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Marlon Brando is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all time, rivaled only by the more theatrically oriented Laurence Olivier in terms of esteem. Unlike Olivier, who preferred the stage to the screen, Brando concentrated his talents on movies after bidding the Broadway stage adieu in 1949, a decision for which he was severely criticized when his star began to dim in the 1960s and he was excoriated for squandering his talents. No actor ever exerted such a profound influence on succeeding generations of actors as did Brando. More than 50 years after he first scorched the screen as Stanley Kowalski in the movie version of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and a quarter-century after his last great performance as Col. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), all American actors are still being measured by the yardstick that was Brando. It was if the shadow of John Barrymore, the great American actor closest to Brando in terms of talent and stardom, dominated the acting field up until the 1970s. He did not, nor did any other actor so dominate the public's consciousness of what WAS an actor before or since Brando's 1951 on-screen portrayal of Stanley made him a cultural icon. Brando eclipsed the reputation of other great actors circa 1950, such as Paul Muni and Fredric March. Only the luster of Spencer Tracy's reputation hasn't dimmed when seen in the starlight thrown off by Brando. However, neither Tracy nor Olivier created an entire school of acting just by the force of his personality. Brando did.
Marlon Brando, Jr. was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Marlon Brando, Sr., a calcium carbonate salesman, and his artistically inclined wife, the former Dorothy Julia Pennebaker. "Bud" Brando was one of three children. His ancestry included English, Irish, German, Dutch, French Huguenot, Welsh, and Scottish; his surname originated with a distant German immigrant ancestor named "Brandau." His oldest sister Jocelyn Brando was also an actress, taking after their mother, who engaged in amateur theatricals and mentored a then-unknown Henry Fonda, another Nebraska native, in her role as director of the Omaha Community Playhouse. Frannie, Brando's other sibling, was a visual artist. Both Brando sisters contrived to leave the Midwest for New York City, Jocelyn to study acting and Frannie to study art. Marlon managed to escape the vocational doldrums forecast for him by his cold, distant father and his disapproving schoolteachers by striking out for The Big Apple in 1943, following Jocelyn into the acting profession. Acting was the only thing he was good at, for which he received praise, so he was determined to make it his career - a high-school dropout, he had nothing else to fall back on, having been rejected by the military due to a knee injury he incurred playing football at Shattuck Military Academy, Brando Sr.'s alma mater. The school booted Marlon out as incorrigible before graduation.
Acting was a skill he honed as a child, the lonely son of alcoholic parents. With his father away on the road, and his mother frequently intoxicated to the point of stupefaction, the young Bud would play-act for her to draw her out of her stupor and to attract her attention and love. His mother was exceedingly neglectful, but he loved her, particularly for instilling in him a love of nature, a feeling which informed his character Paul in Last Tango in Paris (1972) ("Last Tango in Paris") when he is recalling his childhood for his young lover Jeanne. "I don't have many good memories," Paul confesses, and neither did Brando of his childhood. Sometimes he had to go down to the town jail to pick up his mother after she had spent the night in the drunk tank and bring her home, events that traumatized the young boy but may have been the grain that irritated the oyster of his talent, producing the pearls of his performances. Anthony Quinn, his Oscar-winning co-star in Viva Zapata! (1952) told Brando's first wife Anna Kashfi, "I admire Marlon's talent, but I don't envy the pain that created it."
Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School, and was mentored by Stella Adler, a member of a famous Yiddish Theatre acting family. Adler helped introduce to the New York stage the "emotional memory" technique of Russian theatrical actor, director and impresario Konstantin Stanislavski, whose motto was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." The results of this meeting between an actor and the teacher preparing him for a life in the theater would mark a watershed in American acting and culture.
Brando made his debut on the boards of Broadway on October 19, 1944, in "I Remember Mama," a great success. As a young Broadway actor, Brando was invited by talent scouts from several different studios to screen-test for them, but he turned them down because he would not let himself be bound by the then-standard seven-year contract. Brando would make his film debut quite some time later in Fred Zinnemann's The Men (1950) for producer Stanley Kramer. Playing a paraplegic soldier, Brando brought new levels of realism to the screen, expanding on the verisimilitude brought to movies by Group Theatre alumni John Garfield, the predecessor closest to him in the raw power he projected on-screen. Ironically, it was Garfield whom producer Irene Mayer Selznick had chosen to play the lead in a new Tennessee Williams play she was about to produce, but negotiations broke down when Garfield demanded an ownership stake in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Burt Lancaster was next approached, but couldn't get out of a prior film commitment. Then director Elia Kazan suggested Brando, whom he had directed to great effect in Maxwell Anderson's play "Truckline Café," in which Brando co-starred with Karl Malden, who was to remain a close friend for the next 60 years.
During the production of "Truckline Café," Kazan had found that Brando's presence was so magnetic, he had to re-block the play to keep Marlon near other major characters' stage business, as the audience could not take its eyes off of him. For the scene where Brando's character re-enters the stage after killing his wife, Kazan placed him upstage-center, partially obscured by scenery, but where the audience could still see him as Karl Malden and others played out their scene within the café set. When he eventually entered the scene, crying, the effect was electric. A young Pauline Kael, arriving late to the play, had to avert her eyes when Brando made this entrance as she believed the young actor on stage was having a real-life conniption. She did not look back until her escort commented that the young man was a great actor.
The problem with casting Brando as Stanley was that he was much younger than the character as written by Williams. However, after a meeting between Brando and Williams, the playwright eagerly agreed that Brando would make an ideal Stanley. Williams believed that by casting a younger actor, the Neanderthalish Kowalski would evolve from being a vicious older man to someone whose unintentional cruelty can be attributed to his youthful ignorance. Brando ultimately was dissatisfied with his performance, though, saying he never was able to bring out the humor of the character, which was ironic as his characterization often drew laughs from the audience at the expense of Jessica Tandy's Blanche Dubois. During the out-of-town tryouts, Kazan realized that Brando's magnetism was attracting attention and audience sympathy away from Blanche to Stanley, which was not what the playwright intended. The audience's sympathy should be solely with Blanche, but many spectators were identifying with Stanley. Kazan queried Williams on the matter, broaching the idea of a slight rewrite to tip the scales back to more of a balance between Stanley and Blanche, but Williams demurred, smitten as he was by Brando, just like the preview audiences.
For his part, Brando believed that the audience sided with his Stanley because Jessica Tandy was too shrill. He thought Vivien Leigh, who played the part in the movie, was ideal, as she was not only a great beauty but she WAS Blanche Dubois, troubled as she was in her real life by mental illness and nymphomania. Brando's appearance as Stanley on stage and on screen revolutionized American acting by introducing "The Method" into American consciousness and culture. Method acting, rooted in Adler's study at the Moscow Art Theatre of Stanislavsky's theories that she subsequently introduced to the Group Theatre, was a more naturalistic style of performing, as it engendered a close identification of the actor with the character's emotions. Adler took first place among Brando's acting teachers, and socially she helped turn him from an unsophisticated Midwestern farm boy into a knowledgeable and cosmopolitan artist who one day would socialize with presidents.
Brando didn't like the term "The Method," which quickly became the prominent paradigm taught by such acting gurus as Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Brando denounced Strasberg in his autobiography "Songs My Mother Taught Me" (1994), saying that he was a talentless exploiter who claimed he had been Brando's mentor. The Actors Studio had been founded by Strasberg along with Kazan and Stella Adler's husband, Harold Clurman, all Group Theatre alumni, all political progressives deeply committed to the didactic function of the stage. Brando credits his knowledge of the craft to Adler and Kazan, while Kazan in his autobiography "A Life" claimed that Brando's genius thrived due to the thorough training Adler had given him. Adler's method emphasized that authenticity in acting is achieved by drawing on inner reality to expose deep emotional experience
Interestingly, Elia Kazan believed that Brando had ruined two generations of actors, his contemporaries and those who came after him, all wanting to emulate the great Brando by employing The Method. Kazan felt that Brando was never a Method actor, that he had been highly trained by Adler and did not rely on gut instincts for his performances, as was commonly believed. Many a young actor, mistaken about the true roots of Brando's genius, thought that all it took was to find a character's motivation, empathize with the character through sense and memory association, and regurgitate it all on stage to become the character. That's not how the superbly trained Brando did it; he could, for example, play accents, whereas your average American Method actor could not. There was a method to Brando's art, Kazan felt, but it was not The Method.
After A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), for which he received the first of his eight Academy Award nominations, Brando appeared in a string of Academy Award-nominated performances - in Viva Zapata! (1952), Julius Caesar (1953) and the summit of his early career, Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954). For his "Waterfront" portrayal of meat-headed longshoreman Terry Malloy, the washed-up pug who "coulda been a contender," Brando won his first Oscar. Along with his iconic performance as the rebel-without-a-cause Johnny in The Wild One (1953) ("What are you rebelling against?" Johnny is asked. "What have ya got?" is his reply), the first wave of his career was, according to Jon Voight, unprecedented in its audacious presentation of such a wide range of great acting. Director John Huston said his performance of Marc Antony was like seeing the door of a furnace opened in a dark room, and co-star John Gielgud, the premier Shakespearean actor of the 20th century, invited Brando to join his repertory company.
It was this period of 1951-54 that revolutionized American acting, spawning such imitators as James Dean - who modeled his acting and even his lifestyle on his hero Brando - the young Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. After Brando, every up-and-coming star with true acting talent and a brooding, alienated quality would be hailed as the "New Brando," such as Warren Beatty in Kazan's Splendor in the Grass (1961). "We are all Brando's children," Jack Nicholson pointed out in 1972. "He gave us our freedom." He was truly "The Godfather" of American acting - and he was just 30 years old. Though he had a couple of failures, like Désirée (1954) and The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), he was clearly miscast in them and hadn't sought out the parts so largely escaped blame.
In the second period of his career, 1955-62, Brando managed to uniquely establish himself as a great actor who also was a Top 10 movie star, although that star began to dim after the box-office high point of his early career, Sayonara (1957) (for which he received his fifth Best Actor Oscar nomination). Brando tried his hand at directing a film, the well-reviewed One-Eyed Jacks (1961) that he made for his own production company, Pennebaker Productions (after his mother's maiden name). Stanley Kubrick had been hired to direct the film, but after months of script rewrites in which Brando participated, Kubrick and Brando had a falling out and Kubrick was sacked. According to his widow Christiane Kubrick, Stanley believed that Brando had wanted to direct the film himself all along.
Tales proliferated about the profligacy of Brando the director, burning up a million and a half feet of expensive VistaVision film at 50 cents a foot, fully ten times the normal amount of raw stock expended during production of an equivalent motion picture. Brando took so long editing the film that he was never able to present the studio with a cut. Paramount took it away from him and tacked on a re-shot ending that Brando was dissatisfied with, as it made the Oedipal figure of Dad Longworth into a villain. In any normal film Dad would have been the heavy, but Brando believed that no one was innately evil, that it was a matter of an individual responding to, and being molded by, one's environment. It was not a black-and-white world, Brando felt, but a gray world in which once-decent people could do horrible things. This attitude explains his sympathetic portrayal of Nazi officer Christian Diestl in the film he made before shooting One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Edward Dmytryk's filming of Irwin Shaw's novel The Young Lions (1958). Shaw denounced Brando's performance, but audiences obviously disagreed, as the film was a major hit. It would be the last hit movie Brando would have for more than a decade.
One-Eyed Jacks (1961) generated respectable numbers at the box office, but the production costs were exorbitant - a then-staggering $6 million - which made it run a deficit. A film essentially is "made" in the editing room, and Brando found cutting to be a terribly boring process, which was why the studio eventually took the film away from him. Despite his proved talent in handling actors and a large production, Brando never again directed another film, though he would claim that all actors essentially direct themselves during the shooting of a picture.
Between the production and release of One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Brando appeared in Sidney Lumet's film version of Tennessee Williams' play "Orpheus Descending," The Fugitive Kind (1960) which teamed him with fellow Oscar winners Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward. Following in Elizabeth Taylor's trailblazing footsteps, Brando became the second performer to receive a $1-million salary for a motion picture, so high were the expectations for this re-teaming of Kowalski and his creator (in 1961 critic Hollis Alpert had published a book "Brando and the Shadow of Stanley Kowalski"). Critics and audiences waiting for another incendiary display from Brando in a Williams work were disappointed when the renamed The Fugitive Kind (1960) finally released. Though Tennessee was hot, with movie versions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) burning up the box office and receiving kudos from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, The Fugitive Kind (1960) was a failure. This was followed by the so-so box-office reception of One-Eyed Jacks (1961) in 1961 and then by a failure of a more monumental kind: Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), a remake of the famed 1935 film.
Brando signed on to Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) after turning down the lead in the David Lean classic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) because he didn't want to spend a year in the desert riding around on a camel. He received another $1-million salary, plus $200,000 in overages as the shoot went overtime and over budget. During principal photography, highly respected director Carol Reed (an eventual Academy Award winner) was fired, and his replacement, two-time Oscar winner Lewis Milestone, was shunted aside by Brando as Marlon basically took over the direction of the film himself. The long shoot became so notorious that President John F. Kennedy asked director Billy Wilder at a cocktail party not "when" but "if" the "Bounty" shoot would ever be over. The MGM remake of one of its classic Golden Age films garnered a Best Picture Oscar nomination and was one of the top grossing films of 1962, yet failed to go into the black due to its Brobdingnagian budget estimated at $20 million, which is equivalent to $120 million when adjusted for inflation.
Brando and Taylor, whose Cleopatra (1963) nearly bankrupted 20th Century-Fox due to its huge cost overruns (its final budget was more than twice that of Brando's Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)), were pilloried by the show business press for being the epitome of the pampered, self-indulgent stars who were ruining the industry. Seeking scapegoats, the Hollywood press conveniently ignored the financial pressures on the studios. The studios had been hurt by television and by the antitrust-mandated divestiture of their movie theater chains, causing a large outflow of production to Italy and other countries in the 1950s and 1960s in order to lower costs. The studio bosses, seeking to replicate such blockbuster hits as the remakes of The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben-Hur (1959), were the real culprits behind the losses generated by large-budgeted films that found it impossible to recoup their costs despite long lines at the box office.
While Elizabeth Taylor, receiving the unwanted gift of reams of publicity from her adulterous romance with Cleopatra (1963) co-star Richard Burton, remained hot until the tanking of her own Tennessee Williams-renamed debacle Boom! (1968), Brando from 1963 until the end of the decade appeared in one box-office failure after another as he worked out a contract he had signed with Universal Pictures. The industry had grown tired of Brando and his idiosyncrasies, though he continued to be offered prestige projects up through 1968.
Some of the films Brando made in the 1960s were noble failures, such as The Ugly American (1963), The Appaloosa (1966) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). For every "Reflections," though, there seemed to be two or three outright debacles, such as Bedtime Story (1964), Morituri (1965), The Chase (1966), A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), Candy (1968), The Night of the Following Day (1969). By the time Brando began making the anti-colonialist picture Burn! (1969) in Colombia with Gillo Pontecorvo in the director's chair, he was box-office poison, despite having worked in the previous five years with such top directors as Arthur Penn, John Huston and the legendary Charles Chaplin, and with such top-drawer co-stars as David Niven, Yul Brynner, Sophia Loren and Taylor.
The rap on Brando in the 1960s was that a great talent had ruined his potential to be America's answer to Laurence Olivier, as his friend William Redfield limned the dilemma in his book "Letters from an Actor" (1967), a memoir about Redfield's appearance in Burton's 1964 theatrical production of "Hamlet." By failing to go back on stage and recharge his artistic batteries, something British actors such as Burton were not afraid to do, Brando had stifled his great talent, by refusing to tackle the classical repertoire and contemporary drama. Actors and critics had yearned for an American response to the high-acting style of the Brits, and while Method actors such as Rod Steiger tried to create an American style, they were hampered in their quest, as their king was lost in a wasteland of Hollywood movies that were beneath his talent. Many of his early supporters now turned on him, claiming he was a crass sellout.
Despite evidence in such films as The Appaloosa (1966) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) that Brando was in fact doing some of the best acting of his life, critics, perhaps with an eye on the box office, slammed him for failing to live up to, and nurture, his great gift. Brando's political activism, starting in the early 1960s with his championing of Native Americans' rights, followed by his participation in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's March on Washington in 1963, and followed by his appearance at a Black Panther rally in 1968, did not win him many admirers in the establishment. In fact, there was a de facto embargo on Brando films in the recently segregated (officially, at least) southeastern US in the 1960s. Southern exhibitors simply would not book his films, and producers took notice. After 1968, Brando would not work for three years.
Pauline Kael wrote of Brando that he was Fortune's fool. She drew a parallel with the latter career of John Barrymore, a similarly gifted thespian with talents as prodigious, who seemingly threw them away. Brando, like the late-career Barrymore, had become a great ham, evidenced by his turn as the faux Indian guru in the egregious Candy (1968), seemingly because the material was so beneath his talent. Most observers of Brando in the 1960s believed that he needed to be reunited with his old mentor Elia Kazan, a relationship that had soured due to Kazan's friendly testimony naming names before the notorious House un-American Activities Committee. Perhaps Brando believed this, too, as he originally accepted an offer to appear as the star of Kazan's film adaptation of his own novel, The Arrangement (1969). However, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Brando backed out of the film, telling Kazan that he could not appear in a Hollywood film after this tragedy. Also reportedly turning down a role opposite box-office king Paul Newman in a surefire script, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Brando decided to make Burn! (1969) with Pontecorvo. The film, a searing indictment of racism and colonialism, flopped at the box office but won the esteem of progressive critics and cultural arbiters such as Howard Zinn. He subsequently appeared in the British film The Nightcomers (1971), a prequel to "Turn of the Screw" and another critical and box office failure.
Kazan, after a life in film and the theater, said that, aside from Orson Welles, whose greatness lay in film making, he only met one actor who was a genius: Brando. Richard Burton, an intellectual with a keen eye for observation if not for his own film projects, said that he found Brando to be very bright, unlike the public perception of him as a Terry Malloy-type character that he himself inadvertently promoted through his boorish behavior. Brando's problem, Burton felt, was that he was unique, and that he had gotten too much fame too soon at too early an age. Cut off from being nurtured by normal contact with society, fame had distorted Brando's personality and his ability to cope with the world, as he had not had time to grow up outside the limelight.
Truman Capote, who eviscerated Brando in print in the mid-'50s and had as much to do with the public perception of the dyslexic Brando as a dumbbell, always said that the best actors were ignorant, and that an intelligent person could not be a good actor. However, Brando was highly intelligent, and possessed of a rare genius in a then-deprecated art, acting. The problem that an intelligent performer has in movies is that it is the director, and not the actor, who has the power in his chosen field. Greatness in the other arts is defined by how much control the artist is able to exert over his chosen medium, but in movie acting, the medium is controlled by a person outside the individual artist. It is an axiom of the cinema that a performance, as is a film, is "created" in the cutting room, thus further removing the actor from control over his art. Brando had tried his hand at directing, in controlling the whole artistic enterprise, but he could not abide the cutting room, where a film and the film's performances are made. This lack of control over his art was the root of Brando's discontent with acting, with movies, and, eventually, with the whole wide world that invested so much cachet in movie actors, as long as "they" were at the top of the box-office charts. Hollywood was a matter of "they" and not the work, and Brando became disgusted.
Charlton Heston, who participated in Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington with Brando, believes that Marlon was the great actor of his generation. However, noting a story that Brando had once refused a role in the early 1960s with the excuse "How can I act when people are starving in India?," Heston believes that it was this attitude, the inability to separate one's idealism from one's work, that prevented Brando from reaching his potential. As Rod Steiger once said, Brando had it all, great stardom and a great talent. He could have taken his audience on a trip to the stars, but he simply would not. Steiger, one of Brando's children even though a contemporary, could not understand it. When James Mason' was asked in 1971 who was the best American actor, he had replied that since Brando had let his career go belly-up, it had to be George C. Scott, by default.
Paramount thought that only Laurence Olivier would suffice, but Lord Olivier was ill. The young director believed there was only one actor who could play godfather to the group of Young Turk actors he had assembled for his film, The Godfather of method acting himself - Marlon Brando. Francis Ford Coppola won the fight for Brando, Brando won - and refused - his second Oscar, and Paramount won a pot of gold by producing the then top-grossing film of all-time, The Godfather (1972), a gangster movie most critics now judge one of the greatest American films of all time. Brando followed his iconic portrayal of Don Corleone with his Oscar-nominated turn in the high-grossing and highly scandalous Last Tango in Paris (1972) ("Last Tango in Paris"), the first film dealing explicitly with sexuality in which an actor of Brando's stature had participated. He was now again a top ten box office star and once again heralded as the greatest actor of his generation, an unprecedented comeback that put him on the cover of "Time" magazine and would make him the highest-paid actor in the history of motion pictures by the end of the decade. Little did the world know that Brando, who had struggled through many projects in good faith during the 1960s, delivering some of his best acting, only to be excoriated and ignored as the films did not do well at the box office, essentially was through with the movies.
After reaching the summit of his career, a rarefied atmosphere never reached before or since by any actor, Brando essentially walked away. He would give no more of himself after giving everything as he had done in Last Tango in Paris (1972)," a performance that embarrassed him, according to his autobiography. Brando had come as close to any actor to being the "auteur," or author, of a film, as the English-language scenes of "Tango" were created by encouraging Brando to improvise. The improvisations were written down and turned into a shooting script, and the scripted improvisations were shot the next day. Pauline Kael, the Brando of movie critics in that she was the most influential arbiter of cinematic quality of her generation and spawned a whole legion of Kael wannabes, said Brando's performance in Last Tango in Paris (1972) had revolutionized the art of film. Brando, who had to act to gain his mother's attention; Brando, who believed acting at best was nothing special as everyone in the world engaged in it every day of their lives to get what they wanted from other people; Brando, who believed acting at its worst was a childish charade and that movie stardom was a whorish fraud, would have agreed with Sam Peckinpah's summation of Pauline Kael: "Pauline's a brilliant critic but sometimes she's just cracking walnuts with her ass." He probably would have done so in a simulacrum of those words, too.
After another three-year hiatus, Brando took on just one more major role for the next 20 years, as the bounty hunter after Jack Nicholson in Arthur Penn's The Missouri Breaks (1976), a western that succeeded neither with the critics or at the box office. Following The Godfather and Tango, Brando's performance was disappointing for some reviewers, who accused him of giving an erratic and inconsistent performance. In 1977, Brando made a rare appearance on television in the miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979), portraying George Lincoln Rockwell; he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance. In 1978, he narrated the English version of Raoni (1978), a French-Belgian documentary film directed by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux and Luiz Carlos Saldanha that focused on the life of Raoni Metuktire and issues surrounding the survival of the indigenous Indian tribes of north central Brazil.
Later in his career, Brando concentrated on extracting the maximum amount of capital for the least amount of work from producers, as when he got the Salkind brothers to pony up a then-record $3.7 million against 10% of the gross for 13 days work on Superman (1978). Factoring in inflation, the straight salary for "Superman" equals or exceeds the new record of $1 million a day Harrison Ford set with K-19: The Widowmaker (2002). He agreed to the role only on assurance that he would be paid a large sum for what amounted to a small part, that he would not have to read the script beforehand, and his lines would be displayed somewhere off-camera. Brando also filmed scenes for the movie's sequel, Superman II, but after producers refused to pay him the same percentage he received for the first movie, he denied them permission to use the footage.
Before cashing his first paycheck for Superman (1978), Brando had picked up $2 million for his extended cameo in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) in a role, that of Col. Kurtz, that he authored on-camera through improvisation while Coppola shot take after take. It was Brando's last bravura star performance. He co-starred with George C. Scott and John Gielgud in The Formula (1980), but the film was another critical and financial failure. Years later though, he did receive an eighth and final Oscar nomination for his supporting role in A Dry White Season (1989) after coming out of a near-decade-long retirement. Contrary to those who claimed he now only was in it for the money, Brando donated his entire seven-figure salary to an anti-apartheid charity. He then did an amusing performance in the comedy The Freshman (1990), winning rave reviews. He portrayed Tomas de Torquemada in the historical drama 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), but his performance was denounced and the film was another box office failure. He made another comeback in the Johnny Depp romantic drama Don Juan DeMarco (1994), which co-starred Faye Dunaway as his wife. He then appeared in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), co-starring Val Kilmer, who he didn't get along with. The filming was an unpleasant experience for Brando, as well as another critical and box office failure.
Brando had first attracted media attention at the age of 24, when "Life" magazine ran a photo of himself and his sister Jocelyn, who were both then appearing on Broadway. The curiosity continued, and snowballed. Playing the paraplegic soldier of The Men (1950), Brando had gone to live at a Veterans Administration hospital with actual disabled veterans, and confined himself to a wheelchair for weeks. It was an acting method, research, that no one in Hollywood had ever heard of before, and that willingness to experience life.- Actor
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Johnny Carson, the legendary "King of Late Night TV" who dominated the medium's nether hours for three decades, was born in Corning, Iowa, but moved with his family to nearby Norfolk, Nebraska when he was eight years old. He was the son of Ruth E. (Hook) and Homer Lloyd "Kit" Carson, a manager of the Iowa-Nebraska Light & Power Company. It was in Norfolk, where he lived until he was inducted into the U.S. Navy in 1943, that he started his show business career. At age 14, Carson began appearing as the magician "The Great Carsoni" at local venues.
In 1962, Carson was chosen by NBC to succeed the controversial Jack Paar and his The Tonight Show Starring Jack Paar (1957). Paar had decided to quit the show and begin a once-a-week show for NBC in prime time on Friday nights. Carson would never be controversial like Paar, preferring to good-naturedly skewer politicians and celebrities in his opening monologue and staging stunts such as the on-stage marriage of retro-singer Tiny Tim to his "Miss Vicky" in 1969. His popularity with the late-night audience became so great, and the income from advertising on his show so profitable that, in 1967, NBC had to lure Johnny back to The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962)after a walkout with a three-year contract guaranteeing him a minimum of $4 million. In the early 1970s, TV Guide reported that Carson was earning $2 million a year, making him the highest paid TV entertainer ever, a record he repeatedly surpassed, pulling down a then-record $5 million annual salary in the 1980s. Carson created a sense of intimacy with his guests and audiences that made him the unvanquished "King of Nighttime TV". Countless talk shows hosted by the likes of Joey Bishop and Dick Cavett and other non-talk show programs were launched against him year after year only to fail, with the notable exception of ABC News Nightline (1980) halfway through his reign. His tempestuous love-life, which included two high-profile divorces, became the fodder of such celebrity staples as "The National Enquirer" and later "People Magazine", and he was even the subject of a roman a clef pulp novel in the early 1970s. There have been at least seven published biographies of Carson.
After brief stints on radio stations in Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska, his career was exclusively in television, starting with work at Nebraska TV stations in the late 1940s which preceded his 1951-53 skit program Carson's Cellar (1953) on Los Angeles station KNXT-TV. Attracting the attention of the industry, he was hired as a comedy writer for The Red Skelton Hour (1951) which provided him with a career breakthrough when Skelton was injured backstage and Carson substituted for him, delivering his first monologue before a national audience. This led to a stint as the host of the quiz show Earn Your Vacation (1954) and the variety showcase The Johnny Carson Show (1953) in 1955-56. The man who would soon become the most famous late-night TV personality in history hosted the daytime game show Who Do You Trust? (1956) from 1957-62, teaming up with longtime sidekick, Ed McMahon, in 1958.
Before his triumph on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), Carson tried his hand at dramatic acting, appearing in Three Men on a Horse (1957) (episode # 1.29) during the inaugural season of Playhouse 90 (1956) in 1957. In 1960, he shot a pilot for a prime-time TV series, "Johnny Come Lately", that was not picked up by a network. Carson had sat in for "Tonight Show" host Jack Paar in 1958 and, when Paar left the show four years later, NBC chose Carson as his replacement, taking over the catbird seat on October 2, 1962. The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962). Sidekick McMahon's "Heeeeere's Johnny!!!" introduction of Carson became a cultural catchphrase, memorably reprised by Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), Woody Allen's character in the Best Picture Academy Award-winning Annie Hall (1977), stand-up comic Alvy Singer, is recognized in front of a movie theater by a street tough due to his appearance on "The Tonight Show".
Aside from his banter with celebrities, he amused his audience for 30 years with broadly played skit comedy by his "Mighty Carson Art Players" and his spoof clairvoyant "Carnac the Magnificent". He made memorable put-downs of politicians and celebrities, a format that was used by his successors Jay Leno and David Letterman and legions of comics who came after him. When a joke bombed during his monologues, Carson would do a wounded double-take as the audience jeered, fully aware of the awfulness of the joke he had just unloaded. Following these bombs with a sly, self-deprecating remark engendered a sense of intimacy between Carson and his fans.
A liberal in the increasingly liberal age of the 1960s and 1970s, so powerful were his opening monologues that by the early 1970s, he could actually affect society at large outside of the pop culture realm. A joke about a shortage of industrial grade toilet paper caused a national panic and a run on all grades of t.p., with a resulting shortage of the product about which he had kidded. Playing off current events such as the Watergate crisis, his comic evisceration of President Richard Nixon was credited with some critics as exerting such a drag on Nixon's approval rating that it made his resignation possible, if not inevitable. After Carson's reign, it became increasingly de rigueur for politicians to appear on late-night TV talk shows and bear a host's jibes in order to stump for votes.
Carson's connection with the American culture was so absolute, it contributed to one of his few failures, the rejection of "The Tonight Show" in the early 1980s by British audiences who could not understand the topical references of his monologues. And his audience's identification of Johnny with the "Tonight Show" effectively stopped him from work in other media. In the mid-1960s, Carson's agents wanted to trade on his vast popularity to position him in motion pictures as the "New Jack Lemmon", but Carson never made any forays outside of television. His connection with the movie industry remained his hosting of three generations of stars and his memorable turns as the host of five Academy Awards telecasts from 1979-84. In that role, he generally is regarded as the best successor to long-time Oscar host Bob Hope. He did stretch his wings as a producer, his Carson Productions producing TV pilots and series, TV movies and [error], in addition to his own talk show.
The six-time Emmy-winner considered a follow-up to "The Tonight Show", but nothing caught his interest and he spent the last decade of his life in a quiet retirement in Malibu, California, as befitted his private nature. Thus, it was "The Tonight Show" that remains his creative legacy. Unlike every other TV star, he remained on top until the very end, the show winning its ratings period every year for 30 years. When Carson retired, his last appearance was one of the highest rated late night TV shows ever.
"I have an ego like anybody else", Carson told The Washington Post in 1993, "but I don't need to be stoked by going before the public all the time". Frederick De Cordova, the producer of "The Tonight Show" throughout Carson's 30-year run, believed that Carson never pressured himself to launch a follow-up as he already had achieved unprecedented success on TV. "He is one of a kind, was one of a kind", De Cordova said in 1995. "I don't think there's any reason for him to try something different".
Carson, who was suffering from emphysema and had quadruple bypass surgery in 1999, died peacefully at the age of 79 on January 23, 2005, surrounded by his family and friends. In terms of career longevity, popularity, peer respect and impact on the medium, Carson ranks with Lucille Ball and Jackie Gleason as a television great.- Actor
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Yale-educated Dick Cavett established his reputation as the most erudite of American talk show hosts in the late 1960s and early '70s. Although there were many contenders who took on Johnny Carson, the undisputed heavyweight champion of late-night TV, Cavett generally was considered the most successful of the pretenders to Carson's throne. There were many challengers, and Carson vanquished them all, most notably Joey Bishop, Jerry Lewis and Merv Griffin (who moved his talk show to afternoons and syndication after it was canceled by CBS in 1972 after a three-year run on the network).
Cavett's late-night talk show, The Dick Cavett Show (1968), ran on ABC, from 1968 to 1974, and then for an additional year on CBS. (He has since appeared on numerous other talk show gigs into the 21st Century.) Thought it ranked third in ratings behind Carson (perpetually #1 for all the years he headlined his own show) and Griffin in 1969-72, he was the most respected of the Carson-wannabes. Cavett was famous for attracting guests who normally did not appear on talk shows, such as Katharine Hepburn, Laurence Olivier and the post-"Godfather" Marlon Brando, who used his time on the "Dick Cavett Show" to talk about Indians rights with Native American spokespeople Cavett allowed to share Brando's forum. The reticent Brando praised Cavett for being the best.
"The King of Late Night" and the highest-paid television personality of his time, Johnny Carson eventually crushed even Dick Cavett. Ironically, Cavett was born in Nebraska and was an aspiring amateur magician, as was fellow Cornhusker Carson, for whom Cavett worked on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962) as a writer after having broken in to the business in a similar capacity for Jack Paar, Carson's predecessor on "The Tonight Show."
He was born Richard Alva Cavett on November 19, 1936, in Gibbon, Nebraska, the son of two educators, Erabel "Era" (Richards) and Alva Bayard Cavett. After spending his childhood in Lincoln, Nebraska, he matriculated at Yale, where he first experienced the debilitating depression caused by bipolar disorder that would plague him though his adult life. He switched his major at Yale to drama and, upon graduating, made the rounds of casting agents, as did his first wife, the actress Carrie Nye whom he married in 1964 and remained married to for 42 years, until her death.
At 5'3" tall, Cavett was too short to be a success at anything but character parts, but even those were not forthcoming. In addition to his writing for Paar and Carson (and a high-priced staff writing gig on the notoriously unsuccessful The Jerry Lewis Show (1963) in 1963, after which he returned to Carson after Lewis bombed and was canceled), Cavett launched a career as a stand-up comic, possibly influenced by Woody Allen, whom he discovered for Paar (his title on Jack Paar's "Tonight Show" was "talent coordinator").
An American treasure, Dick Cavett now writes regularly for "The New York Times." In November 2010, he had married for the second time, tying the knot with writer Martha Rogers in New Orleans.- Producer
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Director, producer and screenwriter Alexander Payne was born in Omaha, Nebraska. His parents, Peggy (Constantine) and George Payne, ran a Greek restaurant. His father is of Greek and German ancestry, and his mother is of Greek descent; the family name was originally Papadopoulos. He is the youngest of three brothers.
Alexander attended Stanford University, where he majored in Spanish and History. He then went on to study film at UCLA Film School. His university thesis film was screened at the Sundance film festival, which led to him being backed by Miramax to write and direct Citizen Ruth (1996). Payne prefers to have control over his movies, from scripts to cast.- Actress
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Joelle Joanie "JoJo" Siwa was born on May 19, 2003 in Omaha, Nebraska. JoJo Siwa is a YouTube sensation, pop star, dancer, entrepreneur, social media influencer and The New York Times bestselling author. Siwa connects with her fans through many channels: via social media she has over 10 million subscribers with over 2.4 billion views on YouTube, she has over 8.6 million followers on Instagram, over 436,000 Twitter followers, over 17.3 million followers on TikTok (formerly Musical.ly), and over 566,000 followers on Facebook; through her SIWANATORZ club, which stands against negativity and bullying; through her global reach of consumer products including her signature bows, accessories, apparel, arts and crafts, cosmetics, home goods and party supplies; and with her hugely popular singles, "Boomerang," which has been viewed over 732 million times and RIAA certified platinum, "Kid in a Candy Store," which is RIAA certified gold, "Hold The Drama", and D.R.E.A.M.
Siwa is currently in the middle of her first-ever live concert tour, Nickelodeon's Jojo Siwa D.R.E.A.M. The Tour. Produced by Nickelodeon and AEG Presents and presented by Party City, the 80 city North American tour kicked off on May 17th in Phoenix, AZ and will continue thru October. Siwa will also take the tour to the UK and Ireland this fall. Visit JoJoDREAMTour.com for tickets, the full tour schedule and more information.
Siwa recently took the stage at this year's Nickelodeon SlimeFest - a two-day family-friendly music festival held in Chicago, Ill., at Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island on June 8 and 9 - along with Pitbull, Bebe Rexha and T-Pain. Siwa helped kick off Nickelodeon's inaugural U.S. SlimeFest last year, where she performed in front of over 24,000 fans. She also performed at Nickelodeon's second inaugural SlimeFest UK.
Siwa recently won her third Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Award for "Favorite Social Music Star." Her previous Choice Awards include "Favorite Viral Music Artist" in 2017 and "Favorite Musical YouTube Creator" in 2018. She also performed a medley of hits at 2018 Kids' Choice Awards and 2018 Kids' Choice Mexico.
In November, Siwa released her first EP, D.R.E.A.M. The Music, featuring four new songs: "D.R.E.A.M," "My Story," "Everyday Popstars" and "Only Getting Better." The music video for "D.R.E.A.M." was released on Siwa's YouTube channel and to date has garnered over 61 million views. Due to the success of D.R.E.A.M. The Music, Siwa released a second EP, Celebrate, in April featuring an additional four new songs: "It's Time To Celebrate," "#1U," "Worldwide Party," and "Bop!" The accompanying music videos for "Bop!" and "Worldwide Party" have accumulated over 10 million views and 2.2 million views respectively on her YouTube channel.
In 2016, Nickelodeon and Siwa entered an exclusive licensing partnership to develop a line of consumer products inspired by Siwa. Categories span toys, apparel, accessories, consumer electronics, Halloween costumes and more. To date, over 50 million JoJo Bows have been sold. Siwa's consumer products are available internationally, including the UK, Canada, Australia and Mexico.
Siwa launched her first animated shorts series, The JoJo & BowBow Show Show starring Siwa and her furry best friend BowBow. She also worked alongside Nick Cannon in Nickelodeon's hit competition series Lip Sync Battle Shorties. She has appeared on various Nickelodeon live-action series including School of Rock and The Thundermans.- Actor
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Fred Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Johanna (Geilus) and Fritz Austerlitz, a brewer. Fred entered show business at age 5. He was successful both in vaudeville and on Broadway in partnership with his sister, Adele Astaire. After Adele retired to marry in 1932, Astaire headed to Hollywood. Signed to RKO, he was loaned to MGM to appear in Dancing Lady (1933) before starting work on RKO's Flying Down to Rio (1933). In the latter film, he began his highly successful partnership with Ginger Rogers, with whom he danced in 9 RKO pictures. During these years, he was also active in recording and radio. On film, Astaire later appeared opposite a number of partners through various studios. After a temporary retirement in 1945-7, during which he opened Fred Astaire Dance Studios, Astaire returned to film to star in more musicals through 1957. He subsequently performed a number of straight dramatic roles in film and TV.- It would not be easy for anyone to out-do one of American theater's finest thespians, but somehow actress Sandy Dennis managed to even out-quirk the legendary Geraldine Page when it came to affecting nervous tics and offbeat mannerisms on stage and in film. She and Page had few peers when it came to the neurotic-dispensing department. The two Actor's Studio disciples developed fascinating characterizations that seemed to manifest themselves outwardly to such physical extremes and, like a bad car accident, their overt styling was capable of both drawing in, and repelling audiences. There was no gray area. Either way, both had a searing emotional range and were undeniably transfixing figures who held up Oscar trophies to prove there was a "Method" to their respective madness. Sandy's signature quirks--her stuttering, fluttering, throat gulps, eye twitches, nervous giggles, hysterical flailing--are all a part of what made her so distinctive and unforgettable. Her untimely death of cancer at age 54 robbed the entertainment industry of a remarkable talent.
The Nebraska-born-and-bred actress was born Sandra Dale Dennis in Hastings, on April 27, 1937, the daughter of postal clerk Jack Dennis and his secretary wife Yvonne (née Hudson), who divorced in 1966 after a 38-year marriage. Living in both Kenesaw (1942) and Lincoln (1946) while growing up, she and brother Frank went to Lincoln High School with TV host Dick Cavett. Her passion for acting grew and grew while still at home. A college student at both Nebraska Wesleyan University and the University of Nebraska, she eventually found her career direction after appearing with the Lincoln Community Theater Group.
The toothy actress left Nebraska and towards the Big Apple at age 19 just to try her luck. An intense student of acting guru Uta Hagen, Sandy made her New York stage debut in a Tempo Theatre production of "The Lady from the Sea" in 1956 and that same year won her first TV role as that of Alice Holden in the daytime series Guiding Light (1952). A year later she made it to Broadway as an understudy (and eventual replacement) for the roles of Flirt and Reenie in the William Inge drama "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs," directed by Elia Kazan at the Music Box Theatre. She toured with that production and also found regional work in the plays "Bus Stop" and "Motel" while continuing to shine as a budding New York fixture in "Burning Bright," "Face of a Hero" and "Port Royal".
Along with fellow newcomers Gary Lockwood and Phyllis Diller, Sandy made her movie debut in playwright Inge's Splendor in the Grass (1961), a movie quite welcoming of Sandy's neurotic tendencies. In the minor but instrumental role of Kay, she is an unwitting instigator of friend Deanie's (played by an ambitiously unbalanced Natalie Wood) mental collapse. Despite this worthy little turn, Sandy would not make another film for five years.
Instead, the actress set her sights strongly on the stage and for this she was handsomely rewarded, most notably in comedy. After appearing in a two-month run of the Graham Greene drama "The Complaisant Lover" at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1961, stardom would be hers the very next year with her outstanding social worker role in the lighter-weight "A Thousand Clowns". Winning the Theatre World as well as the coveted Tony Award for her performance, she continue her run of prizes with a second consecutive Tony for her sexy turn in the comedy "Any Wednesday" (1964). Having made only one picture at this juncture, Sandy was not in a good position to transfer her award-winning characters to film and when they did, they went to Barbara Harris and Jane Fonda, respectively.
TV was also a viable medium for Sandy and she appeared sporadically on such programs as The Fugitive (1963), Naked City (1958) and Arrest and Trial (1963). In 1965, she appeared in London as Irina in a heralded Actor's Studio production of Chekhov's "The Three Sisters" with fellow devotees Geraldine Page, Kim Stanley, Shelley Winters, Luther Adler and Kevin McCarthy. The play was subsequently videotaped and directed by Paul Bogart, and is valuable today for the studied "Method" performances of its cast. It, however, received mixed reviews upon its release.
Returning to film in 1966, Sandy seemed to embellish every physical and emotional peculiarity she could muster for the role of the mousy wife Honey in the four-character powerhouse play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) by Edward Albee. It is a mouth-dropping, emotionally shattering performance, and both she and a more even-keeled George Segal as the drop over guests of the skewering cutthroat couple George and Martha (Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton) more than held their own. While the distaff cast won Oscars for this (Taylor for "Best Actress" and Dennis for "Best Supporting Actress"), this ferocious landmark film blew open the "Production Code" doors once and for all and a wave of counterculture filming tackling formerly taboo subjects came to be.
Firmly established now with her Oscar win, Sandy found highly affecting lead showcases for herself. She starred as a young, naive English teacher challenged by a New York "Blackboard Jungle"-like school system in Up the Down Staircase (1967). She also stirred up some controversy along with Anne Heywood playing brittle lesbian lovers whose relationship is threatened by a sexy male visitor (Keir Dullea) in another ground-breaking film The Fox (1967). Sandy remained intriguingly off-kilter in the odd-couple romantic story Sweet November (1968) opposite Anthony Newley, the bizarre Robert Altman thriller That Cold Day in the Park (1969), and the gloomy British melodrama A Touch of Love (1969) [aka Thank You All Very Much].
Off-camera, Sandy lived for over a decade with jazz musician and saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, which began in 1965 following his devoted relationship with actress Judy Holliday who had died of cancer earlier in the year. They eventually parted ways in 1976. Rumors that they had married at some point were eventually negated by Sandy herself. Sandy also went on to have a May-December relationship with the equally quirky actor Eric Roberts from 1980 to 1985. She had no children.
At the peak of her film popularity, Sandy began the 1970s in more mainstream fashion. She and Jack Lemmon were another odd-couple hit in Neil Simon's The Out of Towners (1970) as married George and Gwen Kellerman visiting an unmerciful Big Apple. Sandy is at her whiny, plain-Jane best ("Oh, my God...I think we're being kidnapped!") as disaster upon disaster befalls the miserable twosome. Both she and Lemmon were nominated for Golden Globes. Following this, however, Sandy again refocused on the stage with an avalanche of fine performances in "How the Other Half Loves," "And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little," "A Streetcar Named Desire" (as Blanche), "Born Yesterday" (as Billie Dawn), "Absurd Person Singular," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (as Maggie the Cat), "Same Time, Next Year," "The Little Foxes," "Eccentricities of a Nightingale," "The Supporting Cast" and even the title role in "Peter Pan".
A few TV and movie roles came Sandy's way in unspectacular fashion but it wasn't until the next decade that she again stole some thunder. After a moving support turn as a cast-off wife in the finely-tuned ensemble drama The Four Seasons (1981), Sandy proved terrific as a James Dean extremist in another ensemble film Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982), which she played first to fine acclaim on Broadway. Reunited with director Robert Altman as well as her stage compatriots Cher, Karen Black, Kathy Bates, Sudie Bond and Marta Heflin, the film version was equally praised. Her last films included Another Woman (1988), 976-EVIL (1988) and Parents (1989).
Seen less and less in later years, she gave in to her eccentric tendencies as time went on. A notorious cat lover (at one point there was a count of 33 residing in her Westport, Connecticut home), close friends included actresses Brenda Vaccaro and Jessica Walter. Her father Jack died in 1990 and around that same time Sandy was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Undergoing chemotherapy at the time she filmed the part of a beaten-down mother in Sean Penn's The Indian Runner (1991), the role proved to be her last.
Sandy died in Westport on March 2, 1992. Her ashes were placed at the Lincoln Memorial Park in Lincoln, Nebraska. A foundation in her home state was set up to "memorialize the accomplishments of Sandy Dennis, to perpetuate her commitment to education and the performing arts, to promote cultural activities, and to encourage theatrical education, performance, and professionals". A book, "Sandy Dennis: A Personal Memoir," was published posthumously in 1997. - Actor
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Nick Nolte was born in Omaha, Nebraska and began his career on stage at the Pasadena Playhouse and in regional theatre productions. His breakthrough role was in the TV miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man (1976), playing the role of "Tom/Tommy Jordache". Nick Nolte said that when he played a young man in the early scenes of the project, he weighed about 160 pounds. When he played a middle-aged man in the later scenes, he weighed over 180 pounds.- Actor
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Lanky, charismatic and versatile actor with an amazing grin that put everyone at ease, James Coburn studied acting at UCLA, and then moved to New York to study under noted acting coach Stella Adler. After being noticed in several stage productions, Coburn appeared in a handful of minor westerns before being cast as the knife-throwing, quick-shooting Britt in the John Sturges mega-hit The Magnificent Seven (1960). Sturges remembered Coburn's talents when he cast his next major film project, The Great Escape (1963), where Coburn played the Australian POW Sedgwick. Regular work now came thick and fast for Coburn, including appearing in Major Dundee (1965), the first of several films he appeared in directed by Hollywood enfant terrible Sam Peckinpah.
Coburn was then cast, and gave an especially fine performance as Lt. Commander Paul Cummings in Arthur Hiller's The Americanization of Emily, where he demonstrated a flair for writer Paddy Chayefsky's subtle, ironic comedy that would define his performances for the rest of his career.
The next two years were a key period for Coburn, with his performances in the wonderful 007 spy spoof Our Man Flint (1966) and the eerie Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966). Coburn followed up in 1967 with a Flint sequel, In Like Flint (1967), and the much underrated political satire The President's Analyst (1967). The remainder of the 1960s was rather uneventful for Coburn. However, he became associated with martial arts legend Bruce Lee and the two trained together, traveled extensively and even visited India scouting locations for a proposed film project, but Lee's untimely death (Coburn, along with Steve McQueen, was a pallbearer at Lee's funeral) put an end to that.
The 1970s saw Coburn appearing again in several strong roles, starting off in Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), alongside Charles Bronson in the Depression-era Hard Times (1975) and as a disenchanted German soldier on the Russian front in Peckinpah's superb Cross of Iron (1977). Towards the end of the decade, however, Coburn was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which severely hampered his health and work output for many years. After conventional treatments failed, Coburn turned to a holistic therapist, and through a restructured diet program, made a definite improvement. By the 1990s he was once again appearing regularly in both film and TV productions.
No one was probably more surprised than Coburn himself when he was both nominated for, and then won, the Best Supporting Actor Award in 1997 for playing Nick Nolte's abusive and alcoholic father in Affliction (1997). At 70 years of age, Coburn's career received another shot in the arm, and he appeared in another 14 films, including Snow Dogs (2002) and The Man from Elysian Fields (2001), before his death from a heart attack in November of 2002. Coburn's passions in life included martial arts, card-playing and enjoying Cuban cigars (which may have contributed to his fatal heart attack).- Actor
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This remarkable, soft-spoken American began in films as a diffident juvenile. With passing years, he matured into a star character actor who exemplified not only integrity and strength, but an ideal of the common man fighting against social injustice and oppression. He was born in Grand Island, Hall, Nebraska, the son of Herberta Elma (Jaynes) and William Brace Fonda, who was a commercial printer, and proprietor of the W. B. Fonda Printing Company in Omaha, Nebraska. His distant ancestors were Italians who had fled their country and moved to Holland, presumably because of political or religious persecution. In the mid-1600s, they crossed the Atlantic and settled in upstate New York where they founded a community with the Fonda name.
Growing up, Henry developed an early interest in journalism after having a story published in a local newspaper. At the age of twelve, he helped in his father's printing business for $2 a week. Following graduation from high school in 1923, he got a part-time job in Minneapolis with the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company which allowed him at first to pursue journalistic studies at the University of Minnesota. As it became difficult to juggle his working hours with his academic roster, he obtained another position as a physical education instructor at $30 a week, including room and board. By this time, he had grown to a height of six foot one and was a natural for basketball.
In 1925, having returned to Omaha, Henry reevaluated his options and came to the conclusion that journalism was not his forte, after all. For a while, he tried his hand at several temporary jobs, including as a mechanic and a window dresser. Then, despite opposition from his parents, Henry accepted an offer from Gregory Foley, director of the Omaha Playhouse, to play the title role in 'Merton of the Movies'. His father would not speak to him for a month. The play and its star received fairly good notices in the local press. It ran for a week, after which Henry observed "the idea of being Merton and not myself taught me that I could hide behind a mask". For the rest of the repertory season, Henry advanced to assistant director which enabled him to design and paint sets as well as act. A casual trip to New York, however, had already made him set his sights on Broadway.
In 1928, he headed east and briefly played in summer stock before joining the University Players, a group of talented Princeton and Harvard graduates among whose number were such future luminaries as James Stewart (who would remain his closest lifelong friend), Joshua Logan and Kent Smith. Before long, Henry played leads opposite Margaret Sullavan, soon to become the first of his five wives. Both marriage and the players broke up four years later. In 1932, Henry found himself sharing a two-room New York apartment with Jimmy Stewart and Joshua Logan. For the next two years, he alternated scenic design with acting at various repertory companies. In 1934, he got a break of sorts, when he was given the chance to present a comedy sketch with Imogene Coca in the Broadway revue New Faces. That year, he also hired Leland Hayward as his personal management agent and this was to pay off handsomely.
It was Hayward who persuaded the 29-year old to become a motion picture actor, despite initial misgivings and reluctance on Henry's part. Independent producer Walter Wanger, whose growing stock company was birthed at United Artists, needed a star for The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935). With both first choice actors Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea otherwise engaged, Henry was the next available option. After all, he had just completed a successful run on Broadway in the stage version. The cheesy publicity tag line for the picture was "you'll be fonder of Fonda", but the film was an undeniable hit. Wanger, realizing he had a good thing going, next cast Henry in a succession of A-grade pictures which capitalized on his image as the sincere, unaffected country boy. Pick of the bunch were the Technicolor outdoor western The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), the gritty Depression-era drama You Only Live Once (1937) (with Henry as a back-to-the-wall good guy forced into becoming a fugitive from the law by circumstance), the screwball comedy The Moon's Our Home (1936) (with ex-wife Sullavan), the excellent pre-civil war-era romantic drama Jezebel (1938) and the equally superb Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), in which Henry gave his best screen performance to date as the 'jackleg lawyer from Springfield'. Henry made two more films with director John Ford: the pioneering drama Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940), with Henry as Tom Joad, often regarded his career-defining role as the archetypal grassroots American trying to stand up against oppression. It also set the tone for his subsequent career. Whether he played a lawman (Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (1946)), a reluctant posse member (The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), a juror committed to the ideal of total justice in (12 Angry Men (1957)) or a nightclub musician wrongly accused of murder (The Wrong Man (1956)), his characters were alike in projecting integrity and quiet authority. In this vein, he also gave a totally convincing (though historically inaccurate) portrayal in the titular role of The Return of Frank James (1940), a rare example of a sequel improving upon the original.
Henry rarely featured in comedy, except for a couple of good turns opposite Barbara Stanwyck -- with whom he shared an excellent on-screen chemistry -- in The Mad Miss Manton (1938) and The Lady Eve (1941). He was also good value as a poker-playing grifter in the western comedy A Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966). Finally, just to confound those who would typecast him, he gave a chilling performance as one of the coldest, meanest stone killers ever to roam the West, in Sergio Leone's classic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Illness curtailed his work in the 1970s. His final screen role was as an octogenarian in On Golden Pond (1981), in which he was joined by his daughter Jane. It finally won him an Oscar on the heels of an earlier Honorary Academy Award. Too ill to attend the ceremony, he died soon after at the age of 77, having left a lasting legacy matched by few of his peers.- Actor
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Edward Montgomery Clift (nicknamed 'Monty' his entire life) was born on October 17, 1920 in Omaha, Nebraska, just after his twin sister Roberta (1920-2014) and eighteen months after his brother Brooks Clift. He was the son of Ethel "Sunny" Anderson (Fogg; 1888-1988) and William Brooks Clift (1886-1964). His father made a lot of money in banking but was quite poor during the depression. His mother was born out of wedlock and spent much of her life and the family fortune finding her illustrious southern lineage and raising her children as aristocrats.
At age 13, Monty appeared on Broadway ("Fly Away Home"), and chose to remain in the New York theater for over ten years before finally succumbing to Hollywood. He gained excellent theatrical notices and soon piqued the interests of numerous lovelorn actresses; their advances met with awkward conflict. While working in New York in the early 1940s, he met wealthy former Broadway star Libby Holman. She developed an intense decade-plus obsession over the young actor, even financing an experimental play, "Mexican Mural" for him. It was ironic his relationship with the bisexual middle-aged Holman would be the principal (and likely the last) heterosexual relationship of his life and only cause him further anguish over his sexuality. She would wield considerable influence over the early part of his film career, advising him in decisions to decline lead roles in Sunset Blvd. (1950), (originally written specifically for him; the story perhaps hitting a little too close to home) and High Noon (1952).
His long apprenticeship on stage made him a thoroughly accomplished actor, notable for the intensity with which he researched and approached his roles. By the early 1950s he was exclusively homosexual, though he continued to hide his homosexuality and maintained a number of close friendships with theater women (heavily promoted by studio publicists).
His film debut was Red River (1948) with John Wayne quickly followed by his early personal success The Search (1948) (Oscar nominations for this, A Place in the Sun (1951), From Here to Eternity (1953) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)). By 1950, he was troubled with allergies and colitis (the U.S. Army had rejected him for military service in World War II for chronic diarrhea) and, along with pill problems, he was alcoholic. He spent a great deal of time and money on psychiatry.
In 1956, during filming of Raintree County (1957), he ran his Chevrolet into a tree after leaving a party at Elizabeth Taylor's; it was she who saved him from choking by pulling out two teeth lodged in his throat. His smashed face was rebuilt, he reconciled with his estranged father, but he continued bedeviled by dependency on drugs and his unrelenting guilt over his homosexuality.
With his Hollywood career in an irreversible slide despite giving an occasional riveting performance, such as in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Monty returned to New York and tried to slowly develop a somewhat more sensible lifestyle in his brownstone row house on East 61st Street in Manhattan. He was set to play in Taylor's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), when he died in the early morning hours of July 23, 1966, at his home at age 45. His body was found by his live-in personal secretary/companion Lorenzo James, who found Clift lying nude on top of his bed, dead from what the autopsy called "occlusive coronary artery disease." Clift's last 10 years prior to his death from his 1956 car accident were called the "longest suicide in history" by famed acting teacher Robert Lewis.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Peter Henry Fonda was born in New York City, to legendary screen star Henry Fonda and Ontario, Canada-born New York socialite Frances Brokaw (born Frances Ford Seymour). He was the younger brother of actress and activist Jane Fonda and the father of actress Bridget Fonda.
Fonda made his professional stage debut on Broadway in 1961 in Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole, for which he received rave reviews from the New York Critics, and won the Daniel Blum Theater World Award and the New York Critics Circle Award for Best New Actor. He began his feature film career in 1963, playing the romantic lead in Tammy and the Doctor and joined the ensemble cast of the World War II saga, The Victors.
Shortly thereafter, Fonda began what would become a famous association with Roger Corman, starring in Wild Angels, as the ultra-cool, iron-fisted leader of a violent biker gang, opposite Nancy Sinatra, Bruce Dern, and Diane Ladd. Fonda starred in Corman's 1967 psychedelic film The Trip, also starring Dern and Susan Strasberg. His next project was the seminal 1969 anti-establishment film Easy Rider, which he produced and co-scripted, receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
His acting credits included the feature films Outlaw Blues, an expose of the country music business; Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry; Race with the Devil; Robert Rossen's Lilith; Split Image; Robert Wise's Two People; and the cult films Love and a .45 and Nadja. He appeared in Grace of My Heart (directed by Alison Anders), and John Carpenter's Escape from L.A., starring Kurt Russell. He made a cameo appearance in Bodies, Heat & Motion, which starred his daughter Bridget Fonda.
Fonda won critical acclaim for his portrayal of Ulee Jackson, the taciturn beekeeper in the 1997 film Ulee's Gold, earning him both a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and the New York Film Critics Award, as well as an Oscar nomination. Following this, he published his autobiography, Don't Tell Dad, and was then seen in the NBC movie The Tempest, for which he had been nominated for another Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Mini-Series. Fonda then appeared with Helen Mirren in the Showtime telefilm The Passion of Ayn Rand, where he won the Golden Globe for outstanding supporting actor in a mini-series or movie made for television and was nominated for both an Emmy and SAG Award. He co-starred in Steven Soderbergh's 1997 film The Limey. Following this, he appeared in Thomas and the Magic Railroad for director Britt Allcroft, starring Alec Baldwin.
Fonda directed his first feature film, The Hired Hand, in 1971. A critically acclaimed western in which he also starred, the film debuted with a restored version at the 2001 Venice Film Festival; it then screened at the Toronto Film Festival before reopening in theaters in 2003. Other directing credits include the science fiction feature Idaho Transfer, starring as a gambler who wins Brooke Shields in a poker game.
Fonda co-starred in HBO's The Laramie Project, based on the true story of openly gay college student Matthew Shepard, killed in an act of senseless violence and cruelty, which attracted national attention. Fonda starred in The Maldonado Miracle, directed by Salma Hayek for Showtime Networks, and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for his role. Fonda also starred opposite Kris Kristofferson in Wooly Boys, which was released in March 2004, and the television drama Back When We Were Grownups, opposite Blythe Danner and Faye Dunaway. Fonda was seen in Soderbergh's Ocean's Twelve and appeared in Mark Steven Johnson's Ghost Rider, opposite Nicolas Cage.
Fonda's last projects included director Ron Maxwell's Civil War-era drama Copperhead, alongside Billy Campbell and Angus MacFadyen, The Ultimate Gift directed by Michael Landon Jr., and John McNaughton's The Harvest, with Samantha Morton and Michael Shannon.
Peter Fonda died on August 16, 2019, in Los Angeles.- Music Department
- Actor
- Composer
Known for timeless classics such as "We've Only Just Begun," "Rainy Days and Mondays," "Evergreen," "Just an Old Fashioned Love Song," and "Rainbow Connection," Paul Williams is responsible for what will remain part of our popular culture for many years to come. His music has been recorded by some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry.
Three Dog Night's versions of "Just an Old Fashioned Love Song," "Out in the Country," and "Family of Man" have sold millions of copies, worldwide. Karen Carpenter's rich vocals made "We've Only Just Begun," "Rainy Days and Mondays," "Let Me Be the One," and "I Won't Last a Day Without You," a part of our lives. Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Barbra Streisand, Willie Nelson, Kermit the Frog and Luther Vandross are among the hundreds of artists who have recorded Paul's songs.
Neal McCoy recently recorded Paul's "Party On," while Diamond Rio recorded and took "You're Gone" to the top of the charts. The video for "You're Gone" became Pick of the Week on Country Music Television. In 1997, Paul went back into the recording studio and recorded his CD, "Back to Love Again," which includes remakes of some of Paul's more classic hits such as "Rainbow Connection" and "I Won't Last a Day Without You," as well as new songs which contain the same quality, passion and depth that was heard and felt in his hits from the past. Richard Carpenter and Graham Nash appear as guest artists on the album, bringing to it a richness and a quality all its own. Critics, fans and the most famous in the music industry have all had positive reactions and reviews to the album.
No one sings a song like the songwriter who wrote it, and the same holds true for Paul's music. No one captures the emotion within the songs the way he can and does time and time again. Paul is one of the most celebrated songwriters of our time having won Academy, Grammy and Golden Globe Awards. His most recent accomplishments include his induction into the American Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Paul's reputation as a motion picture songwriter took hold in 1973, with an Academy Award nomination for "Nice to Be Around" (co-written with John Williams) from Cinderella Liberty (1973). 1975 brought Paul's second nomination for the soundtrack from Brian De Palma's cult classic, Phantom of the Paradise (1974). He not only wrote the words and music and produced the album for the rock cantata, but also held the audience captive with his devious portrayal of the evil Swan.
Paul went on to become the Music Supervisor for A Star Is Born (1976), bringing with it the challenge of working with three different composers to produce its award-winning score. Williams and Kenny Ascher won a Golden Globe Award for "Best Motion Picture Score." "Evergreen," co-written with Barbra Streisand, won the 1976 Oscar for "Best Song of the Year." In 1980, Paul was once again nominated by the Academy for the score from the box office smash hit, The Muppet Movie (1979), for "Best Original Score" as well as the song "Rainbow Connection" being nominated for "Best Song." "The Muppet Movie" soundtrack went on to win two Grammy Awards and became the biggest soundtrack album of the year, exceeding sales of one million units. Paul reunited with Henson Productions for the Disney feature film, The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992). He wrote and produced the songs for the soundtrack which brought with it yet another Grammy Award nomination for "Best Musical Album for Children."
Paul's other film credits include the songs and score for Bugsy Malone (1976), which starred Jodie Foster and Scott Baio. "Bugsy Malone" continues to be a favorite of children's playhouses and theaters, worldwide. He co-wrote the title song for "Flying Dreams" from The Secret of NIMH (1982), which was recently recorded as a duet by Kenny Loggins and Olivia Newton-John, and has written songs for The End (1978), Rocky IV (1985) and Ishtar (1987). Paul collaborated with Jerry Goldsmith on the title song for The Sum of All Fears (2002). The song is featured in the beginning of the movie with a Latin translation and again at the end in English, performed by Electra recording artist, Yolanda Adams. This may very well be the first time in entertainment history where a song has been presented in a film in two different languages. Paul Williams began his career as an actor with his portrayal of a 12-year-old prodigy in The Loved One (1965), playing opposite Jonathan Winters. He is probably best-known for his roles as Little Enos in the "Smokey and the Bandit" movies, as well as the orangutan Virgil in Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973).
In 1995, Paul received stellar reviews for his starring role as a wheelchair-bound hostage in Headless Body in Topless Bar (1995). Paul is also remembered for his roles in Oliver Stone's The Doors (1991), People Like Us (1990) (the NBC miniseries based on the Dominick Dunne bestseller), as the fun-loving amphibian Gus in Frog (1988) and Frogs! (1993) and Freddie the Bomb in Solar Crisis (1990). He rarely passes up the opportunity to return to his early roots of acting and played an emergency room doctor in Roger Avary's The Rules of Attraction (2002). Paul is no stranger to the small screen. He has appeared on Picket Fences (1992), Dream On (1990), Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show (1997), Boston Common (1996), Walker, Texas Ranger (1993) and The Bold and the Beautiful (1987).
Many people are unaware that Paul has provided voice-overs for countless animated series, some of which include his role as the Penguin in Batman: The Animated Series (1992), and his recurring appearances in Phantom 2040 (1994). Having obtained his certification from UCLA as a drug and alcohol counselor, Paul is very active on the speaker's circuit across the country. Speaking from his personal experiences with his own addiction and the knowledge that he gained through his education and his experience as a counselor, Paul continues to touch the lives and hearts of many people whose lives have been affected by drug abuse and/or alcoholism. He is actively involved with the Musician's Assistance Program and is on the Board of Directors for Community High School, a sober high school in Nashville, Tennessee which offers the teens assistance with their recovery as well as the education that they both strive for and deserve.
Paul has appeared on Prime Time Country (1996), The Geraldo Rivera Show (1987) and Primetime (1989), talking about the devastating effects of drugs and alcohol and the increased use of them amongst teens and pre-teens. Paul has been presented with the Global Arts Award from the Friendly House for his efforts on their behalf, the Spirit of Youth Award from the Pacific Boys Lodge for his efforts and contributions and the "Celebration of Hope" award given to him by Hazelden for his overall contribution in the recovery field. Recovery is not simply a field that Paul is active in, it is one that he is passionate about... this is just one way in which Paul gives of himself to others.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Hilary was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, to Judith Kay (Clough), a secretary, and Stephen Michael Swank, who served in the National Guard and was also a traveling salesman. Her maternal grandmother, Frances Martha Dominguez, was of Mexican descent, and her other roots include German, English, and Scottish. During her early childhood, her family moved to Spokane, Washington, and when she was six, to Bellingham, Washington.
Hilary was discovered as a child by producer Suzy Sachs, who coached her in acting. When she was nine years old, she starred in her first play as "Mowgli" in "The Jungle Book". She began to appear regularly in local theater and school plays. She went to school in Bellingham, where she lived with her family, until she was 16. She competed in the Junior Olympics and Washington State championships in swimming; she ranked 5th in the state in all-around gymnastics (which would come in handy for starring in The Next Karate Kid (1994) years later). In 1990, Hilary and her mother moved to Los Angeles, where she enrolled in South Pasadena High School, and started acting professionally. She appeared in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) but The Next Karate Kid (1994), where she got the part competing against hundreds of other actresses, was her breakout role. Ever since then, she has been much in demand and has worked non-stop in movies. She won the Best Actress Oscar for playing "Brandon Teena" in Boys Don't Cry (1999). In addition to the Oscar, Hilary won the Golden Globe Award for "Best Actress in a Drama" and "Best Actress" prizes from The New York Film Critics, The Los Angeles Film Critics, The Chicago Film Critics and The Broadcast Film Critics Association. She also won the "Breakthrough Performance" prize from The National Board of Review.
Hilary then appeared in supporting roles opposite Cate Blanchett and Keanu Reeves in Sam Raimi's The Gift (2000) and opposite Al Pacino and Robin Williams in Christopher Nolan's Insomnia (2002). Hilary then starred as "Alice Paul" in HBO's Iron Jawed Angels (2004), which told the story of the women's suffragist movement and she was honored with both SAG and Golden Globe nominations for her performance in this film. In 2004, Hilary starred opposite Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman as the title character in Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby (2004); the story of a young woman's quest to realize her dream of becoming a professional boxer. For this performance, she was honored with her second Academy Award for "Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role" and has garnered "Best Actress" prizes from the National Society of Film Critics, the Screen Actors Guild, The Broadcast Film Critics, and a Golden Globe for "Best Lead Actress in a Drama".
Hilary Swank is the third youngest woman in history to win two Academy Awards for "Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role".
She subsequently had a supporting role opposite Scarlett Johansson and Josh Hartnett in Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia (2006), starred in Freedom Writers (2007), the true story of Long Beach schoolteacher, Erin Gruwell, The Reaping (2007) for Warner Brothers, and reunited with her Freedom Writers (2007) writer/director, Richard LaGravenese, starring in the film adaptation of Cecelia Ahern's novel, P.S. I Love You (2007).
An aficionado for anything that involves the outdoors, she enjoys: sky diving, river rafting and skiing.- Actor
- Sound Department
- Additional Crew
David Janssen was born David Harold Meyer in 1931 in Naponee, Nebraska, to Berniece Mae (Graf) and Harold Edward Meyer, a banker. He was of German, and some Swiss-German and Ulster-Scots, descent. David took the surname of his stepfather, Eugene Janssen. The Janssen family settled in Hollywood when he was a teenager and he attended Fairfax High School, where he developed an interest in acting. His film debut was a bit part in It's a Pleasure (1945), and at the age of 18 signed a contract with 20th Century-Fox. However, the studio dropped him after allegedly becoming disenchanted with his odd hairline and big prominent ears. Janssen had better luck at Universal, where he signed on in the early 1950s and became a supporting player in 32 films before appearing on TV as the star of Richard Diamond, Private Detective (1956). He resumed his movie career in 1961, a year after the series ended. His biggest success came from his lead in the series The Fugitive (1963), playing the haunted, hunted Dr. Richard Kimble, on the run for a murder he didn't commit. After the series ended, Janssen launched himself into a grueling schedule by appearing in lead and supporting roles in movies, but he had better luck with made-for-TV-movie roles and a short-lived series, O'Hara, U.S. Treasury (1971). He had another hit series with the cult favorite Harry O (1973). Janssen continued appearing in lead roles in nearly 20 made-for-TV-movies during the 1970s as well as other TV projects. He died in 1980 from a sudden heart attack at his Malibu home at the age of 48. Unfounded speculation holds that Janssen succumbed to alcoholism, a problem that plagued him most of his adult life. There were even unfounded rumors about drug use. However, a much more reasonable explanation for David Janssen's sudden demise is that this intense, dedicated, determined actor simply worked himself to death.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ruth Etting was born on 23 November 1896 in David City, Nebraska, USA. She was an actress, known for Hips, Hips, Hooray! (1934), Road to Perdition (2002) and Water for Elephants (2011). She was married to Myrl Alderman and Martin Snyder. She died on 24 September 1978 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Bil Baird and his wife Cora Baird, the driving forces behind the Bil & Cora Baird Puppets, were pioneer entertainers in U.S. TV, when commercial television in the States was taking its first baby steps. Much of what early viewers could view on that seven-inch screen, with its eerie, whitish glow in a darkened room where a family gathered round to watch in wonder, had come from radio. But the Bairds' medium - their marionettes - was strictly visual, and the audience was regaled. Their first venture on TV, a 15-minute program called Life with Snarky Parker (1950) was directed by none other than Yul Brynner. They and their puppets went on to star in other shows, and the Bairds were featured performers on CBS's attempt to wrest away some of the audience from NBC's "Today" show with its "The Morning Show" (1954), which initially featured their principal newsman, Walter Cronkite. As well, delineated marvelously by the music of Ukrainian-born composer Sergei Prokofiev, the Baird Puppets provided the visual enhancement for Art Carney's narration of the 1958 ABC-TV special, "Art Carney Meets Peter and the Wolf."- Writer
- Soundtrack
Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, one of seven children. His father, Earl Little, was a Baptist preacher who supported Marcus Garvey's Back to Africa movement. When Malcolm was four, the family moved to Lansing, Michigan, where Earl attempted opening a store while continuing his preaching. But a group of white supremacists calling themselves the Black Legion (a sub-branch of the Ku Klux Klan) became irate to him.
Two years later, Earl Little was found dead on the trolley tracks in town after a streetcar ran over him. Despite the police report that Earl's death was an accident, Malcolm strongly believed that his father was murdered by the Black Legion who placed his father's body on the tracks to make it look like an accident. Following Earl's death, Malcolm's mother, Louise Little, tried to support her eight children on her own. Malcolm started stealing food and candy from neighborhood stores to support his brothers and sisters. After being caught a few too many times, a local court ruled that Louise was unable to control Malcolm and had him removed from her care and placed in a friendly white couple's home who knew Louise. Two years later, on account of severe stress in raising her children, Louise suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to the state mental hospital where she remained for the remaining 26 years of her life.
After finishing eighth grade, Malcolm dropped out of school and traveled to Boston where his older sister, Ella, resided. After several years, Malcolm moved to New York City where, to support himself, he became a numbers runner, a drug dealer, even a pimp. He wore zoot suits and dyed his hair red, which earned him the nickname "Detroit Red". He relocated to Boston again where he organized a robbery ring that was uncovered by the police in 1946, and he was sentenced to eight to 10 years in prison. Malcolm used the time behind bars to educate himself in the prison library where he learned the fundamentals of grammar and increased his vocabulary. It was here that a few inmates introduced Malcolm to a new religion and movement, The Nation of Islam. Malcolm's younger brother, Reginald, already a member, visited him and told him about Islam and about Allah. Much of what Reginald said confused Malcolm, but two phrases took root in his head, "The white man is the devil" and "The black man is the brainwashed". Malcolm learned that if he wanted to join, he would have to accept its theology and submit completely to its founder and leader, Elijah Muhammad.
Inspired by the new direction his life was taking, Malcolm wrote Elijah Muhammad a heartfelt letter about himself and why he wanted to join. Elijah wrote back welcoming Malcolm to the faith. He instructed Malcolm to drop his last name, which his ancestors inherited from a slave owner and replace it with the letter X which symbolized that his true African name had been lost. In 1952, Malcolm was finally paroled from prison. Rather than returning to the life of crime, Malcolm committed himself to learning more about his new religion. In 1958, Malcolm married Betty Shabazz, a Muslim nurse and together they had four daughters (plus two more born after his death). Over the next several years, Malcolm became the spokesperson for the Nation of Islam and became one of its most powerful speakers attracting thousands of African-Americans into the fold with his charismatic speeches and rich and powerful words. Malcolm's charismatic personalty also attracted the attention of the white media. But unlike Dr. Martin Luther King who believed in non-violent tactics to archive equal rights for blacks, Malcolm favored the use of arms and proposed a revolutionary program that would create a separate society for blacks in America. Malcolm's relationship with the media displeased Elijah Muhammad for he felt that the Nation of Islam's messages where being overshadowed by Malcolm's newfound celebrity.
In the early 1960s, Malcolm learned of paternity suits filed by two women of the Nation of Islam who worked for Elijah Muhammad as his secretaries. Determined to get to the bottom of the rumors about Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm met with the two women and later privately with Elijah Muhammad who did not deny the accusations against him as he did publicly but justified his actions by comparing his with other Biblical figures as David and Noah who suffered from "moral lapses". Elijah's response left Malcolm dissatisfied and contributed to his growing disenchantment with the Nation of Islam.
In November 1963, Malcolm's candidness with reporters provided Elijah Muhammad with an excuse to sideline him. When asked about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm called the murder a case of "the chickens coming home to roost". The public, both black and white, was outraged by Malcolm's comment after which Elijah suspended him from his duties as spokesperson for 90 days. Feeling betrayed by the Nation of Islam, Malcolm announced in March 1964 that he was not going to return, but he was going to form his own movement called Muslim Mosque, Inc. and invited blacks everywhere to join his new crusade. In response to Malcolm's announcement, Elijah Muhammad wrote in the Nation of Islam's biweekly newspaper that "only those who wish to be led to hell or to their doom will follow Malcolm. No one ever leaves the Nation of Islam."
Over the next several months, several attempts where made against Malcolm's life. Apparently, this did not surprise him for he said, "This thing with me will only be resolved by death and violence." In April 1964, Malcolm made a pilgrimage to Mecca, the Islamic holy city in Saudi Arabia. The trip had a profound affect on him when he was greeted warmly by Musilms of many nationalities. Malcolm then realized that if Muslims of all races can live together in peace, why not people of all religions? Malcolm then remarked, "My true brotherhood includes people of all races, coming together as one. It has proved to me that there is the power of one God."
Upon his return to the United States, death threats continued leading to his house in Queens, New York, being fire-bombed in February 1965, to his assassination a week later at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York City, where he held weekly meetings. Although the Nation of Islam was suspected of being behind Malcolm's murder, his three killers, who were convicted of the murder, denied being part of the Nation of Islam or knowing each other despite the fact that they were Black Musilms and later revealed to be members. When questioned about Malcolm X's murder, Elijah Muhammad maintained (as he did with a great deal of other things) that neither he nor his organization had anything to do with Malcolm X's assassination.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Julianne Moore was born Julie Anne Smith in Fort Bragg, North Carolina on December 3, 1960, the daughter of Anne (Love), a social worker, and Peter Moore Smith, a paratrooper, colonel, and later military judge. Her mother moved to the U.S. in 1951, from Greenock, Scotland. Her father, from Burlington, New Jersey, has German, Irish, Welsh, German-Jewish, and English ancestry.
Moore spent the early years of her life in over two dozen locations around the world with her parents, during her father's military career. She finally found her place at Boston University, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree in acting from the School of the Performing Arts. After graduation (in 1983), She took the stage name "Julianne Moore" because there was another actress named "Julie Anne Smith". Julianne moved to New York and worked extensively in theater, including appearances off-Broadway in two Caryl Churchill plays, Serious Money and Ice Cream With Hot Fudge and as Ophelia in Hamlet at The Guthrie Theatre. But despite her formal training, Julianne fell into the attractive actress' trap of the mid-1980's: TV soaps and miniseries. She appeared briefly in the daytime serial The Edge of Night (1956) and from 1985 to 1988 she played two half-sisters Frannie and Sabrina on the soap As the World Turns (1956). This performance later led to an Outstanding Ingénue Daytime Emmy Award in 1988. Her subsequent appearances were in mostly forgettable TV-movies, such as Money, Power, Murder. (1989), The Last to Go (1991) and Cast a Deadly Spell (1991).
She made her entrance into the big screen with 1990's Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990), where she played the victim of a mummy. Two years later, Julianne appeared in feature films with supporting parts in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) and the comedy The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag (1992). She kept winning better and more powerful roles as time went on, including a small but memorable role as a doctor who spots Kimble Harrison Ford and attempts to thwart his escape in The Fugitive (1993). (A role that made such an impression on Steven Spielberg that he cast her in the Jurassic Park (1993) sequel without an audition in 1997). In one of Moore's most distinguished performances, she recapitulated her "beguiling Yelena" from Andre Gregory's workshop version of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya in Louis Malle's critically acclaimed Vanya on 42nd Street (1994). Director Todd Haynes gave Julianne her first opportunity to take on a lead role in Safe (1995). Her portrayal of Carol White, an affluent L.A. housewife who develops an inexplicable allergic reaction to her environment, won critical praise as well as an Independent Spirit Award nomination.
Later that year she found her way into romantic comedy, co-starring as Hugh Grant's pregnant girlfriend in Nine Months (1995). Following films included Assassins (1995), where she played an electronics security expert targeted for death (next to Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas) and Surviving Picasso (1996), where she played Dora Maar, one of the numerous lovers of Picasso (portrayed by her hero, Anthony Hopkins). A year later, after co-starring in Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), opposite Jeff Goldblum, a young and unknown director, Paul Thomas Anderson asked Julianne to appear in his movie, Boogie Nights (1997). Despite her misgivings, she finally was won over by the script and her decision to play the role of Amber Waves, a loving porn star who acts as a mother figure to a ragtag crew, proved to be a wise one, since she received both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. Julianne started 1998 by playing an erotic artist in The Big Lebowski (1998), continued with a small role in the social comedy Chicago Cab (1997) and ended with a subtle performance in Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho (1960). 1999 had Moore as busy as an actress can be.
As the century closed, Julianne starred in a number of high-profile projects, beginning with Robert Altman's Cookie's Fortune (1999) , in which she was cast as the mentally challenged but adorable sister of a decidedly unhinged Glenn Close. A portrayal of the scheming Mrs. Cheveley followed in Oliver Parker's An Ideal Husband (1999) with a number of critics asserting that Moore was the best part of the movie. She then enjoyed another collaboration with director Anderson in Magnolia (1999) and continued with an outstanding performance in The End of the Affair (1999), for which she garnered another Oscar nomination. She ended 1999 with another great performance, that of a grieving mother in A Map of the World (1999), opposite Sigourney Weaver.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
A pioneering cowboy star of silent and early talking Westerns, Hoot Gibson was one of the 1920s' most popular children's matinée heroes. In his real life, however, he had a rather painful rags-to-riches-and-back-to-rags career, a problem that seemed to plague a number of big stars who fell victim to their high profile and wound up living too high on the hog.
An unfortunate byproduct of stardom is, of course, the misinformation that is often fed to the public over the years by either overzealous publicity agents or the actor himself. The many variations of just how Gibson earned the name tag "Hoot" is one of them: (1) As a youth, he loved to hunt owls; (2) while a teenager working on a rodeo ranch, other ranch hands called him "Hoot Owl" and that the name was shortened to just "Hoot"; (3) he picked up the nickname while a messenger with the Owl Drug Company; and (4) while touring briefly in vaudeville, he would hoot when the audience cheered and, thus, the nickname.
What facts are known about Hoot is that he was born Edmund Richard Gibson on August 6, 1892, in Tekamah, Nebraska. As a child he grew up among horses and received his first pony at the age of 2-1/2. His family moved to California when he was 7. At age 13 the adventurous youth ran away from home and joined a circus for a time. Later work included punching cows in both Wyoming and Colorado (at the time, a territory and not a state). While working on the Miller 101 Ranch at Fort Bliss, Oklahoma, as a horse wrangler, Hoot developed a strong, active interest in the rodeo scene--in particular, bronco busting. In 1907 he signed a four-year contract with the Dick Stanley-Bud Atkinson Wild West Show, which toured throughout the US and (later) Australia.
By 1910 Hoot had found an "in" to the movie business as one of the industry's first stuntmen (for which he was paid $2.50 for performing stunts or training horses). Director Francis Boggs was looking for experienced cowboys and stunt doubles to appear in his western short Pride of the Range (1910) starring Tom Mix; both Hoot and another future cowboy star, Art Acord, were hired. Hoot lost a solid Hollywood contact in Boggs, however, when the director and his working partner, producer William Nicholas Selig, were both shot in October, 1911, by a mentally disturbed employee (Selig was injured, but Boggs was killed). Gibson managed to find other stunt work in director D.W. Griffith's western short The Two Brothers (1910) and several others for the next few years.
Acting, at this point, was not his bread-and-butter income. Hoot still continued to forge a name for himself on the rodeo circuit with his pal Acord. In 1912, at age 20, he won the title "All-Around Champion Cowboy" at the famed annual Pendleton (Oregon) Round-Up. He also won the steer-roping World Championship at the Calgary Stampede. While on the circuit, he met fellow rodeo rider Rose August ("Helen") Wenger. They eventually married (there is still some question about whether they legally exchanged vows) and she took on the marquee name of Helen Gibson. She even found film stunt work herself and eventually was chosen to replace Helen Holmes as star of the popular movie serial The Hazards of Helen (1914) during mid-filming. Hoot himself had a minor role in the Universal cliffhanger.
Hoot picked up a couple of more strong connections in the film industry with western star Harry Carey and director John Ford. Gibson gained some momentum as a secondary player in a few of their films, including Cheyenne's Pal (1917), Straight Shooting (1917), The Secret Man (1917) and A Marked Man (1917). With the outbreak of World War I, however, Gibson's film career was put on hold. He joined the US Army, eventually attaining the the rank of sergeant while serving with the Tank Corps, and was honorably discharged in 1919. He returned immediately to Universal and was able to restart his career, quickly working his way up to co-star status in a series of short westerns, most of which were directed by his now close friend Ford. The two-reelers usually co-starred either Pete Morrison or Hoor's wife Helen, or sometimes both. Films such as The Fighting Brothers (1919), The Black Horse Bandit (1919), Rustlers (1919), Gun Law (1919), The Gun Packer (1919) and By Indian Post (1919) eventually led to his solo starring success.
During this prolific period, he was frequently directed by George Holt (The Trail of the Holdup Man (1919)), Phil Rosen (The Sheriff's Oath (1920)) and Lee Kohlmar (The Wild Wild West (1921)). It was at this time that he and wife Helen separated and divorced. In the early 1920s, Hoot went on to marry another Helen--Helen Johnson. They had one child, Lois Charlotte Gibson, born in 1923. The couple divorced in 1927.
Superstardom came with the John Ford (I)full-length feature western Action (1921), which was taken from "The Three Godfathers" story. It starred Hoot, Francis Ford and J. Farrell MacDonald as a trio of outlaws on the lam who find a baby. From that point on, both Hoot and Tom Mix began to "rule the west". Gibson's light, comedic, tongue-in-cheek manner only added to his sagebrush appeal, especially to children and women. His vehicles were non-violent for the most part, and he rarely was spotted carrying a gun while riding his palomino horse Goldie. Not a particularly handsome man, his boyish appeal and non-threatening demeanor were his aces in the hole--a major distinction that separated him from the more ascetic cowboy stars of the past.
By 1925 Hoot was making approximately $14,500 a week and spending it about as fast as he was making it. He successfully made the transition to talkies and, in 1930, married popular Jazz-era actress Sally Eilers, a third party to his previous divorce. The couple made three features together: The Long, Long Trail (1929), Trigger Tricks (1930) and Clearing the Range (1931). When she found celluloid success on her own with Bad Girl (1931), Sally decided to split from Hoot professionally and personally. They divorced in 1933.
Hoot lost his Universal contract in 1930, which signified the start of his decline. While he secured contracts with lesser studios during the early 1930s, such as Allied Pictures and First Division Pictures, the quality of his films suffered. By this time Hoot had already begun to feature race cars and airplanes in his pictures. such as The Flyin' Cowboy (1928) and The Winged Horseman (1929). Airplanes in particular became a large, expensive passion of his. In 1933 he crashed his biplane during a National Air Race in Los Angeles, which had pitted him against another cowboy star, Ken Maynard. Fortunately, he survived his injuries.
With the advent of talking films, singing cowboys such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers were becoming the new rage, and both Hoot and Tom Mix felt the kick. Yet he managed a couple of "comebacks" by pairing up with others stars. He joined old silent film teammate Harry Carey and 'Guinn Big Boy Williams' in the "Three Mesquiteers" western Powdersmoke Range (1935), and was billed second to Ray Corrigan in the Republic serial The Painted Stallion (1937).
Hoot left films and toured with the Robbins Brothers and Russell Brothers circuses during 1938 and 1939 before retiring from show business altogether. His multiple divorces and reckless spending habits had taken their toll on his finances. For a time he found work in real estate before Monogram Pictures offered the stocky-framed actor a chance to return in 1943. Hoot teamed up with cowboy star Ken Maynard in the popular "Trail Blazers" series, and the duo were later joined by Bob Steele. Chief Thundercloud replaced a difficult Maynard on a couple of the films, but by the end of the series Gibson and Steele were riding alone together. The nearly dozen films in the series began with Wild Horse Stampede (1943) and ended with Trigger Law (1944), the latter being his last hurrah in films.
Hoot then returned to real estate. By the time he appeared as a surprise guest on the popular sitcom I Married Joan (1952) starring Joan Davis, his Western features of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as those of Maynard, Steele and others were a large staple of films seen by a TV audience that couldn't get enough Western fare. He did a favor for old friend John Ford by appearing in a cameo role in the director's 1959 film The Horse Soldiers (1959). His last movie spotting was a guest cameo in the "Rat Pack" film Ocean's Eleven (1960).
Hoot married a fourth and final time on July 3, 1942, to one-time radio singer and actress Dorothea Dunstan. This marriage took hold and lasted for 20 years until his death. By the 1960s Gibson was on the verge of financial collapse after a series of bad investments. Diagnosed with cancer in 1960, rising medical costs forced him to find any and all work available. He was relegated at one point to becoming a greeter at a Las Vegas casino and, for a period, worked at carnivals.
It was an unhappy end for a cowboy who brought so much excitement and entertainment to children and adults alike. Gibson died of cancer at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, California, just a couple of weeks after his 70th birthday. He was interred in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. In remembrance, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and, in 1979, was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.- Actress
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A genuine model of sincerity, practicality and dignity in most of the roles she inhabited, actress Dorothy McGuire offered Tinseltown more talent than it probably knew what to do with. A quiet, passive beauty, she had a soothing quality to her open-faced looks and voice. She was a natural when he came to tearjerkers and she certainly had a knack for opening up her film-goer's tear ducts with her arresting performances in sentimental drama. She preferred to rest on her acting laurels than engage in publicity-monging to win roles. As a result, Dorothy was surprisingly ill-served in the awards department during her over five-decade film career, yet left a major imprint on celluloid. Touching, complex, immaculate in poise and style, she is now and forever etched in Hollywood's "Golden Age" annals and in the minds of film lovers everywhere.
Dorothy began inconspicuously enough in Omaha, Nebraska on Wednesday, June 14th, 1916. Her parents encouraged her early interest in acting and she made her debut as a teenager in "A Kiss for Cinderella" at the Omaha Community Playhouse which starred visiting alumni member Henry Fonda. She received her education at Omaha Junior College, Ladywood Convent in Indianapolis, and Pine Manor Junior College in Wellesley, Massachusetts before setting her sites on an acting career. Following summer stock she appeared in such 1938 stage productions as "Bachelor Born" and "Stopover" before understudying the role of Emily Gibb in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" on Broadway, which at the time showcased young Martha Scott. Dorothy eventually replaced Scott in the role.
Other experiences came her way on stage with "My Dear Children" starring John Barrymore, "Swingin' the Dream", "Medicine Show", "The Time of Your Life" and "Kind Lady" before she was handed the titular role of "Claudia" in 1941. This gentle comedy became a certifiable Broadway hit and Dorothy simply incandescent as the child-like bride forced to wake up to reality after her sudden marriage. David O. Selznick subsequently signed her to a film contract. Fortunately, 20th Century-Fox, untrue to form, took a chance on the film unknown and allowed her to recreate her stage triumph opposite Robert Young. Claudia (1943) was so beautifully done and warmly received that McGuire and Young went on to recreate their roles three years later with Claudia and David (1946).
Unbelievably, Dorothy topped herself in only her second film role. After a pregnant Gene Tierney became unavailable for the role of Katie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), the part fell to Dorothy. It's now hard to believe anyone else in the role. As the impoverished wife of a charming Irish ne'er-do-well and inebriate, Dorothy showed amazing complexity as the detached wife and mother whose painful but necessary decision-making alienates many around her, especially her daughter who is the apple of her daddy's eye. Directed by Elia Kazan, Dorothy was shamefully overlooked at awards time. Young Peggy Ann Garner was given a "special juvenile Oscar" and errant husband James Dunn picked up the Supporting Actor trophy for his work. Dorothy was not of the mind of tooting her own horn and it may have cost her an Oscar nomination -- better yet, the Oscar -- for she was hands down the better performer than eventual winner Joan Crawford, a popular choice for Mildred Pierce (1945).
Dorothy made it four film hits in a row with the success of both the sentimental fantasy The Enchanted Cottage (1945), in which she reunited with Robert Young to play two of society's castoffs who fall in love, and the expert Hitchcockian thriller The Spiral Staircase (1946) as the mute servant who is terrorized by a serial killer. Preferring rich characterizations over glamour, audiences saw Dorothy dolled up a bit more than usual in Till the End of Time (1946) as a war widow who falls for a younger hunk (Guy Madison). Her 40s filming was capped by a Best Actress nomination in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), an-anti-Semitic tale that boasted a topnotch ensemble cast including Gregory Peck, John Garfield and Celeste Holm, who won a supporting Oscar for this.
With nary a weak film yet on her resume, an unpretentious Dorothy still hadn't achieved top cinematic stardom. Preferring to return to her theater roots, she abandoned films for a couple of years and performed in such vehicles as "Tonight at 8:30" (1947) and "Summer and Smoke" (1950). When she did return it was to a different Hollywood and things would not be the same. Instead forgettable fluff such as Mother Didn't Tell Me (1950) and Callaway Went Thataway (1951) were the slim pickings offered. Although she found a popular hit with Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), the film was more notable for its title song and sumptuous settings than for the quality of acting of the three distaff stars -- McGuire, Maggie McNamara and Jean Peters.
Dorothy graciously moved into pillar-of-strength mother roles as she approached her 40s, making fine impressions as a Quaker matriarch in Friendly Persuasion (1956) and as the resourceful mom in three of Disney's endearing classics, Old Yeller (1957), Swiss Family Robinson (1960) and Summer Magic (1963). Her more flawed marital and parenting skills were displayed in the Inge film adaptation of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), and the huge, sudsy teen hit A Summer Place (1959) with Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue as young, star-crossed lovers. McGuire acted as Donahue's mother who rekindles an old love affair with Dee's father (Richard Egan). The 49-year-old McGuire then played the mother of all mothers, the Virgin Mary, in the misguided biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), marred by its overlong narrative and bizarre miscasting, including John Wayne as a Roman centurion. Her last film, the British-made Flight of the Doves (1971) as an Irish granny, had little impact.
In later years Dorothy found rich, rewarding work on TV and received an Emmy nomination for the well-received mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man (1976). She also played Marmee in a TV revisitation of Part I (1978), and ended her career in good company with (what else?) a sentimental tearjerker in the mini-movie The Last Best Year (1990) co-starring Bernadette Peters and Mary Tyler Moore.
Dorothy's longtime husband was photographer John Swope who died in 1979. Her children by him are Mark Swope, an artist and photographer, and former actress Topo Swope. Dorothy's health declined severely after she fell and broke her leg in 2001. She died of heart failure not long after in a Santa Monica hospital on Friday, September 14th at the age of 85.- Actor
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Born Spangler Arlington Brugh, Robert Taylor began displaying a diversity of talents in his youth on the plains of Nebraska. At Beatrice High School, he was a standout track athlete, but also showed a talent for using his voice, winning several oratory awards. He was a musician and played the cello in the school orchestra. After graduating he thought of music as a vocation and started studying music at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. In the early 1930s he decided to follow in his father's footsteps and study medicine. He enrolled at Pomona College but also joined the campus theater group and found himself in many lead roles because of his handsome features. He was inspired to go on to the Neely Dixon Dramatic School, but about a year after graduating from Pomona, he was spotted by an MGM talent scout and given a contract in 1934. That same year, he appeared in his first movie, on loan-out to Fox for a Will Rogers entry, Handy Andy (1934). He also did an MGM short, Buried Loot (1935), for its "Crime Does Not Pay" series, which provided good exposure. However, the next year he did even better by being cast as the lead, again on loan-out, this time to then struggling Universal Pictures, in Magnificent Obsession (1935) with Irene Dunne, the story of a happy-go-lucky party guy who inadvertently causes blindness to the young lady he wishes to impress and then becomes a doctor in order to cure her. The movie was a big hit, and Taylor had a taste of instant box-office stardom. Along with his good looks, Taylor already showed solid dramatic skill. However, critics viewed of him as a no-talent flash-in-the-pan getting by on his looks (a charge levied at his closest contemporary comparison, Tyrone Power over at Fox). He had to endure some brutal reviews through his first years in Hollywood, but they would soon fade away. In 1935 alone, he appeared in seven films, and by the end of the year, he was at the top of his form as a leading man and being offered substantial scripts. The next year he appeared with Greta Garbo in Camille (1936), and for the remainder of the decade MGM's vehicles for him--not to mention a pantheon of top actresses--clicked with audiences. On a personal level, despite his impressive family background and education, Taylor would often strike those who met him as a mental lightweight. Intellectually inclined actress Luise Rainer was shocked when she struck up a conversation with him at a studio function in 1937 when, after asking him what his goals were, he sincerely replied that his most important goal was to accumulate "a wardrobe of ten fine custom-tailored suits." That he usually comes across on screen as having a confident, commanding presence is more of a testimony to his acting talent than his actual personality. He held rigid right-wing political beliefs that he refused to question and, when confronted with an opposing viewpoint, would simply reject it outright. He rarely, if ever, felt the need to be introspective. Taylor simply felt blessed to be working behind the walls of MGM. His affection for the studio would blind him to the fact that boss Louis B. Mayer masterfully manipulated him for nearly two decades, keeping Taylor's salary the lowest of any major Hollywood star. But this is also indicative of how much trust he placed in the hands of the studio's leaders. Indeed, Taylor remained the quintessential MGM company man and would be rewarded by remaining employed there until the demise of the studio system in the late 1950s, outlasting its legend, Clark Gable. Though not quite considered treasures to be locked away in film vaults, Taylor's films during the first five years of his career gave him the opportunity to explore a wide spectrum of romantic characters, playing young officers or doctors more than once. Some noticeable examples of the variety of roles he took over a year's time were his chip-on-the-shoulder Lee Sheridan in A Yank at Oxford (1938), ladies' man/boxer Tommy McCoy in The Crowd Roars (1938) and cynical southern gentleman Blake Cantrell in Stand Up and Fight (1939). Taylor would truly become a first-rate actor in the following decade. By the 1940s, he was playing edgier and somewhat darker characters, such as the title roles in Billy the Kid (1941) and smooth criminal Johnny Eager (1941). With the arrival of the war, Taylor was quick to make his contribution to the effort. As an actor, he made two memorable combat movies: Stand by for Action (1942) and the better known (and for the time, quite graphic) Bataan (1943). From 1943 to 1946, he was in the US Naval Air Corps as a lieutenant, instructing would-be pilots. He also found time to direct two flight instruction training films (1943) and other training films for the Navy. Rather didactic in his ultra-conservative political beliefs, he became involved in 1947 as a "friendly witness" for the House Un-American Activities Committee investigating "Communist subversion" in the film industry. Anyone who knew Taylor knew he was an arch conservative but doubted that he could articulate why. He publicly stated that his accepting a role in Song of Russia (1944) was bad judgment (in reality, it was against his nature to balk at any film assignment while at MGM) and that he considered the film "pro-Communist." He also--rather unwittingly--fingered fellow actor Howard Da Silva as a disruptive force in the Screen Actors Guild. Although he didn't explicitly accuse Da Silva of being a Communist, his charges of "disruption" had the same effect, and the veteran actor found himself blacklisted by the studios for many years. After the war and through the remainder of the decade, Taylor was getting action roles to match his healthy box office draw, but there were fewer of them being offered. He was aging, and though he had one of his best known roles as the faith-challenged Gen. Marcus Vinicius in the monster hit Quo Vadis (1951), he was now being seen more as a mature lead. MGM, now under the aegis of Dore Schary, made the decision to move a significant amount of production to England to cut costs and opted to film several big-budget costume epics there starring Taylor. With Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1952), he was back (as once before in 1949) with the dazzling young Elizabeth Taylor pining for him as the exotic young Jewish woman Rebecca, effectively pulling off a role ideally suited for an actor a decade younger. With a great script and lots of action (forget about the mismatch of some matte backdrops!), the movie was a smash hit. He had a new look--rakish goatee and longer hair--that fit the youthful illusion. The movie did so well that MGM opted for a follow-up film based on the King Arthur legend, Knights of the Round Table (1953). It was not quite as good, but Taylor had the same look, and it worked. To his credit, Taylor continued to push for challenging roles in his dramatic output; the old "pretty face" stigma still seemed to drive him. He played an intriguing and most unlikely character in Devil's Doorway (1950)--an American Indian (dark-stained skin with blue eyes!) who wins a Medal of Honor for heroism in the Civil War but comes home to his considerable land holdings to encounter the continued racial bigotry and envy of his white neighbors. It contained pushing-the-envelope dialog with many thought-provoking scenes dealing with the social plight of the Indian. Taylor did several noteworthy pictures after this film (e.g., the edgy Rogue Cop (1954)) and was even more swashbuckling in one of the lesser known of Sir Walter Scott's romantic novels, Quentin Durward (1955), again successful in a younger-man role. Though his contract with MGM expired in 1958, he accepted a few more films into the 1960s. He put on some weight in his 50s, and the effects of heavy chain smoking began to affect his looks, but Taylor successfully alternated between starring film roles and television, albeit at a somewhat reduced pace. He founded his own production company, Robert Taylor Productions, in 1958 and moved comfortably into TV work. From 1959 to 1962, he was the star of the TV series The Detectives (1959), and when Ronald Reagan bowed out of TV's popular western anthology Death Valley Days (1952) for a political career, Taylor took over as host and sometime actor (1966-1968) until his death from lung cancer at the age of only 57.- Irish McCalla was born on 25 December 1928 in Pawnee City, Nebraska, USA. She was an actress, known for She Demons (1958), Sheena: Queen of the Jungle (1955) and The Beat Generation (1959). She was married to Patrick Horgan and Patrick H. McIntyre. She died on 1 February 2002 in Tucson, Arizona, USA.
- Gerald Rudolph Ford was the 38th President of the United States from August 1974 until January 1977.
Ford was born on July 14, 1913, in Omaha, Nebraska as Leslie Lynch King, Jr., being the son of Leslie Lynch King and Dorothy Ayer Gardner King. His parents separated two weeks after his birth and his mother took him to Grand Rapids, Michigan to live with her parents. On February 1, 1916, his mother Dorothy married Gerald R. Ford, a paint salesman. The Fords began calling their son Gerald R. Ford, Jr. but the name became legal only on December 3, 1935. Aged 13, Ford knew that Gerald Sr., was not his biological father, but it wasn't until 1930 he met his biological father Leslie King, who had made an unexpected stop in Grand Rapids.
Ford grew up in a family with three younger half-brothers, Thomas, Richard, and James. He attended South High School in Grand Rapids, where he already showed his athletics skills, being named to the honor society and the "All-City" and "All-State" football teams. As a scout he was ranked Eagle Scout in November 1927. He earned money by working in the family paint business and at a local restaurant.
Ford attended The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor from 1931 to 1935. He majored in economics and political science and graduated with a B.A. degree in June 1935. He played on the University's national championship football teams in 1932 and 1933 and was voted MVP of Wolverine in 1934. He also played in All-Star and benefit football games. He denied offers from two professional football teams, (Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers), but chose to become boxing coach and assistant varsity football coach at Yale hoping to attend law school there. Ford earned his law degree in 1941.
After returning to Michigan and passing his bar exam, Ford set up a law partnership in Grand Rapids with Philip Buchen, a University of Michigan fraternity brother (who later served on Ford's White House staff as Counsel to the President).
In April 1942 Ford joined the U.S. Naval Reserve and became a physical fitness instructor at a flight school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In the spring of 1943 he began service in the light aircraft carrier USS Monterey. Ford spent the remainder of the war ashore and was discharged as a lieutenant commander in February 1946. He returned to Grand Rapids to become a partner in the locally prestigious law firm of Butterfield, Keeney, and Amberg.
His first political experience was in the summer of 1940 when he was working in the presidential campaign of Wendell Willkie. Six years later he decided to challenge Bartel Jonkman for the Republican nomination for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 1948 election. Ford won the nomination and after that was elected to Congress on November 2, 1948, receiving 61% of the vote.
On October 15 1948, the height of the campaign, Ford married Elizabeth ('Betty') Anne Bloomer Warren, a department store fashion consultant. Betty was born on April 8, 1918 in Chicago, Illinois, but grew up in Grand Rapids. They subsequently had four children: Michael Gerald (March 14, 1950), John Gardner (March 16, 1952), Steven Meigs (May 19, 1956) and Susan Elizabeth (July 6, 1957).
Ford served in the House of Representatives from January 3, 1949 to December 6, 1973. He was re-elected twelve times, winning each time with more than 60% of the vote. As his ambition was to become Speaker of the House already in the early 1950s, he denied offers to run for both the Senate and the Michigan governorship in these years. In 1961 he became chairman of the House Republican Conference. In 1963 President Johnson appointed Ford to the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He was the last living member of the Warren Commission.
In 1965 Ford was chosen as the House minority leader, a post he held until 1973. As minority leader Ford made more than 200 speeches a year all across the country, which made him nationally known. He was not only a close friend of Richard Nixon for many years, but also a loyal supporter in both the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections. As in 1960, Ford was again considered as a vice presidential candidate in 1968. Because the Republicans did not attain a majority in the House, Ford was unable to reach his ultimate political goal, Speaker of the House. Instead, he became President of the Senate.
Late in 1973 Spiro Agnew pleaded no contest to a charge of income tax evasion and resigned as Vice President. President Nixon was empowered by the 25th Amendment to appoint a new vice president and chose Ford. He was sworn in on December 6, 1973.
On August 9, 1974, Nixon became the first president in U.S. history to resign from the office under the threat of impeachment in the Watergate scandal. The same day Gerald R. Ford took the oath of office as 38th President of the United States on August 9, 1974. Also in August 1974, Ford nominated Nelson Rockefeller for vice president, which nomination was confirmed by Congress on December 19, 1974.
One month after taking office President Ford faced one of the toughest decisions in his career. He decided to grant Nixon a full, free and absolute pardon for all offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in. The public opinion was mostly negative about the pardon and there was even suspicion Ford and Nixon had made a deal to grant a pardon if Nixon would resign. Although this happened on September 8, 1974, it might have cost the re-election of Ford two years later.
On November 24, 1974, in the conference hall of the Okeansky Sanitarium, Vladivostok, USSR, President Ford and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev signed the SALT-treaty, following talks on the limitation of strategic offensive arms.
In March 1975, during the final days of the Vietnam War, Ford ordered the airlift of about 237,000 Vietnamese refugees to the United States. Two months later, on May 14, 1975, Ford ordered U.S. forces to retake the S.S. Mayaguez after its seizure by Cambodia, an action Ford characterized as an "act of piracy." The operation saved the ship's 39-member crew, but sadly 41 Americans were killed and 50 more wounded during the preparation and execution of the rescue.
President Ford was twice the target of assassination attempts. Both took place in on two separate trips to California in September 1975 and both were 'performed' by women. On September 5, 1975 he survived an assassination attempt in Sacramento, California, by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a member of a cult once led by convicted mass murderer Charles Manson. On September 22, 1975, in San Francisco, California, Sara Jane Moore fired a shot at the president, but a bystander diverted the shot.
Despite his former athletics skills, Gerald Ford tumbled several times during his presidency. No cause was ever communicated. At the Republican National Convention in August 1976, Ford fought off a serious challenge from Californian Governor Ronald Reagan to be nominated as his party's presidential candidate. He chose Senator Robert Dole of Kansas as his running mate.
Although he succeeded in closing in on Democrat Jimmy Carter's large lead in the polls, President Ford finally lost one of the closest elections in history in November 1976. After leaving office, Gerald and Betty Ford returned to private life and moved to California where they built a new house in Rancho Mirage, which became his last residence.
President Ford continued to actively participate in the political process and to speak out on important political issues. He lectured at hundreds of colleges and universities. In 1981, the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan, were dedicated.
President Ford was the recipient of numerous awards and honors by many civic organizations, like the recipient of many honorary Doctor of Law degrees from various public and private colleges and universities.
In August 1999, President Bill Clinton presented Ford with the nation's highest civilian award, the Medal of Freedom. Two months later, in October 1999, Senate and House leaders presented Ford and his wife, Betty, with the Congressional Gold Medal. Together with former President Carter, he served as honorary Co-Chair of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform in 2001. In May 2001 he was presented with the Profiles in Courage award for his controversial decision to pardon former President Nixon.
In August 2000 Ford suffered a mild stroke while attending the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On May 16, 2003 following fluctuations in blood pressure and hot weather, Ford suffered dizzy spells on the golf course and taken to hospital. He was released the next day.
Although President Ford cut back on his travel and public appearances in recent years, he attended funeral services for President Ronald Reagan at Washington's National Cathedral, sitting with former Presidents Clinton, Bush and Carter, and their wives in June 2004.
In August 2006, he was discharged from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, after doctors tried to reduce or eliminate blockages in his coronary arteries. They also implanted a pacemaker to improve his heart performance. In the fall of 2006 Ford spent several days at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage for medical tests. He was released on October 16.
On November 12, 2006, Ford officially became the longest-lived president, surpassing Ronald Reagan. Ford would extend the record by 45 days.
On December 26, 2006 at 6:45 p.m., President Ford died in his house in Rancho Mirage, California. He was aged 93 years and 165 days old, making him the longest-lived United States President. No cause of death was communicated. A state funeral and memorial services were held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. on January 2, 2007. President Ford was buried at his presidential museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
President Gerald Ford was survived by his wife Betty, after more than 58 years of marriage, and by their four children, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. He was also survived by his brother, Richard, of Grand Rapids, Michigan. - Producer
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One of the kingpins of Hollywood's studio system, Zanuck was the offspring of the ill-fated marriage of the alcoholic night clerk in Wahoo, Nebraska's only hotel and the hotel owner's daughter. Both parents had abandoned him by the time he was 13. At 15, he joined the U.S. Army, and he fought in Belgium in World War I. Mustered out, he kept himself alive with a series of desultory jobs -- steelworker, foreman in a garment factory, professional boxer -- while pursuing a career as a writer. He turned his first published story (for "Physical Culture, " a pulp magazine) into a film scenario for William Russell; his next important sale was to Irving Thalberg. Although often described as barely literate, Zanuck turned out to have a knack for movie plots. After a well-paid apprenticeship with Mack Sennett, Syd Chaplin and Carl Laemmle, Zanuck hit his stride by devising (with Malcolm St. Clair) the Rin Tin Tin series of police-dog movies for Warner Brothers. For Warner, under his own name and three pseudonyms, he ground out as many as 19 scripts a year and became head of production at age 23. He helped forge that studio's style with such films as The Jazz Singer (1927), The Public Enemy (1931) and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932). In 1933, after the Warners made it clear that Zanuck would never be more than an employee, he quit to form Twentieth Century Films (with backing from Louis B. Mayer and Joseph M. Schenck). In 1935, Twentieth absorbed a bankrupt giant, Fox. Zanuck ruled the combined studio for decades. He became known as the most "hands-on" of the major studio bosses, taking particular pride in his talent for remaking movies in the cutting room. His signature productions were such sentimental, content-laden dramas as How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), and Twelve O'Clock High (1949). In the late fifties, Zanuck relinquished day-to-day control of the studio, left his wife, and moved to Europe to concentrate on producing. Many of his later films were designed in part to promote the careers of his successive girlfriends, Bella Darvi, Juliette Gréco, Irina Demick and Geneviève Gilles -- none of whom found much favor with directors or audiences. After the success of The Longest Day (1962), Zanuck returned to run 20th Century-Fox; he promoted his son, Richard D. Zanuck, to head of production, then engineered his firing in a messy boardroom brawl. Within a few months, in May 1971, Zanuck himself was deposed. He was the last studio boss of his era to go down.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Larry the Cable Guy was born in Pawnee City, Nebraska, as Daniel Lawrence Whitney. He is an actor and producer, known for Cars (2006), Cars 2 (2011) and Cars 3 (2017). He is also an original member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. He has been married to Cara Whitney since July 3, 2005. They have two children.- Actor
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- Director
Born in Burchard, Nebraska, USA to Elizabeth Fraser and J. Darcie 'Foxy' Lloyd who fought constantly and soon divorced (at the time a rare event), Harold Clayton Lloyd was nominally educated in Denver and San Diego high schools and received his stage training at the School of Dramatic Art (San Diego). Lloyd grew up far more attached to his footloose, chronically unemployed father than his overbearing mother.
He made his stage debut at age 12 as "Little Abe" in "Tess of d'Ubervilles" with the Burwood Stock company of Omaha. Harold and his father moved to California as a result of a fortuitous accident settlement in 1913. Foxy bought a pool hall (that soon failed) while Harold attended high school. The pair were soon broke when his father suggested he try out for a job on a movie being shot at San Diego's Pan American Exposition by the Edison Company. On the set he first met Hal Roach who would be the most influential person in his professional life. Roach (admittedly a poor actor) told Lloyd that someday he'd be a movie producer and he'd make him his star.
Soon afterward, Roach inherited enough money to begin a small production company (Phun Philms, quickly renamed Rolin, with a partner who he soon bought out) and contacted Lloyd to star in the kinds of films he wanted to make: comedies. On the basis of a handful of self-produced shorts starring Lloyd, he managed to land a production contract with the U.S. branch of the French firm, Pathe, who literally paid Roach by the exposed foot of film on what films were accepted. Things were touch and go in the beginning, with improvised scenarios, outdoor shoots meaning Pathe rejected several of their first efforts, resulting in missed paydays. During his first contract with Roach he appeared in "Will E. Work" and then "Lonesome Luke" comedies, essentially cheap variations of Charles Chaplin's Little Tramp character. He abandoned the character in disgust in late 1917, adopting his "glasses" persona, an average young man capable of conquering any obstacle thrown at him. He began cementing his new image with Over the Fence (1917), that ushered in a prolific number of shorts through late 1921, often releasing 3 per month. In his "glasses" personification, Lloyd's popularity grew exponentially with each new release, but Lloyd rapidly grew dissatisfied with his relationship with his producer. Roach and Lloyd fought constantly; it's not so much that he didn't want to work for Roach, he didn't want to work for anyone - a trait he himself recognized from early on. To be fair, Roach was increasingly preoccupied with other stars (The "Our Gang" series was launched to huge success in 1922 and he also produced ''Snub Pollard" shorts, among others) and although he would always resent Lloyd's attitude and ultimate defection to Paramount, the loss of his major star wouldn't financially cripple him. Lloyd had his own quirks; he fell in love with his first co-star Bebe Daniels, who left him after it became apparent he was unable to make a commitment (however the two would remain lifelong friends). Lloyd, in his own way was decidedly complex: he could be professionally generous (often allowing debatably deserving directorial credit to members of his crew) while being notoriously cheap. Yet he practiced little financial self control in anything that concerned himself. Wildly superstitious, he engaged in strict rituals about dressing himself, leaving through the same doors as he entered, and expected his chauffeurs to know which streets were unlucky to traverse. As his finances improved with age he happily indulged himself with a myriad of hobbies that would include breeding Great Danes, amassing cars, bowling, photography, womanizing, and high-fidelity stereo systems. He was open minded about homosexuals while being practically Victorian in his ideas about raising his daughters. He had an enormous libido and rumors abounded about illegitimate children and according to Roach, chronic bouts with VD. Most traumatically, he suffered the loss of his right thumb and forefinger in an accidental prop bomb explosion on August 14, 1919, just as his career was starting to take off. Lloyd would go to great lengths to hide his disability, spending thousands on flesh-colored prosthetic gloves and hiding his right hand whenever knowingly photographed, even long after his career ended. Upon his recovery he completed work on Haunted Spooks (1920) and successfully renegotiated his contract with Pathe, which began a career ascent that would rival Chaplin's (indeed, Lloyd was more successful, considering grosses on total output as Chaplin's output soon dwindled by comparison). Lloyd began feature film production with the 4-reel A Sailor-Made Man (1921). It began as a 2-reel short but contained, in his words, "so much good stuff we were loathe to take any of it out." It became a huge hit and continued to release hit features with ever increasing grosses but split with Hal Roach (who retained lucrative re-issue rights to his earlier films) after completing The Freshman (1925), one of his finest films. Pathe's U.S. operations quickly unraveled after their U.S. representative, Paul Brunet returned to France, and Lloyd made a decisive move (Roach himself would also leave Pathe, opting for a distribution deal with MGM - Mack Sennett, also distributed by Pathe, would be financially ruined). After weighing various attractive offers, Lloyd signed an advantageous contract with Paramount and racked up another hit with For Heaven's Sake (1926), one of his weakest silent features, yet it grossed an incredible $2.591 million, nearly equaling "The Freshman" and astonishing even himself.
Lloyd could do no wrong throughout the 1920s, he consistently earned at or near $1.5 million per film with his Paramount contract, and seemed invincible. He married his second co-star Mildred Davis on February 10, 1923 and she retired from acting (replaced by Jobyna Ralston). He built a huge 32-room mansion he christened, "Greenacres" that took over 3 years to complete and the couple eventually had 3 children. His final silent film, Speedy (1928), shot on location in New York, was one of the few major hits of the sound transition period and remains (as do most of Lloyd's films) thoroughly enjoyable today. The advent of sound proved problematic for the comedian. His films were gag-driven and his writing team was wholly unaccustomed to converting their type of comedy into dialog. While his first sound effort (began as a silent), Welcome Danger (1929) grossed nearly $3 million, by any standard it's a bad film, and marked a serious decline in Lloyd's screen persona; he became a talking comedian. Ironically, as bad as the film is, it would prove to be the last solid hit of his career. His next talkie, Feet First (1930), included a climb reminiscent (but technically superior to that) of his hit Safety Last! (1923), only being in sound, it contained every grunt and groan and proved painful to watch. With a gross of less that $1 million, Lloyd would see slightly over $300,000, his smallest feature paycheck to date, and it became clear he was in trouble. Lloyd fought back with Movie Crazy (1932). Generally regarded as his finest talkie, it grossed even less than "Feet First." Lloyd left Paramount for Fox and suffered his first outright flop with his next feature, The Cat's-Paw (1934), which grossed $693,000 against a negative cost of $617,000 ---resulting in red ink on a net basis. The miracle Harold Lloyd needed to salvage his career would never happen, but he refused to go down without a fight. Amazingly, the public was oblivious to his decline, and he was widely considered as one of the few silent comedy stars to have made a successful transition through the first decade of sound. But to those within the industry, the numbers didn't add up. Back at Paramount on a 2-movie deal, Lloyd starred in The Milky Way (1936), a better-than-average comedy that pulled a world-wide gross of $1.179 million, but it had production budget exceeding $1 million, resulting in a $250,000 loss for the studio. Paramount was livid, demanding a personal guarantee from Lloyd on anything over $600,000 for his next film, Professor Beware (1938). The comedian soon discovered he couldn't complete the film within the required budget and did something unprecedented --for him at least-- he invested his own money. The final production cost was $820,275 - and it grossed a mere $796,385 - and as a result of a complex payment deal, Lloyd ended up personally losing $119,400 on its initial release (he would eventually recoup the bulk of his losses over the next 35 years). At the relatively young age of 45, Harold Lloyd's Hollywood career was effectively over. Still immensely wealthy from a conservative investment strategy, and always hyperactive, he sought out ways to occupy his time, dragging his kids on marathon movie nights all across Los Angeles and falling back on his many hobbies. Foxy, who had handled the bulk of his correspondence (almost all Lloyd's pre-1938 autographs were actually signed by Foxy) and had carefully documented his press clippings since his acting career had began, retired to Palm Springs in 1938, leaving a void in Lloyd's life. He produced two pictures for RKO, A Girl, a Guy, and a Gob (1941), and a Kay Kyser vehicle, My Favorite Spy (1942) which must have looked good on paper but went nowhere at the box office. This ended his career as a producer. He would sign a $25,000 deal with Columbia in 1943 for a comeback project that never materialized. In 1944, Lloyd was approached by director Preston Sturges who envisioned a first-rate vehicle for him entitled, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947). The production launched Sturges' new California Pictures, was financed by Howard Hughes, and initially released by United Artists. It proved to be a nightmare for everyone concerned. Its $1.7 million production cost proved to be an insurmountable obstacle preventing it from profitability and the eccentric Hughes withdrew it from circulation, later retitling it "Mad Wednesday," re-editing and re-releasing it as an RKO feature in 1951 to an even more dismal box office. Lloyd would also zealously protect ownership of his material and was quite litigious. He successfully sued MGM over their unauthorized poaching of his gags on a Joan Davis vehicle, She Gets Her Man (1945) (sadly an action that put the final nail in the professional coffin of the hopelessly alcoholic Clyde Bruckman). With his career at an end, Harold renewed his interest in photography and became involved with color film experiments. Some of the earliest 2 color Technicolor tests had been shot at Greenacres in 1929. In the late 1940s he became fascinated with color 3D still photography and often visited friends on film sets. Throughout the late 40s and well into the 1960s Lloyd indulged himself with glamor models. At his death, his collection of 3D stills numbered 250,000 (the vast majority of which are nudes). Recently his granddaughter published an elaborate book of photos carefully excised from the collection. In the late 1940s Lloyd became an active member of the Shriners (he'd joined originally in 1924) and an effective administrator for their Los Angeles crippled children's hospital. Harold is reported to be the only actor that owned most of the films he appeared in (sadly many of the earliest ones were destroyed in a nitrate fire in a vault at Greenacres in 1943). This ownership gave him the ability to withhold his films from being shown on television; Lloyd feared incorrect projection speed and commercials would damage his reputation. As a result, a generation of film fans saw very few of his films and his reputation was diminished. He did release 2 compilation films, of which the first, World of Comedy (1962) was very successful. Mildred descended into alcoholism in the 1950s and died in 1969. Lloyd occupied his time with extensive travel (he thoroughly enjoyed speaking engagements where he could interact with students on the subject of silent film) and continued his pathological passion for his hobbies through the end of his life. He became interested in high fidelity stereo systems and habitually ordered several record companies' entire annual catalogs, eventually amassing an LP collection rivaling most record stores. He enjoyed cranking music to volumes that caused the inlaid gold leaf on Greenacres' ceilings to rain down on anyone below. Conversely, he balked at modernizing anything inside the mansion, seeing improvements and redecorating as things that would survive him, and thus a complete waste of money. Lloyd was diagnosed with a recurrence of cancer by his brother-in-law, Dr. John Davis (Jack Davis, who starred in early "Our Gang" shorts) and died on March 8, 1971. His son, Harold Lloyd Jr. was an alcoholic homosexual and died soon afterward. Although Lloyd left an estate valued at $12 million (in 1971 dollars), he failed to make a provision for the maintenance of Greenacres, a blunder that would seriously complicate his estate. His granddaughter Suzanne Lloyd has been largely responsible for restoring his reputation of late, working to preserve his surviving films; many have been issued on HBO Video, Thames Video. Several have been superbly restored with new musical accompaniments and are shown periodically on TCM.- Actress
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Harley Jane Kozak was born on 28 January 1957 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, USA. She is an actress, known for Arachnophobia (1990), Parenthood (1989) and When Harry Met Sally... (1989). She was previously married to Greg Aldisert and Van Saantvord.- Marg Helgenberger is an established dramatic actress whose prominence has been steadily increasing. Her work has been noted on stage, film and TV. Most of her career has been spent in dramatic roles on television, but she has also had a noteworthy presence in feature films.
Helgenberger earned a degree in drama at Northwestern University. A talent scout recruited her from there to work on the soap opera Ryan's Hope (1975) where she appeared over the course of the next four years.
Throughout the 1990s Helgenberger took on numerous roles in made-for-TV movies and as a guest star on many TV series. In particular she appeared in many movies made specifically for the Lifetime cable network and also for Showtime. She won critical acclaim for In Sickness and in Health (1992), Thanks of a Grateful Nation (1998) and Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: JonBenét and the City of Boulder (2000).
In TV series she won an Emmy for her portrayal of a hard-bitten prostitute who catered to Vietnam War soldiers, in the series China Beach (1988). She also was George Clooney's love interest in a multi-episode arc of the monumentally successful TV series ER (1994).
In feature films, Helgenberger has appeared in Tootsie (1982), Steven Spielberg's Always (1989), Species (1995) and In Good Company (2004).
Her greatest claim to fame on the silver screen may be when she played opposite Julia Roberts as a chemical exposure victim in the popular movie Erin Brockovich (2000).
Helgenberger is most known for her TV role as a crime scene investigator in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000). She shared in CSI's 2005 Screen Actors Guild award for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series.
In her personal life, Helgenberger is the daughter of a cancer survivor and is very active in supporting research for breast cancer. - Writer
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Tom Brokaw was born on 6 February 1940 in Webster, South Dakota, USA. He is a writer and actor, known for NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt (1970), Dateline NBC (1992) and Toots (2006). He has been married to Meredith Lynn Auld since 17 August 1962. They have four children.- Actress
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Gabrielle Union was born on October 29, 1972, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Theresa (Glass), who managed a phone company, and Sylvester E. Union, a military sergeant and business executive. When she was eight, her family moved to Pleasanton, California, where she grew up and attended high school. There, Union was an all-star point guard and a year-round athlete participating in soccer, basketball, and track. She graduated from Foothill High School (Class of 1991).
After high school, Gabrielle attended college at University of Nebraska, where she played on the soccer team; and then later transferred to Cuesta College. Eventually, she ended up at UCLA. On her way to law school, just planning on being a working stiff, things started to happen during her senior year. Gabrielle had a college internship at a L.A. modeling agency, she thought it would be an easy way to pick up some extra credits. Little did she know that clients were eyeing the help. Upon the completion of the internship, she was asked to become a client with the agency. Gabby thought of it as a great way to pay off a stack of college loans, and modeled until her agent found that she could actually act. Her first audition/job was landed without any headshots, on Saved by the Bell (1989). Since then, she has gone on to have many small but substantial film roles and has guest-starred on several hit TV shows, all before landing the role of "Dr. Courtney Ellis", on CBS' short-lived medical drama City of Angels (2000).
Although she plays parts that are opinionated and strong, Gabrielle believes that, "Hollywood needs to recognize all shades of African-American beauty." Gabrielle is a 1996 graduate of UCLA with honors in sociology.- Actress
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Jaime King is an American actress and model from Omaha, Nebraska. She is known for acting in Hart of Dixie, the Sin City film series, White Chicks, Barely Lethal, Bulletproof Monk, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Pearl Harbor. She is married to Kyle Newman since 2007 and had two children with him. Jessica Alba and Taylor Swift are her children's godmothers.- Actor
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Don Wilson was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. Not much is known about his early life but what is known is that he played football for the University of Colorado in the 1920s. Wilson began his radio career as a singer in Denver's radio station, KFEL, in 1923. In 1929, he started working at radio station KFI in Los Angeles, California.
In the summer of 1932, Wilson worked as a sportscaster, covering the opening of the 1932 Summer Olympics games and, in the early part of 1934, Wilson was working as the announcer on George Gershwin's series, "Music by Gershwin", when Jack Benny heard him on the radio and insisted that he come to work for him and, on 6 April 1934, Wilson made his first broadcast as Benny's announcer in his live radio show, that started a relationship with Benny that lasted for over thirty years.
Wilson was a "portly man" with a deep resonating voice and a robust figure that made him very popular with sponsors as, in the early days of radio, the show's announcer read the commercial pitches for the sponsors and the sponsors believes a deep voice was more agreeable to the audience. Being a good business man, Wilson always made sure his contracts allowed him to freelance and take on other endeavors, and he did just that, as in 1946, Wilson was a regular on the daytime comedy, "Glamour Manor" (1946). He also worked as an announcer for variety shows and comedy radio programs. In 1950, Jack Benny made the move to television and Wilson made the move as well, until 1965, when The Jack Benny Program (1950) ended.
In 1966, Wilson made his last television appearance on the Batman (1966) TV series (1966-1968) episode, Dizzoner the Penguin (1966), where he played the uncredited role of newscaster "Walter Klondike", a spoof of Walter Cronkite. From 1968 until the mid-1970s, Wilson and his wife hosted a television show called "Town Talk" in the Palm Springs area and he continued to do interviews on radio and television whenever the topic was about Jack Benny or old time radio (He was considered a authority on both).
Don Wilson died of a stroke on April 25, 1982 at age 81 in Cathedral City, California. He was survived by his wife of over 30 years, radio actress Lois Corbett.- Actress
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Leslie Easterbrook is an American actress from Nebraska. She has had a decades-long career, but she is mostly remembered for the role of the tough training instructor Debbie Callahan in the "Police Academy" movie series (1984-1994). She appeared in six of the series' seven films, and Callahan was considered among the series' most memorable characters. Easterbrook has also appeared in several horror films.
Easterbrook was born on July 29, 1948. At the age of 9 months, she was adopted by the Easterbrook family. Her adoptive father Carl Easterbrook worked as a music professor. Her adoptive mother Helen worked as an English teacher at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, a public university located at the small city of Kearney, Nebraska. The city was incorporated in 1873, and named after the nearby historic outpost Fort Kearny.
Easterbrook was primarily raised in the small village of Arcadia, Nebraska. In 1950, Arcadia had a population of 574 people. Easterbrook received her secondary education at Kearney High School, a public high school located in Kearney. She received her tertiary education at Stephens College, a private women's college located in Columbia, Missouri. Stephens had a distinguished Drama Department, which had initially won its fame under the leadership of the actress Maude Adams (1872-1953).
Easterbrook decided to follow an acting career, but she was fairly obscure during the 1970s. She gained her first major television role in 1980, when cast in the role of aspiring actress Rhonda Lee in the sitcom Laverne & Shirley (1976). She was a regular in the sixth, seventh, and eighth seasons of the sitcom. Rhonda was depicted as a vain woman, who spoke of herself in the third person. She liked to brag about her successful love life to her neighbors Laverne DeFazio (Penny Marshall) and Shirley Feeney (Cindy Williams).
Easterbrook was cast in her first major film role as Debbie Callahan in the police comedy Police Academy (1984). Callahan was depicted as a tough and strict training instructor at the Metropolitan Police Academy, who is both physically and sexually aggressive. According to a later interview, Easterbrook had to convince the film's producer and director that she could play an intimidating character. This was a first in her career, but she performed well. The film's subplot was that Callahan maintained a sexual relationship with cadet George Martin (Andrew Rubin), where she dominated her partner.
Police Academy (1984) was a box office hit, earning about 150 million dollars at the worldwide box office. The film had six sequels. Easterbrook did not appear in the second film, but appeared in all the rest. Callahan was a major character in the movie series. A major subplot in the third and fourth films was that Callahan was involved in an interracial relationship with the Japanese cadet Tomoko Nogata (Brian Tochi). The movie series ended in 1994.
In 1985, Easterbrook had a supporting role in the adventure comedy film Private Resort (1985). The film deals with two teenagers at a posh resort in Miami, Florida, who have to stop an experienced jewel thief. The film was a box office flop, but it is remembered for depicting novice actors Johnny Depp and Rob Morrow in starring roles. In 1986, Easterbrook joined the cast of the long-running soap opera Ryan's Hope (1975), playing the regular character Devlin Kowalski. The series depicted life in the neighborhood of Washington Heights, Manhattan. New characters were frequently added to the cast, as older ones were written out. Easterbrook remained a series regular until 1987, and the series was canceled two years later.
In 1992, Easterbrook voiced the sentient android Randa Duane in a two-part episode of Batman: The Animated Series (1992). Randa was depicted as the ultimate creation of the supercomputer H.A.R.D.A.C., and its main agent in a scheme to replace humans with lookalike androids. Randa's appearance was patterned after real-life actress Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962). In 1995, Easterbrook played a character in the interactive film Mr. Payback: An Interactive Movie (1995). The film depicts the vigilante android Mr. Payback (Billy Warlock) punishing or humiliating criminals in sadistic ways. The audience could vote for various directions the story would take.
In 1997, Easterbrook voiced the Kryptonian criminal Mala in a two-part episode of Superman: The Animated Series (1996). Mala was depicted as a female soldier who once participated in a failed coup d'état, and was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment in the Phantom Zone. The character Mala was originally created for this series, but was loosely based on the comic book villain Faora and the film villain Ursa. Both original characters were depicted as prominent Kryptonian enemies of Superman. Also in 1997, Easterbrook guest-starred as Debbie Callahan in the sitcom Police Academy: The Series (1997). The series was a spin-off of the movie series, featuring mostly new characters. In her guest appearance, Callahan was depicted as a retired police officer. She had began a new career as an assistant district attorney.
Easterbrook gained her next prominent role when cast as Mother Firefly in the horror film The Devil's Rejects (2005). Her character was depicted as the matriarch of a family of psychopaths who are hunted down by authorities. The film was a sequel of the movie House of 1000 Corpses (2003), where Mother Firefly was played by Karen Black. The film earned about 19.5 million dollars at the box office. Critics praised the film for fleshing out the recurring characters, providing them with "personalities, histories and motives".
Easterbrook next played the security guard Patty Frost in the horror film Halloween (2007), a remake of the 1978 horror film of the same name. In the remake, Frost is one of several security guards charged with transporting mental patient Michael Myers (played by Tyler Mane). The film earned about 80.5 million dollars at the worldwide box office, and revived the "Halloween" movie franchise.
Easterbrook played the eccentric innkeeper Betty in the supernatural horror film House (2008). The film only received a limited release, and earned about 575,000 dollars at the domestic box office. Easterbrook played the leading role of the mentally unstable killer Maggie in the horror film The Afflicted (2011). The film was loosely based on the life of serial killer Theresa Knorr (1946-), who had tortured and killed two of her own children. Easterbrook played wealthy benefactor Stella Fawnskin in the horror film Sorority Party Massacre (2012). In the film, Fawnskin organizes an annual contest for sorority girls. In the contest's final year, both Fawnskin and her contestants are targeted for murder.
Easterbrook had a more sympathetic role in the ghost-themed film Compound Fracture (2014). She played Annabelle Wolffsen, a wife who is charged with taking care of her aging husband, who suffers from dementia. As of 2021, she has never retired from acting, though she has had few prominent roles in recent years. She is fondly remembered by generations of comedy and horror fans. Several of her older films remain popular.- Actor
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Warren Edward Buffett born in Omaha ( August 30, 1930 ). He developed an interest in business and investing in his youth, eventually entering the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1947 before transferring and graduating from University of Nebraska-Lincoln at the age of 19. Buffett went on to enroll and graduate from Columbia University where he learned and eventually molded his investment philosophy around a concept pioneered by Benjamin Graham-value investing. He attended New York Institute of Finance to specialize his economics background and soon after began various business partnerships, including one with Graham. After meeting Charlie Munger, Buffett created the Buffett Partnership. His firm would eventually acquire a textile manufacturing firm called Berkshire Hathaway and assume its name to create a diversified holding company.
Filmography : Buffett's work even earned him a glamorous foray into the movie business when he made a appearance in the 2015 movie 'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps' (2010), 'The Billionaires' Pledge' (2012) and 'The Berkshire Apprentice' (2016). HBO recently created a documentary "Becoming Warren Buffett,"( January, 2017 ) which provides a fresh overview of the "Oracle of Omaha," the subject of a best-selling 'The Snowball' ( 2008 ) biography for which he also extensively cooperated. Directed by Peter Kunhardt, whose film subjects have included President Richard Nixon and media mogul Oprah Winfrey, the documentary was largely narrated by Buffett and contains interviews with people close to him, including his sisters, three children, Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, and philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates.- Ndamukong Suh was born on 6 January 1987 in Portland, Oregon, USA. He is an actor, known for Think Like a Man Too (2014), Ballers (2015) and The NFL on CBS (1956).
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Adam Patrick Devine is an American actor, comedian, singer, screenwriter, and producer. He is one of the stars and co-creators of the Comedy Central comedy television series Workaholics and Adam Devine's House Party. He played the role of Bumper in the musical films Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2. He had recurring sitcom roles as Andy Bailey in Modern Family and Adam DeMamp in Workaholics. He also had roles in the films The Intern, The Final Girls, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, Game Over, Man! and When We First Met. He has voiced characters in films including Ice Age: Collision Course and The Lego Batman Movie, as well as in the animated series Uncle Grandpa, Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero, Vampirina, Green Eggs and Ham, and Bad Ideas with Adam Devine.- Writer
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Nicholas Sparks was born on December 31, 1965 in Omaha, Nebraska. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1988 and is one of the more critically-acclaimed authors of the past 5 years. He is the author of 5 best-selling books, including "The Notebook" and "The Rescue". Eleven of his books, Message in a Bottle (1999), A Walk to Remember (2002), The Notebook (2004), Nights in Rodanthe (2008), The Last Song [2010] , Dear John [2010] , The Lucky One [2012], Safe Haven [2013] , The Best of Me [2014] , The Longest Ride (2015) and The Choice (2016)
have been adapted into blockbuster movies. Sparks lives in North Carolina with his wife, 3 sons, and twin daughters.- Actor
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Excellent, prolific and dependable character actor Terry Kiser was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Terry attended the University of Kansas on both football and dramatic scholarships. He graduated with a degree in Industrial Engineering and worked for three years in this profession in his hometown of Omaha. Kiser also acted in some 50 plays around this same time. Terry then moved to New York and studied his craft at the Actors Studio, where he was mentored by legendary Method acting teacher Lee Strasberg. Following several gigs in television commercials, he made his film debut as a preacher in the film Rachel, Rachel (1968). Although often cast as sleazy and unlikable scoundrels, Terry has shown on occasion that he can portray more sympathetic parts with equal skill and conviction.
Kiser gave an especially strong and engaging performance in a rare substantial starring role in the little seen drama Lapin 360 (1972). Best known as the deceased, but still active Bernie Lomax in the hilarious "Weekend at Bernie's" films, Terry's other memorable roles include Chuck Norris' ill-fated cop partner Dave Pierce in the exciting An Eye for an Eye (1981), shady businessman Freddy Barrett in the entertaining science fiction disaster film Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land (1983), petty worthless hoodlum Jesse Hardwick in the superior horror anthology opus From a Whisper to a Scream (1987), sneaky psychiatrist Dr. Crews in Friday the 13th: The New Blood (1988), and the evil Count Gunther Spretzle in Mannequin: On the Move (1991). Kiser had a recurring part on the daytime soap opera The Doctors (1963).
Among the many television series Terry has done guest spots on are Will & Grace (1998), Walker, Texas Ranger (1993), Baywatch Nights (1995), Dream On (1990), The Golden Girls (1985), L.A. Law (1986), Hunter (1984), Murder, She Wrote (1984), Riptide (1984), Knight Rider (1982), The Fall Guy (1981), Magnum, P.I. (1980), Hill Street Blues (1981), CHiPs (1977), Diff'rent Strokes (1978), All in the Family (1971), Maude (1972), Hawaii Five-O (1968), The Bionic Woman (1976), The Six Million Dollar Man (1974), and Baretta (1975). In addition to his film and television work, Kiser has acted on stage in the Broadway plays "God's Favorite" (Terry received a Tony Award nomination for his performance in this Neil Simon comedy), "Shelter", "The Castro Complex", and "Paris Is Out!". Terry won both an Obie and a Theater World Award for his exemplary acting in the dramatic play "Fortune and Men's Eyes".
Terry currently resides in Colorado and co-founded the premiere acting school The Actors Arena in Austin Texas with Joy Leigh.- Actress
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Swoosie is the only child of author Margo and Frank Kurtz. As her father was a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, she moved often during her school years, living in eight different states. At the University of Southern California she majored in drama; later she attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, collected Broadway's "triple crown" (the Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards) for her portrayal of Gwen in Lanford Wilson's "The Fifth of July". Since then she has appeared in many TV shows and movies, and received several Emmy and Golden Globe nominations and an Emmy for her guest-starring performance on Carol Burnett's comedy series Carol & Company (1990).- Andy Roddick is an American former world No. 1 professional tennis player.
Roddick became world No. 1 shortly after he won the title at the 2003 US Open, defeating French Open champion Juan Carlos Ferrero in the final and overtaking him as the top-ranked player in the process. Despite several more years as one of the world's best players, the 2003 US Open title would remain his only Grand Slam triumph. He is the most recent North American male player to win a Grand Slam singles event, reach the top ranking, and claim the year-end world No. 1 ranking (2003). Roddick reached four other Grand Slam finals (Wimbledon in 2004, 2005, and 2009, and the US Open in 2006), losing to Roger Federer every time. Roddick was ranked in the year-end top 10 for nine consecutive years (2002-2010) and won five Masters Series titles in that period.
On August 30, 2012, during the 2012 US Open and on his 30th birthday, Roddick announced that he would retire after the tournament. Following a fourth-round defeat by Juan Martin del Potro, Roddick retired from the sport to focus on his work at the Andy Roddick Foundation. - Actor
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Jorge Garcia (born April 28, 1973) is an American actor and comedian. He first came to public attention with his performance as Hector Lopez on the television show Becker (1998), but probably more known later for his portrayal of Hugo "Hurley" Reyes in the television series Lost (2004) from 2004 to 2010. Garcia also performs as a stand-up comedian. He more recently starred in the FOX television series Alcatraz (2012), as well as playing a minor character on ABC's Once Upon a Time (2011). He stars as Jerry Ortega on Hawaii Five-0 (2010). Most recently Jorge Garcia can be seen in the Netflix original movie The Ridiculous 6 (2015).- Music Department
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Matthew Sweet was born on 6 October 1964 in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. He is an actor and composer, known for Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) and The Game (1997).- Actor
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The son of a professional wrestler, Ted DiBiase had started his pro wrestling career as a fan favorite, but soon "changed sides" and became a heel throughout the rest of his career. DiBiase entered the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in the late 1980s where he gained most of his fame as "The Million Dollar Man." He employed a valet "Virgil" (formerly "Soul Train Jones, " and was an instrumental story line when Hulk Hogan's long WWF championship reign ended. DiBiase stayed in the WWF for more nearly 10 years, ending up as a manager for (soon to be star) "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. DiBiase left the WWF when Austin (then known as "The Ring Master") lost a match, and went to the WWF's rival World Championship Wrestling (WCW) as an "advisor" to Hogan's new NWO (New World Order) gang.- Farrah Laurel Abraham was born and raised in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska. Her father Michael Abraham is of Syrian, Lebanese and Italian descent. Her mother Debra Danielsen is of Danish, German, Sicilian descent. Farrah's parents met in Arizona in their career field of top sales executives in the same company. She still has family in Arizona, as well as the Midwest and Denmark. Farrah Abraham is one to watch in 2019!
Having started as a young reality television star on the famed MTV's 16 & Pregnant turned international celebrity on MTV's Teen Mom franchise the "OG" "Legend" of the franchise. Abraham left the franchise after 10 years to continue her developments in scripted genre. She emerged as a New York Times bestselling author, advocate for women empowerment, keynote speaker, and serial entrepreneur with a master class "Ambition Into Reality" to teach others entrepreneurship from her successes. Among her international brands are Furnished by Farrah, Sophia Laurent Children's Boutique, Froco. She has become an established public figure with a growing empire. At the tender age of 16, Abraham evolved from high school cheerleader and aspiring model to teenage mom-to-be as documented in the MTV series "16 & Pregnant." Abraham faced single motherhood head-on as she dealt with the passing of the father of her child two months prior to her daughter Sophia's birth. The young star's story would eventually captivate international audiences and make her a fan favorite, creating the opportunity for Abraham to star in MTV's spin-off series, "Teen Mom."
After several seasons on MTV, Abraham pursued higher education and has continued to build her brand. Over the span of her blossoming career, Abraham has graced the covers of top magazines, such as Us Weekly and Life & Style. The reality star has also been featured on dozens of commercials and networks, including ABC, WE, VH1, MTV, Bravo, E!, FOX, NBC and many more! As a top reality television personality, Abraham has used her star power for advocacy projects. In August 2012, she released her first New York Times bestselling autobiography, My Teenage Dream Ended, which sold over 500,000 copies. Abraham's personal account of being a teen mother allowed her to reach fans on an international scale, which led to the release of her collection of therapeutic music singles.
Through personal appearances, Abraham has become the main attraction at nightlife venues and exclusive events around the world, which leverages her wide range of endorsements. The entrepreneur works with beverage companies, lifestyle brands, as well as with parenting and education companies to spread positive messages about their organizations and products. Farrah enjoys commercial projects as well in feature film, as she continues to exercise her passions in acting, voice over work and developing new shows and films. Abraham is known for breaking the cycle, and she is proud to have diminished the negative stigmas associated with being a teen parent by showing her life example. She continues to rise above the negative stigmas associated with reality TV, and is looking forward to bringing her top work ethic, focus, and drive to expand upon her acting portfolio. She aspires to turn her love of writing into a screenplay to produce her first feature film based off of her best selling memoir. Abraham enlightens, educates and inspires everyone around her, Farrah is a force an influencer who influences change. - William Jennings Bryan is an American orator and politician from Nebraska. Beginning in 1896, he emerged as a dominant force in the Democratic Party, running three times as the party's nominee for President of the United States in the 1896, 1900, and 1908 elections. He served in the United States House of Representatives and as the United States Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson.
Born and raised in Illinois, WilliamBryan moved to Nebraska in the 1880s. He won election to the House of Representatives in the 1890 elections, serving two terms before making an unsuccessful run for the Senate in 1894. The Democratic convention nominated Bryan for president, making Bryan the youngest major party presidential nominee in U.S. history. Subsequently, Bryan was also nominated for president by the left-wing Populist Party, and many Populists would eventually follow Bryan into the Democratic Party. In the intensely fought 1896 presidential election, Republican nominee William McKinley emerged triumphant. Bryan gained fame as an orator, as he invented the national stumping tour when he reached an audience of 5 million people in 27 states in 1896.
Bryan retained control of the Democratic Party and won the presidential nomination again in 1900. In the election, McKinley again defeated Bryan, winning several Western states that Bryan had won in 1896. Bryan's influence in the party weakened after the 1900 election and the Democrats nominated the conservative Alton B. Parker in the 1904 presidential election. Bryan regained his stature in the party after Parker's resounding defeat by Theodore Roosevelt and voters from both parties increasingly embraced the progressive reforms that had long been championed by Bryan. Bryan won his party's nomination in the 1908 presidential election, but he was defeated by William Howard Taft. Along with Henry Clay, Bryan is one of the two individuals who never won a presidential election despite receiving electoral votes in three separate presidential elections.
After the Democrats won the presidency in the 1912 election, Woodrow Wilson rewarded Bryan's support with the important cabinet position of Secretary of State. Bryan helped Wilson pass several progressive reforms through Congress. Bryan resigned from his post in 1915. - Actor
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Gruff, burly American character actor. Born in 1903 in Benkelman, Nebraska (confirmed by Social Security records; sources stating 1905 or Denver, Colorado are in error.) Bond grew up in Denver, the son of a lumberyard worker. He attended the University of Southern California, where he got work as an extra through a football teammate who would become both his best friend and one of cinema's biggest stars: John Wayne. Director John Ford promoted Bond from extra to supporting player in the film Salute (1929), and became another fast friend. An arrogant man of little tact, yet fun-loving in the extreme, Bond was either loved or hated by all who knew him. His face and personality fit perfectly into almost any type of film, and he appeared in hundreds of pictures in his more than 30-year career, in both bit parts and major supporting roles. In the films of Wayne and Ford, particularly, he was nearly always present. Among his most memorable roles are John L. Sullivan in Gentleman Jim (1942), Det. Tom Polhaus in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and the Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnson Clayton The Searchers (1956). An ardent but anti-intellectual patriot, he was perhaps the most vehement proponent, among the Hollywood community, of blacklisting in the witch hunts of the 1950s, and he served as a most unforgiving president of the ultra-right-wing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. In the mid-'50s he gained his greatest fame as the star of TV's Wagon Train (1957). During its production, Bond traveled to Dallas, Texas, to attend a football game and died there in his hotel room of a massive heart attack.- Actor
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Michael Connell Biehn was born on July 31, 1956 in Anniston, Alabama, to Marcia (Connell) and Don Biehn, a lawyer. He grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, and at age 14 moved with his family to Lake Havasu, Arizona, where he won a drama scholarship to the University of Arizona. He left prematurely two years later to pursue an acting career in Hollywood. His first big role was as a psychotic fan stalking Lauren Bacall in The Fan (1981) and later appeared in The Lords of Discipline (1983). He hit the big-time when he was cast as Kyle Reese, the man sent back through time to stop Arnold Schwarzenegger in James Cameron's The Terminator (1984). This established a good working relationship with Cameron, a relationship that should have catapulted Biehn to international stardom. He starred in Cameron's subsequent films, Aliens (1986) and The Abyss (1989), the latter a standout performance as unstable Navy SEAL officer Lt. Hiram Coffey. In the 1990s he starred in films like Navy Seals (1990), K2 (1991) and was particularly memorable as Johnny Ringo in Tombstone (1993). Biehn is married and the father of five sons.- Actor
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Albert Gordon MacRae was born on March 12, 1921, in East Orange, NJ. During his early years, he resided in Syracuse, NY, and, while in high school, spent much of his time singing and acting in the Drama Club. It was also during this time that he learned to play the piano, clarinet and the saxophone. At 19, he entered a singing contest and won a two-week engagement at The World's Fair in New York, performing with the Harry James and Les Brown bands. In 1940, while working in New York City as a page, he was "discovered" and hired to sing for the Horace Heidt Band. After a two-year stint, he joined the Army Air Corps and worked as a navigator for the next two years. He made his Broadway debut in a show called "Junior Miss", as a replacement in the role of "Tommy Arbuckle". Next, he appeared, again on Broadway, in Ray Bolger's 1946 revue, "Three To Make Ready". It was here that he was spotted by Capitol Records and signed to a long-term recording contract in 1947. He stayed with the label for more than 20 years. In October 1948, on ABC, he starred on the radio show "The Railroad Hour". The show moved to NBC in October 1949 and continued until June of 1954. It presented operettas and musical dramatizations, all starring Gordon and many different leading ladies. Also in 1948, he was signed to a seven-year contract with Warner Brothers Pictures and, soon after, made his film debut in the non-musical, The Big Punch (1948), opposite Lois Maxwell (well-known later as "Miss Moneypenny" in the James Bond films). What followed was a string of hit musicals, starting with Look for the Silver Lining (1949), in which MacRae had a featured role opposite June Haver and Ray Bolger, and five fondly remembered films with Doris Day, beginning with Tea for Two (1950). Perhaps his two best and well-known films were two of his last: Oklahoma! (1955) and Carousel (1956), both written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II and both opposite screen newcomer Shirley Jones. MacRae began to suffer, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, from bouts of heavy drinking and, by his own admission, developed into an alcoholic. He revealed that he had been "picked up for drunk driving" during the filming of "Carousel". He conquered the disease in the 1970s and went on to counsel other alcoholics. He continued recording and performing on dozens of television shows. He and his wife, Sheila MacRae, appeared together frequently and even released an album together. His daughters, Meredith MacRae and Heather MacRae, acted in films and on TV. On September 22, 1974, he appeared as a sheriff on an episode of McCloud (1970), starring Dennis Weaver, entitled "The Barefoot Girls of Bleeker Street". His final film came in 1979, a fine dramatic role in The Pilot (1980), which starred Cliff Robertson. He suffered a stroke in 1982. He continued on with the support of his second wife, Elizabeth, and his five children. This brilliant performer continued to tour, when his health would permit, allowing audiences to relive some of his biggest film hits. On January 24, 1986, Gordon MacRae died at the age of 64, at his home in Lincoln, NE, of pneumonia, the result of complications from cancer of the mouth and jaw.- American character actress Anne Ramsey was born Anne Mobley in Omaha, Nebraska to Eleanor (Smith), a national treasurer of the Girl Scouts, and Nathan Mobley, an insurance executive. Her uncle was U.S. Ambassador David S. Smith. An ancestor was Mayflower Pilgrim William Brewster. She attended Rosemary Hall (then an elite girls' school in Greenwich, Connecticut) and Bennington College, and was active in numerous on- and off-Broadway productions. After she married actor Logan Ramsey, the couple founded Philadelphia's Theatre of the Living Arts. In the early 1970s she began her lengthy film career. In 1971 she starred opposite her husband in The Sporting Club (1971), then settled into bit parts.
Eventually, she was noticed for her trademark brusque, gruff, usually comedic roles, after which she received more film offers, notably Goin' South (1978), Any Which Way You Can (1980), The Goonies (1985), and Deadly Friend (1986). Unfortunately, in the mid-1980s she discovered she was suffering from throat cancer and was forced to have parts of both her tongue and jawbone removed, which obviously affected how she spoke and the effects of which are evident in Throw Momma from the Train (1987). She received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Danny DeVito's inimitably nightmarish mother in Throw Momma from the Train (1987) which she managed to finish by bravely soldiering on even as her cancer remorselessly worsened. She died in 1988, aged 59, just weeks after Throw Momma from the Train (1987) was released. - Writer
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Amber Ruffin is a writer, executive producer, and host of the Emmy and WGA Award-nominated series The Amber Ruffin Show on Peacock. She is also an Emmy and WGA Award-nominated writer and performer for NBC's "Late Night with Seth Meyers." Ruffin was the first African American female to write for a late-night network talk show in the U.S. She wrote and performed on Comedy Central's "Detroiters" and was a regular narrator on the cabler's "Drunk History." Ruffin was previously a performer at Boom Chicago in Amsterdam, the iO Theater, and the Second City in Chicago. In addition, she was a writer/performer for the 2018 and 2019 Golden Globe Awards and has written for the series "A Black Lady Sketch Show." Ruffin is a New York Times bestselling author, along with her sister Lacey Lamar, of "You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories of Racism," published by Grand Central Publishing. She is also co-writing the Broadway musical "Some Like it Hot," which will begin performances in 2022. In 2021, Ruffin was named to the 2021 TIME100 Next List, TIME's list of the next 100 most influential people in the world.- Actress
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An accomplished and seasoned actress of stage and screen, Inga Swenson became best known for her portrayals of formidable, often acidulous women on TV. Arguably her most popular role was that of snarky Gretchen Wilomena Kraus, the German-born head housekeeper and later administrative assistant in Benson (1979). Inga was so convincing in her role (which earned her three Emmy Award nominations as Best Supporting Actress) that audiences assumed her to be German in real life, whereas she was actually of Scandinavian ancestry, the daughter of an attorney (Axel Carl Richard Swenson) and his wife (Geneva Pauline Swenson, née Seeger). After graduating from high school in Omaha, she attended Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, to study drama.
Inga made her screen debut in 1957. In her first feature films, the political drama Advise & Consent (1962) and in the biopic The Miracle Worker (1962), she played, respectively, a senator's wife and the mother of young Helen Keller. Thereafter, she divided her career between theatre and television. In the latter medium, she was mostly cast as supporting characters until a strong performance (as the evil housekeeper Ingrid Svenson) in the sitcom Soap (1977) led to her becoming a mainstay on the spin-off series Benson. A later role of note was that of Maude, matriarch of the Hazzard family in the sprawling North & South sagas, based on the novels by John Jakes.
On stage from 1949, Inga's first starring turn was ten years later in the historical play The First Gentleman, set during the Regency Period. Her diversity as a powerful lyric soprano subsequently came to the fore in the musical 110 in the Shade (1963), in which Inga headlined as Lizzie Currie, a role made famous by Katharine Hepburn in the dramatised film version The Rainmaker (1956). This, and her role as Irene Adler in Baker Street (1965), both won her Tony Award nominations. Other stage roles included Magnolia in Show Boat, Desdemona in Othello and Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady.
Inga retired from acting in 1998. From 1953, until her passing on July 23 2023 at the age of 90, she was married to Emmy Award-winning sound engineer Lowell Harris.- Producer
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Paula Zahn was born on 24 February 1956 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. She is a producer and actress, known for Murphy Brown (1988), Great Performances (1971) and Mobster Confessions (1993). She was previously married to Richard Cohen.- Writer
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L. Ron Hubbard was born on 13 March 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska, USA. He was a writer and director, known for Battlefield Earth (2000), The Secret of Treasure Island (1938) and How the E-Meter Works (1976). He was married to Mary Sue Whipp, Sara Northrup and Margaret Louise Grubb. He died on 24 January 1986 in San Luis Obispo, California, USA.- Writer
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An American novelist, writer of crime fiction featuring the private detective Philip Marlowe, Raymond (Thornton) Chandler was born in Chicago of an American father and an Anglo-Irish mother. He moved to England when his parents divorced. He attended Dulwich College and studied languages in France and Germany before returning to England in 1907 and becoming a naturalized British subject. He took a civil service job in the Admiralty, which he left in 1912 to return to America, settling in California. After the US entered World War I he enlisted in the Canadian Army, then transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. After the armistice he returned to California and got a series of bookkeeping jobs, finally becoming a vice-president with the Dabney Oil syndicate.
All along, however, he had been submitting stories, poems, sketches and essays to a number of periodicals, but when the Depression hit and the bottom fell out of the oil business, he lost his job and turned to writing full-time. He found a niche with stories of the "hard-boiled" school popularized by Dashiell Hammett, and had many of his early stories accepted by Black Mask, the same mystery magazine that had first published Hammett. His first four novels--"The Big Sleep" (1939, filmed 1946 [The Big Sleep (1946)] and 1978 [The Big Sleep (1978)]); "Farewell My Lovely" (1940, filmed 1944 [Murder, My Sweet (1944)] and 1975 [Farewell, My Lovely (1975)]); "The High Window" (1942, filmed 1947 [The Brasher Doubloon (1947)]); and "The Lady in the Lake (1943, filmed 1946 [Lady in the Lake (1946)])--which reworked plots from some of his short stories, were his most successful.
He spent some time in Hollywood as a screenwriter, contributing to Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944), the film noir classic The Blue Dahlia (1946) and Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951). He wrote realistically, in stark contrast to the English style of drawing-room puzzle mysteries where an amateur detective always knows more than the police and clues turn up at just the right moment. Chandler dismissed these plots as "having God sit in your lap."- Actress
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Yolonda Ross was born in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. She is an actress and writer, known for The Chi (2018), The Get Down (2016) and Whitney (2015).- Actress
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Sagan Lewis was born on 30 November 1952 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. She was an actress and writer, known for St. Elsewhere (1982), Homicide: Life on the Street (1993) and About Schmidt (2002). She was married to Tom Fontana. She died on 7 August 2016 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actress
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After this feisty, highly offbeat actress from Chattanooga, Tennessee, broke into TV in the 1980s, she immediately set herself apart from the norm with a prime role as new owner Bud Cort's female friend in the bizarre mini-movie Bates Motel (1987). This rather inauspicious beginning would also set Lori Petty off on a career as a kinetic fighter and a misfit, types for which she would be best known.
Lori was born on October 14, 1963, and spent her childhood traveling the US with her father, a Pentecostal minister. Her keen talents first lent themselves toward being a graphic artist in Omaha, Nebraska, but an impulsive desire to act quickly took precedence and soon she was off to New York, where she took acting classes and pounded the pavement for jobs.
Going nowhere fast, she eventually headed for Los Angeles and finally found an "in". Following a number of mediocre TV roles, she won a bit of attention on the short-lived series Booker (1989) as a lippy secretary, then hit pay dirt in secondary roles as an outrageous Cyndi Lauper wannabe in Cadillac Man (1990) and as Patrick Swayze's ex-girlfriend/waitress who hooks up with Keanu Reeves in Point Break (1991).
It looked like mainstream stardom might happen for the tomboy actress, especially after getting cast as Geena Davis' bratty baseball-playing sister in the highly successful A League of Their Own (1992). However, while Lori proved to be an intriguing, kooky sort, she also proved more difficult to cast. Such disparate roles as a kind-hearted animal trainer in Free Willy (1993) and the sole female recruit in Pauly Shore's inane comedy In the Army Now (1994) only proved the point.
She seemed bent towards playing scrappy, hard-edged figures alongside the big action guys but started off on the wrong foot when she was replaced by Sandra Bullock in Sylvester Stallone's Demolition Man (1993) due to "artistic differences". She did play a lone female cop in the thriller The Glass Shield (1994), then found her true calling as the bizarre cartoon heroine Tank Girl (1995), which was billed as "a post-apocalyptic comedy." Playing along the same hard lines, Lori portrayed an FBI agent who teams up with a Tokyo policewoman Yûki Amami in the crime thriller Countdown (1996); played a butch lesbian in the social comedy Relax... It's Just Sex (1998); and an aggressive, tough-talking stripper at odds with the Mafia in the potboiler The Arrangement (1999). She ended the decade on TV as Max, a motel clerk, in the crime drama fantasy series Brimstone (1998).
Into the millennium, the crop-haired, tough-as-nails actress continued to take it to the limit. Following roles in the action films Firetrap (2001) and Route 666 (2001), Lori co-starred alongside the similarly tough-styled Gina Gershon in Prey for Rock & Roll (2003) as members of a punk rock band. She later starred in the creature vs. human horror opus Cryptid (2006); had a small part (First Murderer) in a contemporary Hollywood updating of Shakespeare's Richard III (2007); a deputy in the cross-country sports movie Chasing 3000 (2010); a doctor in the horror thriller Dead Awake (2016); a starring role as a lady Marine in Fear, Love, and Agoraphobia (2018); and a campy role in the low-budget horror flick A Deadly Legend (2020).
On TV, Lori would be seen as a guest in such shows as "The Beast," "NYPD Blue," "CSI: NY," "Masters of Horror," "House," "Prison Break," "Hawaii Five-0," and, more notably, in the recurring and amusing role of loony, paranoiac Lolly in the women's prison series Orange Is the New Black (2013). On the other side of the camera, the still-single Lori wrote and directed the film The Poker House (2008) starring Jennifer Lawrence, a re-dramatization of Lori's teenage years in Iowa. The film earned awards at the Los Angeles Film Festival- Actor
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Gary Owens was an American voice actor, radio announcer and narrator who was known for being the original voice actor of Hanna-Barbera's Space Ghost, Powdered Toast Man from The Ren & Stimpy Show and Blue Falcon from Dynomutt, Dog Wonder. George Lowe became Owens' successor as the voice of Space Ghost since 1994. He passed away from diabetes complications in February 2015.- James M. Connor was born on 16 June 1960 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. He is an actor and writer, known for Vice Principals (2016), Lopez (2016) and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013).
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Leslie Brooks was born on 13 July 1922 in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. She was an actress, known for The Man Who Dared (1946), Cigarette Girl (1947) and It's Great to Be Young (1946). She was married to Russ Vincent and Donald Anthony Shay. She died on 1 July 2011 in Sherman Oaks, California, USA.- Actress
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Crystal Carson has been teaching and coaching professionally in Los Angeles for the last 20 years. She began as a sought after teacher at the Margie Haber Studios for 12 years, before using her extraordinary gifts to start the Auditioning By Heart studio, in Sherman Oaks. Crystal also conducts semi-annual seminars at the University of Nebraska, various studios in Atlanta including Creative Studios of Atlanta, VoiceoverCity, and The Production Centre of Pinewood Studios (Atlanta), RJ's Casting in Orlando, and is invited to lead workshops and seminars in Vietnam at the Saigon International Film School, as well as hosting groups of international actors who travel to the US via "Industry Hollywood" to learn the Auditioning By Heart method.
As a believer in the profound power acting in films and television has on our ever expanding world, Crystal Carson is one of very few elite acting coaches who has devoted her primary career to perfecting the coaching of professional actors. She understands the need for vulnerability, truth and the "flaws that come with being human" to live in every character, in order to reach audiences in a deep and sometimes magical way. Her outstanding reputation is testimony to her remarkable expertise and her unique ability to inspire others to rise to their potential.
Prior to dedicating her life to professional coaching exclusively, Crystal worked as an actress in 25 theatre repertory and summer stock companies; in several television programs, and had a recurring role on CBS's award winning show, "Jag".
But Crystal is better known for playing Julia Barrett for five years on "General Hospital", when she was voted "Best New Female" by Soap Opera Digest and put on their cover as one of "Television's Most Beautiful Women."
In her young career, Crystal appeared for 8 weeks on the mega-hit "Dallas", booked several Television Pilots, and had guest starring roles on "Ellen", "Cheers", "Charles In Charge", "Midnight Caller", "Thirtysomething", "Simon & Simon" and "Night Court" to name a few. Crystal appeared in several films including "Who's That Girl" with Madonna, and the female lead in "Killer Tomatoes Strikes Back" with John Astin, among others.- Richard Duane Kelton was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and was the only child of Fred and Glenna Kelton. While growing up in Miami, Oklahoma, he remembered watching James Dean and cites him as his main influence on becoming an actor. After studying drama at The University of Kansas, he made his way to California where he made his debut playing "Bud" in a 1970 2-part episode (Snow Train) of Gunsmoke Gunsmoke (1955). Soon after that he made his TV movie debut as "Lieutenant Charring" in Wild Women (1970). He continued in numerous other guest starring roles and a movie roles. He also played the role of "Nick" in the Broadway revival of "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf" in 1976. He made his starring role as "Ficus" in the short-lived science fiction series "Quark" (1978). Later that year he was invited back to The University of Kansas to give a short seminar on films. He continued his career until his death in 1978.
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Chris Klein was born in Hinsdale, Illinois, on March 14, 1979, to Terese (Bergen), a kindergarten teacher, and Fred Klein, an engineer. He is of German, Irish, and English descent. After spending the first thirteen years of his life there, he moved with his family to Nebraska. It was while he was in high school that Klein was discovered by director Alexander Payne, who was busy casting his upcoming film, Election. Klein won the role of Paul Metzler in Payne's film, which opened to enthusiastic reviews. As Paul, Klein played the dim but sweet football player persuaded by Matthew Broderick's Jim McAllister to run against the unopposed Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) in the school's student council election. The film was released in April 1999 to positive reviews. Soon after, Klein found a steady amount of work in the film industry while briefly attending TCU, where he studied theater and was a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. He was next seen in American Pie, which opened on July 9, 1999, and was a box office success. Klein reprised his American Pie role in American Pie 2 and American Reunion. In 2002, Klein had a role in the Mel Gibson Vietnam War film, We Were Soldiers. Klein has also appeared in several teen movies, including Just Friends (2005), American Dreamz (2006). In 2014, Klein was cast as an American pilot in the Damien Lay film The Uberkanone. He co-starred in the 2014 comedy indie film Authors Anonymous with Kaley Cuoco.- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Composer ("How the West Was Won"), songwriter ("Make Mine Music"), choral director, conductor, arranger, singer and author, educated at Christian College and a student of Tibor Serly, Ernst Toch, Herman Hand, and Victor Young.
He originated The King's Men male vocal quartet in 1929 and appeared on radio, films, concerts, television and recordings. Later he led and arranged music for the Ken Darby Singers. He was a writer and production supervisor for Walt Disney Studios, and associate producer of many record albums.
Joining ASCAP in 1946, his chief musical collaborator was Gordon Jenkins. His other popular-song compositions include "The Chool Song," "Love Song of Kalua," "Saga of the Ponderosa," "Ports of Paradise," "Merry Christmas Neighbor," "Endless Prairie," and "Whispering Wind".- Actor
- Producer
John Dennis Johnston was born on 14 May 1950 in Elmwood, Nebraska, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for 48 Hrs. (1982), Wyatt Earp (1994) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).- Julie Sommars was born in Fremont, Nebraska to a government grain inspector and schoolteacher. She attended schools in Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota. While a student in Onawa, Iowa, her father, without her knowledge, entered her name in a worldwide talent hunt. Fifteen-year-old Julie found herself in Chicago auditioning for Otto Preminger for the lead role in his film "Saint Joan." She didn't get that part, but as a high school senior she did win the American Legion State Oratory Contest in Aberdeen, South Dakota. She was the only female winner in all of, what was then, the 48 states.
After graduation from high school, Julie took the Greyhound bus to California for a summer job teaching horseback riding and swimming, and attended San Bernardino Valley College. Her appearance in the play, "Our Town" led to her playing Loretta Young's daughter in an episode of the "Loretta Young Show." She was 19.
Her big break came in another talent hunt. She competed for and won the female lead in Ross Hunter's talent hunt for unknowns to play in his 1966 black comedy, "The Pad and How to Use It," based on the Peter Shaffer play, "The Private Ear."
In 1969 she starred in the comedy series, "The Governor and J.J." playing Dan Dailey's daughter, J. J. In 1970 she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, tying with Carol Burnett, as well as the Best New Star Award from the Television Critics Association for her role as J. J.
Julie also starred with Dean Jones and Don Knotts in the Disney movie "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo." Episodic television work includes roles in "Get Smart," "Barnaby Jones," "Harry O," "The Rockford Files," "McMillan and Wife," "McCloud," and "Magnum P.I." In the 1970s Julie starred in many movies for television, including "The Harness," "Five Desperate Women," "Cave-In," and "Centennial."
From 1987-1994 Julie joined Andy Griffith in "Matlock," playing his love interest Assistant District Attorney, Julie March. In 1990 she received her second Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama for the role.
Upon retiring, from March 1999 to March 2000, she served as a public member on the California Judicial Performance Commission. From 2000 to 2003, she served as a public member on The Board of Governors for the State of California.
In 2021 Julie lives in California with John Karns, her husband of 38 years. Between them they have three children, Jacey Erwin, Mike Karns, and Bill Karns. - Actor
- Producer
Native American actor, Rodney Arnold Grant was born the 9th of March, 1959. After his biological parents abandoned him, his grandparents raised him from 6 months of age, up until 1982. Rodney has five adult children: three daughters from his ex-wife, all of which were raised by their mother, and two sons from previous relationships. He is now married to Lee-Anne. Over time, Rodney initially has performed in major motion pictures, as well as television appearances. One in particular CBS's Stolen Women, Captured Hearts (1997), opposite Janine Turner and Michael Greyeyes. On the big screen, Rodney is extensively known for his portrayal of "Wind in His Hair" in Dances with Wolves (1990). Inasmuch as Rodney has proven to be eclectic in his acting ability, he can "play the part" in other genus as well.
Rodney has other multitudinous ways in which he contributes to those in "need" -- especially the Native American Youth. For example, The Boys and Girls Club of Cheyenne country, South Dakota, where he is on the Board of Directors. At the present time, Rodney has taken an interim from acting to bestow his time to family, charities, and independent film making.- Editor
- Editorial Department
- Producer
Mike Hill was born in 1949 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. He was an editor and producer, known for Rush (2013), Frost/Nixon (2008) and Apollo 13 (1995). He was married to LeAnne Hill. He died on 5 January 2023 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
This lovely, fresh-faced Lincoln, Nebraska native was born Janine Loraine Gauntt on December 6, 1962, to stalwart Texans Turner and Janice Gauntt. The younger of two children, she grew up in Fort Worth, Texas, and trained, while a child, in ballet, tap, theater, and modeling (from age 3).
A cheerleading beauty into her teens, she moved with her mother to study at New York's Professional Children's School and was lucky enough to be picked up by the famed Wilhelmina Agency as a model (at 15 she was the youngest at the time to ever be signed). After some commercial work, however, she returned to school in Texas and happened by chance to find some minor work on various episodes of Dallas (1978).
This led to a Hollywood attempt at age 17 and a major TV break two years later when she won the role of Laura Templeton on TV's popular daytime soap General Hospital (1963), a role that required her long tresses to go from brunette to blonde. This, in turn, fed into another 1980s regular part on Another World (1964).
Janine subsequently made her film debut in the daytime parody Young Doctors in Love (1982) that featured her along with other soap stars in cameos. In between, she managed find time to attend Pepperdine University but left when she earned a film role in the movie Tai-Pan (1986). At this stage of the game, she tended to specialize in cute and flighty roles, but all that changed when Janine won the role of spunky, crop-haired Alaskan air taxi pilot Maggie O'Connell opposite Rob Morrow on the eccentric prime-time series Northern Exposure (1990). It was role of her career, a meaty, delightfully quirky star turn that made her a household name. The show lasted six seasons.
Since then, she has been able to subsist on a fairly full plate of TV-movie and film assignments. She's top-lined such women's mini-pictures as Stolen Women, Captured Hearts (1997) and A Secret Affair (1999), while in film playing a lady-in-distress co-star to Sylvester Stallone in the action thriller Cliffhanger (1993), "perfect Mom" June Cleaver in a film remake of Leave It to Beaver (1997) and one of Richard Gere's "women" in Dr. T & the Women (2000). She found another series regular role with Strong Medicine (2000) that lasted two years.
Into the millennium, Janine has been featured in such films as Birdie & Bogey (2004), The Night of the White Pants (2006), Maggie's Passage (2009), The Ivy League Farmer (2015), Solace (2015), Occupy, Texas (2016) and a prime role in Runnin' from My Roots (2018). She also appeared for a the 2008 season of the TV series Friday Night Lights (2006).
Janine also moved into directing, writing, and producing on the side, while also dabbling in singing. Janine's daughter, former child actress Juliette Gauntt, who appeared in her mother's film The Night of the White Pants (2006), was born from a relationship with Jerry Jones Jr., the Dallas Cowboys' Vice President and General Counsel.- Don Stewart was born to George and Marian Stewart on November 14, 1935. He spent his youth in Nebraska with his older brother, George, and his younger brother and sister, Jack and Marilyn. He then moved to New York and began studying opera. He worked on and off Broadway, and even understudied for Robert Goulet in Camelot at a young age. He was in the Air Force as one of the youngest commanders, and then in the Navy and Naval Reserves. He flew fighter jets off of aircraft carriers, etc. He started working on television, and also began singing in night clubs. He has a wonderful and powerful voice. He spent many years as "Michael Bauer" on "The Guiding Light,' before branching out to do more movies, stage, commercials, voice-overs, etc. During all this he married Susan Tremble in 1970-something, and they had two daughters, Heather-Michelle and Genevra. They lived in Oakland, NJ while Don was filming the Guiding Light, then moved to Santa Barbara, CA in 1985. Don enjoyed playing tennis with friends, flying his airplane, working on his tractor at his house, and riding horses with his daughters. Don and Sue divorced in 1993 or so. He remained an eligible bachelor for basically the rest of his life, partly because his children didn't believe anyone was good enough for him. In 2002, Don was diagnosed with aplastic anemia. He was doing OK with that, undergoing medical treatment but still basically healthy, until June 2005. At that point he was diagnosed with lung cancer, despite having lived a very clean and healthy life as a non-smoker. He died from the disease only a few months later.
- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Buffalo Bill Cody was born on 26 February 1846 in Scott County, Iowa, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for Fighting with Buffalo Bill (1926), Battling with Buffalo Bill (1931) and The Indians Are Coming (1930). He was married to Louise Maude Frederici. He died on 10 January 1917 in Denver, Colorado, USA.- Music Department
- Composer
- Actor
Composer ("'Batman' Theme), conductor, arrager and trumpeter, educated in high school and through private music study. He was a trumpeter and arranger with dance orchestras including those of Harry James, Woody Herman, and Charlie Spivak between 1941 and 1951. He was a staff arranger and arranger for the "Arthur Godfrey Show" and the "Kate Smith Show" over ABC, and also formed his own orchestra, playing theatres, hotels, clubs and colleges, and made many recordings. Joining ASCAP in 1953, his oher popular song and instrumental compositions include "Coral Reef", "Cute", "Plymouth Rock", "Buttercup", "Two for the Blues", "Oh What a Night for Love", "Cherry Point", "The Kid from Red Bank", "Repetition", "Splanky", "Sunday Morning", "Hot Pink", "Little Pony", "Lake Placid", "Why Not?", "Blowin' Up a Storm", "I'm Shoutin' Again", "Eee Dee", "Jump for Johnny", "The Long Night", "The Good Earth", "Wildroot", "Late Date", "It's Always Nice to Be With You", "I Must Know", and "Girl Talk".- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
William Dozier was an American TV and movie producer who made it to the top of the TV heap briefly in the mid-1960s with his show Batman (1966). Born on February 13, 1908 in Omaha, Nebraska, Dozier was also known for his wives. After divorcing his first wife, he was married to Oscar-winner Joan Fontaine from 1946 to 1951 and to movie star Ann Rutherford from 1953 to his death on April 23, 1991.
In 1948, he and Fontaine launched Rampart Productions, which produced Max Ophüls' Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) starring his wife, and You Gotta Stay Happy (1948), which starred Fontaine and James Stewart. He served as executive producer on both pictures.
Turning to TV as the new decade of the Fifties dawned, Dozier produced the series Danger (1950), which ran for five years from 1950-55. In the Fifties and Sixties, he continued his career as a TV producer, bringing to the tube the short-lived TV series Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers (1953) (1953), The Loner (1965) (1965).
In 1966, he achieved the height of TV success with "Batman" which ran for three seasons and was a cultural sensation. The TV show spun off a Batman: The Movie (1966) feature film. That same year, he also launched , a modest success, and The Tammy Grimes Show (1966), a notorious flop that shot five episodes and was canceled after four.
Dozier retired as a producer after the 1969 movie _The Big Bounce (1969) flopped, though he enjoyed a modest second career as an actor in the Seventies and early Eighties.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Actor Robert Hays was an Air Force Brat and attended Izmir American School in Izmir, Turkey during the Seventh Grade. He graduated in 1965 from Bellevue High School, Bellevue, Nebraska where his father was stationed at Offutt AFB. He began his career in theatre, performing in plays like Richard III and The Glass Menagerie at the famous Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. After spending several years in the theatre, he moved to Hollywood to pursue his career in film and television.
He first appeared on television in series such as Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969), Wonder Woman (1975), Laverne & Shirley (1976) and Angie (1979). He made his feature-film debut in the landmark comedy Airplane! (1980), starring as Ted Striker, the traumatized former pilot who must land the plane when the flight crew gets struck by food poisoning. He later reprised his role as Ted Striker in Airplane II: The Sequel (1982).
After the massive success of Airplane!, Hays went on to star in many feature films including Take This Job and Shove It (1981), Trenchcoat (1983), Cat's Eye (1985), Fifty/Fifty (1992), Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993), Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco (1996), Robert Altman's Dr. T & the Women (2000) and Alex in Wonder (2001), which he also produced. He starred in over 20 made-for-TV movies like NBC's Mister Roberts (1984), CBS' Murder by the Book (1987), and Lifetime's The Abduction (1996). He also had a surprise appearance in Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014). Hays also had numerous guest appearances on various television shows including Touched by an Angel (1994), Promised Land (1996) and That '70s Show (1998), and he starred in the series Starman (1986), FM (1989), Cutters (1993) and Kelly Kelly (1998).- Casting Director
- Casting Department
- Actor
Arguably the most famous casting director in show biz with more than 400 film and TV credits to his name, Lynn Stalmaster has helped to launch the career of many a great star. He was born in Nebraska, the son of a District Court Judge (Irvin Stalmaster, 1897-1952) and Estelle Lapidus (1903-1971). His family relocated to L.A. in 1938 where he was schooled at Beverly Hills High School and first discovered acting on radio. Following military service he studied at UCLA, graduating with a master's degree in theatre arts in 1952. Between 1951 and 1955, he had a minor career as a screen actor but at the same time hedged his bets by joining an independent production company headed by Jack J. Gross and Philip N. Krasne. Stalmaster started out as a producer's assistant and took over the role of casting director upon his predecessor's retirement, over time developing a canny aptitude for 'reading actors' as well as accumulating an inventory of (not necessarily established) theatrical players from the U.S. and Europe. He initially worked on several classic TV shows, including The Lone Wolf (1954), 319 episodes of Gunsmoke (1955) and Have Gun - Will Travel (1957). After going free-lance, he was tasked by the director Robert Wise to find 'new faces' who could be cast as suitable inmates for the Susan Hayward prison dramaI Want to Live! (1958). Offers soon began to flood in from other famous film makers for ensemble casting.
Stanley Kramer utilised his services for Inherit the Wind (1960) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) (kick-starting the career of William Shatner), William Wyler for The Children's Hour (1961), Billy Wilder for Irma la Douce (1963) and The Fortune Cookie (1966), Norman Jewison for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and Fiddler on the Roof (1971). Stalmaster's bolder choices included travelling across Europe to recruit native German speakers (rather than using familiar English actors) for key roles in The Great Escape (1963) (he found Hannes Messemer, who played prison Kommandant Von Luger, in Zurich). His keen eye for talent resulted in the seminal casting of relatively unknown stage actor Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967) and LeVar Burton as Kunta Kinte in Roots (1977). He discovered Christopher Reeve on the New York stage and persisted in sustained efforts to have him assigned the lead role of Superman (1978) (saying "I was totally captured, not only by his talent, but by him as a human being"). He furthered the careers of Ned Beatty (Deliverance (1972)) and Jeff Bridges (Halls of Anger (1970)) by prompting their respective movie debuts. Others whose careers 'The Master Caster' helped mentor along the way include Richard Dreyfuss, Jill Clayburgh, John Travolta, Bruce Dern, Jon Voight and James Caan.
Stalmaster was the first in his chosen profession to receive a single card main screen credit ('casting by') for The Thomas Crown Affair and also the first casting director to receive an Honorary Academy Award in 2017.- Actor
- Producer
Five-time American League batting champion Wade Boggs ranks with Tony Gwynn of the National League's San Diego Padres as the greatest pure hitters of their generation (1980s through 1990s). In his 18-year career, Boggs racked up 3,010 hits for a career average of .328. This was accomplished in the pre-steroids, doctored-baseball era when baseball parks had more generous dimensions and were more pitcher-friendly than they were today.
Boggs was a member of the 1986 American League Champion Boston Red Sox and the 1996 World's Championship New York Yankees team. The third baseman, who won a Gold Glove for fielding excellence with the Yankees, played in 12 consecutive major league All Star Games from 1985 through 1996. In 2005, he was voted into the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility and was enshrined as a Red Sox player.- Willa Cather was born in 1875 on a small farm close to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. She was the eldest of seven children born to Charles Cather, a deputy Sheriff and struggling entrepreneur, and Mary Virginia Boak Cather. The family's Irish ancestors had settled in Pennsylvania in the 1750s, and Willa cut her hair short and wore trousers to her fashionable mother's chagrin. In 1883 the Cather family moved to join Willa's grandparents in Webster County, Nebraska. A year later they moved to Red Cloud, a nearby railroad town, where Willa met Annie Sadilek, whom she later used as the model for My Antonia. Willa attended the University of Nebraska, where she edited the school magazine and contributed to local papers. In 1892 she published her short story "Peter" in a Boston magazine, a story that later became part of her novel My Antonia. After graduation in 1895, became an editor at Home Monthly in Pittsburgh. Her short stories were ultimately published in a collection called `The Troll Garden' in 1905, which brought her to the attention of S.S. McClure. In 1906 she moved to New York to join McClure's Magazine, eventually becoming its managing editor. Over the next two decades, she published such prolific works as 'O Pioneers' (1913), 'My Antonia' (1917), and 'One of Ours' (1922), which won the Pulitzer Prize. Her early novels focused on the destruction of provincial life and the death of the pioneering tradition, though her later novels (including 'The Professor's House' (1925), 'My Mortal Enemy' (1926), and 'Death Comes for the Archbishop' (1927)) reflected the personal despair that followed her commercial success. Willa once said that she belonged to a world that had split in two and, as a woman of two centuries - the conservative 19th and the modern 20th - she bridged the large gap between traditional culture and the uneasy Americanism of new immigrants. She had a keen eye for new-century changes, writing about the most intimate pictures of the inner setting: the heart, the soul, the home. Though there is speculation about Cather's personal relationships with other women, her intimate connections with friends are found in the intense human interactions and nature imagery of her work. She maintained an active writing career, publishing novels and short stories until her death, whereupon she ordered her letters burned and was buried in New Hampshire.
- Tom Osborne was born on 23 February 1937 in Hastings, Nebraska, USA. He has been married to Nancy Tederman since 4 August 1962. They have three children.
- Scott Frost has been married to Ashley Neidhardt since 11 March 2016. They have one child.
- Theodore Sorensen was born on 8 May 1928 in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. He was married to Gillian Martin, Sara Elbery and Camilla Palmer. He died on 31 October 2010 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.
- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Born in 1914, raised in Norfolk, Nebraska, Thurl Ravenscroft served as a navigator in the US Army Air Transport Command in World War II before settling in Hollywood. An accomplished singer, he performed with The Sportsmen Quartet, The Mellowmen Quartet, The Johnny Mann Singers, The Norman Luboff Choir, and many major stars, including Jim Nabors and Elvis Presley. He was best known, however, for his mellifluous voice-overs, and he voiced Tony the Tiger in countless advertisements for Kellogg's Frosted Flakes in both English and Spanish. In 1996 he and his wife June retired to southern California, although he still did occasional work as Tony. He died in 2005 of prostate cancer.- Educated at UCLA, she made her Broadway debut in 1943. Primarily a stage actress she moved to Britain in 1944, where she worked at the Old Vic and with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She returned to the US in 1975, continuing her stage work on Broadway, and making occasional films. She has won three Tony Awards for her stage work.
- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Gale Sayers was born on 30 May 1943 in Wichita, Kansas, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Brian's Song (1971), Patriot Act: A Jeffrey Ross Home Movie (2005) and Reggie's Prayer (1996). He was married to Ardythe Elaine Bullard and Linda Lou McNeil. He died on 23 September 2020 in Wakarusa, Indiana, USA.- Bob Gibson was born on 9 November 1935 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. He was married to Wendy Nelson and Charline Johnson. He died on 2 October 2020 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA.
- Marlin Briscoe was born on 10 September 1945 in Oakland, California, USA. He died on 27 June 2022 in Norwalk, California, USA.
- Grover Cleveland Alexander was born on 26 February 1887 in Elba, Nebraska, USA. He was married to Aimee Alexander. He died on 4 November 1950 in St. Paul, Nebraska, USA.
- Actor
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Paul Revere was born on 7 January 1938 in Harvard, Nebraska, USA. He was an actor and composer, known for Santee (1973), Where the Action Is (1965) and Hollywood Rocks the Movies: The Early Years (1955-1970) (2000). He was married to Eileen Elizabeth (Sydney) Mohrman, Sandra Sue Campbell and Sharon Kennel. He died on 4 October 2014 in Garden Valley, Idaho, USA.- Armitage Trail was born on 18 July 1902 in Madison, Nebraska, USA. He was a writer, known for Scarface (1932), The Thirteenth Guest (1932) and Scarface. He died on 10 October 1930 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- American novelist and biographer Mari Sandoz was born in Sheridan County, NE, in 1901, the eldest of six children of Swiss immigrants (she once noted that she grew up speaking German and hearing French, Polish and Czech, due to the number of Europeans who settled the Nebraska frontier; she didn't learn to speak English until she started school, at nine years of age). After graduating she took the exams to become a rural teacher, and taught school for five years. Afterwards she attended the University of Nebraska for 3-1/2 years but did not graduate.
She began writing at an early age and had several stories published in the "Omaha Daily News". In 1937 she was offered a position at the Nebraska Historical Society as assistant editor of their publication, "Nebraska History". She had written a biography of her father, "Old Jules", which had been rejected by many publishers. Frustrated, she decided to give up writing. After she got the position at the historical society, however, she decided to give it another try. She re-submitted the manuscript to several publishers. It was eventually accepted (after 13 more rejections) and published in 1935. It won the "Atlantic" Magazine prize for non-fiction.
She continued to write, and her most famous book would be "Cheyenne Autumn", which came out in 1951; it was made into a very popular film, Cheyenne Autumn (1964), directed by 'John Ford (I)'.
Mari Sandoz died in New York City in 1966. - John Gneisenau Neihardt (January 8, 1881 - November 3, 1973) was an American writer and poet, amateur historian and ethnographer. Born at the end of the American settlement of the Plains, he became interested in the lives of those who had been a part of the European-American migration, as well as the Indigenous peoples whom they had displaced.
His best-known work is Black Elk Speaks (1932), which Neihardt presents as an extended narration of the visions of the Lakota medicine man Black Elk. It was translated into German as Ich rufe mein Volk (I Call My People) (1953). In the United States, the book was reprinted in 1961, at the beginning of an increase in non-Native interest in Native American cultures. Its widespread popularity has supported four other editions. In 2008 the State University of New York published the book in a premier, annotated edition. - Producer
- Director
Dana Altman is known for Lovely, Still (2008), David Crosby: CPR Through the Music (1998) and The Private Public (2001).- Composer
- Actor
- Writer
Louis Davis, Jr. was born into a family of musicians in rural Ohio and began his musical training at age 4, with his grandmother as his first piano teacher. He composed his first piece, a four-part chorale about his dog Stormy at age 6. By the time Davis entered the University of Michigan music school, he had found his true musical loves the bassoon and percussion. He graduated in 1969 as a classically trained bassoonist who also played percussion in the famous University of Michigan Marching Band. After touring with the renowned Norman Luboff Choir, and teaching young people to love music, Davis took a new career path that would change his life forever. He began writing advertising jingles for an Omaha ad agency, including a series of spots about fictional truck driver C.W. McCall and his waitress girlfriend Mavis at the Old Home Filler Up and Keep On Truckin' Cafe. What began as just another jingle for a bread company became a national phenomenon radio listeners called stations to request the commercials be played as if they were pop tunes, and the TV spots were listed in TV Guide. With fellow ad executive Bill Fries, Davis accepted a recording contract, and went on to produce blockbusters such as the 1975 hit "Convoy", which sold more than a million copies within 2 months, and eventually sold 10 million copies.
In the meantime, Davis explored new ways of expressing music and discovered a style he calls "18th Century classical rock." He says "I don't believe in all-acoustic or all-electronic, all-digital or all-analog. My place is where they meet." He called his band Mannheim Steamroller, which is the name of an 18th-Century musical technique that we know today as the crescendo.
This exploration resulted in an album called Fresh Aire, which Davis tried and failed to sell to mainstream record companies. So innovative was this musical style that it did not fit into any of the standard industry categories. Innovative music demanded innovative marketing, so Davis founded his own record label, American Gramophone, and distributed the albums not to record stores but to audio showrooms. Used to demonstrate home stereo equipment, Fresh Aire became an audiophile hit when listeners said "I like this turntable, but I really want the music playing on it." Orders flooded in and records sold from the U.S. to Japan to Germany. Since that time Davis has produced seven more Fresh Aire albums, each inspired by the themes of nature, science and ancient mythology. Fresh Aire VII was awarded the Grammy for Best New Age Recording in 1990. Davis released the final album in the series in August 2000, titled Fresh Aire 8, on the theme of infinity.
In 1984 Davis once again called conventional music industry wisdom into question. He announced that his next project would be a Christmas album and was told that he would certainly fail. Infusing new life into traditional Christmas music "Mannheim Steamroller Christmas" has sold more than six million copies and was nominated for a Grammy Award. With subsequent albums "A Fresh Aire Christmas," "Christmas in the Aire" and "Christmas Live", Mannheim Steamroller has sold more than 18 million Christmas albums. Davis doesn't put much stock in conventional wisdom. He and his wife Trisha live outside Omaha, Nebraska with their three children, Kelly, Evan and Elyse. In the living room is the piano his grandmother first taught him to play.- Mary Doyle was born on 21 July 1931 in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. She was an actress, known for The Defenders (1961), The Young Nurses (1973) and Law & Order (1990). She was married to John McQuiggan. She died on 8 June 1995 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Mignon G. Eberhart was born on 6 July 1899 in University Place, Nebraska, USA. Mignon G. was a writer, known for Mystery House (1938), The Patient in Room 18 (1938) and The White Cockatoo (1935). Mignon G. was married to Alanson Clyde Eberhart and John Prince Hazen Perry. Mignon G. died on 8 October 1996 in Greenwich, Connecticut, USA.
- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Production Manager
Leland Hayward was born on 13 September 1902 in Nebraska City, Nebraska, USA. He was a producer and production manager, known for Mister Roberts (1955), The Sound of Music (1965) and A Shot in the Dark (1964). He was married to Pamela Harriman, Mary Raye "Nancy" Gross, Margaret Sullavan and Inez (Lola) Gibbs. He died on 18 March 1971 in Yorktown Heights, New York, USA.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
As a successful director working both inside and outside the Hollywood studio system, Joan Micklin Silver was a true lamplighter. Garnering a steady stream of awards and box office successes, she proved herself time and again as one of the most important woman directors to come out of the United States, and demonstrated that films about Jewish topics can succeed with both Jews and non-Jews alike.
Based in New York, where she lived for many decades, Joan Micklin was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1935. She was the daughter of Maurice David and Doris (Shoshone) Micklin, Russian Jewish immigrants who came separately to the United States before the upheavals of the Russian Revolution. Her father later founded the Micklin Lumber Company. Her deep love for the movies was first nurtured during her earliest days in pre-television Omaha, where she attended the local cinema religiously. She attended Temple Israel Synagogue and graduated from Central High School in 1952 and often wrote sketches for school plays.
Fresh after graduating Sarah Lawrence College in 1956, she married Raphael D. Silver, son of the famous Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland. The Silvers lived in Cleveland from 1956 to 1967 and raised three daughters there: Dina (born 1958), Marisa (born 1960), and Claudia (born 1963). While in Cleveland, Silver taught music and wrote plays, two of which were performed at local Cleveland theaters. In 1967, the Silvers moved to New York, where she worked briefly for the Village Voice and was then hired to adapt Lois Gould's 1970 novel Such Good Friends for legendary director Otto Preminger (she was replaced by a long line of others that included Joan Didion and Elaine May). Her first original screenplay, Limbo, about the wives of prisoners of war in Vietnam, was purchased by Universal Pictures and made into a film directed by Mark Robson. When Silver clashed with the director over her vision for the film, she was fired and replaced by James Bridges, though she received story and co-scripting credit in the final film.
The Learning Corporation of America then commissioned her to write and direct a series of short films, among them The Immigrant Experience: The Long Long Journey (1972), which went on to win several awards. When her success as a screenwriter and director of short films failed to score her a break in directing feature films, and when a studio executive actually told her that "women directors were another problem the studios didn't need," Silver's husband agreed to raise the money for her debut feature and serve as its producer. The film became Hester Street (1975), adapted by Silver from the 1890s novella Yekl by Abraham Cahan, the founder of the Jewish Daily Forward. Turned down by every major studio as an "ethnic oddity" with a limited audience appeal, Hester Street was independently distributed by the Silvers, with the guidance of John Cassavetes. Joan and Ray formed the production and distribution company Midwest Films, through which the film was seen worldwide and admired by Jewish and non-Jewish audiences. Hester Street became one of the earliest independent films to be nominated for Academy Awards, securing a Best Actress nod for lead Carol Kane. The following year, she adapted F. Scott Fitzgerald's Bernice Bobs Her Hair (starring Shelley Duvall, Bud Cort and Veronica Cartwright) as part of a series of median-length features taken from classic American short stories.
Despite the critical and surprise commercial success of Hester Street, major studios still would not back Silver's next film. Her second feature, Between the Lines (1977), about a group of people who work for an alternative newspaper in Boston, was once again produced by her husband. That comedy feature an ensemble cast of now-famous faces, including Jeff Goldblum, John Heard and Stephen Collins. Her third feature, Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979), based on the novel by Ann Beattie, marked Silver's first experience working with a major Hollywood studio, namely United Artists. Turner Classic Movies's Robert Osborne selected the film for inclusion in a special festival recognizing pictures that were "woefully overlooked and under-appreciated," then later programmed the film for his "night of favorites" on TCM in 2007. In November 2014, Chilly Scenes of Winter played to a sold-out crowd at New York City's IFC Center.
After years of directing stage productions, including the well-received A...My Name is Alice (1983), she returned to features in 1985 with the comedy-drama Finnegan Begin Again, starring Robert Preston, Mary Tyler Moore and Sam Waterston. The first effort produced by the fledgling HBO Premiere Films, the film won the Silver Leopard's Eye at the Locarno Film Festival. Her next film with a Jewish subject, the beloved Crossing Delancey, a hit romantic comedy about an assimilated Jewish Manhattanite (played by Amy Irving) and her Lower East Side pickle-salesman suitor (played by Peter Riegert), was produced for Warner Brothers and released in 1988. Her other theatrical releases include Loverboy (1989) for Tri-Star and Stepkids (a.k.a. Big Girls Don't Cry...They Get Even) (1992) for New Line.
Silver's other theater works include A...My Name Is Still Alice (1992), Album (1980), and Maybe I'm Doing It Wrong (1982). She has directed several films for television, among them Parole Board (1990), A Private Matter (1992), Invisible Child (1999) and Hunger Point (2003). In 2002, she directed independent film acting legend Gena Rowlands in Charms for the Easy Life (2002) for Showtime.
In 1995, Silver proved her versatility when she directed a series for National Public Radio called Great Jewish Stories from Eastern Europe and Beyond, which was co-produced by the National Yiddish Book Center. In 1983, she also directed Wallace Shawn and Hermione Gingold in How to Be a Perfect Person in Just 3 Days.
Joan Micklin Silver died at her Manhattan home on December 31, 2020. She was 85.- Actress
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