Starless on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (V-Z)
Starless on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (V-Z)
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- Raf Vallone was an internationally acclaimed Italian movie star known for his rugged good looks. The athletic Vallone, a former soccer player who often was compared to Burt Lancaster, was born Raffaele Vallone in 1916 in Tropea in Calabria, Italy, the son of a prominent lawyer and his aristocratic wife. At the University of Turin, Vallone took degrees in law and philosophy and then entered his father's law firm.
Vallone played semi-professional soccer but never realized his dream of becoming a professional athlete. Subsequently, he became a sports reporter for L'Unita, a communist newspaper, and also a drama critic for La Stampa. During World War II, Vallone served with the anti-Fascist resistance.
His first job as a movie actor was a bit part in We the Living (1942) (aka, "We the Living"), but Vallone was not serious about acting as a career. Hired as a researcher on a film about labor unrest, director Giuseppe De Santis cast Vallone as a soldier competing with Vittorio Gassman for the love of Silvana Mangano in what became the neo-realist classic Bitter Rice (1949) ("Bitter Rice"). The film propelled Vallone, pronounced a natural actor by De Santis, into international stardom and ended his journalism career.
Vallone became a major star in Italy in the 1950s and then a player in the global film industry, making movies in Italian, French and English. Vallone achieved popularity with American audiences in the 1960s, starting with his supporting roles in Two Women (1960) ("Two Women") and El Cid (1961), both co-starring Sophia Loren. Other major actresses he co-starred with on film and stage included Gina Lollobrigida, Anna Magnani, Melina Mercouri, Simone Signoret, and Elena Varzi, to whom he was married for 52 years, until his death in 2002.
Vallone's first "American" role was as the incest-minded Italian-American longshoreman Eddie Carbone in Sidney Lumet's film of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge (1962) ("A View from the Bridge"). Other prominent roles in American films included Otto Preminger's The Cardinal (1963), Roger Corman's The Secret Invasion (1964), Harlow (1965) starring Carroll Baker, and Henry Hathaway's Nevada Smith (1966).
Vallone played many priests during his long career, culminating with the cardinal-confessor of mobster Michael Corleone, a priest who becomes pope and is murdered in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part III (1990). Appearing for the other side, Vallone was memorable as the Mafia boss Altabani in the original The Italian Job (1969). - Actress
- Director
Joan Van Ark, just out of high school, was the second youngest student to attend the Yale School of Drama on a scholarship. The youngest was Julie Harris. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. Years later, they would co-star on the CBS Television series, Knots Landing (1979). Van Ark began her professional career at the Minneapolis Guthrie Theater in Moliere's "The Miser", opposite Hume Cronyn and Zoe Caldwell. That was followed by "Death of a Salesman" at the Guthrie with both Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. After a season at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., Joan was cast in the national touring company of "Barefoot in the Park", directed by Mike Nichols. She recreated the role in the critically acclaimed London Company and later on Broadway. She earned a Tony nomination for her performance in "The School for Wives" and she won the Theater World Award for "The Rules of the Game".
Van Ark also appeared off-Broadway opposite John Rubinstein in "Love Letters". More recently, she co-starred in the New York production of Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize winning play "Three Tall Women". Her Los Angeles theater credits include "Cyrano de Bergerac", playing "Roxanne" opposite Richard Chamberlain's "Cyrano", "Ring Around the Moon" with Michael York and Glynis Johns, "Chemin de Fer", "Heartbreak House" and "As You Like It", for which she won a Los Angeles Drama Critics Award. She also appeared as "Lady Macbeth" in the Grove Shakespeare Festival's production of "Macbeth". Van Ark has also starred in the Williamstown Theater Festival productions of "Night of the Iguana", "The Legend of Oedipus" and the festival's 40th anniversary production of Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music".
She is perhaps best known for her role as "Valene Ewing" beginning on Dallas (1978) and then on the spin-off series, Knots Landing (1979). During the 13 seasons as "Val", she earned six nominations and two Soap Opera Digest Awards for Best Actress. Joan also starred in the TV comedies, The New Temperatures Rising Show (1972) and We've Got Each Other (1977). In May 1997, she reprieved her role of "Valene" in the CBS mini-series, Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac (1997). Most recently, she guest-starred in an episode of The Nanny (1993), which was specially written for her. Van Ark's television movie credits include When the Dark Man Calls (1995), Moment of Truth: Cult Rescue (1994), With Harmful Intent (1993) (actor/producer), Boys Will Be Boys (1999) (actor/director), Terror on Track 9 (1992), Tainted Blood (1993), Menu for Murder (1990), Always Remember I Love You (1990), My First Love (1988) and Shakedown on the Sunset Strip (1988).
She was also one of the voices for CBS-TV's Saturday morning cartoon series Santo Bugito (1995) and she provided the voice of Spider-Woman (1979), another Saturday morning series. In 1997, Joan directed a short documentary on homelessness and domestic violence for the Directors Guild of America, which was nominated for an Emmy.
She appeared in the feature film, Held for Ransom (2000), with Dennis Hopper and Debi Mazar. Joan is currently featured in the film, UP, Michigan! (2001), which was entered in the New York Independent Film Festival. According to Film Festival representatives, the screening of UP, Michigan! (2001) elicited more favorable audience response than any other film throughout the one-week event. Joan also starred as the "Vice President of the United States" in the FOX Family telefilm, Loyal Opposition (1998). Last summer, she played "Camille" in Tennessee Williams' "Camino Real" at the Folger Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C. She appeared in Twice in a Lifetime (1999), filmed in Toronto. She recently completed filming in Los Angeles of Son of the Beach (2000). Joan's career was featured on the biographical program, Joan Van Ark (2002), on the Lifetime Channel for Women. She also played two cameo roles in the independent feature films, Net Games (2003) and the soon-to-be-released Diamond Zero (2005) with Tippi Hedren. Joan was featured in "The Vagina Monologues" at the Canon Theater in Beverly Hills. She also opened the national tour of "The Vagina Monologues" in Denver's Center for the Performing Arts.
In May, 2003, she was a celebrity guest actor in the Los Angeles production of "Blackout" at the McCadden Theater in Hollywood. She also appeared in the off-Broadway production of "The Exonerated" at the Bleeker Street Theater in New York. Last spring, Joan appeared in "Five by Tenn" at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. with Kathleen Chalfant, Patricia Clarkson and Sally Field. It was a world premiere of newly-found Tennessee Williams one-act plays. In addition, she played a regular role for much of last year on CBS Television's The Young and the Restless (1973).
Joan will soon appear in the world premier of Mark O'Donnell's new adaptation of "Private Fittings" by Georges Feydeau at the La Jolla Playhouse near San Diego. The production, opening February 22nd, will be directed by Des McAnuff, winner of two Tony Awards. Joan is still married to her high school sweetheart, John Marshall, a former award-winning TV newsman, who now heads an on-line news service, eNewswires.com. Their daughter, Vanessa Marshall, is also an accomplished actress, director and comedian.- Actress
- Additional Crew
Great-great-granddaughter of "The Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of her family's fortune. Her maternal aunt, Lady Thelma Furness, was a mistress of King Edward VIII of Great Britain. Gloria is a close cousin of the British Dukes of Marlborough.- Trish Van Devere is an American actress best-known for her comedic turn in Carl Reiner's cult classic, Where's Poppa? (1970), in support of George Segal and Ruth Gordon, and for being the wife and widow and frequent co-star of legendary actor, George C. Scott. Born Patricia Louise Dressel on March 9, 1941 in Tenafly, New Jersey, she first made her mark, professionally, on the soap opera, One Life to Live (1968). She met Scott when they co-starred (along with his then-wife Colleen Dewhurst) in the neo-noir, The Last Run (1971). Scott eventually shed Dewhurst (for the second time) and married Van Devere in 1972. She co-starred with him in Mike Nichols' thriller, The Day of the Dolphin (1973), which was not a success, and The Savage Is Loose (1974), a flop, directed by Scott, that was barely released. During the rest of the decade, they co-starred in the TV movie, Beauty and the Beast (1976), Movie Movie (1978), and The Changeling (1980) (1980), a period that coincided with the decline of Scott's stardom and critical reputation. After 1980, when the two appeared on Broadway in a calamitous flop, she continued to appear in less prestigious movies and on TV until 1994.
Van Devere became a stage actress under the tutelage of Scott. She made her Broadway debut in 1975 in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's "All God's Chillun Got Wings", directed by her husband. She also co-starred with him on the Great White Way in "Sly Fox", a retelling of Ben Jonson's "Volpone", that was a great hit. In 1980, they co-starred for the final time on Broadway in the mystery-romance, "Tricks of the Trade", which closed on opening night. - Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Adept at both comedy and drama, veteran "second lead" and character actress Joyce Van Patten was born on March 9, 1934, in New York City. Prodded by a typically assertive magazine editor (stage) mother, Joyce and her equally famous older brother Dick Van Patten displayed natural talent and began performing regularly at a very early age.
Of Dutch, English and Italian descent, Joyce was auditioning for modeling roles before reaching her first birthday, and by the age of 6 was on Broadway performing in the play "Popsy" (1941). In the same year she and brother Dick appear on radio with "Reg'lar Fellers," a summer replacement series for "The Jack Benny Program." As an adolescent, Joyce appeared in the Broadway plays "This Rock" (1943), "Tomorrow the World" (1943), "The Perfect Marriage" (1944), "The Wind Is Ninety" (1945) (also with Dickie) and "The Bees and the Flowers" (1946).
Following her relatively brief marriage (1950-1953) to Thomas King at the age of 16 which produced her son Thomas Casey King, who later turned actor and billed himself as Casey King, Joyce moved to teen parts on such TV anthologies as "Armstrong Circle Theatre" and "Kraft Theatre." On TV she appeared a few times on brother Dick's TV series Mama (1949) and originated the role of Janice Turner Hughes on the popular daytime soaper As the World Turns (1956).
As she grew into a young adult, Joyce purposely dressed down and downplayed her beauty in order to play more interesting characters. Specializing in smart, calculating, cynical, earthy and brittle characters, Joyce reveled in wry comedy as well as quirky drama. Making an inauspicious film debut with an unbilled role in the urban drama Fourteen Hours (1951) with a later small part in The Goddess (1958) starring Kim Stanley, Joyce remained a strong presence on TV and in the theatre. Such popular Broadway shows would include "The Desk Set" (1955), "A Hole in the Head" (1957) and "Spoon River Anthology" (1963). She also appeared with Dick elsewhere on stage with "The Male Animal" (1953), "The Tender Trap" (1955), and "Oh Men! Oh Women! (1955). In 1957, she married actor Martin Balsam and their daughter, Talia Balsam, also became an actress.
In addition to co-starring in the TV diner sitcom The Good Guys (1968) co-starring Bob Denver and Herb Edelman and playing a neurotic assistant to a TV variety show star in The Mary Tyler Moore Hour (1979), Joyce would grace a host of popular 60's and 70's TV shows, including "The Defenders," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Ben Casey," "Dr. Kildare," " "Perry Mason," "The Danny Kaye Show," "The Andy Griffith Show," "The Outer Limits," "The Jack Benny Program," "Gunsmoke," "Mannix," "Love, American Style," "Medical Center," "The Odd Couple," "Columbo," "The Bold Ones," "Family" and "The Bob Newhart Show."
Joyce's infrequent movie roles would be some of her most interesting and quirkiest. She played naïve "square" Peter Sellers's plain-Jane girlfriend in the "hippy" comedy I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968); played one half of a romantic couple with real brother Dick(!) in the teen dramedy Making It (1971); portrayed one-half of a bickering couple held hostage and given marital advice by a house-breaking thief in Bone (1972) (featuring son Casey); played an embittered woman picking up hitchhikers in Thumb Tripping (1972); played a conniving Southern belle fiancée in the Lucille Ball version of Mame (1974); portrayed a bedridden trailer park trash wife in the murder mystery The Manchu Eagle Murder Caper Mystery (1975); and a blunt Little League supervisor in the hit comedy The Bad News Bears (1976). She also returned to Broadway as a replacement in the two-person comedy drama "Same Time, Next Year" (1975) and the short-lived "Murder at the Howard Johnsons" (1979).
Other vital theatre, both Broadway and regional, in later years included "I Oughta Be in Pictures" (1980), "The Supporting Cast" (1981), "Brighton Beach Memoirs" (1983), "Rumors" (1988), "Jake's Women" (1992), "Ring Round the Moon" (1999), "Taller Than a Dwarf" (2000), "Harvey" (2003), "The Oldest Profession" (2004), and "Rabbit Hole" (2006) and "The People in Pictures" (2011). Also, seen in TV movie versions of hit plays such as You Can't Take It with You (1979) as Miss Wellington, and Bus Stop (1982) as diner owner Grace, she also appeared in Malice in Wonderland (1985), Maid for Each Other (1992) and Jake's Women (1996). She also was part of the cast for the first season of the comedy Unhappily Ever After (1995). She was a standout as the overbearing mother to Jason Beghe's quadriplegic son in the horror flick Monkey Shines (1988).
Into the millennium, Joyce has supporting roles in the films Marley & Me (2008), Grown Ups (2010), God's Pocket (2014) and Diane (2018); and the TV programs "Oz," "The Sopranos," "NYPD Blue," "Desperate Housewives," "The Good Wife," "Boardwalk Empire" and "Cady Did."
After two rather brief marriages, Joyce married twice more -- briefly to actor Hal Lynch and a longer one to actor Dennis Dugan.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Monique van Vooren was born on 25 March 1927 in Brussels, Belgium. She was an actress, known for Wall Street (1987), Ça va barder (1955) and Flesh for Frankenstein (1973). She was married to Curt H Pfenniger. She died on 25 January 2020 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
The daughter of a retired sea captain and his much-younger wife, actress Norma Varden was born and raised in turn-of-the-century London. A piano prodigy, she studied in Paris and appeared in concert in England during her teenage years. Acting, however, became her career of choice, studying at the Guildhall School of Music. She took her very first stage bow in a production of Peter Pan. In the adult role of Mrs. Darling, she was actually younger than the actors playing her children. In years to come, Norma would play a number of mature, lady-like roles that were much older than she was.
She performed Shakespeare in repertory and was at first cast in dramatic plays such as The Wandering Jew (1920-her West End debut) and Hamlet (1925) as the Player Queen. In various acting companies, she eventually found a flair for comedy and became the resident character comedienne for the famous Aldwych Theatre farce-ers from 1929 to 1933 à la Marx Bros. foil Margaret Dumont. Finding success there in the comedies A Night Like This and Turkey Time, she later recreated both roles on British film a couple of years later. She went on to prove herself a minor but avid scene-stealer in such movies as Evergreen (1934), The Iron Duke (1934), Stormy Weather (1935) and East Meets West (1936), quickly finding an amusing niche as a haughty society maven. She played both benevolent and supercilious with equal ease -- her height (5'7-1/2"), elongated oval face, vacant manner, plummy voice and slightly drowsy eyes adding immensely to the look and amusement of her characters.
In the early 1940s, the veteran actress visited California, accompanied by her ailing, widowed mother, for a take on the warmer climate and decided to permanently settle. Again, she found herself in demand as a now silvery-haired duchess, queen or Lady something, albeit in less meaty, sometimes even unbilled parts. Although she could dress down when called upon as a bar maid, nurse and landlady, she usually was asked to provide the requisite atmosphere for glossy, opulent settings. Her more noticeable roles came as lecherous Robert Benchley's wealthy, put-upon wife in The Major and the Minor (1942); the vile Lady Abbott in Forever Amber (1947); the giddy socialite nearly strangled by Robert Walker in Hitchcock's classic Strangers on a Train (1951); the impressively bejeweled wife of Charles Coburn, whom Marilyn Monroe fawns over in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953); and the Von Trapp housekeeper Frau Schmidt in The Sound of Music (1965).
Norma became a steadfast radio and TV comedy foil during the 40s, 50s and 60s, often at the mercy of a Lucille Ball or Jack Benny. Her longest radio part was as Basil Rathbone's housekeeper on his Sherlock Holmes radio series. On TV, she appeared in such shows as Mister Ed (1961), The Beverly Hillbillies (1962), Bewitched (1964) and Batman (1966) She had recurring roles as Betty Hutton's aunt on The Betty Hutton Show (1959) and as Shirley Booth's neighbor on Hazel (1961). Never married, Norma's mother passed away in 1969, and the actress retired shortly after. She died of heart failure in 1989, a day before her 91st birthday.- Houston-born-and-bred Florence Vidor was one of the great beauties of early Hollywood. But while her photogenic looks went a long way, audiences would not get to enjoy or really experience her voice as she abruptly left the silver screen after her first disastrous attempt at a talking picture.
Born Florence Arto on July 23, 1895, she was the daughter of realtor John F. Arto and his wife Ida. Educated in both public and finishing schools, she was also a student at the Convent of the Sacred Heart for a time. Her fate was sealed after a happenstance but eventful first meeting of two aspiring filmmakers: future directors Edward Sedgwick and King Vidor. Vidor, a freelance photographer, cast Florence in his very first 2-reel picture although she had no real designs on being an actress. The two became a romantic item, married in 1915, and welcomed one child together, Suzanne Vidor Parry, in 1919.
King set his sites on Hollywood and the couple made the big move, financing their trip by filming travelogue for the Ford Motor Company. The couple settled in Santa Monica and soon found employment at Vitagraph Studios. Florence knew actress Corinne Griffith from her days in Houston and was introduced around the sets. The studio, quite taken by her exquisite beauty, quickly signed her to a contract, starting with some minor roles in such comedy shorts as The Yellow Girl (1916) and Curfew at Simpton Center (1916). Meanwhile, husband King sought work as a scriptwriter and occasional movie extra.
Florence first turned heads portraying tragic seamstress "Mimi" in A Tale of Two Cities (1917). Audiences took notice and the beautiful brunette was immediately promoted to leading-lady status opposite such established stars as Sessue Hayakawa and chic "drag" performer Julian Eltinge. She and Hayakawa made several pictures together, including Hashimura Togo (1917), The Secret Game (1917), and The White Man's Law (1918), among others. With the popular Eltinge, who often outdressed his leading ladies, the actress graced the comedies The Countess Charming (1917) and The Widow's Might (1918). Within a short time she was starring in quality pictures for both William C. de Mille and his brother Cecil B. DeMille, but still preferred to work for her husband King, who had by this time established himself as a formidable director after opening his own studio in 1919.
A mature, opulent presence, Florence became a huge star under her husband's guidance, operating under the banners of King Vidor Productions and Florence Vidor Productions. With such silent classics as The Other Half (1919), Poor Relations (1919), The Family Honor (1920), The Jack-Knife Man (1920), Real Adventure (1922), Dusk to Dawn (1922), and Conquering the Woman (1922), Florence came to the forefront. Her best-regarded film of that period was King's comedy-drama Alice Adams (1923), remade successfully a decade later by Katharine Hepburn.
King and Florence divorced in 1924 and Florence went on to appear for other well-known directors, notably Ernst Lubitsch, in such glossy pictures as The Marriage Circle (1924) and The Patriot (1928). She also portrayed famous female Revolutionary War character Barbara Frietchie in Barbara Frietchie (1924), but she earned most of her kudos specializing in sophisticated comedy. She was well represented in that genre with Marry Me (1925), The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926), and The Magnificent Flirt (1928). Her stylish humor coupled with a charming sensitivity put her squarely on top throughout most of the 1920s opposite such other well-tailored charmers as Adolphe Menjou, Clive Brook, and William Powell.
Florence's first major talking film would also be her last. The unhappy experience and end-result of working on Chinatown Nights (1929), which used highly experimental sound equipment, was enough to convince her to leave films altogether. By that time Florence had married a second time, to famed violinist Jascha Heifetz, and preferred to raise a family. The couple had two children. Following their divorce in 1946, Florence continued to remain completely out of the limelight. She later moved to Pacific Palisades, California and stayed there for the rest of her life. She succumbed to heart failure in 1977 at age 82. - Actress
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They say big things often come in small packages, and never was that saying more true than when sizing up the talents of that diminutive dynamo Nancy Walker. Born Anna Myrtle Swoyer in Philadelphia on May 10, 1922, she lived a born-in-a-trunk existence as the daughter of vaudevillian Dewey Barto (né Stewart Steven Swoyer). At the time of his run of Broadway's "Hellzapoppin", Barto was part of the comedy team of Barto & Mann (George Mann). Her younger sister, Betty Lou Barto (born 1930), had a less impressive and briefer performing career. Although she had designs on becoming a legit singer, it was hard for others to take Nancy seriously with her naturally aggressive manner backed up by this tiny frame. Comedy became her forte.
Broadway legend George Abbott picked up on her innate comic abilities immediately and set her up as his blind date in the Broadway musical smash "Best Foot Forward" in 1941. The show, starring June Allyson, was a certifiable hit, and when MGM turned Best Foot Forward (1943) into a musical film, Nancy, as well as June, went right along with it. Nancy continued giving top support for MGM in the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney starrer Girl Crazy (1943) and in Broadway Rhythm (1944). Back on Broadway, Nancy all but stole the proceedings as the hoydenish cabbie Hildy Esterhazy, who pursues a sailor on leave, in "On the Town" (1944). After a brief first marriage, she met vocal coach David Craig during the 1948 run of "Look, Ma, I'm Dancing", when she was plagued by vocal problems. They married a few years later and had a daughter, Miranda. When Nancy left the show, she was replaced by her sister, Betty Lou Barto. Other musical plaudit came her way, including Tony nominations for the revue "Phoenix '55" and for her lead role in "Do Re Mi" with Phil Silvers.
Nancy experienced some tough, lean years in the late 1950s and 1960s until she found TV an accepting medium. She became popular all over again, and a household name to boot, as Rosie the waitress in a series of Bounty paper-towel commercials. At around the same time, she won a regular role as Mildred, the sardonic maid on McMillan & Wife (1971). Her prototypical wisecracking role, however, came as the outlandish Jewish mom Ida Morgenstern, mother of Valerie Harper's "Rhoda" character on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970).
When Harper spun off into her own series--Rhoda (1974)--interfering Ida was right alongside her still-unmarried daughter, wreaking havoc. Alas, nominated for eight Emmys and four Golden Globe Awards for her collective work on series TV, she never won. Her renewed popularity, however, led to a couple of TV star vehicles that plainly didn't suit her second-banana talents. Neither lasted very long. She eventually moved into stage and film directing. Nancy made her final regular TV-series appearance on the sitcom True Colors (1990), playing another of her long line of delightfully brash buttinskys. During the run of the show, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and died about six weeks before her 70th birthday in 1992. She was survived by her husband, daughter, and sister.- Born in Jamaica Hospital Medical Center (Queens, New York City) on April 15, 1940, the son of actors Robert Walker and Jennifer Jones, Robert Walker Jr. certainly had the right pedigree to make the grade in Hollywood. His parents separated when Robert was only three. Six years later, his mother married powerful film mogul David O. Selznick who by this time had already taken firm control of Jones's career.
Walker Jr. began training at the Actors' Studio in the early 1960s. He also married wife Ellie Wood in the early 1960s and they had three children. Walker Jr. preferred to find his own place in the entertainment field and tried to avoid the obvious comparisons, but his startling resemblance to his late father made it extremely difficult for film audiences to separate the two. He started his film career in good company and with two strong roles in The Hook (1963), a morality story set during the Korean war starring Kirk Douglas and Nick Adams, and The Ceremony (1963) in which he received a Golden Globe Award for "promising newcomer" as Laurence Harvey's brother. Walker Jr. also worked on TV and earned a Theatre World Award for his two 1964 off-Broadway roles in "I Knock at the Door" and "Pictures in the Hallway."
Of slight build and boyishly handsome, Robert Walker Jr. seemed on his way when he was handed the biggest challenge of his film career taking over Jack Lemmon's Oscar-winning role as Ensign Pulver (1964) in the sequel to the popular service comedy Mister Roberts (1955). Unfortunately, his comparison to Lemmon paled significantly and the script had neither the charm nor wit of its predecessor. The film and Walker were torpedoed by the reviewers and Walker lost major ground in Hollywood. Despite his obvious talent, his subsequent films lacked the quality and promise of his first two, which included The Happening (1967), The Savage Seven (1968), Killers Three (1968) and the title role in Young Billy Young (1969) starring Robert Mitchum. He and his wife Ellie appeared in roles in the hit cult film Easy Rider (1969).
Walker Jr. had guest roles in many popular television series from the 1960s through the early 1990s. In The Big Valley (1965) episode, "My Son, My Son" (aired November 3, 1965), Walker portrayed Evan Miles, an emotionally disturbed college dropout who becomes obsessed with childhood friend Audra Barkley. He played the title role and another emotionally disturbed character, a troubled actor who lived and performed on the streets and in circuses, in Naked City (1958) episode "Dust Devil on a Quiet Street" (aired November 28, 1962). He had a memorable role in Star Trek (1966) as "Charles 'Charlie' Evans" in the episode "Charlie X" (aired September 15, 1966). In addition, he played Billy the Kid in episode 22 of The Time Tunnel (1966), which originally aired on February 10, 1967. He portrayed Nick Baxter, an ill alien who caused the deaths of humans by touch, in the episode "Panic" in the television series The Invaders (1967) (aired April 11, 1967). He played Mark Cole in the October 29, 1967 episode of Bonanza (1959), titled "The Gentle Ones". He appeared in a pivotal role on the Columbo (1971) episode "Mind Over Mayhem" (1974) and in the 5th season of Combat! (1962) in the episode "Ollie Joe". His final television appearances were in the 1990s, in L.A. Law (1986), FBI: The Untold Stories (1991), Santa Barbara (1984), The New Lassie (1989), The New Adam-12 (1990), and In the Heat of the Night (1988). - Actress
- Soundtrack
Acclaimed actress Jessica Walter was born on January 31, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Esther (Groisser), a teacher, and David Walter (his original surname was Warshawsky), a musician who was a member of the NBC Symphony Orchestra and the NYC Ballet Orchestra. She was of Russian Jewish descent, the sister of screenwriter and Chairman of the UCLA Screenwriting program Richard Walter. Their uncle was stage and screen actor Jerry Jarrett. Raised in Queens, Walter was a graduate of New York's High School of the Performing Arts and the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. She first acted in summer stock and her extensive subsequent career on the stage included productions both on- and off-Broadway.
On Broadway, Walter appeared in Peter Ustinov's "Photo Finish" (which earned her the Clarence Derwent Award as Most Promising Newcomer), "A Severed Head", "Advise and Consent", "Night Life" and Neil Simon's "Rumors". Off-Broadway, she acted in a 1986 Los Angeles Theater Center production of "Tartuffe" opposite Ron Leibman (to whom she was married from 1983 until his death in 2019).
After guesting on several TV series in the early and mid-1960s, Walter made her move to feature films where she attracted attention for her role as the brash Libby in Sidney Lumet's The Group (1966). This seemed to set the tone for her next screen personae as bitchy, difficult or dangerously vindictive women, the most memorable of which was Evelyn in Clint Eastwood's directorial debut film, Play Misty for Me (1971). This earned Walter a richly deserved Golden Globe nomination. Another stand-out role was Pat, the bored ex-glamour model wife of one racing driver (Brian Bedford) and troublesome girlfriend of another (James Garner) in Grand Prix (1966). Walter's numerous TV roles included the enchantress Morgan LeFay in the rarely seen telemovie Dr. Strange (1978). Of her many screen villainesses she later said: "those are the fun roles. They're juicy, much better than playing the vanilla ingénues".
By the 1980s, Walter had turned increasingly towards comedy, both on the big screen (The Flamingo Kid (1984)) and the small (Three's a Crowd (1984)). However, she never shied away from other genres, whether playing an EarthGov senator on the cult sci-fi series Babylon 5 (1993) or providing the voice for the leading female character in the animated sitcom Dinosaurs (1991). Walter received an Emmy Award for Best Dramatic Actress in the Ironside (1967) spin-off Amy Prentiss (1974) and was nominated for guest-starring roles in episodes of Trapper John, M.D. (1979) and The Streets of San Francisco (1972). She found a new audience among younger viewers as the devious matriarch Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development (2003).
Jessica Walter died in her sleep on March 24, 2021 from undisclosed causes at the age of 80. Riverside Memorial Chapel and Funeral Home in New York City completed her final arrangements. She was cremated and her ashes are with her daughter.- Writer
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No one in the broadcast television industry -- in the U.S. or abroad -- will doubt for an instant that Sylvester (Pat) Weaver has been its foremost creative force. He was born in Los Angeles, California, to Elenor Isabel (Dixon) and Sylvester Laflin Weaver. From commercial television's nascent days at the end of the 1940s, Weaver virtually pioneered the very concepts of morning TV and late-night TV. Aside from those formats, he championed only excellence in television programming. It was by his wisdom that early TV escaped from the captivity of the rules of radio and would soon blossom into the medium that it has become.- Actress
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Mary Woronov was born on December 8, 1943, at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. A surgeon's stepdaughter, she was raised in Brooklyn Heights and attended Cornell University as a sculpting major. After a class trip to Andy Warhol 's Silver Factory, she joined Warhol's entourage and starred in a number of his underground films and appeared as a go-go dancer in the Velvet Underground's Exploding Plastic Inevitable shows. She left the Factory in the late 1960s and, after recovering from a heavy methamphetamine addiction, spent two years in Europe with a friend; during this time, Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanas, and with the altered Factory dynamic, "there was nothing to go back to." She supported herself with work in off-Broadway and off-off- Broadway theater, then "got scared and got married" to director/producer Theodore Gershuny. She appeared in three of his films, Kemek (1970), Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972), and Sugar Cookies (1973). After the marriage broke up, Woronov moved to Los Angeles at the invitation of friend Paul Bartel, where she appeared on the daytime soap Somerset (1970) and had a memorable role in Bartel's Death Race 2000 (1975). Her best and most famous role came in 1982, with the part of Mary Bland in Bartel's black comedy Eating Raoul (1982). A major cult figure as an actress, she is also an accomplished painter and writer, having published three books--Wake for the Angels: Paintings and Stories, the autobiography Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory, and the novel Snake.- She was born Donna Lee Hickey, the daughter of a vaudevillian. At seventeen, she entered show biz as a dancer at the Copacabana and thereafter won several beauty contests, including "Miss American Legion," "Miss Miami Beach", and "Miss Fire Fighter". In January 1950, she was voted Queen of the New York Press Photographers' Ball. From there, it was but a small step to motion pictures and a contract with 20thCentury Fox, courtesy of a sympathetic member of that studio's casting department. However, after a year playing nothing but bit parts, Donna Lee declared with some disappointment "I didn't even work during my last six months there. Every week I hired a taxi, drove to the studio, picked up my check and drove home. They said they would hire me for another year at the same salary. I said no thanks." Instead, she made a move to Columbia which appeared to pay off with a leading role in Edward Dmytryk's classic military courtroom drama The Caine Mutiny (1954) (opposite Humphrey Bogart and Fred MacMurray). Her character, a night club singer, was named May Wynn. At the insistence of producer Stanley Kramer, Donna Lee henceforth adopted this as her stage moniker since there 'hadn't been a May since the days of May McAvoy and Mae Murray'. Freshly minted as May Wynn, she went on to co-star (albeit as second fiddle to, respectively, Donna Reed and Dianne Foster) in two back-to-back westerns: They Rode West (1954) and The Violent Men (1955). Second-billing finally came her way -- but it was to be in B-grade fare like The White Squaw (1956) and The Man Is Armed (1956) for 'Poverty Row' studios Allied Artists and Republic.
In October 1956, May married actor Jack Kelly (who would become popular as James Garner's more serious younger brother Bart in Maverick (1957)). Jack and May appeared together in low budget productions like Taming Sutton's Gal (1957) and Hong Kong Affair (1958) (with May standing in as a Chinese girl, since the local actress originally chosen for the part failed to come to grips with the English language). She also had recurring roles on The Bob Cummings Show (1955) and in the short-lived NBC drama series Noah's Ark (1956), with May as a secretary in a veterinary hospital. The only claim to fame of this series was that it was one of the first to be shot in colour. After exiting show business in 1960, May worked in real estate. She divorced Kelly in 1964 and four years later married realtor Jack Wesley Custer. This union also ended in divorce in 1979. As Donna Lee Custer, she retired to Newport Beach, California, where she passed away at the age of 93 on March 22 2021. - Actress
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The lovely Susannah York, a gamine, blue-eyed, cropped-blonde British actress, displayed a certain crossover star quality when she dared upon the Hollywood scene in the early 1960s. A purposefully intriguing, enigmatic and noticeably uninhibited talent, she was born Susannah Yolande Fletcher on January 9, 1939 in Chelsea, London, but raised in a remote village in Scotland. Her parents divorced when she was around 6. Attending Marr College, she trained for acting at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, winning the Ronson Award for most promising student. She then performed classical repertory and pantomime in her early professional career.
Making an impression on television in 1959 opposite Sean Connery in a production of "The Crucible" as Abigail Williams to his John Proctor, the moon-faced beauty progressed immediately to ingénue film roles, making her debut as the daughter of Alec Guinness in the classic war drama Tunes of Glory (1960). She emerged quickly as a worthy co-star with the sensitively handled coming-of age drama Loss of Innocence (1961), the more complex psychodrama Freud (1962), as a patient to Montgomery Clift's famed psychoanalyst, and the bawdy and robust 18th century tale Tom Jones (1963), with Susannah portraying the brazenly seductive Sophie, one of many damsels lusting after the bed-hopping title rogue Albert Finney.
Susannah continued famously both here and in England in both contemporary and period drama opposite the likes of Warren Beatty, William Holden, Paul Scofield and Dirk Bogarde. Susannah was a new breed. Free-spirited and unreserved, she had no trouble at all courting controversy in some of the film roles she went on to play. She gained special notoriety as the child-like Alice in her stark, nude clinches with severe-looking executive Coral Browne in the lesbian drama The Killing of Sister George (1968). A few years later, she and Elizabeth Taylor traveled similar territory with X, Y & Zee (1972).
Award committees also began favoring her; she won the BAFTA film award as well as Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for her delusional Jean Harlow-like dance marathon participant in the grueling Depression-era film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). Her crazy scene in the shower with Oscar-winner Gig Young was particularly gripping and just one of many highlights in the acclaimed film. She also copped a Cannes Film Festival award for her performance in Images (1972) playing another troubled character barely coping with reality. On television, she was Emmy-nominated for her beautifully nuanced Jane Eyre (1970) opposite George C. Scott's Rochester.
Susannah's film career started to lose ground into the 1970s as she continued her pursuit of challengingly offbeat roles as opposed to popular mainstream work. The film adaptations of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971) opposite Rod Steiger and Jean Genet's The Maids (1975) with Glenda Jackson were not well-received. Her performances in such films as Gold (1974), Conduct Unbecoming (1975) which starred another famous York (Michael York), That Lucky Touch (1975), Sky Riders (1976) and The Shout (1978) were overlooked, as were the films themselves. In the one highly popular movie series she appeared in, the box-office smashes Superman (1978) and its sequel Superman II (1980), she had literally nothing to do as Lara, the wife of Marlon Brando's Jor-El and birth mother of the superhero. While the actress continued to pour out a number of quality work assignments in films and television, she failed to recapture her earlier star glow.
Wisely, Susannah began extending her talents outside the realm of film acting. Marrying writer Michael Wells in 1960, she focused on her personal life, raising their two children for a time. The couple divorced in 1980. In the 1970s, she wrote the children's books "In Search of Unicorns" and "Lark's Castle". She also found time to direct on stage and wrote the screenplay to one of her film vehicles Falling in Love Again (1980). On stage Susannah performed in such one-woman shows as "Independent State", 'Picasso's Women", "The Human Voice" and "The Loves of Shakespeare's Women", while entertaining such wide and varied theatre challenges as "Peter Pan" (title role), "Hamlet" (as Gertrude), "Camino Real", "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Private Lives", "Agnes of God" and the title role in "Amy's View".
At the age of 67, Susannah showed up once again on film with a delightful cameo role in The Gigolos (2006), and seemed ripe for a major comeback, perhaps in a similar vein to the legendary Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren. Sadly, it was not to be. Diagnosed with bone marrow cancer, the actress died on January 15, 2011, six days after her 72nd birthday. Her final films, Franklyn (2008) and The Calling (2009), proved that she still possessed the magnetism of her earlier years.- Music Artist
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Of all the qualities that typified Frank Zappa, perhaps the most striking is that he was a paradox. A workaholic perfectionist rock star who eschewed the hippie culture of the 1960s, deploring its conformism, spurious ideals and drug use, Zappa was not only a brilliant rock guitarist but an orchestral composer, innovative filmmaker, music producer, businessman, iconoclast and perceptive political and social commentator. His oeuvre continually amazes: over 60 albums of music from rock to orchestral, in addition to innumerable films, concerts and other accomplishments.
Frank Vincent Zappa (b. 21 Dec 1940, Baltimore, MD) began to play drums at the age of 12, and was playing in R&B groups by high school, switching to guitar at 18. After barely graduating from high school, and then dropping out of junior college (where he met his first wife, Kay Sherman), Zappa worked at such jobs as window dresser, copywriter and door-to-door sales,an. With the money he earned from scoring Run Home, Slow (1965) (written by his high school English teacher, Don Cerveris), Zappa purchased a recording studio and, after concocting an allegedly obscene recording for an undercover policeman, spent ten days in jail. Zappa's diverse range of albums (both with the seminal and protean groups The Mothers of Invention and Zappa; as well as solo releases) are renowned not only for their bravura musicianship and satire, but for offending various groups (usually conservatives, both religious and political). The 200 Motels (1971) soundtrack was deemed too offensive by the Royal Albert Hall, which canceled scheduled concerts in 1975; and the song "Jewish Princess" (1979) led to Jewish calls for Zappa to apologize. These, and such events as Zappa testifying before Congress in 1985 against rock music censorship, being appointed by Czech president Václav Havel as his Cultural Liaison Officer or considering running for US president, have unfortunately been Zappa's only real source of mainstream publicity.
Diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1991, Zappa nonetheless continued working at his Hollywood Hills home, until his death on 4 December 1993. His widow, Gail, and children Dweezil Zappa, Moon Unit Zappa, Ahmet Zappa and Diva Zappa, soon released a statement to the press that simply stated: "Composer Frank Zappa left for his final tour just before 6pm Saturday."- Actress
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Practically born with ballet slippers on, the dark, lithe and exotic Vera Zorina had memorable careers with the Ballet Russe and, to a lesser degree, Hollywood. Born in Berlin, her father Fritz was German and mother Billie Hartwig Norwegian. She took to ballet at age 2 (she used to take her ballet slippers to bed with her) and by age 4 was performing. She received her education at the Lyceum for Girls in Berlin but was trained in dance by Olga Preobrajenska and Nicholas Legat, the latter teaching Anna Pavlova and Nijinsky at one time.
The dancing prodigy was presented to Max Reinhardt at age 12 and he in turn cast her in his "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1929) and "Tales of Hoffman" (1931). A performance at London's Gaiety Theatre led to her entrance into the company of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1933. She was encouraged to change her stage name to something Russian and exotic in style and she chose "Vera Zorina" for its authenticity and simplicity from a long list of names. She also learned Russian in the process to feel closer to her dancing compatriots. She stayed with the renowned ballet company for three years appearing everywhere from Covent Garden in London to the Metropolitan Opersa House in New York.
Again, timing proved to be on Vera's side when she won a lead role in the London company of "On Your Toes" in 1937 and was spotted by movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn, who signed her to a movie contract. The build-up was considerable and she made her official debut with the musical The Goldwyn Follies (1938). That same year she increased her visibility ten-fold by marrying noted choreographer/director George Balanchine. She followed her film debut successfully recreating her role in the movie version of On Your Toes (1939) and then played the role of a faux countess in the comedy crime caper I Was an Adventuress (1940). She impressed on Broadway with "I Married an Angel" and even more so in the 1940 musical "Louisiana Purchase" before returning to Hollywood once again to perform in the movie version of Louisiana Purchase (1941) opposite Bob Hope. She was cast as Maria in what could have been the beginning of a dramatic career in the Oscar-winning For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), but was abruptly replaced after only two weeks of shooting by Ingrid Bergman, an action that proved detrimental to her movie career. When the sudden surge of film offers began to wane after the releases of Follow the Boys (1944) with George Raft and Lover Come Back (1946) co-starring Lucille Ball and George Brent, she bade Hollywood a prompt goodbye.
Following her divorce from Ballanchine in 1946, she married Goddard Lieberson, president of Columbia Records and a social whirlwind ensued. The prominent couple went on to have two sons, Peter and Jonathan. In later years her lilting accent was used for narrations (in several different languages, including English, German and French) on several records and in tandem with numerous classical symphony orchestras and opera houses. She also directed a production of "Herod" for Norwegian TV. Vera was active with the Lincoln Center as an adviser and director and for several seasons directed operas at the Santa Fe Opera Company in New Mexico. She died in Santa Fe of a cerebral hemorrhage in 2003, predeceased by her second husband and son Jonathan.