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1-9 of 9
- Actress
- Soundtrack
A genuine model of sincerity, practicality and dignity in most of the roles she inhabited, actress Dorothy McGuire offered Tinseltown more talent than it probably knew what to do with. A quiet, passive beauty, she had a soothing quality to her open-faced looks and voice. She was a natural when he came to tearjerkers and she certainly had a knack for opening up her film-goer's tear ducts with her arresting performances in sentimental drama. She preferred to rest on her acting laurels than engage in publicity-monging to win roles. As a result, Dorothy was surprisingly ill-served in the awards department during her over five-decade film career, yet left a major imprint on celluloid. Touching, complex, immaculate in poise and style, she is now and forever etched in Hollywood's "Golden Age" annals and in the minds of film lovers everywhere.
Dorothy began inconspicuously enough in Omaha, Nebraska on Wednesday, June 14th, 1916. Her parents encouraged her early interest in acting and she made her debut as a teenager in "A Kiss for Cinderella" at the Omaha Community Playhouse which starred visiting alumni member Henry Fonda. She received her education at Omaha Junior College, Ladywood Convent in Indianapolis, and Pine Manor Junior College in Wellesley, Massachusetts before setting her sites on an acting career. Following summer stock she appeared in such 1938 stage productions as "Bachelor Born" and "Stopover" before understudying the role of Emily Gibb in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" on Broadway, which at the time showcased young Martha Scott. Dorothy eventually replaced Scott in the role.
Other experiences came her way on stage with "My Dear Children" starring John Barrymore, "Swingin' the Dream", "Medicine Show", "The Time of Your Life" and "Kind Lady" before she was handed the titular role of "Claudia" in 1941. This gentle comedy became a certifiable Broadway hit and Dorothy simply incandescent as the child-like bride forced to wake up to reality after her sudden marriage. David O. Selznick subsequently signed her to a film contract. Fortunately, 20th Century-Fox, untrue to form, took a chance on the film unknown and allowed her to recreate her stage triumph opposite Robert Young. Claudia (1943) was so beautifully done and warmly received that McGuire and Young went on to recreate their roles three years later with Claudia and David (1946).
Unbelievably, Dorothy topped herself in only her second film role. After a pregnant Gene Tierney became unavailable for the role of Katie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), the part fell to Dorothy. It's now hard to believe anyone else in the role. As the impoverished wife of a charming Irish ne'er-do-well and inebriate, Dorothy showed amazing complexity as the detached wife and mother whose painful but necessary decision-making alienates many around her, especially her daughter who is the apple of her daddy's eye. Directed by Elia Kazan, Dorothy was shamefully overlooked at awards time. Young Peggy Ann Garner was given a "special juvenile Oscar" and errant husband James Dunn picked up the Supporting Actor trophy for his work. Dorothy was not of the mind of tooting her own horn and it may have cost her an Oscar nomination -- better yet, the Oscar -- for she was hands down the better performer than eventual winner Joan Crawford, a popular choice for Mildred Pierce (1945).
Dorothy made it four film hits in a row with the success of both the sentimental fantasy The Enchanted Cottage (1945), in which she reunited with Robert Young to play two of society's castoffs who fall in love, and the expert Hitchcockian thriller The Spiral Staircase (1946) as the mute servant who is terrorized by a serial killer. Preferring rich characterizations over glamour, audiences saw Dorothy dolled up a bit more than usual in Till the End of Time (1946) as a war widow who falls for a younger hunk (Guy Madison). Her 40s filming was capped by a Best Actress nomination in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), an-anti-Semitic tale that boasted a topnotch ensemble cast including Gregory Peck, John Garfield and Celeste Holm, who won a supporting Oscar for this.
With nary a weak film yet on her resume, an unpretentious Dorothy still hadn't achieved top cinematic stardom. Preferring to return to her theater roots, she abandoned films for a couple of years and performed in such vehicles as "Tonight at 8:30" (1947) and "Summer and Smoke" (1950). When she did return it was to a different Hollywood and things would not be the same. Instead forgettable fluff such as Mother Didn't Tell Me (1950) and Callaway Went Thataway (1951) were the slim pickings offered. Although she found a popular hit with Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), the film was more notable for its title song and sumptuous settings than for the quality of acting of the three distaff stars -- McGuire, Maggie McNamara and Jean Peters.
Dorothy graciously moved into pillar-of-strength mother roles as she approached her 40s, making fine impressions as a Quaker matriarch in Friendly Persuasion (1956) and as the resourceful mom in three of Disney's endearing classics, Old Yeller (1957), Swiss Family Robinson (1960) and Summer Magic (1963). Her more flawed marital and parenting skills were displayed in the Inge film adaptation of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), and the huge, sudsy teen hit A Summer Place (1959) with Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue as young, star-crossed lovers. McGuire acted as Donahue's mother who rekindles an old love affair with Dee's father (Richard Egan). The 49-year-old McGuire then played the mother of all mothers, the Virgin Mary, in the misguided biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), marred by its overlong narrative and bizarre miscasting, including John Wayne as a Roman centurion. Her last film, the British-made Flight of the Doves (1971) as an Irish granny, had little impact.
In later years Dorothy found rich, rewarding work on TV and received an Emmy nomination for the well-received mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man (1976). She also played Marmee in a TV revisitation of Part I (1978), and ended her career in good company with (what else?) a sentimental tearjerker in the mini-movie The Last Best Year (1990) co-starring Bernadette Peters and Mary Tyler Moore.
Dorothy's longtime husband was photographer John Swope who died in 1979. Her children by him are Mark Swope, an artist and photographer, and former actress Topo Swope. Dorothy's health declined severely after she fell and broke her leg in 2001. She died of heart failure not long after in a Santa Monica hospital on Friday, September 14th at the age of 85.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Charles Regnier was born on 22 July 1914 in Fribourg, Switzerland. He was an actor and writer, known for Mistress of the World (1960), The Secret Ways (1961) and The Black Abbot (1963). He was married to Sonja Ziemann and Pamela Wedekind. He died on 13 September 2001 in Bad Wiessee, Bavaria, Germany.- Judy Jordan was born on 12 May 1940 in Newark, New Jersey, USA. She was married to Del 'Sonny' West. She died on 13 September 2001 in Malibu, California, USA.
- Director
- Cinematographer
- Producer
Producer/director Dale Davis was one of the kings of the surfing films in the 60's, and his film The Golden Breed, has often been compared to The Endless Summer. His other surfing films include Walk on the Wet Side and Inside Out, in which he filmed the largest wave ever ridden. He studied photography at Brooks Institute. His short-lived soap opera, Never Too Young, was the first effort from network TV to try to create a late-afternoon soap opera with appeal to the youthful after-school market. Although it was not successful, its immediate successor in the time slot, Dark Shadows, proved that the concept was viable. Dale passed away on September 13, 2001, in a health care facility in Los Angeles, some two months after suffering a stroke.- Joan Axelrod was born on 8 October 1922 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Next Best Thing (2000). She was married to George Axelrod and George Axelrod. She died on 13 September 2001 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actress
Tiny Brooks was born on 16 March 1950 in Pasadena, Texas, USA. She was an actress, known for Fatso (1980) and Across the Great Divide (1976). She died on 13 September 2001 in Pasadena, Texas, USA.- Johnny Craig was a comic illustrator and writer whose work appeared in many comics, but is most closely associated with the classic EC horror comics. Craig had no formal training, but managed to get a job working as an assistant for M.C. Gaines, publisher of All-American Comics, and later Eduational Comics (EC). Over the course of several years, he gradually learned the craft of drawing comics. Never a very fast drawer, he was nevertheless respected by his peers for his craftsmanship and care. When William Gaines took over EC Comics after the death of his father, he deciced to focus on the more popular horror and science fiction comics.
Craig became the editor of "The Vault of Horror", writing and drawing many stories for that line, as well as designing the "host", the Vault Keeper. Craig and EC became the center of controversy in the 50s after the publication of Dr. Wertham's "Seduction of the Innocents" and the subsequent Congressional hearings investing the link between juvenile deliquency and comics. Ironically, while Craig's work was generally staid compared to other EC artists, it was his cover to "Crime SuspenStories #22" that was diplayed in the Senate as an example of the depravity of horror comics.
After the collapse of EC's horror comics line, Craig temporarily left comics and worked in the advertising industry. He found this unsatisfying, though, as it left him with little time for drawing. In the 1960s, he returned to comic illustrating, first unsuccessfully in the super-hero line, but later finding his niche in the 1970s revivals of the horror comics. After retiring from comics in the 80s, he suplimented his income by drawing recreations of his famous 1950s EC covers and characters for comic art collectors. - Born in Barcelona to Aragonese parents, Teresa Gracia known not for her film roles, but for the extraordinary experiences that since became the subject of several collections of poetry and three plays. As a child of seven, Teresa and her mother were exiled to Francia after the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), where they voluntarily entered in two different internment camps, Argeles-sur-mer and Saint-Cyprien.
After escaping in Dec/Jan of 1940/1941, the Gracia family, reunited with Teresa's father, relocated to Toulouse, where many other Spanish republican refugees were living. Ms. Gracua was subsequently educated in French schools.
After traveling and living briefly in Caracas, Venezuela and Paris, she studied at the Sorbonne and became involved in film, even as far as becoming linked to the director Eric Rohmer. In the early 1970s, Teresa Gracia moved to Rome, where she worked for the FAO. While in Rome, she wrote "Destierro" (Banishment) and "Las Republicanas" (The Female Republicans) the latter a dramatically-rendered poem dealing with her experiences in the internment camps.
Due to increasingly failing health, Ms. Gracia eventually returned to Spain, definitively in 1980, five years after Franco's death and the subsequent return of a constitutional monarchy. Now settled in Madrid, Ms. Gracia published her works in a small press and subsequently wrote two more collections of poems, "Meditacion de la montana" (Meditation of the mountain) and "Manifiesto contra el verso libre" (Manifesto against free verse). She was also recently included in a 1998 anthology of Spanish poets entitled "8 poetas raros" (8 Strange Poets).
She died on September 10, 2001, in Madrid, after battling a terminal condition for more than two decades. - Costume and Wardrobe Department
Barbara Matera was born on 16 July 1929 in Hythe, Kent, England, UK. She is known for 101 Dalmatians (1996), The Addams Family (1991) and 102 Dalmatians (2000). She was married to Arthur Matera. She died on 13 September 2001 in New York City, New York, USA.