Semper Fi - Marines Who Went Hollywood
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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).- Actor
- Producer
Richard Hugh Lynch was born on February 12, 1940 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Irish immigrant parents. He was one of seven children. Before starting a career as an actor, he joined the United States Marine Corps in 1958. He served for four years where he made Corporal, and did a tour of the Middle East with the Sixth Fleet. He began his training with Herbert Berghof and Uta Hagen at H.B. Studios in New York's Greenwich Village, and later went on to train extensively with Lee Strasberg at Carnegie Hall. In 1970, he became a lifetime member of the Actors Studio and spent years in the New York theater community playing in dozens of on- and off-Broadway productions. The more notable plays were: "The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel", "The Lion in Winter", "The Devils", "The Lady from the Sea", "Action", "Live Like Pigs", "Richard III", "Offi on a Tangerine", "A View from the Bridge", "The Man with the Flower in His Mouth", and Shelley Winters' "One Night Stands of a Noisy Passenger".
Lynch made his film debut in the classic film Scarecrow (1973), winner of the Grand Prix Award at the Cannes Film Festival. His performance in Scarecrow launched his film career and brought him to Hollywood, where he has worked in film and television for over twenty years. His more prominent film work has been in: The Seven-Ups (1973), Open Season (1974), The Formula (1980), Invasion U.S.A. (1985), Bad Dreams (1988), Little Nikita (1988), Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (2002), and William Peter Blatty's The Ninth Configuration (1980). His performance as the evil King Cromwell, in the successful fantasy film The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982), won him the Saturn Award for Best Actor from the Academy of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Although best known for playing villains, he was cast as the President of the United States in Mil Mascaras vs. the Aztec Mummy (2007).
He also starred in numerous television series and Movies of the Week, such as Alcatraz: The Whole Shocking Story (1980), Sizzle (1981), Vampire (1979), Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979), Battlestar Galactica (1978), and the Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) two-part episode "Gambit". His work in a variety of independent films has won him a high profile internationally. He has also worked in China, where he played in the first joint production between the Screen Actors' Guild and the People's Republic of China, The Korean Project. In his spare time, Richard enjoys fishing, the arts, architecture, music and poetry. He is also fluent in several languages including German and Italian.- Actor
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American actor and producer Harvey Keitel was born on May 13, 1939 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Miriam (Klein) and Harry Keitel. An Oscar and Golden Globe Award nominee, he has appeared in films such as Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), Ridley Scott's The Duellists (1977) and Thelma & Louise (1991), Peter Yates' Mother, Jugs & Speed (1976), Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), Jane Campion's The Piano (1993), Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant (1992), Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), James Mangold's Cop Land (1997), Paolo Sorrentino's Youth (2015). He is regarded as one of the greatest method actors ever. Along with actors Al Pacino and Ellen Burstyn, he is the current co-president of the Actors Studio.
Keitel studied under both Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg and at the HB Studio, eventually landing roles in some Off-Broadway productions. During this time, Keitel auditioned for filmmaker Martin Scorsese and gained a starring role as "J.R.", in Scorsese's first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967). Since then, Scorsese and Keitel have worked together on several projects. Keitel had the starring role in Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), which also proved to be Robert De Niro's breakthrough film. Keitel re-teamed with Scorsese for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), in which he had a villainous supporting role, and appeared with Robert De Niro again in Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), playing the role of Jodie Foster's pimp.- Actor
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A multi-award-winning writer and actor, Bo Svenson was born in Sweden - the only child of a Jewish, Russian-born big band leader mother and a father who was the Swedish King's personal driver and bodyguard. At 17, he emigrated by himself to the US. After serving six years as a US Marine, he was pursuing a Ph.D. in MetaPhysics and paying the rent with odd acting gigs when he was hired to replace Paul Newman as Robert Redford's co-star in "The Great Waldo Pepper".
This led to a starring role in the CBS TV pilot "The Freebooters" - and his being cast as "Big Swede" on the TV series "Here Come the Brides".
His role as "The Creature" in the 3-hour TV movie "Mary Shelley's Original Frankenstein" brought him great acclaim - and was soon followed by other major starring film roles, including, but most notably, as: Sheriff Buford Pusser in "Walking Tall Part II", "Final Chapter: Walking Tall" and the "Walking Tall" TV series, as the fun-loving offensive lineman Joe Bob Priddy in "North Dallas Forty", as the heroic airline pilot in "The Delta Force", and as Clint Eastwood's rival in "Heartbreak Ridge".
During his fifty years in Hollywood, he has worked with over 100 Academy Award winners/nominees. Since appearing in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" and "Inglourious Basterds" (the latter being Tarantino's version of one of his favorite films of all time, "The Inglorious Bastards" in which Bo starred), Bo has focused on his first love - writing. His screenplays have won and/or been selected more than thirty times by major film festivals.
An accomplished athlete, he has competed in world championships in judo and in Olympic selections in yachting. A 5th degree black belt in judo and a black belt holder in karate as well as aikido, he is past Chairman of USA Judo Masters and has been inducted into the Martial Arts Masters Hall of Fame. He is active in community service causes and was Sports Commissioner at the 2015 Special Olympics World Games at his Alma Mater UCLA.
Since 1975, he has been President/CEO of MagicQuest Entertainment, a California motion picture development and production company that also provides consulting services to actors and script advice to writers.
He is also owner and CEO of the British Columbia film and television production company, CanAm Film Corp., and the Norwegian corporation, Den Norske Arv A/S. He was Chairman of the Board/CEO of Motion Picture Group of America (1984-2004).- Actor
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A talented character actor known for his military roles, Ronald Lee Ermey was in the United States Marine Corps for 11 years. He rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant, and later was bestowed the honorary rank of Gunnery Sergeant by the Marine Corps, after he served 14 months in Vietnam and later did two tours in Okinawa, Japan. After injuries forced him to retire from the Corps, he moved to the Phillipines, enrolling in the University of Manila, where he studied Criminology and Drama. He appeared in several Filipino films before being cast as a helicopter pilot in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979). Due to his Vietnam experiences, Coppola also utilized him as a technical adviser. He got a featured role in Sidney J. Furie's The Boys in Company C (1978), playing a drill instructor. Ermey worked with Furie again in Purple Hearts (1984).
However, his most famous (or infamous) role came as Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe. He did win the best supporting actor award from The Boston Society of Film Critics. Since then, he has appeared in numerous character roles in such films as Leaving Las Vegas (1995), Se7en (1995) and Dead Man Walking (1995). However, Ermey prefers comedy to drama, and has a comedic role in Saving Silverman (2001).- Actor
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American actor Lee Marvin was born Lamont Waltman Marvin Jr. in New York City. After leaving school aged 18, Marvin enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in August 1942. He served with the 4th Marine Division in the Pacific Theater during World War II and after being wounded in action and spending a year being treated in naval hospitals, he received a medical discharge. Marvin's military decorations include the Purple Heart Medal, the Presidential Unit Citation, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal and the Combat Action Ribbon. Returning to the United States it was while working as a plumbers apprentice, repairing a toilet at a local community theater, that he was asked to stand in for an actor who had fallen ill during rehearsals. He immediately caught the acting bug, moving to Greenwich Village to study at the American Theater Wing and began making appearances in stage productions and TV shows. His film debut came in 'You're in the Navy Now' (1951) but it was his portrayal of villains in 'The Big Heat' (1953) and 'The Wild One' (1953) that brought him to the attention of the public and critical acclaim. Now firmly established as a screen bad guy, he began shifting towards leading man roles and landed the lead role in the popular TV series 'M Squad' (1957-1960). Returning to feature films, Marvin had prominent roles in 'The Comancheros' (1961), 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' (1962), 'Donovan's Reef' (1963) and 'The Killers' (1964) but it was his dual comic role in the offbeat western 'Cat Ballou' (1965) that made him a star and won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was now a much sought-after actor and starred in a number of movies as a new kind of leading man including 'The Professionals' (1966), 'The Dirty Dozen' (1967), 'Point Blank' (1967), 'Hell in the Pacific' (1968), 'Monte Walsh' (1970), 'Prime Cut' (1972), 'Emperor of the North' (1973) and 'The Spikes Gang' (1974).Later film credits include 'Shout at the Devil' (1976), 'Avalanche Express' (1979), 'The Big Red One' (1980), 'Death Hunt' (1981) and 'Gorky Park' (1983). His final film role was alongside Chuck Norris in 'The Delta Force' (1986). Lee Marvin died of a heart attack in August 1987. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Marvin paved the way for leading men that didn't fit the traditional mould. An iconic American tough guy and one of the 20th Century's greatest Hollywood stars.- Writer
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"If they move", commands stern-eyed William Holden, "kill 'em". So begins The Wild Bunch (1969), Sam Peckinpah's bloody, high-body-count eulogy to the mythologized Old West. "Pouring new wine into the bottle of the Western, Peckinpah explodes the bottle", observed critic Pauline Kael. That exploding bottle also christened the director with the nickname that would forever define his films and reputation: "Bloody Sam".
David Samuel Peckinpah was born and grew up in Fresno, California, when it was still a sleepy town. Young Sam was a loner. The child's greatest influence was grandfather Denver Church, a judge, congressman and one of the best shots in the Sierra Nevadas. Sam served in the US Marine Corps during World War II but - to his disappointment - did not see combat. Upon returning to the US he enrolled in Fresno State College, graduating in 1948 with a B.A. in Drama. He married Marie Selland in Las Vegas in 1947 and they moved to Los Angeles, where he enrolled in the graduate Theater Department of the University of Southern California the next year. He eventually took his Masters in 1952.
After drifting through several jobs -- including a stint as a floor-sweeper on The Liberace Show (1952) -- Sam got a job as Dialogue Director on Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954) for director Don Siegel. He worked for Siegel on several films, including Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), in which Sam played Charlie Buckholtz, the town meter reader. Peckinpah eventually became a scriptwriter for such TV programs as Gunsmoke (1955) and The Rifleman (1958) (which he created as an episode of Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre (1956) titled "The Sharpshooter' in 1958). In 1961, as his marriage to Selland was coming to an end, he directed his first feature film, a western titled The Deadly Companions (1961) starring \Brian Keith and Maureen O'Hara. However, it was with his second feature, Ride the High Country (1962), that Peckinpah really began to establish his reputation. Featuring Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott (in his final screen performance), its story about two aging gunfighters anticipated several of the themes Peckinpah would explore in future films, including the controversial "The Wild Bunch". Following "Ride the High Country" he was hired by producer Jerry Bresler to direct Major Dundee (1965), a cavalry-vs.-Indians western starring Charlton Heston. It turned out to be a film that brought to light Peckinpah's volatile reputation. During hot, on-location work in Mexico, his abrasive manner, exacerbated by booze and marijuana, provoked usually even-keeled Heston to threaten to run him through with a cavalry saber. However, when the studio later considered replacing Peckinpah, it was Heston who came to Sam's defense, going so far as to offer to return his salary to help offset any overages. Ironically, the studio accepted and Heston wound up doing the film for free.
Post-production conflicts led to Sam engaging in a bitter and ultimately losing battle with Bresler and Columbia Pictures over the final cut and, as a result, the disjointed effort fizzled at the box office. It was during this period that Peckinpah met and married his second wife, Mexican actress Begoña Palacios. However, the reputation he earned because of the conflicts on "Major Dundee" contributed to Peckinpah being replaced as director on his next film, the Steve McQueen film The Cincinnati Kid (1965), by Norman Jewison.
His second marriage now failing, Peckinpah did not get another feature project for two years. However, he did direct a powerful adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter's 'Noon Wine" for Noon Wine (1966)). This, in turn, helped relaunch his feature career. He was hired by Warner Bros. to direct the film for which he is, justifiably, best remembered. The success of "The Wild Bunch" rejuvenated his career and propelled him through highs and lows in the 1970s. Between 1970-1978 he directed The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), Straw Dogs (1971), Junior Bonner (1972), The Getaway (1972), Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), The Killer Elite (1975), Cross of Iron (1977) and Convoy (1978). Throughout this period controversy followed him. He provoked more rancor over his use of violence in "Straw Dogs", introduced Ali MacGraw to Steve McQueen in "The Getaway", fought with MGM's chief James T. Aubrey over his vision for "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid" that included the casting of Bob Dylan in an unscripted role as a character called "Alias." His last solid effort was the WW II anti-war epic "Cross of Iron", about a German unit fighting on the Russian front, with Maximilian Schell and James Coburn, bringing the picture in successfully despite severe financial problems.
Peckinpah lived life to its fullest. He drank hard and abused drugs, producers and collaborators. At the end of his life he was considering a number of projects including the Stephen King-scripted "The Shotgunners". He was returning from Mexico in December 1984 when he died from heart failure in a hospital in Inglewood, California, at age 59. At a standing-room-only gathering that held at the Directors Guild the following month, Coburn remembered the director as a man "who pushed me over the abyss and then jumped in after me. He took me on some great adventures". To which Robert Culp added that what is surprising is not that Sam only made fourteen pictures, but that given the way he went about it, he managed to make any at all.- Actor
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As a child growing up in Benton Harbor, Michigan, Ernie Hudson wrote short stories, poems and songs, always thinking that his words might one day come to life on stage. After a short stint in the Marine Corps, he moved to Detroit where he became the resident playwright at Concept East, the oldest black theatre in the country. In addition, he enrolled at Wayne State University to further develop his writing and acting skills and found time to establish the Actors' Emsemble Theatre, where he and other talented young black writers directed and appeared in their own works. After graduating with a B.A. from Wayne State, he was rewarded a full scholarship to the M.F.A. program at the prestigious Yale School of Drama. While performing with the school's repertory company, he was asked to appear in the Los Angeles production of Lonne Elder III's musical "Daddy Goodness," which led to his meeting Gordon Parks, who gave Hudson the costarring role in his first feature film, Leadbelly (1976). Unfortunately, all that followed "Leadbelly" was a year of "bit parts and some harsh lessons about Hollywood," which led Hudson to enroll in another academic doctorate program at the University of Minnesota. He did not complete the program. Through his experience, he learned another vital lesson: "There are those who spend their lives studying it and those who spend their lives doing it." Hudson definitely wanted to be in the second group. Keeping in mind this self-revelation, Hudson accepted the starring role of Jack Jefferson in the Minneapolis Theatre In The Round's production of "The Great White Hope," a role that he put "everything he had into," including shaving his head. A series of starring and guest roles followed on such television shows as Fantasy Island (1977), The Incredible Hulk (1978), Little House on the Prairie (1974), Diff'rent Strokes (1978), Taxi (1978), One Day at a Time (1975), Gimme a Break! (1981), The A-Team (1983) and Webster (1983), as well as costarring roles in the TV movies White Mama (1980) with Bette Davis, Roots: The Next Generations (1979), Women of San Quentin (1983), California Girls (1985), Mad Bull (1977) and Love on the Run (1985). Other feature film credits include The Jazz Singer (1980), The Main Event (1979), Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983), Penitentiary II (1982), Going Berserk (1983), Joy of Sex (1984) and, of course, the mega-hit Ghostbusters (1984).- Actor
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Comedian, actor and United States Marine Corps Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Robert Allen Riggle, Jr. was born April 21, 1970 in Louisville, Kentucky, to Sandra (Shrout) and Robert Allen Riggle, who worked in insurance. Riggle has amassed notable television credits and has also earned roles in many feature films, including The Lorax (2012) and 21 Jump Street (2012). After graduating from the University of Kansas with a B.A. in Theater and Film, Riggle joined the Marines and earned a Master's degree from Webster University in Public Administration. Riggle had intentions of becoming a Marine Corps pilot, but eventually left the military to pursue a career in comedy. A featured cast member on Saturday Night Live (1975) during the 2004/2005 season, Riggle then joined Comedy Central's The Daily Show (1996) in 2006 as a correspondent. Riggle's numerous television appearances, including credits on Arrested Development (2003), Chappelle's Show (2003), 30 Rock (2006) and The Office (2005) would lead to big-screen roles in Step Brothers (2008), The Hangover (2009) and The Other Guys (2010). When he is not on set or traveling across the United States performing stand-up comedy, Rob Riggle lives in Los Angeles.- Actor
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Dale Dye was born Oct. 8, 1944, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He graduated as a cadet officer from Missouri Military Academy, but there was no money for college, so he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in January 1964. He served in Vietnam in 1965 and 1967 through 1970, surviving 31 major combat operations. He emerged from Southeast Asia with numerous decorations, including a Bronze Star for valor and three Purple Heart medals for wounds suffered in combat. He spent 13 years as an enlisted Marine, rising to the rank of master sergeant. He was chosen to attend officer candidate school and was appointed a warrant officer in 1976. He later converted his commission and was a captain when he was sent to Beirut with the multinational peacekeeping force in 1982-83. He served in a variety of assignments around the world and along the way managed to graduate with a BA degree in English from the University of Maryland. Dye worked for a year at Soldier of Fortune magazine after his retirement in 1984. He spent time in Central America, reporting and training troops in guerrilla warfare techniques in both El Salvador and Nicaragua before leaving the magazine in 1985 and heading for Hollywood. He is the founder and principal of Warriors, Inc., which provides technical advisory services to the entertainment industry worldwide. Services included performer training, research, planning, staging and on-set advisory for directors and other key production personnel.- Michael Murphy was born in Los Angeles, California, to Georgia Arlyn (née Money), a teacher, and Bearl Branton Murphy, a salesman. After a hitch in the Marine Corps, Murphy attended the University of Arizona, Tucson, and then went to U.C.L.A. for his California teaching credential. From 1962 to 1964, he taught high school English and drama in Los Angeles.
Murphy's most notable appearance was as Woody Allen's best friend Yale, the self-tortured adulterer, in Allen's masterpiece Manhattan (1979). The two had acted together earlier in Martin Ritt's The Front (1976) and had become good friends. Surprisingly, despite the excellent performance Murphy gave in the film, Allen hasn't used him again.
Murphy's career as a first-rate supporting player began in 1962 and has continued for over five decades, with major parts in Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried Woman (1978), which he calls "the first of the whining yuppies," Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), and Oliver Stone's Salvador (1986). He also has worked with such significant directors as Elia Kazan in The Arrangement (1969), Tim Burton in Batman Returns (1992), and Paul Thomas Anderson in Magnolia (1999). Murphy co-starred in John Sayles' Silver City (2004), as a U.S. Senator who is the father of a gubernatorial candidate played by Oscar-winner Chris Cooper, standing-in for the pre-presidential George W. Bush.
Murphy is perhaps best known for his long collaboration with director Robert Altman that stretches back to the beginning of his career.
"I was right out of the University of Arizona," Murphy reminisced during a 2004 interview, "and a friend said, 'Go over to MGM and meet Bob Altman. He's using a lot of young guys for this Army thing he's doing.'" Altman was directing the World War II television series Combat! (1962), and Altman cast him in the show without an audition. "We became immediate friends. He told me, 'You may not turn out to be a movie star, but you'll get to do some interesting work.' Bob was in his thirties when we met. He had been a young bomber pilot in World War II and was wise beyond his years. From the very beginning, he never played it safe when it came to making movies. He had amazing fortitude and guts."
In addition to Combat! (1962) and the Altman-directed TV movie Nightmare in Chicago (1964), Murphy has appeared in seven theatrical movies directed by Altman between 1968 and 1996: Countdown (1967), That Cold Day in the Park (1969), M*A*S*H (1970), Brewster McCloud (1970), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Nashville (1975), and Kansas City (1996). Murphy has also appeared in Altman's TV adaptation of Herman Wouk's play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1988) and in two cable-TV mini-series for him: Tanner '88 (1988) and Tanner on Tanner (2004).
About Altman, Murphy says, "I adored the guy. If you were getting married or divorced, or, really, if anything momentous was happening in your life, you'd want to seek him out to talk about it. He was very strong when it came to life's dilemmas...could always see the big picture...was always helpful. An extraordinary man."
Murphy played the title role of Michigan Congressman Jack Tanner in Altman's ground-breaking HBO series Tanner '88 (1988), which was scripted by Garry Trudeau of "Doonesbury" fame. The fictional Tanner ran for president in the Democratic Party primaries of 1988, alongside George Bush (whom Murphy himself "plays" in Silver City (2004)), Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, and Pat Robertson, with some "guest appearances" by Ronald Reagan along the way. The "candidate" Tanner actually interacted on-camera with candidates Gary Hart, Bob Dole, and Jesse Jackson, and with the journalists Linda Ellerbee and Chris Matthews.
During the progress of the series' eleven episodes, Tanner increasingly became alienated as the grueling political marathon went on. He was portrayed as an intellectual troubled by sound-bite politics and the public persona he was compelled to create for the media-fueled electoral machine that vetted the candidates for the public at the other end of the cathode-ray tube. Tanner eventually realizes he lacks the all-consuming drive to be a successful presidential candidate under such a system.
A caustic look at American politics from a liberal-left-anarchist point of view, "Tanner '88" won the prize for best television series at the Festival International de Programmes Audiovisuels in Cannes in the fall of 1988. The mini-series ranks among the best and most important of television programs. Altman-Murphy-Trudeau reprised Tanner with "Tanner on Tanner" (2004), in which the character did not run but commented on the political process and on the media circus accompanying the pursuit for the nation's highest office.
About the cable mini-series, Murphy says, "Yes, Bob shows some of the nastiness behind all campaigns, but I don't think it's a polemic. In Bob's case, you vote for the Democrat, but be careful of what you wish for. He is very cynical."
In 2019, Murphy's Jack Tanner found himself back on the silver screen in "Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese". In this movie, Tanner gets to go to a Dylan concert at the behest of President Jimmy Carter...a mutual friend.
Despite decades of solid performances in a plethora of movies, Murphy remains somewhat anonymous to the public at large. Arriving in a limousine at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival premiere of Silver City (2004), he got out of the car and was unrecognized. When the publicists eventually realized he was a star of the film, Murphy was ordered back into the limousine so that he could exit it again, and the paparazzi could photograph him.
"I'm in this kind of fun position where I'm not especially recognizable," Murphy said when recounting the incident. "This sometimes allows me to stand back and watch the circus...even though I'm a part of it it. You wind up with an interesting perspective."
In 1988, Michael Murphy married the co-star of his short-lived television show Hard Copy (1987), the actress Wendy Crewson. She has also appeared with her husband in Tanner '88 (1988) and in the theatrical films Folks! (1992) and Sleeping Dogs Lie (1998). They have two children, a daughter, Maggie Murphy, born in 1989, and a son, John ("Jack") Branton Murphy, born in 1992. - Actor
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Larry Wilcox grew up in Rawlins, Wyoming, with three siblings and raised by a single parent - his mother. He graduated and then went to the University of Wyoming and studied pre-med and then transferred to Cal State University Northridge in Southern California. His sister was tragically murdered by her husband in front of her mother and their three children and Larry returned home to assist the family. During this time Larry was drafted in the Army but he wanted to be in the best outfit during the Vietnam War and so he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He honorably served thirteen months in Vietnam with five campaign stars and two meritorious promotions. He was discharged as a Sergeant and then went back to school. Wilcox hit the pavement running and began working two to three jobs to make ends meet. He began studying acting and music and soon got a Hollywood agent and landed many commercials and then beat 300 actors to win the co-star role on Lassie in 1970. He then went on to guest star in many popular TV shows from MASH, Love Boat, Police Story, Room 222, The Partridge Family, Hawaii Five-0 and many others. He was subsequently picked to star in CHiPS with co-star Erik Estrada which he did for five years and the show was syndicated in one-hundred foreign countries. During this time Wilcox, a businessman at heart, formed his own production company and began buying scripts and books and making deals with studios and networks. He produced the Death of a Playmate: The Dorothy Stratten Story for MGM and NBC which he believed had many parallels to the death of his sister. He then developed, funded and produced the award winning TV Series, The Ray Bradbury Theater for HBO for five years. Wilcox has a long list of productions and is presently negotiating some very significant projects we all hope to see in the near future.
Wilcox has been married to Marlene Harmon for over thirty years with three boys and two girls which are all adults now. Wilcox was an avid sportsman and, as he states, "I enjoyed pushing the envelope." He set eight Land Speed Records at the infamous Bonneville Salt Flats, was a race car driver and competed in SCCA events and was a cowboy competitor and member of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association. Wilcox is also a pilot who is known for some crazy rides in his very own military plane with a cockpit. He has flown with the Blue Angels and the Marines as a Celebrity Guest and is famous for asking the military pilot to "let it all hang out" and to try and make him sick.
Presently (as of April 2016) Wilcox is focused on two arenas: filmmaking and digital distribution tools that he owns and/or participates in. He has been the past national spokesperson for The Motorcycle Safety Foundation and the Red Cross. He was the national celebrity spokesperson for the Vets Save The Flag campaign. He has also been the celebrity filmmaker and spokesperson for TheFallenHeroes.org. Wilcox believes that man was put on this earth to help each other and to perpetuate better offspring than yourself. He said his credits are not about his life.....his credits are his family. His fan site is larrywilcox.net and he has a Facebook site that he writes a monthly journal to keep in touch with his fans. When asked what advice Wilcox would give to the world he says: "Love and be Loved; and walk tall through the fire and stay in your bubble of personal belief because HE is with you all the way!"- Writer
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Hacks are nothing new in Hollywood. Since the beginning of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century, thousands of untalented people have come to Los Angeles from all over America and abroad to try to make it big (as writers, producers, directors, actors, talent agents, singers, composers, musicians, artists, etc.) but who end up using, scamming and exploiting other people for money as well as using their creative ability (either self-taught or professional training), leading to the production of dull, bland, mediocre, unimaginative, inferior, trite work in the forlorn hope of attaining commercial success. Had Edward D. Wood, Jr. been born a decade or two earlier, it's easy to imagine him working for some Poverty Row outfit in Gower Gulch, competing with the likes of no-talent and no-taste producers and directors--such as Victor Adamson, Robert J. Horner and Dwain Esper--for the title of all-time hack. He would have fit in nicely working at Weiss Brothers-Artclass Pictures in the early 1930s in directing low budget Western-themed serials, or directing low budget film noir crime drama features at PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) in the following decade from 1940 to 1946. Ed Wood is the probably the most well known of all the Hollywood hacks because he is imprisoned in his own time, and in the 1950s, Ed Wood simply had no competition. He was ignored throughout his spectacularly unsuccessful film making career and died a penniless alcoholic, only to be "rediscovered" when promoters in the early 1980s tagged him "The Worst Director of All Time" (mostly thanks to the Medveds' hilarious book, "Golden Turkey Awards") and he was given the singular honor of a full-length biopic by Tim Burton (Ed Wood (1994)). This post-mortem celebrity has made him infinitely more famous today than he ever was during his lifetime.
Wood was an exceedingly complex person. He was born on October 10, 1924, in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he lived most of his childhood. He joined the US Marine Corps in 1943 at the height of World War II and was, by all accounts, an exemplary marine, wounded in ferocious combat in the Pacific theater (a transgender, he claimed to have been wearing a bra and panties under his uniform while storming ashore during the bloody beachhead landing at Tarawa in November 1943). He was habitually optimistic, even in the face of the bleak realities that would later consume him. His personality bonded him with a small clique of outcasts who eked out life on the far edges of the Hollywood fringe.
After settling in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, Wood attempted to break into the film industry, initially without success, but in 1952 he landed the chance to direct a film based on the real-life Christine Jorgensen sex-change story, then a hot topic. The result, Glen or Glenda (1953), gave a fascinating insight into Wood's own personality and shed light on his transgender identity (an almost unthinkable subject for an early 1950s mainstream feature). Although devoutly heterosexual, Wood was an enthusiastic cross-dresser, with a particular fondness for angora. On the debit side, though, the film revealed the almost complete lack of talent that would mar all his subsequent films, his tendency to resort to stock footage of lightning during dramatic moments, laughable set design and a near-incomprehensible performance by Bela Lugosi as a mad doctor whose presence is never adequately explained. The film deservedly flopped miserably but Wood, always upbeat, pressed ahead.
Wood's main problem was that he saw himself as a producer-writer-director, when in fact he was spectacularly incompetent in all three capacities. Friends who knew Wood have described him as an eccentric, oddball hack who was far more interested in the work required in cobbling a film project together than in ever learning the craft of film making itself or in any type of realism. In an alternate universe, Wood might have been a competent producer if he had better industry connections and an even remotely competent director. Wood, however, likened himself to his idol, Orson Welles, and became a triple threat: bad producer, poor screenwriter and God-awful director. All of his films exhibit illogical continuity, bizarre narratives and give the distinct impression that a director's job was simply to expose the least amount of film possible due to crushing budget constraints. His magnum opus, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), features visible wires connected to pie-pan UFOs, actors knocking over cardboard "headstones", cars changing models and years during chase sequences, scenes exhibiting a disturbing lack of handgun safety and the ingenious use of shower curtains in airplane cockpits that have virtually no equipment are just a few of the trademarks of that Edward D. Wood Jr. production. When criticized for their innumerable flaws, Wood would cheerfully explain his interpretation of the suspension of disbelief. It's not so much that he made movies so badly without regard to realism--the amazing part is that he managed to get them made at all.
His previous film with Lugosi, Bride of the Monster (1955), was no better (unbelievably, it somehow managed to earn a small profit during its original release, undoubtedly more of a testament to how cheaply it was produced than its value as entertainment), and Wood only shot a few seconds of silent footage of Lugosi (doped and dazed, wandering around the front yard of his house) for "Plan 9" before the actor died in August 1956. What few reviews the film received were brutal. Typically undaunted, Wood soldiered on despite incoherent material and a microscopic budget, peopling it with his regular band of mostly inept actors. Given the level of dialog, budget and Wood's dismal directorial abilities, it's unlikely that better actors would have made much of a difference (lead actor Gregory Walcott made his debut in this film and went on to have a very respectable career as a character actor, but was always embarrassed by his participation in this film)--in fact, it's the film's semi-official status as arguably the Worst Film Ever Made that gives it its substantial cult following. The film, financed by a local Baptist congregation led by Wood's landlord, reaches a plateau of ineptitude that tends to leave viewers open-mouthed, wondering what is it they just saw. "Plan 9" became, whether Wood realized it or not, his singular enduring legacy. Ironically, the rights to the film were retained by the church and it is unlikely that Wood ever received a dime from it; his epic bombed upon release in 1959 and remained largely forgotten for years to come.
After this career "peak," Wood went into, relatively speaking, a decline. Always an "enthusiastic"--for lack of a better word--drinker, his alcohol addiction worsened in the 1960s due to his depression of not achieving the worldwide fame he had always sought. He began to draw away from film directing and focused most of his time on another profession: writing. Beginning in the early 1960s up until his death, Wood wrote at least 80 lurid crime and sex paperback novels in addition to hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces for magazines and daily newspapers. Thirty-two stories known to be written by Wood (he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms such as "Ann Gora" and "Dr. T.K. Peters") are collected in 'Blood Splatters Quickly', published by OR Books in 2014. Novels include Black Lace Drag (1963) (reissued in 1965 as Killer in Drag), Orgy of the Dead (1965), Devil Girls (1967), Death of a Transvestite (1967), The Sexecutives (1968), The Photographer (1969), Take It Out in Trade (1970), The Only House in Town (1970), Necromania (1971), The Undergraduate (1972), A Study of Fetishes and Fantasies (1973) and Fugitive Girls (1974).
In 1965, Wood wrote the quasi-memoir 'Hollywood Rat Race', which was eventually published in 1998. In it, Wood advises new writers to "just keep on writing. Even if your story gets worse, you'll get better", and also recounts tales of dubious authenticity, such as how he and Bela Lugosi entered the world of nightclub cabaret.
In the 1970s, Wood directed a number of undistinguished softcore and later hardcore adult porno films under various aliases, one of which is the name "Akdov Telmig" ("vodka gimlet" spelled backwards; it helps to imagine that you're a boozy dyslexic, as Ed Wood was). His final years were spent largely drunk in his apartment and occasionally being rolled stumbling out of a local liquor store. Three days before his death, Wood and his wife Kathy were evicted from their Hollywood apartment due to failure to pay the rent and moved into a friend's apartment shortly before his death on the afternoon of December 10, 1978, at age 54. He had a heart attack and died while drinking in bed.
Due to his recent resurgence in popularity, many of his equally interesting transgender - themed sex novels have been republished. The gravitational pull of Planet Angora remains quite strong.- 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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Tyrone Power was one of the great romantic swashbuckling stars of the mid-twentieth century, and the third Tyrone Power of four in a famed acting dynasty reaching back to the eighteenth century. His great-grandfather was the first Tyrone Power (1795-1841), a famed Irish comedian. His father, known to historians as Tyrone Power Sr., but to his contemporaries as either Tyrone Power or Tyrone Power the Younger, was a huge star in the theater (and later in films) in both classical and modern roles. His mother, Helen Emma "Patia" (née Reaume), (Mrs. Tyrone Power), was also a Shakespearean actress as well as a respected dramatic coach.
Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr., (also called Tyrone Power III) was born at his mother's home of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1914. His ancestry included English, Irish, German, French Huguenot, and French-Canadian. A frail, sickly child, he was taken by his parents to the warmer climate of southern California. After his parents' divorce, he and his sister Anne Power returned to Cincinnati with their mother. There he attended school while developing an obsession with acting. Although raised by his mother, he corresponded with his father, who encouraged his acting dreams. He was a supernumerary in his father's stage production of 'The Merchant of Venice' in Chicago and held him as he died suddenly of a heart attack later that year.
Startlingly handsome, young Tyrone nevertheless struggled to find work in Hollywood. He appeared in a few small roles, then went east to do stage work. A screen test led to a contract at 20th Century Fox in 1936, and he quickly progressed to leading roles. Within a year or so, he was one of Fox's leading stars, playing in contemporary and period pieces with ease. Most of his roles were colorful without being deep, and his swordplay was more praised than his wordplay. He served in the Marine Corps in World War II as a transport pilot, and he saw action in the Pacific Theater of operations.
After the war, he got his best reviews for an atypical part as a downward-spiraling con-man in Nightmare Alley (1947). Although he remained a huge star, much of his postwar work was unremarkable. He continued to do notable stage work and also began producing films. Following a fine performance in Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Power began production on Solomon and Sheba (1959). Halfway through shooting, he suffered a heart attack during a dueling scene with George Sanders and died before reaching a hospital.
His three children, including his namesake, Tyrone William Power IV (known professionally as Tyrone Power Jr.), have all followed him in the family acting tradition.- Actor
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Warren Oates was an American character actor of the 1960s and 1970s and early 1980s whose distinctive style and intensity brought him to offbeat leading roles.
Oates was born in Depoy, a very small Kentucky town. He was the son of Sarah Alice (Mercer) and Bayless Earle Oates, a general store owner. He attended high school in Louisville, continuing on to the University of Louisville and military service with the U.S. Marines.
In college he became interested in the theatre and in 1954 headed for New York to make his mark as an actor. However, his first real job in television was, as it had been for James Dean before him, testing the contest gags on the game show Beat the Clock (1950). He did numerous menial jobs while auditioning, including serving as the hat-check man at the nightclub "21".
By 1957 he had begun appearing in live dramas such as Studio One (1948), but Oates' rural drawl seemed more fitted for the Westerns that were proliferating on the big screen at the time, so he moved to Hollywood and immediately stared getting steady work as an increasingly prominent supporting player, often as either craven or vicious types. With his role as one of the Hammond brothers in the Sam Peckinpah masterpiece Ride the High Country (1962), Oates found a niche both as an actor and as a colleague of one of the most distinguished and distinctive directors of the period. Peckinpah used Oates repeatedly, and Oates, in large part due to the prominence given him by Peckinpah, became one of those rare character actors whose name and face is as familiar as those of many leading stars. He began to play roles which, while still character parts, were also leads, particularly in cult hits like Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974).
Although never destined to be a traditional leading man, Oates remained one of Hollywood's most valued and in-demand character players up until his sudden death from a heart attack on April 3, 1982 at the age of 53. His final two films, Tough Enough (1983) (filmed in early 1981) and Blue Thunder (1983) (filmed in late 1981), were released over one year after his death and were dedicated to his memory.- Actor
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J.D. was born in the delta town of Greenville, Mississippi (also the birthplace of Muppets creator Jim Henson) on the same day Richard Nixon was elected president. He is of Irish-French-German-Cherokee-Choctaw decent, the oldest of 7 siblings, and attended 17 different schools (public and private) while moving back and forth between his mother and father. His great-great-great-great uncle was Horace Mann, the founder of the American Public School system. His father (Puddin - yep, that's what they call him) is a welder/artist/amateur archaeologist and inventor. His mother (Sally) has had many professions, including concert promoter and owner of a country/western nightclub called The Headless Horseman, where as a young child, J.D. spent many school nights until the wee hours of the morning hanging out backstage and on stage with the likes of Hank Williams, Jr., Juice Newton, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Paycheck, David Allen Coe, Ray Price, and many others.
After a short stint in college and a 15 month stint in the Marine Corps stationed at 29 Palms, California and after hanging out with some actors in L.A., J.D. thought he would give acting a shot. His only experience with acting had been playing the Prince in his pre-school production of The Nutcracker, and getting kicked out of his senior play, Oklahoma, after his second rehearsal because he and a friend drank a beer before hand. After the Marine Corps, he returned to Mississippi and worked as a debt collector for his mother's collection agency. After a year of hating his job, he decided to return to college and get a degree in theatre at The University of Southern Mississippi. Once on stage at college, he knew acting was what he had to do. His second year in theatre, he was one of 20 finalists in the state selected to attend SETC (Southeastern Theatre Conference). In 1995, a friend offered J.D. a $1,000 to come to Los Angeles and perform a lead role in his play "Dylan's Ghost" at the Morgan-Wixson Theatre in Santa Monica. J.D. took him up on the offer and left college a semester before graduating and since then has lived back and forth between Hollywood, California, Austin, Texas, and Oxford, Mississippi, where he just completed writing and directing his first independent feature _Glorious Mail(2005)_.
Even though he appeared on the short-lived game show, Hollywood Showdown with Todd Newton and won nearly $12,000, his friends like to tell him that he's almost one lucky son of a gun. Mainly because he's come so close to landing lead roles in major films so many times, usually being the director's second choice. In 2004 his luck proved true once again when he purchased a $100 raffle ticket and was 1st Runner Up (2nd Choice) for a $250,000 house in United Way's New Home Giveaway, where instead he won an artist's print worth $80.- Actor
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Hugh O'Brian had the term "beefcake" written about him during his nascent film years in the early 1950s, but he chose to avoid the obvious typecast as he set up his career.
O'Brian was born Hugh Charles Krampe on April 19, 1925, in Rochester, New York, to Ohio-born parents Edith Lillian (Marks) and Hugh John Krampe, a United States Marine Corps officer. His paternal grandparents were German immigrants, while his mother was of half German Jewish and half English/Scottish descent. O'Brian first attended school at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, then Kemper Military School in Booneville, Missouri. Moving from place to place growing up, he managed to show off his athletic prowess quite early. By the time he graduated from high school, he had lettered in football, basketball, wrestling and track. Originally pursuing law, he dropped out of the University of Cincinnati in 1942 (age 19) and enlisted in the Marine Corps. Upon his discharge he ended up in Los Angeles. Hugh joined a little theater group and a Santa Barbara stock company, where he developed his acting chops and slowly built up his résumé. He was discovered for TV by director/actress Ida Lupino, which opened the door to his signing with Universal Studios for films.
Hugh's gentlemanly ruggedness, similar to a James Garner or a Gene Barry, was ideal for pictures, and his lean physique and exceptionally photographic mug had the modest, brown-eyed, curly-haired looker plastered all over the movie magazines. He rebelled against the image for the most part and, as a result, his years with Universal were not as fruitful as they could have been. For the duration, he was pretty much confined as a secondary player to standard action pictures such as The Return of Jesse James (1950), The Cimarron Kid (1952), The Battle at Apache Pass (1952), Red Ball Express (1952), Son of Ali Baba (1952), The Lawless Breed (1952), Seminole (1953), Saskatchewan (1954) and Drums Across the River (1954). It was Rock Hudson who earned all of the Universal glamour guy roles and the out-and-out stardom that could easily have been Hugh's. In 1954, he left Universal to freelance but did not fare any better with more serviceable roles in White Feather (1955) and The Twinkle in God's Eye (1955).
Hugh finally earned top status in the "B" action adventure The Brass Legend (1956) but it did little to advance his film career. Offered the starring role in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955) on TV, a year later, it became a mainstay hit and Hugh an "overnight" star. During his six-year run on the western classic, he managed to show off his singing talents on variety shows and appeared on Broadway, replacing Andy Griffith for a week in the musical "Destry Rides Again" in January of 1960.
The hirsutely handsome bachelor remained a durable talent throughout the 60s and 70s with plentiful work on the big screen, including Come Fly with Me (1963), Love Has Many Faces (1965), Ten Little Indians (1965), Ambush Bay (1966), Africa: Texas Style (1967), Strategy of Terror (1969), John Wayne's last film The Shootist (1976), and Bruce Lee's last film Game of Death (1978), as well as with the TV-movies Wild Women (1970), Harpy (1971), Murder on Flight 502 (1975), Benny and Barney: Las Vegas Undercover (1977), Murder at the World Series (1977), Cruise Into Terror (1978). He also starred in the crime adventure series Search (1972), but never got the one role to earn the critical attention he merited. In addition, he kept busy on the summer stock circuit.
In later years, he appeared in the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Danny DeVito comedy "Twins"; returned as "Wyatt Earp" in the TV movies The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991) and Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone (1994); and made guest appearances on such TV shows as "Fantasy Island," "The Love Boat," "Matt Houston," "Murder, She Wrote," "L.A. Law" and made his last on-camera appearance on the series "Call of the Wild" in 2000.
A sports enthusiast, his hobbies included sailing, tennis, swimming and long-distance bicycling, and his many philanthropic efforts did not go unrecognized. His proudest achievement was the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY), which he founded in 1958 after spending considerable time with Dr. Albert Schweitzer and his clinic in Africa. Struck by the impassioned work being done by Schweitzer, O'Brian set up his own program to help develop young people into future leaders. O'Brian was awarded honorary degrees by several prestigious institutions of higher learning. The perennial bachelor finally "settled down" and tied the knot at age 81 with longtime companion Virginia Barber, who was close to three decades his junior. They lived in his Benedict Canyon home.
Hugh died on September 5, 2016, in Beverly Hills, California, of natural causes.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Tall, blond and of rugged proportions, handsome actor Philip Carey started out as a standard 1950s film actor in westerns, war stories and crime yarns but didn't achieve full-fledged stardom until well past age 50 when he joined the daytime line-up as ornery Texas tycoon Asa Buchanan on the popular soap One Life to Live (1968) in 1979. He lived pretty much out of the saddle after that, enjoying the patriarchal role for nearly three decades.
He was born with the rather unrugged name of Eugene Carey on July 15, 1925, in Hackensack, New Jersey. Growing up on Long Island, he served with the Marine Corps during World War II and the Korean War. He attended (briefly) New York's Mohawk University and studied drama at the University of Miami where he met his college sweetheart, Maureen Peppler. They married in 1949 and went on to have three children: Linda, Jeffrey and Lisa Ann.
The 6'4" actor impressed a talent scout with his brawny good looks while appearing in the summer stock play "Over 21" in New England, and he was offered a contract with Warner Bros as a result. Billed as Philip Carey, he didn't waste any time toiling in bit parts, making his film debut billed fifth in the John Wayne submarine war drama Operation Pacific (1951). Phil could cut a good figure in military regalia and also showed strong stuff in film noir. A most capable co-star, he tended to be upstaged, however, by either a stronger name female or male star or by the action at hand. He was paired up with Frank Lovejoy in the McCarthy-era I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. (1951), and Steve Cochran in the prison tale Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951). Warner Bros. star Joan Crawford was practically the whole movie in the film noir This Woman Is Dangerous (1952) co-starring the equally overlooked David Brian and Dennis Morgan; Calamity Jane (1953) was a vehicle for Doris Day; and he donned his familiar cavalry duds in the background of Gary Cooper in the Civil War western Springfield Rifle (1952).
In 1953, Carey left Warner Bros. and signed up with Columbia Pictures where he was, more than not, billed as "Phil Carey." Here again he fell into the rather non-descript rugged mold as the stoic soldier or stolid police captain. He did find plenty of work, however, and was frequently top-billed. He battled the Sioux in The Nebraskan (1953); played a former subordinate member of the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid gang who has to clear his name in Wyoming Renegades (1955); was a brute force to be reckoned with in They Rode West (1954); and had one of his standard movie roles (as an officer) in a better quality movie, Columbia's Pushover (1954), which spent more time promoting the debut of its starlet Kim Novak as the new Marilyn Monroe. Overshadowed by James Cagney and Jack Lemmon in Mister Roberts (1955) and by Van Heflin, young Joanne Woodward (in her movie debut) and villain Raymond Burr in the western Count Three and Pray (1955), Phil turned his durable talents more and more to TV in the late 1950s.
The man of action took on the role of Canadian-born Lt. Michael Rhodes on the series Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers (1956) alongside Warren Stevens. He eventually left Columbia studios to do a stint (albeit relatively short) playing Raymond Chandler's unflappable detective Philip Marlowe (1959). Most of the 60s and 70s, other than a few now-forgotten film adventures such as Black Gold (1962), The Great Sioux Massacre (1965) and Three Guns for Texas (1968), were spent either saddling up as a guest star on The Rifleman (1958), Bronco (1958), The Virginian (1962) and Gunsmoke (1955) or hard-nosing it on such crime series as 77 Sunset Strip (1958), Ironside (1967), McCloud (1970), Banacek (1972) and The Felony Squad (1966). He also played the regular role of a stern captain in the Texas Rangers western series Laredo (1965).
Phil was a spokesperson for Granny Goose potato chips commercials, and his deep voice served him well for many seasons as narrator of the nature documentary series Untamed Frontier (1967). One of his best-remembered TV guest appearances, however, was a change-of-pace role on the comedy All in the Family (1971) in which he played a vital, strapping blue-collar pal of Archie Bunker's whose manly man just happened to be a proud, astereotypical homosexual. His hilarious confrontational scene with a dumbfounded Archie in Kelsey's bar remains a classic.
Phil's brief regular role in the daytime soap Bright Promise (1969) in 1972 was just a practice drill for the regular role he would play in 1979 as Texas oilman Asa Buchanan in One Life to Live (1968). His popularity soared as the moneybags manipulator you loved to hate. Residing in Manhattan for quite some time as a result of the New York-based show, he played the role for close to three decades until diagnosed with lung cancer in January of 2006. Forced to undergo chemotherapy, he officially left the serial altogether in May of 2007, and his character "died" peacefully off-screen a few months later.
Divorced from his first wife, Phil married a much younger lady, Colleen Welch, in 1976 and had two children by her -- daughter Shannon (born 1980) and son Sean (born 1983). Phil lost his battle with cancer on February 6, 2009, at the age of 83.- Producer
- Actor
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Drew Carey was born on 23 May 1958 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He is a producer and actor, known for The Drew Carey Show (1995), Robots (2005) and Jack and Jill (2011).- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Joe is a U.S. Marine, Actor, Producer and CEO of Jungle Boot Pictures LLC based in Chicago Illinois. Also a member of SAG since 1994.
After graduating top of his class at The School of Infantry, Joe was assigned to Marine Barracks Washington D.C. for White House Duty as Presidential Honor Guard. Duties included prestigious ceremonial assignments at The White House, The Pentagon and the Iwo Jima Memorial as well as as well as vigorous combat training throughout the country.
He was Honorably Discharged in 1992, move back to Chicago to pursue a career as a Federal Law-Enforcement Officer. That quickly changed after meeting his first acting coach, Kurt Naebig from Chicago. After several Theater productions followed by TV and film bookings, this became the new career path.
Since then, Joe has studied everything from improvise and scene study to performance art and acting in film and television. He quickly began to land small roles on TV shows like The Untouchables, Americas Most Wanted and Just Shoot Me. Joe was discovered by director Gregory Hoblit while filming Primal Fear and was upgraded to a principal speaking role with veteran actors Richard Gere and Steven Bauer. Shortly after, Joe landed small roles in Home Alone 3, Hoodlums, Original Gangstas, The Dark Knight, Witless Protection followed by leading roles in Drifted, For Hannah, Never Stop Talking and The Dream Ledger.
Currently, Joe has several feature films in development under Jungle Boot Pictures including, The Dream Ledger, The Treacherous Border and Sanctioned with is currently under development.
Joe is also an aspiring director. His first feature documentary, The Meat Tricks, premiered in two West Coast film festivals, winning First Place Finalist for Best Documentary at the Westwood International Film Festival in Los Angeles. Joe also has directed several short film projects, including Wish, American Haunts, Utopia, Charity. and his latest Tune In-Get Out: The Tubby Watts Story.
Joe has several feature films in development: Back of the Yards, Blood Kin, Flesh and Bone and "Kill Box" - A film based on combat life experiences on the front lines in the Middle East.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Mike is one of four children. His father, Joe, who died in 1956, was a carpenter at Hollywood studios. Mike attended grammar school with Natalie Wood and Ricky Nelson. He entered the Marines in the 1950s for two years. Later, he attended the University of California at Los Angeles and studied acting at the Jeff Corey Workshop. He started getting big parts in movies, which led to a regular role on Days of Our Lives (1965) and, ultimately, to M*A*S*H (1972). When M*A*S*H (1972) went off the air, he resisted series TV for many years until he was offered Providence (1999). In the meantime, he formed his own production company, which made the Robin Williams vehicle, Patch Adams (1998), based on Mike's own acquaintance with the doctor. Mike is very politically involved. He lobbied against the firing of gay teachers. He was outspoken about the US involvement in El Salvador in the 80s. He served as a member of California's Commission on Judicial Performance from February 2, 1998 to February 28, 2001.- Actor
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Jim Beaver is an American character actor, best known for his leading roles on the TV series Deadwood (2004) and Supernatural (2005). Born in Laramie, Wyoming a minister's son, he was raised in and around Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Following high school and a year of college, he joined the Marines and served as a radioman with the 1st Marine Division in Vietnam. He attended Oklahoma Christian College (now Oklahoma Christian University), Edmond, OK, where he first became interested in acting as a career. After one year, he transferred to Central State University (now the University of Central Oklahoma), Edmond, OK, and while a student made his professional debut in a production of "Rain" at the Oklahoma Theatre Center in 1972. He obtained a degree in theatre and returned to the Dallas area where he worked for five seasons with the Dallas Shakespeare Festival. He had written several plays in college and afterward (as well as a biography of actor John Garfield), and in 1979 he was commissioned for the first of three plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. He also began to make appearances in bit roles in films and television shows shot in the Dallas area, including Semi-Tough (1977) and Dallas (1978). Moving to New York in 1979, he worked in stock and in dinner theatre tours, and also maintained a side career as a critic, columnist, and feature writer for Films in Review, the magazine of the National Board of Review. An assignment for an article on TV Superman George Reeves led him to Los Angeles. During his research there, his play "Verdigris" was produced to solid reviews at Theatre West in Hollywood, and he was signed as a writer by Sam Adams, partner in the prestigious Triad Artists agency. He began a successful period as a television writer, penning episodes for shows such as Vietnam War Story (1987), Tour of Duty (1987), and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1985), and was nominated for a CableAce Award for an episode of the latter. He had continued to act on stage and in small film and TV roles, and in 1988 he landed a substantial supporting role as Bruce Willis's best friend, an alcoholic Vietnam veteran, in Norman Jewison's production In Country (1989). He gave up television writing and concentrated on acting. Slowly his roles grew larger (and more varied). He was Mark Harmon's chain-smoking detective partner Earl Gaddis on Reasonable Doubts (1991) and Edward Asner's dim-witted mechanic assistant Leland on Thunder Alley (1994). He was frequently cast in Westerns (Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Bad Girls (1994), among many others) or as detectives, sheriffs, or police officers (Sister Act (1992), Sliver (1993), Joy Ride (2001)). After two seasons on 3rd Rock from the Sun (1996) as French Stewart's sullen bar-owner boss Happy Doug, Beaver landed his most prominent and critically acclaimed role, that of Ellsworth, the gruff but decent and beloved prospector in the landmark Western series Deadwood (2004). Nominated along with other cast members for a 2006 Screen Actors Guild Award, he found his career in high gear following that series. From it he moved to the popular father-figure role of demon hunter Bobby Singer on Supernatural (2005), a part that brought him a worldwide fan base and a secondary career making personal appearances. He was married to and had a daughter with Cecily Adams, the actress-casting director daughter of Get Smart (1965)'s Don Adams. Following her death from lung cancer in 2004, he wrote a best-selling memoir, "Life's That Way." He has continued to write plays and, between acting jobs, to work on the George Reeves project, now planned as a book. He served as biographical consultant on Reeves for the semi-biopic Hollywoodland (2006).- Actor
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George C. Scott was an immensely talented actor, a star of the big screen, stage and television. He was born on October 18, 1927 in Wise, Virginia, to Helena Agnes (Slemp) and George Dewey Scott. At the age of eight, his mother died, and his father, an executive at Buick, raised him. In 1945, he joined the United States Marines and spent four years with them, no doubt an inspiration for portraying General George S. Patton years later. When Scott left the Marines, he enrolled in journalism classes at the University of Missouri, but it was while performing in a play there that the acting bug bit him. He has said it "clicked, just like tumblers in a safe."
It was in 1957 that he landed a role in "Richard III" in New York City. The play was a success and brought the young actor to the attention of critics. He soon began to get work on television, mostly in live broadcasts of plays, and he landed the role of the crafty prosecutor in Anatomy of a Murder (1959). It was this role that got him his first Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor.
However, George and Oscar wouldn't actually become the best of friends. In fact, he felt the whole process forced actors to become stars and that the ceremony was little more than a "meat market." In 1962, he was nominated again for Best Supporting Actor, this time opposite Paul Newman in The Hustler (1961), but sent a message saying "No, thanks" and refused the nomination.
However, whether he was being temperamental or simply stubborn in his opinion of awards, it did not seem to stop him from being nominated in the future. "Anatomy" and "The Hustler" were followed by the clever mystery The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), in which he starred alongside Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum and cameos by major stars of the time, including Burt Lancaster and Frank Sinatra. It's a must-see, directed by John Huston with tongue deeply in cheek.
The following year, Scott starred as General "Buck" Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's comical anti-war film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). This became one of his favorites and he often said that he felt guilty getting paid for it, as he had so much fun making it. Another comedy followed, The Flim-Flam Man (1967), with Scott playing a smooth-talking con artist who takes on an apprentice whom he soon discovers has too many morals.
Three years followed, with some smaller television movies, before he got the role for which he will always be identified: the aforementioned General Patton in Patton (1970). This was a war movie that came at the end of a decade where anti-war protests had rocked a nation and become a symbol of youth dissatisfied with what was expected of them. Still, the actor's portrayal of this aggressive military icon actually drew sympathy for the controversial hero. He won the Oscar this time, but stayed at home watching hockey instead.
A pair of films that he made in the early 1980s were outstanding. The first of these was The Changeling (1980), a film often packaged as a horror movie but one that's really more of a supernatural thriller. He plays John Russell, a composer and music professor who loses his wife and daughter in a tragic accident. Seeking solace, he moves into an archaic mansion that had been unoccupied for 12 years. However, a child-like presence seems to be sharing the house with him and trying to share its secrets with him. From learning of the house's past, he discovers its horrific secret of long ago, a secret that the presence will no longer allow to be kept.
Then he starred -- along with a young cast of then largely unknowns, including Timothy Hutton, Sean Penn and Tom Cruise -- in the intense drama Taps (1981). He played the head of a military academy that's suddenly slated for destruction when the property is sold to local developers who plan to build condos. The students take over the academy when they feel that the regular channels are closed to them.
Scott kept up in films, television and on stage in the later years of his life (Broadway dimmed its lights for one minute on the night of his death). Among his projects were playing Ebenezer Scrooge in a worthy television update of A Christmas Carol (1984), an acclaimed performance on Broadway of "Death of a Salesman", the voice of McLeach in Disney's The Rescuers Down Under (1990) and co-starring roles in television remakes of two classic films, 12 Angry Men (1997) and Inherit the Wind (1999), to name just a few. After his death the accolades poured in, with Jack Lemmon saying, "George was truly one of the greatest and most generous actors I have ever known," while Tony Randall called him "the greatest actor in American history".- Actor
- Stunts
Big, brawny, and imposing actor and stuntman Dick Durock was born on January 18, 1937 in South Bend, Indiana. The fourth of five children; he grew up in South Bend, Indiana and New Jersey. After serving a stint in the Marine Corps and briefly working as a computer programmer, Durock went to Hollywood to eke out a career in show business. He eventually amassed hundreds of credits in both movies and TV series alike (Durock sometimes worked on two different shows in the same day). Durock began his career in 1967 as the stunt double for Guy Williams on the final season of Lost in Space (1965). He also doubled for both Buddy Ebsen and Max Baer Jr. on The Beverly Hillbillies (1962). With his rough face, large, strong, muscular build and towering 6' 5" height Durock was usually cast as mean thugs who get beat up by the hero. Durock achieved his greatest enduring cult popularity with his excellent portrayal of the titular kind-hearted mutant superhero in Wes Craven's delightful Swamp Thing (1982). He reprised the part in the amusingly campy sequel The Return of Swamp Thing (1989) and the spin-off cable TV series, Swamp Thing (1990). Durock's other memorable roles include one of the terrorists in The Enforcer (1976), the bare knuckle brawler who fights Clint Eastwood at the start of Any Which Way You Can (1980), pie-eating contest champion "Bill Travis" in the charming Stand by Me (1986), and a hostile redneck hunter in the notorious turkey Howard the Duck (1986). Among the films Durock has performed stunts in are Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), License to Drive (1988), The Monster Squad (1987), Heat (1986), Runaway Train (1985), The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982), Bronco Billy (1980), 1941 (1979), Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze (1975), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Hammer (1972) and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972). Durock had guest spots on such TV shows as Star Trek (1966), Baretta (1975), Quincy M.E. (1976), The Rockford Files (1974), Little House on the Prairie (1974), The Incredible Hulk (1978), The A-Team (1983), Magnum, P.I. (1980), Falcon Crest (1981), The Fall Guy (1981), Knight Rider (1982), Married... with Children (1987) and Dynasty (1981). He played the "Imperious Leader" on the science fiction series, Battlestar Galactica (1978). He was a proud and active member of the Stuntman's Association of Motion Pictures for over 20 years. Durock lived in Southern California with his wife Jane and made frequent guest appearances at movie conventions held all over the country. He died after a long battle with Pancreatic Cancer at age 72 on September 17, 2009 in Oak Park, California.- Actor
- Director
Short, dark, rough-looking and-tough-talking Irish-American character actor Gerald Stewart O'Loughlin was born on December 23, 1921, in New York City. Graduating from college with a degree in mechanical engineering, he turned to the stage, however, after contemplating a possible law career. After a stint in the U.S. Marine Corps, he used the GI bill instead to train in New York at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
Throughout the early 1950s O'Loughlin regularly performed in stock and repertory plays. He highlighted his stage career playing Stanley in a national tour of "A Streetcar Named Desire" opposite the incomparable legend Tallulah Bankhead as Blanche. He later impressed once again as mental patient Cheswick opposite Kirk Douglas's Randle McMurphy in 1963's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" on Broadway.
Gerald made a very little dent in films at the beginning, what with an offbeat romantic lead role in the low-budget Lovers and Lollipops (1956) and a small role in the more impressive A Hatful of Rain (1957). He later toughened things up with sturdy parts in In Cold Blood (1967), Ice Station Zebra (1968) and, especially, Desperate Characters (1971).
Appearing in dramatic anthology programs from the early 1950's and on such 60's programs as "Ben Casey," "Naked City," "Dr. Kildare," "Run for Your Life" and "The Green Hornet," things finally clicked for him on 1970s TV when he nabbed the role of Lt. Ryker in the TV cop series The Rookies (1972) replacing Darren McGavin, who played the same role in the pilot. He went on to play his usual stern self in other less successful TV series -- Automan (1983) and Our House (1986)
O'Loughlin was highly affecting in TV movies as well, especially as the patriarch in the tearjerker Something for Joey (1977) with Geraldine Page. He continued to impress with strong, authoritarian roles in A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story (1978), Women in White (1979), Child's Cry (1986), Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun (1986) and Crime of the Century (1996). He also had sturdy roles in several acclaimed mini-series (Wheels (1978), Roots: The Next Generations (1979), Blind Ambition (1979) and A Matter of Life and Death (1981)), and was spotted over the years in a slew of guest parts on such established programming as "M*A*S*H," "Fame," "Matt Houston," "Riptide," "Murder, She Wrote," "Too Close for Comfort," "Highway to Heaven," "ER, "The Division," "Titans" and "Judging Amy."
86-year-old Gerald made his last appearance in the short film Destinesia (2008) portraying an elderly man desperate to escape the confines of his nursing home. He died of natural causes in Los Angeles on July 31, 2015. His long-time wife, Meryl Abeles O'Loughlin (1933-2007), a casting agent, predeceased him. They had two children. One son, Chris, was a member of the 1992 U.S. Olympic épée fencing team.- Actor
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- Producer
In the span of just a few short years, Brad James has gone from US Marine to one of the most exciting faces in television and film today. Although widely praised for his comedic role as 'Todd' on the hit series "Tyler Perry's For Better Or Worse," Brad has shown himself to be much more than just a comedic actor. Through dozens of television and film appearances he has showcased a vast range of characters from action hero, to misunderstood boy-toy, to the diabolical villain.
Brad appeared in the Nicholas Sparks adaptation of his popular novel "The Choice," with Teresa Palmer, Alexandra Daddario and Benjamin Walker. His other feature film credits include appearing alongside Billy Crystal and Bette Midler in the family comedy "Parental Guidance," appearing with Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman in Denis Villeneuve's "Prisoners," and starring as 'Spence' in the feature film "Comeback Dad."
2016 witnessed Brad appearing on "NCIS: New Orleans," adding to his long list of television credits that also include ABC's "Devious Maids", The CW's "Hart of Dixie" and recurring on WGN's critically acclaimed series "Underground."
In addition to his acting, Brad has also begun to write, produce and direct projects that he feels have stories that will entertain and enlighten. He's also expanding his reach and utilizing his creative abilities to speak to the youth about the different paths to success in business as well as personal endeavors. He has spoken at several drama academies, schools, panels, camps and more; constantly promoting belief in one's self to accomplish anything that you put your mind and heart to do.- Tom Towles was a character player, often cast as scumbags or obnoxious men, who worked for more than a decade in Chicago theatre, before establishing himself in films and TV beginning in the late 80s - often in lower-budget fare. Towles drifted into acting after serving in the Marine Corps. Although he made an isolated appearance in a bit role in Dog Day Afternoon (1975) with Al Pacino, he returned to Chicago and became a member of the Organic Theatre Company appearing in numerous productions and often collaborating on the writing as well. Towles also acted with the prestigious Goodman Theatre there. It was 1985 before Towles was again in front of the cameras, this time as a lounge lizard in Pink Nights (1985). The next year, he was the despicable, loathsome Otis in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986). In 1990, Towles played Harry Cooper, the guy everyone else trapped in the farmhouse would most like to sacrifice to the zombies in the remake of Night of the Living Dead (1990). Towles' TV work has been ongoing since he appeared as J.J., the hunted killer in Pilot (1987), the two-hour pilot for a Robert Conrad series. He was Norman Stoneface, true to his name, in the 1994 Showtime movie Girls in Prison (1994), and also appeared in numerous TV episodes.
Other films includes Mad Dog and Glory (1993), Fortress (1992), Blood In, Blood Out (1993), The Rock (1996), Doctor Dolittle (1998) and Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses (2003). - Additional Crew
- Actor
Steve Wilkos is the host of NBCUniversal Domestic Television Distribution's nationally syndicated series The Steve Wilkos Show.
A native of Chicago, Wilkos served his country in the U.S. Marine Corps for almost seven years before joining the Chicago Police Department. For almost 12 years, he kept the streets of Chicago's volatile 14th District (Shakespeare) safe while moonlighting during his off hours on television. Wilkos retired from the police force in 2001 and now devotes himself full time to his family and his show.
Prior to starting a show of his own, Wilkos filled in for Jerry Springer as host of the long-running The Jerry Springer Show on more than 50 episodes, using his law enforcement background and no-nonsense style to create his own identity as a talk show host.
Wilkos' many achievements over the years includes earning three Prism Award nominations for raising awareness about substance abuse issues, serving as the host of The Daytime Entertainment Creative Arts Emmy® Awards and being asked to lend his voice for a cameo on The Simpsons. Wilkos has also appeared in several TV shows and films, including the hit motion picture Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.
A huge sports fan and avid golfer, Wilkos can be spotted at various professional sporting events such as baseball, basketball and football games. In his free time, he also likes watching Sons of Anarchy, Breaking Bad and riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
Wilkos and his wife, Rachelle, who is executive producer on The Steve Wilkos Show and The Jerry Springer Show, have two children and live in Connecticut.- Actor
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- Producer
From his birthplace in South Africa, Louis Charles Hayward was brought to England and was educated there and on the Continent. He spent a short time managing a London nightclub, displayed some acting talent and decided on acting, and was quickly tapped by playwright Noël Coward, who became his patron. Matinee-idol-handsome, Hayward developed his acting skills on the London stage in various versions of Broadway plays, such as "Dracula" and "Another Language". He began his film career in the British romance drama Self Made Lady (1932), which was followed by five British films through 1933.
Hayward came to New York and Broadway in 1935 to star in "Point Verlaine". It was his only Broadway venture, but it brought him a Hollywood contract. His first American film role was in The Flame Within (1935). After several supporting roles in 1936, he got his real break starring in the extended romantic prologue of Warner Bros.' Anthony Adverse (1936). As dashing officer Denis Moore, he was Anthony's father, rescuing his soon-to-be mother Maria from an arranged marriage to the Marquis Don Luis, brilliantly played by Claude Rains. Shot with gauze focus in part to increase the dreamlike romantic interlude of the lovers, the prologue played to a bitter end with Hayward dispatched in a sword duel with the outraged Don Luis, and Maria, now pregnant, forced to return to her husband. However, Hayward had had his defining moment. He was now a romantic leading man, and a swashbuckler at that. Through the remainder of the 1930s he would have ample opportunities to vary that class of character, starting with some early "B"-tier efforts. His good looks were complemented by an airy manner of speaking, which worked as both hero and rogue or occasional suave villain. The familiar British Simon Templar character was brought to the screen by Hayward in The Saint in New York (1938) to cap his "B"-picture career. He was destined for plenty of sword point adventure. The stylish The Man in the Iron Mask (1939), the third volume in the Alexandre Dumas musketeer trilogy, gave Hayward the opportunity to play the good and evil royal twins, which he did with impressive flair. However, his swashbuckling efforts did not pan out as well as they did for Errol Flynn. The Son of Monte Cristo (1940), with Hayward paired with Joan Bennett again (as they were in "Iron Mask") was a The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) rip-off that fell flat. Another sort of bad break was his 1941 casting in a pivotal role in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), his part was edited out of the final print.
World War II brought Hayward a respite from the vagaries of Hollywood luck. He was a United States Marine combat photographer, and his work during the invasion of the Japanese-held island of Tarawa earned him a Bronze Star for courage under fire. Overcoming the psychological stress of his war experiences, Hayward returned to the Hollywood spotlight. He had already notched a few mysteries on his belt when he was cast in the Agatha Christie thriller And Then There Were None (1945), which was a hit. His subsequent list of romantic parts included yet another "Monte Cristo" adventure: the Robin Hood-like Robert Louis Stevenson adventure The Black Arrow (1948) and a succession of pirate parts. He played in two "Captain Blood" sequels, neither of which turned out well for him. There was also yet another "twin" sequel, this time a twist of the Jekyll/Hide story but with the doctor's twin sons, called The Son of Dr. Jekyll (1951). There was also one more outing in an "Iron Mask" vehicle, this time with twin royal sisters and Hayward as a mature D'Artagnan. Amid all this blandness - and seeing double - Hayward had the good sense to develop a business sense in case his career kept on its downward spiral. He was one of the first to incorporate the one percentage-of-profits deal for both the theatrical and television releases of his post-1949 films, ensuring him comfortable lifelong income.
Although he continued to make movies, Hayward ventured enthusiastically into television, not only with some ten American playhouse theater productions and episodic television through the 1960s but productions of his own. In 1954, Hayward produced and starred in the 39-week television series The Lone Wolf (1954) (aka "Streets of Danger") after buying exclusive rights to several of Louis Joseph Vance's original "Lone Wolf" stories. He also produced the British series The Pursuers (1961) and the American The Survivors (1969). He bowed out of acting in the mid 1970s, not the screen legend that he had hoped to be, but wiser and certainly comfortable. On February 21, 1985, Louis Hayward died at age 75 of lung cancer in his home in Palm Springs, California.- Actor
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Don Adams was born in New York, to a father of Hungarian Jewish descent, and a mother of German and Irish ancestry. He had a sister, Gloria, and a brother, Dick Yarmy. He served in the U.S. Marines in World War II and contracted malaria during the fighting on Guadalcanal island. After the war he began a career as a stand-up comic. He married singer Adelaide Adams and adopted her last name as his stage surname. He had seven children altogether, (four with his first wife, two with his second, one with his third): Caroline Adams, Christine, Catherine, Cecily Adams, Stacey Adams, Sean, Beige. His television career began when he won the Ted Mack & the Original Amateur Hour (1948) talent contest. His most famous role, of course, is as bumbling, incompetent, clueless yet endearing secret agent Maxwell Smart in the classic sitcom/spy spoof Get Smart (1965), although he also had a career as a television director and a Broadway and theatrical dramatic actor.- Writer
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Donald P. Bellisario was born in North Charleroi in Pennsylvania. His father ran the tavern, where he grew up listening to the war stories of vets returning from WWII. He had a fifteen-year career in advertising before moving to Hollywood. He broke into television as the story editor for Black Sheep Squadron (1976). His most celebrated works to date are NCIS (2003), Magnum, P.I. (1980), Quantum Leap (1989), and JAG (1995). He has been married four times, and has seven children (one of whom is deceased), two stepchildren, and eight grandchildren.- Actor
- Producer
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Barry's full given name is Leonard Barrie Corbin, and he was born on October 16, 1940 in Lamesa, Texas, to Kilmer Blain Corbin, an attorney & TX State Senator, and Alma Corbin, an elementary school teacher. Barry and his wife Jo share a ranch in Fort Worth, Texas. He says when he isn't working, he rides horses there every chance he gets.- Dark-haired, Ivy League-looking Bradford Dillman, whose white-collar career spanned nearly five decades, possessed charm and confident good looks that were slightly tainted by a bent smile, darting glance and edgy countenance that often provoked suspicion. Sure enough, the camera picked up on it and he played shady, highly suspect characters throughout most of his career.
The actor was born in San Francisco on April 14, 1930, to Dean and Josephine Dillman. Yale-educated, he graduated with a B.A. in English Literature. Following this he served with the US Marines in Korea (1951-1953) before focusing on acting as a profession. Studying at the Actors Studio, he spent several seasons apprenticing with the Sharon (CT) Playhouse before making his professional acting debut in "The Scarecrow" in 1953.
Dillman took his initial Broadway bow in Eugene O'Neill's play "Long Day's Journey Into Night" in 1956, originating the author's alter ego character Edmund Tyrone and winning a Theatre World Award in the process. This success put him squarely on the map and 20th Century-Fox took immediate advantage by placing the darkly handsome up-and-comer under contract. Cast in the melodrama A Certain Smile (1958), he earned a Golden Globe for "Most Promising Newcomer" playing a Parisian student who loses his girl (Christine Carère) to the worldly Italian roué Rossano Brazzi. He followed this with a strong ensemble appearance in In Love and War (1958), which featured a cast of young rising stars including Hope Lange and Robert Wagner. More acting honors followed after completing the film Compulsion (1959), which told the true story of the infamous 1920s kidnapping/murder case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. He went on to share a "Best Actor" award at the Cannes Film Festival with fellow co-stars Dean Stockwell, who played the other youthful murderer, and veteran Orson Welles.
Though he was a magnetic player poised for stardom, Dillman's subsequent films failed to serve him well and were generally unworthy of his talent. Though properly serious and stoic as the title character in Francis of Assisi (1961), the film itself was stilted and weakly scripted. Circle of Deception (1960) was a misguided tale of espionage and intrigue, but it did introduce him to his second wife, supermodel-cum-actress Suzy Parker. While A Rage to Live (1965) with Suzanne Pleshette was trashy soap material, The Plainsman (1966) was rather a silly, juvenile version of the Gary Cooper western classic. As a result of these missteps--and others--he began to top-line lesser quality projects or play supporting roles in "A" pictures. His nothing role as Robert Redford's college pal-turned Hollywood producer in The Way We Were (1973) and his major roles in the ludicrous The Swarm (1978) and Lords of the Deep (1989) became proof in the pudding. His last good film role was in O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (1973), although he did play an interesting John Wilkes Booth in the speculative re-enactment drama The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977) and had a fun leading role in the Jaws (1975)-like spoof Piranha (1978).
Dillman bore up very well on TV over the years, subsisting on a plethora of mini-movies and guest spots on popular series, playing everything from turncoats to frauds and from adulterers to psychotics. He earned a Daytime Emmy for his appearance in Last Bride of Salem (1974) and starred in two series--Court Martial (1965), as a military lawyer, and King's Crossing (1982), as an alcoholic parent and teacher attempting to straighten out. He also spent a season on the established nighttime soap Falcon Crest (1981) in 1982.
A narrator, director and teacher of acting in later years. Bradford launched a late-in-the career sideline as an author. The football fan inside him compelled him to write "Inside the New York Giants" (1995), a book that rated players drafted by the team since 1967. Two years later he published his memoirs, the curiously-titled "Are You Somebody?: An Actor's Life." He retired from the screen after a few guest star shots on "Murder, She Wrote" in the mid-90s.
From 1956 to 1962, Dillman was married to Frieda Harding, and had two children, Jeffrey and Pamela. Following their divorce, he met well-known model-turned-actress Suzy Parker during the production of Circle of Deception (1960) and the couple married on April 20, 1963. They had three children, Dinah, Charles, and Christopher. Daughter Pamela Dillman has worked as an actress. Dillman was made a widower when Parker died on May 3, 2003. He lived for many years in Montecito, California, and helped raise money for medical research. He died in Santa Barbara, California on January 16, 2018, aged 87, from complications of pneumonia. - Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Legendary actor Glenn Ford was born Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford in Sainte-Christine-d'Auvergne, Quebec, Canada, to Hannah Wood (Mitchell) and Newton Ford, a railroad executive. His family moved to Santa Monica, California when he was eight years old. His acting career began with plays at high school, followed by acting in West Coast, a traveling theater company.
Ford was discovered in 1939 by Tom Moore, a talent scout for 20th Century Fox. He subsequently signed a contract with Columbia Pictures the same year. Ford's contract with Columbia marked a significant departure in that studio's successful business model. Columbia's boss, Harry Cohn, had spent decades observing other studios'-most notably Warner Brothers-troubles with their contract stars and had built his poverty-row studio around their loan-outs. Basically, major studios would use Columbia as a penalty box for unruly behavior-usually salary demands or work refusals. The cunning Cohn usually assigned these stars (his little studio could not normally afford then) into pictures, and the studio's status rose immensely as the 1930s progressed. Understandably, Cohn had long resisted developing his own stable of contract stars (he'd first hired Peter Lorre in 1934 but didn't know what to do with him) but had relented in the late 1930s, first adding Rosalind Russell, then signing Ford and fellow newcomer William Holden. Cohn reasoned that the two prospects could be used interchangeably, should one become troublesome. Although often competing for the same parts, Ford and Holden became good friends. Their careers would roughly parallel each other through the 1940s, until Holden became a superstar through his remarkable association with director Billy Wilder in the 1950s.
Ford made his official debut in Fox's Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence (1939), and continued working in various small roles throughout the 1940s until his movie career was interrupted to join the Marines in World War II. Ford continued his military career in the Naval Reserve well into the Vietnam War, achieving the rank of captain. In 1943 Ford married legendary tap dancer Eleanor Powell, and had one son, Peter Ford. Like many actors returning to Hollywood after the war (including James Stewart and Holden (who had already acquired a serious alcohol problem), he found it initially difficult to regain his career momentum. He was able to resume his movie career with the help of Bette Davis, who gave him his first postwar break in the 1946 movie A Stolen Life (1946). However, it was not until his acclaimed performance in a 1946 classic film noir, Gilda (1946), with Rita Hayworth, that he became a major star and one of the the most popular actors of his time. He scored big with the film noir classics The Big Heat (1953) and Blackboard Jungle (1955), and was usually been cast as a calm and collected everyday-hero, showing courage under pressure. Ford continued to make many notable films during his prestigious 50-year movie career, but he is best known for his fine westerns such as 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and The Rounders (1965). Ford pulled a hugely entertaining turn in The Sheepman (1958) and many more fine films. In the 1970s, Ford made his television debut in the controversial The Brotherhood of the Bell (1970) and appeared in two fondly remembered television series: Cade's County (1971) and The Family Holvak (1975). During the 1980s and 1990s, Ford limited his appearance to documentaries and occasional films, including a nice cameo in Superman (1978).
Glenn Ford is remembered fondly by his fans for his more than 100 excellent films and his charismatic silver screen presence.- Actor
- Producer
- Stunts
Scott Glenn was born January 26, 1939, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Hope Elizabeth and Theodore Glenn, a salesman. As he grew up in Appalachia, his health was poor; he was bedridden for a year and doctors predicted he would limp for the rest of his life. During long periods of illness, Glenn was reading a lot and "dreaming of becoming Lord Byron". He challenged his illness by intense training programs and eventually got rid of his limp.
After graduating high school, Glenn entered William and Mary College where he majored in English. He spent three years in the Marines and then tried to combine his passion for storytelling with his passion for adventures by working for five months as a criminal reporter at the Kenosha Evening News. Glenn planned to become an author but found out he had "problems with dialogues", so he decided to overcome it by studying acting. In 1966, he headed to New York where he joined George Morrison acting class. He helped in directing student plays to pay for his studies and appeared onstage in La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club productions. Soon after arriving in New York, Glenn became a fan of martial arts. In 1968, he joined The Actors Studio and began working in professional theater and TV. In 1970, James Bridges offered him his first movie work in The Baby Maker (1970).
Glenn left for L.A., where he spent seven of the "most miserable years of [his] life". He couldn't find interesting film roles and, doing brief TV stints, he felt "like a person who had to paint the Sistine Chapel with a house-painter's brush". On a brighter side, he worked episodically with Jonathan Demme (Angels Hard as They Come (1971), Fighting Mad (1976)), Robert Altman (Nashville (1975)) and Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now (1979)). In 1978, Glenn got tired of Hollywood and moved his family to Ketchum, Idaho, where he worked as a barman, huntsman and mountain ranger for two years (occasionally acting in Seattle stage productions). James Bridges once more changed the course of Glenn's life in 1980 when he offered him the role of John Travolta's rival in Urban Cowboy (1980) and made him a star. Glenn's acting abilities and physical presence helped him to excel both in action (Silverado (1985), The Challenge (1982)) and drama (The Right Stuff (1983), Countdown to Looking Glass (1984), The River (1984)) as he alternately played good guys and bad guys.
In the beginning of the '90s, his career was at its peak - he appeared in such indisputable masterpieces as The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and The Hunt for Red October (1990). Established as one of Hollywood's most solid and respected character actors he has appeared in a wide variety of films, such as the black Freudian farce Reckless (1995), the tragicomedy Edie & Pen (1996) and Ken Loach's socio-political declaration Carla's Song (1996), alternating mainstream (Courage Under Fire (1996), Absolute Power (1997)) with independent projects (Lesser Prophets (1997) and Larga distancia (1997)), written by his daughter Dakota Glenn), and TV (Naked City: A Killer Christmas (1998)). Continuing into the 21st century, Glenn has also appeared in Training Day (2001), W. (2008) (as Donald Rumsfeld), Secretariat (2010), Sucker Punch (2011), The Paperboy (2012), and two of the Bourne films: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) and The Bourne Legacy (2012).- Actor
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Clu Gulager was born William Martin Gulager in Holdenville, Hughes County, Oklahoma. His nickname was given to him by his father for the clu-clu birds (known in English as martins, like his middle name) that were nesting at the Gulager home at the time Clu was born. He grew up on his uncle's ranch as a cowhand and when he was old enough he joined the United States Marine Corps for a stint from 1946-1948. He got the acting bug being in army plays so when he left he used the GI Bill of Rights to study acting. During this time he met his wife, actress Miriam Byrd-Nethery. They wed in 1952 and had two children: John (born 1957) and Tom (born 1965) The couple was married for more than 50 years until her death in 2003 from cancer.
Gulager's career started off as bit parts on popular western shows usually playing the heavy. Shows like Wanted Dead or Alive, Have Gun Will Travel, Laramie, Riverboat. He scored big with The Untouchables as "Mad Dog Coll", which led to him being offered the role of "Billy the Kid" on The Tall Man from 1960-1962, which also starred Barry Sullivan as "Pat Garrett". The show was pulled after two seasons reportedly because the powers that were didn't like kids seeing Billy the Kid as a hero.
His next big break was playing Deputy Emmett Ryker on The Virginian from 1964-1968. During this time he also fared very well as Lee Marvin's sidekick in the 1964 TV film The Killers, which was considered too violent for TV so it went to theaters. Having being burned out being a TV star he tried to break into films, mostly as a character actor. His stand out films were The Last Picture Show (1971, playing Ellen Burstyn's lover), McQ (1974) with John Wayne, and A Force of One (1979) with Chuck Norris, with whom he would later work in the 1990s on Walker, Texas Ranger.
Gulager was also cast in San Francisco International Airport, with Lloyd Bridges, which failed big time. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he was in almost every show around, playing bit parts. Then the unthinkable happened: he found a second career as a horror film actor; he followed the footsteps of other TV actors who were stuck in TV hell, like Doug McClure (his costar from The Virginian) and Christopher George. Both men found new careers in B-movies and late night horror films. Gulager finally got a lead part in Dan O'Bannon's cult classic The Return of the Living Dead (1985). He also was in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985).
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he appeared in TV and in the occasional horror flick. In 2005 he started acting in his son's horror films -- the Feasts movies and Piranha DD in his 80s. Not letting age get in his way, he was a horror fan favorite and still showed up at conventions at almost 90.- Solidly built, boyishly handsome American leading-man, Christopher George was the son of Greek immigrants. Weaned on stories of the legendary Greek heroes, George and his brother Nick (later a prominent fashion photographer) both quit high school to join the Marines. Completing his education after his tour of duty, George acted in numerous TV commercials, winning a New York Film Festival Award for his efforts. Appearing in Broadway plays like A Street Car Named Desire and films like Howard Hawks's El Dorado (1966). He became a great friend of John Wayne also in Chisum (1970). George also became a TV star in the wartime adventure series The Rat Patrol (1966). He later starred in the science fiction series The Immortal (1969) and then returned to filmmaking. He also starred in Project X (1968), The Train Robbers (1973), Midway (1976), Grizzly (1976), Day of the Animals (1977), The Exterminator (1980), Graduation Day (1981), and his last, Mortuary (1982). He also appeared in another 30 other films and TV guest appearances. Christopher George died of a heart attack. He was married to his wife, actress Lynda Day George (a frequent co-star) for 14 years.
- Born to George & Frances Simonson Walter, and named Sterling Relyea Walter. Father died in 1925. Adopted by stepfather 'James Hayden' renamed Sterling Walter Hayden. Grew up in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., and Maine. Though very poor, attended prep school at Wassookeag School in Dexter, Maine. Ran away to sea at 17, first as ship's boy, then as doryman on the Grand Banks, as a seaman and fireman on numerous vessels before getting his first command at 19. He sailed around the world a number of times, becoming a well-known and highly respected ship's captain. At urging of friends, met with producer Edward H. Griffith who signs him to a Paramount contract. Fell for his first leading lady, Madeleine Carroll, and married her. Prior to Pearl Harbor, abandoned Hollywood to become a commando with the COI (later the OSS). Joined Marines under pseudonym "John Hamilton" (a name he never acts under), eventually running guns and supplies to Yugoslav partisans through the German blockade of the Adriatic, as well as parachuting into Croatia for guerrilla activities. Won Silver Star and citation from Tito of Yugoslavia. Briefly flirted with Communist Party membership due to friendship with Yugoslav Communists. Returned to film work, which he despised, in order to pay for a succession of sailing vessels. As Red Scare deepens in U.S., he cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee, confessing his brief Communist ties. Ever after regretted this action, holding himself in enormous contempt for what he considered "ratting". Offered role of Tarzan as replacement for Lex Barker, but refused. Made headlines defying court order not to sail to Tahiti with his children following divorce decree. Published autobiography "Wanderer" in 1963, and novel "Voyage" in 1976, both to great acclaim. Cast as Quint in Jaws (1975) but unable to play due to tax problems. Died of cancer in 1986.
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Son of character actor Robert Keith and stage actress Helena Shipman. He grew up on the road with his parents while they toured in plays. First appeared at age 3 in film Pied Piper Malone (1924) with his father. Began acting in radio programs and on stage before World War II. Joined the Marines and served as a machine gunner. Returned to Broadway stage after the war and branched out into television and film. Worked as an extra in several films before achieving speaking roles and subsequent stardom.- Actor
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Mahoney is of French and Irish extraction, with some Cherokee. At the University of Iowa, he was outstanding in swimming, basketball and football. When World War II broke out, he enlisted as a Marine fighter pilot and instructor. In Hollywood, he was a noted stunt man, doubling for Errol Flynn, John Wayne, and Gregory Peck. Gene Autry signed him for the lead in his 78-episode The Range Rider (1951) TV series. He tested to replace Johnny Weissmuller, as Tarzan but lost out to Lex Barker. In 1960, he played the heavy in Gordon Scott's Tarzan the Magnificent (1960), and his part there led Sy Weintraub to hire him as Scott's replacement. In his two Tarzan movies, he did all his own stunts. In Tarzan's Three Challenges (1963), he continued working in spite of dysentery, dengue fever and pneumonia. By this time, Weintraub was looking for a younger Tarzan, envisioning a future TV series. By mutual agreement, his contract with Mahoney was dissolved. After a couple of years regaining his strength and weight, Jock returned to making action films.- Actor
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Ed McMahon's first appearance before a microphone was as a 15-year-old "caller" at a bingo game in Maine. After that, he spent the next three years touring the state fair and carnival circuit. A Marine fighter pilot during World War II, McMahon sold vegetable slicers on Atlantic City's boardwalk to put himself through Catholic University in Washington, DC. In the 1950s, he hosted a late-night interview show in Philadelphia before working as a clown on the show Big Top (1950). His next assignment was as a fighter pilot during the Korean War. After that, he resumed his career in television. In 1959, he was hired as Johnny Carson's straight man on the daytime quiz show Who Do You Trust? (1956). When Carson succeeded Jack Paar on NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Jack Paar (1957), which became The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), he took McMahon with him. This job lasted for 30 years and made McMahon wealthy and famous. On the big screen, he played straight roles in the dramatic The Incident (1967) -- for which he got very good reviews -- and in the comic Fun with Dick and Jane (1977). He also appeared in made-for-TV movies and hosted daytime game shows in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s, McMahon teamed with Dick Clark on Super Bloopers and Practical Jokes (1984) and hosted his own long-running talent show, Star Search (1983). He also made commercial appearances for a multitude of products. In 1994, he was cast as himself in Love Affair (1994) with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening.- Actor
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He was the ultra-cool male film star of the 1960s, and rose from a troubled youth spent in reform schools to being the world's most popular actor. Over 40 years after his untimely death from mesothelioma in 1980, Steve McQueen is still considered hip and cool, and he endures as an icon of popular culture.
McQueen was born in Beech Grove, Indiana, to mother Julian (Crawford) and father William Terence McQueen, a stunt pilot. His first lead role was in the low-budget sci-fi film The Blob (1958), quickly followed by roles in The St. Louis Bank Robbery (1959) and Never So Few (1959). The young McQueen appeared as Vin, alongside Yul Brynner, in the star-laden The Magnificent Seven (1960) and effectively hijacked the lead from the bigger star by ensuring he was nearly always doing something in every shot he and Brynner were in together, such as adjusting his hat or gun belt. He next scored with audiences with two interesting performances, first in the World War II drama Hell Is for Heroes (1962) and then in The War Lover (1962). Riding a wave of popularity, McQueen delivered another crowd pleaser as Hilts, the Cooler King, in the knockout World War II P.O.W. film The Great Escape (1963), featuring his famous leap over the barbed wire on a motorcycle while being pursued by Nazi troops (in fact, however, the stunt was actually performed by his good friend, stunt rider Bud Ekins).
McQueen next appeared in several films of mixed quality, including Soldier in the Rain (1963); Love with the Proper Stranger (1963) and Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965). However, they failed to really grab audience attention, but his role as Eric Stoner in The Cincinnati Kid (1965), alongside screen legend Edward G. Robinson and Karl Malden, had movie fans filling theaters again to see the ice-cool McQueen they loved. He was back in another Western, Nevada Smith (1966), again with Malden, and then he gave what many consider to be his finest dramatic performance as loner US Navy sailor Jake Holman in the superb The Sand Pebbles (1966). McQueen was genuine hot property and next appeared with Faye Dunaway in the provocative crime drama The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), next in what many consider his signature role, that of a maverick, taciturn detective in the mega-hit Bullitt (1968), renowned for its famous chase sequence through San Francisco between McQueen's Ford Mustang GT and the killer's black Dodge Charger.
Interestingly, McQueen's next role was a total departure from the action genre, as he played Southerner Boon Hogganbeck in the family-oriented The Reivers (1969), based on the popular William Faulkner novel. Not surprisingly, the film didn't go over particularly well with audiences, even though it was an entertaining and well made production, and McQueen showed an interesting comedic side of his acting talents. He returned to more familiar territory, with the race film Le Mans (1971), a rather self-indulgent exercise, and its slow plot line contributed to its rather poor performance in theaters. It was not until many years later that it became something of a cult film, primarily because of the footage of Porsche 917s roaring around race tracks in France. McQueen then teamed up with maverick Hollywood director Sam Peckinpah to star in the modern Western Junior Bonner (1972), about a family of rodeo riders, and again with Peckinpah as bank robber Doc McCoy in the violent The Getaway (1972). Both did good business at the box office. McQueen's next role was a refreshing surprise and Papillon (1973), based on the Henri Charrière novel of the same name, was well received by fans and critics alike. He played a convict on a French penal colony in South America who persists in trying to escape from his captors and feels their wrath when his attempts fail.
The 1970s is a decade remembered for a slew of "disaster" movies and McQueen starred in arguably the biggest of the time, The Towering Inferno (1974). He shared equal top billing with Paul Newman and an impressive line-up of co-stars including Fred Astaire, Robert Vaughn and Faye Dunaway. McQueen does not appear until roughly halfway into the film as San Francisco fire chief Mike O'Halloran, battling to extinguish an inferno in a 138-story skyscraper. The film was a monster hit and set the benchmark for other disaster movies that followed. However, it was McQueen's last film role for several years. After a four-year hiatus he surprised fans, and was almost unrecognizable under long hair and a beard, as a rabble-rousing early environmentalist in An Enemy of the People (1978), based on the Henrik Ibsen play.
McQueen's last two film performances were in the unusual Western Tom Horn (1980), then he portrayed real-life bounty hunter Ralph "Papa' Thorson (Ralph Thorson) in The Hunter (1980). In 1978, McQueen developed a persistent cough that would not go away. He quit smoking cigarettes and underwent antibiotic treatments without improvement. Shortness of breath grew more pronounced and on December 22, 1979, after he completed work on 'The Hunter', a biopsy revealed pleural mesothelioma, a rare lung cancer associated with asbestos exposure for which there is no known cure. The asbestos was thought to have been in the protective suits worn in his race car driving days, but in fact the auto racing suits McQueen wore were made of Nomex, a DuPont fire-resistant aramid fiber that contains no asbestos. McQueen later gave a medical interview in which he believed that asbestos used in movie sound stage insulation and race-drivers' protective suits and helmets could have been involved, but he thought it more likely that his illness was a direct result of massive exposure while removing asbestos lagging from pipes aboard a troop ship while in the US Marines.
By February 1980, there was evidence of widespread metastasis. While he tried to keep the condition a secret, the National Enquirer disclosed that he had "terminal cancer" on March 11, 1980. In July, McQueen traveled to Rosarito Beach, Mexico for an unconventional treatment after American doctors told him they could do nothing to prolong his life. Controversy arose over McQueen's Mexican trip, because McQueen sought a non-traditional cancer treatment called the Gerson Therapy that used coffee enemas, frequent washing with shampoos, daily injections of fluid containing live cells from cows and sheep, massage and laetrile, a supposedly "natural" anti-cancer drug available in Mexico, but not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. McQueen paid for these unconventional medical treatments by himself in cash payments which was said to have cost an upwards of $40,000 per month during his three-month stay in Mexico. McQueen was treated by William Donald Kelley, whose only medical license had been (until revoked in 1976) for orthodontics.
McQueen returned to the United States in early October 1980. Despite metastasis of the cancer through McQueen's body, Kelley publicly announced that McQueen would be completely cured and return to normal life. McQueen's condition soon worsened and "huge" tumors developed in his abdomen. In late October, McQueen flew to Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico to have an abdominal tumor on his liver (weighing around five pounds) removed, despite warnings from his American doctors that the tumor was inoperable and his heart could not withstand the surgery. McQueen checked into a Juarez clinic under the alias "Sam Shepard" where the local Mexican doctors and staff at the small, low-income clinic were unaware of his actual identity.
Steve McQueen passed away on November 7, 1980, at age 50 after the cancer surgery which was said to be successful. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea. He married three times and had a lifelong love of motor racing, once remarking, "Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting.".- Actor
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Handsome and elegant George Peppard occasionally displayed considerable talent through his career, whether action roles or dramatic. Following Broadway and television experience, he made a strong film debut in The Strange One (1957). He started getting noticed when he played Robert Mitchum's illegitimate son in the popular melodrama Home from the Hill (1960). He then established himself as a leading man, giving arguably his most memorable film performance as Audrey Hepburn's love interest in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). Seen by the studios as a promising young star, Peppard was subsequently cast in some of the major blockbusters of the early/mid-1960s: How the West Was Won (1962), The Victors (1963), The Carpetbaggers (1964) and Operation Crossbow (1965). He reached the peak of his popularity in another such lavish production, The Blue Max (1966), in which he effectively played an obsessively competitive German flying officer during World War I.
However, by the late 1960s, he seemed to settle as a tough lead in more average, often hokum, adventures, including House of Cards (1968), Cannon for Cordoba (1970) and The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972). In the early 1970s, his declining popularity was temporarily boosted thanks to the television series Banacek (1972). With his film roles becoming increasingly uninteresting, he acted in, directed and produced the drama Five Days from Home (1978), but the result was rather disappointing. In the mid-1980s, he again obtained success on television as Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith, the cigar-chomping leader of The A-Team (1983). George Peppard died at age 65 of pneumonia on May 8, 1994 in Los Angeles, California. He is buried alongside his parents in Northview Cemetery in Dearborn, Michigan.- Actor
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Distinguished U.S. actor and longtime civil rights campaigner Robert Bushnell Ryan was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Mable Arbutus (Bushnell), a secretary, and Timothy Aloysius Ryan, whose wealthy family owned a real estate firm. His father was of Irish ancestry, and his mother was of English and Irish descent. Ryan served in the United States Marines as a drill sergeant (winning a boxing championship) and went on to become a key figure in post WWII American Film Noir and western productions.
Ryan grabbed critical attention for his dynamic performances as an anti-Semitic bully in the superb Crossfire (1947), as an over-the-hill boxer who refuses to take a fall in The Set-Up (1949) and as a hostile & jaded cop in On Dangerous Ground (1951). Ryan's athletic physique, intense gaze and sharply delivered, authoritarian tones made him an ideal actor for the oily world of the Film Noir genre, and he contributed solid performances to many Film Noir features, usually as a vile villain. Ryan played a worthy opponent for bounty hunter James Stewart in the Anthony Mann directed western The Naked Spur (1953), he locked horns with an intrepid investigator Spencer Tracy in the suspenseful Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) and starred alongside Harry Belafonte in the grimy, gangster flick Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Plus, the inventive Ryan excelled as the ruthless "John Claggart" in Billy Budd (1962), and two different WWII US generals - first in the star-filled The Longest Day (1962) and then in Battle of the Bulge (1965).
For the next eight years prior to his untimely death in 1973, Ryan landed some tremendous roles in a mixture of productions each aided by his high-caliber acting skills leaving strong impressions on movie audiences. He was one of the hard men hired to pursue kidnapped Claudia Cardinale in the hard boiled action of The Professionals (1966), a by-the-book army colonel clashing with highly unorthodox army major Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen (1967), and an embittered bounty hunter (again) forced to hunt down old friend William Holden in the violent Sam Peckinpah western classic The Wild Bunch (1969). Ryan's final on-screen performance was in the terrific production of The Iceman Cometh (1973) based on the Eugene O'Neill play and also starring Lee Marvin and Fredric March.
Legend has it that Sam Peckinpah clashed very heatedly with Ryan during the making of The Wild Bunch (1969); however Peckinpah eventually backed down when a crew member reminded Sam of Robert Ryan's proficiency with his fists!
Primarily a man of pacifist beliefs, Ryan often found it a challenge playing sadistic and racist characters who very much were at odds with his own personal ideals. Additionally, Ryan actively campaigned for improved civil rights, restricting the growth of nuclear weapons, and he strongly opposed McCarthyism and its abuse of people who many believed were innocent. A gifted, intelligent and powerful actor, Robert Ryan passed away on July 11th, 1973 of lung cancer.- Actor
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Ralph Waite was born in White Plains, New York on June 22, 1928. Educated at Bucknell University where he graduated with a BA degree, Waite existed rather aimlessly as a young adult while trying to find his way in the world. Occupations came and went, including social worker, religious editor for Harper & Row, and even Presbyterian minister after spending three years at the Yale School of Divinity. At age 30, however, he began to study acting and found his true life's passion.
Waite made his professional NY debut in a 1960 production of "The Balcony" at the Circle in the Square and was seen on Broadway in "Blues for Mister Charlie" before earning fine reviews in 1965 alongside Faye Dunaway in "Hogan's Goat". This was enough to encourage him to move West where he began collecting bit parts in prestigious movies, including Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Five Easy Pieces (1970). One of those films, the coming-of-age Last Summer (1969) starred an up-and-coming talent named Richard Thomas, who, of course, would figure prominently in Waite's success story in years to come. Waite continued to thrive as well on the stage appearing in both contemporary plays ("The Trial of Lee Harvey Osward") as well as Shakespearean classics (Claudius in "Hamlet" and Orsino in "Twelfth Night").
Stardom came for him in the form of the gentle, homespun Depression-era series The Waltons (1972). In the TV-movie pilot, the roles of John and Olivia Walton were played by Andrew Duggan and Patricia Neal. The Earl Hamner Jr. series, however, would welcome Waite along with Michael Learned, and make both, as well as Richard Thomas playing their son John-Boy, household names. Waite also directed several episodes of the series during the nine seasons. Throughout the seventies, he strove to expand outside his Walton patriarchal casting with other TV mini-movie endeavors. Those included Roots (1977), for which he received an Emmy nomination, the title role in The Secret Life of John Chapman (1976), OHMS (1980), Angel City (1980) and The Gentleman Bandit (1981). He also appeared in a few films including On the Nickel (1980) which he wrote and directed.
Throughout the run of the series, Waite continued to revert back to his theater roots from time to time. Notable was his role as Pozzo in Waiting for Godot (1977), which was televised by PBS, and a return to Broadway with "The Father" in 1981. Waite also founded the Los Angeles Actors Theatre in 1975 and served as its artistic director.
The Waltons (1972), which earned him an Emmy nomination, ended in 1981 and Waite ventured on to other TV character roles during the 80s and 90s but less visibly. In his second TV series The Mississippi (1982), which was produced by his company Ralph Waite Productions, he played a criminal lawyer who abandoned his practice (almost) for a leisurely life captaining a riverboat. It lasted only a year. There have been other more recent theater excursions including "Death of a Salesman" (1998), "The Gin Game" (1999), "Ancestral Voices (2000) and "This Thing of Darkness" (2002). He also had a recurring role on the offbeat HBO series Carnivàle (2003) and in 2009 began putting time in on the daytime soap Days of Our Lives (1965) as Father Matt. Waite was able to carry with him a certain grizzled, rumpled, craggy-faced, settled-in benevolence, although he was quite capable of villainy. He always seemed more comfortable in front of the camera wearing a dusty pair of work clothes than a suit. He continued to act well into his 80s, most notably playing the father of Mark Harmon on NCIS (2003).
For many years, Waite had held passionate political ambitions. He twice ran unsuccessfully for a Congressional seat -- in 1990 and 1998. A Palm Desert resident during his second attempt, the 70-year-old Californian was a Democratic hopeful for a seat left vacant by the late Sonny Bono after his fatal skiing accident in 1998. He was ultimately defeated by Bono's widow, Mary Bono.
Waite died in Palm Desert, California on February 13, 2014, at age 85. He is survived by his third wife, Linda East, whom he married in 1982 and two daughters from his first marriage.- Actor
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Born on October 1, 1921, in White Plains, New York, gruff veteran character actor James Whitmore earned early and widespread respect with his award-winning dramatic capabilities on Broadway and in films. He would later conquer TV with the same trophy-winning results.
The son of James Allen Whitmore and Florence Crane, he was educated at Connecticut's Choate School after receiving a football scholarship. He later earned his BA from Yale University in 1944 before serving with the Marines in World War II. Following his honorable discharge he prepared for the stage under the G.I. bill at the American Theatre Wing, where he met first wife Nancy Mygatt. They married in 1947 and went on to have three sons together -- Steve, Dan and actor/director James Whitmore Jr..
Applause and kudos came swiftly for Whitmore while under both the Broadway and film banners. After appearing with the Peterborough, New Hampshire, Players in the summer of 1947 in "The Milky Way," Whitmore made a celebrated Broadway debut as Tech Sergeant Evans in "Command Decision" later that year. His gritty performance swept the stage acting trifecta -- Tony, Donaldson and Theatre World awards. In later years Whitmore would often comment that most of his satisfaction came from performing on the live stage.
Hollywood soon took notice of Whitmore. Clark Gable happened to be starring in the film version of Command Decision (1948), and it was hoped that Whitmore would get to recreate his award-winning role. But it was not to be. Song-and-dance star Van Johnson, who was looking for straight, serious roles after a vastly successful musical career, was given the coveted part. The disappointment didn't last long, however, and Whitmore made an auspicious film bow the following year with a prime role in the documentary-styled crime thriller The Undercover Man (1949) starring Glenn Ford and Nina Foch. Whitmore scored brilliantly with his second film as well. Battleground (1949), another war picture, was highly praised and the actor became the talk of the town upon its initial release, grabbing both the Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for "supporting actor" for his efforts.
Hardly the handsome, matinée lead type, Whitmore nevertheless primed himself up for leading roles in a character vein and found a fine range of material come his way. He showed off his soft inner core as a religious, moral-minded family man opposite Nancy Reagan [Reagan] in the inspirational drama The Next Voice You Hear... (1950); featured his usual saltier side alongside Marjorie Main in Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone (1950); ably portrayed a hunchbacked crook in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and displayed customary authority as a security chief in the stoic military drama Above and Beyond (1952) starring Robert Taylor. Elsewhere, he played it strictly for laughs as a Runyonesque gangster partnered with Keenan Wynn in the classic MGM musical Kiss Me Kate (1953); portrayed a valiant cop fighting off gigantic mutant ants in the intelligent sci-fi thriller Them! (1954); a hard-hitting social worker in Crime in the Streets (1956) and even made the most of his small role as Tyrone Power's manager in The Eddy Duchin Story (1956).
By 1959, the craggy-faced actor known for his trademark caterpillar eyebrows, turned more and more toward the small screen, with memorable roles in The Twilight Zone (1959), The Detectives (1959) (working again with Robert Taylor), Ben Casey (1961) and a host of live theater dramas. He also starred in his own series as attorney Abraham Lincoln Jones in The Law and Mr. Jones (1960), which lasted two seasons.
Every so often a marvelous character would rear its pretty head and interest him back to the big screen. Notable of these were his white man passing for black in the controversial social drama Black Like Me (1964); his weary veteran cop in Madigan (1968); and his brash, authoritative simian in the classic sci-fi Planet of the Apes (1968).
Divorced from wife Nancy after more than two decades, Whitmore married actress Audra Lindley, best known on TV as Mrs. Roper of Three's Company (1976) fame, in 1972. The couple forged a strong acting partnership as well, particularly on stage, and maintained a professional relationship long after their 1979 divorce. Whitmore and Lindley were lauded for their appearances together in such plays as "The Magnificent Yankee," "On Golden Pond," "The Visit," "Foxfire" and "Love Letters," among others.
In the 1970s the actor transformed into a magnificent one-man-show machine playing such celebrated and inspiring historical/entertainment icons as Will Rogers, Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt. He disappeared into these historical legends so efficiently that even the powers-that-be had the good sense to preserve them on film and TV in the form of Will Rogers' USA (1972); Give 'em Hell, Harry! (1975), which earned him his second Oscar nomination; and Bully: An Adventure with Teddy Roosevelt (1978).
In his twilight years, Whitmore showed he still had what it took to touch movie audiences, most notably as the fragile prisoner-turned-parolee who cannot adapt to his late-life freedom in the classic film The Shawshank Redemption (1994). On TV he continued to win awards, copping a TV Emmy for a recurring part on The Practice (1997) in the late 1990s. A household face in commercials as well, one of his passions was gardening and he eventually became the spokesman for Miracle-Gro plant food.
Whitmore remarried (and re-divorced, 1979-1981) his first wife Nancy briefly before finding a lasting union with his fourth wife, actress-turned-author Noreen Nash, whom he married broaching age 80 in 2001. Whitmore died of lung cancer on February 6, 2009, after having been diagnosed in mid-November 2008.- Actor
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Burly, talented character actor who remained consistently busy playing "rough edged" or scary characters, often on the wrong side of the law. Young was born on April 30, 1940, in New York City, the son of a high school shop teacher. He is of Italian descent. Young received his dramatic arts training under acting coach Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.
Young first gathered notice playing tough thugs in such films as The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (1971), Across 110th Street (1972), Chinatown (1974) and The Gambler (1974). Director Sam Peckinpah cast Young as the getaway driver/assassin, "Mac", in The Killer Elite (1975), and Young came to the attention of newcomer Sylvester Stallone, who cast him as future brother-in-law "Paulie" in the 1976 sleeper hit Rocky (1976).
Young was nominated for an Oscar, and has gone on to reprise the role in all five "Rocky" sequels to date! Peckinpah re-hired him to play renegade trucker "Pigpen" in the moderately successful Convoy (1978) (watch for "Pigpen's" Mack truck where the writing on the door states "Paulie Hauling"!).
Young also appeared in Once Upon a Time in America (1984), The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984), Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989), Mickey Blue Eyes (1999) and The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002).- Actor
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Imposing, barrel-chested and often silver-haired Brian Dennehy was a prolific US actor, well respected on both screen and stage over many decades. He was born in July 1938 in Bridgeport, CT, and attended Columbia University in New York City on a football scholarship. Brian majored in history, before moving on to Yale to study dramatic arts. He first appeared in minor screen roles in such fare as Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Semi-Tough (1977) and Foul Play (1978) and proved popular with casting directors, leading to regular work. However, he really got himself noticed by movie audiences in the box-office hit First Blood (1982) as the bigoted sheriff determined to run Vietnam veteran "John Rambo" (played by Sylvester Stallone) out of his town. Dennehy quickly escalated to stronger supporting or co-starring roles in films including the Cold War thriller Gorky Park (1983), as a benevolent alien in Cocoon (1985), a corrupt sheriff in the western Silverado (1985), a tough but smart cop in F/X (1986) and a cop-turned-writer alongside hit man James Woods in Best Seller (1987). In 1987, Dennehy turned in one of his finest performances as cancer-ridden architect "Stourley Kracklite" in Peter Greenaway's superb The Belly of an Architect (1987), for which he won the Best Actor Award at the 1987 Chicago Film Festival. More strong performances followed. He reprised prior roles for Cocoon: The Return (1988) and F/X2 (1991), and turned in gripping performances in three made-for-TV films: a sadistic small-town bully who gets his grisly comeuppance in In Broad Daylight (1991), real-life serial killer John Wayne Gacy in the chilling To Catch a Killer (1992) and a corrupt union boss in Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story (1992). In 1993, Dennehy appeared in the role of police "Sgt. Jack Reed" in the telemovie Jack Reed: Badge of Honor (1993), and reprised the role in four sequels, which saw him for the first time become involved in co-producing, directing and writing screen productions! Demand for his services showed no signs of abating, and he put in further memorable performances in Romeo + Juliet (1996), as bad-luck-ridden "Willy Loman" in Death of a Salesman (2000) (which earned him a Golden Globe Award), he popped up in the uneven Spike Lee film She Hate Me (2004) and appears in the remake Assault on Precinct 13 (2005). The multi-talented Dennehy also had a rich theatrical career and appeared both in the United States and internationally in dynamic stage productions including "Death of a Salesman" (for which he picked up the 1999 Best Actor Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award), "A Touch of the Poet", "Long Day's Journey into Night" (for which he picked up another Tony Award in 2003) and in Eugene O'Neill's heart-wrenching "The Iceman Cometh."- Actor
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Dan Lauria was born on 12 April 1947 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He is an actor and director, known for The Spirit (2008), The Wonder Years (1988) and Stakeout (1987). He was previously married to Eileen Cregg.- David was born on Long Island, New York, and has a younger sister named Betsy and an older sister named Helen, who is also a gifted actor. The family moved to Illinois when David was four and moved all around the suburbs of Chicago - Evanston, Northbrook, Aurora, and finally Naperville when the town was nothing more than a suburban farming town of 27,000 people. Going to public school all his years, he kicked around with the guys of his youth, many of whom he still keeps up with. Every summer from the age of 12 was a working summer, saving for college that only lasted five weeks before he was kicked out.
He met Ken Stien when he was 11. Ken was a local horseman who trained horses and riders alike. Being a transplant and a veteran like David's father, they all fit in together. Ken became a mentor and lifelong friend. Teenage drinking and mild drug abuse colored David's youth with several run-ins with the local police. Trouble followed him for many years before he got straight.
Acting was somewhat of a natural progression. Working for the first time at the age of 12 in a community theater project, he landed a part, not in some cutesy kid story or clown play or happy-happy show, but a production of Kurt Vonnegut's "Happy Birthday, Wanda June" directed by Dale Bowers. The piece was pretty risqué for a small town and walkouts abounded due to language and subject matter. The local critic was very taken by David's presence, and thus provided David's first and only positive review. A few more small local plays and musicals followed, but time and adolescence took him to different places. High school was typically unremarkable, with less than average grades and anger on the menu for those years, leading to an undesired distinction of class clown in the class of '82, which upon receiving, he 'flipped off' the class and administration. The University of Iowa had accepted him, and he decided to pursue study in the field of social work.
Moving back to Naperthrill, he moved into an apartment above an abandoned car dealership and took several different jobs -driving auto parts, doing road construction, and finally enlisting into the United States Marine Corps reserves and letting that wash over him. The intense mandate laid before all recruits - that they must learn to toe the line and suck it up, and learn respect for others and then themselves - had a deep impact on him and followed him in all aspects of life.
Dennis Rosa put him in the chorus of a Chicago hit musical, "One Shining Moment" starring Megan Mullally, Kevin Anderson, and Alan Ruck. After the show's run, David had misgivings about his new profession and didn't quite feel accredited to be in it, having stumbled into the audition while the Chicago school district was on strike and he had no class. He applied and was accepted to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. That decision took him to New York City. They were good days in the city, filled with a pace and energy he could now relate to; ironies abounded in the city, which had no time for its dead, nor patience for sentimentality. A friend simply 'by example' led him to sobriety. Reading plays and lacking any real substantial work, it was years before anything of note came his way. Reading "Six Degrees of Separation" was the first time he discovered, like others, that John Guare had written a great play. He read for several parts first but it was the part of the nameless "hustler" that he knew he had to play and so "serve" this story. Years went by, and little jobs in the theater followed, but most of the years were spent in East Harlem on 109th and 1st paying the bills with carpentry jobs and paint crews. He then stumbled into a friendship with Al Noccella, his partner in construction and beneficiary who kept him employed and ushered him out when it looked like the "break" had come.
The character Steve in "Sex and the City" came after many auditions for many parts on the show and lasted for almost five years. At a USO gala event, he met Chrysti, an Army specialist working the gate at Fort Monroe, Virginia, and through a whole long, bizarre, and weird series of events and lies, hooked his life to a woman that really meant the world to him. - Actor
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Tim Matheson is an American actor, director and producer perhaps best known for his portrayal of the smooth talking 'Eric "Otter" Stratton' in the 1978 comedy, National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), but has had a variety of other well-known roles both before and since, including critical accolades for his playing "Vice President John Hoynes" on the television series, The West Wing (1999), which garnered him two Primetime Emmy award nominations for Best Guest Star in a Drama Series.
From 2011 to 2015, Matheson starred as 'Dr. Brick Breeland' in The CW series, Hart of Dixie (2011), opposite Rachel Bilson. He has and continues to direct several episodes each season throughout the series. Not limited to "Hart of Dixie", Matheson has made a career of directing an array of episodic projects on some of television's most prominent shows, including "The Last Ship," "Burn Notice," "Criminal Minds," "Without a Trace," "Cold Case," "Numbers," "Drop Dead Diva," "Suits," "Eureka" and "White Collar," as well as pilots for Fox's "The Good Guys" and the USA Network successful original series "Covert Affairs."
Beginning his career at the age of 13, Matheson appeared in Robert Young's CBS nostalgia comedy series, Window on Main Street (1961), during the 1961-1962 television season. In 1964, he provided the voice of the lead character in the cartoon program Jonny Quest (1964), as well as the voice of "Jace" in the original animated series, Space Ghost (1966). Additionally, he played the role of the oldest son, "Mike Beardsley", in the film Yours, Mine and Ours (1968), which starred Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda.
In 1969, Matheson joined the cast of NBC's western series, The Virginian (1962), in its eighth season, as "Jim Horn". During the final season of the television western Bonanza (1959) in 1972-1973, Matheson played "Griff King", a parolee who tries to reform his life as a worker at the Ponderosa Ranch under Ben Cartwright's watch. Following that, he portrayed young motorcycle cop "Phil Sweet", in the 1973 film, Magnum Force (1973).
In the fall of 1976, Matheson was seen opposite Kurt Russell in the NBC series, The Quest (1976), the story of two young men in the American West seeking the whereabouts of their sister, a captive of the Cheyenne. In 1978, he co-starred in the acclaimed National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), opposite John Belushi; the following year, he appeared alongside Belushi again in Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979). Matheson and Catherine Hicks played "Rick Tucker" and "Amanda Tucker", who operate a detective agency in Laurel Canyon in CBS' Tucker's Witch (1982), which aired during the 1982-1983 season. He then appeared in the 1983 To Be or Not to Be (1983), starring Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft and went on to star in the 1984 comedy, Up the Creek (1984) and 1985's Fletch (1985).
Matheson, along with business partner 'Dan Grodnik', bought National Lampoon in 1989, when the magazine was facing financial decline. They took the stock from two dollars to over six dollars, and sold it in 1991. In 1996, Matheson took on the role of a con man who claims to be Carol Brady's thought-to-be-dead husband in A Very Brady Sequel (1996). Matheson was seen opposite Ryan Reynolds in the feature comedy National Lampoon's Van Wilder (2002) in 2002, playing the father of the title character, who was inspired by his own character in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), as a nod to the original film.
Tim was born Timothy Lewis Matthieson in Glendale, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, the son of Sally and Clifford Matthieson, a training pilot. He has three wonderful children with former wife Megan Murphy Matheson.- Actor
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- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Jack Pennick was an American film actor, a familiar face, primarily in the movies of John Ford. He was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of gold miner Albert R. and Bessie (Murray) Pennick. After himself working as a gold miner, Pennick joined the U.S. Marine Corps and served, with the Pekin Legation Guard, in China in 1912 and in World War I. He and his first wife, Grechin, had two children by the time he was 20. He had a third child with his second wife, Nona Lorraine. After the First World War, Pennick worked as a horse wrangler and got work as such in various film productions. His rather unforgettably unattractive face caught the attention of filmmakers, particularly Ford, and Pennick began to get work as an actor, as well as occasionally a military technical adviser. Pennick re-enlisted in the navy in 1942, at the age of 46. He served as Chief Petty Officer under Commander John Ford in the Field Photographic Unit and, according to Ford, was decorated with the Silver Star medal for action in which he was wounded at Majaz al Bab, Tunisia during World War II. He continued to appear in films after the war, his career waning simultaneously with Ford's. He died in Manhattan Beach, California, at the age of 68.- Stunts
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One of the key figures in the development of modern cinematic stunt design, improved safety procedures and co-founder of the Stuntmen's Association of Motion Pictures & Televsion, Loren Janes ranks alongside Dar Robinson, Hal Needham and Yakima Canutt for his contributions to movie stunt work.
James has lent his athletic skills to many amazing stunt sequences in over 130 feature films, and has doubled for some of Hollywood's biggest stars including Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Jack Nicholson and even Debbie Reynolds in a career spanning nearly half a century. He has contributed his talents to such spectacular films as The Ten Commandments (1956), Spartacus (1960), The Magnificent Seven (1960), Planet of the Apes (1968), The Towering Inferno (1974) and Beverly Hills Cop (1984). Ruggedly handsome, Janes has also had minor acting roles in over a dozen Hollywood feature films.
In 2001, well known western actor L.Q. Jones presented Loren Janes with the Golden Boot Award for his lifetime contribution to the western film genre.- Additional Crew
- Actor
- Stunts
Aaron Williamson is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, an American actor, and a renowned fitness trainer.
Aaron was born in Daytona Beach, FL & joined the Marine Corps weeks after graduating from high school. Aaron traveled the world as an infantryman, a body bearer & a security specialist assisting in high level missions; his Marine Corps career was unique unlike many other service members. After Aaron's active duty ended he returned to Iraq as part of the global biometrics mission where he remained for over 4 more years.
Aaron returned to the United States in 2009 where he set out to finally fulfill his passion for fitness & bodybuilding. No matter where Aaron was in the world, he was always known for his passion & knowledge in fitness. In the process of becoming a competitive bodybuilder, Aaron found himself in an entirely new and amazing journey making a huge impact in the film industry as an actor and stuntman.- Handsome, rugged American leading man John Russell (whose credits are often confused with those of child actor Johnny Russell) attended the University of California, where he was a student athlete. Serving in the US Marine Corps in WW II, he earned a battlefield commission and decorations for valor at Guadalcanal. His dark good looks brought him to the attention of a talent scout after the war and he began playing second leads and occasional heavies in major productions. In the 1950s, he branched into television and starred in several popular series, most notably Lawman (1958). His appearances were sporadic after the 1960s, though he was a memorable villain in Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider (1985).
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Robert Gene "Red" West was a close friend of Elvis Presley and a member of Presley's inner circle, known as "The Memphis Mafia". He first met Elvis in high school, where he was a year behind him. West played football for the Memphis Tigers high school football team, boxed in the Golden Gloves and played football for the Jones County Junior College Bobcats playing center.
West lived with his mother, Lois West, in the Hurt Housing project in Memphis. West became Elvis's personal driver in driving Elvis and band members Scotty Moore, Bill Black and later D.J. Fontana to different Southern cities for live appearances from 1955 to 1956. West served in the US Marine Corps from 1956 to late 1958 and was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, which allowed him to stay in contact with Elvis. On August 14, 1958, West's estranged father, Newton Thomas West, died, the same day as Elvis' mother, Gladys Presley.
After Elvis' discharge from the US Army in 1960, West was employed as one of the star's bodyguards. Over the years, Elvis bought West a number of vehicles as he became a world-famous celebrity. West also became a movie stuntman and appeared in 16 of Elvis' films in the 1960s, usually playing extras or bit and supporting parts. West married one of Elvis' secretaries, Pat West, on July 1, 1961. West became a songwriter for songs that Elvis, Pat Boone, Ricky Nelson and Johnny Rivers recorded, including the classic tune "Separate Ways" for Elvis, which won a BMI Award. In addition to the Elvis movies, West appeared in three Robert Conrad TV series The Wild Wild West (1965), Black Sheep Squadron (1976) and The Duke (1979). During the 1970s West, his cousin Del 'Sonny' West, and Dave Hebler served as Elvis' bodyguards, in charge of his daily transportation and keeping weirdo or potentially dangerous fans away from him. On July 13, 1976, Vernon Presley, Elvis' father, fired all three bodyguards, criticizing what he believed to be their heavy-handed tactics. The three later collaborated on a book about their lives as Elvis' bodyguards, which was published just two weeks before Elvis' death in 1977.
West continued his acting and songwriting careers, the former until 2015, two years before his death.- Actor
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In the span of just a few short years, Brad James has gone from US Marine to one of the most exciting faces in television and film today. Although widely praised for his comedic role as 'Todd' on the hit series "Tyler Perry's For Better Or Worse," Brad has shown himself to be much more than just a comedic actor. Through dozens of television and film appearances he has showcased a vast range of characters from action hero, to misunderstood boy-toy, to the diabolical villain.
Brad appeared in the Nicholas Sparks adaptation of his popular novel "The Choice," with Teresa Palmer, Alexandra Daddario and Benjamin Walker. His other feature film credits include appearing alongside Billy Crystal and Bette Midler in the family comedy "Parental Guidance," appearing with Jake Gyllenhaal and Hugh Jackman in Denis Villeneuve's "Prisoners," and starring as 'Spence' in the feature film "Comeback Dad."
2016 witnessed Brad appearing on "NCIS: New Orleans," adding to his long list of television credits that also include ABC's "Devious Maids", The CW's "Hart of Dixie" and recurring on WGN's critically acclaimed series "Underground."
In addition to his acting, Brad has also begun to write, produce and direct projects that he feels have stories that will entertain and enlighten. He's also expanding his reach and utilizing his creative abilities to speak to the youth about the different paths to success in business as well as personal endeavors. He has spoken at several drama academies, schools, panels, camps and more; constantly promoting belief in one's self to accomplish anything that you put your mind and heart to do.- Actor
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Actor Brian Kelly was a Valentine's Day baby. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Anne Veronica (O'Brien) and Harry Francis Kelly, who was Governor of Michigan (1943-1947) and served as a justice on the Michigan Supreme Court. He was of Irish descent. Brian joined the Marine Corps. during the Korean War and subsequently attended the University of Michigan Law School with the intent of pursuing a political career like his father, but it only lasted a year. During college he found work as a male model and later broke into the business in Detroit with radio and TV commercials.
A talent agent spotted him and in the late 50s the dark-haired, hairy-chested, extremely handsome actor decided to try his luck in Hollywood. He found some nominal parts coming his way on such series as Adventures in Paradise (1959), The Beverly Hillbillies (1962) and The Rifleman (1958), among others, but nothing that advanced his career significantly. He appeared regularly on two TV short-lived series -- the detective drama 21 Beacon Street (1959) and the high-speed adventure series Straightaway (1961) before nabbing his most recognizable role as game life ranger Porter Ricks on the popular aquatic series Flipper (1964). Although Brian took a back seat to the scene-stealing antics of the titular dolphin and the two actors (Luke Halpin and Tommy Norden) playing his sons, fans admired the actor's widower character on the series who provided a strong moral fiber to his children. The success of the show, which was filmed in Miami and the Bahamas, led to a brief movie career, including a lead in Around the World Under the Sea (1966), which seemed in keeping with his underwater expertise.
In 1970, Brian was involved in a serious motorcycle accident, which left his right arm and leg paralyzed. He subsequently won a legal settlement ($750,000), but the severe impairment cost him his on-camera career. Undaunted, he used his settlement money to produce films, serving as executive producer of the popular Harrison Ford starrer Blade Runner (1982) and associate producer of Cities of the Wild (1996). He first married gorgeous, aspiring blonde actress Laura Devon in 1962. Both met while living in Detroit and married while climbing up the Hollywood ladder. The union ended four years later. He then married Valerie Ann Romero in 1972, with whom he had a daughter Hallie in 1975 and a son Devin in 1980. Brian died of pneumonia in Voorhees, New Jersey, just a few days before his 74th birthday in 2005.- Actor
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Tim Ware was born and raised in Atlanta Georgia. His parents, Barney and Martha Ware provided much love and support throughout his childhood and have continued to have a huge impact on his life. His parents and extended family offered many unique and wonderful opportunities to him, and he took advantage of as many as possible. At the age of 13 he learned to fly and by the age of 15 was working as a crop duster on weekends and summers. Before he had his pilot's license Tim and his cousin were able to start Mid-Georgia Crop Dusters with financial help from a family member. The company was in business for the next 30 years. He attended Marist School in Atlanta and went to Duke University on a tennis scholarship. At Duke Tim had double majors, drama and finance. Upon graduation he did a stint in the Marines. He then worked for his great uncle on his various business interests throughout Europe, Asia and Africa. Tim found the work was both fulfilling and exhausting. After four years Tim moved on. He became a firefighter for the City of Decatur Georgia and continued his crop dusting. Twice a month he would fly to New York where he studied under acting coach Uta Hagen. Several years later, with Uta's encouragement he began doing stage work. During a performance of God's Favorite he was seen by an agent and signed on the spot. He landed a role on his first audition, joined SAG, and has been acting ever since. Tim married his wife, Dee, in 1995 and shortly after they began working together in the wireless communication business. The tower business let him support his acting habit and over the past 30 years he has been in over 60 films and television shows. He has been seen as a recurring character in two series, CBS' Reckless where he plays Judge Abbott Garner; and on the Sundance Channel in Rectify as Dr. Perlmutt. Tim has twin daughters, a stepdaughter and son, and five blue ribbon, prize winning grand children.- Actor
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Pat Flaherty served in the military during the Mexican border campaign in 1916 and was a flying officer for the Signal Corps in World War I. He then played professional baseball in the minor leagues in Des Moines, San Francisco, Shreveport, Indianapolis, Akron and for other teams. He played professional football for the Chicago Bears in 1923. After his sports career was finished he went to New York, where he became very successful with the DeSylva-Brown music publishing company. There he married Dorothea X. Fugazy, the daughter of a famous boxing promoter. In 1930 he came to Hollywood to work as a producer for Joseph P. Kennedy at Fox Films, but the Great Depression resulted in his position being eliminated, and he turned to acting. In A Day at the Races (1937), he played a plainclothes detective who leads a group of policemen chasing Groucho Marx. His clipped East Coast accent and gruff demeanor often caused him to be cast as tough cops, prison guards, foremen, or other types of authority figures. In addition to his career as a character actor, he was a technical advisor on baseball pictures; for example, he taught Gary Cooper how to pitch for his role in The Pride of the Yankees (1942). In World War II he received a commission in the Marine Corps. He also served in Korea and was discharged with the rank of major.- Actor
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Ideal for playing swarthy villains, James Griffith's tall, dark and gaunt features and shady countenance invaded hundreds of film and TV dramas (and a few comedies) throughout his career on-camera. Highlighted by his arched brows, hooded eyes and prominent proboscis, heavy character work would be his largest source of income for nearly four decades.
He was born James J. Griffith, of Welsh ancestry, on February 13, 1916, in Los Angeles. He and sister Dorothy were raised in the Santa Monica area. An early interest in music led to his learning to play several instruments, including the clarinet and saxophone. He got his first taste of entertaining audiences by performing in local bands while arranging music for them as well. An interest in acting came about participating in school plays and continued when he found parts to play in small theatre houses in such productions as "They Can't Get You Down" in 1939.
Unable to consistently pay the bills, however, Griffith found steadier work at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica. Enlisting in the Marine Corps. in 1941, he served his country until 1947. Eventually married with a newborn, a chance meeting with bandleader Spike Jones while working as a gas station attendant led to a six month traveling gig with Jones' City Slicker Band playing tenor saxophone.
Griffith finally broke into "B" films with a smarmy but showy role as an insurance agent in the murder drama Blonde Ice (1948). He continued to sniff out work in both drama and occasional comedy usually as unsympathetic or shady characters, sometimes billed and sometimes not. Some of his bigger, noteworthy parts in the early years came with the pictures Alaska Patrol (1949), Indian Territory (1950) and Double Deal (1950). He also took on some famous and infamous figures of history as in Fighting Man of the Plains (1949) (as William Quantrill), Day of Triumph (1954) (as Judas Iscariot), Jesse James vs. the Daltons (1954) (as outlaw Bob Dalton), The Law vs. Billy the Kid (1954) (as Pat Garrett), and Masterson of Kansas (1954) as Doc Holliday. He provided the voice of Abraham Lincoln in the Rod Cameron western Stage to Tucson (1950).
TV took much of the mustachioed actor's time from the 1950s on, notably in westerns such as "The Lone Ranger," "Annie Oakley," "Gunsmoke," "The Big Valley," "Bonanza," "Death Valley Days," "The Gene Autry Show," "Wagon Train," "Rawhide," "Maverick," "Little House on the Prairie," "B.J. and the Bear" and "Dallas." Elsewhere on the small screen he played cold-hearted villains twice on "Batman" in support of the nefarious Ma Parker and Catwoman. Not to be pegged in just oaters, he also appeared in less dusty TV fare such as "The Streets of San Francisco," "Fantasy Island" and Emergency!" Griffith made his final acting appearance on a 1984 "Trapper John" episode.
A gifted raconteur, his later years were spent writing theatre plays and movie scripts, and attending film festivals. Two of his earlier movie scripts that found releases were Russ Meyer's Lorna (1964) (in which he also appeared), Shalako (1968) and Catlow (1971). Griffith died of cancer on September 17, 1993, at age 77.- Actor
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Benjamin Busch is an actor, writer, director, producer, and photographer. He was born in Manhattan and grew up in rural central New York state. Following his graduation from Vassar College he served as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps deploying for two combat tours in Iraq. His written work has been published in Harper's, and was notable in the 2010 Best American Essays anthology. His photographs have been featured in Five Points, Connecticut Review, Photography Quarterly, and War, Literature, & the Arts. As an actor, he is best known for his appearances in Homicide, The Wire, Generation Kill, and The Beast. His first film, Sympathetic Details, came out in 2008 winning numerous international film awards, and his new film as writer/director, BRIGHT, was released in January 2011. His first book is forthcoming from Ecco Press, an imprint of HarperCollins. He lives on a farm in Michigan with his wife and two fantastic daughters.- Actor
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Nick Dash has a unique background of military service, as well as fiction and entertainment production. Nick honorably served nearly fourteen years in the United States Marine Corps. He is also an accomplished screenwriter, director, and producer.
Nick is an expert of Marine Corps history, culture and customs. He was deployed in several operations overseas in Japan, Thailand, and the Malaysia border of Cambodia, as well as Laos, Korea, and Iraq, and has instructed over 2,000 Marines in combat skills.
His last assignment with the Marines was with The Marine Corps Combat Camera office in Los Angeles. There he was introduced to the entertainment industry. He worked for the USMC as a staff NCO to teach Jamie Foxx to be a Marine on the film Anthony Swoffard's Gulf War memoir, Jarhead starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Nick was instrumental in providing technical and logistic support that accurately portrayed the lives of Marines and Soldiers in combat.
He has worked on several projects including, Pool Party, Dr. G: Medical Examiner for Discovery Channel, The Best Damn Sports Show Period and 2005 MTV Movie Awards Show. He has produced, directed and starred in the short film Porthole, a semi-autobiographical film following a Marine attempting to find himself after the Corps. The film received a heartfelt reception at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Nick has several projects in development for Los Angeles in the United States and abroad.
Nick holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Concordia University, Irvine.- Actor
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Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Rob Mello is an American actor best known for his role as John Tombs in the Blumhouse breakout film, Happy Death Day, which he's reprised in Happy Death Day 2U. His first major role was as Ted Cole in the film adaptation of Nicholas Sparks' "The Best of Me"(2014), and as Buford Granger in Badass 3 (Badasses on the bayou). He has since gone on to play in the Magnificent Seven 2016 (Antoine Fuqua), Heart, Baby! 2017 by Angela Shelton. Rob has worked across from such stars as Frank Grillo in the upcoming film, Into the Ashes.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of a Traffic Manager, he spent most of his time in and around Everett, Massachusetts. He attended Catholic school and graduated in 1993. Among playing men's volleyball and football, Rob also participated in the Drama Club snagging the lead role as Walter Hollander in "Don't Drink The Water". During one performance he forgot his lines. He flirted with a grandmother in the audience until he could recall them. Upon which he returned to the stage and resumed the scene. The audience loved it and Rob realized that he had a knack for improvisation. After graduation Rob enlisted into the United States Marine Corps, where he served as Shore Party. He became a 4-time rifle expert and gained significant combat training. After he was honorably discharged in 1997, he moved around the country working odd-end jobs.
Rob's assent to a career in film acting was not a typical one. In 2012 while already working two jobs to provide for his family, he was just scraping by. Rob came across a Craigslist ad for an extra and decided to give it a try. Thoroughly impressing the director, Palomino, the audition landed him a leading role in the SAG short film "Dickie-Bird. Soon after Rob auditioned for the comedy short "Quicklime". He fell in love with acting all over again. Rob enrolled in classes at Performer's Studio Workshop in Tampa Florida, where he studied under Kathy Laughlin learning the Eric Morris process.
Since then his career has only skyrocketed. Starring alongside James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan in the Nicholas Sparks movie "The Best Of Me" (2014), with the original "Bad Asses" Danny Trejo and Danny Glover in "Bad Asses 3" (2015). He is a proud member of SAG/AFTRA.
Rob resides in New Orleans,LA.
Trade Mark: Bostonian Accent
Chiseled jawline.
Trivia: His father John Mello was a Traffic Manager and his mother Elizabeth owned her own house cleaning business.
Participated in the Bay State Games in 1992.
While the majority of his roles are for villains he is actually a really nice guy. He is the youngest of six children.
He can speak Italian, English, and Spanish.
He is an accomplished cook.
He was nominated as "Best Villain" at the Act Film Challenge (date??).
Known for being a straight shooter. He will be brutally honest with anyone.
Although an amazing actor he is also an accomplished writer as well.
He is passionate about history and learning spherically.
Rob joins the ranks with such Marine turned actor greats as Gene Hackman, Harvey Keitel, R. Lee Ermey, and James Whitmore.- Actor
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Known for "I, Witness", Orange is the New Black, and John Wick, William grew up in Columbus and Canal Winchester, Ohio. He spent his youth racing motocross, watching Horror movies, and listening to Jazz, Classical, and Slayer. After vocational school, he served in the Marine Corps. William then moved to Seattle, WA and formed the Punk band Lethal Rejection releasing five albums and touring for nearly a decade. As of 2007, William has been acting, oil painting, and writing in NYC.- Actor
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Hiram A. Murray is an award-winning American actor, born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He first started his acting career in 1999 on the CBS television show "Now and Again". Hiram took a break from acting to pursue a formal education in screenwriting and film directing in college. While in college he worked for the NYPD. Shortly after 9/11, Hiram put his dreams and aspirations aside to serve his country in the United States Marine Corps, where he quickly rose to the rank of Captain. After completing his active duty in 2008, Hiram came back to his first love "Acting". Hiram has gone on to find success in Hollywood with such roles on Fox's "Touch" starring opposite Kiefer Sutherland, "Lethal Weapon" starring opposite Damon Wayans, Paramount Pictures' "Scout's Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse", a recurring role on ABC's "General Hospital", leading roles in such films as "The Great War", "Operation Seawolf" and various other film and television shows. Most recently, he starred in Amazon Prime's new series "The Terminal List" opposite Chris Pratt.- Writer
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Nick Jones Jr. served in the United States Marine Corps before leaving to pursue a career in the film industry. He started his career as an actor. Before long he was itching to create the worlds he helped bring to life on screen. He studied filmmaking at the New York Film Academy where he learned to write and direct. He interned on the ABC comedy The Middle as a director, learning from the show's main director Lee Shallat-Chemel. He later became the mentee of feature film director Dito Montiel and recently worked with him on his latest film, Man Down, starring Shia Labeouf and Gary Oldman as the film's military consultant.- Writer
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Sheldon Lettich was born in New York City, but moved to California at a young age and grew up in the Los Angeles area. After graduation from high school he spent nearly four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as a radio operator in South Vietnam with 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, and later with the elite 1st Force Reconnaissance Company based at Camp Pendleton, California.
He worked his way through college as a professional photographer, and attended at the American Film Institute's Center for Advanced Film Studies as a Cinematography Fellow. Although his initial career goal was to become a director of photography, at the AFI his interests branched out to encompass writing and directing, which became the two fields where he found eventual success in the entertainment business.
Based partly upon his experiences in Vietnam, he co-authored the renowned play, "Tracers," with a group of Vietnam Vets who were also aspiring actors. First performed on July 4th, 1980 at the Odyssey Theater in Los Angeles, the play then traveled to Joseph Papp's Public Theater in New York City, the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago (directed by Gary Sinise), the Royal Court Theater in London, and numerous venues worldwide. It received both Drama Desk Awards and L.A. Drama Critics Awards, and is still being performed throughout the world.
Around the same time, Lettich was writing numerous spec screenplays. One of these, co-written with Josh Becker, subsequently became the cult classic, Thou Shalt Not Kill... Except (1985), which starred Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi.
Eventually his screenplays began attracting the attention of producers in Hollywood. He co-authored the Cold War drama, Russkies (1987), which was the first starring role for a young Joaquin Phoenix. Around the same time he wrote the screenplay for the now-classic martial arts film, Bloodsport (1988), which launched the career of Jean-Claude Van Damme. One of his Vietnam-based screenplays caught the eye of Sylvester Stallone, which resulted in an overall deal with Stallone's White Eagle Productions, and led to him co-writing Rambo III (1988) with Stallone.
The success of Bloodsport not only turned Jean-Claude Van Damme into an international action star, but it also forged a long and ongoing friendship with the man who wrote it. Van Damme helped to launch Lettich's directing career with the film, Lionheart (1990) , which became Van Damme's first movie to be released theatrically by a major U.S. studio. This was followed by Double Impact (1991), which was filmed in Hong Kong, with Lettich directing Van Damme in a challenging double role as twin brothers seeking revenge for their parents' murder.
Lettich next discovered Mark Dacascos, who made his starring debut in Only the Strong (1993), a film that introduced the Brazilian martial art of Capoeira to international audiences. He also directed Dolph Lundgren in The Last Patrol (2000), and Daniel Bernhardt in Perfect Target (1997).
Continuing his long association with Van Damme, Lettich was a writer and a producer on the historical French Foreign Legion film, Legionnaire (1998), starring Van Damme and shot on location in Morocco. And he directed The Order (2001), an action-thriller starring Van Damme and Charlton Heston, which was filmed on locations in Israel and Bulgaria.
His most recent directorial effort, which he also co-wrote, is The Hard Corps (2006), an urban action-romance. Starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Vivica A. Fox, the film was shot on locations around Vancouver, Canada, and on sound stages in Romania, and was financed and released worldwide by Sony Pictures Entertainment.
His latest movie is Max (2015), which he co-wrote with his long-time friend, Boaz Yakin. The movie was directed by Boaz and produced by MGM. It was released nationwide in the USA by Warner Brothers on June 26th, 2015, and by the end of the summer had grossed $43 million. The novelization sold over 100,000 copies. A sequel has been completed.- Actor
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Tom Reese (real name: Tom Allen) was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on August 8, 1928; his father and uncle were country-western singers, "The Chattanooga Boys," traveling around performing their bluegrass music with the family, including Tom, in tow. Around 1940 the Allens relocated to New York, where Tom's dad supported the family working as a steelworker in the daytime and a singing waiter at night. Tom later held the expected assortment of odd jobs (Automat busboy, usher, etc.) in New York, and (starting at 17) served two tours of duty in the Marine Corps. He later studied dramatics at the American Theater Wing under the G.I. Bill and spent 15 years on the road working nightclubs (emceeing, doing stand-up, etc.). He studied with Lee Strasberg, did some work off-Broadway and in local TV shows and made his film bow in John Cassavetes' New York-made Shadows (1958). Cassavetes also had Reese fly out to Hollywood to play a part in an episode of his detective series Johnny Staccato (1959), Reese's Hollywood debut. He was ready to return to New York after doing the show but an agent signed him "and I've been here [California] ever since." His first major film was Flaming Star (1960), an Elvis Presley western and the start of Reese's long career in big- and small-screen oaters,including Gunsmoke (1955) Bonanza (1959), The Virginian (1962), Rawhide (1959), Branded (1965).- Actress
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Danielle Alaine Guldin is an American actor who was raised in the small town of Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, where she became involved in a large number of diverse activities to safeguard against boredom. As a teenager, she was a competitive dancer, as well as a soloist in the Eastern Pennsylvania Ballet Company, and an Honors student who enjoyed competing in (and winning) German language competitions. Upon high school graduation, she constructively rebelled against her artistic roots to become a Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Specialist in the United States Marine Corps. After serving Honorably in the USMC, Danielle reconnected with her dance background and secured a position as an NFL Cheerleader for the Philadelphia Eagles. To date, Danielle is the only woman in the world to have accomplished these two diverse feats.
Danielle couldn't deny the urge to pursue acting, so she moved to New York City upon retiring from the NFL and fully committed to learning the craft. Since then, Danielle has booked roles on a growing number of films and national television shows.- Actor
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Dana Lee was born in a village outside of Guanzhou (Canton) China. His family immigrated to the U.S. when he was seven and settled in Houston, Texas. As one of a handful of Chinese-Americans living in segregated Houston, Dana was exposed to both the White and Black communities from an early age. His father had a grocery store in the fifth ward, a Black neighborhood, and their home was located in Denver Harbor, a poor White section of town. Growing up shy all of his childhood, Dana took acting classes at Stephen F. Austin High School to overcome it. He immediately fell in love with acting and eventually became an all-city actor. To this day, Dana has never forgotten what his high school acting coach, Mr. Jerry Long, told him: "A good actor can transcend race, ethnicity, and color." Immediately after graduating from high school, Dana made a beeline to Los Angeles. But, because of his parent's disapproval of acting, it was not until many years later that he went headlong into the "biz." In the intervening years, Dana joined the Marine Corps Reserve and got his Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration. Dana credits Jerry Thorpe with giving him his entry into SAG with a role on "Kung Fu" and Stephen J. Cannell for giving him a career in TV, appearing in many of Cannell's shows. He is also grateful to Sylvester Stallone for the opportunity to work with him in "Rambo: First Blood, Part II." In addition to his prolific film and TV career, Dana has also been active on stage. He has performed at such prestigious venues as The Public Theatre in New York City, The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and The Doolittle and The Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. He has acted in classics by Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Chekhov and in modern plays by Miller, Albee, and Shepard. For many years, Dana was a major driving force at East-West Players, America's most renowned Asian-American theatre. Among his most memorable stage works was playing George to Nancy Kwan's Martha in The Singapore Repertory Theatre's production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and Dr. Rank to Shabana Azmi's Nora, in "Nora," Ingmar Bergman's translation/adaptation of Ibsen's "A Doll's House," also at SRT. Dana is a distinguished theatre director, too, having won many awards for directing. Dana is married to his college sweetheart, Michele. They have two beautiful daughters. Their eldest, Jennifer, is a physical therapist, and the youngest, Danielle is graduating with a Master's Degree in production design from AFI. In 2002, Dana won the Award of Excellence at the Big Bear Lake International Film Festival. He was also recognized for his acting achievements by the Chinese-American Society of Los Angeles.- Actor
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George Cisneros is a bilingual actor from Texas. He is a proud veteran who served in the United States Marine Corps as a sergeant. He was honorably discharged and attended the University of Houston where he received a BS degree in Psychology and Business Management. He also attended the Art Institute of Houston and received a degree in culinary art.
George Cisneros is an avid skydiver with over 550 jumps. He is an accomplished athlete who enjoys surfing, snowboarding, mountain biking, running, sculpting, playing classical guitar and riding his motorcycle. He performs his own stunts and is sometimes called an "Adrenaline Junkie."
George Cisneros' strengths as an actor come from his powerful and expressive eyes and his ability to completely submerge himself into the character he portrays. He prefers flawed and complicated characters that allow him to dig into his unconscious and discover new domains within himself. George Cisneros takes his extensive life experiences and infuses them into his characters to create reality.- Actor
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Born in Montana to homesteading parents, Robert Bray eventually moved to Seattle with his family and attended Lincoln High School. After graduation, he knocked around for a while as a lumberjack, cowboy and a member of the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps).
As a young man, Bray worked for a while in Hollywood as a studio carpenter in the early 1940s, before joining the U.S. Marine Corps in 1942 during World War II. He saw heavy action in the South Pacific during his tour of duty, before finally mustering out as a Master Sergeant at war's end.
With aspirations of being a taxidermist or owner of a hunting/fishing lodge, Bray finally decided to pursue acting as a career, and was eventually signed in 1946 to a contract at RKO Pictures where he was looked upon as the new Gary Cooper. He spent three years of a seven-year deal playing supporting roles in a variety of RKO police dramas and Tim Holt westerns before his contract was dropped. From then until the early 1960s when he landed the plum TV role of Ranger Corey Stuart in the Lassie (1954) TV series, he was a freelance actor, who found work mainly portraying he-men such as a tough cavalry officers, hard-bitten cops, a stagecoach driver, etc., in a wide range of action-oriented movies and television episodes. He won the part in "Lassie" over several other candidates because of his affinity for animals, and theirs for him.
Earlier in his career Bray played in some well-received if minor roles such as "Carl" the bus driver in Bus Stop (1956), the film that finally got Marilyn Monroe taken seriously as a dramatic actress. That picture's director, Joshua Logan, offered Bray a part in his next film, South Pacific (1958) but, to his never-ending regret, Bray instead opted to star in several forgettable low-budget pictures for Allied Artists. "Had I appeared in the smash hit South Pacific," he said, "who knows where I might have ended up."
After being replaced on "Lassie" in 1968, Bray's motivation for continued acting work waned and he eventually retired with his wife Joan to Bishop, California, where he could often be found cruising around town in his Winnebago motor home with his dog Lady. An ardent fly fisherman, hunter, model duck carver and all-around sportsman, Bob lived out his final years in the shadow of the eastern High Sierras, where he made so many of his early western movies. After his passing in 1983, his ashes were scattered over Zuma Beach, California, where he spent many pleasant days as a young man.- Actor
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Marine Corps combat veteran Davis Aguila is a native of Cleveland, Ohio. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in 2003. Assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, he served in the 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines based out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He deployed to Haiti with Operation Secure Tomorrow followed by two consecutive deployments in Iraq. Davis served an additional three years in the Reserves. During this time, he traveled to Quantico, Virginia to train Reserve Marines in convoy formations, vehicle and personnel searches and S.W.A.T. tactics.- Writer
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Herman J. Mankiewicz, now known primarily as the man who co-wrote Citizen Kane (1941) with Hollywood's greatest wunderkind, Orson Welles, was one of the highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood and the head of Paramount's screen-writing department in the late 1920s and early '30s. He reached the pinnacle of his craft soon after arriving in Hollywood, then started to make a quickening descent as alcoholism and cynicism adversely affected his career by the end of that decade. His collaboration with Welles, which brought both men the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1942, gave his career a boost in the early 1940s, and he garnered another Oscar nod the following year for writing The Pride of the Yankees (1942) about the recently deceased New York Yankees great Lou Gehrig.
Herman was born on November 7, 1897 in New York City, the son of Johanna (Blumenau) and Franz Mankiewicz. His parents were Jewish emigrants from Germany, and after living in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the family, along with Herman's kid brother Joe, moved back to the Big Apple in 1913. Mankiewicz took a degree in philosophy at Columbia and became an editor of the "American Jewish Chronicle" before going to fight the Great War with the Marine Corps.
The hard-drinking Mankiewicz, like so many of the screenwriters of the Talkie period, started out as a newspaperman. After World War One was over, he was hired by the Paris-based American Red Cross News Service, eventually moving on to the "Chicago Tribune" where he covered German politics in Berlin. He served as dancer Isadora Duncan's publicist while in Europe.
A married man who ultimately sired three children with his long-suffering wife, the former Sara Aaronson, Mankiewicz returned to the city of his birth to write for the "New York World". He established himself as a prime wit rivaled only by George S. Kaufman, and pieces he wrote appeared in the top magazines of the time, including "Vanity Fair." He eventually worked at the "New York Times" with Kaufman as a drama critic before moving on to the "New Yorker" magazine, where he served in the same capacity. He also tried his hand as a Broadway dramatist. His comedy "The Good Fellow" was a flop in 1926, closing after seven performances, though his next effort, "The Wild Man of Borneo (1941)" that he co-wrote with Marc Connelly, lasted all of 15 performances before closing in 1927.
In the last years of silent pictures, Mankiewicz heeded the admonition of Horace Greeley to "Go West, young man" and moved to Hollywood. He wrote intertitles, most notably for Josef von Sternberg's classic The Last Command (1928). Paramount made him the chief of their scenario department, where he hired talented writers in his own mold, men like Ben Hecht, another hard-drinking, ink-stained wretch from the newspaper industry. "Mank" was a talented wordsmith and he soon became the highest paid writer in Hollywood, as his position was solidified with the advent of sound and the need for real dialogue that could be spoken onscreen by actors, not read by audiences, many of whom moved their lips while following along, eyes agog. The new Talkies demanded fast, crisp dialogue, and Mank was the man to provide it. His biting wit and taste for satire went down well with the audiences for the new Talkies. He eventually brought his kid brother Joseph L. Mankiewicz to Hollywood. (With four Oscars out of 10 nominations, Joe -- a triple threat as writer-director-producer -- eventually surpassed his elder brother, creating some classics of his own such as All About Eve (1950).)
Herman Mankiewicz produced the The Marx Brothers pictures Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933). His penultimate gig as a producer at Paramount was on W.C. Fields's 1932 Olympics comedy Million Dollar Legs (1932), on which brother Joe worked as a writer. Surprisingly, Herman wold not produce another movie until 1949, but his bad-boy behavior, which included gambling as well as hard partying, apparently was taking its toll. Mankiewicz's career was hampered not just by his alcoholism, but also by his cynicism. He despised Hollywood.
Mankiewicz went back to New York in early 1932 to make his Broadway debut as an actor, playing a waiter, in the play "Blessed Event", which was a modest hit. Eventually, Paramount let him go. By 1934, he was a contact writer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and by the end of the decade, his reputation was suffering, as he had lost the lofty perch he once occupied.
Orson Welles claimed that he had to assign producer John Houseman to keep Mankiewicz sober during the drafting of the "Citizen Kane" screenplay. After that film gave his career a boost, film critic Pauline Kael wrote that he became even more erratic and unreliable due to his drinking. Mankiewicz apparently found it hard to fit into the increasingly hierarchical structure of the movie industry, which was far removed from the far more relaxed days of the early talkies.
He died in Hollywood, a place he despised, at the age of 55 on March 5, 1953.- Producer
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Stephen Dixon was born Oct 19, 1973 in Ocilla, GA. He grew up in Fitzgerald, GA and graduated Fitzgerald High School in 1993. During and after highschool, he played in local bands and traveled to Florida to open concerts at small venues. In 1995, Stephen joined the United States Marine Corps and trained at Parris Island then went to Camp Lejeune, NC for further training at the School of Infantry. He then went to Marine Corps Logistics Base, Albany, GA where he served for 7 years. While stationed here, he received multiple meritorious promotions and medals and was selected as Marine of the Year. After Sept 11th, Stephen (now a Sergeant was sent to Camp Lejeune and served with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and was deployed to Iraq. He served in the Babil Province in the area known as the "Triangle of Death". During this deployment he served in a special operations platoon that conducted Counter Mortar patrols around the area of Forward Operating Base Kalsu. For his superior performance, he was awarded a Navy & Marine Corps Achievement Medal for Combat Operations. After returning to the United States, Stephen was transferred to an infantry unit, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines. He served in the capacity of Infantry Platoon Sergeant and Infantry Platoon Commander while deployed to Iraq again, this time in Ramadi. Stephen was an ECP Commander for his unit and was awarded the Navy & Marine Corps Commendation Medal with the Combat "V" for his heroic actions. During his two deployments to Iraq, Stephen taught himself how to read, write and speak Arabic so after his second deployment, he was sent to Monterey, CA to attend the Arabic Linguist Course. Upon graduation, he was sent back to Camp Lejeune, NC and deployed to Afghanistan. Prior to deploying to Afghanistan, Stephen auditioned for the movie "Exit 101" by Joseph Lavender and they quickly became good friends and have worked on multiple movie projects there after. Stephen has been a Producer on 3 of Joseph's movies thus far and has had bit parts in each of those. On the set of "the Legend of Seven Toe Maggie" by Joseph Lavender, Stephen met Chris Maney and Samantha Katelyn and began a working relationship with them as well while operating out of North Carolina. Through his connections with some of his cast mates and casting agents, Stephen was offered an opportunity to work on "Iron Man 3" and had the unique privilege of working along side with Robert Downey, Jr during the Afghan Border scenes. He has continued to act and produce an average of 30 films annually. His latest roles were in a series of five films with Bruce Willis, Timothy Murphy and Johnny Messner.- In addition to acting, modeling and hosting, Darryl Booker is a world renowned international speaker, trainer and consultant. As a relative "new comer" to the acting profession, he has been working part-time as an actor, while continuing to manage a successful and demanding speaking schedule.
Darryl has been a master of ceremonies (MC) for various events from hosting strategic business conferences to variety game shows for corporate conference crowd attraction. Darryl has spoken at several major corporate functions, both on-site and at designated locations, as a keynote, presenter, and facilitator.
Darryl has completed his doctoral (PhD) coursework with Nova Southeastern University, received his MBA in Information Systems, his Master's and Graduate Certificate in Project Management from both George Washington University (GWU) and Keller Graduate School of Management. Darryl has his graduate Advanced Master's and Master's Certificate in IT Project Management and Business Analysis from GWU, his BA in Political Science and Psychology from Georgia State University, and his AA in Liberal Arts from the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP). Darryl is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).
Darryl has designed, developed, and delivered seminars, workshops, and courses for numerous Fortune 500 and Global 2000 clients all over the world. - Actor
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Justin Arnold's on-screen performances have been favored at Sundance, Slamdance, SXSW, Berlin, Fantastic Fest, DIFF & more. Highlights are at the helm of Academy Award winning director Spike Jones in collaboration with Arcade Fire's, Scenes from the Suburbs. Also, Justin stars in Whiskey Myers, Bury My Bones. Justin Arnold is a multifaceted actor, writer, filmmaker & musician. Notable works in fiction, A Dog Outside at Night in a Fight and Three Gloves Broken at the Base of an Ugly Mountain. Justin writes, directs, stars and scores the soundtrack for Mother Fucker, a short super-16mm film debut selected by the Dallas International-FF, Lonestar-FF & The Arthouse-FF. Justin is producing an EP album of modern-day hill-country blues ballads to be featured in an off-Broadway musical as well as the feature adaptation of his short film, Mother Fucker.- Gorgeous and shapely brunette knockout Chayse Evans was born Amy Stahly on August 2, 1986 in Monterey, California. Evans served for two years in the US Marine Corps. After leaving the Marine Corps in October, 2006, Chayse went on to work as both a waitress and a stripper. Evans first began performing in explicit hardcore movies at age 21 in 2007; she has appeared in features for such top companies as Vivid, Digital Sin, Club Jenna, and Jules Jordan Video. Chayse has been nominated for several AVN Awards that include Best New Starlet in 2007, Female Performer of the Year in 2010, and Best Group Sex Scene in 2011. Moreover, she was nominated for a FAME Award for Favorite Female Rookie in 2009 and an XBIZ Award for New Starlet of the Year that same year. Evan has a pierced navel and five tattoos. Chayse lives in Los Angeles, California.
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Pat Paulsen was a comedian specializing in satire who thrived on television in the late 1960s. The highlight of his career came in the watershed year 1968 when - emulating Gracie Allen''s quixotic 1940 Presidential bid as the Surprise Party candidate - he launched his own campaign for the U.S. presidency on the STAG (Straight Talking American Government) ticket. His campaign started out as a filmed gag run weekly on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," lampooning the pretensions of American politicians. One sequence had Pat making a campaign stop, unfolding the small ladder-stool he used to stand on while speaking to the voters, and addressing an empty rail-yard. Since there was a camera there, it didn't really matter, as Newt Gingrich found out in his own rise in politics in the 1980s, when he made a name for himself addressing speeches to members of the House in an empty chamber. Since it was filmed by Congressional video cameras, it appeared Gingrich was taking on powerful people who were, in reality, not even there. As a politician, Pat Paulsen was ahead of his time.
Patrick Layton Paulsen was born on July 6, 1927 in South Bend, Washington, a small fishing town, to.Beulah Inez (Fadden) and Norman Inge Paulsen, who worked for the Coast Guard. His father was a Norwegian immigrant and his maternal grandmother was English. The family moved to California when he was 10, and after graduating from high school, Pat joined the U.S. Marine Corps during the waning days of World War II. Demobilized after the war, Paulsen worked a variety of jobs, including postal clerk, truck driver, hod carrier, and miner. Two jobs that prepared him for the campaign trail that lay in his future were Fuller brush salesman, toiling door to door selling his product with a smile on his face, and photostat operator, making numerous copies of documents. He attended San Francisco City College on the G.I. bill. After his college studies, Paulsen joined an acting company before forming a comedy trio that included his brother Lorin (who continues to entertain with a one man show as Abraham Lincoln). Paulsen went solo after the trio broke up, and established himself during the late 1950s and early 1960s, performing in clubs featuring folk music and satiric comedy inspired by the likes of 'Jean Shepherd (I)' and 'Mort Sahl'. A guitarist, he delivered comedic monologues at some of the hottest clubs on the circuit, including Los Angeles' Troubadour and San Francisco's Purple Onion.
His shtick was similar to that of Tom Smothers and his brother Dick Smothers, "The Smothers Brothers," whom he met while performing at The Purple Onion. Paulsen sold them two songs for $40, and the two acts would become forever linked in the public consciousness. Eventually, when "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" premiered on CBS-TV in 1967, Paulsen was one of the cast members. Long before there was a news desk at Saturday Night Live, the Smothers Brothers' show featured Paulsen as an editorialist, providing double-talk commentary on the issues of the day.
At the urging of the Smothers Brothers, Paulsen launched his 1968 Presidential campaign. The emphasis of the campaign was comedy, but lurking below the surface was serious commentary. Satire was what closed on Saturday night, but Paulsen brilliantly managed to slip satire into his comedy, without the abrasiveness of Sahl or Lenny Bruce. He was sending up the professional politicians, peppering his campaign talks with obvious lies, double-talk, and tongue-in-cheek attacks on the "real" candidates. His work as the "reel" candidate of the tumultuous, frequently absurd political year that was 1968 was the highlight of his career and gave him a place in the national consciousness and history. For his work on "The Smothers Brothers' Comedy Hour," he was awarded a special Emmy Award in 1968.
After The Smothers Brothers were canceled due to their outspokenly liberal politics in 1969, Paulsen rebounded with his own show, "Pat Paulsen's Half-a-Comedy Hour." The show was innovative and very funny, but times had changed and the mass audience was no longer receptive to Pat's brand of satire, which laid bare the foibles of the American people and their culture. It was canceled after half a season.
Pat ran another bid for the presidency by entering the New Hampshire primary in 1972, but his time had passed. He did continue to work regularly, appearing in nightclubs, theaters, and conventions throughout the country. He also appeared each summer at the Cherry County Playhouse Muskegon, Michigan, which he co-owned. At the theater, he produced and starred in 25 plays, including "The Fantastics", "The Odd Couple", "Harvey" and "The Sunshine Boys."
Pat Paulsen was too good to ever be forgotten, and he received the International Platform Association's prestigious "Mark Twain Award" for his outstanding work in the field of comedy. Prior winners included Art Buchwald, Mark Russell and Steve Allen. On April 24, 1997, Pat died in 1997 from pneumonia after an 18-month battle with colon cancer. He was 69 years old.- Born on January 9, 1931, in Los Angeles, California, Patrick (Pat) Douglas Conway was the son of Hollywood "royalty"-film actor/director/producer Hugh ("Jack") Ryan Conway and his second wife, Virginia C. Bushman Conway, daughter of famous silent screen star Francis X. Bushman. Pat was a real cowboy, growing up on his father's 125-acre Pacific Palisades ranch where he learned to ride and rope before he was 10, and helping with his father's cattle herd. After graduating from Menlo Junior College at San Francisco, he studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, then traveled to London to study Shakespearean theater for six months at the famous Old Vic. He served a hitch in the U. S. Marine Corps before returning to Hollywood and a contract with MGM.
Pat played a number of roles in several movies and television shows in the early 1950s. Then at the age of 26, the handsome 6'3", blue-eyed, dark-haired, 175-pound actor landed the role for which he is best known, that of Sheriff Clay Hollister, the young, tough but fair sheriff of Tombstone in pre-statehood Arizona in the weekly TV series "Tombstone Territory." He was originally cast to play the deputy in the series but was promoted to the starring role when the director saw his potential; they had to reshoot the first episode as a result. The series ran from Oct. 16, 1957, through July 1960; Conway starred in all 92 episodes. Published interviews from the era describe the young actor as "nice", "shy", and "serious" about his acting. His hobbies included reading, cooking, music, sailing and skin diving; he admitted to being a solitary individual. When "Tombstone Territory" ended, he was busy making guest appearances in many of the western series then populating the airwaves, including "Gunsmoke", "Rawhide" and "Bonanza." He also appeared in two movies ("Geronimo" in 1962 and "Brighty of the Grand Canyon" in 1967). His final appearances were in 1975 in "The Streets of San Francisco" and the television movie "The Abduction of Saint Anne." He died on April 24, 1981, in Santa Barbara County, California, at the age of 50. - Actor
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Trained at the Camp Pendleton school of infantry in 2001, with a PMOS of 0351, serving as both an infantry assault-man with 1st Marine Division, and then as a light armored vehicle (anti-tank) commander at LAR Battalion. Jon continued his training throughout the Marine Corps, earing certificates in over 27 different schools and training courses including NCO school in 2009, counter terrorism, reconnaissance, mountaineering, and A-MOUT (advanced military operations on urban terrain), just to name a few.
After his first combat tour in 2003/4 he became the Echo company, 2nd battalion 23rd Marine regiment's dedicated mountaineering and asymmetric warfare instructor and, from 2008 to 2010, the asymmetric warfare instructor for Alpha Company, 4th Light Armored Recon battalion. Throughout his time in the Marines, he continued to develop a love of weapons and weapons systems, and in 2008 was one of only a handful of sergeants at Camp Pendleton who completed the comprehensive "long rifle" range safety officer (RSO) course. This allowed him to open, operate, and run platoon, company and battalion level weapons training courses on all light, medium, and heavy weapons throughout the entire base.
Serving from 2001 to 2011 in both active / reserve duty, he received the Combat Action Ribbon with bravery commendation, three Navy Achievement Medals, along with many certificates of commendations for NCO combat instructor excellence, and mountain warfare at both the company and battalion level.
Jon had been active in the film and television industry since before joining the Corps, and when time and deployments allowed, he collected a team of other veterans, launching his first company; GUNMETAL, which was dedicated to veteran job creation in movies and tv in 2006. From 2006 onward, he served as a senior military consultant and weapons choreographer for some of the biggest movies, video games, and TV shows in the world. He has been a private weapons trainer for celebrities including Tom Cruise, Connor Cruise, Chris Hemsworth, Aaron Eckhart, Ray Stevenson, Kristen Stewart, Shemar Moore, Will Estes, and many others.
In 2010, the ad agency Campbell Ewald brought Jon on to help them navigate their client USAA. From 2010 to 2018, Jon and his team worked together with the agency and USAA's creative team to help them realistically depict the military in commercials and photography campaigns for: banking, insurance, and retirement.
Since then, Jon has helped other agencies, like Mullen Lowe, navigate all things military for their clients. Just days before the pandemic, Jon started work on the national ad campaigns for T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, and Met Life. Post pandemic, Jon has been constantly working on many action projects throughout Hollywood.
As a professional consultant, Jon has a never-ending thirst for military accuracy and proper depiction of the armed services past, present, and future, across all media platforms. Through his extensive network of active and retired veterans, he is constantly learning and incorporating all the latest military policies, practices, weapons, and uniforms into his work.
Between projects, Jon continues to write prolifically in both novels and screenplays. To date, he has written over 9 full-length feature films, 1 episodic series, and the first 3 books (1.5 million words!) of the Aurillium book series.
Jon launched Night Fire Media in 2015 to help advance veteran storytellers in all media by supplying access to his vast inventory of historical, modern, and futuristic military props, weapons, and wardrobe to the independent filmmaker.
In February 2022, just days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Jon donated over 1 million dollars' worth of REAL military and tactical equipment, that he used for celebrity training, to the government of Ukraine to aid them in their defense against Russian aggression.
Whether through efforts in the media, work in veteran charities, or creating a better tasting craft beer, he always finds a way to help those in need... a way to succeed where others failed... or a way to make the world a better place. For 20 years he has been driven by these words: "aut viam invenium aut faciam"( I'll find a way, or make one)- Actor
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Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on March 26, 1987, Donnie Bentley made his debut as an actor in a Verizon Indy Car Commercial (2011). Also following up with a Nationwide Nascar commercial (2011). Since those early roles, Donnie Bentley has amassed an enviable list of credits that shows no signs of slowing. Just last year he has jump started his TV and Film career, as a marine in the third episode of Cinamax and Showtime's TV series Banshee (2013), The Ultimate life (2013). This year already booked as a Featured American soldier in the upcoming feature Film America the Movie (2014) and as Jason in Fix it in post (2014).
The oldest son of three, son of a construction company business owner And mother-School Admissions Representative, Donnie Bentley was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, but grew up in Fuquay Varina, North Carolina Where he graduated from the local High School. Showing little interest In his father's construction business. Donnie was looking for a change Of scenery and spent some time in the United States Marine Corps. Back To the civilian life, he attended Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina, originally wishing to be a music Education teacher for High school. But after he discovered his inspiration for the Entertainment world he suddenly had to change his direction to modeling And acting, where he got signed with a prestigious agency located in Hickory North Carolina, Where he is currently filming to this day.- Additional Crew
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Matt Sigloch started in Film and TV, after graduating with honors from Valley Forge Military Academy, and retiring from the Marine Corps after 22 years of active duty service as a Master Sergeant. He started from the bottom as a non-union extra. His hard work and determination was soon rewarded as he became a member of the Screen Actors Guild. He began doing stunt work, got an agent, and soon after was enjoying the success that determination can bring.
After landing a role on the TV pilot of JAG (1995), he realized all of his military and tactical training could be utilized in the industry. He approached Donald P. Bellisario, who was the creator, director, writer, executive producer of JAG (1995) about a job as a Military Technical Advisor. Donald P. Bellisario hired Sigloch and he stayed for the entire run of 10 seasons (227 episodes). After JAG (1995) ended, he formed a company, Sigloch Military-Tactical (SMTI), of which he is CEO. SMTl was formed to support the military and tactical side of film and television. He is still acting, and doing stunt work.- Stunts
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Freddie is the son of Win and Brenda Farnsworth, Freddie was born in Muncie, Indiana & grew up in Pinedale, Wyoming. Freddie Joe Farnsworth was an IPRA bareback and saddle bronco rider, and is an excellent rider in all rodeo events and performs all horse stunts, both Western and English. He joined the USMC in May of 1985, and was stationed with 1st Bat 7th March until July of 1991. At that time, he went to Marine Combat Training at Camp Pendleton as a troop handler and a weapons and tactical instructor. He served in both Desert Shield and Desert Storm. In December of 1994 he received an honorable discharge as a Sergeant. Upon leaving the Marine Corps, Freddie returned to Casper, Wyoming and worked as a truck driver and in sales for Butane Power and Equipment until April 1996, when he began work on Starship Troopers (1997) to this day. Freddie is an actor and the military advisor for the Spy Game (2001) film & uses his skills on every film he works on. He occasionally works as a Stuntman for "Stunt Grunts" ('Raleigh Wilson''s company). He is best friends with Max Martini for whom he stunt-doubled on the TV Hit The Unit (2006) and Jake Busey (he met on the film set of Starship Troopers. He resides in L.A. and London (only during filming) with his two daughters Linda & Brenda (now at university), a couples of horses and dogs.- Actor
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Aswan Harris is an American actor, voice over actor, stunt performer, & a Marine Corps Veteran. He is known for playing a War Room Intern alongside the likes of Kevin Costner in Draft Day. Other credits include a remake of the critically acclaimed, Night of the Living Dead (2019), Rachel's 9th Inning (2015), Bachelor Lions (2018), 9-1-1 (2018), The Land (2016), Mauraders (2016) and With This Ring (2015).
Aswan is the baby of six children. After graduating high school he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. There he advanced through the ranks to finish his active duty service as a sergeant (E5) before his honorable discharge which resulted in him trading in his battle dress uniform for the endless wardrobe changes on Hollywood sets.
Aswan's acting career began in 2006 when he auditioned for his first stage play 'Out of Order' which he says he will never forget and be forever indebted to it because of the rawness of being on stage. He says: "It taught me how to be in the moment, I wasn't even a reformed version of myself, Aswan didn't even exist while being on that stage, I could only think about creating a performance that the audience could appreciate and in order for me to do that, I had to embody the character in its entirety." Aswan did several plays obtaining both leading and supporting roles before he got his quote on quote big break in the film industry. In 2014 he was privileged to observe and work alongside some seriously talented individuals (that's an understatement) that he admired in feature film Draft Day. What he remembers most about being on that set was how everyone treated each other like the good side of the family. "Everyone was happy to be on set or at least that's what it felt like, and I was able to sit in the room next to director Ivan Reitman and script supervisor Jayne-Ann Tenggren as Kevin Costner, Timothy Simons, David Ramsey, Wade Williams, and Denis Leary went through their blocking and scene discussions; he says observing that was like a year of acting schooling.- Actor
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Tommy Brown was born and raised in Sweetwater, Texas. Tommy Brown is the son of Tommy Lee Brown Sr., who worked at Sweetwater Cotton Oil Mill, and Mary Lee Nelson (Brown), who worked three decades as a Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN). Mary Nelson remarried in 1973 to Jimmie Lee Nelson, United States Gypsum drywaller & United States Air Force veteran, who mentored Tommy to adulthood. Tommy's acting interest became evident in Sweetwater High School where he participated in Shakespeare role-playing in English Literature class.
Three days after graduating from high school in 1985, he joined the United States Marine Corps where he served 23 years of active service. While in the military, he appeared on television, movies, and worked as a model. Tommy also wrote his first book entitled Seeking Hearts. After retiring from military in 2008, Tommy continued working in the entertainment industry and established himself as entrepreneur in education.
Tommy Brown is the oldest of 4 siblings: Pamela Brown-Ledet, Kevin Nelson & Eric Nelson. Tommy is a single parent of two sons, Derrick Brown and Aaron Brown. Derrick Brown is an assistant manager of a well-known company; and Aaron Brown is an actor who received numerous acting and singing awards in high school. Derrick and Aaron Brown both are involved in the entertainment industry.- Will C Bio
On the dare Will C took the stage at The World Famous Comedy Store in La Jolla, CA in the spring of 1995, caught the comedy bug and never looked back
Will C has traveled the country as a road comic and has performed all over the United States and Canada. With his quick wit, over the top goofiness, and his ability to relate to his audiences, Will has become a favorite at clubs, colleges, and military bases everywhere.
He was the runner up in the Southwest Comedy Competition in 2004 and a finalist again in 2005, that same year 2005 he was voted funniest comic in Kansas City by All Comedy Radio. In 2006 he won Best of the Fest at the Calgary Comedy Festival, 2010 he was voted into the finals of the Boston Comedy Festival Competition, and in 2011 was chosen Best of the Fest at the Eagle Rock Comedy Festival out of 160 comics in Los Angeles.
Also a talented actor who was taught by the amazing Marty Pope, you've seen Will C in such great hits as Yes Man, Seven Pounds, Never Surrender, Article 99, and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge. He has just wrapped shooting Inherent Vice, Wizards Dream, The Vatican Files, Purge 2, Murder of a Cat, Gone Girl, and Revival!.
Will C has been featured on such great shows like, Hello Ladies, Ragtag, Kill Em' All, Wendall and Vinnie, Monk, Numb3rs, Knight Rider, MANswers, Family Jewels, Storage Hunters, and the list goes on and on.
Will C has been in numerous commercials, too many to list here, and is a talented improvisational actor as well having been trained by the great Linda Williams of Comedy Sportz.
Will C toured with The Monsters of Comedy in 2010, traveling the United States and Canada, and in 2011 and 2012 he toured with the GIs of Comedy where he brought laughter to the troops around the world.
Will C is a proud veteran and founded the Veterans of Comedy in 2014 where he will continue performing and raising awareness for the troops. With their motto "No Laugh Left Behind", they hope to help bridge the gap between soldier and civilian life by using laughter as the foundation.
Will C makes his home in Los Angeles, CA where he is a regular at the Improv, The Laugh Factory, The World Famous Comedy Store, and The Icehouse in Pasadena.
His new CD "Weighting to Inhale" has been released and is available wherever fine comedy is sold. - Actor
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Los Angeles-born Holly Bane (who later changed his name to the more macho-sounding Mike Ragan) didn't start out to be an actor--he wanted to be a big-band musician. That didn't work out for him, unfortunately, so he wound up getting a job as an office boy at MGM at age 15. From there he worked his way into the makeup department, working on such productions as The Good Earth (1937) and under the tutelage of famed make-up artist Jack Dawn. He soon began working in front of the camera, first in bit parts in action pictures, but service in the US Marine Corps during World War II put the brakes on his acting career. Upon his return to civilian life at war's end he went back to his make-up job, but eventually decided to trade it for work as a full-time actor. His stocky build and somewhat menacing attitude got him a lot of work in westerns as a heavy, usually a gunfighter or henchman, often at Republic Pictures.
He actually divided his time between acting and make-up work, and in the 1960s, when westerns began to fade from the scene, he went back to make-up full time, eventually working on many prominent TV shows, such as Welcome Back, Kotter (1975), Barney Miller (1975) and Fish (1977).
He died in 1995 in Los Angeles of complications from emphysema.- Actor
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Genial, dark-haired, often bespectacled Ivan Lawrence Blieden (pronounced Blee-den), better known as actor Larry Blyden, was born in Houston, Texas, the son of a lawyer. He developed an early interest in acting, appearing in various theater productions as a teen but never entertained the notion of pursuing a career. Following a stint with the Marine Corps, however, he went to college at the University of Houston and supplemented his income with a job as a local radio announcer, finding himself highly proficient at foreign accents.
Bitten by the acting bug, he decided to give performing a serious try this time, first training at London's Royal Academy of Arts, then moving to New York. It was Broadway that subsequently gave Larry marquee value, contributing strongly to a string of successes. These included not only such staple comedies as "Mr. Roberts", "Oh Men! Oh Women!" and "Absurd Person Singular", but the musicals "Flower Drum Song" (Tony nomination), "The Apple Tree" and "A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum", the last earning him the Tony award in 1972.
From the early 1950s throughout the decade, Larry was a valuable presence in TV anthologies ("The Silver Theatre," "The Philco Television Playhouse," "The Goodyear Playhouse," "Armstrong Circle Theatre," "Playhouse 90," "The Alcoa Hour," "Play of the Week") but, as his career progressed, he also found a comfortable niche in breezy comedy, landing a couple of sitcoms Joe & Mabel (1956) (as Joe) and Harry's Girls (1963) (as Harry), short-lived as they were. Into the 1960's he appeared on such programs as "Thriller," "The Loretta Young Show," "The Twilight Zone," "Adventures in Paradise," "The United States Steel Hour," "Route 66," "Dr. Kildare," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "12 O'CLock High," "The Fugitive" and "The Man from U.N.C.L.E."
Larry projected a very temperate, clean-cut, albeit bland image. As a result, film roles were scarce - three to be exact: Kiss Them for Me (1957) starring Cary Grant and Jayne Mansfield, The Bachelor Party (1957) with Don Murray and Carolyn Jones, and Barbra Streisand's On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970).
Larry was a noted game show enthusiast and was seen frequently as a panelist on Password (1961) and To Tell the Truth (1969), among many others. In 1972, he became a familiar daytime face after replacing Wally Bruner as host of the syndicated What's My Line? (1968).
Larry married Bob Fosse dancer/extraordinaire Carol Haney in 1955. They remained a popular Gotham couple until their split seven years later. Haney, who was pure electric in the Broadway and film versions of "The Pajama Game", was a severe diabetic and died suddenly at age 39 in 1964, two years after their divorce. This left Blyden a single parent with two children to raise. He never remarried. His last performances on TV included guest parts on "The Mod Squad," "Medical Center" and "Cannon."
Blyden himself died fairly young as well, killed in a car accident while traveling in Morocco. He was only 49. Highly personable and modestly unassuming, Larry Blyden may not have hit the heights, but he was a recognizable name and a durable talent - one of Broadway's bright lights for over two decades.- Actor
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Born in Nigeria and raised in North Carolina. He is an actor and model. T.C. served in the United States Marine Corps, while going to college where he began modeling for fashion shows on campus. He has a bachelors in Art and a published poetry book.- Actor
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Alex Wexo was Born in Boston, Mass. At the age of 5 his parent's moved to London, England where for the next 10 year's he went to school. Graduating from High School and determined to see the world, Alex left home and moved to Edinburgh, Scotland. There he did numerous odd job's bouncing in Night Club's and working in an ice cream factory. After living in Scotland for two years, Alex came back to America and settled in San Diego California. There he joined the United States Marine Corps. After graduating from Bootcamp, Alex was shipped off to Fort Sill, Oklahoma to train as an Artillery Fire Direction Control Man. His first order's were to report to 29 Palm's Marine Base in California. During his tenure at 29 Palm's, Alex was quickly recruited by Intelligence Operatives in the Marine Corps. Accepted by the intel community Alex traveled all over the world conducting intel op's. After leaving the Marine Corps. Alex decided to become an actor and his first role was in Columbia Picture's "A Few Good Men", giving him his SAG Card. Alex has worked steadily ever since but is looking for that right role that will show his true essence.- Producer
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Dan Hewitt Owens is an award-winning American Film Director, Actor, Producer, Screenwriter, and Editor. With over 50 years in the film industry, he has worked with numerous legendary filmmakers such as Norman Jewison, David O. Russel, David Gordon Green, Jon Turteltaub, Rob Reiner, and Felix Enrique Alcala. Owens studied film, stage, and television in Dallas, New York, and Los Angeles. He has 39 wins and 5 nominations as a film director, actor, screenwriter, producer, editor, & cinematographer, and has directed over 130 film projects. Owens is credited with roles in major motion pictures such as Last Vegas, LBJ, Our Brand Is Crisis, Selfie Shootout, and Dark Places. He has appeared on numerous television shows such as "Parks and Recreation," "Criminal Minds," "Adam Ruins Everything," "Walker, Texas Ranger," and much more. He successfully directed his own feature-films titled Project: Puppies for Christmas, starring John Ratzenberger, and 1 Interrogation, starring Tom Arnold. Owens proudly served in the U.S. Marine Corps.- Writer
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Tristan Stadtmuller is a United States Marine Corps Infantry Veteran from the southeast. He served 10 months active duty and was discharged for medical because 7 out of those 10 months, both of his feet were broken. This got him published in "Ripley's Believe it or Not!"
His inspiration to get into film making was in the 2nd grade and he watched "Terminator 2: Judgment Day". During his upbringing, he's been involved with theater productions and made his first short film in his senior year in high school titled "The Faded Color of Love".
After moving to Los Angeles in 2005, he has done miscellaneous work on sets of "Good Morning America", "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition", "2006 Scream Awards", and was recently in extra in Michael Bay's "Transformers: Dark of the Moon".
He attended the Los Angeles Film School and was the class of March 2009. He majored in Directing, writing, and producing. He also discovered his acting talent while taking directing. His directing teachers, Heidi Davis and James Pasternak, told him to get back into acting. Their comments included that he looks comfortable in front of the camera, he looks like he's thinking, he's a natural, and they believe that he could find work as a villain.
He has a couple of short films made which include "LA Vice" "The Faded Color of Love", and "Something More". His most recent short film, "Zombies of America", is his first to have SPFX.
Tristan's first professional acting gig was that of being a lead singer in a heavy metal band in the comedy film "Live Nude Girls". This involved him riding the front seat of KITT from "Knight Rider" with Bree Olson sitting on his lap.- Jeremy Roberts was born, Jerry Thompson , but it just didn't stick. At two his mother packed up their bags and moved to Beverly...Hills that is...but actually, Hollywood. He grew up in Hollywood. Joined the United States Marine Corps, was promoted to sergeant, twice...served during the Viet Nam war..was honorably discharged. He worked as a lifeguard/bartender at Lakeside Golf club next door to Burbank Studios. Where he served drinks to the likes of John Wayne, Bing Crosby, Frankie Avalon (he taught their children to swim) Jeremy discovered acting while doing a favor for a director friend doing a play called Laugh-In (from the T.V. series) School followed, where he graduated from the American Conservatory Theatres M.F.A. program. Jeremy has done work in many repertory theaters, such as Denver Center Theatre and The Pacific Conservatory for the Performing Arts. His first T.V. appearance was robbing John Ritter in Hooperman. Jeremy Roberts is an actor best known for Herbie Fully Loaded (2005), The Mask (1994), Christmas Vacation (1989), Star Trek Undiscovered Country (1991). .
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Television producer and host Robert James Keeshan was born in Lynbrook, Long Island, New York. As a young man he served in the US Marine Corps Reserve. Starting as a page at the National Broadcasting Company, Keeshan later began his on-air career as the original "Clarabell, the Clown" for the NBC The Howdy Doody Show (1947) (aka "The Howdy Doody Show"). He was then the first host/performer of WJZ/WABC TV Ch. 7 NYC's "Time For Fun" / "The Johnny Jellybean Show". Keeshan emceed the show as "Corny The Clown" weekdays at noon from Monday, September 21st, 1953, to Friday, July 29th, 1955. He co-created, co-produced and hosted "Tinker's Workshop" with Jack Miller on WJZ/WABC TV Ch. 7 in New York City weekday mornings from Monday, November 15, 1954 to Friday, September 9, 1955. The show continued without Robert until Friday August 22, 1958. The later hosts of the show were Henry Burbig, Gene London & Dom DeLuise.
When asked to put together a show for children, he leaped at the chance. On Monday, October 3rd, 1955, Captain Kangaroo (1955) began its near 30-year run on CBS, until it was moved to Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the 1980s. There was a lot of fun in the "Treasure House", with Bunny Rabbit swindling carrots before lunch from The Captain or Mister Moose finding yet another way to get the Captain to stand still long enough to drop dozens of ping-pong balls down on the ever-unsuspecting Captain's head. Dennis (Cosmo Allegretti) asking so many questions that Mister Bainter would almost always lose his cool. All the while during this, Captain Kangaroo taught us values and gave those with busy or absent fathers a gentle and caring male role model to learn good behavior and manners from. A love of reading was encouraged and the animals that Mister Green Jeans (Hugh Brannum) showed allowed children who had never seen a particular animal to experience it though his fascination with it. During its run in 1964, Keeshan also took on a Saturday morning persona as "Mister Mayor" for a year, but remained the Captain until the end of its run on PBS in 1993. Over the years he and the show won six Emmy's and three Peabody Awards, totaling nine awards, altogether, and he was also elected to the Clown Hall of Fame.
In 1989 he published "Growing Up Happy" and then in October of 1996 he published "Good Morning Captain: 50 Wonderful Years with Bob Keeshan, TV's Captain Kangaroo". Keeshan is also the author of the "Itty Bitty Kitty" children's book series. Widowed in the 1990s, he died in Vermont in 2004.- Producer
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Brendan Rooney is from New York. He served in the Marine Corps from 2001-2005. He went on to receive his undergraduate degree in Political Science at Columbia University and his MFA in Screenwriting at the American Film Institute Conservatory. Brendan resides in Los Angeles with his wife, actress Christy Carlson Romano.- Actor
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David Michael is a talented star on the rise. David is humble and borderline shy about his accomplishments, yet certain and fiercely focused on his missions in life. His passion to achieve greatness in the entertainment industry became clear to him a long time ago while finishing up a tour of duty in the Marine Corps, Recon Unit attached to a Navy Seals unit in the "Desert Storm" war. After his enlistment and Literally digging his boots through the hot sands of IRAQ. He spent a year there only seeing 4 actual days of Combat. While ducking and dodging bullets in the Persian Gulf, he held onto to his dream of one day becoming a successful actor, it was this vision that carried him through. Upon returning to Los Angeles, David's big break came when he was scouted from an acting workshop taught by Chip Fields, mother of "Gimme a Break" and "Living Single" star Kim Fields. One role lead to another and David was on his way. In the tradition of his favorites, Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Delroy Lindo, and Johnny Depp, David, in Just a few Short Years has manage to consecutively grace the TV screen of some heavy weight projects, such as Lost, 24, CSI, Law and Order, NYPD Blue, The Guardian, Moesha, Clueless, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, and as a regular on the CW's The Parenthood, just to name of few. In the past few years, David has formed the production company ROCKET FUEL ENTERTAINMENT, with a stellar team, that will focus on the production of Network Television Shows and Feature Films. He has several project in the works, but the latest on the horizon is the upcoming Wall Street dramedy "Broker Boy$", and the Hip Hop Cartoon entitled "KID'S CREW". David is the Creator, Executive Producer and Writer of the said to be breakout hit show slated for 2022.- Producer
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After serving 4 years in the U.S. Marine Corps (1992 - 1996), Jody, an award winning Producer / Director, started his film career as a Props person and weapons handler on the TV show Pensacola Wings of Gold. He has found success as an Actor, Stuntman, Stunt Coordinator, Military Technical Advisor, Director and Producer. In 2008 Jody started producing Interactive Training films for the Army and Air Force which won 4 Telly Awards, 1 Stevie Award and 1 Davey Award. He joined the Directors Guild of America as a Director in 2009.