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Born to Alice Cooper and Charles Cooper. Gary attended school at Dunstable school England, Helena Montana and Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa (then called Iowa College). His first stage experience was during high school and college. Afterwards, he worked as an extra for one year before getting a part in a two-reeler by the independent producer Hans Tiesler . Eileen Sedgwick was his first leading lady. He then appeared in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) for United Artists before moving to Paramount. While there he appeared in a small part in Wings (1927), It (1927), and other films.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
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.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star, was born Wong Liu Tsong on January 3, 1905, in Los Angeles, California, to laundryman Wong Sam Sing and his wife, Lee Gon Toy. A third-generation American, she managed to have a substantial acting career during a deeply racist time when the taboo against miscegenation meant that Caucasian actresses were cast as "Oriental" women in lead parts opposite Caucasian leading men. Even when the role called for playing opposite a Caucasian in yellowface, as with Paul Muni's as the Chinese peasant Wang Lung in The Good Earth (1937), Wong was rejected, since she did not fit a Caucasian's imagined ideal look for an Asian woman. The discrimination she faced in the domestic industry caused her to go to Europe for work in English and German films. Her name, which she also spelled Wong Lew Song, translates literally as "Frosted Yellow Willows" but has been interpreted as "Second-Daughter Yellow Butterfly." Her family gave her the English-language name Anna May. She was born on Flower Street in downtown Los Angeles in an integrated neighborhood dominated by Irish and Germans, one block from Chinatown, where her father ran the Sam Kee Laundry.
The Wong family moved back to Chinatown two years after Liu Tsong's birth, but in 1910 they uprooted themselves, moving to a nearby Figueroa Street neighborhood where they had Mexican and East European neighbors. There were two steep hills between the Wongs' new home and Chinatown, but as her biographer, Colgate University history professor Graham Russell Gao Hodges, points out, those hills put a psychological as well as physical distance between Liu Tsong and Chinatown. Los Angeles' Chinatown already was teeming with movie shoots when she was a girl. She would haunt the neighborhood nickelodeons, having become enraptured with the early "flickers." Though her traditional father strongly disapproved of his daughter's cinephilia, as it deflected her from scholastic pursuits, there was little he could do about it, as Liu was determined to be an actress. The film industry was in the midst of relocating from the East Coast to the West, and Hollywood was booming. Liu Tsong would haunt movie shoots as she had earlier haunted the nickelodeons. Her favorite stars were Pearl White, of The Perils of Pauline (1914) serial fame, and White's leading man, Crane Wilbur. She was also fond of Ruth Roland.
Educated at a Chinese-language school in Chinatown, she would skip school to watch film shoots in her neighborhood. She made tip money from delivering laundry for her father, which she spent on going to the movies. Her father, if he discovered she had gone to the movies during school hours, would spank her with a bamboo stick. Around the time she was nine years old, she began begging filmmakers for parts, behavior that got her dubbed "C.C.C." for "curious Chinese child."
Liu Tsong's first film role was as an uncredited extra in Metro Pictures' The Red Lantern (1919), starring Alla Nazimova as a Eurasian woman who falls in love with an American missionary. The film included scenes shot in Chinatown. The part was obtained for her by a friend of her father's (without his knowledge) who worked in the movie industry. Retaining the family surname "Wong" and the English-language "Christian" name bestowed on her by her parents, Liu Tsong Americanized herself as "Anna May Wong" for the movie industry, though she would not receive an on-screen credit for another two years.
The rechristened Anna May Wong appeared in bit parts in movies starring Priscilla Dean, Colleen Moore and the Japanese-born Sessue Hayakawa, the first Asian star of American movies. Due to her father's demands, she had an adult guardian at the studio, and would be locked in her dressing room between scenes if she was the only Asian in the cast. Initially balancing school work and her budding film career, she eventually dropped out of Los Angeles High School to pursue acting full time. She was aided by the fact that, though still a teenager, she looked more mature than her real age.
Director Marshall Neilan cast the teenage Anna May in a bit part in his film Dinty (1920), then gave her her first credited role in the "Hop" sequence of Bits of Life (1921), the American movie industry's first anthology film. In "Hop" Wong played Toy Ling, the abused wife of Lon Chaney's character Chin Gow, which the Man of a Thousand Faces played in yellowface. She next appeared in support of John Gilbert in Fox's Shame (1921) before being cast in her first major role at the age of 17, the lead in The Toll of the Sea (1922). She played Lotus Flower in this adaptation of the opera "Madame Butterfly," which moved the action from Japan to China. "The Toll of the Sea" was the first feature film shot entirely in Technicolor's two-strip color process. By appearing top-billed in this romantic melodrama, Anna became the first native-born Asian performer to star in a major Hollywood movie. Most portrayals of Asian women were done by Caucasian actresses in "yellow-face," such as the 1915 Madame Butterfly (1915) starring "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford (who was born in Toronto, Canada) in the title role. In "The Toll of the Sea," Anna May's character perpetuates the stereotype of the Asian "lotus blossom," a self-sacrificial woman who surrenders her life for the love of a Caucasian man. The film was a hit, and it showcased Wong in a preternaturally mature and restrained performance. This breakthrough should have launched Anna May Wong as a star, but for one thing: She was Chinese in a country that excluded (by law) Chinese from emigrating to the US, that forbade (by law) Chinese from marrying Caucasians and that generally excluded (by law or otherwise) Chinese from the culture at large, except for bit roles as heavies in the national consciousness.
"The Toll of the Sea" made Anna May Wong a known, and thus a marketable, commodity in Hollywood. She became the #1 actress when a young Asian female part had to be cast, but unfortunately lead roles for Asians were few and far between. Instead of becoming a star, this beautiful woman with a complexion described as "a rose blushing through old ivory" continued to be stuck in supporting roles, as in Tod Browning's melodrama Drifting (1923) and the western Thundering Dawn (1923). She even played an Eskimo in The Alaskan (1924). She appeared as Tiger Lily, "Chieftainess of the Indians," in Paramount's prestigious production of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1924), but the role was very small (the film was shot on Santa Catalina Island, where the cast stayed during the production.
The 170-cm-tall (5'7", although other sources cite her height as 5'4½") beauty was known as the world's best-dressed woman and widely considered to have the loveliest hands in the cinema. Her big breakthrough after her auspicious start with "The Toll of the Sea" finally came when Douglas Fairbanks cast her in a supporting role as a treacherous Mongol slave in his Middle Eastern/Arabian Nights extravaganza The Thief of Bagdad (1924). The $2-million blockbuster production made her known to critics and the movie-going public. For better or worse, a star, albeit of the stereotypical "Dragon Lady" type, was born.
Despite her waxing fame, she was limited to supporting roles, as Caucasian actresses, including most improbably Myrna Loy, continued to be cast as Asian women in lead roles from the 1920s through the 1940s, despite the ready availability of Anna May Wong. She was unable to attract lead parts despite her beauty and proven acting talent, even in films featuring Asian women, but she did carve out a career as a supporting player in everything from A-list movies to two-reel comedies and serials. The characters she played typically were duplicitous or murderous vamps who often reaped the wages of their sin by being raped. It was a demeaning apprenticeship that most Caucasian actresses did not have to go through. Anna wanted was to play modern American women all through her career but was thwarted because of racism. Later, when she journeyed to Europe to escape the typecasting of Hollywood, she told journalist Doris Mackie, "I was so tired of the parts I had to play. Why is it that the screen Chinese is always the villain? And so crude a villain--murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass."
Wong embodied the Caucasian ideal of a foreign exotic beauty, an alien presence despite her American citizenship. The movie magazine "Pictures" published a memoir of hers in 1926 in which she complained, "A lot of people, when they first meet me, are surprised that I speak and write English without difficulty. But why shouldn't I? I was born right here in Los Angeles and went to the public schools here. I speak English without any accent at all. But my parents complain that the same cannot be said of my Chinese. Although I have gone to Chinese schools, and always talk to my father and mother in our native tongue, it is said that I speak Chinese with an English accent!". Many Chinese-Americans considered themselves "Chinese in America," an attitude bolstered by the anti-Chinese, anti-Asian attitude of the US government and the American culture. In her memoir, Wong referred to herself as "Chinese" or "Americanized Chinese," but not as an "American" or "Chinese-American."
Anna May Wong appeared as a dancer in a play within a movie shot in Technicolor for the Ronald Colman vehicle His Supreme Moment (1925), but her Hollywood output generally was undistinguished. In 1926 she seems to have appeared in a "race" film made by Chinese-Americans for a Chinese-American audience, The Silk Bouquet (1926) (aka "The Dragon Horse"). Moving between Poverty Row and the majors, she appeared again with Lon Chaney in Mr. Wu (1927) at MGM and with Warner Oland and Dolores Costello in Old San Francisco (1927) at Warner Brothers. Warners also cast her in support of Oriental yellowface queen Myrna Loy in The Crimson City (1928). Despite her WASP looks and red hair, Loy in Chinese yellowface had become a major "Oriental" star in American films desiring an exotic element. This indignity may have been what pushed Wong to seek her future somewhere other than Hollywood.
She moved to Europe in 1928, where she made movies in the UK and Germany. She made her debut on the London stage with the young up-and-coming Laurence Olivier in the play "The Circle of Chalk." After receiving a drubbing for her voice and singing from the London critics, she paid a Cambridge University tutor to improve her speech, with the result that she acquired an upper-crust English accent. Later she appeared in Vienna, Austria, in the play "Springtime."
European directors appreciated Wong's unique talents and beauty, and they used her in ways that stereotype-minded Hollywood, hemmed in by American prejudice, would not or could not. Moving to Germany to appear in German films, she became acquainted with German film personalities, including Marlene Dietrich and actress-filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. She learned German and French and began to develop a continental European attitude and outlook. In Europe she was welcomed as a star. According to her biographer Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Wong hobnobbed with "an intellectual elite that included princes, playwrights, artists and photographers who clamored to work with her." Anna May Wong was featured in magazines all over the world, far more than actresses of a similar level of accomplishment. She became a media superstar, and her coiffure and complexion were copied, while "coolie coats" became the rage. According to Hodges, "[S]he was the one American star who spoke to the French people, more than Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford or Mary Pickford, the top American actresses of the time." But, ironically, "[S]he's the one who's now forgotten." Wong was cast in Ewald André Dupont's silent film Piccadilly (1929) as a maid who is fired from her job at a London nightclub after dancing on top of a table, then rehired as a dancer to infuse the club with exotic glamour. Her first talkie was The Flame of Love (1930) (aka "The Road to Dishonour", although some sources claim it was "Song" aka "Wasted Love" in that same year), which was released by British International Pictures. In a time before dubbing, when different versions of a single film were filmed in different languages, Wong played in the English, French and German versions of the movie.
Paramount Pictures offered her a contract with the promise of lead roles in major productions. Returning to the US in 1930, Wong appeared on Broadway in the play "On the Spot." It was a hit, running for 167 performances, and she moved on to Hollywood and Paramount, where she starred in an adaptation of Sax Rohmer's novel "Daughter of Fu Manchu" called Daughter of the Dragon (1931). She was back in stereotype-land, this time as the ultimate "Dragon Lady," who with her father Fu Manchu (played by ethnic Swede Warner Oland, the future Charlie Chan) embodied the evil "Yellow Peril." While "Daughter of the Dragon" may have been B-movie pulp, it enabled Wong to show off her talent by delivering a powerful performance.
Her best role in Hollywood in the early 1930s was in support of Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's Oscar-winning classic Shanghai Express (1932). However, Hollywood in the 1930s was as racist as it had been in the Roaring Twenties, and MGM refused to cast her in its 1932 production of The Son-Daughter (1932), for which she did a screen-test, as she was "too Chinese to play a Chinese." Helen Hayes played the role in yellow-face. Similarly, she was later kept out of both a lead and supporting role in MGM's prestige production of The Good Earth (1937), its filming of Pearl S. Buck's popular novel, after flunking another screen test for failing to live up to a white man's idea of what "looked" Chinese. MGM screen-tested her for the lead role of O-Lan, the sympathetic wife of Chinese farmer Wang Lung (to be played by Paul Muni, personally cast in the part by Irving Thalberg). She also was considered for the supporting role of Lotus, Wang Lung's concubine. Anna, an ethnic Chinese, lost out on both roles to two Austrian women, Luise Rainer and Tilly Losch, as Albert Lewin, the Thalberg assistant who was casting the film, vetoed Wong and other ethnic Chinese because their looks didn't fit his conception of what Chinese people should look like. Ironically, the year "The Good Earth" came out, Wong appeared on the cover of Look Magazine's second issue, which labeled her "The World's Most Beautiful Chinese Girl." Stereotyped in America as a dragon lady, the cover photo had her holding a dagger. Luise Rainer would win the Best Actress Oscar for her performance of O-Lan in Chinese yellowface.
There were practical considerations for MGM's refusal to cast Wong opposite Muni. It was illegal in many states, including California, for Asians to marry Caucasians, and featuring an interracial couple, even if they were playing the same race, likely would mean the movie would be rejected by many theater chains in regions in which anti-Asian prejudice was particularly severe, such as the South. The new Motion Picture Production Code of 1934 forbid black/white miscegenation and MGM did cast Walter Connelly (a white actor) opposite Soo Yong (a Chines-American actress) as a married couple. Anna May returned to England, reportedly distraught at the injustice perpetrated by MGM and her home country. In England she alternated between films and the stage, but she was obliged to return to the US to fulfill her Paramount contract. She appeared in two Robert Florey-directed pictures, Daughter of Shanghai (1937) as a non-stereotypical Asian-American female lead, and Dangerous to Know (1938). She also appeared in major roles in King of Chinatown (1939) and Island of Lost Men (1939).
Anna May Wong did not appear in films from 1939-41, when she was cast as a supporting player in Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery (1941), an entry in the B-movie series. Her last two starring roles in films were in a pair of anti-Japanese propaganda films, Bombs Over Burma (1942) and Lady from Chungking (1942), both of which were made by Producers Releasing Corp., the lowest of the Poverty Row studios. The major studios, when shooting propaganda films requiring a sympathetic Asian lead, reverted to the old practice of casting Caucasians in yellow-face, no matter how absurd the result.
As her movie career went into eclipse in the 1940s (she would not appear in another motion picture until 1949), she found work on the stage and in radio and then in the new medium of television. Wong wrote a preface to the book "New Chinese Recipes" in 1942, which was one of the first Chinese cookbooks printed in the US. The proceeds from the cookbook were dedicated to United China Relief.
Though Wong was vocal in her opposition to stereotypes and typecasting, and was one of Hollywood's more memorable victims of racism in being denied leading roles in A-list pictures because the racist mores of the times prevented an Asian woman from kissing a Caucasian actor, she was considered socially suspect by her own people. The roles she was forced to accept in order to have an acting career, as well as her status as a single woman, disgusted many Chinese in America and in her ancestral homeland, where actresses were equated with prostitutes and where women were still played by men in classical opera. On a trip to China in 1936, Anna May was welcomed by the country's cultural elite in cosmopolitan Beijing and Shanghai, but she had to abandon a trip to her parents' ancestral village when her progress was blocked by a crowd of protesters. Someone in the crowed denounced her with "Down with Huang Liu Tsong, the stooge that disgraces China. Don't let her go ashore." Upon her return from China, Wong was determined to play Chinese characters more authentically, but her only options were to reject roles she deemed racist or to try to soften them from within the belly of the beast. Ultimately for this proud woman, it was a losing battle.
Chinese nationalism had been on the upswing since Yat-sen Sun ended the Manchu Empire in 1911 and was rife in reaction to the war of aggression launched against China by the Empire of Japan. Chinese nationalists, concerned about the portrayal of Chinese people as evil incarnate in American popular culture, were offended by Wong's portrayals of Asians and exotics. Though she would spend the World War II years working for Chinese charities and relief agencies, she was snubbed by Madame Chiang, the sister-in-law of Yat-sen Sun and wife of Kai-Shek Chiang, the army general who led the Nationalist Chinese, during Madame Chiang's 1942-43 propaganda tour of the US. Her biographer Hodges claims this was the beginning of a consensus among Chinese and Chinese-Americans that Wong was an embarrassment. Chinese and Chinese-Americans chose to blame her rather than Hollywood for the demeaning stereotypes she had to play in order to work. The result of this new consensus, according to Hodges, was that "her memory has been washed away."
Anna May's career in motion pictures was virtually finished after the war. She got her own TV series, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong (1951), on the Dumont Network, playing a Chinese detective in a role written expressly for her, a character who was even given her real Chinese name. The half-hour program, which ran weekly from August 27 to November 21, 1951, was the first TV show to star an Asian-American.
Wong's personal relationships typically were with older Caucasian men, but California law forbade marriage between Asians and Caucasians until 1948. One of her white lovers offered to marry her in Mexico, but the couple's intentions became known and he backed off when his Hollywood career was jeopardized. Wong mused about marrying a Chinese man at times, but the Chinese culture held actresses to be on a par with prostitutes, which made her suspect marriage material. She was afraid that the mores of her culture likely meant that marrying a Chinese would force her to quit her career and be an obedient wife.
Anna May Wong appeared in over 50 American, English and German films in her career, making her the first global Chinese-American movie star. She was forced to fight against racism and stereotyping all her professional life, while simultaneously being criticized by Chinese at home and abroad for perpetuating stereotypes in the media. Despite this tremendous burden, the beautiful woman assayed an elegance and sophistication on-screen that made her the paradigm of Asian women for a generation of movie audiences.
Anna May Wong loved reading, and her favorite subjects spanned a wide range, everything from Asian history and Tzu Lao to William Shakespeare. She never married but occupied her time with golf, horses, and skiing. Wong smoked, drank too much, and suffered from depression. She was poised to make a comeback as a character actress on the big screen toward the end of her life, having appeared as Lana Turner's maid in Ross Hunter's sudsy potboiler Portrait in Black (1960). She was cast in the role of Madame Liang in Flower Drum Song (1961), the movie version of Richard Rodgers's and Oscar Hammerstein II's Broadway musical "Flower Drum Song," but before shooting could begin she passed away.
Anna May Wong died of a massive heart attack on February 3, 1961, in Santa Monica, CA, after a long struggle against Laennec's cirrhosis, a disease of the liver. She was 56 years old. Her fame lives on, four decades after her death. She is a part of American popular consciousness, chosen as one of the first movie stars to be featured on a postage stamp. And the interest in her continues: a play about Anna entitled "China Doll--The Imagined Life of an American Actress," written by Elizabeth Wong, had its premiere at Maine's Bowdoin College in 1997. A lecture and film series, "Rediscovering Anna May Wong," was held at the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2004, sponsored by "Playboy" publisher Hugh Hefner. That same year New York City's Museum of Modern Art held its own tribute to Wong, "Retrospective of a Chinese-American Screen Actress." Finally she was getting the respect in her own country that was denied her during her career.
A biography by Colgate University history professor Graham Russell Gao Hodges, "Anna May Wong: From Laundryman's Daughter to Hollywood Legend," was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2004. Hodges considers Anna May's life and career to be amazing, particularly in light of the fact that her star has yet to be eclipsed by any other Asian-American female star, despite the change in attitudes. Finally, in 2004, the British Film Institute restored E.A. Dupont's 1929 silent film "Piccadilly".- Actress
- Soundtrack
Gail Russell was born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 21, 1924. She remained in the Windy City, going to school until her parents moved to California when she was 14. She was an above-average student in school and upon graduation from Santa Monica High School was signed by Paramount Studios.
Because of her ethereal beauty, Gail was to be groomed to be one of Paramount's top stars. She was very shy and had virtually no acting experience to speak of, but her beauty was so striking that the studio figured it could work with her on her acting with a studio acting coach.
Gail's first film came when she was 19 years old with a small role as "Virginia Lowry" in Henry Aldrich Gets Glamour (1943) in 1943. It was her only role that year, but it was a start. The following year she appeared in another film, The Uninvited (1944) with Ray Milland (it was also the first time Gail used alcohol to steady her nerves on the set, a habit that would come back to haunt her). It was a very well done and atmospheric horror story that turned out to be a profitable one for the studio. Gail's third film was the charm, as she co-starred with Diana Lynn in Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1944) that same year. The film was based on the popular book of the time and the film was even more popular.
In 1945 Gail appeared in Salty O'Rourke (1945), a story about crooked gamblers involved in horse racing. Although she wasn't a standout in the film, she acquitted herself well as part of the supporting cast. Later that year she appeared in The Unseen (1945), a story about a haunted house, starring Joel McCrea. Gail played Elizabeth Howard, a governess of the house in question. The film turned a profit but was not the hit that Paramount executives hoped for.
In 1946 Gail was again teamed with Diana Lynn for a sequel to "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay"--Our Hearts Were Growing Up (1946). The plot centered around two young college girls getting involved with bootleggers. Unfortunately, it was not anywhere the caliber of the first film and it failed at the box-office. With Calcutta (1946) in 1947, however, Gail bounced back with a more popular film, this time starring Alan Ladd. Unfortunately, many critics felt that Gail was miscast in this epic drama. That same year she was cast with John Wayne and Harry Carey in the western Angel and the Badman (1947). It was a hit with the public and Gail shone in the role of Penelope Worth, a feisty Quaker girl who tries to tame gunfighter Wayne. Still later Gail appeared in Paramount's all-star musical, Variety Girl (1947). The critics roasted the film, but the public turned out in droves to ensure its success at the box-office. After the releases of Song of India (1949), El Paso (1949), and Captain China (1950), Gail married matinée idol Guy Madison, one of the up-and-coming actors in Hollywood.
After The Lawless (1950) in 1950 Paramount decided against renewing her contract, mainly because of Gail's worsening drinking problem. She had been convicted of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol, and the studio didn't want its name attached to someone who couldn't control her drinking. Being dumped by Paramount damaged her career, and film roles were coming in much more slowly. After Air Cadet (1951) in 1951, her only film that year, she disappeared from the screen for the next five years while she attempted to get control of her life. She divorced Madison in 1954.
In 1956 Gail returned in 7 Men from Now (1956). It was a western with Gail in the minor role of Annie Greer. The next year she was fourth-billed in The Tattered Dress (1957), a film that also starred Jeanne Crain and Jeff Chandler. The following year she had a reduced part in No Place to Land (1958), a low-budget offering from "B" studio Republic Pictures.
By now the demons of alcohol had her in its grasp. She was again absent from the screen until 1961's The Silent Call (1961) (looking much older than her 36 years). It was to be her last film. On August 26, 1961, Gail was found dead in her small studio apartment in Los Angeles, California.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Marion Davies was one of the great comedic actresses of the silent era and into the 1930s.
Marion Cecelia Douras was born in the borough of Brooklyn, New York on January 3, 1897, the daughter of Rose (Reilly) and Bernard J. Douras, a lawyer and judge. Her parents were both of Irish descent. Marion had been bitten by the show biz bug early as she watched her sisters perform in local stage productions. She wanted to do the same. As Marion got older, she tried out for various school plays and did fairly well. Once her formal education had ended, Marion began her career as a chorus girl in New York City, first in the pony follies, and eventually found herself in the famed Ziegfeld Follies. But she wanted to do more than dance. Acting, to Marion, was the epitome of show business and aimed her sights in that direction. Her stage name came when she and her family passed the Davies Insurance Building. One of her sisters called out "Davies!!! That shall be my stage name", and the whole family took on that name.
Her first film was Runaway Romany (1917), when she was 20. Written by Marion and directed by her brother-in-law, the film wasn't exactly a box-office smash, but for Marion, it was a start and a stepping stone to bigger things. The following year Marion starred in two films, The Burden of Proof (1918) and Cecilia of the Pink Roses (1918). The latter film was backed by newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst. When Marion moved to California, she already was involved with Hearst. They lived together at his San Simeon castle, an extremely elaborate mansion which stands as a California landmark to this day. At San Simeon, they threw grand parties, many of them in costume. Frequent guests included Carole Lombard, Mary Pickford, Sonja Henie, and Dolores Del Río - basically all the top names in Hollywood and other celebrities including the mayor of New York City, President Calvin Coolidge, and Charles Lindbergh. Davies and Hearst would continue a long-term romantic relationship for the next 30 years. Because of Hearst's newspaper empire, Marion would be promoted as no actress before her.
She appeared in numerous films over the next few years, with The Cinema Murder (1919) being one of the most suspenseful. In 1922, Marion appeared as Mary Tudor in the historical romantic epic, When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922). It was a film into which Hearst poured in millions of dollars as a showcase for her. Although Marion didn't normally appear in period pieces, she turned in a wonderful performance, and the film turned a profit. Marion remained busy, one of the staples in movie houses around the country. At the end of the twenties, it was obvious that sound films were about to replace silents. Marion was nervous because she had a stutter when she became excited and worried she wouldn't make a successful transition to the new medium, but she was a true professional who had no problem with the change. Time after time, film after film, Marion turned in masterful performances. In 1930, two of her better films were Not So Dumb (1930) and The Florodora Girl (1930). By the early 1930s, Marion had lost her box office appeal and the downward slide began.
Had she been without Hearst's backing, she possibly could have been more successful. He was more of a hindrance than a help. Hearst had tried to push MGM executives to hire Marion for the role of Elizabeth Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934). Louis B. Mayer had other ideas and hired producer Irving Thalberg's wife, Norma Shearer instead. Hearst reacted by pulling his newspaper support for MGM without much impact. By the late 1930s Hearst was suffering financial reversals and it was Marion who bailed him out by selling $1 million of her jewelry. Without her, the Hearst Corporation might not be where it is today. Hearst's financial problems also spelled an end to her career. Although she had made the transition to sound, other stars fared better, and her roles became fewer and further between. In 1937, a 40-year-old Marion filmed her last movie, Ever Since Eve (1937). Out of films and with the intense pressures of her relationship with Hearst, Davies turned more and more to alcohol. Despite those problems, Marion was a very sharp and savvy business woman.
When Hearst died in 1951, Marion did not really know what was going on. The night before, there had been a lot of people in the house. Marion was very upset by the large crowd of family and friends. She said it was too noisy, and they were disturbing Hearst by talking so loud. She was upset and had to be sedated. When she woke, her niece, Patricia Van Cleve Lake, and her husband, Arthur Lake, told her that Hearst was dead. Upon Patricia's death, it was revealed she had been the love child of Davies and Hearst. Marion was banned from Hearst's funeral.
She later started many charities including a children's clinic that is still operating today. She was very generous and was loved by everyone who knew her. She went through a lot, even getting polio in the 1940s. Marion married for the first time at the age of 54, to Horace Brown. The union would last until she died of cancer on September 22, 1961 in Los Angeles, California. She was 64 years old.- Actor
- Soundtrack
A cigar-smoking, monocled, swag-bellied character actor known for his Old South manners and charm. In 1918 he and his first wife formed the Coburn Players and appeared on Broadway in many plays. With her death in 1937, he accepted a Hollywood contract and began making films at the age of sixty.- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
American character actor. Upon his entry into films in 1930, he was typecast as a weakling or criminal type. He received great acclaim for his role as Garth Esdras, the haunted and hunted accessory to murder in Winterset (1936). Memorable as the weaselly convict who tries to kill James Cagney at Steve Cochran's behest, but gets his just deserts in the trunk of a car, in White Heat (1949). After two decades as a film actor, he made a small foray into film directing. He died at 58.- In the 1930s, 1940s, and especially the 1950s, if a director wanted a short, fat actor to play a windy storekeeper or a raucous conventioneer, he might well cast Dick Elliott. He was one of those actors who, whenever he appeared on screen, often for less than a minute, the audience would think, "Oh, it's that guy." Yet few would ever know his name.
Elliott was certainly short, probably not much more than five foot four. And he was certainly fat. His belly was large and round, so he looked a bit like a huge ball with arms and legs. One imagined him soft and pink, and always happy. A Hobbit, perhaps. Santa Claus without the whiskers. And like another short, fat actor, Eugene Pallette, Elliott had a distinctive voice. Not the bullfrog basso that rumbled out of Pallette's gullet, but higher-pitched, whiny, or honey-smooth as the role demanded, with an "sh" in place of a lot of "s" sounds.
Elliott appeared in over 240 films. He was most often cast as judges, mayors, newspaper reporters, policemen, and blowhards, usually one who can't stop talking except when he'd burst into a loud laugh that bordered on a cackle.
As was the case with many character actors who never became featured players, not much record remains of his personal life. He was born Richard Damon Elliott on April 30, 1886, in Salem, Massachusetts. His gravestone says he was a loving husband and father. And we know he began performing in stock in 1931 and was on stage for nearly thirty years before his film debut, including appearing in the long-running hit, "Abie's Irish Rose." Other than that, we have only his film and television appearances to go on, and I'll mention some highlights.
His first movie was Central Airport (1933), and he was Ned Buntline in Annie Oakley (1935) with Barbara Stanwyck in 1935. He was perfect for the role of Marryin' Sam in Li'l Abner (1940), was amusing as the Judge in Christmas in Connecticut (1945), again starring Stanwyck, and made the most of his small role as a Whiskey Drummer in The Dude Goes West (1948) with Eddie Albert. Many film fans remember him best for another small role, as the man on the porch in the holiday perennial It's a Wonderful Life (1946), who tells James Stewart to stop jabbering and go ahead and kiss Donna Reed. Often his role in a film was so small his character didn't even have a name, and was sometimes listed in the cast simply as "Fat Man." He did have a good part in the under appreciated film Park Row (1952). His last film role was in Go, Johnny, Go! (1959).
The advent of television opened up a whole new world of roles. An unending stream of weekly comedies, dramas, and even variety shows needed performers. Some featured character actors like Gene Lockhart and Cecil Kellaway might star in an episode of an anthology series. Actors who had little screen time in films became invaluable featured players, and a few even attained the Holy Grail of being a series regular, Elliott among them. In the fifties he appeared in dozens and dozens of TV shows, including Dick Tracy (1950), in which he had a recurring role as Chief Murphy, My Little Margie (1952), Adventures of Superman (1952), I Love Lucy (1951), I Married Joan (1952), in which his character was called "Fatso," December Bride (1954), and Rawhide (1959). One of his best roles was in the episode The Rain Wagon (1955), in which he played Osgood Falstaff, the Shakespeare-quoting rainmaker who is secretly a bank robber. It was rare for Elliott to play a villain, but he pulls it off, making his eyes look devious and sinister -- a cuddly fat man, but don't turn your back on him. At the other extreme, he often played Santa Claus on Christmas episodes of the Jimmy Durante, Red Skelton, and Jack Benny shows.
To many people, Elliott will always be remembered as Mayor Pike in The Andy Griffith Show (1960) Sadly, Elliott died during the second season of the show, on December 22, 1961, in Burbank, California.
Dick Elliott was one of those character actors who were almost anonymous, though they lit up the screen in short roles. Fortunately, because of "It's a Wonderful Life" every Christmas and "The Andy Griffith Show" in frequent reruns, his fans can still delight in the little fat man. - Actor
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One of Hollywood's finest character actors and most accomplished scene stealers, Barry Fitzgerald was born William Joseph Shields in 1888 in Dublin, Ireland. Educated to enter the banking business, the diminutive Irishman with the irresistible brogue was bitten by the acting bug in the 1920s and joined Dublin's world-famous Abbey Players. He subsequently starred in the Abbey Theatre production of Sean O'Casey's Juno And The Paycock, a role that he recreated in his film debut for director Alfred Hitchcock in 1930. He was coaxed to the U.S. in 1935 by John Ford to appear in Ford's film adaptation of another O'Casey masterpiece, The Plough and the Stars (1936). Fitzgerald took up residence in Hollywood and went on to give outstanding performances in such films as The Long Voyage Home (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), None But the Lonely Heart (1944), And Then There Were None (1945), Two Years Before the Mast (1946) and what is probably the role for which he is most fondly remembered, The Quiet Man (1952). He won the Academy Award For Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of gruff, aging Father Fitzgibbon in Going My Way (1944). He was also nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for the same role and was the only actor to ever be so honored. Barry Fitzgerald died in his beloved Dublin in 1961.- Actress
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Beginning as a chorus girl at age 14, Ruth Chatterton became a Broadway star with "Daddy Long Legs" in 1914. She appeared in such shows as "Mary Rose" and "Come Out of the Kitchen" before moving to Hollywood in 1925. As her film career faded in the late 1930s, she returned to the stage in revivals, and radio and TV performances, including "Hamlet." In the 1950s, she began a successful writing career. She had no children.- Actor
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Alan Marshal was born on 29 January 1909 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was an actor, known for House on Haunted Hill (1959), The Garden of Allah (1936) and Lydia (1941). He was married to Mary Grace Borel. He died on 13 July 1961 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Ernest Hemingway was an American writer who won the Pulitzer Prize (1953) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1954) for his novel The Old Man and the Sea, which was made into a 1958 film The Old Man and the Sea (1958).
He was born into the hands of his physician father. He was the second of six children of Dr. Clarence Hemingway and Grace Hemingway (the daughter of English immigrants). His father's interests in history and literature, as well as his outdoorsy hobbies (fishing and hunting), became a lifestyle for Ernest. His mother was a domineering type who wanted a daughter, not a son, and dressed Ernest as a girl and called him Ernestine. She also had a habit of abusing his quiet father, who suffered from diabetes, and Dr. Hemingway eventually committed suicide. Ernest later described the community in his hometown as one having "wide lawns and narrow minds".
In 1916 Hemingway graduated from high school and began his writing career as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. There he adopted his minimalist style by following the Star's style guide: "Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative." Six months later he joined the Ambulance Corps in WWI and worked as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, picking up human remains. In July 1918 he was seriously wounded by a mortar shell, which left shrapnel in both of his legs causing him much pain and requiring several surgeries. He was awarded the Silver Medal. Back in America, he continued his writing career working for Toronto Star . At that time he met Hadley Richardson and the two married in 1921.
In 1921, he became a Toronto Star reporter in Paris. There he published his first books, called "Three Stories and Ten Poems" (1923), and "In Our Time" (1924). In Paris he met Gertrude Stein, who introduced him to the circle that she called the "Lost Generation". F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson and Ezra Pound were stimulating Hemingway's talent. At that time he wrote "The Sun Also Rises" (1926), "A Farewell to Arms" (1929), and a dazzling collection of Forty-Nine stories. Hemingway also regarded the Russian writers Lev Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ivan Turgenev and Anton Chekhov as important influences, and met Pablo Picasso and other artists through Gertrude Stein. "A Moveable Feast" (1964) is his classic memoir of Paris after WWI.
Hemingway participated in the Spanish Civil War and took part in the D-Day landings during the invasion of France during World War II, in which he not only reported the action but took part in it. In one instance he threw three hand grenades into a bunker, killing several SS officers. He was decorated with the Bronze Star for his action. His military experiences were emulated in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1940) and in several other stories. He settled near Havana, Cuba, where he wrote his best known work, "The Old Man and the Sea" (1953), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. This was adapted as the film The Old Man and the Sea (1958), for which Spencer Tracy was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor, and Dimitri Tiomkin received an Oscar for Best Musical Score.
War wounds, two plane crashes, four marriages and several affairs took their toll on Hemingway's hereditary predispositions and contributed to his declining health. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and insomnia in his later years. His mental condition was exacerbated by chronic alcoholism, diabetes and liver failure. After an unsuccessful treatment with electro-convulsive therapy, he suffered severe amnesia and his physical condition worsened. The memory loss obstructed his writing and everyday life. He committed suicide in 1961. Posthumous publications revealed a considerable body of his hidden writings, that was edited by his fourth wife, Mary, and also by his son Patrick Hemingway. - Actor
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As a kid trying to negotiate his way through various gang territories to a floating crap game or a new pool hall where he was not yet known as a hustler, Leonard (Chico) Marx learned to fake several accents. Because he later employed an Italian accent in the Marx Brothers' act, people assumed his name was pronounced "Cheeko." Instead, Leonard was dubbed "Chicko" for his other consuming passion, women (or "chicks"), at which he was more successful than gambling, but when a typesetter dropped the "k" out of his name, the brothers let it stay as Chico. Chico was the brother who guided the Marxes to stardom. He took over the act's managment (amicably) from their mother, Minnie, and through audacity and charm, Chico secured the Brothers their first international (London) booking, their first Broadway show and their MGM contract with Irving Thalberg, among other successes.- Actor
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Leo Carrillo was born on 6 August 1881 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for The Guilty Generation (1931), The Cisco Kid (1950) and Crime, Inc. (1945). He was married to Edith Shakespear Haeselbarth. He died on 10 September 1961 in Santa Monica, California, USA.- Actress
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Esther Dale was born on November 10, 1885 in Beaufort, South Carolina. She attended Leland and Gray Seminary in Townsend, Vermont, then studied music in Berlin, Germany and had a successful career as a lieder singer. Later, she became an actress in summer stock. She had the title role on Broadway of Carrie Nation in 1933, which also starred James Stewart, Mildred Natwick, and Joshua Logan. Her first film was Crime Without Passion (1934) in 1934, followed by many, many roles in movies and television. Her husband, writer/director Arthur J. Beckhard was her manager. He died in March 1961 and she died a few months later, after surgery, in Queen of Angels Hospital in Hollywood, California.- Actor
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Frank Fay was born on 17 November 1891 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for God's Gift to Women (1931), Nothing Sacred (1937) and The Matrimonial Bed (1930). He was married to Barbara Stanwyck, Frances White, Betty Kean and Gladys Buchanan. He died on 25 September 1961 in Santa Monica, California, USA.- Director
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Maya Deren came to the USA in 1922 as Eleanora Derenkowsky. Together with her father Solomon Derenkowsky, a psychiatrist, and her mother Maria Fidler, an artist, she fled the pogroms organized by the Bolsheviks against the Jews. She studied journalism and political science at the Syracuse University in New York, finishing her BA at the New York University (NYU) in June 1936, and then received her MA in English literature from the Smith College in 1939.
In 1943, she made her first film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943), co-starring with Alexander Hammid. Through this association, at Hammid's suggestion, she changed her name to Maya, meaning "illusion." Overall, she made six short films and several incomplete films, including Witch's Cradle (1944) starring Marcel Duchamp.
Deren is the author of two books, "An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form, and Film" 1946 (reprinted in "The Legend of Maya Deren," vol 1, part 2) and "Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti" (1953)--a book that was made after her first trip to Haiti in 1947 and which is still considered one of the most useful on Haitian Voudoun. Deren wrote numerous articles on film and on Haiti. Maya Deren shot over 18,000 feet of film in Haiti from 1947 to 1954 on Haitian Voudoun, parts of which can be viewed in Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1993) made after her death by her then-husband Teiji Ito and his new wife Cherel Ito.
In 1947, Maya Deren became the first filmmaker to receive a Guggenheim grant for creative work in motion pictures. She wrote film theory, distributed her own films, traveled across the USA, and went to Cuba and Canada to promote her films using the lecture-demonstration format to teach film theory, and Voudoun and the interrelationship of magic, science, and religion. Deren established the Creative Film Foundation in the late 1950s to reward the achievements of independent filmmakers.- John Cason was born on 30 July 1918 in Valley View, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for Sunset Carson Rides Again (1948), Cowboy G-Men (1952) and Jungle Drums of Africa (1953). He died on 7 July 1961 in Santa Barbara, California, USA.
- Although he made nearly 60 films in a 50-year acting career, it is for the two he made with director James Whale that Ernest Thesiger will be best remembered. Born Ernest Frederic Graham Thesiger in London on January 15, 1879, he was the grandson of the first Baron of Chelmsford. Educated at Marlbrough college and the Slade, he originally hoped to become a great painter. Greatness proved elusive, however (though he remained an accomplished watercolour artist), and he quickly turned to the theatre, making his first appearance on stage in a production of "Colonel Smith" in 1909. He put his career on hold when, in 1914, he enlisted as a private in the British army when World War I broke out (he originally hoped to join a Scottish regiment because he wanted to wear a kilt). He did see some action in the trenches but had to be sent home after being wounded (he was quoted afterwards as saying of these experiences, "My dear, the noise! And the people!"). He made his first film appearance in 1916 with The Real Thing at Last (1916) and then returned to the theatre with "A Little Bit of Fluff",' which ran for over 1200 performances and led to him appearing in a film adaptation (A Little Bit of Fluff (1919)).
In 1925 he appeared in Noël Coward's production of "On With the Dance", in which he got to show off his knack for camp performances by playing one of two elderly women sharing a boarding house. In the early 1930s his old friend, actor-turned-director James Whale (who had moved to Hollywood and was enjoying huge success with Frankenstein (1931)), requested that his friend join him there to play the role of Horace Femm in Whale's upcoming production of The Old Dark House (1932). Thesiger agreed and, along with co-star Eva Moore, stole the film, which became a huge success. He returned to Britain to make The Ghoul (1933) with Boris Karloff. Whale requested Thesiger's services in Hollywood again, this time to appear in his sequel to Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Thesiger was given the role of the sinister Dr. Pretorious, after Whale had refused the studio's suggestion of Claude Rains for the role. With help from Whale's direction, some classic dialogue ("Have some gin. It's my only weakness . . .", "To a new world of gods and monsters") and expert camera work (which helped accentuate his skeletal frame), Thesiger stole the show once more. He returned to Britain and, unfortunately, never worked with Whale again. He appeared in the Alexander Korda-produced The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936) and had a memorable role in the thriller They Drive by Night (1938). He appeared with Will Hay in My Learned Friend (1943) and Don't Take It to Heart! (1944). His other notable films of the 1940s include Henry V (1944) and The Winslow Boy (1948). He returned briefly to America to appear in "As You Like It" on Broadway and afterwards divided his time between theatre and film. Notable later films include Last Holiday (1950) (as Sir Trevor Lampington, discoverer and eponym of Lampington's disease), Laughter in Paradise (1951), A Christmas Carol (1951) and The Man in the White Suit (1951) (as an elderly industry magnate). He made his last film appearance in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) and his last stage performance, opposite Sirs Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud, in a production of "The Last Joke". He passed away shortly afterwards, on the eve of his 82nd birthday, at his home on Gloucester Road in Kensington, London. - Make-Up Department
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- Art Department
Stowed away on an American vessel sailing out of the Philippines, a young Charles Gemora arrived in California while the birth of cinema was in full swing. To help earn a little extra cash, he would hang around the Universal entrance offering to sketch portraits. It wasn't long before his natural artistic abilities were noticed and Charles Gemora was working on such films as The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and Noah's Ark (1928) as a sculptor. When Charles began working on creating gorilla suits for film, he realized that with his diminutive stature (5'5") and his commitment to excellence, he could do well to carve himself a niche as a gorilla man. Charles would spend almost 3 decades honing his realistic performance and leading the evolution of suit effects. While early appearances such as Seven Footprints to Satan (1929) were grotesque and horrific, later films like The Monster and the Girl (1941) were distinguished by gorilla suits that were grounded in reality and performances that were informed by much study at the nearby San Diego Zoo. Gemora was equally adept at comedic roles, racking up credits alongside legends like Laurel and Hardy, Zasu Pitts, Charley Chase, Our Gang, the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, and Hope and Crosby. Moving from Universal to Paramount in the early 1930's, Charles Gemora continued to work there in the makeup and effects department up until his death in 1961. Throughout his stay at Paramount, Charles racked up numerous uncredited gorilla suit appearances while working on other films like Gunga Din (1939), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), and The Ten Commandments (1956). Perhaps the most recognizable contribution he made to cinema was the memorable alien menace from The War of the Worlds (1953); the result of a last minute change of plans, Charles and his daughter Diana created the creature in a late night marathon. Gemora made his final gorilla suit film in 1954 with Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954). A stunt man filled the hairy boots for strenuous action scenes but none could replicate the subtle pantomime skills that were unique to Charles.- Actor
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Harry Tyler was born on 13 June 1888 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Grapes of Wrath (1940), The Naked Street (1955) and Woman Who Came Back (1945). He was married to Gladys Crolius. He died on 15 September 1961 in Hollywood, California, USA.- James Fairfax was born on 10 August 1897 in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Against All Flags (1952), Fortunes of Captain Blood (1950) and Last Train from Bombay (1952). He was married to Jessie C. Adams. He died on 8 May 1961 in Papeete, Tahiti.
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Dashiell Hammett was born May 27, 1894, in St. Mary's County, Maryland, to Richard Hammett and Mary Bond. He joined the Baltimore branch of the Pinkerton Detective Agency in 1915. He enlisted in the US Army's Ambulance Corps in June 1918 and was posted to a camp 20 miles from Baltimore, where he caught the flu, which developed into tuberculosis. He was invalided out of the army in July 1919 and returned to Pinkerton's. Hammett entered the veterans hospital near Tacoma, Washington, with tuberculosis in 1920. Upon his release he worked at Pinkerton's Spokane branch. Hospitalized again with tuberculosis, he met and courted a nurse, Josephine Dolan. In February 1921 he was moved to an army hospital near San Diego. After he was released he married a now-pregnant Josie in San Francisco. Hammett worked for the San Francisco branch of Pinkerton's, but left the agency in 1921 or 22 due to ill health. He took a writing course and sold droll vignettes to "The Smart Set" magazine during 1922, and some short stories to other magazines. He began to sell detective stories to "The Black Mask" from 1923. After the birth of the couple's second daughter in 1926, Hammett gave up freelance writing and became an advertising copy writer for the jeweler Albert Samuels, but left after six months due to ill health. Forced by his tuberculosis to live apart from Jose and the children, the marriage eventually broke up. Hammett supported himself through writing, chiefly for "The Black Mask", now under editor Joe Shaw. Hammett's long short stories were republished in novel form by Alfred Knopf. In 1929 Hammett moved to New York. After the success of his novel "The Maltese Falcon", he was engaged as a screenwriter by Paramount Pictures and moved to Hollywood, where he met Lillian Hellman. He returned to New York in 1931, where he wrote "The Glass Key". "The Thin Man" was published as a magazine serial in 1933. Hammett was encouraged by Hearst to write the "Secret Agent X9" comic strip, which ran from 1934-35, his last original work. In 1942 he re-enlisted in the army and was posted to the Aleutian Islands off of Alaska, where he edited The Adakian. When discharged in 1945, he returned to New York and became President of the NY Civil Rights Congress. In July 1951 Hammett was subpoenaed to testify on the Civil Rights Congress' bail fund, and was jailed for refusing to answer questions. Upon his release from jail, he was presented with a bill by the Internal Revenue Service for $111,000 in back taxes. In failing health, he lived off and on with Hellman. In 1961 he was admitted to New York's Lenox Hill Hospital, New York, where he died on January 10.- Green-eyed blonde bombshell Belinda Lee was born in Devon, England to florist Stella Mary Graham and hotel owner Robert Esmond Lee on June 15, 1935. Nicknamed "Billie," she was an incredible beauty while still a teen attending the Rookesbury Park Prep School in Hampshire and St. Margaret's boarding school in Devon. Expressing an avid interest in acting, she focused on dramatics at the Tudor Arts Academy at Surrey (1947), then gained entry via a scholarship to London's RADA, at which she made her stage debut in "Point of Departure."
Sharp-faced Belinda was noticed by Rank Studio director Val Guest while performing at the Nottingham Playhouse. She was artificially groomed in starlet parts, the first being The Runaway Bus (1954), until Guest helped her obtain a movie contract with Rank and introduced her to one of Rank's prime still photographers, Cornel Lucas. That year she married the much-older Lucas, who helped promote her as a sex goddess with thousands of glamorous photographs.
Belinda was promoted as a docile young beauty, but her parts grew sexier. She worked intently in films but became frustrated with being stereotyped as a buxom peroxide blonde. Boxed in as a second-string Diana Dors, she played a sensuous foil to Benny Hill in Who Done It? (1956) and was served up as sexy window-dressing opposite both John Gregson in Miracle in Soho (1957) and Louis Jourdan in Dangerous Exile (1957).
Now estranged from Lucas, Belinda headed off to Italy for a change of pace and atmosphere but only found more of the temptress roles she tried to avoid--Aphrodite, Messalina, and Lucrezia Borgia--in low-budget spectacles. She also became preoccupied with married men, one being Prince Filippo Orsini, whose position with the Vatican led to a major scandal. This particular turbulent romance and a dissipating relationship with the Rank Studio (her last picture for the studio was Elephant Gun (1958) with Michael Craig) triggered a near-fatal suicide attempt with pills in January 1958. She later divorced Lucas and continued her torrid affair with Prince Orsini, then others.
It all ended much too soon for the 25-year-old when she decided to join her current love, the much-older Italian playboy/journalist/film producer Gualtiero Jacopetti, on a trip to Las Vegas, where he was working on a documentary (Women of the World (1963). While she, Jacopetti, and co-producer Paolo Cavara were auto passengers on their way to Los Angeles from Vegas, their driver lost control of their speeding car and flipped. The 25-year-old actress was thrown from the car and died of a fractured skull and broken neck. The other three escaped with fairly minor injuries. She was cremated in the States and her ashes were eventually returned to Rome and placed in the Campo Cestio Cemetery. - Actress
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Widely popular comedienne appeared in some movies and on radio in the 40s and on early television. She starred in the popular television series, I Married Joan (1952), with Jim Backus as her husband and her real-life daughter, Beverly Wills as her sister.
Joan died of a sudden heart attack in 1961. Two years later, a fire tragically claimed the lives of her mother, daughter and two grandsons.- Eily Malyon was born on 30 October 1879 in Islington, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for The Little Princess (1939), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and Kind Lady (1935). She was married to J. Plumpton Wilson. She died on 26 September 1961 in South Pasadena, California, USA.
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Born George Hoy Booth in Wigan, Lancashire on 26 May 1904, he later took his father's stage name of George Formby. He briefly attended school where he failed to learn to read or write so was removed from formal education and sent to become a stable boy in Middleham, North Yorkshire, where he later became an apprentice jockey. In 1915 with the closure of the English racing season because of the First World War he moved to Ireland and continued as a jockey until the end of hostilities. Returning to England he raced for Lord Derby's Newmarket stables where he never won a race. Following his father's death in 1921 he gave his professional two week appearance at the Hippodrome in Lancashire where he was paid £5 a week and soon after hired to appear on the Moss Empire chain of theatres at £17 10 shillings a week. Touring around venues in Northern England his act didn't go down well resulting in bouts of unemployment. In 1923 he made two career changing decisions - he bought a ukulele and married Beryl Ingham, an Acrington, Lancashire, born champion champion clog dancer and actress who transformed his act. She insisted he appear on stage formally dressed and introduce his ukulele to his performance.. By June 1926 he'd started his recording career and from 1934 he was increasingly working in films developing into a major star by the late '30's and becoming the U.K.'s most popular and highest paid entertainer. During WWII he worked extensively for the ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) entertaining civilians and troops and touring factories, theatres and concert halls. By 1946 it was estimated that he had performed in front of three million service personnel. After the war his career declined although he toured the commonwealth and continued to appear in variety and pantomime. His last television appearance was in December 1960, two weeks before the death of Beryl. Seven weeks after her funeral he announced his engagement to a school teacher but died in Preston three weeks later at the age of 56. He was buried in Warrington alongside his father.- Actor
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John Eldredge was born on 30 August 1904 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was an actor, known for High Sierra (1940), Backlash (1947) and The Master Key (1945). He was married to Frances Virginia Kathleen Hubbell and Eleanor Catherine Walker. He died on 23 September 1961 in Laguna Beach, California, USA.- Actor
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Suave, well-mannered, silvery-haired character actor Henry (Joseph) O'Neill played top supports in hundreds of films, often as a benign, wise, sensible father, judge, doctor, minister, general, executive or lawyer. Much of his patrician career was split between two studios: Warner Bros in the 1930s and MGM in the 1940s.
O'Neill was born in Orange, New Jersey on August 10, 1891, and dropped out of college to join a traveling theatre troupe. World War I military service intervened but he quickly returned to acting in 1919 upon his discharge and joined, at different times, the Provincetown Players and the Celtic Players acting companies. Making his Broadway debut at age 30 with "The Spring," he continued on Broadway for over a decade in such plays as Mr. Faust (as the Holy One) 22, "The Hairy Ape" (1922), "The Ancient Mariner" (1924), "The Fountain" (1925), "The Squall" (1926), "Jarnegan" (1928), "The Last Mile" (1930), "Old Man Murphy" (1931), "I Loved You Wednesday (1932) and, his last, "Shooting Star" (1933). His prematurely gray hair lent an air of pride and confidence in his many distinctive stage roles, particularly the works of playwright Eugene O'Neill.
In 1933, O'Neill made a solid, unerring switch to feature films and settled in for the duration of his career as a minor character. Although he was typically cast in agreeable roles, he certainly had it in him to be an urbane villain when the call came in. Films on both sides of the fence included his debut, the romantic drama I Loved a Woman (1933) starring Kay Francis and Edward G. Robinson, as well as many others, the more popular being. -- Fog Over Frisco (1934), Madame Du Barry (1934), The Man Who Reclaimed His Head (1934), Oil for the Lamps of China (1935), The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), Anthony Adverse (1936), The Great O'Malley (1937), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938), Brother Rat (1938), Dodge City (1939), Juarez (1939), Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), Four Wives (1939), Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940), Billy the Kid (1941), Shadow of the Thin Man (1941), Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), Anchors Aweigh (1945), The Beginning or the End (1947) and Alias Nick Beal (1949)
In the 1950's due to failing health, Henry spaced out his feature work with sporadic filming in such movies as The People Against O'Hara (1951), Scarlet Angel (1952), The Wings of Eagles (1957) and, his last, an uncredited bit in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). A one-time member of the board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild, he later earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
He died on May 18, 1961, and was survived by his longtime wife (since 1924) Anna and one child, Patricia He was interred at San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, California.- Actress
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If ever there was a natural-born star it was Joan McCracken. If ever a performer lived up to their early promise, first in ballet, then a spectacular debut on Broadway, it was Joan McCracken. And if ever a life played out in a way that would break the hardest of hearts it was Joan McCracken's.
Born in Philadelphia on New Year's Eve 1917, it was soon apparent that Joan had every gift, including magnetism and charisma, characteristics she inherited from her much-loved father, sportswriter Frank McCracken. Her childhood was made idyllic by the unreserved love and encouragement she received from her father and her four-years-younger brother, Frank Jr. (Buddy).
A talented gymnast as a child, by the age of eleven she had won a scholarship to attend a gymnastics school that trained students to Olympic level. But that same year her aunt took her to a ballet and Joan's future was set - it would be dance, not athletics.
Joan trained at The Catherine Littlefield Ballet school in Philadelphia and was a standout who was noticed from her first recitals. At the age of sixteen she quit high school to join their professional dance company full time. In 1937 Joan was given several principal roles when they became the first American ballet company to tour Europe and England, and her reviews were rapturous wherever they performed.
But 1937 was also the year when the fates seemed to turn against her. In February she was diagnosed with Type 1, insulin dependent, diabetes. Determined to carry on she did the European tour and relied on her fellow dancers to look out for her. They took to hiding sugar cubes in their costumes to help her in case it looked like she was about to faint.
An even worse calamity awaited her in August when her father died suddenly at the age of forty-two. Her most staunch supporter, the one who formed a solid anchor in her life, was gone.
In 1939 Joan married fellow Littlefield dancer Jack Dunphy and they toured the United States with the company until leaving that year to try their luck in New York. Joan started out dancing in the four-times-a-day ballet segment at Radio City Music Hall and also performed with the Eugene Loring Dance Players.
In late 1942 she and Jack both auditioned for a new Rodgers and Hammerstein musical to be choreographed by Agnes de Mille. In a testament to Joan's magnetism, when she walked across the theater de Mille noticed her and said to herself "I'm going to hire that girl." She hired them both for the dance corps.
While rehearsing a dance that involved only the women de Mille asked them to come up with something that would set them apart. Joan mentioned that she could fall and make it look real, so de Mille decided to make her the clumsy little sister who disrupts everything. When audiences saw the show Joan was a sensation, and she was soon listed in the program as Sylvie, The Girl Who Falls Down.
The show was Oklahoma! (March 31 1943-May 29 1948) and for all the revolutionary changes it was credited with it is also the only time an anonymous member of the dance corp became a star on opening night. So valuable was Joan to the box office that she became the highest paid ensemble dancer on Broadway and, even though there was a six-month wait for tickets, people would turn in their tickets if she was not appearing for some reason. Her public appeal was so strong that by the sixth month she had eight commercial endorsements, including becoming the most popular Chesterfield Cigarette Girl when the other seven campaigns were suspended and only her image appeared on billboards and advertisements around New York. When she gave her notice in the tenth month the producers offered her a sizable raise if she would stay, but she had signed with Warner Brothers so it was off to Hollywood.
And just as quickly Joan returned to Broadway. Dismayed by what she considered unprofessional-ism at Warner's during the one number she filmed for the movie Hollywood Canteen (1944), she convinced them to put her seven-year contract on hold so she could take a featured role in the next Broadway show choreographed by Agnes de Mille, Bloomer Girl (Oct 5 1944-Apr 27 1946). The show was a hit, and marked the first time she had to sing and act, as well as dance.
Early in the run fate dealt her another devastating blow. World War II was raging and just before curtain one night Joan received a telegram from the War Department informing her that Lt. Frank McCracken Jr., her beloved brother, had been killed in the South Pacific. The two men who would love her the most in life were gone by the time she was twenty-six.
She left the show after a year because a lead role, in just her third Broadway outing, awaited Joan in Billion Dollar Baby (Dec 21 1945-Jun 29 1946). She eventually bought her way out of the Warner's contract, but in 1947 she signed a one picture deal with MGM to co-star in the musical Good News (1947). It became the only full movie Joan ever made, but not for lack of interest in her. In fact a Paramount executive happened to see a preview and filled out his audience reaction card with "If you don't like Joan McCracken why don't you send her to Paramount. We can use her. Dick Webb."
Returning to New York exhausted by the Hollywood schedule of 12-16 hour days Joan knew she couldn't handle a musical right away, and surprised friends and fans by winning a part in a limited revival of Bertolt Brecht's Galileo (Dec 7 1947-Dec 14 1947), a straight dramatic role. Her critical acclaim led to an invitation to join a new acting school to be conducted only by the best talents in the theater. And so, in 1948 Joan McCracken became one of the founding members of The Actor's Studio. It wasn't her only artistic endeavor. An ardent student of the arts Joan visited every museum, art gallery and library in New York. Her social circle consisted of writers, artists and professors - anyone who could stimulate her intellect and thirst for knowledge.
Her first marriage had ended after the war, and in 1949 she appeared in a Broadway revue musical Dance Me A Song (Jan 20 1950-Feb 18 1950), which featured the married nightclub dancers Fosse & Niles. The Fosse was Bob Fosse, who was at best an untrained hoofer, but Joan thought he had potential in the theater. He recognized that Joan would be a valuable step up the ladder, so he pursued her. His disdain for his current wife, who was made to witness his blatant infidelity, should have given Joan pause. It didn't.
They were married in 1951 and Joan was tireless in using her Broadway contacts to promote Fosse. It proved to be an uphill battle because he couldn't even get a job dancing in a chorus through his own endeavors. Finally, producer George Abbott and choreographer Jerome Robbins, who loved her dearly and knew she was embarrassed by Fosse's failures, gave him a chance at choreographing their new show The Pajama Game (May 13 1954-Nov 24 1956). He copied every move innovated by the great choreographer Jack Cole, and Robbins ended up re-staging all the dances, but let Fosse keep the credit, so he was launched.
For her efforts and devotion Joan was treated to the endless humiliations of Fosse's womanizing. He seemed to take delight in torturing his wives with his infidelities after convincing them of his undying love. The only bitterness Joan ever expressed about his treatment of her was that he never said "Thank you" for the career she had handed him on a silver platter.
The relentless deterioration of her illness took its toll. By the mid-1950's diabetic neuropathy (nerve death) had robbed her legs of the athleticism and grace she was born with, to the extent that friends thought she was drinking heavily when they saw her staggering as she walked. That, and the anguish over her treatment at the hands of Fosse, drove Joan to her knees on a New York street with a major heart attack. A second attack at the hospital and her career as a dancer was over. It was 1955 and she was just thirty-seven.
She came home from the hospital to an empty apartment - Fosse had taken the opportunity to move out (they wouldn't divorce until 1959). In the next few years her strength was limited, but she did manage a short tour in a play, a few TV appearances, and a limited run off-Broadway.
On the evening of Oct. 31 1961 Joan attended a dinner party at a friends' apartment. They were all musing about future projects when Joan remarked "I just don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life." A few hours later, in the early morning of Nov. 1, Joan died in her sleep of heart failure. She was forty-three.
To this day people who see her for the first time in the two films she made are enchanted and wonder why there wasn't more. She also had what it took to be one of the greats in the theater. Instead of the storied career her talent and charisma seemed to guarantee, she is remembered today only with short descriptives:
The chorus dancer who stole the show on the opening night of Oklahoma!. The brilliant talent who mastered dance, comedy, and drama. The girl who fell down.- Josephine Whittell was born on 30 November 1883 in San Francisco, California, USA. She was an actress, known for It's a Gift (1934), Larceny on the Air (1937) and Tugboat Annie Sails Again (1940). She was married to Robert Warwick and George Whittell Jr.. She died on 1 June 1961 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
James Alexander was born in Indiana, on May 20, 1914. He appeared in only a few motion pictures during his brief career and did not start acting until he was 38 years old, with his film debut in the 1952 motion picture "Jack and the Beanstalk", starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello.
His later credits include "Port of Hell" (1954), "Treasure of Ruby Hills" (1955), "Las Vegas Shakedown" (1955), and "Night Freight" (1955). He had roles in the television shows "The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok" and "The Abbott and Costello Show." He died in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 46.- Fay Roope was born on 20 October 1893 in Allston, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Viva Zapata! (1952), The Twilight Zone (1959) and The Atomic Kid (1954). He was married to Marie Theresa Ravot. He died on 13 September 1961 in Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York, USA.
- Esperanza Baur was born on 17 July 1920 in Mexico, D.F., Mexico. She was an actress, known for Guadalajara (1937), La Valentina (1938) and The Count of Monte Cristo (1942). She was married to John Wayne and Eugene Colley Morrison. She died on 10 March 1961 in Mexico D.F., Mexico.
- Dag Hammarskjöld was born on 29 July 1905 in Jönköping, Jönköpings län, Sweden. He died on 18 September 1961 in Ndola, Northern Rhodesia [now Zambia].
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Dorothy Burgess was born on 4 March 1905 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Taxi (1931), Oh! Oh! Cleopatra (1931) and Fashions of 1934 (1934). She was married to Dr. Wiliam Seeley. She died on 20 August 1961 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Boston-born Franklyn Farnum was on the vaudeville stage at the age of 12 and was featured in a number of theatre and musical productions by the time he entered silent films near the age of 40. He appeared to be at his most comfortable in the saddle, his career dominated mostly by westerns. Some of his more famous films include the serial Vanishing Trails (1920) and features The Clock (1917), The Firebrand (1922), The Drug Store Cowboy (1925) and The Gambling Fool (1925). In 1925 he left films, but returned five years later at the advent of sound, only to find himself billed much further down the credits, if at all. He continued on, however, in these obscure roles well into the 1950s. Largely forgotten today, he is not related to silent actors and brothers Dustin Farnum and William Farnum. One of his three wives was the ill-fated Alma Rubens, to whom he was briefly married in 1918. Farnum passed away from cancer in 1961.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ann Codee was born on 5 March 1890 in Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium. She was an actress, known for Kiss Me Kate (1953), So Dark the Night (1946) and Can-Can (1960). She was married to Frank Orth. She died on 18 May 1961 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.- She survived the death of her husband in 1905, the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 and raising four children with no money. In 1926, when she was 64 she became one of the most mature freshman ever to enter the University of California. She graduated 6 years later with her B.A. degree. In 1940 she went to Hollywood, where she began her acting career. Best known for her role in Shirley Temple's Storybook production of "Sleeping Beauty", although she is probably seen most often in "Going My Way" as Father Fitzgibbon's elderly mother.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Donald Cook was born on 26 September 1901 in Portland, Oregon, USA. He was an actor, known for The Public Enemy (1931), Show Boat (1936) and Baby Face (1933). He was married to Princess Gioia Tasca di Cuto. He died on 1 October 1961 in New Haven, Connecticut, USA.- Writer
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Tony Award-winning American playwright/lyricist Moss Hart was born Oct. 24, 1904, in New York City to a poor Jewish family and raised in what he described as a "drab tenement" on 107th St. in the Bronx. He was educated in the city public school system. He showed a knack for writing at an early age--he wrote his first play at age 12--and would stage his plays at the local YMHA (Young Mens Hebrew Association). It wasn't long before he joined the Thalian Players, a little-theatre group, which won a citywide little-theatre competition sponsored by the Belasco theater organization. He worked for a clothing retailer, and he would write and direct the annual company shows. He began directing little-theater groups in the New York/New Jersey area, and found work as the social director at various summer camps in rural Pennsylvania and Vermont, writing and staging plays for the camps' clients.
His first "professional" play, "The Hold-Up Man", premiered in Chicago in the late 1920s, but was a failure. However, his play "Once in a Lifetime" (1930) was a major hit--it was made into a film, Once in a Lifetime (1932)--and was the start of a productive, and profitable, collaboration with writer George S. Kaufman (the royalties he received from the play made him a wealthy man at 26). Kaufman and Hart had a string of successful plays, ranging from wild farces to dark, serious dramas. In 1937 the team received a Pulitzer Prize for their comedy "You Can't Take It With You", which was made into a hugely successful film (You Can't Take It with You (1938)) the next year. Hart also worked by himself on occasion, and collaborated with Kurt Weill on "Lady in the Dark" (1941), which they wrote specifically for Gertrude Lawrence.
In addition to his work as a playwright on Broadway, he also directed several stage productions ("Camelot", "My Fair Lady", for which he won a Tony Award)) and wrote the screenplay for A Star Is Born (1954). His autobiography, "Act One", was made into a film (Act One (1963). He was married to actress Kitty Carlisle from 1946 to his death from a heart attack in Palm Springs, CA, in 1961.- Born in Ontario, Canada, Douglas, like other Canadian actors before and since, made his way to Chicago, then New York. Being of slight frame with a boyish face with a tuft of blond hair completing that latter effect, Walton looked the part of ineffectual, effeminate, snobbish sophisticates, whining cowards, and other assorted types which were in demand during Hollywood's heyday of 1930s and 1940s film-noir. Not interested in the stage, Douglas made his way to Hollywood, where casting directors were availing themselves of his type. From mere small character roles, he began to receive lines to speak--to accent the parts. Walton's soft tenor voice lent well to the 'weakling' roles, but he could talk in a deeper voice for dramatic moments, an early example being his young Albert de Mondego in The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), in which he registers a fine dramatic range. A year later, another opportunity presented itself. One of the real gems in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) is the opening scene with Elsa Lanchester as Mary Shelley with Walton as husband Percy and American character actor Gavin Gordon as Lord Byron. In one of the old Universal sound stages with a huge fireplace and an even huger picture window looking out on a stormy night, the histrionics of these three make the film, if nothing else did--but as a sequel, 'Bride' lends enough to campiness to make it work wonderfully. Walton continued his run of high-profile film outings later that year with the much-anticipated Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) starring Clark Gable. As jealous, priggish midshipman Stewart, he lends the right characterization to make the part his own. Walton's best role of the period was probably Lord Darnley in Mary of Scotland (1936), in which he gives an over-the-top, playing-to-the-hilt rendition of the effeminate noble weakling who by default weds Katharine Hepburn as the vivacious Mary Stuart. Director John Ford was noted for pushing his actors, and he must have been satisfied with Walton and his impressive registering everything in the human emotional range from Darnley's fawning and jealous snits to the fear and terror of his impending doom. Into the late '30s the parts were more conventional secondary characters.
By 1939, halfway through his career of almost 60 films, he decided to take his first (and only) Broadway role, in the original comedy "Billy Draws a Horse". Unfortunately, the play folded after only a week and a half in late December. Ford called on him again for two films: his western remake of The Lost Patrol (1934), Bad Lands (1939); and his reading of Eugene O'Neill's The Long Voyage Home (1940).
There were other high-profile films into the 1940s, including Northwest Passage (1940) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), but by the late decade, he was simply credited as 'Fop' in the epic flop Forever Amber (1947) or, as in the remainder of his films, given no credit at all.
Walton left film after 1950 and passed away form a heart attack a decade later at only 51. - Stanley J. Sandford, better known as "Tiny" Sandford, was born in Iowa, U.S.A in 1894. He went into films in 1910 for Mack Sennett and joined Charles Chaplin in 1916 appearing in The Count (1916), The Immigrant (1915), and The Adventurer (1917). He later appeared in Chaplin's productions such as The Gold Rush (1925), The Circus (1928), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940). But most of all he was best known for his films with Laurel & Hardy such as The Second 100 Years (1927), The Hoose-Gow (1929), Pardon Us (1931), and Our Relations (1936) to name a few. He was originally cast as the Sheriff in Way Out West (1937), but was later replaced by Stanley Fields. Despite making some films for Edgar Kennedy in 1940 he retired.
His best-known role with Laurel & Hardy would've been Big Business (1929), and with Charlie Chaplin, it would have to be Modern Times (1936). - Actress
- Producer
Anita Stewart was born on 7 February 1895 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for A Midnight Romance (1919), Her Kingdom of Dreams (1919) and The Lodge in the Wilderness (1926). She was married to George Peabody Converse and Rudolph Cameron. She died on 4 May 1961 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- James Parnell was born on 9 October 1923 in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. He was an actor, known for One Step Beyond (1959), U.S. Marshal (1958) and Gun Fight (1961). He was married to Gloria Hamilton. He died on 27 December 1961 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Kit Guard was born Christen Klitgaard May 5, 1894 in Hals, Denmark. His parents, Jens and Thyra Klitgaard, were farmers and he had four bothers. The family immigrated to Canada in 1901 and later moved to San Francisco, California. He became an American citizen and went to New York City where he worked as a blacksmith. During World War 1 he joined the Army and served overseas in a military police unit. After the war he moved to Hollywood and was signed by F.B.O. Pictures. He starred in more than one hundred silent shorts including The Telephone Girl series with Alberta Vaiughn and The Beauty Parlor series with Lorraine Eason. Kit often costarred with Al Cooke and they became a popular onscreen comedy team. On August 1, 1924 her married 24 year old Nell Griffith Sullivan. She filed for divorce in 1928 claiming he was a a violent alcoholic. By the 1930s Kit was appearing in low low budget B-movies. He had bit parts in several Three Stooges shorts and was in numerous Westerns including The Fighting Champ and El Diablo Rides with Bob Steele. Sadly his second wife passed away. Kit married his third wife, Hazel Bowers, and continued to act until the late 1950s. He had uncredited roles on the TV shows Gunsmoke and Have Gun Will Travel. Kit died from stomach cancer on July 18, 1961. He was buried at Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood.- Actress
- Art Department
Born Tsuru Kawakami, Tsuru emigrated to the U.S. in 1903 with her aunt and uncle, who were in the theater business. She found work on stage before moving to film. She worked in L.A., then moved to San Francisco and New York before returning to California. At a time when even in her home country female leads were non-existent, she garnered top billing in a series of films by Thomas H. Ince, who had seen her on stage in L.A., including 1913's "The Oath of Tsuru San". She met her future husband Sessue Hayakawa on the set of O Mimi San (1914). They married in 1914 and went on to star together several times. She retired from acting 10 years later to raise her adopted children and only returned once, which was just prior to her death. This last performance was her sole speaking role.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Arthur Ripley started his movie career as an apprentice at Kalem Pictures and then worked for several studios, including Vitagraph and Metro. By early 1920s he had become a gag writer for Mack Sennett. In 1923 Sennett signed vaudeville comic Harry Langdon and gave his writers the job of developing something for Langdon's character. Ripley and fellow Sennett gagman Frank Capra created the perfect story lines for the pantomime of Langdon and soon his two-reel comedies were hugely popular. For the next few years Sennett cranked out film after film with Langdon, written by Ripley and Capra and directed by Harry Edwards. The last film on the Sennett lot was Saturday Afternoon (1926), which was released as a three-reeler.
In 1926 Langdon left Sennett to form his own company, the Harry Langdon Corporation, and took Edwards, Capra and Ripley with him. The first picture they made together was Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926), which became a big hit. After one film Edwards left and Capra became director, although still writing with Ripley. Capra directed the next two films, The Strong Man (1926) and Long Pants (1927), and then he also departed, leaving Ripley as head writer and Langdon not only starring but taking over as director. Without Capra, however, the next three films flopped and Ripley was soon looking for another job. During the 1930s he would work as gag writer in a number of shorts, not unlike the job he held a decade before. He would also occasionally direct and in the 1940s he would add producer to his credits.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Roy Del Ruth was born on Oct. 18, 1895, in Philadelphia, PA. He began his Hollywood career as a writer for Mack Sennett in 1915. He began directing in 1919 for Sennett with the two-reeler Hungry Lions and Tender Hearts (1920). In the early 1920s he moved over to features with such efforts as Asleep at the Switch (1923), The Hollywood Kid (1924), Eve's Lover (1925) and The Little Irish Girl (1926)_. Following several more titles, many of which were later lost in a film vault fire, he directed The First Auto (1927), a charming look at the introduction of the first automobile to a small rural town. The film featured several elaborate sound effects for the time and was considered lost until it was restored years later. Del Ruth went on to direct a number of films before having the distinction of directing the musical The Desert Song (1929), the first color film ever released by Warner Bros. That same year he directed Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), Warner's second two-strip Technicolor, all-talking feature that also became a big box-office hit for the director. Having successfully segued into the talkie era, Del Ruth directed two more two-strip color musicals, Hold Everything (1930) and The Life of the Party (1930), before directing James Cagney and Joan Blondell in the cheerfully amoral gangster film Blonde Crazy (1931). That same year he directed the first of three adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's famed novel, The Maltese Falcon (1931). In that one Ricardo Cortez portrayed the roguish private eye Sam Spade, whose investigation of a murder case entwines him in a plot involving a number of unsavory types searching for a fabled, jewel-encrusted falcon. While the plot basically mirrors the 1941 remake (The Maltese Falcon (1941), this pre-Code version featured several instances of sexual innuendo, including Bebe Daniels bathing in the nude, overt references to homosexuality and even one instance of cursing.
Del Ruth reunited with James Cagney for the crime drama Taxi (1931) and helmed the well-regarded show-biz comedy Blessed Event (1932). He went on to pilot a number of above average-pictures such as The Little Giant (1933) starring Edward G. Robinson, Lady Killer (1933) with Cagney again, Bureau of Missing Persons (1933) featuring Bette Davis, Upperworld (1934) with Ginger Rogers and the musical comedy Kid Millions (1934) starring Eddie Cantor. He next directed Ronald Colman in his second and final appearance as Bulldog Drummond in the detective mystery Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934) and steered the backstage showbiz musical Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), starring Jack Benny and Eleanor Powell
After returning to the realm of crime for It Had to Happen (1936) with George Raft and Rosalind Russell, Del Ruth directed James Stewart in one of the actor's few musicals, Born to Dance (1936). He followed up with Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937) before guiding ice skating star Sonja Henie through My Lucky Star (1938) and Happy Landing (1938).
Del Ruth continued churning out product for the studios, helming competent films like The Star Maker (1939), Here I Am a Stranger (1939), He Married His Wife (1940) and Topper Returns (1941). After working solo on The Chocolate Soldier (1941), Maisie Gets Her Man (1942), Du Barry Was a Lady (1943) and Broadway Rhythm (1944). It may be interesting to note that Del Ruth was the second highest paid director in Hollywood from the period 1932-41, according to Box Office and Exhibitor magazine.
Del Ruth was one of seven directors on the successful Ziegfeld Follies (1945), which featured an all-star cast of Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Fanny Brice, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Lena Horne, Red Skelton and William Powell. From there he helmed the cheerfully ambitious Christmas-themed It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), an appealing entertainment that was compared to It's a Wonderful Life (1946), but did not have that film's generational resonance. Still, the musical comedy starring Don DeFore and Ann Harding was still a touching film that managed to delight. Del Ruth next directed The Babe Ruth Story (1948), with William Bendix badly miscast as baseball legend Babe Ruth. Bending historical truths lest he offend Ruth's legacy, Del Ruth's biopic was rushed through production amidst news of the ailing Ruth's declining health. Even Del Ruth remained unsatisfied with the results.
He directed George Raft again in the film-noir crime drama Red Light (1949), Milton Berle and Virginia Mayo in the comedy Always Leave Them Laughing (1949) and James Cagney in the vibrant The West Point Story (1950). Following a pair of mediocre Doris Day musicals, Starlift (1951) and On Moonlight Bay (1951), Del Ruth's career began to slow to basically one project a year, with Stop, You're Killing Me (1952) and the James Cagney military musical About Face (1952). He went on to direct Jane Powell and Gordon MacRae in Three Sailors and a Girl (1953), then took a short excursion into the new 3D process with the horror film Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954) with Karl Malden.
Away from the director's chair for the next five years, Del Ruth returned to helm the low-budget horror picture The Alligator People (1959), a bizarre tale about humans being partially transformed into alligators in the Deep South, a picture that would seem more suited to Roger Corman than Del Ruth. His ended his career with the misfire Why Must I Die? (1960), apparently made to cash in on the success of the better known Susan Hayward film I Want to Live! (1958).
Roy Del Ruth died a year later on April 27, 1961, at 67 years old from a heart attack.- Actor
- Director
George Irving was born on 5 October 1874 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Bringing Up Baby (1938), Man Power (1927) and The Landloper (1918). He was married to Mary Katherine Gilman. He died on 11 September 1961 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.