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1-42 of 42
- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Clifford Parker Robertson III became a fairly successful leading man through most of his career without ever becoming a major star. Following strong stage and television experience, he made an interesting film debut in a supporting role in Picnic (1955). He then played Joan Crawford's deranged young husband in Autumn Leaves (1956) and was given leads in films of fair quality such as The Naked and the Dead (1958), Gidget (1959) and The Big Show (1961).
He was born to Clifford Parker Robertson Jr. and Audrey Olga (nee Willingham) Robertson. Robertson Jr. was described as "the idle heir to a tidy sum of ranching money". They have divorced when he was a year old, and his mother died of peritonitis a year later in El Paso, Texas. Young Cliff was raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Eleanor Willingham as well as an aunt and uncle.
He supplemented his somewhat unsatisfactory big-screen work with interesting appearances on television, including the lead role in Days of Wine and Roses (1958). Robertson was effective playing a chilling petty criminal obsessed with avenging his father in the B-feature Underworld U.S.A. (1961) or a pleasant doctor in the popular hospital melodrama The Interns (1962). However, significant public notice eluded him until he was picked by President John F. Kennedy to play the young JFK during the latter's World War II experience in PT 109 (1963).
Moving into slightly better pictures, Robertson gave some of his best performances: a ruthless presidential candidate in The Best Man (1964), a modern-day Mosca in an updated version of Ben Jonson's "Volpone", The Honey Pot (1967), and most memorably as a mentally retarded man in Charly (1968), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor. His critical success with Charly (1968) allowed him to continue starring in some good films in the 1970s, including Too Late the Hero (1970), The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972), and Obsession (1976).
He starred in, directed and co-produced the fine rodeo drama J W Coop (1971) and, less interestingly, The Pilot (1980). He remained active mostly in supporting roles, notably playing Hugh Hefner in Star 80 (1983). More recently, he had supporting parts in Escape from L.A. (1996) and Spider-Man (2002).
Robertson died on September 10, 2011, just one day after his 88th birthday in Stony Brook, New York.- Actor
- Producer
- Stunts
Ray Corrigan was a physical culturist and very good athlete. He began working in Hollywood, as a physical fitness trainer for movie stars. Bit parts in 1932 led to action roles in the Undersea Kingdom (1936) and The Leathernecks Have Landed (1936), the same year he began his role as Tucson Smith in Republic Pictures' "Three Mesquiteer" series; he did 24 films in that series before leaving in 1939. He also did 20 of the 24 "Range Busters" series which ran from 1940 to 1943. In the latter part of his career he played apes in The White Gorilla (1945) and Killer Ape (1953) and the title character in the sci-fi classic It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958). After he retired he operated a number of successful businesses. One of these, Corriganville, was a ranch and town used for filming TV and movie westerns. His nickname "Crash" derived from his powerful physique and willingness to undertake dangerous stunts.- Additional Crew
- Actress
- Soundtrack
She was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts and went to New Bedford High School. Even before graduating in 1942, she had opened a dance studio where she taught dancing. Dancing was in her blood from an early age, and she performed often at high school festivities, the Mexican Hat Dance being one of her favorites. During the WWII years, she came to Hollywood and became the protégé of Gene Kelly, whom she admired a great deal. She had fine timing and was indefatigable. Unfortunately, she was a diabetic, and this may have been the cause of her demise. She married Larry Blyden in Hollywood (purportedly on the stage of a theatre), and had two children. After her death, her husband took the children to Texas, where they had relatives, and was soon, thereafter, killed in an auto accident.- Actor
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Keith Flint was born on 17 September 1969 in Chelmsford, Essex, England, UK. He was an actor and composer, known for F9: The Fast Saga (2021), The Condemned (2007) and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003). He was married to Mayumi Kai. He died on 4 March 2019 in Brook Hill, North End, Dunmow, Essex, England, UK.- Jim Boyd was born on 11 November 1933 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for The Electric Company (1971), Law & Order (1990) and Space Force (1978). He was married to Kathleen Paris. He died on 2 January 2013 in Rye Brook, New York, USA.
- Writer
- Producer
Upton Sinclair was born on 20 September 1878 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for There Will Be Blood (2007), The Money Changers (1920) and Maiden No More. He was married to Mary Elizabeth Hard Willis, Mary Craig Sinclair and Meta Fuller. He died on 25 November 1968 in Bound Brook, New Jersey, USA.- John Bryson was born on 12 October 1923 in Brownwood, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for The Getaway (1972), Convoy (1978) and The Osterman Weekend (1983). He died on 10 August 2005 in Brookings, Oregon, USA.
- As a youngster his cute round face and red hair made him popular in his neighbourhood. A Paramount film executive suggested he could have a film career so his family moved to Hollywood where in 1929 he became the youngest actor ever put under contract, at the age of 4, to Paramount. Soon after he was given the stage name of Jerry Tucker and immediately became famous at the studio for his ability to recite his lines from memory. He appeared in Our Gang films until 1937 when his final appearance was in Glove Taps. In 1934 he was one of the Our Gang kids to appear with Laurel and Hardy in 'Babes in Toyland'. Outside of the Gang films he worked with Buster Keaton in 'Sidewalks of New York', Clark Gable in 'San Francisco' and Shirley Temple in 'Captain January'. In 1939 he and his mother moved to New York where he auditioned for a number of radio programmes. In 1942 he joined the navy and was wounded when a Japanese kamikaze plane hit the destroyer U.S.S, Sigsbee which he was on. In 1944 he married Myra Heino and had two daughters, Karen Beth and Renee Eve. After the war he studied electrical engineering at college and was employed as an engineer for RCA Global Communications retiring in 1981 and living on Long Island, New York.
- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Peter Turgeon was born on 25 December 1919 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Airport (1970), American Gigolo (1980) and Muscle Beach Party (1964). He was married to Virginia Wright Richardson Turgeon. He died on 6 October 2000 in Stony Brook, New York, USA.- Maurice Good was born in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. He was an actor, known for Pretenders (1972), Five Million Years to Earth (1967), They Came from Beyond Space (1967), Murder Most Foul (1964), Doctor Who (1963) and The Avengers (1961). He died on May 10, 2013 in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, Canada.
- Jack Youngerman was born on 25 March 1926 in Webster Groves, Missouri, USA. He was married to Delphine Seyrig and Hilary Helfant. He died on 19 February 2020 in Stony Brook, New York, USA.
- Writer
- Producer
Brooke Ellison was born on 20 October 1978 in Rockville Centre, New York, USA. She was a writer and producer, known for Hope Deferred (2009), The Brooke Ellison Story (2004) and Heart of a Hero: A Tribute to Christopher Reeve (2006). She died on 4 February 2024 in Stony Brook, New York, USA.- Shirley Dinsdale grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. When she was a child, she was severely burned when a kettle tipped over on her and she spent a year in a hospital recovering. During that time a puppet named "Judy Splinters" kept her company. After she returned home, her father bartered for ventriloquist lessons and by the age of 14 was appearing on San Francisco radio shows. Soon she moved to Los Angeles and became a regular on Eddie Cantor's radio program. She also appeared in a number of local benefits for the war effort where she was spotted by a KTLA-TV staffer. In the new medium of television, Shirley, by then 17, started with a five minute daily program. Her renown spread and her program appeared as a daily evening broadcast on NBC during the summer of 1949 and a regular afternoon show for the 1949-1950 season.
In 1953, Shirley retired from show business, married and had two children. At the age of 40, she entered Stony Brook University in New York and graduated to become a cardiopulmonary therapist. She died in 1999 at the age of 71. - Editor
- Producer
- Director
Elmo Williams was born James Elmo Williams in Lone Wolf, Oklahoma. Orphaned at 16, he attended schools in Oklahoma and New Mexico before moving to Los Angeles. In 1933 he struck up a relationship with film editor Merrill G. White, who hired Williams as his assistant on a business trip to England. He learned the basics of film editing from White and soon gained a reputation as a first-rate editor, doing much work at RKO. In 1947 Williams edited the documentary Design for Death (1947), which earned an Oscar as Best Documentary, and in 1952 he received an Oscar for his editing of the western classic High Noon (1952). He soon branched out into directing, turning out several low-budget efforts for Lippert Pictures and Republic Pictures. Williams journeyed to Europe in 1958 to work as editor and second-unit director on The Vikings (1958) and wound up staying there for several years when he was hired to produce and direct the TV series Tales of the Vikings (1959).
Upon his return to the US, Williams was hired by 20th Century-Fox as a second-unit director. In that capacity, and as associate producer, he was sent back to Europe to work on the WW II epic The Longest Day (1962), helping to stage the film's spectacular battle scenes. He had another extended stay in Europe when he was given the job of Managing Director of European Production for Fox, a position he held until 1966, when he returned to the US to work on another World War II epic, Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). In 1970 Williams was appointed Vice President in charge of Worldwide Production at Fox, a job he left in 1973 to go into independent production.- Bradley Page was born on 8 September 1901 in Seattle, Washington, USA. He was an actor, known for From Hell to Heaven (1933), Annabel Takes a Tour (1938) and Crashing Hollywood (1938). He died on 8 December 1985 in Brookings, Oregon, USA.
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
China Machado was born on 25 December 1928 in Shanghai, China. She is known for Love at First Bite (1979), Citizen Hearst (2012) and About Face: Supermodels Then and Now (2012). She was married to Martin LaSalle and Riccardo Rosa. She died on 18 December 2016 in Stony Brook University Hospital, Stony Brook, New York, USA.- Aram Chowdhury was born on 19 June 1976 in West Islip, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Don't Eat the Pictures: Sesame Street at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1983). He died on 4 December 1994 in Stony Brook, New York, USA.
- Writer
- Additional Crew
American novelist Pietro Di Donato was born in West Hoboken, NJ, to Italian immigrants. His most famous novel, "Christ in Concrete", is basically an autobiography, being an account of an immigrant growing up in a strange country. When he was 12 Di Donato's father, a bricklayer, was killed when the building he was working on collapsed. His mother died a few years later, leaving Pietro--the oldest of eight children--as the head of the family. He had to leave grammar school to support his new family, and took up his father's job as a bricklayer. Despite the hardships a 12-year-old in his circumstances encountered, he managed to attend night school classes and read anything he could lay his hands on, and took up writing himself. In 1937 he sold his first work, "Christ in Concrete", to "Esquire" magazine. He later expanded the story to become the first chapter in his novel of the same name. However, with the responsibilities he had to raise his siblings, it wasn't until 1938 that he could afford to take time off to finish the book, which was finally published in 1939. It was a sensation, with Di Donato being hailed by some critics as among the most important Italian-American writers of the 20th century (it was adapted into a movie, Give Us This Day (1949)).
In 1958 he wrote a sequel to the novel, "This Woman". In 1960 he came out with another book in the same vein, "Three Circles of Light". That same year he wrote "Immigrant Saint", a biography of Frances Cabrini, a nun who was the first American to be canonized a saint by the Catholic church. In 1961 he published another novel, "The Penitent". In 1976 he wrote an article for "Penthouse" magazine, "Christ in Plastic", about the kidnapping and murder of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades terrorist group. He later adapted the article into a play, "Moro".
Pietro Di Donato died of bone cancer in 1992 at Stony Brook, Long Island, NY.- Writer
- Producer
- Script and Continuity Department
Norman Barasch was born on 18 February 1922 in Rockville Center, New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for The Danny Kaye Show (1963), Rhoda (1974) and Fish (1977). He died on 13 August 2019 in Rye Brook, New York, USA.- Ben Novack Jr. was born on 19 January 1956 in Miami, Florida, USA. He was married to Narcy Novack. He died on 12 July 2009 in Rye Brook, New York, USA.
- Dorothy Gilman was born on 25 June 1923 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. She was a writer, known for Mrs. Pollifax-Spy (1971) and The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (1999). She was married to Edgar A. Butters Jr.. She died on 2 February 2012 in Rye Brook, New York, USA.
- Composer
- Music Department
- Producer
Conductor, composer and songwriter, a music student of Frederick Converse and holder of an honorary Mus. D. from Dartmouth College and a Prix de Rome from The American Academy in Rome. He was associate conductor (with Arturo Toscanini) of the New York Philharmonic in 1934, and conducted symphony orchestras throughout the world. In 1940, he founded the Janssen Symphony in Los Angeles, which he conducted. He also conducted the Baltimore Symphony between 1937 and 1939, the Utah Symphony between 1946-1947, the Portland Symphony between 1947 and 1949, the San Diego Philharmonic between 1952 and 1954, the Symphony of the Air Orchestra in 1956, the Toronto Symphony in 1956 and 1957, and the Belgrade Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera Orchestra between 1959 and 1961. He was a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and a Knight First Class of the Order White Rose in Finland. He also made many records. Joining ASCAP in 1922, his popular-song compositions include "Wisdom Tooth", "Without the One You Love", "At the Fireplace", and "Falling Leaves".- Producer
- Editor
- Additional Crew
Bernard Birnbaum was born on 18 October 1920 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. Bernard was a producer and editor, known for The American Parade (1984), CBS Reports (1959) and 1973: A Television Album (1973). Bernard was married to Ronnie Gutman. Bernard died on 26 November 2009 in Stony Brook, New York, USA.- Writer
- Director
- Special Effects
American writer, newspaper columnist, and playwright George Ade was first and foremost a self described Hoosier. Ade was born in Kentland, Indiana, one of seven children raised by John and Adaline Ade. While attending Purdue University, he met and started a lifelong friendship with cartoonist and Sigma Chi brother John T. McCutcheon and worked as a reporter for the Lafayette Call. In 1890, Ade was hired on by the Chicago Morning News (later known as the Chicago Record), where McCutcheon was working. He wrote the column, Stories of the Streets and of the Town. In the column, which McCutcheon illustrated, Ade illustrated Chicago-life. It featured characters like Artie, an office boy, Doc Horne, a gentlemanly liar, and Pink Marsh, a black shoeshine boy. Ade's well-known "Fables in Slang" was introduced in the popular column.
Ade's literary reputation rests upon his achievements as a great humorist of American character during an important era in American history. The 1890's marked the first large migration from the countryside to burgeoning cities like Chicago, where, in fact, Ade produced his best fiction. He was a practicing realist during the Age of (William Dean) Howells and a local colorist of Chicago and the Midwest. His work constitutes a vast comedy of Midwestern manners and, indeed, a comedy of late 19th century American manners.
Ade's fiction dealt consistently with the "little man," the common, undistinguished, average American, usually a farmer or lower middle class citizen (he sometimes skewered women too, especially women with laughable social pretensions).
Ade's followed in the footsteps of his idol Mark Twain by making expert use of the American language. In his unique "Fables in Slang," (1899) which purveyed not so much slang as the American colloquial vernacular, Ade pursued an effectively genial satire notable for its scrupulous objectivity. Ade's regular practice in the best fables is to present a little drama incorporating concrete, specific evidence with which he implicitly indicts the object of his satire-- always a type (e.g., the social climber). The fable's actual moral is nearly always implicit, though he liked to tack on a mock, often ironic moral (e.g., "Industry and perseverance bring a sure reward").
As a moralist who does not overtly moralize, who is all too aware of the ironies of what in his day was the modern world, George Ade was perhaps our first modern American humorist, paving the way for people such as Will Rogers to follow. The United States, in Ade's lifetime, underwent a great population shift and transfer from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Many felt the nation suffered the even more agonizing process of shifting values toward philistinism, greed, and dishonesty. Ade's prevalent practice is to record the pragmatic efforts of the little man to get along in such a world.
Ade was a playwright (see "Other Works") as well as an author, penning such stage works as Artie, The Sultan of Sulu (a musical comedy), The College Widow, The Fair Co-ed, and "The County Chairman." He wrote the first American play about football.
After twelve years in Chicago, he built a home near the town of Brook, Indiana (Newton County). It soon became known for hosting a campaign stop in 1908 by William Howard Taft, a rally for Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party in 1912, and a homecoming for returning soldiers and sailors in 1919.
George Ade is one of the American writers whose publications made him rich. When land values were inflated about the time of World War I, Ade was a millionaire. The Ross-Ade football stadium at Purdue University was built with his (and David E. Ross's) financial support. He also generously supported his college fraternity, Sigma Chi, leading a fund-raising campaign to endow the Sigma Chi mother house at the site of the fraternity's original establishment at Miami University. Ade is also famous among Sigma Chis as the author of The Sigma Chi Creed, written in 1929, one of the central documents of the fraternity's philosophies.
While Ade's writings fell out of public favor as America struggled through the Great Depression and the onslaught of World War II, his legacy lives on. Ade populated his writings with comedic characters lifted from the streets and front porches of small Midwestern towns and peppered the language with witty slang; characters and situations that can still be found in movies and television sitcoms. Ade's comedic style is just as popular today as it was when he introduced it over a hundred years ago. While Ade was never considered a high-brow literary writer or a fashionably caustic social critic, he succeeded in what he had set out to do, he made America laugh.- Costume Designer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Donald Brooks, born in New Haven, Conn. in 1929, attended Parson's School Of Design. After graduating he made a name for himself by replacing the late legendary Clare McCardle at Townley Manufacturing and their business with him at the helm grew sevenfold. He became one of the first of the new "name" designers when he opened his own business in 1963. Though he was considered one of the top fashion designers in America, Mr.Brooks' first love was theatrical design and in 1963 he accomplished a feat all in the same year no designer before or since has rivaled. On Broadway he designed Richard Rodgers NO STRINGS!, winning a Tony Nomination, for motion pictures he designed Otto Preminger's THE CARDINAL, winning an Oscar Nomination and the same year Mr. Brooks won the first of his three Coty Awards.(The fashion industry's highest recognition.) His fashion clients would include Jacqueline Kennedy, Babe Paley, Princess Grace, Pamela Harriman, Barbra Striesand, Liza Minnelli, Lady Bird Johnson, Faye Dunaway and Diahann Carroll. In his free tme away from seventh avenue Brooks would design the costume for some 40 Broadway shows as well as numberous television and feature film projects. In 1974, he was awarded the Parson"s Gold Medal, the only other reciepients being Adrian and Norell. His work is in the perment collections of both the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institute.