V.G.L.G. #1
Primarily men from the Silent Era through the late 1960's, listed alphabetically.
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- Actor
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Baseball's all-time home run king, Hank Aaron did more than hit home runs. Sure, Aaron led the National League (NL) four times, he also was a two-time batting champion and led the league in RBIs four times and runs scored three times. He won the NL's Most Valuable Player award in 1957 and has a lifetime batting average of .305. Aaron got his start playing for the Indianapolis Clowns, of the Negro Leagues before signing on with the Milwaukee Braves. He played at their minor league team in Eau Claire, Wis., one of the first black players there, and was brought up by the Braves in 1954. For the next 23 years, Aaron clobbered Major League pitchers. Never a charismatic player, Aaron often let his bat do the talking. He was the subject of intense media scrutiny in 1973-74 when he approached Babe Ruth's hallowed home run record. Aaron received more than 10,000 letters (most of them hate mail and even death threats) during the off-season claiming he should not break the record. Ever the ultimate professional and gentleman, he ignored the insults and slurs and went about the opening season in 1974. On April 8, 1974, Aaron hit his 715th home run, breaking Ruth's record and in doing so, received the undying support of the fans. He finished with 755 overall before retiring after the 1976 season. Aaron was elected to baseball's Hall of Fame in 1982, and now works in the front office for the Atlanta Braves.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Nick Adams, best known to audiences as Johnny Yuma of the TV series The Rebel (1959), played leads and supporting parts in many films of the 1950s, often cast in the same "troubled young man" mold as his good friend, James Dean. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Twilight of Honor (1963). He died in 1968 due to an overdose of drugs he was taking for a nervous disorder.- Character actor Wesley Addy began his prolific career as a prime player on the classical stage before coming to occasional films and TV in the early 1950s. Known for his intelligent, white-collar demeanor and lean, icy, cultivated menace, the silver-haired performer, who was actually born in Omaha, Nebraska, was often mistaken as British.
Majoring in economics at the University of California in Los Angeles, Wesley switched gears and trained in summer theater on Martha's Vineyard before trekking to New York City to pursue a professional career. In 1935, the actor made his Broadway stage debut with Orson Welles in Archibald Macleish's "Panic". He continued with roles as both "Marcellus" and "Fortinbras" in Leslie Howard's production of "Hamlet". Other Shakespearean roles during this early period included "Hotspur" in "Henry IV, Part I", "Benvolio" in "Romeo and Juliet" and "Orsino" in "Twelfth Night". He often performed the Bard in the company of such legendary interpreters as Orson Welles, Laurence Olivier and, more frequently, Maurice Evans.
World War II interrupted Addy's early momentum but he eventually returned to the theatre following his tour of duty and played opposite Katharine Cornell in "Antigone" and "Candida". A continued presence on Broadway, he had strong stage roles in "The Traitor", "Another Part of the Forest", "King Lear" and "The Leading Lady".
In 1951, the 38-year-old Addy made his film debut in the drama, The First Legion (1951), and would be seen from time to time throughout the decade in such dramatic fare as Scandal Sheet (1952), My Six Convicts (1952) and Time Table (1956). Some of his chillier roles came in films directed by Robert Aldrich, who utilized the actor quite often -- Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Big Knife (1955), The Garment Jungle (1957), Ten Seconds to Hell (1959) and the Grand Guignol classics, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964).
Never acquiring a strong footing in the movies, Wesley changed his on-camera focus in the 1960s to TV and also sought out theatre roles, as well. In 1961, Wesley married actress Celeste Holm. Together, they proved a strong stage coupling in both comedies and dramas -- "Invitation to a March", "A Month in the Country", "Mame", "Candida", "Light Up the Sky", "Mama" and "With Love and Laughter".
A reliable, durable performer, Wesley played suave gents and villains on TV. A major portion of his work came from daytime soaps -- including The Edge of Night (1956), Days of Our Lives (1965), Ryan's Hope (1975) and Loving (1983). Later films included Seconds (1966), Network (1976), The Europeans (1979) and The Verdict (1982). He continued to act close to the end. His last film role was as a judge in Before and After (1996) starring Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson, which was released in the year of his death. He was 83. - Actor
- Music Department
John Agar was born in Chicago, the eldest of four children. In World War II, Sgt. John Agar was a United States Army Air Force physical instructor. His 1945 marriage at the Wilshire Memorial Church to "America's Sweetheart" Shirley Temple put him in the public eye for the first time, and a movie contract with independent producer David O. Selznick quickly ensued.
Agar debuted opposite John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Temple in John Ford's Fort Apache (1948), initial film in the famed director's "Cavalry Trilogy".
His marriage to Shirley Temple ended in 1949, while his movie career continued.
Popular with fans of Westerns and sci-fi flicks, Agar was a staple at film conventions and autograph shows.- Casting Department
- Casting Director
- Actor
Lane Allan was born on 4 August 1914 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was a casting director and actor, known for Project U.F.O. (1978), Gemini Man (1976) and New Wine (1941). He was married to Ramona Eileen McKay, Randy Stuart and Betty White. He died on 5 August 1995 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Ronald Allen was born on 16 December 1930 in Reading, Berkshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for A Night to Remember (1958), The Projected Man (1966) and Doctor Who (1963). He was married to Sue Lloyd. He died on 18 June 1991 in Reading, Berkshire, England, UK.- A familiar face to movie audiences in the 1950s, James Anderson's rugged and somewhat sinister good looks made him a natural for westerns, and he appeared in many of them over the years, often as a gunman or hired killer but occasionally as a storekeeper or grizzled frontier scout. He turned in a very good performance as one of the survivors of a nuclear attack in Five (1951) and another as a redneck farmer in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), but it's for his western roles in films and on TV that Anderson is best known.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
1950s and 60s second lead actor Keith Andes fits into the tall, handsome, strapping and highly virile mold that encompassed the likes of George Nader, Guy Madison, and Jeffrey Hunter. Although he may not be as well remembered as the aforementioned, he managed to maintain a reliable career on radio (from age 12), stage, TV and films for over three decades.
Born John Charles Andes on July 12, 1920, in Ocean City, New Jersey, Keith found work on radio singing and acting throughout his high school years. While serving with the Air Force during WWII, he performed in the patriotic 1943 Broadway stage show "Winged Victory" and, after being seen by studio mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, was given a minor part in the film version the following year.
Keith returned to Hollywood in the post-war years and won the role of one of Loretta Young's brothers (the others being Lex Barker and James Arness) in the classic film The Farmer's Daughter (1947). His enviable physique and photogenic good looks made the blond looker an obvious choice to continue in both rugged adventures and beefcake drama but his output was fairly minimal. In Clash by Night (1952), one of his best roles, he dallied hot and heavy with a young Marilyn Monroe and, in Blackbeard, the Pirate (1952), he demonstrated some expert swashbuckling skills.
Meanwhile on the musical front, Keith proved he had a resilient baritone. He won a Theatre World Award for "The Chocolate Soldier" in 1947 and, subsequently, starred in "Kiss Me Kate" with Anne Jeffreys of TV's Topper (1953) fame. More notably, he appeared opposite Lucille Ball in her only Broadway musical "Wildcat" in 1960, winding things up playing "Don Quixote" for over 400 performances in "Man of La Mancha" in 1968. Ironically, the movie studios did not take advantage of Keith's musical prowess, appearing in a bland role with Jane Powell and singing one musical number in The Girl Most Likely (1957).
Beside numerous episodic appearances on such popular 60's and 70's shows as "Have Gun, Will Travel," "The Rifleman," "77 Sunset Strip," "Perry Mason," "The Outer Limits," "Daniel Boone," "The Andy Griffith Show," "Star Trek," "I Spy," "Petticoat Junction," "Gunsmoke," "Cannon" and "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century," Keith co-starred in two television series: This Man Dawson (1959) and the sitcom Glynis (1963), the latter starring popular Brit actress Glynis Johns. Both were short-lived. He occasionally found voiceover work.
After a minor part in the film And Justice for All (1979), Keith made his final appearance as Father Adam in the TV movie drama Blinded by the Light (1980) ). He then retired, bought and lived on a boat and ran charters on trips to Catalina and Mexico. Twice married and divorced, Keith had two children (Mark and Matt) by first wife, Jean Alice Cotton. Mark Andes became a rock musician. Keith's second wife was actress/dancer/choreographer Shelah Hackett.
Sadly, his final years were marred by extreme ill health, including bladder cancer, and he committed suicide in his Santa Clarita, California home at age 85.- Born Ralph Bowman, the future film and TV star moved to California with his family when he was five; he attended Hollywood High and the University of Southern California. He first set his sights on a job behind the camera, taking a cinematography course at USC, but then couldn't even land an entry-level position. He later drifted into acting, on stage at the Ben Bard Playhouse and in serials at Universal and Republic. He then entered a radio contest, "Jesse Lasky's Gateway to Hollywood", where aspiring actors competed for a studio contract. The top prize, an RKO contract made out in the name of "John Archer", was won by Bowman after 13 weeks of competition (edging out Hugh Beaumont for the prize and the "Archer" name). The actor quips, "I went from being a Bowman to an Archer!" He has four children, two by wife number one Marjorie Lord (one of whom is Anne Archer) and two by his second wife Ann Leddy (whom he married in 1956).
- Actor
- Producer
Robert Arden was born on 11 December 1922 in London, England, UK. He was an actor and producer, known for Confidential Report (1955), Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and Whoops Apocalypse (1986). He died on 25 March 2004 in London, England, UK.- Actor
- Soundtrack
John Arledge was born on 12 May 1907 in Crockett, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for The Grapes of Wrath (1940), County Fair (1937) and Two in Revolt (1936). He died on 15 May 1947 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Actor
- Soundtrack
During World War I, Richard Arlen served in the Royal Canadian Flying Corps as a pilot, but he never saw combat. After the war he drifted round and eventually wound up in Los Angeles, where he got a job as a motorcycle messenger at a film laboratory. When he crashed into the gates of Paramount Pictures and suffered a broken leg, the studio provided prompt medical attention. Impressed by his good looks, executives also gave him a contract after he had recovered. Starting as an extra in 1925, Arlen soon rose to credited roles, but the quality of his work left much to be desired. However, he continued in films, and his big break came when William A. Wellman cast him as a pilot in the silent film Wings (1927) with Charles 'Buddy' Rogers and Clara Bow. The story of fighter aces would win the Oscar for Best Picture and Arlen would continue to play the tough, cynical hero throughout his career. Arlen appeared in three more pictures directed by Wellman, Beggars of Life (1928), Ladies of the Mob (1928) and The Man I Love (1929). In "Wings" he had a scene with a young actor named Gary Cooper. In 1929, he again worked with Cooper in the western The Virginian (1929), only this time Cooper was the star and Arlen was the supporting actor. While Arlen moved easily into sound, his career just bumped along. By 1935 he was working in such "B" pictures as Three Live Ghosts (1936). It was in 1935 that he became a freelance actor and his freelance career soon waned. In 1939, he signed with Universal and began working in its action films. In 1941 he moved to the Pine-Thomas unit at Paramount, where he appeared in adventure films. With the war on, most of his earlier films included war scenarios. By the end of the 1940s Arlen was becoming deaf and this seemed to signal the end of his career. However, he had an operation in 1949 that restored his hearing and he went on making a handful of adventures and westerns through the 1950s and working more in the 1960s. He made 15 westerns for producer A.C. Lyles, who worked with the old western stars.
Besides movies, Arlen also appeared on television and in commercials. After leaving the business in the late 1960s, he was coaxed back to the screen for three small roles in films that were released the same year that he died.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Russell Arms played Chester Finley opposite Doris Day in "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" (Warner Bros. 1953). Chester, a nerd in love with Marjorie Winfield, Day's character, was Marjorie's piano teacher, a rival to Bill Sherman, played by Gordon MacRae. Arms, in 1953, was not yet a featured player on NBC-TV's "Your Hit Parade." He became one of the program's four regular singers in 1954.- Todd Armstrong was born on 25 July 1937 in St Louis, Missouri, USA. He was an actor, known for Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Icebound in the Antarctic (1983) and Iron Horse (1966). He died on 17 November 1992 in Butte, California, USA.
- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Another in the long line of dramatically handsome foreign imports who made an immediate impact on WWII Hollywood was debonair French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont. The epitome of grace and sophistication, the stylish leading man went on to have a long and respected career on stage, film and TV, both here and abroad.
Aumont was born Jean-Pierre Philippe Salomons on January 5, 1911 (some sources list 1909) in Paris, France, to Suzanne (Cahen), an actress, and Alexandre Abraham Salomons, a well-to-do department store executive. His brother, François Villiers (né Francois Salomons), went on to become a film writer/director. His father was a Dutch Jew and his mother was from a French Jewish family; he was of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi ancestry. Jean-Pierre was transferred from various prep schools before enrolling at the Paris Conservatory of Dramatic Art at the age of 16. Run by the renowned Louis Jouvet, young Aumont's first two film roles were prime roles in Jean de la Lune (1931) and Échec et mat (1931). He then went on to appear strongly in a number of Gallic films. He also made an impressive theater debut playing the role of Oedipus in Jean Cocteau's "La Machine Infernale" at the Comedie Champs-Elysees in 1934, which set up a long and lucrative tenure on the stage. Splitting his time between live performances and film-making opposite such lovelies as Simone Simon, Danielle Darrieux and Annabella), Aumont served with the French Third Mechanized Division for nearly a year (1939-1940) and earned a medal of distinction for his valour (Croix de Guerre). Two of his finest screen roles came just prior to this: 'Marcel Carne''s farcical comedy Bizarre, Bizarre (1937) starring mentor Louis Jouvet, and the romantic drama Hotel du Nord (1938) opposite the lovely Annabella and co-starring Jouvet again.
Aumont arrived in America barely speaking English in 1942 and only a few days later was "discovered" by stage legend Katharine Cornell, making his American debut in her production of "Rose Burke". During the play's Los Angeles engagement, he was signed by MGM for films and made a noticeable debut as Captain Pierre Matard in the espionage war picture Assignment in Brittany (1943) co-starring the tragic Susan Peters. Classily promoted as an up-and-coming Jean Gabin, the lithe, handsome, blue-eyed blond captured the admiration of the American public with his Charles Boyer-like charm and charisma. His second American film was the equally successful The Cross of Lorraine (1943), a dramatic Stalag 17-like story of French POW's held in a German war camp.
The lovely Technicolor siren Maria Montez, known for her popular (and campy) WWII escapism films at Universal, quickly caught his eye and the couple married in 1943 after only a three-month courtship. An earlier marriage to French's Blanche Montel had ended in divorce in 1940, well before his arrival in America. Aumont again interrupted his burgeoning acting career by serving with the Free French forces in North Africa and was again awarded a medal (Legion of Honor) for his bravery. He was twice wounded during his active years of service.
The French actor returned to Hollywood films after the war co-starring with Ginger Rogers in the comedy Heartbeat (1946) and appearing as composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in Universal's Song of Scheherazade (1947). The reception to both were lukewarm and Aumont decided to return to France with his wife (whose career was now in decline), and his daughter (who was born in 1946 and grew up to become the actress Tina Aumont). Seeking to rediscover his earlier glory in European films and the theatre, he also began writing plays. Now and then he would return to the American soil and appeared on Broadway in 1949 with his work "Figure of a Girl," which was retitled "My Name Is Aquilon" by the time it arrived on the Great White Way. While it co-starred the embraceable Lilli Palmer, who was also making her Broadway debut, the play itself was not as embraced.
On the international film scene, Aumont appeared with wife Maria in such uninspired offerings as the United Artist escapist fare Siren of Atlantis (1949), the French crime drama Wicked City (1949) [Wicked City] and the Italian adventure La vendetta del corsaro (1951)_ [The Revenge of the Pirates], the last-mentioned proving to be the last for the fetching Ms. Montez. The 39-year-old star tragically drowned in September of 1951 after her hot mineral salt bath triggered a heart seizure.
After a period of grieving, Aumont continued transcontinentally, but rather unspectacularly, with acting parts that seemed hardly challenging. He cavorted with Paulette Goddard in the mediocre action adventure Charge of the Lancers (1954); appeared among an international cast in the spectacle Napoleon (1955); co-starred rather stiffly opposite Jean Simmons in the glossy "sudspenser" Hilda Crane (1956); was overshadowed by Eleanor Parker, who paled next to Garbo in the remake of Garbo's "The Painted Veil" entitled The Seventh Sin (1957); and, played a cameo as the doomed Louis XVI in the US-based John Paul Jones (1959) co-starring wife Marisa. On a more positive note, he, Mel Ferrer and the ever-enchanting Leslie Caron were wonderful in MGM's touching musical Lili (1953). Aumont also fared much better in his 1950s televised appearances of classic works, notably "Arms and the Man" and "Crime and Punishment".
Following a torrid 1955 romance with Grace Kelly (whom, as we all know, went on to marry her Prince), the actor met and married lovely Italian actress Marisa Pavan, the sister of the late Pier Angeli, in 1956, and had two sons, Jean-Claude and Patrick, by her. Troubled by his erratic output and the uneventful film roles offered, which included those in The Enemy General (1960), The Devil at 4 O'Clock (1961) and Five Miles to Midnight (1962) [Five Miles to Midnight], Aumont wisely refocused on the theatre and his playwriting skills. Stage performances included "The Heavenly Twins" and "A Second String" (both on Broadway), the title role in "The Affairs of Anatol", "Murderous Angels" and appearances in the musicals "Tovarich" with Vivien Leigh (on Broadway), "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," "South Pacific" (as the debonair Emile DeBecque), and "Gigi" with wife Marisa. The couple also went on to form a warmly-received nightclub act in New York.
For the remainder of his career, Aumont remained the ever-charming and worldly continental, vacillating between the stage ("Camino Real," "Private Lives," "The Sound of Music" and "Tiger at the Gates"); international films (Castle Keep (1969), Catherine & Co. (1975), Mahogany (1975), Nana (1983), Sweet Country (1987), Becoming Colette (1991) and a pair of Merchant/Ivory films Jefferson in Paris (1995) and The Proprietor (1996)): and classy TV fare (The Memory of Eva Ryker (1980), Melba (1988), A Tale of Two Cities (1989)). Some of the actor's finest movie roles in years occurred in the 1970s with the excellent Day for Night (1973) [Day for Night] and Cat and Mouse (1975) [Cat and Mouse].
The distinguished actor/playwright went awardless throughout his cinematic career but this glaring oversight was finally rectified in the form of the cross of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 1991 and an honorary César Award in 1992. He died in his native country of a heart attack a few weeks after his 90th birthday in 2001.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Lew Ayres was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and raised in San Diego, California. A college dropout, he was found by a talent scout in the Coconut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles and entered Hollywood as a bit player. He was leading man to Greta Garbo in The Kiss (1929), but it was the role of Paul Baumer in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) that was his big break. He was profoundly affected by the anti-war message of that film, and when, in 1942, the popular star of Young Dr. Kildare (1938) and subsequent Dr. Kildare films was drafted, he was a conscientious objector. America was outraged, and theaters vowed never to show his films again, but quietly he achieved the Medical Corps status he had requested, serving as a medic under fire in the South Pacific and as a chaplain's aid in New Guinea and the Phillipines. His return to film after the war was undistinguished until Johnny Belinda (1948) - his role as the sympathetic physician treating the deaf-mute Jane Wyman won him an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor. Subsequent movie roles were scarce; an opportunity to play Dr. Kildare in television was aborted when the network refused to honor his request for no cigarette sponsorship. He continued to act, but in the 1970s put his long experience into a project to bring to the west the philosophy of the East - the resulting film, Altars of the World (1976), while not a box-office success, won critical acclaim and a Golden Globe Award. Lew Ayres died in Los Angeles, California on December 30, 1996, just two days after his 88th birthday.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Buddy was the younger brother of world heavyweight champion Max Baer. In films, he played giants in Quo Vadis (1951) and Jack and the Beanstalk (1952). When television westerns were in vogue in the '50s and '60s, he often played the heavy to super-sized heroes James Arness, Clint Walker and Chuck Connors.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Max Baer is arguably best known today for siring Max Baer Jr., the actor who played Jethro Bodine on the classic TV series The Beverly Hillbillies (1962). However, old-timers, followers of the sweet science and viewers of the film Cinderella Man (2005) all know that Max Sr. was boxing's heavyweight champion of the world for all of 364 days, from the time he knocked out Primo Carnera on June 14, 1934, to the day he lost his title to Jimmy Braddock on June 13, 1935. Cinephiles also will remember the colorful Max from his numerous bit roles in films, including Bud Abbott and Lou Costello's Africa Screams (1949) to his near-autobiographical turn in the Budd Schulberg boxing expose The Harder They Fall (1956) starring Humphrey Bogart. Ironically, it was his acting in the latter film that likely led to his misrepresentation in "Cinderella Man" as being something akin to a monster, when actually, according to his family and those who knew him, he was an amiable man. Some fight fans thought that it was his good nature, which they attributed to his clowning, that eventually did him in, as he would not bear down on his opponents in the latter part of his career. Max Jr. says that his father wanted to be an actor, an insight that explains the flashy persona he displayed in and outside the ring as he wisecracked and clowned his way through careers as a boxer and performer in movies and nightclubs. Blessed with what "The Boxing Register: International Boxing Hall of Fame Official Record Book" terms the most powerful right hand in heavyweight history, Baer used that right to gain a fearsome reputation as a California prizefighter before moving to New York and taking on the top ranks of the heavyweight division.
Max Baer was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on February 11, 1909, to a Jewish father, Jacob Baer, and a mother of Scots-Irish descent, Dora (Bales). The family moved first to Colorado and then to California, where he dropped out of school after the eighth grade to work with his father on a cattle ranch. Baer developed tremendous physical strength as a ranch hand, and when he turned to boxing, he trained in a most dedicated fashion, a regimen he did not keep to when he reached the zenith of his craft. In 1929 he turned professional and racked up 22 wins in his first 24 fights, nine via first-round knockouts. He was a very dangerous fighter, and in 1930 he was suspended from the ring in California for a year after the death of one of his opponents, Frankie Campbell (the brother of pro baseball player Dolph Camilli). Campbell had died after being KO'ed by Baer, and criminal charges were filed against him. Though the manslaughter charges ultimately were dropped, Baer had to deal with the psychological burden of having taken another man's life. He quit the ring for several months after Campbell's death, and Max Jr. claims that this is when the Max the Clown (one of his nicknames was "Madcap Maxie") emerged, as a way of dealing with his torment. Plagued by nightmares for many years, he also took up smoking, which was not very wise for a fighter who depended on his wind in the ring. When Baer returned to boxing after the layoff, he was a different fighter, shy to go on the offense against his opponents. He lost four of his next six fights; according to one opponent who had beaten him in that period, Tommy Loughran, Baer was telegraphing his punches with a looping attack. Baer's career was revitalized when former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey took a financial interest in the boxer and taught him to shorten his punches. The "monster" of the ring was back. Baer knocked out Ernie Schaaf, rendering him unconscious, in the tenth round of their August 31, 1932, fight. When Schaaf died after fighting future heavyweight champ Primo Carnera in a Februry 14, 1933, bout, many attributed his death to the beating he had taken at the hands of Baer.
This chain of events has long been considered part of boxing lore, which Baer helped perpetuate. In the 1956 movie "The Harder They Fall," the fictionalized story of Carnera's rise and fall through the heavyweight ranks, the Max Baer character, who was played by none other than Baer himself, says: "You know I'm the guy who nailed Gus [Ernie Schaaf], murdered him for 15 rounds. Don't know what held him up, but when Gus left the ring that night he was a dead man. All your joker did was tap him. I did all the work and they gave your guy all the glory." The "your guy" being referred to was the fictionalized Carnera (in actuality, it is most unlikely that Baer caused Schaaf's death. Schaaf likely was suffering from a form of meningitis caused by influenza when he fought Carnera six months after the Baer beating). Baer moved to New York to be near Dempsey and the boxing powers-that-be. In 1933 Baer publicly identified himself as a Jew and began wearing a Star of David on his trunks. This was when he was scheduled to meet the German Max Schmeling in the ring, just at the beginning of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Baer also wore a Star of David on his trunks during his title defense against Jim "Cinderella Man" Braddock, which was the centerpiece of Howard's film. In the movie, the Star of David is significantly less prominent than the real one Baer wore in the 1935 fight. Boxing in America has always capitalized at the box office on racial and ethnic conflicts, real and imagined, since at least the days of Jack Johnson and "The Great White Hope." Some thought Baer's self-identification as a Jew was opportunistic, as it appealed to the very large contingent of Jewish fight fans in the New York City metropolitan area. Baer's father was a non-practicing Jew, and his parents raised their son a Catholic, which fueled the charges of opportunism. However, writer Jeremy Schaap, whose book "Cinderella Man: James J. Braddock, Max Baer, and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History" served as the basis of Ron Howard's film, believes that Baer's manager, Ancil Hoffman, used Baer's ethnic consciousness to motivate him against Schmeling in the ring. Hitler had already launched his anti-Semitic campaign in Germany, and a Jew against a "Nazi" (though Schmeling would always be reluctant about his manipulation as a showpiece of the Nazi state) made good economic sense at the gate--and if it motivated Baer and his fans, so much the better. As it turned out, Baer beat Schmeling so badly at Yankee Stadium before 60,000 fans that the fight had to be stopped in the tenth round due to the ferocity of Baer's attack and the amount of punishment absorbed by Schmeling, himself a future heavyweight champ. Baer won the lead in the 1933 flick The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933) in which he starred with Myrna Loy and future opponent Primo Carnera, then the world's heavyweight boxing champ.
In a foreshadowing of what was to come in his career (his first title shot and first defense, though it would be Jimmy Braddock who was the underdog then), Baer was cast as an all-American underdog who challenges Carnera -- playing himself -- for the championship (Carnera only agreed to adhere to the script and retain his crown through a draw with Baer in the final reel for an additional fee of $10,000). The thespian Baer garnered good reviews and the film was a success at the box office, though Joseph Goebbels banned it in Germany, as the "Jew" Baer was in the cast. By defeating Schmeling, Baer had earned a title shot against the Italian Carnera, who at 6'6" and 263 pounds was two inches taller than Baer and outweighed him by 53 pounds. As was fictionalized in "The Harder They Fall" a generation later, there was a certain dubious quality about Carnera's career. Many thought that his career had been manipulated by the Mafia, and that he had been unfairly steered into the heavyweight title through a series of unworthy opponents and via outright corruption. As in the film, where the fictionalized Carnera got his comeuppance at the hands of Max Baer, the real Carnera was about to face his own Götterdämmerung in the ring.
At the Madison Square Garden Bowl, 50,000 fans of the fistic arts witnessed a ferocious Baer knock down Carnera (who along with Baer later would unsuccessfully take on the eponymous giant ape in Mighty Joe Young (1949) in a New York nightery) ten to 12 times during the 11-round bout (records differ as to the number of times Carnera went down). During the fight Baer constantly taunted and grimaced at Carnera, who kept his dignity despite Baer's shenanigans, which included playing to the ladies in the crowd and non-stop merciless mugging. After the last knockdown in the 11th, the referee stopped the fight, giving Baer the decision on a technical knockout. Max Baer was now the heavyweight champion of the world. He would hold the title for exactly 364 days. That his first order of business after the title fight was repairing to a nightclub where he served as master-of-ceremonies at a fee of $10,000 did not bode well for the length of his future reign as Heavyweight Champ. Baer's nemesis turned out to be New Jersey longshoreman James "Plain Jim" Braddock, a former top contender who had dropped out of the ranks after an injury. He was soon renamed "Cinderella Man" by Damon Runyon. According to Max Baer Jr., his father didn't prepare for the fight with a boxer many considered a "has been" or a "never will be," whose best days in the ring already were eclipsed. Bradock was a 20:1 underdog before the fight, but he wore the heavyweight championship belt after their match-up at the Madison Square Bowl. Lacking motivation, Baer's disdain for training left him at the losing end of one of the greatest upsets in sports history. Braddock won a unanimous decision after 15 rounds in the ring with Baer, the monster tamed through his own malfeasance. Baer had all the talent and the hardest right in the world, enough to make him a longer-reigning champ than just shy of one year, but he squandered. During his fight with Braddock, Baer clowned around while Braddock built up points. Baer thought he could knock out Braddock at will, but he could not find it in himself to do so. The emergence of the potentially great boxer that lurked inside him essentially was denied by Baer's overt persona, the good-natured clown. How much of this is rooted in his desire not to kill again in the ring is pure speculation. Something seemingly went out of Baer after losing the title. Future heavyweight champ Joe Louis, one of the all-time greats, administered a terrible beating to the former champ during Baer's next fight, in which he was counted out on one knee in the fourth round. Many aficionados of the sweet scene thought that Baer was through, and to keep his dignity, he should retire. Baer did quit the ring for a spell, but came back, knocking out "Two-Ton" Tony Galento, a top-ranked contender.
He retired for good in 1941 after being whipped soundly by a young Lou Nova, departing professional pugilism with a career record of 72 wins (52 KOs) and 12 losses. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1995. Max Baer died of a massive heart attack on November 21, 1959, in a Hollywood hotel. He was 50 years old. While he lay dying in his room, the hotel operator asked him if he needed the "house doctor." "No," he replied. "I need a people doctor!" A clown to the end.- Actor
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- Director
The son of former heavyweight boxing champion Max Baer, Max Baer Jr. is a classic (except probably to him) example of Hollywood typecasting. Known around the world as "Jethro Bodine" in the smash TV series The Beverly Hillbillies (1962), Baer did not find work as an actor in Hollywood for three years after the Hillbillies went off the air. Baer finally had to put himself to work as an actor in his movie Macon County Line (1974), which he also wrote and produced with a friend. Although it didn't let him escape his Jethro character, he did earn more than $35 million dollars in box office and (later) rental receipts. This after an initial investment of just over $100,000. Not bad for a boy with a "sixth grade education!"- Actor
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Cast in a number of racially-motivated British films during the 1950s and 1960s, actor Harry Baird was born in Georgetown, Guyana (then called British Guiana) on May 12, 1931 and received his education both in Canada and England.
Famed director Carol Reed gave Harry his film break in 1954 at age 23 when he cast the actor in the smallish role of a black boxer named Jamaica in A Kid for Two Farthings (1955), a tale that dealt with the tense ethnic struggles of London's East End. A year later Harry made a minor stage bow in the musical "Kismet" at the Stoll theatre in London. Although he continued sporadically before live audiences, including a role in Jean Genet's "The Blacks" in 1961, his stronger focus would be in the cinema and on TV where he often took to stunt work just to keep himself in front of the lens.
His first lead on TV was as Rhodes Reason's bearer, Atimbu, in the low-budget White Hunter (1957) adventure series. Moviegoers first took notice of Harry, however, with his stirring portrayal of a young black brutalized by the police in the film Sapphire (1959), a role that helped him continue into the next decade. Extremely good-looking and physically fit, he rarely managed to attain leads, primarily due to the lack of parts at the time for men of his race. He did find regular supporting roles on TV, however, including the series Secret Agent (1964) and the science-fiction program UFO (1970).
As jobs grew scarce into the 60s Harry traveled to other parts of Europe, especially Italy and France, to find work. Some were even leads or co-leads. He played well-muscled action heroes in a handful of Italian spectacles and "spaghetti" westerns and scored a personal triumph in France with first-time director Melvin Van Peebles' landmark low-budget film The Story of a Three Day Pass (1967), in which he starred as a black American GI who falls in love with a white French girl (played by the late Nicole Berger) while on leave in Paris. Sadly, Ms. Berger was killed in a car accident shortly after filming the movie.
Other films around this time included Bryan Forbes' classic The Whisperers (1967) starring Edith Evans, The Touchables (1968), in which the athletic actor played a gay wrestler named "Lillywhite," the Edgar Allan Poe adaptation The Oblong Box (1969) with Vincent Price, and friend Michael Caine's picture The Italian Job (1969). In the 1970s Harry was diagnosed with glaucoma.
He was forced to retire as the impairment worsened and he eventually went completely blind. He remained upbeat and positive in later years as he adapted to his handicap and took classes on film history among other interests. He was married and divorced and survived by a stepdaughter when he died of cancer at age 73 in London on February 13, 2005.- Actor
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George was stage struck at the age of 14 and ran away from school to get a 25 shilling (25p) a week job at a seaside theatre, He spent 6 years going through the mill of small town repertory theatre then the cinema discovered him. After making 12 films he left the studios for 7 years during which time he went back to the theatre appearing in classics at the Old Vic and plays in the West End with films in between - his 13th was The Curse of the Fly,- Actor
- Producer
Stanley Baker was unusual star material to emerge during the Fifties - when impossibly handsome and engagingly romantic leading men were almost de rigueur. Baker was forged from a rougher mould. His was good-looking, but his features were angular, taut, austere and unwelcoming. His screen persona was taciturn, even surly, and the young actor displayed a predilection for introspection and blunt speaking, and was almost wilfully unromantic. For the times a potential leading actor cast heavily against the grain. Baker immediately proved a unique screen presence - tough, gritty, combustible - and possessing an aura of dark, even menacing power.
Stanley Baker came from rugged Welsh mining stock - and as a lad was unruly, quick to flare, and first to fight. But like his compatriot and friend Richard Burton, the young Baker was rescued from a gruelling life of coal mining by a local teacher, Glyn Morse, who recognized in the proud and self-willed lad a potent combination of a fine speaking voice, a smouldering intensity, and a strong spirit. And like Burton, Stanley Baker was specially and specifically tutored for theatrical success. In fact, early on, Burton and Baker appeared together on stage as juveniles in The Druid's Rest, in Cardiff, in Wales. But later, by way of Birmingham Repertory Theatre and then the London stage, Stanley Baker charted his inevitable course toward the Cinema.
Film welcomed the adult Baker as the embodiment of evil. Memorable early roles cast the actor in feisty unsympathetic parts - from the testy bosun in Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) to his modern-day counterpart in The Cruel Sea (1953), to the arch villains in Hell Below Zero (1954) and Campbell's Kingdom (1957) to the dastardly Mordred in Knights of the Round Table (1953) and the wily Achilles in Helen of Troy (1956). For a time there was a distillation of Baker's screen persona in a series of roles as stern and uncompromising policemen - in Violent Playground (1958), Chance Meeting (1959), and Hell Is a City (1960). But despite never having been cast as a romantic leading man, and being almost wholly associated with villainous roles, Stanley Baker nevertheless became a star by dint of his potent personality.
Although now enthroned by enthusiastic audiences Stanley Baker was obviously aware he need not desert unsympathetic parts - and his relish in playing the scheming Astaroth in Sodom and Gomorrah (1962) and the unscrupulous mobster Johnny Bannion in The Concrete Jungle (1960) was readily evident. But soon there were more principled, if still surly characters, in The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Games (1970), Eva (1962), and Accident (1967), the latter two films reuniting Baker with the American expatriot director of The Criminal, Joseph Losey. Stanley Baker also established a fruitful working relationship with the American director Cy Endfield, following their early collaboration on Hell Drivers (1957). When Baker inaugurated his own film production company - it was Endfield he commissioned to write and direct both Zulu (1964) and Sands of the Kalahari (1965), with Baker allotting himself the downbeat roles of the martinet officer John Chard in Zulu and the reluctant hero Mike Bain in The Sands Of The Kalahari.
Baker must have felt more assured in disenchanted roles - as further films from Baker's own stable still promoted the actor in either criminal or villainous mode - as gangster Paul Clifton in Robbery (1967) and the corrupt thief-taker Jonathan Wild in Where's Jack? (1969). The success of Baker's own productions was timely and did much to enhance the prestige of what was then considered an ailing British film industry. Stanley Baker also took the opportunity to move into the realm of television, appearing in, among other productions, the dramas The Changeling (1974) and Robinson Crusoe (1974), and also in the series How Green Was My Valley (1975).
Knighted in 1976 it was evident that Stanley Baker may well have continued to greater heights, both as an actor and a producer, but he succumbed to lung cancer and died at the early age of forty-eight. But his legacy is unquestioned. He was a unique force on screen, championing characterizations that were not clichéd or compromised. He established his own niche as an actor content to be admired for peerlessly portraying the disreputable and the unsympathetic. In that he was a dark mirror, more accurately reflecting human frailty and the vagaries of life than many of his more romantically or heroically inclined contemporaries. There have forever been legions of seemingly interchangeable charming and virile leading men populating the movies - but Stanley Baker stood almost alone in his determination to be characterized and judged by portraying the bleaker aspects of the human condition. Consequently, more than twenty-five years after his death, his sombre, potent personality still illuminates the screen in a way few others have achieved.- Jess Barker was born on 4 June 1912 in Greenville, South Carolina, USA. He was an actor, known for Reign of Terror (1949), Scarlet Street (1945) and Cover Girl (1944). He was married to Susan Hayward. He died on 8 August 2000 in North Hollywood, California, USA.
- Alexander Crichlow Barker Jr. was a direct descendant of the founder of Rhode Island, Roger Williams, and of Sir William Henry Crichlow, historical Governor-General of Barbados. Barker attended the Fessenden School and Phillips-Exeter Academy, where he excelled in football and track. He went to Princeton, but left to become an actor. A year later he was spotted while working in summer stock theatre, and received a contract offer from 20th Century Fox. World War II intervened; he enlisted as an infantry private, and rose to the rank of major.
Although later signed by Fox and then Warner Bros, he was too tall for supporting parts and too unknown for leads. Tarzan's Magic Fountain (1949) (RKO) provided his first starring role. After five Tarzan films, he went into other adventure films. After 16 non-Tarzan films, mostly westerns, he went to Europe in 1957 (he spoke French, Spanish, Italian, and German). He went on to make more than 50 more films worldwide: Brazil, Germany, Spain, Yugoslavia, Italy, Lebanon, France, as well as the USA. He became very popular in Germany owing to his roles as "Old Shatterhand", "Kara Ben Nemsi", and "Dr. Karl Sternau", in films based on books written by Karl May, a popular German writer of adventure literature. Barker won Germany's Bambi Award as Best Foreign Actor of 1966. - Rayford Barnes was born on 23 October 1920 in near Whitesboro, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for The Wild Bunch (1969), Death Hunt (1981) and Young Jesse James (1960). He was married to Debra ?. He died on 11 November 2000 in Santa Monica, California, USA.
- Charles Bateman was born on 19 November 1930 in San Diego, California, USA. He is an actor, known for The Green Hornet (1966), Cannon (1971) and Santa Barbara (1984).
- Actor
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Alan Bates decided to be an actor at age 11. After grammar school in Derbyshire, he earned a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Following two years in the Royal Air Force, he joined the new English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre. His West End debut in 1956, at 22, was also the company's first production. In the same year Bates appeared in John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger," a play that gave a name to a generation of postwar "angry young men." It made Bates a star and launched a lifetime of his performing in works written by great modern playwrights -- Harold Pinter, Simon Gray, Storey, Bennett, Peter Shaffer and Tom Stoppard (as well as such classic playwrights as Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg and William Shakespeare). Four years later Bates appeared in his first film, a classic: The Entertainer (1960), in which he plays one of Laurence Olivier's sons. More than 50 film roles have followed, one of which, The Fixer (1968) (from a novel by Bernard Malamud) earned an Academy Award nomination for Bates. He married Victoria Ward in 1970. Their twin sons, Benedick and Tristan, were born in 1971. Tristan died during an asthma attack in 1990; Ward died in 1992. Bates threw himself into his work to get through these tragedies, and spoke movingly about the effects of his losses in interviews. He was the Patron of the Actors Centre in Covent Garden, London; Bates and his family endowed a theatre there in memory of Tristan Bates, who, like his father and brother, was an actor. With few exceptions, Bates performed in premium works, guided by intuition rather than by box office. For each role he created a three-dimensional, unique person; there is no stereotypical Alan Bates character. Women appreciate the sensitivity he brought to his romantic roles; gay fans appreciate his well-rounded, unstereotyped gay characters; and the intelligence, humor and detail - the smile that started in the eyes, the extra pat or squeeze, the subtle nuances he gave to his lines, his beautiful, flexible voice - are Bates hallmarks that made him special to all his admirers. The rumpled charm of his youth weathered into a softer but still attractive (and still rumpled) maturity. In his 60s Alan Bates continued to divide his time among films, theatre and television. His 1997 stage portrayal of a travel writer facing life's big questions at the bedside of his comatose wife in Simon Gray's "Life Support" was called "a magnificent performance, one of the finest of his career" (Charles Spencer, Sunday Telegraph, 10 August 97). His last two roles in New York earned critical praise and all the Best Actor awards Broadway can bestow. He was knighted in January 2003, and only a few weeks later began treatment for pancreatic cancer. He was positive that he would beat the disease, and continued to work during its course, only admitting to being "a bit tired." His courage and strength were remarkable, and even in his final days his humor remained intact. After his death, there was an outpouring of affection and respect. As Ken Russell said in his Evening Standard tribute, "The airwaves have been heavy with unstinted praise for Alan Bates since his untimely death . . . All the tributes were more than justified for one of the great actors ever to grace the screen and stage."- Rik Battaglia was born on 18 February 1927 in Corbola, Veneto, Italy. He was an actor, known for Esther and the King (1960), Orlando e i Paladini di Francia (1956) and Duck, You Sucker! (1971). He died on 27 March 2015 in Corbola, Veneto, Italy.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Before there was an Alan Ladd, there was another furtive-eyed, baby-faced, cigarette-dangling Alan, impacting the movie scene with his various colorless and cold-hearted thugs, mobsters and killers. Dark-haired, bullet-headed actor Alan Baxter earned a noticeable degree of popularity back in the late 1930s and 1940s with his various despicable characters, before his film career lost steam and he sought more and more TV and stage work.
The son of a Cleveland Trust Company vice president, Baxter was born on November 19, 1908, in East Cleveland. Following high school, he studied drama at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he forged a strong friendship with fellow collegiate and future directing icon, Elia Kazan. Once they graduated in 1930, the duo attended Yale's School of Drama.
Baxter hooked up with the then-fledgling Group Theatre in the early 1930s and appeared in such stage productions as "Lone Valley", "The Pure in Heart" and "Waiting for Lefty". His performance in "Black Pit" in 1935, however, was witnessed by a Hollywood talent scout and it was enough to change the course of his career. Immediately heading west to Hollywood, Baxter made an auspicious debut with his strong performance as "Babe Wilson", the unfeeling killer loved by Sylvia Sidney's character in Mary Burns, Fugitive (1935). Three years later, Baxter went on to recreate the role on radio.
With his foot strongly in the Paramount door, he continued playing dangerous, unsavory types in 13 Hours by Air (1936), Big Brown Eyes (1936) and The Case Against Mrs. Ames (1936), until his contract ran out. Continuing to freelance throughout the remainder of the 1930s, he remained on the wrong side of the law in Parole! (1936), Breezing Home (1937), Night Key (1937), Wide Open Faces (1938), Off the Record (1939), My Son Is a Criminal (1939), and Each Dawn I Die (1939).
A solid "B" lead player who appeared in support when it came to "A" pictures, Baxter occasionally broke out of the "bad guy" mold -- but not often. By this time, Alan Ladd was starting to cut in on Baxter's action with his moody and sexy versions of trench-coat-trendy villains. Baxter, nevertheless, continued to roll on, playing outlaw "Jesse James" in Bad Men of Missouri (1941) opposite Dennis Morgan, Wayne Morris, and Arthur Kennedy as the Younger brothers, while adding slick malevolence to such films as Escape to Glory (1940) (with Constance Bennett), Under Age (1941) (with Nan Grey and Mary Anderson), The Pittsburgh Kid (1941) (with Jean Parker), and Rags to Riches (1941) (with Mary Carlisle). This period of filming was topped by an excellent support role in the classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller, Saboteur (1942), in which he, as the meek-voiced, mustachioed, bespectacled, peroxide blond Nazi spy "Freeman", shares a memorable scene with lead Robert Cummings.
Following standard work in China Girl (1942) and Behind Prison Walls (1943), Baxter (at age 35) signed up for the Army Air Force in 1943, and appeared in the Broadway production of Moss Hart's "Winged Victory", which later was turned into the 1944 movie version of the same name, Winged Victory (1944) (also featuring Baxter). Post-war filming grew more dismal with a high majority of "Poverty Row" pictures coming Baxter's way. His last appearance in a strong film was the Robert Ryan boxing pic, The Set-Up (1949), as a mobster involved in fixing matches. Alan decided to return to the challenge of the stage, appearing in such plays as "Home of the Brave" (1945), "The Voice of the Turtle" (1947), "The Hallams" (1948), "Jenny Kissed Me" (1948), "Tea and Sympathy" (1955), and "South Pacific" (1957) (in a non-singing role). TV also became a positive medium, with adventure guest roles on The Rifleman (1958), Wagon Train (1957), Colt .45 (1957) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), among the offerings.
By the 1960s, Baxter was seen primarily in incidental film roles, his last being the cult rodent thriller, Willard (1971). Diagnosed with cancer, the twice-married actor died a few years later at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, on May 8, 1976, aged 67.- Additional Crew
- Actor
- Cinematographer
Born in 1938 in New York City and raised in New York City, Alabama and Islip, Long Island, Peter Beard began keeping diaries at an early age. He took his first pictures at the age of twelve and photography quickly evolved into an extension of his diaries, as a way to preserve and remember favorite things. In 1957 he entered Yale University as a pre-med undergraduate, but soon switched his major to art history, studying under Vincent Scully, Joseph Albers and Richard Linder.
Trips to Africa in 1955 and 1960 piqued his interests and, after graduating from Yale, he returned to Africa. In the early '60s he worked at Kenya's Tsavo National Park where he photographed and documented the demise of over 35,000 elephants, which later became the subject of his first book "The End of the Game" (1965). During the same period he acquired Hog Ranch, the property adjacent to Karen Blixen's (Isak Dinesen), whom he had met through his cousin Jerome Hill. Hog Ranch, located near the Ngong Hills, became his home base in East Africa. Beard has written further books on his African experience: "Eyelids of Morning" (1973), "Longing for Darkness" (1975) and "Zara's Tales: Perilous Escapades in Equatorial Africa" (2004), written for his daughter.
Beard's first exhibit was at the Blum Helman Gallery in New York in 1975. This was quickly followed by his landmark installation at the International Center of Photography in New York City in 1977. This show exhibited his photographs, elephant carcasses, burned diaries, taxidermy, African artifacts, books and personal memorabilia.
In addition to creating original artwork, Beard has befriended and collaborated on projects with many legendary artists including Andy Warhol, Andrew Wyeth, Richard Linder, Terry Southern, Truman Capote and Francis Bacon.
In 1996, shortly after he was trampled by an elephant, his first major retrospective opened at the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, followed by other exhibits in Berlin, London, Toronoto, Madrid, Milan, Tokyo and Vienna.
Beard currently splits his time between New York City, Montauk Point and Kenya, living with his wife and agent Nejma and their daughter Zara.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Since starring in his first film, Splendor in the Grass (1961), Warren Beatty has been said to have demonstrated a greater longevity in movies than any actor of his generation. Few people have taken so many responsibilities for all phases of the production of films as producer, director, writer, and actor, and few have evidenced so high a level of integrity in a body of work.
In Rules Don't Apply (2016), he writes, produces, directs and stars in. Only Beatty and Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) have been nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as an actor, a director, a writer, and a producer for the same film. Beatty is the only person ever to have done it twice, for Heaven Can Wait (1978) and again for Reds (1981). Beatty has been nominated 15 times by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, and 8 films he has produced have earned 53 Academy nominations. In 1982 he won the Academy Award for Directing and in 2000 was given the Academy's highest honor, the Irving G. Thalberg Award.
He was awarded Best Director from the Directors Guild of America and Best Writer three times from the Writers Guild of America. He has received the Milestone Award from the Producers Guild, the Board of Governors Award from the American Society of Cinematographers, the Directors Award from the Costume Designers Guild, the Life Achievement Award from the Publicists Guild, and the Outstanding Contribution to Cinematic Imagery Award from the Art Directors Guild. The National Association of Theater Owners has honored him as Director of the Year, as Producer of the Year and as Actor of the Year.
He has won 16 awards from the New York and Los Angeles Film Critics, the National Board of Review, and the Golden Globes. In 1992, he was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France; in Italy he received the David di Donatello award in 1968 and again in 1981 and its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998; in 2001, he received the Donostia Lifetime Achievement Award from the San Sebastian International Film Festival; in 2002, he received the British Academy Fellowship from BAFTA; and in 2011, he was awarded the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film.
In December 2004, Beatty received The Kennedy Center Honor in Washington, D.C. In addition, he is the recipient of the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, the HFPA Cecile B. DeMille Award and many others. Politically active since the 1960's, Beatty campaigned with Robert F. Kennedy in his 1968 presidential campaign. That same year he traveled throughout the United States speaking in favor of gun control and against the war in Vietnam. In 1972 he took a year off from motion pictures to campaign with George McGovern.
In 1981, Beatty was a founding board member of the Center for National Policy. He is a founding member of The Progressive Majority, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and has participated in the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland.
Beatty serves on the Board of Directors of the Motion Picture and Television Fund Foundation. He previously served on the Board of Trustees of The Scripps Research Institute for several years. He has received the Eleanor Roosevelt Award from the Americans for Democratic Action, the Brennan Legacy Award from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, and the Philip Burton Public Service Award from The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.
In multiple forums he has addressed campaign finance reform, the increasing disparity of wealth, universal health care and the need for the Democratic Party to return to its roots.
In March of 2013, he was inducted into the California Hall of Fame.
Beatty was born in Richmond, Virginia. He and his wife, Annette Bening, live in Los Angeles and have four children.
His mother, Kathlyn Corinne (MacLean), was a drama teacher from Nova Scotia, Canada, and his father, Ira Owens Beaty, a professor of psychology and real estate agent, was from Virginia. His sister is actress Shirley MacLaine (born Shirley MacLean Beaty). His ancestry is mostly English and Scottish.- Kip Behar was born on 12 April 1936 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He is an actor, known for Beauty and the Body (1963).
- Music Artist
- Actor
- Producer
Harold George Belafonte was born on March 1, 1927 in New York City. He was educated at the New York Dramatic Workshop. He grew up in Jamaica, British West Indies, and did folk-singing in nightclubs and theaters, and on television and records. His debut was at the Village Vanguard in New York. Also, he appeared in the Broadway revues "John Murray Anderson's Almanac" and "Three for Tonight". He owns his own music publishing firm and film production company. He won a Tony Award in 1953, a Donaldson Award in 1953-1954, a Show Business Award in 1954, a Diners' Club Award in 1955-1956, and an Emmy Award for "Tonight with Belafonte". He has made many records. Joining the ASCAP in 1960, his popular-music compositions include "Turn Around", "Shake That Little Foot" and "Glory Manger".- John Beradino was born on 1 May 1917 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for General Hospital (1963), Adventures of Superman (1952) and Young Doctors in Love (1982). He was married to Marjorie Ann Binder, Charissa Hughes and Jeanette Nadine Barritt. He died on 19 May 1996 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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- Soundtrack
William Benedict was active in the drama department of his Tulsa, Oklahoma, high school and, at the height of the Depression (1934), decided to relocate to California. At first, he wanted to be a dancer, but when he discovered that dancers were a dime-a-dozen in Hollywood, he concentrated on acting. He made his film debut in Fox's $10 Raise (1935) and went onto the Fox payroll as a "featured player". After leaving Fox, he played some of his larger parts in serials and in the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys features in which he was a regular. During his half-century-plus career, Benedict has had roles in practically every type of movie; there's only one thing that the ex-hoofer might have enjoyed doing in a movie, but never had the chance: "Strange as it seems, I've never once danced in a picture!".- Music Artist
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- Writer
Tony Bennett, one of the legends of jazz and popular music who served during the Second World War and then developed a career spanning over half a century, is now giving another concert tour across the United States and Europe.
He was born Anthony (Antonio) Dominick Benedetto on August 3, 1926, in Astoria, Queens, in New York City. His father, Giovanni "John" Benedetto, was a grocer, his mother, Anna Maria (Suraci), was a seamstress, and his uncle was a tap dancer. His parents were both from poor farming families in Calabria, Italy. Young Tony gave a singing performance at the opening of the Triborough Bridge at the age of 10. He studied music and painting at the New York High School of Industrial Arts but dropped out at the age of 16. He had to support his family and he performed as a singing waiter in Italian restaurants.
During the Second World War Tony Bennett was drafted into the US Army. He served on the front lines until April 1945 and was involved in the liberation of a Nazi concentration camp at Landsberg, Germany. After the WWII he sang with the Army military band under the stage name "Joe Bari" until his discharge and return to the US in 1946. He studied the Bel Canto singing discipline at the American Theater Wing on the GI Bill and continued singing while waiting on tables at New York restaurants.
At the beginning of his career he drew from such influences as Judy Garland, Louis Armstrong, and Bing Crosby among others and eventually created his own style of singing. He also integrated jazz-style phrasing into his singing by imitating the instrumental solos with his own voice.
In 1949, Bennett was invited on a concert tour by Bob Hope, who suggested him to use the name Tony Bennett. In 1950, he was signed to Columbia Records and made his first big hit 'Because of You', produced by Mitch Miller with orchestration by Percy Faith. It sold over a million copies, reaching #1 in 1951 pop charts. His other #1 hits were 'Blue Velvet', 'Rags to Riches', and "Stranger in Paradise" in 1952-54. Bennett was able to do five to seven shows a day in New York to crowds of screaming teenagers.
In 1956, he hosted The Tony Bennett Show (1956), which replaced Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall (1948). He continued making recordings with the top jazz musicians of the day and his collaboration with Count Basie brought two albums, with 'Chicago' and 'Jeepers Creepers' becoming popular songs. His landmark concert at the Carnegie Hall in June of 1962 featured 44 songs and was accompanied by an all-star band. The same year he released 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco', which remained on the charts for a year and has become his signature song. The eponymous album became a gold record.
Bennett had a change of fortune after 1964, with strong competition from The Beatles and the British Invasion. In 1965, he separated from his first wife, artist Patricia Beech, with whom he had two sons. The marriage did not work under the pressures of being too much on the road and eventually ended in divorce. At the same time, his first acting role in the film The Oscar (1966) was not a success; he received poor reviews, and the film was lambasted by critics, ignored by audiences and became one of the biggest flops of the year. His singing career took a downturn when his bosses at Columbia Records, worried about competition from The Beatles, forced him to change his image and style, which pleased no one. He left Columbia in 1972. A brief contract with MGM Records yielded no hits, and Bennett was left without a recording job.
He married again. He started his own record company and made two highly praised albums with Bill Evans. He moved to England for a while, where he once performed for the Queen. Back in the US, Bennett found only one regular gig in Las Vegas, but no recording deals or concert tours. His debts grew to the point of bankruptcy, and the IRS was trying to seize his house in L.A. By the late 1970s, his second marriage to actress Sandra Grant, with whom he had two daughters, was failing. He also suffered from a drug addiction, and after an overdose in 1979, he called for help from his son Danny Bennett. Danny signed on as his father's manager, and it turned out to be a smart move.
Tony Bennett rejuvenated his career by bringing back his original style, tuxedo and the Great American Songbook. He staged a strong comeback during the 1980s and 1990s, signed with Columbia again, and made two gold albums in 1992 and 1993, and developed a surprising and loyal following among audiences in their 20s and 30s. He also received a Grammy Award, the first since 1962. He again performed and recorded with Frank Sinatra, and extended musical collaboration to gigs with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Elvis Costello, and k.d. lang among others. Bennet also appeared as himself on MTV's documentary series Unplugged (1989) in 1994 and 2000.
His resilience and successful comeback became a sensation in the modern day entertainment industry. Bennett appeared as himself in the films Analyze This (1999), The Scout (1994), and Bruce Almighty (2003). He has sold over 50 million records worldwide, was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame (1997), published an autobiography "The Good Life: The Autobiography of Tony Bennett" (1998), received a lifetime achievement award from ASCAP (2002), and was the recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor in December of 2005. Honored by the United Nations with its Citizen of the World award, he is widely considered an International treasure.
On his 80th anniversary, Tony Bennett enjoyed congratulations from millions of fans from all over the world. In November 2006, Bennett hosted a Gala-party in his honor at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. There he enjoyed live performances by numerous celebrities. The party came to culmination when Mr. Bennett entertained his guests by singing his best known hits: 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco' and 'What A Good Life.'- John Bentley was born on 2 December 1916 in Sparkhill, Birmingham, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Calling Paul Temple (1948), Salute the Toff (1951) and Bombay Waterfront (1952). He was married to Joyce ? and Patricia Smith. He died on 13 August 2009 in Petworth, West Sussex, England, UK.
- Music Artist
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- Music Department
Charles Edward Anderson Berry was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist who pioneered rock and roll. Nicknamed the "Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive with songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958). Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship, Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music.- Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carl Betz formed a repertory theatre company while still in high school, then worked in summer stock. He served in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, then attended Carnegie Tech. Following graduation, he worked as a radio announcer. He made his Broadway debut in "The Long Watch". He was given a contract at Twentieth Century-Fox, and appeared in supporting roles in a number of films before moving into television. After a brief period working in soap operas, he was cast as Dr. Alex Stone on the popular The Donna Reed Show (1958) and spent eight years there. He followed that show with another series, Judd for the Defense (1967), in which he played a masterful attorney. He worked primarily in television, in both guest appearances and TV movies, throughout the Seventies, though he continued to work on stage around the U.S. He fought a gallant fight against early cancer and died in 1978.
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- Editor
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.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Born as George Victor Bishop in 1932. He changed his name to Edward when he became a professional actor, as there was already an actor named George Bishop. Raised in Peekskill, New York through high school. Served in the US Army 1952-1954, worked as a disc jockey on Armed Forces Radio at St Johns' Newfoundland. Planned for a career in Business Administration and went back to school at Boston University. Decided he didn't like Business Administration and enrolled in Boston University Theater Division (1956). Graduated in 1960 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree. Won a scholarship to study drama at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in 1960. Started his professional acting career in July 1961. Married his second wife, the economist Hilary Preen at Caxton Hall in 1962. Met Hilary in Trafalgar Square when he was visiting places of interest in London. They had four children, who were born in 1964 (Daniel, who later died in a car crash), 1967 (Georgina), 1968 (Jessica) and 1971 (Serina). They lived in Napton on the Hill, a little village in Warwickshire, where he bought a large old house in 1980. Here he founded Napton Open Air Theatre and Napton Little Theatre, which staged high quality village productions. He later lived with his third wife, Jane Skinner, at East Molesey. Ed became a grandfather in 1994. He was a keen anti-war campaigner, addressing meetings in Manchester and attending demonstrations at arms fairs. He notably crashed one such fair dressed as General Pinochet, along with four other dictators that Britain had supplied arms to - and who had subsequently turned nasty: General Galtieri, Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler and Ivan the Terrible. It made the national news.- Larry J. Blake was born in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, New York on April 24, 1914. At the age of 18, his talent at impersonations and dialects grew into a vaudeville act. Blake eventually became a headliner, playing the Orpheum circuit, as well as the Roxy Theatre and the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center.
In 1936, he signed to a contract with Universal studios, and his first job was in the serial Secret Agent X-9 (1937). Right after that, he was chosen for a featured role in James Whale's The Road Back (1937), a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). He appeared in other films for Universal including a string of 1938 films, Trouble at Midnight (1937), Air Devils (1938), Nurse from Brooklyn (1938), and The Jury's Secret (1938).
With the outbreak of WWII, Blake joined the U.S. Navy serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific. He was mustered out and treated at a Naval hospital for his alcoholism. A Catholic priest helped Blake join Alcoholics Anonymous, and in 1946 he help start the first A.A. group for members of the motion picture industry.
Blake returned to acting in 1946, working steadily in supporting and bit parts throughout the 1950s. He is best known for his roles in Sunset Boulevard (1950) and High Noon (1952). In Sunset Boulevard he played the first finance man who comes to repossess William Holden's car. In High Noon, Blake played Gillis, the owner of the saloon who is punched by Gary Cooper.
As television's popularity began, Blake found plenty of work from westerns, crime dramas to comedies. He was a regular in The Pride of the Family (1953) television series, as well as the recurring part of the friendly jailer in Yancy Derringer (1958).
His last role was as the museum security guard in Time After Time (1979), when he was forced to retire due to emphysema. Until his death in 1982, Blake continued helping others in the A.A. program. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Dan Blocker is one of the true television immortals, having played Hoss Cartwright -- the heart and soul of Bonanza (1959) -- for 13 seasons, before his untimely death in 1972 at the age of 43. "Bonanza" was the most popular TV series of the 1960s, ranked #1 for three straight seasons (1964-65 through 1966-67) and spending a then-unprecedented nine seasons in the Top 5. After Blocker's death, "Bonanza" -- still in the Top 20 with Hoss after being #8 the previous year -- didn't last another entire season.
The character of Hoss was conceived as a stereotype: The Gentle Giant. The 6'4", 300 lbs. Blocker filled Hoss's cowboy boots and ten-gallon hat admirably but brought something extra to the role, a warmth and empathy that helped ground the show. Personal accounts of Blocker testify to the fact that the man was gregarious and friendly to everyone. He brought that upbeat personality to the character of Hoss.
Hoss originally had been conceived as dull-witted, but ironically, Blocker's professional acting career was assured after he moved his family to California so he could pursue a PhD at U.C.L.A. A native of West Texas, he reportedly was discovered while making a call in a phone booth while outfitted in Western garb, including a straw cowboy hat, his standard dress being a native son of Texas, soon after arriving in California. Even after being cast in "Bonanza", he intended to complete his PhD, but the great success of the series made that impossible, due to the workload of 30+ episodes per year necessitating a 7AM-9PM work schedule five days a week.
Donny Dany Blocker made his debut on December 10, 1928 in De Kalb, Texas, weighing in at 14 lbs. He reportedly was the biggest baby ever born in Bowie County. By the age of 12, he already was 6' tall and weighed 200 lbs. (Towards the end of "Bonanza", he reportedly had ballooned past his stated weight of 300 to as much as 365 lbs.) A "TV Guide" story after his death reported that back in Texas, the young Dan once lifted a car off of a man after it slid off a jack and pinned him under the auto. "My daddy used to say that I was too big to ride and too little to hitch a wagon to," Blocker said, "no good for a damn thing".
His father, Ora Blocker, a poor Texas farmer, was hurt by the Great Depression that began the year after Dan's birth. Ora Blocker lost the farm and later went into the grocery business. He moved his family to O'Donnell, which is just south of Lubbock, where he ran a grocery store. His "no good" son went to the Texas Military Institute, and in 1946 started his undergraduate work at Hardin-Simmons University (Abilene, Texas), where he played football. It was there he fell in love with acting when he was recruited by a girlfriend to play a role in campus production of Arsenic and Old Lace as they needed a strong man to lift the bodies that the spinster aunts had dispatched up from the cellar.
After graduating in 1950 with a degree in English, Blocker went east where he did repertory work in Boston. A 1960 "TV Guide" article says that he appeared on Broadway in the 1950-51 production of King Lear, which starred Louis Calhern. The draft soon ended his apprenticeship, and he served in the Army in the Korean War, making sergeant. After being demobilized in 1952, he attended attended Sul Ross State Teacher's College (Alpine, Texas), earning a master's degree in dramatic arts. He taught English and drama at a Sonora, Texas high school before moving to Carlsbad, New Mexico, where he taught sixth grade. He then moved his family to California, where he again taught school while preparing for his PhD studies.
Blocker picked up bit parts in television, making his debut as a bartender in The Sheriff of Cochise (1956). His career rise was steady and rapid, and he appeared on many Westerns, including Gunsmoke (1955), Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), The Rifleman (1958), and Maverick (1957). He claimed his turn as Hognose Hughes on "Maverick", the comic Western starring James Garner, was the seminal role of his career. As Hoss, Blocker would often star in light-hearted episodes on "Bonanza". He was cast in the recurring role of "Tiny" Carl Budinger in the short lived Western series, Cimarron City (1958). Its cancellation after one season made him available for "Bonanza", which was "Cimarron City" creator David Dortort's next project. He had previously appeared on Dortort's Western series, The Restless Gun (1957).
"Bonanza" debuted in September 1959, shot in color, and R.C.A. made color TV sets and saw the program as a good advertisement for its wares. The company sponsored the first two seasons of the show, and the sponsorship and R.C.A.'s ownership of N.B.C. was likely why it wasn't cancelled after its shaky first season, when it placed #45 in the ratings for the 1959-60 season. The following year, it cracked the top 20 at #17, but it wasn't until it was shifted to Sundays at 9PM in the 1961-62 season that it became a ratings phenomenon, coming in at #2. It was the first of nine straight seasons in the top 5. Once "Bonanza" was ensconced as America's favorite Western, Blocker and his three co-stars, Lorne Greene, Pernell Roberts and Michael Landon were paid an extremely handsome salary that eventually rose to approximately $10,000 per episode each by the time Roberts quit after the sixth season, its first at #1.
Commenting on Roberts' departure, Landon said, "After he left we took one leaf out of the dining room table and we all made more money because we split the take three ways instead of four." Salary, royalties from Bonanza-related merchandise, and business ventures (Blocker started the Bonanza Steak House chain in 1963), and an eventual $1-million payout from NBC to buy out the residual rights of each of the three remaining stars made them all rich. "Bonanza" made Blocker a very wealthy man, but more importantly, it made him a television immortal. The series continues to be re-run in syndication 40 years after Hoss exited the stage.- Actor
- Writer
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Sir Dirk Bogarde, distinguished film actor and writer, was born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde on March 28, 1921, to Ulric van den Bogaerde, the art editor of "The Times" (London) newspaper, and actress Margaret Niven in the London suburb of Hampstead. He was one of three children, with sister Elizabeth and younger brother Gareth. His father was Flemish and his mother was of Scottish descent.
Ulric Bogaerde started the Times' arts department and served as its first art editor. Derek's mother, Margaret - the daughter of actor and painter Forrest Niven - appeared in the play "Bunty Pulls The Strings", but she quit the boards in accordance with her husband's wishes. The young Derek Bogaerde was raised at the family home in Sussex by his sister, Elizabeth, and his nanny, Lally Holt.
Educated at the Allen Glen's School in Glasgow, he also attended London's University College School before majoring in commercial art at Chelsea Polytechnic, where his teachers included Henry Moore. Though his father wanted his eldest son to follow him into the "Times" as an art critic and had groomed him for that role, Derek dropped out of his commercial art course and became a drama student, though his acting talent at that time was unpromising. In the 1930s he went to work as a commercial artist and a scene designer.
He apprenticed as an actor with the Amersham Repertory Company, and made his acting debut in 1939 on a small London stage, the Q Theatre, in a role in which he delivered only one line. His debut in London's West End came a few months later in J.B. Priestley's play "Cornelius," in which he was billed as "Derek Bogaerde". He made his uncredited debut as an extra in the pre-war George Formby comedy Come on George! (1939).
The September 1939 invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union triggered World War II, and in 1940 Bogarde joined the Queen's Royal Regiment as an officer. He served in the Air Photographic Intelligence Unit and eventually attained the rank of major. Nicknamed "Pippin" and "Pip" during the war, he was awarded seven medals in his five years of active duty. He wrote poems and painted during the war, and in 1943, a small magazine published one of his poems, "Steel Cathedrals," which subsequently was anthologized. His paintings of the war are part of the Imperial War Museum's collection.
Similar to his character, Captain Hargreaves, in King & Country (1964), he was called upon to put a wounded soldier out of his misery, a tale recounted in one of his seven volumes of autobiography. While serving with the Air Photographic Intelligence Unit, he took part in the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which he said was akin to "looking into Dante's Inferno".
In one of his autobiographies, he wrote, "At 24, the age I was then, deep shock stays registered forever. An internal tattooing which is removable only by surgery, it cannot be conveniently sponged away by time."
After being demobilized, he returned to acting. His agent re-christened him "Dirk Bogarde," a name that he would make famous within a decade. In 1947 he appeared in "Power Without Glory" at the New Lindsay Theatre, a performance that was praised by Noël Coward, who urged him to continue his acting career. The Rank Organization had signed him to a contract after a talent scout saw him in the play, and he made his credited movie debut in Dancing with Crime (1947) with a one-line bit as a policeman.
His first lead in a movie came that year when Wessex Films, distributed by Rank, gave him a part in the proposed Stewart Granger film Sin of Esther Waters (1948). When Granger dropped out, Bogarde took over the lead. Rank subsequently signed him to a long-term contract and he appeared in a variety of parts during the 14 years he was under contract to the studio.
For three years he toiled in Rank movies as an apprentice actor without making much of a ripple; then in 1950, he was given the role of young hood Tom Riley in the crime thriller The Blue Lamp (1950) (the title comes from the blue-colored light on police call-boxes in London), the most successful British film of 1950, which established Bogarde as an actor of note. Playing a cop killer, an unspeakable crime in the England of the time, it was the first of the intense neurotics and attractive villains that Bogarde would often play.
He continued to act on-stage, appearing in the West End in Jean Anouilh's "Point of Departure". While he was praised for his performance, stage acting made him nervous, and as he became more famous, he began to be mobbed by fans. The pressure of the public adulation proved overwhelming, particularly as he suffered from stage fright. He was accosted by crowds of fans at the stage door during the 1955 touring production of "Summertime," and his more enthusiastic admirers even shouted at him during the play. He was to appear in only one more play, the Oxford Playhouse production of "Jezebel," in 1958. He never again took to the boards, despite receiving attractive offers.
He first acted for American expatriate director Joseph Losey in The Sleeping Tiger (1954). Losey, a Communist and self-described Stalinist at the time, had emigrated to England after being blacklisted in Hollywood after he refused to direct The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) at RKO Pictures, which was owned by right-wing multi-millionaire Howard Hughes at the time, and he was accused in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee of being a Communist. The director, like Bogarde, would not find his stride until the early 1960s, and Losey and Bogarde would build their reputations together.
First, however, Losey had to overcome Bogarde's reluctance to star in a low-budget film (shot for $300,000) with a blacklisted American director. Losey, who had never heard of Bogarde until he was proposed for the film, met with him and asked Bogarde to view one of his pictures. After seeing the film, Bogarde was enthusiastic, and Losey talked him into taking the role, which he accepted at a reduced fee (Losey originally was not credited with directing the film due to his being blacklisted in the States). A decade later they would make more memorable films that would be watersheds in their careers.
It was not drama but comedy that made Dirk Bogarde a star. He achieved the first rank of English movie stardom playing Dr. Simon Sparrow in the comedy Doctor in the House (1954). The film was a smash hit, becoming one of the most popular British films in history, with 17 million admissions in its first year of release. As Sparrow, Bogarde became a heartthrob and the most popular British movie star of the mid-50s. He reprised the character in Doctor at Sea (1955), Doctor at Large (1957).
The title of the latter film may have described his mood as a serious actor having to do another turn as Dr. Sparrow between his career-making performances in Losey's The Servant (1963), with a script by Harold Pinter, and Losey's adaptation of the stage play King & Country (1964), in which Bogarde memorably played the attorney for a young deserter (played by Tom Courtenay).
Bogarde, hailed as "the idol of the Odeons" in honor of his box-office clout, was offered the role of Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger (1959) by producer Harry Saltzman and director Tony Richardson, based on the play that touched off the "Angry Young Man" and "Kitchen Sink School" of contemporary English drama in the 1950s. Though Bogarde wanted to take the part, Rank refused to let him make the film on the grounds that there was "altogether too much dialog." The part went to Richard Burton instead, who went over-the-top in portraying his very angry, not-so-young man.
After this disappointment, Bogarde went to Hollywood to play Franz Liszt in Song Without End (1960) and to appear in Nunnally Johnson's Spanish Civil War drama The Angel Wore Red (1960) with Ava Gardner. Both were big-budgeted films, but hampered by poor scripts, and after both films failed, Bogarde avoided Hollywood from then on.
He was reportedly quite smitten with his French "Song Without End" co-star Capucine, and wanted to marry her. Capucine, who suffered from bi-polar disorder, was bisexual with an admitted preference for women. The relationship did not lead to marriage, but did result in a long-term friendship. It apparently was his only serious relationship with a woman, though he had many women friends, including his I Could Go on Singing (1963) co-star Judy Garland.
In the early 1960s, with the expiration of his Rank contract, Bogarde made the decision to abandon his hugely successful career in commercial movies and concentrate on more complex, art house films (at the same time, Burt Lancaster made a similar decision, though Lancaster continued to alternate his artistic ventures with more crassly commercial endeavors). Bogarde appeared in Basil Dearden's seminal film Victim (1961), the first British movie to sympathetically address the persecution of homosexuals. His career choice alienated many of his old fans, but he was no longer interested in being a commercial movie star; he, like Lancaster, was interested in developing as an actor and artist (however, that sense of finding himself as an actor did not extend to the stage. His reputation was such in 1963 that he was invited by National Theatre director Laurence Olivier to appear as Hamlet to open the newly built Chichester Festival Theatre. That production of the eponymous play also was intended to open the National Theatre's first season in London. Bogarde declined, and the honor went instead to Peter O'Toole, who floundered in the part.)
Jack Grimston, in Bogarde's "Sunday Times" obituary of May 9, 1999, entitled "Bogarde, a solitary star at the edge of the spotlight," said of the late actor that he "belonged to a group that was rare in the British cinema. He was a fine screen player who owed little to the stage. Dilys Powell, the Sunday Times film critic, wrote of him before her own death: 'Most of our gifted film players really belonged to the theater. Bogarde belonged to the screen.'" Bogarde had won the London Critics Circle's Dilys Powell award for outstanding contribution to cinema in 1992.
Appearing in "Victim" was a huge career gamble. In the film, Bogarde played a married barrister who is being blackmailed over his closeted homosexuality. Rather than let the blackmail continue, and allow the perpetrators to victimize other gay men, Bogarde's character effectively sacrifices himself, specifically his marriage and his career, by bravely confessing to be gay (homosexuality was an offence in the United Kingdom until 1967, and there reportedly had been a police crackdown against homosexuals after World War II which made gay men particularly vulnerable to blackmail).
The film was not released in mainstream theaters in the US, as the Production Code Administration (PCA) refused to classify the film and most theaters would not show films that did not carry the PCA seal of approval. "Victim" was the antithesis of the light comedy of Bogarde's "Doctor" movies, and many fans of his character Simon Sparrow were forever alienated by his portrayal of a homosexual. For himself, Bogarde was proud of the film and his participation in it, which many think stimulated public debate over homosexuality. The film undoubtedly raised the public consciousness over the egregious and unjust individual costs of anti-gay bigotry. The public attitude towards the "love that dared not speak its name" changed enough so that within six years, the 1967 Sexual Offences Act decriminalizing homosexual acts between adults passed Parliament. Bogarde reported that he received many letters praising him for playing the role. His courage in taking on such a role is even more significant in that he most likely was gay himself, and thus exposed himself to a backlash.
Bogarde always publicly denied he was a homosexual, though later in life he did confess that he and his manager, Anthony Forwood, had a long-term relationship. When Bogarde met him in 1939, Forwood was a theatrical manager, who eventually married and divorced Glynis Johns. Forwood became Bogarde's friend and subsequently his life partner, and the two moved to France together in 1968. They bought a 15th-century farmhouse near Grasse in Provence in the early 1970s, which they restored. Bogarde and Forwood lived in the house until 1983, when they returned to London so that Forwood could be treated for cancer, from which he eventually died in 1988. Bogarde nursed him in the last few months of his life. After Forwood died, Bogarde was left rudderless and he became more reclusive, eventually retiring from films after Daddy Nostalgia (1990).
Mark Rowe and Jeremy Kay, in their obituary of Bogarde, "Two brilliant lives - on film and in print," published in "The Independent" on May, 9, 1999, wrote, "Although he documented with frankness his early sexual encounters with girls and later his adoring love for Kay Kendall and Judy Garland, he never wrote about his longest and closest relationship - with his friend and manager for more than 50 years, Tony Forwood. Sir Dirk said the clues to his private life were in his books. "If you've got your wits about you, you will know who I am." The British documentary The Private Dirk Bogarde: Part One (2001) made with the permission of his family, stressed the fact that he and Forwood were committed lifelong partners.
In the same issue, the National Film Theatre's David Thompson, in the article "The public understood he was essentially gay," wrote about Bogarde at his high-water mark in the 1950s, that "Audiences of that time loved him . . . Very few people picked up on the fact that there was a distinct gay undertone. It says something about British audiences of the time. He had the good fortune to break out of that prison, and it came through the film Victim (1961), where he played a gay character, and through meeting with Joseph Losey, who directed him in The Servant (1963). For the first time, Bogarde's ambivalence was exploited and used by film."
Bogarde's sexuality is not the issue; what was striking was that it was an act of personal courage for one of Britian's leading box-office attractions to appear in such a provocative and controversial film. Even in the 21st century, many mainstream actors are afraid to play a gay character lest they engender a public backlash against themselves, which is much less likely than it was more than 40 years ago when Bogarde made "Victim."
Apart from sociology, "Victim" marks the milestone in which critics and audiences could discern the metamorphosis of Bogarde into the mature actor who went on to become one of the cinema's finest performers. Most of Bogarde's best and most serious roles come after "Victim," the film in which he first stretched himself and broke out of the mold of "movie star." He received the first of his six nominations as Best Actor from the British Academy of Film & Television Arts (BAFTA) for the film.
Bogarde co-starred with John Mills in The Singer Not the Song (1961), and with Alec Guinness in Damn the Defiant! (1962) (a.k.a. "Damn the Defiant!"). In 1963 he reunited with Losey to film the first of two Losey films with screenplays by Pinter. Bogarde's participation in the two Losey/Pinter collaborations, The Servant (1963) and Accident (1967), in addition to 1964's "King & Country", solidified his reputation. Critics and savvy moviegoers appreciated the fact that Bogarde had developed into a first-rate actor. For his role as the eponymous servant, Bogarde won BAFTA's Best Actor Award. He had now "officially" arrived in the inner circle of the best British film actors.
These three films also elevated Losey into the ranks of major directors (Bogarde also starred in Losey's 1966 spy spoof Modesty Blaise (1966), but that film did little to enhance either man's reputation. He turned down the opportunity to appear in Losey's The Assassination of Trotsky (1972) due to the poor quality of the script).
Philip French, in his obituary "Dark, exotic and yet essentially English", published in "The Observer" on May 9, 1999, said of Bogarde, "Losey discovered something more complex and sinister in his English persona and his performance as Barrett, the malevolent valet in 'The Servant,' scripted by Harold Pinter, is possibly the most subtle, revealing thing he ever did - by confronting his homosexuality in a non-gay context."
Losey told interviewer Michel Ciment that his work with Bogarde represented a turning point in the actor's career, when he developed into an actor of depth and power. He also frankly admitted to Ciment that without Bogarde, his career would have stagnated and never reached the heights of success and critical acclaim that it did in the 1960s.
Interestingly during the filming of "The Servant." Losey was hospitalized with pneumonia. He asked Bogarde to direct the film in order to keep shooting so that the producers would not cancel the film. A reluctant Bogarde complied with Losey's wishes and directed for ten days. He later said that he would never direct again.
Bogarde co-starred with up-and-coming actress Julie Christie in John Schlesinger's Darling (1965), for which Christie won a Best Actress Oscar and was vaulted into 1960s cinema superstardom. During the filming of the movie, both Bogarde and Christie were waiting to hear whether they would be cast as Yuri Zhivago and his lover Lara in David Lean's upcoming blockbuster Doctor Zhivago (1965). Christie got the call, Bogarde didn't, but he was well along in the process of establishing himself as one of the screen's best and most important actors. He won his second BAFTA Best Actor Award for his performance in "Darling."
Bogarde went on to major starring roles in such important pictures as The Fixer (1968), for which Alan Bates won a Best Actor Academy Award nomination. While Bogarde never was nominated for an Oscar, he had the honor of starring in two films for Luchino Visconti, The Damned (1969) ("The Damned") and Death in Venice (1971), based on Thomas Mann's novella "Death in Venice." Bogarde felt that his performance as Gustav von Aschenbach, the dying composer in love with a young boy and with the concept of beauty, in "Death in Venice" was the "the peak and end of my career . . . I can never hope to give a better performance in a better film."
Visconti told Bogarde that when the lights went up in a Los Angeles screening room after a showing of "Death in Venice" for American studio executives, no one said anything. The silence encouraged Visconti, who believed it meant that the executives were undergoing a catharsis after watching his masterpiece. However, he soon realized that, in Bogarde's own words, "Apparently they were stunned into horrified silence . . . A group of slumped nylon-suited men stared dully at the blank screen." One nervous executive, feeling something should be said, got up and asked, "Signore Visconti, who was responsible for the score of the film?"
"Gustav Mahler," Visconti replied.
"Just great!", said the nervous man. "I think we should sign him."
After "Venice", Bogarde made only seven films over the next two decades and was scathing about the quality of the scripts he was offered. To express himself artistically, he began to write. In his third volumes of autobiography, he wrote, "No longer do the great Jewish dynasties hold power: the people who were, when all is said and done, the Picture People. Now the cinema is controlled by vast firms like Xerox, Gulf & Western, and many others who deal in anything from sanitary-ware to property development. These huge conglomerates, faceless, soulless, are concerned only with making a profit; never a work of art . . . "
He rued the fact that "it is pointless to be 'superb' in a commercial failure; and most of the films which I had deliberately chosen to make in the last few years were, by and large, just that. Or so I am always informed by the businessmen. The critics may have liked them extravagantly, but the distributors shy away from what they term 'A Critic's Film', for it often means that the public will stay away. Which, in the mass, they do: and if you don't make money at the box-office you are not asked back to play again."
However, the courageous artist was not to be daunted: "But I'd had very good innings. Better than most. So what the hell?" His well-written works were enthusiastically received by critics and the book-buying public.
Bogarde appeared in another film that flirted with the theme of German fascism, Liliana Cavani's highly controversial The Night Porter (1974) ("The Night Porter"). He played an ex-SS officer who encounters a woman with whom he had been engaged in a sado-masochistic affair at a World War II Nazi extermination camp. Many critics found the film, which featured extensive nudity courtesy of Charlotte Rampling, crassly offensive, but no one faulted Bogarde's performance.
He played Lt. Gen. Frederick "Boy" Browning in the all-star blockbuster A Bridge Too Far (1977). Although some of his fellow actors were World War II veterans, only Bogarde had been involved in the actual battle. His performance arguably is the best in the film. Appearing in Alain Resnais' art house hit Providence (1977) gave Bogarde the opportunity to co-star with John Gielgud. He also starred in German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder's adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's Despair (1978), with a script by Tom Stoppard. Though the film was not much of a critical success, Bogarde's acting as 1930s German businessman Hermann Hermann, a man who chooses to go mad when faced with the paradoxes of his life in his proto-fascist fatherland, was highly praised.
Bogarde enjoyed working with Fassbinder. He wrote that "Rainer's work was extraordinarily similar to that of Visconti's; despite their age difference, they both behaved, on set, in much the same manner. Both had an incredible knowledge of the camera: the first essential. Both knew how it could be made to function; they had the same feeling for movement on the screen, of the all-important (and often-neglected) 'pacing' of a film, from start to finish, of composition, of texture, and probably most of all they shared that strange ability to explore and probe into the very depths of the character which one had offered them."
After his experience with Fassbinder, he acted only four more times, twice in feature films and twice on television. Bogarde was nominated for a Golden Globe for playing Roald Dahl in The Patricia Neal Story (1981). He got rave reviews playing Jane Birkin's father in Bertrand Tavernier's Daddy Nostalgia (1990), his last film.
In 1984 Bogarde was asked to serve as president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, a huge honor for the actor, as he was the first Briton ever to serve in that capacity. Two years earlier he had been made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des lettres 1982. A decade later, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II on February 13, 1992.
Bogarde won two Best Actor Awards out of six nominations from the British Academy of Film & Television Arts, for "The Servant" and "Darling" in 1964 and 1966, respectively. He was also nominated in 1962 for "Victim," in 1968 for "Accident" and Our Mother's House (1967) and in 1972 for "Morte a Venezia."
Bogarde suffered a stroke in 1996, and though it rendered him partially paralyzed, he was able to recover and live in his own flat in Chelsea. However, by May of 1998 he required around-the-clock nursing care, and he had his lawyers draw up a "living will," also known as a no-resuscitation order. Bogarde publicly came out in favor of voluntary euthanasia, becoming Vice President of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society. He publicly addressed the subject of his own "living will," which ordered that no extraordinary measures be taken to keep him alive should he become terminally ill.
The living will proved unnecessary. Dirk Bogarde died of a heart attack on May 8, 1999, in his home in Chelsea, London, England. According to his nephew Brock Van den Bogaerde, the family planned to hold a private funeral but no memorial service in accordance with his uncle's wish "just to forget me." Bogarde wanted to be cremated and have his ashes scattered in France, and accordingly, his remains were returned to Provence.
Margaret Hinxman, in her May 10, 1999, obituary in "The Guardian", said of him, "At his peak and with directors he trusted - Joseph Losey, Luchino Visconti and Alain Resnais - Dirk Bogarde . . . was probably the finest, most complete, actor on the screen."
Clive Fisher's obituary in "The Independent" on May 10, 1999, praised Bogarde as "a major figure because, wherever they were made, his finest films are all somehow about him. He was a great self-portraitist and the screen persona he fashioned, a stylization of his private being, not only dominated its surroundings but spoke subliminally and powerfully to British audiences about the tensions of the time, about connivances and cruel respectabilities of England in the Fifties and Sixties."
The secret of Dirk Bogarde's success as a great cinema actor was his intimate relationship with the camera. Bogarde believed that the key to acting on film was the eyes, specifically, the "look" of the actor. Like Alan Ladd, it didn't matter if an actor was good with line readings if they had mastery over the "look." For many critics and movie-goers at the end of the 20th century, Dirk Bogarde's face epitomized the "look" of Britain in the tumultuous decades after the Second World War.
David Tindle's portrait of Bogarde is part of the collection of London's National Portrait Gallery, London. In 1999, the portrait, on temporary loan, was displayed at 10 Downing Street, the Prime Minister's official residence, with other modern works of art. Officially, Dirk Bogarde had become the look of Britain.- Actor
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Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born in New York City, New York, to Maud Humphrey, a famed magazine illustrator and suffragette, and Belmont DeForest Bogart, a moderately wealthy surgeon (who was secretly addicted to opium). Bogart was educated at Trinity School, NYC, and was sent to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in preparation for medical studies at Yale. He was expelled from Phillips and joined the U.S. Naval Reserve. From 1920 to 1922, he managed a stage company owned by family friend William A. Brady (the father of actress Alice Brady), performing a variety of tasks at Brady's film studio in New York. He then began regular stage performances. Alexander Woollcott described his acting in a 1922 play as inadequate. In 1930, he gained a contract with Fox, his feature film debut in a ten-minute short, Broadway's Like That (1930), co-starring Ruth Etting and Joan Blondell. Fox released him after two years. After five years of stage and minor film roles, he had his breakthrough role in The Petrified Forest (1936) from Warner Bros. He won the part over Edward G. Robinson only after the star, Leslie Howard, threatened Warner Bros. that he would quit unless Bogart was given the key role of Duke Mantee, which he had played in the Broadway production with Howard. The film was a major success and led to a long-term contract with Warner Bros. From 1936 to 1940, Bogart appeared in 28 films, usually as a gangster, twice in Westerns and even a horror film. His landmark year was 1941 (often capitalizing on parts George Raft had stupidly rejected) with roles in classics such as High Sierra (1940) and as Sam Spade in one of his most fondly remembered films, The Maltese Falcon (1941). These were followed by Casablanca (1942), The Big Sleep (1946), and Key Largo (1948). Bogart, despite his erratic education, was incredibly well-read and he favored writers and intellectuals within his small circle of friends. In 1947, he joined wife Lauren Bacall and other actors protesting the House Un-American Activities Committee witch hunts. He also formed his own production company, and the next year made The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Bogie won the best actor Academy Award for The African Queen (1951) and was nominated for Casablanca (1942) and as Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny (1954), a film made when he was already seriously ill. He died in his sleep at his Hollywood home following surgeries and a battle with throat cancer.- Born in 1931 in Elkhart, Kansas as Earl C. Craver, he was the middle child of six born to Mabel Mae and Fred Francis Craver. He graduated from Elkhart High School then attended Wichita State University on a football scholarship. He married his wife Billie in 1954. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps for the Korean War, served in Korea and was awarded the Purple Heart. Following his service with the 1st Marine Division Craver was posted to the newly reformed 9th Marines at Camp Pendleton.
He joined the LAPD. (In Craver v. City of Los Angeles, 42 Cal. App. 3d 79-80 (1974), he applied unsuccessfully for a disability retirement pension.) In 1959, he issued a traffic citation to Robert Raison, a Hollywood agent and a friend of fellow agent Henry Willson. Impressed by Craver's 6'4" height, his 260 pound physique, his 52" chest and his 32" waist, Willson helped Craver jump start an acting career.
Bolder retired at the end of the 1960s and moved to Washington State, where he died from cancer in 2005, aged 73. He published a novel, "Last Reunion", under his real name, E. C. Craver. - Actor
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Ray Bolger was born Raymond Wallace Bolger on January 10, 1904 in Dorchester, Massachusetts, to Anne C. (Wallace) and James Edward Bolger, both Irish-Americans. Ray began his career in vaudeville. He was half of a team called "Sanford and Bolger" and also did numerous Broadway shows on his own. Like Gene Kelly, he was a song-and-dance man as well as an actor. He was signed to a contract with MGM and his first role was as himself in The Great Ziegfeld (1936). This was soon followed by a role opposite Eleanor Powell in the romantic comedy Rosalie (1937). His first dancing and singing role was in Sweethearts (1938), where he did the "wooden shoes" number with redheaded soprano/actress Jeanette MacDonald. This got him noticed by MGM producers and resulted in his being cast in his most famous role, the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz (1939).
Surprisingly, even though the film was a success, Bolger's contract with MGM ended. He went to RKO Radio Pictures to make the romantic comedy Four Jacks and a Jill (1942). After this, Bolger went to Broadway, where he received his greatest satisfaction. In 1953, he turned to television and received his own sitcom, Where's Raymond? (1953), later changed to "The Ray Bolger Show". After his series ended, Bolger guest starred on many television series such as Battlestar Galactica (1978) and Fantasy Island (1977), and had some small roles in movies. In 1985, he co-hosted the documentary film That's Dancing! (1985) with Liza Minnelli. Ray Bolger died of bladder cancer in Los Angeles, California on January 15, 1987, five days after his 83rd birthday.- Actor
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Gruff, burly American character actor. Born in 1903 in Benkelman, Nebraska (confirmed by Social Security records; sources stating 1905 or Denver, Colorado are in error.) Bond grew up in Denver, the son of a lumberyard worker. He attended the University of Southern California, where he got work as an extra through a football teammate who would become both his best friend and one of cinema's biggest stars: John Wayne. Director John Ford promoted Bond from extra to supporting player in the film Salute (1929), and became another fast friend. An arrogant man of little tact, yet fun-loving in the extreme, Bond was either loved or hated by all who knew him. His face and personality fit perfectly into almost any type of film, and he appeared in hundreds of pictures in his more than 30-year career, in both bit parts and major supporting roles. In the films of Wayne and Ford, particularly, he was nearly always present. Among his most memorable roles are John L. Sullivan in Gentleman Jim (1942), Det. Tom Polhaus in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and the Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnson Clayton The Searchers (1956). An ardent but anti-intellectual patriot, he was perhaps the most vehement proponent, among the Hollywood community, of blacklisting in the witch hunts of the 1950s, and he served as a most unforgiving president of the ultra-right-wing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. In the mid-'50s he gained his greatest fame as the star of TV's Wagon Train (1957). During its production, Bond traveled to Dallas, Texas, to attend a football game and died there in his hotel room of a massive heart attack.- Actor
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Richard Allen Boone was born in Los Angeles, California, to Cecile Lillian (Beckerman) and Kirk Etna Boone, a wealthy corporate lawyer. His maternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants, while his father was descended from a brother of frontiersmen Daniel Boone and Squire Boone.
Richard was a college student, boxer, painter and oil-field laborer before ending up in the U.S. Navy during World War II. After the war he used the G.I. Bill to study acting with the Actor's Studio in New York. Serious and methodical, Boone debuted on Broadway in the play "Medea". Other plays followed, as did occasional TV work. In 1950 20th Century-Fox signed him to a contract and he made his screen debut in Halls of Montezuma (1951), playing a Marine Corps officer. Tall and craggy, Boone was continually cast in a number of war and western movies. He also tackled roles such as Pontius Pilate in The Robe (1953) and a police detective in Vicki (1953). In 1954 he was cast as Dr. Konrad Styner in the pioneering medical series Medic (1954), which was a critical but not a ratings success. This role lasted for two years, though in the meantime, he continued to appear in westerns and war movies.
In 1957 he played Dr. Wright, who treats Elizabeth for her memory lapses, in Lizzie (1957). It was also in that year that Boone was cast in what is his best-known role, the cultured gunfighter Paladin in the highly regarded western series Have Gun - Will Travel (1957). Although a gun for hire, Paladin was usually a moral one, did the job and lived at the Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. Immensely popular, the show made Boone a star. The series lasted six years, and in addition to starring in it, Boone also directed some episodes. He still kept busy on the big screen during the series' run, appearing as Sam Houston in the John Wayne epic The Alamo (1960), and as a weary cavalry captain fighting Indians in A Thunder of Drums (1961). After Have Gun - Will Travel (1957) ended in 1963, Boone hosted a dramatic anthology series, The Richard Boone Show (1963), but it was not successful.
Boone moved to Hawaii for the next seven years. During this time he made a few Westerns, including the muscular Rio Conchos (1964), but he was largely absent from the screen. In the 1970s he moved to Florida, and resumed his film and TV career with a vengeance. In 1972 he again appeared on television in the Jack Webb-produced series Hec Ramsey (1972) (years before he had played a police captain in Webb's first "Dragnet" film, Dragnet (1954)). Based on a real man, Hec was a tough, grizzled old frontier sheriff at the turn of the 20th century who, late in life, has studied the newest scientific theories of crime detection. His new boss, a much younger man, doesn't always approve of Hec, his nonconformist style or his new methods. The series lasted for two years. Boone continued working until the end of the decade but died as a result of throat cancer in 1981.- Actor
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Stephen Boyd was born William Millar on July 4, 1931, at Glengormley, Northern Ireland, one of nine children of Martha Boyd and Canadian truck driver James Alexander Millar, who worked for Fleming's on Tomb Street in Belfast. He attended Glengormley & Ballyrobert primary school and then moved on to Ballyclare High School and studied bookkeeping at Hughes Commercial Academy. In Ireland he worked in an insurance office and travel agency during the day and rehearsed with a semi-professional acting company at night during the week and weekends. He would eventually manage to be on the list for professional acting companies to call him when they had a role. He joined the Ulster Theatre Group and was a leading man with that company for three years, playing all kinds of roles. He did quite a bit of radio work in between as well, but then decided it was distracting him from acting and completely surrendered to his passion. Eventually he went to London as an understudy in an Irish play, "The Passing Day."
In England he became very ill and was in and out of work, supplementing his acting assignments with odd jobs such as waiting in a cafeteria, doorman at the Odeon Theatre and even busking on the streets of London. Even as things turned for the worst, he would always write back to his mother that all was well and things were moving along so as not to alarm her in any way or make her worry. Sir Michael Redgrave discovered him one night at the Odeon Theatre and arranged an introduction to the Windsor Repertory Company. The Arts Council of Great Britain was looking for leading man and part-time director for the only major repertory company that was left in England, The Arts Council Midland Theatre Company, and he got the job. During his stay in England he went into television with the BBC, and for 18 months he was in every big play on TV. One of the major roles in his early career was the one in the play "Barnett's Folly," which he himself ranked as one of his favorites.
In 1956 he signed a seven-year contract with 20th Century-Fox. This led to his first film role, as an IRA member spying for the Nazis The Man Who Never Was (1956), a job he was offered by legendary producer Alexander Korda. William Wyler was so struck by Boyd's performance in that film that he asked Fox to loan him Boyd, resulting in his being cast in what is probably his most famous role, that of Messala in the classic Ben-Hur (1959) opposite Charlton Heston. He received a Golden Globe award for his work on that film but was surprisingly bypassed on Oscar night. Still under contract with Fox, Boyd waited around to play the role of Marc Anthony in Cleopatra (1963) opposite Elizabeth Taylor. However, Taylor became so seriously ill that the production was delayed for months, which caused Boyd and other actors to withdraw from the film and move on to other projects.
Boyd made several films under contract before going independent. One of the highlights was Fantastic Voyage (1966), a science-fiction film about a crew of scientists miniaturized and injected into the human body as if in inner space. He also received a nomination for his role of Insp. Jongman in Lisa (1962) (aka "The Inspector") co-starring with Dolores Hart.
Boyd's Hollywood career began to fade by the late 1960s as he started to spend more time in Europe, where he seemed to find better roles more suited to his interests. When he went independent it was obvious that he took on roles that spoke to him rather than just taking on assignments for the money, and several of the projects he undertook were, at the time, quite controversial, such as Slaves (1969) and Carter's Army (1970). Boyd chose his roles based solely on character development and the value of the story that was told to the public, and never based on monetary compensation or peer pressure.
Although at the height of his career he was considered one of Hollywood's leading men, he never forgot where he came from, and always reminded everyone that he was, first and foremost, an Irishman. When the money started coming in, one of the first things he did was to ensure that his family was taken care of. He was particularly close to his mother Martha and his brother Alex.
Boyd was married twice, the first time in 1958 to Italian-born MCA executive Mariella di Sarzana, but that only lasted (officially) during the filming of "Ben Hur." His second marriage was to Elizabeth Mills, secretary at the British Arts Council and a friend since 1955. Liz Mills followed Boyd to the US in the late 1950s and was his personal assistant and secretary for years before they married, about ten months before his death. He died on June 2, 1977, in Northridge, California, from a massive heart attack while playing golf - one of his favorite pastimes - at the Porter Valley Country Club. He is buried at Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth, California. It was a terrible loss, just as he seemed to be making a comeback with his recent roles in the series Hawaii Five-O (1968) and the English movie The Squeeze (1977).
It is a real tragedy to see that a man who was so passionate about his work, who wanted nothing but to tell a story with character, a man who was ahead of his time in many ways ended up being overlooked by many of his peers. One fact remains about Stephen Boyd, however--his fans are still passionate about his work to this day, almost 30 years after his death, and one has to wonder if he ever realized that perhaps in some way he achieved the goal he set out for himself: to entertain the public and draw attention to the true art of acting while maintaining glamour as he defined it by remaining himself a mystery.- Actor
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He had the manly good looks and rugged appeal to make it to top stardom in Hollywood and succeeded quite well as a sturdy leading man of standard action on film and TV. Born in Brooklyn on September 13, 1924, Irish-American Scott Brady was christened Gerard Kenneth Tierney (called Jerry) by parents Lawrence and Maria Tierney. His father, chief of New York's aqueduct police force, had always had show business intentions and later did print work after retiring from the force. Both Scott's older and younger brothers, Lawrence Tierney and Edward Tierney went on to become actors as well. Lawrence's promising film noir "bad guy" career was sabotaged by a severe drinking disorder that led to numerous skirmishes with the law. Scott himself faced a narcotics charge in 1957 (charges were dropped, Scott maintained that he was framed) and later (1963) was involved in illegal bookmaking activities. Fortunately, Scott was more cool-headed and wound up avoiding the pitfalls that befell his older brother, making a very lucrative living for himself in Hollywood throughout the 1950s and early 1960s.
Scott grew up in Westchester County and attended Roosevelt and St. Michael's High Schools. Like his older brother Lawrence, Scott he was an all-round athlete in school and earned letters for basketball, football and track and expressed early designs on becoming a football coach or radio announcer. Instead he enlisted before graduating from high school and served as a naval aviation mechanic overseas. During his term of duty he earned a light heavyweight boxing medal. He was discharged in 1946 and decided to head for Los Angeles where his older brother Lawrence was making encouraging strides as an actor. Toiling in menial jobs as a cabbie and day-time laborer, the handsome, blue-eyed looker was noticed having lunch in a café by producer Hal B. Wallis and offered a screen test. The test did not fare well but, not giving up, he enrolled in the Bliss-Hayden drama school under his G.I. Bill, studied acting, and managed to rid himself of his thick Brooklyn accent.
He signed with a minor league studio, Eagle-Lion, and made his debut of sorts in the poverty-row programmer In This Corner (1948) utilizing his boxing skills from his early days in the service. He showed more promise with his second and third films Canon City (1948) and He Walked by Night (1948), the latter as a detective who aids in nabbing psychotic killer Richard Basehart. Scott switched over to higher-grade action stories for Fox and Universal over time. Westerns and crime stories would be his bread-winning genres with The Gal Who Took the West (1949) opposite Yvonne De Carlo and John Russell and Undertow (1949), with Russell again, being prime examples. He frequently switched from hero to heavy during his peak years. In one film he would romance a Jeanne Crain in The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951) or a Mitzi Gaynor in Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952), while in the next beat Shelley Winters to a pulp in Untamed Frontier (1952). A favorite pin-up hunk in his early years, he hit minor cult status as a bad hombre, The Dancin' Kid, in the offbeat western Johnny Guitar (1954). He and the other manly men, however, were somewhat overshadowed in the movie by the Freudian-tinged gunplay between Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge. Other roles had him sturdily handling the action scenes while giving the glance over to such diverting female costars as Barbara Stanwyck, Mala Powers and Anne Bancroft.
Scott would mark the same territory in TV -- westerns and crimers -- finding steadier work on the smaller screen into the 1960s. He starred as the title hero in the western series Shotgun Slade (1959). Stage too was a sporadic source of income with such productions as "The Moon Is Blue", "Detective Story" and "Picnic" under his belt before making his Broadway bow as a slick card sharp opposite Andy Griffith in the short-lived musical "Destry Rides Again" in 1959. He later did the national company of the heavyweight political drama "The Best Man" with his portrayal of a senator.
The seemingly one-time confirmed bachelor decided to settle down after meeting and marrying Mary Tirony in 1967 at age 43. Prior to this he had been linked with such luminous beauties as Gwen Verdon and Dorothy Malone. The couple had two sons. Parts dwindled down in size in later years and he gained considerable weight as he grew older and balder, but he still appeared here-and-there as an occasional character heavy or hard-ass cop in less-important movies such as Doctors' Wives (1971), $ (1971), The Loners (1972) and Wicked, Wicked (1973). Minor TV roles in mini-movies also came his way at a fair pace. Towards the end he was seen in such high-profile big-screen movies as The China Syndrome (1979) and Gremlins (1984). Scott had a collapse in 1981 and was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive respiratory disease. He later relied on an oxygen tank. He died of the disease four years later and was interred at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.- Actor
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Marlon Brando is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all time, rivaled only by the more theatrically oriented Laurence Olivier in terms of esteem. Unlike Olivier, who preferred the stage to the screen, Brando concentrated his talents on movies after bidding the Broadway stage adieu in 1949, a decision for which he was severely criticized when his star began to dim in the 1960s and he was excoriated for squandering his talents. No actor ever exerted such a profound influence on succeeding generations of actors as did Brando. More than 50 years after he first scorched the screen as Stanley Kowalski in the movie version of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and a quarter-century after his last great performance as Col. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), all American actors are still being measured by the yardstick that was Brando. It was if the shadow of John Barrymore, the great American actor closest to Brando in terms of talent and stardom, dominated the acting field up until the 1970s. He did not, nor did any other actor so dominate the public's consciousness of what WAS an actor before or since Brando's 1951 on-screen portrayal of Stanley made him a cultural icon. Brando eclipsed the reputation of other great actors circa 1950, such as Paul Muni and Fredric March. Only the luster of Spencer Tracy's reputation hasn't dimmed when seen in the starlight thrown off by Brando. However, neither Tracy nor Olivier created an entire school of acting just by the force of his personality. Brando did.
Marlon Brando, Jr. was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Marlon Brando, Sr., a calcium carbonate salesman, and his artistically inclined wife, the former Dorothy Julia Pennebaker. "Bud" Brando was one of three children. His ancestry included English, Irish, German, Dutch, French Huguenot, Welsh, and Scottish; his surname originated with a distant German immigrant ancestor named "Brandau." His oldest sister Jocelyn Brando was also an actress, taking after their mother, who engaged in amateur theatricals and mentored a then-unknown Henry Fonda, another Nebraska native, in her role as director of the Omaha Community Playhouse. Frannie, Brando's other sibling, was a visual artist. Both Brando sisters contrived to leave the Midwest for New York City, Jocelyn to study acting and Frannie to study art. Marlon managed to escape the vocational doldrums forecast for him by his cold, distant father and his disapproving schoolteachers by striking out for The Big Apple in 1943, following Jocelyn into the acting profession. Acting was the only thing he was good at, for which he received praise, so he was determined to make it his career - a high-school dropout, he had nothing else to fall back on, having been rejected by the military due to a knee injury he incurred playing football at Shattuck Military Academy, Brando Sr.'s alma mater. The school booted Marlon out as incorrigible before graduation.
Acting was a skill he honed as a child, the lonely son of alcoholic parents. With his father away on the road, and his mother frequently intoxicated to the point of stupefaction, the young Bud would play-act for her to draw her out of her stupor and to attract her attention and love. His mother was exceedingly neglectful, but he loved her, particularly for instilling in him a love of nature, a feeling which informed his character Paul in Last Tango in Paris (1972) ("Last Tango in Paris") when he is recalling his childhood for his young lover Jeanne. "I don't have many good memories," Paul confesses, and neither did Brando of his childhood. Sometimes he had to go down to the town jail to pick up his mother after she had spent the night in the drunk tank and bring her home, events that traumatized the young boy but may have been the grain that irritated the oyster of his talent, producing the pearls of his performances. Anthony Quinn, his Oscar-winning co-star in Viva Zapata! (1952) told Brando's first wife Anna Kashfi, "I admire Marlon's talent, but I don't envy the pain that created it."
Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School, and was mentored by Stella Adler, a member of a famous Yiddish Theatre acting family. Adler helped introduce to the New York stage the "emotional memory" technique of Russian theatrical actor, director and impresario Konstantin Stanislavski, whose motto was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." The results of this meeting between an actor and the teacher preparing him for a life in the theater would mark a watershed in American acting and culture.
Brando made his debut on the boards of Broadway on October 19, 1944, in "I Remember Mama," a great success. As a young Broadway actor, Brando was invited by talent scouts from several different studios to screen-test for them, but he turned them down because he would not let himself be bound by the then-standard seven-year contract. Brando would make his film debut quite some time later in Fred Zinnemann's The Men (1950) for producer Stanley Kramer. Playing a paraplegic soldier, Brando brought new levels of realism to the screen, expanding on the verisimilitude brought to movies by Group Theatre alumni John Garfield, the predecessor closest to him in the raw power he projected on-screen. Ironically, it was Garfield whom producer Irene Mayer Selznick had chosen to play the lead in a new Tennessee Williams play she was about to produce, but negotiations broke down when Garfield demanded an ownership stake in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Burt Lancaster was next approached, but couldn't get out of a prior film commitment. Then director Elia Kazan suggested Brando, whom he had directed to great effect in Maxwell Anderson's play "Truckline Café," in which Brando co-starred with Karl Malden, who was to remain a close friend for the next 60 years.
During the production of "Truckline Café," Kazan had found that Brando's presence was so magnetic, he had to re-block the play to keep Marlon near other major characters' stage business, as the audience could not take its eyes off of him. For the scene where Brando's character re-enters the stage after killing his wife, Kazan placed him upstage-center, partially obscured by scenery, but where the audience could still see him as Karl Malden and others played out their scene within the café set. When he eventually entered the scene, crying, the effect was electric. A young Pauline Kael, arriving late to the play, had to avert her eyes when Brando made this entrance as she believed the young actor on stage was having a real-life conniption. She did not look back until her escort commented that the young man was a great actor.
The problem with casting Brando as Stanley was that he was much younger than the character as written by Williams. However, after a meeting between Brando and Williams, the playwright eagerly agreed that Brando would make an ideal Stanley. Williams believed that by casting a younger actor, the Neanderthalish Kowalski would evolve from being a vicious older man to someone whose unintentional cruelty can be attributed to his youthful ignorance. Brando ultimately was dissatisfied with his performance, though, saying he never was able to bring out the humor of the character, which was ironic as his characterization often drew laughs from the audience at the expense of Jessica Tandy's Blanche Dubois. During the out-of-town tryouts, Kazan realized that Brando's magnetism was attracting attention and audience sympathy away from Blanche to Stanley, which was not what the playwright intended. The audience's sympathy should be solely with Blanche, but many spectators were identifying with Stanley. Kazan queried Williams on the matter, broaching the idea of a slight rewrite to tip the scales back to more of a balance between Stanley and Blanche, but Williams demurred, smitten as he was by Brando, just like the preview audiences.
For his part, Brando believed that the audience sided with his Stanley because Jessica Tandy was too shrill. He thought Vivien Leigh, who played the part in the movie, was ideal, as she was not only a great beauty but she WAS Blanche Dubois, troubled as she was in her real life by mental illness and nymphomania. Brando's appearance as Stanley on stage and on screen revolutionized American acting by introducing "The Method" into American consciousness and culture. Method acting, rooted in Adler's study at the Moscow Art Theatre of Stanislavsky's theories that she subsequently introduced to the Group Theatre, was a more naturalistic style of performing, as it engendered a close identification of the actor with the character's emotions. Adler took first place among Brando's acting teachers, and socially she helped turn him from an unsophisticated Midwestern farm boy into a knowledgeable and cosmopolitan artist who one day would socialize with presidents.
Brando didn't like the term "The Method," which quickly became the prominent paradigm taught by such acting gurus as Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Brando denounced Strasberg in his autobiography "Songs My Mother Taught Me" (1994), saying that he was a talentless exploiter who claimed he had been Brando's mentor. The Actors Studio had been founded by Strasberg along with Kazan and Stella Adler's husband, Harold Clurman, all Group Theatre alumni, all political progressives deeply committed to the didactic function of the stage. Brando credits his knowledge of the craft to Adler and Kazan, while Kazan in his autobiography "A Life" claimed that Brando's genius thrived due to the thorough training Adler had given him. Adler's method emphasized that authenticity in acting is achieved by drawing on inner reality to expose deep emotional experience
Interestingly, Elia Kazan believed that Brando had ruined two generations of actors, his contemporaries and those who came after him, all wanting to emulate the great Brando by employing The Method. Kazan felt that Brando was never a Method actor, that he had been highly trained by Adler and did not rely on gut instincts for his performances, as was commonly believed. Many a young actor, mistaken about the true roots of Brando's genius, thought that all it took was to find a character's motivation, empathize with the character through sense and memory association, and regurgitate it all on stage to become the character. That's not how the superbly trained Brando did it; he could, for example, play accents, whereas your average American Method actor could not. There was a method to Brando's art, Kazan felt, but it was not The Method.
After A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), for which he received the first of his eight Academy Award nominations, Brando appeared in a string of Academy Award-nominated performances - in Viva Zapata! (1952), Julius Caesar (1953) and the summit of his early career, Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954). For his "Waterfront" portrayal of meat-headed longshoreman Terry Malloy, the washed-up pug who "coulda been a contender," Brando won his first Oscar. Along with his iconic performance as the rebel-without-a-cause Johnny in The Wild One (1953) ("What are you rebelling against?" Johnny is asked. "What have ya got?" is his reply), the first wave of his career was, according to Jon Voight, unprecedented in its audacious presentation of such a wide range of great acting. Director John Huston said his performance of Marc Antony was like seeing the door of a furnace opened in a dark room, and co-star John Gielgud, the premier Shakespearean actor of the 20th century, invited Brando to join his repertory company.
It was this period of 1951-54 that revolutionized American acting, spawning such imitators as James Dean - who modeled his acting and even his lifestyle on his hero Brando - the young Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. After Brando, every up-and-coming star with true acting talent and a brooding, alienated quality would be hailed as the "New Brando," such as Warren Beatty in Kazan's Splendor in the Grass (1961). "We are all Brando's children," Jack Nicholson pointed out in 1972. "He gave us our freedom." He was truly "The Godfather" of American acting - and he was just 30 years old. Though he had a couple of failures, like Désirée (1954) and The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), he was clearly miscast in them and hadn't sought out the parts so largely escaped blame.
In the second period of his career, 1955-62, Brando managed to uniquely establish himself as a great actor who also was a Top 10 movie star, although that star began to dim after the box-office high point of his early career, Sayonara (1957) (for which he received his fifth Best Actor Oscar nomination). Brando tried his hand at directing a film, the well-reviewed One-Eyed Jacks (1961) that he made for his own production company, Pennebaker Productions (after his mother's maiden name). Stanley Kubrick had been hired to direct the film, but after months of script rewrites in which Brando participated, Kubrick and Brando had a falling out and Kubrick was sacked. According to his widow Christiane Kubrick, Stanley believed that Brando had wanted to direct the film himself all along.
Tales proliferated about the profligacy of Brando the director, burning up a million and a half feet of expensive VistaVision film at 50 cents a foot, fully ten times the normal amount of raw stock expended during production of an equivalent motion picture. Brando took so long editing the film that he was never able to present the studio with a cut. Paramount took it away from him and tacked on a re-shot ending that Brando was dissatisfied with, as it made the Oedipal figure of Dad Longworth into a villain. In any normal film Dad would have been the heavy, but Brando believed that no one was innately evil, that it was a matter of an individual responding to, and being molded by, one's environment. It was not a black-and-white world, Brando felt, but a gray world in which once-decent people could do horrible things. This attitude explains his sympathetic portrayal of Nazi officer Christian Diestl in the film he made before shooting One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Edward Dmytryk's filming of Irwin Shaw's novel The Young Lions (1958). Shaw denounced Brando's performance, but audiences obviously disagreed, as the film was a major hit. It would be the last hit movie Brando would have for more than a decade.
One-Eyed Jacks (1961) generated respectable numbers at the box office, but the production costs were exorbitant - a then-staggering $6 million - which made it run a deficit. A film essentially is "made" in the editing room, and Brando found cutting to be a terribly boring process, which was why the studio eventually took the film away from him. Despite his proved talent in handling actors and a large production, Brando never again directed another film, though he would claim that all actors essentially direct themselves during the shooting of a picture.
Between the production and release of One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Brando appeared in Sidney Lumet's film version of Tennessee Williams' play "Orpheus Descending," The Fugitive Kind (1960) which teamed him with fellow Oscar winners Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward. Following in Elizabeth Taylor's trailblazing footsteps, Brando became the second performer to receive a $1-million salary for a motion picture, so high were the expectations for this re-teaming of Kowalski and his creator (in 1961 critic Hollis Alpert had published a book "Brando and the Shadow of Stanley Kowalski"). Critics and audiences waiting for another incendiary display from Brando in a Williams work were disappointed when the renamed The Fugitive Kind (1960) finally released. Though Tennessee was hot, with movie versions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) burning up the box office and receiving kudos from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, The Fugitive Kind (1960) was a failure. This was followed by the so-so box-office reception of One-Eyed Jacks (1961) in 1961 and then by a failure of a more monumental kind: Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), a remake of the famed 1935 film.
Brando signed on to Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) after turning down the lead in the David Lean classic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) because he didn't want to spend a year in the desert riding around on a camel. He received another $1-million salary, plus $200,000 in overages as the shoot went overtime and over budget. During principal photography, highly respected director Carol Reed (an eventual Academy Award winner) was fired, and his replacement, two-time Oscar winner Lewis Milestone, was shunted aside by Brando as Marlon basically took over the direction of the film himself. The long shoot became so notorious that President John F. Kennedy asked director Billy Wilder at a cocktail party not "when" but "if" the "Bounty" shoot would ever be over. The MGM remake of one of its classic Golden Age films garnered a Best Picture Oscar nomination and was one of the top grossing films of 1962, yet failed to go into the black due to its Brobdingnagian budget estimated at $20 million, which is equivalent to $120 million when adjusted for inflation.
Brando and Taylor, whose Cleopatra (1963) nearly bankrupted 20th Century-Fox due to its huge cost overruns (its final budget was more than twice that of Brando's Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)), were pilloried by the show business press for being the epitome of the pampered, self-indulgent stars who were ruining the industry. Seeking scapegoats, the Hollywood press conveniently ignored the financial pressures on the studios. The studios had been hurt by television and by the antitrust-mandated divestiture of their movie theater chains, causing a large outflow of production to Italy and other countries in the 1950s and 1960s in order to lower costs. The studio bosses, seeking to replicate such blockbuster hits as the remakes of The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben-Hur (1959), were the real culprits behind the losses generated by large-budgeted films that found it impossible to recoup their costs despite long lines at the box office.
While Elizabeth Taylor, receiving the unwanted gift of reams of publicity from her adulterous romance with Cleopatra (1963) co-star Richard Burton, remained hot until the tanking of her own Tennessee Williams-renamed debacle Boom! (1968), Brando from 1963 until the end of the decade appeared in one box-office failure after another as he worked out a contract he had signed with Universal Pictures. The industry had grown tired of Brando and his idiosyncrasies, though he continued to be offered prestige projects up through 1968.
Some of the films Brando made in the 1960s were noble failures, such as The Ugly American (1963), The Appaloosa (1966) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). For every "Reflections," though, there seemed to be two or three outright debacles, such as Bedtime Story (1964), Morituri (1965), The Chase (1966), A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), Candy (1968), The Night of the Following Day (1969). By the time Brando began making the anti-colonialist picture Burn! (1969) in Colombia with Gillo Pontecorvo in the director's chair, he was box-office poison, despite having worked in the previous five years with such top directors as Arthur Penn, John Huston and the legendary Charles Chaplin, and with such top-drawer co-stars as David Niven, Yul Brynner, Sophia Loren and Taylor.
The rap on Brando in the 1960s was that a great talent had ruined his potential to be America's answer to Laurence Olivier, as his friend William Redfield limned the dilemma in his book "Letters from an Actor" (1967), a memoir about Redfield's appearance in Burton's 1964 theatrical production of "Hamlet." By failing to go back on stage and recharge his artistic batteries, something British actors such as Burton were not afraid to do, Brando had stifled his great talent, by refusing to tackle the classical repertoire and contemporary drama. Actors and critics had yearned for an American response to the high-acting style of the Brits, and while Method actors such as Rod Steiger tried to create an American style, they were hampered in their quest, as their king was lost in a wasteland of Hollywood movies that were beneath his talent. Many of his early supporters now turned on him, claiming he was a crass sellout.
Despite evidence in such films as The Appaloosa (1966) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) that Brando was in fact doing some of the best acting of his life, critics, perhaps with an eye on the box office, slammed him for failing to live up to, and nurture, his great gift. Brando's political activism, starting in the early 1960s with his championing of Native Americans' rights, followed by his participation in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's March on Washington in 1963, and followed by his appearance at a Black Panther rally in 1968, did not win him many admirers in the establishment. In fact, there was a de facto embargo on Brando films in the recently segregated (officially, at least) southeastern US in the 1960s. Southern exhibitors simply would not book his films, and producers took notice. After 1968, Brando would not work for three years.
Pauline Kael wrote of Brando that he was Fortune's fool. She drew a parallel with the latter career of John Barrymore, a similarly gifted thespian with talents as prodigious, who seemingly threw them away. Brando, like the late-career Barrymore, had become a great ham, evidenced by his turn as the faux Indian guru in the egregious Candy (1968), seemingly because the material was so beneath his talent. Most observers of Brando in the 1960s believed that he needed to be reunited with his old mentor Elia Kazan, a relationship that had soured due to Kazan's friendly testimony naming names before the notorious House un-American Activities Committee. Perhaps Brando believed this, too, as he originally accepted an offer to appear as the star of Kazan's film adaptation of his own novel, The Arrangement (1969). However, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Brando backed out of the film, telling Kazan that he could not appear in a Hollywood film after this tragedy. Also reportedly turning down a role opposite box-office king Paul Newman in a surefire script, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Brando decided to make Burn! (1969) with Pontecorvo. The film, a searing indictment of racism and colonialism, flopped at the box office but won the esteem of progressive critics and cultural arbiters such as Howard Zinn. He subsequently appeared in the British film The Nightcomers (1971), a prequel to "Turn of the Screw" and another critical and box office failure.
Kazan, after a life in film and the theater, said that, aside from Orson Welles, whose greatness lay in film making, he only met one actor who was a genius: Brando. Richard Burton, an intellectual with a keen eye for observation if not for his own film projects, said that he found Brando to be very bright, unlike the public perception of him as a Terry Malloy-type character that he himself inadvertently promoted through his boorish behavior. Brando's problem, Burton felt, was that he was unique, and that he had gotten too much fame too soon at too early an age. Cut off from being nurtured by normal contact with society, fame had distorted Brando's personality and his ability to cope with the world, as he had not had time to grow up outside the limelight.
Truman Capote, who eviscerated Brando in print in the mid-'50s and had as much to do with the public perception of the dyslexic Brando as a dumbbell, always said that the best actors were ignorant, and that an intelligent person could not be a good actor. However, Brando was highly intelligent, and possessed of a rare genius in a then-deprecated art, acting. The problem that an intelligent performer has in movies is that it is the director, and not the actor, who has the power in his chosen field. Greatness in the other arts is defined by how much control the artist is able to exert over his chosen medium, but in movie acting, the medium is controlled by a person outside the individual artist. It is an axiom of the cinema that a performance, as is a film, is "created" in the cutting room, thus further removing the actor from control over his art. Brando had tried his hand at directing, in controlling the whole artistic enterprise, but he could not abide the cutting room, where a film and the film's performances are made. This lack of control over his art was the root of Brando's discontent with acting, with movies, and, eventually, with the whole wide world that invested so much cachet in movie actors, as long as "they" were at the top of the box-office charts. Hollywood was a matter of "they" and not the work, and Brando became disgusted.
Charlton Heston, who participated in Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington with Brando, believes that Marlon was the great actor of his generation. However, noting a story that Brando had once refused a role in the early 1960s with the excuse "How can I act when people are starving in India?," Heston believes that it was this attitude, the inability to separate one's idealism from one's work, that prevented Brando from reaching his potential. As Rod Steiger once said, Brando had it all, great stardom and a great talent. He could have taken his audience on a trip to the stars, but he simply would not. Steiger, one of Brando's children even though a contemporary, could not understand it. When James Mason' was asked in 1971 who was the best American actor, he had replied that since Brando had let his career go belly-up, it had to be George C. Scott, by default.
Paramount thought that only Laurence Olivier would suffice, but Lord Olivier was ill. The young director believed there was only one actor who could play godfather to the group of Young Turk actors he had assembled for his film, The Godfather of method acting himself - Marlon Brando. Francis Ford Coppola won the fight for Brando, Brando won - and refused - his second Oscar, and Paramount won a pot of gold by producing the then top-grossing film of all-time, The Godfather (1972), a gangster movie most critics now judge one of the greatest American films of all time. Brando followed his iconic portrayal of Don Corleone with his Oscar-nominated turn in the high-grossing and highly scandalous Last Tango in Paris (1972) ("Last Tango in Paris"), the first film dealing explicitly with sexuality in which an actor of Brando's stature had participated. He was now again a top ten box office star and once again heralded as the greatest actor of his generation, an unprecedented comeback that put him on the cover of "Time" magazine and would make him the highest-paid actor in the history of motion pictures by the end of the decade. Little did the world know that Brando, who had struggled through many projects in good faith during the 1960s, delivering some of his best acting, only to be excoriated and ignored as the films did not do well at the box office, essentially was through with the movies.
After reaching the summit of his career, a rarefied atmosphere never reached before or since by any actor, Brando essentially walked away. He would give no more of himself after giving everything as he had done in Last Tango in Paris (1972)," a performance that embarrassed him, according to his autobiography. Brando had come as close to any actor to being the "auteur," or author, of a film, as the English-language scenes of "Tango" were created by encouraging Brando to improvise. The improvisations were written down and turned into a shooting script, and the scripted improvisations were shot the next day. Pauline Kael, the Brando of movie critics in that she was the most influential arbiter of cinematic quality of her generation and spawned a whole legion of Kael wannabes, said Brando's performance in Last Tango in Paris (1972) had revolutionized the art of film. Brando, who had to act to gain his mother's attention; Brando, who believed acting at best was nothing special as everyone in the world engaged in it every day of their lives to get what they wanted from other people; Brando, who believed acting at its worst was a childish charade and that movie stardom was a whorish fraud, would have agreed with Sam Peckinpah's summation of Pauline Kael: "Pauline's a brilliant critic but sometimes she's just cracking walnuts with her ass." He probably would have done so in a simulacrum of those words, too.
After another three-year hiatus, Brando took on just one more major role for the next 20 years, as the bounty hunter after Jack Nicholson in Arthur Penn's The Missouri Breaks (1976), a western that succeeded neither with the critics or at the box office. Following The Godfather and Tango, Brando's performance was disappointing for some reviewers, who accused him of giving an erratic and inconsistent performance. In 1977, Brando made a rare appearance on television in the miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979), portraying George Lincoln Rockwell; he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance. In 1978, he narrated the English version of Raoni (1978), a French-Belgian documentary film directed by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux and Luiz Carlos Saldanha that focused on the life of Raoni Metuktire and issues surrounding the survival of the indigenous Indian tribes of north central Brazil.
Later in his career, Brando concentrated on extracting the maximum amount of capital for the least amount of work from producers, as when he got the Salkind brothers to pony up a then-record $3.7 million against 10% of the gross for 13 days work on Superman (1978). Factoring in inflation, the straight salary for "Superman" equals or exceeds the new record of $1 million a day Harrison Ford set with K-19: The Widowmaker (2002). He agreed to the role only on assurance that he would be paid a large sum for what amounted to a small part, that he would not have to read the script beforehand, and his lines would be displayed somewhere off-camera. Brando also filmed scenes for the movie's sequel, Superman II, but after producers refused to pay him the same percentage he received for the first movie, he denied them permission to use the footage.
Before cashing his first paycheck for Superman (1978), Brando had picked up $2 million for his extended cameo in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) in a role, that of Col. Kurtz, that he authored on-camera through improvisation while Coppola shot take after take. It was Brando's last bravura star performance. He co-starred with George C. Scott and John Gielgud in The Formula (1980), but the film was another critical and financial failure. Years later though, he did receive an eighth and final Oscar nomination for his supporting role in A Dry White Season (1989) after coming out of a near-decade-long retirement. Contrary to those who claimed he now only was in it for the money, Brando donated his entire seven-figure salary to an anti-apartheid charity. He then did an amusing performance in the comedy The Freshman (1990), winning rave reviews. He portrayed Tomas de Torquemada in the historical drama 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), but his performance was denounced and the film was another box office failure. He made another comeback in the Johnny Depp romantic drama Don Juan DeMarco (1994), which co-starred Faye Dunaway as his wife. He then appeared in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), co-starring Val Kilmer, who he didn't get along with. The filming was an unpleasant experience for Brando, as well as another critical and box office failure.
Brando had first attracted media attention at the age of 24, when "Life" magazine ran a photo of himself and his sister Jocelyn, who were both then appearing on Broadway. The curiosity continued, and snowballed. Playing the paraplegic soldier of The Men (1950), Brando had gone to live at a Veterans Administration hospital with actual disabled veterans, and confined himself to a wheelchair for weeks. It was an acting method, research, that no one in Hollywood had ever heard of before, and that willingness to experience life.- Actor
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Rossano Brazzi was an Italian stage and film actor. He was married to Lydia Brazzi until her death, and to Ilse Fischer, his second wife, until his death.
He's most familiar to English-speaking audiences for his role as Emile De Becque in South Pacific (1958), playing opposite Mitzi Gaynor.
He died in Rome of complications following a neural virus, on December 24, 1994.- Breck was born Joseph Peter Breck, the son of a jazz musician also named Joseph (nicknamed "Jobie"). Over time, his father worked with such legendary greats as Fats Waller, Bix Beiderbecke, Paul Whiteman and Billie Holiday. Nicknamed "Buddy" while young, Peter's parents were on the road for much of his early life and he was sent to live with his grandparents in Haverhill, Massachusetts, a move that provided more stability.
His parents eventually divorced and young Peter returned to Rochester to live with his mother and her new husband, Al Weber, who was a sports editor of the Rochester Times-Union. Following his schooling at John Marshall High School in Rochester, Peter served in the United States Navy. He then turned his attention back to education and studied English and drama at the University of Houston in Houston. While performing in college plays, he started to apprentice at Houston's Alley Theatre, where he appeared in such productions as "Stalag 17", among others. He had a talent for singing and performed in several clubs in and around the Houston area.
Breck extended his stage resume at Washington D.C.'s Arena Theatre. While performing there in a 1957 production of George Bernard Shaw's "The Man of Destiny", he was "discovered" by Robert Mitchum, who cast him in an unbilled role in the film Thunder Road (1958), which Mitchum himself produced, co-wrote and starred in. Mitchum invited the young tenderfoot to Los Angeles and helped set him up out there. While Breck struggled trying to establish himself in films (he played a juvenile delinquent in the movie The Beatniks (1958)), it seemed that rugged TV roles came easier to him. He found his first series lead as "Clay Culhane" in the western Black Saddle (1959), the story of a gunfighter (Breck) who switches guns for law books and tries to tame the West through reason. Co-starring Russell Johnson (later the "Professor" on Gilligan's Island (1964)), who plays a suspicious U.S. Marshal, the series was canceled after two seasons.
A Warner Brothers studio contract, however, did come out of this-and a new visibility. Tall, dark and handsome at 6'2", Breck guest-starred on all the top Warner Bros. TV shows of the day: Sugarfoot (1957), Surfside 6 (1960), Bronco (1958), Hawaiian Eye (1959), 77 Sunset Strip (1958), Cheyenne (1955) and played a recurring "Doc Holliday" in the popular series Maverick (1957). He returned to the movies as well, but this time in stronger leads or co-leads. Handed a choice co-starring assignment in Portrait of a Mobster (1961) opposite star Vic Morrow, who played the infamous "Dutch Schultz", Peter also managed to show a rare, gentler side in the outdoor family drama Lad: A Dog (1962).
He left Warners after only a few years but managed to score the leads in two low-budget cult thrillers in its wake: Shock Corridor (1963)_ and The Crawling Hand (1963), along with a very dismal lead in the musical outing Hootenanny Hoot (1963), in which he was given no songs to perform despite his singing capabilities. Again, TV came to the rescue when he won the brotherly co-lead on The Big Valley (1965). Despite a uniformly strong ensemble cast that included oldest brother Richard Long, younger brother Lee Majors and sister Linda Evans, Stanwyck was the only performer on the show who was nominated for an Emmy during its four-season run; she was nominated twice and won once.
Following this TV peak, Breck abruptly left Hollywood and focused on the theater both in the U.S. and Canada throughout the 1970s, appearing in such showcase vehicles as "The Gazebo", "A Thousand Clowns", "The Rainmaker" and "Mister Roberts". Married to former dancer Diana Bourne since 1960, the couple settled in Vancouver, Canada, with their son Christopher, where Breck checked out the film scene. He also set up a full-time acting academy school, The Breck Academy, which ran for ten years. Tragically, it was during this time that their son, Christopher, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and died (two years later).
Breck decided to lay back following this traumatic period, but still manages to perform in films and TV from time to time. As he grew older, he joined the cast of some very offbeat "B" films: Terminal City Ricochet (1990) and and Highway 61 (1991). His more recent "B" movies included Decoy (1995), Enemy Action (1999) and Jiminy Glick in Lalawood (2004). He also wrote a western column and showed up occasionally at nostalgia conventions until he was diagnosed with dementia. He made his last film with a small role in the Martin Short vehicle Jiminy Glick in Lalawood (2004). Breck died on February 6, 2012, in Vancouver, Canada. - Actor
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The favorite leading man of star Bette Davis was born George Brendan Nolan in Ballinasloe, County Galway, Ireland (although his place of birth has also been variosuly given as Raharabeg, County Roscommon and Shannonbridge, County Offaly). He was the youngest of five children born to shopkeeper John J. Nolan and Mary (McGuinness) Nolan, who lived on Main Street in Ballinasloe. His parents separated, making him an orphan from the tender age of eleven. From 1915, he lived with maternal relatives in New York until he was old enough to earn money. To make ends meet, he briefly became a sheep herder and even crossed the Atlantic to find work in the gold fields of South Africa.
George eventually returned to Ireland to study at the University of Dublin. By 1921, he had become -- despite his paternal ancestors' service in the British Army -- a despatch courier for Irish Republican Army guerrilla leader Michael Collins during the "The Troubles". At his time he was hunted by the Black and Tans with a bounty on his head. Goerge had, by then, developed an interest in acting and (partly to cover up his nightly activities for Sinn Fein) joined the Abbey Theatre Players. Tipped off by a double agent to his imminent arrest by British soldiers, he went into hiding and later skipped town. His return to acting was necessitated by the need for a sustainable source of income. By August 1921, he had returned to the U.S. via Canada.
Back in New York four years later, he toured with the hit play 'Abie's Irish Rose' and then with stock companies in Colorado, Florida, and Massachusetts, appearing in the ensemble cast of 'The Nightingale' on Broadway' (1927). Another three years on, George co-starred (with Alice Brady and Clark Gable) in the short-lived play 'Love, Honor and Betray'.
He worked in Hollywood from 1930, initially playing farmers, doctors and partner of Rin Tin Tin, before Warner Brothers finally recognised his potential as a handsome leading man for some of their more temperamental female stars. One of those was Ruth Chatterton who picked him to play opposite her in The Rich Are Always with Us (1932). This was the first of four films he made with the actress, whom he eventually married. They divorced after just two years. A specialist in dapper, sophisticated gentlemen, George gave reliable support to such stars as Greta Garbo, Hedy Lamarr, Barbara Stanwyck, and Bette Davis (with whom he appeared in 11 films). However, he could rarely be described as dynamic. In his own words, all a good leading man needed 'was a good haircut since an audience was only ever likely to see the back of his head'. On the other hand, he was able to accumulate six marriages, among his wives another Warner Brothers star (Ann Sheridan).
At his best opposite Davis (with whom he had an affair), the two appeared in 11 films together, including Front Page Woman (1935), Dark Victory (1939), The Old Maid (1939), and The Rains Came (1939). When lead roles became scarce, he appeared against type as the maniacal murderer in the Robert Siodmak-directed thriller The Spiral Staircase (1946). Following that, there were several B-movies on both sides of the Atlantic, after which Brent retired from acting to concentrate on breeding race horses. He died of emphysema in 1979, aged 75.- Actor
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The refined and debonair English actor Jeremy Brett will forever be best remembered for his long-running and critically acclaimed portrayal of Sherlock Holmes for Britain's Granada Television. From a privileged background, Brett was educated at England's most prestigious independent school, Eton College. After training as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, Brett made his professional stage debut in repertory in 1954. He became a noteworthy classical actor who was to make regular appearances on stage, including many with the National Theatre.
Brett was as cultured off screen as on. His interests included classical music, archery and horseback riding. His greatest popularity and acclaim would come with his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes on television from the 1980s through to the 1990s. Where so many have tried and failed to capture the essence of the character, either being derided or forgotten, Brett's widely praised take on it has been described by many as superlative and even definitive. Brett suffered from poor health towards the end of his life but he was still playing the role of Holmes shortly before his death in 1995 at the age of 61.- Actor
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The star of many land and underwater adventures, Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Jr. was born on January 15, 1913 in San Leandro, California, to Harriet Evelyn (Brown) and Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Sr., who owned a movie theater and also worked in the hotel business. He grew up in various Northern California towns. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, but young Lloyd's interests turned to acting while at the University of California at Los Angeles. (Dorothy Dean Bridges, Bridges' wife of more than 50 years, was one of his UCLA classmates, and appeared opposite him in a romantic play called "March Hares.") He later worked on the Broadway stage, helped to found an off-Broadway theater, and acted, produced and directed at Green Mans ions, a theater in the Catskills. Bridges made his first films in 1936, and went under contract to Columbia in 1941. Allegations that Bridges had been involved with the Communist Party threatened to derail his career in the early 1950s, but he resumed work after testifying as a cooperative witness before the House Un-American Activities, admitting his past party membership and recanting. Making the transition to television, Bridges became a small screen star of giant proportions by starring in Sea Hunt (1958), the country's most successful syndicated series. Trouper Bridges worked right to the end, winning even more new fans with his spoofy portrayals in the movies Airplane! (1980) and Hot Shots! (1991), and their respective sequels. Lloyd Bridges died at age 85 of natural causes on March 10, 1998.- Director
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Burt Brinckerhoff was born on 25 October 1936 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He is a director and producer, known for Lou Grant (1977), The ABC Afternoon Playbreak (1972) and Remington Steele (1982).- Primarily known as a "B" movie bad guy of hundreds of films, husky actor Steve Brodie was born John Daugherty Stephens on November 25, 1919, in El Dorado, Kansas. Raised in Wichita, he dropped out of school and raced cars, boxed and worked on oil rigs to get by. He initially entertained a criminal law career but that interest quickly wore off after having to toil as a property boy.
A passion for acting then was instigated and Brodie found early work in summer stock. Changing his stage name to "Steve Brodie", a move to New York did not pay off but a subsequent move to Los Angeles did. He broke into films after being spotted by an MGM talent scout in a Hollywood theatre production entitled "Money Girls". Loaned out for his first film, Universal's Ladies Courageous (1944), Brodie appeared in a few tough-guy bit parts in such MGM films as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), The Clock (1945) and Anchors Aweigh (1945) before he was dropped. It wasn't long before he was signed by RKO and it was with studio that his reputation as a heavy in westerns grew, with such roles as notorious outlaws Bob Dalton in Badman's Territory (1946) and Cole Younger in Return of the Bad Men (1948). In between those two pictures were strong roles in three film noir classics: Desperate (1947) (leading good guy), Crossfire (1947) and Out of the Past (1947) (both supporting baddies).
A hard-living, hard-drinking actor, Brodie married "B" actress Lois Andrews in 1946 but the couple divorced four years later, not long after appearing together in the western programmer Rustlers (1949). He married Barbara Savitt--the widow of bandleader Jan Savitt--in September of 1950 and the union produced son Kevin Brodie two years later (Kevin later became a producer/director). Steve's second marriage lasted until 1966.
Interest in Brodie eventually waned at the studio and his contract was not renewed. Freelancing elsewhere, he appeared as a lead in Rose of the Yukon (1949) and another classic film noir, Armored Car Robbery (1950), and also earned good parts in Home of the Brave (1949), The Steel Helmet (1951) and Lady in the Iron Mask (1952) (as the Musketeer Athos). Most of his post-RKO film work, however, would be in low-budgeters: I Cheated the Law (1949), The Great Plane Robbery (1950), Army Bound (1952), The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Donovan's Brain (1953) and Under Fire (1957). He also appeared as the hero's nemesis in several Tim Holt / Richard Martin westerns, including The Arizona Ranger (1948), Guns of Hate (1948) and Brothers in the Saddle (1949). In the late 1950s he had leads in the "C"-level films Spy in the Sky! (1958), Arson for Hire (1959) and Here Come the Jets (1959).
A familiar presence on 1950s and 1960s TV, he worked on such crime series as Public Defender (1954), Hawaiian Eye (1959), Surfside 6 (1960), Perry Mason (1957), Burke's Law (1963) and such western series as The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955) (recurring part), The Lone Ranger (1949), Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1951), Laramie (1959), Sugarfoot (1957), Maverick (1957), Rawhide (1959), Gunsmoke (1955) and comedies including The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952), _"The Beverly Hillbillies" (1962)_ (qav). He also appeared in a touring production of "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial" starring Paul Douglas and Wendell Corey. The company ended abruptly when the liberal-minded Douglas, in a North Carolina interview, strongly criticized the conservative state and the resulting backlash forced the production's closure.
Brodie's later years were marred by drinking arrests. In the 1970s he made sporadic appearances, including a lead in the campy low-budget horror film The Giant Spider Invasion (1975) opposite Barbara Hale and a part in Delta Pi (1984) [aka "Mugsy's Girls"], which was written, produced and directed by son Kevin and was also his last film. He also provided voice work in commercials and showed up at nostalgia conventions, including The Knoxville Western Film Fair in 1991, less than a year before his death.
In 1973 Brodie married a third time, to Virginia Hefner, and they had a son Sean. Suffering from esophageal cancer and heart problems, Brodie died at age 72 on January 9, 1992, at a West Hills, California, hospital. - The name may be hard-pressed to anyone but the most devoted film buffs, but dark-haired actor John Bromfield was a "B"-level leading man during the late 1950s. Possessed with a fine build and square-faced handsomeness, he was somewhat of a blend between Steve Cochran and Rory Calhoun, both 1950s hunks. During his heyday, John headlined a handful of mediocre sci-fi programmers, melodramas and westerns and was often seen in skimpy outfits (especially a swim suit) that showed off his fine physique. Born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1922 and christened Farron Bromfield, his strong athleticism and good looks were not lost on the picture business. By age 26 he was in Hollywood and a contractee of Paramount. His first feature film came in the form of a small role in the Barbara Stanwyck/Burt Lancaster film noir tingler Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) for Paramount. Following the minor documentary/adventure Harpoon (1948) at Paramount, he made his third film, Rope of Sand (1949). There he met his first wife, the delectable French actress Corinne Calvet, who was a co-star on the film and just starting to create an international stir. The couple married shortly after completing the film in 1948. The pairing proved beneficial for Bromfield and his career but the marriage itself lasted only five years. A featured performer in the early 1950s, he earned leading man status by 1955, but it was a very brief tenure. The pictures themselves were hardly the talk of the town, including The Big Bluff (1955), Frontier Gambler (1956), Three Bad Sisters (1956), Quincannon, Frontier Scout (1956), Manfish (1956) and Hot Cars (1956), and most of them fell by the wasteside. One of his films, however, managed to earn sci-fi "cult" status -- Revenge of the Creature (1955). At around this time he fell for dancer Larri Thomas while on the set of Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956) and married her shortly after filming. Following his last movie (and 20th feature) in Crime Against Joe (1956) with sultry singer Julie London, he switched mediums and corralled the title role (and mild stardom) in the syndicated TV western series The Sheriff of Cochise (1956), which was later retitled "U.S. Marshal" during its third season. In 1959, his second marriage ended after only 3 years and his western series soon bit the dust as well. Unfulfilled with his life as an actor, John abruptly retired in 1960, finding renewed interest as a commercial fisherman. A hunting enthusiast most his life, he was an emcee at Chicago's annual Sportsman's Show in the 1980s. Not much else was heard until his recent passing from kidney failure on September 18, 2005, at the age of 83. He is survived by his third wife.
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After passing his screen test, Rand Brooks played a bit role in the 1938 film Love Finds a Way. He then found several other roles before landing the part of Charles Hamilton in Gone with the Wind. He went on to play small roles in films such as Laddie, And One was Beautiful, The Son of Monte Cristo, Jennie, Niagara Falls, among others. Beginning in 1946, he took over the role of Hopalong Cassidy's youthful sidekick, Lucky, and played in twelve of the feature films. Among these, which starred William Boyd as Hoppy, were The Devil's Playground, Fool's Gold, Unexpected Guest, Dangerous Venture, and Hoppy's Holiday. Brooks continued playing roles in films throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, which also started his television career. He made co-starring appearances on series such as The Roy Rogers Show, Highway Patrol, Lassie, Wagon Train, Maverick, The Real McCoys, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Bat Masterson, Laramie, Gunsmoke, The Munsters, Perry Mason, Columbo, and Bonanza, as well as nine episodes of The Lone Ranger, where he began a friendship with Clayton Moore. In 1966, Rand Brooks started Professional Ambulance Service in Glendale, California, with two used ambulances and a credit card. By 1977 his company had become the largest private ambulance 9-1-1 paramedic provider in Los Angeles County. During his ownership the company received dozens of awards and commendations and was widely recognized as one of the finest ambulance services in the country. In 1995 Brooks sold it to corporate giant American Medical Response. He lived at his ranch in Santa Barbara County with second wife Hermine, a former executive with his company, until his death in 2003. Brooks has two children; a daughter and a son, Rand Brooks Jr., who owns a trucking company in Los Angeles. Brooks can be seen portraying a police officer in the two-hour premier episode of the television series Emergency! (1972), which was first aired in January of 1972 on NBC. Rand Brooks' acting career spanned over 140 films and television series, as well as writing, producing, and directing one film called Legend of the Northwest.- Actor
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Often mentioned as the greatest player in NFL history, this ruggedly handsome African American fullback for the Cleveland Browns first appeared on movie screens in the western Rio Conchos (1964), followed by a strong supporting role as convict commando "Jefferson" in the terrific WWII action film The Dirty Dozen (1967). He was kept busy with additional on screen appearances in other fast paced films including Ice Station Zebra (1968), 100 Rifles (1969) and El Condor (1970).
Brown's popularity grew during the boom of "blaxploitation" cinema in the early 1970s portraying tough "no nonsense" characters in Slaughter (1972), Black Gunn (1972) and Three the Hard Way (1974). His on-screen work in the latter part of the 1970s and 1980s was primarily centered around guest spots on popular TV shows such as CHiPs (1977) and Knight Rider (1982). However, Brown then resurfaced in better quality films beginning with his role as a fiery assassin in The Running Man (1987), he parodied the blaxploitation genre along with many other African-American actors in the comedy I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), played an ex-heavyweight boxer in the sci-fi comedy Mars Attacks! (1996) and ironically played an ex-football legend in the Oliver Stone directed sports film Any Given Sunday (1999).
Additionally, Jim Brown was a ringside commentator for the first six events of the Ultimate Fighting Championships from 1993 through to 1996. A bona fide legend in American sports and a successful actor, he continues to remain busy in front of the camera with recent appearances in various sports shows & TV productions.- Actor
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American actor, a tall, rugged television leading man of the 1960s and 70s, as well as a voice actor and occasional writer, not to be confused with the British actor of that name (1921-2003) who played M in several James Bond films. There was also Robert Howell Brown -- better known as Robert Lansing -- who arrived on the scene after Robin Adair MacKenzie Brown had already trademarked the 'Robert Brown' moniker in the Screen Actors Guild. Brown, the younger of two siblings born to parents William and Margaret in Trenton, New Jersey, was of English and Scottish ancestry. After wartime service in the U.S. Navy he studied acting under Lee Strasberg at the New School Dramatic Workshop (originally founded in 1940 by German theater director Erwin Piscator), alongside fellow alumni Rod Steiger and Walter Matthau. He made his debut both on Broadway and on the screen in 1948. He first appeared in several early anthology dramas on television and in a couple of B-movies. His first noteworthy role was as Sir Justin in the Roger Corman-directed gothic horror Tower of London (1962). He also had three guest spots on Perry Mason (1957) before being famously cast as a last-ditch replacement for John Drew Barrymore (whose 'no show' on the set resulted in a six-months suspension of his Screen Actors Guild membership) to play the part of alien scientist Lazarus in the Star Trek (1966) episode The Alternative Factor. While probably doing his best with the role -- given the short notice he had to come to grips with the intricate script -- Alternative Factor is generally ranked as one of the lesser entries in the franchise. Brown's luck did not improve the following year. Slated for the career-making role of Steve McGarrett in Hawaii Five-O (1968), he was dropped by producer Leonard Freeman at the eleventh hour in favour of Jack Lord.
Finally given a chance to shine, Brown was cast in the leading role of Jason Bolt, the extrovert boss of a lumberjacking outfit, in Here Come the Brides (1968), an off-beat western series said to have been inspired by the classic MGM musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). It ran for two seasons, after which Brown had another starring role as the eponymous oceanographer of Primus (1971), a scuba-diving adventure set around Nassau in the Bahamas. This show was produced by Ivan Tors who had made his reputation in the aquatic arena with Sea Hunt (1958) and Flipper (1964). Primus fared rather less well in the ratings and was axed after just one season. Brown then made just a few more sporadic TV guest appearances before fading from the scene in 1994.- Actor
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George Bruggeman was born on 1 November 1904 in Antwerp, Belgium. He was an actor, known for You Hit the Spot (1945) and The Living Christ Series (1951). He was married to Emily Priscilla Mills. He died on 9 June 1967 in North Hollywood, California, USA.- Actor
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Exotic leading man of American films, famed as much for his completely bald head as for his performances, Yul Brynner masked much of his life in mystery and outright lies designed to tease people he considered gullible. It was not until the publication of the books "Yul: The Man Who Would Be King" and "Empire and Odyssey" by his son, Yul "Rock" Brynner, that many of the details of Brynner's early life became clear.
Yul sometimes claimed to be a half-Swiss, half-Japanese named Taidje Khan, born on the island of Sakhalin; in reality, he was the son of Marousia Dimitrievna (Blagovidova), the Russian daughter of a doctor, and Boris Yuliyevich Bryner, an engineer and inventor of Swiss-German and Russian descent. He was born in their home town of Vladivostok on 11 July 1920 and named Yuli after his grandfather, Jules Bryner. When Yuli's father abandoned the family, his mother took him and his sister Vera to Harbin, Manchuria, where they attended a YMCA school. In 1934 Yuli's mother took her children to Paris. Her son was sent to the exclusive Lycée Moncelle, but his attendance was spotty. He dropped out and became a musician, playing guitar in the nightclubs among the Russian gypsies who gave him his first real sense of family. He met luminaries such as Jean Cocteau and became an apprentice at the Theatre des Mathurins. He worked as a trapeze artist with the famed Cirque d'Hiver company.
He traveled to the U.S. in 1941 to study with acting teacher Michael Chekhov and toured the country with Chekhov's theatrical troupe. That same year, he debuted in New York as Fabian in "Twelfth Night" (billed as Youl Bryner). After working in a very early TV series, Mr. Jones and His Neighbors (1944), he played on Broadway in "Lute Song" with Mary Martin, winning awards and mild acclaim. He and his wife, actress Virginia Gilmore, starred in the first TV talk show, Mr. and Mrs. (1948). Brynner then joined CBS as a television director. He made his film debut in Port of New York (1949). Two years later Mary Martin recommended him for the part he would forever be known for: the King in Richard Rodgers' and Oscar Hammerstein II's musical "The King and I". Brynner became an immediate sensation in the role, repeating it for film (The King and I (1956)) and winning the Oscar for Best Actor.
For the next two decades, he maintained a starring film career despite the exotic nature of his persona, performing in a wide range of roles from Egyptian pharaohs to Western gunfighters, almost all with the same shaved head and indefinable accent. In the 1970s he returned to the role that had made him a star, and spent most of the rest of his life touring the world in "The King and I". When he developed lung cancer in the mid 1980s, he left a powerful public service announcement denouncing smoking as the cause, for broadcast after his death. The cancer and its complications, after a long illness, ended his life. Brynner was cremated and his ashes buried in a remote part of France, on the grounds of the Abbey of Saint-Michel de Bois Aubry, a short distance outside the village of Luzé. He remains one of the most fascinating, unusual and beloved stars of his time.- Actor
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Donald Buka was born on 17 August 1920 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for The Street with No Name (1948), One Step Beyond (1959) and Tales of Tomorrow (1951). He was married to Suzanne Marie (Fischer) Sinaiko, Joy Weber and Irene Maskell Mitchell. He died on 21 July 2009 in Reading, Massachusetts, USA.- Actor
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Tall, dark, and handsome is how Hollywood liked their leading men back in the 1950s and 1960s, and actor Paul Burke certainly fitted the bill. While his career fell short of outright stardom, he managed to stand out in a couple of acclaimed TV cop series in the 1960s and "enjoyed" semi-cult status by co-starring in one of the screen's most celebrated "turkeys" of all time.
The New Orleans-born actor was born on July 21, 1926, the son of Martin Burke, a prizefighter who later became a well-known promoter and French Quarter nightclub owner ("Marty Burke's"). Educated at prep schools, he was drawn to acting and moved to Hollywood in the late 1940s, studying at the Pasadena Playhouse for a couple of years. Screen director Lloyd Bacon, a friend of his father Marty, helped the fledgling actor along by giving him an unbilled part in the Betty Grable musical Call Me Mister (1951). From there, he managed to scrounge up bit/uncredited parts in such 1950s films as Fearless Fagan (1952); Francis Goes to West Point (1952), Three Sailors and a Girl (1953), South Sea Woman (1953), and Spy Chasers (1955). He moved up the ladder a bit to featured status in another Francis the talking mule picture, Francis in the Navy (1955), and in Screaming Eagles (1956), then earned a starring role in the voodoo/jungle horror flick The Disembodied (1957), opposite the "50-Foot Woman," herself, Allison Hayes.
Better yet, Burke found steady work on the small tube with grim-faced roles in a number of crime series such as Highway Patrol (1955),
The Lineup (1954), M Squad (1957), and Dragnet (1951). He also appeared in Adventures of Superman (1952). Via an association with "Dragnet" producer/director Jack Webb, he received his own TV series, albeit short lived, in the form of Noah's Ark (1956), portraying veterinarian "Dr. Noah McCann." He followed that by co-starring with Barry Sullivan in another one-season series, Harbourmaster (1957), a New England coast adventure yarn, and then in Five Fingers (1959), a spy drama headlining David Hedison. Another hit series came with 12 O'Clock High (1964), based on the hit film drama of the same name.
Burke's best-known TV role, however, was as "Detective Adam Flint" in the highly praised police series Naked City (1958), replacing James Franciscus. He joined the cast in the second season as the young partner of "Lt. Mike Parker" (portrayed by Horace McMahon), just as the half-hour show format was being extended to an hour. Based on the gritty, groundbreaking cop movie The Naked City (1948), the series did the film more than justice with excellent story lines, and Burke walked away with two Emmy nominations out of the three seasons he appeared.
His only movie role in the early 1960s was Della (1965) (aka Fatal Confinement) starring Joan Crawford which was actually a failed pilot to a prospective TV series. Winning the co-lead role of fledgling writer "Lyon Burke" in the highly-anticipated film adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's monstrous best seller, Valley of the Dolls (1967). It could have been the break to turn things around on film. It did not...far from it. The Susann book was, if anything, a guilty pleasure as readers were reeled in by the trashy Hollywood themes of drugs, fame, and sex. The movie was a laughable misfire-riddled with bad acting, bad dialogue and inept directing. It earned instant cult infamy, making many "top 10" lists for worst movie ever. It also damaged the screen careers of many of the actors involved. In reality, Burke and Barbara Parkins, who played his paramour in the movie, actually came off better and more grounded than most. Unfortunately, good or bad, they were identified with a huge "turkey", and it stuck.
Despite Burke's co-star cop role, opposite Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, in the stylish thriller The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), the very next year, it was not able to right the wrong of "Dolls". Thereafter, Burke tended to be overlooked in his later film career, which included standard starring roles both in the U.S. and abroad in such fare as Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1969), Once You Kiss a Stranger... (1969), and Maharlika (1970). TV crime, however, proved again to be reliable income for Burke with guest roles in such popular 70s series as The Rookies (1972), The New Perry Mason (1973), Police Woman (1974), Harry O (1973), Mannix (1967), Ironside (1967), and the acclaimed Police Story (1973) series. TV movies also came his way, as well, with the starring role of tycoon "C.C. Capwell" (replacing Peter Mark Richman), in the daytime soap opera, Santa Barbara (1984). Burke himself was replaced after a relatively brief time.
Following assured roles in the series Hot Shots (1986) and Dynasty (1981), the latter as scheming "Congressman Neal McVane", who frames Joan Collins' character for murder, Burke's career hit an irreversible snag in 1989, when he and three others, including New Orleans' district attorney Harry Connick Sr. (yes, father of the crooning junior, Harry Connick Jr.), were tried on federal racketeering charges, aiding and abetting a gambling operation, and committing perjury before a grand jury. The seven-week trial in 1990 resulted in his and Connick's acquittal (the other two were found guilty) but the damage was done and he wasn't able to find work when he returned to California. Burke's last film, (The Fool (1990), shot in England, and his last TV guest role (in an episode of Columbo (1971)) both came out in 1990.
Divorced from Peggy Pryor, the mother of his three children, Burke married actress Lyn Peters in 1979. They met while she was appearing in the 12 O'Clock High (1964) episode Siren Voices (1966). The couple eventually retired to Palm Springs, where the actor died at age 83 of leukemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in September of 2009.- Not unlike Don Burnett's father Albert John Burnett who served in World War I in the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Forces, Don also became involved with military, the American forces, when he graduated from the Army Officer Candidate Division on November 8, 1952, Class No. 52, Commissioned at Fort Riley, Kansas, as Lt. Donald J. Burnett.
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Neil Burstyn was born on 17 July 1939 in New York, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for The Monkees (1965), Panic in Year Zero! (1962) and The Young Savages (1961). He was married to Ellen Burstyn. He died on 1 November 1978 in New York, New York, USA.- Actor
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Peter Burton was born on 4 April 1921 in Bromley, Kent, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Dr. No (1962), A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Avengers (1961). He was married to Lillias Walker. He died on 27 November 1989 in Chelsea, London, England, UK.- Actor
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Probably best-remembered for his turbulent personal life with Elizabeth Taylor (whom he married twice), Richard Burton was nonetheless also regarded as an often brilliant British actor of the post-WWII period.
Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins in 1925 into a Welsh (Cymraeg)-speaking family in Pontrhydyfen to Edith Maude (Thomas) and Richard Walter Jenkins, a coal miner. The twelfth of thirteen children, his mother died while he was a toddler and his father later abandoned the family, leaving him to be raised by an elder sister, Cecilia. An avid fan of Shakespeare, poetry and reading, he once said "home is where the books are". He received a scholarship to Oxford University to study acting and made his first stage appearance in 1944.
His first film appearances were in routine British movies such as Woman of Dolwyn (1949), Waterfront Women (1950) and Green Grow the Rushes (1951). Then he started to appear in Hollywood movies such as My Cousin Rachel (1952), The Robe (1953) and Alexander the Great (1956), added to this he was also spending considerable time in stage productions, both in the UK and USA, often to splendid reviews. The late 1950s was an exciting and inventive time in UK cinema, often referred to as the "British New Wave", and Burton was right in the thick of things, and showcased a sensational performance in Look Back in Anger (1959). He also appeared with a cavalcade of international stars in the World War II magnum opus The Longest Day (1962), and then onto arguably his most "notorious" role as that of Marc Antony opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the hugely expensive Cleopatra (1963). This was, of course, the film that kick-started their fiery and passionate romance (plus two marriages), and the two of them appeared in several productions over the next few years including The V.I.P.s (1963), The Sandpiper (1965), the dynamic Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and The Taming of The Shrew (1967), as well as box office flops like The Comedians (1967). Burton did better when he was off on his own giving higher caliber performances, such as those in Becket (1964), the film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play The Night of the Iguana (1964), the brilliant espionage thriller The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) and alongside Clint Eastwood in the World War II action adventure film Where Eagles Dare (1968).
His audience appeal began to decline somewhat by the end of the 1960s as fans turned to younger, more virile male stars, however Burton was superb in Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) as King Henry VIII, he put on a reasonable show in the boring Raid on Rommel (1971), was over the top in the awful Villain (1971), gave sleepwalking performances in Hammersmith Is Out (1972) and Bluebeard (1972), and was wildly miscast in the ludicrous The Assassination of Trotsky (1972).
By the early 1970s, quality male lead roles were definitely going to other stars, and Burton found himself appearing in some movies of dubious quality, just to pay the bills and support family, including Divorce His - Divorce Hers (1973) (his last on-screen appearance with Taylor), The Klansman (1974), Brief Encounter (1974), Jackpot (1974) (which was never completed) and Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). However, he won another Oscar nomination for his excellent performance as a concerned psychiatrist in Equus (1977). He appeared with fellow acting icons Richard Harris and Roger Moore in The Wild Geese (1978) about mercenaries in South Africa. While the film had a modest initial run, over the past thirty-five years it has picked up quite a cult following. His final performances were as the wily inquisitor "O'Brien" in the most recent film version of George Orwell's dystopian 1984 (1984), in which he won good reviews, and in the TV mini series Ellis Island (1984). He passed away on August 5, 1984 in Celigny, Switzerland from a cerebral hemorrhage.- Actor
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Tom Busby was born on 7 November 1936 in Toronto, Canada. He was an actor, known for The Dirty Dozen (1967), Husbands (1970) and Never Take Candy from A Stranger (1960). He died on 20 September 2003 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK.- Francis X. Bushman Jr. was born on 1 May 1903 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was an actor, known for The Three Musketeers (1933), Spell of the Circus (1930) and Dangerous Traffic (1926). He was married to Beatrice Margaret Danti. He died on 16 April 1978 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Gerlando Buzzanca, best known as Lando Buzzanca, is an Italian theatrical, film and television actor, whose career spanned over 55 years. Born in Palermo the son of a cinema projectionist, at 16 years old Buzzanca left the high school and moved to Rome to pursue his dream of becoming an actor. In order to survive, he took many jobs including waiter, furniture mover, and a brief appearance as a slave in the film "Ben-Hur". He made his official debut in Pietro Germi's "Divorce, Italian Style", and soon specialized in the role of the average immigrant from southern Italy. After two successful "James Tont" films in which he played a parody of James Bond, starting from the late 1960s, Buzzanca got a large success in a series of satirical commedia sexy all'italiana films which satirized major institutions such as politics, religion, trade unions and financial world. With the decline of the genre, he slowed his film activities, focusing into theatre and television, in which he enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the 2000s thanks to a series of well-received TV-series. In 2013, following the death of his wife Lucia and a heavy depression, Buzzanca attempted suicide by cutting his veins. In 2015 he has fully recovered from depressive period undertaking a relationship with a younger woman, Antonella. In 2016 he participates as dancer in the television program "Ballando con le stelle" and lives a new and intense romance with a younger actress and journalist Francesca della Valle.- Actor
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Hollywood stalwart Bruce Cabot's main claim to fame, other than rescuing Fay Wray from King Kong (1933), is that he tested for the lead role of The Ringo Kid in John Ford's Western masterpiece Stagecoach (1939). John Wayne got the role and became the most durable star in Hollywood history, while Cabot (eventually) found himself a new drinking partner when the two co-starred in Angel and the Badman (1947). In the latter stages of his career, Cabot could rely on Wayne for a supporting part in one of the Duke's movies.
It wasn't always so. In the 1930s Cabot's star shone bright. He was born with the unlikely name Etienne Pelissier Jacques de Bujac in Carlsbad, New Mexico, the son of French Col. Etienne de Bujac and Julia Armandine Graves, who died shortly after giving birth to the future Bruce Cabot. After leaving the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, the future thespian hit the road, working a wide variety of jobs including sailor and insurance salesman, and doing a stint in a knacker's yard. In 1931 he wound up in Hollywood and appeared in several films in bit parts.
The young Monsieur de Bujac met David O. Selznick, then RKO's central producer (a job akin to Irving Thalberg's at MGM), at a Hollywood party, which led to an uncredited bit part as a dancer in Lady with a Past (1932) and a supporting role in The Roadhouse Murder (1932). On a parallel career track at the time, Marion Morrison (John Wayne) had failed to follow up on his audacious debut in Raoul Walsh's The Big Trail (1930) (the Duke had appeared in 18 movies previously but had only been billed in one, as "Duke Morrison" in the unlikely John Wayne vehicle Words and Music (1929)). Cabot and Wayne eventually appeared in 11 films together.
Although Cabot was prominently featured in the blockbuster "King Kong" in 1933, he never did make the step to stardom, though he enjoyed a thriving career as a supporting player. He was a heavy in the 1930s, playing a gangster boss in Let 'em Have It (1935) and the revenge-minded Native American brave Magua after Randolph Scott's scalp in The Last of the Mohicans (1936); over at MGM, he ably supported Spencer Tracy as the instigator of a lynch mob in Fritz Lang's indictment of domestic fascism, Fury (1936). A freelancer, he appeared in movies at many studios before leaving Hollywood for military service. Cabot worked for Army intelligence overseas during World War II; after the war, he continued to work steadily, with and without his friend and frequent co-star, the Duke.
Bruce Cabot died in 1972 of lung and throat cancer. He was 68 years old.- Actor
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One of Hollywood's preeminent male stars of all time, James Cagney was also an accomplished dancer and easily played light comedy. James Francis Cagney was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, to Carolyn (Nelson) and James Francis Cagney, Sr., who was a bartender and amateur boxer. Cagney was of Norwegian (from his maternal grandfather) and Irish descent. Ending three decades on the screen, he retired to his farm in Stanfordville, New York (some 77 miles/124 km. north of his New York City birthplace), after starring in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961). He emerged from retirement to star in the 1981 screen adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel "Ragtime" (Ragtime (1981)), in which he was reunited with his frequent co-star of the 1930s, Pat O'Brien, and which was his last theatrical film and O'Brien's as well). Cagney's final performance came in the title role of the made-for-TV movie Terrible Joe Moran (1984), in which he played opposite Art Carney.- Actor
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Michael Caine was born as Maurice Joseph Micklewhite in London, to Ellen (née Burchell), a cook, and Maurice Micklewhite Sr., a fish-market porter. He had a younger brother, Stanley Caine, and an older maternal half-brother named David Burchell. He left school at age 15 and took a series of working-class jobs before joining the British army and serving in Korea during the Korean War, where he saw combat. Upon his return to England, he gravitated toward the theater and got a job as an assistant stage manager. He adopted the name of Caine on the advice of his agent, taking it from a marquee that advertised The Caine Mutiny (1954). In the years that followed, he worked in more than 100 television dramas, with repertory companies throughout England and eventually in the stage hit "The Long and the Short and the Tall".
Zulu (1964), the epic retelling of a historic 19th-century battle in South Africa between British soldiers and Zulu warriors, brought Caine to international attention. Instead of being typecast as a low-ranking Cockney soldier, he played a snobbish, aristocratic officer. Although "Zulu" was a major success, it was the role of Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File (1965) and the title role in Alfie (1966) that made Caine a star of the first magnitude. He epitomized the new breed of actor in mid-1960s England, the working-class bloke with glasses and a down-home accent. However, after initially starring in some excellent films, particularly in the 1960s, including Gambit (1966), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Play Dirty (1969), Battle of Britain (1969), Too Late the Hero (1970), The Last Valley (1971) and especially Get Carter (1971), he seemed to take on roles in below-average films, simply for the money he could by then command.
However, there were some gems amongst the dross. He gave a magnificent performance opposite Sean Connery in The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and turned in a solid one as a German colonel in The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Educating Rita (1983), Blame It on Rio (1984) and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (for which he won his first Oscar) were highlights of the 1980s, while more recently Little Voice (1998), The Cider House Rules (1999) (his second Oscar) and Last Orders (2001) have been widely acclaimed. Caine played Nigel Powers in the parody sequel Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), and Alfred Pennyworth in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. He appeared in several other of Nolan's films including The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014). He also appeared as a supporting character in Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men (2006) and Pixar's sequel Cars 2 (2011).
As of 2015, films in which Caine has starred have grossed over $7.4 billion worldwide. He is ranked the ninth highest grossing box office star. Caine is one of several actors nominated for an Academy Award for acting every decade from five consecutive decades (the other being Laurence Olivier and Meryl Streep). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1992 Birthday Honours, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2000 Birthday Honours in recognition for his contributions to the cinema.
Caine has been married twice. First to actress Patricia Haines from 1954 to 1958. They had a daughter, Dominique, in 1957. A bachelor for some dozen-plus years after the divorce, he was romantically linked to Edina Ronay (for three years), Nancy Sinatra, Natalie Wood, Candice Bergen, Bianca Jagger, Françoise Pascal and Jill St. John. In 1971 he met his second wife, fashion model Shakira Caine (née Baksh), and they married in 1973, six months before their daughter Natasha was born. The couple has three grandchildren, and in 2023, they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.- John Cairney made his stage debut at the Park Theatre, Glasgow, before enrolling at the RSAMD in Glasgow. After graduation, he joined the Wilson Barrett Company as Snake in 'The School for Scandal'. A season at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre followed before going on to the Bristol Old Vic where he appeared in the British premiere of Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible'. He returned to the Citizens from time to time, most notably as Hamlet in 1960. He also appeared in the premiere of John Arden's 'Armstrong's Last Goodnight' in 1964.
Other stage work until 1991 included King Humanitie in 'The Thrie Estaites' for Tyrone Guthrie at the Edinburgh Festival, Archie Rice in 'The Entertainer' at Dundee (1972), as the title character in 'Cyrano de Bergerac' at Newcastle (1974), Becket in 'Murder in the Cathedral' at the Edinburgh Festival of 1986 and 'Macbeth' in the same Festival in 1989. He also wrote and appeared in his own productions of 'An Edinburgh Salon', 'At Your Service', 'The Ivor Novello Story' and 'A Mackintosh Experience" while continuing to tour the world in his solo 'The Robert Burns Story'. His affiliation with Robert Burns began in 1965 with Tom Wright's solo play 'There Was A Man' at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, and at the Arts Theatre, London. The solo was televised twice nationally and was also an album recording for REL Records, Edinburgh, as well as a video for Green Place Productions, Glasgow. From Burns he moved on to other solos on William McGonagall, Robert Service and Robert Louis Stevenson until he worked with New Zealand actress Alannah O'Sullivan at the Edinburgh Festival of 1978. They married in 1980. As Two For A Theatre they toured the world for P&O Cruises and the British Council as well as the Keedick Lecture Bureau, New York, with programmes on Byron, Wilde and Dorothy Parker until 1986.
Cairney's first film was Night Ambush (1957) for the Rank Organisation, followed by Windom's Way (1957), Shake Hands with the Devil (1959), Victim (1961), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Cleopatra (1963), The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964) and A Study in Terror (1965), among others. His many television parts include Branwell Bronte, Edgar Allan Poe and Robert the Bruce, and featured in such television series as Dr. Finlay's Casebook (1962), Secret Agent (1964), The Avengers (1961), Jackanory (1965), Elizabeth R (1971), Taggart (1983), and as Ian Craig in the BBC2's This Man Craig (1966). Also, he wrote and recorded his own songs for EMI at Abbey Road.
As a writer, he published 'Worlds Apart', 'A Scottish Football Hall of Fame', 'Heroes Are Forever', and 'A Year Out In New Zealand'. He wrote three books about Robert Burns for Luath Press (Edinburgh) as well as biographies of R.L. Stevenson and C.R. Mackintosh and a book of essays on Glasgow ('Glasgow by the Way, But'). 'Flashback Forward' was published for Random House (New Zealand), and his book on acting, 'Greasepaint Monkey', was due for publication by Luath Press, Edinburgh in 2010.
Cairney earned a Master of Letters degree from Glasgow University for a "History of Solo Theatre" in 1988 and, in 1994, a PhD from Victoria University, Wellington, NZ, for his study of Stevenson and Theatre. Having spent 17 years in New Zealand, John and Alannah returned to live in Scotland. - Actor
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Rory Calhoun was born Francis Timothy McCown in Los Angeles, the son of Elizabeth Cuthbert and Floyd McCown. Rory starred in over 80 films and 1,000 television episodes. Before becoming an actor he worked as a boxer, a lumberjack, a truck driver and a cowpuncher. Tall and handsome, he benefited from a screen test at 20th Century-Fox, arranged for him by Sue Carol, a Hollywood agent and the wife of actor Alan Ladd, who is said to have spotted Calhoun while he was riding a horse in a Los Angeles park. He debuted on screen in Something for the Boys (1944), with Carmen Miranda, billed as "Frank McCown". David O. Selznick changed his name to Rory Calhoun, and after playing small parts for a while, he graduated to starring in western films, including River of No Return (1954) with Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum. Calhoun's better-known pictures include How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Lauren Bacall, Monroe and Betty Grable, and With a Song in My Heart (1952) with Susan Hayward.
From 1959 to 1960 he starred in the CBS television series The Texan (1958). More than two decades later he returned to CBS for five years as Judge Judson Tyler on the daytime serial Capitol (1982). His final appearance, 70 years old but handsome as ever, was as Ernest Tucker in Pure Country (1992). Calhoun has two stars on Hollywood's Walk of Fame: one for motion pictures, and one for television.- William Campbell was born on 30 October 1923 in Newark, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for Escape from Fort Bravo (1953), The High and the Mighty (1954) and Dementia 13 (1963). He was married to Tereza Pavlovic, Barbara Bricker and Judith Campbell Exner. He died on 28 April 2011 in Woodland Hills, California, USA.
- From 1955 - 1960, Glenn Cannon was in New York City. He appeared on Broadway in A Moon for the Misbegotten and The Good Woman of Setzuan, and Off Broadway in 20 plays, among which were the famed productions of The Three Penny Opera at the Theatre DeLys and The Iceman Cometh at Circle in the Square. His tours included leading roles in West Side Story, Tea and Sympathy, and I Can Get It for You Wholesale. His television appearances in leading and supporting roles included such network live productions as Studio One (1948), Playwrights '56 (1955), Camera Three (1955), Hallmark Hall of Fame (1951). He also worked on two motion pictures shot in New York City during this time period: Cop Hater (1958) and Mad Dog Coll (1961). (Both are still seen on late-night TV in the United States.)
From 1960 - 1965, Cannon was in Los Angeles. He appeared in supporting and starring roles on television, which included episodes of Combat! (1962), 77 Sunset Strip (1958), The Gallant Men (1962), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), Johnny Staccato (1959), No Time for Sergeants (1964), and The Outer Limits (1963).
From 1965 - 1968, Cannon was a resident actor-director-teacher with the Stanford Repertory Theatre, an Equity company of nine actors supplemented by students in Stanford's theatre program. This was a pilot project for three years funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. During his time in California, he directed 15 stage productions.
In 1968, Cannon came to the University of Hawaii at Manoa as a drama professor. Shortly thereafter, he was cast as District Attorney John Manicote in Hawaii Five-O (1968), and played this recurrent role for eight years on the CBS series. He later played Dr. Ibold for eight years on Magnum, P.I. (1980) and made several appearances in principal roles on Tour of Duty (1987) and Jake and the Fatman (1987). He subsequently acted in several made-for-television movies filmed in Honolulu and played the recurring role of Dr. Landowski on the short-lived CBS series Island Son (1989) with Richard Chamberlain. Cannon also appeared in Miracle Landing (1990), based on the real-life air accident of Aloha Airlines Flight 243, and the feature film Picture Bride (1994) that included in its cast, Toshirô Mifune and Tamlyn Tomita.
Since making Hawaii his home, in addition to teaching, Cannon has remained active in acting and directing for the stage. Presently, he has directed over 108 plays at Kennedy Theatre, Diamond Head Theatre, Manoa Valley Theatre, and other venues in Hawaii. His stage appearances in Hawaii include starring roles in Othello (as Iago), J.B. (as The Devil), The Sunshine Boys (as Willie), Death of a Salesman (as Willy Loman), Follies (as Buddy), and I'm Not Rappaport (as Nat) among others. His efforts have not gone unnoticed by the local theatre community. Cannon is the winner of a total of 11 Po'okela Awards for Excellence in Directing and another for Best Actor since the awards were instituted in 1983 by the Hawaii State Theatre Council. - Actor
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John Donovan Cannon graduated from high school in his hometown of Salmon, Idaho, in 1940. His subsequent studies at the Academy of Dramatic Arts were interrupted as a result of wartime military service from 1942 to 1945. After the war, Cannon returned to New York to complete his training and acting on the stage, both on and off-Broadway, trying his hand at a wide variety of parts, mostly in classical plays. He essayed "Petruchio" in "The Taming of the Shrew" and appeared on Broadway in "Henry IV", "Lysistrata" and "Peer Gynt". Leading roles were few and far between, however.
Once Cannon had found his niche as a frequent guest star on numerous television episodes, his career as a motion picture actor became somewhat desultory, though he had memorable roles in two films: as the road gang convict "Society Red" in Cool Hand Luke (1967); and as the gangster "Calhoun" in Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970). His first TV appearance was as a poker-hustling master sergeant in a 1958 episode of The Phil Silvers Show (1955). His tough screen persona was pretty well established by the mid-60's, though, against character, he portrayed the timid weakling "Lloyd Chandler" (witness to the original crime committed by the "one-armed man") in the final denouement installment of The Fugitive (1963). He was at his scene-stealing best in an episode of The Invaders (1967) as "Peter Kalter", a strangely sympathetic mobster who turns against his own outfit and aids the chief protagonist against the impending alien threat.
In his recurring role as lawman "Harry Briscoe" in the western comedy series Alias Smith and Jones (1971), Cannon was again given the opportunity to deliver some enjoyably caustic one-liners, something at which he excelled. He will arguably be most fondly remembered for his popular portrayal of the perpetually exasperated, choleric, cigar-chewing NYPD Chief of Detectives, "Peter B. Clifford", in McCloud (1970) (1970-77).- Actor
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Eager young James (aka Jimmy) Cardwell had an auspicious beginning and showed great promise in 1940s films. Dark-haired and thick-browed with an earnest, boyish look and set-jawed handsomeness that could remind someone of a John Garfield type, he couldn't have started off much better than by playing a young, heroic war casualty as one of The Fighting Sullivans (1944) (aka "The Fighting Sullivans"). By the end of the decade, however, James' film career did not advance and he ended things negligibly on TV. Despondency overwhelmed him and on January 31, 1954, he became another tragic Hollywood statistic, The victim of suicide at age 32, he has become completely forgotten save for film trivia enthusiasts.
The son of Raymond and Bessie (McCarroll) Cardwell, he was christened Albert Paine Cardwell after his grandfather, a Philadelphia publishing editor. Born in Camden, New Jersey, on November 21, 1921 (several sources give 1920) and raised there, young Cardwell attended Alfred Cramer Junior High School before transferring to Woodrow Wilson High School. While there he found himself drawn to acting and, after appearing in a sophomore play, served as president of the school's drama club. He also showed athletic prowess on the football field, as well as in track and field.
Following his graduation in 1940, he toiled about in a few odd jobs (clerk, laborer, etc.) but continued to prod his interest in acting by joining the Camden Drama Guild. Committed by this time, he later joined the Hedgerow Theater Group in Pennsylvania. While there he may ends meet by working in the shipping department for RCA Victor, meeting and marrying Esther Borton in June of 1942.
In the summer of 1943, while in New York looking for representation/work, James was seen by agents scouting out fresh faces for an upcoming WWII picture about five patriotic soldier-brothers. He won one of the brothers' roles. His wife, however, had no shared interest in his fledgling career or move to Los Angeles, and the marriage quickly ended. Signed up for seven years with Twentieth Century-Fox, he was renamed James Cardwell for the movies and the young hopeful made a heart-tugging debut in the war drama The Fighting Sullivans (1944), a somewhat fictionalized and sentimental, but nevertheless inspiring true-life story of five brothers from Iowa (Cardwell played George Sullivan) who served together (by request) and died on the same torpedoed ship during WWII.
After this film, James appeared in second leads as various reporters, rookies and private eye types in Charlie Chan mysteries and other various "B" level dramas, working throughout the post-war era of the 1940s. Despite his capabilities, he did not move to the top lead status and many of the films he did appear in were dismissed by the critics. For every engaging appearance in a strong quality film such as A Walk in the Sun (1945) or He Walked by Night (1948), one could count twice as many forgettable ones in lesser pictures (The Devil on Wheels (1947), Robin Hood of Texas (1947), King of the Gamblers (1948), Down Dakota Way (1949)). His single male lead in a movie may have dimmed any chances of further growth after co-starring with Lois Hall in the absurd Monogram adventure Daughter of the Jungle (1949), a distaff Tarzan movie complete with swinging vine scenes and female animal calls.
Unable to grasp the necessary momentum to advance, he fell further down the credits list while working on primarily "Poverty Row" studio movie projects. In the light comedy And Baby Makes Three (1949) and the Bogart war drama Tokyo Joe (1949), James received no billing at all, and he was completely overlooked in his last billed film appearance, a supporting role in the assembly-line Rex Allen western, The Arizona Cowboy (1950). Forced to look at TV as a possible medium, few opportunities came his way with the exception of a couple of guest parts on a Rod Cameron crime series. An uncredited role in the horror film Them! (1954) occurred shortly before his death.
In anticipation of his fading career, James started attending UCLA at night and taking up pre-med courses. At one point he toured Australia with Joe E. Brown in the top comedian's vaudeville act and joined a circus comedy acrobatic act called the Coleano Troupe that toured throughout the U.S. and Europe. Returning to the States in 1953, depression set in when he couldn't find TV work. On January 31, 1954, at age 32, with no prospects in sight and debts mounting, James shot himself in the head in an automobile he borrowed from a friend in a parking lot near his two-room West Los Angeles bungalow. He was survived by his parents and buried in his native Camden.- Actor
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Tall, blond and of rugged proportions, handsome actor Philip Carey started out as a standard 1950s film actor in westerns, war stories and crime yarns but didn't achieve full-fledged stardom until well past age 50 when he joined the daytime line-up as ornery Texas tycoon Asa Buchanan on the popular soap One Life to Live (1968) in 1979. He lived pretty much out of the saddle after that, enjoying the patriarchal role for nearly three decades.
He was born with the rather unrugged name of Eugene Carey on July 15, 1925, in Hackensack, New Jersey. Growing up on Long Island, he served with the Marine Corps during World War II and the Korean War. He attended (briefly) New York's Mohawk University and studied drama at the University of Miami where he met his college sweetheart, Maureen Peppler. They married in 1949 and went on to have three children: Linda, Jeffrey and Lisa Ann.
The 6'4" actor impressed a talent scout with his brawny good looks while appearing in the summer stock play "Over 21" in New England, and he was offered a contract with Warner Bros as a result. Billed as Philip Carey, he didn't waste any time toiling in bit parts, making his film debut billed fifth in the John Wayne submarine war drama Operation Pacific (1951). Phil could cut a good figure in military regalia and also showed strong stuff in film noir. A most capable co-star, he tended to be upstaged, however, by either a stronger name female or male star or by the action at hand. He was paired up with Frank Lovejoy in the McCarthy-era I Was a Communist for the F.B.I. (1951), and Steve Cochran in the prison tale Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951). Warner Bros. star Joan Crawford was practically the whole movie in the film noir This Woman Is Dangerous (1952) co-starring the equally overlooked David Brian and Dennis Morgan; Calamity Jane (1953) was a vehicle for Doris Day; and he donned his familiar cavalry duds in the background of Gary Cooper in the Civil War western Springfield Rifle (1952).
In 1953, Carey left Warner Bros. and signed up with Columbia Pictures where he was, more than not, billed as "Phil Carey." Here again he fell into the rather non-descript rugged mold as the stoic soldier or stolid police captain. He did find plenty of work, however, and was frequently top-billed. He battled the Sioux in The Nebraskan (1953); played a former subordinate member of the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid gang who has to clear his name in Wyoming Renegades (1955); was a brute force to be reckoned with in They Rode West (1954); and had one of his standard movie roles (as an officer) in a better quality movie, Columbia's Pushover (1954), which spent more time promoting the debut of its starlet Kim Novak as the new Marilyn Monroe. Overshadowed by James Cagney and Jack Lemmon in Mister Roberts (1955) and by Van Heflin, young Joanne Woodward (in her movie debut) and villain Raymond Burr in the western Count Three and Pray (1955), Phil turned his durable talents more and more to TV in the late 1950s.
The man of action took on the role of Canadian-born Lt. Michael Rhodes on the series Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers (1956) alongside Warren Stevens. He eventually left Columbia studios to do a stint (albeit relatively short) playing Raymond Chandler's unflappable detective Philip Marlowe (1959). Most of the 60s and 70s, other than a few now-forgotten film adventures such as Black Gold (1962), The Great Sioux Massacre (1965) and Three Guns for Texas (1968), were spent either saddling up as a guest star on The Rifleman (1958), Bronco (1958), The Virginian (1962) and Gunsmoke (1955) or hard-nosing it on such crime series as 77 Sunset Strip (1958), Ironside (1967), McCloud (1970), Banacek (1972) and The Felony Squad (1966). He also played the regular role of a stern captain in the Texas Rangers western series Laredo (1965).
Phil was a spokesperson for Granny Goose potato chips commercials, and his deep voice served him well for many seasons as narrator of the nature documentary series Untamed Frontier (1967). One of his best-remembered TV guest appearances, however, was a change-of-pace role on the comedy All in the Family (1971) in which he played a vital, strapping blue-collar pal of Archie Bunker's whose manly man just happened to be a proud, astereotypical homosexual. His hilarious confrontational scene with a dumbfounded Archie in Kelsey's bar remains a classic.
Phil's brief regular role in the daytime soap Bright Promise (1969) in 1972 was just a practice drill for the regular role he would play in 1979 as Texas oilman Asa Buchanan in One Life to Live (1968). His popularity soared as the moneybags manipulator you loved to hate. Residing in Manhattan for quite some time as a result of the New York-based show, he played the role for close to three decades until diagnosed with lung cancer in January of 2006. Forced to undergo chemotherapy, he officially left the serial altogether in May of 2007, and his character "died" peacefully off-screen a few months later.
Divorced from his first wife, Phil married a much younger lady, Colleen Welch, in 1976 and had two children by her -- daughter Shannon (born 1980) and son Sean (born 1983). Phil lost his battle with cancer on February 6, 2009, at the age of 83.- Actor
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The son of an attorney, Richard Carlson had an introspective quality to his performances and looked every inch the academic he first aspired to be. Following his graduation from the University of Minnesota with a Master's Degree in English, the tall, dark-haired youth had a brief stint as a drama teacher at his alma mater. However, deciding on the performing arts instead, he invested his money in buying his own theatre in Minneapolis and featuring himself as the star. By the age of 23, he had gained sufficient acting credentials to perform on Broadway opposite Ethel Barrymore, Jimmy Durante and Ethel Merman. Sidelining as a writer, he enjoyed moderate success publishing a number of short stories, but his play "Western Waters" was a flop on Broadway, closing after just seven performances. Just when it seemed Richard's fortunes were on the wane, he was offered a contract as actor/writer/director by the producer David O. Selznick.
After being encouraged by leading actress Janet Gaynor to make his screen bow in her motion picture The Young in Heart (1938), Richard moved to California on a permanent basis. During the next few years, he made several films (primarily at RKO), invariably in the part of the diffident juvenile. Many of these were forgettable second features, such as the supernaturally-themed Beyond Tomorrow (1940), or commercial failures, like the nostalgic Anna Neagle musical No, No, Nanette (1940). There was, however, one stellar performance: his newspaperman David Hewitt in William Wyler's brilliant adaptation of Lillian Hellman's southern melodrama The Little Foxes (1941). This was followed by another decent role in the fruity (but highly enjoyable) melodrama White Cargo (1942), and the lead in a cliched, run-of-the-mill crime picture, Highways by Night (1942). Then World War II intervened and Richard did his tour of duty. When he returned to the screen, it was without the intensity and vigor which had characterized his pre-war performances.
After several years of indifferent acting parts, Richard found renewed energy for his third-billed appearance in MGM's lavish Technicolor remake of King Solomon's Mines (1950). Perhaps surprisingly, this did not lead to further roles in A-grade features. Instead, Richard Carlson found himself the unlikely star of several sci-fi features, which have attained cult status over the passing years. Pick of the bunch was Jack Arnold's seminal It Came from Outer Space (1953) (based on a story by Ray Bradbury), with Richard in the role of a well-meaning, rather arcane astronomer, witness to an alien presence which turns out to be benign. The sincerity of his performance led to similar parts in The Magnetic Monster (1953) (with similar moralistic undertones) and the atmospheric Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).
Though his original contract with Selznick had stipulated directing as well, Richard did not work behind the camera until 1954. Then, he unwisely accepted charge of a silly pseudo-scientific premise entitled Riders to the Stars (1954), a low-budget enterprise bogged down by verisimilitude and technobabble at the expense of drama. In the course of the next twelve years, he directed some better second features, including the westerns Four Guns to the Border (1954) and Kid Rodelo (1966), as well as a number of television episodes. He also wrote the occasional TV script, as well as contributing articles on non-fiction subjects to several magazines.
During the early fifties -- with America in the grip of McCarthyist paranoia -- Richard gained a wider audience as the star of I Led 3 Lives (1953), playing the role of Herbert A. Philbrick (1915-1993) (on whose book by the same title the series was based), who infiltrated the Communist Party on behalf of the FBI. The show proved popular enough at the time to run for three years and 115 episodes. Richard had yet another recurring part, as stalwart Colonel Ranald Mackenzie, taming the south-western frontier in Mackenzie's Raiders (1958). For the remainder of his acting career, he guested in western and detective series, including The Virginian (1962), Perry Mason (1957), The F.B.I. (1965) and Cannon (1971) . After his retirement in 1975, Richard lived the last two years of his life in Sherman Oaks, California.- Actor
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Actor, songwriter ("Christmas Eve"), composer and author Carleton Carpenter, was educated at Bennington (VT) High School. He appeared on Broadway, in "Bright Boy", "Three to Make Ready", and "John Murray Anderson's Almanac," and on television, and made many records. Carpenter wrote special material for Debbie Reynolds, Kaye Ballard, Marlene Dietrich and Hermione Gingold, and also scripts for films and television. Joining ASCAP in 1955, his other popular-song compositions include "I Wouldn't Mind," "Ev'ry Other Day," "Cabin In the Woods," "A Little Love" and "Come Away."- Actor
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John Carroll was born on 17 July 1906 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for Flying Tigers (1942), Hi, Gaucho! (1935) and Death in the Air (1936). He was married to Lucille Ryman Carroll and Steffi Duna. He died on 24 April 1979 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Lawrence "Larry" Casey was born in 1940, one of eight siblings (William Jr., Paul, John, Joseph, Mary, Peter, and the late Michael), born to to William and Florence Casey. When Larry was 10 years old, his family moved to Manhattan's East Side where the very tall and athletic Larry played baseball and one day wanted to become a professional ball player. Casey's father died in February 1955 and Larry gave up baseball to work after school to help support the family. He graduated high school in 1958. In 1962 his mother bought a dairy farm in Guilford, where she would live with her sons Paul and John until her own death in December 2004, almost 50 years after she was first widowed. Larry Casey and his wife Katha have three children.
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George Chakiris made his film debut at the age of 12 singing in the chorus of Song of Love (1947). Following his graduation from high school, he supported his night-time dancing, singing and dramatic lessons with a daytime job clerking in a Los Angeles department store. Later he started his acting/dancing career appearing in musicals such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)--he is one of the ballet dancers escorting Marilyn Monroe in "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend"--White Christmas (1954), The Girl Rush (1955), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), Brigadoon (1954), and Meet Me in Las Vegas (1956). In 1957, he made his debut as a dramatic actor in Under Fire (1957). In 1958 he traveled to New York hoping for a Broadway "break." Hearing that Jerome Robbins was casting the London company of "West Side Story", he auditioned and was awarded the co-starring role of Riff. He played the part for almost two years on the West End stage before acting, singing and dancing as Bernardo in the Robert Wise film version (West Side Story (1961)), a performance that earned him a Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Since then, he starred in a succession of films, including Diamond Head (1962) with Charlton Heston, Bebo's Girl (1964) with Claudia Cardinale, The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) with Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac and Gene Kelly, The Big Cube (1968) with Lana Turner, Why Not Stay for Breakfast? (1979), Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again (1982), and Pale Blood (1990). He is one of the most traveled stars in motion pictures, having been to such locations as Hawaii, Japan, Mexico, Italy, England, Spain, and France. His nightclub career was launched to rave reviews at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and Harrah's Club in Lake Tahoe. In the 1970s and 1980s, his career focused on television and music. He appeared as guest star in several TV series such as Hawaii Five-O (1968) (Death is a Company Policy - 1972), Wonder Woman (1975) (Death in Disguise - 1978), CHiPs (1977) (Fox Trap - 1983), Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983) (Lost and Found - 1984), Murder, She Wrote (1984) (Weave a Tangled Web - 1989), and he joined the cast of Dallas (1978) from 1985 to 1986. He has released several records: "George Chakiris," "Memories Are Made of These," "The Gershwin Song Book," "West Side Story's Dynamic...". Recently, he has appeared in several plays and stage musicals: after "The King and I" in the US in 1995, he performed in Britain the role of Rochester in "Jane Eyre".- Actor
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Jeff was born in Brooklyn and attended Erasmus High School. After high school, he took a drama course and worked in stock companies for two years. His next role was that of an officer in World War II. After he was discharged from the service, he became busy acting in radio dramas and comedies until he was signed by Universal. It was in the fifties that Jeff would become a star, making westerns and action pictures. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Cochise in Broken Arrow (1950). He followed this by playing the role of Cochise in two sequels: The Battle at Apache Pass (1952) and Taza, Son of Cochise (1954). While his premature gray hair and tanned features served him well in his westerns and action pictures, the studio also put him into soaps and costume movies. In his films, his leading ladies included Maureen O'Hara, Rhonda Fleming, Jane Russell, Joan Crawford, and June Allyson. Shortly after his last film Merrill's Marauders (1962), Jeff died, at 42, from blood poisoning after an operation for a slipped disc.- 6'2" blond, Ivy-League-handsome William Ching was just as skilled in the vocal as he was in the acting department but he purposely shied away from the musical film genre in fear of harming his career as a dramatic actor. Had he thought otherwise, the actor might have enjoyed the musical baritone career of a Nelson Eddy, Gordon MacRae, Howard Keel or Dan Dailey. Nevertheless, while full-out stardom proved quite elusive, he did find a modicum of post-war acting work on film and TV for nearly a decade and a half before he abandoned his career and moved successfully into real estate.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri on October 2, 1913, he was christened William Brooks Ching and came from a strong English background. Studying voice as a teen, he earned jobs out of high school in theatre stock shows before gaining valuable experience as a member of a light opera company in Memphis, Tennessee. His career was then interrupted by WWII after enlisting in the Coast Guard.
Following military service, Ching regrouped and found work singing on radio in San Francisco. Spotted by a talent agent, he was brought into the Hollywood fold as a newly-signed Universal contract player. Because his Asian-sounding surname confused audiences, the studio re-named him "William Brooks" and, when not appearing unbilled in such films as Song of Scheherazade (1947) and the Abbott & Costello comedy Buck Privates Come Home (1947), was identified as such in two of his earliest films -- the multi-chaptered cliffhanger The Mysterious Mr. M (1946) and the western Michigan Kid (1947) starring Jon Hall in the title role.
Ching, however, was very protective of his family name and insisted on returning to it, figuring that when he established a firmer reputation with audiences, the problem would fade away. The studio reluctantly consented but the "problem" didn't go away. Primarily handed bland but brawny bit parts, Ching was generally unhappy with his minor standing at Universal and turned to the Broadway stage for fulfillment after a so-so featured role in the studio's Abbott & Costello comedy vehicle The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap (1947). Cast in one of the top male roles in the lesser known Rodgers & Hammerstein musical "Allegro" in October of 1947 (their third collaboration after "Carousel" and "Oklahoma!"), the New York show, in which Bill introduced the song "A Fellow Needs a Girl," earned mixed reviews but still managed an eight-month run.
Finding some breaks in NY with live TV roles and with his own radio show, Ching eventually returned to films in 1950 when he was cast in a deceptively villainous role in the film noir classic _D.O.A. (1950) starring Edmond O'Brien. His optimism did not last long when he was then given a very minor role in another film noir piece, the Humphrey Bogart starrer In a Lonely Place (1950). Republic Studios saved the day when they signed the actor up, albeit for featured roles in "B" westerns and war dramas. During this period he backed up Bill Elliott in The Showdown (1950), John Carroll and Vera Ralston in both Surrender (1950) and Belle Le Grand (1951), Rod Cameron in both Oh! Susanna (1951) and The Sea Hornet (1951) and 'Wendell Corey and Vera Ralston again in The Wild Blue Yonder (1951). In these (and later) films he was usually typecast in "other man" roles or as a staunch military man.
Finally, Republic had the sense to make use of Ching's strong singing voice by casting him as the lead in its musical crime melodrama Bal Tabarin (1952) wherein he took second billing opposite operatic soprano Muriel Lawrence. Unfortunately the musical, which figured in the historic Parisian nightclub in its plot, was not released by MGM or a highly comparable studio so it came and went without much fanfare. As a result, Ching's reward was that Republic dropped him.
While the actor did appear in another musical, MGM's Give a Girl a Break (1953) starring Gower Champion and then-wife Marge Champion, his was only a minor role and he was given no songs to solo on. MGM did, however, cast the actor in what became arguably his cinematic career highlight, the Tracy/Hepburn vehicle Pat and Mike (1952) as Katharine Hepburn's arrogant husband-to-be. Fourth billed (behind Aldo Ray), Ching would not find an important role in a quality film like this again.
Trying to keep the momentum of his ever-stalling career going, Ching began to include TV assignments, alternately switching between them and film parts. TV proved a stronger medium for his playing of handsome leading men types. He was afforded the opportunity to guest opposite such lovelies as Joan Crawford, Jane Wyman, Laraine Day, Jane Greer, Gale Storm, Marjorie Lord, and others in both dramatic and lightly comedic appearances. In 1955 he enjoyed a minor, recurring part as a physical education teacher who briefly catches the attention of teacher Eve Arden in the popular Our Miss Brooks (1952) series.
In the mid-1950s the twice-married father of five (two from his second wife's first marriage) was forced to focus more and more on selling real estate to make ends meet. Finishing his film career uneventfully with the horror opus My World Dies Screaming (1958) and Escort West (1959) (the latter billed as "Bill Ching" far below star Victor Mature), the actor phased out his career altogether and fully retired in 1959. Bill and his family remained in the Southern California area where he continued to thrive as a realtor. Ching died on July 1, 1989, in Tustin, California of congestive heart failure and was buried at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana. - Music Department
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Lou Christie was a popular singer from the Pittsburgh area, a former choirboy with no formal musical training, who hit it big in the early 1960s as a teenager with two songs featuring his very high-pitched falsetto voice, "The Gypsy Cried" and "Two Faces Have I." Several years later he hit it big again, with two more hits using his falsetto voice (though not as prominently as on his previous hits), "Lightning Strikes Again" and "Rhapsody in the Rain." The latter had the distinction of being one of the first songs to be banned from many radio stations because of its perceived "suggestive" lyrics.- One of a load of ab-normal muscular men who stood on the Neopolitan pectoral pedestal during the sword-and-sandal craze of the early 1960s, Sergio Ciani was born in Italy and went by the aptly-named stage moniker "Alan Steel" while in the meat of his film career. Playing assorted mythological demigods in cheaply-made but highly popular spectacles of the early 1960s, the actor also occasionally went by his birth name. Riding on a cinematic tidal wave ignited by Montana-born bodybuilder and one-time "Mr Universe" Steve Reeves in the cult hit Hercules (1958) [aka Hercules], Steel was actually one of the very few native Italians to play these colossal he-men as most were transported from America or England.
Steel started off his beefcake run off as a body double for Reeves in both the "Hercules" sequel Hercules Unchained (1959) [Hercules Unchained] and in The Giant of Marathon (1959) [Giant of Marathon], in which he also had bit roles. Within a couple of years Steel was posing front-and-center as Herk himself in Sansone (1961) [Samson] opposite another physique-minded American import, Brad Harris in the title role. On numerous occasions Steel was asked to play the legendary Greek hero, as well as the equally well-built demigods Samson and Ursus, even though the film titles often fused (or confused) them in their titles. Steel starred as Hercules in Hercules Against Rome (1964) [Hercules Against Rome], Hercules Against the Moon Men (1964) [Hercules Against the Moon Men], Sansone contro il corsaro nero (1964) [Hercules and the Black Pirate], and Lost Treasure of the Incas (1964) [Hercules and the Treasure of the Incas], the second movie mentioned being one of the only spectacles to actually incorporate science fiction into the genre. In contrast, his Hercules serves as a mere sidekick in the Zorro-like spectacle Hercules and the Masked Rider (1963) [Hercules and the Masked Rider] starring Ettore Manni.
It was not surprising to find Steel cast as a heavy during his prime as well -- menacing the very heroes he was prone to playing -- such as his crazed emperor Commodus in Rebel Gladiators (1962) [Ursus, the Rebel Gladiator] opposite Dan Vadis. He also played the supporting role of Kaldos in The Fury of Hercules (1962) [The Fury of Hercules] when it was Brad Harris' turn to play the title role.
By mid-decade the Herculean phase had faded away and Steel went on, unlike others peplum stars, to other film styles -- dramas, thrillers, horror, oaters, even comedies. In the late 1960s he and fellow movie musclemen Kirk Morris and Gordon Mitchell served up a "spaghetti western" entitled Sapevano solo uccidere (1968) [Saguaro]. In 1976 Steel starred in and co-wrote a Robin Hood movie, and in 1979 ended his on-camera appearances with the Italian comedy Baby Love (1979).
As a footnote, in 1993 Australian filmmakers took Alan's film Samson and the Mighty Challenge (1964) [Samson and the Mighty Challenge] and did a total re-edit to create a brand new feature (an action comedy), with original scenes, Aussie actors and a new soundtrack. The film was entitled Hercules Returns (1993). - Ken Clark was born on 4 June 1927 in Neffs, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959), None But the Lonely Spy (1964) and Missione speciale Lady Chaplin (1966). He was married to Bette Lola Eileen Kruger. He died on 1 June 2009 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.
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American actor Gary Clarke was born Clarke Frederic L'Amoreaux of French and Mexican ancestry. Raised in the predominantly Chicano neighbourhood of East Los Angeles, he was determined to become an actor by the time he attended high school. His first performing engagements were in community theatre in San Gabriel, followed by stage appearances in Glendale and drama studies at the Pasadena Playhouse. At the same time, Clarke made ends meet as a machine operator and newspaper delivery man.
He made his TV debut in 1957, followed by his first motion picture lead the following year in Dragstrip Riot (1958), a low budget AIP release which cashed in on the prevailing trend for youth-oriented car racing and biker gang pictures. Clarke alternated supporting roles with occasional leads in several other genre pictures: as a young horror movie actor, hypnotized and transformed by a vengeful make up artist into a homicidal lycanthrope in How to Make a Monster (1958); as one of two escaped convict stowaways in Missile to the Moon (1958), an inept, ultra-low budget remake of Cat-Women of the Moon (1953) (with even shoddier props and special effects); as a love-struck teen whose life is complicated by conservative parents, the bride-to-be's thuggish ex-boyfriend, a junkie brother and a likely gallery of assorted pushers and mobsters in Date Bait (1960); and as a college undergraduate bent on seducing a particularly hard-to-get sorority sister in the predictable teen comedy Wild Wild Winter (1966).
On TV, Clarke had a semi-regular role as Dick Hamilton, younger brother of Lucy, the secretary of private eye Michael Shayne (1960) (Richard Denning). This character was specifically created for the show and did not appear in the original novels by Brett Halliday. Perhaps thanks to his boyish face and easy-going personality, Clarke became an audience favourite as Steve Hill, a close buddy of the Trampas character (played by Doug McClure) during the first two seasons of the hit western series The Virginian (1962). When Hill was phased out in 1964, Clarke moved on to play an Arizona Territory cavalry officer in Hondo (1967) and made guest appearances in diverse shows and made-for-TV movies.
In 1966, he began surreptitiously submitting scripts for the NBC spy sitcom Get Smart (1965) as 'C. F. Lamoreaux', in the process creating the character of Hymie the Robot (played perfectly deadpan by Dick Gautier) in a set of six episodes. The show's creators, Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, were well aware of this little subterfuge, but they liked his ideas. When Clarke eventually owned up that he had been an actor on The Virginian, their response was "we watch TV too".
Clarke continued through the 70s and 80s in occasional TV guest spots. He popped up several times as a police officer in Dynasty (1981) and played four different characters in The Young Riders (1989). He had a small role in the A-grade western Tombstone (1993), as U.S. Marshal Crawley Dake (1936-1890), the lawman who first deputized Virgil Earp. In Parkland (2013), he played Vice Admiral George Burkley (1902-1991), physician to three U.S. presidents, who was among those present during JFK's ill-fated Dallas motorcade.
Clarke has also briefly sidelined as a vocalist, releasing the single "Tomorrow May Never Come" (co-written by Jackie DeShannon) for RCA Victor in 1962, and a cover of the theme from The Virginian ("Lonesome Tree"), backed by "One Summer in a Million" for Decca Records in 1963.
Clarke's second wife (1964-70) was the actress Pat Woodell (best known as Bobbie Jo Bradley in TV's Petticoat Junction (1963)). He has been married since 1991 to Jerrene Beatty and is the father of two daughters. His hobbies have been said to be riding horses and motorcycles and playing golf.- Actor
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Edward Montgomery Clift (nicknamed 'Monty' his entire life) was born on October 17, 1920 in Omaha, Nebraska, just after his twin sister Roberta (1920-2014) and eighteen months after his brother Brooks Clift. He was the son of Ethel "Sunny" Anderson (Fogg; 1888-1988) and William Brooks Clift (1886-1964). His father made a lot of money in banking but was quite poor during the depression. His mother was born out of wedlock and spent much of her life and the family fortune finding her illustrious southern lineage and raising her children as aristocrats.
At age 13, Monty appeared on Broadway ("Fly Away Home"), and chose to remain in the New York theater for over ten years before finally succumbing to Hollywood. He gained excellent theatrical notices and soon piqued the interests of numerous lovelorn actresses; their advances met with awkward conflict. While working in New York in the early 1940s, he met wealthy former Broadway star Libby Holman. She developed an intense decade-plus obsession over the young actor, even financing an experimental play, "Mexican Mural" for him. It was ironic his relationship with the bisexual middle-aged Holman would be the principal (and likely the last) heterosexual relationship of his life and only cause him further anguish over his sexuality. She would wield considerable influence over the early part of his film career, advising him in decisions to decline lead roles in Sunset Boulevard (1950), (originally written specifically for him; the story perhaps hitting a little too close to home) and High Noon (1952).
His long apprenticeship on stage made him a thoroughly accomplished actor, notable for the intensity with which he researched and approached his roles. By the early 1950s he was exclusively homosexual, though he continued to hide his homosexuality and maintained a number of close friendships with theater women (heavily promoted by studio publicists).
His film debut was Red River (1948) with John Wayne quickly followed by his early personal success The Search (1948) (Oscar nominations for this, A Place in the Sun (1951), From Here to Eternity (1953) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)). By 1950, he was troubled with allergies and colitis (the U.S. Army had rejected him for military service in World War II for chronic diarrhea) and, along with pill problems, he was alcoholic. He spent a great deal of time and money on psychiatry.
In 1956, during filming of Raintree County (1957), he ran his Chevrolet into a tree after leaving a party at Elizabeth Taylor's; it was she who saved him from choking by pulling out two teeth lodged in his throat. His smashed face was rebuilt, he reconciled with his estranged father, but he continued bedeviled by dependency on drugs and his unrelenting guilt over his homosexuality.
With his Hollywood career in an irreversible slide despite giving an occasional riveting performance, such as in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Monty returned to New York and tried to slowly develop a somewhat more sensible lifestyle in his brownstone row house on East 61st Street in Manhattan. He was set to play in Taylor's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), when he died in the early morning hours of July 23, 1966, at his home at age 45. His body was found by his live-in personal secretary/companion Lorenzo James, who found Clift lying nude on top of his bed, dead from what the autopsy called "occlusive coronary artery disease." Clift's last 10 years prior to his death from his 1956 car accident were called the "longest suicide in history" by famed acting teacher Robert Lewis.- Actor
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Lanky, charismatic and versatile actor with an amazing grin that put everyone at ease, James Coburn studied acting at UCLA, and then moved to New York to study under noted acting coach Stella Adler. After being noticed in several stage productions, Coburn appeared in a handful of minor westerns before being cast as the knife-throwing, quick-shooting Britt in the John Sturges mega-hit The Magnificent Seven (1960). Sturges remembered Coburn's talents when he cast his next major film project, The Great Escape (1963), where Coburn played the Australian POW Sedgwick. Regular work now came thick and fast for Coburn, including appearing in Major Dundee (1965), the first of several films he appeared in directed by Hollywood enfant terrible Sam Peckinpah.
Coburn was then cast, and gave an especially fine performance as Lt. Commander Paul Cummings in Arthur Hiller's The Americanization of Emily, where he demonstrated a flair for writer Paddy Chayefsky's subtle, ironic comedy that would define his performances for the rest of his career.
The next two years were a key period for Coburn, with his performances in the wonderful 007 spy spoof Our Man Flint (1966) and the eerie Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966). Coburn followed up in 1967 with a Flint sequel, In Like Flint (1967), and the much underrated political satire The President's Analyst (1967). The remainder of the 1960s was rather uneventful for Coburn. However, he became associated with martial arts legend Bruce Lee and the two trained together, traveled extensively and even visited India scouting locations for a proposed film project, but Lee's untimely death (Coburn, along with Steve McQueen, was a pallbearer at Lee's funeral) put an end to that.
The 1970s saw Coburn appearing again in several strong roles, starting off in Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), alongside Charles Bronson in the Depression-era Hard Times (1975) and as a disenchanted German soldier on the Russian front in Peckinpah's superb Cross of Iron (1977). Towards the end of the decade, however, Coburn was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which severely hampered his health and work output for many years. After conventional treatments failed, Coburn turned to a holistic therapist, and through a restructured diet program, made a definite improvement. By the 1990s he was once again appearing regularly in both film and TV productions.
No one was probably more surprised than Coburn himself when he was both nominated for, and then won, the Best Supporting Actor Award in 1997 for playing Nick Nolte's abusive and alcoholic father in Affliction (1997). At 70 years of age, Coburn's career received another shot in the arm, and he appeared in another 14 films, including Snow Dogs (2002) and The Man from Elysian Fields (2001), before his death from a heart attack in November of 2002. Coburn's passions in life included martial arts, card-playing and enjoying Cuban cigars (which may have contributed to his fatal heart attack).- Actor
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Born Robert Alexander Cochran, son of a California lumberman, he worked mostly in the theatre before landing a contract with Samuel Goldwyn in 1945. His debut was Wonder Man (1945) with Virginia Mayo and Danny Kaye. From 1949 to 1952, he was signed to Warner Brothers, then started up his own production company. In 1965, he sailed off in his yacht to Guatemala to look for suitable filming locations but died of a lung infection before reaching land.- Actor
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Barry Coe was born on 26 November 1934 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Peyton Place (1957), Jaws 2 (1978) and The 300 Spartans (1962). He was married to Jorunn Kristiansen. He died on 16 July 2019 in Palm Desert, California, USA.- Peter Coe was born on 11 November 1918 in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia. He was an actor, known for Vigilante Force (1976), Road to Bali (1952) and Sands of Iwo Jima (1949). He was married to Rosalee Calvert. He died on 9 June 1993 in Los Angeles, California, USA.