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1-21 of 21
- Actress
- Soundtrack
A beloved, twinkly blue-eyed doyenne of stage and screen, actress Jessica Tandy's career spanned nearly six and a half decades. In that span of time, she enjoyed an amazing film renaissance at age 80, something unheard of in a town that worships youth and nubile beauty. She was born Jessie Alice Tandy in London in 1909, the daughter of Jessie Helen (Horspool), the head of a school for mentally handicapped children, and Harry Tandy, a traveling salesman. Her parents enrolled her as a teenager at the Ben Greet Academy of Acting, where she showed immediate promise. She was 16 when she made her professional bow as Sara Manderson in the play "The Manderson Girls", and was subsequently invited to join the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Within a couple of years, Jessica was making a number of other debuts as well. Her first West End play was in "The Rumour" at the Court Theatre in 1929, her Gotham bow was in "The Matriarch" at the Longacre Theatre in 1930, and her initial film role was as a maid in The Indiscretions of Eve (1932).
Jessica married British actor Jack Hawkins in 1932 after the couple had met performing in the play "Autumn Crocus" the year before. They had one daughter, Susan, before parting ways after eight years of marriage. An unconventional beauty with slightly stern-eyed and sharp, hawkish features, she was passed over for leading lady roles in films, thereby focusing strongly on a transatlantic stage career throughout the 1930s and 1940s. She grew in stature while enacting a succession of Shakespeare's premiere ladies (Titania, Viola, Ophelia, Cordelia). At the same time, she enjoyed personal successes elsewhere in such plays as "French Without Tears", "Honour Thy Father", "Jupiter Laughs", "Anne of England" and "Portrait of a Madonna". And then she gave life to Blanche DuBois.
When Tennessee Williams' masterpiece "A Streetcar Named Desire" opened on Broadway on December 3, 1947, Jessica's name became forever associated with this entrancing Southern belle character. One of the most complex, beautifully drawn, and still sought-after femme parts of all time, she went on to win the coveted Tony award. Aside from introducing Marlon Brando to the general viewing public, "Streetcar" shot Jessica's marquee value up a thousandfold. But not in films.
While her esteemed co-stars Brando, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden were given the luxury of recreating their roles in Elia Kazan's stark, black-and-white cinematic adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Jessica was devastatingly bypassed. Vivien Leigh, who played the role on stage in London and had already immortalized another coy, manipulative Southern belle on celluloid (Scarlett O'Hara), was a far more marketable film celebrity at the time and was signed on to play the delusional Blanche. To be fair, Leigh was nothing less than astounding in the role and went on to deservedly win the Academy Award (along with Malden and Hunter). Jessica would exact her revenge on Hollywood in later years.
In 1942, she entered into a second marriage, with actor/producer/director Hume Cronyn, a 52-year union that produced two children, Christopher and Tandy, the latter an actor in her own right. The couple not only enjoyed great solo success, they relished performing in each other's company. A few of their resounding theatre triumphs included the "The Fourposter" (1951), "Triple Play" (1959), "Big Fish, Little Fish (1962), "Hamlet" (he played Polonius; she played Gertrude) (1963), "The Three Sisters (1963) and "A Delicate Balance." They supported together in films too, their first being The Seventh Cross (1944). In the film The Green Years (1946), Jessica, who was two years older than Cronyn, actually played his daughter! Throughout the 1950s, they built up a sturdy reputation as "America's First Couple of the Theatre."
In 1963, Jessica made an isolated film appearance in Alfred Hitchcock's classic The Birds (1963). Low on the pecking order at the time (pun intended), Hitchcock gave Jessica a noticeable secondary role, and Jessica made the most of her brittle scenes as the high-strung, overbearing mother of Rod Taylor, who witnesses horror along the California coast. It was not until the 1980s that Jessica (and Hume, to a lesser degree) experienced a mammoth comeback in Hollywood.
Alongside Hume she delighted movie audiences in such enjoyable fare as Honky Tonk Freeway (1981), The World According to Garp (1982), Cocoon (1985) and *batteries not included (1987). In 1989, however, octogenarian Jessica was handed the senior citizen role of a lifetime as the prickly Southern Jewish widow who gradually forms a trusting bond with her black chauffeur in the genteel drama Driving Miss Daisy (1989). Jessica was presented with the Oscar, Golden Globe and British Film Awards, among others, for her exceptional work in the film that also won "Best Picture". Deemed Hollywood royalty now, she was handed the cream of the crop in elderly film parts and went on to win another Oscar nomination for Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) a couple of years later.
Jessica also enjoyed some of her biggest stage hits ("Streetcar" notwithstanding) during her twilight years, earning two more Tony Awards for her exceptional work in "The Gin Game" (1977) and "Foxfire" (1982). Both co-starred her husband, Hume, and both were beautifully transferred by the couple to television. Diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1990, Jessica bravely continued working with Emmy-winning distinction on television. She died of her illness on September 11, 1994. Her last two films, Nobody's Fool (1994) and Camilla (1994), were released posthumously.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Morris Carnovsky was one of the more prominent victims of the Hollywood blacklist, being named as a Communist party member by both Elia Kazan -- the most infamous of the informers who sang before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the era blacklistee Lillian Hellman called the "Scoundrel Time" -- and Sterling Hayden. However, he had been effectively blacklisted -- unofficially banned from appearing in Hollywood films -- since 1950, two years before Kazan sang before HUAC, when Carnovsky himself refused to "name names" before the Committee. Carnovsky did not make any more movies for the better part of a decade -- in fact, his movie acting career essentially was over -- but he did have a thriving career on the Broadway stage, the venue where he established his reputation as a thespian back in the 1930s.
Morris Carnovsky was born in St. Louis, Missouri on September 5, 1898, the son of a grocer. Upon graduation from high school he attended St. Louis' Washington University.
Like most actors of his generation, he worked his way up the ladder by first appearing with traveling stock companies. Eventually, he landed in New York City, where he became a member of the Theatre Guild, the legendary theatrical company appearing as Kublai Khan in Nobel Prize winner 'Eugene O'Neill's play "Marco Millions' (I)'. Subsequently, he became one of the founding members of the left-wing Group Theatre.
Founded in 1931 by Lee Strasberg and Harold Clurman, and Cheryl Crawford, The Group Theatre contained Luther Adler, Stella Adler, Elia Kazan, and playwright Clifford Odets; the latter three were major forces in transforming American theater and acting, a process that began with the Provincetown Theatre. Stella Adler, Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg, including their students/latter Group Theatre members like Bobby Lewis, were instrumental in making "The Method" -- a variation of Konstantin Stanislavski's acting theories, based on finding and cultivating "motivation" -- revolutionized American acting on stage and in the movies, most famously through Adler's student Marlon Brando. Kazan and Strasberg later founded the Actors Studio, America's premier acting school that promulgated "The Method" via such alumni as James Dean, Paul Newman and hundreds of others.
Carnovsky was a member of the Group Theater until it broke up in 1940. He appeared prominently in Odets' plays "Awake and Sing" and Golden Boy (1939). Carnovsky's talents were in demand by other theatrical troupes, and he appeared on Broadway in the 1930s in multiple non-Group Theatre productions.
Eventually, Hollywood beckoned and Carnovsky made his screen debut in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), playing Anatole France in support of Paul Muni. Settling in Los Angeles after the Group Theatre breakup, Carnovsky was one of the founders of the Actor's Laboratory and became involved with the the Hollywood Communist Party, whose cultural apparatchik, screenwriter John Howard Lawson, was later one of the Hollywood Ten, the first group of leftists blacklisted by the film industry. While Carnovsky was never involved in espionage or any overt acts against the interests of the United States (as were none of the Hollywood Ten or other blacklistees), he led Marxist study groups in his home, as Sterling Hayden testified to before HUAC.
In his 1952 testimony before HUAC, Elia Kazan named Carnovsky as a member of the Communist Party cell he had belonged to in the Group Theatre. Other members included Lee Strasberg's wife, Paula (best known as Marilyn Monroe's acting coach). Kazan had quit the cell in the mid-1930s, he said, when it was ordered by the Party to undermine Harold Clurman and Lee Strasberg (who did not know his wife was a communist) and take over the Group Theatre. The attempted coup was never launched.
In 1950, Carnovsky was hauled before HUAC, where he refused to "name names." This resulted in his blacklisting, not Kazan's testimony. (Kazan said that Carnovsky, like others he named, already were known by the Committee.) The blacklist did not exist on Broadway, and producer (and future Osar-winning actor) John Houseman cast Carnovsky in the Broadway production of Henrik Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People," whose script was written by future HUAC target Arthur Miller. He acted in many Broadway productions throughout the 1950s and into the '60s.
A part in Sidney Lumet's film version of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge (1962) did not revive his movie career, and he continued to act on stage. He died on September 1, 1992, at the age of 94.- Helen Keller contracted a virulent childhood disease which resulted in complete loss of sight and hearing at nineteen months. Her parents futilely sought help for her, as did family friend Alexander Graham Bell. Finally, when Keller was seven, Annie Sullivan, a young teacher, was hired by the family. Through a system involving a constant physical contact with Sullivan, a touch alphabet "spelled" into Keller's hand, persistence, faith, and love - detailed in The Miracle Worker (1962) - Keller suddenly and amazingly understood; she quickly and efficiently learned language, and the world opened to her. She asked to be taught to speak at the age of ten. With Sullivan's important emotional and intellectual support, Keller's development took off. Keller graduated - cum laude - from Radcliffe College in 1904. Sullivan was her companion until her death in 1936. Helen Keller wrote prolifically, traveled widely, lectured on various personal, political, and academic topics, and was awarded numerous honorary degrees from universities around the world. She died in 1968, one of the most famous and widely-admired women of our time.
- Devon Guzman was born on 9 June 1981 in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, USA. She died on 15 June 2000 in Easton, Pennsylvania, USA.
- Joe Stapleton was born on 30 August 1963 in the USA. He was an actor, known for Edge of Darkness (2010), R.I.P.D. (2013) and Mystic River (2003). He died on 31 December 2018 in North Easton, Massachusetts, USA.
- Igor Sikorsky was born on 24 May 1889 in Kiev, Russian Empire [now Ukraine]. He was married to Elisabeth Semion and Olga Fyodorovna Simkovitch. He died on 26 October 1972 in Easton, Connecticut, USA.
- Actress
- Writer
Pamela Toll was born on 31 May 1948 in Paterson, New Jersey, USA. She was an actress and writer, known for The Doctors (1963), Rascal (1969) and House Calls (1978). She died on 31 August 2020 in Easton, Maryland, USA.- John Searing was born on 26 January 1950 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was married to Paula Brokaw. He died on 8 December 2015 in Easton, Pennsylvania, USA.
- Birch Bayh was born on 22 January 1928 in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA. He was married to Katherine 'Kitty' Halpin and Marvella Hern Bayh. He died on 14 March 2019 in Easton, Maryland, USA.
- Diana McLellan was born on 22 September 1937 in Leicester, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Imagemaker (1986), Greta Garbo: A Lone Star (2001) and The Last Editor (2002). She was married to Richard X. McLellan Jr. and Robin Bull. She died on 25 June 2014 in Easton, Maryland, USA.
- A 1900 graduate of Hobart College, Bellamy Partridge went on to study law, and for about a decade practiced law with his father, Civil War veteran and country lawyer Samuel Selden Partridge, in the little town of Phelps, New York--near Rochester--before striking out as a freelance writer, novelist and popular historian. He was the author of many works, including the national best-seller "Country Lawyer" (1939), a memoir of his father, and its sequel, "The Big Family" (1941). Partridge and his family moved out to California when "Country Lawyer" was picked up by one of the studios and he was given a six-month contract to adapt it for the screen. They lived at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, and while her husband labored on the screenplay, his wife, a short story and article writer herself, composed letters back to her family in Connecticut that would later become the basis of her 1941 book "A Lady Goes to Hollywood: Being The Casual Adventures of an Author's Wife in the Much Misunderstood Capital of Filmland". By the time the screenplay was finished, Pearl Harbor was attacked and America entered World War II; the project was permanently shelved and the film was never made.
- Additional Crew
James A. Clark was born on 2 December 1927 in Richmond, Virginia, USA. James A. is known for You Are There (1953). James A. died on 20 March 2015 in Easton, Maryland, USA.- Stephen Yearick was born on 4 October 1942 in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, USA. He died on 22 December 2021 in Easton, Pennsylvania, USA.
- Emmy nominee Arnold J. "Arnee" Nocks, a director for the ABC and DuMont television networks and an accomplished organist for church, theatre and nightclubs, lived at 325 Kintner Road in Kintnersville, Pennsylvania. He directed the first open-heart surgery on television. He was a son of the late Daniel and Sally (Levine) Nocks and a Navy veteran of World War II as a radio operator in the South Pacific. Nocks was a practice goalie for the New York Rangers hockey team and a player-coach for the New Jersey Rockets. As an organist, he played at Cascade Lodge in Kintnersville, at Christmas services at St. John's United Church of Christ in Riegelsville, Pennsylvania and at roller-skating rinks in New Jersey.
He was honored at an organ recital in the State Theatre in Easton, Pennsylvania in October of 1991 for donating an Allen organ to the theatre. He was survived by a sister, Shari Gladstone of Dix Hills, New York. - Chauncey Howell was born on 15 July 1935 in Easton Pennsylvania, USA. He died on 20 September 2021 in Easton Pennsylvania, USA.
- Patricia Helwick was born in 1933 in Yonkers, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Superboy (1988) and Swamp Thing (1990). She died on 4 January 2021 in Easton, Maryland, USA.
- Frank Cashen was born on 13 September 1925 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was married to Jean. He died on 30 June 2014 in Easton, Maryland, USA.
- Writer
- Producer
Hans Koningsberger was born on 12 July 1921 in Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands. He was a writer and producer, known for The Revolutionary (1970), A Walk with Love and Death (1969) and Gavre Princip - Himmel unter Steinen (1990). He was married to Katherine Scanlon. He died on 13 April 2007 in Easton, Connecticut, USA.- Frances Hesselbein was born on 1 November 1915 in South Fork, Pennsylvania, USA. He was married to John Hesselbein. He died on 11 December 2022 in Easton, Pennsylvania, USA.
- Dick Radatz was born on 2 April 1937 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He died on 16 March 2005 in Easton, Massachusetts, USA.
- Morton Friedman was born on 3 November 1920 in New York, New York, USA. He was a writer, known for Panic Button (1964) and Gaslight Follies (1945). He died on 10 April 2007 in Easton, Connecticut, USA.