Hollywood supporting actors
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- Character actor Wesley Addy began his prolific career as a prime player on the classical stage before coming to occasional films and TV in the early 1950s. Known for his intelligent, white-collar demeanor and lean, icy, cultivated menace, the silver-haired performer, who was actually born in Omaha, Nebraska, was often mistaken as British.
Majoring in economics at the University of California in Los Angeles, Wesley switched gears and trained in summer theater on Martha's Vineyard before trekking to New York City to pursue a professional career. In 1935, the actor made his Broadway stage debut with Orson Welles in Archibald Macleish's "Panic". He continued with roles as both "Marcellus" and "Fortinbras" in Leslie Howard's production of "Hamlet". Other Shakespearean roles during this early period included "Hotspur" in "Henry IV, Part I", "Benvolio" in "Romeo and Juliet" and "Orsino" in "Twelfth Night". He often performed the Bard in the company of such legendary interpreters as Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier and, more frequently, Maurice Evans.
World War II interrupted Addy's early momentum but he eventually returned to the theatre following his tour of duty and played opposite Katharine Cornell in "Antigone" and "Candida". A continued presence on Broadway, he had strong stage roles in "The Traitor", "Another Part of the Forest", "King Lear" and "The Leading Lady".
In 1951, the 38-year-old Addy made his film debut in the drama, The First Legion (1951), and would be seen from time to time throughout the decade in such dramatic fare as Scandal Sheet (1952), My Six Convicts (1952) and Time Table (1956). Some of his chillier roles came in films directed by Robert Aldrich, who utilized the actor quite often -- Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Big Knife (1955), The Garment Jungle (1957), Ten Seconds to Hell (1959) and the Grand Guignol classics, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).
Never acquiring a strong footing in the movies, Wesley changed his on-camera focus in the 1960s to TV and also sought out theatre roles, as well. In 1961, Wesley married actress Celeste Holm. Together, they proved a strong stage coupling in both comedies and dramas -- "Invitation to a March", "A Month in the Country", "Mame", "Candida", "Light Up the Sky", "Mama" and "With Love and Laughter".
A reliable, durable performer, Wesley played suave gents and villains on TV. A major portion of his work came from daytime soaps -- including The Edge of Night (1956), Days of Our Lives (1965), Ryan's Hope (1975) and Loving (1983). Later films included Seconds (1966), Network (1976), The Europeans (1979) and The Verdict (1982). He continued to act close to the end. His last film role was as a judge in Before and After (1996) starring Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson, which was released in the year of his death. He was 83. - Actor
- Additional Crew
Rudolph Anders was born on 17 December 1895 in Waldkirch, Grand Duchy of Baden [now Baden-Württemberg], Germany. He was an actor, known for The Great Dictator (1940), She Demons (1958) and The Prize (1963). He died on 27 March 1987 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Chris Ellis was born on 14 April 1956 in Dallas, Texas, USA. He is an actor, known for Armageddon (1998), The Island (2005) and Transformers (2007).
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Dick O'Neill was born on 29 August 1928 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Jerk (1979), The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) and The Front Page (1974). He was married to Susan Jacqueline (Jackie) Shaw and Dina Harris. He died on 17 November 1998 in Santa Monica, California, USA.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
George DiCenzo was an American character actor, voice actor, and acting teacher from New Haven, Connecticut. His acting career lasted for about 30 years, and he had previously served as an associate producer for the gothic soap opera "Dark Shadows" (1966-1971). His best-remembered live-action role was portraying Sam Baines (Marty McFly's maternal grandfather) in the time-travel-themed science fiction film "Back to the Future" (1985). As a voice actor, he is primarily remembered for portraying stranded astronaut John Blackstar in "Blackstar" (1981) and the tyrant Hordak in "She-Ra: Princess of Power" (1985-1986).
DiCenzo received his acting training from Milton Katselas (1933- 2008), the acting instructor who founded the Beverly Hills Playhouse. He later served as an apprentice teacher under Katselas, before branching out on his own. He used both New York City and Philadelphia as his home-base at various points in his teaching career.
Towards the end of his career, DiCenzo voiced roles in a few video games. His better known role in the field was voicing crime lord Ennio Salieri in the crime-themed video game "Mafia" (2002). In the video game, Salieri eliminates a rival crime lord and becomes the de facto ruler of a fictional city in 1930s Illinois. He starts mistreating his own henchmen, until one of them turns against him and betrays Salieri to the authorities. The game had a number of sequels, but DiCenzo never had a chance to voice Salieri again.
DiCenzo had his final film role in the drama film "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" (2006). The film was an adaptation of a memoir by film director Dito Montiel, concerning the troubling experiences which convinced him to abandon his family and few remaining friends in 1986. DiCenzo effectively retired afterwards, due to his declining health.
DiCenzo died in August 9, 2010 due to sepsis (blood poisoning). He was 70-years-old at the time of his death, and was living in Pennsylvania. He was buried in the North and Southampton Churchyard, located at Churchville, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. DiCenzo is fondly remembered for a number of memorable roles in his career, but he was better known for his voice rather than his face.- Actor
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Talented and highly capable character actor Geoffrey Lewis, with rustic (sometimes sour-faced) looks, grew up in Rhode Island but was moved out to California at the age of ten. Lewis was very keen on the dramatic arts at high school, but often preferred to put on his own one-man shows rather than participate in larger school productions. His drama teacher took note of his growing talent and referred him to the Plymouth Theater in Massachusetts, where he appeared in summer stock. Afterwards he appeared in several off-Broadway productions in New York City. After spending considerable time traveling, in both the United States and abroad, Lewis turned his attention back to his love of the dramatic arts, and scored his first minor movie role in The Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972) as a somewhat jovial but deadly cowhand. He then cropped up as gangster Harry Pierpont in Dillinger (1973) before beginning a long association with Clint Eastwood, starting off with High Plains Drifter (1973), then as kind-hearted thief Eddie Goody in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), as Clint's buddy Orville Boggs in Every Which Way But Loose (1978) and Any Which Way You Can (1980), then as a henpecked husband in Bronco Billy (1980), as Ricky Z in Pink Cadillac (1989), and in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) also as patient Michael Kahn in Disturbed (1990).
Equally busy on the small screen, he has guest-starred in dozens of episodes of high profile TV series. Additionally, he received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in the series Flo (1980). Apart from his extensive film and TV exposure, Lewis is also a member of the rather unique musical/storytelling "Celestial Navigations," along with award-winning composer songwriter Geoff Levin. Their performances have received terrific reviews from some of Hollywood's top actors and noted musicians, including Chick Corea. As Geoffrey Lewis approaches his seventh decade, nothing seems likely to slow down this multi-talented actor, storyteller and engaging entertainer!- Actor
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- Producer
Born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada, Donnelly Rhodes trained to be a warden in the National Park Service in Manitoba and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force as an airman-mechanic before finally settling into his long and successful career as an actor. Rhodes studied at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Center and was a member of the first graduating class of the National Theatre School in Canada. After making his professional debut on stage as Stanley Kowalski in Streetcar Named Desire, he became a contract player for Universal Pictures in the U.S., landing film and television roles ranging from a gunslinger in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) to a country singer in The Hard Part Begins (1973) to various guest appearances in series such as Mission: Impossible (1966). Later, he was popular as the suave Phillip Chancellor Sr. on The Young and the Restless (1973), but left the show in 1976 to avoid devoting too much of his career to the one role. He continued to work steadily, taking roles in a wide variety of television and theatrical movies and making guest appearances on more than 100 television series. Major TV roles saw him range from dim-witted escaped con Dutch on Soap (1977) to veterinarian and family man Dr. Grant Roberts on the popular Canadian family series Danger Bay (1983). More recently, he has appeared in a number of TV movies as well as in guest spots on popular series such as Sliders (1995) and The X-Files (1993). Rhodes' diverse interests include music and horses, but his real passion is boats. He has said that if he hadn't succeeded as an actor, he would have pursued a career as a naval architect.- Actor
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Adept at both comedy and drama, character player Eugene Roche (sometimes billed as Gene Roche) had an extensive four-decade career. Born in Depression-era Boston on September 22, 1928, he was the son of a Navy man.
Roche started on radio at age 15, displaying a knack for character voices, both men and women. He enlisted in the U.S. Army following high school, then studied at Emerson College. Searching for work in summer stock and variety shows, he appeared in productions of "Pal Joey" with Bob Fosse and "Point of No Return" with Henry Fonda. Newly married at this time, he found classical stage parts to play in early 1950s San Francisco, then headed for New York and began appearing in dramatic TV shows and commercials. He made his Broadway debut with "Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole" starring Darren McGavin and went on to do "The White House" with Helen Hayes and "Mother Courage" with Anne Bancroft.
Comedy became his forte on TV with recurring or featured roles on Soap (1977), Night Court (1984), Perfect Strangers (1986) and Webster (1983), while choice support parts came his way on film, including The Late Show (1977) and Foul Play (1978). Not overly tall but built like the base of a Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, he could and did play scary guys very well. His "Luther Gillis" on Magnum, P.I. (1980), in a recurring role as an acquaintance in the same line of business whose violent streak Magnum keeps underestimating, went from bulldog PI to violent near-sociopath in less than a minute whenever faced with a (male) obstacle standing in his way. Roche also appeared in many 1970s/1980s TV series -- usually, but not always, as heavies -- such as "The Rookies", "Ironside", "McCloud", "Hawaii Five-0", "Kojak", "Phyllis", "Medical Center", "The Streets of San Francisco", "Barnaby Jones", "Maude", "Police Woman", "Starsky & Hutch", "Lou Grant", "All in the Family", "Hart to Hart", "Taxi", "Gimme a Break", "Airwolf", "Highway to Heaven", and "Murder, She Wrote". His last role was in an episode of "7th Heaven" in 2004 (the year of his death).
The father of nine children, three of his sons also opted for careers in entertainment: Eamonn Roche and Brogan Roche are actors, and Sean Roche is an Emmy award-winning writer and producer. Eugene died at the age of 75 on July 28, 2004 after suffering a heart attack.- Actor
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Dennis Patrick was born on 14 March 1918 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Joe (1970), House of Dark Shadows (1970) and Dark Shadows (1966). He was married to Barbara Cason and Amelia Honora Baines. He died on 13 October 2002 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Jon Cypher was born on 13 January 1932 in New York City, New York, USA. He is an actor, known for Masters of the Universe (1987), Spontaneous Combustion (1989) and Favorite Son (1988). He is married to Carol Rosin. He was previously married to Ruth Wagner.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Lawrence Pressman was born on 10 July 1939 in Cynthiana, Kentucky, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for 9 to 5 (1980), American Pie (1999) and Shaft (1971). He was previously married to Lanna Saunders.- Another one of those frustratingly nameless but omnipresent and talented faces of stage, film and TV, chameleon-like player Harris Yulin has avoided the severe stereotyping lost to many a prolific actor. Benign, balding and often bearded, Yulin off camera was a stark contrast to the tough, unsympathetic men he presented on camera. Born in Los Angeles in 1937, Yulin traveled extensively throughout Europe and Israel before deciding on an acting career. Attending UCLA, he studied acting with Jeff Corey before making his off-Broadway debut in "Next Time I'll Sing for You" in 1963.
From there, Harris continued to forge a respectable name for himself in the classical arena, particularly in the works of Shakespeare. With credits including "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1964), "Richard III" (1966) and "King John" (1967), he proved to be a stellar Hamlet in 1974, and subsequently played the role of Claudius to Kevin Kline's dour Dane in a 1986 production. Marking his Broadway debut in "Watch on the Rhine" in 1980, he impressed later that year alongside James Earl Jones in the contemporary drama "A Lesson from Aloes" (1980). His classical repertoire over the years has included "Uncle Vanya" (1981), "Hedda Gabler" (1981) and (2001), "The Doctor's Dilemma" (1982) "Tartuffe" (1984), "The Seagull" (1985), and a Broadway return with "The Visit" (1992). More recently, he won Drama Desk nominations for his superb work in "The Price" (1999) and "The Diary of Anne Frank" (2001). Keeping his base firmly in Los Angeles for most his career, he was one of the founders of the Los Angeles Classic Theater and has kept active on the regional theater scene over the years. A noted New York stage director, he helmed the off-Broadway productions "Baba Goya," "This Lime Tree Bower," and "The Trip to Bountiful".
He is the possessor of an intriguingly solemn, autocratic-looking mug, and his glowering intensity usually invites suspicion, scorn or skepticism... or all three. Yulin began appearing in films and TV in mid-life (1970), and a high percentage of his work earned standout notices, if not awards and outright stardom. He started impressively enough in Terry Southern's thoroughly bizarre film adaptation of John Barth's novel End of the Road (1970) amid a dream ensemble cast that included Stacy Keach, James Earl Jones, Dorothy Tristan, and James Coco. He then formed a strong acting bond with Keach, again playing best friend Wyatt Earp to Keach's Doc Holliday in an offbeat, revisionist version of their OK Corral story in 'Doc' (1971) that also co-starred Faye Dunaway. While strong supporting turns in The Midnight Man (1974), Night Moves (1975), Scarface (1983), Woody Allen's Another Woman (1988), Narrow Margin (1990), and Clear and Present Danger (1994) kept his name alive on the larger screen, his career found a stronger focus on TV. Over time, he played a number of flashy historical figures on the quality small screen, including Machine Gun Kelly (George Kelly), J. Edgar Hoover, Senator Joseph McCarthy, Israeli General Forman, Jesse James, George Marshall, Leonardo DaVinci and even the Bard himself.
He could always be counted on to play a maniacal genius or the embodiment of white-collar corruption in a career piled with genuinely unsympathetic characters. His more mainstream filming has included lightweight comedies and horrors, such as Bad Dreams (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Multiplicity (1996) and Rush Hour 2 (2001), and the more familiar heavy drama, including the brutal urban tale Training Day (2001) starring Oscar-winner Denzel Washington, and the somber biopic Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006) with Nicole Kidman.
Though Yulin has been unable to find the one transcending role to catapult him to the very top of his character ranks, he continues to enjoy an enviable career broaching age 70. Fresher audiences might recognize him from episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993), Law & Order (1990), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997), 24 (2001) and Frasier (1993), for which he earned a "guest" Emmy nomination. His late wife Gwen Welles, who succumbed to cancer at age 42 in 1993, was an actress of note (Robert Altman's Nashville (1975), in particular). A documentary chronicling his wife's illness and untimely death appeared at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival.
Into the millennium, Harris has added sturdy support to such films as The Million Dollar Hotel (2000), Perfume (2001), Rush Hour 2 (2001), Training Day (2001), King of the Corner (2004), My Soul to Take (2010), The Family Fang (2015), Norman (2016) and Wanderland (2018). TV appearances included "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Mister Sterling," "Third Watch," "Law & Order," "Encourage," "Rubicon," "Pan Am," "Nikita," "Veep" and the revamped "Murphy Brown." Inclusive were offbeat recurring roles in 24 (2001), Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015) and Ozark (2017). - Actor
- Soundtrack
American character actor born in Cincinnati and raised in Louisville, Mitchell Ryan was a well known supporting actor in films and television. Joined the Navy in 1951 at age 17 and was later assigned to the Special Services Entertainment and became hooked on acting. After his term in the Navy, he appeared in dozens of plays until he received notice as playing a regular in TV's Dark Shadows (1966).
Beginning in the 1970s, he received work in motion pictures including Monte Walsh (1970), Magnum Force (1973) and in Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter (1973). He had a small part in Universal's Midway (1976) and returned to act in numerous soaps and television series, among them included a recurring guest role in Having Babies (1978), Executive Suite (1976), The Chisholms (1979) and All My Children (1970) and a growing list of television films and TV guest appearances.
He may have been best-known for portraying the villain that Mel Gibson and Danny Glover are after in Lethal Weapon (1987), but his career included several supporting roles in the past ten years including Judge Dredd (1995), Michael Myers' nemesis in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), Liar Liar (1997) (with Jim Carrey), and as Harrison Ford's chief out to get Brad Pitt in the film The Devil's Own (1997).- Actor
- Soundtrack
Stanley Kamel was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey on January 1, 1943 and was raised in South River, New Jersey. He attended high school at Rutgers Prepatory School (graduated 1961) in Somerset, New Jersey and received his college degree from the Boston University School of Fine Arts in 1965. Kamel got his start in acting with bit parts off-Broadway before his big break into television (as a regular cast member) portraying Eric Peters #2 on Days of Our Lives (1965) from 1972 to 1976.
He played a lot of different characters over the years, and his face was well known to most. He had a recurring role as the unscrupulous psychiatrist, Dr. Graham Lester on Murder One (1995). He also had recurring roles on the hits Melrose Place (1992) and Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990). Late in his career, Kamel was probably best known for playing Dr. Charles Kroger on Monk (2002) starring Tony Shalhoub.
On April 8, 2008, Kamel was found dead in his Hollywood Hills (Los Angeles) home by his long time agents, Donna Massetti and Marilyn Szatmary, having died of a heart attack. Kamel was only 65 years old.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Ken Swofford was born on 25 July 1933 in Du Quoin, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Annie (1982), The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Black Roses (1988). He was married to Barbara Ann Biggs. He died on 1 November 2018 in Pacific Grove, California, USA.- Dark-haired, Ivy League-looking Bradford Dillman, whose white-collar career spanned nearly five decades, possessed charm and confident good looks that were slightly tainted by a bent smile, darting glance and edgy countenance that often provoked suspicion. Sure enough, the camera picked up on it and he played shady, highly suspect characters throughout most of his career.
The actor was born in San Francisco on April 14, 1930, to Dean and Josephine Dillman. Yale-educated, he graduated with a B.A. in English Literature. Following this he served with the US Marines in Korea (1951-1953) before focusing on acting as a profession. Studying at the Actors Studio, he spent several seasons apprenticing with the Sharon (CT) Playhouse before making his professional acting debut in "The Scarecrow" in 1953.
Dillman took his initial Broadway bow in Eugene O'Neill's play "Long Day's Journey Into Night" in 1956, originating the author's alter ego character Edmund Tyrone and winning a Theatre World Award in the process. This success put him squarely on the map and 20th Century-Fox took immediate advantage by placing the darkly handsome up-and-comer under contract. Cast in the melodrama A Certain Smile (1958), he earned a Golden Globe for "Most Promising Newcomer" playing a Parisian student who loses his girl (Christine Carère) to the worldly Italian roué Rossano Brazzi. He followed this with a strong ensemble appearance in In Love and War (1958), which featured a cast of young rising stars including Hope Lange and Robert Wagner. More acting honors followed after completing the film Compulsion (1959), which told the true story of the infamous 1920s kidnapping/murder case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. He went on to share a "Best Actor" award at the Cannes Film Festival with fellow co-stars Dean Stockwell, who played the other youthful murderer, and veteran Orson Welles.
Though he was a magnetic player poised for stardom, Dillman's subsequent films failed to serve him well and were generally unworthy of his talent. Though properly serious and stoic as the title character in Francis of Assisi (1961), the film itself was stilted and weakly scripted. Circle of Deception (1960) was a misguided tale of espionage and intrigue, but it did introduce him to his second wife, supermodel-cum-actress Suzy Parker. While A Rage to Live (1965) with Suzanne Pleshette was trashy soap material, The Plainsman (1966) was rather a silly, juvenile version of the Gary Cooper western classic. As a result of these missteps--and others--he began to top-line lesser quality projects or play supporting roles in "A" pictures. His nothing role as Robert Redford's college pal-turned Hollywood producer in The Way We Were (1973) and his major roles in the ludicrous The Swarm (1978) and Lords of the Deep (1989) became proof in the pudding. His last good film role was in O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (1973), although he did play an interesting John Wilkes Booth in the speculative re-enactment drama The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977) and had a fun leading role in the Jaws (1975)-like spoof Piranha (1978).
Dillman bore up very well on TV over the years, subsisting on a plethora of mini-movies and guest spots on popular series, playing everything from turncoats to frauds and from adulterers to psychotics. He earned a Daytime Emmy for his appearance in Last Bride of Salem (1974) and starred in two series--Court Martial (1965), as a military lawyer, and King's Crossing (1982), as an alcoholic parent and teacher attempting to straighten out. He also spent a season on the established nighttime soap Falcon Crest (1981) in 1982.
A narrator, director and teacher of acting in later years. Bradford launched a late-in-the career sideline as an author. The football fan inside him compelled him to write "Inside the New York Giants" (1995), a book that rated players drafted by the team since 1967. Two years later he published his memoirs, the curiously-titled "Are You Somebody?: An Actor's Life." He retired from the screen after a few guest star shots on "Murder, She Wrote" in the mid-90s.
From 1956 to 1962, Dillman was married to Frieda Harding, and had two children, Jeffrey and Pamela. Following their divorce, he met well-known model-turned-actress Suzy Parker during the production of Circle of Deception (1960) and the couple married on April 20, 1963. They had three children, Dinah, Charles, and Christopher. Daughter Pamela Dillman has worked as an actress. Dillman was made a widower when Parker died on May 3, 2003. He lived for many years in Montecito, California, and helped raise money for medical research. He died in Santa Barbara, California on January 16, 2018, aged 87, from complications of pneumonia. - Actor
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- Location Management
Robert Pine is an American actor who is best known as Sgt. Joseph Getraer on the television series CHiPs (1977-1983). Including CHiPs, Pine has appeared in over 400 episodes of television. Pine was born in New York City on July 10, 1941, the son of Virginia (née Whitelaw) and Granville Martin Pine, a patent attorney. He graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1963. He is married to Gwynne Gilford, who appeared in several episodes of CHiPs as Betty Getraer, the wife of Pine's character. They have two children, actors Chris and Katie.- Excellent, prolific and versatile character actor Michael Cavanaugh was born on November 21, 1942 in New York. The eldest of nine children, Cavanaugh joined the Navy following his high school graduation and was stationed in Hawaii for three years. After his tour of duty was over, Cavanaugh developed an interest in acting. He began his acting career in children's theater; he made his stage debut in the titular role in a production of "Winnie the Pooh". Michael's other stage credits include "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", "Merchant of Venice" and "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?". An accomplished vocalist, Cavanaugh has sung tenor in such musicals as "Oh Calcutta!", "Carousel" and "110 in the Shade". Michael has racked up an extensive list of film and TV show credits alike since the mid-1970s; he often portrays police officers, government agents, stern military types, lawyers, judges and slick businessmen. Cavanaugh has appeared in three Clint Eastwood pictures: The Enforcer (1976), The Gauntlet (1977) and Any Which Way You Can (1980). He was especially memorable as the head nasty bad guy in the exciting Chuck Norris action vehicle Forced Vengeance (1982). Cavanaugh was terrific as obsessive and xenophobic chief federal security agent "George Fox" on the fine and thoughtful science fiction TV series Starman (1986). He also had a recurring part on the short-lived early 90s revival of the popular horror soap opera Dark Shadows (1991). Among the many TV shows Cavanaugh has done guest spots on are Monk (2002), Shark (2006), Bones (2005), The Young and the Restless (1973), The West Wing (1999), The Practice (1997), NYPD Blue (1993), Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993), Matlock (1986), Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987), ER (1994), The X-Files (1993), L.A. Law (1986), Our House (1986), Amazing Stories (1985), MacGyver (1985), Airwolf (1984), Dallas (1978), The A-Team (1983), Cagney & Lacey (1981), Hunter (1984), T.J. Hooker (1982), Vega$ (1978), CHiPs (1977) and Kojak (1973).
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
George Coe was born on 10 May 1929 in Jamaica, Queens, New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and The Stepford Wives (1975). He was married to Karen Foray, Nancy Baker and Susan Allsopp Massaron. He died on 18 July 2015 in Santa Monica, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Philip Sterling made his Broadway debut in 1955 in the Cole Porter musical ''Silk Stockings.'' His most prominent role on Broadway was that of the adulterous father in Neil Simon's 1986 comedy ''Broadway Bound.'' He also appeared in Ron Cowen's ''Summertree'' and in Gore Vidal's ''An Evening With Richard Nixon and . . .'' playing Dwight D. Eisenhower to George S. Irving's Richard Nixon. Off Broadway, he appeared in ''Brecht on Brecht,'' ''In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer,'' ''The Trojan Women'' and ''Victim of Duty.'' His most recent stage appearance was in ''Out of Purgatory'' at the Old Globe Theater in San Diego.
A serious student of music, he also was narrator of several concert works, including Schoenberg's ''Survivor from Warsaw'' with the New York Philharmonic under Pierre Boulez at Lincoln Center.
Among his films were ''Backfire,'' ''The Competition,'' ''The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight'' and ''Me, Natalie.''
Mr. Sterling began working in television in the days of live comedy and drama, appearing on ''Studio One'' and ''Kraft Television Theater.'' He also acted in ''City of Angels'' and and had recurring roles on ''Sisters'' ''L.A. Law'' and ''St. Elsewhere.'' His guest appearances were many and various, from ''NYPD Blue'' and "Barney Miller" to "Golden Girls" and ''M*A*S*H.''
The son of a Philadelphia lawyer, Mr. Sterling was the first president of the Screen Actors Guild Foundation. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School of Business, he started his career as a jazz pianist before turning to acting.
He is survived by his wife, Rhona, and daughter, Mila.- Name a soap opera and invariably character actor Nicholas Pryor has appeared on it. Playing the quirky professor Victor Collins on the daytime drama Port Charles (1997), the tall, rangy, silver-haired player was born Nicholas David Probst and is a native of Baltimore, with early training received from his many productions with the local Drummond Players.
Pryor made his TV debut on the New York-based soap drama "The Brighter Day" in 1958, while studying at Yale University. Around the same time he earned some roles on the Broadway stage with "The Egghead" (1957), "Love Me a Little" (1958), "Howie" (1958) and "The Highest Tree" (1959).
He became a sturdy, familiar face on 1960s and 1970s TV soap dramas with Young Dr. Malone (1958) as Ernest Cooper; Another World (1964) as Tom Baxter; The Secret Storm (1954) as Johnny Ellis; The Nurses (1965) as Ken Alexander; All My Children (1970) as Lincoln Tyler and The Edge of Night (1956) as Joel Gantry. In the evening he appeared in several anthology series such as "Kraft Theatre," "Armstrong Circle Theatre," "Dupont Show of the Month" and "Startime." He also graced a number of popular TV shows including "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "Coronet Blue."
It wasn't until his mid-career that Nicholas started checking out films. He began as the starring protagonist undergoing a mid-life crisis in the little seen film The Way We Live Now (1970). From there he served as a support actor with parts in such films as Man on a Swing (1974) and The Happy Hooker (1975). One of his best roles came as Barbara Feldon's hapless husband in the cult film Smile (1975). His parts have varied but he did play a number of father figure parts. He played Tom Cruise's dad in Risky Business (1983) and Robert Downey Jr.'s in Less Than Zero (1987). Nicholas also returned to Broadway in the early 1970's with replacement roles in both "That Championship Season" and "Thieves."
From the 1980's on, Nicholas' movie output has been sporadic, appearing as professional or authoritarians (doctors, ministers, judges, attorneys, politicians) in such offerings as Airplane! (1980), The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), Pacific Heights (1990), Hoffa (1992), Sliver (1993), Hail Caesar (1994), The Chamber (1996), Molly (1999).
Television, however, has been a strong medium of choice with hundreds of appearances on such shows as "Trapper John," "Simon & Simon," "Little House on the Prairie," "Silver Spoons," "Crazy Like a Fox," "Hill Street Blues," "Dallas," "Dynasty," "The Colbys," "St. Elsewhere," "Falcon Crest," "Moonlighting," "Who's the Boss," "227," "Growing Pains," "Murder, She Wrote," "L.A. Law," "Matlock," "Picket Fences," "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," "Diagnosis Murder." He also had a regular role on The Bronx Zoo (1987) and recurring ones on Eight Is Enough (1977), Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990) and Party of Five (1994). He graced such acclaimed mini-series as The Adams Chronicles (1976), Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977) and East of Eden (1981).
He continues a steady pace into the millennium, particularly on TV, with parts on the popular shows "American Tragedy," "That's Life," "Gideon's Crossing," "The West Wing," "NYPD Blue," "Nashville" and "The Outsider." Feature film work includes the Arnold Schwarzenegger action thriller Collateral Damage (2002); the supernatural thriller The List (2007); the dramedy A Short History of Decay (2014); the mystery thriller Buster's Mal Heart (2016) starring Rami Malek and the horror fantasy Doctor Sleep (2019).
Married four times, he is married to actress Christine Belford, a prominent TV actress. - Actor
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Ron Leibman was born on 11 October 1937 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Garden State (2004), Zorro: The Gay Blade (1981) and Kaz (1978). He was married to Jessica Walter and Linda Lavin. He died on 6 December 2019 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
A native of Boston and graduate of Syracuse University, George has worked extensively in TV and film since 1972. Notable film work includes the Coen Brothers' best-picture nominee A Serious Man (2009) as Rabbi Nachtner, Mel Brooks' Spaceballs (1987) as Colonel Sandurz, and his To Be or Not to Be (1983). Among other dozens of film credits are the classic Fletch (1985) and Fletch Lives (1989), The Devil's Advocate (1997), and Trouble with the Curve (2012). George has guest starred on over 150 TV shows, and has been a series regular on nine. He is perhaps best known for his six seasons as Deputy D.A. Irwin Bernstein on Hill Street Blues (1981).- Lloyd Bochner had that wonderfully sonorous type of voice that was always tailor-made for radio or for the stage. Unsurprisingly then, by the time he was eleven, Lloyd was already employed as part-time voiceover artist and reader of drama serials by radio stations in Vancouver.
Lloyd Wolfe Bochner was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Frieda (Kenen) and Charles Abraham Bochner. He was of Russian Jewish and Ukrainian Jewish descent. He made his acting debut as a youth with the Joseph Barrington Juveniles. Lloyd's education at the University of Toronto was interrupted in 1943 by wartime service in the Royal Canadian Navy. However, in 1947, he graduated with a B.A. and a few years later moved to New York to further hone his acting skills. In 1953, he returned to Canada to participate in the inaugural season of the Stratford Festival getting to enact choice Shakespearean roles from Horatio in "Hamlet" to Orsino in "Twelfth Night".
Having made his screen bow in a small Canadian production, The Mapleville Story (1946), Lloyd's first significant exposure in television was as British army officer Nicholas Lacey in the half-hour NBC serial One Man's Family (1949), which had first been performed on radio and starred Bert Lytell and Marjorie Gateson. His real breakthrough came quite a few years later, once having moved to Hollywood, as co-star of the studio-bound crime series Hong Kong (1960). He played local British police-chief Neil Campbell, solving crime in tandem with an American newspaper correspondent (played by Australian actor Rod Taylor). This, in turn, led to other key roles including his almost legendary appearance in the classic The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "To Serve Man" in 1962 (at one time voted 11th in a TV guide poll of 100 best TV episodes of all time). Based on a short story by Damon Knight written in 1950, "To Serve Man" unfolds in flashback as narrated for the viewer by Lloyd's decoding expert Michael Chambers. It has all the elements of great television, with an excellent cast (including Richard Kiel, later known as 'Jaws' from the 'James Bond' movies; and Theodore Marcuse as Citizen Grigori giving an indelible impression of Nikita Khrushchev); and an unexpected and disturbing denouement when it turns out that the supposedly altruistic alien Kanamits have come to earth to harvest humans for food. Lloyd repeated his famous punch-line, "it's a cook book!", years later as a spoof in Leslie Nielsen's The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991).
For most of the 1960s and 1970s, Lloyd was cast in supporting roles, often as mellifluous, meticulously-attired, upper-class snobs, practically guaranteed to harbour treacherous intent. He appeared in several motion pictures, notably as the malicious, smooth villain Frederick Carter who unsuccessfully tangles with Lee Marvin in Point Blank (1967), and in the same year, as homosexual drug dealer Vic Rood on the receiving end of the beating from Frank Sinatra in Tony Rome (1967). However, on the whole, Lloyd's preferred medium was television. He had a recurring role in the long-running soap-opera Dynasty (1981) as Blake Carrington's manipulative rival, Cecil Colby, in league with archvillain Alexis Carrington (Joan Collins). A versatile character actor, Lloyd's clean-cut, aquiline features and quiet air of authority lent themselves to portraying a vast gallery of medical men, soldiers, politicians and executives. Some of these were men of integrity, but like many a good actor, Lloyd rather enjoyed the challenge of playing the scoundrel.
During his half century-long acting career, Lloyd Bochner garnered two Liberty Awards as best television actor, Canada's equivalent of the Emmy Awards. He was also an active member in the Association of Canadian Radio and Television Artists. He died at age 81 of cancer on October 29, 2005 in Santa Monica, California. His children are actors Hart Bochner, Paul Bochner, and Johanna Courtleigh. - Actor
- Music Department
- Producer
Gregg Henry has worked with many well-known filmmakers. For James Gunn: Slither (2006), Super (2010), Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017). For Brian De Palma: Scarface (1983), Body Double (1984). Raising Cain (1992), Femme Fatale (2002), The Black Dahlia (2006), and Casualties of War (1989). For Paul Greengrass: United 93 (2006), and Jason Bourne (2016). Henry also stars in Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), and is maybe best known for the role of Val Resnick in Payback (1999).
Henry has numerous TV credits, notably as Hollis Doyle in Scandal (2012); Hit & Run (2021) for Netflix; The Riches (2007); The Killing (2011); The Following (2013); Chicago Med (2015); Hung (2009); Hell on Wheels (2011); Gilmore Girls (2000); Law & Order: Organized Crime (2021). In a chilling portrayal of the infamous Dennis Rader, Henry starred in the critically acclaimed The Hunt for the BTK Killer (2005).
On stage, Henry most recently played the titular character in the brilliant and controversial production of Julius Caesar by the Public Theater and Oskar Eustis in Central Park. He's also performed at Seattle Rep, ACT Seattle, South Coast Rep, Old Globe Theater San Diego, and the Denver Center Theater. Henry has won thirteen Drama-Logue Awards, an L.A. Weekly Award, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for his stage work as producer and actor.
A composer and lyricist, Henry wrote both music and lyrics for Little Egypt: The Musical, which had a successful LA run and was accepted into the NYMF festival in NYC. He composed and wrote lyrics for two additional musicals, work-shopped at the LAByrinth Theater Summer intensives.
Henry plays the piano and has recorded several albums, as a professional singer and songwriter. Dwight Yoakam's cover of Henry's song, "The Back of Your Hand" for his album Population Me, reached #1 on CMT. Henry lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife Lisa James, a noted director for the American Theater.- A veteran of nearly 100 films, Jon Polito is most recognized for his work with The Coen brothers, as well as his many television appearances as a series regular and guest star. Notable motion picture roles include: Millers Crossing, Barton Fink, The Man Who Wasn't There, The Crow, Blankman, and The Freshman with Marlon Brando, and Big Eyes. Directors he has worked with include; Russel Mulcahy, Clint Eastwood, John McNaughton, Tom Hanks, Andrew Bergman, Michael Apted, Ridley Scott, and Tim Burton amongst others. On television, he starred as a series regular on Crime Story, Ohara, Hearts are Wild, The Chronical, and the critically acclaimed Homicide, Life on the Street. Notable guest star roles include the befuddled landlord Sylvio on Seinfeld, his only role as a woman - Rhonda, on The Chris Isaak Show, Gino, brother to Danny Devito's character, Frank, on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Earl Chambers on Modern Family. He starred on Broadway with Faye Dunaway in The Curse Of An Aching Heart, and with Dustin Hoffman in the 1985 Tony award winning revival of Death Of A Salesman, which he also filmed for CBS. He received the Best Actor OBIE award for Off Broadway theatre in 1980. Other awards include the 2001 TELLY for animation voice over in The Dancing Pumpkin which was directed by his brother Jack Polito, The New York Independent Festival Award for Excellence in Acting, and the 2005 Cinequest Maverick Award for his lifetime body of work in Film and Television. In 2012 Jon received the Best Actor Award for the short film Anti-Muse from the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival. He credits his success to three people; his mentor Dominic Garvey, his only acting teacher Irene Baird, and to the late, great director, and friend, Paul Bettis. In addition, his inspiration to this day is New York theatre artist, Theodora Skipitares, who taught him film and design in university, and who has since never been far away from his life. She is 'Art' surviving.
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George Furth wrote eleven one-act plays planned for Kim Stanley as each of the separate leads. Hollywood actor Anthony Perkins, interested in directing, asked Sondheim to read the material. After Sondheim read the plays, Sondheim asked Harold Prince for his opinion; Prince thought the plays could form the basis for a musical. The theme would be New York marriages with a central character to examine those marriages. Originally titled "Threes", its plot revolves around Bobby, a single man unable to commit fully to a steady relationship, let alone marriage, four married couples, and one single couple, who are his best friends, and also includes Bobby's three free-wheeling girl friends.
Unlike most book musicals, which follow a clearly delineated plot, "Company" is a concept musical composed of short vignettes, presented in no particular chronological order, linked by a celebration for Bobby's 35th birthday. "Company" was among the first musicals to deal with adult themes and relationships. As Sondheim puts it, "Broadway theater has been for many years supported by upper-middle-class people with upper-middle-class problems. These people really want to escape that world when they go to the theatre, and then here we are with 'Company' talking about how we're going to bring it right back in their faces." "Company" opened in Boston in out-of-town tryouts, receiving mixed reviews, from the Boston Evening Globe "Brilliant", to Variety Magazine "The songs are for the most part undistinguished" and "As it stands now it's for ladies' matinees, homos and misogynists." The book was by Furth; Lyrics and music was by Stephen Sondheim; direction was by Prince.
"Company" opened on April 26, 1970, at the Alvin Theatre in New York City, where it ran for 705 performances after seven previews. Musical staging was by Michael Bennett, assisted by Bob Avian. The set design by Boris Aronson consisted of two working elevators and various vertical platforms that emphasized the musical's theme of isolation. "Company" was honored with the following theatre awards: the 1971 New York Drama Desk Award for (1) Outstanding Book of a Musical awarded to Furth; (2) Outstanding Director of a Musical awarded to Harold Prince; (3) Outstanding Lyrics and (4) Outstanding Music awarded to Stephen Sondheim; (5) Outstanding Set Design was awarded to Boris Aronson. The New York Theatre World Award was awarded to actor Susan Browning. In an unusual move, the Tony Awards committee deemed Larry Kert eligible for a nomination, an honor usually reserved for the actor (Dean Jones, in this case) who technically originates a role.
The musical was nominated for a record setting 14 Tony Award Nominations and won six. "Company" won the (1) Tony Award for Best Musical; (2) Tony Award Best Score (music) and (3) Tony Award Best Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; (4) Tony Award Best Book of a Musical by George Furth; (5) Tony Award Best Direction for a Musical by Harold Prince; (6) Tony Award Best Scenic Design by Boris Aronson; Nominated for Tony Award Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical (7) Larry Kert; Nominated for Tony Award Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical (8) Elaine Stritch and (9) Susan Browning; Nominated for Tony Award Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical (10) Charles Kimbrough; Nominated for Tony Award Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical (11) Barbara Barrie and (12) Pamela Myers; Nominated for Tony Award Best Choreography (13) Michael Bennett; Nominated for Tony Award Best Lighting Design (14) Robert Ornbo. (In the early 1990s, Furth and Sondheim revised the libretto, cutting and altering dialogue that had become dated and rewriting the end to act one.)- Actor
- Soundtrack
The son of Edwin Schallert, drama editor of the "Los Angeles Times" and the dean of West Coast critics, William Schallert became interested in an acting career while at UCLA in 1942. After graduation, he became involved with the Circle Theater (eventually becoming one of its owners) and made his film debut in The Foxes of Harrow (1947). He then became ubiquitous in movies and TV ever since, and from 1979 to 1981, he was president of the Screen Actors Guild. He stayed active with SAG projects and said he never gave retirement a thought.- Actor
- Soundtrack
A man of all mediums, this veteran, Manhattan-born character actor was named after his great-grandfather, Lincolnesque Congressman William Windom. Born in 1923, the son of Paul Windom, an architect, and the former Isobel Wells Peckham, Bill attended Williams College and the University of Kentucky, among others, before serving in the Army during WWII. After the war, he studied at both Fordham and Columbia universities in New York City before settling on an acting career. Trained at the American Repertory Theatre (1946-1961), he made his minor Broadway debut with the company in November of 1946 with revolving productions of "Henry VIII", "What Every Woman Knows", "John Gabriel Borkman" and "Androcles and the Lion". The following year, he continued building up his Broadway resume with roles in "Yellow Jack" and as the "White Rabbit" in a production of "Alice in Wonderland".
In the early 1950s, a new avenue opened up to Bill: television. For the duration of the decade, he shifted between stage, which included Broadway roles in "A Girl Can Tell" (1953), "Mademoiselle Colombe" (1954), "Fallen Angels" (1956), "The Greatest Man Alive" (1957) and "Viva Madison Avenue!" (1960), and TV drama, with stalwart work in such programs as Robert Montgomery Presents (1950) and Hallmark Hall of Fame (1951).
Major attention came Windom's way on TV moving into the following decade. In addition to hundreds of guest appearances on the most popular shows of the day (Combat! (1962), The Fugitive (1963), All in the Family (1971), Dallas (1978), Highway to Heaven (1984)), his standout work included a co-starring role opposite the luminous Inger Stevens in the popular light comedy series The Farmer's Daughter (1963). On the show, Windom portrayed widower "Glen Morley", a decent congressman who eventually falls in love with his pert and pretty Swedish governess "Katy Holstrum" (played by Stevens). Prior to this success, both he and Ms. Stevens had been singularly recognized for their sterling performances on various episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959). Following this success, Windom enjoyed critical notice as the cartoonist/protagonist whose vivid imagination causes problems on the homefront on the Thurberesque weekly series My World and Welcome to It (1969). Despite the show's critical merit and Windom's "Best Actor" Emmy win, the show, years ahead of its time, lasted only one season. Decades later, Windom would play James Thurber on stage in one-man shows.
The native New Yorker went on to essay a number of loungy Southerners and down-home types with incredible ease--both heroes and villains. He offered strong support in his film debut as Gregory Peck's opposing counsel in the Alabama-based To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), and went on to play prelate Norman Vincent Peale's father in One Man's Way (1964) starring Don Murray. Windom demonstrated the maturity to carry off the character even though he was only 5 years older than Murray. He also delivered a variety of pungent roles in such films as The Detective (1968) (as a closeted gay married man), Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud (1970) (as a political blowhard facing a series of murders) and The Man (1972) (as a racist politician).
Growing slier and stockier over the years, Windom provided TV audiences with a colorful gallery of characters, ranging from avuncular and ingratiating, to cantankerous and unscrupulous. He became a regular for over a decade on the Angela Lansbury whodunit series Murder, She Wrote (1984), joining the show in its second season as "Dr. Seth Hazlitt". He briefly left "Murder" to work on another series, Parenthood (1990), which was based on the highly popular 1989 movie starring Steve Martin. Here, Ed Begley Jr. took over the Martin part and Windom assumed Jason Robards's patriarchal role as Begley's father. The show was off the air within a few months, however, and Windom was invited back to the mystery series -- a semi-regular until the show folded in 1997.
In addition, Windom reprised a Star Trek (1966) portrayal as "Commodore Matt Decker," appeared in scores of mini-movies, has given voice to various book readings, presented a second one-man show (this time that of combat reporter Ernie Pyle), and continued to film at age 80+, his latest being Yesterday's Dreams (2005).
The five-times-married Windom was wed (for 36 years) to writer Patricia Veronica Tunder at the time of his death of congestive heart failure at age 88. A chess, tennis and sailing enthusiast, he is survived by four children: Rachel, Heather Juliet, Hope and Rebel Russell.Two step-daughters, Debora and Maggie as well as four grandchildren. He died at his home in Woodacre, California, on August 16, 2012.- Utilitarian actor Lonny Chapman remains one of those highly familiar character faces to which you can't quite place the name. While he appeared in over 30 films and well over 300 TV programs over a five-decade career, the theater remained his first and foremost passion and for which he is best remembered. From 1973 until his death 34 years later, he was artistic director of the Group Repertory Theatre (GRT), a North Hollywood non-profit acting organization for which he also served as producer, writer, director and actor. It was a place to which scores and scores of L.A.-based actors would, and did, call "home". The facility, which is still running today, was renamed the Lonny Chapman Group Repertory Theatre (LCGRT) in 1999 in loving tribute.
He was born Lon Leonard Chapman on October 1, 1920, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but grew up in the city of Joplin, Missouri. His interest in acting started while fairly young. Following his graduations from Joplin High School (1938) and Joplin Junior College (1940), the athletically-inclined Lonny attended the University of Oklahoma on a track scholarship. The bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, interrupted his college studies, joining the Marines the very next day. He saw major action in the South Pacific, including Guadalcanal. During his 5-year tour of duty, he contracted malaria; frequent recurrences would plague him the rest of his life. The track star returned to his Oklahoma college following war duty and graduated with a BFA in Drama in 1947.
While at college Lonny became best friends with actor Dennis Weaver, who was also a talented track-and-field athlete and fellow drama student. The two young hopefuls hitchhiked together to New York City where they began their respective careers. Within a year (1948) Lonny was appearing as "Wiley" in the Chicago company of "Mister Roberts", directed by Joshua Logan. The year after that, he made his Broadway debut in "The Closing Door", directed by Lee Strasberg. During this time, he also established strong ties with the prestigious Group Theatre and Actors Studio. It was at the Actors Studio that he forged lifelong friendships with director Mark Rydell, and character actors Martin Landau, R.G. Armstrong, Pat Hingle and Logan Ramsey, among others.
Arguably, the peak of Lonny's early stage career occurred in 1950, when he co-starred in the award-winning drama "Come Back, Little Sheba", William Inge's first play to be produced on Broadway. Art imitated life in this case as Lonny portrayed the second lead role of "Turk", a college student and star athlete. Coincidentally, friend Dennis Weaver became his understudy and eventually took over the role. Starring Tony winners Shirley Booth and Sidney Blackmer, only Ms. Booth went on to recreate her role in the film version for which she won the Oscar. Lonny, who had yet to make a movie, was replaced by the already-established Richard Jaeckel as "Turk" in the film version.
Lonny continued to solidify his reputation on Broadway with "The Chase" (1952), produced and directed by José Ferrer and starring Actors Studio exponents Kim Stanley and Kim Hunter; "Whistler's Grandmother" (1952), co-starring Josephine Hull; "The Ladies of the Corridor" (1953), directed by renowned "Group Theatre" member Harold Clurman; and the Horton Foote-penned "The Traveling Lady" (1954), again starring Ms. Stanley. Elsewhere, he earned excellent notices as "Tom" opposite Franchot Tone's "Joe" in a revival of William Saroyan's "The Time of Your Life" and as the "Gentleman Caller" in the first national tour of "The Glass Menagerie" starring Helen Hayes. By this time, Lonny had begun appearing on early TV, making his debut in an episode of Captain Video and His Cartoon Rangers (1956). His first film was a featured role in the tuneful Doris Day/Frank Sinatra drama Young at Heart (1954) in which he shared secondary scenes with Elisabeth Fraser. Actor Studio preeminent Elia Kazan took a strong liking to Lonny as an actor and looked for no one else to play the role of "Roy", the auto mechanic, in the classic John Steinbeck film East of Eden (1955), which catapulted James Dean to cult status. Kazan then gave Lonny a plum role in his film Baby Doll (1956).
In the late 1950s, Chapman began to show promise as a mover and shaker in the theater. In 1959, and for eight seasons following, he and co-founder Curt Conway devoted their summer seasons to the Cecilwood Theatre in Fishkill, New York, where he directed over 80 productions and performed in nearly thirty. Those up-and-comers who received their Equity union card under his guidance included Barbra Streisand, Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall. As a playwright, Lonny saw two of his own works produced off-Broadway -- "The Buffalo Skinner" and "Cry of the Raindrop".
Lonny migrated to Los Angeles in the 1960s in order to pursue film and TV roles and, along with Martin Landau, helped form the West branch of the Actors Studio out there. His gritty look, trademark dusky voice, earnest demeanor and solid Midwest upbringing was his meal ticket for getting Hollywood work. Tailor-made for earthy, blue-collar roles, he was most at home playing unpretentious folk. One would be hard-pressed to see him donning tie and tails in highly elegant settings when he obviously appeared more at home in a plaid shirt with rolled up sleeves or, at the most, a tweed sport coat with loose tie. He provided stark authenticity to a number of westerns, crimers and small-town dramas. In Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963), he portrayed the concerned diner operator who tends to Tippi Hedren's head wound after her first gull attack. He subsequently played a secondary but pivotal role in director/friend Mark Rydell's picture The Reivers (1969) set in Mississippi with Steve McQueen, and also one of Sally Field's chauvinistic bosses in the down-home drama Norma Rae (1979). He showed remarkable versatility with a top, change-of-pace supporting part in the early Woody Allen comedy classic Take the Money and Run (1969).
In 1973, he formed the Group Repertory Theatre and served as its first and only artistic director (until his death). Under his strong leadership, the non-profit organization staged over 350 productions, 45 of which were world premieres of original works. Sean Penn and Jennifer Tilly are former members of the company.
Quite visible on TV, he appeared to good advantage in prime-time programming. Headlining one TV series that never got firmly off the ground, The Investigator (1958), in which he played a private detective, he also co-starred with William Shatner and Jessica Walter in the "Law and Order" precursor For the People (1965). During the 60s, 70s and 80s, the gruff, bushy-browed actor could always be spotted somewhere on a topnotch crime show (Perry Mason (1957), The Defenders (1961) (recurring role), Judd for the Defense (1967), Mission: Impossible (1966), Mannix (1967), Ironside (1967), Quincy M.E. (1976), Matlock (1986)). He was given just as much footage sitting tall in the saddle in various western series (Laredo (1965), The Rifleman (1958), The Virginian (1962), Bonanza (1959)). He also appeared more than a few times on Gunsmoke (1955) and McCloud (1970), which starred his good friend Dennis Weaver. One particular highlight was his patriarchal role in an above-par TV-movie adaptation of The Rainmaker (1982) co-starring Tommy Lee Jones and Tuesday Weld.
A modest, down-to-earth kind of guy with a generous heart and spirit who preferred not to call attention to himself, Chapman was a sturdy film and TV presence over the years playing a hefty number of heroes, villains, boss types and confidantes. Although he worked consistently throughout the years, he never found the one role that might have moved him up the pecking order and propel him to the very top of the character echelon. In the twilight of his film career, he showed eerie countenance in his elderly watchman role in Nightwatch (1997), and last graced the screen as an octogenarian in Reindeer Games (2000), directed by John Frankenheimer and The Hunted (2003), directed by William Friedkin.
The last few years of his life were marred by failing health and the increasingly frail actor had to eventually be placed in a Sherman Oaks (California) care facility. He died there of complications from pneumonia and heart disease a little more than a week after his 87th birthday, on October 12, 2007. He was survived by his steadfast wife (of nearly 65 years), the former Erma Dean Gibbons, and their son Wyley Dean. - Actor
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Don is probably best remembered for his role as "Ernie Kaltenbrunner" in the 1985 comedy horror The Return of the Living Dead (1985). Don's career spans over 40 years in both film and TV. Born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Ozone Park Queens, and later West Hempstead, Long Island, Don Calfa was originally interested in a career in the fine arts. He got the acting bug after seeing films such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Vertigo (1958). After dropping out of high school to study at Erwin Piscotor's "The Dramatic Workshop", (he finished his degree in night school), Calfa spent two years in summer stock which enabled him to join Actors Equity and eventually get his SAG card.
Don has starred alongside some of cinema's greats including Warren Beatty in Bugsy (1991), Michael Douglas in The Star Chamber (1983), Jack Nicholson in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), and many more.
Among Don's most memorable roles were as "Mr. Pitts" on the TV series Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990), "Ralph Wilum" in Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (1989) (aka "Chopper Chicks in Zombietown"), "Paulie" in Weekend at Bernie's (1989), "Scarface" in Foul Play (1978). His stage work includes extensive off-off-Broadway work, and he appeared on Broadway in "Lenny".
Nowadays, Don still works in the movie business and works the convention circuit in the USA, alongside his friend, Beverly Randolph, who he met on the set of The Return of the Living Dead (1985). Don recently, along with the rest of "The Return of the Living Dead" cast, recorded a cast commentary for a new special edition release of "The Return of the Living Dead". Plans are in motion for a "Return of the Living Dead" cast reunion in the United Kingdom in November 2007 at Birmingham's NEC Memorabilia event.- Actor
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Graham Greene was born on 22 June 1952 in Six Nations Reserve, Ontario, Canada. He is an actor and writer, known for The Green Mile (1999), Wind River (2017) and Dances with Wolves (1990). He has been married to Hilary Blackmore since 20 December 1990. They have two children.- James Joseph Sloyan was born on February 24, 1940 in Indianapolis, Indiana; his family moved to Europe when he was a young boy, living in Rome, Capri, Milan, Switzerland, and Ireland.
When he was 17, his family moved back to the United States and settled in upstate New York, where he managed a theater. He received a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and after two years he went to work for Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival.
In 1962, he was drafted into the United States Army; after four years he returned to the NYSF and performed in 28 plays and choreographed all the onstage fights. He also appeared in the original off-Broadway stage version of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". - A highly engaging, charismatic, and reliable character actor with a long and distinguished career spanning half a century, Jerry Hardin has been gracing both the big and small screen, and stage, with many enjoyable performances, highlighted by a relaxed and pleasing Southern twang. Born November 20, 1929, in Dallas, Texas, where his father was a rancher, Hardin was raised outside the city, where he first began acting in school productions. This would lead to a scholarship to Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, and a Fulbright scholarship to the Royal Academy for Dramatic Art in London. He had his first (uncredited) film role in the classic drive-in flick, Thunder Road (1958), starring Robert Mitchum, and, by 1961, had racked up an impressive amount of over 75 theatre credits. He became incredibly prolific in the 1970s, when his film career really took off, and he also started appearing regularly on TV series, including Gunsmoke (1955), Starsky and Hutch (1975), The Streets of San Francisco (1972), Little House on the Prairie (1974), The Rockford Files (1974), Miami Vice (1984), L.A. Law (1986), Melrose Place (1992), Murder, She Wrote (1984) and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993). A particularly memorable performance, by Mr. Hardin in this medium, was that of Mark Twain in episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). He would also prove to be in high demand for film roles, appearing in the likes of Wolf Lake (1979), Heartland (1979), 1941 (1979), Honky Tonk Freeway (1981), Reds (1981), Missing (1982), Honkytonk Man (1982), Cujo (1983), The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), Warning Sign (1985), Big Trouble in Little China (1986), Wanted: Dead or Alive (1986), The Hot Spot (1990), The Firm (1993), Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), Hidalgo (2004) and Are We There Yet? (2005). His performance as one of the subtly sinister senior partners in The Firm (1993) impressed The X-Files (1993) creator Chris Carter enough that Carter would create the character of "Deep Throat" with him in mind, and it's this role that is definitely one of Hardin's most famous. A noteworthy stage performance of his was in the play, "The Rainmaker", working alongside Jayne Atkinson, Woody Harrelson and David Aaron Baker.
Hardin's wife is actress and acting teacher Diane Hardin (her students have included Leonardo DiCaprio, Hilary Swank, Stephen Dorff, River Phoenix, Kellie Martin and Christopher Masterson), his daughter is actress Melora Hardin, and his son Shawn Hardin was chief operating officer, in-charge-of product, for NBC-1 in San Francisco. - Actor
- Writer
William Talman is best known for his role as Hamilton Burger, the district attorney who perpetually lost to Perry Mason in the long-running series Perry Mason (1957). Talman was an accomplished screenwriter and stage and screen actor, and appeared in numerous roles on television as a character actor from the mid-'50s until his death from lung cancer in August of 1968.
He was born William Whitney Talman Jr. on February 4, 1915, in Detroit, Michigan, the first son of William Talman Sr. and Ada B. Talman. His father was vice-president of an electrical company that manufactured industrial heat-measuring recording devices and yachts. During an interview with "TV Guide" in April of 1963, Talman told writer Richard Gehman that his father made a good deal of money, "enough to send me to school in a limousine each day. Public school. That meant I had to fight my way in and out." In school Talman developed an avid interest in athletics, especially boxing and baseball. He furthered his interest in boxing early in life by fighting on the local parish boxing team of the Episcopal Church. At one point in his life he played semi-professional baseball. He was educated at Cranbrook School and later attended Dartmouth College, where his interest in acting first took hold. He left Dartmouth in his sophomore year after an incident in which a freshman he knew "loaned" him a car so that he could go visit a girlfriend at Smith College. A bus forced the car off of the road and it hit a tree. A boy who was with them was killed and it later turned out that the car was stolen. Talman was asked to resign from Dartmouth, which he did. Although invited back the next year, he never returned.
Talman began his acting career on Broadway in the early 1940s. His first roles were in "Beverly Hills", "Yokel Boy" and "Of Mice and Men." He was appearing in "Spring Again" at Henry Miller's Theatre in January of 1942 when he received his draft notice for induction into the US army. Prior to leaving for active duty he married actress Lynne Carter. He entered the army as a private and saw 30 months of service in the Pacific, where he won a commission and eventually was promoted to the rank of major. During the war his assignments included the managing of a school that trained soldiers to put on shows. At one point he was in charge of training boxing and baseball teams. He was proud of the fact that his teams won both the boxing and baseball championships of the Western Pacific. Talman returned to Broadway after the war. Two of his more notable postwar roles were in Joseph M. Hyman's and Bernard Hart's production of "Dear Ruth" in 1946 and Henry Adrian's production of "A Young Man's Fancy" in 1947. In 1949 the actor moved to Hollywood and began making films. His first picture was Red, Hot and Blue (1949), in which he played gangster Bunny Harris. Other movie and television roles soon followed. In 1951 his wife sued him for divorce, citing extreme cruelty. She claimed that Talman had criticized her publicly in front of their friends. The divorce was granted in September of 1952 with custody of the couple's three-year-old daughter, Lynda, and 24% of Talman's income awarded to his former spouse. He went on to perform in over 17 films, several of which he starred in. Some of his more notable films include The Racket (1951), Armored Car Robbery (1950), Smoke Signal (1955), Big House, U.S.A. (1955), One Minute to Zero (1952) and Two-Gun Lady (1955). His best known role was as escaped killer and kidnapper Emmett Myers in the classic film noir The Hitch-Hiker (1953), directed by Ida Lupino. He also co-wrote two feature films, I've Lived Before (1956) and Joe Dakota (1957).
Talman married actress Barbara Read in 1952. The couple had two children, Barbie and Billy, but they separated in September of 1959. In a tragic turn of events, his former wife took her own life in December of 1963 by closing up her house and turning on the gas jets. Notes she left behind blamed ill health for her action. In March of 1960 Talman made headlines when he was arrested during a police raid of an alleged "wild nude party" being held at the home of an acquaintance, Richard Reibold. The incident caused CBS to invoke a morals clause in his contract that cost him his job on "Perry Mason." The charges were eventually dropped after a trial that was closely followed by the newspapers and sensationalized by the tabloids. Talman always maintained his innocence, and following the trial the judge in the case criticized the police for arresting him. He remained off the show until December of 1960, when CBS reinstated him after a flood of fan mail from supporters. He married Margaret (Peggy) Flanigan and adopted her two children from a previous marriage, Steve and Debbie. After the "Perry Mason" show ended in 1966, Talman went on a six-week tour of Vietnam to entertain the troops. Upon his return home, it was discovered that he had lung cancer. His last film was The Ballad of Josie (1967), with Doris Day.
Near the end of his life, Talman did something that, while common nowadays, was an extraordinarily courageous thing for an actor to do at that time. A heavy smoker for most of his life, he was angered by a newspaper article he read about actors being afraid to make anti-smoking messages for fear of losing opportunities to make lucrative cigarette commercials. He decided to do something about it. Talman volunteered to make a short film for the American Cancer Society, part of which was shown in late 1968 and 1969 as a television anti-smoking commercial. He was the first actor to ever make such a commercial. When the message was being filmed, Talman knew he was dying, was in a great deal of pain and was in fact under heavy sedation for it. The short film begins, "Before I die I want to do what I can to leave a world free of cancer for my six children . . . ",
William Talman died of cardiac arrest due to complications from lung cancer at West Valley Community Hospital in Encino, California, on August 30, 1968, at the age of 53. Although his life was short, he left an enduring legacy through his writing, his acting, his heroism and his never-ending championing of the underdog.- Actor
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Award-winning American actor, writer and director, Chris Mulkey has a long and diverse career in film, television and stage. Chris is best known for On the Basis of Sex (2018), Whiplash (2014), Captain Phillips (2013), Twin Peaks (1990), Castle Rock (2018), Broken Trail (2006), Any Day Now (1998) and Boardwalk Empire (2010).
Chris grew up in the Midwest, majored in acting at the University of Minnesota and spent four years as a company member of the Children's Theatre of Minneapolis. While in Minnesota, Chris starred in Loose Ends (1975), the Grand Prize winner at the USA film Festival. Chris moved to Hollywood 1975, married actress/artist Karen Landry and they moved to Venice Beach. The couple wrote and starred in Patti Rocks (1988), an independent film that won the Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival. Chris and Karen often worked together in film and on stage in LA, New York, and the Twin Cities.
Chris is also a songwriter with original songs featured in films and television and can be seen playing around the country with his band Chris Mulkey and Deluxe.- Handsome, rugged, versatile and charismatic character actor Tom Atkins was born on November 13, 1935 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Atkins initially became an avid horror film fan in his childhood days; Howard Hawks' immortal classic The Thing from Another World (1951) made an especially strong impression on him as a kid. Tom attended Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and was a member of the Gamma Phi Fraternity. Atkins made his film debut as a rookie police officer in the Frank Sinatra private eye-outing The Detective (1968); it was the first of many police officer roles he has played throughout the years. Tom appeared in two films for director John Carpenter: he is very likable as Nick Castle in the spooky ghost film The Fog (1980) and solid as Rehme in the fantastic futuristic sci-fi/action cult film Escape from New York (1981). Atkins had a nice small role as a disapproving and overbearing father in the wrap-around segments of the immensely enjoyable fright feature anthology Creepshow (1982). He made for a touchingly flawed hero as Dr. Daniel Challis in the unjustly maligned Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982).
Tom gave a smack dead-on-the-money terrific performance as weary, cynical and suicidal Detective Ray Cameron in the delightful Night of the Creeps (1986) (this movie is Tom's personal favorite among all the horror films he has acted in). He was once again excellent as the similarly burnt-out Lt. Frank McCrae in the fine Maniac Cop (1988) and impressive as the guilt-ridden heroin smuggler Michael Hunsaker in the exciting blockbuster Lethal Weapon (1987). Atkins had a recurring part as Lt. Alex Diehl on the television series The Rockford Files (1974); he reprised this character in several spin-off made-for-TV movies. Among the television series Tom has done guest spots on are Oz (1997), Xena: Warrior Princess (1995), Walker, Texas Ranger (1993), The Equalizer (1985), Spenser: For Hire (1985), The Fall Guy (1981), Lou Grant (1977), Baretta (1975) and M*A*S*H (1972). Outside of his film and television work, Atkins has had a long and distinguished stage career. He has acted on Broadway in the plays "The Changing Room" (Tom won a 1973 Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Performer), "Keep It in the Family" and "The Unknown Soldier and His Wife". His off-Broadway credits include "Vikings", "Long Days Journey Into Night", "Whistle in the Dark" and "Nobody Hears a Broken Drum". Tom frequently acts in plays held at the Pittsburgh Public Theater; he has garnered plenty of accolades for his outstanding portrayal of Pittsburgh Steelers founder Art Rooney in the acclaimed one-man show "The Chief". Tom Atkins resides in Peters Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania. - James Allen Preston was born in Washington, District of Columbia, USA on November 13, 1932. He attended public schools in the nation's capital and earned a track scholarship to a college in North Carolina. J. A. married Merilyn Alsop in 1957. His acting career accelerated to recurring TV series roles when he moved from New York to California in 1976. He is best known for roles as Allen Brooks in All's Fair, Ozzie Cleveland in Hill Street Blues, Leo Daltry in Dallas, and Richard Matthews in Santa Barbara. He played many magistrates in films, most notably Judge Julius Alexander Randolph in A Few Good Men. He lives in retirement in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Noble Willingham appeared in more than 30 feature films, including Up Close & Personal (1996), Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994), Chinatown (1974), City Slickers (1991), and The Distinguished Gentleman (1992).
He was born in the small town of Mineola, Texas, east of Dallas. After graduating from North Texas State College in 1953, he earned a master's degree in educational psychology from Baylor University. Willingham was a teacher before following his long-time dream of becoming an actor. Willingham auditioned for a part in the Academy Award-winning film The Last Picture Show (1971), which was filmed in Texas. He won the role, which led to another, in the Academy Award-winning comedy Paper Moon (1973).
On television, he had recurring roles on Home Improvement (1991) and Walker, Texas Ranger (1993), and appeared as a guest star on other television series, including Matlock (1986), L.A. Law (1986), Quantum Leap (1989), Murder, She Wrote (1984), and Northern Exposure (1990), as well as such films and made-for-television movies as Men Don't Tell (1993), Woman with a Past (1992), The Alamo: Thirteen Days to Glory (1987), and Unconquered (1989). - Actor
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Veteran character actor Richard B. Shull was born on February 24, 1929 in Evanston, Illinois and raised in the Midwest. He attended the University of Iowa, then served with the U.S. Army in 1953. Finding work as a stage manager following his release, he finally made his Broadway debut in the Marx Brothers musical bio "Minnie's Boys" starring Shelley Winters on Broadway in 1970. His hangdog demeanor, puffy features and bemused manner proved an excellent scene stealer in comedy roles and he moved easily into film and TV in mid-career. Following his film debut in the very obscure Watch the Birdie (1965), Richard came into his own starting in 1971 with regular roles in such movies as The Anderson Tapes (1971), Klute (1971), Made for Each Other (1971), Slither (1973), Hail (1972), Hearts of the West (1975), The Big Bus (1976), Splash (1983), Garbo Talks (1984), HouseSitter (1992), Trapped in Paradise (1994) and, his last, Private Parts (1997) with Howard Stern. On TV, he was probably best known for his title role on the silly, short-lived series Holmes and Yoyo (1976) as Det. Alexander Holmes, opposite John Schuck who played Yoyo, a robotic cop. The recipient of a Tony nomination for his Broadway work on "Goodtime Charlie" in 1975, Richard's later career included such theater notables as "The Marriage of Bette and Boo" (1985), for which he won an off-Broadway Obie award, and the ever-popular "Victor/Victoria" starring a resurgent Julie Andrews, in 1995. Married four times, Richard was appearing in the stage production of "Epic Proportions" in New York when he suffered a fatal heart attack on October 14, 1999 at age 70.- William Newman made his film debut in the Stuart Rosenberg film Brubaker (1980), starring Robert Redford, and followed this up with The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) opposite Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
Acting roles continued through out the 1980s with roles in the Stephen King horror film Silver Bullet (1985) alongside Gary Busey and Corey Haim, the drama The Mosquito Coast (1986) with Harrison Ford and River Phoenix, and the Chevy Chase comedy Funny Farm (1988). He played a sheriff in the The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James (1986) and appeared in George A. Romero's Monkey Shines (1988) proving that, as a character actor, he has the ability to adapt to various genres.
During the 1990s, work for Newman did not slow down. He appeared in: Leprechaun (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Stephen King's The Stand (1994) opposite Rob Lowe, The Craft (1996) and Touch (1997), the latter two films with Skeet Ulrich.
Newman has since worked steady in film, but is also a familiar face on TV, his roles including Eerie, Indiana (1991) episode 'Mr Chaney', Picket Fences (1992), and My Name Is Earl (2005). - Actor
- Soundtrack
John McMartin was born on 21 August 1929 in Warsaw, Indiana, USA. He was an actor, known for Blow Out (1981), All the President's Men (1976) and No Reservations (2007). He was married to Cynthia Baer. He died on 6 July 2016 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Keene Curtis was born on 15 February 1923 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. He was an actor, known for Sliver (1993), I.Q. (1994) and Heaven Can Wait (1978). He died on 13 October 2002 in Bountiful, Utah, USA.- Actor
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John Cullum was born on 2 March 1930 in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Northern Exposure (1990), All Good Things (2010) and 1776 (1972). He has been married to Emily Frankel since 5 May 1959. They have one child.- This durable, granite-faced actor with the matching steel-edged voice was one of the most interesting and recognisable leads in 1950s and 1960s television. He was born Marvin Jack Richman in South Philadelphia to paper and roofing contractor Benjamin Richman and his wife Yetta Dora (née Peck), the youngest of five siblings. His childhood was -- by his own account -- 'horrendous'. The family was not well off and money was hard to come by. For two years he played football until sidelined by a knee injury. Richman also studied at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, from which he graduated in 1951 as a fully qualified pharmacist. He briefly worked in that field, though his interest had always been in the performing arts, spurred on by regular childhood visits to the nearby Alhambra Theater and performances in high school dramatics. Between 1952 and 1954, Richman trained at the Actor's Studio in New York under Lee Strasberg, having already made his stage debut in 1947. Until 1996, he acted on and off-Broadway and on the West Coast, as well as touring nationally in seminal plays like Mister Roberts, The Rainmaker and A Hatful of Rain. For most of his early career he was billed as 'Mark Richman' but in 1971 changed his moniker to Peter Mark Richman because of his abiding belief in Subud, an Eastern spiritualist philosophy.
An amazingly prolific screen actor, Richman was first brought to Hollywood by famed director William Wyler to appear in Friendly Persuasion (1956). There were a few subsequent big screen outings, but the lean, edgy and coldly handsome actor reserved his best for the small screen. By the early 60s, he starred in his own series at NBC, Cain's Hundred (1961). His character was a former syndicate lawyer, Nick Cain, who, after wanting to 'go straight' is targeted for a hit. When his fiancée gets killed in the crosshairs instead, Cain swears revenge and joins an FBI task force to bring down the top 100 mobsters by various legal means. While the series only ran to 30 episodes, it firmly established Richman in the medium. He was henceforth to alternate between nasty villains, stern authority figures and stoic heroes and become one of the most often killed guys on TV. His numerous roles have included appearances in The Twilight Zone (1959), The Fugitive (1963), The Virginian (1962), Mission: Impossible (1966), Longstreet (1971) (as James Franciscus' cynical boss, Duke Paige), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) (as a rather camp THRUSH operative) and -- having lost none of his edge -- in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). Standouts have included The Probe (1965) in which Richman plays a scientist determined to explore another dimension at any cost, and the first of two guest spots on The Invaders (1967) as an ally of the chief protagonist David Vincent. Richman was almost clipped by a helicopter blade during this episode and lucky to survive the experience. He continued to perform on screen well until his late eighties.
In addition to his work on front of the camera, Richman was something of a Renaissance man: a noted humanitarian (for which he was awarded a Silver Medallion from The Motion Picture and Television Fund) and an accomplished painter from an early age, trained at the Philadelphia Sketch Club. Describing himself as a 'figurative expressionist', Richman has had at least seventeen successful one-man exhibitions on the West Coast and in New York (primarily portraits of oil on canvas). He has also written two novels and several stage plays, of which his solo show 4 Faces and the one act play A Medal for Murray were the most acclaimed. His wife of 67 years was the actress Helen Richman (née Landess). - Actor
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Pat Hingle (real name: Martin Patterson Hingle) was born in Miami, Florida, the son of a building contractor. His parents divorced when Hingle was still in his infancy (he never knew his father) and his mother supported the family by teaching school in Denver. She then began to travel (with her son in tow) in search of more lucrative work; by age 13 Hingle had lived in a dozen cities. The future Tony Award nominee made his "acting debut" in the third grade, playing a carrot in a school play ("At that time it didn't seem like much of a way to make a living!", he recalled). Hingle attended high school in Texas and in 1941 entered the University of Texas, majoring in advertising. After serving in the Navy during WW II, he went back to the university and got involved with the drama department as a way to meet girls. With his wife Alyce (whom he first met at the university), Hingle moved to New York and began to get jobs on the stage and on TV. The apex of his stage career was "J.B." by poet Archibald Macleish, with Hingle in the title role as a 20th-century Job. It was during the run of "J.B." that Hingle took an accidental plunge down the elevator shaft of his New York apartment building, sustaining near-fatal injuries in the 54-foot fall. He was near death for two weeks (and lost the little finger of his left hand); his recovery took more than a year. In more recent years, Hingle has played Commissioner Gordon in the "Batman" movies.
Just prior to his death, he resided in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, with his wife, Julia.- Actor
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Alan Oppenheimer is an American actor from New York City, who started his career in the 1950s. By the 1970s, Oppenheimer started performing voice acting roles. He eventually emerged as one of the most prolific voice actors in the United States, with roles in numerous series and films. His better known roles include the evil emperor Ming the Merciless in "The New Adventures of Flash Gordon" (1979-1982), the tyrant Overlord and his mind-controlling Vizier in "Blackstar" (1981), the arrogant narcissist Vanity Smurf in "The Smurfs" (1981-1989), the evil sorcerer Skeletor, the shape-shifting animal Cringer, the heroic Man-at-Arms, and the aquatic villain Mer-Man in "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" (1983-1985), the pacifistic naturalist Beachcomber, the sailor Seaspray, and the gun-enthusiast and munitions expert Warpath in "The Transformers" (1984-1987), the android wizard Prime Evil in "Ghostbusters" (1986), and the cryptic advisor Merlin in "The Legend of Prince Valiant" (1991-1993).
In 1930, Oppenheimer was born in New York City. His father was the stockbroker Louis Oppenheimer. In 1958, Oppenheimer married costume designer Marianna Elliott. They had three children. He received a divorce at some point prior to the mid-1980s. In 1984, Oppenheimer married the professional tennis player Marilyn Greenwood. Their marriage lasted less than a decade, and ended in a divorce. In 1992, Oppenheimer re-married his first wife Marianna Elliott. Their marriage lasted until her death in 2003. He has remained single since her death.
In 1993, Oppenheimer had a guest star role in "Star Trek: The Next Generation". He played the Klingon cleric Koroth. His character cloned the long-dead messianic warrior Kahless, in hope of restoring his peoples' faith in their religion.In 1994, Oppenheimer played the ill-fated star-ship captain Keogh in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine". After successfully completing a rescue mission, Keogh fell victim to a suicide attack (along with most of his crew). In 1997, Oppenheimer played an unnamed ambassador of the Nezu in "Star Trek: Voyager". His character attempted to enlist the USS Voyager to rescue his planet from destruction. This was Oppenheimer's last role in a "Star Trek" television series. Oppenheimer has mostly avoided live-action roles since 1998.
In 2022, Oppenheimer voiced Skeletor again for an appearance in the film "Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers". By 2022, Oppenheimer was 92-years-old. He has never fully retired, though he has played less prominent roles in recent productions. He remains popular to animation fans for his iconic roles in several classic series.- Actor
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George William Bailey was born on August 27, 1944 in Port Arthur, Texas. Although Bailey started college at Lamar University in Beaumont, he eventually transferred to Texas Tech University in Lubbock. He did not complete his studies. He worked at local theater companies during the mid 1960s until his move to California, sometime in the 1970s. Here he began his work on such television series as Starsky and Hutch (1975), Charlie's Angels (1976) and CHiPs (1977). He eventually got a movie debut role in the Chuck Norris movie A Force of One (1979) before landing the role of Luther Rizzo in M*A*S*H (1972). In 1993, he returned to Texas to study again, this time at Southwest Texas State University. In 1994, he graduated with a Bachelor's degree of Fine Arts, Theatre and, for the 1999-2000 school year, he was the Artist in Residence.
While in his 30s, Bailey went prematurely gray, leading to roles of characters much older than his actual age. Although he prefers dramatic acting, his most famous role will always be that of Captain Thaddeus Harris in Police Academy (1984). Since his goddaughter was diagnosed with leukemia, he has worked voluntarily for the Sunshine Kids Foundation, organizing trips for young cancer sufferers. In 2001, he was announced as the executive director of the foundation.- Logan Ramsey was born on 21 March 1921 in Long Beach, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Walking Tall (1973), Part 2: Walking Tall (1975) and Scrooged (1988). He was married to Anne Ramsey. He died on 26 June 2000 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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David Spielberg was born on 6 March 1939 in Weslaco, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for Christine (1983), Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) and The American Girls (1978). He was married to Janie Glassman Tutelman and Barbara Gladstone. He died on 1 June 2016 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Soundtrack
A tall, sinewy, austere-looking character actor with silver hair, rugged features and a distinctive voice, John Robert Anderson appeared in hundreds of films and television episodes. Immensely versatile, he was at his best submerging himself in the role of historical figures (he impersonated Abraham Lincoln three times and twice baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, men whom he strongly resembled). He was a familiar presence in westerns and science-fiction serials, usually as upstanding, dignified and generally benign citizens (a rare exception was his Ebonite interrogator in The Outer Limits (1963) episode "Nightmare"). He had a high opinion of Rod Serling and was proud to be featured in four episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959), most memorably as the tuxedo-clad angel Gabriel in "A Passage for Trumpet" (doing for Jack Klugman what Henry Travers did for James Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life (1946)).
Known to other youths as 'J.R.', Anderson had a happy childhood, growing up first on a small farm near Clayton, Illinois, and then in the mid-sized town of Quincy where his mother operated a cigar stand. A rangy, outdoorsy type, he excelled at various sports, was a drum major, a member of the track team and the Boy Scouts. During World War II, he served in the Coast Guard, mainly involved in helping protect convoys from U-boat attacks. In 1946, he commenced studies at the University of Iowa, eventually graduating with a Master's degree in Drama. His acting career began on the riverboat 'Goldenrod' (now the oldest surviving Mississippi River Basin showboat in America) and proceeded from there to the Cleveland Playhouse for a year, then the New York stage and summer stock with parts in prestigious plays like "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Home of the Brave". He also occasionally doubled up as a singer on Broadway ("Paint Your Wagon" (1951), "The Emperor's Clothes" (1953)).
Anderson began as a regular television actor during that medium's formative years. In the course of the next four decades, his appearance barely changing, he was consistently excellent wherever he popped up, be it as western lawmen (including a recurring role as Virgil Earp in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955)), as cops, governors, judges and army officers; hard-nosed oil executive Herbert Styles in Dallas (1978), or as kindly patriarch of the Hazard clan in North & South: Book 1, North & South (1985). Though less traveled on the big screen, Anderson was particularly impressive as the furtive second-hand car dealer, 'California Charlie', in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), the ruthless leader of the renegades, Addis, in Day of the Evil Gun (1968) and, reprising his role as Lincoln, in The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977). One of the best all-rounders in the business, Anderson died of a heart attack at his home in Sherman Oaks in August 1992, aged 69.- Pat Corley was born on 1 June 1930 in Dallas, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for Mr. Destiny (1990), Murphy Brown (1988) and Kiss My Grits (1982). He was married to Iris June Carter and Rose Louise Valentine. He died on 11 September 2006 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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- Additional Crew
Roger Til was born on 5 January 1909 in Paris, France. He was an actor, known for Stargate (1994), Topaz (1969) and Brewster's Millions (1985). He died on 28 June 2002 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Michael O'Neill was born on 29 May 1951 in Montgomery, Alabama. He is an actor, known for Dallas Buyers Club (2013), Transformers (2007) and Seabiscuit (2003). He is married to Mary O'Keefe. They have three children.
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Born Eduard Franz Schmidt in Milwaukee, WI, this stern-faced character actor had originally planned to be a commercial artist, but a stint with a local theatrical troupe set him on the road to an acting career. In 1925 he moved to New York City and joined up with a Greenwich Village theatrical group. He returned to Wisconsin in the early 1930s and rejoined his old theatrical company, The Wisconsin Players. He accepted a position with the St. Louis Municipal Opera in 1944 and performed in many different operettas until 1947, when he headed to Hollywood. It didn't take him long to find work, and he was soon appearing in such films as The Magnificent Yankee (1950) and The Ten Commandments (1956), and even did a turn in an interesting low-budget horror flick, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959). All through his film career, however, he kept his hand in the theater, and also had an extensive list of television credits.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Ron Rifkin was born on 31 October 1939 in New York City, New York, USA. He is an actor, known for Alias (2001), L.A. Confidential (1997) and Dragonfly (2002). He has been married to Iva Rifkin since 28 August 1966.- Actor
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- Producer
James McEachin was born on May 20, 1930 in Rennert, North Carolina. At the age of 18 he joined the US Armed Forces and served in the Korean War earning many medals of valor to include the Purple Heart and Silver Star. After leaving the military he spent time as a policeman and then fireman before moving to California and becoming a record producer. After a short stint in the music industry McEachin went into acting and spent many years in film and television. Not yet content he took time away from acting to become an award-winning author and maker of audio books. In 2005 McEachin was appointed as a US Army Reserve Ambassador and spends his free time speaking to soldiers, veterans and America. In late 2006 he produced the film-short Old Glory, a film short for the soldier, veteran and patriot in us all. In 2008 McEachin opened his one-man play, Above the Call; Beyond the Duty at the John F. Kennedy Center, Washington, DC and his since played Casa Manana, Ft. Worth, TX, Brentwood Theater, Los Angeles, CA, and Merle Reskin Theatre, Chicago, IL.
McEachin is married with three grown children and resides in So Cal.- Lanky, balding, intense American character actor of Puerto Rican ancestry, born in New York's Spanish Harlem. Deserted by his parents, Sierra was brought up by an aunt in a rough, predominantly Irish neighbourhood from the age of six. Though briefly tempted by gang life as a teenager, he took up acting classes after accompanying a friend to an audition and ended up playing Shakespearean roles with the National Shakespeare Company and in the New York Shakespeare Festival (playing, among many other parts, Macbeth and Romeo), as well as appearing off-Broadway. He later said "I would have been happy if I continued to do that for the rest of my life". However, in 1969, Sierra decided to move to Hollywood and began acting in episodic television where he was initially typecast as Latino heavies or cops.
Sierra made his breakthrough in the role of Julio Fuentes on NBC's Sanford and Son (1972), his character the perennial butt of bigoted jokes from the show's cantankerous lead, played by Redd Foxx. He then appeared in the original cast of the police sitcom Barney Miller (1975) as the passionate, proudly Puerto Rican Detective Sergeant Chano Amenguale. Written out of the show at the end of season two, he had further recurring roles in serial television, frequently alternating between comedy and drama. These included the short-lived hospital sitcom A.E.S. Hudson Street (1977), the controversial but hugely popular parody Soap (1977) (as South American counter-revolutionary "El Puerco"), Hill Street Blues (1981) (as Assistant District Attorney Alvarez), Zorro and Son (1983) (as garrison commander Paco Pico, one of the hero's chief antagonists), Miami Vice (1984) (as Don Johnson's erstwhile boss Lou Rodriguez, killed off by a hitman in episode four -- in fact, Sierra opted to leave the show because he disliked Miami) and the science fiction series Something Is Out There (1988) (as Captain Victor Maldonado). His numerous, varied and often highly entertaining guest appearances have included supporting roles as a Native American renegade on Gunsmoke (1955), a mutated religious leader living underneath irradiated New York in Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), a professor of anthropology helping Mulder and Scully track down the Jersey Devil in The X-Files (1993), a Cardassian member of the sinister Obsidian Order on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993), an Italian priest in John Carpenter's Vampires (1998) and an Iraqi gunboat captain in the Rambo spoof Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993).
Sierra made his home in Laguna Beach, California, where he died of cancer on January 4 2021 at the age of 84. - A prolific character actor of imposing presence, Robert F. Simon drifted into acting via the Cleveland Playhouse, hoping that this would cure his natural propensity for shyness. After training at the Actor's Studio in New York he had a ten year run on Broadway (1942-52) in which he cut his teeth--both as actor and as stage manager--on anything from drama to musical comedy. In a roundabout way, he was even able to fulfill his original career goal of becoming a traveling salesman: as understudy to the great Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman".
Robert started in films in 1950, but over the years came often to be typecast in stereotypical roles of benevolent authoritarianism or grouchy executive stress. At times he drew unkind reviews from the critics. He was considerably better served by the small screen, where, for some 35 years, he became a familiar face as generals, police captains, doctors, journalists and attorneys. We may remember him most fondly as George Armstrong Custer's disapproving superior, General Alfred Terry, in Custer (1967); as the sympathetic, long-suffering father of Darrin Stephens in Bewitched (1964); or as Maynard M. Mitchell, one of the wackiest of generals ever to have served in the Korean War (or any other war), in M*A*S*H (1972). - Actor
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Wonderfully talented, heavyset character actor (from New York, but regularly playing Southerners) M. Emmet Walsh has made a solid career of playing corrupt cops, deadly crooks, and zany comedic roles since the early 1970s.
Michael Emmet Walsh was born in Ogdensburg, to Agnes Katharine (Sullivan) and Harry Maurice Walsh, a customs agent. He is of Irish descent. Walsh first appeared in a few fairly forgettable roles both on TV and onscreen before cropping up in several well remembered films, including a courtroom police officer in What's Up, Doc? (1972), as the weird Dickie Dunn in Slap Shot (1977), and as a loony sniper hunting Steve Martin in The Jerk (1979). On-screen demand heated up for him in the early 1980s with attention-grabbing work in key hits, including Brubaker (1980), Reds (1981), and as Harrison Ford's police chief in the futuristic thriller Blade Runner (1982). Walsh then turned in a stellar performance as the sleazy, double-crossing private detective in the Joel Coen and Ethan Coen film noir Blood Simple (1984), and showed up again for the Coens as a loud-mouthed sheet-metal worker bugging Nicolas Cage in the hilarious Raising Arizona (1987). As Walsh moved into his fifties and beyond, Hollywood continued to offer him plenty of work, and he has appeared in over 50 movies since passing the half-century mark. His consistent ability to turn out highly entertaining portrayals led film critic Roger Ebert to coin the "Stanton-Walsh Rule," which states that any film starring Walsh or Harry Dean Stanton has to have some merit. And the "M" stands for Michael!- Actor
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John Rubinstein is an actor, director, composer, singer, and teacher. He was born in Los Angeles, California in 1946, the same year his father, the renowned Polish-born concert pianist Artur Rubinstein, became an American citizen. He is the youngest of four children. His sister, Eva, danced and acted on Broadway, originating the role of "Margot" in the original production of "The Diary of Anne Frank"; she later became an internationally known photographer. His brother, Paul, recently retired from his career as a stockbroker in New York; his sister, Alina, is a psychiatrist in Manhattan. John attended St. Bernard's School and Collegiate School in New York City, and then returned to Los Angeles in 1964 to study theater at UCLA. During his college years, he began his professional career as an actor, appearing in 1965 with Howard Keel in Lerner and Loewe's "Camelot" in San Carlos and Anaheim; playing a role in the Civil War film, Journey to Shiloh (1968); and starting his long list of television appearances in shows, such as The Virginian (1962), Dragnet 1967 (1967) and Room 222 (1969). It was also at UCLA that he began composing and orchestrating music: incidental music for theatrical plays, and a musical, "The Short and Turbulent Reign of Roger Ginzburg", with book and lyrics by David Colloff, that won the 1967 BMI Varsity Musical Award as Best Musical.
Rubinstein made his Broadway acting debut in 1972, and received a Theater World Award, for creating the title role in the musical "Pippin", directed by Bob Fosse. In 1980, he won the Tony, Drama Desk, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, and Drama-Logue Awards for his portrayal of "James Leeds" in Mark Medoff's "Children Of A Lesser God", directed by Gordon Davidson. Other Broadway appearances were in Neil Simon's "Fools", and David Rabe's "Hurlyburly", both directed by Mike Nichols; Herman Wouk's "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial", which earned him another Drama Desk nomination; David Henry Hwang's "M. Butterfly"; "Getting Away With Murder", by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by Jack O'Brien, and the musical "Ragtime", directed by Frank Galati. In 2014, he joined the Broadway cast of the hit revival of "Pippin," directed by Diane Paulus, this time playing Pippin's father, Charlemagne. He repeated this role on the national tour throughout the United States, Japan, and Europe in 2014-2016. In 2017 he originated the role of Grandpa Joe in the Broadway musical, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," directed by Jack O'Brien. In 1987, he made his off-Broadway debut at the Roundabout Theater as "Guildenstern" in Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead", with Stephen Lang and John Wood, and subsequently performed in "Urban Blight" and "Cabaret Verboten". In 2005, he received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Lead Actor in a Play, as well as nominations for both the Outer Critics' and Drama League Awards, for his portrayal of "George Simon" in Elmer Rice's "Counselor-at-Law", directed by Dan Wackerman, at the Pecadillo Theatre.
His appearances in regional theaters include the musicals "Camelot" (at various times as "Tom of Warwick", "Mordred" and "King Arthur") and "South Pacific"; the role of "Billy" in David Rabe's "Streamers", "Ariel" in "The Tempest", "Marchbanks" in Shaw's "Candida", both Sergius and Bluntschli (alternating nights with Richard Thomas) in Shaw's "Arms And The Man", several roles in Arnold Weinstein's "Metamorphoses", directed by Paul Sills at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, "Sight Unseen" at L.A.'s Odyssey Theatre, "The Torch-Bearers" and "Our Town" at the Williamstown Theater Festival, Arthur Miller's "Broken Glass" at Monterey Peninsula College, and Warren Smith in "On A Clear Day You Can See Forever" (in a 160-city National Tour). In 1985 He starred in "Merrily We Roll Along" at the La Jolla Playhouse, in a version newly re-written by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by James Lapine. He was the original Andrew Ladd III in A.R. Gurney's "Love Letters" at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, opened the play in New York off-Broadway, and later performed it on Broadway, in San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. He created the role of Molina in "Kiss Of The Spider Woman", the musical by Terrence McNally, John Kander, and Fred Ebb, directed by Harold Prince, and the role of Kenneth Hoyle in Jon Robin Baitz's "Three Hotels". In 1997, he played Tateh in the American premiere run of the musical "Ragtime", by Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty, and Lynn Ahrens, directed by Frank Galati, at the Shubert Theater in Los Angeles, receiving both an L. A. Drama Critics Circle nomination and a Drama-Logue Award as Best Actor in a Musical, and continued in the show both in Vancouver and on Broadway. He appeared opposite Donald Sutherland in Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's "Enigmatic Variations" at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, and at the Savoy Theatre in London's West End; played the Wizard of Oz in the hit musical "Wicked", by Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz, directed by Joe Mantello, at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles for 18 months; and starred with John Schuck and Ken Page in the world premiere of a musical version of "Grumpy Old Men" in Winnipeg at the Manitoba Theatre Centre.
His 24 feature films include Atlas Shrugged Part II; Hello, I Must Be Going, which opened the 2012 Sundance Festival; 21 Grams; Red Dragon; Mercy; Another Stakeout; Someone To Watch Over Me; Daniel; The Boys From Brazil; Rome and Jewel; Choose Connor; Sublime; Jekyll; Kid Cop; Getting Straight; Zachariah; The Trouble with Girls; Journey To Shiloh; and The Car. He received an Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of Jeff Maitland III in the ABC series "Family", a role he played for five years; and he starred for two years with Jack Warden in the CBS series "Crazy Like A Fox". He has acted in over 200 television films and series episodes, including Arthur Miller's "The American Clock" (CableAce Award Nomination), "Feud!", "When We Rise", "Mrs. Harris", "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town", "Norma And Marilyn", "The Sleepwalker", "Working Miracles", "In My Daughter's Name", "Perry Mason", "Voices Within: The Lives Of Truddi Chase", "The Two Mrs. Grenvilles", "Skokie", "Movieola", "Roots: The Next Generations", and "A Howling In The Woods". He has played recurring parts on "This Is Us", "The Fosters", "Perception", "The Mentalist", "Desperate Housewives", "Parenthood", "No Ordinary Family", "Greek", "The Wizards of Waverly Place", "Dirty Sexy Money", "Day Break", "Angel", "The Guardian", "The Practice", "Star Trek: Enterprise", "Girlfriends", "Robocop: the Series", "The Young and the Restless", and "Barbershop."
Mr. Rubinstein has composed, orchestrated, and conducted the musical scores for five feature films, including Jeremiah Johnson (directed by Sidney Pollack) and The Candidate, (directed by Michael Ritchie), both starring Robert Redford; Paddy (with Milo O'Shea); The Killer Inside Me (with Stacy Keach); and Kid Blue (with Dennis Hopper); and for over 50 television films, among them the Peabody Award-winning "Amber Waves", "The Dollmaker" (starring Jane Fonda), "A Walton Wedding", "The Ordeal Of Patty Hearst", "Choices Of The Heart", and "Emily, Emily", as well as the weekly themes for "Family" and "China Beach".
He spent six years as host for the radio program "Carnegie Hall Tonight", broadcast on l80 stations in the United States and Canada, and two years as the keyboard player for the jazz-rock group Funzone. He has recorded over 100 audio books, including 25 of the best-selling Alex Delaware novels by Jonathan Kellerman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Independence Day" by Richard Ford, Tom Clancy's "Debt Of Honor" and "Op Center", and E. L. Doctorow's "City of God", "World's Fair", and "All The Time In The World".
In 1987, Rubinstein made his directorial debut at the Williamstown Theater Festival, staging Aphra Behn's "The Rover", with Christopher Reeve and Kate Burton; the following season he directed the first American-cast production of Christopher Hampton's "Les Liaisons Dangereuses", with Dwight Schultz and Dianne Wiest. Off-Broadway, he directed the New York premieres of "Phantasie", by Sybille Pearson, and "Nightingale", by Elizabeth Diggs; and the world premiere of A. R. Gurney's "The Old Boy", with Stephen Collins. At the Cape Playhouse in Massachusetts, he staged "Wait Until Dark", with Hayley Mills and William Atherton. For NYU, he directed productions of "The Three Sisters" and "Macbeth"; for UCLA, "Company"; and for USC, "Brigadoon", "Into The Woods", "On The Town", "City of Angels", and "The Most Happy Fella". In Los Angeles, at Interact Theatre Company, of which he has been a member since 1992, he co-directed and starred in the revival of Elmer Rice's Counsellor-At-Law, winning Drama-Logue Awards and L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards in both categories, as well as Ovation Awards for Ensemble Acting and Sound Design; the production itself won 22 awards; he also directed and acted in Sondheim and Lapine's "Into The Woods" and "A Little Night Music", and Meredith Willson's "The Music Man", and also directed Sheridan's "The Rivals" and Frank Loesser's "Guys and Dolls". For television, he directed the CBS Schoolbreak Special "A Matter Of Conscience", which won the Emmy Award for Best Children's Special in 1990, an episode of the CBS series "Nash Bridges", the ABC AfterSchool Special miniseries "Summer Stories", and three episodes of the TV series "High Tide".
In 2011, Rubinstein provided commentary for the online web-casting of the XIVth International Tchaikovsky Competition, a classical music competition held in Moscow. He teaches courses in musical theater audition and acting for the camera, and directs the annual spring musical, at the University of Southern California.
He is married to Bonnie Burgess, and has five children: Jessica, Michael (the actor Michael Weston), Peter, Jacob, and Max.- Byron Morrow was born on 8 September 1911 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Star Trek (1966), Black Sheep Squadron (1976) and The Mysterians (1957). He was married to Zelda Maxine Friend and Dorothy Nicholas Morrow. He died on 11 May 2006 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Duke Media Entertainment, led by actor, director, producer, writer and humanitarian, Bill Duke, is dedicated to bringing quality Edutainment to audiences around the globe. Formerly Yagya Productions, Duke Media has successfully produced critically acclaimed film and television content for more than 30 years. Additionally, Duke Media is in process of expanding the brand to involve itself in the development of new media technologies, i.e. cellphone apps, games, and virtual world experiences. Since the early 70s, Bill Duke along with industry veterans Michael Shultz and Gordon Parks, have long paved the way for African Americans in the industry.
Mr. Duke excels in front of and behind the camera. His acting and directing credits are extensive and include stints on such ground breaking television series as Falcon Crest, Fame, Hill Street Blues, Knotts Landing, Dallas, and New York Undercover. His feature credits include Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, Get Rich or Die Trying, Deep Cover, Hoodlum, Predator, Menace II Society and Not Easily Broken, to name a few. He has recently completed production on, Blexicans, a new television pilot that takes a comedic look at a mixed race family. His documentaries, Dark Girls and Light Girls, both NAACP Image Award nominees, aired on OWN and were two of the most successful documentaries on the network.
Bill Duke's invaluable contributions to the industry have been recognized by both his peers and the entertainment community. Appointed by former President Bill Clinton to the National Endowment of Humanities, he was appointed to the Board of the California State Film Commission by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and he has been honored by the Directors Guild of America with a Lifetime Achievement Tribute.- John Lehne was born on 27 October 1925 in Newark, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for Serpico (1973), Family Plot (1976) and Gable and Lombard (1976). He was married to Helen Celina Herbert and Dee Timberlake. He died on 6 July 2007 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Actor of Puerto Rican descent who gained fame making many memorable films in the 1980s and 1990s due to his villainous physical appearance. Guzmán was born in Cayey, Puerto Rico on August 28, 1956 and raised in New York City's Greenwich Village and the surrounding Lower East Side neighborhood. His mother Rosa worked in a hospital and Benjamin Cardona, his stepfather, was a TV repairman. Guzman presently resides in Vermont with his wife and kids.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Joe Mantell was an American actor of Austrian-Jewish descent. His original last name was "Mantel", but he added an additional l at the end. He was once nominated for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor .
In 1915, Mantell was born in Brooklyn, New York City. His parents were immigrants from the region of Galicia in Eastern Europe. At the time of their immigration, Galicia was part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (1772-1918), one of the crown-lands of the Austrian Empire.
Mantell started appearing in films as an uncredited extra c. 1949. His first credited role was that of Dexter Freeman in the adventure film "Barbary Pirate" (1949), which depicted the Barbary Wars (1801-1805, 1815).
Mantell first received critical attention for his role as Angie in the romantic drama "Marty" (1955). Angie is depicted as the best friend of protagonist Marty Piletti (played by Ernest Borgnine), but discourages Marty from pursuing marriage with his love interest Clara (played by Betsy Blair). For this role as an obstacle to love, Mantell received his only nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The award was instead won by rival actor Jack Lemmon (1925-2001).
Mantell continued playing minor and supporting roles in films. His film appearances included the film noir "Storm Center" (1956), the political drama "Beau James" (1957), the military-themed comedy "The Sad Sack" (1957), and the World War II-themed comedy-drama "Onionhead".
Mantell was cast frequently in guest star roles in television. He received the starring role of gangster Jackie Rhoades in the episode of "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" (1960) of the anthology series "The Twilight Zone", co-stared as Pole, the robot fighter Battling Maxo's co-owner in the episode "Steel" (1963) of the same series. He played the failed assassin Giuseppe Zangara (1900-1933) in the two part episode "The Unhired Assassin" (1960) of the crime drama series "The Untouchables".
Mantell had his first recurring role in television when playing Ernie Briggs in six episodes of the sitcom "Pete and Gladys" (1960-1962). He had another recurring role as private detective Albie Loos in four episodes of the detective series "Mannix" (1967-1975).
In 1974, Mantell had one of his most recognizable roles in the neo-noir "Chinatown" (1974), as the character Lawrence Walsh . Walsh is depicted as an associate of the private investigator J. J. "Jake" Gittes (played by Jack Nicholson), and plays a significant role in the film's conclusion, Years later, Mantell returned to the role of Walsh in the sequel films "The Two Jakes" (1990). This happened to be Mantell's last appearance in a film.
Mantell retired from acting in 1990, at the age of 75. He lived in retirement until his death in September 2010. He died in Tarzana, California. He was 94-years-old at the time of death, one of the oldest living actors.- Prolific, sharp-featured American character actor of somewhat skeletal and dishevelled appearance, accentuated later in his career by thinning hair and a scraggly goatee. A former theology student, Brocco began his career playing leading roles in stock theatre. He subsequently honed his craft touring France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland, before returning to the U.S. in 1947, eventually joining the Federal Theater Group. On films from as early as 1932, he was at his most effective portraying eccentrics, scientists, small-time crooks, alcoholics, or nervous, downtrodden little men. His particular forte lay in the genre of science-fiction, where he graced the small screen on numerous occasions as assorted victims (The Outer Limits (1963), The Time Tunnel (1966), The Invaders (1967)) or aliens (Lost in Space (1965), Star Trek (1966), The Twilight Zone (1959)). His occasional film appearances include a dementia patent in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and a rare starring role in the black comedy Homebodies (1974), late in his career. As a liberal-minded individual, Brocco was briefly blacklisted during the McCarthy era, but this did not prove detrimental to his career in the long run.
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Best recalled as the eldest son and first member of the "Bonanza" Cartwright clan to permanently leave the Ponderosa in the hopes of greener acting pastures, dark, deep-voiced and durably handsome Pernell Roberts' native roots lay in Georgia. Born Pernell Elvin Roberts, Jr. on May 18, 1928, in North Carolina and moved to Waycross as an infant, he was singing in local USO shows while still in high school (where he appeared in plays and played the horn). He attended both Georgia Tech and the University of Maryland but flunked out of both colleges, with a two-year stint as a Marine stuck somewhere in between. He eventually decided to give acting a chance and supported himself as a butcher, forest ranger, and railroad riveter during the lean years while pursuing his craft.
On stage from the early 1950s, he gained experience in such productions as "The Adding Machine," "The Firebrand" and "Faith of Our Fathers" before spending a couple of years performing the classics with the renowned Arena Stage Company in Washington, DC. Productions there included "The Taming of the Shrew" (as Petruchio), "The Playboy of the Western Word," "The Glass Menagerie," "The Importance of Being Earnest," and "Twelfth Night." He made his Broadway debut in 1955 with "Tonight in Samarkind" and that same year won the "Best Actor" Drama Desk Award for his off-Broadway performance as "Macbeth," which was immediately followed by "Romeo and Juliet" as Mercutio. Other Broadway plays include "The Lovers" (1956) with Joanne Woodward, "A Clearing in the Woods" (1957) with Kim Stanley, a return to Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" (1957) and "The Duchess of Malfi" (1957). He returned to Broadway fifteen years later as the title role opposite Ingrid Bergman in "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" (1972).
Pernell then headed for Hollywood and found minor roles in films before landing the pivotal role of Ben Cartwright's oldest and best-educated son Adam in the Bonanza (1959) series in 1959. The series made Roberts a bona fide TV star, while the program itself became the second longest-running TV western (after "Gunsmoke") and first to be filmed in color. At the peak of his and the TV show's popularity, Pernell, displeased with the writing and direction of the show, suddenly elected not to renew his contract and left at the end of the 1964-1965 season to the utter dismay of his fans. The show continued successfully without him, but a gap was always felt in the Cartwright family by this abrupt departure. The story line continued to leave open the possibility of a return if desired, but Pernell never did.
With his newfound freedom, Roberts focused on singing and the musical stage. One solo album was filled with folks songs entitled "Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies." Besides such standard roles in "Camelot" and "The King and I," he starred as Rhett Butler to Lesley Ann Warren's Scarlett O'Hara in a musical version of "Gone with the Wind" that did not fare well, and appeared in another misguided musical production based on the life of "Mata Hari." During this period he became an avid civil rights activist and joined other stalwarts such as Dick Gregory, Joan Baez and Harry Belafonte who took part in civil rights demonstrations during the 60s, including the Selma March.
The following years were rocky. He never found a solid footing in films with roles in rugged, foreign films such as Tibetana (1970) [The Kashmiri Run], Four Rode Out (1969), making little impression. He maintained a viable presence in TV, however, with parts in large-scale mini-series and guest shots on TV helping to keep some momentum. In 1979 he finally won another long-running series role (and an Emmy nomination) as Trapper John, M.D. (1979) in which he recreated the Wayne Rogers TV M*A*S*H (1972) role. Pernell was now heavier, bearded and pretty close to bald at this juncture (he was already wearing a toupee during his early "Bonanza" years), but still quite virile and attractive. The medical drama co-starring Gregory Harrison ran seven seasons.
The natural-born Georgia rebel was a heavily principled man and spent a life-time of work fighting racism, segregation, and sexism, notably on TV. He was constantly at odds with the "Bonanza" series writers of his concerns regarding equality. He also kept his private life private. Married and divorced three times, he had one son, Jonathan Christopher, by first wife Vera. Jonathan was killed in a motorcycle crash in 1989. In the 1990s, Pernell starred in his last series as host of FBI: The Untold Stories (1991). It had a short life-span.
Retiring in the late 1990s, Roberts was diagnosed with cancer in 2007 and died about two years later at age 81 on January 24, 2010, survived by fourth wife Eleanor Criswell. As such, the rugged actor, who never regretted leaving the "Bonanza" series, managed to outlive the entire Cartwright clan (Dan Blocker died in 1972; Lorne Greene in 1987); and Michael Landon in 1991).- Actor
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Dooley was a keen cartoonist as a youth and drew a strip for a local paper in Parkersburg, West Virginia. He joined the Navy before discovering acting while at college. Moving to New York, he soon found success as a regular on the stage. Also having an interest in comedy, Dooley was a stand-up comedian for five years, as well as having brief stints as a magician and as a clown. Unafraid of trying different areas of entertainment, he was also a writer. After appearing in many movies, including most notably Popeye (1980), Dooley has appeared as recurrent characters on various shows, including My So-Called Life (1994), Dream On (1990), Grace Under Fire (1993), and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993).- Actor
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Charles Napier was born in the tiny community of Mt. Union, near Scottsville, Allen County, Kentucky, to Linus Pitts Napier, a tobacco farmer and postman, and his wife, Sara, on April 12, 1936. He attended public school in Scottsville. After graduating high school, he enlisted in the Army in 1954. He rose to the rank of E-5 (Sgt.) while serving as company clerk with Company A 511th Airborne Infantry, 11th Airborne Division. He was a lively character actor who usually played edgy military types and menacing bad guys. His film debut was in Russ Meyer's Cherry, Harry & Raquel! (1969).
Napier went on appearing in other Meyer movies, including the homicidal Harry Sledge in Supervixens (1975) and also became a regular playing smaller roles for Jonathan Demme. His memorable portrayals of tough guys included the scheming intelligence officer in Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) and the short-tempered front man in The Blues Brothers (1980).- Actor
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Respected character actor whose on-screen work included everything from Shakespeare to Dick Tracy (1990) (his last film). After a long apprenticeship in the theatre, the 38-year-old Wolfe finally debuted in films in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), recreating his Broadway role. He then toiled away steadily in Hollywood for the next several decades, working as a supporting player in literally hundreds of film and TV productions well into his 90s. Though capable of a wide range of parts, Wolfe's gentle, patrician manner found him most often cast as a butler, a minister or a kindly doctor. He finally gained his greatest fame at the age of 85, effortlessly stealing scenes as Mama Carlson's doddering yet feisty butler "Hirsch" in several episodes of the MTM sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati (1978).- Actor
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Keith David is a classically trained actor, winning 3 Emmys out of 6 nominations as well as being nominated for a Tony award. He starred in the recently concluded TV series "Greenleaf" for Oprah Winfrey's OWN network. Upcoming films include "Horizon Line" with Allison Williams ("Get Out") and "Black As Night," for Amazon.
In "Greenleaf" Keith portrayed 'Bishop James Greenleaf', the charismatic and God-fearing leader of the Calvary Fellowship and the patriarch of the family. The series followed the unscrupulous world of the Greenleaf family, their scandalous secrets and lies, and their sprawling Memphis megachurch. The series was praised for its push and pull dynamic, its hypocrisy, and its compelling characters. Keith's stellar performance was best stated by The Hollywood Reporter, "... Keith David ...is perfectly cast as Bishop Greenleaf. Whether he's playing to the congregation at the altar or getting conspiratorial in a smaller venue, this is an unusually great and meaty role for David."
On the big screen, Keith co-starred with Chadwick Boseman in "21 Bridges". Prior credits include "Night School" with Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish and "Tales from the Hood 2". Additional titles include the Academy award-winning films "Crash" and "Platoon." He is widely recognized for appearing in the highly-acclaimed films Disney's "The Princess and the Frog", "Requiem for a Dream", "Men at Work", "They Live", "There's Something About Mary", and "The Thing."
Other recent TV credits include an upcoming appearance on "Creepshow," "NCIS: New Orleans", "Blackish," MacGyver", and "Fresh Off the Boat". Earlier credits include "Community", "Enlisted", "ER", and "Mister Roger's Neighborhood". On Broadway, Keith starred in August Wilson's "Seven Guitars" and "Jelly's Last Jam" for which he garnered a Tony Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical.
Keith's work as a voice actor has made him a household name. His rich and powerful voice has been featured in national commercials, award shows, documentaries, video games, and animation. His work in narration has earned him three Emmys for Ken Burns' "Jackie Robinson", "The War", and "Unforgivable Blackness - The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson". Some of his other voice acting credits include countless fan favorites such as "Adventure Time", "Bojack Horseman," "Rick & Morty", "Spawn", and "Gargoyles". Keith has lent his voice to many video game titles. Recently he portrayed the character "Spawn" in the reboot of the "Mortal Kombat" video game. Other appearances include the "Halo" series (games 2, 3, and 5), the "Saint's Row" series (games 1, 2, and 4), as well as the "Mass Effect" series (games 1,2, and 3).
Born and raised in New York by his parents Lester and Dolores, Keith became interested in the arts at a very young age. After appearing in his school's production of "The Wizard of Oz", he knew this was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He enrolled in New York's High School of the Performing Arts and continued his studies at The Juilliard School. After graduation, he was immediately hired by Joseph Papp as an understudy for the role of Tullus Aufidius in William Shakespeare's "Coriolanus." His work with Mr. Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival launched his incredible career.
In addition to his versatile acting and voiceover work, Keith is also a remarkable singer. He's has been touring in 2 shows, "Too Marvelous for Words", in which he portrays the legendary singer Nat King Cole, and a show about the incredible Blues singer Joe Williams, "Here's to Life."
Twitter: @ImKeithDavid Instagram: @SilverThroat Facebook: @ImKeithDavid- Actor
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Reginald VelJohnson was born on 16 August 1952 in Queens, New York, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Die Hard (1988), Ghostbusters (1984) and Die Hard 2 (1990).- Boyd Irwin was born on 12 March 1880 in Brighton, East Sussex, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Captain Blood (1924), The Three Musketeers (1921) and The Luck of Geraldine Laird (1920). He died on 22 January 1957 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Tall American character actor with distinctively dark eyebrows and graying hair. The son of an engineer, he was a respected performer on Broadway for thirty years, beginning in 1934. He had a reputation for being a consummate professional and a great storyteller. Despite his military bearing and aristocratic manner, Bourneuf was versatile in just about any part, ranging from Shakespeare to comedy and musicals. He was in the original cast of Eva Le Gallienne's American Repertory Theatre. In 1947, Bourneuf received a special award for his performances from the New York Drama Critics Circle.
Feature films rarely did justice to his abilities as an actor, though he had a rare chance to shine as a grand-standing district attorney in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956). He was, however, better served by television, appearing in numerous guest spots from as early as 1949. - Jon Lormer was born on 7 May 1906 in Canton, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for Creepshow (1982), The Twilight Zone (1959) and Getting Straight (1970). He died on 19 March 1986 in Burbank, California, USA.
- Joseph Crehan was born on 15 July 1883 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was an actor, known for Black Magic (1944), Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947) and Kid Galahad (1937). He was married to Dorothy R. Lord. He died on 15 April 1966 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actor
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- Soundtrack
George Harris Kennedy, Jr. was born on February 18, 1925 in New York City, to Helen (Kieselbach), a ballet dancer, and George Harris Kennedy, an orchestra leader and musician. Following high school graduation, Kennedy enlisted in the United States Army in 1943 with the hope to become a fighter pilot in the Army Air Corps. Instead, he wound up in the infantry, served under General George S. Patton and distinguished himself with valor. He won two Bronze Stars and four rows of combat and service ribbons.
A World War II veteran, Kennedy at one stage in his career cornered the market at playing tough, no-nonsense characters who were either quite crooked or possessed hearts of gold. Kennedy notched up an impressive 200+ appearances in both television and films, and was well respected within the Hollywood community. He started out on television Westerns in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), Rawhide (1959), Maverick (1957), Colt .45 (1957), among others) before scoring minor roles in films including Lonely Are the Brave (1962), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and The Flight of the Phoenix (1965).
The late 1960s was a very busy period for Kennedy, and he was strongly in favor with casting agents, appearing in Hurry Sundown (1967), The Dirty Dozen (1967) and scoring an Oscar win as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Cool Hand Luke (1967). The disaster film boom of the 1970s was also kind to Kennedy and his talents were in demand for Airport (1970) and the three subsequent sequels, as a grizzled police officer in Earthquake (1974), plus the buddy/road film Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) as vicious bank robber Red Leary.
The 1980s saw Kennedy appear in a mishmash of roles, playing various characters; however, Kennedy and Leslie Nielsen surprised everyone with their comedic talents in the hugely successful The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988), and the two screen veterans exaggerate themselves again, in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991) and Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994). From 1988-1991, he also played Ewing family nemesis Carter McKay on the CBS prime-time soap opera Dallas (1978).
Kennedy also played President Warren G. Harding in the miniseries Backstairs at the White House (1979) and had a long standing role on the CBS daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless (1973). He remained busy in Hollywood and lent his distinctive voice to the animated Cats Don't Dance (1997) and the children's action film Small Soldiers (1998). A Hollywood stalwart for nearly 50 years, he is one of the most enjoyable actors to watch on screen. His last role was in the film The Gambler (2014), as Mark Wahlberg's character's grandfather.
George Kennedy died of natural causes in Middleton, Idaho on February 28, 2016, only ten days after his 91st birthday.- Arthur Space was born on 12 October 1908 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for The Big Noise (1944), The Bat People (1974) and Terror at Red Wolf Inn (1972). He was married to Mary (Mollie) Campbell. He died on 13 January 1983 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Ann Doran appeared in over 500 motion pictures and 1000 television shows, by one count. Starting at the age of four, she appeared in hundreds of silent films under assumed names so her father's family wouldn't find out. Rarely a featured player (although Charles Starrett's Rio Grande (1938) is a notable exception), she provided many a wonderful performance in support of the leads.- Actor
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Lloyd Corrigan was born on 16 October 1900 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and The Chase (1946). He died on 5 November 1969 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Producer
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This tall, sandy-haired, mustachioed actor from Texas, born Justus McQueen, adopted the name of the character he portrayed in his first film, Battle Cry (1955). Jones, with his craggy, gaunt looks, first appeared in minor character roles in plenty of WWII films including The Young Lions (1958), The Naked and the Dead (1958), Hell Is for Heroes (1962) and Battle of the Coral Sea (1959). However, 1962 saw him team up with maverick director Sam Peckinpah for the first of Jones' five appearances in his films. Ride the High Country (1962) saw Jones play one of the lowlife Hammond brothers. Next he appeared alongside Charlton Heston in Major Dundee (1965), then Peckinpah cast him, along with his real-life friend Strother Martin, as one of the scummy, murderous bounty hunters in The Wild Bunch (1969). Such was the chemistry between Jones and Martin that Peckinpah teamed them again the following year in The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), and Jones' final appearance in a Peckinpah film was in another western, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973). Two years later Jones directed the cult post-apocalyptic film A Boy and His Dog (1975) starring a young Don Johnson. He has continued to work in Hollywood, and as the lines on his craggy face have deepened, he turns up more frequently as crusty old westerners, especially in multiple TV guest spots. He turned in an interesting performance as a seemingly good ol' boy Nevada cowboy who was actually a powerful behind-the-scenes player in state politics who leaned on Robert De Niro's Las Vegas mob gambler in Martin Scorsese's violent and powerful Casino (1995).- Claude King was born on 15 January 1875 in Hackney, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Behind the Mask (1932), London After Midnight (1927) and Bella Donna (1923). He was married to Evelyn Hall and Evelyn Walsh Hall. He died on 18 September 1941 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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- Producer
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Perhaps best known for his chilling performance as "Candyman", the charismatic 6' 5" actor Tony Todd has consistently turned in compelling performances since his debut in the fantasy film Sleepwalk (1986). Born in Washington, D.C., Todd spent two years on a scholarship at the University of Connecticut, which, in turn, led to a scholarship from the renowned Eugene O'Neill National Theatre Institute. It proved to be the foundation for intense stints at the Hartman Conservatory in Stamford, Connecticut and the Trinity Square Repertory Theatre Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island. Todd appeared in dozens of classical and many experimental plays, yet still managed to find time to teach playwriting to high school students in the Hartford public school system.
Todd's extensive credits exemplify his versatility. They include such film classics as The Rock (1996), The Crow (1994), Lean on Me (1989), Bird (1988), Night of the Living Dead (1990), Final Destination (2000), the multiple Academy Award winning Oliver Stone film Platoon (1986) and The Secret (2000), which was nominated and screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Todd's recent films include the independent film Silence (2002) and Final Destination 2 (2003). He has had prominent guest starring roles in numerous critically-acclaimed television series, including recurring on Boston Public (2000), For the People (2002) and The District (2000), as well as NYPD Blue (1993), Smallville (2001), Law & Order (1990), Crossing Jordan (2001), Homicide: Life on the Street (1993) and The X-Files (1993). Todd recurred on three incarnations of "Star Trek" and guest starred on Xena: Warrior Princess (1995) and episodes of CSI: Miami (2002) and Andromeda (2000). His television movies include starring roles in True Women (1997), Black Fox (1995), Butter (1998), Ivory Hunters (1990), Babylon 5: A Call to Arms (1999) and Control Factor (2003).
Todd's considerable theatre credits include the world premiere of award-winning playwright August Wilson's "King Hedley II", where he originated the title role in Pittsburgh, Seattle and Boston. Variety commented: "Todd's King Hedley dominates the stage. A sour-faced mix of rage and resolve, anger and vulnerability. Todd's Hedley was a memorable tour-de-force even on opening." He also received a coveted Helen Hayes nomination for his performance in Athol Fugard's "The Captain's Tiger at La Jolla, the Manhattan Theatre Club and the Kennedy Center. Other theatre credits include "Les Blancs", "Playboy of the West Indies", "Othello", "Zooman and the Sign", award-winning playwright Keith Glover's "Dark Paradise", "Aida" (on Broadway), and most recently, "Levee James" for the prestigious Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference and The New Dramatist Guild.- Actor
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Most familiar to TV audiences as no-nonsense Sheriff Roy Coffee on the long-running western series Bonanza (1959), Ray Teal was one of the most versatile character actors in the business. In his almost 40-year career he played everything from cops to gunfighters to sheriffs to gangsters to a judge at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials. He could play a kindly grandfather in one film and a heartless, sadistic killer in the next, and be equally believable in both roles. A native of Grand Rapids, Michigan, he was a musician who worked his way through college playing the sax in local bands. At UCLA in the 1920s he formed his own band and led it until 1936. He appeared in several films in minor bit parts, and it wasn't until 1938 that he had a somewhat more substantial part, in Western Jamboree (1938). The next year he had a bigger part in the splashy Spencer Tracy adventure Northwest Passage (1940) as one of Rogers' Rangers. He appeared in serials, westerns, crime dramas, costume epics (he even appeared as Little John in The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1946)!), war pictures, had a small but memorable part as an anti-Semitic blowhard who gets knocked into a store display by Dana Andrews in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and a bigger and more memorable part as one of Spencer Tracy's fellow judges in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). He also made many appearances on TV, in everything from The Lone Ranger (1949) to Green Acres (1965). He died of natural causes in 1976.- Emile Meyer was born on 18 August 1910 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He was an actor, known for Paths of Glory (1957), Shane (1953) and Sweet Smell of Success (1957). He died on 19 March 1987 in Covington, Louisiana, USA.
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Elder brother of the director John Ford and himself a screen director (and John's erstwhile mentor) until the advent of sound. He had also acted in his own films and those of other directors, but turned to acting exclusively circa 1929. As actor, he would provide convincing portrayals of men of authority - men sometimes ruthless if not downright unsavory. (See him as the Republican judge in his brother John's The Informer (1935).) But he also had an ample feel for light comedy. (See him in John's The Quiet Man (1952), as the village elder who - almost in the manner of slapstick - rouses himself from his very deathbed to witness the film's donnybrook dénouement.)- Stuart's entertainment career began as a child in school, acting and singing in school plays, then in the late 1920's he began entertaining professionally as Larry Sothern. He was the lead singer in the Will Bradley Orchestra, as well as the John Phillip Souza Band, going on to have his own band, the Larry Sothern Orchestra. While in Florida he joined the Theater of Fifteen, appearing in a number of plays that toured the US in the late 30's and early '40's. Although Larry had been a singer all his life, he wanted very much to be an actor, and at last he saw in the Fifteen an opportunity to gain experience in the theater. He took a small part in "Give My Regards to Broadway," which ran four weeks instead of the usual two, and gave him additional time to work on his next part, which was a leading role in a new play, "U. S. Ark." He worked intensively and came through with an amazingly professional performance as Fanchon, the Communist. Larry performed in six plays over nine months in 1940. U.S. Ark, The Texas Ranger, The Gentle People, Kiss the Boys Goodbye, A Man From the Band and Battle of Angels. A Man From the Band proved to be a leading role for Larry. He played Ernie Craig, a band leader who marries a socialite.
In mid 1941 Larry joined the cast of "My Sister Eileen". The play was on Broadway for better than a year with the original cast, but a different cast played Chicago for over eight months, this was the cast that Larry was with. After Chicago, the play went on the road for approximately one year, performing at St. Louis, Decatur, Cincinnati, Detroit, Dayton, Minneapolis and Lansing, then traveling to the west coast to Oakland and Los Angeles, closing sometime in 1942.
World War II put a hold on Larry / Stuart's career when he was called into the U. S. Army in 1942 under his birth name of Clarence Maxwell, with Basic Training, as well as his advanced training with the 55th Field Artillery Division being accomplished at Camp Roberts, San Louis Obispo County. After returning from an over-seas assignment, he was discharged in November of 1944, with the rank of Sergeant.
As with a number of actors and actresses, Larry Sothern changed his name to Stuart Randall and became an actor with his first movie being Bells of Coronado, starring Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, which was released in January of 1950,
Some of Stuart's movies are Storm Warning, with Ronald Reagan, Wells Fargo Gunmaster, The Hoodlum, Carbine Williams, Pony Soldier, with Tyrone Powers, Pony Express, with Charlton Heston, Southwest Passage, starring Rod Cameron, The Far Country with Jimmie Stewart, Indestructible Man with Lon Chaney, Run of the Arrow, Verboten!, Frontier Uprising, with Jim Davis, Taggart, and True Grit, with John Wayne.
He appeared in nearly all of the popular western television series of the 50's, 60's and 70's at least once, some of them numerous times, including: three times on the Lone Ranger; twice on Zane Grey Theater; twice on Colt .45; five times as a series regular on Cimarron City; three times on Sugarfoot; five times in Restless Gun; three times on The Texan; Wagon Train twice; seven appearances in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp; twice each on The Rifleman, Wanted: Dead or Alive and Lawman; three in Riverboat; twice on Death Valley Days; seven times on The Virginian and six times on Bonanza and of course his most memorable appearance in Laramie, thirty-four times as Sheriff Mort Cory as well as two other appearances earlier in the series, portraying other characters.
Stuart also appeared in non-western series, including: Lassie eleven times; Tightrope twice; Navy Log twice; twice in Wire Service; Schlitz Playhouse five times; The Star and the Story twice; The Loretta Young Show three times; Public Defender three times; and twice on Waterfront.
Stuart's entertainment career spanned forty-five years, with his last screen appearance being on the television series Alias Smith and Jones - Dreadful Sorry Clementine, Season 2, Episode 10, in November, 1971.
Stuart passed away at his home in Victorville, California on June 22, 1988. - Frances Lee McCain was born on 28 July 1944 in York, Pennsylvania, USA. She is an actress, known for Back to the Future (1985), Gremlins (1984) and Footloose (1984).
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Bartlett Robinson was born on 9 December 1912 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Sleeper (1973), The Fortune Cookie (1966) and The Spirit of St. Louis (1957). He was married to Margaret White Ballantine. He died on 26 March 1986 in Fallbrook, California, USA.- Actor
- Writer
While in Vietnam entertaining troops with Bob Hope and others touring with the USO, Thomas Tully contracted a filarial worm, similar to the worm which can lead to elephantiasis. After returning to the U.S. his condition was diagnosed after a blood clot in a major leg vein cut off circulation so severely his left leg was amputated very close to the hip. This was circa 1971. The amputation was performed in Laguna Beach, California, close to his home in San Juan Capistrano. Complications to this surgery caused pleuritis, deafness and serious debilitation. His death was due, in great part, to these serious medical conditions. He should be remembered as a true patriot who sacrificed his life to entertain our troops during the Vietnam War.- Russell Thorson was born on 14 October 1906 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, USA. He was an actor, known for Hang 'Em High (1968), The Detectives (1959) and Zero Hour! (1957). He died on 6 July 1982 in Van Nuys, California, USA.
- Nelson Leigh was born on 1 January 1905 in Mississippi, USA. He was an actor, known for Ma Barker's Killer Brood (1960), World Without End (1956) and Life of St. Paul Series (1949). He was married to Lois Cecile Johnson. He died on 3 July 1985 in Hemet, California, USA.
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American character actor who specialized in average-guy parts and who could be equally effective in sympathetic or unlikeable roles. His parents, the vaudeville team of Ruf and Cusik, took him onstage with them when he was a baby, and Faylen grew up in the theatre. He attended St. Joseph's Preparatory College in Kirkwood, Missouri, but returned to vaudeville as a comic pantomimist. He toured the country throughout the late Twenties and early Thirties as a clown and later as song-and-dance man with acrobatic agility. During a tour stop in Los Angeles, he was screen tested and began a thirty-year career as one of Hollywood's most familiar character players. His most famous film roles were as the vicious male nurse Bim in The Lost Weekend (1945) and as the cabdriver Ernie in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). But his greatest fame came in television, particularly as Dobie's dad Herbert T. Gillis in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959). Faylen was married to actress Carol Hughes, with whom he had two daughters. He retired after Funny Girl (1968), and died in 1985.- Moses Gunn was born on 2 October 1929 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He was an actor, known for Shaft (1971), Rollerball (1975) and Heartbreak Ridge (1986). He was married to Gwendolyn Mumma Landes. He died on 16 December 1993 in Guilford, Connecticut, USA.
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This distinctive-looking, bushy-browed, heavy-set Welsh character actor played dozens of rustics, sea captains, sheriffs, priests and police officers during a forty-year long career, starting in 1926. His was the perfect face for period drama. At the peak of his popularity, Owen co-starred as a first mate in Captain David Grief (1957), a South Seas adventure based on stories by Jack London. During the 1940's and 50's, he was prolific on radio, lending his voice to crime dramas like "Pursuit" (CBS, 1949-52) and "Pete Kelly's Blues". His best-known role was that of alcoholic 'wharf-bum' Jocko Madigan, drunk ex-doctor friend and sidekick of star Jack Webb, in "Pat Novak for Hire". He also voiced Towser in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)).- Actor
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Al Ruscio was born on 2 June 1924 in Salem, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Showgirls (1995), The Phantom (1996) and The Godfather Part III (1990). He was married to Kate Williamson. He died on 12 November 2013 in Encino, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
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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.- One of those wonderfully busy character actors whose face is familiar if not his name, mild-mannered actor Byron Foulger began performing with community theater, and stock and repertory companies after graduating from the University of Utah. He met his future wife, character actress Dorothy Adams, in one of these companies. The marriage lasted nearly five decades and ended only with his death.
Making his Broadway debut in a 1920 production of "Medea" that featured Moroni Olsen as Jason (of the Argonauts), and went on to appear in several other Olsen Broadway productions and in close succession (including "The Trial of Joan of Arc," "Mr. Faust" and "Candida"). While touring the country with Olsen's stock company, he ended up at the Pasadena Playhouse where he both acted and directed. Thereafter he and wife Dorothy decided to settle in Los Angeles.
Together the acting couple tried to stake a claim for themselves in 30s and 40s Hollywood films. Both succeeded, appearing in hundreds of film parts, both together and apart, albeit in small and often unbilled bits. A man of meek, nervous countenance, Foulger's short stature and squinty stare could be used for playing both humble and shady fellows. In the 1940s, the actor became a part of Preston Sturges' company of players, appearing in five of his classic films -- The Great McGinty (1940), Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943) and The Great Moment (1944).
Although predominantly employed as an owlish storekeeper, mortician, professor, or bank teller, his better parts had darker intentions. He was exceptional as weaselly, mealy-mouthed, whining henchmen who inevitably showed their yellow streak by the film's end.
The character actor eased into TV roles in the 1950s and '60s, displaying a comedy side in many folksy, rural sitcoms. His final regular TV role was as train conductor Wendell Gibbs in the final years of the Petticoat Junction (1963) series. The father of actress Rachel Ames, Foulger died of a heart ailment on April 4, 1970, coincidentally the same day the final new episode of Petticoat Junction (1963) was broadcast. . - Edward Keane was born on 28 May 1884 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for A Night at the Opera (1935), The Roaring Twenties (1939) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946). He was married to Helen. He died on 12 October 1959 in Los Angeles, California, USA.