the stage production of the musical "Lady in the Dark" in 1940 that brought him acclaim and notice from agents. Also in 1940, he married Sylvia Fine, who went on to manage his career. She helped create the routines and gags, and wrote most of the songs that he performed. Danny could sing and dance like many others, but his specialty was reciting those tongue-twisting songs and monologues.
Samuel Goldwyn had been trying to sign Kaye to a movie contract for two years before he eventually agreed. Goldwyn put him in a series of Technicolor musicals, starting with Up in Arms (1944). His debut was successful, and he continued to make hit movies such as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and The Inspector General (1949). In 1954, he appeared with Bing Crosby in White Christmas (1954), which was based on the Irving Berlin song of the same name. In 1955, he made what many consider his best comedy, The Court Jester (1955), with the brilliant Pellet with the Poison routine. Like all things, however, the lifespan of a comedian is limited and his movie career waned. In 1960, he began doing specials on television and this led to his own TV series, The Danny Kaye Show (1963), which ran from 1963 to 1967.
Some of his last roles were also his most memorable, such as an intense Holocaust survivor in Skokie (1981) and as a kind but goofy dentist in an episode of The Cosby Show (1984). He also worked tirelessly for UNICEF.- 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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Born Alvin Morris, the son of immigrants from Poland, Tony Martin received a soprano saxophone on his tenth birthday. In his grammar school glee club, he became an instrumentalist and soprano pop singer. When in high school, he then formed his first band called "The Red Peppers", eventually joining a local orchestra leader, Tom Gerun, as a reed instrument specialist, sitting along with a future band leader, Woody Herman.
In the mid-1930s, Martin left Gerun to go to Hollywood, where he would go under his stage name, "Tony Martin". in 1937, Martin married Alice Faye. After their divorce, he married Cyd Charisse in 1948 - a marriage which lasted sixty years.
Martin starred in hit movies such as Follow the Fleet (1936), The Farmer in the Dell (1936), Pigskin Parade (1936), The Holy Terror (1937), Ali Baba Goes to Town (1937), The Big Store (1941), Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), Casbah (1948), Clash by Night (1952), where he is heard on the soundtrack singing "I Hear A Rhapsody", and Hit the Deck (1955). His numerous signature standard hits include "Kiss Of Fire", "I Get Ideas", "Some Day", "Fools Rush In" and "There's No Tomorrow", for which he is possibly best remembered. From 1954-56, he hosted a weekly 15 minute variety series on NBC-TV. Over the next 40 years, he was a guest on the TV variety series of Jack Benny, Dinah Shore, Milton Berle, Merv Griffin, Dean Martin, Nat 'King' Cole, David Frost, Barbara McNair, Johnny Carson and Ed Sullivan. He has had many TV acting roles, as well.- Actress
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Virginia Clara Jones was born on November 30, 1920 in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of a newspaper reporter and his wife. The family had a rich heritage in the St. Louis area: her great-great-great-grandfather served in the American Revolution and later founded the city of East Saint Louis, Illinois, located right across the Mississippi River from its namesake. Virginia was interested in show business from an early age. Her aunt operated a dance studio and Virginia began taking lessons at the age of six. After graduating from high school in 1937, she became a member of the St. Louis Municipal Opera before she was signed to a contract by Samuel Goldwyn after being spotted by an MGM talent scout during a Broadway revue. David O. Selznick gave her a screen test, but decided she wouldn't fit into films. Goldwyn, however, believed that her talent as an actress was there and cast her in a small role in 1943's Jack London (1943). She later had a walk-on part in Follies Girl (1943) that same year. Believing there was more to her than her obvious ravishing beauty, producers thought it was time to give her bigger and better roles. In 1944 she was cast as Princess Margaret in The Princess and the Pirate (1944), with Bob Hope and a year later appeared as Ellen Shavley in Wonder Man (1945). Her popularity increasing with every appearance, Virginia was cast in two more films in 1946, The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), with Danny Kaye, and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), with Dana Andrews, and received good notices as Andrews' avaricious, unfaithful wife. Her roles may have been coming in slow, but with each one her popularity with audiences rose. She finally struck paydirt in 1947 with a plum assignment in the well-received The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) as Rosalind van Hoorn. That same year she married Michael O'Shea and would remain with him until his death in 1973 (the union produced a daughter, Mary Catherine, in 1953). She got some of the best reviews of her career in James Cagney's return to the gangster genre, White Heat (1949), as Verna, the scheming, cheating wife of homicidal killer Cody Jarrett (Cagney). The striking beauty had still more plum roles in the 1950s. Parts in Backfire (1950), She's Working Her Way Through College (1952) and South Sea Woman (1953) all showed she was still a force to be reckoned with. As the decade ended, Virginia's career began to slow down. She had four roles in the 1960s and four more in the following decade. Her last role was as Lucia in 1997's The Man Next Door. She died on January 17, 2005.- Actor
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Cameron Mitchell was the son of a minister, but chose a different path from his father. Prior to World War II, in which he served as an Air Force bombardier, Mitchell appeared on Broadway, and, in 1940, an experimental television broadcast, "The Passing of the Third Floor Back". He made his film debut in What Next, Corporal Hargrove? (1945), but continued with stage as well as film work. He gained early recognition for his portrayal of Happy in the stage and screen versions of "Death of a Salesman". Still, out of more than 300 film and TV appearances, he is probably best remembered for his work on The High Chaparral (1967) TV series in which he, as the happy-go-lucky Buck Cannon, and Henry Darrow, as Manolito Montoya, stole the show.- Actor
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Robert Mitchum was an underrated American leading man of enormous ability, who sublimated his talents beneath an air of disinterest. He was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Ann Harriet (Gunderson), a Norwegian immigrant, and James Thomas Mitchum, a shipyard/railroad worker. His father died in a train accident when he was two, and Robert and his siblings (including brother John Mitchum, later also an actor) were raised by his mother and stepfather (a British army major) in Connecticut, New York, and Delaware. An early contempt for authority led to discipline problems, and Mitchum spent good portions of his teen years adventuring on the open road. He later claimed that on one of these trips, at the age of 14, he was charged with vagrancy and sentenced to a Georgia chain gang, from which he escaped. Working a wide variety of jobs (including ghostwriter for astrologist Carroll Righter), Mitchum discovered acting in a Long Beach, California, amateur theater company. He worked at Lockheed Aircraft, where job stress caused him to suffer temporary blindness. About this time he began to obtain small roles in films, appearing in dozens within a very brief time. In 1945, he was cast as Lt. Walker in Story of G.I. Joe (1945) and received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor. His star ascended rapidly, and he became an icon of 1940s film noir, though equally adept at westerns and romantic dramas. His apparently lazy style and seen-it-all demeanor proved highly attractive to men and women, and by the 1950s, he was a true superstar despite a brief prison term for marijuana usage in 1949, which seemed to enhance rather than diminish his "bad boy" appeal. Though seemingly dismissive of "art," he worked in tremendously artistically thoughtful projects such as Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955) and even co-wrote and composed an oratorio produced at the Hollywood Bowl by Orson Welles. A master of accents and seemingly unconcerned about his star image, he played in both forgettable and unforgettable films with unswerving nonchalance, leading many to overlook the prodigious talent he can bring to a project that he finds compelling. He moved into television in the 1980s as his film opportunities diminished, winning new fans with The Winds of War (1983) and War and Remembrance (1988). His sons James Mitchum and Christopher Mitchum are actors, as is his grandson Bentley Mitchum. His last film was James Dean: Race with Destiny (1997) with Casper Van Dien as James Dean.- Actress
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Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, comedienne, singer, and model. Monroe is of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent. She became one of the world's most enduring iconic figures and is remembered both for her winsome embodiment of the Hollywood sex symbol and her tragic personal and professional struggles within the film industry. Her life and death are still the subjects of much controversy and speculation.
She was born Norma Jeane Mortenson at the Los Angeles County Hospital on June 1, 1926. Her mother, Gladys Pearl (Monroe), was born in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, to American parents from Indiana and Missouri, and was a film-cutter at Consolidated Film Industries. Marilyn's biological father has been established through DNA testing as Charles Stanley Gifford, who had been born in Newport, Rhode Island, to a family with deep roots in the state. Because Gladys was mentally and financially unable to care for young Marilyn, Gladys placed her in the care of a foster family, The Bolenders. Although the Bolender family wanted to adopt Marilyn, Gladys was eventually able to stabilize her lifestyle and took Marilyn back in her care when Marilyn was 7 years old. However, shortly after regaining custody of Marilyn, Gladys had a complete mental breakdown and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and was committed to a state mental hospital. Gladys spent the rest of her life going in and out of hospitals and rarely had contact with young Marilyn. Once Marilyn became an adult and celebrated as a film star, she paid a woman by the name of Inez Melson to look in on the institutionalized Gladys and give detailed reports of her progress. Gladys outlived her daughter, dying in 1984.
Marilyn was then taken in by Gladys' best friend Grace Goddard, who, after a series of foster homes, placed Marilyn into the Los Angeles Orphan's Home in 1935. Marilyn was traumatized by her experience there despite the Orphan's Home being an adequate living facility. Grace Goddard eventually took Marilyn back to live with her in 1937 although this stay did not last long as Grace's husband began molesting Marilyn. Marilyn went to live with Grace's Aunt Ana after this incident, although due to Aunt Ana's advanced age she could not care properly for Marilyn. Marilyn once again for the third time had to return to live with the Goddards. The Goddards planned to relocated and according to law, could not take Marilyn with them. She only had two choices: return to the orphanage or get married. Marilyn was only 16 years old.
She decided to marry a neighborhood friend named James Dougherty; he went into the military, she modeled, they divorced in 1946. She owned 400 books (including Tolstoy, Whitman, Milton), listened to Beethoven records, studied acting at the Actors' lab in Hollywood, and took literature courses at UCLA downtown. 20th Century Fox gave her a contract but let it lapse a year later. In 1948, Columbia gave her a six-month contract, turned her over to coach Natasha Lytess and featured her in the B movie Ladies of the Chorus (1948) in which she sang three numbers : "Every Baby Needs a Da Da Daddy", "Anyone Can Tell I Love You" and "The Ladies of the Chorus" with Adele Jergens (dubbed by Virginia Rees) and others. Joseph L. Mankiewicz saw her in a small part in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and put her in All About Eve (1950) , resulting in 20th Century re-signing her to a seven-year contract. Niagara (1953) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) launched her as a sex symbol superstar.
When she went to a supper honoring her in the The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she arrived in a red chiffon gown borrowed from the studio (she had never owned a gown). That same year, she married and divorced baseball great Joe DiMaggio (their wedding night was spent in Paso Robles, California). After The Seven Year Itch (1955) , she wanted serious acting to replace the sexpot image and went to New York's Actors Studio. She worked with director Lee Strasberg and also underwent psychoanalysis to learn more about herself. Critics praised her transformation in Bus Stop (1956) and the press was stunned by her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller . True to form, she had no veil to match her beige wedding dress so she dyed one in coffee; he wore one of the two suits he owned. They went to England that fall where she made The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) with Laurence Olivier , fighting with him and falling further prey to alcohol and pills. Two miscarriages and gynecological surgery followed. So had an affair with Yves Montand . Work on her last picture The Misfits (1961) , written for her by departing husband Miller, was interrupted by exhaustion. She was dropped from the unfinished Something's Got to Give (1962) due to chronic lateness and drug dependency.
On August 4, 1962, Marilyn Monroe's day began with threatening phone calls. Dr. Ralph Greenson, Marilyn's physician, came over the following day and quoted later in a document "Felt it was possible that Marilyn had felt rejected by some of the people she had been close to." Apart from being upset that her publicist slept too long, she seemed fine. Pat Newcombe, who had stayed the previous night at Marilyn's house, left in the early evening as did Greenson who had a dinner date. Marilyn was upset he couldn't stay, and around 7:30pm she telephoned him to say that her second husband's son had called her. Peter Lawford also called Marilyn, inviting her to dinner, but she declined. Lawford later said her speech was slurred. As the evening went on there were other phone calls, including one from Jose Belanos, who said he thought she sounded fine. According to the funeral directors, Marilyn died sometime between 9:30pm and 11:30pm. Her maid unable to raise her but seeing a light under her locked door, called the police shortly after midnight. She also phoned Ralph Greenson who, on arrival, could not break down the bedroom door. He eventually broke in through French windows and found Marilyn dead in bed. The coroner stated she had died from acute barbiturate poisoning, and it was a 'probable suicide' though many conspiracies would follow in the years after her death.- Actor
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Legendary actor Ricardo Montalban was the epitome of Latin elegance, charm and grace on film and television and in the late 1940s and early 1950s reinvigorated the Rudolph Valentino / Ramon Novarro "Latin Lover" style in Hollywood without achieving top screen stardom. Moreover, unlike most minority actors of his time, he fought to upscale the Latin (particularly, Mexican) image in Hollywood. His noted militancy may have cost him a number of roles along the way, but he gained respect and a solid reputation as a mover and shaker within the acting community while providing wider-range opportunities for Spanish-speaking actors via Los Angeles theater.
He was born in Mexico City on November 25, 1920, the youngest of four children to Castilian Spanish immigrants, Ricarda Merino and Jenaro Montalbán. His father was a dry goods store owner. Montalbán moved to Los Angeles as a teen and lived with his much older brother Carlos Montalbán, who was then pursuing show business as both an actor and dancer. Ricardo attended Fairfax High School in Hollywood and was noticed in a student play but passed on a screen test that was offered. Instead, he traveled with his brother to New York, where he earned a bit part in the Tallulah Bankhead stage vehicle "Her Cardboard Lover" in 1940, and won subsequent roles in the plays "Our Betters" and "Private Affair".
Returning to Mexico to care for his extremely ill mother, his dark good looks and magnetic style helped propel him into the Spanish-language film industry. After nearly a dozen or so films, he was on the verge of stardom in Mexico when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer took an interest in him and he relocated back to Los Angeles. Making his Hollywood leading debut as a robust bullfighter and twin brother of MGM star Esther Williams in the "B"-level musical Fiesta (1947), he attracted immediate attention. His second film with Williams, On an Island with You (1948), led to a contract with the studio, where he routinely ignited "Latin Lover" sparks opposite such prime female stars as Cyd Charisse, Shelley Winters, Anne Bancroft, Pier Angeli, Laraine Day and (once again) Esther Williams, this time in Neptune's Daughter (1949) (one of his MGM extravaganzas opposite gorgeous Lana Turner was actually called Latin Lovers (1953)). His strongest Hispanic competition in films at the time was Argentine-born fellow MGM player Fernando Lamas, who wound up eventually marrying Esther Williams after divorcing another MGM beauty, Arlene Dahl.
Although Montalban was the epitome of the "Latin lover" type, it actually damaged his cinematic career, pigeonholing him and hurting his momentum. He was seldom able to extricate himself from the usual portrayals of bandidos and gigolos, although he did manage to find an interesting film from time to time, such as his turn as a Mexican undercover policeman in the gritty Border Incident (1949), Mystery Street (1950), the classic war film Battleground (1949) and the hard-edged boxing drama Right Cross (1950). Occasionally, he was handed ethnic roles outside the Latino realm, such as his villainous Blackfoot Indian chief in Across the Wide Missouri (1951) starring Clark Gable, his heroic, bare-chested rebel warrior in the steamy Italian sword-and-sandals costumer The Queen of Babylon (1954) alongside Rhonda Fleming and his Japanese Kabuki actor in the Oscar-winning feature Sayonara (1957). It was during the filming of Across the Wide Missouri (1951) that he suffered a serious injury to his spine after he slipped and fell off a running horse, which resulted in a permanent limp.
Well established by this time, Montalban returned to the stage in 1954 with varied roles in such fare as "Can-Can", "The Inspector General", "South Pacific" and "Accent on Youth", before making his Broadway debut as Chico in the original musical "Seventh Heaven" (1955) with Gloria DeHaven, Kurt Kasznar and Bea Arthur. He then earned a Tony Award nomination as the only non-African-American actor in the tropical-themed musical "Jamaica" (1957) co-starring Lena Horne. He also toured as the title role in "Don Juan in Hell" in the 1960s, returning to Broadway with it in 1973 with Agnes Moorehead, Paul Henreid and Edward Mulhare, and touring once again with the show in 1991.
His strong work ethic and reservoir of talent enabled him to continue on television long after his exotic beefcake status in films had waned. He had married Loretta Young's half-sister Georgiana Young in 1944, and appeared on his sister-in-law's television series (The New Loretta Young Show (1962)) several times. He also showed up in a number of television dramatic anthologies (Playhouse 90 (1956) and Colgate Theatre (1958)) and made guest appearances on the popular series of the day, such as Death Valley Days (1952), Bonanza (1959), Burke's Law (1963), Dr. Kildare (1961), The Defenders (1961) and, more notably, a first-season episode of Star Trek (1966) in which he memorably portrayed galaxy arch-villain Khan Noonien Singh. He resurrected this character memorably in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).
Over the years, he continued to appear occasionally on the big screen, typically playing continental smoothies, in such films as Love Is a Ball (1963), Madame X (1966) and Sweet Charity (1969), but it was television that finally made him a household name. Montalban captivated audiences as the urbane, white-suited concierge of mystery Mr. Roarke in the Aaron Spelling series Fantasy Island (1977). He stayed with the series for six seasons, buoyed by his popular "odd couple" teaming with the late Hervé Villechaize, who played Mr. Roarke's diminutive sidekick, and fellow greeter, Tattoo. While it may have seemed a somewhat lightweight and undemanding role for the talented Montalban, it nevertheless became his signature character. The series faltered after Villechaize, who had become erratic and difficult on the set, was fired from the series in 1983. Corpulent Britisher Christopher Hewett, as Lawrence, replaced the Tattoo character but to little avail and the series was canceled one season later. The troubled Villechaize committed suicide on September 4, 1993.
An Emmy Award winner for his role in the miniseries How the West Was Won (1976) and a noteworthy villain in the Dynasty (1981) spin-off series The Colbys (1985), Montalban was also famous for a series of television commercials in which he returned somewhat to his "Latin lover" persona, primarily in a series of slick commercials for Chrysler's Cordoba automobile, pitching the elegant auto with its "rich, Corinthian leather" (it later came to light that this phrase had been conjured up as a marketing tool, and that there was no such product from Corinth or anywhere else!). As for film and television work in his later years, he good-naturedly spoofed his Hollywood image in a number of featured roles, including a hilarious send-up of himself in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988). Two of his final, larger-scaled film roles were as the grandfather in the two "Spy Kids" sequels: Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams (2002) and Spy Kids 3: Game Over (2003). His deep, soothing, confident tones could also be heard in animated features and television series.
Frustrated at Hollywood's portrayal of Mexicans, he helped to found, and gave great support, attention and distinction to, the image-building "Nosotros" organization, a Los Angeles theatre-based company designed for Latinos working in the industry. Nosotros and the Montalban foundation eventually bought the historic Doolittle Theater in Hollywood and renamed the theatre in his honor in 2004. It became the first major theater facility (1200 seats) in the United States to carry the name of a Latino performing artist. In 1980, along with Bob Thomas, he published his memoir, entitled "Reflections: A Life in Two Worlds".
A class act who was beloved in the industry for his gentle and caring nature, the long-term effects of his spinal injury eventually confined him to a wheelchair in his later years. He died in his Los Angeles home of complications from old age on January 14, 2009 at age 88. His wife having died on November 29, 2007, he was survived by their two daughters and two sons: Laura, Anita, Victor and Mark.- His five brothers all became policemen, encouraged on by their father, but Hartford-born Irish-American Michael O'Shea defied family tradition and turned to acting. Born on March 17, 1906, Michael dropped out of school at age 12 and went the vaudeville route, touring with his boxing idol Jack Johnson's show. He tried everything. During the Prohibition years, he became a comedian and emcee at speakeasies. He put together his own dance band, "Michael O'Shea and His Stationary Gypsies", and later broke into radio.
His career advanced with the legit stage, where he was billed for a time as "Eddie O'Shea". His noticeable performance in "The Eve of St. Mark" in 1942 led to a string of '40s films, notably as Barbara Stanwyck's boyfriend comic in Lady of Burlesque (1943). He also managed great reviews repeating his stage role in the film The Eve of St. Mark (1944). Other WWII-era films included the leading role opposite Anne Shirley in the romantic drama Man from Frisco (1944); a military man lead in the musical Something for the Boys (1944) in which he managed to show off a little of his Irish tenor in the song "Wouldn't It Be Nice?" with Vivian Blaine, Phil Silvers and Carmen Miranda; the male co-star in the Sonja Henie skating vehicle It's a Pleasure (1945); and lead and support roles in a string of crime dramas including Circumstantial Evidence (1945), Mr. District Attorney (1947), Violence (1947), Parole, Inc. (1948) and The Underworld Story (1950).
The father of two, Michael met his second wife, the beautiful actress Virginia Mayo, during the time he was filming the title role of Jack London (1943). They married four years later and had one daughter. The couple subsequently appeared on the stock stage together in such productions as "George Washington Slept Here", "Tunnel of Love" and Fiorello! One of those fine talents who did not make a big name for himself, Michael was out of films by 1952, but revitalized on TV and starred in the mild TV sitcom It's a Great Life (1954) also starring James Dunn, William Bishop, Frances Bavier and Barbara Bates playing a former GI trying to find a civilian job.
Interestingly, Michael became a plainclothes operative for the CIA after retiring from show business in the 1960s. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1973. - Actor
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Eldred Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916 in La Jolla, California, to Bernice Mae (Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, a chemist and druggist in San Diego. He had Irish (from his paternal grandmother), English, and some German, ancestry. His parents divorced when he was five years old. An only child, he was sent to live with his grandmother. He never felt he had a stable childhood. His fondest memories are of his grandmother taking him to the movies every week and of his dog, which followed him everywhere. He studied pre-med at UC-Berkeley and, while there, got bitten by the acting bug and decided to change the focus of his studies. He enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and debuted on Broadway after graduation. His debut was in Emlyn Williams' play "The Morning Star" (1942). By 1943, he was in Hollywood, where he debuted in the RKO film Days of Glory (1944).
Stardom came with his next film, The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. Peck's screen presence displayed the qualities for which he became well known. He was tall, rugged and heroic, with a basic decency that transcended his roles. He appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) as an amnesia victim accused of murder. In The Yearling (1946), he was again nominated for an Academy Award and won the Golden Globe. He was especially effective in westerns and appeared in such varied fare as David O. Selznick's critically blasted Duel in the Sun (1946), the somewhat better received Yellow Sky (1948) and the acclaimed The Gunfighter (1950). He was nominated again for the Academy Award for his roles in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), which dealt with anti-Semitism, and Twelve O'Clock High (1949), a story of high-level stress in an Air Force bomber unit in World War II.
With a string of hits to his credit, Peck made the decision to only work in films that interested him. He continued to appear as the heroic, larger-than-life figures in such films as Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) and Moby Dick (1956). He worked with Audrey Hepburn in her debut film, Roman Holiday (1953). Peck finally won the Oscar, after four nominations, for his performance as lawyer Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). In the early 1960s, he appeared in two darker films than he usually made, Cape Fear (1962) and Captain Newman, M.D. (1963), which dealt with the way people live. He also gave a powerful performance as Captain Keith Mallory in The Guns of Navarone (1961), one of the biggest box-office hits of that year.
In the early 1970s, he produced two films, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (1972) and The Dove (1974), when his film career stalled. He made a comeback playing, somewhat woodenly, Robert Thorn in the horror film The Omen (1976). After that, he returned to the bigger-than-life roles he was best known for, such as MacArthur (1977) and the monstrous Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele in the huge hit The Boys from Brazil (1978). In the 1980s, he moved into television with the miniseries The Blue and the Gray (1982) and The Scarlet and the Black (1983). In 1991, he appeared in the remake of his 1962 film, playing a different role, in Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear (1991). He was also cast as the progressive-thinking owner of a wire and cable business in Other People's Money (1991).
In 1967, Peck received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He was also been awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. Always politically progressive, he was active in such causes as anti-war protests, workers' rights and civil rights. In 2003, his Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch was named the greatest film hero of the past 100 years by the American Film Institute. Gregory Peck died at age 87 on June 12, 2003 in Los Angeles, California.- Actor
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Tyrone Power was one of the great romantic swashbuckling stars of the mid-twentieth century, and the third Tyrone Power of four in a famed acting dynasty reaching back to the eighteenth century. His great-grandfather was the first Tyrone Power (1795-1841), a famed Irish comedian. His father, known to historians as Tyrone Power Sr., but to his contemporaries as either Tyrone Power or Tyrone Power the Younger, was a huge star in the theater (and later in films) in both classical and modern roles. His mother, Helen Emma "Patia" (née Reaume), (Mrs. Tyrone Power), was also a Shakespearean actress as well as a respected dramatic coach.
Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr., (also called Tyrone Power III) was born at his mother's home of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1914. His ancestry included English, Irish, German, French Huguenot, and French-Canadian. A frail, sickly child, he was taken by his parents to the warmer climate of southern California. After his parents' divorce, he and his sister Anne Power returned to Cincinnati with their mother. There he attended school while developing an obsession with acting. Although raised by his mother, he corresponded with his father, who encouraged his acting dreams. He was a supernumerary in his father's stage production of 'The Merchant of Venice' in Chicago and held him as he died suddenly of a heart attack later that year.
Startlingly handsome, young Tyrone nevertheless struggled to find work in Hollywood. He appeared in a few small roles, then went east to do stage work. A screen test led to a contract at 20th Century Fox in 1936, and he quickly progressed to leading roles. Within a year or so, he was one of Fox's leading stars, playing in contemporary and period pieces with ease. Most of his roles were colorful without being deep, and his swordplay was more praised than his wordplay. He served in the Marine Corps in World War II as a transport pilot, and he saw action in the Pacific Theater of operations.
After the war, he got his best reviews for an atypical part as a downward-spiraling con-man in Nightmare Alley (1947). Although he remained a huge star, much of his postwar work was unremarkable. He continued to do notable stage work and also began producing films. Following a fine performance in Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Power began production on Solomon and Sheba (1959). Halfway through shooting, he suffered a heart attack during a dueling scene with George Sanders and died before reaching a hospital.
His three children, including his namesake, Tyrone William Power IV (known professionally as Tyrone Power Jr.), have all followed him in the family acting tradition.- Actor
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Anthony Quinn was born Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca (some sources indicate Manuel Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca) on April 21, 1915, in Chihuahua, Mexico, to Manuela (Oaxaca) and Francisco Quinn, who became an assistant cameraman at a Los Angeles (CA) film studio. His paternal grandfather was Irish, and the rest of his family was Mexican.
After starting life in extremely modest circumstances in Mexico, his family moved to Los Angeles, where he grew up in the Boyle Heights and Echo Park neighborhoods. He played in the band of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson as a youth and as a deputy preacher. He attended Polytechnic High School and later Belmont High, but eventually dropped out. The young Quinn boxed (which stood him in good stead as a stage actor, when he played Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" to rave reviews in Chicago), then later studied architecture under Frank Lloyd Wright at the great architect's studio, Taliesin, in Arizona. Quinn was close to Wright, who encouraged him when he decided to give acting a try. Made his credited film debut in Parole! (1936). After a brief apprenticeship on stage, Quinn hit Hollywood in 1936 and picked up a variety of small roles in several films at Paramount, including an Indian warrior in The Plainsman (1936), which was directed by the man who later became his father-in-law, Cecil B. DeMille.
As a contract player at Paramount, Quinn's roles were mainly ethnic types, such as an Arab chieftain in the Bing Crosby-Bob Hope comedy, Road to Morocco (1942). As a Mexican national (he did not become an American citizen until 1947), he was exempt from the draft. With many other actors in military service during WWII, he was able to move up into better supporting roles. He married DeMille's daughter Katherine DeMille, which afforded him entrance to the top circles of Hollywood society. He became disenchanted with his career and did not renew his Paramount contract despite the advice of others, including his father-in-law, with whom he did not get along (whom Quinn reportedly felt had never accepted him due to his Mexican roots; the two men were also on opposite ends of the political spectrum) but they eventually were able to develop a civil relationship. Quinn returned to the stage to hone his craft. His portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" in Chicago and on Broadway (where he replaced the legendary Marlon Brando, who is forever associated with the role) made his reputation and boosted his film career when he returned to the movies.
Brando and Elia Kazan, who directed "Streetcar" on Broadway and on film (A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)), were crucial to Quinn's future success. Kazan, knowing the two were potential rivals due to their acclaimed portrayals of Kowalski, cast Quinn as Brando's brother in his biographical film of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, Viva Zapata! (1952). Quinn won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for 1952, making him the first Mexican-American to win an Oscar. It was not to be his lone appearance in the winner's circle: he won his second Supporting Actor Oscar in 1957 for his portrayal of Paul Gauguin in Vincente Minnelli's biographical film of Vincent van Gogh, Lust for Life (1956), opposite Kirk Douglas. Over the next decade Quinn lived in Italy and became a major figure in world cinema, as many studios shot films in Italy to take advantage of the lower costs ("runaway production" had battered the industry since its beginnings in the New York/New Jersey area in the 1910s). He appeared in several Italian films, giving one of his greatest performances as the circus strongman who brutalizes the sweet soul played by Giulietta Masina in her husband Federico Fellini's masterpiece The Road (1954). He met his second wife, Jolanda Addolori, a wardrobe assistant, while he was in Rome filming Barabbas (1961).
Alternating between Europe and Hollywood, Quinn built his reputation and entered the front rank of character actors and character leads. He received his third Oscar nomination (and first for Best Actor) for George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind (1957). He played a Greek resistance fighter against the Nazi occupation in the monster hit The Guns of Navarone (1961) and received kudos for his portrayal of a once-great boxer on his way down in Rod Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). He went back to playing ethnic roles, such as an Arab warlord in David Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and he played the eponymous lead in the "sword-and-sandal" blockbuster Barabbas (1961). Two years later, he reached the zenith of his career, playing Zorba the Greek in the film of the same name (a.k.a. Zorba the Greek (1964)), which brought him his fourth, and last, Oscar nomination as Best Actor. The 1960s were kind to him: he played character leads in such major films as The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) and The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969). However, his appearance in the title role in the film adaptation of John Fowles' novel, The Magus (1968), did nothing to save the film, which was one of that decade's notorious turkeys.
In the 1960s, Quinn told Life magazine that he would fight against typecasting. Unfortunately, the following decade saw him slip back into playing ethnic types again, in such critical bombs as The Greek Tycoon (1978). He starred as the Hispanic mayor of a southwestern city on the short-lived television series The Man and the City (1971), but his career lost its momentum during the 1970s. Aside from playing a thinly disguised Aristotle Onassis in the cinematic roman-a-clef The Greek Tycoon (1978), his other major roles of the decade were as Hamza in the controversial The Message (1976) (a.k.a. "Mohammad, Messenger of God"); as the Italian patriarch in The Inheritance (1976); yet another Arab in Caravans (1978); and as a Mexican patriarch in The Children of Sanchez (1978). In 1983, he reprised his most famous role, Zorba the Greek, on Broadway in the revival of the musical "Zorba" for 362 performances (opposite Lila Kedrova, who had also appeared in the film, and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance). His career slowed during the 1990s but he continued to work steadily in films and television, including an appearance with frequent film co-star Maureen O'Hara in Only the Lonely (1991).
Quinn lived out the latter years of his life in Bristol, Rhode Island, where he spent most of his time painting and sculpting. Beginning in 1982, he held numerous major exhibitions in cities such as Vienna, Paris, and Seoul. He died in a hospital in Boston at age 86 from pneumonia and respiratory failure linked to his battle with throat cancer.- Actress
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One of Hollywood's more talented and watchable stars on screen was sullen and thin 50s actress Jan Sterling who didn't quite reach the top echelon of stardom but certainly ensured audiences of a real good time with her sexy pout and flashy style in soaps, film noir and saucy comedy.
Jan was born Jane Sterling Adriance in Manhattan in 1921 to a well-to-do family. Her father was a prominent advertising executive who divorced her mother when the girl was only eight years old. Her mother remarried (to an oilman) when Jan was still a youngster and the family relocated abroad where Jan was schooled by private tutors in Brazil, then later in London and Paris.
Although both sets of parents disapproved, Jan, who by this time possessed a strong British accent, set her sites on acting and was eventually enrolled in Fay Compton's dramatic school in London. A strong-minded young lady with a heartfelt passion for the arts, she returned to Manhattan to conquer Broadway and by the age of 17 had found her first ingénue role in "Bachelor Born," playing (naturally) a young British lady. Over the next 11 years, Jan dominated Broadway as proper British ladies while billing herself as "Jane Adrian."
One of her highlights was working with the legendary Ruth Gordon in 1942 in Gordon's first play entitled "Over 21." As Billie Dawn in the Chicago company of "Born Yesterday," Jan bowled over the critics and seemed almost a shoo-in to do the 1950 film version but she lost out in the end to Judy Holliday. The ash-blonde broke quickly into films supporting Oscar-winning Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda (1948) in a key, emotional role.
To her absolute delight, she left the docile, ladylike image behind her and was allowed to dig her nails into a florid array of cheap floozies, hard-bitten dames, and lethal schemers and stood out well with 'bad girl' parts in the films Caged (1950), Ace in the Hole (1951), Flesh and Fury (1952), The Human Jungle (1954), and Female on the Beach (1955). In between she occasionally made a nicer, or at least a more sympathetic, impression in the movies Sky Full of Moon (1952) and The High and the Mighty (1954), the latter earning her an Oscar nomination.
Married to and divorced from actor John Merivale in the 1940s, Jan later married gruff film star Paul Douglas in 1950. The couple moved away from the Hollywood scene in Burlington, Vermont. The couple appeared together professionally on occasional TV shows and Douglas revived his "Born Yesterday" Harry Brock role with a stage tour starring Jan in the Billie Dawn part. It and they were a solid hit.
Jan's career slowed down considerably after the sudden death of her 52-year-old second husband in 1959. He suffered a massive heart attack at their Hollywood home. She refocused on stage and TV but at a slower step. Incidental filming occurred on occasion, including support roles in Love in a Goldfish Bowl (1961) and The Incident (1967). She also involved herself in humanitarian causes. In the late 1960s she moved to London, England and in the 1970s, she entered into a strong personal relationship with actor Sam Wanamaker. An isolated film role came her way with a small part in First Monday in October (1981). They never married but stayed together until his death in 1993.
Inactive for nearly two decades, Jan made an appearance at the Cinecon Film Festival in Los Angeles in the fall of 2001, still charming audiences at the age of 80. On 26 March 2004, she passed away at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California. She was 82.- Actress
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Vera-Ellen began dancing at the age of 10, and a few years later became one of the youngest Rockettes. She appeared in several Broadway musicals until she was spotted by film producer Samuel Goldwyn in 1945. She was only 24 years old when Goldwyn cast her opposite Danny Kaye in Wonder Man (1945). She danced with Fred Astaire in Three Little Words (1950) and with Gene Kelly in On the Town (1949). Blonde, slim of build, and a dancing sensation, she appeared in a string of light-hearted but successful films. Vera-Ellen retired from acting in the late 1950s.- Actor
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Already trained in dance and theater, he quit school at age 13 to study music and painting. By 19 he was a professional ballroom dancer in New York, and by his mid-twenties he was performing in musicals, dramas on Broadway and in London, and in silent movies. His first real success in film came in middle age as the classy villain Waldo Lydecker in Laura (1944), followed by the part of Elliott Templeton in The Razor's Edge (1946) - both of which won him Oscar nominations. His priggish Mr. Belvedere in a series of films was supposedly not far removed from his fastidious, finicky, fussy, abrasive and condescending real-life persona. He was inseparable from his overbearing mother Maybelle, with whom he lived until her death at 91, six years before his own death. The recent success of Titanic (1997) created brief interest due his having appeared with Barbara Stanwyck in the 1953 version of the story. He is interred at Abbey of the Psalms, Hollywood Memorial Cemetery (now known as Hollywood Forever).- Actor
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Richard Widmark established himself as an icon of American cinema with his debut in the 1947 film noir Kiss of Death (1947), in which he won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination as the killer Tommy Udo. Kiss of Death (1947) and other noir thrillers established Widmark as part of a new generation of American movie actors who became stars in the post-World War II era. With fellow post-War stars Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum, Widmark brought a new kind of character to the screen in his character leads and supporting parts: a hard-boiled type who does not actively court the sympathy of the audience. Widmark was not afraid to play deeply troubled, deeply conflicted, or just downright deeply corrupt characters.
After his debut, Widmark would work steadily until he retired at the age of 76 in 1990, primarily as a character lead. His stardom would peak around the time he played the U.S. prosecutor in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) as the 1950s segued into the 1960s, but he would continue to act for another 30 years.
Richard Weedt Widmark was born in Sunrise Township, Minnesota, to Ethel Mae (Barr) and Carl Henry Widmark. His father was of Swedish descent and his mother of English and Scottish ancestry. He has said that he loved the movies from his boyhood, claiming, "I've been a movie bug since I was 4. My grandmother used to take me". The teenaged Widmark continued to go to the movies and was thrilled by Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931). "I thought Boris Karloff was great", Widmark said. Although he loved the movies and excelled at public speaking while attending high school, Widmark attended Lake Forest College with the idea of becoming a lawyer. However, he won the lead role in a college production of, fittingly enough, the play "Counsellor-at-Law", and the acting bug bit deep. After taking his bachelor of arts degree in 1936, he stayed on at Lake Forest as the Assistant Director of Speech and Drama. However, he soon quit the job and moved to New York to become an actor, and by 1938 he was appearing on radio in "Aunt Jenny's Real Life Stories". He made his Broadway debut in 1943 in the play "Kiss and Tell" and continued to appear on stage in roles that were light-years away from the tough cookies he would play in his early movies.
After World War II, he was signed by 20th Century-Fox to a seven-year contract. After seeing his screen test for the role of Tommy Udo, 20th Century-Fox boss Darryl F. Zanuck insisted that the slight, blonde Widmark - no one's idea of a heavy, particularly after his stage work - be cast as the psychopath in Kiss of Death (1947), which had been prepared as a Victor Mature vehicle. Even though the role was small, Widmark stole the picture. The publicity department at 20th Century-Fox recommended that exhibitors market the film by concentrating on thumping the tub for their new antihero. "Sell Richard Widmark" advised the studio's publicity manual that an alert 20th Century-Fox sent to theater owners. The manual told local exhibitors to engage a job printer to have "wanted" posters featuring Widmark's face printed and pasted up. He won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nod for the part, which led to an early bout with typecasting at the studio. Widmark played psychotics in The Street with No Name (1948) and Road House (1948) and held his own against new Fox superstar Gregory Peck in the William A. Wellman western Yellow Sky (1948), playing the villain, of course. When his pressuring the studio to let him play other parts paid off, his appearance as a sailor in Down to the Sea in Ships (1949) made headlines: Life magazine's March 28, 1949, issue featured a three-page spread of the movie headlined "Widmark the Movie Villain Goes Straight". He was popular, having captured the public imagination, and before the decade was out, his hand- and footprints were immortalized in concrete in the court outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.
The great director Elia Kazan cast Widmark in his thriller Panic in the Streets (1950), not as the heavy (that role went to Jack Palance) but as the physician who tracks down Palance, who has the plague, in tandem with detective Paul Douglas. Widmark was establishing himself as a real presence in the genre that later would be hailed as film noir. Having proved he could handle other roles, Widmark didn't shy away from playing heavies in quality pictures. The soon-to-be-blacklisted director Jules Dassin cast him in one of his greatest roles, as the penny-ante hustler Harry Fabian in Night and the City (1950). Set in London, Widmark's Fabian manages to survive in the jungle of the English demimonde, but is doomed. Widmark was masterful in conveying the desperation of the criminal seeking to control his own fate but who is damned, and this performance also became an icon of film noir. In that same year, he appeared in Oscar-winning writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's No Way Out (1950) as a bigot who instigates a race riot.
As the 1950s progressed, Widmark played in westerns, military vehicles, and his old stand-by genre, the thriller. He appeared with Marilyn Monroe (this time cast as the psycho) in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and made Pickup on South Street (1953) that same year for director Samuel Fuller. His seven-year contract at Fox was expiring, and Zanuck, who would not renew the deal, cast him in the western Broken Lance (1954) in a decidedly supporting role, billed beneath not only Spencer Tracy but even Robert Wagner and Jean Peters. The film was well respected, and it won an Oscar nomination for best screenplay for the front of Hollywood 10 blacklistee Albert Maltz. Widmark left Fox for the life of a freelance, forming his own company, Heath Productions. He appeared in more westerns, adventures and social dramas and pushed himself as an actor by taking the thankless role of the Dauphin in Otto Preminger's adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan (1957), a notorious flop that didn't bring anyone any honors, neither Preminger, his leading lady Jean Seberg, nor Widmark. In 1960, he was appearing in another notorious production, John Wayne's ode to suicidal patriotism, The Alamo (1960), with the personally liberal Widmark playing Jim Bowie in support of the very conservative Wayne's Davy Crockett. Along with character actor Chill Wills, Widmark arguably was the best thing in the movie.
In 1961, Widmark acquitted himself quite well as the prosecutor in producer-director Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), appearing with the Oscar-nominated Spencer Tracy and the Oscar-winning Maximilian Schell, as well as with superstar Burt Lancaster and acting genius Montgomery Clift and the legendary Judy Garland (the latter two winning Oscar nods for their small roles). Despite being showcased with all this thespian firepower, Widmark's character proved to be the axis on which the drama turned. A little later, Widmark appeared in two westerns directed by the great John Ford, with co-star James Stewart in Two Rode Together (1961) and as the top star in Ford's apologia for Indian genocide, Cheyenne Autumn (1964). On Two Rode Together (1961), Ford feuded with Jimmy Stewart over his hat. Stewart insisted on wearing the same hat he had for a decade of highly successful westerns that had made him one of the top box office stars of the 1950s. Both he and Widmark were hard-of-hearing (as well as balding and in need of help from the makeup department's wigmakers), so Ford would sit far away from them while directing scenes and then give them directions in a barely audible voice. When neither one of the stars could hear their director, Ford theatrically announced to his crew that after over 40 years in the business, he was reduced to directing two deaf toupees. It was testimony to the stature of both Stewart and Widmark as stars that this was as far as Ford's baiting went, as the great director could be extraordinarily cruel.
Widmark continued to co-star in A-pictures through the 1960s. He capped off the decade with one of his finest performances, as the amoral police detective in Don Siegel's gritty cop melodrama Madigan (1968). With Madigan, one can see Widmark's characters as a progression in the evolution of what would become the late 1960s nihilistic antihero, such as those embodied by Clint Eastwood in Siegel's later Dirty Harry (1971). In the 1970s, he continued to make his mark in movies and, beginning in 1971, in television. In movies, he appeared primarily in supporting roles, albeit in highly billed fashion, in such films as Sidney Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Robert Aldrich's Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977), and Stanley Kramer's The Domino Principle (1977). He even came back as a heavy, playing the villainous doctor in Coma (1978).
In 1971, in search of better roles, he turned to television, starring as the President of the U.S. in the TV miniseries Vanished (1971). His performance in the role brought Widmark an Emmy nomination. He resurrected the character of Madigan for NBC in six 90-minute episodes that appeared as part of the rotation of "NBC Wednesday Mystery Movie" for the fall 1972 season. Widmark was married for 55 years to playwright Jean Hazlewood, from 1942 until her death in 1997 (they had one child, Anne, who was born in 1945). He lived quietly and avoided the press, saying in 1971, "I think a performer should do his work and then shut up". Los Angeles Times critic Kevin Thomas thought that Widmark should have won an Oscar nomination for his turn in When the Legends Die (1972) playing a former rodeo star tutoring Frederic Forrest's character.
It is surprising to think that Kiss of Death (1947) represented his sole Oscar nomination, but with the rise of respect for film noir around the time his career began tapering off in the '70s, he began to be reevaluated as an actor. Unlike Bogart, who did not live to see his reputation flourish after his death, Widmark became a cult figure well before he retired.- Actress
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Susan Hayward was born Edythe Marrener in Brooklyn, New York, on June 30, 1917. Her father was a transportation worker, and Susan lived a fairly comfortable life as a child, but the precocious little redhead had no idea of the life that awaited her. She attended public school in Brooklyn, where she graduated from a commercial high school that was intended to give students a marketable skill. She had planned on becoming a secretary, but her plans changed. She started doing some modeling work for photographers in the NYC area. By 1937, her beauty in full bloom, she went to Hollywood when the nationwide search was on for someone to play the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1939). Although she--along with several hundred other aspiring Scarletts--lost out to Vivien Leigh, Susan was to carve her own signature in Hollywood circles. In 1937 she got a bit part in Hollywood Hotel (1937). The bit parts continued all through 1938, with Susan playing, among other things, a coed, a telephone operator and an aspiring actress. She wasn't happy with these bit parts, but she also realized she had to "pay her dues". In 1939 she finally landed a part with substance, playing Isobel Rivers in the hit action film Beau Geste (1939). In 1941 she played Millie Perkins in the offbeat thriller Among the Living (1941). This quirky little film showed Hollywood Susan's considerable dramatic qualities for the first time. She then played a Southern belle in Cecil B. DeMille's Reap the Wild Wind (1942), one of the director's bigger successes, and once again showed her mettle as an actress. Following that movie she starred with Paulette Goddard and Fred MacMurray in The Forest Rangers (1942), playing tough gal Tana Mason. Although such films as Jack London (1943), And Now Tomorrow (1944) and Deadline at Dawn (1946) continued to showcase her talent, she still hadn't gotten the meaty role she craved. In 1947, however, she did, and received the first of five Academy Award nominations, this one for her portrayal of Angelica Evans in Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947). She played the part to the hilt and many thought she would take home the Oscar, but she lost out to Loretta Young for The Farmer's Daughter (1947). In 1949 Susan was nominated again for My Foolish Heart (1949) and again was up against stiff competition, but once more her hopes were dashed when Olivia de Havilland won for The Heiress (1949). Now, however, with two Oscar nominations under her belt, Susan was a force to be reckoned with. Good scripts finally started to come her way and she chose carefully because she wanted to appear in good quality productions. Her caution paid off, as she garnered yet a third nomination in 1953 for With a Song in My Heart (1952). Later that year she starred as Rachel Donaldson Robards Jackson in The President's Lady (1953). She was superb as Andrew Jackson's embittered wife, who dies before he was able to take office as President of the United States. After her fourth Academy Award nomination for I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955), Susan began to wonder if she would ever take home the coveted gold statue. She didn't have much longer to wait, though. In 1958 she gave the performance of her lifetime as real-life California killer Barbara Graham in I Want to Live! (1958), who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in the gas chamber. Susan was absolutely riveting in her portrayal of the doomed woman. Many film buffs consider it to be one of the finest performances of all time, and this time she was not only nominated for Best Actress, but won. After that role she appeared in about one movie a year. In 1972 she made her last theatrical film, The Revengers (1972). She had been diagnosed with cancer, and the disease finally claimed her life on March 14, 1975, in Hollywood. She was 57.- Actress
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Anne Baxter was born in Michigan City, Indiana, on May 7, 1923. She was the daughter of a salesman, Kenneth Stuart Baxter, and his wife, Catherine Dorothy (Wright), who herself was the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, the world-renowned architect. Anne was a young girl of 11 when her parents moved to New York City, which at that time was still the hub of the entertainment industry even though the film colony was moving west. The move there encouraged her to consider acting as a vocation. By the time she was 13 she had already appeared in a stage production of 'Seen but Not Heard'", and had garnered rave reviews from the tough Broadway critics. The play helped her gain entrance to an exclusive acting school.
In 1937, Anne made her first foray into Hollywood to test the waters there in the film industry. As she was thought to be too young for a film career, she packed her bags and returned to the New York stage with her mother, where she continued to act on Broadway and summer stock up and down the East Coast. Undaunted by the failure of her previous effort to crack Hollywood, Anne returned to California two years later to try again. This time her luck was somewhat better. She took a screen test which was ultimately seen by the moguls of Twentieth Century-Fox, and she was signed to a seven-year contract. However, before she could make a movie with Fox, Anne was loaned out to MGM to make 20 Mule Team (1940). At only 17 years of age, she was already in the kind of pictures that other starlets would have had to slave for years as an extra before landing a meaty role. Back at Fox, that same year, Anne played Mary Maxwell in The Great Profile (1940), which was a box-office dud. The following year she played Amy Spettigue in the remake of Charley's Aunt (1941). It still wasn't a great role, but it was better than a bit part. The only other film job Anne appeared in that year was in Swamp Water (1941). It was the first role that was really worth anything, but critics weren't that impressed with Anne, her role nor the movie. In 1942 Anne played Joseph Cotten's daughter, Lucy Morgan, in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). The following year she appeared in The North Star (1943), the first film where she received top billing. The film was a critical and financial success and Anne came in for her share of critical plaudits. Guest in the House (1944) the next year was a dismal failure, but Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944) was received much better by the public, though it was ripped apart by the critics. Anne starred with John Hodiak, who would become her first husband in 1947 (Anne was to divorce Hodiak in 1954. Her other two husbands were Randolph Galt and David Klee).
In 1946 Anne portrayed Sophie MacDonald in The Razor's Edge (1946), a film that would land her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She had come a long way in so short a time, but for her next two films she was just the narrator: Mother Wore Tights (1947) and Blaze of Noon (1947). It would be 1950 before she landed another decent role--the part of Eve Harrington in All About Eve (1950). This film garnered Anne her second nomination, but she lost the Oscar to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday (1950). After several films through the 1950s, Anne landed what many considered a plum role--Queen Nefretiri in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). Never in her Hollywood career did Anne look as beautiful as she did as the Egyptian queen, opposite Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner. After that epic, job offers got fewer because she wasn't tied to a studio, instead opting to freelance her talents. After no appearances in 1958, she made one film in 1959 Season of Passion (1959) and one in 1960 Cimarron (1960).
After Walk on the Wild Side (1962), she took a hiatus from filming for the next four years. She was hardly idle, though. She appeared often on stage and on television. She wasn't particularly concerned with being a celebrity or a personality; she was more concerned with being just an actress and trying hard to produce the best performance she was capable of. After several notable TV appearances, Anne became a staple of two television series, East of Eden (1981) and Hotel (1983). Her final moment before the public eye was as Irene Adler in the TV film Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death (1984). On December 12, 1985, Anne died of a stroke in New York. She was 62.- Actor
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James Mason was born in Huddersfield and had a film career spanning over 50 years during which he appeared in over 100 films in England and America but never won an Oscar. Whatever role he played, from the wounded Belfast gunman in Odd Man Out to Rommel in The Desert Fox, his creamy velvet voice gave him away. Like Charlie Chaplin James left the screen to spend his later life living in Switzerland. His first marriage had been to Pamela Kellino, a Yorkshire mill owner's daughter and his second to Australian actress Clarissa Kaye.- Actor
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The athletic William Lundigan stood 6' 2" and weighed 170 pounds. He played football, basketball and tennis at Syracuse (NY) University. He was discovered by Charles R. Rogers, head of production at Universal Studios. Rogers happened to tune into radio station WFBL in Syracuse. He was so intrigued by a voice he heard reading a commercial that he gave instructions for the speaker to be located, brought to New York and tested for movie possibilities. The speaker, of course, was Lundigan. He had gotten the announcing job because his father owned the building that housed WBFL. Later in his career Lundigan was successful as the host of the CBS programs Climax! (1954) and Shower of Stars (1954). For these programs he delivered on-air commercials for their sponsor, Chrysler Motors. Off screen he traveled as a goodwill ambassador for the company, covering over 100,000 miles on the road and visiting 560,000 people in 90 weeks.- Actor
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American leading man Victor John Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Clara P. (Ackley) and Marcellus George Mature, a cutler and knife sharpener. His father, born Marcello Gelindo Maturi in Pinzolo, Trentino, was Italian, and his mother was of Swiss-German and German descent. Mature worked as a teenager with his father as a salesman for butcher supplies. Hoping to become an actor, he studied at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He auditioned for Gone with the Wind (1939) for the role ultimately played by his fellow Playhouse student, George Reeves. After achieving some acclaim in his first few films, he served in the Coast Guard in World War II. Mature became one of Hollywood's busiest and most popular actors after the war, though rarely was he given the critical respect he often deserved. His roles in John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) and in Henry Hathaway's Kiss of Death (1947) were among his finest work, though he moved more and more frequently into more exotic roles in films like Samson and Delilah (1949) and The Egyptian (1954). Never an energetic actor nor one of great artistic pretensions, he nevertheless continued as a Hollywood stalwart both in programme and in more prominent films like The Robe (1953). More interested in golf than acting, his appearances diminished through the 1960s, but he made a stunning comeback of sorts in a hilarious romp as a very Victor Mature-like actor in Neil Simon's After the Fox (1966). Golf eventually took over his activities and, after a cameo as Samson's father in a TV remake of his own "Samson and Delilah" (Samson and Delilah (1984)), he retired for good. Rumors occasionally surfaced of another comeback, most notably in a never-realized remake of Red River (1948) with Sylvester Stallone, but none came to fruition. He died of cancer at his Rancho Santa Fe, California, home in 1999.- Actor
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Dale Robertson, the actor who made his name in television Westerns in the 1950s and '60s, was born on July 14, 1923, in Harrah, Oklahoma. After serving in a tank crew and in the combat engineers in North Africa and Europe during World War II, the twice-wounded Robertson started his acting career while still on active duty in the U.S. Army. While stationed at San Luis Obispo, California, had a photograph taken for his mother. A copy of the photo displayed in the photo shop window attracted movie scouts, and the six foot tall, 180-lb. Robertson soon was on his way to Hollywood. Will Rogers Jr., whose father is the most famous son of Oklahoma, told him to avoid formal training and keep his own persona. Robertson took his advice and avoided acting classes.
Robertson was typecast in Western movies and TV shows when the genre was still America's favorite. He headlined two TV series, Tales of Wells Fargo (1957), in which he played the roving trouble-shooter Jim Hardie, and Iron Horse (1966), in which he won a railway in a poker game. He also served as one of the hosts, along with Ronald Reagan, of the syndicated series Death Valley Days (1952) during the 1960s. Robertson later appeared in the inaugural season of Dynasty (1981).
Robertson is a recipient of the Golden Boot Award in 1985, and was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers and the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. He is retired on a ranch near Oklahoma City, not far from his birthplace of Harrah.- Actress
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With prominent cheekbones, luminous skin and the most crystalline green eyes of her day, Gene Tierney's striking good looks helped propel her to stardom. Her best known role is the enigmatic murder victim in Laura (1944). She was also Oscar-nominated for Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Her acting performances were few in the 1950s as she battled a troubled emotional life that included hospitalization and shock treatment for depression.
Gene Eliza Tierney was born on November 19, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York, to well-to-do parents, Belle Lavinia (Taylor) and Howard Sherwood Tierney. Her father was a successful insurance broker and her mother was a former teacher. Her childhood was lavish indeed. She also lived, at times, with her equally successful grandparents in Connecticut and New York. She was educated in the finest schools on the East Coast and at a finishing school in Switzerland.
After two years in Europe, Gene returned to the US where she completed her education. By 1938 she was performing on Broadway in What a Life! and understudied for the Primrose Path (1938) at the same time. Her wealthy father set up a corporation that was only to promote her theatrical pursuits. Her first role consisted of carrying a bucket of water across the stage, prompting one critic to announce that "Miss Tierney is, without a doubt, the most beautiful water carrier I have ever seen!" Her subsequent roles Mrs O'Brian Entertains (1939) and RingTwo (1939) were meatier and received praise from the tough New York critics. Critic Richard Watts wrote "I see no reason why Miss Tierney should not have a long and interesting theatrical career, that is if the cinema does not kidnap her away."
After being spotted by the legendary Darryl F. Zanuck during a stage performance of the hit show The Male Animal (1940), Gene was signed to a contract with 20th Century-Fox. Her first role as Barbara Hall in Hudson's Bay (1940) would be the send-off vehicle for her career. Later that year she appeared in The Return of Frank James (1940). The next year would prove to be a very busy one for Gene, as she appeared in The Shanghai Gesture (1941), Sundown (1941), Tobacco Road (1941) and Belle Starr (1941). She tried her hand at screwball comedy in Rings on Her Fingers (1942), which was a great success. Her performances in each of these productions were masterful. In 1945 she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Ellen Brent in Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Though she didn't win, it solidified her position in Hollywood society. She followed up with another great performance as Isabel Bradley in the hit The Razor's Edge (1946).
In 1944, she played what is probably her best-known role (and, most critics agree, her most outstanding performance) in Otto Preminger's Laura (1944), in which she played murder victim named Laura Hunt. In 1947 Gene played Lucy Muir in the acclaimed The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947). By this time Gene was the hottest player around, and the 1950s saw no letup as she appeared in a number of good films, among them Night and the City (1950), The Mating Season (1951), Close to My Heart (1951), Plymouth Adventure (1952), Personal Affair (1953) and The Left Hand of God (1955). The latter was to be her last performance for seven years. The pressures of a failed marriage to Oleg Cassini, the birth of a daughter with learning disabilities in 1943, and several unhappy love affairs resulted in Gene being hospitalized for depression. When she returned to the the screen in Advise & Consent (1962), her acting was as good as ever but there was no longer a big demand for her services.
Her last feature film was The Pleasure Seekers (1964), and her final appearance in the film industry was in a TV miniseries, Scruples (1980). Gene died of emphysema in Houston, Texas, on November 6, 1991, just two weeks shy of her 71st birthday.- Actor
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His father was an insurance executive; his mother died when he was four. He attended Western Michigan University then worked as a statistician in Cleveland where he joined a Shakespeare repertory company. Two years later he had a minor role in "The American Way" in New York. He was rejected by the army in World War II but volunteered as an ambulance driver in North Africa. He returned to critical acclaim on Broadway (Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill). He was the earned a Tony award for acting ("Finian's Rainbow", 1947) for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. He moved to Los Angeles in 1977 though his movie credits go back to Portrait of Jennie (1948) and Adam's Rib (1949). Among his many television roles were a bank official in his own comedy series, Norby (1955), James Merrick, a heart patient in the episode Heartbeat (1957), the part of Inspector Queen in the Manfred Lee's Ellery Queen (1975) series and of "Digger" Barnes in Dallas (1978). In his last feature film, he played an inquisitive but slightly senile train conductor in the irreverent comedy, " Finders Keepers"(1985).- Actor
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Cornel Wilde was born Kornel Lajos Weisz on October 13, 1912 in Prievidza, Hungary (now part of Slovakia) to a Jewish family. In 1920, he immigrated to New York City with his parents, Rayna (Vid) and Vojtech Béla Weisz, and elder sister, Edith. His family Anglicized their names. Kornel took the name Cornelius Louis Wilde. He spent much of his youth traveling in Europe, developing a continental flair as well as an affinity for languages. He received a scholarship for medical school, but turned it down in favor of his new love, the theatre.
A natural athlete and a champion fencer with the U.S. Olympic fencing team, he quit the team just prior to the 1936 Berlin Olympics in order to take a role in a play. In 1937, he married Marjorie Heintzen (later known as Patricia Knight), and they both shaved a few years off their ages in order to get work, Wilde thereafter claiming publicly he was born in New York in 1915 while continuing to list his correct place and year of birth on government documents.
Shortening his name to Cornel Wilde for the stage, he appeared in the Broadway hit "Having a Wonderful Time", but it wasn't until he was hired in the dual capacities of fencing choreographer and actor (Tybalt) in Laurence Olivier's 1940 Broadway production of "Romeo and Juliet" that Hollywood spotted him. He played a few minor roles before leaping to fame and an Oscar nomination as Frederic Chopin in A Song to Remember (1945). He spent the balance of the 1940s in romantic, and often swashbuckling, leading roles.
During the 1950s, his star dimmed a little, and aside from an occasional blockbuster like The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), he settled mainly into adventure films. A growing interest in directing led him to form his own production company with the goal of directing his own films. Several of his ventures into film noir in this period, both his own and those of other directors, are quite interesting (The Big Combo (1955) and Storm Fear (1955), for example). He produced, directed and starred in The Naked Prey (1965), a tour-de-force adventure drama that brought him real acclaim as a director. His later films were of varying quality, and he ended his career in near-cameos in minor adventure films. He died of leukemia in 1989, three days after his 77th birthday, leaving behind an unpublished autobiography, "The Wilde Life".- Actress
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An acting career was always in the cards for Debra Paget (nee Debralee Griffin) and her siblings, coming from a show biz family and being the offspring of a "stage mother" anxious to get her kids into the movies. Paget's sister Teala Loring got her movie breaks in the 1940s, Lisa Gaye was a film and TV star in the 50s and 60s, and even brother Frank Griffin (acting as 'Ruell Shayne') landed some film jobs. Paget got a 20th Century-Fox contract at age 14 and her first role in the film noir Cry of the City (1948), her first of nearly 20 movies at the studio, mostly Westerns, swashbucklers and period musicals. Every inch (all five-foot-two of her) the Hollywood star, Paget retired from the screen after marrying a Chinese millionaire in 1962.- Actress
- Make-Up Department
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Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but then she discovered the stage, and gave up dancing for acting. To her, it presented much more of a challenge.
After graduation from Cushing Academy, she was refused admittance to Eva Le Gallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory. She enrolled in John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School and was the star pupil. She was in the off-Broadway play "The Earth Between" (1923), and her Broadway debut in 1929 was in "Broken Dishes". She also appeared in "Solid South". Late in 1930, she was hired by Universal, where she made her first film, called Bad Sister (1931). When she arrived in Hollywood, the studio representative who went to meet her train left without her because he could find no one who looked like a movie star. An official at Universal complained she had "as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville" and her performance in "Bad Sister" didn't impress.
In 1932, she signed a seven-year deal with Warner Brothers Pictures. Her first film with them was The Man Who Played God (1932). She became a star after this appearance, known as the actress that could play a variety of very strong and complex roles. More fairly successful movies followed, but it was the role of Mildred Rogers in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) that would give Bette major acclaim from the film critics. She had a significant number of write-in votes for the Best Actress Oscar, but didn't win. Warner Bros. felt their seven-year deal with Bette was more than justified. They had a genuine star on their hands. With this success under her belt, she began pushing for stronger and more meaningful roles. In 1935, she received her first Oscar for her role in Dangerous (1935) as Joyce Heath.
In 1936, she was suspended without pay for turning down a role that she deemed unworthy of her talent. She went to England, where she had planned to make movies, but was stopped by Warner Bros. because she was still under contract to them. They did not want her to work anywhere. Although she sued to get out of her contract, she lost. Still, they began to take her more seriously after that.
Returning after losing her lawsuit, her roles improved dramatically. In 1938, Bette received a second Academy Award win for her work in Jezebel (1938) opposite the soon-to-be-legendary Henry Fonda. The only role she didn't get that she wanted was Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Warners wouldn't loan her to David O. Selznick unless he hired Errol Flynn to play Rhett Butler, which both Selznick and Davis thought was a terrible choice. It was rumored she had numerous affairs, among them George Brent and William Wyler, and she was married four times, three of which ended in divorce. She admitted her career always came first.
She made many successful films in the 1940s, but each picture was weaker than the last and by the time her Warner Brothers contract had ended in 1949, she had been reduced to appearing in such films as the unintentionally hilarious Beyond the Forest (1949). She made a huge comeback in 1950 when she replaced an ill Claudette Colbert in, and received an Oscar nomination for, All About Eve (1950). She worked in films through the 1950s, but her career eventually came to a standstill, and in 1961 she placed a now famous Job Wanted ad in the trade papers.
She received an Oscar nomination for her role as a demented former child star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). This brought about a new round of super-stardom for generations of fans who were not familiar with her work. Two years later, she starred in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Bette was married four times.
In 1977 she received the AFI's Lifetime Achievement Award and in 1979 she won a Best Actress Emmy for Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter (1979). In 1977-78 she moved from Connecticut to Los Angeles and filmed a pilot for the series Hotel (1983), which she called Brothel. She refused to do the TV series and suffered a stroke during this time.
Her last marriage, to actor Gary Merrill, lasted ten years, longer than any of the previous three. In 1985, her daughter Barbara Davis ("B.D.") Hyman published a scandalous book about Bette called "My Mother's Keeper." Bette worked in the later 1980s in films and TV, even though a stroke had impaired her appearance and mobility. She wrote a book, "This 'N That", during her recovery from the stroke. Her last book was "Bette Davis, The Lonely Life", issued in paperback in 1990. It included an update from 1962 to 1989. She wrote the last chapter in San Sebastian, Spain.
Sadly, Bette Davis died on October 6, 1989, of metastasized breast cancer, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Many of her fans refused to believe she was gone.- Actor
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Gary Merrill was born August 2, 1915, in Hartford, Connecticut. He began his career acting in summer stock plays. He married Barbara Leeds, an actress, and then served a brief stint in the army. After the army, he landed in New York, where he was chosen to join the already popular play "Born Yesterday". In 1950 he was cast in the part of Bill Sampson in All About Eve (1950). It would be his first time meeting Bette Davis and they became an instant couple. After their respective divorces, they were married in Mexico. She was 42 and he was 35. During their marriage they adopted two children, Margot and Michael, and after ten years of fighting and financial problems they divorced. Merrill did not marry again, though he was involved with Rita Hayworth for a time. Later in his career Merrill made a lucrative living doing voice-overs for radio and television commercials. In 1988 he published his autobiography, "Bette, Rita, And The Rest Of My Life". He died of lung cancer at the age of 74.- The daughter of a United Press executive, Mala Powers attended the Max Reinhardt Junior Workshop as a kid and fell in love with acting the first time she set foot on a stage. She made her film debut in Universal's 1942 Tough As They Come (1942) before actress Helene Thimig (Max Reinhardt's wife) convinced her to continue studying rather than become a child actress. Powers worked in radio ("Cisco Kid", "Red Ryder", "This Is Your F.B.I.", "Lux Radio Theater", "Screen Guild on the Air") and met actress Ida Lupino while working on the latter show; Lupino auditioned and approved Powers for the top role in Outrage (1950), made by Lupino's Filmmakers production company. Powers' promising career was derailed by illness in the early '50s; when she resumed work, it was as the "B queen" of Westerns and sci-fi flicks (and much TV). For many years she has been lecturing on and teaching the Michael Chekhov acting technique throughout the U.S.
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Dolores Diane (her first stage name) made her film debut at age 14 in Girls' Town (1942), a "B" picture from low-rent PRC, then played a series of juvenile roles at Universal in 1943-45 (sometimes as part of a teen dancing group known as The Jivin' Jacks and Jills). She worked at MGM (where her stage name became Helene Stanley) and elsewhere from 1945-50 and at 20th Century-Fox in 1952, but her roles never rose above starlet level. Her last role at MGM, notable if uncredited, was in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) as the sexy teenager who causes Doc's downfall. Her live-action cinema career ended with Dial Red O (1955), both English and German-language versions. However, in a second career she made major, if invisible, contributions to Disney animated features, which used live-action films as the basis for animation. Helene modeled Cinderella (1950), Sleeping Beauty (1959) and the young wife in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961). Amusingly, one critic complained that Cinderella was too "voluptuous"! Also for Disney, Helene appeared in the Davy Crockett TV-films as Davy's wife Polly. Helene was (briefly) the third wife of gangster Johnny Stompanato, whose subsequent fatal affair with Lana Turner made headlines. Her second marriage to David Niemetz, a Beverly Hills physician, was happier, and she formally retired from show business on the birth of her son in 1961. The cause of her 1990 death was not reported.- Actress
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Sally's parents were both amateur ballroom dancers, so it was no surprise when Sally developed an interest in dancing. She entered dance classes by the first grade and was signed by MGM upon her graduation from high school. In 1945, she moved with her parents to Hollywood, where Sally worked on the dances used in the films Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) and The Kissing Bandit (1948). Soon unemployed, she worked in small roles until she teamed with Ida Lupino, who was producing and directing small films at the time, and Sally was cast in the lead role of Not Wanted (1949). The picture was a critical and commercial success, and Sally also received critical acclaim for her role. After appearing in a few more Lupino movies, including Never Fear (1950), Sally returned to MGM, where she was cast in movies with stars such as Boris Karloff and Red Skelton. When her husband, Milo O. Frank Jr., moved to New York, she went with him. There, she worked in summer stock and on Broadway in the stage play "The Seven Year Itch". Sally appeared in only a couple of movies after that, but she again worked with Ida Lupino in While the City Sleeps (1956).- Actor
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Jeffrey Hunter was born Henry Herman McKinnies Jr. on November 25, 1926 in New Orleans, Louisiana, an only child. His parents met at the University of Arkansas, and when he was almost four his family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In his teens, he acted in productions of the North Shore Children's Theater and, from 1942 to 1944, performed in summer stock with the local Port Players, along with Eileen Heckart, Charlotte Rae and Morton DaCosta. Hunter was also a radio actor at WTMJ, getting his first professional paycheck in 1945 for the wartime series "Those Who Serve." After graduation from Whitefish Bay High School, where he was co-captain of the football team, he enlisted in the United States Navy and underwent training at Great Lakes Naval Station, Illinois, in 1945-1946, but on the eve of his shipping out for active duty in Japan he took ill and received a medical discharge from the service.
Hunter attended and graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor's degree in 1949, where he acquired more stage experience in Sheridan's "The Rivals" and Ruth Gordon's "Years Ago". He also did summer stock with Northwestern students at Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania in 1948, worked on two Northwestern Radio Playshop broadcasts, was president of Phi Delta Theta Fraternity, and was active in the campus film society with David Bradley, later acting in director David Bradley's production of Julius Caesar (1950) in 1949. He then attended graduate school at the University of California at Los Angeles, where he studied radio and drama. He was in the cast of a UCLA production of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons" in May, 1950; on opening night, the good-looking Hunter drew the attention of talent scouts from Paramount and 20th Century-Fox Studios.
Hunter made a screen test with Ed Begley in a scene from "All My Sons" at Paramount (where he met Barbara Rush, his future wife), but after an executive shake-up at that studio derailed his hiring, he was signed by 20th Century Fox (where he remained under contract until 1959) and within a month was sent on location in New York for Fourteen Hours (1951). Hunter was kept fairly busy in pictures, working his way from featured roles to starring roles to first-billing within two years in Sailor of the King (1953). His big break came with John Ford's classic, The Searchers (1956), where he played the young cowboy who accompanies John Wayne on his epic search for a child kidnapped by Comanches. Hunter got excellent reviews for his performance in this film and justifiably so, as he held his own well with the veteran Wayne.
Starring roles in two more John Ford movies followed, and in 1960, Hunter had one of his best roles in Hell to Eternity (1960), the true story of World War II hero Guy Gabaldon. That same year, Hunter landed the role for which he is probably best known (although it's far from his best work), when he played Jesus in producer Samuel Bronston's King of Kings (1961), which due to Hunter's still youthful looks at 33, was dubbed by irreverent Hollywood wags "I Was a Teenage Jesus." After the cancellation of his Western series Temple Houston (1963), and his decision not to continue in the lead role of the current series Star Trek (1966), his career took a downturn, and Hunter eventually wound up in Europe working on cheap Westerns, at the time a sure sign of a career in trouble.
While in Spain in November 1968 to film Cry Chicago (¡Viva América!), a story about the Chicago Mafia, Hunter was injured in an on-set explosion when a car window near him, which had been rigged to explode outward, accidentally exploded inward. Hunter sustained a serious concussion. According to Hunter's wife Emily, he "went into shock" on the flight back to the United States after filming and "couldn't speak. He could hardly move." After landing, Hunter was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, but doctors could not find any serious injuries except for a displaced vertebra and a concussion.
On the afternoon of May 26, 1969, Hunter suffered an intracranial hemorrhage while walking down a three-stair set of steps at his home in Van Nuys, California. He fell, knocked over a planter, and struck his head on the banister, fracturing his skull. He was found unconscious by Frank Bellow, an actor and a friend of Hunter's, who came for a visit, and taken to Valley Presbyterian Hospital, where he underwent brain surgery. He died at about 9:30 the following morning at the age of 42.- Actress
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Ann Miller was born Johnnie Lucille Ann Collier on April 12, 1923 in Chireno, Texas. She lived there until she was nine, when her mother left her philandering father and moved with Ann to Los Angeles, California. Even at that young age, she had to support her mother, who was hearing-impaired and unable to hold a job. After taking tap-dancing lessons, she got jobs dancing in various Hollywood nightclubs while being home-schooled. Then, in 1937, RKO asked her to sign on as a contract player, but only if she could prove she was 18. Though she was really barely 14, she managed to get hold of a fake birth certificate, and so was signed on, playing dancers and ingénues in such films as Stage Door (1937), You Can't Take It with You (1938), Room Service (1938) and Too Many Girls (1940). In 1939, she appeared on Broadway in "George White's Scandals" and was a smash, staying on for two years. Eventually, RKO released her from her contract, but Columbia Pictures snapped her up to appear in such World War II morale boosters as True to the Army (1942) and Reveille with Beverly (1943). When she decided to get married, Columbia released her from her contract. The marriage was sadly unhappy and she was divorced in two years. This time, MGM picked her up, showcasing her in such films as Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949) and Kiss Me Kate (1953). In the mid-1950s, she asked to leave to marry again, and her request was granted. This marriage didn't last long, either, nor did a third. Ann then threw herself into work, appearing on television, in nightclubs and on the stage. She was a smash as the last actress to headline the Broadway production of "Mame" in 1969 and 1970, and an even bigger smash in "Sugar Babies" in 1979, which she played for nine years, on Broadway and on tour. She has cut back in recent years, but did appear in the Paper Mill Playhouse (Millburn, New Jersey) production of Stephen Sondheim's "Follies" in 1998, in which she sang the song "I'm Still Here", a perfect way to sum up the life and career of Ann Miller. On January 22, 2004, Ann Miller died at age 80 of lung cancer and was buried at the Holy Cross Cemetary in Culver City, California.- George Fisher was a Hollywood gossip columnist and radio broadcaster who worked for the "Los Angeles Evening News" (later the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner") and multiple radio stations in the southern California region. He also was a columnist for the popular movie magazines "Modern Screen" and "Radio Mirror".
Fisher started his career as a radio announcer at the age of 18, broadcasting stories carried by the "San Francisco Examiner", where he had started work as a 15-year-old copy boy. He continued as a radio broadcaster for 33 years. - Actor
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Comedian Bob Hope was born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, London, England, the fifth of seven sons of Avis (Townes), light opera singer, and William Henry Hope, a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. His maternal grandmother was Welsh. Hope moved to Bristol before emigrating with his parents to the USA in 1908. After some years onstage as a dancer and comedian, he made his first film appearance in The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938) singing "Thanks for the Memory", which became his signature tune.
In partnership with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, he appeared in the highly successful "Road to ..." comedies (1940-52), and in many others until the early 1970s. During World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars he spent much time entertaining the troops in the field. For these activities and for his continued contributions to the industry he received five honorary Academy Awards.- Actor
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Edgar Bergen was born on 16 February 1903 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Fun and Fancy Free (1947), The Muppet Movie (1979) and Letter of Introduction (1938). He was married to Frances Bergen. He died on 30 September 1978 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.- Jacques Bergerac was born on 26 May 1927 in Biarritz, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France. He was an actor, known for Gigi (1958), Missione speciale Lady Chaplin (1966) and Un homme se penche sur son passé (1958). He was married to Dorothy Malone and Ginger Rogers. He died on 15 June 2014 in Anglet, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France.
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Character actress Shirley Booth could play everything in all facets of show business, whether it was Miss Duffy the Tavern Owner's Man Crazy Daughter on "Duffy's Tavern", the sassy maid on TV's Hazel (1961) or the pathetic woman in Come Back, Little Sheba (1952). For those who only know her through her sitcom, it might be hard to believe she was a seasoned theatrical veteran, having appeared on Broadway from 1925-70. She was highly regarded as a stage actress and ranks as one of the premier talents of the 20th-century theatre.- Writer
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Charles Brackett, born in Saratoga Springs, New York, of Scottish ancestry, followed in his attorney-father's footsteps and graduated with a law degree from Harvard University in 1920. He practised law for several years, before commencing work as drama critic for The New Yorker (1925-29), in addition to submitting short stories to The Saturday Evening Post. In 1932, Brackett left for Hollywood as a screenwriter. He was signed by Paramount primarily on the strength of his novel "Week-End". Brackett remained at the studio until 1950, doubling up as producer from 1945.
During his tenure at Paramount, Brackett became part of one of the most celebrated screenwriting partnerships in the motion picture business, alongside Billy Wilder. They were eventually dubbed by Life Magazine as "the happiest couple in Hollywood". Despite having very different personalities and arguing incessantly -- Wilder being the more extroverted and cynical, while Bracket was, to quote Gloria Swanson, 'quieter, more refined' -- their collaboration endured until 1951, spanning fourteen motion pictures. Many of their most popular hits, such as Ninotchka (1939), Ball of Fire (1941) and The Lost Weekend (1945), were noted for their intricate scripting and witty, sardonic dialogue. The culmination of their efforts was Sunset Boulevard (1950), which won an Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay. Following this, the team split up at the peak of their success, each going their separate ways.
Brackett moved on to work under contract at 20th Century Fox for the next eight years. With Walter Reisch, he co-wrote the screenplays for Niagara (1953) and Titanic (1953), winning his third Oscar for the latter. He also produced the superior western Garden of Evil (1954), the historical drama The Virgin Queen (1955) and the lavish musical The King and I (1956). Brackett retired due to illness after producing State Fair (1962).- Director
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One of seven children, Frank Capra was born on May 18, 1897, in Bisacquino, Sicily. On May 10, 1903, his family left for America aboard the ship Germania, arriving in New York on May 23rd. "There's no ventilation, and it stinks like hell. They're all miserable. It's the most degrading place you could ever be," Capra said about his Atlantic passage. "Oh, it was awful, awful. It seems to always be storming, raining like hell and very windy, with these big long rolling Atlantic waves. Everybody was sick, vomiting. God, they were sick. And the poor kids were always crying."
The family boarded a train for the trip to California, where Frank's older brother Benjamin was living. On their journey, they subsisted on bread and bananas, as their lack of English made it impossible for them to ask for any other kind of foodstuffs. On June 3, the Capra family arrived at the Southern Pacific station in Los Angeles, at the time, a small city of approximately 102,000 people. The family stayed with Capra's older brother Benjamin, and on September 14, 1903, Frank began his schooling at the Castelar Elementary school.
In 1909, he entered Los Angeles' Manual Arts High School. Capra made money selling newspapers in downtown L.A. after school and on Saturdays, sometimes working with his brother Tony. When sales were slow, Tony punched Frank to attract attention, which would attract a crowd and make Frank's papers sell quicker. Frank later became part of a two-man music combo, playing at various places in the red light district of L.A., including brothels, getting paid a dollar per night, performing the popular songs. He also worked as a janitor at the high school in the early mornings. It was at high school that he became interested in the theater, typically doing back-stage work such as lighting.
Capra's family pressured him to drop out of school and go to work, but he refused, as he wanted to partake fully of the American Dream, and for that he needed an education. Capra later reminisced that his family "thought I was a bum. My mother would slap me around; she wanted me to quit school. My teachers would urge me to keep going....I was going to school because I had a fight on my hands that I wanted to win."
Capra graduated from high school on January 27, 1915, and in September of that year, he entered the Throop College of Technology (later the California Institute of Technology) to study chemical engineering. The school's annual tuition was $250, and Capra received occasional financial support from his family, who were resigned to the fact they had a scholar in their midst. Throop had a fine arts department, and Capra discovered poetry and the essays of Montaigne, which he fell in love with, while matriculating at the technical school. He then decided to write.
"It was a great discovery for me. I discovered language. I discovered poetry. I discovered poetry at Caltech, can you imagine that? That was a big turning point in my life. I didn't know anything could be so beautiful." Capra penned "The Butler's Failure," about an English butler provoked by poverty to murder his employer, then to suicide."
Capra was singled out for a cash award of $250 for having the highest grades in the school. Part of his prize was a six-week trip across the U.S. and Canada. When Capra's father, Turiddu, died in 1916, Capra started working at the campus laundry to make money.
After the U.S. Congress declared War on Germany on April 6, 1917, Capra enlisted in the Army, and while he was not a naturalized citizen yet, he was allowed to join the military as part of the Coastal Artillery. Capra became a supply officer for the student soldiers at Throop, who have been enrolled in a Reserve Officers Training Corps program. At his enlistment, Capra discovered he was not an American citizen; he became naturalized in 1920.
On September 15, 1918, Capra graduated from Throop with his bachelor's degree, and was inducted into the U.S. Army on October 18th and shipped out to the Presidio at San Francisco. An armistice ending the fighting of World War One would be declared in less than a month. While at the Presidio, Capra became ill with the Spanish influenza that claimed 20 million lives worldwide. He was discharged from the Army on December 13th and moved to his brother Ben's home in L.A. While recuperating, Capra answered a cattle call for extras for John Ford's film "The The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1919) (Capra, cast as a laborer in the Ford picture, introduced himself to the film's star, Harry Carey. Two decades later, Capra, designated the #1 director in Hollywood by "Time" magazine, would cast Carey and his movie actress wife Olive in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) for which Carey won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination).
While living at his mother's house, Capra took on a wide variety of manual laboring jobs, including errand boy and ditch digger, even working as an orange tree pruner at 20 cents a day. He continued to be employed as an extra at movie studios and as a prop buyer at an independent studio at Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street, which later became the home of Columbia Pictures, where Capra would make his reputation as the most successful movie director of the 1930s. Most of his time was spent unemployed and idle, which gave credence to his family's earlier opposition to him seeking higher education. Capra wrote short stories but was unable to get them published. He eventually got work as a live-in tutor for the son of "Lucky" Baldwin, a rich gambler. (He later used the Baldwin estate as a location for Dirigible (1931)).
Smitten by the movie bug, in August of that year, Capra, former actor W. M. Plank, and financial backer Ida May Heitmann incorporated the Tri-State Motion Picture Co. in Nevada. Tri-State produced three short films in Nevada in 1920, Don't Change Your Husband (1919), The Pulse of Life (1917), and The Scar of Love (1920), all directed by Plank, and possibly based on story treatments written by Capra. The films were failures, and Capra returned to Los Angeles when Tri-State broke up. In March 1920, Capra was employed by CBC Film Sales Co., the corporate precursor of Columbia Films, where he also worked as an editor and director on a series called "Screen Snapshots." He quit CBC in August and moved to San Francisco, but the only jobs he could find were that of bookseller and door-to-door salesman. Once again seeming to fulfill his family's prophecy, he turned to gambling, and also learned to ride the rails with a hobo named Frank Dwyer. There was also a rumor that he became a traveling salesman specializing in worthless securities, according to a "Time" magazine story "Columbia's Gem" (August 8, 1938 issue, V.32, No. 6).
Still based in San Francisco in 1921, producer Walter Montague hired Capra for $75 per week to help direct the short movie The Ballad of Fisher's Boarding House (1922), which was based on a poem by Rudyard Kipling. Montague, a former actor, had the dubious idea that foggy San Francisco was destined to become the capital of movies, and that he could make a fortune making movies based on poems. Capra helped Montague produced the one-reeler, which was budgeted at $1,700 and subsequently sold to the Pathe Exchange for $3,500. Capra quit Montague when he demanded that the next movie be based upon one of his own poems.
Unable to find another professional filmmaking job, Capra hired himself out as a maker of shorts for the public-at-large while working as an assistant at Walter Ball's film lab. Finally, in October 1921, the Paul Gerson Picture Corp. hired him to help make its two-reel comedies, around the time that he began dating the actress Helen Edith Howe, who would become his first wife. Capra continued to work for both Ball and Gerson, primarily as a cutter. On November 25, 1923, Capra married Helen Howell, and the couple soon moved to Hollywood.
Hal Roach hired Capra as a gag-writer for the "Our Gang" series in January, 1924. After writing the gags for five "Our Gang" comedies in seven weeks, he asked Roach to make him a director. When Roach refused (he somewhat rightly felt he had found the right man in director Bob McGowan), Capra quit. Roach's arch rival Mack Sennett subsequently hired him as a writer, one of a six-man team that wrote for silent movie comedian Harry Langdon, the last major star of the rapidly disintegrating Mack Sennett Studios, and reigning briefly as fourth major silent comedian after Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. Capra began working with the Harry Langdon production unit as a gag writer, first credited on the short Plain Clothes (1925).
As Harry Langdon became more popular, his production unit at Sennett had moved from two- to three-reelers before Langdon, determined to follow the example of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, went into features. After making his first feature-length comedy, His First Flame (1927) for Sennett, Langdon signed a three-year contract with Sol Lesser's First National Pictures to annually produce two feature-length comedies at a fixed fee per film. For a multitude of reasons Mack Sennett was never able to retain top talent. On September 15, 1925, Harry Langdon left Sennett in an egotistical rage, taking many of his key production personnel with him. Sennett promoted Capra to director but fired him after three days in his new position. In addition to the Langdon comedies, Capra had also written material for other Sennett films, eventually working on twenty-five movies.
After being sacked by Sennett, Capra was hired as a gag-writer by Harry Langdon, working on Langdon's first First National feature-length film, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926). The movie was directed by Harry Edwards who had directed all of Harry Langdon's films at Sennett. His first comedy for First National, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926) did well at the box office, but it had ran over budget, which came out of Langdon's end. Harry Edwards was sacked, and for his next picture, The Strong Man (1926), Langdon promoted Capra to director, boosting his salary to $750 per week. The movie was a hit, but trouble was brewing among members of the Harry Langdon company. Langdon was increasingly believing his own press.
His marriage with Helen began to unravel when it is discovered that she had a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy that had to be terminated. In order to cope with the tragedy, Capra became a work-a-holic while Helen turned to drink. The deterioration of his marriage was mirrored by the disintegration of his professional relationship with Harry Langdonduring the making of the new feature, Long Pants (1927).
The movie, which was released in March 1927, proved to be Capra's last with Harry Langdon, as the comedian soon sacked Capra after its release. Capra later explained the principle of Langdon comedies to James Agee, "It is the principal of the brick: If there was a rule for writing Langdon material, it was this: his only ally was God. Harry Langdon might be saved by a brick falling on a cop, but it was verboten that he in any way motivated the bricks fall."
During the production of Long Pants (1926), Capra had a falling out with Langdon. Screenwriter Arthur Ripley's dark sensibility did not mesh well with that of the more optimistic Capra, and Harry Langdon usually sided with Ripley. The picture fell behind schedule and went over budget, and since Langdon was paid a fixed fee for each film, this represented a financial loss to his own Harry Langdon Corp. Stung by the financial set-back, and desiring to further emulate the great Chaplin, Harry Langdon made a fateful decision: He fired Capra and decided to direct himself. (Langdon's next three movies for First National were dismal failures, the two surviving films being very dark and grim black comedies, one of which, The Chaser (1928), touched on the subject of suicide. It was the late years of the Jazz Age, a time of unprecedented prosperity and boundless bonhomie, and the critics, and more critically, the ticket-buying public, rejected Harry. In 1928, First National did not pick up his contract. The Harry Langdon Corp. soon went bankrupt, and his career as the "fourth major silent comedian" was through, just as sound was coming in.)
In April of 1927, Capra and his wife Helen split up, and Capra went off to New York to direct For the Love of Mike (1927) for First National, his first picture with Claudette Colbert. The director and his star did not get along, and the film went over budget. Subsequently, First National refused to pay Capra, and he had to hitchhike back to Hollywood. The film proved to be Capra's only genuine flop.
By September 1927, he was back working as a writer for Mack Sennett, but in October, he was hired as a director by Columbia Pictures President and Production Chief Harry Cohn for $1,000. The event was momentous for both of them, for at Columbia Capra would soon become the #1 director in Hollywood in the 1930s, and the success of Capra's films would propel the Poverty Row studio into the major leagues. But at first, Cohn was displeased with him. When viewing the first three days of rushes of his first Columbia film, That Certain Thing (1928), Cohn wanted to fire him as everything on the first day had been shot in long shot, on the second day in medium shot, and on the third day in close-ups.
"I did it that way for time," Capra later recalled. "It was so easy to be better than the other directors, because they were all dopes. They would shoot a long shot, then they would have to change the setup to shoot a medium shot, then they would take their close-ups. Then they would come back and start over again. You lose time, you see, moving the cameras and the big goddamn lights. I said, 'I'll get all the long shots on that first set first, then all the medium shots, and then the close-ups.' I wouldn't shoot the whole scene each way unless it was necessary. If I knew that part of it was going to play in long shot, I wouldn't shoot that part in close-up. But the trick was not to move nine times, just to move three times. This saved a day, maybe two days."
Cohn decided to stick with Capra (he was ultimately delighted at the picture and gave Capra a $1,500 bonus and upped his per-picture salary), and in 1928, Cohn raised his salary again, now to to $3,000 per picture after he made several successful pictures, including Submarine (1928). The Younger Generation (1929), the first of a series of films with higher budgets to be directed by Capra, would prove to be his first sound film, when scenes were reshot for dialogue. In the summer of that year, he was introduced to a young widow, Lucille Warner Reyburn (who became Capra's second wife Lou Capra). He also met a transplanted stage actress, Barbara Stanwyck, who had been recruited for the talkie but had been in three successive unsuccessful films and wanted to return to the New York stage. Harry Cohn wanted Stanwyck to appear in Capra's planned film, Ladies of Leisure (1930), but the interview with Capra did not go well, and Capra refused to use her.
Stanwyck went home crying after being dismissed by Capra, and her husband, a furious Frank Fay, called Capra up. In his defense, Capra said that Stanwyck didn't seem to want the part. According to Capra's 1961 autobiography, "The Name Above the Title," Fay said, "Frank, she's young, and shy, and she's been kicked around out here. Let me show you a test she made at Warner's." After viewing her Warners' test for The Noose (1928), Capra became enthusiastic and urged Cohn to sign her. In January of 1930, Capra began shooting Ladies of Leisure (1930) with Stanwyck in the lead. The movies the two made together in the early '30s established them both on their separate journeys towards becoming movieland legends. Though Capra would admit to falling in love with his leading lady, it was Lucille Warner Reyburn who became the second Mrs. Capra.
"You're wondering why I was at that party. That's my racket. I'm a party girl. Do you know what that is?"
Stanwyck played a working-class "party girl" hired as a model by the painter Jerry, who hails from a wealthy family. Capra had written the first draft of the movie before screenwriter Jo Swerling took over. Swerling thought the treatment was dreadful. According to Capra, Swerling told Harry Cohn, when he initially had approached about adapting the play "Ladies of the Evening" into Capra's next proposed film, "I don't like Hollywood, I don't like you, and I certainly don't like this putrid piece of gorgonzola somebody gave me to read. It stunk when Belasco produced it as Ladies of Leisure (1930), and it will stink as Ladies of Leisure, even if your little tin Jesus does direct it. The script is inane, vacuous, pompous, unreal, unbelievable and incredibly dull."
Capra, who favored extensive rehearsals before shooting a scene, developed his mature directorial style while collaborating with Stanwyck, a trained stage actress whose performance steadily deteriorated after rehearsals or retakes. Stanwyck's first take in a scene usually was her best. Capra started blocking out scenes in advance, and carefully preparing his other actors so that they could react to Stanwyck in the first shot, whose acting often was unpredictable, so they wouldn't foul up the continuity. In response to this semi-improvisatory style, Capra's crew had to boost its level of craftsmanship to beyond normal Hollywood standards, which were forged in more static and prosaic work conditions. Thus, the professionalism of Capra's crews became better than those of other directors. Capra's philosophy for his crew was, "You guys are working for the actors, they're not working for you."
After "Ladies of Leisure," Capra was assigned to direct Platinum Blonde (1931) starring Jean Harlow. The script had been the product of a series of writers, including Jo Swerling (who was given credit for adaptation), but was polished by Capra and Robert Riskin (who was given screen credit for the dialogue). Along with Jo Swerling, Riskin would rank as one of Capra's most important collaborators, ultimately having a hand in 13 movies. (Riskin wrote nine screenplays for Capra, and Capra based four other films on Riskin's work.)
Riskin created a hard-boiled newspaperman, Stew Smith for the film, a character his widow, the actress Fay Wray, said came closest to Riskin of any character he wrote. A comic character, the wise-cracking reporter who wants to lampoon high society but finds himself hostage to the pretensions of the rich he had previously mocked is the debut of the prototypical "Capra" hero. The dilemma faced by Stew, akin to the immigrant's desire to assimilate but being rejected by established society, was repeated in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and in Meet John Doe (1941).
Capra, Stanwyck, Riskin and Jo Swerling all were together to create Capra's next picture, The Miracle Woman (1931), a story about a shady evangelist. With John Meehan, Riskin wrote the play that the movie is based on, "Bless You, Sister," and there is a possibly apocryphal story that has Riskin at a story conference at which Capra relates the treatment for the proposed film. Capra, finished, asked Riskin for his input, and Riskin replied, "I wrote that play. My brother and I were stupid enough to produce it on Broadway. It cost us almost every cent we had. If you intend to make a picture of it, it only proves one thing: You're even more stupid than we were."
Jo Swerling adapted Riskin's play, which he and his brother Everett patterned after Sinclair Lewis' "Elmer Gantry." Like the Lewis novel, the play focuses on the relationship between a lady evangelist and a con man. The difference, though, is that the nature of the relationship is just implied in Riskin's play (and the Capra film). There is also the addition of the blind war-vet as the moral conscience of the story; he is the pivotal character, whereas in Lewis' tale, the con artist comes to have complete control over the evangelist after eventually seducing her. Like some other Capra films, The Miracle Woman (1931) is about the love between a romantic, idealizing man and a cynical, bitter woman. Riskin had based his character on lady evangelist Uldine Utley, while Stanwyck based her characterization on Aimee Semple McPherson.
Recognizing that he had something in his star director, Harry Cohn took full advantage of the lowly position his studio had in Hollywood. Both Warner Brothers and mighty MGM habitually lent Cohn their troublesome stars -- anyone rejecting scripts or demanding a pay raise was fodder for a loan out to Cohn's Poverty Row studio. Cohn himself was habitually loathe to sign long-term stars in the early 1930s (although he made rare exceptions to Peter Lorre and The Three Stooges) and was delighted to land the talents of any top flight star and invariably assigned them to Capra's pictures. Most began their tenure in purgatory with trepidation but left eagerly wanting to work with Capra again.
In 1932, Capra decided to make a motion picture that reflected the social conditions of the day. He and Riskin wrote the screenplay for American Madness (1932), a melodrama that is an important precursor to later Capra films, not only with It's a Wonderful Life (1946) which shares the plot device of a bank run, but also in the depiction of the irrationality of a crowd mentality and the ability of the individual to make a difference. In the movie, an idealistic banker is excoriated by his conservative board of directors for making loans to small businesses on the basis of character rather than on sounder financial criteria. Since the Great Depression is on, and many people lack collateral, it would be impossible to productively lend money on any other criteria than character, the banker argues. When there is a run on the bank due to a scandal, it appears that the board of directors are rights the bank depositors make a run on the bank to take out their money before the bank fails. The fear of a bank failure ensures that the failure will become a reality as a crowd mentality takes over among the clientèle. The board of directors refuse to pledge their capital to stave off the collapse of the bank, but the banker makes a plea to the crowd, and just like George Bailey's depositors in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), the bank is saved as the fears of the crowd are ameliorated and businessmen grateful to the banker pledge their capital to save the bank. The board of directors, impressed by the banker's character and his belief in the character of his individual clients (as opposed to the irrationality of the crowd), pledge their capital and the bank run is staved off and the bank is saved.
In his biography, "The Name Above the Picture," Capra wrote that before American Madness (1932), he had only made "escapist" pictures with no basis in reality. He recounts how Poverty Row studios, lacking stars and production values, had to resort to "gimmick" movies to pull the crowds in, making films on au courant controversial subjects that were equivalent to "yellow journalism."
What was more important than the subject and its handling was the maturation of Capra's directorial style with the film. Capra had become convinced that the mass-experience of watching a motion picture with an audience had the psychological effect in individual audience members of slowing down the pace of a film. A film that during shooting and then when viewed on a movieola editing device and on a small screen in a screening room among a few professionals that had seemed normally paced became sluggish when projected on the big screen. While this could have been the result of the projection process blowing up the actors to such large proportions, Capra ultimately believed it was the effect of mass psychology affecting crowds since he also noticed this "slowing down" phenomenon at ball games and at political conventions. Since American Madness (1932) dealt with crowds, he feared that the effect would be magnified.
He decided to boost the pace of the film, during the shooting. He did away with characters' entrances and exits that were a common part of cinematic "grammar" in the early 1930s, a survival of the "photoplays" days. Instead, he "jumped" characters in and out of scenes, and jettisoned the dissolves that were also part of cinematic grammar that typically ended scenes and indicated changes in time or locale so as not to make cutting between scenes seem choppy to the audience. Dialogue was deliberately overlapped, a radical innovation in the early talkies, when actors were instructed to let the other actor finish his or her lines completely before taking up their cue and beginning their own lines, in order to facilitate the editing of the sound-track. What he felt was his greatest innovation was to boost the pacing of the acting in the film by a third by making a scene that would normally play in one minute take only 40 seconds.
When all these innovations were combined in his final cut, it made the movie seem normally paced on the big screen, though while shooting individual scenes, the pacing had seemed exaggerated. It also gave the film a sense of urgency that befitted the subject of a financial panic and a run on a bank. More importantly, it "kept audience attention riveted to the screen," as he said in his autobiography. Except for "mood pieces," Capra subsequently used these techniques in all his films, and he was amused by critics who commented on the "naturalness" of his direction.
Capra was close to completely establishing his themes and style. Justly accused of indulging in sentiment which some critics labeled "Capra-corn," Capra's next film, Lady for a Day (1933) was an adaptation of Damon Runyon's 1929 short story "Madame La Gimp" about a nearly destitute apple peddler whom the superstitious gambler Dave the Dude (portrayed by Warner Brothers star Warren William) sets up in high style so she and her daughter, who is visiting with her finance, will not be embarrassed. Dave the Dude believes his luck at gambling comes from his ritualistically buying an apple a day from Annie, who is distraught and considering suicide to avoid the shame of her daughter seeing her reduced to living on the street. The Dude and his criminal confederates put Annie up in a luxury apartment with a faux husband in order to establish Annie in the eyes of her daughter as a dignified and respectable woman, but in typical Runyon fashion, Annie becomes more than a fake as the masquerade continues.
Robert Riskin wrote the first four drafts of Lady for a Day (1933), and of all the scripts he worked on for Capra, the film deviates less from the script than any other. After seeing the movie, Runyon sent a telegraph to Riskin praising him for his success at elaborating on the story and fleshing out the characters while maintain his basic story. Lady for a Day (1933) was the favorite Capra film of John Ford, the great filmmaker who once directed the unknown extra. The movie cost $300,000 and was the first of Capra's oeuvre to attract the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, getting a Best Director nomination for Capra, plus nods for Riskin and Best Actress. The movie received Columbia's first Best Picture nomination, the studio never having attracted any attention from the Academy before Lady for a Day (1933). (Capra's last film was the flop remake of Lady for a Day (1933) with Bette Davis and Glenn Ford, Pocketful of Miracles (1961))
Capra reunited with Stanwyck and produced his first universally acknowledged classic, The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932), a film that now seems to belong more to the oeuvre of Josef von Sternberg than it does to Frank Capra. With "General Yen," Capra had consciously set out to make a movie that would win Academy Awards. Frustrated that the innovative, timely, and critically well-received American Madness (1932) had not received any recognition at the Oscars (particularly in the director's category in recognition of his innovations in pacing), he vented his displeasure to Columbia boss Cohn.
"Forget it," Cohn told Capra, as recounted in his autobiography. "You ain't got a Chinaman's chance. They only vote for that arty junk."
Capra set out to boost his chances by making an arty film featuring a "Chinaman" that confronted that major taboo of American cinema of the first half of the century, miscegenation.
In the movie, the American missionary Megan Davis is in China to marry another missionary. Abducted by the Chinese Warlord General Yen, she is torn away from the American compound that kept her isolated from the Chinese and finds herself in a strange, dangerous culture. The two fall in love despite their different races and life-views. The film ran up against the taboo against miscegenation embedded in the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association's Production Code, and while Megan merely kisses General Yen's hand in the picture, the fact that she was undeniably in love with a man from a different race attracted the vituperation of many bigots.
Having fallen for Megan, General Yen engenders her escape back to the Americans before willingly drinking a poisoned cup of tea, his involvement with her having cost him his army, his wealth, and now his desire to live. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932) marks the introduction of suicide as a Capra theme that will come back repeatedly, most especially in George Bailey's breakdown on the snowy bridge in It's a Wonderful Life (1946).
Despair often shows itself in Capra films, and although in his post-"General Yen" work, the final reel wraps things up in a happy way, until that final reel, there is tragedy, cynicism, heartless exploitation, and other grim subject matter that Capra's audiences must have known were the truth of the world, but that were too grim to face when walking out of a movie theater. When pre-Code movies were rediscovered and showcased across the United States in the 1990s, they were often accompanied by thesis about how contemporary audiences "read" the films (and post-1934 more Puritanical works), as the movies were not so frank or racy as supposed. There was a great deal of signaling going on which the audience could read into, and the same must have been true for Capra's films, giving lie to the fact that he was a sentimentalist with a saccharine view of America. There are few films as bitter as those of Frank Capra before the final reel.
Despair was what befell Frank Capra, personally, on the night of March 16, 1934, which he attended as one of the Best Director nominees for Lady for a Day (1933). Capra had caught Oscar fever, and in his own words, "In the interim between the nominations and the final voting...my mind was on those Oscars." When Oscar host Will Rogers opened the envelope for Best Director, he commented, "Well, well, well. What do you know. I've watched this young man for a long time. Saw him come up from the bottom, and I mean the bottom. It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Come on up and get it, Frank!"
Capra got up to go get it, squeezing past tables and making his way to the open dance floor to accept his Oscar. "The spotlight searched around trying to find me. 'Over here!' I waved. Then it suddenly swept away from me -- and picked up a flustered man standing on the other side of the dance floor - Frank Lloyd!"
Frank Lloyd went up to the dais to accept HIS Oscar while a voice in back of Capra yelled, "Down in front!"
Capra's walk back to his table amidst shouts of "Sit down!" turned into the "Longest, saddest, most shattering walk in my life. I wished I could have crawled under the rug like a miserable worm. When I slumped in my chair I felt like one. All of my friends at the table were crying."
That night, after Lloyd's Cavalcade (1933), beat Lady for a Day (1933) for Best Picture, Capra got drunk at his house and passed out. "Big 'stupido,'" Capra thought to himself, "running up to get an Oscar dying with excitement, only to crawl back dying with shame. Those crummy Academy voters; to hell with their lousy awards. If ever they did vote me one, I would never, never, NEVER show up to accept it."
Capra would win his first of three Best Director Oscars the next year, and would show up to accept it. More importantly, he would become the president of the Academy in 1935 and take it out of the labor relations field a time when labor strife and the formation of the talent guilds threatened to destroy it.
The International Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences had been the brainchild of Louis B. Mayer in 1927 (it dropped the "International" soon after its formation). In order to forestall unionization by the creative talent (directors, actors and screenwriters) who were not covered by the Basic Agreement signed in 1926, Mayer had the idea of forming a company union, which is how the Academy came into being. The nascent Screen Writers Union, which had been created in 1920 in Hollywood, had never succeeded in getting a contract from the studios. It went out of existence in 1927, when labor relations between writers and studios were handled by the Academy's writers' branch.
The Academy had brokered studio-mandated pay-cuts of 10% in 1927 and 1931, and massive layoffs in 1930 and 1931. With the inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt took no time in attempting to tackle the Great Depression. The day after his inauguration, he declared a National Bank Holiday, which hurt the movie industry as it was heavily dependent on bank loans. Louis B. Mayer, as president of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, Inc. (the co-equal arm of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association charged with handling labor relations) huddled with a group from the Academy (the organization he created and had long been criticized for dominating, in both labor relations and during the awards season) and announced a 50% across-the-board pay cut. In response, stagehands called a strike for March 13th, which shut down every studio in Hollywood.
After another caucus between Mayer and the Academy committee, a proposal for a pay-cut on a sliding-scale up to 50% for everyone making over $50 a week; which would only last for eight weeks, was inaugurated. Screen writers resigned en masse from the Academy and joined a reformed Screen Writers Guild, but most employees had little choice and went along with it. All the studios but Warner Bros. and Sam Goldwyn honored the pledge to restore full salaries after the eight weeks, and Warners production chief Darryl F. Zanuck resigned in protest over his studio's failure to honor its pledge. A time of bad feelings persisted, and much anger was directed towards the Academy in its role as company union.
The Academy, trying to position itself as an independent arbiter, hired the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse for the first time to inspect the books of the studios. The audit revealed that all the studios were solvent, but Harry Warner refused to budge and Academy President 'Conrad Nagel' resigned, although some said he was forced out after a vote of no-confidence after arguing Warner's case. The Academy announced that the studio bosses would never again try to impose a horizontal salary cut, but the usefulness of the Academy as a company union was over.
Under Roosevelt's New Deal, the self-regulation imposed by the National Industrial Relations Act (signed into law on June 16th) to bring business sectors back to economic health was predicated upon cartelization, in which the industry itself wrote its own regulatory code. With Hollywood, it meant the re-imposition of paternalistic labor relations that the Academy had been created to wallpaper over. The last nail in the company union's coffin was when it became public knowledge that the Academy appointed a committee to investigate the continued feasibility of the industry practice of giving actors and writers long-term contracts. High salaries to directors, actors, and screen writers was compensation to the creative people for producers refusing to ceded control over creative decision-making. Long-term contracts were the only stability in the Hollywood economic set-up up creative people,. Up to 20%-25% of net earnings of the movie industry went to bonuses to studio owners, production chiefs, and senior executives at the end of each year, and this created a good deal of resentment that fueled the militancy of the SWG and led to the formation of the Screen Actors Guild in July 1933 when they, too, felt that the Academy had sold them out.
The industry code instituted a cap on the salaries of actors, directors, and writers, but not of movie executives; mandated the licensing of agents by producers; and created a reserve clause similar to baseball where studios had renewal options with talent with expired contracts, who could only move to a new studio if the studio they had last been signed to did not pick up their option.
The SWG sent a telegram to FDR in October 1933 denouncing this policy, arguing that the executives had taken millions of dollars of bonuses while running their companies into receivership and bankruptcy. The SWG denounced the continued membership of executives who had led their studios into financial failure remaining on the corporate boards and in the management of the reorganized companies, and furthermore protested their use of the NIRA to write their corrupt and failed business practices into law at the expense of the workers.
There was a mass resignation of actors from the Academy in October 1933, with the actors switching their allegiance to SAG. SAG joined with the SWG to publish "The Screen Guilds Magazine," a periodical whose editorial content attacked the Academy as a company union in the producers' pocket. SAG President Eddie Cantor, a friend of Roosevelt who had bee invited to spend the Thanksgiving Day holiday with the president, informed him of the guild's grievances over the NIRA code. Roosevelt struck down many of the movie industry code's anti-labor provisions by executive order.
The labor battles between the guilds and the studios would continue until the late 1930s, and by the time Frank Capra was elected president of the Academy in 1935, the post was an unenviable one. The Screen Directors Guild was formed at King Vidor's house on January 15, 1936, and one of its first acts was to send a letter to its members urging them to boycott the Academy Awards ceremony, which was three days away. None of the guilds had been recognized as bargaining agents by the studios, and it was argued to grace the Academy Awards would give the Academy, a company union, recognition. Academy membership had declined to 40 from a high of 600, and Capra believed that the guilds wanted to punish the studios financially by depriving them of the good publicity the Oscars generated.
But the studios couldn't care less. Seeing that the Academy was worthless to help them in its attempts to enforce wage cuts, it too abandoned the Academy, which it had financed. Capra and the Board members had to pay for the Oscar statuettes for the 1936 ceremony. In order to counter the boycott threat, Capra needed a good publicity gimmick himself, and the Academy came up with one, voting D.W. Griffith an honorary Oscar, the first bestowed since one had been given to Charles Chaplin at the first Academy Awards ceremony.
The Guilds believed the boycott had worked as only 20 SAG members and 13 SWG members had showed up at the Oscars, but Capra remembered the night as a victory as all the winners had shown up. However, 'Variety' wrote that "there was not the galaxy of stars and celebs in the director and writer groups which distinguished awards banquets in recent years." "Variety" reported that to boost attendance, tickets had been given to secretaries and the like. Bette Davis and Victor McLaglen had showed up to accept their Oscars, but McLaglen's director and screenwriter, John Ford and Dudley Nichols, both winners like McLaglen for The Informer (1935), were not there, and Nichols became the first person to refuse an Academy Award when he sent back his statuette to the Academy with a note saying he would not turn his back on his fellow writers in the SWG. Capra sent it back to him. Ford, the treasurer of the SDG, had not showed up to accept his Oscar, he explained, because he wasn't a member of the Academy. When Capra staged a ceremony where Ford accepted his award, the SDG voted him out of office.
To save the Academy and the Oscars, Capra convinced the board to get it out of the labor relations field. He also democratized the nomination process to eliminate studio politics, opened the cinematography and interior decoration awards to films made outside the U.S., and created two new acting awards for supporting performances to win over SAG.
By the 1937 awards ceremony, SAG signaled its pleasure that the Academy had mostly stayed out of labor relations by announcing it had no objection to its members attending the awards ceremony. The ceremony was a success, despite the fact that the Academy had to charge admission due to its poor finances. Frank Capra had saved the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and he even won his second Oscar that night, for directing Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). At the end of the evening, Capra announced the creation of the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award to honor "the most consistent high level of production achievement by an individual producer." It was an award he himself was not destined to win.
By the 1938 awards, the Academy and all three guilds had buried the hatchet, and the guild presidents all attended the ceremony: SWG President Dudley Nichols, who finally had accepted his Oscar, SAG President Robert Montgomery, and SDG President King Vidor. Capra also had introduced the secret ballot, the results of which were unknown to everyone but the press, who were informed just before the dinner so they could make their deadlines. The first Irving Thalberg Award was given to long-time Academy supporter and anti-Guild stalwart Darryl F. Zanuck by Cecil B. DeMille, who in his preparatory remarks, declared that the Academy was "now free of all labor struggles."
But those struggles weren't over. In 1939, Capra had been voted president of the SDG and began negotiating with AMPP President 'Joseph Schenck', the head of 20th Century-Fox, for the industry to recognize the SDG as the sole collective bargaining agent for directors. When Schenck refused, Capra mobilized the directors and threatened a strike. He also threatened to resign from the Academy and mount a boycott of the awards ceremony, which was to be held a week later. Schenck gave in, and Capra won another victory when he was named Best Director for a third time at the Academy Awards, and his movie, You Can't Take It with You (1938), was voted Best Picture of 1938.
The 1940 awards ceremony was the last that Capra presided over, and he directed a documentary about them, which was sold to Warner Bros' for $30,000, the monies going to the Academy. He was nominated himself for Best Director and Best Picture for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), but lost to the Gone with the Wind (1939) juggernaut. Under Capra's guidance, the Academy had left the labor relations field behind in order to concentrated on the awards (publicity for the industry), research and education.
"I believe the guilds should more or less conduct the operations and functions of this institution," he said in his farewell speech. He would be nominated for Best Director and Best Picture once more with It's a Wonderful Life (1946) in 1947, but the Academy would never again honor him, not even with an honorary award after all his service. (Bob Hope, in contrast, received four honorary awards, including a lifetime membership in 1945, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian award in 1960 from the Academy.) The SDG (subsequently renamed the Directors Guild of America after its 1960 with the Radio and Television Directors Guild and which Capra served as its first president from 1960-61), the union he had struggled with in the mid-1930s but which he had first served as president from 1939 to 1941 and won it recognition, voted him a lifetime membership in 1941 and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1959.
Whenever Capra convinced studio boss Harry Cohn to let him make movies with more controversial or ambitious themes, the movies typically lost money after under-performing at the box office. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932) and Lost Horizon (1937) were both expensive, philosophically minded pictures that sought to reposition Capra and Columbia into the prestige end of the movie market. After the former's relative failure at the box office and with critics, Capra turned to making a screwball comedy, a genre he excelled at, with It Happened One Night (1934). Bookended with You Can't Take It with You (1938), these two huge hits won Columbia Best Picture Oscars and Capra Best Director Academy Awards. These films, along with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and It's a Wonderful Life (1946) are the heart of Capra's cinematic canon. They are all classics and products of superb craftsmanship, but they gave rise to the canard of "Capra-corn." One cannot consider Capra without taking into account The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932), American Madness (1932), and Meet John Doe (1941), all three dark films tackling major issues, Imperialism, the American plutocracy, and domestic fascism. Capra was no Pollyanna, and the man who was called a "dago" by Mack Sennett and who went on to become one of the most unique, highly honored and successful directors, whose depictions of America are considered Americana themselves, did not live his cinematic life looking through a rose-colored range-finder
In his autobiography "The Name Above the Title," Capra says that at the time of American Madness (1932), critics began commenting on his "gee-whiz" style of filmmaking. The critics attacked "gee whiz" cultural artifacts as their fabricators "wander about wide-eyed and breathless, seeing everything as larger than life." Capra's response was "Gee whiz!"
Defining Hollywood as split between two camps, "Mr. Up-beat" and "Mr. Down-beat," Capra defended the up-beat gee whiz on the grounds that, "To some of us, all that meets the eye IS larger than life, including life itself. Who ca match the wonder of it?"
Among the artists of the "Gee-Whiz:" school were Ernest Hemingway, Homer, and Paul Gauguin, a novelist who lived a heroic life larger than life itself, a poet who limned the lives of gods and heroes, and a painter who created a mythic Tahiti, the Tahiti that he wanted to find. Capra pointed to Moses and the apostles as examples of men who were larger than life. Capra was proud to be "Mr. Up-beat" rather than belong to "the 'ashcan' school" whose "films depict life as an alley of cats clawing lids off garbage cans, and man as less noble than a hyena. The 'ash-canners,' in turn, call us Pollyannas, mawkish sentimentalists, and corny happy-enders."
What really moves Capra is that in America, there was room for both schools, that there was no government interference that kept him from making a film like American Madness (1932). (While Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Joseph P. Kennedy had asked Harry Cohn to stop exporting Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) to Europe as it portrayed American democracy so negatively.) About Mr. Up-beat and Mr-Downbeat and "Mr. In-between," Capra says, "We all respect and admire each other because the great majority freely express their own individual artistry unfettered by subsidies or strictures from government, pressure groups, or ideologists."
In the period 1934 to 1941, Capra the created the core of his canon with the classics It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can't Take It with You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Meet John Doe (1941), wining three Best Director Oscars in the process. Some cine-historians call Capra the great American propagandist, he was so effective in creating an indelible impression of America in the 1930s. "Maybe there never was an America in the thirties," John Cassavetes was quoted as saying. "Maybe it was all Frank Capra."
After the United States went to war in December 1941, Frank Capra rejoined the Army and became an actual propagandist. His "Why We Fight" series of propaganda films were highly lauded for their remarkable craftsmanship and were the best of the U.S. propaganda output during the war. Capra's philosophy, which has been variously described as a kind of Christian socialism (his films frequently feature a male protagonist who can be seen a Christ figure in a story about redemption emphasizing New Testament values) that is best understood as an expression of humanism, made him an ideal propagandist. He loved his adopted country with the fervor of the immigrant who had realized the American dream. One of his propaganda films, The Negro Soldier (1944), is a milestone in race relations.
Capra, a genius in the manipulation of the first form of "mass media," was opposed to "massism." The crowd in a Capra film is invariably wrong, and he comes down on the side of the individual, who can make a difference in a society of free individuals. In an interview, Capra said he was against "mass entertainment, mass production, mass education, mass everything. Especially mass man. I was fighting for, in a sense, the preservation of the liberty of the individual person against the mass."
Capra had left Columbia after "Mr. Smith" and formed his own production company. After the war, he founded Liberty Films with John Ford and made his last masterpiece, It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Liberty folded prior to its release (another Liberty film, William Wyler's masterpiece, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) was released through United Artists). Though Capra received his sixth Oscar nomination as best director, the movie flopped at the box office, which is hard to believe now that the film is considered must-see viewing each Christmas. Capra's period of greatness was over, and after making three under-whelming films from 1948 to '51 (including a remake of his earlier Broadway Bill (1934)), Capra didn't direct another picture for eight years, instead making a series of memorable semi-comic science documentaries for television that became required viewing for most 1960's school kids. His last two movies, A Hole in the Head (1959) and Pocketful of Miracles (1961) his remake of Lady for a Day (1933) did little to enhance his reputation.
But a great reputation it was, and is. Capra's films withstood the test of time and continue to be as beloved as when they were embraced by the movie-going "masses" in the 1930s. It was the craftsmanship: Capra was undeniably a master of his medium. The great English novelist Graham Greene, who supported himself as a film critic in the 1930s, loved Capra's films due to their sense of responsibility and of common life, and due to his connection with his audience. (Capra, according to the 1938 "Time" article, believed that what he liked would be liked by moviegoers). In his review of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Greene elucidated the central theme of Capra's movies: "Goodness and simplicity manhandled in a deeply selfish and brutal world."
But it was Capra's great mastery over film that was the key to his success. Comparing Capra to Dickens in a not wholly flattering review of You Can't Take It with You (1938), Green found Capra "a rather muddled and sentimental idealist who feels -- vaguely -- that something is wrong with the social system" (807). Commenting on the improbable scene in which Grandpa Vanderhof persuades the munitions magnate Anthony P. Kirby to give everything up and play the harmonica, Greene stated:
"It sounds awful, but it isn't as awful as all that, for Capra has a touch of genius with a camera: his screen always seems twice as big as other people's, and he cuts as brilliantly as Eisenstein (the climax when the big bad magnate takes up his harmonica is so exhilarating in its movement that you forget its absurdity). Humour and not wit is his line, a humor that shades off into whimsicality, and a kind of popular poetry which is apt to turn wistful. We may groan and blush as he cuts his way remorselessly through all finer values to the fallible human heart, but infallibly he makes his appeal - to that great soft organ with its unreliable goodness and easy melancholy and baseless optimism. The cinema, a popular craft, can hardly be expected to do more."
Capra was a populist, and the simplicity of his narrative structures, in which the great social problems facing America were boiled down to scenarios in which metaphorical boy scouts took on corrupt political bosses and evil-minded industrialists, created mythical America of simple archetypes that with its humor, created powerful films that appealed to the elemental emotions of the audience. The immigrant who had struggled and been humiliated but persevere due to his inner resolution harnessed the mytho-poetic power of the movie to create proletarian passion plays that appealed to the psyche of the New Deal movie-goer. The country during the Depression was down but not out, and the ultimate success of the individual in the Capra films was a bracing tonic for the movie audience of the 1930s. His own personal history, transformed on the screen, became their myths that got them through the Depression, and when that and the war was over, the great filmmaker found himself out of time. Capra, like Charles Dickens, moralized political and economic issues. Both were primarily masters of personal and moral expression, and not of the social and political. It was the emotional realism, not the social realism, of such films as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), which he was concerned with, and by focusing on the emotional and moral issues his protagonists faced, typically dramatized as a conflict between cynicism and the protagonist's faith and idealism, that made the movies so powerful, and made them register so powerfully with an audience.- Art Director
- Production Designer
- Art Department
The distinguished art director and production designer Edward Carfagno had a long career under contract to MGM (1943-1970). During that time, he worked on some of the studio's most prestigious films and established a reputation for creating an authentic and accurate period feel. He frequently worked on costume epics made by MGM at Cinecitta in Rome. Carfagno was nominated thirteen times for Academy Awards, winning for The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), sharing with Cedric Gibbons, Edwin B. Willis and F. Keogh Gleason; Julius Caesar (1953)with Gibbons, Gleason and Hugh Hunt); and Ben-Hur (1959)with Gibbons, Hunt and William A. Horning). His other notable contributions include Quo Vadis (1951), Soylent Green (1973) and Pale Rider (1985) (one of five Clint Eastwood-directed films he worked on as set designer).
A graduate from the University of Southern California, Carfagno started work at MGM in 1939 as a draftsman on The Wizard of Oz (1939), quickly working his way up to production designer. His first fully credited film in that capacity was the Lucille Ball comedy Best Foot Forward (1943). Edward Carfagno was inducted into the Art Director's Guild Hall of Fame in 2007.- Actress
- Writer
- Music Department
She was the daughter of Andrew and Frances Clooney and grew up in Maysville, Kentucky, where she and her sister Betty Clooney used to sing in her grandfather's mayoral election campaigns, which he won three times. She made her singing debut on Cincinnati radio station WLW in 1941 at 13. On WLW she worked with band leader Barney Rapp, who had also worked with Doris Day and Andy Williams at the same station. She attended high school at Our Lady of Mercy in Cincinnati. In 1946 she appeared with her sister in Atlantic City, New Jersey, at the Steel Pier with Tony Pastor's band. In 1949 she went solo and later appeared in White Christmas (1954), co-starring opposite Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. Her first big hit was "Come On A My House" in 1951. She married José Ferrer in 1953 and they had five children between 1955 and 1960. Her marriage to Ferrer was a tempestuous one and she had a nervous breakdown in 1968, but went on to resume her career in 1976. Her life was dramatized in a 1982 made-for-television movie starring Sondra Locke, who was actually just 16 years Rosemary's junior but constantly lied about her age.
Her son Gabriel is married to singer Debby Boone, daughter of 1950s pop singer Pat Boone. Her brother, Nick Clooney, was an ABC news anchor in Cincinnati, and her nephew George Clooney has developed into one of the biggest movie stars of the 21st century. In 1968 she was standing in the Ambassdor Hotel in Los Angeles with Roosevelt Grier when Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in the hotel kitchen after she had participated in his campaign rally. Her top hits include "Hey There" in 1954, "Tenderly", "This Ole House" and "Half As Much" in 1952.- Actor
- Soundtrack
A cigar-smoking, monocled, swag-bellied character actor known for his Old South manners and charm. In 1918 he and his first wife formed the Coburn Players and appeared on Broadway in many plays. With her death in 1937, he accepted a Hollywood contract and began making films at the age of sixty.- Actor
- Producer
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British leading man of primarily American films, one of the great stars of the Golden Age. Raised in Ealing, the son of a successful silk merchant, he attended boarding school in Sussex, where he discovered amateur theatre. He intended to attend Cambridge and become an engineer, but his father's death cost him the financial support necessary. He joined the London Scottish Regionals and at the outbreak of World War I was sent to France. Seriously wounded at the battle of Messines--he was gassed--he was invalided out of service scarcely two months after shipping out for France. Upon his recovery he tried to enter the consular service, but a chance encounter got him a small role in a London play. He dropped other plans and concentrated on the theatre, and was rewarded with a succession of increasingly prominent parts. He made extra money appearing in a few minor films, and in 1920 set out for New York in hopes of finding greater fortune there than in war-depressed England. After two years of impoverishment he was cast in a Broadway hit, "La Tendresse". Director Henry King spotted him in the show and cast him as Lillian Gish's leading man in The White Sister (1923). His success in the film led to a contract with Samuel Goldwyn, and his career as a Hollywood leading man was underway. He became a vastly popular star of silent films, in romances as well as adventure films. The coming of sound made his extraordinarily beautiful speaking voice even more important to the film industry. He played sophisticated, thoughtful characters of integrity with enormous aplomb, and swashbuckled expertly when called to do so in films like The Prisoner of Zenda (1937). A decade later he received an Academy Award for his splendid portrayal of a tormented actor in A Double Life (1947). Much of his later career was devoted to "The Halls of Ivy", a radio show that later was transferred to television The Halls of Ivy (1954). He continued to work until nearly the end of his life, which came in 1958 after a brief lung illness. He was survived by his second wife, actress Benita Hume, and their daughter Juliet Benita Colman.- Producer
- Writer
- Additional Crew
In 1920, Merian C. Cooper was a member of volunteer of the American Kosciuszko Squadron that supported the Polish army in the war with Soviet Russia, where he met best friend and producing partner Ernest B. Schoedsack. On 26 July 1920, his plane was shot down, and he spent nearly nine months in the Soviet prisoner-of-war camp. He escaped just before the war was over. He was decorated by Marshall Jozef Pilsudski with the highest military decorations: Virtuti Military. He had a successful career in the military and in the movie business.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Broderick Crawford is best remembered for two roles: his Oscar-winning turn as Willie Stark in All the King's Men (1949) and as Chief Dan Mathews on the syndicated TV series Highway Patrol (1955). He was also memorable as Judy Holliday's vulgar partner in Born Yesterday (1950), roles both actors had originated on Broadway to great acclaim.
He was born William Broderick Crawford on December 9, 1911, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to vaudeville performers Lester Crawford and Helen Broderick. His mother had a brief movie career acting in Hollywood comedies. Broderick Crawford, large and burly, was no one's idea of a leading man due to his rough-and-tumble looks, but he broke through playing John Steinbeck's simple-minded giant Lenny in the Broadway adaptation of Steinbeck's novella "Of Mice and Men". After this Broadway success, Crawford moved to Hollywood and made his cinema debut in the comedy Woman Chases Man (1937), in a supporting role to stars Joel McCrea and Miriam Hopkins. When producer-director Lewis Milestone was casting the movie version of Steinbeck's classic (Of Mice and Men (1939)), he passed over Crawford and selected Lon Chaney Jr. to play Lenny.
After many supporting roles (including a memorable turn as a big but kindhearted lug in the comedy Larceny, Inc (1942)) and a stint in the military during World War II, Crawford had his breakthrough role in Robert Rossen's adaptation of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "All the King's Men". Crawford gave a masterly performance as the southern U.S. politician based on Louisiana's Huey Long. In addition to the Oscar, he also won the New York Film Critics' Award for Best Actor. All the King's Men (1949) was a hit, as was Born Yesterday (1950). (Crawford had also played the role on Broadway, succeeding Paul Douglas, who originated the role.) However, Crawford soon after became typecast as crude or brutish.
Five years after copping the Academy Award, TV producer Frederick W. Ziv hired Crawford to play the lead role in his syndicated police drama "Highway Patrol". The show ran for four seasons. Crawford's career, moribund in the early 1950s, revived, but he generally eschewed the big screen, preferring television, for the remainder of his career. He continued to act almost up until his death in Rancho Mirage, California, on April 26, 1986, at age 74, following a series of strokes.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, 1906, in San Antonio, Texas, to Anna Belle (Johnson) and Thomas E. LeSueur, a laundry laborer. By the time she was born, her parents had separated, and by the time she was a teenager, she'd had three stepfathers. It wasn't an easy life; Crawford worked a variety of menial jobs. She was a good dancer, though, and -- perhaps seeing dance as her ticket to a career in show business -- she entered several contests, one of which landed her a spot in a chorus line. Before long, she was dancing in big Midwestern and East Coast cities. After almost two years, she packed her bags and moved to Hollywood. Crawford was determined to succeed, and shortly after arriving she got her first bit part, as a showgirl in Pretty Ladies (1925).
Three films quickly followed; although the roles weren't much to speak of, she continued toiling. Throughout 1927 and early 1928, she was cast in small parts, but that ended with the role of Diana Medford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), which elevated her to star status. Crawford had cleared the first big hurdle; now came the second, in the form of talkies. Many stars of the silents saw their careers evaporate, either because their voices weren't particularly pleasant or because their voices, pleasing enough, didn't match the public's expectations (for example, some fans felt that John Gilbert's tenor didn't quite match his very masculine persona). But Crawford wasn't felled by sound. Her first talkie, Untamed (1929), was a success. As the 1930s progressed, Crawford became one of the biggest stars at MGM. She was in top form in films such as Grand Hotel (1932), Sadie McKee (1934), No More Ladies (1935), and Love on the Run (1936); movie patrons were enthralled, and studio executives were satisfied.
By the early 1940s, MGM was no longer giving her plum roles; newcomers had arrived in Hollywood, and the public wanted to see them. Crawford left MGM for rival Warner Bros., and in 1945 she landed the role of a lifetime. Mildred Pierce (1945) gave her an opportunity to show her range as an actress, and her performance as a woman driven to give her daughter everything garnered Crawford her first, and only, Oscar for Best Actress. The following year she appeared with John Garfield in the well-received Humoresque (1946). In 1947, she appeared as Louise Graham in Possessed (1947); again she was nominated for a Best Actress from the Academy, but she lost to Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter (1947). Crawford continued to choose her roles carefully, and in 1952 she was nominated for a third time, for her depiction of Myra Hudson in Sudden Fear (1952). This time the coveted Oscar went to Shirley Booth, for Come Back, Little Sheba (1952). Crawford's career slowed after that; she appeared in minor roles until 1962, when she and Bette Davis co-starred in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Their longstanding rivalry may have helped fuel their phenomenally vitriolic and well-received performances. (Earlier in their careers, Davis said of Crawford, "She's slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie", and Crawford said of Davis, "I don't hate [her] even though the press wants me to. I resent her. I don't see how she built a career out of a set of mannerisms instead of real acting ability. Take away the pop eyes, the cigarette, and those funny clipped words, and what have you got? She's phony, but I guess the public really likes that.")
Crawford's final appearance on the silver screen was in the flop Trog (1970). Turning to vodka more and more, she was hardly seen afterward. On May 10, 1977, Joan died of a heart attack in New York City. She was 71 years old. She had disinherited her adopted daughter Christina and son Christopher; the former wrote a tell-all book called "Mommie Dearest", The Sixth Sense published in 1978. The book cast Crawford in a negative light and was cause for much debate, particularly among her friends and acquaintances, including Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Crawford's first husband. (In 1981, Faye Dunaway starred in Mommie Dearest (1981) which did well at the box office.) Crawford is interred in the same mausoleum as fellow MGM star Judy Garland, in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
White-haired London-born character actor, a familiar face in Hollywood for more than five decades. He was born George William Crisp, the youngest of ten siblings, to working class parents James Crisp and his wife Elizabeth (nee Christy). Despite his humble beginnings, Donald was educated at Oxford University. He saw action with the 10th Hussars of the British Army at Kimberley and Ladysmith during the Boer War and subsequently moved to the United States to begin a new life as an actor.
Arriving in New York in 1906 he began as a singer in Grand Opera with the company of impresario John C. Fisher. By 1910, he had climbed his way up the ladder to become stage manager for George M. Cohan. He was a member of D.W. Griffith's original stock company in the early days of the film industry, beginning with Biograph in New Jersey and featured in The Birth of a Nation (1915) (as General Ulysses S. Grant), Intolerance (1916) and Broken Blossoms (1919). He later joined Famous Players Lasky (subsequently Paramount) and turned with some success to directing in the 1920s, on occasion also appearing in his films (as for example in Don Q Son of Zorro (1925), as Don Sebastian). By the early 30s, Crisp concentrated exclusively on acting and became one of the more prolific Hollywood character players on the scene. Though he was actually a cockney, he -- for unknown reasons -- invented a Scottish ancestry for himself early on, claiming that he was born in Aberfeldy and affected a Scottish accent throughout his career. Crisp's particular stock-in-trade types were crusty or benevolent patriarchs, stern military officers, doctors and judges. He had lengthy stints under contract at Warner Brothers (1935-42) and MGM (1943-51) with an impressive list of A-grade output to his credit: Burkitt in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Colonel Campbell in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Maitre Labori in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Phipps in The Dawn Patrol (1938), General Bazaine in Juarez (1939), Francis Bacon in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) and Sir John Burleson in The Sea Hawk (1940). He is perhaps most fondly remembered as the famous canine's original owner in Lassie Come Home (1943), Elizabeth Taylor's dad Mr. Brown in National Velvet (1944), and, above all, as the head of a Welsh mining family in How Green Was My Valley (1941) (the role which won him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor). In a less sympathetic vein, Crisp gave a sterling performance as a ruthless tobacco planter in the underrated Gary Cooper drama Bright Leaf (1950).
Donald Crisp died in May 1974 in Van Nuys, California, at the age of 91. He is commemorated by a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Vine Street.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz, the eldest of three children of Helen (Klein) and Emanuel Schwartz, Jewish immigrants from Hungary. Curtis himself admits that while he had almost no formal education, he was a student of the "school of hard knocks" and learned from a young age that the only person who ever had his back was himself, so he learned how to take care of both himself and younger brother, Julius. Curtis grew up in poverty, as his father, Emanuel, who worked as a tailor, had the sole responsibility of providing for his entire family on his meager income. This led to constant bickering between Curtis's parents over money, and Curtis began to go to movies as a way of briefly escaping the constant worries of poverty and other family problems. The financial strain of raising two children on a meager income became so tough that in 1935, Curtis's parents decided that their children would have a better life under the care of the state and briefly had Tony and his brother admitted to an orphanage. During this lonely time, the only companion Curtis had was his brother, Julius, and the two became inseparable as they struggled to get used to this new way of life. Weeks later, Curtis's parents came back to reclaim custody of Tony and his brother, but by then Curtis had learned one of life's toughest lessons: the only person you can count on is yourself.
In 1938, shortly before Tony's Bar Mitzvah, tragedy struck when Tony lost the person most important to him when his brother, Julius, was hit by a truck and killed. After that tragedy, Curtis's parents became convinced that a formal education was the best way Tony could avoid the same never-knowing-where-your-next-meal-is-coming-from life that they had known. However, Tony rejected this because he felt that learning about literary classics and algebra wasn't going to advance him in life as much as some real hands-on life experience would. He was to find that real-life experience a few years later, when he enlisted in the navy in 1942. Tony spent over two years getting that life experience doing everything from working as a crewman on a submarine tender, the USS Proteus (AS-19), to honing his future craft as an actor performing as a sailor in a stage play at the Navy Signalman School in Illinois.
In 1945, Curtis was honorably discharged from the navy, and when he realized that the GI Bill would allow him to go to acting school without paying for it, he now saw that his lifelong pipe dream of being an actor might actually be achievable. Curtis auditioned for the New York Dramatic Workshop, and after being accepted on the strength of his audition piece (a scene from "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in pantomime), Curtis enrolled in early 1947. He then began to pay his dues by appearing in a slew of stage productions, including "Twelfth Night" and "Golden Boy". He then connected with a small theatrical agent named Joyce Selznick, who was the niece of film producer David O. Selznick. After seeing his potential, Selznick arranged an interview for Curtis to see David O. Selznick at Universal Studios, where Curtis was offered a seven-year contract. After changing his name to what he saw as an elegant, mysterious moniker--"Tony Curtis" (named after the novel Anthony Adverse (1936) by Hervey Allen and a cousin of his named Janush Kertiz)--Curtis began making a name for himself by appearing in small, offbeat roles in small-budget productions. His first notable performance was a two-minute role in Criss Cross (1949), with Burt Lancaster, in which he makes Lancaster jealous by dancing with Yvonne De Carlo. This offbeat role resulted in Curtis's being typecast as a heavy for the next few years, such as playing a gang member in City Across the River (1949).
Curtis continued to build up a show reel by accepting any paying job, acting in a number of bit-part roles for the next few years. It wasn't until late 1949 that he finally got the chance to demonstrate his acting flair, when he was cast in an important role in an action western, Sierra (1950). On the strength of his performance in that movie, Curtis was finally cast in a big-budget movie, Winchester '73 (1950). While he appears in that movie only very briefly, it was a chance for him to act alongside a Hollywood legend, James Stewart.
As his career developed, Curtis wanted to act in movies that had social relevance, ones that would challenge audiences, so he began to appear in such movies as Spartacus (1960) and The Defiant Ones (1958). He was advised against appearing as the subordinate sidekick in Spartacus (1960), playing second fiddle to the equally famous Kirk Douglas. However, Curtis saw no problem with this because the two had recently acted together in dual leading roles in The Vikings (1958).- Actor
- Soundtrack
Billy Daniels toiled obscurely for years before becoming a star in 1950. He began singing in his native Jacksonville, Florida, then moved to Harlem in 1932 and became a dishwasher, and later a singing waiter, as Dickie Wells' restaurant-club. He toured with the Erskine Hawkins band circa 1935-36, then returned to Harlem, which he loved, and sang virtually every day, sometimes just for food. He became a staple on local radio shows, and in 1941 he had a small record hit on Bluebird, "Diane"/"Penthouse Serenade." "Diane" became his trademark song at this stage of his career, when he sang tenor with no appreciable body movement. At this time he starred in Sepia Cinderella (1947). In 1948 he began to work permanently with pianist/backup singer Benny Payne, who also served as his musical director. About that time he began to make "That Old Black Magic," which he'd first sung in the summer of 1946 at the Club Harlem in Atlantic City, his new trademark. A 1948 extended appearance at New York's posh Park Avenue Restaurant began his climb to fame, which climaxed in 1950 with engagements at Hollywood's Mocambo and Bill Miller's Riviera in New Jersey, capped by his sensational appearance in the film When You're Smiling (1950). From then on he was a star. He appeared in three Broadway musicals: "Memphis Bound" (1945), "Golden Boy" (1964), and "Hello Dolly" (1975). Mercury Records was his main label, but before he signed with them he'd appeared on Vocalion, Bluebird, Victor (with Phil Moore), Savoy (with Stuff Smith), Decca (Andy Kirk), and Apollo. His film credits are sometimes confused with the dancer-choreographer-actor Billy Daniel,- Missouri-born Jane Darwell was born Patti Woodard, the daughter of William Robert Woodard, president of the Louisville Southern Railroad, and Ellen (Booth) Woodard, in Palmyra, Missouri, where she grew up on a ranch . She nursed ambitions to be an opera singer, but put it off because of her father's disapproval (she eventually changed her name to Darwell from the family name of Woodard so as not to "sully" the family name). Making her stage debut at age 33, she was almost 40 when she made her first film, a silent, in 1913.
She easily made the transition from silents to talkies, and specialized in playing kindly, grandmotherly types. Her most famous role was as Ma Joad, the glue that held the Joad family together, in the classic The Grapes of Wrath (1940), for which she won the Academy Award. She was, however, memorably cast against type in The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), as the shrewish, cackling Ma Grier, a lynch mob leader, and again in Caged (1950), as the unsympathetic prison matron in charge of the isolation ward.
She made over 200 films. Her last, Mary Poppins (1964), was made at the express request of Walt Disney; she had retired and was living at the Motion Picture Country Home and Disney came out personally to ask her to appear in the film, after which she went back into retirement. She died in 1967 after suffering a stroke and a heart attack, and was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916 in Tokyo, Japan to British parents, Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her sister Joan, later to become famous as Joan Fontaine, was born the following year. Her surname comes from her paternal grandfather, whose family was from Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Her parents divorced when Olivia was just three years old, and she moved with her mother and sister to Saratoga, California.
After graduating from high school, where she fell prey to the acting bug, Olivia enrolled in Mills College in Oakland, where she participated in the school play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and was spotted by Max Reinhardt. She so impressed Reinhardt that he picked her up for both his stage version and, later, the Warner Bros. film version in 1935. She again was so impressive that Warner executives signed her to a seven-year contract. No sooner had the ink dried on the contract than Olivia appeared in three more films: The Irish in Us (1935), Alibi Ike (1935), and Captain Blood (1935), this last with the man with whom her career would be most closely identified: heartthrob Errol Flynn. He and Olivia starred together in eight films during their careers. In 1939 Warner Bros. loaned her to David O. Selznick for the classic Gone with the Wind (1939). Playing sweet Melanie Hamilton, Olivia received her first nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, only to lose out to one of her co-stars in the film, Hattie McDaniel.
After GWTW, Olivia returned to Warner Bros. and continued to churn out films. In 1941 she played Emmy Brown in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), which resulted in her second Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actress. Again she lost, this time to her sister Joan for her role in Suspicion (1941). After that strong showing, Olivia now demanded better, more substantial roles than the "sweet young thing" slot into which Warners had been fitting her. The studio responded by placing her on a six-month suspension, all of the studios at the time operating under the policy that players were nothing more than property to do with as they saw fit. As if that weren't bad enough, when her contract with Warners was up, she was told that she needed to make up the time lost because of the suspension. Irate, she sued the studio, and for the length of the court battle she didn't appear in a single film. The result, however, was worth it. In a landmark decision, the court said that not only would Olivia not need to make up the time, but also that all performers would be limited to a seven-year contract that would include any suspensions handed down. This became known as the "de Havilland decision": no longer could studios treat their performers as chattel. Olivia returned to the screen in 1946 and made up for lost time by appearing in four films, one of which finally won her the Oscar that had so long eluded her: To Each His Own (1946), in which she played Josephine Norris to the delight of critics and audiences alike. Olivia was the strongest performer in Hollywood for the balance of the 1940s.
In 1948 she turned in another strong showing in The Snake Pit (1948) as Virginia Cunningham, a woman suffering a mental breakdown. The end result was another Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but she lost to Jane Wyman in Johnny Belinda (1948). As in the two previous years, she made only one film in 1949, but she again won a nomination and the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Heiress (1949). After a three-year hiatus, Olivia returned to star in My Cousin Rachel (1952). From that point on, she made few appearances on the screen but was seen on Broadway and in some television shows. Her last screen appearance was in The Fifth Musketeer (1979), and her last career appearance was in the TV movie The Woman He Loved (1988).
Her turbulent relationship with her only sibling, Joan Fontaine, was press fodder for many decades; the two were reported as having been permanently estranged since their mother's death in 1975, when Joan claimed that she had not been invited to the memorial service, which she only managed to hold off until she could arrive by threatening to go public. Joan also wrote in her memoir that her elder sister had been physically, psychologically, and emotionally abusive when they were young. And the iconic photo of Joan with her hand outstretched to congratulate Olivia backstage after the latter's first Oscar win and Olivia ignoring it because she was peeved by a comment Joan had made about Olivia's new husband, Marcus Goodrich, remained part of Hollywood lore for many years.
Nonetheless, late in life, Fontaine gave an interview in which she serenely denied any and all claims of an estrangement from her sister. When a reporter asked Joan if she and Olivia were friends, she replied, "Of course!" The reporter responded that rumors to the contrary must have been sensationalism and she replied, "Oh, right--they have to. Two nice girls liking each other isn't copy." Asked if she and Olivia were in communication and spoke to each other, Joan replied "Absolutely." When asked if there ever had been a time when the two did not get along to the point where they wouldn't speak with one another, Joan replied, again, "Never. Never. There is not a word of truth about that." When asked why people believe it, she replied "Oh, I have no idea. It's just something to say ... Oh, it's terrible." When asked if she had seen Olivia over the years, she replied, "I've seen her in Paris. And she came to my apartment in New York often." The reporter stated that all this was a nice thing to hear. Joan then stated, "Let me just say, Olivia and I have never had a quarrel. We have never had any dissatisfaction. We have never had hard words. And all this is press." Joan died in 2013.
During the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of GWTW in 1989, Olivia graciously declined requests for all interviews as the last of the four main stars. She enjoyed a quiet retirement in Paris, France, where she resided for many decades, and where she died on 26 July, 2020, at the age of 104.
As well as being the last surviving major cast member of some of cinema's most beloved pre-war and wartime film classics (including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Gone with the Wind (1939)), and one of the longest-lived major stars in film history, Olivia de Havilland was unquestionably the last surviving iconic figure from the peak of Hollywood's golden era during the late 1930s, and her passing truly marked the end of an era.- Producer
- Director
- Editor
His parents Henry C. DeMille and Beatrice DeMille were playwrights. His father died when he was 12, and his mother supported the family by opening a school for girls and a theatrical company. Too young to enlist in the Spanish-American War, Cecil followed his brother William C. de Mille to the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts, making his stage debut in 1900. For twelve years he was actor/manager of his mother's theatrical company. In 1913, Jesse L. Lasky, Samuel Goldwyn and DeMille formed the Lasky Film Company (which years later evolved into Paramount Pictures), and the next year went west to California and produced the successful six reeler, The Squaw Man (1914), of historical significance as the first feature length film produced in Hollywood. He championed the switch from short to feature-length films and is often credited with making Hollywood the motion picture capital of the world. Rather than putting his money into known stars, he emphasized production values. He also developed stars, notably Gloria Swanson. He produced and directed 70 films and was involved in many more. Many of his films were romantic sexual comedies (he is supposed to have believed that Americans were curious only about money and sex). His best-known were biblical/religious epics: Joan the Woman (1916), The Ten Commandments (1923), The King of Kings (1927), The Sign of the Cross (1932), The Crusades (1935), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956). From 1936 to 1945 he hosted and directed the hour-long "Lux Radio Theatre", which brought the actors and stories of many movies to the airwaves and further established him as the symbol of Hollywood. He appeared as himself in the classic Sunset Boulevard (1950) with his former star Gloria Swanson as the fictitious disturbed former silent film actress Norma Desmond. His niece Agnes de Mille was the acclaimed choreographer of both the original Broadway production and film version of Oklahoma! (1955).- Actress
- Script and Continuity Department
A dark, exotic beauty, Katherine DeMille was a fascinating screen presence in the 1930s and 1940s. She was born in Canada to a Scottish schoolteacher, Edward Gabriel Lester, and his Italian-Swiss wife, Cecile Bianca Bertha (Colani) Lester. Her father was killed in France during World War I, and her mother, who was terminally ill, traveled to California to find Katherine's paternal grandparents and leave her with them. Mrs. Lester died before she could contact her in-laws and Katherine was placed in a Los Angeles orphanage. Constance Adams, the wife of Hollywood's top filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, was a director of the orphanage. The DeMilles were moved by Katherine's misfortune and decided to adopt her. She became a member of a family that also included the DeMilles' only natural child, Cecilia de Mille; another adopted child, John de Mille; and Richard de Mille, who was actually DeMille's nephew.
Katherine was educated at the Hollywood School for Girls and the Santa Barbara School for Girls. She loved acting in school plays and eventually found work as a movie extra, using the stage name Kay Marsh. DeMille, aware of his daughter's dream of becoming a star, hired her as a script supervisor for his film Four Frightened People (1934) and permitted her to visit the sets of his films and watch his editing process. She secretly auditioned for the role of Pancho Villa's wife, Rosita Morales, in the MGM production Viva Villa! (1934), starring Wallace Beery in the title role. She won the role and impressed the critics with her performance and beauty. Her portrayal of a Mexican maid in The Trumpet Blows (1934) earned her a contract with Paramount Pictures, and she was cast as the villain in Mae West's Belle of the Nineties (1934). Her ability to succeed in films on her own helped her gain her father's admiration as well as a featured role in his next epic, The Crusades (1935). She played Alice, Princess of France, and competed with Loretta Young's Berengaria for the love (and title as consort) of Richard the Lionheart (Henry Wilcoxon). The critics appreciated Katherine's talent and appearance in the lavish DeMille production. Her career was ascending.
After her excellent work in the prestigious DeMille picture, Katherine was finally elevated to leading lady status. Paramount starred her in Drift Fence (1936) and Sky Parade (1936). She was also loaned out to MGM for an uncredited appearance as Romeo's first love, Rosaline, in Romeo and Juliet (1936). 20th Century-Fox cast her in a supporting role in the Barbara Stanwyck-Joel McCrea starrer Banjo on My Knee (1936) and gave her second billing in Charlie Chan at the Olympics (1937). Katherine fell in love with Mexican actor Anthony Quinn and married him in 1937. She was billed third in The Californian (1937) and appeared in Love Under Fire (1937), a Spanish Civil War drama. At Columbia Pictures, she was billed second in the Jack Holt vehicle Under Suspicion (1937). This was followed by a small role in another Spanish Civil War drama, Blockade (1938), and a leading lady role in another Jack Holt vehicle, Trapped in the Sky (1939). Unfortunately, the big studios failed to showcase her talent in notable productions. Her next roles were featured in B movies: In Old Caliente (1939), Isle of Destiny (1940), Ellery Queen, Master Detective (1940), and Dark Streets of Cairo (1940). She returned to Paramount for a role in the Technicolor film Aloma of the South Seas (1941).
The Quinns had five children. She abandoned her film career after the tragic death of their firstborn, Christopher, in 1941. She made a comeback with a leading role in Black Gold (1947), co-starring her husband, and a supporting role as a Native American woman in her father's Unconquered (1947). She also starred in the film noir The Judge (1949). The Quinns divorced in 1965, and Katherine later moved to Tucson, Arizona, where she died of Alzheimer's disease in 1995.- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
London-born piano child prodigy Adolph Deutsch trained at the Royal Academy of Music from the age of eight and composed his first piece, a waltz for piano, entitled "La Charmeuse", two years later. He moved to the U.S. in 1910 and got his first job working for a publishing house, during which time he took pains to attend musical recitals and rehearsals and fully immerse himself into the art of orchestration and composition. During the 1920's and early 30's, Deutsch free-lanced variously as arranger and musical director in New York and Chicago, turning out numerous top-flight arrangements for leading dance bands of the day. He spent five years as arranger/conductor with Paul Ash's semi-symphonic orchestra, which performed regularly at the Oriental and Paramount theatres. This was followed by a 39-week stint on The Kraft Music Hall radio show and a year with legendary bandleader Paul Whiteman's Musical Varieties network radio broadcast.
In 1937, Deutsch was signed to a personal contract by director Mervyn LeRoy for Warner Brothers. Six years later, he founded the Screen Composer's Association and eventually served ten years (1943-53) as its president and another two years as Professor Emeritus. During his tenure at Warners he composed often subtle music for many of the studio's moody, low key films noir and melodramas. They included The Maltese Falcon (1941), Lucky Jordan (1942), The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) and the haunting score for High Sierra (1940), reminiscent of Max Steiner, and complete with a rousing, up-beat finale. His regular orchestrators during this period were Jerome Moross and Arthur Lange.
Since Ray Heindorf handled the relatively few musicals made at Warners, Deutsch did not have a lot to do with the genre until he joined MGM in 1948, as a replacement for the ailing Herbert Stothart. Handed an eight-year contract, Deutsch first assisted on the musical Luxury Liner (1948) and then received several prestige assignments, beginning with the Technicolor re-make of Little Women (1949). He was subsequently promoted to musical director for MGM's lavish musicals Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Show Boat (1951) and The Belle of New York (1952). He won three Oscars for Best Score, the first for "Annie Get Your Gun", the other two for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Oklahoma! (1955).
In addition to his studio work, Deutsch composed a symphonic work, "The Scottish Suite" (1936) and a "Prelude and Salute to Oscar" for the 18th Academy Award Presentation in 1946. His instrumental compositions include the numbers 'Clarabelle', 'Three Sisters', 'Skyride', 'Margo', 'Stairway' and 'Lonely Room' (the main theme from The Apartment). From 1946 to 1947, Deutsch also served as musical director on Hedda Hopper's weekly national radio broadcast of "This Is Hollywood".- Producer
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Flora Disney (née Call) and Elias Disney, a Canadian-born farmer and businessperson. He had Irish, German, and English ancestry. Walt moved with his parents to Kansas City at age seven, where he spent the majority of his childhood. At age 16, during World War I, he faked his age to join the American Red Cross. He soon returned home, where he won a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute. There, he met a fellow animator, Ub Iwerks. The two soon set up their own company. In the early 1920s, they made a series of animated shorts for the Newman theater chain, entitled "Newman's Laugh-O-Grams". Their company soon went bankrupt, however.
The two then went to Hollywood in 1923. They started work on a new series, about a live-action little girl who journeys to a world of animated characters. Entitled the "Alice Comedies", they were distributed by M.J. Winkler (Margaret). Walt was backed up financially only by Winkler and his older brother Roy O. Disney, who remained his business partner for the rest of his life. Hundreds of "Alice Comedies" were produced between 1923 and 1927, before they lost popularity.
Walt then started work on a series around a new animated character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This series was successful, but in 1928, Walt discovered that M.J. Winkler and her husband, Charles Mintz, had stolen the rights to the character away from him. They had also stolen all his animators, except for Ub Iwerks. While taking the train home, Walt started doodling on a piece of paper. The result of these doodles was a mouse named Mickey. With only Walt and Ub to animate, and Walt's wife Lillian Disney (Lilly) and Roy's wife Edna Disney to ink in the animation cells, three Mickey Mouse cartoons were quickly produced. The first two didn't sell, so Walt added synchronized sound to the last one, Steamboat Willie (1928), and it was immediately picked up. With Walt as the voice of Mickey, it premiered to great success. Many more cartoons followed. Walt was now in the big time, but he didn't stop creating new ideas.
In 1929, he created the 'Silly Symphonies', a cartoon series that didn't have a continuous character. They were another success. One of them, Flowers and Trees (1932), was the first cartoon to be produced in color and the first cartoon to win an Oscar; another, Three Little Pigs (1933), was so popular it was often billed above the feature films it accompanied. The Silly Symphonies stopped coming out in 1939, but Mickey and friends, (including Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, and plenty more), were still going strong and still very popular.
In 1934, Walt started work on another new idea: a cartoon that ran the length of a feature film. Everyone in Hollywood was calling it "Disney's Folly", but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was anything but, winning critical raves, the adoration of the public, and one big and seven little special Oscars for Walt. Now Walt listed animated features among his ever-growing list of accomplishments. While continuing to produce cartoon shorts, he also started producing more of the animated features. Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942) were all successes; not even a flop like Fantasia (1940) and a studio animators' strike in 1941 could stop Disney now.
In the mid 1940s, he began producing "packaged features", essentially a group of shorts put together to run feature length, but by 1950 he was back with animated features that stuck to one story, with Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953). In 1950, he also started producing live-action films, with Treasure Island (1950). These began taking on greater importance throughout the 50s and 60s, but Walt continued to produce animated features, including Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).
In 1955 he opened a theme park in southern California: Disneyland. It was a place where children and their parents could take rides, just explore, and meet the familiar animated characters, all in a clean, safe environment. It was another great success. Walt also became one of the first producers of films to venture into television, with his series The Magical World of Disney (1954) which he began in 1954 to promote his theme park. He also produced The Mickey Mouse Club (1955) and Zorro (1957). To top it all off, Walt came out with the lavish musical fantasy Mary Poppins (1964), which mixed live-action with animation. It is considered by many to be his magnum opus. Even after that, Walt continued to forge onward, with plans to build a new theme park and an experimental prototype city in Florida.
He did not live to see the culmination of those plans, however; in 1966, he developed lung cancer brought on by his lifelong chain-smoking. He died of a heart attack following cancer surgery on December 15, 1966 at age 65. But not even his death, it seemed, could stop him. Roy carried on plans to build the Florida theme park, and it premiered in 1971 under the name Walt Disney World. His company continues to flourish, still producing animated and live-action films and overseeing the still-growing empire started by one man: Walt Disney, who will never be forgotten.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Bobby Driscoll was a natural-born actor. Discovered by chance at the age of five-and-a-half in a barber shop in Altadena, CA. and then convincing in anything he ever undertook on the movie screen and on television throughout his career spanning 17 years (1943-1960). Includes such notable movie screen appearances as The Fighting Sullivans (1944), Song of the South (1946), So Dear to My Heart (1948), and The Window (1949), which was not only the sleeper of 1949 but even earned him his Academy Award in March 1950 as the outstanding juvenile actor of 1949. For his role as Jim Hawkins in Walt Disney's Treasure Island (1950), he eventually received his Hollywood Star on 1560 Vine Street, and in 1954 he was chosen in a nation-wide poll for a Milky Way Gold Star Award (for his work on TV and radio). But all the more tragic, then, was his fruitless struggle to find a place in a pitiless adolescent world after severe acne had stalled his acting career at 16. When his face was no longer charming and his voice not smooth enough to be used for voice-over jobs, his last big movie hit was the voice of animated Peter Pan (1953), for which he was also the live-action model. When his contract with the Disney studios was prematurely terminated shortly after the release of Peter Pan (1953) in late March 1953, his mother additionally took him from the talent-supporting Hollywood Professional School, which he attended by then. On his new School, the public Westwood University High School, on which he graduated in 1955, all of a sudden his former stardom became more burden than advantage. He successfully continued acting on TV until 1957 and even managed to get two final screen roles; in The Scarlet Coat (1955) and opposite of Mark Damon and Connie Stevens in The Party Crashers (1958). His life became more and more a roller coaster ride that included several encounters with the law and his eventual sentencing as a drug addict in October 1961. Released in early 1962, rehabilitated and eager to make a comeback, Bobby was ignored by the very industry that once had raised and nurtured him, because of his record as a convict and former drug addict. First famous... now infamous. Hoping to revive his career on the stage after his parole had expired in 1964, he eventually traveled to New York, only to learn that his reputation had preceded him, and no one wanted to hire him there, either. After a final appearance in Piero Heliczer's Underground short Dirt (1965) in 1965 and a short art-period at Andy Warhol's so-called Factory, he disappeared into the underground, thoroughly dispirited, funds depleted. On March 30, 1968, two playing children found his dead body in an abandoned East Village tenement. Believed to be an unclaimed and homeless person, he was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave on Hart Island, where he remains.- Actor
- Director
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José Ferrer was a Puerto Rican actor and film director. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for playing the title character in Cyrano de Bergerac (1950). Ferrer was the first Puerto Rican actor to win an Academy Award, and also the first Hispanic actor to win an Academy Award.
In 1912, Ferrer was born is San Juan, the capital city of Puerto Rico. Established as a Spanish colonial city in 1521, San Juan is the third oldest European-established capital city in the Americas, following Santo Domingo (established in 1496) and Panama City (established in 1521). Ferrer's father was Rafael Ferrer, a lawyer and author who was born and raised in San Juan. Ferrer's mother was María Providencia Cintrón, a native of the coastal town of Yabucoa. Ferrer's paternal grandfather was Dr. Gabriel Ferrer Hernández, who had campaigned for Puerto Rican independence from the Spanish Empire.
The Ferrer family moved to New York City in 1914, when José was 2-years-old. As a school student, Ferrer was educated abroad at the Institut Le Rosey, a prestigious boarding school located in Rolle, Switzerland. In 1933, Ferrer was enrolled at Princeton University, located in Princeton, New Jersey. He studied architecture, and wrote a senior thesis about French Naturalism and the literary works of Spanish naturalist writer Emilia Pardo Bazán (1851-1921). In 1934, Ferrer transferred to Columbia University, where he studied Romance languages.
In 1934, while still a college student, Ferrer made his theatrical debut in Long Island-based theatre. In 1935, he was hired as the stage manager at the Suffern Country Playhouse. Later in 1935, Ferrer made his Broadway debut in the comedy play "A Slight Case of Murder" by Damon Runyon (1880-1946) and Howard Lindsay (1889-1968). This stage production of the play ran for 69 performances, with Ferrer appearing in all of them.
Ferrer's major success as a Broadway actor was performing in the play "Brother Rat" by John Monks Jr. (1910-2004) and Fred F. Finklehoffe (1910-1977). The play had a ran of 577 performances from 1936 to 1938. Among his subsequent theatrical appearances, the most successful were staged productions of Mamba's Daughters (1938), which ran for 163 performances, and "Charley's Aunt" (1940-1941), which ran for 233 performances. His role in "Charley's Aunt" required him to perform in drag, for the first time in his career.
Ferrer had one of the greatest theatrical successes of his career when playing the villainous Iago in a Broadway production of "Othello' by William Shakespeare. The production had a ran of 296 performances, lasting from 1943 to 1944. Ferrer played his most famous role as the historical figure of Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) in the 1946-1947 Broadway season. For this role, Ferrer won the 1947 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play.
Ferrer made his film debut in the Technicolor epic "Joan of Arc" (1948). He played the historical monarch Charles VII of France (1403-1461, reigned 1422-1461), the ruler who Joan of Arc served during the Hundred Years' War. For his debut role, Ferrer was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The Award was instead won by rival actor Walter Huston (1883-1950).
Ferrer's success as a film actor, helped him gain more film roles in Hollywood-produced films. He played the "smooth-talking hypnotist David Korvo" in the film noir "Whirlpool" (1949), and dictator Raoul Farrago in the film noir "Crisis". He had a career highlight with a film adaptation of the play "Cyrano de Bergerac", where he played the title role. For this role, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.
His next critically successful role was that of artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) in the historical drama "Moulin Rouge" (1952). For this role, Ferrer was again nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. The award was instead won by rival actor Gary Cooper (1901-1961). The film also marked a financial success for Ferrer, who received 40% of the film's profits.
Ferrer also appeared in other box office hits of the 1950s, such as the musical "Miss Sadie Thompson" (1953), the Navy-themed drama "The Caine Mutiny" (1954), and the biographical film "Deep in My Heart" (1954). Ferrer was also interested in becoming a film director. He made his directing debut with the film noir "The Shrike" (1955). His subsequent directing efforts included war film "The Cockleshell Heroes" (1955), the film noir "The Great Man" (1956), the biographical film I Accuse! (1958), and the comedy film "The High Cost of Loving" (1958). While still critically well-received, several of these films were box office flops. He took a hiatus from films productions.
Ferrer attempted a comeback as a film director with the sequel film "Return to Peyton Place" (1961) and the musical film "State Fair" (1962). Both films were box office flops. As an actor, Ferrer had a supporting role as a Turkish Bey in the historical drama "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962). While a relatively minor role, Ferrer considered the finest role of his film career.
In television, Ferrer gained a notable role as the narrator in the pilot episode of the hit sitcom "Bewitched" (1964-1972). In films, Ferrer started playing mostly supporting roles. He briefly returned to the role of Cyrano de Bergerac in the French adventure film "Cyrano and d'Artagnan". He had another notable role as a historical monarch, playing Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea (reigned 4 BC-39 AD) in the Biblical epic "The Greatest Story Ever Told" (1965).
Ferrer had his first notable role as a voice actor, playing the villain Ben Haramed in the Rankin/Bass Christmas "The Little Drummer Boy" (1968). But at this time, he started having legal troubles. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) accused Ferrer of still owing unpaid taxes since 1962.
Ferrer had many film roles in the 1970s, but no outstanding highlights. As a voice actor, he voiced Cyrano de Bergerac in an episode of "The ABC Afterschool Special". In the 1980s, Ferrer played a monarch again, playing Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV in the science fiction film "Dune". The film was an adaptation of the 1965 novel "Dune" by Frank Herbert (1920-1986), and Shaddam was one of the film's villains. This was among the last notable roles of Ferrer's long career.
Ferred retired from acting entirely in 1991, due to increasing health problems. His last theatrical performance was a production of the generation-gap drama "Conversations with My Father". Ferrer died in 1992, due to colorectal cancer. He was 80-years-old. He died in Coral Gables, Florida, but was buried in the Santa María Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Several of his children had acting careers of their own.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland on October 22, 1917, in Tokyo, Japan, in what was known as the International Settlement, to British parents, Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her paternal grandfather's family was from Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Her father had a lucrative practice in Japan, but due to Joan and older sister Olivia de Havilland's recurring ailments the family moved to California in the hopes of improving their health. Mrs. de Havilland and the two girls settled in Saratoga while their father went back to his practice in Japan. Joan's parents did not get along well and divorced soon afterward. Mrs. de Havilland had a desire to be an actress but her dreams were curtailed when she married, but now she hoped to pass on her dream to Olivia and Joan. While Olivia pursued a stage career, Joan went back to Tokyo, where she attended the American School. In 1934 she came back to California, where her sister was already making a name for herself on the stage. Joan likewise joined a theater group in San Jose and then Los Angeles to try her luck there. After moving to L.A., Joan adopted the name of Joan Burfield because she didn't want to infringe upon Olivia, who was using the family surname.
She tested at MGM and gained a small role in No More Ladies (1935), but she was scarcely noticed and Joan was idle for a year and a half. During this time she roomed with Olivia, who was having much more success in films. In 1937, this time calling herself Joan Fontaine, she landed a better role as Trudy Olson in You Can't Beat Love (1937) and then an uncredited part in Quality Street (1937). Although the next two years saw her in better roles, she still yearned for something better. In 1940 she garnered her first Academy Award nomination for Rebecca (1940). Although she thought she should have won, (she lost out to Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle (1940)), she was now an established member of the Hollywood set. She would again be Oscar-nominated for her role as Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth in Suspicion (1941), and this time she won. Joan was making one film a year but choosing her roles well. In 1942 she starred in the well-received This Above All (1942).
The following year she appeared in The Constant Nymph (1943). Once again she was nominated for the Oscar, she lost out to Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette (1943). By now it was safe to say she was more famous than her older sister and more fine films followed. In 1948, she accepted second billing to Bing Crosby in The Emperor Waltz (1948). Joan took the year of 1949 off before coming back in 1950 with September Affair (1950) and Born to Be Bad (1950). In 1951 she starred in Paramount's Darling, How Could You! (1951), which turned out badly for both her and the studio and more weak productions followed.
Absent from the big screen for a while, she took parts in television and dinner theaters. She also starred in many well-produced Broadway plays such as Forty Carats and The Lion in Winter. Her last appearance on the big screen was The Witches (1966) and her final appearance before the cameras was Good King Wenceslas (1994). She is, without a doubt, a lasting movie icon.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Eva Gabor was born on February 11, 1919 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman) and Vilmos Gabor (born Farkas Miklós Grün), a soldier. Her older siblings were Magda Gabor, an actress, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, an actress and socialite. Her parents were both from Jewish families. She went to Hollywood, California, to act in the 1930s. Her mother escaped from Nazi-occupied Budapest in the 1940s, also settling in the U.S.
Eva appeared both in films and on Broadway in the 1950s, as well as in several "A"-movies, including The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), starring Elizabeth Taylor, and Artists and Models (1955), which featured Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
In 1953, she was given her own television talk show, The Eva Gabor Show (1953). Throughout the rest of the 1950s and early 1960s, she appeared on television and in movies. She appeared on one episode of the mystery series Justice (1954), and was on the game show What's My Line? (1950) as the "mystery challenger". Her film appearances during this period include a remake of My Man Godfrey (1957), Gigi (1958) and It Started with a Kiss (1959).
However, she is best remembered as Lisa Douglas, the socialite turned farm wife on Green Acres (1965) with co-star Eddie Albert playing her attorney husband Oliver Wendell Douglas. Eva Gabor died at age 76 from respiratory failure and pneumonia on July 4, 1995 in Los Angeles, California.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Undoubtedly the woman who had come to epitomize what we recognize today as "celebrity," Zsa Zsa Gabor, is better known for her many marriages, personal appearances, her "dahlink" catchphrase, her actions, gossip, and quotations on men, rather than her film career.
Zsa Zsa was born as Sári Gabor on February 6, 1917 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman) and Vilmos Gabor (born Farkas Miklós Grün), both of Jewish descent. Her siblings were Eva Gabor and Magda Gabor. Zsa Zsa studied at a Swiss finishing school, was second runner-up in the fifth Miss Hungary pageant, and began her stage career in Vienna in 1934. In 1941, the year she obtained her first divorce, she followed younger sister Eva to Hollywood.
A radiant, beautiful blonde, Zsa Zsa began to appear on television series and occasional films. Her first film was at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Lovely to Look At (1952), co-starring Kathryn Grayson and Red Skelton. She next made a comedy called We're Not Married! (1952) at 20th Century Fox with Ginger Rogers. It was far from a star billing; she appeared several names down the cast as a supporting actress. But in 1952 she broke into films big time with her starring role opposite José Ferrer in Moulin Rouge (1952), although it has been said that throughout filming, director John Huston gave her a very difficult time.
In the following years, Zsa Zsa slipped back into supporting roles in films such as Lili (1953) and 3 Ring Circus (1954). Her main period of film work was in the 1950s, with other roles in Death of a Scoundrel (1956), with Yvonne De Carlo, and The Man Who Wouldn't Talk (1958) with Anna Neagle; again, these were supporting roles. By the 1960s, Zsa Zsa was appearing more as herself in films. She now appeared to follow her own persona around, and cameo appearances were the order of the day in films such as Pepe (1960) and Jack of Diamonds (1967). This continued throughout the 1970s.
She was memorable as herself in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991), in which she humorously poked fun at a 1989 incident where she was convicted of slapping a police officer (Paul Kramer) during a traffic stop. She spent three days in jail and had to do 120 hours of community service. Such infamous incidents contributed to her becoming one of the most all-time recognizable of Hollywood celebrities, and sometimes ridiculed as a result. She was also memorable to British television viewers on The Ruby Wax Show (1997).
In 2002, Gabor was reported to be in a coma in a Los Angeles hospital after a horrifying car accident. The 85-year-old star was injured when the car she was traveling in hit a utility pole in West Hollywood, California. The reports about her coma eventually proved to be inaccurate.
Zsa Zsa's life, spanning two continents, nine husbands, and 11 decades, came to an end on December 18, 2016, when she died of cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California. She was 99.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson was born on September 29, 1904 in London, England, to Nancy Sophia (Greer) and George Garson, a commercial clerk. Of Scottish and Ulster-Scots descent, Garson displayed no early interest in becoming an actress. Educated at the University of London intending to become a teacher, she opted instead to take a job at an advertising agency. During her off hours she appeared in local theatrical productions, gaining a reputation as an extremely talented and charismatic performer. During a stage production of "Old Music," Garson was offered a studio contract by MGM Vice President of Production Louis B. Mayer while he was on a visit to London looking for new talent. Garson's very first film under that arrangement was the immensely popular Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), earning her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress - the first of six she would receive. The following year would see Greer in the highly acclaimed Pride and Prejudice (1940) as "Elizabeth Bennet". 1941 saw her earn a second nomination for her role as Edna Gladney in Blossoms in the Dust (1941), but it was the moving, if propagandist, Mrs. Miniver (1942), in a role that she would forever be known by, that actually brought her the Oscar statuette as Best Actress.
As Marie Curie in Madame Curie (1943), she would draw yet another nomination, and the same the next year in Mrs. Parkington (1944). It began to seem that any movie she was part of would be an automatic success. Sure enough, in 1945, she won yet another nomination, for her role as "Mary Rafferty" in The Valley of Decision (1945). Still, Garson began to chafe at the unbroken stream of "noble woman" roles in which the studio was casting her. MGM felt that they had an winning formula and saw no compelling reason to alter it. Two standard seven-year contract extensions kept her at MGM until 1954 when, by mutual consent, she left the only studio she had ever known. In 1946, Greer appeared in Adventure (1945), which was a flop at the box-office. 1947's Desire Me (1947) was no less a disaster, downward spiral finally arrested with the hit That Forsyte Woman (1949). The next year, she reprised her role as "Kay Miniver" in The Miniver Story (1950), though audiences were unsurprisingly put off by her character's untimely demise from cancer, leaving screen husband Walter Pidgeon to soldier on alone.
For the remainder of the 1950s, she endured several predictably unappreciated films. Then, 1960 found her cast in the role of Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (1960). This film was, perhaps, her finest work and landed her seventh and final Academy Award nomination. Her final screen appearances were in The Singing Nun (1966) as "Mother Prioress" and The Happiest Millionaire (1967). After a few TV movies, Garson retired to the New Mexico ranch she shared with her husband, millionaire Buddy E.E. Fogelson. She concentrated on the environment and other various charities. By the 1980s, she was suffering from chronic heart problems, prompting her to slow down. That was the cause of her death on April 6, 1996 in Dallas, Texas, at age 91.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Janet Gaynor was born Laura Gainor on October 6, 1906, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a child, she & her parents moved to San Francisco, California, where she graduated from high school in 1923. She then moved to Los Angeles where she enrolled in a secretarial school. She got a job at a shoe store for the princely sum of $18 per week. However, since L.A. was the land of stars and studios, she wanted to try her hand at acting. She managed to land unbilled bit parts in several feature films and comedy shorts. She bided her time, believing "Good things come to those who wait." She didn't have to wait too long, either. In 1926, at the age of 20, she turned in a superb performance as Anna Burger in The Johnstown Flood (1926). The Hollywood moguls knew they had a top star on their hands and cast her in several other leading roles that year, including The Shamrock Handicap (1926), The Blue Eagle (1926), The Midnight Kiss (1926) and The Return of Peter Grimm (1926). The next year she turned in acclaimed performances in two classic films, 7th Heaven (1927) and Sunrise (1927). Based on the strength of those two films plus Street Angel (1928), Janet received the very first Academy Award for best actress. This was the first and only time an actress won the Oscar for multiple roles. When "talkies" replaced silent films, Janet was one of the few who made a successful transition, not only because of her great acting ability but for her charming voice as well. Without a doubt, Janet had already lived a true rags-to-riches story. Throughout the mid-1930s she was the top drawing star at theaters. She turned in grand performances in several otherwise undistinguished films.
Then came A Star Is Born (1937). She was very convincing as Vicki Lester (aka Esther Blodgett), struggling actress trying for the big time. Told by the receptionist at Central casting "You know what your chances are? One in a hundred thousand," Esther/Vicki replies, "But maybe--I'm that one." For her outstanding performance she was nominated for another Oscar, but lost to Luise Rainer's performance in The Good Earth (1937), her second in as many tries. After appearing in The Young in Heart (1938), Janet didn't appear in another film until 1957's Bernardine (1957). Her last performance was in a Broadway version of Harold and Maude. Although the play was a flop, Janet's performance salvaged it to any degree - she still had what it took to entertain the public. On September 14, 1984, Janet passed away from pneumonia in Palm Springs, California, at the age of 77.- Editor
- Editorial Department
- Director
American film editor who occasionally directed, but won Oscars in his primary field. The son of Harry W. Gerstad, silent film cinematographer, Harry Donald Gerstad grew up in Hollywood. In his late teenage years he got work as a laboratory assistant at Hal Roach Studios, then Warner Bros., and finally at Republic Pictures.
Following the Second World War, he began editing feature films at RKO, working frequently with director Edward Dmytryk, who mentored Gerstad and helped him find work. In 1949 Gerstad was hired by Stanley Kramer as editorial supervisor and moved to Kramer's unit at Columbia Pictures. He won an Academy Award for his editing of Champion (1949) and shared the Oscar with Elmo Williams for High Noon (1952). He was one of several Kramer staff to work on the TV series Adventures of Superman (1952), and directed episodes as well as editing them. In the 1960s he worked for Bing Crosby Productions and 20th Century-Fox as editorial supervisor, as well as for John Wayne's Batjac Productions. He retired in 1973 and lived the remainder of his life in Palm Springs, where he died in 2002 at 93.- Art Director
- Art Department
- Set Decorator
After graduating from New York's Art Students League he worked for his architect father, then started film work at Edison Studios in 1915 assisting Hugo Ballin. In 1918 he moved to Goldwyn as art director and, in 1924, began his 32 year stint as supervising art director for some 1500 MGM films, with direct responsibility in well over 150 of those. He designed the Oscar itself, winning it 11 of the 37 times he was nominated for it. Some of his designs influenced American interiors, and it has been argued that he was the most important art director in the history of American cinema.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Gloria Grahame Hallward, an acting pupil of her mother (stage actress and teacher Jean Grahame), acted professionally while still in high school. In 1944 Louis B. Mayer saw her on Broadway and gave her an MGM contract under the name Gloria Grahame. Her debut in the title role of Blonde Fever (1944) was auspicious, but her first public recognition came on loan-out in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Although her talent and sex appeal were of star quality, she did not fit the star pattern at MGM, who sold her contract to RKO in 1947. Here the same problem resurfaced; her best film in these years was made on loan-out, In a Lonely Place (1950). Soon after, she left RKO. The 1950s, her best period, brought her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and typecast her as shady, inimitably sultry ladies in seven well-known film-noir classics.
Rumors of being difficult to work with on the set of Oklahoma! (1955) helped sideline her film career from 1956 onward. She also suffered from marital and child-custody troubles. Eight years after divorce from Nicholas Ray, who was 12 years her senior (and reportedly had discovered her in bed with his 13 year old son), and after a subsequent marriage to Cy Howard ended in divorce, in 1960 she married her former stepson Anthony Ray (who was almost 14 years younger than she was.) This led former husbands Nicholas Ray and Cy Howard to sue Grahame; each man seeking custody of his respective child, putting gossip columnists and scandal sheets into overdrive. Grahame herself underwent electroconvulsive therapy after the ensuing stress caused a nervous breakdown. Surprisingly, however, Grahame and Anthony "Tony" Ray proved a happy couple. The union would be Grahame's longest marriage, lasting almost 14 years (10 years longer than her previous union with Ray's father); the couple had two children, Anthony Jr. and James.
In 1960, Grahame resumed stage acting, combined with TV work and, from 1970, some mostly inferior films. She was described as a serious, skillful actress; spontaneous, honest, and strong-willed; imaginative and curious; incredibly sexy but insecure about her looks (prompting plastic surgery on her famous lips); loving appreciative male company; "a bit loony". In 1975, she was treated for breast cancer. Five years later, she was diagnosed with cancer again, although it is unclear if this was a new cancer or a metastasis of her breast cancer. Grahame eventually moved to England in 1978. Her busiest period of British and American stage work ended abruptly in 1981 when she collapsed from cancer symptoms during a rehearsal. She wished to remain in Liverpool with her partner, Peter Turner (almost 30 years her junior), but after Turner notified her children of her health condition and impending death, two of her children flew to England to retrieve her, insisting she return to the United States. She died a few hours later that same day of stomach cancer and peritonitis at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan on October 5, 1981 at age 57.- Stewart Granger was born James Lablache Stewart in London, the great grandson of the opera singer Luigi Lablache. He attended Epsom College but left after deciding not to pursue a medical degree. He decided to try acting and attended Webber-Douglas School of Dramatic Art, London. By 1935, he made his stage debut in "The Cardinal" at the Little Theatre Hull . He was with the Birmingham Repertory Company between 1936 and 1937 and, in 1938, he made his debut in the West End, London in "The Sun Never Sets". He joined the Old Vic company in 1939, appearing in 'Tony Draws a Horse' at the Criterion and 'A House in the Square' at the St Martins He had been gradually rising through the ranks of better stage roles when World War II began, and he joined the British Army in 1940. However, he developed an ulcer (1942) which brought his release from military service.
With a dearth of leading men for British movies he quickly landed his first film opportunity The Man in Grey (1943) for Gainsborough Pictures. This was the first installment of the company's successful series of romance films. Not to be confused with American actor James Stewart, James Lablanche Stewart became Stewart Granger (though he was "Jimmy" to his off-screen friends). But the film work was unsatisfying. He was forever cast as the dashing hero type, while fellow up-and-coming actor James Mason always garnered the more substantial Gainsborough part. When Mason got the nod from Hollywood, Granger inherited better parts and, in some star company in one case, the sophisticated Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) with Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh and a very young bit player already being noticed, Jean Simmons. Granger's lead roles to the end of the decade were substantial, but Simmons was unwittingly moving on into British film history with small but memorable roles for David Lean, Michael Powell, and, in a big way, Laurence Olivier, as "Ophelia" in his historic Hamlet (1948) for which she received an Oscar nomination. Granger and she were brought together as co-stars in the comedy Adam and Evalyn (1949). This time around, the chemistry off-camera was there as well, and they became engaged. About the same time, Granger's hope of interesting Hollywood was realized for him and his bride-to-be. He married Simmons and signed with MGM in 1950. Once in Hollywood, he was getting star billing leads in romantic roles that the audiences loved, but he found them still unsatisfying. He also found himself heir apparent to Errol Flynn as a swashbuckler in two popular films: the remake of The Prisoner of Zenda (1952) and Scaramouche (1952). He and Simmons were paired in Young Bess (1953), where Granger had the romantic lead, but Simmons was the focus of the movie.
Through the 50s, the films of each might have fairly equal production values, but as the fortunes of Hollywood go, Simmons was the more memorable star in films that were more popular-some very big hits, the later Elmer Gantry (1960) and Spartacus (1960). That sort of undeclared competition for a married Hollywood couple was poison to the marriage. In 1960, they divorced. Granger did a lot of work in Germany, along with some in Italy and Spain in the 60s. Interestingly, in the same period Simmons was finding the same lack of challenging roles in the US. In the 70s and 80s, Granger was relegated to small screen subsistence with regular TV roles along with a few movies and a stint on the New York stage. And ironically, Simmons was in the same boat during that period. Granger's typecasting was nothing new, but certainly his often scathing criticism of Hollywood and its denizens that came out in his autobiography "Sparks Fly Upward" was understandable and rang true with so many other stories dealing with illusive stardom. Though he was candid in his disgust with his whole career - and admittedly he did not have the depth for the range of roles allotted to bigger named actors - nonetheless he always turned in solid performances in the roles that became his legacy. - Actor
- Soundtrack
There are very few character actors from the 1930s, '40s or '50s who rose to the rank of stardom. Only a rare man or woman reached the level of renown and admiration, and had enough audience appeal, to be the first name in a cast's billing, a name that got marquee posting. Charles Coburn comes to mind, but there aren't many others. However, one who made it was Edmund Gwenn.
Gwenn was born Edmund Kellaway in Wandsworth, London, on September 26, 1877. He was the oldest boy in the family, which at that time meant he was the only one who really mattered. His father was a British civil servant, and he groomed Edmund to take a position of power in the Empire. However, early on, the boy had a mind of his own. For a while, his inclination was to go to sea, but that ended when one of his forebear's in the Queen's Navy was court-martialed for exceeding his "wine bill". In addition to that, Edmund had poor eyesight and perhaps most importantly, he was his mother's darling, and she kept having visions of shipwrecks and desert island strandings. As for the civil service, to the boy it seemed like a "continent of unexplored boredom".
He attended St. Olaf's College and would attend King's College in London as well. Surprisingly, he excelled at rugby and amateur boxing. Meanwhile, he developed a strong inclination to the stage, partly because of his admiration for the great English actor, Henry Irving. A major roadblock to that ambition, however, was his father, who, at that time, was stationed in Ireland. When Edmund broke the news to his father that he had chosen acting as a career, there followed "a scene without parallel in Victorian melodrama." His father called the theatre "that sink of iniquity." He predicted that, if Edmund went into theatre, he would end up in the gutter, and then literally "showed him the door." Years later his father would admit he had been wrong, but that didn't help the young man during an all-night crossing from Dublin to England during which he had time to reflect. He was penniless. His experience consisted of a few performances in amateur productions, and he knew that if he failed, there was no going back home.
However, in 1895, at the age of eighteen, he made his first appearance on the English stage with a group of amateurs just turned professional, playing two roles, "Dodo Twinkle" and "Damper", in "Rogue and Vagabond". For a long time afterward, he refused to go on stage without a false beard or some other disguise, fearing someone would recognize him and tell his father (it's a bit ironic, by the way, that Edmund's younger brother Arthur would also become an actor using the name of Arthur Chesney). During the next few years, roles were hard to come by but, by 1899, he made his first appearance on the West End in London in "A Jealous Mistake". This was followed by ten years in the hinterlands acting with stock and touring companies, gradually working his way up from small parts to juicier roles. While with Edmund Tearle's Repertory Company, which toured the provinces, he played a different role each night. It was excellent training, in that he acted in everything from William Shakespeare to old melodrama.
About this time, he married Minnie Terry, niece of the more famous actress Ellen Terry, a marriage that evidently was short-lived. Most sources list it as beginning and ending in 1901, perhaps only for a matter of days or even hours. From that point, Gwenn would remain a bachelor for the rest of his life. He seems to have preferred not going into any details about the marriage and divorce, and Minnie Terry, who outlived Gwenn, apparently never mentioned what happened, at least not publicly. That same year, however, he went to Australia and acted there for three years, not returning to London until 1904. There, he took a small part in "In the Hospital", which led to his receiving a postcard from George Bernard Shaw, offering him a leading role as "Straker", the Cockney chauffeur, in "Man and Superman". Gwenn accepted (by this time he was Edmund Gwenn) and the play was a success. Shaw became a sort of professional godfather for him. He appeared in "John Bull's Island", "Major Barbara", "You Never Can Tell", "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" and "The Devil's Disciple", all by Shaw. He spent three years in Shaw's company, years which he called "the happiest I've ever had in the theatre".
From 1908 until 1915, he performed in new plays by noted playwrights of the time, including John Masefield's "The Campden Wonder", 'John Galsworthy''s "Justice" and "The Skin Game", J.M. Barrie's "What Every Woman Knows" and "The Twelve Pound Look", as well as Henrik Ibsen's "The Wild Duck" and Harley Granville-Barker's "The Voysey Inheritance". By this time, World War I had started and Gwenn, despite his poor eyesight, was conscripted into the British Army. Most of his time during "The Great War" was spent drawing supplies up to the front lines, while under fire. He was so successful at this task that, after a year as a private, he received a steady stream of promotions until eventually becoming a captain.
After the War, he returned to the stage and, in 1921, made his first appearance in the US in "A Voice from the Minaret" and "Fedora". He would return to America in 1928 to replace his friend, Dennis Eadie, who had died while in rehearsal for "The House of Arrows", but for most of this time, he was in England doing more stage roles and two dozen British films.
His first appearance on screen was in a British short, The Real Thing at Last (1916) in 1916, while he was still in the army. His next film roles were in Shaw's How He Lied to Her Husband (1931) and J.B. Priestley's The Good Companions (1933). He was also in Unmarried (1920) in 1920 and a silent version of "The Skin Game" (The Skin Game (1921)) as "Hornblower", a role he would reprise in 1931 for a talking version (The Skin Game (1931)) directed by Alfred Hitchcock. From then on, Gwenn was to work steadily until the end of his life. He appeared in English stage plays and films, eventually doing more and more on Broadway and in Hollywood. For example, he played the amiable counterfeiter in "Laburnum Grove" in 1933 (later to become the film Laburnum Grove (1936) in which he would star) and then with the entire British company brought it to New York. He was also a huge success in "The Wookey" in 1942, playing a Cockney tugboat captain. That same year, he appeared as "Chebutykin" in Anton Chekhov's "The Three Sisters", with Katharine Cornell, Ruth Gordon and Judith Anderson. In such illustrious company, Gwenn was hailed by critics as "magnificent" and "superlatively good".
In 1935, RKO summoned him to Hollywood to portray Katharine Hepburn's father in Sylvia Scarlett (1935). From then on, he was much in demand, appearing in Anthony Adverse (1936), All American Chump (1936), Parnell (1937), and A Yank at Oxford (1938). In 1940, he was the delightful "Mr. Bennet" in Pride and Prejudice (1940), then made a 180-degree turn by playing a folksy assassin in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940). The year 1941 brought Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941), One Night in Lisbon (1941), The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) and Scotland Yard (1941). Then came Charley's Aunt (1941), in which he romanced Jack Benny, masquerading as a woman. Other important films included A Yank at Eton (1942), The Meanest Man in the World (1943), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) and Between Two Worlds (1944).
In 1945, he played villain "Albert Richard Kingby" in Dangerous Partners (1945). There is a peculiar scene in this film, which makes one wonder what director Edward L. Cahn was thinking. James Craig and Signe Hasso, the hero and heroine, are being held by the villainous Gwenn in a room, when Gwenn comes in to interrogate them. In the midst of this, the 33-year-old, 6'2" Craig punches the 68-year-old, 5'5" Gwenn in the belly and then forces the doubled-over Gwenn to release them. Admittedly, Craig and Hasso must escape, and Gwenn's character is pretty evil, but knocking the wind out of the old man makes Craig seem like a bully and far less sympathetic.
After "Dangerous Partners", Gwenn was in Bewitched (1945), She Went to the Races (1945), Of Human Bondage (1946), Undercurrent (1946), Life with Father (1947), Green Dolphin Street (1947) and Apartment for Peggy (1948). In Thunder in the Valley (1947), he played one of his most unlikable characters, a father who beats his son, smashes his violin and shoots his dog.
Then in 1947, he struck it rich. Twentieth Century-Fox was planning Miracle on 34th Street (1947). It had offered the role of "Kris Kringle" to Gwenn's cousin, the well-known character actor Cecil Kellaway, but he had turned it down with the observation that "Americans don't like whimsy". Fox then offered it to Gwenn, who pounced on it. His performance was to earn him an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor (at age 71) and, because it is rerun every Christmas season, he would become for many their all-time favorite screen Santa. Accepting the award, Gwenn said, "Now I know there is a Santa Claus". He beat out some stiff competition: Charles Bickford (The Farmer's Daughter (1947)), Thomas Gomez (Ride the Pink Horse (1947)), Robert Ryan (Crossfire (1947)) and Richard Widmark (Kiss of Death (1947)). As soon as he got the part, Gwenn went to work turning himself into Santa Claus. Though rotund, Gwenn didn't feel he was rotund enough to look like the jolly old elf most people expected after having read Clement Moore's "The Night before Christmas", in which Santa "had a broad face and a little round belly / That shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly." He could of course wear padding, but he resisted that as too artificial. So he put on almost 30 pounds for the role, a fair amount for a man of his short stature, and added nearly five inches to his waistline. The problem was that after the film was finished, Gwenn found it hard to lose the extra weight. "I've been stocky all my adult life," he said, "but now I must accept the fact that I'm fat." As was his nature, he didn't get upset, and instead was able to laugh about it. Six years later, when playing an elderly professor in The Student Prince (1954), he had a scene in which he entered the Prince's chamber, struggling with the buttons of a ceremonial uniform. The line he was given was, "I'm too old to wear a uniform," but Gwenn suggested a change which stayed in the finished film, "I'm too old and fat to wear a uniform."
Gwenn had lost his hair early on, and had no more concern about it than he did about his portliness. In a fair number of films, such as Pride and Prejudice (1940), he appears bald, but he also played many roles with a toupee if he felt that worked better for the character. He would select a hairpiece that helped achieve the look he was after for the role. As regards the rest of his appearance, Gwenn is commonly listed as 5'6" tall, which may have been accurate when he was a younger man, but by the time he was a Hollywood regular he appears to be at least two inches shorter. Plagued by weak eyesight since his youth, Gwenn wore a pince-nez for a while, and then glasses, off-screen and sometimes on. Though he enjoyed fine clothes, he does not seem to have been in the least bit vain about any physical shortcomings he may have had. He looked a bit like a benign clergyman, perhaps of the Anglican faith, an image enhanced by his soft, almost soothing voice. He once said he was "always short and stocky, and not a particularly handsome thing. I could never play romantic leads." After "Miracle on 34th Street," however, Gwenn was a star and constantly in demand, especially when the role called for a kindly eccentric.
Gwenn remained a British subject all his life. When he first moved to Hollywood, he lived at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. His home in London had been reduced to rubble during the bombings by the Luftwaffe in World War II. Only the fireplace survived. What Gwenn regretted most was the loss of the memorabilia he had collected of the famous actor Henry Irving. Eventually Gwenn bought a house at 617 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills, which he was to share with his secretary and "confidential man", Ernest C. Bach, and later with former Olympic athlete Rodney Soher.
The year 1950 brought a pair of interesting films. In Louisa (1950) he and Charles Coburn were romantic rivals for the hand of Spring Byington. In one scene Gwenn socks Coburn in the jaw, though Coburn later bests him in arm wrestling. Gwenn wins Byington's hand in the end. He was also delightful in Mister 880 (1950) as a kindly counterfeiter. Gwenn received his second Oscar nomination for his performance, though this time he lost out to George Sanders in All About Eve (1950) He did, however, win the Golden Globe Award.
In 1952 he appeared in Sally and Saint Anne (1952) as Grandpa Patrick Ryan, affecting an Irish brogue for the role. He played football coach Pop Doyle, teamed up with a chimpanzee, in Bonzo Goes to College (1952). "The Student Prince" followed in 1954, as did the science-fiction classic Them! (1954). This film raises an interesting observation. The year before, Cecil Kellaway had appeared in another sci-fi classic, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). Watch the two films together and you'll see that the two cousins are playing essentially the same role, that of an elderly scientist with a lovely daughter who is able to provide the hero, and the audience, with some scholarly background on the dangers they face. The two actors could easily have switched roles. "Them!" is noteworthy, too, in that it was a particularly physically painful part for Gwenn. By this time he was 77 and suffering from advanced arthritis. Several scenes in the movie were filmed in the desert, where the temperature often reached 110 degrees. The costumer had outfitted him in a wool suit for some of the early scenes. Joan Weldon, who played his daughter, has noted that Gwenn was in great discomfort and almost certainly could not have continued without the help of his valet, Ernest.
The next year Gwenn was in It's a Dog's Life (1955) and The Trouble with Harry (1955). His film work has some interesting patterns. "Dog's Life" was at least the third time Gwenn made a film centered on a dog. He had already co-starred with Pal as Lassie in Lassie Come Home (1943) and Challenge to Lassie (1949). "Harry" was Gwenn's fourth picture directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the others being "The Skin Game", Strauss' Great Waltz (1934) and "Foreign Correspondent". Gwenn's last feature film was The Rocket from Calabuch (1956), shot in Spain and released in 1958, when he was 81. As for TV, his most memorable role may have been as a snowman that comes to life in a Christmas night telecast on The Ford Television Theatre (1952) from a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Heart of Gold".
Gwenn's final days were spent at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, California. Having endured terrible arthritis for many years, he had suffered a stroke, and then contracted pneumonia, from which he died at age 81 on September 6, 1959. His body was cremated, and his ashes were originally stored in a private vault at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles. In March 2023, Gwenn's misplaced urn was found in the vault by Hollywood Graveyard creator Arthur Dark and researcher Jessical Wahl. Dark and Wahl created a GoFundMe campaign to fund moving Gwenn's urn to a publicly accessible location and, on December 3, 2023, Gwenn's urn was reinurned in the Cathedral Mausoleum at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Gwenn had appointed Rodney Soher as the executor of his will, in which he had left Minnie Terry one-third of his estate, his sister Elsie Kellaway a third, and Ernest Bach a third, in addition to his clothes, shoes, linens, ties and luggage. However, for some reason, while he was spending his last days at the Motion Picture Home, Gwenn signed a codicil to his will, in which he said he had given Bach the lump sum of $5000, and that was all he was to receive. After Gwenn's death, Bach challenged the codicil, claiming that Gwenn was not of sound mind while in the Home and that some unnamed person--possibly referring to Soher--had unduly influenced Gwenn to change his will. The outcome is not known. There is a story that has been around for years that shortly before he died a visitor observed, "It must be hard [to die]", to which Gwenn replied, "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard". The story and the wording vary somewhat from teller to teller. Gwenn may indeed have said it, but he may have been repeating someone else. The quotation has also been ascribed to several earlier wits, including his mentor George Bernard Shaw and the famous actor Edward Keane. Gwenn's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame can be found at 1751 Vine Street.- Costume Designer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Actress
Edith Head was born on 28 October 1897 in San Bernardino, California, USA. She was a costume designer and actress, known for Sabrina (1954), All About Eve (1950) and The Sting (1973). She was married to Wiard Ihnen and Charles Head. She died on 24 October 1981 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
If ever there was a Great Dane in Hollywood it was Jean Hersholt - and one of its great hearts as well. He was from a well-known Danish stage and entertainment family that had toured throughout Europe performing with young Jean as an essential cast member. He graduated from the Copenhagen Art School and continued expanding his stage experience and evidently decided early that he wanted to work in films. He did just two very early (1906) silent films in Germany. Hersholt emigrated from Denmark to the US while still a young man in 1913. Like many another European he came to America to seek further opportunities. Unlike many other European actors who appeared on Broadway in their early American careers, Hersholt never trod The Great White Way. He moved on to Hollywood in 1914 where the future of silent movies had taken the lead. He started as a movie extra then progressed into small feature player roles from 1915 through 1917. For that latter year he had no less than 17 bit parts.
By the 1920s his roles were substantial feature pieces, but most of these were as villains - in fact, a concoction of really vile characters. His theater experience serving him well, he played them so well that he much sought after by directors. Several of his 1920s films were landmarks of the silent era, an early one being The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) which helped propel Rudolf Valentino into the stellar heights. Hersholt became popular and well paid. And certainly his signature silent role was the lead character of Marcus Schouler in the Erich von Stroheim great film Greed (1924), based on the novel McTeague. Stroheim, who spent far more time in front of the camera as an actor, was already well know as a task master and perfectionist director. He went through 42 reels of film for the picture - a numbing nine hours of screen time (shown only once at that length in a private studio screening). He cut the film to five hours, but it was further whittled to a bit over two for release, causing Stroheim to quip bitterly of the editor, "The only thing he had on his mind was his hat!" The powerful film was still there, but the massive editing resulted in whole roles disappearing, not to mention some telltale continuity. Stroheim's need for realism resulted in the climax of the movie to be shot in Death Valley. Still hot in the fall time, Hersholt endured like a veteran but required a hospital stay after sweating away 27 pounds.
Fortunately into the later 1920s Hersholt's roles expanded into a more realistic balance of characters-more virtuous roles - but still some shady fellows and especially the unsuspected, and thus surprising, guilty party in the ever popular murder mysteries. He worked for Samuel Goldwyn for about a year (1923-1924), for Paramount from 1927 through 1929, and several other studios during the period. By the end of the silent era, including those early primitive part mono features with small bits of audio music, sound effects, or dialog, Hersholt was a tried veteran of 75 films. His first all mono sound film was The Climax (1930) and despite a Germanic accent, he had a pleasant, mellow voice and a camera friendly presence that ensured him continued success. The variety ran the gamut from a sturdy supporting part in Grand Hotel (1932), to supporting Boris Karloff and a pretty hot Myrna Loy in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), and doing the same in Dinner at Eight (1933). Busy with nine movies in 1930, he also moved into people's living rooms on radio as well during that year.
Of course, for some time Hersholt was a mature actor-simply meaning he had many secondary roles as doctors and professors and nobles of many sorts and increasingly he appeared as benign fatherly types. Father roles of the 20s continued into the 30s - augmented with grandfather roles as well. He was the father of Sonja Henie in that charismatic champion ice skater's first Hollywood film One in a Million (1936), and he is perhaps best remembered as the embittered but deeply caring grandfather of Shirley Temple in the beloved Heidi (1937). But it was another role as a doctor that would provide a continuing vehicle for Hersholt and something of a fateful direction for the actor. The mid-30s were abuzz with the births of the Dionne Quintuplets in Canada. Hollywood jumped on it with usual alacrity, highlighting the story and the officiating obstetrician, Dr. Dafoe, who was translated into Dr. John Luke, in The Country Doctor (1936). Hersholt brought the right ingredients to the part of Luke and two years later a sequel followed, Five of a Kind (1938). Hersholt thought the character good medicine all round and was enthusiastic about a series of movies, but Dafoe himself blocked this idea. Nevertheless, in 1937 Hersholt had already germinated a new radio series to continue portraying a dedicated and kindly small town doctor. For a character name Hersholt turned to his most beloved author, his countryman, literary light Hans Christian Andersen, for a name-Dr. Christian. It was a hit and, and he convinced RKO Radio Pictures to bankroll a series of six Dr. Christian films (1939-41).
These latter and a few other films would mark the end of Hersholt's film career, but he was so very busy otherwise. His familiarity with Andersen was a scholarly avocation and labor of love, furthered by enthusiastic collecting of a library of important Andersen editions and related bibliography (which would later go to the Library of Congress). His English translation (see Trivia below) of the Andersen corpus of fairy tales (including his addition of several other Andersen stories from the author's private papers) remains perhaps the most comprehensive and best effort-even more so for Hersholt personal interpretation of Andersen. Hersholt would also write several articles about Andersen and edit The Andersen-Scudder-Letters (1948). Among other literary pursuits Hersholt also co-wrote a novel based on his Dr. Christian character.
It was in Hersholt's generous nature to give back something in gratitude for the acting career afforded him in Hollywood. His payment was rich indeed: the Motion Picture Relief Fund, the retirement home and hospital inspired by it and generated from it (see Trivia below), and the great charitable work that Hersholt would perform were paid back with two Academy Awards, the second after his tenure as president of the Academy. These special honors would be the seed of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award (see Trivia below). But in 1956 Hersholt was dying of cancer - and yet that would not stop him from one more good turn. His beloved Dr. Christian character was going to TV (produced by the Ziv Studios), and he was asked to symbolically pass the baton to the new Dr. Christian, Macdonald Carey. With a tremendous effort, Hersholt, now withered to 95 pounds braved the first episode shooting, capping his life with one last magnificent example of his humanity.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Additional Crew
Winton C. Hoch was born on 31 July 1905 in Storm Lake, Iowa, USA. He was a cinematographer, known for The Quiet Man (1952), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964) and The Searchers (1956). He died on 20 March 1979 in Santa Monica, California, USA.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Celeste Holm was an only child, born into a home where her mother was a painter and her father worked in insurance. She would study acting at the University of Chicago and make her stage debut in 1936. Her Broadway debut came when she was 19 in 'The Time of Your Life'. She appeared in many successful plays, including "The Women", "Oklahoma!" and "Bloomer Girl". It was in the production of "Oklahoma!" that Celeste would sing the showstopper, "I Cain't Say No". She was signed by 20th Century Fox in 1946 and appeared in her first film, Three Little Girls in Blue (1946). With her third film, Gentleman's Agreement (1947), she would win the Supporting Actress Oscar and a Golden Globe. Celeste would be nominated twice more for Academy Awards in the Come to the Stable (1949) and All About Eve (1950). But, Celeste was a star who loved the stage so she left Hollywood, only to return for two MGM musicals in the 1950s. They were The Tender Trap (1955) and High Society (1956). In addition to her stage career, Celeste appeared on television in her own series, Honestly, Celeste! (1954) and as a panelist on Who Pays? (1959). In 1970, Celeste returned to television series as the chaperone to the president's daughter on Nancy (1970). For the next two decades, she would appear on television in regular series, miniseries and movies. Celeste Holm died at age 95 of a heart attack on July 15, 2012.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Her father, Donald Cole, was a consulting engineer, and died in 1926 when Kim was only three years old. Her mother, Grace Lind, once performed as a concert pianist. She had one brother who was eight years older than she, and she was educated at Miami Beach High.
According to an in-depth article on Kim Hunter by Joseph Collura in the October 2009 issue of "Classic Images", Kim was quiet and painfully shy as a child and overcame it through the guidance of a local dramatics teacher, a Mrs. Carmine. Included were diction, voice and posture lessons.
She studied at the Actors Studio and her first professional appearance was as "Penny" in "Penny Wise" in Miami in November 1939. Then, she joined a repertory group called "Theatre of Fifteen", but it disbanded in 1942 when WWII took away most of its male members.
She made her Broadway debut performance as "Stella" in "A Streetcar Named Desire" at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, in December 1947 that was the 1947-1948 season's success and for which she won the Critics Circle and Donaldson awards.
A one-time student of the Pasadena Playhouse, she was appearing in the 1942 production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" when she was discovered by an RKO talent hunter who signed her to a seven-year contract for David O. Selznick's company. Selznick suggested she change her first name to "Kim" and a RKO secretary suggested the last name of "Hunter". A few years later, Irene Mayer Selznick, David's ex-wife by then, recommended Kim for her reprise role of "Stella" in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), for which she won an Oscar.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Dean Jagger was born in Lima, Ohio, on November 7, 1903. He dropped out of high school twice before finally graduating from Wabash College. Working first as a school teacher, he soon became interested in acting and enrolled at Chicago's "Lyceum Art Conservatory". Mr. Jagger made his first movie and only silent film, The Woman from Hell (1929) in 1929, starring Mary Astor. During 1929 he also appeared in the film Handcuffed (1929). He quickly found his niche as a character actor and the highlight of his career was winning an Oscar for "Best Supporting Actor," in the 1949 movie Twelve O'Clock High (1949). Dean played Principal Albert Vane on TV for the 1963-1964 season of Mr. Novak (1963). Dean Jagger died in Santa Monica, California, on February 5, 1991.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Along with fellow actors Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price, Boris Karloff is recognized as one of the true icons of horror cinema, and the actor most closely identified with the general public's perception of the "Monster" from the classic Mary Shelley novel "Frankenstein". William Henry Pratt was born on November 23, 1887, in Camberwell, London, England, UK, the son of Edward John Pratt Jr., the Deputy Commissioner of Customs Salt and Opium, Northern Division, Indian Salt Revenue Service, and his third wife, Eliza Sarah Millard.
He was educated at London University in anticipation that he would pursue a diplomatic career; however, he emigrated to Canada in 1909, joined a touring company based out of Ontario and adopted the stage name of "Boris Karloff." He toured back and forth across the U.S. for over 10 years in a variety of low budget theater shows and eventually ended up in Hollywood, reportedly with very little money to his name. Needing cash to support himself, Karloff secured occasional acting work in the fledgling silent film industry in such pictures as The Deadlier Sex (1920), Omar the Tentmaker (1922), Dynamite Dan (1924) and Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1927), in addition to a handful of serials (the majority of which, sadly, have not survived). Karloff supplemented his meager film income by working as a truck driver in Los Angeles, which allowed him enough time off to continue to pursue acting roles.
His big break came in 1931 when he was cast as "the Monster" in the Universal production of Frankenstein (1931), directed by James Whale, one of the studio's few remaining auteur directors. The aura of mystery surrounding Karloff was highlighted in the opening credits, as he was listed as simply "?". The film was a commercial and critical success for Universal, and Karloff was instantly established as a hot property in Hollywood. He quickly appeared in several other sinister roles, including Scarface (1932) (filmed before Frankenstein (1931)), the black-humored The Old Dark House (1932), as the namesake Chinese villain of Sax Rohmer's Dr. Fu Manchu novels in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), as the undead Im-ho-tep in The Mummy (1932) and as the misguided Prof. Morlant in The Ghoul (1933). He thoroughly enjoyed his role as a religious fanatic in John Ford's The Lost Patrol (1934), although contemporary critics described it as a textbook example of overacting.
He donned the signature make-up, neck bolts and asphalt spreader's boots again to play the Frankenstein Monster twice, in the sensational Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and the less thrilling Son of Frankenstein (1939). Karloff, on loan to Fox, appeared in one of the best of the Warner Oland Charlie Chan films, Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936), before beginning his own short-lived Mr. Wong detective series. He was a wrongly condemned doctor in Devil's Island (1938), shaven-headed executioner "Mord the Merciless" in Tower of London (1939), another misguided scientist in The Ape (1940), a crazed scientist surrounded by monsters, vampires and werewolves in House of Frankenstein (1944), a murderous cabman in The Body Snatcher (1945) and a Greek general fighting vampirism in the Val Lewton thriller Isle of the Dead (1945).
While Karloff continued appearing in a plethora of films, many of them were not up to the standards of his previous efforts, including appearances in two of the hokey Bud Abbott and Lou Costello monster films (he had appeared with them in an earlier, superior film, Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet the Killer Boris Karloff (1949), of which theater owners often added his name to the marquee), the low point of the Universal-International horror film cycle. During the 1950s he was a regular guest on many high-profile TV shows, including The Milton Berle Show (1948), Tales of Tomorrow (1951), The Veil (1958), The Donald O'Connor Show (1954), The Red Skelton Hour (1951) and The Dinah Shore Chevy Show (1956), to name a few, and he appeared in a mixed bag of films, including Sabaka (1954) and Voodoo Island (1957). On Broadway, he appeared as the murderous Brewster brother in the hit "Arsenic and Old Lace" (his role, or rather the absence of him in it, was amusingly parodied in the 1944 film version) and 10 years later he enjoyed a long run in "Peter Pan," perfectly cast as "Captain Hook."
His career experienced something of a revival in the 1960s thanks to hosting the TV anthology series Thriller (1960) and indie director Roger Corman, with Karloff contributing wonderful performances in The Raven (1963), The Terror (1963), the ultra-eerie Black Sabbath (1963) and the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired Die, Monster, Die! (1965). Karloff's last great film role was as Byron Orlok, an aging horror film star on the brink of retirement confronting a modern-day sniper in the Peter Bogdanovich film Targets (1968). In 1970, he played the blind sculptor Franz Badulescu in Cauldron of Blood (1968) which was produced, directed and written by Edward Mann, who had also come to the art of film from the stage and the theater. His TV career was capped off by achieving Christmas immortality as both the voices of the titular character and the narrator of Chuck Jones's perennial animated favorite, How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966). Four low-budget Mexican-produced horror films starring an ailing Karloff were released in the two years after his death; however, they do no justice to this actor. In retrospect, he never took himself too seriously as an actor and had a tendency to downplay his acting accomplishments. Renowned as a refined, kind and warm-hearted gentleman with a sincere affection for children and their welfare, Karloff passed away on February 2, 1969 from emphysema. Respectful of his Indian roots and in true Hindu fashion, he was cremated at Guildford Crematorium, Godalming, Surrey, England, UK, where he is commemorated by a plaque in Plot 2 of the Garden of Remembrance.- Actress
- Director
- Soundtrack
Piper Laurie was a three-time Oscar nominee, nominated by BAFTA as well as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for best performance by an actress in 'The Hustler' with Paul Newman.
Laurie was born Rosetta Jacobs in Detroit, Michigan, to Charlotte Sadie (Alperin) and Alfred Jacobs, a furniture dealer. She had an elder sister. Her family was of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent.
Young Rosetta had been studying acting with Benno and Betomi Schnider for three years when she auditioned for Universal Studios, who signed her to a long term contract and was renamed Piper Laurie. She made more than twenty films, appearing opposite such actors as Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson and Tyrone Power.
Disgusted with the lack of serious roles, Laurie finally broke her lucrative Hollywood contract, moved to New York, lived on a budget, worked on live television and theater, and within two years changed her life and her career.
She stopped working for fifteen years after 'The Hustler' to devote her energies to the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, feeling acting was less important. When she accepted work again she was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for 'Carrie' with Sissy Spacek, and again as Best Supporting Actress in 'Children of a Lesser God' with Marlee Matlin. She won the Golden Globe for her role in the David Lynch cult favorite 'Twin Peaks' and was nominated for an Emmy for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in 'Twin Peaks'.
She was nominated a total of twelve times for the Emmy, including one for the original and celebrated live broadcast of 'The Days of Wine and Roses' with Cliff Robertson, directed by John Frankenheimer, as well as for her comedic performance in 'Frasier'. She won an Emmy for her performance in 'Promise' opposite James Woods and James Garner. She was Harvard's Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year, and she also received an SFECA award for her performance as Dolly in the film 'The Grass Harp'.
In 2010, she played an elderly grandma who learns to smoke a bong in the feature film 'Hesher', with Joseph Gordon Levitt and Natalie Portman. Most recently she appeared as Grandma Hershe in White Boy Rick, starring Matthew McConaughey, and as Rose Muller in 'Snapshots', directed by Melanie Mayron. In 2013, she made her musical stage debut in 'A Little Night Music' as Madame Armfeldt.
Laurie performed on Broadway in the Tony-nominated Lincoln Center production of 'Mornings at Seven' directed by Dan Sullivan at the Lyceum Theatre. She also appeared on Broadway in the 20th Anniversary production of 'The Glass Menagerie', in which she played Laura Wingfield, with Maureen Stapleton (only 7 years older) as her mother, Amanda, at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre.
Off-Broadway, she appeared in Molly Kazan's 'Rosemary and the Alligators' and in Larry Kramer's 'The Destiny of Me'. She toured in a one-person play about Zelda Fitzgerald, written by Bill Luce. In 2010 she directed Jim Brochu in his one-man show 'Zero Hour', for which he received the Drama Desk Award for best solo performance on or off Broadway, playing Zero Mostel.
Laurie was divorced from Wall Street Journal's movie critic, Pulitzer Prize-winner Joe Morgenstern. They had a daughter. Laurie's autobiography, Learning to Live Out Loud, was published by Crown in 2011 to rave reviews and is now available as an audio book on audible.com.- Music Artist
- Actress
- Music Department
Peggy Lee was Born Norma Dolores Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, on May 26, 1920. At age four her mother died. Peggy's father, a railroad station agent, remarried but later left home, leaving Peggy's care entrusted to a stepmother who physically abused her. Peggy later memorialized this in the calypso number "One Beating a Day", one of 22 songs she co-wrote for the autobiographical musical "Peg", in which she made her Broadway debut in 1983 at the age of 62. As a youngster Peggy worked as a milkmaid, later turning to singing for money in her teens. While singing on a local radio station in Fargo, the program director there suggested she change her name to Peggy Lee. Peggy's big break came when Benny Goodman hired her to sing with his band after hearing her perform. Peggy shot to stardom when she and Goodman cut the hit record "Why Don't You Do Right?" and went out on her own to record such classics as "Fever", "Lover", "Golden Earrings", "Big Spender" and "Is That All There Is?" - the latter winning her a Grammy Award in 1969. Peggy's vocal style provided a distinctive imprint to countless swing tunes, ballads and big band numbers. She was considered the type of performer equally capable of interpreting a song as uniquely as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Bessie Smith. Her 1989 album, "Peggy Sings the Blues", was a Grammy Award nominee. Peggy was a prolific songwriter and arranger and her 1990 "The Peggy Lee Songbook" contained four songs she wrote with guitarist John Chiodini. Peggy also wrote for jazz greats Duke Ellington, who called her "The Queen", and Johnny Mercer, and composer Quincy Jones. Also in 1990 Peggy was awarded the coveted Pied Piper Award presented by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). She made her mark in Hollywood as an actress, winning an Academy Award nomination for her role as the hard-drinking singer in the jazz saga, Pete Kelly's Blues (1955) and composed songs for the 1955 Walt Disney animated classic Lady and the Tramp (1955). The animated film featured a character named Peg, a broken-down old showgirl of a dog, whose provocative walk was based on the stage-prowl of Peggy Lee. Later she sued Disney and won a landmark legal judgment for a portion of the profits from the videocassette sale of the film. Peggy's private life was racked by physical ailments, a near-fatal fall in 1976, diabetes and a stroke in 1998. She was married four times, all ending in divorce. She and first husband, guitarist Dave Barbour, had a daughter, Nicki, her only child. Peggy and Dave were on the verge of a reconciliation in 1965, but he died of a heart attack before the couple got back together. Peggy has left a vast legend of music that is constantly finding new generations of fans.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Janet Leigh was the only child of a couple who often moved from town to town. Living in apartments, Janet was a bright child who skipped several grades and finished high school when she was 15. A lonely child, she would spend much of her time at movie theaters. She was a student, studying music and psychology, at the University of the Pacific until she was "discovered" while visiting her parents in Northern California. Her father was working the desk at a ski resort where her mother worked as a maid. Retired MGM actress Norma Shearer saw a picture of Janet on the front desk and asked if she could borrow it. This led to a screen test at MGM and a starring role in The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947). MGM was looking for a young naive country girl and Janet filled the bill perfectly. She would play the young ingénue in a number of films and work with such stars as Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Orson Welles and Judy Garland. She appeared in a number of successful films, including Little Women (1949), Angels in the Outfield (1951), Scaramouche (1952), Houdini (1953) and The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), among others. Janet would appear in a variety of films, from comedies to westerns to musicals to dramas. Of her more than 50 movies, she would be remembered for the 45 minutes that she was on the screen in the small-budget thriller Psycho (1960). Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this 1960 classic would include the shower scene that would become a film landmark. Even though her character is killed off early in the picture, she would be nominated for an Academy Award and receive a Golden Globe. Her next film would be The Manchurian Candidate (1962), in which she starred with Frank Sinatra. For the rest of the decade, her appearances in films would be rare, but she worked with Paul Newman in Harper (1966). In the 1970s she appeared on the small screen in a number of made-for-TV movies. In 1980, she appeared alongside her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in The Fog (1980), and later, in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998). Janet Leigh died at age 77 in her home in Beverly Hills, California on October 3, 2004.- Actor
- Producer
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Born in Burchard, Nebraska, USA to Elizabeth Fraser and J. Darcie 'Foxy' Lloyd who fought constantly and soon divorced (at the time a rare event), Harold Clayton Lloyd was nominally educated in Denver and San Diego high schools and received his stage training at the School of Dramatic Art (San Diego). Lloyd grew up far more attached to his footloose, chronically unemployed father than his overbearing mother.
He made his stage debut at age 12 as "Little Abe" in "Tess of d'Ubervilles" with the Burwood Stock company of Omaha. Harold and his father moved to California as a result of a fortuitous accident settlement in 1913. Foxy bought a pool hall (that soon failed) while Harold attended high school. The pair were soon broke when his father suggested he try out for a job on a movie being shot at San Diego's Pan American Exposition by the Edison Company. On the set he first met Hal Roach who would be the most influential person in his professional life. Roach (admittedly a poor actor) told Lloyd that someday he'd be a movie producer and he'd make him his star.
Soon afterward, Roach inherited enough money to begin a small production company (Phun Philms, quickly renamed Rolin, with a partner who he soon bought out) and contacted Lloyd to star in the kinds of films he wanted to make: comedies. On the basis of a handful of self-produced shorts starring Lloyd, he managed to land a production contract with the U.S. branch of the French firm, Pathe, who literally paid Roach by the exposed foot of film on what films were accepted. Things were touch and go in the beginning, with improvised scenarios, outdoor shoots meaning Pathe rejected several of their first efforts, resulting in missed paydays. During his first contract with Roach he appeared in "Will E. Work" and then "Lonesome Luke" comedies, essentially cheap variations of Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp character. He abandoned the character in disgust in late 1917, adopting his "glasses" persona, an average young man capable of conquering any obstacle thrown at him. He began cementing his new image with Over the Fence (1917), that ushered in a prolific number of shorts through late 1921, often releasing 3 per month. In his "glasses" personification, Lloyd's popularity grew exponentially with each new release, but Lloyd rapidly grew dissatisfied with his relationship with his producer. Roach and Lloyd fought constantly; it's not so much that he didn't want to work for Roach, he didn't want to work for anyone - a trait he himself recognized from early on. To be fair, Roach was increasingly preoccupied with other stars (The "Our Gang" series was launched to huge success in 1922 and he also produced ''Snub Pollard" shorts, among others) and although he would always resent Lloyd's attitude and ultimate defection to Paramount, the loss of his major star wouldn't financially cripple him. Lloyd had his own quirks; he fell in love with his first co-star Bebe Daniels, who left him after it became apparent he was unable to make a commitment (however the two would remain lifelong friends). Lloyd, in his own way was decidedly complex: he could be professionally generous (often allowing debatably deserving directorial credit to members of his crew) while being notoriously cheap. Yet he practiced little financial self control in anything that concerned himself. Wildly superstitious, he engaged in strict rituals about dressing himself, leaving through the same doors as he entered, and expected his chauffeurs to know which streets were unlucky to traverse. As his finances improved with age he happily indulged himself with a myriad of hobbies that would include breeding Great Danes, amassing cars, bowling, photography, womanizing, and high-fidelity stereo systems. He was open minded about homosexuals while being practically Victorian in his ideas about raising his daughters. He had an enormous libido and rumors abounded about illegitimate children and according to Roach, chronic bouts with VD. Most traumatically, he suffered the loss of his right thumb and forefinger in an accidental prop bomb explosion on August 14, 1919, just as his career was starting to take off. Lloyd would go to great lengths to hide his disability, spending thousands on flesh-colored prosthetic gloves and hiding his right hand whenever knowingly photographed, even long after his career ended. Upon his recovery he completed work on Haunted Spooks (1920) and successfully renegotiated his contract with Pathe, which began a career ascent that would rival Chaplin's (indeed, Lloyd was more successful, considering grosses on total output as Chaplin's output soon dwindled by comparison). Lloyd began feature film production with the 4-reel A Sailor-Made Man (1921). It began as a 2-reel short but contained, in his words, "so much good stuff we were loathe to take any of it out." It became a huge hit and continued to release hit features with ever increasing grosses but split with Hal Roach (who retained lucrative re-issue rights to his earlier films) after completing The Freshman (1925), one of his finest films. Pathe's U.S. operations quickly unraveled after their U.S. representative, Paul Brunet returned to France, and Lloyd made a decisive move (Roach himself would also leave Pathe, opting for a distribution deal with MGM - Mack Sennett, also distributed by Pathe, would be financially ruined). After weighing various attractive offers, Lloyd signed an advantageous contract with Paramount and racked up another hit with For Heaven's Sake (1926), one of his weakest silent features, yet it grossed an incredible $2.591 million, nearly equaling "The Freshman" and astonishing even himself.
Lloyd could do no wrong throughout the 1920s, he consistently earned at or near $1.5 million per film with his Paramount contract, and seemed invincible. He married his second co-star Mildred Davis on February 10, 1923 and she retired from acting (replaced by Jobyna Ralston). He built a huge 32-room mansion he christened, "Greenacres" that took over 3 years to complete and the couple eventually had 3 children. His final silent film, Speedy (1928), shot on location in New York, was one of the few major hits of the sound transition period and remains (as do most of Lloyd's films) thoroughly enjoyable today. The advent of sound proved problematic for the comedian. His films were gag-driven and his writing team was wholly unaccustomed to converting their type of comedy into dialog. While his first sound effort (began as a silent), Welcome Danger (1929) grossed nearly $3 million, by any standard it's a bad film, and marked a serious decline in Lloyd's screen persona; he became a talking comedian. Ironically, as bad as the film is, it would prove to be the last solid hit of his career. His next talkie, Feet First (1930), included a climb reminiscent (but technically superior to that) of his hit Safety Last! (1923), only being in sound, it contained every grunt and groan and proved painful to watch. With a gross of less that $1 million, Lloyd would see slightly over $300,000, his smallest feature paycheck to date, and it became clear he was in trouble. Lloyd fought back with Movie Crazy (1932). Generally regarded as his finest talkie, it grossed even less than "Feet First." Lloyd left Paramount for Fox and suffered his first outright flop with his next feature, The Cat's-Paw (1934), which grossed $693,000 against a negative cost of $617,000 ---resulting in red ink on a net basis. The miracle Harold Lloyd needed to salvage his career would never happen, but he refused to go down without a fight. Amazingly, the public was oblivious to his decline, and he was widely considered as one of the few silent comedy stars to have made a successful transition through the first decade of sound. But to those within the industry, the numbers didn't add up. Back at Paramount on a 2-movie deal, Lloyd starred in The Milky Way (1936), a better-than-average comedy that pulled a world-wide gross of $1.179 million, but it had production budget exceeding $1 million, resulting in a $250,000 loss for the studio. Paramount was livid, demanding a personal guarantee from Lloyd on anything over $600,000 for his next film, Professor Beware (1938). The comedian soon discovered he couldn't complete the film within the required budget and did something unprecedented --for him at least-- he invested his own money. The final production cost was $820,275 - and it grossed a mere $796,385 - and as a result of a complex payment deal, Lloyd ended up personally losing $119,400 on its initial release (he would eventually recoup the bulk of his losses over the next 35 years). At the relatively young age of 45, Harold Lloyd's Hollywood career was effectively over. Still immensely wealthy from a conservative investment strategy, and always hyperactive, he sought out ways to occupy his time, dragging his kids on marathon movie nights all across Los Angeles and falling back on his many hobbies. Foxy, who had handled the bulk of his correspondence (almost all Lloyd's pre-1938 autographs were actually signed by Foxy) and had carefully documented his press clippings since his acting career had began, retired to Palm Springs in 1938, leaving a void in Lloyd's life. He produced two pictures for RKO, A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob (1941), and a Kay Kyser vehicle, My Favorite Spy (1942) which must have looked good on paper but went nowhere at the box office. This ended his career as a producer. He would sign a $25,000 deal with Columbia in 1943 for a comeback project that never materialized. In 1944, Lloyd was approached by director Preston Sturges who envisioned a first-rate vehicle for him entitled, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947). The production launched Sturges' new California Pictures, was financed by Howard Hughes, and initially released by United Artists. It proved to be a nightmare for everyone concerned. Its $1.7 million production cost proved to be an insurmountable obstacle preventing it from profitability and the eccentric Hughes withdrew it from circulation, later retitling it "Mad Wednesday," re-editing and re-releasing it as an RKO feature in 1951 to an even more dismal box office. Lloyd would also zealously protect ownership of his material and was quite litigious. He successfully sued MGM over their unauthorized poaching of his gags on a Joan Davis vehicle, She Gets Her Man (1945) (sadly an action that put the final nail in the professional coffin of the hopelessly alcoholic Clyde Bruckman). With his career at an end, Harold renewed his interest in photography and became involved with color film experiments. Some of the earliest 2 color Technicolor tests had been shot at Greenacres in 1929. In the late 1940s he became fascinated with color 3D still photography and often visited friends on film sets. Throughout the late 40s and well into the 1960s Lloyd indulged himself with glamor models. At his death, his collection of 3D stills numbered 250,000 (the vast majority of which are nudes). Recently his granddaughter published an elaborate book of photos carefully excised from the collection. In the late 1940s Lloyd became an active member of the Shriners (he'd joined originally in 1924) and an effective administrator for their Los Angeles crippled children's hospital. Harold is reported to be the only actor that owned most of the films he appeared in (sadly many of the earliest ones were destroyed in a nitrate fire in a vault at Greenacres in 1943). This ownership gave him the ability to withhold his films from being shown on television; Lloyd feared incorrect projection speed and commercials would damage his reputation. As a result, a generation of film fans saw very few of his films and his reputation was diminished. He did release 2 compilation films, of which the first, World of Comedy (1962) was very successful. Mildred descended into alcoholism in the 1950s and died in 1969. Lloyd occupied his time with extensive travel (he thoroughly enjoyed speaking engagements where he could interact with students on the subject of silent film) and continued his pathological passion for his hobbies through the end of his life. He became interested in high fidelity stereo systems and habitually ordered several record companies' entire annual catalogs, eventually amassing an LP collection rivaling most record stores. He enjoyed cranking music to volumes that caused the inlaid gold leaf on Greenacres' ceilings to rain down on anyone below. Conversely, he balked at modernizing anything inside the mansion, seeing improvements and redecorating as things that would survive him, and thus a complete waste of money. Lloyd was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer by his brother-in-law, Dr. John Davis (Jack Davis, who starred in early "Our Gang" shorts) and died on March 8, 1971. His son, Harold Lloyd Jr. was an alcoholic homosexual and died soon afterward. Although Lloyd left an estate valued at $12 million (in 1971 dollars), he failed to make a provision for the maintenance of Greenacres, a blunder that would seriously complicate his estate. His granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd has been largely responsible for restoring his reputation of late, working to preserve his surviving films; many have been issued on HBO Video, Thames Video. Several have been superbly restored with new musical accompaniments and are shown periodically on TCM.- Actor
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Fredric March began a career in banking but in 1920 found himself cast as an extra in films being produced in New York. He starred on the Broadway stage first in 1926 and would return there between screen appearances later on. He won plaudits (and an Academy Award nomination) for his send-up of John Barrymore in The Royal Family of Broadway (1930). Four more Academy Award nominations would come his way, and he would win the Oscar for Best Actor twice: for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). He could play roles varying from heavy drama to light comedy, and was often best portraying men in anguish, such as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman (1951). As his career advanced he progressed from leading man to character actor.- Actress
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The less famous, but still undeniably talented, of the "Marilyn" sex symbols of the 1940s/'50s was born Marvel Marilyn Maxwell in Clarinda, Iowa on August 3, 1920 (she later began using her middle name professionally at the suggestion of Louis B. Mayer). As a teenager, she worked as an usher at the Rialto Theater in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and later as a radio singer.
In 1942, Maxwell signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, appearing on such radio shows as "The Abbott and Costello Show", "Beat the Band", and "Stars Over Hollywood". That same year, she made her movie debut in the star-studded World War II propaganda film Stand by for Action (1942). She went on to star in such popular movies of the 1940s/50s as Thousands Cheer (1943), Lost in a Harem (1944), Champion (1949), Key to the City (1950), The Lemon Drop Kid (1951) (in which she introduced the carol "Silver Bells"), and Rock-a-Bye Baby (1958). Throughout World War II, and later the Korean War, she accompanied three-time co-star (and off-screen lover) Bob Hope on USO tours to entertain troops.
Throughout the 1950s, Maxwell directed her focus to television, with guest appearances on such series as The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950), General Electric Theater (1953), The Red Skelton Hour (1951), The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show (1956), and Playhouse 90 (1956). This continued into the '60s, as Maxwell appeared on Wagon Train (1957), The Danny Thomas Show (1953), Burke's Law (1963), The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), and The Bob Hope Show (1950), and even game shows such as I've Got a Secret (1952) and Stump the Stars (1947). Her most prominent part in this period was that of diner owner Grace Sherwood on Bus Stop (1961), a series she left after one season after becoming bored of "doing nothing but pour a second cup of coffee and point the way to the men's room".
Maxwell was married three times - to actor John Conte, restaurateur Anders Nylund McIntyre, and producer Jerry Davis - each marriage ending in divorce. She had one son with Davis, Matthew (b. 1956). On March 20, 1972, 15 year-old Matthew returned home from school, only to find his mother dead from an apparent heart attack. Maxwell was 51 at the time of her death.