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- Actor
- Producer
- Stunts
He was the ultra-cool male film star of the 1960s, and rose from a troubled youth spent in reform schools to being the world's most popular actor. Over 40 years after his untimely death from mesothelioma in 1980, Steve McQueen is still considered hip and cool, and he endures as an icon of popular culture.
McQueen was born in Beech Grove, Indiana, to mother Julian (Crawford) and father William Terence McQueen, a stunt pilot. His first lead role was in the low-budget sci-fi film The Blob (1958), quickly followed by roles in The St. Louis Bank Robbery (1959) and Never So Few (1959). The young McQueen appeared as Vin, alongside Yul Brynner, in the star-laden The Magnificent Seven (1960) and effectively hijacked the lead from the bigger star by ensuring he was nearly always doing something in every shot he and Brynner were in together, such as adjusting his hat or gun belt. He next scored with audiences with two interesting performances, first in the World War II drama Hell Is for Heroes (1962) and then in The War Lover (1962). Riding a wave of popularity, McQueen delivered another crowd pleaser as Hilts, the Cooler King, in the knockout World War II P.O.W. film The Great Escape (1963), featuring his famous leap over the barbed wire on a motorcycle while being pursued by Nazi troops (in fact, however, the stunt was actually performed by his good friend, stunt rider Bud Ekins).
McQueen next appeared in several films of mixed quality, including Soldier in the Rain (1963); Love with the Proper Stranger (1963) and Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965). However, they failed to really grab audience attention, but his role as Eric Stoner in The Cincinnati Kid (1965), alongside screen legend Edward G. Robinson and Karl Malden, had movie fans filling theaters again to see the ice-cool McQueen they loved. He was back in another Western, Nevada Smith (1966), again with Malden, and then he gave what many consider to be his finest dramatic performance as loner US Navy sailor Jake Holman in the superb The Sand Pebbles (1966). McQueen was genuine hot property and next appeared with Faye Dunaway in the provocative crime drama The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), next in what many consider his signature role, that of a maverick, taciturn detective in the mega-hit Bullitt (1968), renowned for its famous chase sequence through San Francisco between McQueen's Ford Mustang GT and the killer's black Dodge Charger.
Interestingly, McQueen's next role was a total departure from the action genre, as he played Southerner Boon Hogganbeck in the family-oriented The Reivers (1969), based on the popular William Faulkner novel. Not surprisingly, the film didn't go over particularly well with audiences, even though it was an entertaining and well made production, and McQueen showed an interesting comedic side of his acting talents. He returned to more familiar territory, with the race film Le Mans (1971), a rather self-indulgent exercise, and its slow plot line contributed to its rather poor performance in theaters. It was not until many years later that it became something of a cult film, primarily because of the footage of Porsche 917s roaring around race tracks in France. McQueen then teamed up with maverick Hollywood director Sam Peckinpah to star in the modern Western Junior Bonner (1972), about a family of rodeo riders, and again with Peckinpah as bank robber Doc McCoy in the violent The Getaway (1972). Both did good business at the box office. McQueen's next role was a refreshing surprise and Papillon (1973), based on the Henri Charrière novel of the same name, was well received by fans and critics alike. He played a convict on a French penal colony in South America who persists in trying to escape from his captors and feels their wrath when his attempts fail.
The 1970s is a decade remembered for a slew of "disaster" movies and McQueen starred in arguably the biggest of the time, The Towering Inferno (1974). He shared equal top billing with Paul Newman and an impressive line-up of co-stars including Fred Astaire,
Robert Vaughn and Faye Dunaway. McQueen does not appear until roughly halfway into the film as San Francisco fire chief Mike
O'Halloran, battling to extinguish an inferno in a 138-story skyscraper. The film was a monster hit and set the benchmark for other disaster movies that followed. However, it was McQueen's last film role for several years. After a four-year hiatus he surprised fans, and was almost unrecognizable under long hair and a beard, as a rabble-rousing early environmentalist in An Enemy of the People (1978), based on the Henrik Ibsen play.
McQueen's last two film performances were in the unusual Western Tom Horn (1980), then he portrayed real-life bounty hunter Ralph "Papa' Thorson (Ralph Thorson) in The Hunter (1980). In 1978, McQueen developed a persistent cough that would not go away. He quit smoking cigarettes and underwent antibiotic treatments without improvement. Shortness of breath grew more pronounced and on December 22, 1979, after he completed work on 'The Hunter', a biopsy revealed pleural mesothelioma, a rare lung cancer associated with asbestos exposure for which there is no known cure. The asbestos was thought to have been in the protective suits worn in his race car driving days, but in fact the auto racing suits McQueen wore were made of Nomex, a DuPont fire-resistant aramid fiber that contains no asbestos. McQueen later gave a medical interview in which he believed that asbestos used in movie sound stage insulation and race-drivers' protective suits and helmets could have been involved, but he thought it more likely that his illness was a direct result of massive exposure while removing asbestos lagging from pipes aboard a troop ship while in the US Marines.
By February 1980, there was evidence of widespread metastasis. While he tried to keep the condition a secret, the National Enquirer disclosed that he had "terminal cancer" on March 11, 1980. In July, McQueen traveled to Rosarito Beach, Mexico for an unconventional treatment after American doctors told him they could do nothing to prolong his life. Controversy arose over McQueen's Mexican trip, because McQueen sought a non-traditional cancer treatment called the Gerson Therapy that used coffee enemas, frequent washing with shampoos, daily injections of fluid containing live cells from cows and sheep, massage and laetrile, a supposedly "natural" anti-cancer drug available in Mexico, but not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. McQueen paid for these unconventional medical treatments by himself in cash payments which was said to have cost an upwards of $40,000 per month during his three-month stay in Mexico. McQueen was treated by William Donald Kelley, whose only medical license had been (until revoked in 1976) for orthodontics.
McQueen returned to the United States in early October 1980. Despite metastasis of the cancer through McQueen's body, Kelley publicly announced that McQueen would be completely cured and return to normal life. McQueen's condition soon worsened and "huge" tumors developed in his abdomen. In late October, McQueen flew to Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico to have an abdominal tumor on his liver (weighing around five pounds) removed, despite warnings from his American doctors that the tumor was inoperable and his heart could not withstand the surgery. McQueen checked into a Juarez clinic under the alias "Sam Shepard" where the local Mexican doctors and staff at the small, low-income clinic were unaware of his actual identity.
Steve McQueen passed away on November 7, 1980, at age 50 after the cancer surgery which was said to be successful. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea. He married three times and had a lifelong love of motor racing, once remarking, "Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting.".- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was
the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer
William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English
and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock
(born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock (born 1892). Raised as a strict
Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits,
Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. His first job outside of
the family business was in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley
Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in movies began at around
this time, frequently visiting the cinema and reading US trade
journals.
Hitchcock entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer.
It was there that he met Alma Reville, though they never
really spoke to each other. It was only after the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923)
fell ill and Hitchcock was named director to complete the film that he
and Reville began to collaborate. Hitchcock had his first real crack at
directing a film, start to finish, in 1923 when he was hired to direct
the film Number 13 (1922), though the
production wasn't completed due to the studio's closure (he later remade it as a sound film). Hitchcock
didn't give up then. He directed
The Pleasure Garden (1925), a
British/German production, which was very popular. Hitchcock made his
first trademark film in 1927,
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927)
. In the same year, on the 2nd of December, Hitchcock married Alma
Reville. They had one child,
Patricia Hitchcock who was born on July 7th, 1928. His success followed when he made a number of films in Britain such as The Lady Vanishes (1938)
and Jamaica Inn (1939), some of which
also gained him fame in the USA.
In 1940, the Hitchcock family moved to Hollywood, where the producer
David O. Selznick had hired him to direct an adaptation of 'Daphne du Maurier''s Rebecca (1940).
After Saboteur (1942), as his fame as a director grew, film companies began
to refer to his films as 'Alfred Hitchcock's', for example
Alfred Hitcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's
Family Plot (1976), Alfred
Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972).
Hitchcock was a master of pure cinema who almost never failed to reconcile aesthetics with the demands of the box-office.
During the
making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife
Alma suffered a paralyzing stroke which made her unable to walk very
well. On March 7, 1979, Hitchcock was awarded the AFI Life
Achievement Award, where he said: "I beg permission
to mention by name only four people who have given me the most
affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration.
The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter,
the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a
cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen and their names
are Alma Reville." By this time, he was ill with angina and his
kidneys had already started to fail. He had started to write a screenplay
with Ernest Lehman called The Short Night but he fired Lehman and
hired young writer David Freeman to rewrite the script. Due to
Hitchcock's failing health the film was never made, but Freeman
published the script after Hitchcock's death. In late 1979, Hitchcock
was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. On the 29th April 1980,
9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. His
funeral was held in the Church of Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills.
Father Thomas Sullivan led the service with over 600 people attended
the service, among them were
Mel Brooks (director of
High Anxiety (1977), a comedy
tribute to Hitchcock and his films),
Louis Jourdan,
Karl Malden,
Tippi Hedren,
Janet Leigh and
François Truffaut.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Often credited as the greatest comedian of all time, Peter Sellers was born Richard Henry Sellers to a well-off acting family in 1925 in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth. He was the son of Agnes Doreen "Peg" (Marks) and William "Bill" Sellers. His parents worked in an acting company run by his grandmother. His father was Protestant and his mother was Jewish (of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi background). His parents' first child had died at birth, so Sellers was spoiled during his early years. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force and served during World War II. After the war he met Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine, who would become his future workmates.
After the war, he set up a review in London, which was a combination of music (he played the drums) and impressions. Then, all of a sudden, he burst into prominence as the voices of numerous favorites on the BBC radio program "The Goon Show" (1951-1960), and then making his debut in films in Penny Points to Paradise (1951) and Down Among the Z Men (1952), before making it big as one of the criminals in The Ladykillers (1955). These small but showy roles continued throughout the 1950s, but he got his first big break playing the dogmatic union man, Fred Kite, in I'm All Right Jack (1959). The film's success led to starring vehicles into the 1960s that showed off his extreme comic ability to its fullest. In 1962, Sellers was cast in the role of Clare Quilty in the Stanley Kubrick version of the film Lolita (1962) in which his performance as a mentally unbalanced TV writer with multiple personalities landed him another part in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) in which he played three roles which showed off his comic talent in play-acting in three different accents; British, American, and German.
The year 1964 represented a peak in his career with four films in release, all of them well-received by critics and the public alike: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), for which he was Oscar nominated, The Pink Panther (1963), in which he played his signature role of the bumbling French Inspector Jacques Clouseau for the first time, its almost accidental sequel, A Shot in the Dark (1964), and The World of Henry Orient (1964). Sellers was on top of the world, but on the evening of April 5, 1964, he suffered a nearly fatal heart attack after inhaling several amyl nitrites (also called 'poppers'; an aphrodisiac-halogen combination) while engaged in a sexual act with his second wife Britt Ekland. He had been working on Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). In a move Wilder later regretted, he replaced Sellers with Ray Walston rather than hold up production. By October 1964, Sellers made a full recovery and was working again.
The mid-1960s were noted for the popularity of all things British, from the Beatles music (who were presented with their Grammy for Best New Artist by Sellers) to the James Bond films, and the world turned to Sellers for comedy. What's New Pussycat (1965) was another big hit, but a combination of his ego and insecurity was making Sellers difficult to work with. When the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967) ran over budget and was unable to recoup its costs despite an otherwise healthy box-office take, Sellers received some of the blame. He turned down an offer from United Artists for the title role in Inspector Clouseau (1968), but was angry when the production went ahead with Alan Arkin in his place. His difficult reputation and increasingly erratic behavior, combined with several less successful films, took a toll on his standing. By 1970, he had fallen out of favor. He spent the early years of the new decade appearing in such lackluster B films as Where Does It Hurt? (1972) and turning up more frequently on television as a guest on The Dean Martin Show (1965) and a Glen Campbell TV special.
In 1974, Inspector Clouseau came to Sellers rescue when Sir Lew Grade expressed an interest in a TV series based on the character. Clouseau's creator, writer-director Blake Edwards, whose career had also seen better days, convinced Grade to bankroll a feature film instead, and The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) was a major hit release during the summer of Jaws (1975) and restored both men to prominence. Sellers would play Clouseau in two more successful sequels, The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), and Sellers would use his newly rediscovered clout to realize his dream of playing Chauncey Gardiner in a film adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's novel "Being There". Sellers had read the novel in 1972, but it took seven years for the film to reach the screen. Being There (1979) earned Sellers his second Oscar nomination, but he lost to Dustin Hoffman for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).
Sellers struggled with depression and mental insecurities throughout his life. An enigmatic figure, he often claimed to have no identity outside the roles that he played. His behavior on and off the set and stage became more erratic and compulsive, and he continued to frequently clash with his directors and co-stars, especially in the mid-1970s when his physical and mental health, together with his continuing alcohol and drug problems, were at their worst. He never fully recovered from his 1964 heart attack because he refused to take traditional heart medication and instead consulted with 'psychic healers'. As a result, his heart condition continued to slowly deteriorate over the next 16 years. On March 20, 1977, Sellers barely survived another major heart attack and had a pacemaker surgically implanted to regulate his heartbeat which caused him further mental and physical discomfort. However, he refused to slow down his work schedule or consider heart surgery which might have extended his life by several years.
On July 25, 1980, Sellers was scheduled to have a reunion dinner in London with his Goon Show partners, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. However, at around 12 noon on July 22, Sellers collapsed from a massive heart attack in his Dorchester Hotel room and fell into a coma. He died in a London hospital just after midnight on July 24, 1980 at age 54. He was survived by his fourth wife, Lynne Frederick, and three children: Michael, Sarah and Victoria. At the time of his death, he was scheduled to undergo an angiography in Los Angeles on July 30 to see if he was eligible for heart surgery.
His last movie, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980), completed just a few months before his death, proved to be another box office flop. Director Blake Edwards' attempt at reviving the Pink Panther series after Sellers' death resulted in two panned 1980s comedies, the first of which, Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), deals with Inspector Clouseau's disappearance and was made from material cut from previous Pink Panther films and includes interviews with the original casts playing their original characters.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Mae West was born August 17, 1893 in Brooklyn, New York, to "Battling Jack" West and Matilda Doelger. She began her career as a child star in vaudeville, and later went on to write her own plays, including "SEX", for which she was arrested. Though her first movie role, at age 40, was a small part in Night After Night (1932), her scene has become famous. A coat check girl exclaims, "Goodness! What lovely diamonds!", after seeing Mae's jewelry. Mae replies, "Goodness had nothing to do with it". Her next film, in which she starred, came the following year. She Done Him Wrong (1933) was based on her earlier and very popular play, "Diamond Lil". She went on to write and star in seven more films, including My Little Chickadee (1940) with W.C. Fields. Her last movie was Sextette (1977), which also came from a play. She died on November 22, 1980.- Dorothy Stratten's story was brief, glorious and tragic. She was born
Dorothy Ruth Hoogstraten on February 28, 1960 in Vancouver, British
Columbia, Canada. She grew up in a rough neighborhood in Vancouver, but
kept out of trouble and went through the motions of school. While not a
beauty as a child, nor early teen, Stratten came into her own out of
high school and attracted the attention of Paul Snider, a promoter and
wannabe star. He started dating her and after seeing an advertisement
for Playboy's 25th Anniversary Playmate search in 1978, convinced her
to pose for photos. Playboy saw the potential in Stratten and flew her
out to Los Angeles, California, where she became a candidate. Although
she lost out to Candy Loving, Stratten was
made a Playmate in the August 1979 issue of Playboy. Soon after, she
was pressured into marrying Snider, who had a Svengali-like influence
on her.
After her centerfold came out, Stratten found work in a few movies,
notably Americathon (1979) and
Skatetown U.S.A. (1979), as
well as being the object of
Richard Dawson's affection in an
ABC-TV special shot at the Playboy mansion. Clearly, her star was on
the rise. In 1980, it was revealed that Stratten would be tabbed as the
Playmate of the Year by Playboy publisher and founder
Hugh Hefner. While this was one of the
crowning achievements of her career, things were not going well in her
marriage to Snider. He bothered her on the set of the movie
Galaxina (1980) and when Snider found
out she was developing more than a friendly relationship with director
Peter Bogdanovich, Snider grew
increasingly frustrated.
After a separation, Snider bought a shotgun and talked Stratten into
coming to the apartment they used to share in West Los Angeles. Snider
tied her up, sexually assaulted her and put the shotgun next to her
face and pulled the trigger. Snider then turned the shotgun on himself
to complete the murder-suicide. Since her death, Stratten has become
something of a minor cult fixture, and has had two (one a television)
movies, a song, and a couple of books written about her. The last movie
she was in,
They All Laughed (1981), was
released after her death. - Actor
- Soundtrack
American character actor who achieved considerable fame in the last decade of his life. A native of Kokomo, Indiana, Strother Martin Jr. was the youngest of three children of Strother Douglas Martin, a machinist, and Ethel Dunlap Martin. His family moved soon after his birth to San Antonio, Texas, but quickly returned to Indiana. Strother Jr. grew up in Indianapolis and in Cloverdale, Indiana. He excelled at swimming and diving, and at 17 won the National Junior Springboard Diving Championship. He attended the University of Michigan as diving team member. He served in the U.S. Navy as a swimming instructor in World War II. Nicknamed "T-Bone" Martin for his diving style, his 3rd place finish in the adult National Springboard Diving Championships cost him a place on the 1948 Olympic team. He moved to California to become an actor, but worked in odd jobs and as a swimming instructor to Marion Davies and the children of Charles Chaplin. He found work as a swimming extra in several films and as a leprechaun on a local children's TV show,
"Mabel's Fables." Bit parts came his way, leading to television work with Sam Peckinpah, which led to a lifelong relationship. He also found memorable roles for John Ford and by the 1960s was a familiar face in American movies. With Cool Hand Luke (1967) in 1967 came new acclaim and a place among the busiest character actors in Hollywood. He worked steadily and in substantial roles throughout the 1970s and seemed at the peak of his career when he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1980.- Actor
- Sound Department
- Additional Crew
David Janssen was born David Harold Meyer in 1931 in Naponee, Nebraska, to Berniece Mae (Graf) and Harold Edward Meyer, a banker. He was of German, and some Swiss-German and Ulster-Scots, descent. David took the surname of his stepfather, Eugene Janssen. The Janssen family settled in Hollywood when he was a teenager and he attended Fairfax High School, where he developed an interest in acting. His film debut was a bit part in It's a Pleasure (1945), and at the age of 18 signed a contract with 20th Century-Fox. However, the studio dropped him after allegedly becoming disenchanted with his odd hairline and big prominent ears. Janssen had better luck at Universal, where he signed on in the early 1950s and became a supporting player in 32 films before appearing on TV as the star of Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1957). He resumed his movie career in 1961, a year after the series ended. His biggest success came from his lead in the series The Fugitive (1963), playing the haunted, hunted Dr. Richard Kimble, on the run for a murder he didn't commit. After the series ended, Janssen launched himself into a grueling schedule by appearing in lead and supporting roles in movies, but he had better luck with made-for-TV-movie roles and a short-lived series, O'Hara, U.S. Treasury (1971). He had another hit series with the cult favorite
Harry O (1973). Janssen continued appearing in lead roles in nearly 20 made-for-TV-movies during the 1970s as well as other TV projects. He died in 1980 from a sudden heart attack at his Malibu home at the age of 48. Unfounded speculation holds that Janssen succumbed to alcoholism, a problem that plagued him most of his adult life. There were even unfounded rumors about drug use.
However, a much more reasonable explanation for David Janssen's sudden demise is that this intense, dedicated, determined actor simply worked himself to death.- Jay Silverheels was born on Canada's Six Nation's Reserve and was one
of 10 children. He was a star lacrosse player and a boxer before he
entered films as a stuntman in 1938. He worked in a number of films
through the 1940s before gaining notice as the Osceola brother in a
Humphrey Bogart film
Key Largo (1948). Most of Silverheels'
roles consisted of bit parts as an Indian character. In 1949, he worked
in the movie
The Cowboy and the Indians (1949)
with another "B movie" actor
Clayton Moore. Later that year,
Silverheels was hired to play the faithful Indian companion, Tonto, in
the TV series
The Lone Ranger (1949) series,
which brought him the fame that his motion picture career never did.
Silverheels recreated the role of Tonto in two big-screen color movies
with Moore,The Lone Ranger (1956)
and
The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958).
After the TV series ended in 1957, Silverheels could not escape the
typecasting of Tonto. He would continue to appear in an occasional film
and television show but became a spokesperson to improve the portrayal
of Indians in the media. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Raymond Bailey was a great example of "If at first you don't
succeed..." After high school, Bailey headed for Hollywood with the
intent on becoming a movie star, but soon found it tougher than he
thought. Instead Bailey went into a high finance career working as
stockbroker and banker. He made a second stab at Hollywood, and again
had no success. He then became a seaman, working on various freighters
and travelling all over the world. Bailey also worked on a pineapple
plantation in Hawaii, and tried his luck in the local theatre. Deciding
to give Hollywood one more try in 1938, he got lucky getting several
small parts in the movies which eventually evolved into bigger
character roles. When television became big, Bailey was in demand for
parts and it was there he got his most famous part on the hit sitcom
The Beverly Hillbillies (1962),
as (ironically) banker Milburn Drysdale, whose fists were tighter than
Elly May's pants. After the show ended, he did a few movie roles.- Music Artist
- Composer
- Actor
John Winston (later Ono) Lennon was born on October 9, 1940, in Liverpool, England, to Julia Lennon (née Stanley) and Alfred Lennon, a merchant seaman. He was raised by his mother's older sister Mimi Smith. In the mid-1950s, he formed his first band, The Quarrymen (after Quarry Bank High School, which he attended) who, with the addition of Paul McCartney and George Harrison, later became The Beatles.
After some years of performing in Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany, "Beatlemania" erupted in England and Europe in 1963 after the release
of their singles "Love Me Do" and "Please Please Me". That same year, John's first wife Cynthia Lennon welcomed their only son Julian Lennon, named after John's mother. The next year the Beatles flew to America to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) (aka The Ed Sullivan Show), and Beatlemania spread worldwide. Queen Elizabeth II granted all four Beatles M.B.E. medals in 1965, for import revenues from their record sales; John returned his four years later, as part of an antiwar statement. John and the Beatles continued to tour and perform live until 1966, when protests over his calling the Beatles phenomenon "more popular than Jesus" and the frustrations of touring made the band decide to quit the road. They devoted themselves to studio work, recording and releasing albums such as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", "Magical Mystery Tour" and the "White Album". Instead of appearing live, the band began making their own "pop clips" (an early term for music videos), which were featured on television programs of the time.
In the late 1960s John began performing and making albums with his second wife Yoko Ono, as the Beatles began to break up. Their first two albums, "Two Virgins" and "Life With The Lions", were experimental and flops by Beatles standards, while their "Wedding Album" was almost a vanity work, but their live album "Live Peace In Toronto" became a Top Ten hit, at the end of the 1960s.
In the early 1970s John and Yoko continued to record together, making television appearances and performing at charity concerts. After the
release of John's biggest hit, "Imagine", they moved to the US, where John was nearly deported because of his political views (a late-'60s
conviction for possession of hashish in the U.K. was the excuse given by the government), but after a four-year legal battle he won the right
to stay. In the midst of this, John and Yoko separated for over a year; John lived in Los Angeles with personal assistant May Pang, while Yoko dated guitarist David Spinozza. When John made a guest appearance at Elton John's Thanksgiving 1974 concert, Yoko was in the audience, and surprised John backstage. They reconciled in early 1975, and Yoko soon became pregnant. After the birth of their son Sean Lennon, John settled into the roles of "househusband" and full-time daddy, while Yoko became his business manager; both appeared happy in their new life together.
After a five-year break from music and the public eye, they made a comeback with their album "Double Fantasy", but within weeks of their
re-emergence, Lennon was murdered on the evening of December 8, 1980 by Mark David Chapman, a one-time Beatles fan angry and jealous over John's ongoing career, who fatally shot Lennon four times in the back outside his apartment building, The Dakota, as Lennon was returning from a recording session. Within minutes after being shot, John Lennon was dead at age 40. His violent death was a sudden and tragic end to the life of a talented singer and musician who wanted to make a difference in the world.- Delightful, sophisticated English actress, daughter of the
distinguished thespian Sir Guy Standing.
Kay trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and was
taught elocution by
Mrs. Patrick Campbell. She made
her theatrical debut in "Tilly of Bloomsbury" in 1927. Within just a
few years, she had established herself as a regular on the West End
stage. In 1936, Kay made her first big splash as the flirtatious Diana
Lake in Terence Rattigan's "French
Without Tears" (1936) opposite
Roland Culver. She then had several roles
as leading lady in several minor British features, demonstrating a
singular penchant for comedy. However, Kay decided early on to limit
her screen appearances in order to further her theatrical career.
Her most celebrated role was that of Elvira Condomine in
Noël Coward's supernatural comedy
Blithe Spirit (1945), a part she
originated in the 1941 stage version at London's Piccadilly Theatre to
rave reviews. Kay was irresistibly alluring (even in ghostly make-up
and green hair) and thoroughly likeable as the mischievous spirit of
novelist Charles's (Rex Harrison's)
deceased first wife, accidentally summoned during a seance by crusty
medium Madame Arcati
(Margaret Rutherford) and intent on
wreaking havoc on her husband's second marriage.
There was precious little of Kay on screen after
'Blithe Spirit'. Following her marriage to the actor John Clements,
she appeared for a while with the Chichester Festival Theatre, often
partnering with her husband on stage. Their last joint performance was in
"The Marriage Go-Round" in 1959 at the Piccadilly Theatre. Sadly, a
deteriorating heart condition forced her premature retirement from
acting and she spent the last few years of her life confined to a
wheelchair. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Character actor Milburn Stone, the beloved "Doc Adams" on TV's
long-running western classic Gunsmoke (1955), was born in Kansas on July 5,
1904. Acting must have been in his blood as the nephew of Broadway
comedian Fred Stone for Milburn left home as a teenager to find work with
touring repertory troupes. Emulating his famous uncle Fred, he appeared
in vaudeville as part of a song-and-dance team called "Stone and
Strain."
Following a minor appearance on Broadway in "The Jayhawkers,"
Milburn moved to Los Angeles in 1935 to try his luck in films. He
toiled for years in mostly unbilled parts for 'poverty row' Monogram
Pictures and a few major studios, apprenticing in a number of background roles as both benign
fellows (clerks, reporters, sailors, detectives) and bad guys
(convicts, robbers, henchmen) in such films as Ladies Crave Excitement (1935), The Fighting Marines (1935), The Princess Comes Across (1936), Banjo on My Knee (1936) and They Gave Him a Gun (1937)
Out of the blue he would occasionally nab a heroic film lead in films as the crime drama Federal Bullets (1937) and The Judge (1949) or serial thrillers as The Great Alaskan Mystery (1944) and The Master Key (1945), then would invariably go right back to unbilled status in his very
next role. One memorable featured part (which was also unbilled) was as
debater Stephen A. Douglass in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). In addition he played
a regular support role as pal/co-pilot "Skeeter Milligan" in the "Tommy Tailspin" airborne film quickies Mystery Plane (1939), Sky Patrol (1939) and Danger Flight (1939).
Other higher visible support roles occurred in such films as the Roy Rogers western Colorado (1940), as well as Captive Wild Woman (1943), The Frozen Ghost (1945), Roadblock (1951), Black Tuesday (1954), Smoke Signal (1955). He also went on to appear in a couple of John Ford's later features such as Simone Bär and The Long Gray Line (1955).
When the crusty but lovable role of "Doc Adams" finally landed at his feet in 1955, Milburn was only too appreciative to experience a steady paycheck. He became an "overnight" star and, along with Matt Dillon's James Arness, earned an Emmy Award for "supporting actor" and stayed a citizen of Dodge City throughout its entire 20-year run (500 episodes). In 1971, Stone was temporarily sidelined by a heart attack and briefly replaced by another "doc" played by Pat Hingle. The ever-durable Stone missed only seven episodes, however, and did return on a more limited basis.
Fully retired to his ranch in 1975 after the show's
cancellation, he was eventually awarded an honorary doctorate from St.
Mary of the Plains College in (of course) Dodge City, Kansas. Married
to Jane Garrison, the 75-year-old veteran died of a heart attack on
June 12, 1980 in La Jolla, California. His wife passed away much later in
2002.- Stony-faced, grizzled-looking tough guy Charles McGraw (real name Charles Butters)
notched up dozens of TV and film credits, usually portraying law
enforcement figures or military officers, plus the odd shifty gangster. While at high school he worked as a theatre usher and was nicknamed "Chick" by his friends. At 17, he returned to his home town of Akron to study at university. He hitchhiked to New York from Ohio, enjoyed a substantial period in the boxing ring as a middleweight pugilist and then found his first success as an actor in 1937 on the Broadway stage in the Clifford Odets play "Golden Boy". Afterwards, stage work proved hard to come by. Therefore, to make ends meet, McGraw began to earn his living as a hoofer in dime-a-dance establishments. His career in Hollywood began in 1942 with bit parts and stalled again after a brief sojourn in the army. However, by 1947, he had picked up a solid amount of work as radio actor thanks to his gravelly voice which was perfectly suited for crime dramas. This did eventually re-open the door to Hollywood. Before long, McGraw regularly plied his trade as assorted hard cases who perfectly matched his craggy looks and steely-eyed visage. Best remembered among his standout roles are
the dogged cop
protecting a mob witness in the 1952 classic thriller
The Narrow Margin (1952) , as
resolute Lt. Jim Cordell pursuing armed bandits in
Armored Car Robbery (1950), as a hit man in Robert Siodmak's seminal film noir The Killers (1946),
as sadistic gladiatorial trainer Marcellus taunting slave
Kirk Douglas (and ending up in a vat of boiling soup) in the epic
Spartacus (1960), as
William Holden's naval commander in
the Korean War drama
The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954)
and as jaded police officer Lt. Matthews assisting
Spencer Tracy in the all-star comedy
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963).
McGraw died in 1980 after a tragic accident in which he slipped and fell
through a glass shower door. - Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Donald Barry went from the stage to the
screen. After four years of playing villains and henchmen at various
studios, Barry got the role that changed his image: Red Ryder in
the Republic Pictures serial
Adventures of Red Ryder (1940).
Although he had appeared in westerns for two years or so, this was the
one that kept him there. He acquired the nickname "Red" from
his association with the Red Ryder character. After the success of "Red
Ryder" Barry starred in a string of westerns for Republic. Studio chief
Herbert J. Yates got the idea that
Barry could be Republic's version of
James Cagney, as he was short and had the
same scrappy, feisty nature that Cagney had. Unfortunately, while Barry
could in fact be a good actor when he wanted to be -- as he showed in the
World War II drama
The Purple Heart (1944) -- his
"feistiness", combative nature and oversized ego caused him to alienate
many of the casts and crews he worked with at Republic (ace serial
director William Witney detested him,
calling him "the midget", and director
John English worked with him once
and refused to ever work with him again). Barry made a series of
westerns at Republic throughout the 1940s, but by 1950 his career had
pretty much come to a halt, and he was reduced to making cheaper and
cheaper pictures for bottom-of-the-barrel companies like Lippert and
Screen Guild. Barry continued to work and still appeared in
westerns up through the 1970s, but they were often in small supporting
roles, sometimes unbilled. In 1980 he committed suicide by shooting
himself.- Writer
- Actor
- Producer
Though almost completely unknown, this man was one of the originators
of a highly popular and groundbreaking new form of comedy and satire.
After working on the Harvard Lampoon as an undergraduate, Douglas C.
Kenney co-founded the National Lampoon magazine and the National
Lampoon Radio Hour.
Kenney had originally collaborated at Harvard with friend,
Henry Beard, and founded the National
Lampoon, where the two pooled their talents and created a radical new
humor magazine. Humor that was sophomoric, rebellious, off-color,
vulgar and just plain laceratingly funny.
The Lampoon's humor was considered radical. Not only was the magazine
an all-time best seller - particularly the infamous cover of the gun
pointed at the family pet: "If you don't buy this magazine, we'll kill
this dog". Kenney had broadened his comic touch all over. He and other
members of the Lampoon had written books - the most popular being the
"1964 High School Yearbook Parody" in 1974 (co-edited by
P.J. O'Rourke). Written like a real
yearbook and spoofing all the things that make them almost embarrassing
and funny in their own right, Kenney and his cohorts had certainly
written a little masterpiece.
Another best-selling classic of his was the cult favorite "Bored of the
Rings", a humorous little take on Mr.
J.R.R. Tolkien's legendary best-seller.
The book was a best-seller and thanks to the release of
Peter Jackson's Oscar-winning
live-action adaptation of the novel trilogy, the book got another
printing. Kenney's legacy was living on.
Another piece of his was "Mrs. Agnew's Diary", that roasted the Nixon
administration.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Beautiful, swift and tough-tongued British character actress Rachel
Roberts gained notice for her roles on the English stage, before she
hit it largely in films. Born in Wales and married to actor Rex Harrison in
1962, Roberts made her film debut in a key role in J. Lee Thompson's Young and Willing (1954) a
drama film about the life of women in prison. Around the early sixties,
it wasn't uncommon to see a British actress in feature films, usually
such an actress would remain on the British screen for such time, but
Roberts continued going strong, she's hard to forget as the cankerous
housewife in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960).
After her divorce from Rex Harrison in 1971, Roberts continued such
supporting roles usually as tough authority women characters or
villainous beauties in films including Doctors' Wives (1971), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975),
Foul Play (1978), When a Stranger Calls (1979) and Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981). Although never far from the screen, she
was occasionally seen on television, such as Mrs. Bonnie McClellan in
the 1976 series The Tony Randall Show (1976). She probably achieved her greatest success as
Richard Harris's love interest in the film This Sporting Life (1963) which earned her an Academy
Award nomination as Best Actress. Rachel Roberts committed suicide in
November of 1980 of a "barbiturate overdose" at her home in Studio
City, California. Roberts was only 53 years old.- Actor
- Soundtrack
George Raft was born and grew up in a poor family in Hell's Kitchen, at
the time one of the roughest, meanest areas of New York City. He was
born George Ranft, and was the son of Eva (Glockner) and Conrad Ranft,
a department store deliveryman. His parents were both of German
descent. In his youth, he showed a great interest in, and aptitude for,
dancing. That, combined with his dark good looks and sharp dressing,
made him a local favorite at such spots as the El Fey Club with
Texas Guinan. In 1928, Raft went to
Hollywood to try his luck at acting. His first big role was as the
coin-tossing henchman in
Scarface (1932). His career was marked
by numerous tough-guy roles, often a gangster or convict. The
believability with which he played these, together with his lifelong
associations with such real-life gangsters as
Owney Madden and
Bugsy Siegel, added to persistent rumors
that he was also a gangster. The slightly shady reputation may have
helped his popularity early on, but it made him somewhat undesirable to
movie executives later in his career. He somewhat parodied his gangster
reputation in Billy Wilder's
Some Like It Hot (1959).- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
First wife Jeanne died in 1943. Wed second wife, Marjorie Little after
16 year courtship when she was 39 and he 67 Marjorie Little had been
the hatcheck girl at the Copacabana. Durante and his second wife
adopted a baby girl, Cecelia Alicia on Christmas day 1961. Durante
doted on "CeCe" until his death.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Achieving both film and TV notice during his lengthy career, this diminutive Asian-American character was born Victor Cheung Young on October 18, 1915 in San Francisco to Chinese emigrants. When his mother died during the influenza epidemic of 1918-19, his father placed Victor and his sister in a children's shelter and returned to China, returning to the USA in the mid-1920s, having remarried. The two children were released back to his guardianship, and began learning Chinese. To contribute to the family income, young Sen Yew was employed as a houseboy at age 11 and managed to earn his way through college at the University of California at Berkeley with an interest in animal husbandry and receiving a degree in economics.
Following a move to Hollywood for some post graduate work at UCLA and USC, Victor gained an entrance into films via extra work, where he was in such roles as a peasant boy in The Good Earth (1937), and a soldier in Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (1938), among others. During this early period he also worked as a salesman for a chemical firm. In one of Hollywood's more interesting tales of being "discovered", the story goes that Victor (as he would become known) was on the 20th Century-Fox studio lot at the time trying to pitch one of his company's flame retardant compounds to industry techies when one of them suggested he check out casting. The original actor who had played Charlie Chan, Warner Oland, died and the series was undergoing a major casting overhaul. In the end, Sidney Toler, received cast approval, chose the fledgling actor following a screen test to play his #2 son, Jimmy Chan, for the film Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938). Victor went on to play the role for seventeen other "Charlie Chan" features. Needless, to say he quit the sales business for good.
Victor enjoyed playing Jimmy, the earnest rookie detective who, to his chagrin, was always under the watchful eye of his famous father while trying to help solve murder cases. Outside the role, however, Victor (billed variously as Sen Yung, Victor Yung, and Victor Sen Yung at different times) found the atmosphere oppressive. Usually cast in nothing-special Asian stereotypes, sometimes villainous, in war-era films, parts in such movies as The Letter (1940) starring Bette Davis, Secret Agent of Japan (1942), Little Tokyo, U.S.A. (1942), Moontide (1942), Across the Pacific (1942), Manila Calling (1942), China (1943) and Night Plane from Chungking (1943), did little to advance his stature in Hollywood. His career was interrupted for U.S. Air Force duty as a Captain of Intelligence during WWII. His part in the Chan pictures was taken over by actor Benson Fong.
Victor was able to pick up where he left off in Hollywood following the war and returned to his famous role as #2 son. The character's name, however, was eventually changed from "Jimmy" to "Tommy" after a third installment of Charlie Chan pictures were filmed with Roland Winters now the title sleuth after the death of Toler in 1947. While Victor's workload was fairly steady, again the roles themselves were meager and hardly inspiring. Most were in "B" level crime mysteries and war pictures and many were uncredited roles. Reduced often to playing middle-age servile roles (houseboys, laundrymen, valets, clerks, dock workers and waiters), some of his slightly more prominent roles include those in Woman on the Run (1950), Forbidden (1953), Target Hong Kong (1953), and Trader Tom of the China Seas (1954). His last film appearance was in The Man with Bogart's Face (1980).
On TV, he appeared in two familiar recurring roles. On the John Forsythe series, Bachelor Father (1957), he showed up as "Peter Fong" on the final season of the sitcom. He played the cousin to houseboy Sammee Tong's regular character. Victor is better remembered, however, for the part of Hop Sing, the earnest, volatile cook to the Cartwright clan, provided sporadic comic relief on Bonanza (1959). He also appeared in the TV pilot and in several episodes of Kung Fu (1972), as well as popping up in dramatic episodes of Hawaiian Eye (1959), The F.B.I. (1965). and Hawaii Five-O (1968). Sitcoms gave a hint of his gentle, humorous side in Here's Lucy (1968), Get Smart (1965) and Mister Ed (1961).
Married and divorced with one child, he sought work outside of acting by the mid-1970s. At one point he was giving cooking
demonstrations in department stores. An accomplished chef who specialized in Cantonese-style cooking, in 1974, he published the 1974 Great Wok Cookbook and dedicated the book to his father, Sen Gam Yung.
Victor Sen Yung was working on a second cookbook when he was suddenly found dead in November of 1980 under initially "mysterious circumstances" in his modest San Fernando Valley bungalow. Following an investigation it was determined that Victor was accidentally asphyxiated in his sleep after turning on a faulty kitchen stove for heat. He was survived by his son, Brent Kee Young, and two grandchildren.- Actor
- Additional Crew
If you've ever seen a war picture, sci-fi epic or western from the
1940s or 1950s, then you've seen Thomas Browne Henry, and more than
once. Along with Morris Ankrum, Henry is probably the army officer most
responsible for helping Earth drive off hordes of invading outer-space
monsters, aliens and other unwelcome intruders. His stocky build,
sharply etched face, commanding voice and no-nonsense,
get-down-to-business style were just right for the scores of generals,
colonels, bankers, political leaders and other authority figures he
played over his long and prolific career. Born in California, he had a
very successful career as a stage actor and director, and was closely
associated with the renowned Pasadena Playhouse, before breaking into
films in 1948 (his brother, William Henry, was also an actor) and played a
succession of cops, sheriffs, district attorneys, professors and, of
course, army officers over the next 20+ years. He finally retired in
1970 and went back to his first love, the theater, again back to the
Pasadena Playhouse. He died in 1980.- Producer
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Cold, calculating and hard-as-nails is probably the best definition of
Gail Patrick's femmes on the 30s and 40s silver screen, and the actress
herself was no softie in real life. The tall, slender, patrician beauty
was born with the equally stately-sounding name Margaret LaVelle
Fitzpatrick in Birmingham, Alabama, on June 20, 1911. She received a
B.A. and was a dean of women at her alma mater, Howard College, for a
time. She was studying pre-law at the University of Alabama at the time
she, by happenstance, became a finalist in a nationwide contest for a
Paramount film role (which she did not get). This led her to go to
Hollywood and, despite her loss, the studio wound up offering her a
studio contract at $50 a week (she managed to finagle her way to $75).
After the usual grooming in bit parts, Gail moved stealthily up the
ladder to featured roles in a wide assortment of genres including the
fantasy
Death Takes a Holiday (1934),
the melodramatic thriller
The Crime of Helen Stanley (1934),
the musical Mississippi (1935) and
the easy comedy Early to Bed (1936).
Just as quickly she began essaying the occasional co-star or leading
lady -- that of a woman lawyer in
Disbarred (1939) and a romantic
diversion in the Zane Grey western
adaptations of Wagon Wheels (1934)
and
Wanderer of the Wasteland (1935).
She was most identified, however, in manipulative second leads while
usually tangling with the star femme as the "other woman," haughty
socialite or scheming villainess.
Gail participated grandly in three well-known film classics. In the
screwball comedy
My Man Godfrey (1936), she was at
odds with Carole Lombard as a
spoiled, treacherous sister; in
Stage Door (1937), she engaged in some
marvelous cat-fights with Ginger Rogers as
a cynical wannabe actress, and in
My Favorite Wife (1940) she
played Cary Grant's exacting second wife who
must contend with the reappearance of his first, supposedly dead wife
Irene Dunne. Gail exuded wit, confidence,
assertiveness and elegance in all her characters, nothing less, and her
male co-stars were the sturdiest assortment Hollywood could offer --
Bing Crosby,
Randolph Scott,
Richard Dix,
John Howard,
Preston Foster,
Dean Jagger and
George Sanders.
In 1947, she did an abrupt about-face and left her highly respectable
career following her third marriage. After involving herself
successfully in clothing design, she became (as Gail Patrick Jackson)
the executive producer of the
Perry Mason (1957) TV series
(1957-1966), alongside producer and husband (Thomas)
Cornwell Jackson, who was a literary
agent to author/creator
Erle Stanley Gardner. The courtroom
"whodunnit" was a long and highly successful run. She and Jackson
divorced in 1969, and one of her few failures in life was in her
attempt to revive the series with
The New Perry Mason (1973)
in 1973, but Monte Markham was a mighty
pale comparison to Raymond Burr in the
title role and the show quickly tanked. Divorced three times, she and
Mr. Jackson had two adopted children. She was married to her fourth husband
John Velde Jr., at the time of her death in 1980 of leukemia. She was
69.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Raoul Walsh's 52-year directorial career made him a Hollywood legend.
Walsh was also an actor: He appeared in the first version of
W. Somerset Maugham's "Rain" renamed
Sadie Thompson (1928) opposite
Gloria Swanson in the title role. He
would have played the Cisco Kid in his own film
In Old Arizona (1928) if an errant
jackrabbit hadn't cost him his right eye by leaping through the
windshield of his automobile.
Warner Baxter filled the role and won an
Oscar. Before John Ford and
Nicholas Ray, it was Raoul Walsh
who made the eye-patch almost as synonymous with a Hollywood director
as Cecil B. DeMille's jodhpurs.
He interned with the best, serving as assistant director and editor on
D.W. Griffith's racist
masterpiece, The Clansman, better known as
The Birth of a Nation (1915),
a blockbuster that may have been the highest-grossing film of all time
if accurate box office records had been kept before the sound era. He
pulled triple duty on that picture, playing John Wilkes Booth, the man
who assassinated President
Abraham Lincoln at Ford's
Theater and ranked as the most notorious American actor of all time
until Pee Wee Herman (Paul Reubens).
The year before The Clansman, Walsh was second unit director on
The Life of General Villa (1914),
also playing the Mexican revolutionary
Pancho Villa as a young man. Walsh
got his start in the business as co-director of another Pancho Villa
flick,
The Life of General Villa (1914),
in 1912. The movie featured footage shot of an actually battle between
Villa's forces and Mexican federal troops.
In 1915, in addition to helping out the great Griffith, Walsh directed
no less than 14 films, including his first feature-length film,
The Regeneration (1915), which he also
wrote. The movie starred silent cinema superstar
Anna Q. Nilsson as a society woman
turned social worker who aids the regeneration of a Bowery gang leader.
It was a melodrama, but an effective one. In his autobiography, Walsh
credited D.W. Griffith with
teaching him about the art of filmmaking and about production
management techniques. The film is memorable for its shots of New York
City, where Walsh had been born 28 years earlier on March 11, 1887.
Raoul Walsh would continue to be a top director for 40 years and would
not hang up his director's megaphone (if he still had one at that late
in the game) until 1964. As a writer, his last script was made in 1970,
meaning his career as a whole spanned seven decades and 58 years.
He introduced the world to John Wayne
in The Big Trail (1930) in 70mm
wide-screen in 1930. It would take nine more years and
John Ford to make the Duke a star. In
one three-year period at Warner Bros., he directed
The Roaring Twenties (1939),
They Drive by Night (1940),
High Sierra (1940),
The Strawberry Blonde (1941),
Manpower (1941),
They Died with Their Boots On (1941),
and Gentleman Jim (1942), among
other films in that time frame. He helped consolidate the stardom of
Humphrey Bogart and
Errol Flynn while directing the
great James Cagney in one of his more
delightful films,
The Strawberry Blonde (1941).
This was the same director that would elicit Cagney's most searing
performance since
The Public Enemy (1931) in the
crime classic White Heat (1949).
Novelist Norman Mailer says that Walsh was
dragged off of his death bed to direct the underrated film adaptation
of Mailer's
The Naked and the Dead (1958).
The movie is as masculine and unsentimental as the book, an exceedingly
harsh look at the power relations between men at war on the same side
that includes the attempted murder of prisoners of war and the
"fragging" of officers (Sergeant Croft allows his lieutenant to walk
into an ambush). Walsh was at his best when directing men in war or
action pictures.
Raoul Walsh seemingly recovered from Mailer's phantasmagorical death
bed, as he lived another 22 years after
The Naked and the Dead (1958).
He died on December 31, 1980, in Simi Valley, California, at the age of
93.- Actress
- Director
- Producer
A one-time pin-up beauty and magazine story model, Barbara Loden
studied acting in New York in the early 50s and was on the Broadway
boards within the decade. She was discovered for films by legendary
producer/director Elia Kazan who was
impressed with what she did in a small role as
Montgomery Clift's secretary in
Wild River (1960). He moved her up to
feature status with her next role as
Warren Beatty's wanton sister in his
classic
Splendor in the Grass (1961).
As Kazan's protégé, she appeared as part of Kazan's stage company in
the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater's production of After the
Fall, winning the Tony and Outer Critic's Circle awards for that
dazzling performance. An oddly entrancing, delicate blonde beauty
possessed with a Marilyn Monroe-like
vulnerability, she impressed in two of his other stage productions as
well - But For Whom Charlie and The Changeling . After
appearing in the failed movie
Fade In (1973) with
Burt Reynolds, she married Kazan
and went into semi-retirement. Barbara wrote, directed and starred,
however, in a bold independent film entitled
Wanda (1970) and became an unexpected art
house darling, distinguishing herself as one of the few woman directors
whose work was theatrically-released during the period. She won praise
in all three departments, nabbing the Venice Film Festival's
International Critics Prize. Supposedly discouraged by a doubting,
perhaps even resentful Kazan, Barbara never followed up on this
success. She expressed interest and was in the midst of putting
together another film, based on the novella The Awakening by
Kate Chopin, when she learned in 1978 she
had breast cancer. Barbara died two and a half years later, at age 48,
after the cancer spread to her liver - before the project ever came to
fruition. The Hollywood industry lost a burgeoning talent who just
might have opened doors for other women directors had she been given
the time.- John Laurie was a Scotsman who would play many character roles in his
long career - a lot of Scotsmen to be sure - but an enthusiastic and
skilled actor in nearly 120 screen roles. He was the son of a mill
worker, and studied for a career in architecture which he indeed began.
But with World War I he left his position to join the British army.
After the war he set his sights in a different direction, training to
become an actor by attending the Central School of Speech and Drama in
London. His first stage play was in 1921. He honed his skills
thereafter (from 1922 to 1939) principally as a Shakespearian actor at
the Old Vic in London or at Stratford-upon-Avon - and later the Open
Air in Regent's Park. But by 1930 he was giving time to films as well.
His first movie was the Sean O'Casey play
Juno and the Paycock (1929),
one of Alfred Hitchcock's early sound efforts. With his craggy profile
and arcing bulbous nose, and rather stern visage (though it could as
quickly break into a broad smile), he was right for many a memorable
character. Hitchcock made sure of that first off by calling on him
again to play the dour, suspicious, and miserly farmer, John Crofter,
in The 39 Steps (1935). Laurie
became a good friend of another Shakespearean,
Laurence Olivier, and the two, Olivier
as a lead, were in Hungarian director/producer Paul Czinner's
As You Like It (1936). The year
1937 was a busy one, with six films, the most important giving him one
of his few leading roles. This was director/screen writer Michael
Powell's intriguing
The Edge of the World (1937),
doubly important in that it was the film that sold Powell to producers
like Alexander Korda. The film was shot
on location on the remote Shetland isle of Foula, the furthest point of
Britain. It dealt with the impact of the modern world on the lives of
the inhabitants of an economically decaying island. Into 1938 and 1939
Laurie was involved in British experimental TV movies, that medium to
be revisit later frequently. In 1939 he was taped by Alexander Korda
for his classic film production of
The Four Feathers (1939) in
which Laurie, who could fit his Scots voice to any part, played the
zealous Mahdi (the Khalifa). He is hardly to be recognized in
character.
During the war Olivier was planning one of the important morale movies
of World War II; his
Henry V (1944),
and Laurie was asked to play a memorable Capt. Jamie. Olivier also
called on him for his two other Shakespeare ventures:
Hamlet (1948) and
Richard III (1955). As any good
character actor, Laurie could play comedy as well and set a number of
roles to that end into the 1940s. He and
Roger Livesey were cast in
Emeric Pressburger and Powell's first
color film,
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943).
And Laurie was a jubilant John Campbell in the Powell/Pressburger
wonderful and thoughtful comedy of more insular Scots life,
I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)
with a delightful young Wendy Hiller and
worldly-wise Livesey.
Through the remainder of the decade and into the 1950s, Laurie's face
showed up in a variety of films - with greater frequency as assorted
Scotsmen-comedic and otherwise - and further down the credits list of
supporting actors. He was familiar in the decade invasion to the UK of
American co-productions, such as Disney's
Treasure Island (1950) and
Kidnapped (1960). And he even trod the
uncertain path of a few sci-fi films - that shall remain nameless here.
But he was certainly always busy - when all told - the actor's foremost
blessing. Television drama and series gave him better opportunities for
a veteran actor, beginning with a
Henry V (1953) where he played
the comic role of Pistol. Along with some BBC TV theater (more
Shakespeare and some American playhouse as well) and sporadic serials,
he had a stint on the long-running BBC children's reading program
"Jackanory". And he is probably best remembered as the dour James
Frazer on the popular "Dad's Army" series (1968-1977). But one of his
last and most touching performance was simply being his good-natured
self - 80 years old but still a vibrant man with his Scots burr - when
he accompanied Powell back to dramatically isolated Foula for the
director's short documentary
Return to the Edge of the World (1978)
(included with the 2003 DVD release of the 1937 movie). There was a bit
of staging by Powell. But Laurie's animated face was a picture of
profound humanity, as - with a shade of theatrics when appropriate - he
remembered the shoot and with sincere joy renewed acquaintances with
the inhabitants, as if he himself had returned once more to his native
heath. A bonnie old actor indeed! - Cinematographer
- Special Effects
- Director
Italian director Mario Bava was born on July 31, 1914 in the coastal
northern Italian town of Sanremo. His father,
Eugenio Bava (1886-1966), was a
cinematographer in the early days of the Italian film industry. Bava
was trained as a painter, and when he eventually followed his father
into film photography his artistic background led him to a strong
belief in the importance of visual composition in filmmaking.
Other than a series of short films in the 1940s which he directed, Bava
was a cinematographer until 1960. He developed a reputation as a
special effects genius, and was able to use optical trickery to great
success. Among the directors for whom Bava photographed films were
Paolo Heusch,
Riccardo Freda,
Jacques Tourneur and
Raoul Walsh. While working with Freda on
Lust of the Vampire (1957) in 1956, the director
left the project after an argument with the producers and the film
mostly unfinished. Bava stepped in and directed the majority of the
movie, finishing it on schedule. This film, also known as "The Devil's
Commandment", inspired a wave of gothic Italian horror films. After a
similar incident occurred on Freda's
Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959),
and Bava's having been credited with "saving" Tourneur's
The Giant of Marathon (1959),
Galatea urged Bava to direct any film he wanted with their financing.
The film that emerged,
Black Sunday (1960),
is one his most well known as well as one of his best. This widely
influential movie also started the horror career of a beautiful but
then unknown British actress named
Barbara Steele. While Black Sunday is a
black and white film, it was in the color milieu that the director
excelled. The projects which followed began to develop stunning
photography, making great use of lighting, set design, and camera
positioning to compliment mise-en-scenes bathed in deep primaries.
Through works such as
Hercules in the Haunted World (1961),
The Whip and the Body (1963),
and
Planet of the Vampires (1965),
Bava's films took on the look of works of art. In the films
The Evil Eye (1963)
and
Blood and Black Lace (1964),
he created the style and substance of the giallo, a genre which would
be perfected in the later films of
Dario Argento.
Bava worked in many popular genres, including viking films, peplum,
spaghetti westerns, action, and even softcore, but it is his horror
films and giallo mystery films which stand out and for which he is best
remembered. Recommended are Black Sunday (1960), The Whip and the Body
(1963), Blood and Black Lace (1964),
Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966),
A Bay of Blood (1971), and
Lisa and the Devil (1973).
Bava's son Lamberto served as his assistant on most of his films since
1965, and since 1980 has been a director himself. Lamberto Bava's films
include Macabre (1980), Demons (1985) and Body Puzzle (1992).
But after the commercial failure of his later films, as well as the
unreleased works of
Rabid Dogs (1974), Bava went
into a decline and by 1975, retired from filmmaking all together. He
was persuaded to come out of retirement at the request of his son,
Lamberto, to direct Shock, as well as a made-for-Italian television
movie. Mario Bava died from a sudden heart
attack on April 27, 1980 at age 65. With his death, an era in Italian
filmmaking had come to a close.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Minor league singer/actress Gale Robbins was a knockout-looking
hazel-eyed redhead who made a modest dent in post-war Hollywood films. Born
Betty Gale Robbins in Chicago, Illinois (some say Mitchell, Indiana) on
May 7, 1921, she was the eldest of five daughters of Arthur E., a doctor, and Blanche Robbins, and
educated at Chicago's Jennings Seminary at Aurora, Illinois and Flower
Tech. Gale had a natural flair for music and appeared in glee clubs and
church choirs in the early days. She graduated from her Chicago high
school in 1939.
She started out in entertainment as a model for the Vera Jones Modeling
School in Chicago, but her singing talents soon took over. Signed by a
talent agency, she sang with Phil Levant's outfit in 1940 and later
teamed with some male singers for a swing band that called themselves
"The Duchess and Her Dukes." She went on to work with some of the top
radio and live 'big bands' of that era including the
Jan Garber and
Hal Kemp orchestras, her best showcase was working for Art Jarrett in 1941 when he took over Kemp's band.
20th Century-Fox caught sight of this slim looker while she was singing for 'Ben Bernie (I)'s outfit and was quickly signed
her up, her first film being the pleasant time-filler
In the Meantime, Darling (1944).
A semi-popular cheesecake pin-up, Gale appeared on the cover of "Yank,
The Army Weekly" in 1944, was heard on radio, and toured with Bob Hope in Europe the next
year. Her post-war parts, mostly sultry second leads, were typically
lightweight in nature. She was often lent out to other studios and not
always in a singing mode. Gale's better known film work includes
Race Street (1948),
The Barkleys of Broadway (1949),
Three Little Words (1950),
The Fuller Brush Girl (1950)
and Calamity Jane (1953).
Gale went on to host the
Hollywood House (1949) and
also appeared on
The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950)
in 1951. In the late 50s the gal with the smooth and sexy vocal style
released an easy-listening album ("I'm a Dreamer") for the Vik Label
backed by Eddie Cano & His Orchestra. She
covered such standards as "Them There Eyes" and "What Is This Thing
Called Love." After her final film appearance in
Quantrill's Raiders (1958)
and a few additional TV parts on such programs as "Bourbon Street Beat," "77 Sunset Strip," "The Untouchables," "Perry Mason" and "Mister Ed," Gale phased out her career to focus
full-time on raising her family.
Married to her high school sweetheart Robert Olson in November of 1943
while he was serving in the Air Force, her husband turned to
construction engineering as a career and they had two children. After
her 47-year-old husband was tragically killed on February 4, 1967, in a building accident, a distraught Gale, left the States for a time with her
two daughters, and decided to make a transatlantic comeback of sorts appearing in nightclubs in Japan and the Orient. She later was glimpsed in the film
Stand Up and Be Counted (1972)
and appeared on stage in
Stephen Sondheim's musical "Company" in
1975. She also made ends meet as an interior decorator. Gale died of lung cancer in February of 1980, and interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Enjoyably larger-than-life character actor Hugh Emrys Griffith was born
in Marianglas, Anglesey, North Wales, to Mary (Williams) and William
Griffith. Griffith left the world of banking (having been employed as a
teller) after winning a scholarship to study acting at the Royal
Academy of Dramatic Art. Though he graduated a gold medalist, top of
his class of 300, the war put the brakes on his career and he enlisted
in the Army in 1940, serving with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in India
for six years. Following the war, he enjoyed a successful career on the
stage, appearing in Shakespearean plays in Stratford-upon-Avon with the
Royal Shakespeare Company. He was particularly noteworthy as "Falstaff"
and, his favourite role, "King Lear", which he played both in English
and in his native Welsh. On the other side of the Atlantic, he made his
Broadway debut in 1951 and had a hit starring in "Look Homeward Angel"
(1957-59) with Anthony Perkins
and Jo Van Fleet. The play ran for 564
performances and earned Griffith a Tony Award nomination for the part
of "W.O. Gant". He later jokingly remarked, that, when the producers
asked him to play a man from the deep south, he (Griffith) had
understood that to mean a man from the deep south of Wales.
Griffith started his film career proper in 1948 with films like
Dulcimer Street (1948),
followed by the wonderful black comedy
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
at Ealing in 1949. A portly, thickly-bearded character with bushy
eyebrows, ruddy complexion and a resonant voice, Griffith made a
lasting impression for his many portrayals of eccentric, bucolic and,
sometimes, raucous types. In 1959, he won the Academy Award as Best
Supporting Actor for his "Sheikh Ilderim", who supplies
Charlton Heston with the chariot
race-winning white stallions in
Ben-Hur (1959). He was equally memorable
as the lecherous "Squire Western" in
Tom Jones (1963), a role for which he
was nominated for both an Oscar and a BAFTA Award as Best British
Actor. He later appeared in the critically-acclaimed musical version of
Oliver! (1968), as a hilarious "King
Louis" in
Start the Revolution Without Me (1970)
and one of Vincent Price's many
victims in
Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972).
On television, he was a noteworthy, rolling-eyed "Long John Silver" in
a 1960 version of "Treasure Island",
Treasure Island (1960),
and roving-eyed funeral director "Caradog Lloyd-Evans" in the comedy
Grand Slam (1978).
Griffith was a lifelong friend (and drinking companion) of Welsh poet
Dylan Thomas.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Florence Lake was born on 27 November 1904 in Charleston, South Carolina, USA. She was an actress, known for Secret Service (1931), Quiet Please! (1933) and Wrong Direction (1934). She was married to John Graham Owens. She died on 11 April 1980 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- A knockout curvaceous screen siren with a smart, confident air, Peggy
Knudsen had the blonde pulchritude and the presence to make it in
Hollywood. Somehow, stardom eluded her. The daughter of a Duluth fire
chief, she had studied violin as a child and later showed some promise
acting in school plays. Her mother consequently moved the family to
Chicago, where Peggy got her start on the CBS daytime radio drama "The
Woman in White". Aged nineteen, she then made her way to Broadway to
debut in a small part in "My Sister Eileen", as replacement for
Jo Ann Sayers. Movies eventually beckoned,
and, in 1945, Peggy was signed by Warner Brothers after being 'spotted'
at the Stage Door Canteen. The studio publicity machine promptly
heralded her arrival by nicknaming her "the lure". Peggy's first
significant role was as Mona Mars in the film noir classic
The Big Sleep (1946). She replaced the original actress when the part was recast when the film was re-shot to add sizzle to the Bogart/Bacall vehicle. Though a small part, Peggy received good critical notices. She was then cast in support of
Errol Flynn in
Never Say Goodbye (1946) and
John Garfield in
Humoresque (1946).
Despite these A-grade films, her subsequent career turned out to be
somewhat desultory. Warners had a not undeserved reputation for often
failing to effectively cast (rather than typecast) their starlets. With
Peggy, they missed the boat altogether. In the absence of suitable
vehicles, she was first relegated to playing one-dimensional
hard-boiled toughs or the proverbial
'other woman', then loaned out. With Sol M. Wurtzel's
B-unit at 20th Century Fox (and, subsequently, at Monogram) she fared
rather better, finally getting to play leads. However, her films, --
Roses Are Red (1947),
Trouble Preferred (1948),
Perilous Waters (1948) and
Half Past Midnight (1948) --
were little seen low budget affairs. Unsurprisingly, Peggy turned
towards television, becoming a prolific guest star on such prime time
shows as
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952), Perry Mason (1957)
and Bat Masterson (1958). A
projected co-starring role in a 1962 sitcom, entitled "Howie", never
came to pass, as CBS refused to acquire the pilot episode. Nonetheless,
for her contribution to TV, Peggy was awarded a Star on the 'Walk of
Fame' on Hollywood Boulevard in 1960, perhaps scant consolation for
missing out on stardom. A debilitating affliction with arthritis
brought about her premature retirement from acting in 1965. She spent
much of her sadly few remaining years cared for by her close friend,
the actress Jennifer Jones, who
also reputedly paid for her medical expenses. Peggy died in July 1980,
aged 57. - He made guest appearances on TV series like Bonanza, Perry Mason,
Maverick, The Andy Griffith Show, Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone (the
1963 episode "Death Ship"), Ben Casey, The Outer Limits, The Munsters,
The Time Tunnel, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., Honey West, Mission: Impossible,
Hawaii Five-O, The FBI, The Odd Couple, Kung Fu, The Six Million Dollar
Man, The Rockford Files, Barnaby Jones, Dallas, and Lou Grant. - While never one of the big names on screen, Michael Strong was one of
those excellent method actors who were often compelling to watch.
Unsurprisingly, many of Michael's screen characters were typical New
Yorkers, whether they be cops or thugs, and he imbued them with an edgy
'in-your-face' intensity that was all his own. He was already an
established stage actor, both on and off-Broadway, with an extensive
resume to his name long before transferring his talents to the screen.
A graduate of the Actor's Studio, he was also part of the original crew
of the Lincoln Center Repertory Company, performing in key plays by
Arthur Miller,
S.N. Behrman and
Eugene O'Neill. Usually assigned
to playing military types or proletarian firebrands, Michael eventually
came to note as a young burglar in "Detective Story", written and
staged on Broadway by Sidney Kingsley in
1949. Director William Wyler subsequently
brought him to Hollywood to recreate his role for the 1951 motion
picture.
A couple of other good roles Michael later enacted for the big screen
were his smarmy used-car salesman Stegman in the thriller
Point Blank (1967) and Brigadier
General Hobart Carver in the Oscar-winning war drama
Patton (1970). For the most part, however,
television became Michael's most prolific medium. His furtive looks and
nervous demeanor often suggested that his characters had something to
hide - and most of them did, particularly those Eastern bloc spy types
with names like Malkov and Petrovich. He was at home in just about
every major police series of the period, equally adept at NYPD
sergeants and contract assassins. Fans of
Star Trek (1966) will also remember
Michael as the unhinged Dr. Roger Korby who had his consciousness
transferred into an android body in the episode "What Are Little Girls
Made Of?". As tough as some of his characters, Michael continued to act
right up until the end. - Wavy-haired, emaciated-looking Tom Fadden enjoyed a prolific screen
career as a small part supporting actor with more than a fair share of
scene-stealing moments to his credit. From the time he
began with a stock company in Omaha in 1915, he remained continuously
employed right up until his death in 1980. He was much in-demand in
vaudeville, including on the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Circuit. He was also a
regular performer on Broadway where he made his debut in a starring role in
1924 with
'The Wonderful Visit', written by H.G. Wells.
The following year he again starred (as Alf Rylett) in 'Nocturne '.
Other notable plays he appeared in were 'Elmer Gantry' (1928), 'The
Petrified Forest' (1935) and
'Our Town' (1938).
From 1939, he was seen in numerous small roles on screen, usually as kindly 'average Joe' townsfolk, cab or truck drivers or rural types in the vein of Percy Kilbride.
Tom was particularly good at the double-take and a befuddled look,
perhaps best exemplified by his toll keeper's reaction to
Henry Travers (as the angel
Clarence) in Capra's
It's a Wonderful Life (1946).
Tom had a rare leading role as one of a trio hunting for an ancient
skull with mystical powers in the comedy adventure
Zanzibar (1940). Otherwise, there were
memorable bits as a cafe waiter in
Dark Passage (1947), his Sheriff
Murdock in the comedy
Murder, He Says (1945) and Uncle
Ira Lentz, one of the first victims of the
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
Tom also played Eben Kent, Superman's adoptive father in the first
episode of the original
Adventures of Superman (1952)
on TV and even popped up for Disney as the uncle of the titular hero
in Toby Tyler or Ten Weeks with a Circus (1960).
Tom had recurring roles in
Cimarron City (1958)
and was perfectly cast as one of the bucolic characters of
Petticoat Junction (1963). - Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Triple-threat performer singer, dancer and actor Bobby Van was the epitome of the breezy, exuberant song-and-dance man who could enliven any film he was put into. Unfortunately, he caught the tail end of MGM's musical reign during the 1950s. Alas, the visions of Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor come more readily to mind when one reflects on the "Golden Age" of musicals, but Bobby was a charming colleague.
The entertainer was born Robert Jack Stein on December 6, 1928 in the Bronx, New York. Living most of his early youth backstage (his parents were vaudevillians), Bobby made his stage bow at the ripe old age of four, when he became a scene-stealing part of his parents' act. Bobby attended New York City schools growing up and took a special interest in music classes. His early interest focused on the trumpet, but a last-minute song-and-dance job as a replacement at a Catskill Mountains resort where he and his band were playing a gig ultimately changed his destiny. A natural on stage, he also told jokes and did impressions. World War II interrupted his nascent career but he eventually regained his momentum and started appearing regularly in nightclub, on radio and TV.
Bobby earned some Broadway attention in the musical "Alive and Kicking" and in the revival of "On Your Toes," both in 1950. In 1952 he married musical actress Diane Garrett, who abruptly retired (they adopted a son, Peter, in 1959). That year was a banner one for Bobby professionally for he had joined the MGM ranks and was now appearing in movies. He partnered up with Debbie Reynolds in Skirts Ahoy! (1952) and had a minor part in the glossy Mario Lanza vehicle Because You're Mine (1952) which featured him in a dance solo. Bobby went on to "second lead" status the following year with Small Town Girl (1953) starring Jane Powell, which featured his famous "hopping" dance sequence, then to film star as the boyish high school swooner in the warm and winning The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953). Best of all, he showed off his exceptional dancing prowess in the musical classic Kiss Me Kate (1953) in which he, Tommy Rall and then-dancer Bob Fosse stopped the show with their breathtaking footwork in the "From This Moment On" number. Although this MGM film should have put him on the movie map, it ended up being his swan song. Bobby would not make another film for over a decade.
With the "Golden Age" of MGM now officially a part of his past, Bobby was forced to look elsewhere for work. He kept a lower profile but remained busy in night clubs and worked as a choreographer, staging the musical numbers for two of Jerry Lewis' movie vehicles: The Ladies Man (1961) and It's Only Money (1962). He appeared regularly again on the screen (the smaller screen, that is) with a recurring role in the short-lived TV series Mickey (1964) starring old MGM pal Mickey Rooney. The two stars later worked together in night clubs.
Divorced in the early 1960s from musical actress Diane Garrett, Bobby married another performer, singer/comedienne Elaine Joyce, in 1968. The lovely couple appeared frequently together on such game shows as Tattletales (1974) and Match Game (1973). Game shows actually became a steady line of work for Bobby, and he wound up hosting a few of his own, including Showoffs (1975), The Fun Factory (1976) and Make Me Laugh (1979). On stage he was rejuvenated again when he co-starred in the successful revival of "No, No, Nanette" (1971) on Broadway starring Susan Watson and Tony winner Helen Gallagher. Bobby himself was nominated for a Tony and went on to hoof it up in the original musical "Doctor Jazz" (1975), as well as the more established "Mack and Mabel" (1975), "Anything Goes" (1977) and "Dames at Sea" (1978). In 1977 wife Elaine bore him a baby girl, Taylor.
Sadly, in 1979 Bobby was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Although he underwent surgery to remove the tumor, the cancer came back. Ever the trouper, the "show went on" as he valiantly continued to perform despite his illness. He made his fourth and last appearance as host of the "Mrs. America Pageant" in June 1980. Bobby passed away a little more than a month later on July 31, 1980, at age 51. He is buried at Mt. Sinai Memorial Park in Burbank, California.- Actor
- Soundtrack
American character actor who specialized in none-too-bright pals of the
lead, though his range included villains and ethnic types. A native of
New York City, he began acting at 15. He studied at the Neighborhood
Playhouse and played on Broadway with the Theatre Guild, and with the
Provincetown Players. He came to Hollywood in the late Thirties and
quickly became a fixture in films of all genres, primarily at Warner
Bros. He was a frequent foil for James Cagney and played everything from
comedies to dramas and musicals. In the 1960s, he achieved greater fame
as the long-suffering neighbor Abner Kravitz on the hit TV show
Bewitched (1964). He retired in 1972. He died of cancer a decade later.- Barbara O'Neil was an American actress, mostly remembered for playing Ellen O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind" (1939). She was once nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress .
O'Neil was born in St. Louis, Missouri to a prominent family. Her father was businessman David O'Neil (1874-1947), president of the O'Neil Lumber Company. David was also a poet and theatrical actor. O'Neil's mother was suffrage leader Barbara Blackman O'Neil (1880-1963), president of the Equal Suffrage League. O'Neil's maternal grandmother was portrait painter Carrie Horton Blackman (1856-1935).
O'Neil was mostly raised in Europe, where had father had retired. She was educated at the Sarah Lawrence College, a liberal arts college in Yonkers, New York. She received her acting education in Yale School of Drama, where her mentor was drama teacher George Pierce Baker (1866-1935).
Baker recommended O'Neil as an actress to the University Players (1928-1932), a summer stock theater company who was seeking a new leading lady. O'Neil made her theatrical debut in 1931, and her Broadweay debut in 1932. Her first Broadway performance was a play depicting the life of Carrie Nation (1846-1911), a radical member of the temperance movement. The real-life nation had become famous for attacking taverns with her hatchet.
After several years as a theatrical actress, O'Neil made her film debut in the drama film "Stella Dallas" (1937). She acted alongside female lead Barbara Stanwyck (1907-1990), and secondary lead Anne Shirley (1918-1993).
O'Neil found steady work in films during the late 1930s. Her films included the adultery-themed drama "Love, Honor and Behave" (1938), the American Civil War-themed drama "The Toy Wife" (1938), the racketeering-themed crime drama "I Am the Law" (1938), the British Empire-themed drama "The Sun Never Sets" (1939), and the adultery-themed romantic drama "When Tomorrow Comes" (1939), O'Neil played the historical figure Elizabeth Woodville (c. 1437-1492), Queen consort of England in the period film "Tower of London" (1939).
O'Neil received her most prominent Ellen O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind" (1939). As in the source novel by Margaret Mitchell, Ellen is still a young woman who has three daughters, and is married to a much-older man. In the film, the role of the elderly husband Gerald O'Hara was played by Thomas Mitchell, daughter Scarlett O'Hara was played by Vivien Leigh, daughter Suellen O'Hara was played by Evelyn Keyes, and daughter Carreen O'Hara was played Ann Rutherford. O'Neil was actually only three years older than Leigh, six years older than Keyes, and 7 years older than Rutherford.
O'Neil's next prominent film role was that of murder victim Françoise, duchesse de Praslin (1807-1847) in the period film "All This, and Heaven Too" (1940). O'Neil was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for this role. The award was instead won by rival actress Jane Darwell (1879-1967).
O'Neil's next films included the medical missionary-themed drama "Shining Victory" (1941), the Bluebeard-themed psychological thriller "Secret Beyond the Door" (1947), the immigrant-themed drama "I Remember Mama" (1948), the film noir "Whirlpool" (1950), the film noir "Angel Face" (1953), and the film noir "Flame of the Islands" (1956).
O'Neil's last prominent film role was that of Mother Didyma in the convent-themed film "The Nun's Story" (1959). She largely retired from film at the age of 49. She briefly returned with a supporting role in "Lions of St. Petersburg" (1970), which was her final role in any form.
O'Neil continued living in retirement until her death in 1980, due to a heart attack. She was 70-years-old. - Yootha was a student at RADA where all ,her tutors said that she had no talent and suggested that she try a different career. Despite this she started in repertory theatres where she swept the stage , made tea and took what small roles she could get, In 1960 she was with Theatre Workshop Co in ;'Fings Ain't What They Used to be', Eventually she was cast in the comedy television series Man About the House which led to the break away series George and Mildred, both with Brian Murphy as her husband,
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Billie Thomas was an African-American child actor who was best-known for appearing in the "Our Gang" film series from 1934 to its end in 1944.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Thomas auditioned for an "Our Gang" role when he was three years old. He was cast as a background player in the short films "For Pete's Sake!", "The First Round-Up", and "Washee Ironee", all from 1934.
With the short film "Mama's Little Pirate" (1935), Thomas became the third actor to portray the character "Buckwheat", who had at first been depicted as a bowed-pigtailed female character at first, portrayed by Carlena Beard (1929-1972) and Willie Mae Walton (1918-2018); Thomas was effectively cross-dressing for the role. Buckwheat eventually became a more masculine character, and was first credited as male in "The Pinch Singer" (1936). He gained an entirely-new costume for "Pay as You Exit" (1936), where he played a slave in search of a master. Thomas kept this new look--overalls, striped shirt, oversized shoes, and a large, unkempt Afro--for the duration of playing this role, until 1944.
Thomas performed in "Our Gang" for 10 years. During this time, he was only absent for a single film, "Feed 'em and Weep" (1938), because he was ill. His character was paired with that of Eugene "Porky" Lee: they were "the little kids" who outsmarted "the big kids": George "Spanky" McFarland and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer.
As a young child, Thomas had a speech impediment; this was transferred to his character and used as a comic device. Both Buckwheat and Porky spoke in "garbled dialogue" and pronounced "OK" as "O-tay!"
The series' original short films were produced by Hal Roach Studios, but production was taken over by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1938. From 1938 to 1944, MGM produced 52 "Our Gang" short films and Thomas was the only cast member to appear in all of them. He was the only holdover from the Hal Roach era to remain in the series until its end.
Thomas' team-up with Eugene Lee ended when Lee was replaced by new cast member Robert Blake. By 1940 Thomas had outgrown his speech impediment, and Buckwheat started speaking clearly as well. The series' final film was "Dancing Romeo" (1944), and Thomas was 12 years old during its production.
While Buckwheat became synonymous with the "pickaninny" stereotype of African-American children, Thomas himself was well-liked for being depicted as a playmate and equal to the white children of the series. "Our Gang" featured a desegregated cast during the Jim Crow Era.
Thomas largely retired from acting following the 1940s. He served in the United States Army from 1954 to 1956 and received both a National Defense Service Medal and a Good Conduct Medal. Following his discharge, Thomas was offered new acting roles but he rejected them. He viewed an acting career as "a rat race ... with no security". Instead, he chose a more modest career as a film lab technician for the Technicolor corporation.
In the summer of 1980, surviving "Our Gang" cast members appeared in the second annual meeting of the fraternal organization the Sons of the Desert (named after a Laurel and Hardy film). Thomas received a spontaneous standing ovation by 500 fans, and cried in response. On October 10, 1980, he suffered a heart attack and died. He was 49 years old.
Thomas was survived by his son William Thomas Jr. In 1992, the younger Thomas created the Buckwheat Memorial Scholarship for students of California State Northridge University. The scholarship was named in honor of his father and his best-known role.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Harlan Warde was born on 6 November 1917 in Los Angeles County, California, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The Monster That Challenged the World (1957), Money Madness (1948) and State Department: File 649 (1949). He was married to Barbara Grace Whittaker and Caroline Frances Sherwood. He died on 13 March 1980 in Los Angeles County, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
A graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, Beckley appeared in BBC TV's "Romeo and Juliet", and later in "War and Peace" and "Julius Caesar." On stage, he appeared with Maggie Smith in "Snap" and Elaine Stritch in Tennessee Williams' "Small Craft Warnings." A veteran actor of over 1000 stage productions and television shows in England, Beckley's last film role was as the killer in When a Stranger Calls (1979).- Actor
- Soundtrack
Although established in show business for many years, it wasn't until 1964 with the debut of the TV series, "Peyton Place" that he became truly famous as the hapless and scheming, Leslie Harrington. His tenure there lasted several years and he added considerable style and finesse with his presence to what was for a time an exceptionally well-done series.- American actor who starred in silent Westerns under one name, then
moved into character roles and bit parts under another. Born Floyd
Taliaferro Alderson in Sheridan, Wyoming, and raised on a ranch in
Rosebud County, Montana, he became an expert horseman. He served in
World War I, then traveled to California. After getting work as a
wrangler for Universal Pictures, he entered films as an extra in 1915.
By the 1920s he was starring in silent Westerns under the stage name
Wally Wales. His career declined, and in the mid-1930s, he changed to a
new stage name, Hal Taliaferro, and worked in supporting roles and even
bit parts for the rest of his career, primarily in Westerns. In the
1950s, he retired to his family's property in Montana (then and now
known as the Bones Brothers Ranch). He devoted himself to landscape
painting until a series of strokes debilitated him. He died in a
nursing home in his birthplace, Sheridan, Wyoming, in 1980. His papers
are archived at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. - Radiant to a tee, well-coiffed and well-dressed Barbara Britton looked
like she stepped out of a magazine when she entered into our homes
daily as the 'Revlon Girl' on 50s and 60s TV. She sparkled with the
best of them and managed to capture that "perfect wife/perfect mother"
image with, well, perfect poise and perfect grace. Co-starring opposite
some of Hollywood's most durable leading men, including
Randolph Scott (multiple times),
Joel McCrea,
Gene Autry,
Jeff Chandler and
John Hodiak, it's rather a shame Barbara was
rather obtusely used in Hollywood films, but thankfully her beauty and
glamour, if not her obvious talent, would save the day and put the
finishing touches on a well-rounded career.
It all began for sunny, hazel-eyed blonde Barbara Maureen Brantingham
in equally sunny Long Beach, California on September 26, 1920 (1919 is
incorrect, according to her son and several other sources). Attending
Polytechnic High School, Barbara eventually taught Sunday school and
majored in speech at Long Beach City College with designs of becoming a
speech and drama teacher. Her interest in acting, however, quickly took
hold and she decided, against the wishes of her ultra-conservative
parents, to pursue the local stage. Barbara's own personal 'Hollywood'
story unfolded when, as a Pasadena Tournament of Roses parade
representative of Long Beach, she was seen on the front pages of the
newspaper, scouted out and signed by Paramount movie agents.
The surname Britton was a cherished family name and Barbara picked it
as her stage moniker when Paramount complained that Brantingham was
"too long to fit on a marquee." She made her film debut with
Secret of the Wastelands (1941),
a Hopalong Cassidy western, and continued in bit parts for a time
before finding modest but showier roles in such fare as
Louisiana Purchase (1941),
So Proudly We Hail! (1943)
and Till We Meet Again (1944).
She eventually earned higher visibility as a lead and second femme lead
but was underserved for most of her film career, confined as a pretty,
altruistic, genteel young thing in such durable but male-oriented films
as The Great John L. (1945),
The Virginian (1946),
The Return of Monte Cristo (1946),
Albuquerque (1948), and
Champagne for Caesar (1950).
Barbara wisely turned to the stage and TV in the 1950s, making her TV
debut on an episode of "Robert Montgomery Presents" in 1950 and her
Broadway debut co-starring in the short-lived
Peggy Wood comedy "Getting Married"
the following year.
After co-starring a couple of seasons with
Richard Denning on the TV
program
Mr. & Mrs. North (1952),
Barbara earned major attention as Revlon's lovely pitchwoman and
remained on view in that capacity for 12 years. She appeared in Revlon
commercials live for a number of programs, including "The $64,000
Question," "The $64,000 Challenge," "Revlon's Big Party" and "The Ed
Sullivan Show." In between Barbara graced several of the top dramatic
shows of the day, and co-starred intermittently in such "B" films as
Bandit Queen (1950),
The Raiders (1952),
Bwana Devil (1952),
Dragonfly Squadron (1953) and
Night Freight (1955) before ending
her movie run with
The Spoilers (1955) opposite
Jeff Chandler and
Rory Calhoun.
Various Broadway shows included "Wake Up, Darling (1956), "How to Make
a Man" (1961), and "Me and Thee" (1965). Other stage credits on the
dinner theatre and summer stock circuits include "Last of the Red Hot
Lovers", "Mary, Mary," "Barefoot in the Park" and "No, No, Nanette." As
time passed, more and more would be devoted to raising her family. Only
occasionally seen in the 1970, Barbara sometimes appeared with her two
children in such regional shows as "Best of Friends," "Forty Carats"
and "A Roomful of Roses".
Married in 1945 to Eugene Czukor, a naturopathic physician at the time,
he later became a psychiatrist when the family moved to New York City
(Manhattan) in 1957. The couple raised two children -- son Theodore
(Ted or Theo) who appeared on the Canadian Shakespearean stage and
later became a yoga instructor, and daughter Christina who grew up to
become a model, actress, opera singer, music therapist and romance
novelist. Both used the surname Britton in their respective performance
careers. Sadly, two other children born to Barbara and husband Eugene,
a girl and a boy, died at the hospital shortly after birth.
One of Barbara's last roles was as a regular on the daytime soap
One Life to Live (1968) in
1979. Her enjoyment on this show was short-lived as the vivacious
actress was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer not long after. She died
in January of 1980 at age 60. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Arguably one of the best crooners of the 20th century, Dick Haymes was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on September 13, 1918, to an English father and Irish-born mother of English descent. Brought to the U.S. as an infant, Dick inherited his vocal gift from his mother who had made ends meet during the Depression as a singer and voice teacher. A music gig in 1931 caught the eye of a local band leader and soon Dick was moving up, but it was pretty slow-going. In 1939, while Dick was trying to pitch his songwriting talents to band leader Harry James, the 21-year-old wound up as his featured vocalist instead.
During the war years Dick hooked up with the Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey orchestras before deciding to go solo. Nabbing his own popular radio program, "The Dick Haymes Show" (1944-1948), in addition to a Decca recording contract, Twentieth Century-Fox soon expressed interest in his musical talents. Among his many staid but pleasant film leads were State Fair (1945) opposite Jeanne Crain and Vivian Blaine, Diamond Horseshoe (1945) and The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (1947), both paired with Betty Grable, One Touch of Venus (1948) with Ava Gardner, and All Ashore (1953), a second string version of On the Town (1949), with Mickey Rooney and Ray McDonald as his shore-leave buddies.
For such a seemingly pleasant and unassuming man, Dick's personal life certainly was a shambles, aggravated by alcoholism and financial debt. Five marriages also came and went (including actresses Joanne Dru, Nora Eddington, Rita Hayworth, and Fran Jeffries) before his sixth one finally stuck. He had six children from three of those marriages.
In the 1960s, he traveled to Europe and picked up the remnants of his career as his reputation had not been damaged there. While he enjoyed some renewed popularity, he never regained a strong foothold in the business again. He did manage to return to the U.S. and find some work on late 60s and 70s TV. Guesting on such programs as "The Saint," "Hec Ramsey," "Adam-12," "Get Christie Love," "McCloud" and "McMillan & Wife." His last TV role was on a 1978 episode of "The Eddie Capra Mysteries."
The older brother of actor Bob Haymes, Dick died of lung cancer in 1980. Though not as well remembered today as other crooners of his time
(Frank Sinatra, Tony Martin, Vic Damone), this rich baritone's legacy is his music. Some of Dick's most popular recordings include "The More I See You," "How Blue the Night," "For You, For Me, Forever More," "Speak Low," and "Another Night Like This."- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Best known for playing Matron--as in "Ooh, Matron!"--in four films:
Carry on Nurse (1959),
Carry on Doctor (1967),
Carry on Again Doctor (1969)
and, of course
Carry on Matron (1972). Key roles
included: Grace Short in
Carry on Teacher (1959), Sophie
Bliss in Carry on Loving (1970)
and Peggy Hawkins in
Carry on Cabby (1963). She was
married to John Le Mesurier (Sergeant
Wilson in Dad's Army (1968)), but
left him for another man. They divorced but remained friends. An
unexpectedly attractive woman in her time, she played parts which
depended upon and mocked her weight. Only in
Carry on Cabby (1963) was she
allowed to escape her dragon persona and play the romantic lead
opposite Sidney James. She died
prematurely at the age of 58 from a heart attack.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Though she is little remembered today, silent screen star Carmel Myers
had a high-flying career in her heyday and was ranked among the
screen's most glamorous and enticing vamps. She was born at the turn of
the century in San Francisco, the daughter of immigrant parents. Her
father, a rabbi, emigrated from Australia and her mother from Austria.
Her older brother, Zion Myers, would grow up to become a successful writer
and director in Hollywood. The family moved to Los Angeles when she was
in her early teens and her father, an acquaintance of director D.W. Griffith,
advised Griffith on the biblical scenes for his movie Intolerance (1916), for
which Carmel received a bit role as a dancer.
Signed by Universal, Carmel rose quickly up the ranks appearing with
Rudolph Valentino in A Society Sensation (1918) and All Night (1918). She later branched out and worked for
other studios. She appeared in her most prestigious film over at MGM.
In the epic extravaganza Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), she portrayed Iras, the evil Egyptian
seductress out to snare both Ramon Navarro and Francis X. Bushman. Outrageously adorned,
she was a tremendous hit and MGM signed her up for their pictures
The Devil's Circus (1926) and Tell It to the Marines (1926), with each showcase striving to outdo the costumes
she wore for "Ben-Hur."
Carmel managed the transition into talkies but, due to her age, started
appearing more and more in support roles until she was left with
nothing but bits. In the 1950s she tried television and made her debut
in July 1951 with an interview show called, fittingly, The Carmel Myers Show (1951), in
which she bantered with such show biz elite as Richard Rodgers and Sigmund Romberg, but
the show lasted only one season. Married three times, she turned to
real estate and also founded Carmel Myers, Inc. in which she
distributed French fragrances. She died on November 9,
1980.- Daisy Earles came to the U.S. from Germany in the early 1920s, joining
her brother and sister Harry Earles and Gracie Doll. The three of them, soon
joined by sister Tiny Doll, made a handful of appearances in films before
retiring from the film business in 1930 in favor of working for the
Ringling Brothers Circus. From 1930 until the mid-1950s, the four
siblings made very few film appearances (with the exception of The Wizard of Oz (1939)
and Daisy's blink-and-you-miss-it shot in Best Picture winner The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)).
The four retired in the mid-1950's. Grace died in 1970, Daisy in 1980,
and Harry in 1985. - Roy Engel was born on 13 September 1913 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952), The Man from Planet X (1951) and Rogue River (1951). He died on 29 December 1980 in Burbank, California, USA.
- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Herbie Faye was born on 2 February 1899 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), The Harder They Fall (1956) and The New Phil Silvers Show (1963). He was married to Mary Lou. He died on 28 June 1980 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.- Mary Hignett was born on 31 March 1916 in Madras, Madras Presidency, British India. She was an actress, known for Doomwatch (1970), Jane Eyre (1956) and All Creatures Great and Small (1978). She was married to Michael Brennan. She died on 6 July 1980 in Chichester, Sussex, England, UK.
- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Lewis Milestone, a clothing manufacturer's son, was born in Bessarabia
(now Moldova), raised in Odessa (Ukraine) and educated in Belgium and
Berlin (where he studied engineering). He was fluent in both German and
Russian and an avid reader. Milestone had an affinity for the theatre
from an early age, starting as a prop man and background artist before
traveling to the US in 1914 with $6.00 in his pocket. After a
succession of odd jobs (including as a dishwasher and a photographer's
assistant) he joined the Army Signal Corps in 1917 to make educational
short films for U.S. troops. Following World War I, having acquired
American citizenship, he went on to Hollywood to meet the director
William A. Seiter at Ince Studios.
Seiter started him off as an assistant cutter. Milestone quickly worked
his way up the ranks to become editor, assistant director and
screenwriter on many of Seiter's projects in the early 1920s,
experiences that would greatly influence his directing style in years
to come.
Milestone directed his first film,
Seven Sinners (1925), for
Howard Hughes and two years later
won his first of two Academy Awards for the comedy
Two Arabian Knights (1927).
He received his second Oscar for what most regard as his finest
achievement, the anti-war movie
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930),
based on a novel by
Erich Maria Remarque. The film,
universally praised by reviewers for its eloquence and integrity, also
won the Best Picture Academy Award that year. A noted Milestone
innovation was the use of cameras mounted on wooden tracks, giving his
films a more realistic and fluid, rather than static, look. Other
trademarks associated with his pictures were taut editing, snappy
dialogue and clever visual touches, good examples being the screwball
comedy The Front Page (1931), the
melodrama Rain (1932)--based on a play by
W. Somerset Maugham--and an
adaptation of John Steinbeck's
Of Mice and Men (1939). When
asked in 1979 about the secret behind his success, he simply declared
"Arrogance, chutzpah--in the old Hollywood at least that's the thing
that gave everybody pause" (New York Times, September 27, 1980).
Milestone had a history of being "difficult", having clashed with
Howard Hughes, Warner Brothers and a host of studio executives over
various contractual and artistic issues. Nonetheless, he remained
constantly employed and worked for most of the major studios at one
time or another, though never on long-term contracts. While he was not
required to testify before HUAC, Milestone was blacklisted for a year
in 1949 because of left-wing affiliations dating back to the 1930's.
His output became less consistent during the 1950s and his career
finished on a low with the remake of
Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)
and its incongruously cast, equally headstrong star
Marlon Brando.
Milestone must be credited with a quirky sense of humor: when the
producer of "All Quiet on the Western Front",
Carl Laemmle Jr., demanded a "happy
ending" for the picture, Milestone telephoned, "I've got your happy
ending. We'll let the Germans win the war".
Having suffered a stroke, Lewis Milestone spent the last ten years of
his life confined to a wheelchair. He died September 25, 1980, at the
University of California Medical Center in Los Angeles.