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Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895 in Piqua, Kansas, to Joe Keaton and Myra Keaton. Joe and Myra were Vaudevillian comedians with a popular, ever-changing variety act, giving Keaton an eclectic and interesting upbringing. In the earliest days on stage, they traveled with a medicine show that included family friend, illusionist Harry Houdini. Keaton himself verified the origin of his nickname "Buster", given to him by Houdini, when at the age of three, fell down a flight of stairs and was picked up and dusted off by Houdini, who said to Keaton's father Joe, also nearby, that the fall was 'a buster'. Savvy showman Joe Keaton liked the nickname, which has stuck for more than 100 years.
At the age of four, Keaton had already begun acting with his parents on the stage. Their act soon gained the reputation as one of the roughest in the country, for their wild, physical antics on stage. It was normal for Joe to throw Buster around the stage, participate in elaborate, dangerous stunts to the reverie of audiences. After several years on the Vaudeville circuit, "The Three Keatons", toured until Keaton had to break up the act due to his father's increasing alcohol dependence, making him a show business veteran by the age of 21.
While in New York looking for work, a chance run-in with the wildly successful film star and director Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, resulted in Arbuckle inviting him to be in his upcoming short The Butcher Boy (1917), an appearance that launched Keaton's film career, and spawned a friendship that lasted until Arbuckle's sudden death in 1933. By 1920, after making several successful shorts together, Arbuckle moved on to features, and Keaton inherited his studio, allowing him the opportunity to begin producing his own films. By September 1921, tragedy touched Arbuckle's life by way of a scandal, where he was tried three times for the murder of Virginia Rapp. Although he was not guilty of the charges, and never convicted, he was unable to regain his status, and the viewing public would no longer tolerate his presence in film. Keaton stood by his friend and mentor through out the incident, supporting him financially, finding him directorial work, even risking his own budding reputation offering to testify on Arbuckle's behalf.
In 1921, Keaton also married his first wife, Natalie Talmadge under unusual circumstance that have never been fully clarified. Popular conjecture states that he was encouraged by Joseph M. Schenck to marry into the powerful Talmadge dynasty, that he himself was already a part of. The union bore Keaton two sons. Keaton's independent shorts soon became too limiting for the growing star, and after a string of popular films like One Week (1920), The Boat (1921) and Cops (1922), Keaton made the transition into feature films. His first feature, Three Ages (1923), was produced similarly to his short films, and was the dawning of a new era in comedic cinema, where it became apparent to Keaton that he had to put more focus on the story lines and characterization.
At the height of his popularity, he was making two features a year, and followed Ages with Our Hospitality (1923), The Navigator (1924) and The General (1926), the latter two he regarded as his best films. The most renowned of Keaton's comedies is Sherlock Jr. (1924), which used cutting edge special effects that received mixed reviews as critics and audiences alike had never seen anything like it, and did not know what to make of it. Modern day film scholars liken the story and effects to Christopher Nolan Inception (2010), for its high level concept and ground-breaking execution. Keaton's Civil War epic The General (1926) kept up his momentum when he gave audiences the biggest and most expensive sequence ever seen in film at the time. At its climax, a bridge collapses while a train is passing over it, sending the train into a river. This wowed audiences, but did little for its long-term financial success. Audiences did not respond well to the film, disliking the higher level of drama over comedy, and the main character being a Confederate soldier.
After a few more silent features, including College (1927) and Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), Keaton was informed that his contract had been sold to MGM, by brother-in-law and producer Joseph M. Schenck. Keaton regarded the incident as the worst professional mistake he ever made, as it sent his career, legacy, and personal life into a vicious downward spiral for many years. His first film with MGM was The Cameraman (1928), which is regarded as one of his best silent comedies, but the release signified the loss of control Keaton would incur, never again regaining his film -making independence. He made one more silent film at MGM entitled Spite Marriage (1929) before the sound era arrived.
His first appearance in a film with sound was with the ensemble piece The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929), though despite the popularity of it and his previous MGM silents, MGM never allowed Keaton his own production unit, and increasingly reduced his creative control over his films. By 1932, his marriage to Natalie Talmadge had dissolved when she sued him for divorce, and in an effort to placate her, put up little resistance. This resulted in the loss of the home he had built for his family nicknamed "The Italian Villa", the bulk of his assets, and contact with his children. Natalie changed their last names from Keaton to Talmadge, and they were disallowed from speaking about their father or seeing him. About 10 years later, when they became of age, they rekindled the relationship with Keaton. His hardships in his professional and private life that had been slowly taking their toll, begun to culminate by the early 1930s resulting in his own dependence on alcohol, and sometimes violent and erratic behavior. Depressed, penniless, and out of control, he was fired by MGM by 1933, and became a full-fledged alcoholic.
After spending time in hospitals to attempt and treat his alcoholism, he met second wife Mae Scrivens, a nurse, and married her hastily in Mexico, only to end in divorce by 1935. After his firing, he made several low-budget shorts for Educational Pictures, and spent the next several years of his life fading out of public favor, and finding work where he could. His career was slightly reinvigorated when he produced the short Grand Slam Opera (1936), which many of his fans admire for giving such a good performance during the most difficult and unmanageable years of his life.
In 1940, he met and married his third wife Eleanor Norris, who was deeply devoted to him, and remained his constant companion and partner until Keaton's death. After several more years of hardship working as an uncredited, underpaid gag man for comedians such as the Marx Brothers, he was consulted on how to do a realistic and comedic fall for In the Good Old Summertime (1949) in which an expensive violin is destroyed. Finding no one who could do this better than him, he was given a minor role in the film. His presence reignited interest in his silent films, which lead to interviews, television appearances, film roles, and world tours that kept him busy for the rest of his life.
After several more film, television, and stage appearances through the 1960s, he wrote the autobiography "My Wonderful World of Slapstick", having completed nearly 150 films in the span of his ground-breaking career. His last film appearance was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) which premiered seven months after Keaton's death from the rapid onset of lung cancer. Since his death, Keaton's legacy is being discovered by new generations of viewers every day, many of his films are available on YouTube, DVD and Blu-ray, where he, like all gold-gilded and beloved entertainers can live forever.- Actress
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Her father was a police lieutenant and imbued in her a military attitude to life. Marlene was known in school for her "bedroom eyes" and her first affairs were at this stage in her life - a professor at the school was terminated. She entered the cabaret scene in 1920s Germany, first as a spectator then as a cabaret singer. In 1923, she married and, although she and Rudolf Sieber lived together only 5 years, they remained married until his death. She was in over a dozen silent films in increasingly important roles. In 1929, she was seen in a Berlin cabaret by Josef von Sternberg and, after a screen test, captured the role of the cabaret singer in The Blue Angel (1930) (and became von Sternberg's lover). With the success of this film, von Sternberg immediately took her to Hollywood, introducing her to the world in Morocco (1930), and signing an agreement to produce all her films. A series of successes followed, and Marlene became the highest paid actress of her time, but her later films in the mid-part of the decade were critical and popular failures. She returned to Europe at the end of the decade, with a series of affairs with former leading men (she had a reputation of romancing her co-stars), as well as other prominent artistic figures. In 1939, an offer came to star with James Stewart in a western and, after initial hesitation, she accepted. The film was Destry Rides Again (1939) - the siren of film could also be a comedienne and a remarkable comeback was reality. She toured extensively for the allied effort in WW II (she had become a United States citizen) and, after the war, limited her cinematic life. But a new career as a singer and performer appeared, with reviews and shows in Las Vegas, touring theatricals, and even Broadway. New success was accompanied by a too close acquaintance with alcohol, until falls in her performance eventually resulted in a compound fracture of the leg. Although the last 13 years of her life were spent in seclusion in her apartment in Paris, with the last 12 years in bed, she had withdrawn only from public life and maintained active telephone and correspondence contact with friends and associates.- Actor
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His mother was the French Lady Comynyplatt Henrietta de Gacher, his father was the British Lieutenant William Graham Niven, who died in the war when David was six years old. Niven was considered a difficult child to educate and had to change schools often until he finally went to Sandhurst Military Academy. He came to Malta as a soldier, left the army here and went to Canada, where he worked as a lumberjack, bridge builder, journalist and whiskey salesman. After detours via New York and Cuba, Niven settled in California in 1934, where he had his first roles as an extra. He appeared in smaller films until the Second World War and then had to go to war for the British army.
In between, he also starred in propaganda films. Niven fought on the British front at Dunkirk and was promoted to colonel in 1944. General Eisenhower decorated him with the medals of the American Legion of Merit. From his first marriage to Primula Rollo, whom he married in 1940, Niven had two sons, David and Jamie. After his wife died in an accident in 1946, he married the Swede Hjordis Tersmeden in 1948, and his daughters Kristine and Fiona came from this marriage. In 1952, Niven founded the television production "Four Star TV" with Charles Boyer and other colleagues and starred in the self-produced series "The David Niven Show" and "Rogues Against Crooks". He had already been successful as an actor for a long time.
Niven starred in the 1946 English production of Error in the Afterlife and then returned to Hollywood. He celebrated successes with "The Virgin on the Roof", "Bonjour Tristesse", "The Guns of Navarone", "55 Days in Peking", "The Pink Panther", "Lady L." and with "Casino Royale". In 1959 he reached the peak of his success when he was honored with the Oscar for Best Actor for Separated from Table and Bed. His most beautiful film role was that of "Phileas Fogg" in the Jules Verne film adaptation "Around the World in 80 Days". Niven later demonstrated his enormous skills in many other films. In the 1970s and 1980s he starred in "Vampira", "A Corpse for Dessert", "Death on the Nile", "The Lion Shows its Claws" and in "Grandpa Seldom Comes Alone".
In 1982 and 1983 he had his last two roles in "The Pink Panther is Hunted" and "The Curse of the Pink Panther". Niven retired and lived on the Cote d'Azur and in Switzerland.
David Niven died on July 29, 1983 in Switzerland as a result of the nervous disease ALS. He made part of his inheritance available to medical research.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Billy Wilder proclaimed William Holden to be "the ideal motion picture actor". For almost four decades, the handsome, affable 'Golden Holden' was among Hollywood's most durable and engaging stars. He was born William Franklin Beedle Jr., one of three sons to a high school English teacher, Mary Blanche (Ball), and a chemical and fertilizer analyst, William Franklin Beedle, head of the George W. Gooch Laboratories in Pasadena. His father, a keen physical fitness enthusiast, taught young Bill the art of tumbling and boxing. During his days as a student at South Pasadena High, he also became adept at team sports (football and baseball), learned to ride and shoot and to be proficient on piano, clarinet and drums.
To his father's chagrin, Bill had no inclination of following in dad's footsteps, though he did major in chemistry at Pasadena Junior College. A trip to New York and Broadway had set Bill's path firmly on an acting career. He had already performed in school plays and lent his voice to several radio plays in Los Angeles by the time he was spotted by a Paramount talent scout (playing the part of octogenarian Eugene Curie) at the Pasadena Workshop Theatre. In early 1938, he was offered a six-month studio contract for a weekly salary of $50. Naturally, the name Beedle had to go. Several alternatives were bandied around -- including Randolph Carey and Taylor Randolph - until the head of Paramount's publicity department settled on the name Holden (based on a personal friend who was an associate editor at the L.A. Times, also named Bill).
Having joined Paramount's Golden Circle Club of promising young actors, Bill was now groomed for stardom. However, it was a loan-out to Columbia that secured him his breakthrough role. He was the sixty-sixth actor to audition for the part of an Italian violinist forced to become a boxer in Golden Boy (1939). His earlier training as a junior pugilist proved somewhat beneficial but it was self-effacing co-star Barbara Stanwyck who turned out to be most instrumental in helping him rehearse and overcoming his nerves to act alongside her and thespians Lee J. Cobb and Adolphe Menjou. The picture was a minor hit and Columbia consequently acquired half his contract. For the next few years, Bill continued playing wholesome, guy-next-door types and rookie servicemen in pictures like Our Town (1940), I Wanted Wings (1941) (which was the making of 'peek-a-boo' star Veronica Lake) and The Fleet's In (1942). His salary had been enhanced and he now earned $150 a week. In July 1941, he married 25-year old actress Brenda Marshall, who commanded five times his income.
In 1942, he enlisted in the Officers Candidate School in Florida, graduating as an Air Force second lieutenant. He spent the next three years on P.R. duties and making training films for the Office of Public Information. One of his brothers, a naval pilot, was shot down and killed over the Pacific in 1943. After war's end, he was demobbed and returned to Hollywood to resume playing similar characters in similar movies. He later commented that he found "no interest or enjoyment" in portraying the same type of "nice-guy meaningless roles in meaningless movies". That was to change - along with his image - when he was invited to play the part of caddish, down-on-his-luck scriptwriter Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard (1950). The brilliantly acidulous screenplay was by Charles Brackett and director Billy Wilder (from their story A Can of Beans) and the story was narrated in flashback by Bill's character, opening with Gillis floating face-down in the swimming pool of a decrepit mansion "of the kind crazy people bought in the 20s".
With Sunset Boulevard (1950), Holden had effectively graduated from leading man to leading actor. No longer typecast, he was now allowed more hard-edged or even morally ambiguous roles: a self-serving, cynical prisoner-of-war in Stalag 17 (1953) (for which he won an Academy Award); an unemployed drifter who disrupts and changes the lives (particularly of womenfolk) in a small Kansas town, in Picnic (1955); a happy-go-lucky gigolo (who, as Billy Wilder explained the part to Bill, gets the sports car while Bogey -- Humphrey Bogart -- gets the girl), in the delightful Sabrina (1954); and an ill-fated U.S. Navy pilot in The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), set during the Korean War. Clever dialogue and the Holden likability factor also improved what potentially could have turned out dull or maudlin in pictures like Forever Female (1953) and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955).
Already one of the highest paid stars of the 1950s, Holden received 10% of the gross for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), making him an instant multi-millionaire. He invested much of his earnings in various enterprises, even a radio station in Hong Kong. At the end of the decade, he relocated his family to Geneva, Switzerland, but spent more and more of his own time globetrotting. In the 1960s, Holden founded the exclusive Mount Kenya Safari Club with oil billionaire Ray Ryan and Swiss financier Carl Hirschmann. His fervent advocacy of wildlife conservation now consumed more of his time than his acting. His films, consequently, dropped in quality.
Drinking ever more heavily, he also started to show his age. By the time he appeared as the leader of an outlaw gang on their last roundup in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969), his face was so heavily lined that someone likened it to 'a map of the United States.' He still had a couple more good performances in him, in The Towering Inferno (1974) and Network (1976), until his shock death from blood loss due to a fall at his apartment while intoxicated. In 1982, actress Stefanie Powers, with whom he had been in a relationship since 1972, helped set up the William Holden Wildlife Foundation and the William Holden Wildlife Education Center in Kenya. Bill also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His wanderlust has left traces of him all over the world.- Actress
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- Soundtrack
Actress and producer Eva Marie Saint was born on July 4, 1924 on Newark, New Jersey. She is known for starring in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). Her film career also includes roles in Raintree County (1957), Exodus (1960), The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966), Grand Prix (1966), Nothing in Common (1986), Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), Superman Returns (2006) and Winter's Tale (2014).
Saint made her feature film debut in On the Waterfront (1954), starring Marlon Brando and directed by Elia Kazan - a performance for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The film was a major success and launched her movie career. She starred in the pioneering drug-addiction drama A Hatful of Rain (1957) with Don Murray and Anthony Franciosa. She also starred in lavish the Civil War epic Raintree County (1957) with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.
Director Alfred Hitchcock surprised many by choosing Saint over dozens of other candidates for the femme fatale role in what was to become a suspense classic North by Northwest (1959) with Cary Grant and James Mason. Written by Ernest Lehman, the film updated and expanded upon the director's early "wrong man" spy adventures of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, including The 39 Steps (1935), Young and Innocent (1937), and Saboteur (1942). North by Northwest (1959) became a box-office success and an influence on spy films for decades.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Rodney Stephen Steiger was born in Westhampton, New York, to Augusta Amelia (Driver) and Frederick Jacob Steiger, both vaudevillians. He was of German and Austrian ancestry. After his parents' divorce, Steiger was raised by his mother in Newark, New Jersey. He dropped out of Westside High school at age 16 and joined the Navy. He saw action in the Pacific on a destroyer. Steiger returned to New Jersey after the war and worked for the VA. He was part of an amateur acting group, and then joined the Actors' Studio using his GI Bill benefits.
Steiger received his first film roles in the early 1950s. His first major one was in Teresa (1951), but his first lead role was in the TV version of Marty (1953). The movie version, however, had Ernest Borgnine in the lead and won him an Academy Award. Steiger's breakthrough role came in 1954, with the classic On the Waterfront (1954). Since then he has been a presence on the screen as everything from a popular leading man to a little-known character actor. Steiger made a name for himself in many different types of roles, from a crooked promoter in The Harder They Fall (1956) to the title character in Al Capone (1959). He was one of dozens of stars in the epic World War II film The Longest Day (1962). In 1964, he received his second Oscar nomination for The Pawnbroker (1964). The next couple of years he was at the height of his powers. In 1965, he starred in the dark comedy The Loved One (1965), and in David Lean's epic Doctor Zhivago (1965). In 1966, he starred in the BBC Play of the Month (1965) episode "Death of a Salesman" as Willy Loman in the TV version of his stage play "Death of a Salesman," but in 1967, he landed what many consider his greatest role: Sheriff Bill Gillespie in In the Heat of the Night (1967), opposite Sidney Poitier. Steiger deservedly took home the Best Actor Oscar for his work in that film.
He took another controversial role as a man with many tattoos in The Illustrated Man (1969) and as a serial killer in the classic No Way to Treat a Lady (1968). After that, he seemed to have withdrawn from high-profile movies and became more selective in the roles he chose. He turned down the lead in Patton (1970) and also in The Godfather (1972). Among his more notable roles in the 1970s are Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971), Lolly-Madonna XXX (1973), as Benito Mussolini in The Last 4 Days (1974), Portrait of a Hitman (1979), Jesus of Nazareth (1977), F.I.S.T. (1978) and The Amityville Horror (1979). He starred in the critically acclaimed The Chosen (1981) with Robby Benson and Maximilian Schell, perhaps the highlight of his 1980s movie career. Steiger increasingly moved away from the big Hollywood pictures, instead taking roles in foreign productions and independent movies. As the 1980s ended, Steiger landed a role as the buttoned-up New York City Chief of Police in The January Man (1989).
Steiger was seriously affected by depression for 8 years. As he returned to the screen in the late 1990s he began creating some of his most memorable roles. He was the doctor in the independently-made movie Shiloh (1996), about an abused dog. He was the crazed, kill-'em-all army general in Mars Attacks! (1996) who always called his enemies peace-mongers. He took a small part as a Supreme Court judge in The Hurricane (1999) and as a preacher in the badly produced film End of Days (1999). He was still active in films moving into the new millennium.- Actor
- Producer
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Lean, angular-faced and authoritatively spoken lead / supporting actor Roy Scheider obviously never heard the old actor's axiom about "never appearing with kids or animals" lest they overshadow your performance. Breaking that rule did him no harm, though, as he achieved pop cult status by finding, fighting and blowing up a 25-foot-long Great White shark (nicknamed "Bruce") in the mega-hit Jaws (1975) and then electrocuting an even bigger Great White in the vastly inferior Jaws 2 (1978).
Athletic Scheider was born in November 1932 in Orange, New Jersey, to Anna (Crosson) and Roy Bernhard Scheider, a mechanic. He was of German and Irish descent. A keen sportsman from a young age, he competed in baseball and boxing (his awkwardly mended broken nose is a result of his foray into Golden Gloves competitions). While at college, his pursuits turned from sports to theater and he studied drama at Rutgers and Franklin and Marshall. After a stint in the military, Scheider appeared with the New York Shakespeare Festival and won an "Obie Award" for his appearance in the play "Stephen D."
His film career commenced with the campy Z-grade horror cheesefest The Curse of the Living Corpse (1964), and he then showed up in Star! (1968), Paper Lion (1968), Stiletto (1969) and Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970). In 1971 he really came to the attention of film audiences with his role in the Jane Fonda thriller Klute (1971) and then as Det. Buddy Russo (scoring his first Oscar nomination) alongside fiery Gene Hackman in the crime drama The French Connection (1971). His performance as a tough street cop in that film led him into another tough cop role as NYC Det. Buddy Manucci in the underappreciated The Seven-Ups (1973), which features one of the best car chase sequences ever put on film.
In the early 1970s the Peter Benchley novel "Jaws" was a phenomenal best-seller, and young director Steven Spielberg was chosen by Universal Pictures to direct the film adaptation, Jaws (1975), in which Scheider played police chief Brody and shared lead billing with Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss in the tale of a New England seaside community terrorized by a hungry Great White shark. "Jaws" was a blockbuster, and for many years held the record as the highest-grossing film of all time. Scheider then turned up as the shady CIA agent brother of Dustin Hoffman in the unnerving Marathon Man (1976) and in the misfired William Friedkin-directed remake of The Wages of Fear (1953) titled Sorcerer (1977), before again returning to Amity to battle another giant shark in Jaws 2 (1978). Seeking a change from tough cops and hungry sharks, he took the role of womanizing, drug-popping choreographer Joe Gideon, the lead character of the semi-autobiographical portrayal of director Bob Fosse in the sparkling All That Jazz (1979). It was another big hit for Scheider (and another Oscar nomination), with the film featuring a stunning opening sequence to the tune of the funky George Benson number "On Broadway", and breathtaking dance routines including the "Airotica" performance by the glamorous Sandahl Bergman.
Returning to another law enforcement role, Scheider played a rebellious helicopter pilot in the John Badham conspiracy / action film Blue Thunder (1983), a scientist in the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) simply titled 2010 (1984), a cheating husband who turns the tables on his blackmailers in 52 Pick-Up (1986), a cold-blooded hit man in Cohen and Tate (1988) and a CIA operative in the muddled and slow-moving The Russia House (1990). The versatile Scheider was then cast as the captain of a futuristic submarine in the relatively popular TV series SeaQuest 2032 (1993), which ran for three seasons.
Inexplicably, however, Scheider had seemingly, and slowly, dropped out of favor with mainstream film audiences, and while he continued to remain busy, predominantly in supporting roles (generally as US presidents or military officers), most of the vehicles he appeared in were B-grade political thrillers such as The Peacekeeper (1997), Executive Target (1997), Chain of Command (2000) and Red Serpent (2003).- Actor
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Michael Caine was born as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen (née Burchell), a cook, and Maurice Micklewhite Sr., a fish-market porter. He had a younger brother, Stanley Caine, and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He left school at age 15 and took a series of working-class jobs before joining the British army and serving in Korea during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England, he gravitated toward the theater and got a job as an assistant stage manager. He adopted the name of Caine on the advice of his agent, taking it from a marquee that advertised The Caine Mutiny (1954). In the years that followed, he worked in more than 100 television dramas, with repertory companies throughout England and eventually in the stage hit "The Long and the Short and the Tall".
Zulu (1964), the epic retelling of a historic 19th-century battle in South Africa between British soldiers and Zulu warriors, brought Caine to international attention. Instead of being typecast as a low-ranking Cockney soldier, he played a snobbish, aristocratic officer. Although "Zulu" was a major success, it was the role of Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965) and the title role in Alfie (1966) that made Caine a star of the first magnitude. He epitomized the new breed of actor in mid-1960s England, the working-class bloke with glasses and a down-home accent. However, after initially starring in some excellent films, particularly in the 1960s, including Gambit (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Play Dirty (1969), Battle of Britain (1969), Too Late the Hero (1970), The Last Valley (1971) and especially Get Carter (1971), he seemed to take on roles in below-average films, simply for the money he could by then command.
However, there were some gems amongst the dross. He gave a magnificent performance opposite Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and turned in a solid one as a German colonel in The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Educating Rita (1983), Blame It on Rio (1984) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (for which he won his first Oscar) were highlights of the 1980s, while more recently Little Voice (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999) (his second Oscar) and Last Orders (2001) have been widely acclaimed. Caine played Nigel Powers in the parody sequel Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), and Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. He appeared in several other of Nolan's films including The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014). He also appeared as a supporting character in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006) and Pixar's sequel Cars 2 (2011).
As of 2015, films in which Caine has starred have grossed over $7.4 billion worldwide. He is ranked the ninth highest grossing box office star. Caine is one of several actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting every decade from five consecutive decades (the other being Laurence Olivier and Meryl Streep). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1992 Birthday Honours, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2000 Birthday Honours in recognition for his contributions to the cinema.
Caine has been married twice. First to actress Patricia Haines from 1954 to 1958. They had a daughter, Dominique, in 1957. A bachelor for some dozen-plus years after the divorce, he was romantically linked to Edina Ronay (for three years), Nancy Sinatra, Natalie Wood, Candice Bergen, Bianca Jagger, Françoise Pascal and Jill St. John. In 1971 he met his second wife, fashion model Shakira Caine (née Baksh), and they married in 1973, six months before their daughter Natasha was born. The couple has three grandchildren, and in 2023, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Gloria Grahame Hallward, an acting pupil of her mother (stage actress and teacher Jean Grahame), acted professionally while still in high school. In 1944 Louis B. Mayer saw her on Broadway and gave her an MGM contract under the name Gloria Grahame. Her debut in the title role of Blonde Fever (1944) was auspicious, but her first public recognition came on loan-out in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Although her talent and sex appeal were of star quality, she did not fit the star pattern at MGM, who sold her contract to RKO in 1947. Here the same problem resurfaced; her best film in these years was made on loan-out, In a Lonely Place (1950). Soon after, she left RKO. The 1950s, her best period, brought her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and typecast her as shady, inimitably sultry ladies in seven well-known film-noir classics.
Rumors of being difficult to work with on the set of Oklahoma! (1955) helped sideline her film career from 1956 onward. She also suffered from marital and child-custody troubles. Eight years after divorce from Nicholas Ray, who was 12 years her senior (and reportedly had discovered her in bed with his 13 year old son), and after a subsequent marriage to Cy Howard ended in divorce, in 1960 she married her former stepson Anthony Ray (who was almost 14 years younger than she was.) This led former husbands Nicholas Ray and Cy Howard to sue Grahame; each man seeking custody of his respective child, putting gossip columnists and scandal sheets into overdrive. Grahame herself underwent electroconvulsive therapy after the ensuing stress caused a nervous breakdown. Surprisingly, however, Grahame and Anthony "Tony" Ray proved a happy couple. The union would be Grahame's longest marriage, lasting almost 14 years (10 years longer than her previous union with Ray's father); the couple had two children, Anthony Jr. and James.
In 1960, Grahame resumed stage acting, combined with TV work and, from 1970, some mostly inferior films. She was described as a serious, skillful actress; spontaneous, honest, and strong-willed; imaginative and curious; incredibly sexy but insecure about her looks (prompting plastic surgery on her famous lips); loving appreciative male company; "a bit loony". In 1975, she was treated for breast cancer. Five years later, she was diagnosed with cancer again, although it is unclear if this was a new cancer or a metastasis of her breast cancer. Grahame eventually moved to England in 1978. Her busiest period of British and American stage work ended abruptly in 1981 when she collapsed from cancer symptoms during a rehearsal. She wished to remain in Liverpool with her partner, Peter Turner (almost 30 years her junior), but after Turner notified her children of her health condition and impending death, two of her children flew to England to retrieve her, insisting she return to the United States. She died a few hours later that same day of stomach cancer and peritonitis at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan on October 5, 1981 at age 57.- Director
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- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Delbert Mann, the Oscar-winning film director, was born Delbert Martin Mann Jr. in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1920. His father moved the family to Nashville, Tennesse, after taking a teaching position at Scarritt College. The young Mann graduated from Vanderbilt University, where he met his future wife, Ann Caroline Gillespie. He developed a lifelong friendship with Fred Coe, whom he met at the Nashville Community Playhouse, that would prove critical in his professional life.
After his 1941 graduation from Vanderbilt, Mann joined the Army and was assigned to the Air Corps, eventually becoming a pilot with the 8th Air Force. As a B-24 pilot with the "Mighty Eighth," Mann flew 35 bombing missions in the European Theater of Operations. After being demobilized at the end of the war, his interest changed to another type of theater, and he attended the Yale Drama School. From Yale he moved on to a directing job with the Town Theatre of Columbia, South Carolina.
His old friend Fred Coe, a producer at NBC, offered Mann the opportunity to direct live television drama on the network's The Philco Television Playhouse (1948). Mann accepted the job offer and moved to New York in 1949. For NBC he directed many dramas for the "Philco Playhouse," which later alternated its broadcasting weeks on the network with the Goodyear Playhouse (1951) and Producers' Showcase (1954) (television programs in the early days typically had one major commercial sponsor; thus, many programs from the early days bore the name of that primary sponsor). Mann directed episodes for all three showcases, including "October Story" with Julie Harris and Leslie Nielsen, "Middle of the Night" with Eva Marie Saint and E.G. Marshall, a remake of The Petrified Forest (1936) with the inevitable Humphrey Bogart (who created the role of Duke Mantee on the Broadway stage and played it in the classic 1935 film), and even two productions of William Shakespeare's "Othello" (one of which featured the unlikely Walter Matthau as Iago!).
Mann was one of the best-known graduates of "The Golden Age of Television," when live original drama was a staple of network TV. Other showcases he worked for included NBC Repertory Theatre (1949), Ford Star Jubilee (1955) and Playwrights '56 (1955). In 1953 he directed a live teleplay written by another WWII vet, Paddy Chayefsky. The episode of "Goodyear Television Playhouse" starring another vet, the up-and-coming Method actor Rod Steiger, as a lonely butcher named "Marty."
Delbert Mann's name will always be linked to the extraordinary cultural phenomenon that was "Marty," but it was as a film, not as television program, that Chayevsky's 1953 script became legendary, the first blockbuster hit of independent cinema. However, Mann's first recognition from the culture industry didn't come from Chayevsky's "Marty," either on television or film, but from Thornton Wilder's theatrical warhorse about a small burg in New Hampshire, "Our Town."
In 1954, Mann won a Best Director Emmy nomination for the "Producers' Showcase" episode "Our Town," a musical adaptation featuring the young Paul Newman and the singing talents of swinging Frank Sinatra. Ironically, the TV play of "Marty," considered the summit of TV's Golden Age in retrospect, went unrecognized during the nascent industry's awards season, though it did receive an excellent buzz via word of mouth. (The live "Marty" was captured via kinescope, a method of reproduction that involved shooting a 16-mm copy of the broadcast off of a TV monitor for rebroadcast to the West Coast in the days before coast-to-coast TV hookups, let along videotape; such programs were seldom rebroadcast after the initial showing due to the poor quality of the 'scope.) That situation would change once "Marty" moved from New York to Hollywood.
It's said that superstar Burt Lancaster and his producing partner Ben Hecht were looking for a property to generate a tax write-off for their successful indie production company, Hecht-Lancaster. That property was Marty, shot in B+W in the standard Academy ratio of 4:3 in an era when the blockbuster, like Cecil B. DeMIlle's epic remake of "The Ten Commandments," shot in color in the wide-screen processes of CinemaScope, Cinerama and VistaVision, were all the rage. (The box office gross of the 1956 "Ten Commandments," if adjusted for inflation, would rival the grosses generated by the top block busters of the present era.) Color, widescreens and spectacle were considered to be the necessary ingredients to get people out of the house where they were planted in front of the TV and back into the theaters. And here was a low-budget, B+W film with no production values and no stars based on a TV play that had appeared free on TV (Hollywood's great enemy) just two years before!
Remaking "Marty" seemed an honorable way to generate a tax-write off, so the story goes, while associating the company with quality, but Hecht-Lancaster refused to spend much money on it. The budget was limited to just under $350,000. (It's said that "Marty" was the first Oscar-winning film in which the advertising costs exceeded the budget.) Rod Steiger, who did not want to be bound contractually to Hecht-Lancaster, refused to reprise the eponymous title role, so it was turned over to Burt Lancaster's "From Here to Eternity" co-star, 'Ernest Borginine' . Having assayed Fatso Judson and other screen heavies in his brief cinema career, Borgnine had never played a sympathetic supporting character, let alone a lead, on film before.
Possibly due to its unpromising prospects, Burt Lancaster didn't bother putting his name on the picture as a producer, leaving that honor (and the Oscar that lay in "Marty's future) to Hecht. No wonder the success of "Marty" caught everyone flat-footed! It's perhaps the supreme case in Hollywood's checkered flirtation with "quality" cinema that quality not only won out, but more importantly, paid off (and paid off handsomely at that!).
The movie "Marty" was a critical success before it was a commercial success. Shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1955, it was the first American film to win the Golden Palm (an award which, in the French manner, is shared by its director). In release, the film returned $3 million in rentals ($21 million in 2005 dollars), which was a considerable amount in the mid-1950s. More importantly for Hecht-Lancaster, its low-budget made "Marty" one of the most profitable movies ever made.
The critical recognition and boffo box office made "Marty" a sleeper at the 1956 Academy Awards, at which Mann won the Oscar as Best Director of 1955 and Chayevsky copped the Best Adapted Screenplay trophy. In addition to the original "auteurs," Ernest Borgnine won the Best Actor Oscar and Harold Hecht picked up the gong for Best Picture. Betsy Blair and Joe Mantell also received nominations in Best Supporting Acting categories, and on the technical side, "Marty" was nominated for Best B+W Cinematography (Joseph LaShelle) and Best B+W Art Direction-Set Decoration ( Ted Haworth, Walter M. Simonds, Robert Priestley). Until Sam Mendes duplicated the feat in 2000, Mann was the only director to win an Oscar for his first film.
Though he could not know it then, "Marty" was the highpoint of Mann's career. While Chayevsky went on to win two more Oscars, Mann never won another Oscar nomination, though he did pick up two more Emmy nominations in 1972 and 1980 during his productive career. More significantly, Delbert Mann had the respect of his peers: in addition to his three subsequent Directors Guild of America nominations to go along with his win for "Marty," the DGA honored him with its Robert B. Aldrich Achievement Award in 1997 and an Honorary Life Membership in 2002.- Actor
- Producer
- Music Department
Dennis William Quaid was born on April 9, 1954 in Houston, Texas to Juanita Bonniedale "Nita" Quaid (née Jordan), a real estate agent & William Rudy Quaid, an electrician. He grew up in the Houston suburban city of Bellaire. He was raised a Baptist, and studied drama, Mandarin Chinese, and dance while a student at Bellaire High School. He continued study at the University of Houston, but dropped out before completing his degree. He moved to Los Angeles to pursue a film career where his brother, Randy Quaid, had already began to build a successful career. However, Dennis initially had trouble finding film roles, but began to gain notice when he appeared in Breaking Away (1979) and earned strong reviews for his role in The Right Stuff (1983). Aside from acting, Quaid is also a musician, and plays with his band, "The Sharks". He holds a flying license and is a five handicap golfer.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Shirley MacLaine was born Shirley MacLean Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. Her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (MacLean), was a drama teacher from Nova Scotia, Canada, and her father, Ira Owens Beaty, a professor of psychology and real estate agent, was from Virginia. Her brother, Warren Beatty, was born on March 30, 1937. Her ancestry includes English and Scottish.
Shirley was the tallest in her ballet classes at the Washington School of Ballet. Just after she graduated from Washington-Lee High School, she packed her bags and headed for New York. While auditioning for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's "Me and Juliet", the producer kept mispronouncing her name. She then changed her name from Shirley MacLean Beaty to Shirley MacLaine. She later had a role in "The Pajama Game", as a member of the chorus and understudy to Carol Haney. A few months into the run, Shirley was going to leave the show for the lead role in "Can-Can" but ended up filling in for Haney, who had broken her ankle and could not perform. She would fill in for Carol, again, three months later, following another injury, the very night that movie producer Hal B. Wallis was in the audience. Wallis signed MacLaine to a five-year contract to Paramount Pictures. Three months later, she was off to shoot The Trouble with Harry (1955). She then took roles in Hot Spell (1958) and Around the World in 80 Days (1956), completed not too long before her daughter, Sachi Parker (born Stephanie), was born. With Shirley's career on track, she played one of her most challenging roles: "Ginny Moorhead" in Some Came Running (1958), for which she received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. She went on to do The Sheepman (1958) and The Matchmaker (1958). In 1960, she got her second Academy Award nomination for The Apartment (1960). Three years later, she received a third nomination for Irma la Douce (1963). In 1969, she brought her friend Bob Fosse from Broadway to direct her in Sweet Charity (1969), from which she got her "signature" song, "If My Friends Could See Me Now". After a five-year hiatus, Shirley made a documentary on China called The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir (1975), for which she received an Oscar nomination for best documentary.
In 1977, she got her fourth Best Actress Oscar nomination for The Turning Point (1977). In 1979, she worked with Peter Sellers in Being There (1979), made shortly before his death. After 20 years in the film industry, she finally took home the Best Actress Oscar for Terms of Endearment (1983). After a five-year hiatus, Shirley made Madame Sousatzka (1988), a critical and financial hit that took top prize at the Venice Film Festival. In 1989, she starred with Dolly Parton, Sally Field and Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias (1989). She received rave reviews playing Meryl Streep's mother in Postcards from the Edge (1990) and for Guarding Tess (1994). In 1996, she reprised her role from "Terms of Endearment" as "Aurora Greenway" in The Evening Star (1996), which didn't repeat its predecessor's success at the box office. In mid-1998, she directed Bruno (2000), which starred Alex D. Linz. In February 2001, Shirley worked with close friends once again in These Old Broads (2001), and co-starred with Julia Stiles in Carolina (2003) and with Kirstie Alley in Salem Witch Trials (2002).
MacLaine as her own website which includes her own radio show and interviews, the Encounter Board, and Independent Expression, a members-only section of the site. In the past few years, Shirley starred in a CBS miniseries based on the life of cosmetics queen Mary Kay Ash--Hell on Heels: The Battle of Mary Kay (2002), and wrote two more books, "The Camino" in 2001, and "Out On A Leash" in 2003. After taking a slight hiatus from motion pictures, Shirley returned with roles in the movies that were small, but wonderfully scene-stealing: Bewitched (2005) with Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell, In Her Shoes (2005) with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette, in which Shirley was nominated for a Golden Globe in the best supporting actress category, and Rumor Has It... (2005) with Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Costner. Shirley completed filming of Closing the Ring (2007), directed by Sir Richard Attenborough, in 2007. Her latest book is entitled "Sage-ing While Ag-ing"; Shirley's latest film is Valentine's Day (2010), which debuted in theaters on February 12, 2010.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Probably best-remembered for his turbulent personal life with Elizabeth Taylor (whom he married twice), Richard Burton was nonetheless also regarded as an often brilliant British actor of the post-WWII period.
Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins in 1925 into a Welsh (Cymraeg)-speaking family in Pontrhydyfen to Edith Maude (Thomas) and Richard Walter Jenkins, a coal miner. The twelfth of thirteen children, his mother died while he was a toddler and his father later abandoned the family, leaving him to be raised by an elder sister, Cecilia. An avid fan of Shakespeare, poetry and reading, he once said "home is where the books are". He received a scholarship to Oxford University to study acting and made his first stage appearance in 1944.
His first film appearances were in routine British movies such as Woman of Dolwyn (1949), Waterfront Women (1950) and Green Grow the Rushes (1951). Then he started to appear in Hollywood movies such as My Cousin Rachel (1952), The Robe (1953) and Alexander the Great (1956), added to this he was also spending considerable time in stage productions, both in the UK and USA, often to splendid reviews. The late 1950s was an exciting and inventive time in UK cinema, often referred to as the "British New Wave", and Burton was right in the thick of things, and showcased a sensational performance in Look Back in Anger (1959). He also appeared with a cavalcade of international stars in the World War II magnum opus The Longest Day (1962), and then onto arguably his most "notorious" role as that of Marc Antony opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the hugely expensive Cleopatra (1963). This was, of course, the film that kick-started their fiery and passionate romance (plus two marriages), and the two of them appeared in several productions over the next few years including The V.I.P.s (1963), The Sandpiper (1965), the dynamic Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Taming of The Shrew (1967), as well as box office flops like The Comedians (1967). Burton did better when he was off on his own giving higher caliber performances, such as those in Becket (1964), the film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play The Night of the Iguana (1964), the brilliant espionage thriller The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) and alongside Clint Eastwood in the World War II action adventure film Where Eagles Dare (1968).
His audience appeal began to decline somewhat by the end of the 1960s as fans turned to younger, more virile male stars, however Burton was superb in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) as King Henry VIII, he put on a reasonable show in the boring Raid on Rommel (1971), was over the top in the awful Villain (1971), gave sleepwalking performances in Hammersmith Is Out (1972) and Bluebeard (1972), and was wildly miscast in the ludicrous The Assassination of Trotsky (1972).
By the early 1970s, quality male lead roles were definitely going to other stars, and Burton found himself appearing in some movies of dubious quality, just to pay the bills and support family, including Divorce His - Divorce Hers (1973) (his last on-screen appearance with Taylor), The Klansman (1974), Brief Encounter (1974), Jackpot (1974) (which was never completed) and Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). However, he won another Oscar nomination for his excellent performance as a concerned psychiatrist in Equus (1977). He appeared with fellow acting icons Richard Harris and Roger Moore in The Wild Geese (1978) about mercenaries in South Africa. While the film had a modest initial run, over the past thirty-five years it has picked up quite a cult following. His final performances were as the wily inquisitor "O'Brien" in the most recent film version of George Orwell's dystopian 1984 (1984), in which he won good reviews, and in the TV mini series Ellis Island (1984). He passed away on August 5, 1984 in Celigny, Switzerland from a cerebral hemorrhage.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
By transforming into his characters and pulling the audience in, Ed Harris has earned a reputation as one of the most talented actors of our time.
Ed Harris was born in Tenafly, New Jersey, to Margaret (Sholl), a travel agent, and Robert Lee Harris, a bookstore worker who also sang professionally. Both of his parents were originally from Oklahoma. Harris grew up as the middle child. After graduating high school, he attended New York's Columbia University, where he played football. After viewing local theater productions, Harris took a sudden interest in acting. He left Columbia, headed to Oklahoma, where his parents were living, and enrolled in the University of Oklahoma's theater department. After graduation, he moved to Los Angeles to find work. He started acting in theater and television guest spots. Harris landed his first leading role in a film in cult-favorite George A. Romero's Knightriders (1981). Two years later, he got his first taste of critical acclaim, playing astronaut John Glenn in The Right Stuff (1983). Also that year, he made his New York stage debut in Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love", a performance that earned him an Obie for Outstanding Actor. Harris' career gathered momentum after that. In 2000, he made his debut as a director in the Oscar-winning film Pollock (2000).- Actor
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- Producer
Jonathan Harshman Winters III was born on November 11, 1925 in Dayton, Ohio. His father, Jonathan Harshman Winters II, was a banker who became an alcoholic after being crushed in the Great Depression. His parents divorced in 1932. Jonathan and his mother then moved to Springfield to live with his grandmother. There his mother remarried and became a radio personality. Jonathan joined the United States Marine Corps during his senior year of high school. Upon his discharge, he entered Kenyon College and later transferred to Dayton Art Institute. He met his wife, Eileen Schauder, in 1948 and married a month later. They remain married until her death in January 11, 2009. They have a son, Jay, who is a contractor, and a daughter, Lucinda, who is a talent scout for movies.
Jonathan got his start in show business by winning a talent contest. This led to a children's television show in Dayton in 1950. This led to a game show and a talk show. Denied a requested raise, he moved the family to New York with only $56 in their pocket. Within two months, he was getting night club bookings. He suffered two nervous breakdowns, one in 1959 and another in 1961. He came out of "retirement" to work with director/writer Martin Guigui for Swing (2003) and Cattle Call (2006). He made ten Grammy-nominated comedy recordings and won once. Jonathan Winters died at age 87 of natural causes on April 11, 2013 in Montecito, California.- Actor
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Standing 6 feet 9 inches tall, Garrett grew up in Woodland Hills outside of Los Angeles. His father was a hearing aid specialist working in geriatrics and his mother was a housewife. Garrett spent a whopping six weeks at UCLA before going into stand-up comedy full time. He began performing his act at various Los Angeles comedy clubs, getting his start at the Ice House in Pasadena and the Improv in Hollywood. In 1984, he became the first $100,000 grand champion winner in the comedy category of Star Search (1983). This led to his first appearance, at age 23, on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), making him one of the youngest comedians ever to perform on the show. In 1986, Garrett told a joke the talent booker warned him against and he hasn't been on the show since. Following his "Tonight Show" appearance, Garrett's career took off, garnering him headlining gigs at several national venues as well as opening spots for legends including Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli. He has headlined at Bally's Park Place and co-headlined with The Temptations at Trump Plaza. He has also worked at The Sands Hotel in Las Vegas with Frank Sinatra, Caesar's Palace with David Copperfield, and Smokey Robinson, Harrah's with Sammy Davis Jr. and The Beach Boys, and Radio City Music Hall with Julio Iglesias. In 1989, the Las Vegas Review Journal named him the Best Comedian working on the strip. Changing gears, he made his way into the world of television. He struck gold with Everybody Loves Raymond (1996). Apart from his supporting role in sitcoms, he has also done voice-overs and appeared in a few films. In 1998, Garrett made a real-life proposal to his then real-life girlfriend, Jill Diven, on the set of Everybody Loves Raymond (1996). Garrett currently resides in Hollywood, California with his two Labradors Retrievers, Gus and Mabel.- Actor
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- Soundtrack
One of a spate of teen idols to come out of Philadelphia in the 1950s and 1960s, Frankie Avalon--unlike many of the others--actually had a musical background, having been taught to play the trumpet at a very young age by his father. As a youth Avalon performed in local clubs and theaters. He won a local TV talent contest playing a trumpet solo. In 1951, at age 12, he was in a band called Rocco and the Saints, which included another soon-to-be famous teen singer, Bobby Rydell. In 1952 he was performing at a private party held for singer Al Martino. A talent scout who was also at the party was impressed enough by Avalon to get him an appearance on Jackie Gleason's TV show, which led to more television appearances. In 1954 he made two singles for "X" Records, an RCA Victor subsidiary. Both were instrumentals featuring Avalon playing his trumpet: "Trumpet Sorrento" and ""Trumpet Tarantella." He eventually landed a recording contract with Philadelphia's Chancellor Records, and he recorded "Cupid" and "Teacher's Pet". These records got him his first movie role, a small part in Jamboree! (1957) designed to promote "Teacher's Pet." His next record was "DeDe Dinah", a song written by his managers (and one for which he had so little respect that he pinched his nose while recording it, resulting in its extremely nasal sound). After an appearance on Dick Clark's teen dance show American Bandstand (1952), sales of the record zoomed and it eventually sold more than a million copies. In 1959, after two more big hits ("Ginger Bread" and "I'll Wait for You") he recorded the song he is probably best known for, the million-selling "Venus." However, as 1960 rolled around his career began to wane and his record sales dropped precipitously. He soon began taking small parts in movies, most notably in John Wayne's The Alamo (1960). He began to get somewhat bigger parts and had his first starring role in Drums of Africa (1963). His movie career really took off, however, when he was paired with former Mousketeer Annette Funicello in Beach Party (1963) and its string of sequels. These films, with their combination of surfing, low comedy, dancing and "beach bunnies" in bikinis, struck a nerve with teenage audiences, were produced for peanuts and made a fortune. Avalon still recorded songs for Chancellor and other labels, but now he was far better known among younger audiences for his movies than for his records. In 1985 he began touring with fellow teen idols Rydell and Fabian in an oldies show called "The Golden Boys of Bandstand," which was a rousing success. In 1987 he and Funicello were reunited in Back to the Beach (1987), an homage to, and parody of, their earlier "beach" movies. Avalon still makes personal appearances and tours, many with and for his old friend and mentor Dick Clark.- Actress
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Annette Joanne Funicello achieved teenage popularity starting in October 1955 after she debuted as a Mouseketeer. Born on October 22, 1942 in Utica, New York, the family had moved to California when she was still young. Walt Disney himself saw her performing the lead role in "Swan Lake" at her ballet school's year-end recital in Burbank and decided to have her audition along with two hundred other children. Annette became the last Mouseketeer of the twenty-four that was picked. By the run-through in 1958 of The Mickey Mouse Club (1955) in which she appeared in her own multi-segmented series entitled "Annette", she had become the most popular Mousketeer of them all and the only one kept under contract by Walt Disney after he canceled the show. Her popularity was such that by the late 1950s, she was simply known as "Annette" -- America's sweetheart and the first "crush" for many a teenage baby boomer. Whenever anyone spoke of Annette, no last name was ever needed as everyone knew who you were talking about.
The popular teenager became synonymous with wholesome entertainment and was borrowed by Danny Thomas in 1959 to play Gina, a foreign exchange student, on The Danny Thomas Show (1953) (aka "The Danny Thomas Show") and also that same year had a recurring role on the Disney television series Zorro (1957). She made her well as other Disney film vehicles for several years, including The Shaggy Dog (1959), Babes in Toyland (1961) and The Monkey's Uncle (1965). During this time, the modest young singer had a couple of hit singles on the "Hot 100" charts, notably, "Tall Paul", and as a result, traveled with Dick Clark's caravan on singing tours around the country. At one point, she and teen idol Paul Anka became an item and he wrote both "Puppy Love" and "Put Your Head On My Shoulder" with her in mind. Their busy careers led to them parting ways.
During the early 1960s, American International Films wanted to use her in a fun-on-the-beach movie. They presented the idea to "Mr. Disney", as Annette always called him and with whom she was still under contract. To everyone's surprise, he gave his consent, with the only condition being that she make sure her navel was completely covered by a one piece bathing suit. The first movie, aptly titled Beach Party (1963) starred Robert Cummings and Dorothy Malone as the older generation who explore the younger set represented by Annette (as "Dee Dee") and her love interest Frankie Avalon (as "Frankie"). The "teenage" couple (actually she was 20 and he 23) proved so popular in this that they were whisked into a number of sand-and-surf romps (Muscle Beach Party (1964), Bikini Beach (1964), Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965)) that showcased the actors engaging in harmless fun while singing and dancing in the sand, and falling into silly slapstick.
After the surfing craze died out in 1965, Annette married Jack Gilardi, Paul Anka's agent, and became the mother of his three children -- Gina, Jack Jr. and Jason. While appearing in a few other movies that did nothing to further her career, including Fireball 500 (1966), Thunder Alley (1967) and Head (1968), she appeared as a guest on shows and, most famously, became the spokesperson for Skippy Peanut Butter in a host of commercials. But she phased out her career in favor of family.
She and Gilardi divorced in 1983. Three years later, she married Glen Holt, a harness racing horse breeder/trainer. Within a year into her second marriage, Annette was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She hid her condition for five years before making a formal announcement (in 1992) for fear that her uncontrollable movements might be characterized as drunkenness. She became the most famous spokesperson for the disease. Annette's life was filmed as a television movie with A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes: The Annette Funicello Story (1995) co-starring her good friend, Shelley Fabares. Receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1993, Annette was eventually wheelchair-ridden and went into complete seclusion.
Following a tragic March 2011 incident in which their Los Angeles house burnt to the ground and both Annette and husband Glen were hospitalized with smoke inhalation, the couple moved to Bakersfield, California. A little more than a year later, and over 25 years after she was diagnosed with this long and painful illness, Annette passed away on April 8, 2013 from complications at age 70. To the present, her foundation continues to raise money to help find cures for this and other debilitating disorders, including Lou Gehrig's disease.- Actress
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Penny Marshall was born Carole Penny Marshall on October 15, 1943 in Manhattan. The Libra was 5' 6 1/2", with brown hair and green eyes. She was the daughter of Marjorie (Ward), a tap dance teacher, and Anthony "Tony" Marshall, an industrial film director. She was the younger sister of filmmakers Garry Marshall and Ronny Hallin. Her father was of Italian descent, originally surnamed "Masciarelli," and her mother was of German, Scottish, English, and Irish ancestry.
Penny was known in her family as "the bad one"... because not only did she walk on the ledge of her family's apartment building, but she snuck into the movies as a child and even dated a guy named "Lefty." She attended a private girls' high school in New York and then went to the University of New Mexico for two and a half years. There, Penny got pregnant with daughter, Tracy Reiner, and soon after married the father, Michael Henry, in 1961. The couple divorced two years later in 1963. She worked as a secretary for awhile. Her film debut came from her brother Garry Marshall, who put her in the movie How Sweet It Is! (1968) with the talented Debbie Reynolds and James Garner. She also did a dandruff commercial with Farrah Fawcett - the casting people, of course, giving Farrah the part of the "beautiful girl" and Penny the part of the "plain girl." This only added to Penny's insecurity with her looks.
She then married Rob Reiner on April 10, 1971, shortly after getting her big television break as Oscar Madison's secretary, Myrna Turner, on The Odd Couple (1970). She also played Mary Richards' neighbor, Paula Kovacks, on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) for a couple of episodes. However, her Laverne & Shirley (1976) fame came when her brother needed two women to play "fast girls" who were friends of Arthur Fonzarelli and would date Fonzie and Richie Cunningham on Happy Days (1974). Penny had been working on miscellaneous writing projects ("My Country Tis Of Thee", a bicentennial spoof for Francis Ford Coppola and "Paper Hands" about the Salem Witch Trials) with writing partner Cindy Williams. Cindy happened to be a friend and ex-girlfriend of Henry Winkler's, so Garry asked the two to play the parts of these girls. The audience saw their wonderful chemistry, and loved them so much, a spin-off was created for them.
Penny was well-known as Laverne DeFazio. She and Rob had divorced in 1980. The show ended three years later, half a year after Cindy Williams left the show due to pregnancy (her first baby, Emily, from now ex-husband Bill Hudson)... they wanted Williams to work the week she was supposed to deliver.
Soon after, Penny began directing such films as Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986), Big (1988) and A League of Their Own (1992). Her hobbies included needlepoint, jigsaw puzzles and antique shopping. She was best friends with actress Carrie Fisher and was godmother to Carrie's daughter, Billie.
Penny died at 75 in Los Angeles, California.- Actress
- Additional Crew
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Kristen Schaal is an American actress, voice artist, writer, and comedian. She is best known for her roles as Mel on the HBO series Flight of the Conchords, Louise Belcher on FOX animated comedy Bob's Burgers, and Mabel Pines on Gravity Falls. Other notable roles include her appearances as a commentator on The Daily Show, Amanda Simmons on The Hotwives of Orlando, Hazel Wassername on 30 Rock, Victoria Best on WordGirl, Trixie from the Toy Story franchise, and Anne on Wilfred. Since 2015, she has co-starred alongside Will Forte in the Fox comedy The Last Man on Earth, playing the role of Carol.- Director
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Moved to New York City at the age of seventeen from Akron, Ohio. Graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in English, class of '75. Without any prior film experience, he was accepted into the Tisch School of the Arts, New York.- Actor
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Fred Willard radiated a unique charm that established him as one of the industry's most gifted comic actors, first coming to prominence as ambitious but dimwitted sidekick Jerry Hubbard to Martin Mull's smarmy talk-show host Barth Gimble in the devastating satirical series Fernwood Tonight (1977). A master of sketch comedy, he was most heralded for his quick wit and improvisational expertise. His 50 appearances in sketches on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992) were indicative of his ability to transform any character into a unique comic portrayal. Fred starred in an oft sold-out one-man show, "Fred Willard: Alone At Last!" (actually with a cast of 12) that received two Los Angeles Artistic Director Awards, for Best Comedy and Best Production. He was also an alumnus of The Second City and headed a sketch comedy workshop, The MoHo Group.- Actor
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Character actor, dramatic leading man, or hilarious comic foil? With an astonishing range of roles already under his belt, John C. Reilly has played an eclectic host of rich characters to great effect over the years, from seedy ne'er-do-wells, to lovable, good-natured schlepps.
The fifth of six children, John Christopher Reilly was born in Chicago, to a father of mostly Irish descent, and a Lithuanian-American mother, and was brought up on Chicago's tough Southwest territory. His father, also named John, ran an industrial linen supply company business. On the amateur stage from age eight, Reilly trained at the Goodman School of Drama and eventually became a member of Chicago's renowned Steppenwolf Theatre.
His film break came with a small role in the Vietnam War drama Casualties of War (1989), wherein Brian De Palma liked his work so much during the early stages that he recast him in a major role by the start of shooting as a soldier bent on rape. Reilly gained momentum throughout the 1990s and showed his dazzling stretch of talent in such films as Days of Thunder (1990), Shadows and Fog (1991), What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993) and The River Wild (1994). He became a major stock player in director Paul Thomas Anderson's films, while finding some of his best roles in Hard Eight (1996) as a compulsive gambler, Boogie Nights (1997) in which he played a narcissistic porn star, and in Magnolia (1999) as a compassionate policeman. He went on to earn further critical points for his role of the soldier sent to the front lines in Terrence Malick's war epic The Thin Red Line (1998).
On stage, Reilly has wowed audiences in "The Grapes of Wrath" on Broadway, "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Othello" at Steppenwolf, and earned an Outer Critics Circle Award and Tony nomination for "True West" alongside another impeccable character player Philip Seymour Hoffman. Reilly finally received the film recognition he deserved in 2002 with a slew of choice, high-profile parts in The Hours (2002), The Good Girl (2002), Gangs of New York (2002), and especially Chicago (2002) as the put-upon husband, Amos Hart, who is played for a patsy by murderous wife Roxie (Renée Zellweger). For this last part, he received both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor.
Since then his stock has risen considerably, and he has further widened his cinematic repertoire, appearing in everything from dramatic roles - We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), The Aviator (2004) and Carnage (2011) - to broader comic turns - Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Step Brothers (2008), Cyrus (2010) and Cedar Rapids (2011). Most recently, he has voiced the lead in Disney's animated smash Wreck-It Ralph (2012).
Reilly is married to producer Alison Dickey.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Gary Michael Cole is an American television, film and voice actor. Cole began his professional acting career on stage at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 1985. On television, he has had starring roles in the TV series Midnight Caller, American Gothic, The West Wing, Crusade, The Good Wife, The Good Fight, Veep, Chicago Fire, and Mixed. In film, he has appeared in The Brady Bunch Movie, One Hour Photo, Office Space, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, Breach, and Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. He is also known for voicing the title character on the Adult Swim series Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Principal Shepherd on Family Guy, and James Timothy Possible on Kim Possible. As of season 19, Cole joined NCIS, taking over from Mark Harmon, who left the show, as FBI Special Agent, and new head of Gibbs' team, Alden Parker.- Actress
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Zoe Saldana was born on June 19, 1978 in Passaic, New Jersey, to Asalia Nazario and Aridio Saldaña. Her father was Dominican and her mother is Puerto Rican. She was raised in Queens, New York. When she was 10 years old, she and her family moved to the Dominican Republic, where they would live for the next seven years. While living there, Zoe discovered a keen interest in performance dance and began her training at the prestigious ECOS Espacio de Danza Dance Academy where she learned ballet as well as other dance forms. Not only did her training provide an excellent outlet for the enthusiastic and energetic youngster, it would also prove to be a fortunate precursor for the start of her professional acting career. At age 17, Zoe and her family moved back to the United States where her love for dance followed and an interest in theater performance became stronger.
She began performing with the Faces theater troupe which put on plays geared to provide positive messages for teens with themes dealing with issues such as substance abuse and sex. These performances not only gave her valuable experience but also a source of great pride knowing that she was making a difference in the lives of young people like herself. While performing with the Faces troupe and also the New York Youth Theater, Zoe was recruited for a talent agency and her dance training years before coupled with her acting experience greatly helped her land her first big screen role as Eva Rodriguez, the talented and headstrong ballet dancer in the film Center Stage (2000). Since her professional career began several years ago, Zoe's talent and determination have allowed her to be involved in blockbuster films and act with major actors, actresses and industry insiders at a pace that very few young professionals have experienced.
Zoe has not only held her own in major motion picture productions but gained the respect and praise from industry insiders such as Jerry Bruckheimer and Steven Spielberg and actors/actresses such as Tom Hanks, Bernie Mac, Keira Knightley, Ashton Kutcher, Kirsten Dunst and Orlando Bloom. According to many of her co-stars, producers and directors, the sky is no limit for this young star who has incredible range, intense concentration, and a steely determination to be involved with projects that challenge her professionally with wide-ranging subject matters and characters. Just to ask practically anyone who she has worked for or with about her, glowing comments abound and earned friendships and respect are readily revealed. A star has been born, and growing every day.- Actress
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Shelley Alexis Duvall was born in Fort Worth, Texas, the first child to Bobbie Ruth (Massengale, 1929-2020), a real estate broker, and Robert Richardson Duvall (1919-1994), a lawyer. At the time of her birth, her mother was visiting her grandmother in Fort Worth, though Duvall was raised in Houston. During her childhood, Shelley's mother humorously gave Shelley the nickname "Manic Mouse", because she would often run around her house and tip over furniture. Shelley however was more than a mouse, but rather quite the little artist. Her favorite thing to do when she was very young was draw. She also has three brothers: Scott, Shane, and Stewart.
Shelley graduated from Waltrip High School in Texas and at first became a cosmetics salesperson. It was in 1970 when Shelley was discovered by talent scouts at a local party. Director Robert Altman wanted to cast Shelley in a film that he was making during the time. Shelley had experience in acting in high school plays at the time and took Altman's offer and she appeared in her first film Brewster McCloud. Altman was so fascinated by her performance that she appeared in his next films including: McCabe and Mrs. Miller in 1971, Thieves Like Us in 1974, and Nashville in 1975. Aside from these three successful films, Duvall's acting blossomed in her leading role as Mille Lammoroux in 3 Women in 1977. Duvall's acting was so superb that she won Best Actress at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival. Shelley also starred as Bernice in Joan Micklin Silver's Bernice Bobs Her Hair in 1976, and had a cameo in Woody Allen's Annie Hall in 1977. In the same year, Shelley also hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live.
When the 1980s hit, Duvall's career was just beginning. She is famously known for playing the role of "Wendy Torrance" in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining with Jack Nicholson. During the making of this film, Kubrick psychologically tormented Duvall, causing her immense stress and affecting her mental state. He would often ignore her entirely during filming or would put in her situations which caused her immense fear and distress. The most obvious example is when Kubrick shot the famous "baseball bat scene" with Duvall and Nicholson 127 times, which is the world record for most number of takes in any film set.
In January of 1979, Robert Altman would offer Duvall yet another role in one of his films. Only the role was a certain role that Altman believed she was born to play. That certain role was "Olive Oyl" in the real life version of Popeye. Shelley was skeptical at first on accepting the role, due to bad memories as a child of negatively being called "Olive Oyl" in grade school. She fortunately decided to take the role and performed admirably. Shelley also sings several songs in this film. The most famous ones would be "He's Large" and "He Needs Me" which also appeared in the film Punch Drunk Love.
As the 1980s rolled on, Shelley's career never slowed down. She appeared as a supporting actress in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits in 1981; she played "Susan Frankenstein" in Tim Burton's Frankenweenie (1984) , and co-starred in the hit comedy film Roxanne in 1987 starring Steve Martin. From 1982 to 1986, Shelley continued her filming career but from a different aspect. Since Shelley was 17, she had a collection of a variety of illustrated classic fairy tale books. During the making of Popeye, she showed her collection to Robin Williams. One particular fairy tale she showed Robin was "The Frog Prince". Picturing Robin as the real life Frog Prince, Shelley created Platypus Productions, her own production company. Shelley went to Showtime with the idea for airing a television program that was based on fairy tales. She produced Fairy Tale Theater which Showtime aired that was a hit television series that was based on several classic fairy tales. Fairy Tale Theatre was on television from 1982-1987. Each episode was a one-hour series and there were a total of twenty six episodes, all hosted by Shelley Duvall. Shelley also starred in four out of the twenty six episodes. In 1985, Ms. Duvall created Tall Tales and Legends that was aired for three years until it ended in 1988. Similar to Fairy Tale Theatre, Tall Tales and Legends was also a one-hour series hosted, produced, and guest starred by Duvall. Although it only consisted of nine episodes, Shelley was nominated for an Emmy from the series. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Shelley discovered Think Entertainment; another production company which helped Shelley create more programs and movies that were made for television that aired on common cable channels. Shelley produced three more programs from these production companies that aired on Showtime: Nightmare Classics, Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories, and Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. Her Bedtime Stories program earned her a 2nd Emmy Nomination. Shelley sold Think Entertainment in 1993 and retired as a producer.
In 1989, Shelley met Dan Gilroy while filming the Disney Channel movie Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme (1990), the two fell in love and they have been together ever since.
Shelley Duvall's later career found her a number of different roles. She appeared in the family comedy Home Fries in 1998 playing "Mrs. Jackson", Drew Barrymore's character's mother. Other comedic films Shelley appeared in were Suburban Commando in 1991, and Changing Habits in 1997. She also had cameos in several TV series' such as: Frasier, L.A. Law, The Ray Bradbury Theater, Wishbone, and several others. Shelley returned to the horror genre when she played "Martha Stewart" in The 4th Floor in 1999 and played the role of "Mrs. Stein" in Big Monster On Campus in 2000; which consisted of both the comedy and horror genre.
Since 2002, Shelley Duvall has not acted in any films, but lives a quiet and peaceful life in Blanco, Texas. She has lived in Blanco since 1994, after her home in Los Angeles got damaged by an earthquake. For the last couple years, there have been several rumors about Duvall being a "recluse" and not being in touch with reality. However, a recent interview in 2010 was conducted by MondoFilm VideoGuide that had heavy proof that Shelley is as normal and aware of reality as ever. She has also noted in this interview that she takes care of several animals at her home in Texas and writes a lot of poetry, and that returning to acting is always a possibility.- Actor
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Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz, the eldest of three children of Helen (Klein) and Emanuel Schwartz, Jewish immigrants from Hungary. Curtis himself admits that while he had almost no formal education, he was a student of the "school of hard knocks" and learned from a young age that the only person who ever had his back was himself, so he learned how to take care of both himself and younger brother, Julius. Curtis grew up in poverty, as his father, Emanuel, who worked as a tailor, had the sole responsibility of providing for his entire family on his meager income. This led to constant bickering between Curtis's parents over money, and Curtis began to go to movies as a way of briefly escaping the constant worries of poverty and other family problems. The financial strain of raising two children on a meager income became so tough that in 1935, Curtis's parents decided that their children would have a better life under the care of the state and briefly had Tony and his brother admitted to an orphanage. During this lonely time, the only companion Curtis had was his brother, Julius, and the two became inseparable as they struggled to get used to this new way of life. Weeks later, Curtis's parents came back to reclaim custody of Tony and his brother, but by then Curtis had learned one of life's toughest lessons: the only person you can count on is yourself.
In 1938, shortly before Tony's Bar Mitzvah, tragedy struck when Tony lost the person most important to him when his brother, Julius, was hit by a truck and killed. After that tragedy, Curtis's parents became convinced that a formal education was the best way Tony could avoid the same never-knowing-where-your-next-meal-is-coming-from life that they had known. However, Tony rejected this because he felt that learning about literary classics and algebra wasn't going to advance him in life as much as some real hands-on life experience would. He was to find that real-life experience a few years later, when he enlisted in the navy in 1942. Tony spent over two years getting that life experience doing everything from working as a crewman on a submarine tender, the USS Proteus (AS-19), to honing his future craft as an actor performing as a sailor in a stage play at the Navy Signalman School in Illinois.
In 1945, Curtis was honorably discharged from the navy, and when he realized that the GI Bill would allow him to go to acting school without paying for it, he now saw that his lifelong pipe dream of being an actor might actually be achievable. Curtis auditioned for the New York Dramatic Workshop, and after being accepted on the strength of his audition piece (a scene from "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in pantomime), Curtis enrolled in early 1947. He then began to pay his dues by appearing in a slew of stage productions, including "Twelfth Night" and "Golden Boy". He then connected with a small theatrical agent named Joyce Selznick, who was the niece of film producer David O. Selznick. After seeing his potential, Selznick arranged an interview for Curtis to see David O. Selznick at Universal Studios, where Curtis was offered a seven-year contract. After changing his name to what he saw as an elegant, mysterious moniker--"Tony Curtis" (named after the novel Anthony Adverse (1936) by Hervey Allen and a cousin of his named Janush Kertiz)--Curtis began making a name for himself by appearing in small, offbeat roles in small-budget productions. His first notable performance was a two-minute role in Criss Cross (1949), with Burt Lancaster, in which he makes Lancaster jealous by dancing with Yvonne De Carlo. This offbeat role resulted in Curtis's being typecast as a heavy for the next few years, such as playing a gang member in City Across the River (1949).
Curtis continued to build up a show reel by accepting any paying job, acting in a number of bit-part roles for the next few years. It wasn't until late 1949 that he finally got the chance to demonstrate his acting flair, when he was cast in an important role in an action western, Sierra (1950). On the strength of his performance in that movie, Curtis was finally cast in a big-budget movie, Winchester '73 (1950). While he appears in that movie only very briefly, it was a chance for him to act alongside a Hollywood legend, James Stewart.
As his career developed, Curtis wanted to act in movies that had social relevance, ones that would challenge audiences, so he began to appear in such movies as Spartacus (1960) and The Defiant Ones (1958). He was advised against appearing as the subordinate sidekick in Spartacus (1960), playing second fiddle to the equally famous Kirk Douglas. However, Curtis saw no problem with this because the two had recently acted together in dual leading roles in The Vikings (1958).- Actor
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Alan Arkin was an Academy Award-winning American actor who was also an acclaimed director, producer, author, singer and composer.
He was born Alan Wolf Arkin on March 26, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. His family were Jewish emigrants from Russia and Germany. In 1946, the Arkins moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, California. His father, David I. Arkin, was an artist and writer, who worked as a teacher, and lost his job for merely refusing to answer questions about his political affiliation during the 1950s Red Scare. His father challenged the politically biased dismissal and eventually prevailed, but unfortunately it was after his death. His mother, Beatrice (Wortis) Arkin, a teacher, shared his father's views. Young Arkin was fond of music and acting, he was taking various acting classes from the age of 10. He attended Franklin High School, in Los Angeles, then Los Angeles City College from 1951 - 1953, and Bennington College in Vermont from 1953 - 1954. He sang in a college folk-band, and was involved in a drama class. He dropped out of college to form the folk music group The Tarriers, in which Arkin was the lead singer and played guitar. He co-wrote the 1956 hit "The Banana Boat Song" - a Jamaican calypso folk song, which became better known as Harry Belafonte's popular version, and reached #4 on the Billboard chart. At that time Arkin was a struggling young actor who played bit parts on television and on stage, and made a living as a delivery boy, repairman, pot washer and baby sitter. From 1958 - 1968 he performed and recorded with the children's folk group, The Babysitters. He has also recorded an entire album for the Elektra label titled "Folksongs - Once Over Lightly."
In 1957 Arkin made his first big screen appearance as a lead singer with The Tarriers in Calypso Heat Wave (1957). Then he made his Off-Broadway debut as a singer in "Heloise" (1958). Next year he joined the Compass Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri. There he caught the eye of stage director Bob Sills and became the original member of the "Second City" troupe in Chicago. In 1961 Arkin made his Broadway debut in musical "From the Second City", for which he wrote lyrics and sketches, then starred as David Kolowitz in the Broadway comedy "Enter Laughing" (1963), for which he won a Tony Award. He starred in a Broadway musical "From the Second City production, then returned to Broadway as Harry Berlin in "Luv" (1964). Arkin made his directorial debut with an Off-Broadway hit called "Eh?" (1966), which introduced the young actor, named Dustin Hoffman. He won a Drama Desk Award for his direction of the Off-Broadway production of "Little Murders" (1969), and another Drama Desk Award for "The White House Murder Case" (1970). He also directed the original version of Neil Simon's hilarious smash, "The Sunshine Boys" (1972), which ran over 500 performances.
Arkin earned his first Academy Award nomination as Best Actor for his feature acting debut in a comedy The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966), by director Norman Jewison, co-starring as Lt. Rozanov, a Soviet submariner who is mistaken for a spy after his boat accidentally wrecks aground in New England. Arkin demonstrated his dramatic range as the psychopathic killer Roat in suspense film Wait Until Dark (1967), opposite Audrey Hepburn. He reinvented himself as the sensitive deaf-mute in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), for which he received his second Academy Award Nomination as Best Actor in the Leading role. He followed with what remained his best known role as Captain Yossarian in Catch-22 (1970), directed by Mike Nichols and based on the eponymous anti-war novel by Joseph Heller. In it Arkin arguably gave his strongest performance, however, his career suffered because the film initially did not live up to expectations. After a few years of directorial work on television, Arkin made a comeback with an impressive portrayal of doctor Sigmund Freud in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976). In the early 1980s he acted in three movies that were family affairs, written by his wife, Barbara Dana, and co-starring his son, Adam Arkin.
During the 1990s he turned out several notable performances, such as a bitter former baseball player in TNT's Cooperstown (1993), and as a hilarious psychiatrist opposite John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blank (1997). He won raves for his portrayal of a divorced father who struggles to keep his kids enrolled in the Beverly Hills school system in Slums of Beverly Hills (1998). Arkin gave a brilliant performance opposite Robin Williams in Jakob the Liar (1999), a film about the Nazi occupation of Poland. He also returned to the New York stage co-starring with his son, Tony Arkin and Elaine May in "Power Plays", which he also co-authored. His most recent comeback as a heroin-snorting, sex-crazed, foul-mouthed grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine (2006), earned him his third Academy Award nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, and his first Academy Award.
Alan Arkin had been a modern Renaissance man. In addition to his achievements as an actor, director, and producer, he made his mark as a singer-songwriter with his popular-song compositions "Banana Boat Song", "Cuddle Bug," "That's Me," and "Best Time of the Year." Arkin also authored several books, including science-fiction and some children's stories, such as "The Clearing", "The Lemming Condition" and "Cassie Loves Beethoven" among his other publications. He was a father of three sons, Adam Arkin, Matthew Arkin, and Anthony Arkin, and a grandfather of Molly Arkin.
Alan Arkin was a strong supporter of an organic way of living and also a proponent for preservation of the environment and natural habitat. He avoided the show-biz-milieu and was known as an actor who does not really care about prestigious awards, but values having a good job and being acknowledged by his peers. In Arkin's own words he wanted to "Stay home for three months. Living as quietly as humanly possible." Arkin was given an Indian name, Grey Wolf, by his Native American friends in New Mexico.
Alan Arkin died in California on June 29, 2023 at the age of 89. He is survived by his three sons - Adam, Matthew, and Anthony Dana Arkin, and with Dana, Alan Arkin is survived by third wife, Suzanne Newlander Arkin, whom he married in 1999.- Actress
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One of the most natural beauties of the 1960s with a gentle voice and personality to match, blonde Hope Lange was born in Redding Ridge, Connecticut, and performed on stage from the age of nine. She studied both drama and dance under Martha Graham, did some modeling and then worked in stock companies and on television, dancing on Jackie Gleason shows. She acted in just a handful of motion pictures, garnering an Academy Award nomination for one, and later won two Emmys for her best-loved role on television.
Hope was one of four children of an actress mother, upon whose shoulders fell the responsibility of supporting the family after the premature death of her father, the composer/arranger John Lange, at age 61 in 1942. Along with her siblings, she worked as a waitress in the family's Greenwich Village restaurant, 'Minette's of Washington Square'. By chance, she made the acquaintance of Eleanor Roosevelt, who owned an apartment in the village, and ended up walking the former First Lady's prized Scotch terrier, Fala. This got her photo into a newspaper, which, in turn, led to an advertising job with pictures on the June 1949 cover of 'Radio-Electronics', sporting the futuristic red 'Man from Mars' pith helmet with built-in radio. Still just fifteen years old, Hope spent the next two years at college in Oregon and New York, then found her first job in television and was subsequently signed by 20th Century-Fox.
After successful screen tests, Lange made her motion picture debut in Bus Stop (1956) (Barbara Eden was one of her competitors for the part) opposite Marilyn Monroe and husband-to-be Don Murray. Even the great Marilyn was said to have felt a little threatened by another blonde who was not only beautiful but five years younger and could act as well. After playing the wife of the titular character in The True Story of Jesse James (1957), a picture which she later referred to as a 'turkey', Lange was cast as the fragile Selena Cross in the melodramatic but good-looking soap opera Peyton Place (1957). This movie was regarded as risqué and controversial at the time, dealing with previously taboo subjects such as rape and incest. For her part of the abused girl, raped by her alcoholic stepfather, whom she finally kills in self-defense, Lange received an Academy Award nomination.
The glossy production values of The Best of Everything (1959), a film about ambitious New York career women working in a magazine publishing house, overshadowed most of the character development. However, Lange (who was billed above the established star Joan Crawford) was dealt with most favorably by the critics. According to Bosley Crowther of The New York Times: "Simply because she has the most to do, and does it gracefully, Miss Lange comes off best' (October 9,1959). The following decade was to be a period of mixed fortunes for Hope Lange.
In 1961, Lange began a long-standing relationship with fellow actor Glenn Ford and left husband Don Murray. Ford, in his dual role of star and associate producer, put pressure on director Frank Capra to cast Lange as the female lead in his next motion picture, the whimsical Damon Runyon-inspired comedy Pocketful of Miracles (1961), even though Shirley Jones had already been assigned to the role. Capra reluctantly gave way, though Hope Lange was likely miscast as the wisecracking showgirl. Lange again co-starred with Ford in the glossy romantic melodrama Love Is a Ball (1963), wherein acting took a back seat to sumptuous costumes and the French Riviera. On the negative side of the ledger, Lange had unsuccessfully auditioned for the part of Maria in West Side Story (1961), which ultimately went to Natalie Wood. Instead, she was cast as Elvis Presley's psychiatrist in Wild in the Country (1961), which was generally panned by critics, except for Variety singling out her performance above the rest as 'intelligent' and 'sensitive'. Lange was also slated to appear as love interest to George Peppard in How the West Was Won (1962), but her scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.
Turning increasingly towards television, Hope Lange achieved her most lasting fame as the popular star of the amiable sitcom The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (1968) as a widow who (with two kids and a housekeeper) takes up residence in a quaint cottage also inhabited by the cantankerous ghost of a sea captain (Edward Mulhare). The show ran for three seasons and Lange won two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series (1969 and 1970). In her only other recurring TV role, she played Dick Van Dyke's wife in The New Dick Van Dyke Show (1971), but with less rewarding results. She received good notices for portraying Charles Bronson's dying wife, the victim of the original Death Wish (1974) and its raison d'etre. She then acted primarily on television, with few exceptions, including Blue Velvet (1986) and Clear and Present Danger (1994) as a U.S. senator. In 1977, she replaced Tony Award-winning Ellen Burstyn in the starring role of Doris in 'Same Time, Next Year' on Broadway.
In the early '90s, Lange underwent surgery for a brain tumour. While the operation was successful, her health remained precarious and she limited her screen appearances, retiring altogether in 1998. She died of an intestinal infection in December 2003, aged 70.- Additional Crew
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Jerome Robbins was one of the founding members of the Ballet Theatre when it was formed in 1940 portraying a variety of roles for several years before devising his own creations such as 'Fancy Free' about 3 sailors on leave in New York which marked a long association with Leonard Bernstein. With Jerome in one of the leading roles it opened at the Metropolitan Opera House in April 1944 and quickly established Jerome and Leonard as important talents particularly when the play was turned into the film'On the Town' Among ballets Jerome staged for the New York City Ballet, of which he became company director are 'Pied Piper','The Cage',and 'Inter Play'. In 1958 he formed his own company 'Ballets: USA which did tours of Europe and the Middle East, New York and a national tour. Several members of the company were in the film West Side Story which Jerome staged fir Broadway, the National Company and London.- Actress
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Angie Dickinson was born in Kulm, North Dakota, in 1931, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. L. H. Brown. Mr. Brown was the publisher of The Kulm Messenger. The family left North Dakota in 1942 when Angie was 11 years old, moving to Burbank, California. In December of 1946, when she was a senior at Bellamarine Jefferson High School in Burbank, she won the Sixth Annual Bill of Rights Contest. Two years later her sister Janet, did likewise. Being the daughter of a printer, Angie at first had visions of becoming a writer, but gave this up after winning her first beauty contest. After finishing college she worked as a secretary in a Burbank airplane parts factory for 3-1/2 years. In 1953 she entered the local Miss America contest one day before the deadline and took second place. In August of the same year she was one of five winners in a beauty contest sponsored by NBC and appeared in several TV variety shows. She got her first bit part in a Warner Brothers movie in 1954 and gained television fame in the TV series The Millionaire (1955) and got her first good film role opposite John Wayne and Dean Martin in Rio Bravo (1959). Her success then climbed until she became one of the nation's top movie stars.- Actor
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Adam Scott was born in Santa Cruz, California, the son of Anne and Dougald Scott. He has two older siblings, Shannon and David. Scott has said that his brother David "looks like me but is far more cerebral and inherited the intellect of our parents," both of whom are retired teachers. He graduated from Harbor High School and he is an alumnus of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles, California, class of 1993.- Actor
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Paul Scheer is a SAG Award-winning actor, writer, producer, pod-caster, and director. Scheer is a series regular on the Emmy nominated Showtime series Black Monday opposite Don Cheadle. He also is known for his role as Andre on the hit FX show The League, as well as his role of Mitch in Fresh off the Boat, and Stevie on Veep. He is the creator and star of the Adult Swim series NTSF:SD:SUV:: as well as the co-creator and star of MTV's cult Sketch Comedy show Human Giant. His recent film credits include a scene-stealing performance in SpectreVision's Archenemy starring Joe Manganiello, the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival selected Happily opposite Joel McHale, as well as the 2021 Sundance hit, This is How it Ends. Additionally he's had roles in Lionsgate's Long Shot, and the Oscar-nominated A24 film The Disaster Artist as well as the horror-comedy Slice with Chance the Rapper, and the indie drama Summer 03 with Joey King, and Universal Pictures' Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.- Actor
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Sherman Hemsley played characters known to be wise-cracking, "Weezy" loving, boisterous fools which America and the entire world laughed with kindheartedly. Sherman Alexander Hemsley, Air Force veteran and actor, was born on Feb. 1, 1938 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, William Hemsley, worked at a printing press while his mother worked at various factories during the war. As a child, Hemsley was introduced to acting during school where the teachers would ask students to play different characters. The first play he did as a kid in school was about fire prevention and Hemsley played the fire. He eventually ended up dropping out of school and joined the Air Force. During his adolescence he never considered acting as a profession until after he served in the military. Hemsley then moved from south Philadelphia where he had spent most of his life to New York City. He worked graveyard shift as a post office clerk during the night and actor during the day. He considered New York the best place to be as it had several acting workshops and theater companies such as The Negro Ensemble Company (NEC)founded by Robert Hooks which helped actors/actresses obtain roles on theater, television and movies. His former co-star, Roxie Roker, was also part of the NEC alumni. Hemsley made his professional acting debut on the Broadway play, Purlie, and toured with the show for a year. In 1971, while on tour for Purlie, he received a call from producer/creator/writer Norman Lear. Lear wanted Hemsley to audition for a role which was going to be part of his sitcom All in the Family (1971). Due to his commitment to the Purlie project, Hemsley declined the role. Norman Lear said he would have the role open for him and Hemsley joined the cast two years later. Hemsley and co-star, Isabel Sanford were chosen to do a spin off of the show All In The Family called The Jeffersons (1975). Despite the age difference between Hemsley and Sanford (twenty years apart), many described their on-screen marriage as truly hilarious. Hemsley was nominated for a Golden Globe for his outstanding performance as George Jefferson. The Jeffersons turned out to be a success spanning eleven seasons ending in 1985. After The Jeffersons, Hemsley steadily started working on other projects and in 1986 joined the NBC sitcom Amen (1986) where he played religious deacon Ernest Frye. The show ran for five seasons until 1991. Hemsley then made his debut as a voice actor as part of the ABC live action-puppet series, Dinosaurs (1991). Hemsley played Bradley P. Richfield, Earl's cruel boss. The show ran successfully for four seasons. In 1997, the remaining cast of The Jeffersons had a reunion on the Rolonda (1994) talk show, still having the same charm they did decades ago. Isabel Sanford and Sherman Hemsley made television guest appearances together on well-known television programs such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990) and were in commercials for The Gap, Old Navy and Denny's. Hemsley and Marla Gibbs guest starred on the TBS show House of Payne (2006) in 2011. Sherman Hemsley will be remembered as an actor who was on shows that addressed serious issues but also one who brought laughter into homes every week.- Actress
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Rita Moreno is one of the very few performers to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy, thus becoming an EGOT. She was born Rosita Dolores Alverío in the hospital in Humacao, Puerto Rico on December 11, 1931 (but raised in nearby, smaller Juncos, which had no hospital), to seamstress Rosa María (Marcano) and farmer Francisco José "Paco" Alverío. Her mother moved to New York City in 1937, taking Rita with her while leaving her reportedly unfaithful husband and Rita's younger brother behind. Rita's professional career began before she reached adolescence.
From the age of nine, she performed as a professional dancer in New York night clubs. At age 11, she landed her first movie experience, dubbing Spanish-language versions of US films. Less than a month before her 14th birthday on November 22, 1945, she made her Broadway debut in the play "Skydrift" at the Belasco Theatre, costarring with Arthur Keegan and a young Eli Wallach. Although she would not appear again on Broadway for almost two decades, Rita Moreno, as she was billed in the play, had arrived professionally. In 1950, she was signed by MGM, but the studio dropped her option after just one year.
The cover of the March 1, 1954, edition of "Life Magazine" featured a three-quarters, over-the-left-shoulder profile of the young Puerto Rican actress/entertainer with the provocative title "Rita Moreno: An Actresses' Catalog of Sex and Innocence". It was sexpot time, a stereotype that would plague her throughout the decade. If not cast as a Hispanic pepper pot, she could rely on being cast as another "exotic", such as her appearance on Father Knows Best (1954) as an exchange student from India. Because of a dearth of decent material, Moreno had to play roles in movies that she considered degrading. Among the better pictures she earned featured roles in were the classic Singin' in the Rain (1952) and The King and I (1956).
Director Robert Wise, who was chosen to co-direct West Side Story (1961) (the film version of the smash Broadway musical, a retelling of William Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet" with the warring Venetian clans the Montagues and Capulets re-envisioned as Irish/Polish and Puerto Rican adolescent street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks), cast Moreno as "Anita", the Puerto Rican girlfriend of Sharks' leader Bernardo, whose sister Maria is the piece's Juliet.
However, despite her talent, roles commensurate with that talent were not forthcoming in the 1960s. The following decade would prove kinder, possibly because the beautiful Moreno had aged gracefully and could now be seen by filmmakers, TV producers and casting directors as something other than the spitfire/sexpot that Hispanic women were supposed to conform to. Ironically, it was in two vastly diverging roles--that of a $100 hooker in director Mike Nichols' brilliant realization of Jules Feiffer's acerbic look at male sexuality, Carnal Knowledge (1971), and Milly the Helper in the children's TV show The Electric Company (1971)--that signaled a career renaissance.
Moreno won a 1972 Grammy Award for her contribution to "The Electric Company"'s soundtrack album, following it up three years later with a Tony Award as Best Featured Actress in a Musical for "The Ritz" (a role she would reprise in the film version, The Ritz (1976)). She then won Emmy Awards for The Muppet Show (1976) and The Rockford Files (1974).
She has continued to work steadily on screen (both large and small) and on stage, solidifying her reputation as a national treasure, a status that was officially ratified with the award of the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush in June 2004.- Actress
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- Music Department
Allison Janney is an award-winning actress who has earned a solid reputation in stage productions and in many supporting roles on screen, and who more recently has become prominent by portraying one of the major characters in the popular TV series The West Wing (1999).
Entertainment Weekly magazine describes Janney's screen presence as "uncommonly beautiful and infinitely expressive." As an actor, the magazine deems her to be "one to watch."
Janney was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Macy Brooks (Putnam), a former actress, and Jervis Spencer Janney, Jr., a real estate developer and jazz musician. While studying at Kenyon College, Janney answered a casting call for an on-campus play that was to be directed by Kenyon's most famous alumnus, the legendary actor Paul Newman. During her audition/interview, Janney played upon Newman's known passion for race car driving - she explained how she cut thirty minutes off of the 130 mile journey from her home town to the college. She got chosen for the play's cast.
After earning her degree in drama, Janney took Joanne Woodward's suggestion to do further study at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. She also studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
Early in her career Janney got comedic roles in the soap operas As the World Turns (1956) and Guiding Light (1952). Later, she gave memorable movie performances in supporting roles in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), American Beauty (1999) and Nurse Betty (2000), and in the made-for-TV movie ...First Do No Harm (1997), among others.
Among her stage work, Janney has played in a revival of Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge" on Broadway opposite Anthony LaPaglia, which earned her a Tony Award nomination, and a Drama League Award for outstanding artist for the 1997-98 season. She played in Noel Coward's "Present Laughter" opposite Frank Langella, which earned her the Outer Critics Circle Award and an Actors' Equity award. Janney also appeared in the New York Shakespeare Festival's production of "The Taming of the Shrew."
In 1999 Janney became part of the original cast of the acclaimed TV series The West Wing (1999) where she played the President's press secretary who eventually gets promoted to the White House Chief of Staff. Her impressive work during the seven seasons of that renowned series earned her four Emmys and two SAG Awards.
With her reputation becoming more broadly established during her work on "The West Wing" Janney won more substantive roles in feature films, in the acclaimed The Hours (2002) where she was Meryl Streep's lesbian lover, and in How to Deal (2003) where she played Mandy Moore's mother.- Actor
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Don Knotts, the legendary television character actor, was born Jesse Donald Knotts on July 21, 1924 in Morgantown, West Virginia, to William Jesse Knotts and the former Elsie Luzetta Moore. He was the youngest of four sons in a family that had been in America since the 17th century.
His first stint as an entertainer was as a ventriloquist, performing paid gigs at parties and other events in Morgantown. He decided to make a stab at a career in show business, moving to New York City after graduating from high school, but he only lasted in the Big Apple for a few weeks. He decided to go to college, enrolling at West Virginia University but, when World War II engulfed America, he enlisted in the United States Army. The 19-year-old soldier was assigned to the Special Services Branch, where he entertained the troops. It was while in the Army that Don ditched ventriloquism for straight comedy.
Don returned to West Virginia University after being demobilized. After graduating with a degree in theater in 1948, he married and moved back to New York, where connections he had made while in the Special Services Branch helped him break into show business. In addition to doing stand-up comedy at clubs, he appeared on the radio, eventually playing the character "Windy Wales" on "The Bobby Benson Show". From 1953 to 1955, he was a regular on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow (1951). Destiny intervened when he was cast in the small role of the psychiatrist in the Broadway play "No Time for Sergeants", which starred Andy Griffith, who would play a large part in Don's future career. Don also appeared in the film adaption of the play with Griffith.
Don's big break before he hooked up again with Andy Griffith was a regular gig on the The Steve Allen Plymouth Show (1956) hosted by Steve Allen, starting in 1956. He became well-known for his "nervous man" shtick in the "Man-on-the-Street" segments that were a staple of Allen's show. His character in the segments was a very nervous man obviously uptight about being interviewed on camera. He developed this into the fidgety, high-strung persona that he used successfully for the rest of his career.
When "The Tonight Show" moved to Hollywood in 1959 with new host Jack Paar, Don also moved to California as a regular. However, he was soon cast in Andy Griffith's new television series about a small-town sheriff, The Andy Griffith Show (1960), in the role that would make him a legend. For playing "Deputy Barney Fife", Don was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor five times from 1961 to 1967, winning each time. He soon tasted big-screen success, starring in The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964). Don cut back his appearances on The Andy Griffith Show (1960) to concentrate on making movies after signing a five-year contract with Universal Pictures. For Universal, Don appeared in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966), The Reluctant Astronaut (1967), The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968), The Love God? (1969) and How to Frame a Figg (1971). His mid-1960s popularity as a movie comedian began to wane towards the end of the decade, and the contract was not renewed. Don returned to television as the star of his own variety show, but it was quickly canceled.
During the 1970s, Don had a spotty career, appearing in regional theater and making guest appearances on other television series. He eventually made some slapstick movies with Tim Conway for the Walt Disney Company, but it wasn't until the end of the decade that he tasted real success again. He was cast as would-be-swinger landlord "Ralph Furley" on the popular sitcom Three's Company (1976) after the original landlords, "The Ropers", were spun off into their own series. Since the show was canceled in 1984, he appeared as "Barney Fife" for a 1986 reunion of The Andy Griffith Show (1960) and in television guest spots, including a recurring gig as the pesky neighbor "Les Calhoun" on Griffith's Matlock (1986) series until 1992.
He remained busy for the next ten years touring with plays and doing voice-over work for cartoons. In 2005, Don provided the voice of "Mayor Turkey Lurkey" in Disney's animated film Chicken Little (2005). It turned out to be one of his final films. He died at age 81 on February 24, 2006.- Actress
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Pamela Adlon comes from an acting family and began her career in television in 1983. She has appeared in many popular TV shows, including as a voice actress in a number of animated TV series including, most famously, King of the Hill (1997) for which she won an Emmy for her role as Bobby Hill.- Actress
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Beatrice "Bebe" Neuwirth is the daughter of Sydney Anne, an artist, and Lee Paul Neuwirth, a mathematician. Born and raised in Princeton, New Jersey, she started out as a dancer. Her New York career started out in "A Chorus Line". She won a Tony Award for her part in "Sweet Charity" and two Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for playing Lilith Sternin Crane of Cheers (1982).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Eva Gabor was born on February 11, 1919 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman) and Vilmos Gabor (born Farkas Miklós Grün), a soldier. Her older siblings were Magda Gabor, an actress, and Zsa Zsa Gabor, an actress and socialite. Her parents were both from Jewish families. She went to Hollywood, California, to act in the 1930s. Her mother escaped from Nazi-occupied Budapest in the 1940s, also settling in the U.S.
Eva appeared both in films and on Broadway in the 1950s, as well as in several "A"-movies, including The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), starring Elizabeth Taylor, and Artists and Models (1955), which featured Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
In 1953, she was given her own television talk show, The Eva Gabor Show (1953). Throughout the rest of the 1950s and early 1960s, she appeared on television and in movies. She appeared on one episode of the mystery series Justice (1954), and was on the game show What's My Line? (1950) as the "mystery challenger". Her film appearances during this period include a remake of My Man Godfrey (1957), Gigi (1958) and It Started with a Kiss (1959).
However, she is best remembered as Lisa Douglas, the socialite turned farm wife on Green Acres (1965) with co-star Eddie Albert playing her attorney husband Oliver Wendell Douglas. Eva Gabor died at age 76 from respiratory failure and pneumonia on July 4, 1995 in Los Angeles, California.- Director
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Alejandro González Iñárritu (ih-nyar-ee-too), born August 15th, 1963, is a Mexican film director.
González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and by the Directors Guild of America for Best Director. He is also the first Mexican-born director to have won the Prix de la mise en scene or best director award at Cannes (2006), the second one being Carlos Reygadas in 2012. His six feature films, 'Amores Perros' (2000), '21 Grams' (2003), 'Babel' (2006), 'Biutiful' (2010), 'Birdman' (2014) and 'The Revenant' (2015), have gained critical acclaim world-wide including two Academy Award nominations.
Alejandro González Iñárritu was born in Mexico City.
Crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a cargo ship at the ages of seventeen and nineteen years, González Iñárritu worked his way across Europe and Africa. He himself has noted that these early travels as a young man have had a great influence on him as a film-maker. The setting of his films have often been in the places he visited during this period.
After his travels, González Iñárritu returned to Mexico City and majored in communications at Universidad Iberoamericana. In 1984, he started his career as a radio host at the Mexican radio station WFM, a rock and eclectic music station. In 1988, he became the director of the station. Over the next five years, González Iñárritu spent his time interviewing rock stars, transmitting live concerts, and making WFM the number one radio station in Mexico. From 1987 to 1989, he composed music for six Mexican feature films. He has stated that he believes music has had a bigger influence on him as an artist than film itself.
In the nineties, González Iñárritu created Z films with Raul Olvera in Mexico. Under Z Films, he started writing, producing and directing short films and advertisements. Making the final transition into T.V Film directing, he studied under well-known Polish theatre director Ludwik Margules, as well as Judith Weston in Los Angeles.
In 1995, González Iñárritu wrote and directed his first T.V pilot for Z Films, called Detras del dinero, -"Behind the Money", starring Miguel Bosé. Z Films went on to be one of the biggest and strongest film production companies in Mexico, launching seven young directors in the feature film arena. In 1999, González Iñárritu directed his first feature film Amores perros, written by Guillermo Arriaga. Amores perros explored Mexican society in Mexico City told via three intertwining stories. In 2000, Amores perros premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Critics Weeks Grand Prize. It also introduced audiences for the first time to Gael García Bernal. Amores perros went on to be nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards.
After the success of Amores Perros, González Iñárritu and Guillermo Arriaga revisited the intersecting story structure of Amores perros in González Iñárritu's second film, 21 Grams. The film starred Benicio del Toro, Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, and was presented at the Venice Film Festival, winning the Volpi Cup for actor Sean Penn. At the 2004 Academy Awards, Del Toro and Watts received nominations for their performances.
In 2005 González Iñárritu embarked on his third film, Babel, set in 4 countries on 3 continents, and in 4 different languages. Babel consists of four stories set in Morocco, Mexico, the United States, and Japan. The film stars Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Adriana Barraza. The majority of the rest of the cast, however, was made up of non-professional actors and some new actors, such as Rinko Kikuchi. It was presented at Cannes 2006, where González Iñárritu earned the Best Director Prize (Prix de la mise en scène). Babel was released in November 2006 and received seven nominations at the 79th Annual Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. González Iñárritu is the first Mexican director nominated for a DGA award and for an Academy Award. Babel went on to win Best Motion Picture in the drama category at the Golden Globe Awards on January 15, 2007. Gustavo Santaolalla won the Academy Award that year for Best Original Score. After Babel, Alejandro and his writing partner Guillermo Arriaga professionally parted ways, following González Iñárritu barring Arriaga from the set during filming (Arriaga told the LA Times in 2009 "It had to come to an end, but I still respect González Iñárritu").
In 2008 and 2009, González Iñárritu directed and produced Biutiful, starring Javier Bardem, written by González Iñárritu, Armando Bo, and Nicolas Giacobone. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festial on May 17, 2010. Bardem went on to win Best Actor (shared with Elio Germano for La nostra vita) at Cannes. Biutiful is González Iñárritu's first film in his native Spanish since his debut feature Amores perros. For the second time in his career his film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards. It was also nominated for the 2011 Golden Globes in the category of Best Foreign Film, for the 2011 BAFTA awards in the category of Best Film Not in the English Language and Best Actor. Javier Bardem's performance was also nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor.
In 2014, González Iñárritu directed Birdman, starring Michael Keaton, Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, and Andrea Riseborough. The film is Iñárritu's first comedy. Birdman is about an actor who played an iconic superhero, and who tries to revive his career by doing a play based on the Raymond Carver short story What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The film was released on October 17, 2014.
In April 2014, it was announced that González Iñárritu's next film as a director will be The Revenant, which he co-wrote with Mark L. Smith. It is based on the novel of same name by Michael Punke. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy and Will Poulter with shooting began in September 2014, for a December 25, 2015 release.The Revenant is being filmed in Alberta and B.C. with production scheduled to wrap in February 2015. The film will be a 19th Century period piece, and is described as a "gritty thriller" about a fur trapper who seeks revenge against a group of men who robbed and abandoned him after he was mauled by a grizzly bear.
From 2001 to 2011, González Iñárritu directed several short films.
In 2001, he directed an 11 minute film segment for 11.09.01- which is composed of several short films that explore the effects of the 9/11 terrorist attacks from different points of view around the world.
In 2007, he made ANNA which screened at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival inside Chacun son cinéma. It was part of the 60th anniversary of the film festival and it was a series of shorts by 33 world-renown film directors.
In 2012, he made the experimental short film Naran Ja: One Act Orange Dance - inspired by L.A Dance Project's premiere performance. The short features excerpts of the new choreography Benjamin Millepied crafted for Moving Parts. The story takes place in a secluded, dusty space and centers around LADP dancer Julia Eichten.
In 2001/2002, González Iñárritu directed "Powder Keg", an episode for the BMW film series The Hire, starring Clive Owen as the driver.
In 2010, González Iñárritu directed Write the Future, a football-themed commercial for Nike ahead of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, which went on to win Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions advertising festival.
In 2012, he directed Procter and Gamble's "Best Job" commercial spot for the 2012 Olympic Ceremonies. It went on to win the Best Primetime Commercial Emmy at Creative Arts Emmy Awards.- Actress
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Veronica Lake was born as Constance Frances Marie Ockleman on November 14, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the daughter of Constance Charlotta (Trimble) and Harry Eugene Ockelman, who worked for an oil company as a ship employee. Her father was of half German and half Irish descent, and her mother was of Irish ancestry. While still a child, Veronica's parents moved to Florida when she was not quite a year old. By the time she was five, the family had returned to Brooklyn. When Connie was only twelve, tragedy struck when her father died in an explosion on an oil ship. One year later her mother married Anthony Keane and Connie took his last name as her own. In 1934, when her stepfather was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the family moved to Saranac Lake, where Connie Keane enjoyed the outdoor life and flourished in the activities of boating on the lakes, skating, skiing, swimming, biking around Moody Pond and hiking up Mt Baker. The family made their home in 1935 at 1 Watson Place, (now 27 Seneca Street) then they moved to 1 Riverside Drive,(now Lake Kiwassa Road). Both Connie and Anthony benefited from the Adirondack experience and in 1936 the family left the Adirondacks and moved to Miami, FL., however, the memories of those carefree Saranac Lake days would always remain deeply rooted in her mind.
Two years later, Connie graduated from high school in Miami. Her natural beauty and charm and a definite talent for acting prompted her mother and step-father to move to Beverly Hills, California, where they enrolled her in the well known Bliss Hayden School of Acting in Hollywood. Connie had previously been diagnosed as a classic schizophrenic and her parents saw acting as a form of treatment for her condition. She showed remarkable abilities and did not have to wait long for a part to come her way.
Her first movie was as one of the many coeds in the RKO film, Sorority House (1939). It was a minor part, to be sure, but it was a start. Veronica quickly followed up that project with two other films. All Women Have Secrets (1939) and Dancing Co-Ed (1939), were again bit roles for the pretty young woman from the East Coast, but she did not complain. After all, other would-be starlets took a while before they ever received a bit part. Veronica continued her schooling, while taking a bit roles in two more films, Young as You Feel (1940) and Forty Little Mothers (1940). Prior to this time, she was still under her natural name of Constance Keane. Now, with a better role in I Wanted Wings (1941), she was asked to change her name, and Veronica Lake was born. Now, instead of playing coeds, she had a decent, speaking part. Veronica felt like an actress. The film was a success and the public loved this bright newcomer.
Paramount, the studio she was under contract with, then assigned her to two more films that year, Hold Back the Dawn (1941) and Sullivan's Travels (1941). The latter received good reviews from the always tough film critics. As Ellen Graham, in This Gun for Hire (1942) the following year, Veronica now had top billing. She had paid her dues and was on a roll. The public was enamored with her. In 1943, Veronica starred in only one film. She portrayed Lieutenant Olivia D'Arcy in So Proudly We Hail! (1943) with Claudette Colbert. The film was a box-office smash. It seemed that any film Veronica starred in would be an unquestionable hit. However, her only outing for 1944, The Hour Before the Dawn (1944) would not be well-received by either the public or the critics. As Nazi sympathizer Dora Bruckmann, Veronica's role was dismal at best. Critics disliked her accent immensely because it wasn't true to life. Her acting itself suffered because of the accent. Mediocre films trailed her for all of 1945. It seemed that Veronica was dumped in just about any film to see if it could be salvaged. Hold That Blonde! (1945), Out of This World (1945), and Miss Susie Slagle's (1946) were just a waste of talent for the beautiful blonde. The latter film was a shade better than the previous two. In 1946, Veronica bounced back in The Blue Dahlia (1946) with Alan Ladd and Howard Da Silva. The film was a hit, but it was the last decent film for Veronica. Paramount continued to put her in pathetic movies. After 1948, Paramount discharged the once prized star, and she was out on her own. In 1949, she starred in the Twentieth Century film Slattery's Hurricane (1949), which, unfortunately, was another weak film. She was not on the big screen again until 1952 when she appeared in Stronghold (1951). By Veronica's own admission, the film "was a dog". From 1952 to 1966, Veronica made television appearances and even tried her hand on the stage. Not a lot of success for her at all. By now alcohol was the order of the day. She was down on her luck and drank heavily. In 1962, Veronica was found living in an old hotel and working as a bartender. She finally returned to the big screen in Footsteps in the Snow (1966). Another drought ensued and she appeared on the silver screen for the last time in Flesh Feast (1970) - a very low budget film.
On July 7, 1973, Veronica died of hepatitis in Burlington, Vermont. The beautiful actress with the long blonde hair was dead at the age of 50.- Actress
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Harlean Carpenter, who later became Jean Harlow, was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on March 3, 1911. She was the daughter of a successful dentist and his wife. In 1927, at the age of 16, she ran away from home to marry a young businessman named Charles McGrew, who was 23. The couple pulled up stakes and moved to Los Angeles, not long after they were married, and it was there Jean found work as an extra in films, landing a bit part in Moran of the Marines (1928). From that point on she would go to casting calls whenever she could. In 1929 she had bit parts in no less than 11 movies, playing everything from a passing woman on the street to a winged ballerina. Her marriage to McGrew turned out to be a disaster--it lasted barely two years--and they divorced. The divorce enabled her to put more of her efforts into finding roles in the movie business. Although she was having trouble finding roles in feature movies, she had more luck in film shorts. She had a fairly prominent role in Hal Roach's Double Whoopee (1929). Her big break came in 1930, when she landed a role in Howard Hughes' World War I epic Hell's Angels (1930), which turned out to be a smash hit. Not long after the film's debut, Hughes sold her contract to MGM for $60,000, and it was there where her career shot to unprecedented heights. Her appearance in Platinum Blonde (1931) cemented her role as America's new sex symbol. The next year saw her paired with Clark Gable in John Ford's Red Dust (1932), the second of six films she would make with Gable. It was while filming this picture (which took 44 days to complete at a cost of $408,000) that she received word that her new husband, MGM producer Paul Bern, had committed suicide. His death threatened to halt production of the film, and MGM chief Louis B. Mayer had even contacted Tallulah Bankhead to replace Harlow if she were unable to continue, a step that proved to be unnecessary. The film was released late in 1932 and was an instant hit. She was becoming a superstar. In MGM's glittering all-star Dinner at Eight (1933) Jean was at her comedic best as the wife of a ruthless tycoon (Wallace Beery) trying to take over another man's (Lionel Barrymore) failing business. Later that year she played the part of Lola Burns in director Victor Fleming's hit Bombshell (1933). It was a Hollywood parody loosely based on Clara Bow's and Harlow's real-life experiences, right down to the latter's greedy stepfather, nine-room Georgian-style home with mostly-white interiors, her numerous pet dogs - right down to having her re-shoot scenes from the Gable and Harlow hit, Red Dust (1932) here! In 1933 Jean married cinematographer Harold Rosson, a union that would only last eight months. In 1935 she was again teamed with Gable in another rugged adventure, China Seas (1935) (her remaining two pictures with Gable would be Wife vs. Secretary (1936) and Saratoga (1937)). It was her films with Gable that created her lasting legacy in the film world. Unfortunately, during the filming of Saratoga (1937), she was hospitalized with uremic poisoning. On June 7, 1937, she died from the ailment. She was only 26. The film had to be finished by long angle shots using a double. Gable said he felt like he was in the arms of a ghost during the final touches of the film. Because of her death, the film was a hit. Record numbers of fans poured into America's movie theaters to see the film. Other sex symbols/blonde bombshells have followed, but it is Jean Harlow who all others are measured against.- Actress
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Carole Lombard was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on October 6, 1908. Her parents divorced in 1916 and her mother took the family on a trip out West. While there they decided to settle down in the Los Angeles area. After being spotted playing baseball in the street with the neighborhood boys by a film director, Carole was signed to a one-picture contract in 1921 when she was 12. The film in question was A Perfect Crime (1921). Although she tried for other acting jobs, she would not be seen onscreen again for four years. She returned to a normal life, going to school and participating in athletics, excelling in track and field. By age 15 she had had enough of school, though, and quit. She joined a theater troupe and played in several stage shows, which were for the most part nothing to write home about. In 1925 she passed a screen test and was signed to a contract with Fox Films. Her first role as a Fox player was Hearts and Spurs (1925), in which she had the lead. Right after that film she appeared in a western called Durand of the Bad Lands (1925). She rounded out 1925 in the comedy Marriage in Transit (1925) (she also appeared in a number of two-reel shorts). In 1926 Carole was seriously injured in an automobile accident that resulted in the left side of her face being scarred. Once she had recovered, Fox canceled her contract. She did find work in a number of shorts during 1928 (13 of them, many for slapstick comedy director Mack Sennett), but did go back for a one-time shot with Fox called Me, Gangster (1928). By now the film industry was moving from the silent era to "talkies". While some stars' careers ended because of heavy accents, poor diction or a voice unsuitable to sound, Carole's light, breezy, sexy voice enabled her to transition smoothly during this period. Her first sound film was High Voltage (1929) at Pathe (her new studio) in 1929. In 1931 she was teamed with William Powell in Man of the World (1931). She and Powell hit it off and soon married, but the marriage didn't work out and they divorced in 1933. No Man of Her Own (1932) put Carole opposite Clark Gable for the first and only time (they married seven years later in 1939). By now she was with Paramount Pictures and was one of its top stars. However, it was Twentieth Century (1934) that showed her true comedic talents and proved to the world what a fine actress she really was. In 1936 Carole received her only Oscar nomination for Best Actress for My Man Godfrey (1936). She was superb as ditzy heiress Irene Bullock. Unfortunately, the coveted award went to Luise Rainer in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), which also won for Best Picture. Carole was now putting out about one film a year of her own choosing, because she wanted whatever role she picked to be a good one. She was adept at picking just the right part, which wasn't surprising as she was smart enough to see through the good-ol'-boy syndrome of the studio moguls. She commanded and received what was one of the top salaries in the business - at one time it was reported she was making $35,000 a week. She made but one film in 1941, Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941). Her last film was in 1942, when she played Maria Tura opposite Jack Benny in To Be or Not to Be (1942). Tragically, she didn't live to see its release. The film was completed in 1941 just at the time the US entered World War II, and was subsequently held back for release until 1942. Meanwhile, Carole went home to Indiana for a war bond rally. On January 16, 1942, Carole, her mother, and 20 other people were flying back to California when the plane went down outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. All aboard perished. The highly acclaimed actress was dead at the age of 33 and few have been able to match her talents since.- Actress
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Cate Blanchett was born on May 14, 1969 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to June (Gamble), an Australian teacher and property developer, and Robert DeWitt Blanchett, Jr., an American advertising executive, originally from Texas. She has an older brother and a younger sister. When she was ten years old, her 40-year-old father died of a sudden heart attack. Her mother never remarried, and her grandmother moved in to help her mother.
Cate graduated from Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1992 and, in a little over a year, had won both critical and popular acclaim. On graduating from NIDA, she joined the Sydney Theatre Company's production of Caryl Churchill's "Top Girls", then played Felice Bauer, the bride, in Tim Daly's "Kafka Dances", winning the 1993 Newcomer Award from the Sydney Theatre Critics Circle for her performance. From there, Blanchett moved to the role of Carol in David Mamet's searing polemic "Oleanna", also for the Sydney Theatre Company, and won the Rosemont Best Actress Award, her second award that year. She then co-starred in the ABC Television's prime time drama Heartland (1994), again winning critical acclaim. In 1995, she was nominated for Best Female Performance for her role as Ophelia in the Belvoir Street Theatre Company's production of "Hamlet". Other theatre credits include Helen in the Sydney Theatre Company's "Sweet Phoebe", Miranda in "The Tempest" and Rose in "The Blind Giant is Dancing", both for the Belvoir Street Theatre Company. In other television roles, Blanchett starred as Bianca in ABC's Bordertown (1995), as Janie Morris in G.P. (1989) and in ABC's popular series Police Rescue (1994). She made her feature film debut in Paradise Road (1997).
Cate married writer Andrew Upton in 1997. She had met him a year earlier on a movie set, and they didn't like each other at first. He thought she was aloof, and she thought he was arrogant, but then they connected over a poker game at a party, and she went home with him that night. Three weeks later he proposed marriage and they quickly married before she went off to England to play her breakthrough role in films: the title character in Elizabeth (1998) for which she won numerous awards for her performance, including the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama. Cate was also nominated for an Academy Award for the role but lost out to Gwyneth Paltrow. 2001 was a particularly busy year, with starring roles in Bandits (2001), The Shipping News (2001), Charlotte Gray (2001) and playing Elf Queen Galadriel in the "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy. She also gave birth to her first child, son Dashiell, in 2001. In 2004, she gave birth to her second son Roman.
Also, in 2004, she played actress Katharine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's film The Aviator (2004), for which she received an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. Two years later, she received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress for playing a teacher having an affair with an underage student in Notes on a Scandal (2006). In 2007, she returned to the role that made her a star in Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007). It earned her an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. She was nominated for another Oscar that same year as Best Supporting Actress for playing Bob Dylan in I'm Not There (2007). In 2008, she gave birth to her third child, son Ignatius. She and her husband became artistic directors of the Sydney Theatre Company, choosing to spend more time in Australia raising their three sons. She also purchased a multi-million dollar home in Sydney, Australia and named it Bulwarra and made extensive renovations to it. Because of her life in Australia, her film work became sporadic, until Woody Allen cast her in the title role in Blue Jasmine (2013), which won her the Academy Award as Best Actress. She ended her job as artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company, while her husband continued there for two more years before he too resigned.
In 2015, she adopted her daughter Edith in her father's homeland of the United States. That same year, she and her husband sold their multi-million dollar home in Australia at a profit and moved to America. Reasons varied from her wanting to work more in America to wanting to familiarize herself with her late father's American heritage. She played the title role of Carol (2015), a 1950s American housewife in a lesbian affair with a younger woman, for which she received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. While most actresses might slow down in their forties, Blanchett did the opposite by stretching her boundaries even further, such as when she played 13 different characters in Manifesto (2015) and then making her Broadway debut in 2017 in "The Present", which is her husband's adaptation of Chekhov's play "Platonov" for which she earned a Tony nomination as Best Actress in a Play. Also in 2017, she was selected for the highest honor in her birth country: the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was born on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her father was a United States Army lieutenant and her mother had been a student of drama and an actress with a traveling troupe. Once Mr. Russell was mustered out of the service, the family took up residence in Canada but moved to California when he found employment there. The family was well-to-do and although Jane was the only girl among four brothers, her mother saw to it that she took piano lessons. In addition to music, Jane was interested in drama much as her mother had been and participated in high school stage productions. Upon graduation, Jane took a job as a receptionist for a doctor who specialized in foot disorders. Although she had originally planned on being a designer, her father died, and she had to go to work to help the family. Jane modeled on the side and was very much sought-after especially because of her figure.
She managed to save enough money to go to drama school, with the urging of her mother. She was signed by Howard Hughes for his production of The Outlaw (1943) in 1941, the film that was to make Jane famous. The film was not a classic by any means but was geared through its marketing to show off Jane's ample physical assets rather than acting abilities. Although the film was made in 1941, it was not released until two years later and then only on a limited basis due to the way the film portrayed Jane's assets. It was hard for the flick to pass the censorship board. Finally, the film gained general release in 1946. The film was a smash at the box office.
Jane did not make another film until 1945 when she played Joan Kenwood in Young Widow (1946). She had signed a seven-year contract with Hughes, and it seemed the only films he would put her in were those that displayed Jane in a very flattering light due to her body. Films such as His Kind of Woman (1951) and The Las Vegas Story (1952) did nothing to highlight her true acting abilities. The pinnacle of her career was in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) as Dorothy Shaw, with Marilyn Monroe. This film showed Jane's comedic side very well. Jane did continue to make films throughout the 1950s, but the films were at times not up to par, particularly with Jane's talents being wasted in forgettable movies to show off her sexy side. Films such as Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955) and The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956) did do Jane's justice and were able to show exactly the fine actress she was.
After The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown (1957) (a flop), Jane took a hiatus from films, to dabble a little in television, returning in 1964 to film Fate Is the Hunter (1964). Unfortunately, the roles were not there anymore as Jane appeared in only four pictures during the entire decade of the 1960s. Her last film of the decade was The Born Losers (1967). After three more years away from the big screen, she returned to make one last film called Darker Than Amber (1970). Her last play before the public was in the 1970s when Jane was a spokesperson for Playtex bras. Had Jane not been wasted during the Hughes years, she could have been a bigger actress than what she was allowed to show. Jane Russell died at age 89 of respiratory failure on February 28, 2011, in Santa Maria, California.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Rinko was born Kikuchi Yuriko in Hadano just south of Tokyo. The town is known mainly for its green tea and public baths. She is the youngest of three siblings. After being scouted on the street, she began modeling in her hometown and subsequently began acting under her birth name before switching to Rinko. She appeared in the cult film The Taste Of Tea, but came to mainstream audiences' attention for her role in Babel, for which she had learned sign language. She played a deaf-mute. She was the first Japanese actress to be nominated for the Oscars in 50 years, since Miyoshi Umeki. Other than that she had appeared in commercials, including ads for Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent, as well as Japanese soap operas. As a result, her popularity rose outside her native country. She moved to New York City and lived for a time with director Spike Jonze, whom she had met in Tokyo at a film festival in 2009. That's when she began taking English lessons. While she had appeared in the acclaimed film version of Norwegian Wood, her later American were mostly popcorn flicks like 47 Ronin and Pacific Rim. Her success and foray into American entertainment continued with her castings in Kumiko, and Westworld. Rinko married Japanese actor Sometani Shota in 2014 and gave birth to a son in October 2016. She is a capable rider of horses and motorcycles and grew up watching samurai films.- Actress
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One of America's most loved actresses was born Doris Mary Kappelhoff on April 3, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Alma Sophia (Welz), a housewife, and William Joseph Kappelhoff, a music teacher and choir master. Her grandparents were all German immigrants. She had two brothers, Richard, who died before she was born and Paul, a few years older.
Her parents divorced while she was still a child, and she lived with her mother. Like most little girls, Doris liked to dance. At fourteen, she formed a dance act with a boy, Jerry Doherty, and they won $500 in a local talent contest. She and Jerry took a brief trip to Hollywood to test the waters. They felt they could succeed, so she and Jerry returned to Cincinnati with the intention of packing and making a permanent move to Hollywood. Tragically, the night before she was to move to Hollywood, she was injured riding in a car hit by a train, ending the possibility of a dancing career.
It was a terrible setback, but after taking singing lessons she found a new vocation, and at age 17, she began touring with the Les Brown Band. She met trombonist Al Jorden, whom she married in 1941. Jorden was prone to violence and they divorced after two years, not long after the birth of their son Terry. In 1946, Doris married George Weidler, but this union lasted less than a year. Day's agent talked her into taking a screen test at Warner Bros. The executives there liked what they saw and signed her to a contract (her early credits are often confused with those of another actress named Doris Day, who appeared mainly in B westerns in the 1930s and 1940s).
Her first starring movie role was in Romance on the High Seas (1948). The next year, she made two more films, My Dream Is Yours (1949) and It's a Great Feeling (1949). Audiences took to her beauty, terrific singing voice and bubbly personality, and she turned in fine performances in the movies she made (in addition to several hit records). She made three films for Warner Bros. in 1950 and five more in 1951. In that year, she met and married Martin Melcher, who adopted her young son Terry, who later grew up to become Terry Melcher, a successful record producer.
In 1953, Doris starred in Calamity Jane (1953), which was a major hit, and several more followed: Lucky Me (1954), Love Me or Leave Me (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and what is probably her best-known film, Pillow Talk (1959). She began to slow down her filmmaking pace in the 1960s, even though she started out the decade with a hit, Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960).
In 1958, her brother Paul died. Around this time, her husband, who had also taken charge of her career, had made deals for her to star in films she didn't really care about, which led to a bout with exhaustion. The 1960s weren't to be a repeat of the previous busy decade. She didn't make as many films as she had in that decade, but the ones she did make were successful: Do Not Disturb (1965), The Glass Bottom Boat (1966), Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968) and With Six You Get Eggroll (1968). Martin Melcher died in 1968, and Doris never made another film, but she had been signed by Melcher to do her own TV series, The Doris Day Show (1968). That show, like her movies, was successful, lasting until 1973. After her series went off the air, she made only occasional TV appearances.
By the time Martin Melcher died, Doris discovered she was millions of dollars in debt. She learned that Melcher had squandered virtually all of her considerable earnings, but she was eventually awarded $22 million by the courts in a case against a man that Melcher had unwisely let invest her money. She married for the fourth time in 1976 and since her divorce in 1980 has devoted her life to animals.
Doris was a passionate animal rights activist. She ran Doris Day Animal League in Carmel, California, which advocates homes and proper care of household pets.
Doris died on May 13, 2019, in Carmel Valley Village, California. She was 97.- Desmond Llewelyn was born in South Wales in 1914, the son of a coal mining engineer. In high school, he worked as a stagehand in the school's productions and then picked up sporadic small parts. His family would not give up their effort to prevent him from a life on stage, so an uncle who was a high-ranking police officer arranged for Llewelyn to take the department's physical exam.
"Thank God, I flunked the eye test, and they wouldn't take me. I suspect the inspector had a hangover because he also failed this other chap I knew, who went out the same day and passed the physical for the Royal Navy, which had a lot tougher test."
After failing the police exam, Llewelyn thought about becoming a minister, realizing after a week-long retreat of quiet and meditation that the ministry "was definitely not for me." Llewelyn persevered in his acting quest, and was accepted to the Royal Academy for the Dramatic Arts in the mid 1930s.
The outbreak of World War II in September 1939, halted his acting career, and Llewelyn was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the British army. He was assigned to the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and was sent to France in early 1940.
In a short time, his regiment was fighting the Germans, and Llewelyn's company was holding off a division of German tanks. Llewelyn explained that "eventually, the tanks broke through and many of us jumped into this canal and started swimming down it to the other side, figuring that our chaps were still over there. But the Germans were the only ones there," and Llewelyn was captured, and held as a prisoner of war for five years.
At one prison camp, the prisoners had dug a tunnel and were planning to escape the next morning. Llewelyn was down in the tunnel doing some maintenance work in preparation of the escape when the Germans found out about the tunnel and caught him down in it, a crime that earned Llewelyn 10 days in solitary, which Llewelyn called "a blessing of sorts. After spending every day of several years sleeping in a room with 50 other people, the quiet and privacy was rather nice."
After the war, Llewelyn returned to London and revived his career, eventually being cast as his trademark Q in From Russia with Love (1963). Since 1963, Llewelyn has appeared as Q in every Eon Productions Bond film, except Live and Let Die (1973).
Llewelyn was omitted from Live and Let Die (1973) because producers Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli felt that too much was being made of the gadgets and they would play it down. Llewelyn said he "was quite disappointed" at being left out of Live and Let Die (1973).
Fans, however, missed Q, and Llewelyn got a call shortly after the release of Live and Let Die (1973) telling him that he would be in the next Bond film, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974).
Llewelyn, who admits that his mechanical abilities in real life are virtually nil, is geared up for the next Bond movie. "I'd love to be in the next one," Llewelyn said. "Of course, if you consider my age, they should have put me out to grass a long time ago." - The archetypal screen tough guy with weatherbeaten features--one film critic described his rugged looks as "a Clark Gable who had been left out in the sun too long"--Charles Bronson was born Charles Buchinsky, one of 15 children of struggling parents in Pennsylvania. His mother, Mary (Valinsky), was born in Pennsylvania, to Lithuanian parents, and his father, Walter Buchinsky, was a Lithuanian immigrant coal miner.
He completed high school and joined his father in the mines (an experience that resulted in a lifetime fear of being in enclosed spaces) and then served in WW II. After his return from the war, Bronson used the GI Bill to study art (a passion he had for the rest of his life), then enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. One of his teachers was impressed with the young man and recommended him to director Henry Hathaway, resulting in Bronson making his film debut in You're in the Navy Now (1951).
He appeared on screen often early in his career, though usually uncredited. However, he made an impact on audiences as the evil assistant to Vincent Price in the 3-D thriller House of Wax (1953). His sinewy yet muscular physique got him cast in action-type roles, often without a shirt to highlight his manly frame. He received positive notices from critics for his performances in Vera Cruz (1954), Target Zero (1955) and Run of the Arrow (1957). Indie director Roger Corman cast him as the lead in his well-received low-budget gangster flick Machine-Gun Kelly (1958), then Bronson scored the lead in his own TV series, Man with a Camera (1958). The 1960s proved to be the era in which Bronson made his reputation as a man of few words but much action.
Director John Sturges cast him as half Irish/half Mexican gunslinger Bernardo O'Reilly in the smash hit western The Magnificent Seven (1960), and hired him again as tunnel rat Danny Velinski for the WWII POW big-budget epic The Great Escape (1963). Several more strong roles followed, then once again he was back in military uniform, alongside Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine in the testosterone-filled The Dirty Dozen (1967).
European audiences had taken a shine to his minimalist acting style, and he headed to the Continent to star in several action-oriented films, including Guns for San Sebastian (1968) (aka "Guns for San Sebastian"), the cult western Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) (aka "Once Upon a Time in The West"), Rider on the Rain (1970) (aka "Rider On The Rain") and, in one of the quirkier examples of international casting, alongside Japansese screen legend Toshirô Mifune in the western Red Sun (1971) (aka "Red Sun").
American audiences were by now keen to see Bronson back on US soil, and he returned triumphantly in the early 1970s to take the lead in more hard-edged crime and western dramas, including The Valachi Papers (1972) and the revenge western Chato's Land (1972). After nearly 25 years as a working actor, he became an 'overnight" sensation. Bronson then hooked up with British director Michael Winner to star in several highly successful urban crime thrillers, including The Mechanic (1972) and The Stone Killer (1973). He then scored a solid hit as a Colorado melon farmer-done-wrong in Richard Fleischer's Mr. Majestyk (1974). However, the film that proved to be a breakthrough for both Bronson and Winner came in 1974 with the release of the controversial Death Wish (1974) (written with Henry Fonda in mind, who turned it down because he was disgusted by the script).
The US was at the time in the midst of rising street crime, and audiences flocked to see a story about a mild-mannered architect who seeks revenge for the murder of his wife and rape of his daughter by gunning down hoods, rapists and killers on the streets of New York City. So popular was the film that it spawned four sequels over the next 20 years.
Action fans could not get enough of tough guy Bronson, and he appeared in what many fans--and critics--consider his best role: Depression-era street fighter Chaney alongside James Coburn in Hard Times (1975). That was followed by the somewhat slow-paced western Breakheart Pass (1975) (with wife Jill Ireland), the light-hearted romp (a flop) From Noon Till Three (1976) and as Soviet agent Grigori Borsov in director Don Siegel's Cold War thriller Telefon (1977).
Bronson remained busy throughout the 1980s, with most of his films taking a more violent tone, and he was pitched as an avenging angel eradicating evildoers in films like the 10 to Midnight (1983), The Evil That Men Do (1984), Assassination (1987) and Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects (1989). Bronson jolted many critics with his forceful work as murdered United Mine Workers leader Jock Yablonski in the TV movie Act of Vengeance (1986), gave a very interesting performance in the Sean Penn-directed The Indian Runner (1991) and surprised everyone with his appearance as compassionate newspaper editor Francis Church in the family film Yes Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus (1991).
Bronson's final film roles were as police commissioner Paul Fein in a well-received trio of crime/drama TV movies Family of Cops (1995), Breach of Faith: A Family of Cops II (1997) and Family of Cops III: Under Suspicion (1999). Unfortunately, ill health began to take its toll; he suffered from Alzheimer's disease for the last few years of his life, and finally passed away from pneumonia at Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in August 2003.
Bronson was a true icon of international cinema; critics had few good things to say about his films, but he remained a fan favorite in both the US and abroad for 50 years, a claim few other film legends can make. - Director
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Otto Ludwig Preminger was born in Wiznitz, Bukovina, Austria-Hungary. His father was a prosecutor, and Otto originally intended to follow his father into a law career; however, he fell in love with the theater in his 20's and became one of the most imaginative stage producers and directors. He was only 24 when engaged by Max Reinhardt to take over his theatre where he produced all kids of plays. He directed his first film in 1931, and came to the US in 1936 to direct 'Libel' on the Broadway stage. He then moved to Hollywood where he signed with Fox becoming the first independent producer / director .He alternated between stage and film until the great success of Laura (1944) made him an A-list director in Hollyood.
For two decades after "Laura was released in 1944, Preminger ranked as one of the top directors in the world. His powers began to wane after Advise & Consent (1962), and by the end of the decade, he was considered washed-up. However, such was the potency of his craftsmanship that he continued to direct major motion pictures into the 1970s, with Rosebud (1975) getting scathing reviews. His last directorial effort was The Human Factor (1979), which won him respectful notices.
Otto Preminger died on April 23, 1986 in New York City from the effects of lung cancer and Alzheimer's disease. He was 80 years old.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris on December 3, 1930, the second of four children in a bourgeois Franco-Swiss family. His father was a doctor who owned a private clinic, and his mother came from a preeminent family of Swiss bankers. During World War II Godard became a naturalized citizen of Switzerland and attended school in Nyons, Switzerland. His parents divorced in 1948, at which time he returned to Paris to attend the Lycée Rohmer. In 1949 he studied at the Sorbonne to prepare for a degree in ethnology. However, it was during this time that he began attending with François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, and Éric Rohmer.
In 1950 Godard, with Rivette and Rohmer, founded "Gazette du cinéma", which published five issues between May and November. He wrote a number of articles for the journal, often using the pseudonym "Hans Lucas". After Godard worked on and financed two films by Rivette and Rohmer, Godard's family cut off their financial support in 1951, and he resorted to a Bohemian lifestyle that included stealing food and money when necessary. In January 1952 he began writing film criticism for "Les cahiers du cinéma". Later that year he traveled to North and South America with his father and attempted to make his first film (of which only a tracking shot from a car was ever accomplished).
In 1953 he returned to Paris briefly before securing a job as a construction worker on a dam project in Switzerland. With the money from the job, he made a short film in 1954 about the building of the dam called Operation Concrete (1958). Later that year his mother was killed in a motor scooter accident in Switzerland. In 1956 Godard began writing again for "Les cahiers du cinéma" as well as for the journal "Arts". In 1957 Godard worked as the press attache for "Artistes Associés", and made his first French film, All Boys Are Called Patrick (1959).
In 1958 he shot Charlotte and Her Boyfriend (1958), his homage to Jean Cocteau. Later that year he took unused footage of a flood in Paris shot by Truffaut and edited it into a film called A Story of Water (1961), which was an homage to Mack Sennett. In 1959 he worked with Truffaut on the weekly publication "Temps de Paris". Godard wrote a gossip column for the journal, but also spent much time writing scenarios for films and a body of critical writings which placed him firmly in the forefront of the "nouvelle vague" aesthetic, precursing the French New Wave.
It was also in that year Godard began work on Breathless (1960). In 1960 he married Anna Karina in Switzerland. In April and May he shot The Little Soldier (1963) in Geneva and was preparing the film for a fall release in Paris. However, French censors banned it due to its references to the Algerian war, and it was not shown until 1963. In March 1960 Breathless (1960) premiered in Paris. It was hugely successful both with the film critics and at the box office, and became a landmark film in the French New Wave with its references to American cinema, its jagged editing and overall romantic/cinephilia approach to filmmaking. The film propelled the popularity of male lead Jean-Paul Belmondo with European audiences.
In 1961 Godard shot A Woman Is a Woman (1961), his first film using color widescreen stock. Later that year he participated in the collective effort to remake the film The Seven Deadly Sins (1962), which was heralded as an important project in artistic collaboration. In 1962 Godard shot Vivre sa vie (1962) in Paris, his first commercial success since "Breathless". Later that year he shot a segment entitled "Le Nouveau Monde" for the collective film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963), another important work in the history of collaborative multiple-authored art.
In 1963 Godard completed a film in homage to Jean Vigo entitled The Carabineers (1963), which was a resounding failure with the public and stirred furious controversy with film critics. Also that year he worked on a couple of collective films: The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers (1964) (from which Godard's sequence was later cut) and Six in Paris (1965). In 1964 Godard and his wife Anna Karina formed their own production company, Anouchka Films. They shot a film called A Married Woman (1964), which censors forced them to re-edit due to a topless sunbathing scene shot by Jacques Rozier. The censors also made Godard change the title to "Une femme marié" so as to not give the impression that this "scandalous" woman was the typical French wife. Later in the year, two French television programs were produced in devotion to Godard's work.
In the spring of 1965 Godard shot Alphaville (1965) in Paris; in the summer he shot Pierrot the Fool (1965) in Paris and the south of France. Shortly thereafter he and Anna Karina separated. Following their divorce, Godard shot Made in U.S.A (1966), "Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (1966)", "L'amour en l'an 2000" (1966) (a sequel to "Alphaville" shot as a sketch for the collective film "L'amour travers les ages" (1966)).
In 1967 Godard shot The Chinese (1967) in Paris with Anne Wiazemsky, who was the granddaughter of French novelist François Mauriac. During the making of the film Godard and Wiazemsky were married in Paris. Later in the year he was prevented from traveling to North Vietnam for the shooting of a sequence for the collective film Far from Vietnam (1967). He instead shot the sequence in Paris, entitled "Camera-Oeil". Also during 1967 Godard participated (as the only Frenchman) on an Italian collective film called Love and Anger (1969).
In 1968 Godard was commissioned by French television to make Joy of Learning (1969). However, television producers were so outraged by the product Godard produced that they refused to show it. In May of that year Henri Langlois was fired by the head of the French Jean-Pierre Gorin to form the Dziga-Vertov group, infuriating Godard. He became increasingly concerned with socialist solutions to an idealist cinema, especially in providing the proletariat with the means of production and distribution. Along with other militantly political filmmakers in the Dziga-Vertov group, Godard published a series of 'Ciné-Tracts' outlining these viewpoints. In the summer of 1968 Godard traveled to New York City and Berkeley, California, to shoot the film "One American Movie", which was never completed. In September he made a trip to Canada to start another film called "Communication(s)", which also went unfinished, and then made a visit to Cuba before returning to France.
In 1969 Godard traveled to England, where he made the film See You at Mao (1970) for BBC Weekend Television, but the network later refused to show it. In the late spring he traveled with the Dziga-Vertov group to Prague to secretly shoot the film "Pravda". Later that year he shot Lotte in Italia (1971) ("Struggle for Italy") for Italian television. It was never shown, either.
In 1970 Godard traveled to Lebanon to shoot a film for the Palestinian Liberation Organization entitled "Jusque à la victoire" (1970) ("Until Victory"). Later that year he traveled to dozens of American universities trying to raise money for the film. In spite of his efforts, it was never released.- Writer
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French director François Truffaut began to assiduously go to the movies at age seven. He was also a great reader but not a good pupil. He left school at 14 and started working. In 1947, aged 15, he founded a film club and met André Bazin, a French critic, who became his protector. Bazin helped the delinquent Truffaut and also when he was put in jail because he deserted the army. In 1953 Truffaut published his first movie critiques in "Les Cahiers du Cinema." In this magazine Truffaut, and some of his friends as passionate as he was, became defenders of what they call the "author policy". In 1954, as a test, Truffaut directed his first short film. Two years afterwords he assisted Roberto Rossellini with some later abandoned projects.
The year 1957 was an important one for him: he married Madeleine Morgenstern, the daughter of an important film distributor, and founded his own production company, Les Films du Carrosse; named after Jean Renoir's The Golden Coach (1952). He also directed The Mischief Makers (1957), considered the real first step of his cinematographic work. His other big year was 1959: the huge success of his first full-length film, The 400 Blows (1959), was the beginning of the New Wave, a new way of making movies in France. This was also the year his first daughter, Laura Truffaut, was born.
From 1959 until his death, François Truffaut's life and films are mixed up. Let's only note he had two other daughters Eva Truffaut (b. 1961) and Josephine (b. 1982, with French actress Fanny Ardant). Truffaut was the most popular and successful French film director ever. His main themes were passion, women, childhood and faithfulness.- Director
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Victor Fleming entered the film business as a stuntman in 1910, mainly doing stunt driving - which came easy to him, as he had been a mechanic and professional race-car driver. He became interested in working on the other side of the camera, and eventually got a job as a cameraman on many of the films of Douglas Fairbanks. He soon began directing, and his first big hit was The Virginian (1929). It was the movie that turned Gary Cooper into a star (a fact Cooper never forgot; he and Fleming remained friends for life). Fleming's star continued to rise during the '30s, and he was responsible for many of the films that would eventually be considered classics, such as Red Dust (1932), Bombshell (1933), Treasure Island (1934), and the two films that were the high marks of his career: Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939). Ironically Fleming was brought in on both pictures to replace other directors and smooth out the troubled productions, a feat he accomplished masterfully. His career took somewhat of a downturn in the '40s, and most of his films, with the exception of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), weren't particularly successful. He ended his career with the troubled production Joan of Arc (1948), which turned out to be a major critical and financial failure.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born on November 9, 1922 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ruby Dandridge (née Ruby Jean Butler), an entertainer, and Cyril H. Dandridge, a cabinet maker and minister. Under the prodding of her mother, Dorothy and her sister Vivian Dandridge began performing publicly, usually in black Baptist churches throughout the country. Her mother would often join her daughters on stage. As the depression worsened, Dorothy and her family picked up and moved to Los Angeles where they had hopes of finding better work, perhaps in film. Her first film was in the Marx Brothers comedy, A Day at the Races (1937). It was only a bit part but Dandridge hoped it would blossom into something better. She only appeared in another film in 1940, in Four Shall Die (1940).
Meanwhile, she dropped out of high school and became part of a musical trio which performed with the orchestra of Jimmie Lunceford. During the late 30s, she dated music composer Phil Moore, who was instrumental in launching her career as a nightclub singer and big band vocalist.
Her next few screen roles in the early 1940s tended to be small stereotypical roles of black girls or princesses - such as Bahama Passage (1941) and Drums of the Congo (1942), She was the singing star of the western themed all-black-cast "soundie" (short musical) Cow-Cow Boogie (1942) and appeared in movies that showcased her talents as actress and singer, like Hit Parade of 1943 (1943) as the vocalist of Count Basie's Band, and twice as the vocalist of Louis Armstrong's Band in Pillow to Post (1945) and Atlantic City (1944).
Those brought her headline acts in the nation's finest hotel nightclubs in New York, Miami, Chicago and Las Vegas. She may have been allowed to sing in these fine hotels but, because of racism, she couldn't have a room in any of them. It was reported that one hotel drained its swimming pool to keep her from enjoying that amenity.
In 1954, she appeared in the all-black production of Carmen Jones (1954) in the title role. She was so superb in that picture that she garnered an Academy Award nomination but lost to Grace Kelly in The Country Girl (1954). She did not get another movie role until Tamango (1958), an Italian film. She did six more films, including, most notably, Island in the Sun (1957) and Porgy and Bess (1959). The last movie in which she would ever appear was The Murder Men (1962) (1961).
Dandridge faded quickly after that, due to an ill-considered marriage to Jack Dennison (her first husband was Harold Nicholas), poor investments, financial woes, and alcoholism.
She was found dead in her apartment at 8495 Fountain Avenue, West Hollywood, on September 8, 1965, aged 42, from barbiturate poisoning. She left $2.14 in her bank account, and a handwritten letter: "In case of my death - whoever discovers it - Don't remove anything I have on - scarf, gown, or underwear. Cremate me right away - if I have any money, furniture, give it to my mother, Ruby Dandridge - She will know what to do.". She was cremated and her ashes were interred in the Freedom Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.
She was posthumously awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6719 Hollywood Blvd. on January 18, 1983.- Writer
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The name "Melville" is not immediately associated with film. It conjures up images of white whales and crackbrained captains, of naysaying notaries and soup-spilling sailors. It is the countersign to a realm of men and their deeds, both heroic and villainous. It is the American novel, with its Ishmaels and its Claggarts a challenge to the European canon. It is Herman Melville. And yet, for over three decades, it was also worn by one of the French cinema's brightest lights, Jean-Pierre Melville, whose art was as revolutionary as that of the eponymous author.
Jean-Pierre Grumbach was born on October 20, 1917, to a family of Alsatian Jews. In his youth he studied in Paris, where he was first exposed to great films, among them Robert J. Flaherty's and W.S. Van Dyke's silent documentary White Shadows in the South Seas (1928). It left so deep a mark upon the pubescent Grumbach that he became a regular at the cinema, an obsession that would benefit him in adulthood. His own earliest efforts, 16mm home movies, were made with a camera given to him by his father in this period. In 1937, however, his career was forestalled when he began obligatory service in the French army. He was still in uniform when the Nazis invaded in 1940; under the nom de guerre of Melville, he aided the Resistance and was eventually forced to flee to England. There he joined the Free French forces and took part in the Allies' liberation of continental Europe. After the war, despite a desire to revert to Grumbach, he found that pseudonym had stuck.
Eager to earn his place in the movie industry, Melville applied to the French Technicians' Union but was denied membership. Undaunted by what he regarded as party politics, he set up his own production company in 1946 and started releasing films outside the system. The first, a low-budget short titled 24 Hours in the Life of a Clown (1946), was a success, inspired by his boyhood love for the circus. His feature-length debut, The Silence of the Sea (1949), was highly innovative. An intimate piece on the horrors of World War II, it starred unknown actors and was filmed by a skeleton crew. Its schedule was unusual: It was shot over 27 days in the course of a year. Its production was unusual: it incorporated "on-location" scenes--rarities in that era--done without vital permits. Its provenance was unusual: it was adapted from a book before the author's consent was obtained. Above all, its style was unusual. Its dark, claustrophobic sets and bottom-lit close-ups signaled a departure from the highly cultured cinema of René Clair, Marcel Pagnol, Abel Gance and Jacques Feyder. It was neither comedietta nor costume drama nor avant-garde "cinéma pur." Where its roots may have been in Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion (1937), it was clearly something new.
Over the following 12 years Melville continued to create films that would influence the auteurs of La Nouvelle Vague (i.e., the French New Wave.) In 1950 he collaborated with Jean Cocteau on an unsatisfying version of The Terrible Children (1950), the tale of a strange, incestuous relationship between siblings. When You Read This Letter (1953), with French and Italian backing, was his first commercial project. While it was unprofitable, the fee he received allowed him to establish a studio outside of Paris. His next work, Bob the Gambler (1956), featured Roger Duchesne, a popular leading man of the 1930s who had drifted into the underworld during the war. As such, he was a uniquely apt choice for the role of the fashionable, self-immolating Bob. His supporting cast included Daniel Cauchy as toadying sidekick Paolo and newcomer Isabelle Corey as the temptress Anne. Although the picture was not a hit, it was a favorite of the aficionados that frequented Henri Langlois' Cinémathèque Français. Among them were the young savants Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, the latter of whom used Guy Decomble of "Bob le flambeur" in his The 400 Blows (1959) that ushered in the "New Wave" era. They adored the hip, new rendering of a tired scenario, much of it shot in the streets with hidden cameras. They viewed it as fresh and daring, a "freeing up" through the rejection of high-minded literary adaptations and the embracing of pop culture. Simply put, Melville refused to play by the rules, and they followed suit.
In retrospect, "Bob le flambeur" seems straightforward: A reformed mobster turned high-stakes gambler comes out of retirement to pull one last job. Its genius lies in its simplicity. Melville admired American culture, as his alias indicated. He drove around Paris in an enormous Cadillac, sporting a Stetson hat and aviator sunglasses. He drank Coca-Cola and listened to American radio. The works of American directors John Ford and Howard Hawks were appealing to him, as they were ageless sagas of heroes and villains. Melville strove to build his own pantheon by blending the American ethos with his postwar sensibilities. As he perceived it, it was America that had valiantly rescued France from German occupation. Still, for a young man with Alsatian roots, the line separating good guys and bad guys had been breached, and one can see this disillusionment from The Silence of the Sea (1949) onward. Thus, while he borrowed from the American noir's revolt against the dichotomous Hollywood creations of the 1930s, the artist was forging his own apocryphal brand of dark tragedy. In his paradigm, a criminal could be a kind of hero within his milieu, so long as he stuck by his word and his allegiances. It was his personal style and his adherence to the code of honor that defined a "good guy"; obversely, it was his faith in others that was his downfall. It is a universe without the possibility for salvation, in which love and friendship are brief interludes in the cat-and-mouse games that lead to certain destruction. In that sense, Bob is a crucial link between Julien Duvivier's Pépé le Moko (1937) and Godard's Breathless (1960), in which Melville gave a brilliant cameo performance.
Jean-Pierre Melville is often regarded as the godfather of the Nouvelle Vague. Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that had it not been for his aforementioned passion for American film, he might have shown us a very different "Bob le flambeur". Originally conceived as a hard-boiled gangster flick about the step-by-step plotting of a heist, Melville was forced to rethink its narrative after watching John Huston's remarkably similar The Asphalt Jungle (1950). It was only then that he had the idea to turn Bob into the comedy of manners that so delighted the cinephiles of the day. For this and other debts of gratitude, his next picture, Two Men in Manhattan (1959), was "a love letter to New York" and the America he revered. It was also his third straight box-office flop, however, and it caused Melville to break away from a New Wave movement that he felt catered to the cognoscenti. He later said, "If . . . I have consented to pass for their adopted father for a while, I do not wish it anymore, and I have put some distance in between us."
The first step in this split came with Léon Morin, Priest (1961), a wartime piece about a priest's endeavors to bring redemption to the inhabitants of a small town. Produced by Carlo Ponti, it was a big-budget affair with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Emmanuelle Riva, both household names by then. On the strength of its favorable reception, Melville released four consecutive cops-and-robbers movies, the most notable of which were The Informer (1962) and The Samurai (1967). Belmondo again headlined in "Le Doulous", not as a clergyman but as the fingerman Silien, whose loyalty to his old mob cronies entangles him in a web of intrigue and disaster. During the making of "Le Samouraï", a hauntingly minimalist film about a doomed assassin, Melville's studio burned to the ground and the project was completed in rented facilities. Regardless, it was a critical and commercial success. Presenting Alain Delon as ultra-cool assassin Jef Costello, it was considered one of the most meticulously-crafted pictures in the history of the cinema. Delon would later star in a second masterpiece, The Red Circle (1970), featuring the ultimate onscreen jewel heist. His Charles Bronson-cum-Jack Lord sang-froid toughness served as a counterpoint in Melville's oeuvre to the lighter and less predictable Belmondo. Another memorable production was Army of Shadows (1969), an austere portrait of perfidy within the ranks of the French Resistance.
It is trite to say that a particular artist is "not for everyone." In Melville's case, this statement could not be more fitting. Despite a round belly and an unattractive face, he was a notorious womanizer, and his chauvinism is painfully obvious in his movies. They are cynical, male-driven works in which women are devoid of nobility, merely functioning as beautiful chess pieces. His men also lack spiritual depth, diligently playing out their roles toward the final showdown. A "profound moment" inevitably occurs before a mirror, a cliché for which many critics do not share the creator's enthusiasm. As a result of these peccadilloes, as well as its lack of back-stories and character motivations, Melville's later output has been accused of stiffness, with its wooden troupe of cops, crooks and general mauvais sujets. Further, well-structured plots notwithstanding, Melville films are methodically paced with tremendous attention paid to time and place. Hollywoodphiles often find them slow, with an overemphasis on tone and style.
Some have gone as far as to claim that the réalizateur's genius was outstripped by his importance to the development of the medium. They look to him as a sort of Moses figure, helping to guide the Nouvelle Vague to the promised land without partaking in its fruits. At his death by heart attack in 1973, the 55-year-old had directed just 14 projects, at least six of which are acknowledged classics. Aside from Godard and Truffaut, luminaries such as John Woo, Quentin Tarantino, Michael Mann, Volker Schlöndorff, Johnnie To and Martin Scorsese have pointed to him as an key influence. If a man's legacy is best measured not only by its quality but by the respect of his colleagues, Jean-Pierre Melville's contribution to cinema surely ranks with the greatest.- Director
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Born in southern China, John Woo grew up in Hong Kong, where he began his film career as an assistant director in 1969, working for Shaw Brothers Studios. He directed his first feature in 1973 and has been a prolific director ever since, working in a wide variety of genres before A Better Tomorrow (1986) established his reputation as a master stylist specializing in ultra-violent gangster films and thrillers, with hugely elaborate action scenes shot with breathtaking panache. After gaining a cult reputation in the US with The Killer (1989), Woo was offered a Hollywood contract. He now works in the US.- Actress
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Jean Dorothy Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, to substitute teacher Dorothy Arline (Benson) and pharmacist Edward Waldemar Seberg. Her father was of Swedish descent and her mother was of English and German ancestry.
One month before her 18th birthday, Jean landed the title role in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan (1957) after a much-publicized contest involving some 18,000 hopefuls. The failure of that film and the only moderate success of her next, Bonjour Tristesse (1958), combined to stall Seberg's career, until her role in Jean-Luc Godard's landmark feature, Breathless (1960), brought her renewed international attention. Seberg gave a memorable performance as a schizophrenic in the title role of Robert Rossen's Lilith (1964) opposite Warren Beatty and went on to appear in over 30 films in Hollywood and Europe.
In the late 1960s, Seberg became involved in anti-war politics and was the target of an undercover campaign by the FBI to discredit her because of her association with several members of the Black Panther party. She was found dead under mysterious circumstances in Paris in 1979.- Actress
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Marlee Beth Matlin was born on August 24, 1965 in Morton Grove, Illinois, to Libby (Hammer) and Donald Matlin, an automobile dealer. She has two older brothers. Her family is of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent.
Marlee lost much of her hearing at the age of eighteen months. That did not stop her from acting in a children's theater company at age seven; she was Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz". Her deafness never held her back. As an adult, she said it so eloquently: "I have always resisted putting limitations on myself, both professionally and personally." Marlee studied criminal justice at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, and maintained her passion for acting after graduating. While performing on stage through Chicago and the Midwest, Marlee attracted notice for her performance in a production of the Tony Award-winning play "Children of a Lesser God" and was cast in the movie version Children of a Lesser God (1986). Although this was her movie debut, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. While shooting her next movie Walker (1987), in Nicaragua, large-hearted Marlee took time to visit both hearing and hearing-impaired children. She continued this tradition of visiting local children through her travels to Germany, England, Italy, Australia, Mexico, Canada, etc.
Her interest in the criminal justice field played a role in her on screen career; she portrayed an assistant D.A. on the television series Reasonable Doubts (1991), while off screen she married police officer Kevin Grandalski on August 29, 1993. The couple has four children: Sarah (born 1996), Brandon (born 2000), Tyler (born 2002), and Isabelle (born 2003). In 1994, Marlee was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance as Laurie Bey on the television series Picket Fences (1992). Marlee is also a spokeswoman for the National Captioning Institute. In 1995, she testified at a congressional hearing and helped get a law passed that requires all television sets 13 inches or larger to be manufactured with built-in chips to provide closed captioning on their screens; this was a godsend for deaf viewers.
Marlee serves as the national spokeswoman for the largest provider of television closed captioning, and has spoken on behalf of CC in countries such as Australia, England, France and Italy. She also serves on the boards of a number of charitable organizations, including Very Special Arts, the Starlight Foundation, and other charities that primarily benefit children. As someone who loves children so much, it is only fitting that she has four of her own. Professionally, Marlee has even tried producing, being the executive producer for Where the Truth Lies (1999).- Actress
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Moretz is best known for her work in the sci-fi thriller series The Peripheral, created by Scott B. Smith; the Mattson Tomlin-directed sci-fi thriller Mother/Android; Neil Jordan's thriller Greta; Roseanne Liang's Shadow in the Cloud, which claimed the Midnight Madness People's Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival in 2020; The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which won both critical acclaim and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2018; Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria, which went on to claim the Independent Spirit Awards' Robert Altman Award after world premiering in Venice; MGM's The Amityville Horror; Marc Webb's 500 Days of Summer; the Kick-Ass franchise; Matt Reeves' English-language remake of Let Me In; Martin Scorsese's Oscar winner Hugo; Warner Bros' If I Stay and Dark Shadows; Kimberly Peirce's remake of the Stephen King classic Carrie; and Sony's The Equalizer with Denzel Washington. She also exec produced the Snapchat Discover series Coming Out, which premiered in 2021.- Actress
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With prominent cheekbones, luminous skin and the most crystalline green eyes of her day, Gene Tierney's striking good looks helped propel her to stardom. Her best known role is the enigmatic murder victim in Laura (1944). She was also Oscar-nominated for Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Her acting performances were few in the 1950s as she battled a troubled emotional life that included hospitalization and shock treatment for depression.
Gene Eliza Tierney was born on November 19, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York, to well-to-do parents, Belle Lavinia (Taylor) and Howard Sherwood Tierney. Her father was a successful insurance broker and her mother was a former teacher. Her childhood was lavish indeed. She also lived, at times, with her equally successful grandparents in Connecticut and New York. She was educated in the finest schools on the East Coast and at a finishing school in Switzerland.
After two years in Europe, Gene returned to the US where she completed her education. By 1938 she was performing on Broadway in What a Life! and understudied for the Primrose Path (1938) at the same time. Her wealthy father set up a corporation that was only to promote her theatrical pursuits. Her first role consisted of carrying a bucket of water across the stage, prompting one critic to announce that "Miss Tierney is, without a doubt, the most beautiful water carrier I have ever seen!" Her subsequent roles Mrs O'Brian Entertains (1939) and RingTwo (1939) were meatier and received praise from the tough New York critics. Critic Richard Watts wrote "I see no reason why Miss Tierney should not have a long and interesting theatrical career, that is if the cinema does not kidnap her away."
After being spotted by the legendary Darryl F. Zanuck during a stage performance of the hit show The Male Animal (1940), Gene was signed to a contract with 20th Century-Fox. Her first role as Barbara Hall in Hudson's Bay (1940) would be the send-off vehicle for her career. Later that year she appeared in The Return of Frank James (1940). The next year would prove to be a very busy one for Gene, as she appeared in The Shanghai Gesture (1941), Sundown (1941), Tobacco Road (1941) and Belle Starr (1941). She tried her hand at screwball comedy in Rings on Her Fingers (1942), which was a great success. Her performances in each of these productions were masterful. In 1945 she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Ellen Brent in Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Though she didn't win, it solidified her position in Hollywood society. She followed up with another great performance as Isabel Bradley in the hit The Razor's Edge (1946).
In 1944, she played what is probably her best-known role (and, most critics agree, her most outstanding performance) in Otto Preminger's Laura (1944), in which she played murder victim named Laura Hunt. In 1947 Gene played Lucy Muir in the acclaimed The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947). By this time Gene was the hottest player around, and the 1950s saw no letup as she appeared in a number of good films, among them Night and the City (1950), The Mating Season (1951), Close to My Heart (1951), Plymouth Adventure (1952), Personal Affair (1953) and The Left Hand of God (1955). The latter was to be her last performance for seven years. The pressures of a failed marriage to Oleg Cassini, the birth of a daughter with learning disabilities in 1943, and several unhappy love affairs resulted in Gene being hospitalized for depression. When she returned to the the screen in Advise & Consent (1962), her acting was as good as ever but there was no longer a big demand for her services.
Her last feature film was The Pleasure Seekers (1964), and her final appearance in the film industry was in a TV miniseries, Scruples (1980). Gene died of emphysema in Houston, Texas, on November 6, 1991, just two weeks shy of her 71st birthday.- Actress
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- Camera and Electrical Department
Jennifer Beals is an internationally renowned actress who has over 90 credits to her name, including critically acclaimed feature films and some of the highest rated television series to date. Beals is currently executive producing and returning as a lead cast member in the revival of her hit original series THE L WORD: GENERATION Q. The highly anticipated series will launch in December 2019 on Showtime. The ground-breaking lesbian-focused drama THE L WORD originally aired for six seasons. For her performance as Bette Porter, Beals received the prestigious GLAAD Golden Gate Award, as well as two NAACP Image Award nominations and a Satellite Award nomination. In 2012, Beals was presented with the Human Rights Campaign's Ally for Equality Award for her support of the LGBT community. Additionally, Beals and The L Word's Ilene Chaiken are set to executive produce the Freeform series "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo," an adaption for Taylor Jenkins Reid's acclaimed novel.
Beals and filmmaker Tom Jacobson created the concept for the new novel, The Hive. The book is a gripping thriller set in the near future that focuses on escalating mob violence that ensues from online shaming and internet bullying. Released in September 2019, the novel was named one of People Magazine's 'Best Books of Fall 2019.'
Throughout her accomplished film career, Beals has worked with many of the industry's most acclaimed filmmakers and talent. She co-starred alongside Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman in the blockbuster THE BOOK OF ELI and starred opposite Garry Marshall, Faye Dunaway and Brendan Fraser in TWILIGHT OF THE GOLDS, for which she won a Golden Satellite Award. Beals was featured among an all-star cast including Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman and Rachel Weisz in the crime thriller RUNAWAY JURY. She also starred in THE MADONNA AND THE DRAGON from legendary film director Samuel Fuller. More recently, Beals co-starred in the feature film MANHATTAN NIGHT, opposite Adrien Brody and Campbell Scott, as well as AFTER, the film adaption of Anna Todd's series of bestselling young adult novels alongside Josephine Langford and Hero Fiennes Tiffin.
On the television side, Beals recurred in the Amazon series THE LAST TYCOON, receiving critical acclaim for her performance as Hollywood starlet Margo Taft. Los Angeles Magazine proclaimed "Beals stole every scene she's in as a ball-busting, piece-of-work Joan Crawford goddess with a very American secret" and Indiewire named her "the shows biggest stand out." Beals was also seen as the female lead in TAKEN, NBC's straight-to-series adaptation of the hit movie franchise, and co-starred in the Warner Bros TV/DC series SWAMP THING, released in May 2019. Beals starred in the TV movie A WIFE'S NIGHTMARE, for which she received a Canadian Screen Award nomination. Notable television credits include TNT's PROOF, NBC's medical drama THE NIGHT SHIFT and the FOX series THE CHICAGO CODE alongside Jason Clarke.
For her role in the iconic film FLASHDANCE, Beals earned a Golden Globe nomination and an NAACP Image Award for Best Actress. Beals starred in A HOUSE DIVIDED, for which she was nominated for a Satellite Award. Some of her acclaimed independent film projects include IN THE SOUP opposite Steve Buscemi, which won The Grand Jury Prize for Best Dramatic film at the Sundance Film Festival, and CINEMANOVELS which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Beals extensive credits include films such as RODGER DODGER, MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE, FOUR ROOMS, BEFORE I FALL and DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS, which earned her another NAACP Image Award nomination. Beals received the Maverick Tribute Award at the Cinequest San Jose Film Festival in 1999.
In addition to her work on-camera, the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group recently named Beals a 'C40 Goodwill Ambassador.' Beals' partnership with C40 will help raise awareness about the bold climate action underway in leading cities driving forward solutions to the climate crisis worldwide. Through her ambassador role, she will support and amplify the voices of inspiring young climate activists in raising awareness of the current climate emergency. Additionally, Beals will also play a leading role in C40's Women4Climate Initiative, helping to celebrate the incredible leadership being delivered by women around the world in climate action.
Originally from Chicago, Beals attended Yale University, where she graduated with honors.- Actress
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- Music Department
Jane Horrocks is an actress internationally known as the zany and droll Bubble in the award winning British television sitcom Absolutely Fabulous (1992). She's also remembered as Miss Irvine, an evildoing witch-turned heroine in one her earliest films, The Witches (1990). She received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance of "LV", a reclusive and timid woman hiding away her unique singing talent in Little Voice (1998). The film is an adaptation of the 1992 play, 'The Rise and Fall of Little Voice', of which Horrocks originated the role.- Actor
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- Sound Department
Jeremy Lee Renner was born in Modesto, California, the son of Valerie (Tague) and Lee Renner, who managed a bowling alley. After a tumultuous yet happy childhood with his four younger siblings, Renner graduated from Beyer High School and attended Modesto Junior College. He explored several areas of study, including computer science, criminology, and psychology, before the theater department, with its freedom of emotional expression, drew him in.
However, Renner recognized the potential in acting as much through the local police academy as through drama classes. During his second year at Modesto Junior College, Renner role-played a domestic disturbance perpetrator as part of a police-training exercise for an easy $50. Deciding to shift his focus away from schoolwork, Renner left college and moved to San Francisco to study at the American Conservatory Theater. From there he moved to Hawaii and, in 1993, to Los Angeles.
In Los Angeles, Renner devoted himself to theater, most notably starring in and co-directing the critically acclaimed "Search and Destroy." He pursued other projects during this time as well, landing his first film role in 1995's National Lampoon's Senior Trip (1995). After several commercials and supporting roles in television movies and series, Renner captured the attention of critics with his gripping, complex portrayal of the infamous serial killer in the 2002 film Dahmer (2002). Renner's performance, which earned him an Independent Spirit Award nomination, is especially remarkable for painting a humane and sympathetic, yet deeply disturbing, portrait of the title character.
In 2003, Renner took a break from small indie films to work on his first commercially successful movie, S.W.A.T. (2003), with Colin Farrell. In 2005, he played the leading role in Neo Ned (2005) as an institutionalized white supremacist in love with a black girl, winning the Palm Beach International Film Festival's best actor award. Renner's pivotal supporting roles in 2005's 12 and Holding (2005) and North Country (2005) earned him accolades from critics, and his 2007 turn in Take (2007) garnered him the best actor award at California's Independent Film Festival. Also in 2007, Renner played a leading role in the horror film 28 Weeks Later (2007) as well as a supporting role in the underrated Western epic The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), with Casey Affleck, Brad Pitt, and Sam Rockwell.
Renner's depiction of Jeffrey Dahmer in 2002 caught the attention of director Kathryn Bigelow, and, in 2008, she cast him in his most famous role as Sergeant First Class William James in The Hurt Locker (2008). Renner's performance as a single-minded bomb specialist scored him an Academy Award nomination for best actor. He also earned best actor nominations from the Independent Spirit Awards, the Screen Actors Guild, and the BAFTA Awards, as well as wins in this category from several film critics groups.
In 2009, Renner starred in the short-lived TV series, The Unusuals (2009), and in 2010 he played the chilling but loyal criminal Jem in Ben Affleck bank-heist thriller The Town (2010). In the fall of 2010, Renner began filming Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011). He has also since starred in The Avengers (2012), American Hustle (2013), and Kill the Messenger (2014).
Renner's strengths as an actor derive not only from his expressive eyes but also from his ability to thoroughly embody the characters he portrays. His visceral depiction of these individuals captivates audiences and empowers him to steal scenes in many of his films, even when playing a minor role. Renner gravitates toward flawed, complicated, three-dimensional characters that allow him to explore new territory within himself.
In addition to his work as an actor, Renner continues to cultivate his lifelong love of music. A singer, songwriter, and musician, he performed with the band Sons of Ben early in his career. Scenes in Love Comes to the Executioner (2006), North Country (2005), and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) briefly showcase Renner's singing talents.
Despite traveling the world for film roles and, recently, as a United Nations Goodwill Peace Ambassador to raise awareness for mine-clearing efforts in Afghanistan, Renner remains close to his roots. In 2010, Modesto Junior College presented him the Distinguished Alumnus award in recognition of his body of work as an actor. He also headlined at a benefit for Modesto's Gallo Center for the Arts in the fall of 2010.
Renner maintains a sense of humility and gratitude, even in the wake of his recent successes and recognition. He keeps himself grounded by renovating and restoring old and rundown iconic Hollywood homes, an enterprise he began back in his early days in Los Angeles. He values loyalty and a sense of both age and history, and enjoys the opportunity to help conserve these qualities in a town that favors the young and the new.- Actress
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Anna Kendrick was born in Portland, Maine, to Janice (Cooke), an accountant, and William Kendrick, a teacher. She has an older brother, Michael Cooke Kendrick, who has also acted. She is of English, Irish, and Scottish descent.
For her role as "Dinah" in "High Society" on Broadway, Anna Kendrick was nominated for a Tony Award (second youngest ever), a Drama Desk Award, and a Fany Award (best actress featured in a musical). Her spectacular performance landed her the Drama League and Theatre World Award.
She was a lead performer with Cabaret's Kit Kat Club at "Carnegie Hall Live" in My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies (1999) (TV). She also had the privilege of working with director Scott Ellis and choreographer Susan Stroman at the New York City Opera House with Jeremy Irons amongst many more celebrity status actors, playing the role of "Fredrika" in "A Little Night Music".
Anna work-shopped "Jane Eyre" & "The Little Princess" for Broadway and starred in the feature film Camp (2003) with director Todd Graff.- Writer
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Larry Wilmore was born in Los Angeles and grew up in suburban Pomona. He graduated from Damien High School in La Verne in 1979. He studied theatre at California State Polytechnic University but dropped out because he wanted to get his Actors' Equity Association card and begin his career as a stand-up comedian. He began his acting career in the 1980s on shows like The Facts of Life (1979) and Sledge Hammer! (1986) but was then always miscast.
He got his behind-the-scenes career started on Into the Night (1990) as a writer. He also wrote for a sketch comedy, In Living Color (1990), and a sitcom, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990). He created (with Eddie Murphy and Steve Tompkins) and produced The PJs (1999), a prime-time animated series. He also created and executive produced The Bernie Mac Show (2001), which won him an Emmy for writing. He executive produced Whoopi (2003), a sitcom developed by Whoopi Goldberg. He was a consulting producer on the first three seasons of The Office (2005). He is also an executive producer on Black-ish (2014).
In 2006, he began appearing on Comedy Central's The Daily Show (1996) as the Senior Black Correspondent. His many guest starring roles on various TV shows include Mr. Brown, a diversity consultant on The Office (2005), Dr. Roland on Accidentally on Purpose (2009), The Boss on Love Bites (2011), Mr. Forristal on Happy Endings (2011), and the voice of Principal Larry on Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero (2014). He has also appeared in movies, including I Love You, Man (2009), Dinner for Schmucks (2010), Vamps (2012), and Date and Switch (2014).
After Stephen Colbert left Comedy Central and The Colbert Report (2005), Larry was announced as the host of the new show, titled The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore (2015). Since the beginning of 2015, he has hosted, been one of the executive producers, and one of the writers on the show. He is also the host of 2016 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (2016). In 2009, he wrote a political humor book, "I'd Rather We Got Casinos: And Other Black Thoughts".- Actor
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Jake Johnson (born Mark Jake Johnson Weinberger; May 28, 1978) is an American actor, comedian and director, most commonly known for playing Nick Miller in the Fox comedy series New Girl opposite Zooey Deschanel, for which he has received a Teen Choice Award nomination among others. Johnson also co-starred in the 2009 film Paper Heart and the 2012 film Safety Not Guaranteed, as well as appearing in Get Him to the Greek, 21 Jump Street. His first starring role in a feature film was Drinking Buddies, and he also starred in the 2014 comedy Let's Be Cops, alongside fellow New Girl star Damon Wayans, Jr. Appeared alongside Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard in Jurassic World (2015). Co-starred with Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe, in the Dark Universe thriller, The Mummy (2017). Starred as gambler Eddie Garrett in Netflix feature film Win It All (2017), alongside Keegan Michael Key and Joe Lo Truglio, directed by friend Joe Swanberg.- Actor
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Mark Duplass was born on 7 December 1976 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Safety Not Guaranteed (2012), Creep (2014) and The One I Love (2014). He has been married to Katie Aselton since 26 August 2006. They have two children.- Katrina Bowden (born September 19, 1988) was raised in Wyckoff, New Jersey. She attended the now-defunct Saint Thomas More School in Midland Park, New Jersey, for her grammar and middle school education. She later attended Immaculate Heart Academy in Washington Township, New Jersey.
In 2006, Bowden scored her first acting role in a two-episode arc on the ABC long-time running daytime soap opera television series One Life to Live (1968) as Britney. She has since guest starred on shows such as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) and Ugly Betty (2006). Bowden's breakthrough role came when she was cast as a recurring character, Cerie, on the Emmy Award-winning comedy television series 30 Rock (2006). She signed on as a regular for the show's second season in 2007 and starred on the series through its seventh-season finale in 2013.
In 2008, Bowden made her film debut in the raunchy comedy Sex Drive (2008). The following year, Bowden starred in two low-budget straight-to-DVD projects The Shortcut (2009) and National Lampoon's Ratko: The Dictator's Son (2009). In 2010 Bowden starred in the widely acclaimed horror-comedy film Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010) as Allison. The film was released in a limited release and grossed over four million dollars and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.
In April 2011, Bowden was voted as Esquire Magazine's Sexiest Woman Alive. She was also the face of the Jordache television campaign that made its premiere in September 2011. In 2012, Bowden appeared in Piranha 3DD (2012), which was panned by critics, and the horror movie Hold Your Breath (2012), which received a limited theatrical release, before being released to DVD. Later, she co-starred in Nurse (2013).
On January 28, 2012, Bowden got engaged to her boyfriend of nearly two years, musician Ben Jorgensen, from the band Armor For Sleep. They were wed on May 19, 2013, in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden in New York. - Actor
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One of stage, screen and TV's finest transatlantic talents, slight, gravel-voiced, pasty-looking John Vincent Hurt was born on January 22, 1940, in Shirebrook, a coal mining village, in Derbyshire, England. The youngest child of Phyllis (Massey), an engineer and one-time actress, and Reverend Arnould Herbert Hurt, an Anglican clergyman and mathematician, his quiet shyness betrayed an early passion for acting. First enrolled at the Grimsby Art School and St. Martin's School of Art, his focus invariably turned from painting to acting.
Accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1960, John made his stage debut in "Infanticide in the House of Fred Ginger" followed by "The Dwarfs." Elsewhere, he continued to build upon his 60's theatrical career with theatre roles in "Chips with Everything" at the Vaudeville, the title role in "Hamp" at the Edinburgh Festival, "Inadmissible Evidence" at Wyndham's and "Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs" at the Garrick. His movie debut occurred that same year with a supporting role in the "angry young man" British drama Young and Willing (1962), followed by small roles in Appuntamento in Riviera (1962), A Man for All Seasons (1966) and The Sailor from Gibraltar (1967).
A somber, freckled, ravaged-looking gent, Hurt found his more compelling early work in offbeat theatrical characterizations with notable roles such as Malcolm in "Macbeth" (1967), Octavius in "Man and Superman" (1969), Peter in "Ride a Cock Horse" (1972), Mike in '"The Caretaker" (1972) and Ben in "The Dumb Waiter" (1973). At the same time he gained more prominence in a spray of film and support roles such as a junior officer in Before Winter Comes (1968), the title highwayman in Sinful Davey (1969), a morose little brother in In Search of Gregory (1969), a dim, murderous truck driver in 10 Rillington Place (1971), a skirt-chasing, penguin-studying biologist in Cry of the Penguins (1971), the unappetizing son of a baron in The Pied Piper (1972) and a repeat of his title stage role as Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs (1974).
Hurt shot to international stardom, however, on TV where he was allowed to display his true, fearless range. He reaped widespread acclaim for his embodiment of the tormented gay writer and raconteur Quentin Crisp in the landmark television play The Naked Civil Servant (1975), adapted from Crisp's autobiography. Hurt's bold, unabashed approach on the flamboyant and controversial gent who dared to be different was rewarded with the BAFTA (British TV Award). This triumph led to the equally fascinating success as the cruel and crazed Roman emperor Caligula in the epic television masterpiece I, Claudius (1976), followed by another compelling interpretation as murderous student Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment (1979).
A resurgence occurred on film as a result. Among other unsurpassed portraits on his unique pallet, the chameleon in him displayed a polar side as the gentle, pathetically disfigured title role in The Elephant Man (1980), and as a tortured Turkish prison inmate who befriends Brad Davis in the intense drama Midnight Express (1978) earning Oscar nominations for both. Mainstream box-office films were offered as well as art films. He made the most of his role as a crew member whose body becomes host to an unearthly predator in Alien (1979). With this new rush of fame came a few misguided ventures as well that were generally unworthy of his talent. Such brilliant work as his steeple chase jockey in Champions (1984) or kidnapper in The Hit (1984) was occasionally offset by such drivel as the comedy misfire Partners (1982) with Ryan O'Neal in which Hurt looked enervated and embarrassed. For the most part, the craggy-faced actor continued to draw extraordinary notices. Tops on the list includes his prurient governmental gadfly who triggers the Christine Keeler political sex scandal in the aptly-titled Scandal (1989); the cultivated gay writer aroused and obsessed with struggling "pretty-boy" actor Jason Priestley in Love and Death on Long Island (1997); and the Catholic priest embroiled in the Rwanda atrocities in Shooting Dogs (2005).
Latter parts of memorable interpretations included Dr. Iannis in Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), the recurring role of the benign wand-maker Mr. Ollivander in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010), the tyrannical dictator Adam Sutler in V for Vendetta (2005) and the voice of The Dragon in Merlin (2008). Among Hurt's final film appearances were as a terminally ill screenwriter in That Good Night (2017) and a lesser role in the mystery thriller Damascus Cover (2017). Hurt's voice was also tapped into animated features and documentaries, often serving as narrator. He also returned to the theatre performing in such shows as "The Seagull", "A Month in the Country" (1994), "Afterplay" (2002) and "Krapp's Last Tape", the latter for which he received the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award.
A recovered alcoholic who married four times, Hurt was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by the Queen in 2004, and Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in 2015. That same year (2015) he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In July of 2016, he was forced to bow out of the father role of Billy Rice in a then-upcoming London stage production of "The Entertainer" opposite Kenneth Branagh due to ill health that he described as an "intestinal ailment". Hurt died several months later at his home in Cromer, Norfolk, England on January 15, 2017, three days after his 77th birthday.- Director
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Raoul Walsh's 52-year directorial career made him a Hollywood legend. Walsh was also an actor: He appeared in the first version of W. Somerset Maugham's "Rain" renamed Sadie Thompson (1928) opposite Gloria Swanson in the title role. He would have played the Cisco Kid in his own film In Old Arizona (1928) if an errant jackrabbit hadn't cost him his right eye by leaping through the windshield of his automobile. Warner Baxter filled the role and won an Oscar. Before John Ford and Nicholas Ray, it was Raoul Walsh who made the eye-patch almost as synonymous with a Hollywood director as Cecil B. DeMille's jodhpurs.
He interned with the best, serving as assistant director and editor on D.W. Griffith's racist masterpiece, The Clansman, better known as The Birth of a Nation (1915), a blockbuster that may have been the highest-grossing film of all time if accurate box office records had been kept before the sound era. He pulled triple duty on that picture, playing John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater and ranked as the most notorious American actor of all time until Pee Wee Herman (Paul Reubens).
The year before The Clansman, Walsh was second unit director on The Life of General Villa (1914), also playing the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa as a young man. Walsh got his start in the business as co-director of another Pancho Villa flick, The Life of General Villa (1914), in 1912. The movie featured footage shot of an actually battle between Villa's forces and Mexican federal troops.
In 1915, in addition to helping out the great Griffith, Walsh directed no less than 14 films, including his first feature-length film, The Regeneration (1915), which he also wrote. The movie starred silent cinema superstar Anna Q. Nilsson as a society woman turned social worker who aids the regeneration of a Bowery gang leader. It was a melodrama, but an effective one. In his autobiography, Walsh credited D.W. Griffith with teaching him about the art of filmmaking and about production management techniques. The film is memorable for its shots of New York City, where Walsh had been born 28 years earlier on March 11, 1887.
Raoul Walsh would continue to be a top director for 40 years and would not hang up his director's megaphone (if he still had one at that late in the game) until 1964. As a writer, his last script was made in 1970, meaning his career as a whole spanned seven decades and 58 years.
He introduced the world to John Wayne in The Big Trail (1930) in 70mm wide-screen in 1930. It would take nine more years and John Ford to make the Duke a star. In one three-year period at Warner Bros., he directed The Roaring Twenties (1939), They Drive by Night (1940), High Sierra (1940), The Strawberry Blonde (1941), Manpower (1941), They Died with Their Boots On (1941), and Gentleman Jim (1942), among other films in that time frame. He helped consolidate the stardom of Humphrey Bogart and Errol Flynn while directing the great James Cagney in one of his more delightful films, The Strawberry Blonde (1941). This was the same director that would elicit Cagney's most searing performance since The Public Enemy (1931) in the crime classic White Heat (1949).
Novelist Norman Mailer says that Walsh was dragged off of his death bed to direct the underrated film adaptation of Mailer's The Naked and the Dead (1958). The movie is as masculine and unsentimental as the book, an exceedingly harsh look at the power relations between men at war on the same side that includes the attempted murder of prisoners of war and the "fragging" of officers (Sergeant Croft allows his lieutenant to walk into an ambush). Walsh was at his best when directing men in war or action pictures.
Raoul Walsh seemingly recovered from Mailer's phantasmagorical death bed, as he lived another 22 years after The Naked and the Dead (1958). He died on December 31, 1980, in Simi Valley, California, at the age of 93.- Actor
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Douglas Fairbanks was born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman in Denver, Colorado, to Ella Adelaide (nee Marsh) and Hezekiah Charles Ullman, an attorney and native of Pennsylvania, who was a captain for the Union forces during the Civil War. Fairbanks' paternal grandparents were German Jewish immigrants, while his mother, a Southerner with roots in Louisiana and Georgia, was of British Isles descent. From the age of five he was raised by his mother due to her husband's abandonment. She changed her sons' surnames to Fairbanks (her former husband's surname) and covered up their paternal Jewish ancestry.
He began amateur theater at age 12 and continued while attending the Colorado School of Mines. In 1900 they moved to New York. He attended Harvard, traveled to Europe, worked on a cattle freighter, in a hardware store and as a clerk on Wall Street. He made his Broadway debut in 1902 and five years later left theater to marry an industrialist's daughter.
He returned when his father-in-law went broke the next year. In 1915, he went to Hollywood and worked under a reluctant D.W. Griffith. The following year he formed his own production company. During a Liberty Bond tour with Charles Chaplin he fell in love with Mary Pickford with whom he, Chaplin and Griffith had formed United Artists in 1919. He made very successful early social comedies, then highly popular swashbucklers during the 'twenties. The owners of Hollywood's Pickfair Mansion separated in 1933 and divorced in 1936. In March 1936, he married and retired from acting.- Director
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Norman Jewison was an award-winning, internationally acclaimed filmmaker who produced and directed some of the world's most memorable, entertaining and socially important films, exploring controversial and complicated subjects and giving them a universal accessibility. Some of his most well-known works include the pre-glasnost political satire The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, the original The Thomas Crown Affair, the groundbreaking civil rights-era drama In the Heat of the Night (winner of five Academy Awards, including Best Picture), the first rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, the futuristic cult hit Rollerball, hit musical comedy-drama Fiddler on the Roof, the romantic comedy Moonstruck, the courtroom drama ...And Justice For All, the military drama A Soldier's Story, the labor movement picture F.I.S.T., the war dramas The Statement and In Country, and the masterfully told story of Reuben 'Hurricane' Carter, The Hurricane, among many others.
Jewison was personally nominated for four Oscars and received three Emmy Awards; his films received 46 nominations and won 12 Academy Awards. In 1999, Jewison received the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the Academy Awards.
In Canada, his life's work has been recognized with the Governor General's Performing Arts Award, and he was named a Member of the Order of Canada, an Officer of the Order of Ontario and a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada's highest civilian honour. In 2010, Jewison was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Directors Guild of America.
Jewison was committed to advancing the art of storytelling and filmmaking, both through his groundbreaking films, and through his creation of the Canadian Film Centre (CFC) in 1986, which opened its doors in Toronto in 1988. The CFC is a charitable cultural organization which drives the future of Canadian storytelling.- Writer
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A true master of his craft, Michael Haneke is one of the greatest film artists working today and one who challenges his viewers each year and work goes by, with films that reflect real portions of life in realistic, disturbing and unforgettable ways. One of the most genuine filmmakers of the world cinema, Haneke wrote and directed films in several languages: French, German and English, working with a great variety of actors, such as Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Huppert, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Toby Jones, Ülrich Muhe, Arno Frisch and the list goes on.
This grand figure from Austrian cinema was born in Germany on 23 March 1942, from a German father and an Austrian mother, with both parents being from the artistic world working as actors, a career that Michael also tried but without much success. At the University of Vienna he studied drama, philosophy and psychology, and after graduation he went on to become a film critic and TV editor. His career behind camera started with After Liverpool (1974), which he wrote and directed. He went on to direct five more TV films and two episodes from the miniseries "Lemminge" (1979)_.
The years spent on television works prompted him to finally direct his first cinema feature, during his early 40's, which is somewhat unusual for film directors. But it was worth waiting. In The Seventh Continent (1989), Haneke establishes the foundation of what his future cinema would be about: a cinema that doesn't provides answers but one that dares to throw more and more questions, a cinema that reflects and analyses the human condition in its darkest and unexpected ways outside of any Hollywood formula. Films that exist to confront audiences and not comfort them. In it, Haneke deals with the duality of social values vs. internal values while exposing an apparent perfect family that runs into physical and material disintegration for reasons unknown. It was the first time a film of his was sent to the Cannes Film Festival (out of competition lineup) but he managed to cause some commotion in the audience with polemic scenes that were meant to extract all possible reactions from the crowd.
His next ventures at the decade's turn was in dealing with disturbed youth and the alienation they have in separating reality from fiction, trying to intersect both to drastic results. In Benny's Video (1992), it's the disturbing story of a teen boy who experiences killing for the first time capturing the murder on tape, impressed by the power of detachment that films and videos can cause to people; and later on the highly controversial Funny Games (1997), where two teens hold a family hostage to play sadistic games just for their own sick amusement. The film cemented Haneke's name as one of the greatest authors of his generation but sparkled a great debate with its themes of violence, sadism and the influence those things have in audiences. At the 1997's Cannes Film Festival, it was the film that had the most walk-out's by the audience. In between both films, he released 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994) and Kafka's The Castle (1997), the latter being one of the rare times when Haneke developed an adapted work.
In the 2000's, he strongly continued in producing more outstanding works prone to debate and reflection in what would become his most prolific decade with the following films: Code Unknown (2000), The Piano Teacher (2001), Time of the Wolf (2003), Caché (2005), an American remake shot-by shot of Funny Games (2007) and The White Ribbon (2009). His study about romance versus masochism in The Piano Teacher (2001) was an intense work, with powerful performances by Isabelle Huppert and Benoit Magimel, that the Cannes jury in the year were so impressed that Haneke managed to actually reverse their award rules where it was decided that film entries at the festival couldn't win more than one main award (the two lead actors won awards and Haneke got the Grand Prize of the Jury, just lost the Palme d'Or). With The White Ribbon (2009), an enigmatic black-and-white masterpiece following the inception of Nazism in this pre WWI and WWII story focusing on repressed children living in this small village where strange events happen all the time and without any possible reasoning, Haneke conquered the world and audiences with an artistic and daring work that won his first Palme d'Or a Golden Globe as Best Foreign Language Film and received an Oscar nomination for the same category plus the cinematography work of Christian Berger.
2012 was the year that marked his supremacy in the film world with the release of the bold and beautiful Amour (2012), a love story with powerful real drama and one where Haneke removed most of his usual dark characteristics to present more quiet and calm elements without losing input in creating controversy. The touching story of George and Anne provided one the greatest moments of that year and earned Haneke his second and consecutive Palme d'Or at Cannes and his first Oscar nominations for Best Direction and Best Original Screenplay - and it was one of the several nominees for Best Picture Oscar, winning as Best Foreign Language Film.
After abandoning a flash-mob film project, he returned to the screen with Happy End (2017), a film dealing with the refugee crisis in Europe and again he debuted his film at Cannes, receiving mildly positive reviews.
Besides his film work, Haneke also directs theatre productions, from drama to opera, from Così fan tutte to Don Giovanni.- Actor
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Although all too frequently neglected by fans of silent comedy, Max Linder is in many ways as important a figure as Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd, not least because he predated (and influenced) them all by several years and was largely responsible for the creation of the classic style of silent slapstick comedy.
Linder started out as an actor in the French theatre, but after making his screen debut in 1905 he quickly became an enormously famous and successful film comedian on both sides of the Atlantic, thanks to his character "Max," a top-hatted dandy. By 1912 he was the highest-paid film star in the world, with an unprecedented salary of one million francs. He began to direct films in 1911 and showed equal facility behind the camera, but his career suffered an almost terminal blow when he was drafted into the French army to fight in World War I. He was gassed, and the illness that resulted would blight his career. Although offered a contract in America, recurring ill health meant that his US films had little of the sparkle of his early French work, and a brief attempt to revive his career by making films for the recently-formed United Artists (one of whose founders, of course, was Chaplin) in the early 1920s came to little, although these later films are now regarded as classics. He returned to France and killed himself in a suicide pact with his wife in 1925.- Director
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Louis Malle, the descendant of a French nobleman who made a fortune in beet sugar during the Napoleonic Wars, created films that explored life and its meaning. Malle's family discouraged his early interest in film but, in 1950, allowed him to enter the Institute of Advanced Cinematographic Studies in Paris. His résumé showed that he had worked as an assistant to film maker Robert Bresson when Malle was hired by underwater explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau to be a camera operator on the Calypso. Cousteau soon promoted him to be co-director of The Silent World (1956) ("The Silent World"). Years later, Cousteau called Malle the best underwater cameraman he ever had. Malle's third film, The Lovers (1958) ("The Lovers"), starring Jeanne Moreau broke taboos against on screen eroticism. In 1968 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the obscenity conviction of an Ohio theater that had exhibited "Les Amants." A director during the Nouvelle Vague, New Wave" of 1950s and 1960s (though technically not considered a Nouvelle Vague auteur), he also made films on the other side of the Atlantic, starting with Pretty Baby (1978), the film that made Brooke Shields an international superstar. The actress who played a supporting role in that film was given a starring role in Malle's next American film, Atlantic City (1980). That promising actress was Susan Sarandon.
In one of his later French films, Goodbye, Children (1987), Malle was able to find catharsis for an experience that had haunted him since the German occupation of France in World War II. At age 12, he was sent to a Catholic boarding school near Paris that was a refuge for several Jewish students, one of them was Malle's rival for academic honors and his friend. A kitchen worker at the school with a grudge became an informant. The priest who was the principal was arrested and the Jewish students were sent off to concentration camps.
In his final film, Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), Malle again penetrated the veil between life and art as theater people rehearse Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya." In that film, Malle worked again with theater director Andre Gregory and actor-playwright Wallace Shawn, the conversationalists of My Dinner with Andre (1981). Malle was married to Candice Bergen, and he succumbed to lymphoma in 1995.- Director
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Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would produce better academic performance, Kubrick's father sent him in 1940 to Pasadena, California, to stay with his uncle, Martin Perveler. Returning to the Bronx in 1941 for his last year of grammar school, there seemed to be little change in his attitude or his results. Hoping to find something to interest his son, Jack introduced Stanley to chess, with the desired result. Kubrick took to the game passionately, and quickly became a skilled player. Chess would become an important device for Kubrick in later years, often as a tool for dealing with recalcitrant actors, but also as an artistic motif in his films.
Jack Kubrick's decision to give his son a camera for his thirteenth birthday would be an even wiser move: Kubrick became an avid photographer, and would often make trips around New York taking photographs which he would develop in a friend's darkroom. After selling an unsolicited photograph to Look Magazine, Kubrick began to associate with their staff photographers, and at the age of seventeen was offered a job as an apprentice photographer.
In the next few years, Kubrick had regular assignments for "Look", and would become a voracious movie-goer. Together with friend Alexander Singer, Kubrick planned a move into film, and in 1950 sank his savings into making the documentary Day of the Fight (1951). This was followed by several short commissioned documentaries (Flying Padre (1951), and (The Seafarers (1953), but by attracting investors and hustling chess games in Central Park, Kubrick was able to make Fear and Desire (1952) in California.
Filming this movie was not a happy experience; Kubrick's marriage to high school sweetheart Toba Metz did not survive the shooting. Despite mixed reviews for the film itself, Kubrick received good notices for his obvious directorial talents. Kubrick's next two films Killer's Kiss (1955) and The Killing (1956) brought him to the attention of Hollywood, and in 1957 he directed Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory (1957). Douglas later called upon Kubrick to take over the production of Spartacus (1960), by some accounts hoping that Kubrick would be daunted by the scale of the project and would thus be accommodating. This was not the case, however: Kubrick took charge of the project, imposing his ideas and standards on the film. Many crew members were upset by his style: cinematographer Russell Metty complained to producers that Kubrick was taking over his job. Kubrick's response was to tell him to sit there and do nothing. Metty complied, and ironically was awarded the Academy Award for his cinematography.
Kubrick's next project was to direct Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks (1961), but negotiations broke down and Brando himself ended up directing the film himself. Disenchanted with Hollywood and after another failed marriage, Kubrick moved permanently to England, from where he would make all of his subsequent films. Despite having obtained a pilot's license, Kubrick was rumored to be afraid of flying.
Kubrick's first UK film was Lolita (1962), which was carefully constructed and guided so as to not offend the censorship boards which at the time had the power to severely damage the commercial success of a film. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) was a big risk for Kubrick; before this, "nuclear" was not considered a subject for comedy. Originally written as a drama, Kubrick decided that too many of the ideas he had written were just too funny to be taken seriously. The film's critical and commercial success allowed Kubrick the financial and artistic freedom to work on any project he desired. Around this time, Kubrick's focus diversified and he would always have several projects in various stages of development: "Blue Moon" (a story about Hollywood's first pornographic feature film), "Napoleon" (an epic historical biography, abandoned after studio losses on similar projects), "Wartime Lies" (based on the novel by Louis Begley), and "Rhapsody" (a psycho-sexual thriller).
The next film he completed was a collaboration with sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is hailed by many as the best ever made; an instant cult favorite, it has set the standard and tone for many science fiction films that followed. Kubrick followed this with A Clockwork Orange (1971), which rivaled Lolita (1962) for the controversy it generated - this time not only for its portrayal of sex, but also of violence. Barry Lyndon (1975) would prove a turning point in both his professional and private lives. His unrelenting demands of commitment and perfection of cast and crew had by now become legendary. Actors would be required to perform dozens of takes with no breaks. Filming a story in Ireland involving military, Kubrick received reports that the IRA had declared him a possible target. Production was promptly moved out of the country, and Kubrick's desire for privacy and security resulted in him being considered a recluse ever since.
Having turned down directing a sequel to The Exorcist (1973), Kubrick made his own horror film: The Shining (1980). Again, rumors circulated of demands made upon actors and crew. Stephen King (whose novel the film was based upon) reportedly didn't like Kubrick's adaptation (indeed, he would later write his own screenplay which was filmed as The Shining (1997).)
Kubrick's subsequent work has been well spaced: it was seven years before Full Metal Jacket (1987) was released. By this time, Kubrick was married with children and had extensively remodeled his house. Seen by one critic as the dark side to the humanist story of Platoon (1986), Full Metal Jacket (1987) continued Kubrick's legacy of solid critical acclaim, and profit at the box office.
In the 1990s, Kubrick began an on-again/off-again collaboration with Brian Aldiss on a new science fiction film called "Artificial Intelligence (AI)", but progress was very slow, and was backgrounded until special effects technology was up to the standard the Kubrick wanted.
Kubrick returned to his in-development projects, but encountered a number of problems: "Napoleon" was completely dead, and "Wartime Lies" (now called "The Aryan Papers") was abandoned when Steven Spielberg announced he would direct Schindler's List (1993), which covered much of the same material.
While pre-production work on "AI" crawled along, Kubrick combined "Rhapsody" and "Blue Movie" and officially announced his next project as Eyes Wide Shut (1999), starring the then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. After two years of production under unprecedented security and privacy, the film was released to a typically polarized critical and public reception; Kubrick claimed it was his best film to date.
Special effects technology had matured rapidly in the meantime, and Kubrick immediately began active work on A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), but tragically suffered a fatal heart attack in his sleep on March 7th, 1999.
After Kubrick's death, Spielberg revealed that the two of them were friends that frequently communicated discreetly about the art of filmmaking; both had a large degree of mutual respect for each other's work. "AI" was frequently discussed; Kubrick even suggested that Spielberg should direct it as it was more his type of project. Based on this relationship, Spielberg took over as the film's director and completed the last Kubrick project.
How much of Kubrick's vision remains in the finished project -- and what he would think of the film as eventually released -- will be the final great unanswerable mysteries in the life of this talented and private filmmaker.- Actress
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Kathleen Turner was born June 19, 1954 in Springfield, Missouri, to Patsy (Magee) and Allen Richard Turner, a U.S. Foreign Service officer. She graduated from American School in London in 1972. After the death of her father, the Turner family moved back to the United States where Kathleen later enrolled at Missouri State University for two years, and earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in 1977. Kathleen made her film debut in Body Heat (1981), her role as the relentless Matty Waker brought her astronomical success, and is remembered as one of the sexiest roles in film history. After her initial success, Kathleen continued to flourish with performances in The Man with Two Brains (1983), Romancing the Stone (1984), The Jewel of the Nile (1985), Prizzi's Honor (1985), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), The War of the Roses (1989), and Serial Mom (1994).- Actor
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- Producer
Exotic leading man of American films, famed as much for his completely bald head as for his performances, Yul Brynner masked much of his life in mystery and outright lies designed to tease people he considered gullible. It was not until the publication of the books "Yul: The Man Who Would Be King" and "Empire and Odyssey" by his son, Yul "Rock" Brynner, that many of the details of Brynner's early life became clear.
Yul sometimes claimed to be a half-Swiss, half-Japanese named Taidje Khan, born on the island of Sakhalin; in reality, he was the son of Marousia Dimitrievna (Blagovidova), the Russian daughter of a doctor, and Boris Yuliyevich Bryner, an engineer and inventor of Swiss-German and Russian descent. He was born in their home town of Vladivostok on 11 July 1920 and named Yuli after his grandfather, Jules Bryner. When Yuli's father abandoned the family, his mother took him and his sister Vera to Harbin, Manchuria, where they attended a YMCA school. In 1934 Yuli's mother took her children to Paris. Her son was sent to the exclusive Lycée Moncelle, but his attendance was spotty. He dropped out and became a musician, playing guitar in the nightclubs among the Russian gypsies who gave him his first real sense of family. He met luminaries such as Jean Cocteau and became an apprentice at the Theatre des Mathurins. He worked as a trapeze artist with the famed Cirque d'Hiver company.
He traveled to the U.S. in 1941 to study with acting teacher Michael Chekhov and toured the country with Chekhov's theatrical troupe. That same year, he debuted in New York as Fabian in "Twelfth Night" (billed as Youl Bryner). After working in a very early TV series, Mr. Jones and His Neighbors (1944), he played on Broadway in "Lute Song" with Mary Martin, winning awards and mild acclaim. He and his wife, actress Virginia Gilmore, starred in the first TV talk show, Mr. and Mrs. (1948). Brynner then joined CBS as a television director. He made his film debut in Port of New York (1949). Two years later Mary Martin recommended him for the part he would forever be known for: the King in Richard Rodgers' and Oscar Hammerstein II's musical "The King and I". Brynner became an immediate sensation in the role, repeating it for film (The King and I (1956)) and winning the Oscar for Best Actor.
For the next two decades, he maintained a starring film career despite the exotic nature of his persona, performing in a wide range of roles from Egyptian pharaohs to Western gunfighters, almost all with the same shaved head and indefinable accent. In the 1970s he returned to the role that had made him a star, and spent most of the rest of his life touring the world in "The King and I". When he developed lung cancer in the mid 1980s, he left a powerful public service announcement denouncing smoking as the cause, for broadcast after his death. The cancer and its complications, after a long illness, ended his life. Brynner was cremated and his ashes buried in a remote part of France, on the grounds of the Abbey of Saint-Michel de Bois Aubry, a short distance outside the village of Luzé. He remains one of the most fascinating, unusual and beloved stars of his time.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
László Kovács was born on May 14, 1933 in Cece, Hungary. He is known for his work on Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), Ghostbusters (1984) and Copycat (1995). He won the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ASC in 2002. He was married to Audrey. He died on July 22, 2007 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
One cool, eternally classy lady, Candice Bergen was elegantly poised for trendy "ice princess" stardom when she first arrived on the '60s screen, but she gradually reshaped that débutante image in the '70s, both on- and off-camera. A staunch, outspoken feminist with a decisive edge, she went on to take a sizable portion of those contradicting qualities to film and, most particularly, to late 1980s TV.
The daughter of famed ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and former actress and "Chesterfield Girl" model Frances Bergen (née Westerman), Candice Patricia Bergen was born in Beverly Hills, California, of Swedish, German, and English descent. At the age of six, she made her radio debut on her father's show. She attended Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles, the Cathedral School in Washington D.C. and then went abroad to the Montesano (finishing) School in Switzerland. Although she began taking art history and creative drawing at the University of Pennsylvania, she did not complete her studies.
In between she also worked as a Ford model in order to buy cameras for her new passion--photography. Her Grace Kelly-like glacial beauty deemed her an ideal candidate for Ivy League patrician roles, and Candice made an auspicious film debut while still a college student portraying the Vassar-styled lesbian member of Sidney Lumet's The Group (1966) in an ensemble that included the debuts of other lovely up-and-comers including Kathleen Widdoes, Carrie Nye, Joan Hackett and Joanna Pettet.
Film offers started coming her way, both here and abroad (spurred by her love for travel). Other than her top-notch roles as the co-ed who comes between Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel in Carnal Knowledge (1971) and her prim American lady kidnapped by Moroccan sheik Sean Connery in The Wind and the Lion (1975), her performances were deemed a bit too aloof to really stand out among the crowd. During this time, she found a passionate second career as a photographer and photojournalist. A number of her works went on to appear in an assortment of magazines including Life, Playboy and Esquire.
Most of Candice's 1970s films were dismissible and unworthy of her talents, including the campus comedy Getting Straight (1970) opposite the hip counterculture star of the era -- Elliott Gould; the disturbingly violent Soldier Blue (1970); the epic-sized bomb The Adventurers (1970); T.R. Baskin (1971); Bite the Bullet (1975); The Domino Principle (1977), Lina Wertmüller's long-winded and notoriously long-titled Italian drama A Night Full of Rain (1978); and the inferior sequel to the huge box-office soaper Love Story (1970), entitled Oliver's Story (1978) alongside original star Ryan O'Neal. Things picked up toward the second half of the decade, however, when the seemingly humorless Candice made a clever swipe at comedy. She made history as the first female guest host of Saturday Night Live (1975) and then showed an equally amusing side of her in the dramedy Starting Over (1979) as Burt Reynolds' tone-deaf ex-wife, enjoying a "best supporting actress" Oscar nomination in the process. She and Jacqueline Bisset also worked well as a team in George Cukor's Rich and Famous (1981), in which her mother Frances could be glimpsed in a Malibu party scene.
Candice made her Broadway debut in 1985 replacing Sigourney Weaver in David Rabe's black comedy "Hurlyburly". In 1980 Candice married Louis Malle, the older (by 14 years) French director. They had one child, Chloe. In the late 1980s, Candice hit a new career plateau on comedy television as the spiky title role on Murphy Brown (1988), giving great gripe as the cynical and competitive anchor/reporter of a TV magazine show. With a superlative supporting cast around her, the CBS sitcom went the distance (ten seasons) and earned Candice a whopping five Emmys and two Golden Globe awards. TV-movie roles also came her way as a result with colorful roles ranging from the evil Arthurian temptress "Morgan Le Fey" to an elite, high-classed madam -- all many moons away from her initial white-gloved debs of the late 60s.
Husband Malle's illness and subsequent death from cancer in 1995 resulted in Candice maintaining a low profile for an extended period. In time, however, she married a second time (since 2000) to Manhattan real estate developer Marshall Rose and returned to acting with a renewed vigor (or vinegar), with many of her characters enjoyable extensions of her sardonic "Murphy Brown" character. As for TV, she joined the 2005 cast of Boston Legal (2004) playing a brash, no-nonsense lawyer while trading barbs with a much less serious William Shatner, earning an Emmy nomination in the process. In 2018, Candice revisited her Murphy Brown character in a revised series form with many of the cast back on board. The show, however, was cancelled after only one season.
Candice also ventured into the romantic comedy film genre with a spray of crisp supports -- sometimes as a confidante, sometimes as a villain. Such films include Miss Congeniality (2000), Sweet Home Alabama (2002), The In-Laws (2003), Sex and the City (2008), The Women (2008), Bride Wars (2009), A Merry Friggin' Christmas (2014), Rules Don't Apply (2016), The Meyerowitz Stories (2017), Home Again (2017) and Book Club (2018).- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Edgar Bergen was born on 16 February 1903 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Fun and Fancy Free (1947), The Muppet Movie (1979) and Letter of Introduction (1938). He was married to Frances Bergen. He died on 30 September 1978 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Actress Elizabeth Anne "Lizzy" Caplan was born in Los Angeles, California, to Barbara (Bragman), a political aide, and Richard Caplan, a lawyer. She has two older siblings, Julie and Benjamin, and was raised in a Jewish household. Her mother was a cousin of publicist Howard Bragman. Caplan was educated at Alexander Hamilton High School, where she showed an interest in acting and was cast in school plays.
After graduating, Caplan made her onscreen debut in the TV movie From Where I Sit (2000). Other roles followed in TV shows such as Freaks and Geeks (1999), Smallville (2001) and The Pitts (2003). Caplan made her big screen debut with a small role in Orange County (2002) and went on to play Janis Ian in the hit Mean Girls (2004). Further successes include Cloverfield (2008), Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) and 127 Hours (2010).
More recently, Caplan has played Virginia Johnson in the television series Masters of Sex (2013), for which she received an Emmy nomination. Her 2010s film work includes co-starring in The Interview (2014), opposite Joseph Gordon-Levitt in The Night Before (2015), and alongside Jesse Eisenberg, Dave Franco, Woody Harrelson, and Daniel Radcliffe in Now You See Me 2 (2016).- Actor
- Producer
- Stunts
Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Ann Lydia Elizabeth (Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman, who operated a newspaper printing press. He is of Pennsylvania Dutch (German), English, and Scottish ancestry, partly by way of Canada, where his mother was born. After several moves, his family settled in Danville, Illinois. Gene grew up in a broken home, which he left at the age of sixteen for a hitch with the US Marines.
Moving to New York after being discharged, he worked in a number of menial jobs before studying journalism and television production on the G.I. Bill at the University of Illinois. Hackman would be over 30 years old when he finally decided to take his chance at acting by enrolling at the Pasadena Playhouse. Legend says that Hackman and friend Dustin Hoffman were voted "least likely to succeed."
Hackman next moved back to New York, where he worked in summer stock and off-Broadway. In 1964 he was cast as the young suitor in the Broadway play "Any Wednesday." This role would lead to him being cast in the small role of Norman in Lilith (1964), starring Warren Beatty. When Beatty was casting for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), he cast Hackman as Buck Barrow, Clyde Barrow's brother. That role earned Hackman a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, an award for which he would again be nominated in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). In 1972 he won the Oscar for his role as Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection (1971). At 40 years old Hackman was a Hollywood star whose work would rise to new heights with Night Moves (1975) and Bite the Bullet (1975), or fall to new depths with The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Eureka (1983). Hackman is a versatile actor who can play comedy (the blind man in Young Frankenstein (1974)) or villainy (the evil Lex Luthor in Superman (1978)). He is the doctor who puts his work above people in Extreme Measures (1996) and the captain on the edge of nuclear destruction in Crimson Tide (1995). After initially turning down the role of Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992), Hackman finally accepted it, as its different slant on the western interested him. For his performance he won the Oscar and Golden Globe and decided that he wasn't tired of westerns after all. He has since appeared in Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Wyatt Earp (1994), and The Quick and the Dead (1995).- Actress
- Music Department
- Additional Crew
Natalie Wood was an American actress of Russian and Ukrainian descent. She started her career as a child actress and eventually transitioned into teenage roles, young adult roles, and middle-aged roles. She drowned off Catalina Island on November 29, 1981 at age 43.
Wood was born July 20, 1938 in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents: housewife Maria Gurdin (née Zoodiloff), known by multiple aliases including Mary, Marie and Musia, and second husband Nick Gurdin (née Zacharenko), a janitor and prop builder. Nicholas was born in Primorsky Krai, son of a chocolate-factory worker. Maria was born in Barnaul, southern Siberia to a wealthy industrialist. Natalie's maternal grandfather owned soap and candle factories.
Wood's parents had to migrate due to the Russian Civil War. Her paternal grandfather joined the anti-Bolshevik civilian forces early in the war and was killed in a street fight between Red and White Russian soldiers. This convinced the Zacharenkos to migrate to Shanghai, China, where they had relatives. Wood's paternal grandmother remarried in 1927 and moved the family to Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1933 they resettled along the U.S. West Coast. Nicholas met Wood's mother, four years his senior, while she was still married to Alexander Tatuloff, an Armenian mechanic she divorced in 1936.
Mary Tatuloff, Wood's mother, had unfulfilled ambitions of becoming a ballet dancer. She grew up in the Chinese city of Harbin and had married Alexander there in 1925. The Tatuloffs had one daughter, Ovsanna, before coming to America in 1930. After marrying Nicholas Zacharenko in 1938, five months before Wood's birth, Mary (now calling herself Marie) transferred her dream of stardom onto her second child. Marie frequently took a young Wood with her to the cinema, where she could study the films of Hollywood child stars.
Wood's parents changed the family name to Gurdin upon obtaining U.S. citizenship, and her pseudonymous mother finally settled on a permanent first name: Maria. In 1942 they bought a house in Santa Rosa, where young Natalie was noticed by members of a crew during a film shoot. She got to audition for roles as an actress, and the family moved to Los Angeles to help seek out roles for her. RKO Radio Pictures' executives William Goetz and David Lewis chose the stage name Wood for her, in reference to director Sam Wood. Natalie's younger sister Svetlana Gurdin would eventually follow an acting career as well, under the stage name Lana Wood.
Wood made her film debut in Happy Land (1943). She was only five years old, and her scene as the "Little Girl Who Drops Ice Cream Cone" lasted 15 seconds. Wood somehow attracted the interest of film director Irving Pichel who remained in contact with her family. She had few job offers over the following two years, but Pichel helped her get a screen test for a more substantial role in the romance film Tomorrow Is Forever (1946). Wood passed through an audition and won the role of Margaret Ludwig, a post-World War II German orphan. At the time, Wood was unable to "cry on cue" for a key scene, so her mother tore a butterfly to pieces in front of her, giving her a reason to cry for the scene.
Wood started appearing regularly in films following this role and soon received a contract with 20th Century Fox. Her first major role was that of Susan Walker in the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street (1947), which was a commercial and critical hit. Wood got her first taste of fame, and afterwards Macy's invited her to appear in the store's annual Thanksgiving Day parade. Following her early success, Wood receive many more film offers. She typically appeared in family films, cast as the daughter of such stars as Fred MacMurray, Margaret Sullivan, James Stewart, Joan Blondell, and Bette Davis. Wood found herself in high demand and appeared in over twenty films as a child actress.
The California laws of the era required that until reaching adulthood, child actors had to spend at least three hours per day in the classroom. Wood received her primary education on the studio lots, receiving three hours of school lessons whenever she was working on a film. She was reportedly a "straight A student." Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz was quite impressed by Wood's intellect. After school hours ended, Wood would hurry to the set to film her scenes.
While Wood acquired the services of agents, her early career was micromanaged by her mother. An older Wood gained her first major television role in the short-lived sitcom The Pride of the Family (1953). At the age of 16, she found more success with the role of Judy in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). She played the role of a teenage girl who wears makeup and dresses up in racy clothes to attract the attention of a father who typically ignores her. The film's success helped Wood make the transition from child actress to an ingenue. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Her next significant film was The Searchers (1956), a western in which she played the role of abduction victim Debbie Edwards, niece of John Wayne's character. The film was a commercial and critical hit, and has since become regarded as a masterpiece. Also in 1956, Wood graduated from Van Nuys High School. She signed a contract with Warner Brothers, where she was kept busy with several new films. To her disappointment, she was typically cast as the girlfriend of the protagonist and received roles of little depth. For a while, WB had her paired with teen heartthrob Tab Hunter. The studio was hoping that the pairing would serve as a box-office draw, but this did not work out. One of Wood's only serious roles from this period was the title character in Marjorie Morningstar (1958), as a young Jewish girl whose efforts to create her own identity and career path clash with the expectations of her family. The film was a critical success, and fit well with other films exploring the restlessness of youth in the '50s.
Wood's first major box office flop was the biographical film All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960), examining the rags to riches story of jazz musician Chet Baker without actually using his name. The film's box office earnings barely covered the production costs, and MGM recorded a loss of $1,108,000. For the first time. Wood's appeal to the audience was in doubt. With her career in decline following this failure, Wood was seen as "washed up" by many in the film community. But director Elia Kazan gave her the chance to audition for the role of the sexually-repressed Wilma Dean Loomis in his upcoming film Splendor in the Grass (1961). Kazan cast Wood as the female lead, because he found in her (in his words): a "true-blue quality with a wanton side that is held down by social pressure." Kazan is credited for producing Wood's most powerful moment as an actress. The film was a critical success, with Wood nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Wood's next important film was West Side Story (1961), where she played Maria, a restless Puerto Rican girl. Wood was once again called to represent the restlessness of youth, this time in a story involving youth gangs and juvenile delinquents. The film was a great commercial success with about $44 million gross, the highest-grossing film of 1961. It was also critically acclaimed, and is still regarded as one of the best films of Wood's career. Her next film was Gypsy (1962), playing the role of burlesque entertainer and stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Film historians credit the film as an even better role for Wood than that of Maria, with witty dialogue, a greater emotional range, and complex characterization. The film was the eighth highest-grossing release of 1962, and was well-received critically.
Wood's next significant role was that of Macy's salesclerk Angie Rossini in Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). In the film, Angie has a one-night-stand with musician Rocky Papasano, played by Steve McQueen, finds herself pregnant and desperately seeks an abortion. The film under-performed at the box office but was critically well-received. Wood received her third (and last) nomination for an Academy Award. At age 25, Wood was tied with Teresa Wright as the youngest person to score three Oscar nominations. Wood held that designation until 2013, when Jennifer Lawrence achieved her third nomination at age 23.
Wood continued her successful film career until 1966, but her health status was not as successful. She was suffering emotionally and had sought professional therapy. She paid Warner Bros. $175,000 to cancel her contract and was able to retire for a while. She also fired her entire support team: agents, managers, publicist, accountant, and attorneys. She took a three-year hiatus from acting.
Wood made her comeback in the comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) with the themes of sexual liberation and wife swapping. It was a box office hit. Wood decided to gamble her $750,000 fee on a percentage of the gross, earning a million dollars in profits. She chose not to capitalize on the film's success, however, and did not take another acting job for five years.
In 1970, Wood was married to the screenwriter Richard Gregson and was expecting her first child, Natasha Gregson Wagner. She went into semi-retirement to be a stay-at-home mom, appearing in only four more theatrical films before her death. These films were the mystery comedy Peeper (1975), the science fiction film Meteor (1979), the comedy The Last Married Couple in America (1980), and the posthumously-released science fiction film Brainstorm (1983).
In the late '70s, Wood found success in television roles, appearing in several made-for-TV movies and the mini-series From Here to Eternity (1979). Her project received high ratings, and she had plans to make her theatrical debut in a 1982 production of Anastasia.
On November 28, 1981, Wood joined her last husband Robert Wagner, their married friend Christopher Walken, and captain Dennis Davern on a weekend boat trip to Catalina Island. Conspicuously absent from the group was Christopher's wife, casting director Georgianne Walken. The four of them were on board the Wagners' yacht "Splendour." Earwitness Marilyn Wayne heard cries for help around 11:05 P.M. and a "man's voice slurred, and in aggravated tone, say something to the effect of, 'Oh, hold on, we're coming to get you,' and not long after, the cries for help subsided." On the morning of November 29, Wood's corpse was recovered 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) away from the boat, near small Valiant-brand inflatable dinghy beached nearby. The toxicology report revealed her blood alcohol level was at .14, over the legal limit of .10. Wood was buried on December 2 at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Nine days later, the LACSD officially closed the case.- Actress
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Cute as a button and with a petite, porcelain prettiness and vulnerability that endeared her to the American public, Sally Struthers nabbed a series role in the early 1970s and became a solid part of TV history as a member of a dysfunctional family quartet in the milestone sitcom, All in the Family (1971).
She was born Sally Ann Struthers, the daughter of a surgeon, on July 28, 1948, in Portland, Oregon. Raised there, she pursued an acting career following high school. She eventually moved to Los Angeles and trained at the Pasadena Playhouse College of Theatre Arts, earning a scholarship as its "most promising student." She performed briefly in regional stock plays until finding her break as both a commercial actress and dancer on TV.
A recurring dancer/performer on such variety shows as The Smothers Brothers Summer Show (1970) and The Tim Conway Comedy Hour (1970), the pert-nosed, blue-eyed, curly blonde cutie showed starlet promise in films, offering ditsy support in the Jack Nicholson starrer, Five Easy Pieces (1970), and the chase film, The Getaway (1972), top-lining Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw.
And, then came the iconic series All in the Family (1971). Also starring Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton as conservative parents Archie and Edith, and Rob Reiner as liberal husband Mike, Struthers went on to win two supporting Emmy Awards and four Golden Globe nominations as kewpie-doll Gloria Bunker Strivic, Archie Bunker's "little goil."
Seen occasionally guesting elsewhere on such popular TV programs as "Love, American Style," "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," "Ironside," "Laugh-In," "Sonny and Cher" and as the voice of teenage Pebbles Flintstone on the spin-off cartoon series The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show (1971), Sally, along with Rob, finally left the popular family show after seven seasons, both eager to grow away from their strong TV images. While Reiner stepped away from the camera and became a noted director, Sally continued to act. She made her Broadway debut in "Wally's Cafe" in 1981 and returned, four years later, with a gender-bending version of "The Odd Couple" as neat-freak "Florence" opposite Rita Moreno's slovenly "Olive". In addition, she found steady work in both topical and light-hearted 70's TV movies with Aloha Means Goodbye (1974), Hey, I'm Alive (1975), The Great Houdini (1976), My Husband Is Missing (1978), ...and Your Name Is Jonah (1979), A Gun in the House (1981), to name a few.
When offers began to dry up for Sally, she returned to the TV series fold in the early 1980s spinning off her "Gloria" character, sans Rob Reiner, with the self-titled sitcom, Gloria (1982). Without Reiner (the plot had the couple split and her focusing on raising son Joey), the ensemble formula that worked so well for her earlier was missing here and the show died in its freshman year. To compensate, however, Sally's baby-doll voice worked extremely well for her in cartoons. She remained active off-camera, providing little girl voices for Saturday morning entertainment, notably her teenage "Pebbles Flintstone" character.
In addition to Yo Yogi! (1991) and Tiny Toon Adventures (1990), other TVanimated voice-over work included TaleSpin (1990) as "Rebecca 'Becky' Cunningham" and, notably, puppeteer Jim Henson's creative prehistoric sitcom, Dinosaurs (1991), playing dino-daughter "Charlene Sinclair."
As she grew older, Sally continued delighting fans with broader shtick in plus-sized parts. She showed that she had lost none of the fun for which she was known, by providing hearty comedy relief when she joined the prime-time series Nine to Five (1982) and as a guest in "Charles in Charge," "Sister Kate" and "Murder, She Wrote."
The musical stage was another popular venue. Over the years, she has patented the by-the-book principal "Miss Lynch", with her many "Grease" tours, and as the scheming orphanage operator "Miss Hannigan" in a number of road productions of "Annie." She went on to cop a 2002 Los Angeles "Ovation" award for her delightfully over-the-top "Agnes Gooch" in "Mame", starring Carol Lawrence and in 2012, she performed in both "Always...Patsy Cline" as Louise Segar, and "9 to 5: The Musical" as nosy Roz Klein. In 2014, Struthers toured in the 50th anniversary production in the title role of "Hello, Dolly!"
Into the millennium, Sally has guested on such series as "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch" and "The Division," had recurring roles on Still Standing (2002) and Gilmore Girls (2000), and was seen in featured or cameo roles in such independent films as the drama A Month of Sundays (2001), the mystery thriller Reeseville (2003), the Mario Van Peebles biopic Baadasssss! (2003), the comedy Monster Heroes (2010), and the musical comedies Waiting in the Wings: The Musical (2014), Hollywood Musical! (2015), Still Waiting in the Wings (2018) and Christmas Harmony (2018).
Divorced, Sally is the mother of one daughter who has made a career for herself as a clinical psychologist.
For years, Sally was a prime spokesperson for the Christian Children's Fund on TV, fervently (and often tearfully) appealing for viewer's monetary assistance in finding an end to starvation in under-developed countries.- Writer
- Actor
- Director
Dalton Trumbo, the Oscar-winning screenwriter, arguably the most talented, most famous of the blacklisted film professionals known to history as the Hollywood 10, was born in Montrose, Colorado to Orus Trumbo and his wife, the former Maud Tillery.
Dalton Trumbo was raised at 1124 Gunnison Ave. in Grand Junction, Colorado, where his parents moved in 1908. His father, Orus, worked in a shoe store. Dalton, the first child and only son, was later joined by sisters Catharine and Elizabeth. The young Dalton peddled the produce from his father's vegetable garden around town and had a paper route. While attending Grand Junction High School (Class of 1924), he worked at The Daily Sentinel as a cub reporter. Of his early politics, a much older Dalton Trumbo told how he asked his father for five dollars so he could join the Ku Klux Klan, a mass organization after the First World War. He didn't get the five dollars.
While at university, he realized that his calling was as a writer. He worked on the school's newspaper, humor magazine and yearbook, while also toiling for the Boulder Daily Camera. He left school his first year to follow his family to Los Angeles. The family moved due to financial difficulties after his father had been terminated by the shoe company. In L.A., Dalton enrolled at the University of Southern California but was unable to complete enough credits for a degree. Orus Trumbo died of pernicious anemia in 1926, and Dalton had to take a job to become the breadwinner for his widowed mother and two younger sisters. Dalton Trumbo took on whatever jobs were available, including repossessing motorcycles and bootlegging, which he quit because it was too dangerous. Eventually, Trumbo took a job at the Davis Perfection Bakery on the night shift and remained for nearly a decade. Trumbo continued to write, mostly short stories, becoming more and more anxious and eventually desperate to leave the bakery, fearing that he would never achieve his destiny of becoming an important writer. During this time, he sold several short stories, written his first novel and worked for the "Hollywood Spectator" as a writer, critic and editor. His work also appeared in "Vanity Fair" and "Vogue" magazines. Trumbo's first novel, "Eclipse" (1934), was set in fictional Shale City, Colorado (a thinly veiled Grand Junction) during the 1920s and 1930s, with characters who resembled notable community members. One of its main characters, John Abbott, is modeled after Trumbo's father. Dalton had tried, perhaps unfairly he admitted later, to avenge his father on the town where he had failed.
In 1934, Warner Bros. hired Trumbo as a reader, a job that entailed reading and summarizing plays and novels and advising whether they might be adapted into movies. It lead to a contract as a junior screenwriter at its B-pictures unit. In 1936, the same year he of his first screen credit for the B-move Road Gang (1936), Trumbo met his future soulmate Cleo Fincher and they married two years later. Daughter Nikola was born in 1939 and son Christopher in 1940. A daughter was added, Mitzi, the baby of the family.
He wrote the story for Columbia's Canadian-made Tugboat Princess (1936), clearly influenced by Captain January (1936), which had been made into a silent in 1924 before being remade with superstar Shirley Temple, substituting a tugboat in the original with a lighthouse. His screenplays for such films as Devil's Playground (1937) showed some concern for the plight of the disenfranchised, but the Great Depression still existed, and social commentary was inevitable in all but fantasies and musicals.
After leaving Warners, he worked for Columbia, Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, and beginning in 1937, M.G.M., the studio for which he would do some of his best work in the 1940s. By the late 1930s, he had worked himself up to better assignments, primarily for RKO (though he returned to Warners for The Kid from Kokomo (1939)), and was working on A-list pictures by the turn of the decade. He won his first Oscar nod for RKO's Kitty Foyle (1940), for which Ginger Rogers won the Academy Award for best actress as a girl from a poor family who claws her way into the upper middle class via a failed marriage to a Main Line Philadelphia swell.
By the time of America's entry into World War II, Trumbo was one of the most respected, highest paid screenwriters in Hollywood. He had also established a name for himself as a left-wing political activist whose sympathies coincided with those of the American Communist Party (CPUSA), which hewed to the line set by Moscow.
Trumbo was part of the anti-fascist Popular Front coalition of communists and liberals in the late 1930s, at the time of the Spanish Civil War. The Popular Front against Nazism and Fascism was been torn asunder in August 1939 when the USSR signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. Many party members quit the CPUSA in disgust, but the true believers parroted the party line, which was now pro-peace and against US involvement in WWII.
Trumbo reportedly did not join the Party until 1943 and harbored personal reservations about its policies as regards enforcing ideological conformity. However, the publication of his anti-war novel "Johnny Got His Gun" in 1939 coincided with the shift of the CPUSA's stance from anti-Hitler to pro-peace, and his novel was embraced by the Party as the type of literature needed to keep the US out of the war. Trumbo agreed with the Party's pro-peace platform. The book, about a wounded World War One vet who has lost his limbs, won the American Book Sellers Award (the precursor to the National Book Award) in 1939. In a speech made in February 1940, four months before the Nazi blitzkrieg knocked France out of the war, Trumbo said, "If they say to us, 'We must fight this war to preserve democracy,' let us say to them, 'There is no such thing as democracy in time of war. It is a lie, a deliberate deception to lead us to our own destruction. We will not die in order that our children may inherit a permanent military dictatorship.'"
His speech was a rebuke to New Deal liberals. The Party began demonizing President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who hated Hitler and was pro-British, as a war-monger. The Party ordered its members to henceforth be pro-peace and anti-FDR in their work and statements. In June 1941, after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR, the CPUSA shifted gears to become pro-war, supportive of FDR's aggressive behavior towards Nazi Germany.
Shortly after the German invasion, Trumbo instructed his publisher to recall all copies of "Johnny Got His Gun" and to cease publication of the book. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war against the U.S. catapulted the U.S. into both the Asian and European theaters of World War II, the book - always popular with peace-lovers and isolationists who opposed America's involvement in foreign wars - suddenly became popular among native fascists, too. However, it proved hard to get a copy of the book during the war years.
Trumbo joined the CPUSA in 1943, the same year Victor Fleming's great patriotic war movie A Guy Named Joe (1943), with a Trumbo screenplay, appeared on screens. In 1944, Original Story was a separate Oscar category and David Boehm and Chandler Sprague were nominated in that category for an Academy Award. Trumbo's screenplay was overlooked. Like other communist screenwriters, he proved to be an enthusiastic writer of pro-war propaganda, though except for the notorious pro-Stalin Mission to Moscow (1943), few films displayed any overt communist ideas or propaganda. One that did was Tender Comrade (1943) , which Trumbo wrote as a Ginger Rogers vehicle for RKO. Directed by his future Hollywood 10 comrade Edward Dmytryk, it depicted a mild form of socialism and collectivization among women working in the defense industry. He also wrote the patriotic classic Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) for M.G.M., which was based on the Doolittle Raid of 1942.
Trumbo voluntarily invited FBI agents to his house in 1944 and showed them letters he had received from what he perceived were pro-fascist peaceniks who had requested copies of "Johnny Got His Gun", then out-of-print due to Trumbo's orders to his publisher. He turned those letters over to the FBI and later kept in contact with the Bureau, a fact that would later haunt blacklisted leftists, urging that the F.B.I. deal with them. His actions conformed to the CPUSA policy of denouncing anyone who opposed the war.
In 1945, the last year of the war, MGM released the Margaret O'Brien / Edward G. Robinson vehicle, Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945), penned by Trumbo. Robinson was a future member of the Hollywood "gray-list" with those, like Henry Fonda who were suspected of leftist sympathies or for being Fellow Travelers, but who could not be officially blacklisted. Drawing on his own rural childhood, it was a picture of a young girl's life on a farm in rural Wisconsin. The year 1945 was crucial for Trumbo and other Hollywood party members in terms of the CPUSA's desire to have their work reflect the party's ideological agenda.
HCUA was originally created in 1934 as the Special Committee on Un-American Activities to look into the activities of fascist and pro-Nazi organizations. Then popularly known as the McCormack-Dickstein Committee, the Special Committee on Un-American Activities exposed fascist organizations, including a planned coup d'etat against President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the so-called Business Plot. Later on, it became known as the House Un-American Activities Committee or the Dies Committee after the new chairman, Martin Dies. HCUA originally was tasked with investigating the involvement of German Americans with the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
HCUA became a standing committee in 1946, still tasked with investigating suspected threats of subversion or propaganda that attacked "the form of government guaranteed by our Constitution." The focus was solely on the communists and their allies, so-called Fellow Travelers who made common cause with communists during the War Years. Fellow Travelers was a loose term that seemed to embrace many liberal FDR New Deal Democrats.
HCUA subpoenaed suspected communists in the entertainment industry. Trumbo's screenplay for Tender Comrade (1943), which concerned three Army wives who pool their resources while their husbands are away fighting was denounced as communist propaganda. However, writer-producer James Kevin McGuinness, a conservative who was a friendly witness before HCUA, testified that left-wing screenwriters did not inject propaganda into their movie scripts during World War II. McGuiness testified "[The movie industry] profited from reverse lend-lease because during the [war] the Communist and Communist-inclined writers in the motion picture industry were given leave of absence to be patriotic. During that time...under my general supervision Dalton Trumbo wrote two magnificent patriotic scripts, A Guy Named Joe (1943) and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)."
Appearing before HCUA in October 1947 with Alvah Bessie, Herbert J. Biberman, Lester Cole, John Howard Lawson, 'Ring Lardner Jr' , Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, and Samuel Ornitz, Trumbo - like the others - refused to answer any questions. In a defense strategy crafted by CPUSA lawyers, the soon-to-be-known-as "Hollywood 10" claimed that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave them the right to refuse to answer inquiries into their political beliefs as well as their professional associations. One line of questioning of HCUA was to ask if the subpoenaed witnesses were members of the Screen Writers Guild in order to smear the SWG. It was a gambit played by the Committee as it knew that which of the 10 were in the unions, and it knew which were communist. As Arthur Miller has pointed out, HCUA left the Broadway theater alone, despite the fact that there were communists working in it, because no one outside of the Northeastern U.S. really cared about theater or knew who theatrical professionals were, and thus, it could not generate the publicity that HCUA members craved and courted through their hearings.
HCUA cited them for contempt of Congress, and the Hollywood 10 were tried and convicted on the charge. All were fined and jailed, with Trumbo being sentenced to a year in federal prison and a fine of $1,000. He served 10 months of the sentence. The Hollywood 10 were blacklisted by the Hollywood studios, a blacklist enforced by the very guilds they helped create. Trumbo and the other Hollywood 10 screenwriters were kicked out of the Screen Writers Guild (John Howard Lawson had been one of the founders of the SWG and its first president), which meant, even if they weren't blacklisted, they could not obtain work in Hollywood. Those who continued to write for the American cinema had to do so under assumed names or by using a "front", a screenwriter who would take credit for their work and pass on all or some of the fee to the blacklisted writer. Later, as one of the Hollywood Ten, Trumbo claimed for himself the mantle of "Martyr for Freedom of Speech" and attacked, as rats, those who became informers for HCUA by naming names. In 1949, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., wrote in The Saturday Review of Books, that Trumbo was in fact NOT a free speech martyr since he would not fight for freedom of speech for ALL the people, such as right-wing conservatives, but only for the freedom of speech of CPUSA members. The anti-communist Schlesinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard historian, thought Trumbo and others like him were doctrinaire communists and hypocrites. In response, Trumbo wrote a scathing letter to The Saturday Review to defend himself, characterizing himself as a paladin championing free speech for all Americans under the aegis of the First Amendment, which the Hollywood 10 claimed gave them the right to refuse to cooperate with HCUA.
After his blacklisting and failure of the Hollywood 10's appeals, the Trumbo family exiled themselves to Mexico. In Mexico, chain-smoking in the bathtub in which he always wrote, usually with a parrot given to him by 'Kirk Douglas' perched on his shoulder, Trumbo wrote approximately thirty scripts under pseudonyms and using fronts who relayed the money to him. His works included the film noir classic Gun Crazy (1950) (AKA Gun Crazy), co-written under the pseudonym Millard Kaufman, Oscar-winning Roman Holiday (1953) (with screenwriter Ian McLellan Hunter as a front), and The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955) for director Otto Preminger and upon which blacklisted Oscar-winning screenwriter Michael Wilson also worked).
At the 1957 Academy Awards, Robert Rich won the Oscar for best original story of 1956 for The Brave One (1956). Rich was not present to accept the award, which was accepted on his behalf by Jesse Lasky Jr. of the Screen Writers Guild. When journalists began digging in to the background of the phantom Mr. Rich, they found out he was the nephew of a producer. Suspicion then arose that Rich was a pseudonym for the blacklisted Trumbo.
Though Hollywood has always been inundated with writers, Trumbo, even while blacklisted, was prized as a good writer who was fast, reliable and could write in many genres. Despite being a communist, Trumbo's favorite themes were more in the vein of populism than Marxism. Trumbo celebrated the individual rebelling against the powers that be.
With rumors circulating that Trumbo had written the Oscar-winning The Brave One (1956), it triggered a discussion in the industry about the propriety of the blacklist, since so many screenplays were being written by blacklisted individuals who were being denied screen credit. The blacklist only worked to suppress the prices of screenplays by these talented writers. In 1958, Pierre Boulle won the Oscar for the screenplay adapted from his novel The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), which was unusual since Boulle could not speak nor write in English, which may have been the reason he did not attend the awards ceremony to pick up the Oscar in person. It was immediately realized that the screenplay had likely been written by a blacklisted screenwriter. It was - Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman.
Kirk Douglas hired Trumbo to write the script for Spartacus in 1958. In the summer of 1959 Otto Preminger hired Trumbo to write the script for Exodus. On January 20, 1960, the New York Times carried the story that Otto Preminger had hired Dalton Trumbo to write the script for Exodus, and that he would start shooting in April. On August 8, of the same year Kirk Douglas announced in Variety that Trumbo had written the script for Spartacus. Both pictures opened in the winter of 1960.
Trumbo wrote many more screenplays for A-list films, including Lonely Are the Brave (1962), The Sandpiper (1965), Hawaii (1966) , and _Fixer, The (1968). In 1970, he was awarded the Laurel Award for lifetime achievement by the Screen Writers Guild. He made a famous speech that many saw as a reconciliation of the two sides of fight. In 1971, he wrote and directed the movie adaptation of his famous anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun (1971). His last screenwriting credit on a feature film was for Papillon (1973), in which he also had a cameo role.
A six-pack-a-day smoker, he developed lung cancer in 1973. Two years later, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (which had supported the black list), Walter Mirisch, personally delivered a belated Oscar to Trumbo for his The Brave One (1956) script, now officially recognized by AMPAS as his creation. Eighteen years later, AMPAS would award him a posthumous Oscar for Roman Holiday (1953).
Dalton Trumbo died from a heart attack in California on September 10, 1976. At his memorial service, Ring Lardner Jr., his close friend and fellow Hollywood 10 member, delivered an amusing eulogy. "At rare intervals, there appears among us a person whose virtues are so manifest to all, who has such a capacity for relating to every sort of human being, who so subordinates his own ego drive to the concerns of others, who lives his whole life in such harmony with the surrounding community that he is revered and loved by everyone with whom he comes in contact. Such a man Dalton Trumbo was not."- Writer
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Born in Brooklyn in 1969 Noah Baumbach is the son of two film critics, Georgia Brown and Jonathan Baumbach (also a writer). His studies at Vassar College were the subject of his first film (made as he was 26 years old), Kicking and Screaming (1995). His second major picture, made ten years later, The Squid and the Whale (2005) was no less autobiographical but went back further in his personal history, back to the time when his parents separated. Recounting this past trauma and its aftermath earned Noah a selection at the Sundance Film Festival, three Golden Globe nominations and a best screenplay Oscar nomination. From then on his career was launched and his output became more regular with Margot at the Wedding (2007) starring Nicole Kidman and his wife Jennifer Jason Leigh, Greenberg (2010), filmed in Los Angeles, with Ben Stiller and Greta Gerwig. Back in New york, where he lives, he was the director (and co-author with his main actress, Greta Gerwig) of the bittersweet art house success Frances Ha (2012). Besides directing films, he also co-writes some with Wes Anderson, a good friend of his, and is the author of humor columns in the New Yorker.- Actor
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Don Ameche was a versatile and popular American film actor in the 1930s and '40s, usually as the dapper, mustached leading man. He was also popular as a radio master of ceremonies during this time. As his film popularity waned in the 1950s, he continued working in theater and some TV. His film career surged in a comeback in the 1980s with fine work as an aging millionaire in Trading Places (1983) and a rejuvenated oldster in Cocoon (1985).
Ameche was born Dominic Felix Amici in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to Barbara Edda (Hertel) and Felice Amici, a bartender.- Actress
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Jessica Michelle Chastain was born in Sacramento, California, and was raised in a middle-class household in a Northern California suburb. Her mother, Jerri Chastain, is a vegan chef whose family is originally from Kansas, and her stepfather is a fireman. She discovered dance at the age of nine and was in a dance troupe by age thirteen. She began performing in Shakespearean productions all over the Bay area.
An actor in a production of "Romeo & Juliet" encouraged her to audition for Juilliard as a drama major. She became a member of "Crew 32" with the help of a scholarship from one of the school's famous alumni, Robin Williams.
In her last year at Juilliard, she was offered a holding deal with TV writer/producer John Wells and she eventually worked in three of his TV shows. Jessica continues to do theatre, having played in "The Cherry Orchard", "Rodney's Wife", "Salome" and "Othello". She spends her time between New York and Los Angeles, working in theater, film and TV.
In 2011, she had a prolific year in film. She was nominated for and won a number of awards, including a 2012 Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for The Help (2011).- Actress
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Karen entered Northwestern University at 18 and left two years later. She studied under Lee Strasberg in New York and worked in a number of off-Broadway roles. She made a critically acclaimed debut on Broadway in 1965 in "The Playroom". Her first big film role was in You're a Big Boy Now (1966), directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Shortly after wards, she appeared as Marcia in the TV series The Second Hundred Years (1967).
The film that made her a star was Easy Rider (1969), where she worked with Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and a supporting actor named Jack Nicholson. She appeared with Nicholson again the next year when they starred in Five Easy Pieces (1970), which garnered an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe for Karen. Her roles mainly consisted of waitresses, hookers and women on the edge. Some of her later films were disappointments at the box office, but she did receive another Golden Globe for The Great Gatsby (1974). One role for which she is well remembered is that of the jewel thief in Alfred Hitchcock's last film, Family Plot (1976). Another is as the woman terrorized in her apartment by a murderous Zuni doll come to life in the well received TV movie Trilogy of Terror (1975). After a number of forgettable movies, she again won rave reviews for her role in Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982). Since then, her film career has been busy, but the quality of the films has been uneven.- Actress
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Actress and activist Shailene Woodley was born in Simi Valley, California, to Lori (Victor), a middle school counselor, and Lonnie Woodley, a school principal. She has one brother, Tanner. She was educated at Simi Valley High School in California. When Woodley was four years old she began commercial modeling. Acting roles followed, and she made her screen debut in 1999's Replacing Dad (1999). More parts followed in The District (2000), The O.C. (2003) and Crossing Jordan (2001),amongst others. When Woodley was 15, she was diagnosed with Idiopathic Scoliosis and wore a chest-to-hips plastic brace for two years, which proved a successful treatment.
In 2008 Woodley was cast in the lead role of Amy Juergens in The Secret Life of the American Teenager (2008) and in 2011 she had her big screen breakthrough when she appeared in Alexander Payne's The Descendants (2011), opposite George Clooney. Her performance in the role of Alexandra King brought critical acclaim and recognition by the movie industry. She won an Independent Spirit Award and the 2012 MTV Movie Awards Breakthrough Performance Award, as well as a Golden Globe nomination. She gained more prominence for portraying Tris from the Divergent film trilogy based on the book series. She portrayed Mary Jane Watson in deleted scenes of The Amazing Spider-Man 2. She had roles in The Fault in Our Stars, The Mauritanian, White Bird in a Blizzard, Big Little Lies, Adrift and The Fallout. She was engaged to Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers but broke up.- Actor
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James Mason was born in Huddersfield and had a film career spanning over 50 years during which he appeared in over 100 films in England and America but never won an Oscar. Whatever role he played, from the wounded Belfast gunman in Odd Man Out to Rommel in The Desert Fox, his creamy velvet voice gave him away. Like Charlie Chaplin James left the screen to spend his later life living in Switzerland. His first marriage had been to Pamela Kellino, a Yorkshire mill owner's daughter and his second to Australian actress Clarissa Kaye.- Actress
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Teri Garr can claim a career in show business by birthright. She was the daughter of Eddie Garr, a Broadway stage and film actor, and Phyllis Garr, a dancer. While she was still an infant, her family moved from Hollywood to New Jersey but, after the death of her father when she was 11, the family returned to Hollywood, where her mother became a wardrobe mistress for movies and television. While Garr's dancing can be seen in five Elvis Presley movies, her first speaking role in motion pictures was in the 1968 feature Head (1968), starring The Monkees. In the 1970s she became well established in television with appearances on shows such as Star Trek (1966), It Takes a Thief (1968) and McCloud (1970), and became a semi-regular on The Sonny and Cher Show (1976) as Cher's friend, Olivia. Garr has since risen to become one of Hollywood's most versatile, energetic and well-recognized actresses. She has starred in many memorable films, including Young Frankenstein (1974), Oh, God! (1977), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Mr. Mom (1983), After Hours (1985) and her Academy Award-nominated performance for Best Supporting Actress in Tootsie (1982). Other film roles include The Black Stallion (1979), One from the Heart (1981), The Escape Artist (1982), Firstborn (1984), Let It Ride (1989), Full Moon in Blue Water (1988), Out Cold (1989), Short Time (1990), Waiting for the Light (1990), Mom and Dad Save the World (1992), Perfect Alibi (1995), Ready to Wear (1994) and A Simple Wish (1997).- Actress
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Born into wealth in Savannah, Georgia, on October 18, 1902, Ellen Miriam Hopkins was able to attend the finest educational institutions, including Goddard Seminary in Plainfield, Vermont, and Syracuse University in New York State. Studying dance in New York, she received her first taste of show business as a chorus girl at twenty. She appeared in local musicals before she began expanding her horizons by trying out dramatic roles four years later. By 1928, Miriam was appearing in stock companies on the East Coast, and her reviews were getting better after she had been vilified earlier in her career. In 1930, Miriam decided to try the silver screen and signed with Paramount Studios. Because she was already established on Broadway, Paramount felt it was getting a seasoned performer after the rave reviews she had received on Broadway. Her first role was in Fast and Loose (1930). The role, in which Miriam played a rebellious girl, was a good start. After appearing in 24 Hours (1931), in which she is killed by her husband, Miriam played Princess Anna in The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) opposite Maurice Chevalier. Still considered a newcomer, Miriam displayed a talent that had all the earmarks of stardom. She was to finish out the year by playing Ivy Pearson in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931). Miriam began filming The World and the Flesh (1932), which was not a box-office blockbuster. Later, she appeared in Dancers in the Dark (1932) with George Raft. The film was unexpectedly strong and enjoyable, which served as a catalyst to propel Miriam and Raft to bigger stardom. In Two Kinds of Women (1932), directed by William C. de Mille, Miriam once again performed magnificently. Later that year, she played Lily Vautier in the sophisticated comedy Trouble in Paradise (1932). A film that should have been nominated for an Academy Award, it has lasted through the years as a masterpiece in comedy. Even today, film buffs and historians rave about it. Miriam's brilliant performance in Design for Living (1933) propelled her to the top of Paramount's salary scale. Later that year, Miriam played the title role in The Story of Temple Drake (1933). Paramount was forced to tone down the film's violence and the character's rape in order to pass the Hayes Office code. Despite being watered down, it was still a box-office smash. In 1934, Miriam filmed All of Me (1934), which was less than well received. Soon, the country was abuzz as to who would play Scarlett O'Hara in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind (1939). Miriam wanted the coveted spot, especially because she was a Southern lady and a Georgia native. Unfortunately, as we all know, she didn't win the role. As a matter of fact, her only movie role that year was in The Old Maid (1939). By that time, the roles were only trickling in for her. With the slowdown in film work, Miriam found herself returning to the stage. She made two films in 1940, none in 1941, one in 1942, and one in 1943. The stage was her work now. However, in 1949, she received the role of Lavinia Penniman in The Heiress (1949). Miriam made only three films in the 1950s, but she had begun making appearances on television programs. Miriam made her final big-screen appearance in Hollywood Horror House (1970). Nine days before her 70th birthday, on October 9, 1972, Miriam died of a heart attack in New York.- Actor
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William Claude Rains, born in the Clapham area of London, was the son of the British stage actor Frederick Rains. The younger Rains followed, making his stage debut at the age of eleven in "Nell of Old Drury." Growing up in the world of theater, he saw not only acting up close but the down-to-earth business end as well, progressing from a page boy to a stage manager during his well-rounded learning experience. Rains decided to come to America in 1913 and the New York theater, but with the outbreak of World War I the next year, he returned to serve with a Scottish regiment in Europe. He remained in England, honing his acting talents, bolstered with instruction patronized by the founder of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Herbert Beerbohm Tree. It was not long before his talent garnered him acknowledgment as one of the leading stage actors on the London scene. His one and only silent film venture was British with a small part for him, the forgettable -- Build Thy House (1920).
In the meantime, Rains was in demand as acting teacher as well, and he taught at the Royal Academy. Young and eager Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud were perhaps his best known students. Rains did return to New York in 1927 to begin what would be nearly 20 Broadway roles. While working for the Theater Guild, he was offered a screen test with Universal Pictures in 1932. Rains had a unique and solid British voice-deep, slightly rasping -- but richly dynamic. And as a man of small stature, the combination was immediately intriguing. Universal was embarking on its new-found role as horror film factory, and they were looking for someone unique for their next outing, The Invisible Man (1933). Rains was the very man. He took the role by the ears, churning up a rasping malice and volume in his voice to achieve a bone chilling persona of the disembodied mad doctor. He could also throw out a high-pitched maniac laugh that would make you leave the lights on before going to bed. True to Universal's formula mentality, it cast him in similar roles through 1934 with some respite in more diverse film roles -- and further relieved by Broadway roles (1933, 1934) for the remainder of his contract. By 1936, he was at Warner Bros. with its ambitious laundry list of literary epics in full swing. His acting was superb, and his eyes could say as much as his voice. And his mouth could take on both a forbidding scowl and the warmest of smiles in an instant. His malicious, gouty Don Luis in Anthony Adverse (1936) was inspired. After a shear lucky opportunity to dispatch his young wife's lover, Louis Hayward, in a duel, he triumphs over her in a scene with derisive, bulging eyes and that high pitched laugh -- with appropriate shadow and light backdrop -- that is unforgettable.
He was kept very busy through the remainder of the 1930s with a mix of benign and devious historical, literary, and contemporary characters always adapting a different nuance -- from murmur to growl -- of that voice to become the person. He culminated the decade with his complex, ethics-tortured Senator "Joe" Paine in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). That year he became an American citizen. Into the 1940s, Rains had risen to perhaps unique stature: a supporting actor who had achieved A-list stardom -- almost in a category by himself. His some 40 films during that period ranged from subtle comedy to psychological drama with a bit of horror revisited; many would be golden era classics. He was the firm but thoroughly sympathetic Dr. Jaquith in Now, Voyager (1942) and the smoothly sardonic but engaging Capt. Louis Renault -- perhaps his best known role -- in Casablanca (1942). He was the surreptitiously nervous and malignant Alexander Sebastian in Notorious (1946) and the egotistical and domineering conductor Alexander Hollenius in Deception (1946). He was the disfigured Phantom of the Opera (1943) as well. He played opposite the challenging Bette Davis in three movies through the decade and came out her equal in acting virtuosity. He was nominated four times for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar -- but incredibly never won. With the 1950s the few movies left to an older Rains were countered by venturing into new acting territory -- television. His haunted, suicidal writer Paul DeLambre in the mountaineering adventure The White Tower (1950), though a modest part, was perhaps the most vigorously memorable film role of his last years. He made a triumphant Broadway return in 1951's "Darkness at Noon."
Rains embraced the innovative TV playhouse circuit with nearly 20 roles. As a favored 'Alfred Hitchcock' alumnus, he starred in five Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) suspense dramas into the 1960s. And he did not shy away from episodic TV either with some memorable roles that still reflected the power of Claude Rains as consummate actor -- for many, first among peers with that hallowed title.- Director
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Milos Forman was born Jan Tomas Forman in Caslav, Czechoslovakia, to Anna (Svabova), who ran a summer hotel, and Rudolf Forman, a professor. During World War II, his parents were taken away by the Nazis, after being accused of participating in the underground resistance. His father died in Mittelbau-Dora, a sub camp of Buchenwald, and his mother died in Auschwitz, at which Milos became an orphan very early on. He studied screen-writing at the Prague Film Academy (F.A.M.U.). In his Czechoslovakian films, Black Peter (1964), Loves of a Blonde (1965), and The Firemen's Ball (1967), he created his own style of comedy. During the invasion of his country by the troops of the Warsaw pact in the summer of 1968, to stop the Prague spring, he left Europe for the United States. In spite of difficulties, he filmed Taking Off (1971) there and achieved his fame later with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) adapted from the novel of Ken Kesey, which won five Oscars, including one for best direction. Other important films of Milos Forman were the musical Hair (1979) and his biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Amadeus (1984), which won eight Oscars.- Actress
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Viola Davis is a critically revered actress of film, television, and theater and has won rave reviews for her multitude of substantial and intriguingly diverse roles. Audiences across the United States and internationally have admired her for her work- including her celebrated, Oscar-nominated performances in The Help (2011), Doubt (2008), and her Oscar winning performance in Fences (2016). In 2015, Davis won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series for her work in ABC's How To Get Away With Murder, making her the first black woman in history to take home the award. In addition to acting, Viola currently produces alongside her husband and producing partner, Julius Tennon, through their JuVee Productions banner. Together they have produced award-garnering productions across theater, television, and film.- Actress
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Spencer is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, which she claims is the proverbial buckle of the Bible belt. She's the sixth of seven siblings and holds a BS in Liberal Arts from Auburn University. A "closet" lover of acting, this practical Alabamian knew that she'd someday work in the film industry, but never dreamed it would be in front of the camera. In 1995, acclaimed director Joel Schumacher changed all that by giving her a small part opposite Sandra Bullock in the hit film A Time to Kill, and Spencer was on her way. In 1996, she teamed up with Bullock again in Bullock's directorial debut of Making Sandwiches, a short film that premiered at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival.
Spencer made her stage debut in Los Angeles and originated the role of "LaSonia" (pronounced lasagna) in famed writer/director Del Shore's, The Trials and Tribulations of a Trailer Trash Housewife, starring opposite veteran actors Beth Grant, Dale Dickey and David Steen (2003). The play garnered Spencer and her fellow cast mates critical acclaim and a bevy of awards. Since then, Spencer has continued to see success as an actor in both film and television, working alongside Hollywood's elite. In February 2009, she was lauded by Los Angeles Times publication: The Envelope, for her brief but memorable performance in the Will Smith drama Seven Pounds.- Actor
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Sean Penn is a powerhouse film performer capable of intensely moving work, who has gone from strength to strength during a colourful film career, and who has drawn much media attention for his stormy private life and political viewpoints.
Sean Justin Penn was born in Los Angeles, California, the second son of actress Eileen Ryan (née Annucci) and director, actor, and writer Leo Penn. His brother was actor Chris Penn. His father was from a Lithuanian Jewish/Russian Jewish family, and his mother is of half Italian and half Irish descent.
Penn first appeared in roles as strong-headed or unruly youths such as the military cadet defending his academy against closure in Taps (1981), then as fast-talking surfer stoner Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).
Fans and critics were enthused about his obvious talent and he next contributed a stellar performance alongside Timothy Hutton in the Cold War spy thriller The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), followed by a teaming with icy Christopher Walken in the chilling At Close Range (1986). The youthful Sean then paired up with his then wife, pop diva Madonna in the woeful, and painful, Shanghai Surprise (1986), which was savaged by the critics, but Sean bounced back with a great job as a hot-headed young cop in Colors (1988), gave another searing performance as a US soldier in Vietnam committing atrocities in Casualties of War (1989) and appeared alongside Robert De Niro in the uneven comedy We're No Angels (1989). However, the 1990s was the decade in which Sean really got noticed by critics as a mature, versatile and accomplished actor, with a string of dynamic performances in first-class films.
Almost unrecognisable with frizzy hair and thin rimmed glasses, Penn was simply brilliant as corrupt lawyer David Kleinfeld in the Brian De Palma gangster movie Carlito's Way (1993) and he was still in trouble with authority as a Death Row inmate pleading with a caring nun to save his life in Dead Man Walking (1995), for which he received his first Oscar nomination. Sean then played the brother of wealthy Michael Douglas, involving him in a mind-snapping scheme in The Game (1997) and also landed the lead role of Sgt. Eddie Walsh in the star-studded anti-war film The Thin Red Line (1998), before finishing the 1990s playing an offbeat jazz musician (and scoring another Oscar nomination) in Sweet and Lowdown (1999).
The gifted and versatile Sean had also moved into directing, with the quirky but interesting The Indian Runner (1991), about two brothers with vastly opposing views on life, and in 1995 he directed Jack Nicholson in The Crossing Guard (1995). Both films received overall positive reviews from critics. Moving into the new century, Sean remained busy in front of the cameras with even more outstanding work: a mentally disabled father fighting for custody of his seven-year-old daughter (and receiving a third Oscar nomination) for I Am Sam (2001); an anguished father seeking revenge for his daughter's murder in the gut-wrenching Clint Eastwood-directed Mystic River (2003) (for which he won the Oscar as Best Actor); a mortally ill college professor in 21 Grams (2003) and a possessed businessman in The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004).
Certainly Sean Penn is one of Hollywood's most controversial, progressive and gifted actors.