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- Soundtrack
Christine Belford was born on 14 January 1949 in Amityville, New York, USA. She is an actress, known for Christine (1983), Outlaws (1986) and The Greatest American Hero (1981). She has been married to Nicholas Pryor since July 1993.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Morgan Stevens was born on 16 October 1951 in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Fame (1982), Murder One (1995) and Bare Essence (1983). He died on 26 January 2022 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Born in Decatur, Alabama and christened Dean Carroll Jones, the actor's father worked for a railroad company and the family moved often, living in Washington, DC, Nashville, and New Orleans. "It was in New Orleans I really learned how to sing", Jones told the Pittsburgh Press in 1969. Dropping out of school at 15, he worked for a short time singing in a club in that city, but when the club closed, he returned to Decatur and got his degree but Jones had gotten the show business bug.
After serving in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War, Jones got a job acting in a melodrama at Knott's Berry Farm. He was spotted by veteran composer Vernon Duke, who was planning a musical. The musical project fell through, but Duke enabled Jones an audition with Arthur Freed, the famous producer of MGM feature film musicals such as "Singin' In the Rain". It did not go as planned. "He's an actor, not singer!", Freed exclaimed as related by Jones in a 1966 L.A. Times interview.
Still, the studio signed Jones, and in his first credited role, he found himself acting opposite James Cagney in the 1956 drama "These Wilder Years." The veteran actor helped him through their scene. "There I was, just out of the U.S. Navy without an acting lesson to my name," Jones told the Christianity Today. "In walks Cagney and says, 'Walk to your mark and remember your lines.' That's all I've been doing for 50 years."
Jones had mostly small roles of a far grittier nature than his later Disney fare. "I played drug addicts, pimps, hard-cased killers, ex-cons and angry young men," he told The Times in 1995. And he reveled in the movie life. In a 2007 interview with the Pantagraph newspaper in Bloomington, Illinois, he recalled being on the MGM Culver City studio back-lot, with "Liz Taylor yelling, 'Hey Dean-O, let's go down to Stage 22 and watch Bing and Frank sing!'" Jones would appear with Elvis Presley in 1957 in "Jailhouse Rock".
He made his debut on Broadway in 1960 opposite Jane Fonda in "There Was a Little Girl", which flopped. Jones went on to the more successful "Under the Yum-Yum Tree" later that same year. He appeared in the title role of the Disney television series "Ensign O'Toole", a military comedy, which debuted in 1962 on NBC on Sunday evenings. The show was followed by Disney's anthology television show, so Disney caught the end of some episodes of Jones series, and liked what he saw.
Beginning in 1965 with "That Darn Cat!", Jones became closely identified with Disney family fare. In addition to the "Love Bug" and "The Ugly Dachshund", he was the leading man in "Monkeys, Go Home", "The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit", "The Million Dollar Duck", "The Shaggy D.A.", "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo", and other Disney feature films.
But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was leading an off-screen life contrary to his wholesome image. He had numerous affairs and was drinking heavily. "I had thought if I became a star I'd be happy," he said in a 1976 L.A. Times interview. "I had thought if I had a fairly large amount of money I'd be happy. I thought if I had a house on a hill I'd be happy. I thought if I had a Ferrari I'd be happy. One goal after another was accomplished. And with no fulfillment." Jones was able to keep his torment largely separated from his work life. Even the head of the studio was fooled. "I remember having lunch with Walt one day, and he told me, 'Dean, you're a perfect fit for these pictures. You're such a good family man!'" Jones told the Pantagraph. "I wasn't a good family man", Jones acknowledged. "I was showing up at home smelling of perfume that wasn't my wife's".
Jones' first marriage to Mae Inez Entwisle ended in divorce in 1970. They had two daughters. He was married to actress Lory Patrick from 1973 until his death in 2015. Lory had a son, Michael Patrick, whom Jones adopted.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
William Conrad became a television star relatively late in his career. In fact, the former Army Air Corps World War II fighter pilot began his screen career playing heavies. He was Max, one of The Killers (1946) hired to finish off Burt Lancaster in his dingy lodgings. He was the corrupt state inspector Turck working for the syndicate in The Racket (1951). He was a mobster in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), the murderous gunslinger Tallman in Johnny Concho (1956) and sleazy nightclub owner Louie Castro who claimed to be 60% legitimate in Cry Danger (1951).
When not essaying outright villainy, Bill played characters like the tough fight promoter Quinn in Body and Soul (1947) or the doom-laden province commissioner in The Naked Jungle (1954). The portly, balding, crumple-faced, self-confessed gourmand had an ever-present weight problem (at one time 260 lbs.) which proved to be a natural obstacle to progressing to more substantial leading film roles. That, however, didn't hinder a very successful career in radio. In fact, Bill himself estimated that he had played in excess of 7,000 radio parts. Even if that was an exaggeration, his gravelly, resonant voice was certainly heard on countless broadcasts from "Buck Rogers" to "The Bullwinkle Show," from portraying Marshall Matt Dillon in "Gunsmoke" on the radio (before James Arness got the part on screen) to narrating the adventures of Richard Kimball in the television program The Fugitive (1963). In "The Wax Works," an episode of the anthology series Suspense (1949) in 1956, he voiced each and every part.
Since his corpulence effectively precluded playing strapping characters like Matt Dillon, Bill began to concentrate on directing and producing by the early 1960's. This, ironically, included episodes of Gunsmoke (1955). In 1963, he contributed to saving 77 Sunset Strip (1958) for yet another season. Later in the decade, he produced and directed several films for Warner Brothers, including the thriller Brainstorm (1965) with Jeffrey Hunter and Anne Francis. He returned to acting in 1971 to become the unlikely star of the Quinn Martin production Cannon (1971), for which he is chiefly remembered. Bill imbued the tough-talking, no-nonsense character of Frank Cannon with enough humanity and wit to make the series compelling but, despite the show's popularity, he made his views clear in a 1976 Times interview that he found himself poorly served by the scripts he had been given. A planned sequel, The Return of Frank Cannon (1980) failed to get beyond the movie-length pilot, but the actor's popularity resulted in another starring role in Jake and the Fatman (1987) as District Attorney McCabe, co-starring with Joe Penny) and a brief run as eccentric detective Nero Wolfe (1981). A self-effacing man with a good sense of humor and never afraid to speak his mind, Bill Conrad died of heart failure in February 1994. He was elected to the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame and (posthumously) to the Radio Hall of Fame in 1997.- Actress
- Writer
- Music Department
Diana Canova was born on 1 June 1953 in West Palm Beach, Florida, USA. She is an actress and writer, known for Soap (1977), The First Nudie Musical (1976) and Throb (1986). She has been married to Elliot Scheiner since 24 July 1982. They have two children. She was previously married to Geoff Levin.- Actress
- Producer
- Executive
Angela Lansbury was born in 1925 into a prominent family of the upper middle class living in the Regent's Park neighborhood of London. Her father was socialist politician Edgar Isaac Lansbury (1887-1935), a member of both the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and the Labour Party. Edgar served as Honorary Treasurer of the East London Federation of Suffragettes (term 1915), and Mayor of Poplar (term 1924-1925). He was the second Communist mayor in British history, the first being Joe Vaughan (1878-1938). Lansbury's mother was Irish film actress Moyna Macgill (1895-1975), originally from Belfast. During the first five years of Angela's life, the Lansbury family lived in a flat located in Poplar. In 1930, they moved to a house located in the Mill Hill neighborhood of north London. They spend their weekends vacationing in a farm located in Berrick Salome, a village in South Oxfordshire.
In 1935, Edgar Lansbury died from stomach cancer. Angela reportedly retreated into "playing characters", as a coping mechanism to deal with the loss. The widowed Moyna Macgill soon became engaged to Leckie Forbes, a Scottish colonel. Moyna moved into his house in Hampstead.
From 1934 to 1939, Angela was a student at South Hampstead High School. During these years, she became interested in films.. She regularly visited the local cinema, and imagined herself in various roles. Angela learned how to play the piano, and received a musical education at the Ritman School of Dancing.
In 1940, Lansbury started her acting education at the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art, located in Kensington, West London. She made her theatrical debut in the school's production of the play "Mary of Scotland" (1933) by Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959). The play depicted the life of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542-1587, reigned 1542-1567), and Lansbury played one of the queen's ladies-in-waiting.
Also in 1940, Lansbury's paternal grandfather, George Lansbury, died from stomach cancer. When the Blitz started, Moyna Macgill had reasons to fear for the safety of her family and few remaining ties to England. Macgill moved to the United States to escape the Blitz, taking her three youngest children with her. Isolde was already a married adult, and was left behind in England.
Macgill secured financial sponsorship from American businessman Charles T. Smith. She and her children (including Angela) moved into Smith's house in Mahopac, New York, a hamlet in Putnam County. Lansbury was interested in continuing her studies, and secured a scholarship from the American Theatre Wing. From 1940 to 1942, Lansbury studied acting at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art, located in New York City. She appeared in performances organized by the school.
In 1942, Lansbury moved with her family to a flat located in Morton Street, Greenwich Village. She soon followed her mother in her theatrical tour of Canada. Lansbury secured her first paying job in Montreal, singing at the nightclub Samovar Club for a payment of 60 dollars per week. Lansbury was 16 years old at the time, but lied about her age and claimed to be 19 in order to be hired.
Lansbury returned to New York City in August, 1942, but Moyna Macgill soon moved herself and her family again. The family moved to Los Angeles, where Moyna was interested in resurrecting her film career. Their first home there was a bungalow in Laurel Canyon, a neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills.
Lansbury helped financially support her family by working for the Bullocks Wilshire department store in Los Angeles. Her weekly wages were only 28 dollars, but she had a secure income while her mother was unemployed. Through her mother, Lansbury was introduced to screenwriter John Van Druten (1901-1957), who had recently completed his script of "Gaslight" (1944). He suggested that young Lansbury would be perfect for the role of Nancy Oliver, the film's conniving cockney maid. This helped secure Lansbury's first film role at the age of 17, and a seven-year contract with the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She earned 500 dollars per week, and chose to continue using her own name instead of a stage name.
In 1945, Lansbury married actor Richard Cromwell (1910-1960), who was 15 years older than she. The troubled marriage ended in a divorce in 1946. The former spouses remained friends until Cromwell's death.
In 1946, Lansbury started a romantic relationship with aspiring actor Peter Shaw (1918-2003), who was 7 years older than her. Shaw had recently ended his relationship with actress Joan Crawford (c. 1908-1977). The new couple started living together, while planning marriage. They wanted to be married in the United Kingdom, but the Church of England refused to marry two divorcees. They were married in 1949, in a Church of Scotland ceremony at St. Columba's Church, located in Knightsbridge, London. After their return to the United States, they settled into Lansbury's home in Rustic Canyon, Malibu. In 1951, both Lansbury and Shaw became naturalized citizens of the United States, while retaining their British citizenship.
Meanwhile, Lansbury continued appearing in MGM films. She appeared in 11 MGM films between 1945 and 1952. MGM at times loaned Lansbury to other film studios. She appeared in United Artists' "The Private Affairs of Bel Ami" (1947), and Paramount Pictures' "Samson and Delilah" (1949). In 1948, Lansbury made her debut in radio roles, followed by her television debut in 1950.
In 1952, Lansbury requested the termination of her contract with MGM, instead of its renewal. She felt unsatisfied with her film career as an MGM contract player. She then joined the East Coast touring productions of two former Broadway plays. By 1953, Lansbury had two children of her own and was also raising a stepson. She and her family moved into a larger house, located on San Vincente Boulevard in Santa Monica. In 1959, she and her family moved into a house in Malibu. The married couple were able to send their children to a local public school.
Meanwhile she continued her film career as a freelance actress, but continued to be cast in middle-aged roles. She regained her A-picture actress through well-received roles in the drama film "The Long, Hot Summer" (1958) and the comedy film "The Reluctant Debutante" (1958). She also appeared regularly in television roles, and became a regular on game show "Pantomime Quiz" (1947-1959).
In 1957, Lansbury made her Broadway debut in a performance of "Hotel Paradiso". The play was an adaptation of the 1894 "L'Hôtel du libre échange" ("Free Exchange Hotel"), written by Maurice Desvallières (1857-1926) and Georges Feydeau (1862-1921). Lansbury's role as "Marcel Cat" was critically well received. She continued appearing in Broadway over the next several years, most notably cast as the verbally abusive mother in "A Taste of Honey". She was cast as the mother of co-star Joan Plowright (1929-), who was only four years younger.
In the early 1960s, Lansbury was cast as an overbearing mother in "Blue Hawaii" (1961). The role of her son was played by Elvis Presley (1935-1977), who was only 10 years than her. The film was a box office hit, it finished as the 10th-top-grossing film of 1961 and 14th for 1962 on the "Variety" national box office survey. It gained Lansbury renewed fame, at a difficult point of her career.
Lansbury gained critical praise for a sympathetic role in the drama film "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1960), and the role of a manipulative mother in the drama film "All Fall Down" (1962). Based on her success in "All Fall Down", she was cast in a similar role in the Cold War-themed thriller "The Manchurian Candidate" (1962). She was cast as Eleanor Iselin, the mother of her co-star Laurence Harvey (1928-1973), who was only 3 years younger than she. This turned out to be one of the most memorable roles in her career. She received critical acclaim and was nominated for a third time for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The award was instead won by Patty Duke (1946-2016).
Lansbury made a comeback in the starring role of Mame Dennis in the musical "Mame" (1966), by Jerome Lawrence (1915-2004) and Robert Edwin Lee (1918-1994). The play was an adaptation of the novel "Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade" (1955) by Patrick Dennis (1921-1976), and focused on the life and ideas of eccentric bohemian Mame Dennis. The musical received critical and popular praise, and Lansbury won her first Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. Lansbury gained significant fame from her success, becoming a "superstar".
Her newfound fame led to other high-profile appearances by Lansbury. She starred in a musical performance at the 1968 Academy Awards ceremony, and co-hosted the 1968 Tony Awards. The Hasty Pudding Club, a social club for Harvard students. elected her "Woman of the Year" in 1968.
Lansbury's next theatrical success was in 1969 "The Madwoman of Chaillot" (1945) by Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944). The play concerns an eccentric Parisian woman's struggles with authority figures. Lansbury was cast in the starring role of 75-year-old Countess Aurelia, despite her actual age of 44. The show was well received and lasted for 132 performances. Lansbury won her second Tony Award for this role.
In 1970, Lansbury's Malibu home was destroyed in a brush fire. Lansbury and her husband decided to buy Knockmourne Glebe, an 1820s Irish farmhouse, located near the village of Conna in rural County Cork.
Her film career reached a new height. She was cast in the starring role of benevolent witch Eglantine Price in Disney's fantasy film "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" (1971). The film was a box-office hit; it was critically well received, and introduced Lansbury to a wider audience of children and families.
In 1972, Lansbury returned to the British stage, performing in London's West End with the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1973, Lansbury appeared in the role of Rose in London performances of the musical "Gypsy" (1959) by Arthur Laurents. It was quite successful. In 1974, "Gypsy" went on tour in the United States. with the same cast. For her role, Lanbury won the Sarah Siddons Award and her third Tony Award. The musical had its second tour in 1975.
Tired from musicals. Lansbury next sought Shakespearean roles in the United Kingdom. From 1975 to 1976, she appeared as Queen Gertrude in the National Theatre Company's production of Hamlet. In November 1975, Lansbury's mother Moyna Macgill died at the age of 79. Lansbury arranged for her mother's remains to be cremated, and the ashes scattered near her own County Cork home.
In 1976, Lansbury returned to the American stage. In 1978, Lansbury temporarily replaced Constance Towers (1933-) in the starring role of Anna Leonowens (1831-1915) in The King and I. While Towers was on a break from the role, Lansbury appeared in 24 performances.
In 1978, Lansbury appeared in her first film role in seven years, as the novelist and murder victim Salome Otterbourne in the mystery film "Death on the Nile" (1978). The film was an adaptation of the 1937 novel by Agatha Christie (1890-1976); Otterbourne was loosely based on real-life novelist Elinor Glyn (1864-1943). The film was a modest box-office hit, and Lansbury befriended her co-star Bette Davis (1908-1989).
In 1979, Lansbury was cast in the role of meat pie seller Mrs. Lovett in the musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" (1979), by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler (1912-1987). The musical was loosely based on the penny dreadful serial novel "The String of Pearls: A Domestic Romance" (1846-1847), which first depicted fictional serial killer Sweeney Todd. Lansbury remained in the role for 14 months, and was then replaced by Dorothy Loudon (1925-2003). Lansbury won her fourth Tony Award for this role. She returned to the role for 10 months in 1980.
Lansbury's next prominent film role was that of Miss Froy in "The Lady Vanishes" (1979), a remake of the 1938 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). She was next cast in the role of amateur sleuth Miss Jane Marple in the mystery film "The Mirror Crack'd" (1980), an adaptation of the novel "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side" (1962) by Agatha Christie. The novel was loosely inspired by the life of Gene Tierney (1920-1991). The film was a modest commercial success. There were plans for at least two sequels, but they ended in development hell.
In 1982, Lansbury was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, She appeared at the time in the new play "A Little Family Business" and a revival of "Mame", but both shows were commercial failures. In film, Lansbury voiced the witch Mommy Fortuna in the animated fantasy film "The Last Unicorn" (1982). The film was critically well received, but was not a box-office hit.
Lansbury played Ruth in the musical comedy "The Pirates of Penzance" (1983), a film adaptation of the 1879 comic opera by William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900). The film was a box office bomb, earning about 695,000 dollars.
Lansbury's next film role was that of Granny in the gothic fantasy film "The Company of Wolves" (1984), based on a 1979 short story by Angela Carter (1940-1992). Lansbury was cast as the grandmother of protagonist Rosaleen (played by Sarah Patterson), in a tale featuring werewolves and shape-shifting. The film was critically well received, but barely broke even at the box office.
At about that time, Lansbury appeared regularly in television films and mini-series. Her most prominent television role was that of Jessica Fletcher in the detective series "Murder, She Wrote" (1984-1996). Jessica was depicted as a successful mystery novelist from Maine who encounters and solves many murders. The character was considered an American counterpart to Miss Marple. The series followed the "whodunit" format and mostly avoided depictions of violence or gore.
The series was considered a television landmark for having an older female character as the protagonist. It was aimed primarily at middle-aged audiences, but also attracted both younger viewers and senior citizen viewers. Ratings remained high for most of its run. Lansbury rejected pressure from network executives to put her character in a relationship, as she believed that Fletcher should remain a strong single female.
In 1989, Lansbury co-founded the production company Corymore Productions, which started co-producing the television series with Universal Television. This allowed Lansbury to have more creative input on the series. She was appointed an executive producer. By the time the series ended in 1996, it tied with the original "Hawaii Five-O" (1968-1980) as the longest-running detective drama series in television history.
Her popularity from "Murder, She Wrote" made Lansbury a much-sought figure for advertisers. She appeared in advertisements and infomercials for Bufferin, MasterCard and the Beatrix Potter Company.
Lansbury's highest-profile film role in decades was voicing the character of singing teapot Mrs. Potts in Disney's animated fantasy film "Beauty and the Beast" (1991). Lansbury performed the film's title song, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.
During the late 1980s and 1990s, Lansbury lived most of the year in California. In 1991, she had Corymore House, a farmhouse at Ballywilliam, County Cork, built as her new family home. She spend Christmases and summers there.
Following the end of "Murder, She Wrote", Lansbury returned to a career as a theatrical actress. She temporarily retired from the stage in 2001, to take care of her husband Peter Shaw, whose health was failing. Shaw died in 2003, from congestive heart failure at the couple's Brentwood, California home. Their marriage had lasted for 54 years (1949-2003).
Lansbury felt at the time that she could not take on any more major acting roles, but that she could still make cameos. She moved back to New York City in 2006, buying a condominium in Manhattan. Her first prominent film role in years was that of Aunt Adelaide in the fantasy film "Nanny McPhee" (2005). She credits her performance in the film with pulling her out of depression, a state of mind which had lasted since her husband's death.
Lansbury returned to performing on the Broadway stage in 2007, after an absence of 23 years. In 2009, she won her fifth Tony Award. She shared the record for most Tony Award victories with Julie Harris (1925-2013). In the 2010s, she continued regularly appearing in theatrical performances. In 2014, she returned to the London stage, after an absence of nearly 40 years.
In 2015, Lansbury received her first Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress. At age 89, she was among the oldest first-time winners. Also in 2015, November 2015 was awarded the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement in Musical Theatre.
In 2017, she was cast as Aunt March in the mini-series "Little Women". The mini-series was an adaptation of the 1868-1869 novel of the same name by Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888). The series lasted for 3 episodes, and was critically well received.
In 2018, Lansbury gained her next film role in Disney's fantasy film "Mary Poppins Returns" (2018), a sequel to "Mary Poppins". Lansbury was cast in the role of the Balloon Lady, a kindly old woman who sells balloons at the park. The films was a commercial hit, earning about 350 million dollars at the worldwide box office.
In 2019, Lansbury performed at a one-night benefit staging of Oscar Wilde's play "The Importance of Being Earnest" (1895). a farce satirizing Victorian morals. She was cast in the role of society lady Lady Bracknell, mother to Gwendolen Fairfax.
By 2020, Lansbury was 95 years old, one of the oldest-living actresses. She has never retired from acting, and remains a popular icon.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
The daughter of Judy Garland and producer Sidney Luft, and the half-sister of Liza Minnelli, Lorna Luft was born in 1952 in Santa Monica, California. According to her autobiography, "Me and My Shadows" (1998), she and her younger brother Joey Luft lived an idyllic childhood in Bel Air, oblivious to any problems that may have arisen regarding her mother's ongoing drug addiction and her parents' marriage. By the time she was 12, however, her parents were divorced, and she was forced to face her mother's serious drug problem head-on. But she stuck with her mother, because she knew that Garland truly loved her children when not under the influence of the drugs. She became her mother's care-giver, administering the medication she needed to function, carefully monitoring the amount she took, and dealing with her whenever her behavior got out of control. Eventually, however, she couldn't take it anymore and had a mental breakdown. As painful as it was for her, she and her brother left her mother and went to live with their father. Several months later, Garland overdosed and died. Lorna was crushed and guilty, having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that her mother's death was inevitable, and would have happened had she been there or not. Lorna soon followed in her mother and sister's footsteps to a show business career. She became a professional singer, though never quite reaching the success her mother and sister had in that field. She also appeared on Broadway in "Promises, Promises" and "Snoopy", in a summer stock production of "Grease" and in a national tour of "Guys and Dolls". She hasn't made many films. The ones she has made include Grease 2 (1982), the disastrous sequel to the film version of "Grease", and the beach party film Where the Boys Are (1984), as well as small appearances in Studio 54 (1998) and My Giant (1998). In 1985, she took a supporting role in the sitcom Trapper John, M.D. (1979) as a nurse, but a year and a half later, the show ended its seven-year run. In the 70's and 80's, she also experienced a drug addiction to cocaine, but is now drug-free. She claims she has had to face her sister Liza's drug addictions, as well, and helped to get her into the Betty Ford Center once. She was married to rocker Jake Hooker, who later became her manager, but despite two children, the marriage was not happy. They are now divorced, and she lives in California with her children and her second husband, musician Colin Freeman. Currently (1999), plans are in full swing for a miniseries to be made from her book. She will serve as executive producer on the project.- 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
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
A grand, well-respected character lead and support of stage, film and television, most people mistakenly think New Zealander Clive Revill is British. A delightfully comic eccentric praised for his sterling work on the musical stage, the blue-eyed, curly, red-haired gent is also highly regarded for his formidable dramatic work in Shakespearean roles.
Clive Selsby Revill was born on April 18, 1930, in Wellington, New Zealand, and educated at Rongotai College and Victoria University (Wellington). Once trained for a career as an accountant, he abruptly switched gears and made his stage debut in Auckland, New Zealand playing Sebastian in "Twelfth Night" in 1950. He then moved to England to study with the Old Vic School in London. While there he appeared at Stratford-on-Avon in mid-1950s presentations of "Hamlet", "Love's Labour's Lost", "The Merchant of Venice", "Julius Caesar" and "The Tempest", among others.
Having made his Broadway debut back in 1952 with "Mr. Pickwick", the man of many skills took a juicy chunk out of the Big Apple upon returning to New York in the 1960s with his critically lauded, Tony Award-nominated work in "Irma La Douce" and as "Fagin" in "Oliver!" He has amused audiences for years with his larger-than-life musical roles, particularly in such Gilbert and Sullivan operettas as "The Mikado" and "The Pirates of Penzance". Others have included "Sherry", "Lolita" and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" -- replacing the late George Rose in the last mentioned after that actor's untimely death in 1988.
Making an inauspicious debut in an unbilled role in 1956, his more pronounced movie work includes Kaleidoscope (1966), The Assassination Bureau (1969), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), Avanti! (1972), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, The Legend of Hell House (1973) (a rare lead), Mack the Knife (1989), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995). Quite proficient at ethnic roles (playing everything from Chinese to Russian), Clive's acute sense of comic timing and uncanny use of body language is parallel to none, often engaging audiences as delightfully pompous, even "hissable" gents.
From the 1990s into the millennium, Clive has pretty much settled in the States. His distinctive voice has been greatly utilized in animated features and video games (Dr. Doom, Darth Gravus, Jetfire), plus a few films including Intrepid (2000), Crime and Punishment (2002), Gentlemen Broncos (2009) and The Queen of Spain (2016). Twice divorced, Revill has one daughter, Kate Selsby (aka Kate Selsby Revill), by his second marriage to Suzi Schor-Revill. He makes his home in Los Angeles.- Stewart Granger was born James Lablache Stewart in London, the great grandson of the opera singer Luigi Lablache. He attended Epsom College but left after deciding not to pursue a medical degree. He decided to try acting and attended Webber-Douglas School of Dramatic Art, London. By 1935, he made his stage debut in "The Cardinal" at the Little Theatre Hull . He was with the Birmingham Repertory Company between 1936 and 1937 and, in 1938, he made his debut in the West End, London in "The Sun Never Sets". He joined the Old Vic company in 1939, appearing in 'Tony Draws a Horse' at the Criterion and 'A House in the Square' at the St Martins He had been gradually rising through the ranks of better stage roles when World War II began, and he joined the British Army in 1940. However, he developed an ulcer (1942) which brought his release from military service.
With a dearth of leading men for British movies he quickly landed his first film opportunity The Man in Grey (1943) for Gainsborough Pictures. This was the first installment of the company's successful series of romance films. Not to be confused with American actor James Stewart, James Lablanche Stewart became Stewart Granger (though he was "Jimmy" to his off-screen friends). But the film work was unsatisfying. He was forever cast as the dashing hero type, while fellow up-and-coming actor James Mason always garnered the more substantial Gainsborough part. When Mason got the nod from Hollywood, Granger inherited better parts and, in some star company in one case, the sophisticated Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) with Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh and a very young bit player already being noticed, Jean Simmons. Granger's lead roles to the end of the decade were substantial, but Simmons was unwittingly moving on into British film history with small but memorable roles for David Lean, Michael Powell, and, in a big way, Laurence Olivier, as "Ophelia" in his historic Hamlet (1948) for which she received an Oscar nomination. Granger and she were brought together as co-stars in the comedy Adam and Evalyn (1949). This time around, the chemistry off-camera was there as well, and they became engaged. About the same time, Granger's hope of interesting Hollywood was realized for him and his bride-to-be. He married Simmons and signed with MGM in 1950. Once in Hollywood, he was getting star billing leads in romantic roles that the audiences loved, but he found them still unsatisfying. He also found himself heir apparent to Errol Flynn as a swashbuckler in two popular films: the remake of The Prisoner of Zenda (1952) and Scaramouche (1952). He and Simmons were paired in Young Bess (1953), where Granger had the romantic lead, but Simmons was the focus of the movie.
Through the 50s, the films of each might have fairly equal production values, but as the fortunes of Hollywood go, Simmons was the more memorable star in films that were more popular-some very big hits, the later Elmer Gantry (1960) and Spartacus (1960). That sort of undeclared competition for a married Hollywood couple was poison to the marriage. In 1960, they divorced. Granger did a lot of work in Germany, along with some in Italy and Spain in the 60s. Interestingly, in the same period Simmons was finding the same lack of challenging roles in the US. In the 70s and 80s, Granger was relegated to small screen subsistence with regular TV roles along with a few movies and a stint on the New York stage. And ironically, Simmons was in the same boat during that period. Granger's typecasting was nothing new, but certainly his often scathing criticism of Hollywood and its denizens that came out in his autobiography "Sparks Fly Upward" was understandable and rang true with so many other stories dealing with illusive stardom. Though he was candid in his disgust with his whole career - and admittedly he did not have the depth for the range of roles allotted to bigger named actors - nonetheless he always turned in solid performances in the roles that became his legacy. - Blue-eyed, red-haired American character actress, often seen as resolute, strong-willed women. Though born in Kansas, Barbara Babcock spent much of her early childhood in Japan, where her father, U.S. Army Major General Conrad Stanton Babcock Jr., was posted (he was also a noted equestrian, who competed at the 1936 Summer Olympics). Her mother was Chilean-born Jadwiga Florence Noskowiak (1903-2000), a former stage actress and singer.
Babcock attended universities in Lausanne and Milan and later graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She initially interviewed for a job with the State Department, aiming at a diplomatic career. When this fell through, she turned to acting, debuting on screen in 1956. From the early 60s, Babcock made guest appearances in numerous television series. She ultimately became best known for her Emmy Award-winning performance as the over-amorous Grace Gardner in NBC's Hill Street Blues (1981) and as pioneer newspaper editor Dorothy Jennings in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993) (a regular role, lasting from 1993 to 1998).
Babcock featured several times on Star Trek (1966), though it was more often her voice that was utilized for assorted alien background characters. She also played a member of the 'underground' in episodes of Hogan's Heroes (1965) and Pam Ewing's fashion boss in Dallas (1978). Babcock was one of the leads in Alan Alda's sitcom The Four Seasons (1984), about four middle-aged couples who vacation together four times annually, once per season. In this, she played the orthopedist wife of Allan Arbus (of M*A*S*H (1972) fame). Babcock subsequently starred in her own right as a demure attorney, counterpoint to Jerry Orbach's vociferous, seedy 'old school' gumshoe, in the short-lived CBS mystery drama The Law and Harry McGraw (1987). One might also remember her as one of the (ill-fated) residents of Salem's Lot (1979) and as a repeat guest star on Mannix (1967) and (alternating between murder victim and villainess of the week) in Murder, She Wrote (1984).
Her occasional forays to the big screen tended to be in smaller supporting roles, first up as an Apache kidnap victim in the Glenn Ford western Day of the Evil Gun (1968). More recently in maternal roles, she portrayed an Irish immigrant, the mother of Nicole Kidman's character, in Ron Howard's big budget western Far and Away (1992). Her last motion picture appearance was as the wife of test pilot and would-be-astronaut Frank Corvin (Clint Eastwood) in Space Cowboys (2000).
Barbara Babcock retired from acting in 2004, the year she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. In her private life, she has had a lifelong interest in travel and exploration and has dabbled in writing. She is known as an avid crusader for animal rights. - Actress
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The early film career of Stella Stevens could be said to mirror that of Marilyn Monroe. She began by playing a succession of sensuous, blond glamour girls, from naïve virgins and funny coquettes to precocious or briny-tongued floozies. Her early maturity on screen may have reflected her own turbulent private life: she was married at 15, had a child (Andrew Stevens) at 16 and was divorced a year later. At 21, having a child to support and no money, she posed for a celebrated Playboy centerfold. She was Playmate of the Month for January 1960 which did her subsequent movie career no harm whatever. She was voted by Playboy as one of the 100 Sexiest Women of the 20th century and became one of the most photographed stars of the 1960s.
The voluptuous, blue-eyed Stella was born Estelle Caro Eggleston to one of the oldest families in Yazoo City, Mississippi. A myth which had her hailing from the quaintly named area of Hot Coffee was purely an invention by Hollywood publicists. Her father, Thomas Ellet Eggleston, was an insurance salesman, her mother, Estelle (nee Caro), a nurse. The family moved to Memphis when she was four.
During her early childhood, Stella was nicknamed "Bootsie". Precocious and impatient to grow up, she took to watching movies at every opportunity. It became her main passion. Graduating from high school in 1955, she spent two years attending Memphis State University where she was 'discovered' during a production of Bus Stop in the role of aspiring nightclub singer Chérie (famously played by Marilyn in the film version). Borrowing some money, Stella made her way to the bright lights of Los Angeles and was signed by 20th Century Fox in 1959. She made only three films for the studio during a six months spell before her contract was dropped, her debut being a bit part in Frank Tashlin's saccharine comedy-drama Say One for Me (1959).
Her role won her a Golden Globe Award as Most Promising Newcomer. That same year, she was picked up by Paramount and made her first breakthrough on the screen as the vampish Apassionata von Climax in the film version of the hit Broadway musical Li'l Abner (1959), based on Al Capp's comic strip.
She alternated motion pictures with television appearances, displaying a perhaps unexpectedly wide range as an actress in both dramatic and comedic roles. She stood out in films like Too Late Blues (1961) and The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1963), both under greatly contrasting directorial styles.
Above all, she saw herself not as a sex icon but as a comedienne. She once said "I want to be remembered for whatever made people laugh the most." Unafraid to do physical comedy in the manner of Lucille Ball she was also often lauded for her comic timing in films like The Silencers (1966) (a James Bond-style spoof, co-starring a sleepy-eyed Dean Martin) and Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! (1968). In the 1970s, her best role was as a warmhearted prostitute in Sam Peckinpah's seminal western The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970). Writer and critic Roger Ebert wrote of her performance "There are few enough actresses who can be funny and feminine at the same time, but she is certainly one of them." Conversely, in the classic disaster epic The Poseidon Adventure (1972), she played a former hooker with a heart closer to tin.
Like many film careers, hers too experienced a fair share of hiccups along the way, often due to typecasting: duds like Slaughter (1972), Stand Up and Be Counted (1972), Las Vegas Lady (1975), The Manitou (1978), and others. However, Stella proved resourceful enough to diversify and go behind the camera, both as producer and director of a feature-length documentary, The American Heroine (1979). She co-authored a novel entitled 'Razzle, Dazzle' (published in 1999), about the rise and fall of a glamorous rock star. She unveiled her own range of women's and men's fragrances, called 'Sexy'.
During the 1980s and 1990s, she concentrated primarily on television and enjoyed lengthy tenures on the glossy soaps Flamingo Road (1980) and Santa Barbara (1984), in addition to many guest appearances in shows as diverse as Police Story (1973), Hotel (1983), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1985) and In the Heat of the Night (1988). In 1976, she briefly forsook the glamour of Beverly Hills and set up home on a 27-acre ranch on the edge of the Cascade Mountains in Washington State and then proceeded to operate an art gallery and bakery in a nearby town.
By 1983, she had returned to her Beverly Hills home where she lived with her partner (rock guitarist Bob Kulick), until the home was sold in 2016. Afflicted by Alzheimer's disease, Stella Stevens spent her remaining years in an assisted living home in California and passed away in Los Angeles on February 17 2023 at the age of 84.- Actress
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From the grand old school of wisecracking, loud and lanky Mary Wickes had few peers while forging a career as a salty scene-stealer. Her abrupt, tell-it-like-it-is demeanor made her a consistent audience favorite on every medium for over six decades. She was particularly adroit in film parts that chided the super rich or exceptionally pious, and was a major chastiser in generation-gap comedies. TV holds a vault full of not-to-be-missed vignettes where she served as a brusque foil to many a top TV comic star. Case in point: who could possibly forget her merciless ballet taskmaster, Madame Lamond, putting Lucille Ball through her rigorous paces at the ballet bar in a classic I Love Lucy (1951) episode?
Unlike the working-class characters she embraced, this veteran character comedienne was actually born Mary Isabelle Wickenhauser on June 13, 1910, in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of a well-to-do banker. Of Irish and German heritage, she grew into a society débutante following high school and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in political science. She forsook a law career, however, after being encouraged by a college professor to try theater, and she made her debut doing summer stock in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The rest, as they say, is history.
Prodded on by the encouragement of stage legend Ina Claire whom she met doing summer theater, she transported herself to New York where she quickly earned a walk-on part in the Broadway play "The Farmer Takes a Wife" starring Henry Fonda in 1934. In the show she also understudied The Wizard of Oz (1939)'s "Wicked Witch" Margaret Hamilton, and earned excellent reviews when she went on in the part. Plain and hawkish in looks while noticeably tall and gawky in build, Wickes was certainly smart enough to see that comedy would become her career path and she enjoyed showing off in roles playing much older than she was. New York stage work continued to pour in, and she garnered roles in "Spring Dance" (1936), "Stage Door" (1936), "Hitch Your Wagon" (1937), "Father Malachy's Miracle (1937) and, in an unusual bit of casting, Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre production of "Danton's Death". All the while she kept fine-tuning her acting craft in summer stock.
A series of critically panned plays followed until a huge door opened for her in the form of Miss Preen, the beleaguered nurse to an acid-tongued, wheelchair-bound radio star (played by the hilarious Monty Woolley) in the George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart comedy "The Man Who Came to Dinner"; for once, it was Wickes doing the cowering. The play was the toast of Broadway for two wacky years and she went on tour with it as well. She also become a Kaufman favorite.
Hollywood took notice as well, and when Warner Bros. decided to film the play, it allowed both Wickes and Woolley to recreate their classic roles. The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941), which co-starred Bette Davis and Ann Sheridan, was a grand film hit and Wickes was now officially on board in Hollywood, given plenty of chances to freelance. At Warners she lightened up the proceedings a bit in the Bette Davis tearjerker Now, Voyager (1942) as the nurse to Gladys Cooper. Elsewhere, she traded quips with Lou Costello as a murder suspect in the amusing whodunit Who Done It? (1942); played a WAC in Private Buckaroo (1942) with The Andrews Sisters; and dished out her patented smart-alecky services in both Happy Land (1943) and My Kingdom for a Cook (1943).
Wickes returned to Broadway for a few seasons, often for Kaufman, and did some radio work as well, but returned to Hollywood and played yet another nurse in The Decision of Christopher Blake (1948), a part written especially for her. She appeared with Bette Davis for a third time in June Bride (1948), finding some fine moments playing a magazine editor. Wickes went on to perform yeoman work in On Moonlight Bay (1951) and its sequel, By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953); I'll See You in My Dreams (1951); White Christmas (1954) and The Music Man (1962), the last as one of the "Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little" gossiping housewives of River City.
Television roles also began filtering in for Wickes she continued to put her cryptic comedy spin on her harried housekeepers, teachers, servants and other working commoner types. She played second banana to a queue of comedy's best known legends in the 1950s and 1960s, notably Lucille Ball (who was a long-time neighbor and pal off-screen), Danny Thomas, Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante, Peter Lind Hayes and Gertrude Berg. Her stellar work with Berg on The Gertrude Berg Show (1961) garnered Wickes an Emmy nomination. Among the Baby Boom generation, she may be best remembered as Miss Cathcart in Dennis the Menace (1959).
In later years her gangly figure filled out a bit as she continued to appear here and there on the small screen in both guest star and series' regular parts. Later in life she enjoyed a bit of a resurgence. Recalled earlier for her Sister Clarissa in the madcap comedy films The Trouble with Angels (1966) and its sequel, Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! (1968), both with Rosalind Russell, She donned the habit again decades later as crabby musical director Sister Mary Lazarus in the box-office smash Sister Act (1992) and its sequel, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993). She appeared in Postcards from the Edge (1990) as Meryl Streep's grandmother, and in Little Women (1994) as the matriarchal Aunt March. True to form, the last role in which she appeared was voicing the gargoyle "Laverne" in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), which was released after her death.
The never-married Wickes died in 1995 after entering the hospital with respiratory problems. She suffered a broken hip from an accidental fall and complications quickly set in following surgery. She was 85 years young.- Actress
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Actress, writer, producer, and director Anne Lockhart can look back over 100 years to trace her theatrical roots.
She was born Anne Kathleen Maloney on September 6, 1953 in New York City and grew up in Brentwood, California. Born to one of theatre's leading families, she is the fourth generation of performers in her family to carry the Lockhart name, as the daughter of actress June Lockhart, granddaughter of Gene Lockhart and Kathleen Lockhart, and great-granddaughter of John Coates Lockhart. Her mother is known for her years on the television series Lassie (1954) and Lost in Space (1965).
Anne's professional career has spanned over 50 years. She has appeared in over 60 television series from the 1970s to the present, including Magnum, P.I. (1980), The Fall Guy (1981), Simon & Simon (1981), Knight Rider (1982), Murder, She Wrote (1984), and Diagnosis Murder (1993). Her first film appearance was in the Oscar-nominated T Is for Tumbleweed (1958). In 1979 she appeared as the groundbreaking "Lieutenant Sheba" in eleven episodes of Battlestar Galactica (1978) and the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979) episode.
In addition to her long list of film and television credits, Anne has had a prolific career as a voice actress since 1975. Mostly uncredited, she remains one of the most "in-demand" voices in Hollywood. As writer, among other stage and film work, Anne has performed her original one-woman piece on "Frenchy McCormick" across the country, since 1999. An accomplished stage actress, Anne's work "on the boards" continues. Her stage debut at age 18 in New York ("40 Carats") was followed by multiple national tours of other theatrical productions. As well as appearing in contemporary as well as classical works, Anne is an accomplished Shakespearean actress, having appeared in many productions of the Bard's work. Anne founded and continues to serve on the Board of the "Kingsmen Shakespeare Festival" in California.
Single mother to daughter Carlyle Taylor and son Zane Taylor since 1994, she keeps a busy working schedule and divides her time among homes in California, Texas, and Montana.- Actress
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Alice Maud Krige was born on June 28, 1954 in Upington, South Africa where her father, Dr. Louis Krige, worked as a young physician. The Kriges later moved to Port Elizabeth where Alice grew up in what she describes as a "very happy family", a family that also included two brothers (both of whom became physicians) and her mother, Pat, a clinical psychologist. Interestingly, Alice also grew up without television, something which the actress calls a "huge black hole in my education" (South Africa did not start getting television until 1976, a year after Alice left the country to pursue an acting career in London).
While growing up, she had no dreams or aspirations of pursuing an acting career, in fact as a child she had wanted to become a dancer, but her father disapproved. Instead, she prepared to follow in the footsteps of her mother by attending Rhodes University in Grahamstown where she pursued an undergraduate degree in psychology and literature (graduating in 1975). However, as luck or fate would have it, Alice decided to "take up a bit of timetable" by enrolling in a drama class in order to make use of a free credit. This decision would prove to be a life-altering one, resulting in an honors degree in drama from Rhodes, a move to London and a new career path. As Alice explains, "I really got into it and it took over my life... it became my life-calling, all consuming."
After arriving in England, she began three years of study at London's Central School of Speech and Drama. Her first professional acting performance was a tiny television role in a 1979 BBC Play for Today. In 1980, Alice made her feature film debut as Sybil Gordon in the Academy Award winning Best Picture, Chariots of Fire (1981). She then appeared in the television adaptation of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1980), which was followed by her memorable, dual role as the avenging spirit in Ghost Story (1981). Also in 1981, she debuted in a West End theatre production of Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man, for which she received the honors of both a Plays and Players Award and a Laurence Olivier Award for Most Promising Newcomer. It was this early success in theatre that she decided to focus her career on next by spending some time working with the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company.
During her two seasons with the RSC (1982-83), Alice performed in such productions as "King Lear", "The Tempest", "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Cyrano de Bergerac". After her stint with the Royal Shakespeare Company, she returned to work in film and television. Her career could best be described as an eclectic mix of both mediums. She appeared in a diverse range of films, such as King David (1985), Barfly (1987), Haunted Summer (1988), Spies Inc. (1992) and See You in the Morning (1989). Her work in television included critically acclaimed miniseries, such as Ellis Island (1984) and Wallenberg: A Hero's Story (1985), as well as a healthy dose of what Alice herself calls, "kitchen sink dramas".
This eclectic trend continued into the 1990s. In addition to numerous roles in television (including appearances on Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990) and Becker (1998), Alice also appeared in the films Sleepwalkers (1992), Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream That One Calls Human Life (1995), Donor Unknown (1995), Amanda (1996), Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1997), Habitat (1997), The Commissioner (1998) and Molokai (1999). However, one notable standout was the film Star Trek: First Contact (1996) for which she won a 1997 Saturn Award for her portrayal of the Borg Queen. This is without a doubt the most commercial, mainstream film with which she has been involved. However, due to the amount of make-up and prosthetics that the role required, Alice claims that even today she is still most recognized from her role in Ghost Story (1981).
One obvious and lasting impact of her experience with Star Trek: First Contact has been her initiation into the world of Star Trek/sci-fi conventions. These weekend-long conventions take place all over the United States and Europe (primarily in the United Kingdom and Germany). They feature "guests", such as Alice, who give presentations, sign autographs, etc. The new millennium finds her with several new projects to her credit, which include such works as The Little Vampire (2000), the Star Trek: Voyager (1995) series finale "Endgame", Attila (2001), Dinotopia (2002), Reign of Fire (2002), Children of Dune (2003), The Mystery of Natalie Wood (2004) and a recurring guest role in the HBO series Deadwood (2004). Current projects include a film about the life of Julius Caesar, the horror film Silent Hill (2006), Lonely Hearts (2006) and The Contract (2006). In addition, she continues to make sporadic convention appearances and was recently awarded an honorary doctorate in literature from Rhodes University.
Alice Krige is married to writer/director Paul Schoolman, and lives what she describes as an "itinerant" lifestyle. Although she and her husband maintain a permanent home in the United States, they spend much of their time living and working abroad.- Actress
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Acclaimed actress Jessica Walter was born on January 31, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Esther (Groisser), a teacher, and David Walter (his original surname was Warshawsky), a musician who was a member of the NBC Symphony Orchestra and the NYC Ballet Orchestra. She was of Russian Jewish descent, the sister of screenwriter and Chairman of the UCLA Screenwriting program Richard Walter. Their uncle was stage and screen actor Jerry Jarrett. Raised in Queens, Walter was a graduate of New York's High School of the Performing Arts and the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. She first acted in summer stock and her extensive subsequent career on the stage included productions both on- and off-Broadway.
On Broadway, Walter appeared in Peter Ustinov's "Photo Finish" (which earned her the Clarence Derwent Award as Most Promising Newcomer), "A Severed Head", "Advise and Consent", "Night Life" and Neil Simon's "Rumors". Off-Broadway, she acted in a 1986 Los Angeles Theater Center production of "Tartuffe" opposite Ron Leibman (to whom she was married from 1983 until his death in 2019).
After guesting on several TV series in the early and mid-1960s, Walter made her move to feature films where she attracted attention for her role as the brash Libby in Sidney Lumet's The Group (1966). This seemed to set the tone for her next screen personae as bitchy, difficult or dangerously vindictive women, the most memorable of which was Evelyn in Clint Eastwood's directorial debut film, Play Misty for Me (1971). This earned Walter a richly deserved Golden Globe nomination. Another stand-out role was Pat, the bored ex-glamour model wife of one racing driver (Brian Bedford) and troublesome girlfriend of another (James Garner) in Grand Prix (1966). Walter's numerous TV roles included the enchantress Morgan LeFay in the rarely seen telemovie Dr. Strange (1978). Of her many screen villainesses she later said: "those are the fun roles. They're juicy, much better than playing the vanilla ingénues".
By the 1980s, Walter had turned increasingly towards comedy, both on the big screen (The Flamingo Kid (1984)) and the small (Three's a Crowd (1984)). However, she never shied away from other genres, whether playing an EarthGov senator on the cult sci-fi series Babylon 5 (1993) or providing the voice for the leading female character in the animated sitcom Dinosaurs (1991). Walter received an Emmy Award for Best Dramatic Actress in the Ironside (1967) spin-off Amy Prentiss (1974) and was nominated for guest-starring roles in episodes of Trapper John, M.D. (1979) and The Streets of San Francisco (1972). She found a new audience among younger viewers as the devious matriarch Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development (2003).
Jessica Walter died in her sleep on March 24, 2021 from undisclosed causes at the age of 80. Riverside Memorial Chapel and Funeral Home in New York City completed her final arrangements. She was cremated and her ashes are with her daughter.- Actress
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In a six-decade-plus career (she started out as a radio performer at age 14), there are very few facets of entertainment that lovely singer/actress Polly Bergen has not conquered or, at the very least, touched upon. A nightclub and Columbia recording artist of the 50s and 60s, she is just as well known for her film and Emmy-winning dramatic performances as she is for her wry comedic gifts. In the leaner times, she has maintained quite well with her various businesses. Truly one for the ages, Polly has, at age 70+, nabbed a Tony nomination for her gutsy "I'm Still Here" entertainer Carlotta in Stephen Sondheim's "Follies", and was still dishing out the barbs as she recently demonstrated as Felicity Huffman's earthy mom on Desperate Housewives (2004).
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee as Nellie Burgin on July 14, 1930, her family, which included father William, mother Lucy and sister Barbra, eventually moved to Los Angeles. By the time she was 14, Polly was singing professionally on radio and managed to scrape up singing gigs with smaller bands around and about the Southern California area. She attended Compton Junior College before Paramount mogul Hal B. Wallis caught sight of her and signed her up with his studio. Having made an isolated film debut (as Polly Burgin) a year earlier in the Monogram western Across the Rio Grande (1949), Wallis showcased her as a decorative love interest in the slapstick vehicles of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the (then) hottest comedy team in Hollywood. But At War with the Army (1950), That's My Boy (1951) and The Stooge (1951) did little for Polly although she presented herself well. MGM and Universal had the idea to cast her in a more serious vein with co-starring roles in their dramas Escape from Fort Bravo (1953), Arena (1953) and Cry of the Hunted (1953), but again she was overlooked. Disasppointed, she decided to abandon her lucrative film contract and seek work elsewhere.
That "elsewhere" came in the form of 1950s TV. Focusing on her singing, she promoted her many albums for Columbia by guest-starring on all the top variety shows of the times. This culminated in her own variety program, The Polly Bergen Show (1957). The song "The Party's Over" became her traditional show-closer and signature tune. Polly also showed some marquee mettle on the cabaret and nightclub circuits, performing at many of the top hotels and showrooms throughout the country. She made her Broadway debut along with Harry Belafonte in "John Murray Anderson's Almanac" in 1953, and went on to appear in such stage shows as "Top Man" and "Champagne Complex". A delightfully engaging game show panelist to boot, she took a regular seat on the To Tell the Truth (1956) panel for five seasons.
Polly tended to display a looser, down-to-earth personality to induce laughs but she was also was formidable dramatic player and fashion plate quite capable of radiating great charm, poise and elegance. For her role as alcoholic torch singer Helen Morgan in the special TV showcase The Helen Morgan Story (1957) , she took home the Emmy award. Unfortunately for Polly, Ann Blyth took on the role of the tragic singer in the film version (with Gogi Grant providing the vocals), in what could have been a significant return to films for her.
Instead, Polly had to wait another five years for that to happen. As the wife of Gregory Peck and designated victim of revengeful psychopath Robert Mitchum in the taut movie thriller Cape Fear (1962), her film career reignited. Other opportunities came in the form of her distraught mental patient in The Caretakers (1963), which found her at odds with nurse Joan Crawford and doctor Robert Stack; the sparkling comedy Move Over, Darling (1963), which placed her in a comedy triangle with "other wife" Doris Day and husband James Garner; and as the first woman Chief Executive of the White House in the frothy comedy tidbit Kisses for My President (1964) opposite bemused "First Gentleman" Fred MacMurray. In what was to be a tinge of deja vu, Polly again saw her movie career dissipate after only a couple of vehicles. True to form, the indomitable Polly rebounded on TV.
A mild string of TV-movies came her way as she matured into the 1970s and 1980s, most notably the acclaimed miniseries The Winds of War (1983), which reunited her with Robert Mitchum, this time as his unhappy, alcoholic wife. This, along with her participation in the sequel, War and Remembrance (1988), earned Polly supporting Emmy nominations. In the years to come, she would find herself still in demand displaying her trademark comic grit in such shows as The Sopranos (1999), Commander in Chief (2005) and Desperate Housewives (2004).
Polly returned to singing in 1999 after nearly a three-decade absence (due to health and vocal issues). Quite huskier in tone, she went on to delight the New York musical stage with stand-out performances in "Follies" (2001), "Cabaret" (2002) and "Camille Claudel" (2007). Polly still made nightly appearances and had even put together singing concert tours on occasion.
Polly has authored three best-selling beauty books outside the acting arena and has demonstrated a marked level of acumen in the business world. Founding a mail-order cosmetics business in 1965, she sold it to Faberge eight years later. She also developed her own shoe and jewelry lines.
Married (1950-1955) to MGM actor Jerome Courtland during her first movie career peak, she later wed topflight agent/producer Freddie Fields in 1957, a union that lasted 18 years and produced two adopted children, Pamela and Peter. A third marriage in the 1980s also ended in divorce. An assertive voice when it comes to women's rights and issues, her memoir "Polly's Principles" came out in 1974.
Polly played a grandmother in her last film, the dramedy Struck by Lightning (2012), and died two years later on September 20, 2013, at the age of 84.- Actor
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Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall was born in Herne Hill, London, to Winifriede Lucinda (Corcoran), an Irish-born aspiring actress, and Thomas Andrew McDowall, a merchant seaman of Scottish descent. Young Roddy was enrolled in elocution courses at age five. By age 10, he had appeared in his first film, Murder in the Family (1938), playing Peter Osborne, the younger brother of sisters played by Jessica Tandy and Glynis Johns.
His mother brought Roddy and his sister to the U.S. at the beginning of World War II, and he soon got the part of "Huw", the youngest child in a family of Welsh coal miners, in John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941), acting alongside Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara and Donald Crisp in the film that won that year's best film Oscar. He went on to many other child roles, in films like My Friend Flicka (1943) and Lassie Come Home (1943) until, at age eighteen, he moved to New York, where he played a long series of successful stage roles, both on Broadway and in such venues as Connecticut's Stratford Festival, where he did Shakespeare. He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1949.
In addition to making many more movies (over 150), McDowall acted in television, developed an extensive collection of movies and Hollywood memorabilia, and published five acclaimed books of his own photography. He died at his Los Angeles home, aged 70, of cancer. He never married and had no children.- Actress
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The dark, petulant beauty of this petite American film and musical star worked to her advantage, especially in her early dramatic career. Anne Marie Blythe was born of Irish stock to Harry and Annie (nee Lynch) Blythe on August 16, 1928 in Mt. Kisco, New York. Her parents split while she was young and she, her mother and elder sister, Dorothy, moved to New York City, where the girls attended various Catholic schools. Already determined at an early age to perform, Ann attended Manhattan's Professional Children's School and was already a seasoned radio performer, particularly on soap dramas, while in elementary school. A member of New York's Children's Opera Company, the young girl made an important Broadway debut in 1941 at age 13 as the daughter of the characters played by Paul Lukas and Mady Christians in the classic Lillian Hellman WWII drama "Watch on the Rhine", billed as Anne (with an extra "e") Blyth. She stayed with the show for two years.
While touring with the play in Los Angeles, the teenager was noticed by director Henry Koster at Universal and given a screen test. Signed on at age 16 as Ann (without the "e") Blyth, the pretty, photographic colleen displayed her warbling talent in her debut film, Chip Off the Old Block (1944), a swing-era teen musical starring Universal song-and-dance favorites Donald O'Connor and Peggy Ryan. She followed it pleasantly enough with other "B" tune-fests such as The Merry Monahans (1944) and Babes on Swing Street (1944). It wasn't until Warner Bros. borrowed her to make self-sacrificing mother Joan Crawford's life pure hell as the malicious, spiteful daughter Veda in the film classic Mildred Pierce (1945) that she really clicked with viewers and set up her dramatic career. With murder on her young character's mind, Hollywood stood up and took notice of this fresh-faced talent.
Although Blyth lost the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year to another Anne (Anne Revere), she was borrowed again by Warner Bros. to film Danger Signal (1945). During filming, she suffered a broken back in a sledding accident while briefly vacationing in Lake Arrowhead and had to be replaced in the role. After a long convalescence (over a year and a half in a back brace) Universal used her in a wheelchair-bound cameo in Brute Force (1947).
Her first starring role was an inauspicious one opposite Sonny Tufts in Swell Guy (1946), but she finally began gaining some momentum again. Instead of offering her musical gifts, she continued her serious streak with Killer McCoy (1947) and a dangerously calculated role in Another Part of the Forest (1948), a prequel to The Little Foxes (1941) in which Blyth played the Bette Davis role of Regina at a younger age. Her attempts at lighter comedy were mild at best, playing a fetching creature of the sea opposite William Powell in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) and a teen infatuated with a much-older film star, Robert Montgomery, in Once More, My Darling (1949).
At full-throttle as a star in the early 1950s, Blyth transitioned easily among glossy operettas, wide-eyed comedies and all-out melodramas, some of which tended to be overbaked and, thereby, overplayed. When not dishing out the high dramatics of an adopted girl searching for her birth mother in Our Very Own (1950) or a wrongly-convicted murderess in Thunder on the Hill (1951), she was introducing classic standards as wife to Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso (1951) or playing pert and perky in such light confections as Katie Did It (1950). A well-embraced romantic leading lady, she made her last film for Universal playing a Russian countess courted by Gregory Peck in The World in His Arms (1952). MGM eventually optioned her for its musical outings, having borrowed her a couple of times previously. She became a chief operatic rival to Kathryn Grayson at the studio during that time. Grayson, however, fared much better than Blyth, who was given rather stilted vehicles.
Catching Howard Keel's roving eye while costumed to the nines in the underwhelming Rose Marie (1954) and his daughter in Kismet (1955), she also gussied up other stiff proceedings like The Student Prince (1954) and The King's Thief (1955) will attest. Unfortunately, Blyth came to MGM at the tail end of the Golden Age of musicals and probably suffered for it. She was dropped by the studio in 1956. She reunited with old Universal co-star Donald O'Connor in The Buster Keaton Story (1957). Blyth ended her film career on a high note, however, playing the tragic title role in the The Helen Morgan Story (1957) opposite a gorgeously smirking Paul Newman. She had a field day as the piano-sitting, kerchief-holding, liquor-swilling torch singer whose train wreck of a personal life was destined for celluloid. Disappointing for her personally, no doubt, was that her singing voice had to be dubbed (albeit superbly) by the highly emotive, non-operatic songstress Gogi Grant.
Through with films, Blyth's main concentration (after her family) were musical theatre and television. Over the years a number of classic songs were tailored to suit her glorious lyric soprano both in concert form and on the civic light opera/summer stock stages. "The Sound of Music", "The King and I", "Carnival", "Bittersweet", "South Pacific", "Show Boat" and "A Little Night Music" are but a few of her stage credits. During this time Blyth appeared as the typical American housewife for Hostess in its Twinkie, cupcake and fruit pie commercials, a job that lasted well over a decade. She made the last of her sporadic TV guest appearances on Quincy M.E. (1976) and Murder, She Wrote (1984) in the mid-1980s.
Married since 1953 to Dr. James McNulty, the brother of late Irish tenor Dennis Day, she is the mother of five, Blyth continues to be seen occasionally at social functions and conventions.- Actress
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Yvonne De Carlo was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton on September 1, 1922 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She was three when her father abandoned the family. Her mother turned to waitressing in a restaurant to make ends meet--a rough beginning for an actress who would, one day, be one of Hollywood's elite. Yvonne's mother wanted her to be in the entertainment field and enrolled her in a local dance school and also saw that she studied dramatics. Yvonne was not shy in the least. She was somewhat akin to Colleen Moore who, like herself, entertained the neighborhood with impromptu productions. In 1937, when Yvonne was 15, her mother took her to Hollywood to try for fame and fortune, but nothing came of it and they returned to Canada. They came back to Hollywood in 1940, where Yvonne would dance in chorus lines at night while she checked in at the studios by day in search of film work. After appearing in unbilled parts in three short films, she finally got a part in a feature.
Although the film Harvard, Here I Come! (1941) was quite lame, Yvonne glowed in her brief appearance as a bathing beauty. The rest of 1942 and 1943 saw her in more uncredited roles in films that did not quite set Hollywood on fire. In The Deerslayer (1943), she played Wah-Tah. The role did not amount to much, but it was much better than the ones she had been handed previously. The next year was about the same as the previous two years. She played small parts as either secretaries, someone's girlfriend, native girls or office clerks. Most aspiring young actresses would have given up and gone home in defeat, but not Yvonne. She trudged on. The next year, started out the same, with mostly bit parts, but later that year, she landed the title role in Salome, Where She Danced (1945) for Universal Pictures. While critics were less than thrilled with the film, it was at long last her big break, and the film was a success for Universal. Now she was rolling.
Her next film was the western comedy Frontier Gal (1945) as Lorena Dumont. After a year off the screen in 1946, she returned in 1947 as Cara de Talavera in Song of Scheherazade (1947), and many agreed that the only thing worth watching in the film was Yvonne. Her next film was the highly regarded Burt Lancaster prison film Brute Force (1947). Time after time, Yvonne continued to pick up leading roles, in such pictures as Slave Girl (1947), Black Bart (1948), Casbah (1948) and River Lady (1948). She had a meaty role in Criss Cross (1949), a gangster movie, as the ex-wife of a hoodlum. At the start of the 1950s, Yvonne enjoyed continued success in lead roles. Her talents were again showcased in movies such as The Desert Hawk (1950), Silver City (1951) and Scarlet Angel (1952). Her last film in 1952 was Hurricane Smith (1952), a picture most fans and critics agree is best forgotten.
In 1956, she appeared in the film that would immortalize her best, The Ten Commandments (1956). She played Sephora, the wife of Moses (Charlton Heston). The film was, unquestionably, a super smash, and is still shown on television today. Her performance served as a springboard to another fine role, this time as Amantha Starr in Band of Angels (1957). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Yvonne appeared on such television series as Bonanza (1959) and The Virginian (1962). With film roles drying up, she took the role of Lily Munster in the smash series The Munsters (1964). However, she still was not completely through with the big screen. Appearances in such films as McLintock! (1963), The Power (1968), The Seven Minutes (1971) and La casa de las sombras (1976) kept her before the eyes of the movie-going public. Yvonne De Carlo died at age 84 of natural causes on January 8, 2007 in Woodland Hills, California.- John Franklin Carson was born and raised in Hollywood, California. His father was actor Kit Carson (born Eldridge Franklin Carson), who appeared in many Western films, most notably working with Dale Robertson. His mother, the former Rosemonde James, also had some acting experience, albeit primarily as a fashion model, and was elected president of the Mannequins Association of Los Angeles in 1968. Young Johnny started his career doing commercials, including one at age 5 or 6 portraying a circus ringmaster for a local department store. He later did cartoon voices for Hanna-Barbara. While attending Valley College, he played a lead role in "Taming of the Shrew", staged by the drama department in November 1969.
After his feature film debut, there was a dispute with Johnny Carson regarding use of the name John Carson. As a result, he began to use the name John David Carson professionally. He was romantically linked with Kim Darby at the time of her ex-husband (James Stacy)'s motorcycle accident, in which Stacy lost an arm and a leg, becoming a paraplegic. Carson and Darby met while the two were filming Joie (1973). - Actress
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Stardom somehow eluded this vastly gifted actress. Had it not perhaps been for her low-level profile compounded by her McCarthy-era blacklisting in the early 1950s, there is no telling what higher tier Marsha Hunt might have attained. Perhaps her work was not flashy enough, or too subdued, or perhaps her intelligence too often disguised a genuine sex appeal to stand out among the other lovelies. Two studios, Paramount in the late 1930s and MGM in the early 1940s, failed to complete her star. Nevertheless, her talent and versatility cannot be denied. This glamorous, slimly handsome leading lady offered herself to well over 50 pictures during the 1930s and 1940s alone.
Christened Marcia Virginia Hunt, the Chicago-born actress was the younger of two girls born to an attorney and voice teacher/accompanist. The family relocated to New York when she was quite young and she attended such schools as PS #9 and Horace Mann School for Girls. She developed an interest in acting at an early age (3), performing around and about in school plays and at church functions. Following her high school graduation the young beauty found work as a John Powers model and as a singer on radio, a gift obviously inherited from her mother. Marcia (she later changed the spelling of her first name to Marsha) studied drama at the Theodora Irvine Drama School (one of her fellow students was Cornel Wilde).
Encouraged to try Hollywood by various New York people in the business, the young photogenic hopeful moved there in 1934. She was only 17 but was accompanied by her older sister. It didn't take long for the studios to take an interest in her and she was signed up by Paramount not long after. Marsha's very first movie was in a featured role opposite Robert Cummings and Johnny Downs in the old-fashioned The Virginia Judge (1935). Displaying an innate, fresh-faced sensitivity, she moved directly into her second film, playing the title role in Gentle Julia (1936), this time with Tom Brown as her romantic interest.
Marsha continued to show promise but these well-acted roles were, more often than not, overlooked in mild "B"-level offerings. Appearing in co-starring roles in everything from westerns (Desert Gold (1936) and Thunder Trail (1937)) to folksy or flyweight comedy (Easy to Take (1936) and Murder Goes to College (1937)), she could not find decent enough scripts at Paramount. Though she was once deemed one of the studio's promising starlets, one of her last films there was another prairie flower role--[error]--with cowboys John Wayne and Johnny Mack Brown vying for her attention. At about this time (1938) she married Jerry Hopper, a Paramount film editor who turned to directing in the 1950s. This marriage lasted but a few years.
Freelancing for a time for many studios, Marsha's more noticeable war-era work in sentimental comedy and staunch war dramas came from MGM, and she finally signed with the studio in 1939. The roles offered, which included a featured part as one of the sisters in Pride and Prejudice (1940) starring Greer Garson, and again as a sister to Garson in Blossoms in the Dust (1941), which showed much more promise. Some of her better war-era roles came in the films Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941), Kid Glove Killer (1942) and The Affairs of Martha (1942). During this time she also sang on extended USO tours and stayed busy on radio. Her best known film is arguably The Human Comedy (1943) but she wasn't the star. Other film roles had her in support of others, such as Margaret Sullavan in Cry 'Havoc' (1943), little Margaret O'Brien in Lost Angel (1943) and Garson again in The Valley of Decision (1945). Leading roles did not come in "A" pictures.
Her MGM contract was allowed to lapse in 1945 and a second marriage in 1946, to screenwriter Robert Presnell Jr., became a higher priority. The marriage was long and happy (exactly 40 years) and lasted until his passing in June of 1986. The few pictures she made were, again, uneventful or in support of the star, although she did have a catchy, unsympathetic role in the Susan Hayward starrer Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947) as a scheming secretary. In Raw Deal (1948), starring Dennis O'Keefe, she got the "raw deal" being overshadowed as a "good girl" by the "bad girl" posturings of Claire Trevor. At this point of her career she decided to try the stage and made her Broadway debut in "Joy to the World" (1948). Other plays down the road would include "The Devil's Disciple" with Maurice Evans, "The Lady's Not for Burning" with Vincent Price and "The Little Hut" with Leon Ames. She even had a chance to return to her beloved singing as Anna in a production of "The King and I" and (much later) in productions of "State Fair" and "Meet Me in St. Louis". TV also yielded some new work opportunities, including a presentation of "Twelfth Night" in which she portrayed Viola.
The seams of her film career fell apart in the early 1950s. During the late 1930s and into the 1940s she signed a number of petitions promoting liberal ideals, and was a member of the Committee for the First Amendment. A strong supporter of freedom of speech, these associations led to her name appearing in the pamphlet "Red Channels", a McCarthy-era publication that "exposed" alleged Communists and "subversives". Although she and her husband were never called before the House Un-American Activities Commission, their names were nevertheless smeared all over Hollywood as "Reds". While she still found film work on occasion, it was rare. Although she had worked steadily from 1935 until 1949, appearing in over 50 films, she made only three films in the next eight years. Her screenwriter husband would be credited for only one film from 1948 to 1955.
Semi-retired by the early 1960s, stage and TV became Marsha's focal points. She also devoted herself to civil rights causes and such humanitarian efforts as UNICEF, The March of Dimes and The Red Cross. She became actively involved with the United Nations. On the acting front she appeared only in smaller roles in five films but in numerous TV programs and made-for-TV movies, playing everything from judges to grandmas. She became the Honorary Mayor of Sherman Oaks, California, in 1983, and published a book on fashion entitled "The Way We Wore" in 1993. Widowed in 1986, the ever-vibrant Marsha, in her 90s, continues to serve on the Advisory Board of Directors for the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center, a large non-profit that advocates for adults and children affected by homelessness and mental illness. As recently as 2006, she appeared to good advantage in the movie Chloe's Prayer (2006) and, at age 91, was seen in Empire State Building Murders (2008).- Actress
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No shrinking violet this one, but despite her talent, vivacity and sheer drive, lovely and alluring blonde Evelyn Keyes would remain for the most part typed as a "B" girl on the silver screen. In spite of her ripe contributions to such superior pictures as Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), The Jolson Story (1946), Mrs. Mike (1949), The Prowler (1951) and 99 River Street (1953), she received no significant awards during her career. In fact, film-goers seem to remember her best not for one of these exceptional co-starring parts, but for her bit role as Scarlett O'Hara's kid sister in Gone with the Wind (1939), American's most beloved epic film. Evelyn also kept Hollywood alive and kicking with two sensationalistic memoirs that chronicled her four dicey marriages, numerous affairs with the rich and famous, and negative takes on the Hollywood studio system.
Evelyn Louise Keyes was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on November 20, 1916 (for decades she would deceive the public as to her real age). Her father died when she was two, and she and her only brother and three sisters grew up living with her mother and her grandmother in Atlanta, Georgia. Taking voice, dance and piano lessons, she was hopeful of becoming a ballerina. Instead, she entered a beauty pageant or two and worked as a chorus girl before relocating to California at age 20. Shortly after her arrival in Los Angeles, a chance meeting with the legendary Cecil B. DeMille led to a Paramount Pictures contract. Stories differ as to how she met De Mille. Hollywood folklore has it that she was "discovered" by a talent scout in true Lana Turner fashion while eating at a restaurant. Another, more believable story has it that she hooked up with one of De Mille's former writers, which led to an introduction.
Nevertheless, she was groomed as a starlet and initially placed in bit and/or unbilled roles. De Mille first gave her a small part in his pirate epic The Buccaneer (1938), then placed her rather obscurely in his sprawling railroad saga Union Pacific (1939). It was David O. Selznick who gave her the bit part of whiny, bratty Suellen O'Hara, who loses her beau to the more calculating Scarlett in "Gone with the Wind". This led directly to her signing with Columbia Pictures. In 1938, just prior to the filming of GWTW, she married businessman Barton Bainbridge, her first of four. The marriage soured within a year or so, however, after she took up with Budapest-born director Charles Vidor, who directed three of her pictures: The Lady in Question (1940) (her first at Columbia), Ladies in Retirement (1941) and The Desperadoes (1943). This second marriage lasted about as long as the first (1943-1945), supposedly due to Vidor's infidelities.
At Columbia Evelyn hit pin-up status and sparked a number of war-era pictures. She played Boris Karloff's daughter in the crime horror Before I Hang (1940) and a blind woman who befriends the hideously scarred Peter Lorre in the excellent The Face Behind the Mask (1941). Still, she could not rise above her secondary status. For every one nifty "B" picture that could propel her into the higher ranks, such as Dangerous Blondes (1943), there was always a low-caliber western (Beyond the Sacramento (1940)), adventure (A Thousand and One Nights (1945)) or musical (The Thrill of Brazil (1946)) lurking about to keep her humble.
In the post-war years, a third tempestuous but highly adventurous marriage (1946-1950) to Hollywood titan John Huston made the tabloid papers practically on a weekly basis. They divorced after four years. She did some of her best work during this period, particularly as the wife of Al Jolson opposite Larry Parks' splendid impersonation. She also showed she had a strong range and earned snappy notices alongside Dick Powell in the film noir Johnny O'Clock (1947) as well as the title comedy character in The Mating of Millie (1948) co-starring Glenn Ford.
Her last (and just as questionable) marriage was to another "father figure" type, musician Artie Shaw, a womanizer if ever there was one who had already had been discarded by trophy wives Ava Gardner and Lana Turner (and five others) by the time he and Evelyn married in 1957. She had pretty much put her career on the back burner by this point. Surprisingly, this marriage lasted longer than any of their previous ones. The couple separated in the 1970s but did not divorce until 1985.
Evelyn returned to the acting fold every once in while. Scarcely on stage (she once played Sally Bowles in a theatrical production of "I Am a Camera" in 1953), she joined up with Don Ameche in a 1972 tour of the musical "No, No, Nanette". She also would show up on an episode of The Love Boat (1977) or Murder, She Wrote (1984) every now and then. She remained childless (there was one adopted child, Pedro, by Huston, but they were estranged).
Very much the traveler, Evelyn lived sporadically all over the world, including France, England and Mexico, and spoke Spanish and French fluently. She was also a writer and published a Hollywood-themed novel in her later years. Her GWTW association and tell-all memoirs in 1977 and 1991 kept her a point of interest right up until the end. Not surprisingly, this firecracker of a lady passed away on the 4th of July -- at age 91 of uterine cancer at an assisted-living residence in Montecito, California.- Actor
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Christopher Stone was an occasional lead and supporting actor in films and on television throughout the 1980s and early 90s. He achieved his first major role as "Dr. Pooch Hardin" on the 1970s TV series The Interns (1970), and made occasional appearances in made-for-TV movies and guest-starring on such TV shows that included Mission: Impossible (1966), Hunter (1976) and Wonder Woman (1975). Stone later married actress Dee Wallace and co-starred with her in such theatrical feature films including The Howling (1981) and Cujo (1983), as well as the late 1980s TV series The New Lassie (1989). Stone continued appearing in TV guest-starring roles and made for TV films before he died of a heart attack at the age of 55 in 1995.- Actor
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When Parker Stevenson was five years old his mother, who acted in numerous television commercials, took him to a filming session. This resulted in two small television appearances. However, Parker's father, an investment advisor, looked askance at the whole business, and although Parker appeared in a few play productions at Brooks School he had no intention of becoming an actor. Parker rowed with the Brooks School crew in the Princess Elizabeth Cup Race at the prestigious Henley Regatta. Later at Princeton, Parker rowed with the freshman lightweight crew team which won the 1971-72 eastern sprint races. Parker Stevenson graduated from Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts in 1971.- Actor
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Randolph Mantooth definitely fit the bill when he made a bankable name for himself in the TV medical series Emergency! (1972) as strong but sensitive paramedic/firefighter "John Gage".
Tall, dark and good-looking, Randy is of Seminole Indian heritage, born in Sacramento, California on September 19, 1945. One of four children born to a construction engineer, his childhood was somewhat physically unsettling in that his father's job career had the family moving frequently from state to state. Randy attended San Marcos High School in the Santa Barbara area of California where he participated in school plays. He received a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York following his studies at Santa Barbara City College.
Randy was discovered in New York by a Universal talent agent after performing the lead in the play "Philadelphia, Here I Come" and returned to California. He slowly built up his resume with work on such dramatic series as Adam-12 (1968), McCloud (1970), Alias Smith and Jones (1971) and Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969). This led to TV stardom on the popular "Emergency!" series in 1972 which ran over five seasons. As a change of pace, he tried comedy and earned series roles on the short-lived Operation Petticoat (1977) and Detective School (1979), as well as pursued the guest star route on episodics. He was also prominently seen in the high-profile mini-series Testimony of Two Men (1977) and The Seekers (1979).
After a career lull in the early 1980s, Randy found a new direction in his career with daytime soaps. He played "Clay Alden" in the soap opera Loving (1983) from 1987 through 1990, then left for personal reasons before returning to the show in 1993, this time in the role of "Alex Masters". The soap was later revamped and entitled The City (1995) but it lasted only two more years.
From there he has regularly appeared on General Hospital (1963), One Life to Live (1968) and As the World Turns (1956), where he has played both good guys and villains. Millennium credits film include featured roles in the romantic comedy It Started with a Kiss (1959), the action thriller Agent Red (2000), the social drama Price to Pay (2006), the romantic thriller He Was a Quiet Man (2007), the action adventure Bold Native (2010) and, his last to date, the horror yarn Killer Holiday (2013). On TV, he has had regular roles on the daytime soap dramas As the World Turns (1956) in 2003-2005 and One Life to Live (1968) in 2007.
Randy has frequently returned to his theater roots in such productions as "Footprints in Blood", "Back to the Blankets", "Wink Dah", "The Independence of Eddie Rose", "The Paper Crown", "The Inuit" and, most recently, "Rain Dance" off-Broadway in 2003.
Divorced from actress Rose Parra, he married actress Kristen Connors in 2002. They were featured together as the ambassador and his wife in the film comedy Scream of the Bikini (2009). Two siblings also got into the business -- actor Don Mantooth and producer Tonya Mantooth.- Actor
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Robert Francis Vaughn was born on November 22, 1932 at Charity Hospital in New York City, the son of show business parents, Marcella Frances (Gaudel) and Gerald Walter Vaughn. His father was a radio actor and his mother starred on stage. Robert came to the public's attention first with his Oscar-nominated role, in The Young Philadelphians (1959). The next year, he was one of the seven in the western classic The Magnificent Seven (1960). Despite being in such popular films, he generally found work on television. He appeared over 200 times in guest roles in the late 1950s to early 1960s. It was in 1963 that he received his first major role in The Lieutenant (1963). Robert took the role with the intention of making the transition from being a guest-star actor to being a co-star on television. It was due to his work in this series that producer Norman Felton offered him the role of Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964).
Four extremely successful years (1964-68) followed as the series became one of the most popular television series of the 1960s. It made Vaughn an international television star, but he wanted to embark on a career in film, and did so soon after the series ended in 1968 by co-starring in Bullitt (1968) with Steve McQueen. Now working in film full-time, he starred in The Bridge at Remagen (1969) and The Mind of Mr. Soames (1970), before making a change by going back to television, this time in England. He took a lead role in the series The Protectors (1972) and stayed in England for the first half of the 1970s. He returned to the United States in the mid-1970s and embarked on a very successful run of television miniseries roles that resulted in his receiving an Emmy Award in 1978 for Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977) and a nomination the following year for Backstairs at the White House (1979).
The 1970s proved a important time in Robert's life, as in 1974, he married actress Linda Staab, and completed his thesis on Hollywood blacklisting during the McCarthy "Red Scare" era, published in 1972 as "Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting". During the 1980s, he mixed television with film. Roles in such films as S.O.B. (1981), Superman III (1983), The Delta Force (1986) and Black Moon Rising (1986) were highlights. In television, he appeared in many successful series, most notably in The A-Team (1983) and Emerald Point N.A.S. (1983).
He continued with a diverse range of projects, appearing on stage on numerous occasions. The 1990s saw the same variety of roles. Made-for-TV movies were a popular choice for him, as well as such series as As the World Turns (1956), The Nanny (1993) and Law & Order (1990). He had a role in the 1998 series remake of the classic film in which he appeared, The Magnificent Seven (1998). He also appeared in major features such as Joe's Apartment (1996) and BASEketball (1998), and in smaller roles in subsequent years.
Robert died of acute leukemia on November 11, 2016 in Ridgefield, Connecticut. His last acting credit, Gold Star (2017), was released the year of his death.- Actress
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Lovely, indefatigable Connie Stevens added sparkle to a number of films and TV shows in the late 50s and 60s Hollywood. Brooklyn born Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingolia is of Italian/Sicilian and Irish descent, the daughter of Eleanor McGinley and Teddy Stevens (born Peter Ingolia). She was subsequently raised by her grandparents when her mother and father (a band singer and jazz musician, respectively) filed for divorce. Connie attended Catholic boarding schools in her formative years. Inheriting her parents' love and talent for music, she formed a vocal quartet called "The Foremost" which was comprised of Connie and three men. Those men later became part of The Lettermen.
In Hollywood from 1953, Connie formed yet another vocal group "The Three Debs" while trying to break into films doing extra work. Moving up to the co-star ranks in a few mediocre teen dramas such as Young and Dangerous (1957), Eighteen and Anxious (1957), The Party Crashers (1958), and Dragstrip Riot (1958), it was comedian Jerry Lewis who set things in motion by casting her in his comedy Rock-a-Bye Baby (1958). As such, Warner Bros. signed her up for their hot detective series Hawaiian Eye (1959) and she was off. As pert and pretty "Cricket Blake", a slightly flaky and tomboyish singer/photographer, Connie became an instant teen idol -- trendy and undeniably appealing. A couple of record offers (and hits) came her way as a result including "Sixteen Reasons" and the novelty song "Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb" (in tribute to Edd Byrnes' hip, teen idol character on the popular detective series 77 Sunset Strip (1958)).
Adored for her sexy effervescence, Connie tried to broaden her "sex kitten" image in the 60's with serious attempts at adult film drama, including the title role in Susan Slade (1961), as well as co-leads in Parrish (1961), Palm Springs Weekend (1963), and Two on a Guillotine (1965), but they were modestly received. For the most part, she remained a comfy TV presence in musical variety shows ("The Red Skelton Show," "Kraft Music Hall"), westerns ("Cheyenne," "Maverick") and game shows ("Hollywood Squares"). She also appeared opposite George Burns in a second series, the sitcom Wendy and Me (1964), and co-starred in a couple of lightweight films, Never Too Late (1965) and Way... Way Out (1966), again with Jerry Lewis.
In the 1970s, she refocused on her voice and started lining up singing commercials (Ace Hardware) while subsisting in nightclubs and hotels. Connie eventually built herself up as a Las Vegas headlining act. She also starred on Broadway with "The Star-Spangled Girl" and won a Theatre World Award for her performance in 1967. Comedian Bob Hope's made her one of his regular entertainers on his USO tours. Sporadic films came her way every now and then. A TV-movie The Sex Symbol (1974) had her playing a tragic Marilyn Monroe type goddess. There was also innocuous fun in such sporadic films as Grease 2 (1982) and Back to the Beach (1987) with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. TV episodic work on "Murder, She Wrote," "The Love Boat," "Baywatch," "Ellen," the revamped "Burke's Law," "It's Garry Shandling Show," "Baywatch" and "8 Simple Rules," plus a regular role on the short-lived series Starting from Scratch (1988) also kept her afloat.
Once wed to actor James Stacy, Connie later married and divorced singer Eddie Fisher. From her union with Fisher came two daughters, Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher, both of whom became actors. Single with two daughters, and completely out of sync with Hollywood, Connie started experiencing severe financial woes. In the 1990s, the never-say-die personality began a new lucrative career in the infomercial game with skin-care and make-up products, and turned her financial woes around. Now a self-made tycoon with her own successful beauty line to boot, Connie is living proof that anything can happen in that wild and wacky world called show biz.
She resurged briefly in films with featured roles in Love Is All There Is (1996), James Dean: Race with Destiny (1997), Returning Mickey Stern (2002), Double Duty (2009), Just Before I Go (2014) and Search Engines (2016) which starred daughter Joely. She also was seen on TV with episodic work on "s, The recipient of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Connie was elected secretary-treasurer of the Screen Actors Guild in 2005. Since suffering a stroke in 2016, she has remained out of the limelight for the most part. In 2019, she made a brief return to films with By the Rivers of Babylon, again with Joely.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Anne Francis got into show business quite early in life. She was born on September 16, 1930 in Ossining, New York (which is near Sing Sing prison), the only child of Phillip Ward Francis, a businessman/salesman, and the former Edith Albertson. A natural little beauty, she became a John Robert Powers model at age 6(!) and swiftly moved into radio soap work and television in New York. By age 11, she was making her stage debut on Broadway playing the child version of Gertrude Lawrence in the star's 1941 hit vehicle "Lady in the Dark". During this productive time, she attended New York's Professional Children's School.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer put the lovely, blue-eyed, wavy-blonde hopeful under contract during the post-war World War II years. While Anne appeared in a couple of obscure bobbysoxer bits, nothing much came of it. Frustrated at the standard cheesecake treatment she was receiving in Hollywood, the serious-minded actress trekked back to New York where she appeared to good notice on television's "Golden Age" drama and found some summer stock work on the sly ("My Sister Eileen").
Discovered and signed by 20th Century-Fox's Darryl F. Zanuck after playing a seductive, child-bearing juvenile delinquent in the low budget film So Young, So Bad (1950), Anne soon starred in a number of promising ingénue roles, including Elopement (1951), Lydia Bailey (1952), and Dreamboat (1952) but she still could not seem to rise above the starlet typecast. At MGM, she found promising leading lady work in a few noteworthy 1950s classics: Bad Day at Black Rock (1955); Blackboard Jungle (1955); and the science fiction cult classic Forbidden Planet (1956). While co-starring with Hollywood's hunkiest best, including Paul Newman, Dale Robertson, Glenn Ford and Cornel Wilde, her roles still emphasized more her glam appeal than her acting capabilities. In the 1960s, Anne began refocusing strongly on the smaller screen, finding a comfortable niche on television series. She found a most appreciative audience in two classic The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes and then as a self-sufficient, Emma Peel-like detective in Aaron Spelling's short-lived cult series Honey West (1965), where she combined glamour and a sexy veneer with judo throws, karate chops and trendy fashions. The role earned her a Golden Globe Award and Emmy Award nomination.
The actress returned to films only on occasion, the most controversial being Funny Girl (1968), in which her co-starring role as Barbra Streisand's pal was heartlessly reduced to a glorified cameo. Her gratuitous co-star parts opposite some of filmdom's top comics' in their lesser vehicles -- Jerry Lewis' Hook, Line and Sinker (1969) and Don Knotts' The Love God? (1969) -- did little to show off her talents or upgrade her career. For the next couple of decades, Anne remained a welcome and steadfast presence in a slew of television movies (The Intruders (1970), Haunts of the Very Rich (1972), Little Mo (1978), A Masterpiece of Murder (1986)), usually providing colorful, wisecracking support. She billed herself as Anne Lloyd Francis on occasion in later years.
For such a promising start and with such amazing stamina and longevity, the girl with the sexy beauty mark probably deserved better. Yet in reflection, her output, especially in her character years, has been strong and varied, and her realistic take on the whole Hollywood industry quite balanced. Twice divorced with one daughter from her second marriage, Anne adopted (as a single mother) a girl back in 1970 in California. She has long been involved with a metaphysical-based church, channeling her own thoughts and feelings into the inspirational 1982 book "Voices from Home: An Inner Journey". Later, she has spent more time off-camera and involved in such charitable programs as "Direct Relief", "Angel View" and the "Desert AIDS Project", among others. Her health declined sharply in the final years. Diagnosed with lung cancer in 2007, the actress died on January 2, 2011, from complications of pancreatic cancer in a Santa Barbara (California) retirement home.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
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!"- Actress
- Soundtrack
A disarming character lady quite capable of scene-stealing, Mildred Natwick was a well-rounded talent with distinctively dowdy features and idiosyncratic tendencies who, over a six-decade period, assembled together a number of unforgettable matrons on stage and (eventually) film and TV. Whimsical, feisty, loony, stern, impish, shrewish, quizzical, scheming -- she greatly enhanced both comedies and dramas and, thankfully, her off-centered greatness was captured perfectly on occasion by such film directors as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Neil Simon.
A short, plumpish, oval-eyed figure with a unique flowery, honey-glazed voice, Natwick was born on June 19, 1905 (some sources list 1908) to Joseph (a businessman) and and Mildred Marion Dawes Natwick. The Baltimore native graduated from both the Bryn Mawr School (in Baltimore) and also from Bennett College in Dutchess County, N.Y., where she majored in drama. Breaking into the professional field touring on stage, Miss Natwick joined the Vagabonds in the late 1920s, a non-professional group from Baltimore. She later became part of the renowned University Players at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, whose rising performers at the time included Henry Fonda, Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart.
Natwick made her Broadway bow in the 1932 melodrama "Carry Nation," directed by Blanche Yurka with Esther Dale in the title role. In the cast was Joshua Logan, whom she befriended and later collaborated with when he turned director. She then continued her momentum on 1930s Broadway with "Amourette" (1933), "Spring in Autumn" (1933), "The Wind and the Rain" (1934), "The Distaff Side" (1934) "End of Summer" (1936), "Love from a Stranger" (1936), "The Star-Wagon" (1937), "Missouri Legend" (1938), "Stars in Your Eyes" (1939) (directed by Logan), and "Christmas Eve" (1939).
Natwick did not come to films until middle age (35) with the John Ford classic The Long Voyage Home (1940), in which she played a Cockney floozie. Despite her fine work in this minor part, she did not make another film until her landlady role five years later in The Enchanted Cottage (1945) supporting Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young. Not a great beauty by Hollywood standards, Natwick learned quickly in Hollywood that if she were to succeed, it would be as a character performer. Ford himself picked up on her versatility and used her repeatedly in several of his post-war classics -- 3 Godfathers (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and The Quiet Man (1952).
Never abandoning the theater for long, Natwick excelled as Miss Garnett in George Bernard Shaw's "Candida" and as the buoyant medium in Noël Coward's "Blithe Spirit". As for the big screen, she was sporadically seen in such films as Yolanda and the Thief (1945), The Late George Apley (1947), A Woman's Vengeance (1948), The Kissing Bandit (1948), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and Against All Flags (1952). Making use of even the tiniest of roles, none of them did much to improve her stature in Hollywood. With her delicious turn, however, in Hitchcock's eccentric black comedy The Trouble with Harry (1955), which starred Shirley MacLaine (in her film debut), John Forsythe, Kris Kringle's Edmund Gwenn, little Jerry Mathers (of "Leave It to Beaver"), and another famous Mildred, Mildred Dunnock, Natwick enjoyed one of her best roles ever on film. This was followed by her scheming and furtive sorceress in the Danny Kaye vehicle The Court Jester (1955) in which she, Kaye and Glynis Johns participate in the memorable tongue-twisting "The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle..." comedy routine. This, in turn, led to a couple of more, albeit lesser, films, including Teenage Rebel (1956) and Tammy and the Bachelor (1957).
Preferring the theatre to movies, MIldred received her first Tony nomination for her sharp, astute work in Jean Anouilh's "Waltz of the Toredors" in 1957 and recreated her character in a TV special. She seemed to move effortlessly from the classics ("Medea," "Coriolanus") to chic comedy ("Ladies in Retirement," "The Importance of Being Earnest"). Receiving great applause as the beleaguered, overly-winded mother in Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park" on Broadway in 1963, she transferred the role to film four years later. The cinematic Barefoot in the Park (1967) earned Mildred a well-deserved Oscar nomination for "best supporting actress". She switched things up again with Harold Pinter's theatrical "Landscape," and then again in 1971 when she made her debut in a singing role in the John Kander-Fred Ebb musical, "70, Girls, 70" (1971) in which she earned a second Tony nomination. Her last Broadway show came as a replacement in "Bedroom Farce" in 1979.
With only the slightest of gesture, look or tone of voice, Mildred's characters could speak volumes and she became an essential character player during the 1970s as an offbeat friend, relative or elderly on TV and film. She was awarded the Emmy for her playing of one of The Snoop Sisters (1972)_ alongside the equally delightful Helen Hayes in the short-lived TV series. Both played impish Jessica Fletcher-type mystery writers who solve real crimes on the sly. She also played Rock Hudson's quirky mother in McMillan & Wife (1971) and a notable dying grandmother in a guest appearance of the critically-lauded TV series drama Family (1976). Her final film came with a small regal role as Madame de Rosemonde in Dangerous Liaisons (1988) with Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Never married, Mildred was called "Milly" by close friends and family and was the first cousin of Myron 'Grim' Natwick, the creator of Betty Boop for the Max Fleischer cartoon studio and prime animator for Disney's Snow White character. She died of cancer at age 89 in New York City.- Actress
- Writer
- Composer
Karen entered Northwestern University at 18 and left two years later. She studied under Lee Strasberg in New York and worked in a number of off-Broadway roles. She made a critically acclaimed debut on Broadway in 1965 in "The Playroom". Her first big film role was in You're a Big Boy Now (1966), directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Shortly after wards, she appeared as Marcia in the TV series The Second Hundred Years (1967).
The film that made her a star was Easy Rider (1969), where she worked with Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, and a supporting actor named Jack Nicholson. She appeared with Nicholson again the next year when they starred in Five Easy Pieces (1970), which garnered an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe for Karen. Her roles mainly consisted of waitresses, hookers and women on the edge. Some of her later films were disappointments at the box office, but she did receive another Golden Globe for The Great Gatsby (1974). One role for which she is well remembered is that of the jewel thief in Alfred Hitchcock's last film, Family Plot (1976). Another is as the woman terrorized in her apartment by a murderous Zuni doll come to life in the well received TV movie Trilogy of Terror (1975). After a number of forgettable movies, she again won rave reviews for her role in Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982). Since then, her film career has been busy, but the quality of the films has been uneven.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Jerry Orbach was born in the Bronx, New York, the only child of Leon Orbach, a former vaudevillian actor, was a German Jewish immigrant, who was born in Hamburg, Germany, and Emily (nee Olexy), a radio singer, was born in Pennsylvania to immigrant Polish-Lithuanian Roman Catholic parents, Alexander Olexy and Susanna (nee Klauba). The family moved frequently. He spent part of his childhood in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania and eventually settled in Waukegan, Illinois, where he went to high school.
The constant moving made him the new kid on the block and forced him to become "a chameleon" to blend in his new settings. He studied drama at the University of Illinois and at Northwestern University. He then went to study acting in New York and got constant work in musicals. He slowly pushed to get acting roles in television and films after being overlooked due to his musical roots.
Orbach died at age 69 on December 28, 2004, after a decade-long battle with prostate cancer. His widow, Elaine Cancilla Orbach died on April 1, 2009, from pneumonia. Orbach and Cancilla both predeceased Orbach's mother, Emily Orbach, who died on July 28, 2012, at the age of 101.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born in Salisbury, Maryland, USA, following high school Linda studied for two years at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, before moving on to acting studies in New York. In New York she attended acting workshops given by Lee Strasberg. Her first parts were small parts in TV series, with her biggest break coming with her role in The Terminator (1984). Most known to public at large from her part in the TV series Beauty and the Beast (1987) (before Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), at least).- Born Alexander Viespi, Jr. in Floral Park, New York in 1933, handsome, often mustachioed Alex Cord was stricken with polio at the age of 12. Confined to a hospital and iron lung for a long time, he overcame the illness after being sent to a Wyoming ranch for therapy. He soon regained his dream and determination of becoming a jockey or professional horseman.
A high school dropout at the age of sixteen, he grew up to be too tall to be a jockey so he joined the rodeo circuit and earned a living riding bulls and bareback horses. During another extended hospital stay, this time suffering major injuries after being thrown by a bull at a rodeo in New York City's Madison Square Garden, he reevaluated his life's direction and decided to finish his high school education by way of night school. A voracious reader during his long convalescence, he later studied and received his degree in literature at New York University.
Prodded by an interest in acting, Alex received dramatic training at the Actors Studio and began his professional career in summer stock (The Compass Players in St. Louis, Missouri) and at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut where he played "Laertes" in a production of "Hamlet". A British producer saw his promise and invited him to London where he co-starred in four plays ("Play With a Tiger", "The Rose Tattoo", "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Umbrella"). He was nominated for the "Best Actor Award" by the London Critics' Circle for the first-mentioned play.
He sought a Hollywood "in" and found one via his equestrian skills in the early 1960s. Steady work came to him on such established western TV series as Laramie (1959) and Branded (1965) and that extended itself into acting roles on crime action series (Route 66 (1960) and Naked City (1958)). Gaining a foothold in feature films within a relatively short time, he starred or co-starred in more than 30 feature films, including Get Off My Back (1965), Stagecoach (1966), Stiletto (1969) and The Brotherhood (1968).
After his film career declined in the late 1970s he turned to action adventure overseas with the "spaghetti western" A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die (1967) [A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die] and the British war drama The Last Grenade (1970) with Stanley Baker and Richard Attenborough. Around that time as well, he played the murderer opposite Sam Jaffe's old man in Edgar Allan Poe's dramatic short, The Tell-Tale Heart (1971). It was TV, however, that provided more career stability. Cord has more than 300 credits, including roles in Hotel (1983), Fantasy Island (1977), Simon & Simon (1981), Jake and the Fatman (1987), Mission: Impossible (1966), Walker, Texas Ranger (1993) and Murder, She Wrote (1984). He situated himself in a number of series, notably Airwolf (1984), in which he co-starred with Jan-Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine as the mysterious white-suited, eye-patched, cane-using "Michael Archangel".
Later commercial interest was drawn from his title role in Grayeagle (1977), a remake of the John Wayne film, The Searchers (1956), in which he played the Indian kidnapper of Ben Johnson's daughter. Lana Wood, sister of star Natalie Wood (who appeared in the original), also co-starred in this film. Alex can still be seen from time to time in low-budget films and the occasional television appearance, but other interests took up his time. His last film role was in the dismissible thriller Fire from Below (2009) in support of Kevin Sorbo.
Alex's love for horses extended itself into work for numerous charities and benefits. He was a regular competitor in the Ben Johnson Pro-Celebrity Rodeos that raised money for children's charities, and he is one of the founders of the Chukkers for Charity Celebrity Polo Team which has raised more than $3 million for worthy causes. He chairs "Ahead with Horses", an organization that provides therapeutic riding programs for the physically and emotionally challenged. Alex also turned to writing, thus far publishing several novels including A Feather in the Rain (2005), Days of the Harbinger (2013), The Man Who Would Be God (2014 and High Moon (2016). He has also sold three screenplays.
The actor's three marriages all ended in divorce. His second wife was British-born actress Joanna Pettet and third, Susannah, was a horse trainer. He had three children -- Toni Aluisa, Wayne and Damien Zachary. His son by Pettet, Damien, died tragically in 1995 of a heroin overdose at the age of 26. - Actress
- Producer
- Director
Prime-Time Emmy-nominated actress Lee Purcell produces, directs and performs in Two Fat Dogs Entertainment's (co-owned by Lee and her producing partner) anthology series of classic radio plays starring today's Hollywood Radio Players in these innovative virtual shows, Radio You Can See.
Lee is the recipient of two Prime-Time Emmy nominations, the first being for LONG ROAD HOME starring opposite Mark Harmon, the second for SECRET SINS OF THE FATHERS starring opposite Beau Bridges.
She was also seen in the film CAROL OF THE BELLS with RJ Mitte, JL RANCH with Jon Voight, KIDS VS. MONSTERS with Malcolm McDowell and LOVE AT FIRST GLANCE with Amy Smart.
In her extensive career, this acclaimed actress has earned numerous film, television and stage credits, including her role as "Louise St. Laurent" on the international TV series favorite DUE SOUTH and as the sultry step-mom in the iconic film VALLEY GIRL with Nicholas Cage. Lee was also seen as "Eleanor Sullivan" in the NBC-TV Prime-Time series PERSONS UNKNOWN with Chadwick Boseman, created by Oscar winner Christopher McQuarrie. Fans around the world also frequently reach out to Lee for her role as "Peggy" in the cult favorite film BIG WEDNESDAY.
As a young actress, Lee's film career began when she was personally selected and mentored by legendary movie star Steve McQueen to star in McQueen's Solar Productions' film ADAM AT 6 A.M. opposite Michael Douglas. She will always be grateful to McQueen for his casting and mentoring her and cherishes the time spent with him.
At only three years old, Lee was chosen by the iconic Neiman Marcus flagship store in Dallas to be a child model and began modeling professionally. She later modeled in Los Angeles for the Nina Blanchard Agency and in London for Lumley's Agency.
As a dancer, Lee was performing in a traveling troupe by the age of 13, and later danced in such films as ALMOST SUMMER and television shows such as McGYVER.
As a producer, Lee also co-owned a niche market video production company, which won the Silver Medal in the New York Film and TV Festival. After the sale of the video company, Lee focused on the production and financing of independent features, and the creation of film, TV and theatre projects.
Lee has been active in directing and producing live theatre. She was co-producer, co-director and performer of a critically acclaimed troupe of well-known actors and musicians who performed Western Heritage literature and music from the 1800's. Many noted guest artists, including the late Sam Shepard, performed with the Green River Players.
Having the unique background of being an American who trained and lived in London, Lee has returned to Europe many times to direct, perform and teach. She has enjoyed directing and performing there in such plays as LOVE LETTERS, BLITHE SPIRIT, RICHARD III, MACBETH and others.
Lee is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (OSCARS) and has served on various committees there. She is also a voting member of The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (EMMYS) and currently serves on its Performers Peer Group Executive Committee.
She is also a dedicated activist for SAG-AFTRA members, serving and chairing many committees at the union and has been elected to several leadership positions.
Lee has been involved with many charitable organizations throughout her career, and some of her charity work includes the Motion Picture and Television Fund, Heart of a Horse, Veterans Entertainment Team, Big Brothers, Special Olympics, and Paralyzed Veterans of America.
She was born on the Cherrypoint Marine Base in North Carolina to Major Frank Williams and Olivia McKnight Williams.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Mark Shera was born on 10 July 1949 in Bayonne, New Jersey, USA. He is an actor, known for Barnaby Jones (1973), Taken (2002) and Murder, She Wrote (1984).- A veteran character actress with a prolific career, Pamela Susan Shoop began acting while in her teens and established herself as a television regular in the early seventies. Since that time, she has appeared in several guest spots on a variety of television programs while occasionally working in theatrical films. As recurring player for Glen A. Larson, Pamela has made many appearances in at least nine different shows associated with the famed TV writer, director, and producer. While she has worked primarily in supporting and guest roles, Pamela did hold the regular part of Allison MacKenzie in the television soap opera Return to Peyton Place (1972) from 1972 to 1973.
- Actor
- Music Department
- Composer
Born in South Amboy, New Jersey, Greg Evigan grew up in Sayreville. While in high school he won acclaim as Cornelius Hackl in Hello Dolly, which won the New Jersey High School Musical Contest. One month after graduating from Sayreville War Memorial High School in 1971, Greg auditioned for and won a part in the Broadway show "Jesus Christ Superstar." He also joined the cast of a touring company, playing the lead in the musical "Grease".
Since the mid-1970s, he has amassed over 100 acting credits. His two most famous television roles were, B.J. and the Bear (1978) and My Two Dads (1987). Both series were initially successful but suffered sharp ratings declines and only lasted three seasons. Evigan sang the opening theme on both series. He is also known for TekWar (1994) and Masquerade (1983), which were both short-lived series.
His three children are also in the entertainment industry. His daughters Briana Evigan and Vanessa Evigan are actresses and his son Jason Evigan is a singer/songwriter.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Jenny Agutter was born on December 20, 1952, in Taunton, Somerset, England, UK. The daughter of an army officer, she spent her childhood traveling and living in different countries. Her film career began at the age of 12 in East of Sudan (1964), which was quickly followed by Ballerina: Part 1 (1966) and Ballerina: Part 2 (1966), and A Man Could Get Killed (1966). Other films and television appearances in her early career include Gates to Paradise (1968), Long After Summer (1967), Star! (1968), I Start Counting (1970), The Great Inimitable Mr. Dickens (1970), and The Wild Duck (1971).
In 1970, she appeared in what was her real big break as a child star: The Railway Children (1970), as "Bobbie". The next year, Hollywood called and she spent several years there, appearing in such works as The Cherry Orchard (1971), Walkabout (1971), and The Snow Goose (1971) with Richard Harris, for which she received an Emmy Award. She also appeared in the critically acclaimed A War of Children (1972) and Shelley (1972).
In 1976, Jenny really came to the attention of US film audiences with her starring role in the science-fiction classic Logan's Run (1976) with Michael York. Though not a critical favorite, it was a huge box-office success and spawned a television series. She also starred alongside Richard Chamberlain in a well-received made-for-TV version of the famous Dumas tale The Man in the Iron Mask (1977) and turned in a solid performance in the WW II thriller The Eagle Has Landed (1976) with Michael Caine and Donald Sutherland. The next year, she starred in Peter Shaffer's weighty Equus (1977) as "Jill Mason", alongside Richard Burton. Among her other TV and film work during the 1970s were Dominique (1979), School Play (1979), and The Riddle of the Sands (1979).
In 1981, she played "Desdemona" opposite William Marshall in The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice (1981). Other Shakespeare performances include "King Lear", Love's Labour's Lost (1985) as "Rosaline" for the BBC and Romeo & Juliet (1993) as "Lady Capulet". During this time, she was in numerous films and television series, including Sweet William (1980), Beulah Land (1980), The Survivor (1981), Amy (1981), and one of the films for which she is most fondly remembered, An American Werewolf in London (1981). She also appeared in This Office Life (1984), Secret Places (1984), Silas Marner (1985), Dark Tower (1987), Miss Right (1982), and King of the Wind (1990).
In the 1990s, she concentrated mainly on television, with roles in TECX (1990); Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less (1990); Red Dwarf (1988); The All New Alexei Sayle Show (1994); The Buccaneers (1995); And the Beat Goes On (1996); September (1996) with Edward Fox, Michael York, Virginia McKenna, and Jacqueline Bisset; A Respectable Trade (1998) with Warren Clarke, Anna Massey, and Richard Briers. Her theatrical films during this period included Darkman (1990) with Liam Neeson; and Blue Juice (1995) with Sean Pertwee, Ewan McGregor, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. She also appeared as "Mrs. Bruce" in two feature-length episodes of the popular ITV series Bramwell (1995) in which she starred with Jemma Redgrave. She has also made several guest appearances in TV shows such as The Red Dwarf (1998); Boon (1986); The Equalizer (1985) with Edward Woodward; The Twilight Zone (1985); Magnum, P.I. (1980) and The Six Million Dollar Man (1974).
Jenny married to Johan Tham in August 1990. They have one son Jonathan, born in December 1990 and live in Cornwall, England, UK. Her particular love is charity work for The Diabetic Association and NCH Action for Children - a charity which provides home and other help for homeless children - with which she has been involved for many years.- Eric Braeden is a German actor in America who began his career playing Nazis and eventually became a star of daytime soap operas. Born Hans Gudegast in Kiel, Germany, during the Second World War, he was a superb athlete who excelled in track-and-field events. As a teenager, he immigrated to the United States and worked in Texas and Montana as a translator, a cowhand, and a lumber millhand. His athleticism won him a scholarship to Montana State University. While attending college, he and friend Bob McKinnon made a film, The Riverbusters, about their successful attempt to be the first men to take a boat from the source to the mouth of the Salmon river and back again. He traveled to Los Angeles in hopes of finding a distributor for the documentary, but instead found that his handsome visage and accented English made him a valuable commodity as an actor. He appeared in small parts under his real name before landing the leading role of the antagonist, Captain Hans Dietrich, on the World War II television series The Rat Patrol (1966).
The series was a hit, and Gudegast's sympathetic German officer was very popular. He appeared in a few movies and television films thereafter in supporting roles, then was given the lead in Universal's science-fiction computer thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970). His delight at this huge career boost was muted by the studio's insistence that he change his name. With extreme reluctance, he agreed and became known subsequently as Eric Braeden. Braeden worked continuously in television movies for the next decade. He also worked on Broadway and in Los Angeles area theatre. In 1980, he reluctantly accepted a role in a daytime drama, The Young and the Restless (1973), and gained a stardom in this medium that had just eluded him in film and prime time television. As lead Victor Newman, Braeden brought a gravity and a strong center to the program. Amazingly handsome and athletic into his sixties, Braeden maintained the charisma that first brought him notice in "The Rat Patrol".
His infrequent film work during his nearly quarter century on "The Young and the Restless" included a prominent role as John Jacob Astor in Titanic (1997). A five-time Emmy nominee for his "The Young and the Restless" role (he won in 1998), he was also nominated eleven times for the Soap Opera Digest Outstanding Leading Actor Award, winning three times. In 1987, he was appointed, along with Henry Kissinger, Paul Volker, Steffi Graf, Alexander Haig, and Katherine Graham, to the German-American Advisory Board, and in 1991 received the Federal Medal of Honor from the president of his native land, Germany. He married his college sweetheart Dale Russell in 1966. Their son, Christian Gudegast is a screenwriter. - Actress
- Producer
- Executive
Susan Anton has been recognized as a multi-talented international star for more than 35 years in television, film, theater, and concert venues. She was nominated for a Golden Globe in her first film outing, Goldengirl (1979), and was soon thereafter signed by NBC to star in her own variety show, Presenting Susan Anton (1979). ABC later signed her to a development deal, where she starred in the hourly drama, Cliffhangers. She has appeared in hundreds of film and television projects over the years. Her Broadway credits include co-starring with the original Broadway cast of Tommy Tune's Tony Award-winning musical, "The Will Rogers Follies"; she also worked with director Mike Nichols in David Rabe's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, "Hurlyburly". She co-starred as "Velma Von Tussle" in the Las Vegas production of the Broadway musical, "Hairspray", opposite Harvey Fierstein, which was directed by Tony Award winner Jack O'Brien and choreographed by Tony Award winner Jerry Mitchell. She went on to reprise the role for three spectacular evenings at the Hollywood Bowl with an all-star cast, which was directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell. She co-starred in the national tour of the Broadway musical, "All Shook Up", directed by Christopher Ashley and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo. Susan starred for seven years in the The Great Radio City Music Hall Spectacular with the legendary The Radio City Rockettes, directed by the late Joe Layton. She also toured in the Neil Simon/Marvin Hamlisch production of "They're Playing Our Song" and then went on to co-star with Elizabeth Ashley in the national tour of "A Couple of White Chicks Sitting Around Talking". She has shared the stage with legendary entertainers Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Tom Jones, and many more. She toured with country super star Kenny Rogers and had a top 10 country hit with the song "Killing Time". Internationally, she had recording success and received a Gold record for her hit, "Foxy". Susan and her husband, director Jeff Lester have called Las Vegas home for more than 20 years. In 1997, they opened their production company, "Big Picture Studios". Under their banner, Susan executive-produced the award-winning The Last Real Cowboys (2000), starring Oscar winner Billy Bob Thornton, and also executive-produced the documentary, Speed of Life (2008), with Amy Purdy, the inspirational Sochi bronze medalist who was also runner up in last season's Dancing with the Stars (2005). Susan is a minority partner and celebrity brand ambassador in a new beverage company, Spa Girl Cocktails, slated to launch in late 2015.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Tom Bosley was born on 1 October 1927 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Happy Days (1974), The Back-up Plan (2010) and Yours, Mine and Ours (1968). He was married to Patricia Carr and Jean Eliot. He died on 19 October 2010 in Rancho Mirage, California, USA.- J. Eddie Peck was born on 10 October 1958 in Lynchburg, Virginia, USA. He is an actor, known for Kyle XY (2006), Dallas (1978) and All My Children (1970). He has been married to Sonya Zaza since 1989. They have two children.
- John Laughlin continues to have an amazing career in television and film. His television credits include "I am the Night", "NCIS", "The Defenders", "Criminal Minds" and "The Equalizer." He also shot the feature film "Cloudy With a Chance of Christmas". Born in Tennessee, John Laughlin started as a series regular on "White Shadow," which lead to a breakout role in "An Officer and Gentleman." He went on to film "Footloose" alongside Kevin Bacon then landed a three-picture deal starting with a critically acclaimed performance as the lead in "Crimes of Passion" starring Kathleen Turner. He also can be seen in the Michael Bay directed film "The Rock" opposite Sean Connery.
- Katherine Cannon was born on 6 September 1953 in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. She is an actress, known for The Hidden (1987), Black Sheep Squadron (1976) and Battlestar Galactica (1978). She has been married to Dean Butler since 2002. She was previously married to Richard Chambers.
- Stephanie Faracy was born on 1 January 1952 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. She is an actress, known for Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016), Temple Grandin (2010) and Sideways (2004).
- Kathleen Lloyd was born on 13 September 1948 in Santa Clara, California, USA. She is an actress, known for The Car (1977), The Missouri Breaks (1976) and Equal Justice (1990). She is married to John Steven Mansfield . She was previously married to Peter Joseph Jenvay.
- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Mark Stevens, a good-looking, second-tier star during the 1940s and 1950s, was born Richard William Stevens in Cleveland, Ohio, on December 13, 1916 (the dates in reference books seem to vary between 1915-20). Of Scottish and English heritage, the freckle-faced boy with the reddish hair had a father who was an American flyer. His parents divorced while he was young and Mark was sent to England where the rebellious boy found himself kicked out of several schools. He resided briefly with his maternal grandparents until a second move to Canada, where he was raised by his older sister. Slight in stature, Mark built himself up through athletics. A back injury, sustained while training as a Canadian Olympic diver, however, kept him from serving in WWII.
His initial interest appeared to be art, which he studied for a time, but a gift for singing led to nightclub and theatre work, performing in musicals and legit plays throughout the various Canadian provinces. Radio broadcasting turned into another creative outlet for Mark. He eventually returned to his Ohio hometown in the early 1940s where he earned leading roles at the Cleveland Playhouse. Notice here on the stage eventually had him setting his sights on Hollywood. Being young and talented -- combined with a 4-F classification -- helped gain him a studio contract at a time when the major stars were assigned to military duty. Voted 5th as a promising "star of tomorrow" in 1946, he appeared sporadically on radio.
He first became a contract player at Warner Brothers where he was groomed in bit parts as earnest soldier types and given the marquee name of Stephen Richards. That name was quickly changed by Darryl F. Zanuck to Mark Stevens, however, when Mark moved to the 20th Century-Fox lot. The studio also darkened his hair and covered up the freckles to enhance his serious good looks. He soon materialized into a prime film noir contender with such films as Within These Walls (1945) and the excellent The Dark Corner (1946) (interestingly had the starring role but billed fourth in line), the latter pairing him up with a cast-against-type Lucille Ball several years before her I Love Lucy (1951) fame. One of Mark's finest hours on film was as an FBI man at odds with Richard Widmark in The Street with No Name (1948). He also co-starred as the altruistic husband of mental patient Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit (1948).
On the musical front, Mark appeared rather colorlessly in such tunefests as I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now (1947) and Oh, You Beautiful Doll (1949), in which he was overshadowed by his leading ladies. Indeed, despite his good looks and abilities, Stevens was constantly (and unfairly) pigeonholed as a lesser version of John Payne or Alan Ladd. In retrospect, many of his capable performances leave viewers thinking he was a producer's casting Plan B. Securing a brief contract at Universal in 1951 where he appeared in such films as Little Egypt (1951) and Katie Did It (1950), Stevens later directed and starred in the "B" level crimer Cry Vengeance (1954) for Allied Artists.
TV played a big part in his career in the 1950s, with two classic dramatic series coming his way. A move into producing (Mark Stevens Television, Inc.) and music publishing (Mark Stevens Music, Inc.) encouraged his retirement from acting, although he did occasionally appear in guest spots on such TV dramas as Wagon Train (1957) and Playhouse 90 (1956), while occasionally directing as well. He earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 for his small screen work.
A jack of all trades, Mark moved to Europe in the late 1950s and spent a decade operating a restaurant in Spain. He was married for some time to film/TV actress Annelle Hayes and had two children, Mark Richard and Arrelle. His rather nomadic existence eventually led to him to both the divorce and bankruptcy courts in the early 1960's. Divvying his time between here and Europe in later years, he still found occasional work in Hollywood while owning/maintaining apartment buildings as well. He married a second time to a Swedish woman named Hilde. His last on-screen work occurred on late 1980's TV, dying of cancer in Majores, Spain, at age 77, on September 15, 1994.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio, the last of three children born to a mathematics teacher and his wife. Eleanor caught the acting bug early and began performing in school plays. She was was so serious about becoming an actor, that she attended the Rice Summer Theatre on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, beginning when she was 15 years old. She was offered her first screen test by a 20th Century-Fox talent scout while attending Rice, but turned the opportunity down to gain professional stage experience in Cleveland after graduating from high school.
She moved on to California to continue her acting studies at the Pasadena Playhouse. It was there, while sitting in the audience of a play being put on at the Playhouse, that she was again offered a screen test - this time from a Warner Brothers' scout - and again declined, wanting to finish her first year at the Playhouse. When the year was up, Eleanor contacted Warner Brothers to take them up on their offer of a screen test and was signed as a contract player two days after it was shot.
She was cast in Raoul Walsh's They Died with Their Boots On (1941), but her performance was left on the cutting room floor.
She was then cast in short subjects and given other assignments typical of novice film actors, to enable them to learn their craft, such as voice-acting and appearances in other actors' screen tests. Finally, she was promoted to the B-picture unit, making her feature debut in Busses Roar (1942).
Her beauty meant she was not forgotten, and she was cast in one of Warner Brothers' biggest productions for the 1943 season, the pro-Soviet Mission to Moscow (1943), directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Walter Huston as the U.S. ambassador to the USSR. Eleanor played his daughter in the film, which became notorious in the McCarthy era for its glorification of "Uncle Joe" Stalin. The film proved significant to Eleanor, as she met a future husband on the set, Navy Lieutenant. Fred L. Losse, Navy dentist. The marriage was a brief wartime affair, lasting from March 21, 1943, to December 5, 1944.
She went back to the B's with The Mysterious Doctor (1943), then bounced back to the A-list for Between Two Worlds (1944), a remake of the Leslie Howard vehicle Outward Bound (1930) in which she played Paul Henreid's fiancee (both die from suicide, but in Hollywood logic that didn't mean they couldn't frolic together on the silver screen). Eleanor then made two more B-quickies in 1944, Crime by Night (1944) and The Last Ride (1944), before graduating to the A-list for good with Pride of the Marines (1945) with John Garfield.
In the 1946 Warner Bros. remake of Of Human Bondage (1946), she took the role that Bette Davis had made good in 1934 (ironically, at rival RKO). Though Parker would be gaining kudos and Oscar nominations by the beginning of the next decade, her portrait of Mildred was weak in comparison with Davis's dynamic performance.
Parker received the first of her three Best Actress Oscar nominations for playing a prisoner in Caged (1950), and won the best actress award at the Venice Film Festival. She was also nominated the next year for playing the cop's wife who shared a secret with the neighborhood abortionist in William Wyler's Detective Story (1951). Her third and last Oscar nod came for Interrupted Melody (1955), wherein she played an opera singer struck down by polio. She could easily have been nominated that same year for her portrayal of Frank Sinatra's faux crippled wife in Otto Preminger's brooding masterpiece The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), adapted from the novel by Nelson Algren.
Parker proved herself to be a supremely talented and very versatile lead actress. The versatility was likely one of the reasons she never quite became a major star. Audiences attending a movie starring Parker never knew quite what to expect of her; if they even remembered she was the same actress they had seen before in a different type of role in another picture. Her turns in Detective Story (1951) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) could not have been more different. Parker's stardom and subsequent fame (and remembrance) suffered from her focusing on being a serious actress and creating a character who fit the motion picture she was in, rather than playing a character over and over, as most actors do. She probably best remembered for the relatively tame part as the Baroness in The Sound of Music (1965).
She received an Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy nomination in 1963 for her appearance in The Eleventh Hour (1962) episode Why Am I Grown So Cold? Despite the success of The Sound of Music (1965) being completely attributed to #1 box office sensation Julie Andrews, it's probably Parker's best-remembered role.
Her appearances in such fare as The Oscar (1966) (the cast of which the Playboy Magazine reviewer derided as "has-beens and never-will-bes") and the movie adaptation of Norman Mailer's indescribable existential potboiler An American Dream (1966) with fellow Oscar-nominee Stuart Whitman signaled that Miss Parker was now inscribed on the list of the has-beens.
She had one last hurrah, winning a Golden Globe nomination in 1970 as best lead actress for her role in the TV series Bracken's World (1969), but unfortunately times had changed during the tumultuous 1960s. Her last film role was in a Farrah Fawcett bomb, Sunburn (1979). Subsequently, she appeared very infrequently on TV, most recently in Dead on the Money (1991).
Eleanor Parker retired far too soon for those who were her fans, and those who appreciated a superb actress.- Actress
- Manager
Ann Kathryn Turkel was born in 1946, and raised in Manhattan, the daughter of Thelma L. (Friedricks) and Melvin A. Turkel. She is of Austrian Jewish and Russian Jewish descent. Ann took acting, dance and voice lessons from an early age. By the time she reached 16, Ann had studied at the Musical Theatre Academy with prominent acting coaches. In 1971, she performed a season of summer stock theatre. Ann, who had become statuesque at 6 feet tall, was discovered by an editor at Vogue Magazine. In a short time, she became one of the most sought-after models in the country appearing on the covers of the top fashion magazines. Two years later, Ann hit the international markets, modeling successfully in Europe. At the age of 27, she left her successful modeling career to co-star in a movie, a surreal detective/mystery, 99 and 44/100% Dead! (1974), starring actor Richard Harris. Ann fell in love with the Irish star, who was 15 years her senior, and they married that year. Ann and Richard appeared in several movies together, until they divorced in 1982. Ann then started acting on TV, doing guest appearances on many different shows, and often doing her own stunts. In addition to working in front of the camera, Ann has also written some screenplays and is a successful photographer. Keeping in shape and being athletic, Ann enjoys a number of sports: tennis, softball, skating, volleyball and skiing. Ann loves the beauty of the outdoors, which is reflected in her photography and paintings. She is a spokesperson for animal rights and children's causes, and volunteers her time and help in these areas; Ann has raised money for worldwide charities.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Mary Jo Catlett has been part of the main voice cast on SpongeBob SquarePants (1999) since its premiere, playing SpongeBob's teacher, Mrs. Puff. She is an unmistakably happy and hearty veteran character actress and comedienne who has found success in all three mediums (stage, film and television) with her trademark flowery voice, giddy demeanor and ever-cheery disposition. Having made her off-Broadway debut in 1963, the endearing Mary Jo Catlett is now broaching six decades in the entertainment business.
Catlett was born on September 2, 1938 in Denver, Colorado, the daughter of Robert and Cornelia (Callaghan) Catlett. A graduate of Loretto Heights College in Denver, she was drawn to acting quite young -- musical comedy, in particular. While she made her off-Broadway debut in a 1963 melodrama, "Along Came a Spider", which opened at the Mermaid Theatre, the following year Mary Jo was right back in her tuneful element scoring as Ernestina in the original Broadway production of "Hello, Dolly!" starring Carol Channing. She toured with the production when Ginger Rogers took the show on tour. Eventually building up her resume in regional theater, she served as a replacement in the 1969 musical "Promenade", then returned to Broadway at the end of that year where her broad, burlesque style well suited the bawdy musical takeoff of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales", which lasted about four months. Other New York-based productions came her way but most were short-lived, including "Greenwillow" (1970), "Different Times" (1972), "Lysistrata" (1972) and "Fashion" (1973). However, she did enjoy a scene-stealing role as Mabel in the New York revival of "The Pajama Game" in 1973.
While Mary Jo has a propensity for humor and laughter, she has also demonstrated an award-winning dramatic side. Her role as Lola Delaney in "Come Back, Little Sheba" earned her the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award in 1976. Four years later, she won the award again in a production of "Philadelphia, Here I Come". Over the years, she has flitted about not only in musicals ("Annie Get Your Gun" (as Annie), "How to Succeed in Business..."), but has tackled Shakespeare ("Twelfth Night", "Romeo and Juliet") and other serious stage roles ("27 Wagons Full of Cotton", "Naomi Court", "Our Town").
With her plaintive and matronly features, ample size, wallflower demeanor and instincts for broad levity, Mary Jo has proven to be a natural for small screen comedy. In the late 1960s, she began to apply her trade on-camera. One of her earliest mid-career appearances included a role in the television fantasy The Littlest Angel (1969) where she and fellow comedienne Lu Leonard played plus-sized scribes, but it was not until the mid-1970s that she began making the normal rounds with dozens of appearances on the sitcom circuit, including roles on "The Bob Newhart Show", "M*A*S*H", "Mr. Belvedere", "Night Court", Gimme a Break", "Saved By the Bell", "Maude" and "Welcome Back, Kotter". In 1982, she joined the cast as a housekeeping regular for television kids Gary Coleman, Todd Bridges and Dana Plato on Diff'rent Strokes (1978) and found plentiful work on lightweight dramatic series too such as "Murder, She Wrote," "Matlock" and "Fantasy Island". In daytime, she was nominated for an Emmy Award during the 1989-1990 season of General Hospital (1972). She also became a television face in households with over 30 national commercials to her credit.
Sparingly used on film, she made her debut in an unbilled part in Woody Allen's Bananas (1971). Other supporting work include roles in High Anxiety (1977), Semi-Tough (1977), The Champ (1979), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) and, more notably, Serial Mom (1994). She has had a slight upsurge of late in movie parts with roles in the gay-themed Surprise, Surprise (2010) and Anderson's Cross (2010), and the comedy How to Be a Serial Killer (2008). On stage, Mary Jo has continued to put her best foot forward on the musical stage in such productions as "Beauty and the Beast", "Big River" and "The Full Monty", not to mention several variations of "Nunsense" and its offshoots.
Over the years, Mary Jo has shown that her heart is as big as her talent as a consistently reliable and fun-filled novelty song performer at charity fund raisers and musical benefits, most notably for various AIDS and the Broadway-oriented "Help Is on the Way" organizations.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Katherine Kiernan Mulgrew, or Kate Mulgrew, was born on April 29, 1955. She grew up in Dubuque, Iowa, the second oldest child (and oldest girl) in a large Irish Catholic family. When Kate expressed an interest in acting as a child, her mother, Joan, encouraged her to audition for local theater productions. Kate left Iowa for New York City at age 17 to pursue a career in acting. Kate was accepted into the Stella Adler Conservatory (part of New York University's acting program) and studied there for only a year, as she landed the lead role in the ABC soap opera Ryan's Hope in 1975, vaulting her to instant stardom.
At the same time she was filming Ryan's Hope, Kate played the role of Emily in the American Shakespeare Theatre's production of "Our Town" in Stratford, Connecticut. At age 23, following her success on Ryan's Hope, Kate was offered the lead role of Kate Columbo in "Mrs. Columbo," playing the wife of one of television's most beloved detectives, Lt. Columbo, as made famous by actor Peter Falk. While critically successful, the series was canceled after two seasons.
In 1981, Mulgrew co-starred with Richard Burton and Nicholas Clay in Lovespell, a film set in the era of Arthurian legend, as Irish princess Isolt, whose love story with Tristan is a classic tale of doomed love. That same year, Kate co-starred with Pierce Brosnan in the six-hour miniseries, The Manions of America, set in 19th century America just before the start of the Civil War. In 1985, she had a notable role in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins as officer Major Fleming. In 1986, Kate appeared in a number of of Cheers episodes as congresswoman Janet Eldridge, a love interest for series lead Sam Malone (Ted Danson). In 1987, she appeared in Throw Momma from the Train as Margaret, Billy Crystal's ex-wife.
In 1992, Kate appeared on several episodes of Murphy Brown as Hillary Wheaton, a Toronto-based anchorwoman brought in to replace Murphy Brown during her maternity leave, but who also struggled with alcoholism (just as Brown did at the beginning of the series). Also in 1992, she played a guest-starring role as a soap opera star who kills her husband and tries to cover it up, on Murder, She Wrote, episode #170, titled "Ever After". Kate also guest-starred in three episodes of Batman: The Animated Series as the terrorist Red Claw. Kate has gone on to do a great deal of voice work for animated series and video games.
Shortly after, Kate married theater director Robert H. Egan in 1982. They have two sons, Ian Thomas and Alexander James. The two officially divorced in 1995.
More notably in 1995, Kate received a call that a part for which she'd auditioned but another actress had been chosen for - Captain Kathryn Janeway, the first female Star Trek captain. The first actress quit within two days of beginning production, leading producers to call Kate back and offer her the role. Star Trek: Voyager, as the newly-created UPN's flagship network show, had found its captain. Kate portrayed Janeway for seven seasons, and also appeared briefly in Star Trek: Nemesis as Admiral Kathryn Janeway.
Mulgrew played Katharine Hepburn in the one-woman play "Tea at Five", debuting in Hartford, Connecticut in 2002 and going on to tour across the U.S. after a stint on Broadway. For this role, Kate received a Lucille Lortel nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress, an Outer Critics Circle nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance, Broadway.com's Audience Award for Favorite Solo Performance, and won the award for Best Actress at the 29th Carbonell Awards for her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn, all in 2003.
Kate married Tim Hagan, former Ohio gubernatorial candidate and former commissioner of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in April 1999. The two divorced in 2014.
From 2003 to 2013, Kate had many memorable television appearances, including stints on The Black Donnellys, Mercy, cult favorite Warehouse 13, and NTSF:SD:SUV. In 2013, Kate began work on Netflix breakout out Orange Is The New Black as the wildly popular prison chef Galina "Red" Reznikov. OITNB is set to conclude in the summer of 2019.
Kate is also an author of two memoirs - 2016's Born With Teeth (Little Brown) and 2019's How To Forget: A Daughter's Memoir (Harper Collins). She is filming the newest season of Mr. Mercedes, a serial killer drama based on Stephen King's Bill Hodges trilogy. Mr. Mercedes airs on the AT&T Audience network and can be streamed on DirecTV.- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Location Management
Herb Edelman was born on 5 November 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was an actor and assistant director, known for The Odd Couple (1968), The Golden Girls (1985) and The Way We Were (1973). He was married to Louise Sorel. He died on 21 July 1996 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Scott Jacoby was born on 26 November 1956 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is an actor and director, known for The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976), That Certain Summer (1972) and Harold Robbins' 79 Park Avenue (1977). He has been married to Lyn Jacoby since 23 June 1985. They have two children.- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
Adam West was born William West Anderson on September 19, 1928 in Walla Walla, Washington, to parents Otto West Anderson, a farmer, and his wife Audrey V. (Speer), an opera singer. At age 10, in 1938, West had a cache of comic books; and starting in 1939, Batman, who appeared in Detective Comics, made a big impression on him--the comic hero was part bat-man (a la Count Dracula) and part world's greatest detective (a la Charlie Chan and Sherlock Holmes). When his mother remarried to a Dr. Paul Flothow, she took West and his younger brother, John, to Seattle. At age 14, West attended Lakeside School, then went to Whitman College, where he got a degree in literature and psychology. During his last year of college, he married 17-year-old Billie Lou Yeager.
West got a job as a disc jockey at a local radio station, then enrolled at Stanford for post-grad courses. Drafted into the army, he spent the next two years starting military television stations, first at San Luis Obispo, California, then at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Afterwards, West and his wife toured Europe, visiting Germany, Switzerland and Italy's Isle of Capri. When the money ran out, he joined a childhood and college buddy, Carl Hebenstreit, who was starring in the kiddie program "The Kini Popo Show" in Hawaii. West would eventually replace Carl but not the other star, Peaches the Chimp. In 1956, he got a divorce and married a beautiful girl, originally from Tahiti, named Ngatokoruaimatauaia Frisbie Dawson (he called her "Nga" for short). They had a daughter, Jonelle (born 1957), and a son, Hunter (born 1958). In 1959, West came to Hollywood. He adopted the stage name "Adam West", which fit his roles, as he was in some westerns.
After seven years in Tinseltown, he achieved fame in his signature role as Bruce Wayne / Batman, on the wildly popular ABC-TV series Batman (1966) (though he has over 60 movie and over 80 television guest appearance credits, "Batman" is what the fans remember him for). The series, which lasted three seasons, made him not just nationally but internationally famous. The movie version, Batman: The Movie (1966), earned West the "Most Promising New Star" award in 1967. The downside was that the "Batman" fame was partly responsible for ruining his marriage, and he was typecast and almost unemployable for a while after the series ended (he did nothing but personal appearances for two years).
In 1970, he met and then married Marcelle Tagand Lear, and picked up two stepchildren, Moya and Jill. In addition, they had two children of their own: Nina West in 1976 and Perrin in 1979. You can't keep a good actor down--West's career took off again, and he appeared in 50 projects after that: movies, television movies and sometimes doing voices on television series. West wrote his autobiography, "Back to the Batcave" (1994). One of his most prized possessions was a drawing of Batman by Bob Kane with the inscription "To my buddy, Adam, who breathed life into my pen and ink creation". Beginning in 2000, West made guest appearances on the animated series Family Guy (1999), on which he played Mayor Adam West, the lunatic mayor of Quahog, Rhode Island.
On June 9, 2017, Adam West died at age 88 after a brief battle with leukemia in Los Angeles, California. On June 15, 2017, Los Angeles shone the bat-signal on City Hall, and Walla Walla shone the bat-signal on the Whitman Tower, both as a tribute to West.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Ron Masak (MAY-SACK) was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of a salesman/musician (Floyd Lewis Masak, of Bohemian Czech descent), and a mother (Mildred Alice Rudy, of Irish descent), who was a merchandise buyer. Ron attended Chicago City College, and studied theater at both the CCC and the Drama Guild. He made his acting debut with the Drama Guild in Chicago in Stalag 17 in 1954.
During the course of his career, he starred in 25 feature films and guest starred in some 350 television shows. Perhaps the most beloved character was that of Sheriff Mort Metzger on Murder, She Wrote (1984). He was seen and heard in hundred of television and radio commercials. He was nicknamed the "King of Commercials" by columnist James Bacon.
Trained in the classics, he proved to be equally at home on stage or screen with Shakespeare or slapstick. He played everything from Stanley Kowalski in 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and Sakini in 'Teahouse of the August Moon' to Will Stockdale in 'No Time For Sergeants', and Antony in 'Julius Caesar'. As further proof of his versatility, in one production of 'Mr. Roberts', he played Ensign Pulver, and, in another production, he portrayed the title character himself.
In his hometown of Chicago, he was resident leading man at The Candlelight Dinner Playhouse from 1962 to 1966, never missing a single performance. The U.S. Army provided Masak with a platform from which to display his all-around talents for performing, writing and directing. In 1960-61, he toured the world doing vocal impressions in the all-Army show entitled 'Rolling Along' and never missed a show.
Masak continued to demonstrate his range of talent in such films as Ice Station Zebra, Daddy's Gone A-Hunting, Tora! Tora! Tora!, A Time For Dying, Harper Valley PTA, Cops & Roberts and The Man From Clover Grove. It was during Clover Grove that Ron added credits as a lyric writer, as he wrote and sang the title song. He played his first big screen villain starring in No Code of Conduct. Among his many television roles, he starred as Charley Wilson on Love Thy Neighbor, as Count Dracula on The Monkees, and was submitted for an Emmy nomination for one of his ten appearances on Police Story. He was seen on Magnum P.I., Webster, The Law and Harry McGraw, and Columbo. His movies of the week include The Neighborhood, In the Glitter Palace, Pleasure Cove, Once An Eagle, and Nightmare in Chicago.
His variety work included emceeing hundreds of shows for, among others, Kenny Rogers, Diahann Carroll, Alabama, Billy Crystal, The Steve Garvey Classics, Tony Orlando, The Lennon Sisters, Trini Lopez, Marilyn McCoo, Billy Davis, Connie Stevens, as well as the Michael Landon Classics and the Beau Bridges Classics.
Masak starred in Second Effort (with Vince Lombardi), Time Management (with James Whitmore), How to Control Your Time (with Burgess Meredith), and Ya Gotta Believe (with Tommy Lasorda, which Masak wrote and directed). He was a sought-after motivational speaker. He traveled across the USA as spokesman for a major brewing company and for 15 years was the voice of the Vlasic Pickle stork. Masak played Lou Costello in commercials for Bran News, McDonald's, and Tropicana Orange Juice. Frequently seen on the talk and game show circuit, he was a celebrity panelist on such game shows as Password, Tattletales, Crosswits, Liar's Club, Showoffs and Match Game. He was a regular panelist on To Tell the Truth.
He devoted his time and energy working with many charities. For eight years, he was the LA host for the Jerry Lewis Telethon and recipient of MDA's first Humanitarian of the Year Award. He served as field announcer for the Special Olympics in support of Special needs children, and was named Man of the Year by Volunteers Assisting Cancer Stricken Families. In addition, he contributed time to work with Multiple Sclerosis, Cystic Fibrosis, and Breast Cancer awareness groups and hosted charity golf tournaments for among others, Childhelp USA, for whom he was a worldwide ambassador.
He and his wife Kay had six children and ten grandchildren.- Actress
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In addition to being Miss New Orleans in 1931, Dorothy Lamour worked as a Chicago elevator operator; band vocalist for her first husband, band leader Herbie Kaye; and radio performer. In 1936 she donned her soon-to-be-famous sarong for her debut at Paramount, The Jungle Princess (1936), and continued to play female Tarzan-Crusoe-Gauguin-girl-with make-up parts through the war years and beyond. The most famous of these was in the popular Bob Hope/Bing Crosby "Road" pictures - a strange combination of adventure, slapstick, ad-libs and Hollywood inside jokes. Of these she said, "I was the happiest and highest-paid straight woman in the business." As she aged, however, the quality of her films dropped. Among her serious films were Johnny Apollo (1940) and A Medal for Benny (1945).- Actress
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Marie Windsor (born Emily Marie Bertelsen) was born in Marysvale, Utah, and attended Brigham Young University. She trained for the stage under Maria Ouspenskaya before she began playing leading roles in B pictures in the late 1940s. So many B films in fact, that she garnered the title of 'Queen of the Bs'.
She was a talent - to paraphrase a cliché - of the right type and the right time. If film noir could have manufactured an archetype, it would most definitely have been Marie.
With Ms Windsor's bedroom eyes ('they didn't fit for a 'goody-goody wife, or a nice little girlfriend' ) she smouldered on screens, in scenes with John Garfield, and many others, in some of her best work. Marie's femme fatale (Ms Windsor was later quoted as saying a femme fatale is '...usually the woman who gets the man into bed... then into trouble') was on screen, most notably her role as the manipulative, double-crossing wife of Elisha Cook Jr. in The Killing (1956) (which earned her "Look" magazine's Best Supporting Actress award).
Marie later said she loved playing them because they're '... the type of character audience's never forget'.
Some of her favourites amongst her own films, in addition to The Killing (1956), are The Narrow Margin (1952) and Hellfire (1949).
Marie married was married twice before she met Jack Hupp, a realtor with whom she had a son. After retiring from films, Marie took up sculpting and painting.
Marie passed away one day before her 81st birthday. She's interred with her husband in her hometown.
Marie said audience's 'loved to hate her', and this is only partially true; audience's love Ms Windsor for the dynamism she portrayed, and as film noir gains new fans every day - more than 3/4 of a century since their heyday, it's a love affair which shows no signs of abating.- Actress
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Musical theater devotees will undoubtedly know that the song "Let Me Entertain You" was from the classic musical "Gypsy", the born-in-a-trunk story of resilient kid troopers Gypsy Rose Lee and June Havoc who were mercilessly pushed into vaudeville careers by an unbearably headstrong mother. While the lesser-talented Gypsy, of course, became the legendary ecdysiast who turned stripping into an art form, sister June survived her "Baby June" vaudeville child days of old and the tougher road of Depression-era dance marathons to become a reputable actress of stage, screen and TV, among other things. While June may have immortalized in "Gypsy," based on her older sister's memoirs, it was a bittersweet notoriety as she felt it was a very unjust, hurtful and highly inaccurate portrait of her. It also caused a deep rift between the sisters that lasted for well over a decade.
The Canadian-born actress (she was born in Vancouver, not Seattle) entered the world in 1912 (some sources insist 1913 or 1916, but Havoc confirmed her true birth date in 2006), the younger daughter of audacious "stage mother" Rose Thompson Hovick and her husband, John Olaf Hovick, a cub reporter for a Seattle newspaper. Baby June was primed for stardom by Rose by age 2 and was soon dancing with the great ballerina Anna Pavlova and appearing in Hal Roach film shorts (1918-1924) with Harold Lloyd. A flexible, high-kicking vaudeville sensation at 5, she was featured front-and-center in an act completely built around her ("Dainty June and Her Newsboys"). Earning around $1,500 a week at her peak, the delightful child star had audiences eating out of the palm of her little hand while sharing the stage with the likes of "Red-Hot Mama" Sophie Tucker and "Baby Snooks" Fanny Brice. The unrelenting pressures and suffocating dominance of her mother, however, led to a capricious elopement at age 13 with a young boy from the act (Bobby Reed, who inspired the dancing character of Tulsa in "Gypsy"). They married in North Platte, Nebraska with each lying about their age. By the time the Depression hit, however, vaudeville, the nation's economy and her marriage had all collapsed.
Now a mother of a young daughter, April (born out of wedlock in 1930, April Kent acted briefly in the 1950s and died of a heart attack in 1998), June made ends meet by modeling, posing and toiling in dance marathons. The blonde, blue-eyed stunner also found work in stock musicals and on the Borscht Belt circuit. She made her Broadway debut in the musical "Forbidden Melody in 1936". Years passed before she earned her big break as Gladys in Rodgers and Hart's classic musical "Pal Joey" opposite Van Johnson and Gene Kelly in 1940. As a result of their scene-stealing work, the trio earned movie contracts - the two men heading off to the MGM studio and June to RKO.
Unlike her male counterparts, June found herself inextricably caught up in "B" level material. Her film debut in the war-era Four Jacks and a Jill (1942) was followed by the equally ho-hum Powder Town (1942) and Sing Your Worries Away (1942), neither requiring much in the line of acting. Her personality was big for the screen due to her broad vaudeville background, but she nevertheless could show some true grit and talent on occasion, particularly with her support role in My Sister Eileen (1942).
For the next few years she experienced both highs and lows. Her Broadway shows were either hits, such as the musical "Mexican Hayride" (1944) (for which she won the Donaldson Award), and the dramatic "The Ryan Girl" (1945), or complete misses, which included a musical version of the Sadie Thompson saga Rain. June's film acting continued to be a stumbling block, scoring best when asked to play brassy, cynical dames. While she fared well as the femme fatale in Intrigue (1947), the racist secretary in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and the gun moll The Story of Molly X (1949), more often than not, she was handed second-rate fodder to flounder in such as The Iron Curtain (1948), Once a Thief (1950) and Follow the Sun (1951). She appeared on TV in the early 50s, and she received her own short-lived vehicles as a lawyer in Willy (1954) and as host of her own show The June Havoc Show (1964).
After completing her last film Three for Jamie Dawn (1956), June refocused on stage and TV - particularly the former. She earned some of her best reviews both here and abroad in later years: Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Mistress Sullen in "The Beaux' Stratagem," Sabina in "The Skin of Our Teeth," Millicent in "Dinner at Eight," Jenny in "The Threepenny Opera," Mrs. Swabb in "Habeas Corpus," and Mrs. Lovett in "Sweeney Todd". In 1982 she pulled out all the stops on Broadway and gave a real Rose's Turn as a Miss Hannigan replacement in "Annie".
June expanded her talents to include both playwriting and directing. In addition to "I Said the Fly," she wrote "Marathon '33" (based on her Depression-era struggles) and received a 1964 Tony nomination for directing the play. June became the artistic director of the New Orleans Repertory Theatre in 1970, and later went on tour with her own one-woman show "An Evening with June Havoc". On stage and broaching age 80, the never-say-die actress appeared in a production of "Love Letters" and "An Old Lady's Guide to Survival".
June's mid-career biography "Early Havoc" was published in 1959. Married three times (her last husband, producer/director/writer William Spier died in 1973), June was long estranged from her sister, none too happy with Gypsy's portrayal of her in the best-selling memoir, "Gypsy" and equally dismayed of her Baby June character in the smash musical hit. The girls, noted for their trademark elongated faces and shapely gams, were estranged as children as well, but eventually patched things up for a time as adults. The sisters didn't truly grow close until Gypsy told June that she was dying of lung cancer in 1970. June elaborated more about her relationship with her sister in her second autobiography, "More Havoc" in 1980.
Ms. Havoc died peacefully on March 28, 2010, at her home in Stamford, Connecticut of natural causes. She was 97 years young.- Actor
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Born in Avoca, Iowa and moved with his parents to Hollywood, California in the late 1940s, Richard Beymer acted in various films while attending North Hollywood High School. He enjoys making his own films and has a film used in a PBS series on the civil rights movement.- Actress
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Born in India to South African parents, Juliet studied to be a dancer from the age of 4. Attending the Royal Academy of Dance, by the time Juliet was 14, she was deemed too tall to enter the world of ballet. She signed as a chorus dancer with the London Palladium and then pursued a career as a dancer in European nightclubs. While dancing in Paris, she was spotted by Hollywood choreographer Hermes Pan and signed to a role in the movie Can-Can (1960). While rehearsing for the movie, Soviet Premier Khrushchev was invited to watch the then-unknown Prowse and others rehearsing their steps. The next day, he denounced the dance as immoral and it was Prowse's photo that accompanied the news across newspapers worldwide. An instant celebrity, Juliet shot to stardom with her acting and dancing and the tabloids filled with her romance with star Frank Sinatra. That same year, she also appeared with Elvis Presley in G.I. Blues (1960) and again the tabloids followed her.
She appeared in more films the next year but, as her celebrity status waned, so did her movie career. Her engagement to Sinatra in 1962 fueled her nightclub act, but did nothing for her movie career. In 1965, she moved to television with the series Mona McCluskey (1965), playing a nutty Hollywood starlet, but the show soon ended. Her big-screen career ended with Run for Your Wife (1965) and she, thereafter, appeared on the stage and on the nightclub circuit. Some of her stage shows included "Sweet Charity", "Kismet", "Irma La Douce", "Mame" and "The Pajama Game". She also appeared as a guest on Television but, most of the time, she worked in her nightclub act. In 1994, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.- Actor
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Dack (given name Norman) and identical twin brother, Dirk Rambo (Orman), were born in sunny California in 1941. Dack's noticeable difference was a mole on his left cheek. Both happened upon an acting career, at age 21, after being discovered by Loretta Young for her TV show, while sitting in a church pew. The sons of Lester and Beatrice Rambo, the brothers also had another brother and sister, Bill and Beverly. Dack's early training began as a student of Vincent Chase and Lee Strasberg, and both boys found employment, following the one-season stint on Loretta's TV show, in 1963. While Dirk found success on episodic-TV (The Virginian (1962), Dragnet 1967 (1967)), Dack went on to a couple of other TV series, including Never Too Young (1965) and The Guns of Will Sonnett (1967). Dirk was tragically killed in 1967, after being struck by a drunken driver. A stunned Dack ventured on, however, and eventually found a secure place for his dark good looks in 70s and 80s glossy drama and secondary action. He played many a calculating lover in both daytime (All My Children (1970), Another World (1964)) and prime-time (Dallas (1978)) soaps, while showing off his athletic skills in such outdoor adventure series as Sword of Justice (1978). Later in his career, he worked up a few action leads in low-budget filming. In 1991, while appearing on Another World (1964), Dack discovered he had contracted AIDS and made a courageous decision to retire in order to focus on awareness of this deadly disease. He was extremely candid as to his bisexuality and advocating safe sex and helping to establish an international data bank for AIDS research. He died of complications in 1994 at age 52.- Actress
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An English actress of stage, screen and television, sister to Hayley Mills and daughter of Sir John Mills, Juliet first came to notice in films, actually after her sister Hayley started her career. Juliet, however, was first plucked onto the screen and signing a contract with Warner Brothers and taking small roles in comedies like Nurse on Wheels (1963) and Carry on Jack (1964). It wasn't until 1966, when Juliet Mills started getting attention in her role opposite James Stewart and Maureen O'Hara in the western film The Rare Breed (1966). She continued in television in the seventies as a recurring guest star on The Love Boat (1977), Wonder Woman (1975) and Fantasy Island (1977). She got her first starring television series, Nanny and the Professor (1970), in 1970, co-starring Richard Long, the series was top-rated, but was shortly canceled after two seasons by ABC. She hit the screen again in 1974, playing the possessed "Jessica Barrett" in the Italian horror film Beyond the Door (1974) ("Beyond the Door") for Film Ventures International, but it was pulled from theaters because it resembled The Exorcist (1973), even though it was becoming a box office hit. She didn't get very many roles after that and continued in television through the eighties. She did a small part in Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992) and then played Juliette Lewis's friendly maid in the 1999 major motion picture The Other Sister (1999), co-starring Diane Keaton and Tom Skerritt. Juliet Mills has recently been in the daytime drama (soap opera) Passions (1999), playing "Tabitha", the witch. She is married to actor Maxwell Caulfield.- Actress
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A supremely gifted, versatile player who could reach dramatic depths, as exemplified in her weary-eyed, good-hearted waitress in The Last Picture Show (1971), or comedy heights, as in her sadistic drill captain in Private Benjamin (1980), Eileen Brennan managed to transition from lovely Broadway singing ingénue to respected film and television character actress within a decade's time. Her Hollywood career was hustling and bustling at the time of her near-fatal car accident in 1982. With courage and spirit, she recovered from her extensive facial and leg injuries, and returned to performing... slower but wiser. On top of all this, the indomitable Eileen survived a bout of alcoholism and became recognized as a breast cancer survivor, having had a mastectomy in 1990. On camera, she still tosses out those trademark barbs to the delight of all her fans, as demonstrated by her more-recent recurring roles as the prying Mrs. Bink on 7th Heaven (1996) and as Zandra, the disparaging acting coach, on Will & Grace (1998).
She was born with the highly unlikely marquee name of Verla Eileen Regina Brennan in Los Angeles, California, the child of Irish-Catholic parents Regina ("Jeanne") Manahan (or Menehan), a minor silent film player, and John Gerald Brennan, a doctor. Following grade school education, she attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and appeared in plays with the Mask and Bauble Society during that time. She then went on to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Her lovely soprano coupled with a flair for comedy was the winning combination that earned her the break of her budding career as the not-so-dainty title role in the off-Broadway, tongue-in-cheek operetta "Little Mary Sunshine". For this 1959 endeavor, Eileen not only won an Obie Award, but was among an esteemed group of eight other thespians who won the Theatre World Award that year for "Promising New Personality", including Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, Carol Burnett and a very young Patty Duke.
Unwilling to be pigeonholed as a singing comedienne, Eileen took on one of the most arduous and demanding legit roles a young actress could ask for when she portrayed Annie Sullivan role in a major touring production of "The Miracle Worker" in 1961. After proving her dramatic mettle, she returned willingly to the musical theatre fold and made a very beguiling Anna in a production of "The King and I" (1963). She took her first Broadway bow in another comic operetta, "The Student Gypsy" (1963). In the musical, which was an unofficial sequel to her "Mary Sunshine" hit, she played a similarly-styled Merry May Glockenspiel, but the show lasted only a couple of weeks. Infinitely more successful was her deft playing of Irene Malloy alongside Carol Channing's Dolly Levi Gallagher in the original Broadway production of "Hello, Dolly!" (1964). Eileen stayed with the role for about two years.
By this time, Hollywood beckoned and Eileen never looked back... or returned to sing on Broadway. After a support role in the film comedy Divorce American Style (1967) starring Debbie Reynolds and Dick Van Dyke, Eileen's talents were selected to be showcased on the irreverent variety show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1967). But what seemed to be an ideal forum to show off her abilities didn't. Overshadowed by the wackier talents of Goldie Hawn, Ruth Buzzi and Jo Anne Worley, who became television comedy stars from this, Eileen seemed out of sync with the knockabout slapstick element. She left the cast before the show barely got off the ground. "Laugh-In" (1968-1973) went on to become a huge cult hit.
In retrospect, this disappointment proved to be a boon to Eileen's dramatic film career. Set in a dusty, barren town, she played up her hard looks and earned terrific reviews for her downbeat role of Genevieve, the careworn waitress, in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show (1971). As part of a superb ensemble cast, her hard-knocks vulnerability and earthy sensuality added authenticity to the dreary Texas surroundings. Following this, she scored great marks for her brothel madam/confidante in George Roy Hill's ragtime-era Oscar winner The Sting (1973). Bogdanovich himself became a fan and used Eileen again and again in his subsequent films -- the ambitious but lackluster Daisy Miller (1974) and At Long Last Love (1975). At least, the latter movie allowed her to show off her singing voice. Her comedic instincts were on full display too in the all-star mystery spoofs Murder by Death (1976) and The Cheap Detective (1978) where she fared quite well playing take-it-on-the-chin dames.
Eileen hit the apex of her comic fame playing the spiky and spiteful drill captain who mercilessly taunts and torments tenderfoot Goldie Hawn in the huge box-office hit Private Benjamin (1980). She deservedly earned a "best supporting actress" Oscar nomination for her scene-stealing contribution and was given the chance to reprise the role on the television series that followed. Starring Lorna Patterson in the Hawn role, Private Benjamin (1981) was less successful in its adaptation to the smaller screen but Eileen was better than great and earned both Emmy and Golden Globe Awards in the process.
During the show's run in 1982, Brennan had dinner one evening with good friend Goldie Hawn at a Los Angeles restaurant. They had already parted ways when Brennan was hit and critically injured by a car while crossing a street. Replaced in the television series (by "Alice" co-star Polly Holliday), her recovery and rehabilitation lasted three years, which included an addiction to painkillers. She returned to the screen in another amusing all-star comedy whodunit, Clue (1985), in which she played one of the popular game board suspects, Mrs. Peacock. While looking weaker and less mobile, she showed she had lost none of the disarming causticity that made her a character star.
Forging ahead, Eileen went on to recreate her tough luck waitress character in Texasville (1990), the sequel to The Last Picture Show (1971), and also appeared with Bette Midler in the overly mawkish Stella (1990). However, for the most part, she lent herself to playing eccentric crab apples in such lightweight fare as Rented Lips (1987), Sticky Fingers (1988), Changing Habits (1997), Pants on Fire (1998), Jeepers Creepers (2001), Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous (2005) and Naked Run (2011). She has also provided crotchety animated voices for series cartoons.
Eileen Brennan died at age 80 on July 28, 2013 at her Burbank, California home after a battle with bladder cancer. She is survived by her two sons, Patrick (formerly a basketball player, now an actor) and Sam (a singer), from her first and only marriage in the late 1960s to mid-1970s.- Actress
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Jane Powell was singing and dancing at an early age. She sang on the radio and performed in theaters before her screen debut in 1944. Through the 1940s and 1950s, she had a successful career in movie musicals. However, in 1957, Jane's career in films ended, as she had outgrown her innocent girl-next-door image. She made brief returns to acting in front of the camera -- on television, in commercials, and in a workout video. She also had a variety of roles on stage after the end of her movie career, including the musicals "South Pacific," "The Sound of Music," "Oklahoma!," "My Fair Lady," "Carousel," and a one-woman show "The Girl Next Door and How She Grew," from which she took the title of her 1988 autobiography.- Actor
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Robert Prosky was born on 13 December 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for Thief (1981), Broadcast News (1987) and Mrs. Doubtfire (1993). He was married to Ida Hove. He died on 8 December 2008 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA.- Actor
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Christopher Hewett was born on 5 April 1921 in Worthing, Sussex, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Producers (1967), Mr. Belvedere (1985) and Fantasy Island (1977). He died on 3 August 2001 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
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Carolyn Seymour is a highly accomplished actress of stage and screen, with a long and impressive list of credits on both sides of the Atlantic.
Born in Buckinghamshire to an Estonian father with Russian descent and an Irish mother, Carolyn trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama, before rising to fame with starring roles in Peter Barnes' much acclaimed THE RULING CLASS starring Peter O'Toole and directed by Peter Medak, Terry Nation's cult sci-fi television series SURVIVORS and the BBC's TAKE THREE GIRLS.
Multiple film credits include GUMSHOE opposite Albert Finney for director Stephen Frears, STEPTOE & SON, MR. MUM with Michael Keaton, and CONGO for director Frank Marshall.
Carolyn's extensive theatre work includes THE GREAT EXHIBITION written by Sir David Hare, for which Carolyn starred opposite David Warner and Penelope Wilton at The Hampstead Theatre. The production was directed by Sir Richard Eyre.
Carolyn received critical praise for a role as Ophelia in HAMLET at The Gielgud (formerly The Globe Theatre), directed by Peter Coe and produced by Sam Wanamaker. ON APPROVAL saw Carolyn starring opposite Kenneth More and Moray Watson at The Vaudeville Theatre. In THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER Carolyn co-starred with Wilfred Hyde-White for the production at the Theatre Royal Brighton followed by a national tour, both directed by Roger Redfarn. HAY FEVER marked Carolyn's debut on Broadway playing Myra Arundel for director Brian Murray. SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL directed by Brian Bedford would follow at The Taper in Los Angeles.
Carolyn made the effortless transition to American television during the 1980s, with celebrated performances in a multitude of hit, award-winning series including FAMILY TIES, HART TO HART, CAGNEY & LACEY, MAGNUM P.I., MURDER SHE WROTE, QUANTUM LEAP, L.A LAW and ER. Recurring guest appearances on the Emmy award-winning STAR TREK: The Next Generation and STAR TREK Voyager, like that of her work on SURVIVORS, have also drawn a strong and devoted fan-base.
Carolyn is also a regular voice artist, recording audio adaptations of stage plays by Sir Alan Ayckbourn (TABLE MANNERS and LIVING TOGETHER), as well as TOP GIRLS by celebrated playwright Caryl Churchill. For Big Finish Productions, and by the demand of her loyal fans, Carolyn returned to her iconic role of Abby Grant in SURVIVORS, as well as guest-starring alongside the surviving DOCTOR WHO's.
Over 5 decades in the industry, Carolyn has continued to adapt to the demands of the business including successfully transitioning into the world of video games, with multiple projects for the STAR WARS franchise amongst many others.
Having resided in the United States and France for many years, Carolyn returns to her native England in Summer 2021 with plans to return to her roots - British stage and screen.
Carolyn divides her personal time between her family, her love of art, and her passion for charitable work including animal activism and supporting the homeless.- Rosemary Murphy was born on 13 January 1925 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. She was an actress, known for To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Eleanor and Franklin (1976) and Mighty Aphrodite (1995). She was married to Reginald Marsh. She died on 5 July 2014 in New York City, New York, USA.
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Betty May Adams was the daughter of a travelling Iowa cotton buyer with a penchant for alcohol. Growing up in Arkansas, Betty expressed an early interest in acting and made her performing debut in a third grade play of "Hansel and Gretel." Beautiful, talented and determined, the freshly minted 'Miss Little Rock' left home at the age of 19 to live with her aunt and uncle in California. For three days a week she made ends meet working as a secretary. The remainder of her time was spent taking speech and drama lessons (in due course losing her Southern twang) and making the rounds of the various Hollywood casting departments. Her first screen role was (appropriately) as a starlet in Paramount's Red, Hot and Blue (1949). This was followed by an inauspicious leading role in the B-grade Western The Dalton Gang (1949). Over a period of five weeks she appeared in six further quota quickies of the sagebrush variety for Poverty Row outfit Lippert Productions. Since Lippert owned no actual studio facilities, most of the filming took place at the Ray Corrigan ranch in Chatsworth, California. In the summer of 1950, Betty assisted in a screen test for Detroit Lions football star Leon Hart at Universal-International. While Hart's movie career ended up stillborn, Betty clicked with producers who opted to change her first name to 'Julia.' The initial outing for her new studio was entitled Bright Victory (1951), with the budding actress a little underemployed as 'the other girl' in a love triangle involving a blind war veteran (played by Arthur Kennedy). Her career was significantly better served in her next assignment as co-star opposite James Stewart in Anthony Mann's seminal Technicolor western Bend of the River (1952) (Kennedy this time cast as the arch villain). Adams later recalled her part in this film as "a great learning experience" and one of her "fondest Hollywood memories," It also led to a life long friendship with Jimmy Stewart.
Signed to a seven-year contract (and having her legs insured by Universal to the tune of $125,000 by Lloyds of London), Julia seemed destined to remain perpetually typecast as a western heroine. A comely actress with soft, classical features, she often gave affecting performances in what amounted to little more than bread-and-butter pictures. At the very least, she got to play romantic leads opposite some of Universal's top box-office earners: Rock Hudson (in Horizons West (1952) and The Lawless Breed (1952)), Tyrone Power(The Mississippi Gambler (1953)) and Glenn Ford (The Man from the Alamo (1953)). Having played a succession of 'nice girls,' Julia took a turn as leader of an outlaw gang in Wings of the Hawk (1953), set against the background of the Mexican Revolution (Van Heflin was first-billed as a mining engineer, who, having his gold mine taken over by Federales, joins Julia's band of 'insurrectos'). 'Miss Melon Patch' of 1953 was about to experience another important career change, being famously cast as the imperilled heroine Kay Lawrence in Jack Arnolds cultish monster flic Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), a role Adams initially considered turning down. Shot in 3-D on a shoestring budget, the picture was light on script but strong on atmosphere and proved once again that style can succeed over content. The not inconsiderable physical charms of Miss Adams often dominated the scenery and gave the 'Gill Man' a run for his money. Audiences approved and 'Creature' spawned two further sequels, alas without Julia and with diminishing returns.
In 1955, having generated strong box office heat, Julia changed her moniker (with studio approval) to the less gentle-sounding Julie. Accordingly, she was now offered more varied material ranging from tough melodramas, to comedies and lightweight romances. Adams further established her credentials with roles which included a soft porn model who survives a plane crash in the Colorado Rockies in The Looters (1955); as a cop's wife in Six Bridges to Cross (1955) (a crime drama based on Boston's Great Brinks Robbery); a sympathetic school's doctor in the family-oriented comedy The Private War of Major Benson (1955) and as the wife of an assistant D.A. fighting gangland on the New York waterfront in Slaughter on 10th Avenue (1957). After 1957, her contract with Universal having expired, Adams successfully transitioned into television where she remained a firm favorite in westerns and crime dramas, guest-starring in just about every classic prime-time series covering both genres (Perry Mason (1957) being her personal favorite). Latterly, she had a popular recurring role as real estate lady Eve Simpson in Murder, She Wrote (1984). Adams was still in demand for occasional screen appearances well into her 90s.
She was married twice: first, to writer-producer Leonard Stern, and, secondly, to the actor Ray Danton. Julie Adams passed away in Los Angeles on February 3, 2019 at the age of 92. Her autobiography (co-written with her son Mitchell Danton), entitled "The Lucky Southern Star: Reflections from the Black Lagoon" appeared in 2011.- Actress
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Gloria Mildred DeHaven was born on July 23, 1925 in Los Angeles to vaudeville headliners Carter and Flora DeHaven. Her parents made sure their daughter would be educated at the very best private schools. They also indulged her ambition to be in show business by packing her off to the Mar-Ken Professional School in Hollywood (1940-42). Diminutive of stature and dark-haired, budding musical star Gloria (her nickname then was "Glo") enjoyed collecting perfume, reading (her favorite author being Daphne Du Maurier) and listening to the big bands (particularly Tommy Dorsey). With her father's help (who was assistant director and a friend of Charles Chaplin) she finagled her first movie appearance -- an uncredited bit part in Modern Times (1936). Her first visible role was in the George Cukor-directed Susan and God (1940). A contemporary newspaper article quipped that the winsome lass was "a backstage baby, never a child star".
First and foremost, Gloria concentrated on her singing career. She developed her own nightclub act over the years and also enjoyed considerable success as a solo vocalist with the orchestras of Bob Crosby, Jan Savitt and Muzzy Marcellino. It was her singing which prompted Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to sign her under contract in 1940. During the following decade she made decent strides as a soubrette and was regularly featured as second lead in cheerful light musicals. The pick of the bunch were Thousands Cheer (1943), Step Lively (1944) (on loan to RKO, giving Frank Sinatra his first screen kiss), Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), Summer Stock (1950) (a typical role, as sister to the nominal star, in this case Judy Garland) and Three Little Words (1950) (in which she played her own mother, Flora Parker DeHaven, singing the Ruby & Kalmar standard "Who's Sorry Now?"). New York Times critic Bosley Crowther commented in in June 1944: "It's a toss-up between June Allyson and Gloria DeHaven as to which is the lovelier girl. Both sing and dance with springtime crispness and have such form and grace as are divine." Always a popular pin-up with American servicemen in World War II, Gloria was featured on the cover of 'Yank' magazine that very same month.
Gloria never quite managed to get first tier assignments and her career waned as musicals ceased to be a bankable commodity. In the early 1950s she attempted stronger dramatic roles but with only moderate success. By 1955, she had wisely turned to the stage for occasional appearances on Broadway. As late as 1989 she sang in cabaret at the Rainbow & Stars in New York. There was also a screen comeback of sorts with recurring roles in the soap operas Ryan's Hope (1975), As the World Turns (1956) and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976). She was one of the numerous celebrities who appeared in box office bomb Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976) and guest-starred on television series, such as Gunsmoke (1955), Mannix (1967), Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969), The Love Boat (1977), Fantasy Island (1977), Hart to Hart (1979), Murder, She Wrote (1984) and Touched by an Angel (1994).
After a long absence, Gloria returned to motion pictures and scored a hit as Jack Lemmon's love interest in the romantic comedy Out to Sea (1997). She died of a stroke in Las Vegas, Nevada on July 30, 2016, one week after her 91st birthday.- Actress
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Kathryn Grayson was born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick in Winston-Salem, NC, on February 9, 1922. This pretty, petite brunette with a heart-shaped face was discovered by MGM talent scouts while singing on the radio. The studio quickly signed her to a contract, and she was given acting lessons along and had to pose for countless publicity photos. Kathryn, a coloratura soprano, made her first film in 1941, a "B" picture called Andy Hardy's Private Secretary (1941). She soon was cast opposite some of MGM's top musical stars of the 1940s, such as Gene Kelly and Mario Lanza. She was paired with Lanza a few times, but the two never got along due mostly to Lanza's hot temper and alcohol abuse. The pairing of Lanza and Grayson would never match the success of lyrical soprano Jeanette MacDonald and baritone Nelson Eddy, although Kathryn and MacDonald did become great friends. Jeanette became a mentor and an older sister figure for Kathryn.
Grayson's most memorable roles came in the early 1950s. They were Show Boat (1951), where she played "Magnolia", opposite Ava Gardner and Howard Keel; Kiss Me Kate (1953), playing actress "Lilli Vanessi", who portrayed "Katherine" in the movie's "show within a show", a musical version of "The Taming of the Shrew". In 1953 she exited MGM, then made only one more film, The Vagabond King (1956), at Paramount. She later worked in nightclubs and on stage.- Actor
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Rick Lenz was born on 21 November 1939 in Springfield, Illinois, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Cactus Flower (1969), Hec Ramsey (1972) and The Shootist (1976). He has been married to Linda Kurth since 15 May 1982. He was previously married to Jessica Rains.- Actress
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Ruth Roman was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, the youngest of three daughters of Lithuanian-Jewish parents Mary Pauline (Gold) and Abraham Roman. Her father, a carnival barker, died when she was a small child, forcing her mother to support the family by working as a waitress and cleaning woman. Ruth grew up in the poor tenement district of Boston, Massachusetts, where she went to school. However, she left school after just two years to pursue an acting career. Her chosen path proved to be strewn with obstacles: in New York, she obtained a job posing for stills for a crime magazine, but theatrical work eluded her. She then worked as a hat check girl at a night club before calling it quits and returning to Boston. There, she made ends meet as an usherette during the day while at night performing with the New England Repertory Company, her first steady acting job. She also studied drama and eventually graduated from the Bishop-Lee Theatre School.
Trying to get into films, Ruth unsuccessfully made the rounds of agents and producers for two years (1940-42), until a bit part as a WAVE came her way in the film Stage Door Canteen (1943). With $200 to her name, she purchased a one-way ticket to Hollywood, where she found shared accommodation with other aspiring starlets, naming it, optimistically, 'the House of the Seven Garbos'. After a screen test with Warner Brothers failed to result in a contract, Ruth had another run of six hard years playing bit parts, many of them uncredited, some ending up on the cutting room floor. A sole speaking part of consequence was in the titular role of Jungle Queen (1945), a Universal serial (after subsequent acting lessons, Ruth was aghast when the serial was rereleased in 1951).
Ruth finally got her big break when producer Dore Schary cast her (against character, as a murderess) in the RKO thriller The Window (1949). That same year, she successfully auditioned for Stanley Kramer's boxing drama Champion (1949) as the dependable wife of the fighter (Kirk Douglas). After this turning point in her life, the shapely, smoky-voiced brunette secured a contract with Warner Brothers. During the next phase of her career, she moved effortlessly from glamorous and seductive to demure and wholesome in films opposite stars like James Stewart, Errol Flynn, and Gary Cooper. Look Magazine billed her as the 'Big Time Movie Personality of 1950', and by the following year she was receiving some 500 fan letters per week.
While many of her leads were in westerns (albeit mostly A-grade ones), Ruth was somewhat more memorable in support of Farley Granger (as his upper-crust lover and the raison d'etre for the planned murder of his wife) in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951). Another offbeat role was as a gangster's moll in the British-made updated adaptation of Shakespeare's Joe MacBeth (1955). As Lily, she is the power behind angst-ridden Paul Douglas ('Joe'), whom she easily manipulates to do her bidding. In The Bottom of the Bottle (1956), she was at her dependable best as the supportive wife of lawyer Joseph Cotten. Arguably, her last noteworthy performance on the big screen was in Alexander Singer's romance/drama Love Has Many Faces (1965).
By the 1960s, Ruth had made the transition to middle-aged character parts and began to appear mostly on television in shows like The Outer Limits (1963), Mannix (1967), Gunsmoke (1955), and (in a recurring role) in The Long, Hot Summer (1965). She also toured nationally with theatrical productions of "Plaza Suite", "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", and "Two for the Seesaw". For the actress, who was said to disdain the trimmings of Hollywood stardom, real-life drama came when she and her son counted among the 760 survivors of the sinking of the luxury cruise liner 'Andrea Doria' in 1956. In September 1967, she jumped from her burning car but still managed to make her scheduled performance in "Beekman Place" at the Ivanhoe Theatre. Ruth died in September 1999 at her home in Laguna Beach, aged 76.- Antoinette Bower's first job on leaving school in London was as a Field Language Supervisor for the International Refugee Organization in Germany, an experience which very much influenced her view of the world. Shortly after IRO was discontinued, she joined her family in Canada and found work as a copy writer and disc jockey at a small-town radio station, which led in time to Toronto and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, more radio and much live television, most frequently for the CBC Public Affairs Dept. Then somehow - bit by bit - she found herself drawn into acting - first CBC live TV shows, then theatre, although, in spite of her love for it and the rehearsal periods before a run, she feels that she has never been on stage enough over the years because she is basically a morning person and not that happy spending all day waiting to work at night!
In 1960, while visiting friends in LA and making a few rounds, she landed a TV guest shot. A second one followed a few weeks later and, like Toronto and New York actor-friends before her, she came to realize that commuting between the coasts with very little warning was fairly impossible so, like others, she took a deep breath and made the decision to move to the west coast. LA became home base.
As for Hollywood careers at that time, people tended to be either a television actor or a feature film actor, there was little crossover (things have certainly changed since then). Antoinette was mainly a TV actor in those years, with occasional forays into theatre. And having always thought of herself as a character actor rather than a leading lady, she loved it when TV Guide referred to her as being 'too versatile for her own good'.
Antoinette has managed to live a fairly balanced existence - there was the joy of working with many excellent actors, the occasional working on location, which she has always loved, not to mention exposure to a variety of worlds. And in the predictable stretches of unemployment, she took regular courses in construction technology, carpentry and cabinet-making at Santa Monica College.
Thanks to her seasons on Neon Rider, and thanks in particular to a great stunt double and ex-rodeo champion who took her under her wing and put her in touch with her legendary Lauder/Glass/Cosgrave family in Alberta, Antoinette was let into a world she would never have known 'from the stands'. Eventually, she shot, wrote and learned to edit (in that order!) a rather long student film - her ode to the two- and four-legged friends she made in the last many years. A recurring interest in documentaries now has her well into a new project. - Actress
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Her quivery, high-pitched, Southern-cracked tones were once described as sounding like "a Tweetie Pie cartoon bird strangling on peanut butter." Just the absurdity of that description fits comedienne Dody Goodman to a tee. One did not know what to make of her, but she could certainly induce laughter with a mere perplexed look, a spaced-out pause, or by opening her mouth and spouting out a silly malaprop. Her flakiness seemed so real that one wondered if that was the REAL Dody Goodman or just some savvy comedienne who knew exactly how to package herself. Maybe a little of both.
An endearing scenestealer, Dody put her own indelible patent on the feather-brained relative, inept teacher and neighborhood chatterbox, playing them all to the hilt in an over six-decade career. Her characters alway seemed lost in their own little world...whatever world that was, it must have been a sweet and happy little place for she always displayed a pleasant demeanor and had a fixed smile plastered on that rather blank face of hers. TV was Dody's choice of medium later in life and her ditsy foils became a popular addiction on prime-time and late-nite TV shows during the 1960s and 1970s.
She was born Dolores Goodman, the daughter of Dexter, a cigar factory owner, and Leona Goodman, in Columbus, Ohio on October 28, 1914. Dody's beginnings were in dance and ballet and, after traipsing off to New York in the hopes of becoming a ballerina, fell into the ballet company at Radio City Music Hall. She eventually went the Broadway route and made her debut as a ballet dancer in the short-lived musical "Viva O'Brien" in 1941. From that she continued to gain experience in the dancing ensembles of "Something for the Boys," "One Touch of Venus," Laffing Room Only," "High Button Shoes," "Miss Liberty," "Call Me Madam" and "My Darlin' Aida." A featured role in the 1953 musical "Wonderful Town" starring Tony-winner Rosalind Russell was a huge turning point, and another standout part in 1955's "Shoestring Revue" had her introducing the show-stopping novelty song "Someone Is Sending Me Flowers".
It was comedienne Imogene Coca and "Wonderful Town" director George Abbott who saw Dody's true potential as a funny girl and helped steer her towards comedy. Soon Dody was performing on 50s TV in comedy skits. With a pixie-like eccentricity that reminded one of the late great Gracie Allen, Dody's big break happened in mid-career when, at age 43, she made a chatty 1957 guest appearance on the second episode of Jack Paar's "Tonight Show" and was hired as a regular. An enormous hit with audiences, she earned an Emmy nomination in the process, but Paar dropped her from the show the following year because she had a disconcerting habit of upstaging him. She later became a well-oiled guest on game shows and on Johnny Carson, Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin's chatfests.
On stage, Dody played the Carol Burnett role in a tour of "Once Upon a Mattress" and added "Fiorello!" and the "New Cole Porter Review" to her musical comedy resume in the early 1960s. She did not return to Broadway until over a decade later with a supporting role in "Lorelei" starring Carol Channing in 1974. Two decades later she would reappear in a Broadway revival of "Grease". On the legit comedy stage, she added to the wackiness of such plays as "A Thurber Carnival," "Don't Drink the Water, "The Front Page" and "George Washington Slept Here".
An ideal showcase for her loopy talents was as Louise Lasser's mother, Martha Shumway, on the cutting edge TV satire, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976). An off-the-wall sendup of soap operas, Goodman was in her element as the title character's mother who engaged in conversation with her plants. When Lasser left the show, the cast maintained for another six months and the title was changed to Forever Fernwood (1977).
An older Dody appeared as a regular for a season on sitcom Diff'rent Strokes (1978) and in such teen-oriented movies as Grease (1978) and Grease 2 (1982), as well as Splash (1983) and Private Resort (1985). She also provided a regular cartoon voiceover for "Alvin & the Chipmunks" for years. On stage she earned a Drama Desk nomination for her 1984 appearance in the O'Neill play "Ah, Wilderness!" and later spent several seasons touring in the musical farce "Nunsense" -- starting out as Sister Mary Amnesia and graduating to the role of Mother Superior. At age 85 she was still kicking up her heels in one of the show's many spin-offs, "Nuncrackers," and was glimpsed occasionally as her old flaky self as a guest on "The David Letterman Show".
Appearing at special events past the age of 90, she died peacefully on June 22, 2008, at the Englewood, New Jersey Hospital and Medical Center. Declining health had forced her to move into assisted living (Lillian Booth Actors' Fund Home) in Englewood back in October of 2007. The unmarried Dody was survived by several nieces and nephews.- Actress
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Fionnula Flanagan was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland. From an early age she grew up speaking both English and Irish on a daily basis. Her parents weren't native Irish speakers but wanted Fionnula and her four siblings to learn the language. Her mother used to say, "A nation without a language is a nation without a soul". Fionnula has said she will be forever grateful to them for that. She was educated at the Abbey Theatre School in Dublin and in Switzerland. She moved to Los Angeles in 1968 and lives with her husband, psychiatrist Dr. Garrett O'Connor, in Beverly Hills. Of her enormous body of work, including stage, television and film, she might be most well-known for James Joyce's Women (1985), in which she plays six different women who had a profound influence on James Joyce's life. Besides giving an award-winning performance, she also wrote, adapted and produced the piece for the stage, and subsequently as a feature film. She believes Joyce is the most important writer in the English language, most notably for "Ulysses", "Finnegan's Wake" and "The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man". When she was growing up she thought the much lauded author was a good friend of her parents, because they were always saying, "Joyce said this, Joyce said that". When she was finally old enough to read Joyce for herself, the characters were like old friends.- Actress
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A sunny singer, dancer and comic actress, Betty Garrett starred in several Hollywood musicals and stage roles. She was at the top of her game when the Communist scare in the 1950s brought her career to a screeching, ugly halt. She and her husband Larry Parks, an Oscar-nominated actor, were summoned by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee and questioned about their involvement.
As the drama played out, a very pregnant Garrett was never called to testify, but her husband was. With his admission of Communist Party membership from 1941-1945 and refusal to name names, he made it to the Hollywood Blacklist. After the incident, Garrett and Parks worked up nightclub singing/comedy acts along with appearing in legit plays. Although Parks never quite shook off the blacklist incident, he did win a role in John Huston's film, Freud (1962). Garrett went on to appear in roles in many television series.- Tricia O'Neil was born on 11 March 1945 in Shreveport, Louisiana, USA. She is an actress, known for Titanic (1997), Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) and Babylon 5 (1993).
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Janet Leigh was the only child of a couple who often moved from town to town. Living in apartments, Janet was a bright child who skipped several grades and finished high school when she was 15. A lonely child, she would spend much of her time at movie theaters. She was a student, studying music and psychology, at the University of the Pacific until she was "discovered" while visiting her parents in Northern California. Her father was working the desk at a ski resort where her mother worked as a maid. Retired MGM actress Norma Shearer saw a picture of Janet on the front desk and asked if she could borrow it. This led to a screen test at MGM and a starring role in The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947). MGM was looking for a young naive country girl and Janet filled the bill perfectly. She would play the young ingénue in a number of films and work with such stars as Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Orson Welles and Judy Garland. She appeared in a number of successful films, including Little Women (1949), Angels in the Outfield (1951), Scaramouche (1952), Houdini (1953) and The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), among others. Janet would appear in a variety of films, from comedies to westerns to musicals to dramas. Of her more than 50 movies, she would be remembered for the 45 minutes that she was on the screen in the small-budget thriller Psycho (1960). Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, this 1960 classic would include the shower scene that would become a film landmark. Even though her character is killed off early in the picture, she would be nominated for an Academy Award and receive a Golden Globe. Her next film would be The Manchurian Candidate (1962), in which she starred with Frank Sinatra. For the rest of the decade, her appearances in films would be rare, but she worked with Paul Newman in Harper (1966). In the 1970s she appeared on the small screen in a number of made-for-TV movies. In 1980, she appeared alongside her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in The Fog (1980), and later, in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998). Janet Leigh died at age 77 in her home in Beverly Hills, California on October 3, 2004.- Actress
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Colleen Camp was born in San Francisco, California. She began working as a juvenile actress at the age of 3 and was eventually 'discovered' while working as a bird trainer at Busch Gardens. She appeared on The Dean Martin Show (1965) and made her film debut in Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973). She has since gone on to appear in over 100 major motion pictures and television productions.- Dennis Bailey was born on 12 April 1953 in Grosse Point, Michigan, USA. He is an actor, known for Great Performances (1971), China Beach (1988) and Martin (1992).
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Larry Carr's life is one of those stories that could only happen in Hollywood. Carr started out as a young actor in films doing day player roles. His good looks soon got him a few credited roles in films like "Again...Pioneers" and in early television shows. Like most people in Hollywood, Carr's career begin the go downhill as he got older.
By the early 1960s, Carr went to Brazil where films capitalized on his good looks and he was regularly cast as the good-looking American in films. He was able to practice his writing skills and earn a living as an actor. Things were going well for Car until the early 1970s when his mother got sick and it forced him to go back to the United States to take care of her.
During this time. Carr's love for the beauty of Hollywood inspired him to write "Four Fabulous Faces" and "More Fabulous Faces" which were books dedicated to some of the various leading ladies of Hollywood's golden age. It was around this time that Carr wanted to get back to work but he had lost his urge to become a star so he used his connections to register for the Screen Extras Guild. It was then that Carr found out that somebody else was using the name "Larry Carr" so he chose the stage name "Larry Charles" to register with the Screen Extra Guild. Carr started regularly appearing as detectives and suits in various shows filmed at Universal. He rarely had dialog he felt comfortable appearing in background roles that provided him a steady income for over 20 years.- Actress
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Jane Badler, the American and Australian actress best known for her role as the evil reptilian Visitor leader "Diana" in the NBC mini-series V (1983), its sequel V: The Final Battle (1984), the subsequent TV series V (1984), and the last season of the latest series V (2009), was born on the last day of 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. She spent her teen years in Manchester, New Hampshire, where she attended Central High School. Jane won the Miss New Hampshire title and competed at the 1972 Miss America Pageant before going on to study drama at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
In 1977, Jane gained her first major role on the TV soap opera One Life to Live (1968), where she played "Melinda Cramer Janssen" until 1981, returning briefly to reprise the role in 1983. She also starred on the venerable soap opera The Doctors (1963). Jane's other TV roles included a stint on Falcon Crest (1981) as "Meredith Braxton" from 1986 to 1987 and as "Agent Shannon Reed" for the revival of the series Mission: Impossible (1988), which was shot in Australia. She also guest-starred on many TV series.
Jane relocated to Australia after filming Mission: Impossible (1988) Down Under, marrying businessman Stephen Haines. They have two sons, Sam and Harry. Her Australian TV roles include Cluedo (1992) (the British and Australian name of the board game known as "Clue" in the United States). She also had a guest-starring role in Snowy River: The McGregor Saga (1994). In the 1990s, she launched a stage career and cabaret act, including the one-woman show "The Love Goddess: Rita Hayworth".- Actor
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René Murat Auberjonois was born on June 1, 1940 in New York City, to Princess Laure Louise Napoléone Eugénie Caroline (Murat), who was born in Paris, and Fernand Auberjonois, who was Swiss-born. René was born into an already artistic family, which included his grandfather, a well-known Swiss painter, and his father, a Pulitzer-nominated writer and Cold War-era foreign correspondent. The Auberjonois family moved to Paris shortly after World War II, and it was there that René made an important career decision at the age of six. When his school put on a musical performance for the parents, little René was given the honor of conducting his classmates in a rendition of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?". When the performance was over, René took a bow, and, knowing that he was not the real conductor, imagined that he had been acting. He decided then and there that he wanted to be an actor. After leaving Paris, the Auberjonois family moved into an Artist's Colony in upstate New York.
At an early age, René was surrounded by musicians, composers and actors. Among his neighbors were Helen Hayes, Burgess Meredith and John Houseman, who would later become an important mentor. Houseman gave René his first theater job at the age of 16, as an apprentice at a theater in Stratford, Connecticut. René would later teach at Juilliard under Houseman. René attended Carnegie-Mellon University and studied theater completely, not only learning about acting but about the entire process of producing a play. After graduating from CMU, René acted with various theater companies, including San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater and Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum. In 1969, he won a role in his first Broadway musical, "Coco" (with Katharine Hepburn), for which he won a Tony Award.
Throughout his life, René acted in a variety of theater productions, films and television presentations, including a rather famous stint as Clayton Endicott III on the comedy series Benson (1979), not to mention seven years on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993) as Odo. René also performed dramatic readings of a variety of books on tape, and appeared in projects like The Patriot (2000), starring Mel Gibson, Sally Hemings: An American Scandal (2000), and NBC's Frasier (1993) and ABC's The Practice (1997).- Actor
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Brian Bedford was born on 16 February 1935 in Morley, Yorkshire, England, UK. He was an actor and director, known for Nixon (1995), Robin Hood (1973) and Grand Prix (1966). He was married to Tim MacDonald. He died on 13 January 2016 in Santa Barbara, California, USA.- Actress
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Cassie Yates was born on 2 March 1951 in Macon, Georgia, USA. She is an actress, known for Rolling Thunder (1977), Magnum, P.I. (1980) and Simon & Simon (1981).- Patrick Houser is originally from California, USA. He made his television debut at just four years old on "The Art Linkletter Show". Then, he disappeared from show business to have a normal life. When he was in college, his neighbor, who happened to be a casting director, recommended that he take acting classes. He did, and then made his stage debut in "Marathon Madness" in Los Angeles, California. He continued to act in stage roles, including William Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew". He also made his film debut in "Endangered Species" (1982) for a respected filmmaker Alan Rudolph. After a 20-year absence, he returned to television, playing Daryl Hannah's boyfriend in the TV movie "Paper Dolls" (1983). And he simultaneously continued on with his feature film career, by appearing in two back-to-back comedies: Hot Dog... The Movie (1983) and Weekend Pass (1984), the former became a cult favorite, with reunions among cast members at public events every 10 years. He met Canadian actress and beauty queen Marie Laurin in an acting class. They married and she got pregnant with their daughter, actress and filmmaker Clara Gabrielle and acted with him on an episode of his television show "Outlaws" in Independents (1987). The show was canceled after 12 episodes. After that, his acting career winded down, and he disappeared to the point that people who were organizing the 30th anniversary of Hot Dog... The Movie (1983) in 2014 were unable to find him. He divorced from Laurin in 2016.
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Michael Horton was born on 5 September 1952. He is an actor, known for Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) and Dances with Wolves (1990). He has been married to Debbie Zipp since 20 December 1975. They have two children.- Actor
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Keith Michell was an Emmy Award-winning Australian stage, television, and film actor. Born 1 December 1926 in Adelaide, South Australia, he was brought up some 150 miles away, in Warnertown, on the Augusta Highway between Crystal Brook and Port Pirie. He taught art until he made his debut on the Adelaide stage in 1947, following that up with his first appearance in London in 1951.
Michell was a member of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company. From 1974-77, he was the artistic director of the Chichester Festival Theatre. He has starred in several musicals, including the first London production of Man of La Mancha (1972). In addition to his stage work, he appeared extensively in film and television in Australia and the UK, most notably as King Henry VIII in the six-part 1970 BBC series The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), for which he won an Emmy Award. A movie version was made in 1972. On US television, he appeared in various episodes of Murder, She Wrote (1984). In addition to acting, he wrote a musical adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's 'Peer Gynt', called "Pete McGynty and the Dreamtime". He also paints and illustrates books, as well as written and illustrated cookbooks.
Michell married the Anglo-Czech actress Jeanette Sterke in 1957; they had two children: actor Paul Michell and actress Helena Michell. He died on 20 November 2015, aged 88, in Hampstead, London, England. A theater in Port Pirie, the Keith Mitchell Theatre-Northern Festival Centre, was founded in his honor.- Actor
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Cyril O'Reilly grew up in Claremont, California. At the age of ten Cyril's father was appointed Deputy Director for the Peace Corps, and moved his family to Somalia, East Africa. Upon his return to the US, Cyril was accepted into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After graduation, he studied with Stella Adler, co-founded the provocative theater group: The Frances Farmer Memorial Players, won several awards for the west coast premiere of Lanford Wilson "Balm in Gilead," and starred in the Sam Shepard play "A Lie of the Mind" opposite Holly Hunter and Amy Madigan at the Mark Taper Forum.
Cyril has appeared on screen with such film luminaries as Burt Lancaster and Angela Lansbury, and starred in the NBC television remake of Splendor in the Grass (1981) with Melissa Gilbert, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Eva Marie Saint. He is best known for his performances as the young Bugsy Siegel in NBC's The Gangster Chronicles (1981), a reluctant vampire in Concorde Pictures' Dance of the Damned (1989), and particularly as the troubled teen "Tim" in the blockbuster hit Porky's (1981) and Porky's II: The Next Day (1983). A thirty year veteran of stage, film, and television acting, O'Reilly can number Black Dog (1998), with Patrick Swayze, Navy Seals (1990), with Charlie Sheen, The Cool Surface (1993), and Airplane! (1980) among his many film credits. He has guest starred in a variety of prominent television programs, such as Murder, She Wrote: The Celtic Riddle (2003), Without a Trace (2002), ER (1994), The X-Files (1993), Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1993), Matlock (1986), St. Elsewhere (1982), and M*A*S*H (1972).
In 2012 O'Reilly produced the sci-fi feature film Alien Rising (2013) starring Lance Henriksen and John Savage and Lost Soul (2009) starring Dave Vescio, both directed by Dana Schroeder and set for release in 2013, and will be adding the 2014 comedy Daddies' Girls, in which he also stars, to his recently acquired producer's credits.- Additional Crew
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Tony O'Dell was born on 30 January 1960 in Pasadena, California, USA. He is an actor, known for The Karate Kid (1984), Head of the Class (1986) and The Karate Kid Part II (1986).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Barbara Bain was born in Chicago, graduating from the University of Illinois with a Bachelor's Degree in Sociology. She then relocated to New York City where she gained work as a dancer and high-fashion model. Ms. Bain studied with Martha Graham, permanently cementing her love of dance; however, it was with Lee Strasberg at the prestigious Actors Studio that she discovered her true first love - acting. She is probably best known for her work in the landmark television series Mission: Impossible (1966), created by Bruce Geller, where she created the pivotal role of Impossible Missions Force Agent "Cinnamon Carter", and, in the process, became the first actress in the history of television to receive three consecutive Emmy Awards for Best Dramatic Actress. Ms. Bain followed with the role of "Dr. Helena Russell" in the now classic British syndicated science fiction television series Space: 1999 (1975), created by Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Anderson. Her stage work has garnered her Los Angeles Critic's Circle and DramaLogue Awards for her work on Arthur Kopit's "Wings", Samuel Beckett's "Happy Days" and Eugène Ionesco's "The Chairs". Ms. Bain has worked on behalf of numerous charitable causes and is the founder of the Screen Actors Guild's "BookPals" Program which currently has some 300 of her colleagues reading to children in Los Angeles schools. Following the success of the program there, she helped the program to develop in other major cities throughout North America.- Actor
- Producer
William Remington Moses was born on November 17th, 1959 to actress Marian McCargo and businessman Richard Cantrell Moses Sr.
William's parents divorced when he was young. His mother met and married Alphonzo E. Bell, Jr. in 1970. Alphonzo adopted William and his three brothers. Alphonzo later became one of the most loved congressmen in California. Growing up on in a citrus farm in Ojai, California, he was not interested in showbiz until he met his brother Rick Moses' agent and did a commercial for Sprite. William's first movie opportunity came with Choices (1981). Shortly after that, his big break came - he read and won for the part of "Cole Gioberti" in the prime time series Falcon Crest (1981). He stayed there for 5 seasons.
He also guest-starred in episodes of Fantasy Island (1977), The Love Boat (1977), Maxwell Ltd: Finder of Lost Loves Pilot (1984), Hotel (1983) and "Battle Of The Network Stars" (1983-1985). He excelled at the latter because of his athletic skills. This is also how he met actress Tracy Nelson, daughter of rock legend Ricky Nelson and Kristin Harmon. They were married on romantic Catalina Island in July 1987.
A month after the wedding, Tracy was diagnosed with a form of cancer, Hodgkins' Disease. Because of her illness and waiting for her remission, they delayed having a baby. On August 11, 1992, their daughter, Remington Moses, was born. They divorced in 1997. William later found Sarah, whom he married in 2002. They have two daughters.
He will probably always be remembered for two roles, Falcon Crest (1981) and the Perry Mason Mysteries series (1989-1995). He comes from a talented family. His brothers are actor Rick Moses, musician Graham Moses and minister/director Harry Morgan Moses. His late mother, Marian McCargo, was a tennis star and actress before becoming a mother and stepmother to seven boys. He also has three stepbrothers.- Actress
- Talent Agent
- Producer
Erin Gray was born on January 7, 1950 in Honolulu, Hawaii. Gray moved with her family from Hawaii to California when she was eight years old and graduated from Pacific Palisades High School. She was fifteen when a chance meeting with Nina Blanchard, head of one of Hollywood's top model agencies, convinced her what she wanted to do in life. Moving to New York City, she became one of the town's most sought-after models, in elite company with Farrah Fawcett, Veronica Hamel and Susan Blakely. Television viewers encountered her commercials for Breck, Max Factor, Clairol, Camay Soap and RC Cola, and a classic spot--for English Leather cologne--in which she provocatively declared, "My men wear English Leather--or they wear nothing at all!" Between modeling assignments, she studied acting with well-known coach Warren Robertson and, when television movie offers came in, she was ready.
Universal was impressed by her performances on such series as Police Story (1973) and Gibbsville (1976) and signed her to a seven-year contract. Under that pact, the studio co-starred her as a tough-minded newspaper reporter in Irwin Shaw's Evening in Byzantium (1978). Her performance scored with both critics and audiences, and led directly to her role as Colonel Wilma Deering in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979). As a result, she has become a regular commuter between Hollywood and New York City, the hub of the magazine and fashion world. Many women admired her commanding role as Colonel Wilma Deering, while many men admired her beautiful looks and shapely figure.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Lucie Arnaz was born on 17 July 1951 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for The Jazz Singer (1980), Here's Lucy (1968) and Smoking Nonsmoking (2011). She has been married to Laurence Luckinbill since 22 June 1980. They have three children. She was previously married to Phil Vandervort.- Actress
- Soundtrack
As a baby, she was winning beauty contests; as a teenager, with good looks and an attractive contralto voice, she was singing with big bands (most notably Enric Madriguera's orchestra in Latin Club Del Rio in Washington, D.C.. She met Rudy Vallee, her first husband, on the radio where she also enjoyed a brief stint as a singer. At age 15, an attack of palsy left her face partially paralyzed. She claimed that it was through facial exercises to overcome the paralysis that she learned the efficacy of facial expression in conveying human emotion, a skill she was renowned for using in her acting.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
David began his career with the repertory companies at the Barter Theatre in Virginia America and the Hartford Stage Company followed by his New York debut as one of the twins in A Comedy of Errors in Joseph Papps Shakespeare Festival. In 1968 he played the lead in Summertree at New York's: Lincoln Centre winning the Clarence Derwent Award and the Theatre World Award. Later he played the lead role of Mark Elliott in the television series Love is a Many Splendored Thing followed by the part of Bernie in the comedy series Bridget Loves Bernie. Both were top ranking shows making him a well known name across America and earning numerous awards. He made his film debut in Caravan to Vaccares- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Michael grew up in the small town of Concord, Massachusetts- a huge Red Sox, Patriots and Celtics fan- and where he began his acting career as a child in a production of The King Of Hearts at The Concord Players in 1967. He went on to study theatre and film at Northwestern University graduating in 1979. Michael immediately landed a role in the ABC/Paramount pilot Homeroom opposite Ally Sheedy which began a string of guest starring roles on Paramount shows such as Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley and Family Ties. Michael credits his appearance on Gary David Goldberg's Family Ties with getting the attention of Aaron Spelling and leading to a role that would change his life. In 1983, Michael was cast in Spelling's television drama Hotel that starred James Brolin, Connie Sellecca and Bette Davis (Anne Baxter took over the Bette Davis role for the run of the series). Michael was cast opposite Heidi Bohay and they played, married couple, Dave and Megan Kendall for five years. They married for real after the run of the show ended in 1988, have three children and have been married ever since. Michael still loves theatre, most notably originating the role of Rob Stein in the Broadway production of Jon Tolins' Twilight Of The Golds which he also performed in at The Kennedy Center. He also starred in the off- Broadway hit Beau Jest at The Lamb's Theatre opposite Laura Patinkin. His favorite film role was in Gary David Goldberg's Must Love Dogs. He was overjoyed to get the chance to work with Mr. Goldberg one more time.