Birthdays: August 16
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Moria Casán was born on 16 August 1946 in Buenos Aires, Federal District, Argentina. She is an actress and producer, known for Buenos vecinos (1999), Primavera (2016) and Cruzadas (2011).- Actress
- Producer
Aasha Davis was born in Alexandria, VA and grew up in several different areas around the world. She went to boarding school in Barbados when she was 7 years-old until she left several years later to attend school in Montreal, Canada. Aasha became an expert at switching schools during her second appearance at Washington International School which promotes an international education stemming heavily in languages. Aasha graduated from high school at Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, MA where she played varsity volleyball and learned all about classic rock. Ms. Davis spent her college years at George Washington University where she received her BA in Communications. Shortly after college Aasha moved to Los Angeles to work behind the scenes. Her first industry job was working as a production assistant on a late-night talk show that convinced her to appear in several skits. It was there that Aasha discovered her love for acting. Aasha is best known to audiences for a number of television and commercial appearances including such prominent television series as "Criminal Minds," "Grey's Anatomy," "Castle" and "House M.D.," as well as the ground breaking series "South of Nowhere," and is probably best known for her role as "Waverly Grady" on NBC's "Friday Night Lights." In 2009 Aasha was nominated for a NAACP Los Angeles Theatre Award for Best Supporting Actress in the very funny adaptation of "Coffee Will Make You Black." Her first feature, The Sundance hit, "Pariah" holds The Sundance Cinematography Award, The Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award and a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Film. Additionally 10 years after its release Pariah has been inducted into the Academy Museum and preserved by the Criterion Collection. Ms. Davis also starred in and produced the popular and award winning web series "The Unwritten Rules." In addition Aasha has also had the pleasure of joining the ensemble cast of the Emmy Nominated Drunk History! She resides in Los Angeles with her son.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Agnes Bruckner was born on 16 August 1985 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Murder by Numbers (2002), Blood and Chocolate (2007) and Anna Nicole (2013).- Actor
- Soundtrack
Al Hibbler was born on 16 August 1915 in Tyro, Mississippi, USA. He was an actor, known for Nightfall (1956), After Hours (2009) and Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall (1948). He died on 24 April 2001 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Alan Madanes was born on 16 August 1994 in Argentina. He is an actor, known for Bia (2019), Freeks (2023) and Kally's Mashup (2017).
- Actor
- Editor
- Director
Alex Kaluzhsky was born on 16 August 1984 in Odessa, Ukrainian SSR, USSR [now Ukraine]. He is an actor and editor, known for The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009), Rie and Aria.- Alexandra Larsson has been married to Patrick Andersson since July 2022. They have two children.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Andy Milder was born on 16 August 1969 in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. He is an actor, known for Apollo 13 (1995), Armageddon (1998) and Frost/Nixon (2008). He is married to Dr. Betty Lee.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Captivating, gifted, and sensational, Angela Bassett's presence has been felt in theaters and on stages and television screens throughout the world. Angela Evelyn Bassett was born on August 16, 1958 in New York City, to Betty Jane (Gilbert), a social worker, and Daniel Benjamin Bassett, a preacher's son. Bassett and her sister D'nette grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida with their mother. As a single mother, Betty stressed the importance of education for her children. With the assistance of an academic scholarship, Bassett matriculated into Yale University. In 1980, she received her B.A. in African-American studies from Yale University. In 1983, she earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the Yale School of Drama. It was at Yale that Bassett met her husband, Courtney B. Vance, a 1986 graduate of the Drama School.
Bassett first appeared in small roles on The Cosby Show (1984) and Spenser: For Hire (1985), but it was not until 1990 that a spate of television roles brought her notice. Her breakthrough role, though, was playing Tina Turner, whom she had never seen perform before taking the role, in What's Love Got to Do with It (1993). Bassett's performance earned her an Academy Award nomination and a Golded Globe Award for Best Actress.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Anita Gillette was born on 16 August 1936 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. She is an actress, known for Moonstruck (1987). She has been married to David Bates since 4 October 2021. She was previously married to Armand Eugene Coullet and Dr. Ronald William Gillette.- Actress
- Soundtrack
The dark, petulant beauty of this petite American film and musical star worked to her advantage, especially in her early dramatic career. Anne Marie Blythe was born of Irish stock to Harry and Annie (nee Lynch) Blythe on August 16, 1928 in Mt. Kisco, New York. Her parents split while she was young and she, her mother and elder sister, Dorothy, moved to New York City, where the girls attended various Catholic schools. Already determined at an early age to perform, Ann attended Manhattan's Professional Children's School and was already a seasoned radio performer, particularly on soap dramas, while in elementary school. A member of New York's Children's Opera Company, the young girl made an important Broadway debut in 1941 at age 13 as the daughter of the characters played by Paul Lukas and Mady Christians in the classic Lillian Hellman WWII drama "Watch on the Rhine", billed as Anne (with an extra "e") Blyth. She stayed with the show for two years.
While touring with the play in Los Angeles, the teenager was noticed by director Henry Koster at Universal and given a screen test. Signed on at age 16 as Ann (without the "e") Blyth, the pretty, photographic colleen displayed her warbling talent in her debut film, Chip Off the Old Block (1944), a swing-era teen musical starring Universal song-and-dance favorites Donald O'Connor and Peggy Ryan. She followed it pleasantly enough with other "B" tune-fests such as The Merry Monahans (1944) and Babes on Swing Street (1944). It wasn't until Warner Bros. borrowed her to make self-sacrificing mother Joan Crawford's life pure hell as the malicious, spiteful daughter Veda in the film classic Mildred Pierce (1945) that she really clicked with viewers and set up her dramatic career. With murder on her young character's mind, Hollywood stood up and took notice of this fresh-faced talent.
Although Blyth lost the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year to another Anne (Anne Revere), she was borrowed again by Warner Bros. to film Danger Signal (1945). During filming, she suffered a broken back in a sledding accident while briefly vacationing in Lake Arrowhead and had to be replaced in the role. After a long convalescence (over a year and a half in a back brace) Universal used her in a wheelchair-bound cameo in Brute Force (1947).
Her first starring role was an inauspicious one opposite Sonny Tufts in Swell Guy (1946), but she finally began gaining some momentum again. Instead of offering her musical gifts, she continued her serious streak with Killer McCoy (1947) and a dangerously calculated role in Another Part of the Forest (1948), a prequel to The Little Foxes (1941) in which Blyth played the Bette Davis role of Regina at a younger age. Her attempts at lighter comedy were mild at best, playing a fetching creature of the sea opposite William Powell in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) and a teen infatuated with a much-older film star, Robert Montgomery, in Once More, My Darling (1949).
At full-throttle as a star in the early 1950s, Blyth transitioned easily among glossy operettas, wide-eyed comedies and all-out melodramas, some of which tended to be overbaked and, thereby, overplayed. When not dishing out the high dramatics of an adopted girl searching for her birth mother in Our Very Own (1950) or a wrongly-convicted murderess in Thunder on the Hill (1951), she was introducing classic standards as wife to Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso (1951) or playing pert and perky in such light confections as Katie Did It (1950). A well-embraced romantic leading lady, she made her last film for Universal playing a Russian countess courted by Gregory Peck in The World in His Arms (1952). MGM eventually optioned her for its musical outings, having borrowed her a couple of times previously. She became a chief operatic rival to Kathryn Grayson at the studio during that time. Grayson, however, fared much better than Blyth, who was given rather stilted vehicles.
Catching Howard Keel's roving eye while costumed to the nines in the underwhelming Rose Marie (1954) and his daughter in Kismet (1955), she also gussied up other stiff proceedings like The Student Prince (1954) and The King's Thief (1955) will attest. Unfortunately, Blyth came to MGM at the tail end of the Golden Age of musicals and probably suffered for it. She was dropped by the studio in 1956. She reunited with old Universal co-star Donald O'Connor in The Buster Keaton Story (1957). Blyth ended her film career on a high note, however, playing the tragic title role in the The Helen Morgan Story (1957) opposite a gorgeously smirking Paul Newman. She had a field day as the piano-sitting, kerchief-holding, liquor-swilling torch singer whose train wreck of a personal life was destined for celluloid. Disappointing for her personally, no doubt, was that her singing voice had to be dubbed (albeit superbly) by the highly emotive, non-operatic songstress Gogi Grant.
Through with films, Blyth's main concentration (after her family) were musical theatre and television. Over the years a number of classic songs were tailored to suit her glorious lyric soprano both in concert form and on the civic light opera/summer stock stages. "The Sound of Music", "The King and I", "Carnival", "Bittersweet", "South Pacific", "Show Boat" and "A Little Night Music" are but a few of her stage credits. During this time Blyth appeared as the typical American housewife for Hostess in its Twinkie, cupcake and fruit pie commercials, a job that lasted well over a decade. She made the last of her sporadic TV guest appearances on Quincy M.E. (1976) and Murder, She Wrote (1984) in the mid-1980s.
Married since 1953 to Dr. James McNulty, the brother of late Irish tenor Dennis Day, she is the mother of five, Blyth continues to be seen occasionally at social functions and conventions.- Actress
- Producer
- Stunts
Arden Cho was born on 16 August 1985 in Amarillo, Texas, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Teen Wolf (2011), Chicago Med (2015) and The Honor List (2018).- Actress
- Sound Department
- Music Department
Barbara Goodson is a "lifer" in show biz. Truly in love with all aspects of this wild & crazy craft. Was aware of her mimicry skills early on in life when she imitated family members & caught on to the positive attention it gave her & the pleasure & camaraderie it gave to others. She delights in the task of putting her own stamp on a character whether it be dramatic, musical, comedic &/or in film, cartoons, v/o, nightclubs, stage, TV, etc.
Stuck in a tiny woman's body has always been her challenge since she's always felt much bigger than her under 5' stature & has been recognized for her powerful vocal range playing many nasty yet amusing "bad ladies" on & off screen.
She has no intention of ever retiring...& continues to dream of working with more of the 'heavy weights' & being cast in meaningful, well received & lucrative projects. Believes acting is a blessed career that can move mountains. It's not for sissies & contains a community of (mostly) evolved, concerned humans. She is proud to have had the modicum of success she has achieved & looks forward to more.- This elegant, ladylike baroness and 50s Broadway star was born with the lengthy name Elizabeth Caroline Maria Agatha Felicitas Therese Freiin von Furstenberg-Hedringen in Arnsberg, Germany on August 16, 1931, the daughter of Count Franz-Egon von Fürstenberg and his wife Elizabeth (Johnson). A lady of privilege, Betsy moved to America growing up and attended Miss Hewitt's Classes and New York Tutoring School. She performed with the American Ballet Theater at age 7.
A teenage model with strong designs on acting, she prepared for the theater at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner and made her stage debut in New York at the Morosco Theatre in 1951 with "Second Threshold." She went on to create a gallery of breezy and stylish debutantes and society girls and enjoyed her first major hit playing Myra Hagerman in "Oh, Men! Oh, Women!" in 1953. Her role would be played by Barbara Rush in the 1957 movie version. Betsy continued with prime roles throughout the 1950s in such plays as "The Chalk Garden," "Child of Fortune," "Nature's Way," "Wonderful Town" and "Much Ado About Nothing," among others. She was at her best playing impish, independent women. At the same time she also graced a number of live and taped TV dramas, including 'Playhouse 90," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "Kraft Television Theatre" and a variety of talk shows. She became a regular presence on a variety of daytime soaps as well with roles on The Secret Storm (1954), Bluebeard (1955), Another World (1964) and As the World Turns (1956)
In the 1960s Betsy appeared in another sparkling comedy hit playing the role of Tiffany in "Mary, Mary" starring Barbara Bel Geddes and Barry Nelson. Again, however, when it came time to film the movie version, Betsy was replaced...this time by then-popular TV star Diane McBain. Making her first and only film appearance in the Italian-made _Donne senza nome (1949)_ [Women Without Names], one can only surmise the film career she might have had, had she been able to recreate some of her lovely stage roles. In the 1970s, Betsy was seen opposite Maureen Stapleton in "The Gingerbread Lady" and played Sybil in a production of "Private Lives." Light comedies also came her way with "There's a Girl in My Soup" (with Don Ameche and Taina Elg), "Absurd Person Singular," "Status Quo Vadis" and "Avanti!"
Married to Guy Vincent de la Maisoneuve, a mining engineer, they divorced in 1966 after two children. She turned to writing articles for columns in 1968; her novel Mirror Mirror, the story of an jet-setting heiress and her search for love, was published in 1988. She later married (1984) real-estate broker John J. Reynolds, who died ten years later. Retired from the stage in later years, she would often be glimpsed at high society gatherings and theater benefit functions until illness set in. She died of complications from Alzheimer's disease on April 21, 2015. - Actor
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Bob Balaban was born on 16 August 1945 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Gosford Park (2001), A Mighty Wind (2003) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). He has been married to Lynn Grossman since 1 April 1977. They have two children.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Australian actor Brendan Cowell was raised in the beach side suburb of Cronulla by parents Yvonne and Bruce. His older sisters, both singers and dancers, encouraging Brendan to create his own shows to perform after dinner in front of the family. At age 8, he was cast in a TV commercial while awaiting one of his sisters to come out of a dance rehearsal. He worked in television drama during his teens, before getting his BA in Communication, Theatre and Media from Charles Sturt University, Bathurst in 1998. He continued to work in film, theatre and television as an actor, but then began writing his own plays in the late 1990's to immediate success. Brendan was the recipient of the 2003 Griffin Playwright award for most outstanding new work in a given year, and his play 'Bed' earned him a share of the 2001 Patrick White Playwrights award, the richest playwriting award in Australia for new talent. Brendan ran Wharf2Loud at the Sydney Theatre Company for two years, a company later succeeded by Cate Blanchett. Brendan's next foray into television saw him writing for the SBS TV satire 'Life Support', of which he played Todd the Toolman, and the widely acclaimed 'Love My Way', which he played Tom Jackson, and wrote several episodes. Brendan acted in a number of Australian films, including Matthew Saville's 'Noise', and the war epic 'Beneath Hill 60', later directing the film adaptation of his most successful play 'Ruben Guthrie', which opened the Sydney Film Festival in 2015 and played at the London BFI the following year. After the overseas success of the ABC TV adaptation of 'The Slap' a single series drama which Brendan wrote and acted in, winning the AFI for best screenplay in TV in a given year - Brendan boldly moved to London in 2016, where he achieved immediate success on stage with the Simon Stone directed 'Yerma' starring Billie Piper, at which Joe Wright, the well-renowned film maker (Atonement), spotted him for the lead role in the Young Vic production of 'Life of Galileo' which played to full houses and featured the music of The Chemical Brothers. Brendan has also starred in season 7 of 'Game of Thrones' since his move to the UK, enjoying a small role in 'A Current War' next to Michael Shannon, and 'Press', a TV series about the tabloids for BBC 1, before he heads off to Broadway with 'Yerma' in 2018. Brendan has two original TV scripts in development with UK producers and networks and a new stage play for England called 'London Bridge'. He is single, 41, and has no pets.- Director
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Bruce Beresford was born in Australia and graduated from Sydney University in 1962. He served as Film Officer for the British Film Institute Production Board from 1966-1971 and as a Film Advisor to the Arts Council of Great Britain. Beresford has also directed several operas including Girl Of The Golden West (Puccini), staged for the Spoleto Festival in Charleston and Spoleto (Italy) and Elektra (Strauss), which was staged for the State Opera Company of South Australia and performed in Adelaide and Melbourne. It won the Award for Best Opera Production of 1991. Immediately prior to starting production on PARADISE ROAD, Beresford directed SWEENEY TODD for the Portland Opera in Oregon.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Caitlin was born on August 16, 1953 in Whitefish Bay, Milwakee, Wisconsin. Growing up there, she and her two older sisters turned their garage into a theatre. She made her formal stage debut at eight, when her mother, a drama teacher, cast Caitlin as Peter Pan in a Cumberland School summer production. Caitlin admits there may have been some bias at that audition, but none was evident when she joined the North Shore Children's Theatre, a local professional touring company, at age 11. She played clarinet in the band at Whitefish Bay High School, where she was also a member of the choir. At 17, she won a scholarship at the prestigious Julliard School of Drama in New York City.
In her four years at Julliard, Caitlin studied under Oscar-winning actor John Houseman, and performed such classic roles as Masha in "The Seagull," Doreen in "Tartuffe," Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet," Mary Boyle in "Juno and the Paycock," Maryanne in "Measure for Measure," and Esmeralda in "Camino Reef."
After graduation, Caitlin made her off-Broadway debut as Loretta in "Hot House" at the Chelsea Theatre. She remained at Chelsea to play Finkel in "Yentl" and to understudy Tovah Feldshuh in the title role. She moved to Broadway to understudy the role of Elizabeth in "A Matter of Gravity," starring Katherine Hepburn, then to Seattle to appear as Celia in "As You Like It," Gwendolyn in "Travesties," and Eylie in "Ladyhouse Blues."
Caitlin next appeared in "Gogol" at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and played the double roles of Belle and Mrs. Cratchit in "A Christmas Carol" at Playwrights Horizon. On closing night she made a trial move to Los Angeles and in five weeks was cast as Anna Marie Hollyhock in an ABC comedy series, "Apple Pie." The series introduced Caitlin to tap dancing, an interest she still pursues.
Caitlin remained in Los Angeles to play fourteen-year old Bianca in "White Marriage" at the Odyssey Theatre, which earned her a Drama-Logue award for best actress. She also appeared in two television movies, "Mark Twain's America" and "The Seeding of Sarah Burns."
She returned to the East to star as Ersilla Drei in Pirandello's "Naked" at the Syracuse Stage, and as Amy in the horror feature "He Knows You're Alone." Performances in "Ape Watch" at the Mark Taper Forum Lab, "The Brides" at the Lenox Art Centre, and off-Broadway as Olive Lashbrook in the 40s classic "The Voice of the Turtle" and "Scenes and Revelations" soon followed. She also appeared as waitress Lurleen Hamett in ABC's "One Life to Live."
One of Caitlin's early roles was in He Knows You're Alone (1980) (best known as Tom Hanks's film debut). She also played 1930's Hollywood actress Dolores Farrar in Woody Allen's film A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) (1982). Allen would cast her in two more films: Zelig (1983) (1983) and The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). She also acted in Three O'Clock High (1987) (1987), which was executive-produced by Steven Spielberg.
She was best known to TV viewers for her performances as Sarah Stickney White in Tales of the Gold Monkey (1982) (1982) and as the first Snow White in The Charmings (1987) (1987). As Sarah, she was an American secret agent who poses as a singer to cover her activities as an American agent operating in the South Pacific. And as Snow White, she played the fairy tale character surviving in the modern world to perfection.
She has also created a company called "Caitlin" which markets perfumes that she personally created.
Caitlin continues to act, her recent feature film was Brooklyn Lobster (2005), where she played Aunt Fran.
She lives on a horse farm outside New York City, with her many pets, including dogs and horses.- Actor
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Cam graduated from Auburn High School in Auburn, Washington, in 2001. His family lives in Lake Tapps, WA. His father's name is Jay, his mother's name is Kim, and he has one older sister, Kelsie. His father is one of the founders of a popular restaurant chain called The Rock, Wood Fired Pizza & Spirits. Cam resides in West Hollywood, California.- Actor
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Cameron Monaghan was born in Santa Monica, California. Cameron's debut TV role as "Winthrop Paroo" in The Music Man (2003) was originally played by Ron Howard in The Music Man (1962). Cameron began his acting career at 5 years old in commercials. At age 7, he began appearing on stage as Stuart Little in "Stuart Little" and as Piglet in "Winnie the Pooh" at Little Palm Family Theatre in Boca. His most famous rolls include Ian Gallagher in "Shameless US" and Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska in "Gotham".- Carmen Llywelyn was born on 16 August 1973 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. She is an actress, known for Chasing Amy (1997), Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) and Never Been Kissed (1999). She was previously married to Jason Lee.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Though English-born, Carole Shelley spent almost her entire award-winning career in the theatre in America, becoming one of Broadway's mainstays and a true pioneer of the American theatre.
Shelley was born in London, England, to Deborah (Bloomstein), an opera singer, and Curtis Shelley, a composer. A naturalized U.S. citizen, Carole stayed busy on all fronts in the entertainment industry in films, television and, of course, the live stage. Her Broadway credits include "The Odd Couple" (her Broadway debut) playing the hilarious Gwendolyn Pigeon, the intended blind date for the hapless Felix, a role she reprised for the film The Odd Couple (1968) and in the later television series (The Odd Couple (1970). Also on Broadway, she starred in "The Miser", "Stepping Out" (Tony nomination), "The Elephant Man" (Tony Award, Best Actress), "Hay Fever", "The Norman Conquests" (LADCC Award), "Absurd Person Singular" (Tony nomination) and "Loot".
Her national tours include "Broadway Bound", "The Royal Family" and "Noises Off". She also worked off-Broadway, in plays including "The Film Society", "London Suite", "The Destiny of Me", "Richard II" (New York Shakespeare Festival), "Later Life" (Drama Desk nomination), "Cabaret Verboten", "What the Butler Saw", "Little Murders", "Twelve Dreams" (Obie award), "Tartuffe".
Returning to London, she replaced Maggie Smith in "Lettuce and Lovage" (she had gone to America to star in the Broadway run of the play) in the West End. Always interested in remaining busy, she never turned down a good opportunity for work and acquitted herself admirably, stepping into such long running hits as "Cabaret", "Show Boat", "The Last Night of Ballyhoo" and "Noises Off".
She kept busy in films, too, appearing in Quiz Show (1994), The Road to Wellville (1994), Jungle 2 Jungle (1997), The Super (1991), and provided some delightful vocal characterizations for many Disney animated features: Hercules (1997), The Aristocats (1970), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) and Robin Hood (1973).
Carole Shelley died on August 31, 2018, in Manhattan, New York City.
In honor of Shelley's work on Broadway the marquee lights of The Gershwin Theatre, The Walter Kerr Theatre, The Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, and The Imperial Theatre were dimmed on September 5, 2018 at 6:45 PM for one minute in her memory.- Actress
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She attended Mount Douglas Senior Secondary in Victoria B.C. and studied drama at the Kalidoscope Theatre and dance at Kidco theatre dance group. Kidco traveled all over dancing for schools and at sporting events. After graduating Carrie Ann began modelling to help support her family. Holding down odd job and doing extra work wasn't paying the bills. Then she landed a role in Happy Gilmore (1996) with Adam Sandler. Unfortunatly the world would have to wait to see Carrie Ann as her role was left on the cutting room floor.- Writer
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- Music Department
Charles Bukowski, the American poet, short-story writer, and novelist, was born Heinrich Karl Bukowski, Jr. in Andernach, Germany on August 1920. He was the son of Henry Bukowski, a US soldier who was part of the post-World War I occupation force, and Katharina Fett, a German woman. His father, his wife and young "Henry Charles" returned to the United States in 1922, settling in Los Angeles, California, the setting of much of "Hank" Bukowski's oeuvre. With Raymond Chandler, Bukowski is the great chronicler of the City of Angels, and after John Steinbeck and Robinson Jeffers, who influenced Bukowski's poetry, he arguably is the most important and certainly one of the most influential writers produced by the Golden state.
Bukowski's childhood was marred by a violent father, who regularly beat him with a razor strop until his teen years, and then by the Great Depression. When Bukowski went through adolescence, he developed an awful case of acne vulgaris which disfigured his face and made him feel like an outsider. His father frequently was out of work during the Depression, and he took out his pain and anxiety on his son. The younger Bukowski took to drink at a young age, and became a rather listless underachiever as a means of rebellion against not only his father, but against society in general, the society his father wanted him to become a productive member of. The young Bukowski could care less.
During his school years, Bukowski read widely, and he entered Los Angeles City College after graduating from high school to study journalism and literature with the idea of becoming a writer. He left home after his father read some of his stories and went berserk, destroying his output and throwing his possessions out onto the lawn, a lawn that the young Bukowski had to mow weekly and would be beaten for if the grass wasn't perfectly cut. Bukowski left City College after a year and went on the bum, traveling to Atlanta, where he lived in a shack and subsisted on candy bars. He would continue to return to his parents' house when he was busted flat and had nowhere else to go.
At City College, Bukwoski briefly flirted with a pathetic, ad hoc, pro-fascist student group. Proud of being a German, he did not feel inclined to go to war against Hitler's Germany. When America entered World War II, Bukowski resisted entreaties from his friends and father to join the service. He began living the life of a wandering hobo and a bum, frequently living on skid row as he worked his way through a meaningless series of jobs in L.A. and other cities across the U.S. He wound up in New York City during the war after his short story, 'Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip,' was accepted by "Story" magazine. He disliked New York and soon decamped for more hospitable climes. He was content to go to public libraries and read -- he discovered the L.A. writer John Fante, whom heavily influenced his own work and whom he would champion when he became famous -- and loaf.
The story, published in "Story" in 1944, was the highlight of the first part of his writing career. He returned to Los Angeles and became a Bottle Baby in his mid-twenties, forsaking the typewriter for John Barleycorn and Janet Cooney Baker, an alcoholic ten years his senior who became his lover, off and on, for the the next decade. They would shack up in a series of skid row rooms until the money and the booze would run out, and Jane would hurt the turf. She was a tortured soul who could match Bukowski drink for drink, and she was the love of his life. They would drift apart in the mid-1950s until coming together again at the beginning of a new decade, before she drank herself to death in 1962.
Bukowski got a temporary Christmas job at the Post Office in 1952, and stuck with his job as a mail carrier for three years. In 1955, he was hospitalized in a charity ward with a bleeding ulcer that nearly killed him. He was told never to drink again, but he fell off the water wagon the day he got out of the hospital and never regretted it.
After recovering from his brush with death -- he would have died if an idealistic doctor hadn't demanded from the nurses that had left Bukowski to die that they give him a massive blood transfusion -- he began to write again: poetry. Bukowski developed into one of the most original and influential poets of the post-War era, though he was never anthologized in the United States (though those that were influenced by him were). Bukwoski, who chronicled the low-life that he lived, never gained any critical respect in America, either in the journals or in academia.
Barbara Frye, a woman born to wealth who published the small poetry magazine "Harlequin," began to publish Bukowski. She sent a letter to him saying she feared no one would marry her because of a congenital conformity essentially leaving her with no neck. Bukowski, who had never met her, wrote back that he would marry her, and he did. The marriage lasted two years. In 1958, he went back to work for the Post Office, this time as a mail sorting clerk, a job he would hold for almost a dozen hellish years.
His first collection of poetry, "Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail" was published as a chapbook in 1959 in a run of 200 copies. The influence of Jeffers is very strong in the early work. One can also detect W.H. Auden, although Bukowski never mentioned him, and he was phlegmatic whereas Auden was dry. But that same sense of an outsider looking in critically at his society was there.
Bukowski's poetry, like all his writing, was essentially autobiographical and rooted in clinical detail rather than metaphor. The poems detailed the desperate lives of men on the verge -- of suicide, madness, a mental breakdown, an economic bust-out, another broken relationship -- whose saving grace was endurance. The relationship between male and female was something out of Thomas Hobbes, and while Bukowski's life certainly wasn't short, one will find in the poetry and prose much that is brutish.
Jon Edgar Webb, a former swindler who became a littérateur with his "The Outsider" magazine, became enamored of Bukowski's work in the early 1960s. Webb, who had published the work of Lawrence Ferlenghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, and William Burroughs, published Bukowski, then dedicated an issue of his magazine to Buk was "Outsider of the Year," and eventually decided to publish, with his own bespoke hand press, a collection of Bukowski's poetry.
Bukowski began to establish a reputation in the small magazines that proliferated with the "mimeograph revolution" of the late 1960s, micro-circulation "magazines" run off on mimeograph and Gestetner machines. Bukowski began moving away from a more traditional, introspection poetry to more expressionistic, free-form "verse," and began dabbling in the short story, a form he became a master of. He also began a weekly column for an underground Los Angeles newspaper, "Open City," called "Notes of a Dirty Old Man." The texts of his column were collected in a collection of the same title published by Ferlenghetti's City Lights press in 1969. (City Lights also would publish his first book of short stories, entitled "Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness," in 1972).
In the column, Bukowski would introduce ideas, vignettes and stories, many of which would be further developed into the short stories that helped make his reputation. The Bukowski of the mid- to late- 1960s and 1970s became one of the greatest short story writers that America has produced, and his reputation grew steadily in Europe. (Though a literary lion on the West Coast, Buk never was much appreciated in the New York City that he had spurned which was, after all, the arbiter of culture. Since he didn't exist in their ken, he didn't exist at all, with the surprising result for Europeans that the most popular American writer in Europe was little known by Americans.)
There was envy as Bukowski became increasingly popular. Aside from the master of kitsch Rod McKuen, Bukowski was probably the best selling poet America produced after World War II. By the end of the 1970s, he was the most popular American writer in Germany and also had a huge reputation in France and other parts of Europe. Yet, he remained virtually unknown in the United States, except among the core of the Bukowski cult who faithfully bought his books.
Bukowski's success as a writer in the 1970s can be attributed to the patronage of John Martin, a book collector and chap book publisher who offered to subsidize Bukowski to the tune of $100 a month for life. Bukowski took him up on the offer, quit his job at the Post Office in 1969, and set out to be a writer who made his living by the typewriter alone (and an occasional poetry reading). Martin established his Black Sparrow Press to print Bukowski, and Bukowski proceeded to begin his first novel while continuing to write poetry and short stories. The first novel, "Post Office," was published by Black Sparrow in 1971. The Bukowski phenomenon began to gain momentum.
Around the time he quit the Post Office, Bukowski took up with the poet and sculptress Linda King, who was 20 years his junior. They began a tumultuous relationship juiced in equal parts with sadism and masochism that extended into the mid-1970s. In his 1978 autobiographical novel "Women," Bukowski writes about how his alter ego, "Henry Chinaski," had not had a woman in four years. Now, as Bukowski became a literary phenomenon in the small/alternative press world, he became a literary if not literal Don Juan, bedding down his legions of women fans who flocked to his apartment on DeLongre Avenue in the sleaziest part of Hollywood. (It was at this time that Bukowski was friends with a dirty book store manager who was the father of Leonardo DiCaprio.)
Bukowski's alter ego in his novels, Chinaski (who significantly shares Bukowski's real first name, the name he went by; he used his middle name "Charles" for his poetry as it seemed more literary, and possibly to deny his father, who shared the same Christian name), shares an affinity with with the underground denizens of Feodor Dostoyevsky's work and the protagonists of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's novels "Journey to the End of Night" and "Death on the Installment Plan." Celine arguably is the largest influence on Bukowski's prose, aside from Hemingway (who influenced Bukowski's entire generation) and Fante. Like Celine, in World War II, Bukowski flirted with fascism (though Bukowski never descended into the anti-semitism of Celine or any other type of racism in his work); like Celine, he despised America and the brand of capitalism once known as "Fordism," assembly line industrialism and the petty consumer society Bukowski found abominable and which he tried to escape.
Chinaski is a hard-drinking, would-be womanizer who is ready to duke it out with the bums, crooks and assorted low-lives he lives and drinks amongst, though occasionally he visits high society through the ministrations of a woman. Like Bukowski himself, he will accept company but prefers to be alone to drink and listen to classical music on the radio: Beethoven, Mozart, and Mahler among others.
Chinaski was introduced in the autobiographical short-story "Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beats," his first published short story, printed in chap book form in 1965. Chinaski's life is chronicled in Bukowski's novels "Post Office" (1971), "Factotum" (1975), "Women" (1978), and "Ham on Rye" (1982). Bukowski is not naturally gifted as a novelist, and while "Women" is superb and the very short "Post Office" is highly readable, "Factotum" and "Ham on Rye" are not up to the standards of Bukowski's short stories.
As his social situation evolved, Bukowski's works broadened from tales of low-lives and bums and losers; he added to his repertoire meditative and sarcastic accounts of his new life. A constant in his work became poems and short stories about the race track, to which he had been introduced by Jane back in the 1950s. The race track as metaphor suited Bukowski as it represented something more than luck or chance. A horse player had to work at it to be any good and beat the odds, and the odds were definitely stacked against the crowd as the track took its vig right off the top, when it wasn't outright and forthrightly fixing the race.
Going with the crowd was to be avoided in order to improve one's odds, and the track, the establishment, was out to f--- the bettor, but spiritual kin to Camus' Sissyphus, the bettor on nags had to have the wit to at least get the stone to the crown of the hill and avoid getting crushed as it courses its way back. The bettor was hip to the fact that the rock always fell back and would always fall back, but a good living or at least survival could be had by beating the track, beating the establishment, if the bettor knew how to play the horses. It was all a matter of developing his own system, and standing aloof from the crowd, whose dumb, manipulated enthusiasms skewed the odds. And knowing when to change to a new system, to keep ahead of the track, and the crowd. Bukowski was the antithesis of Carl Sandburg and Sandburg's "The People."
Bukowski was and would remain a literary outsider. In 1973, Taylor Hackford presented Bukowski to a wider audience via an award-winning documentary for Los Angeles public television station KCET. "Bukowski" won the San Francisco Film Festival's Silver Reel Award after being voted the best cultural film on public TV. After his relationship with Linda King petered out, Bukowski met Linda Lee Beighle, a health food restaurateur twenty-five years his junior in 1976. They became a couple and Bukowski's life became more balanced. With a stable relationship and steady royalties in the low six-figure range, Bukowski became a home owner, albeit in a middle class neighborhood in San Pedro. He now had a swimming pool, a hot tub, and drove a black BMW he paid cash for to the track. He palled around with Sean Penn and U2 dedicated a song to him at a Los Angeles concert.
The Muse, whom Buk bet on as faithfully as he did the ponies, left him when it came to the short story sometime in the 1980s. The poetry always ran through his head and down into his fingers, but it became less artful, though the powerful voice remained. Buk wrote a screenplay for Barbet Schroeder, which was made into the movie Barfly (1987), and Bukowski became known in the United States at last. He refused to appear on The Tonight Show (1962) with Johnny Carson, but let "People" magazine interview him as in his reasoning, it would be read by normal people at the supermarket checkout lines. It was the "Crowd" he despised but honored in his own way by refusing to be part of the "better" part of society that kept them down.
Always immensely prolific when it came to his poetry, and aided by a personal computer in the 1980s, Bukowski generated so much material that originals are still being published 10 years after his death. He finished his last novel, an L.A./Chandler/private detective/noir spoof called "Pulp" shortly before he lost his battle with leukemia; it, like the final poetry collection published in his lifetime, "The Last Night of the Earth Poems," is full of intimations of mortality, and of course, his mordant humor.
On March 9, 1994, in his native Los Angeles, the man Jean Genet and Jean-Paul Sartre called America's "greatest poet" died. In his short story collection "Hot Water Music," Bukwoski wrote, "There are so many," she said, "who go by the name of poet. But they have no training, no feeling for their craft. The savages have taken over the castle. There's no workmanship, no care, simply a demand to be accepted." The remarkable endurance of the man who never asked for acceptance, the endurance that took him nearly forty years beyond the near-death his drinking and despair had brought him in 1955, finally gave out, and not to the booze and the carousing and anomie, but to a cancer. Many of his fans thought it was remarkable that the "Dirty Old Man" had made it to 74, but it was a brave front: they greatly mourned the passing of their favorite writer, a man that could be read by anyone of any class or educational background.
His friend, Sean Penn, dedicated his film The Crossing Guard (1995) to Bukowski, with the words felt by many who had loved him: "Hank, I still miss you."
We still do.- Actress
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Christine Cavanaugh (birth name: Christine Josephine Sandberg) was an American actress from Layton, Utah. She emerged as a prolific voice actress in the 1990s, voicing roles in many films and television series. She chose to retire from acting in 2001, at the age of 38. Her most famous voice roles were the energetic tomboy Gosalyn Waddlemeyer-Mallard in "Darkwing Duck" (1991-1992), the timid Chuckie Finster in "Rugrats" (1991-2002), the heroic cyborg Bunnie Rabbot in "Sonic the Hedgehog" (1993-1994), the shape-shifting monster Oblina in "Aaahh!!! Real Monsters" (1994-1997), the overweight boy Martin Sherman in "The Critic" (1994-1995), the orphaned piglet Babe in the film "Babe" (1995), the genius child Dexter in "Dexter's Laboratory" (1996-2002), and the prehistoric caveboy Bamm-Bamm Rubble in "Cave Kids" (1996).
In 1963, Cavanaugh was born in Layton, Utah. The city is a bedroom community for the Hill Air Force Base, one of the largest employers in the state of Utah. The base has been in operation since 1940. Cavanaugh's parents were Waldo Eugene Sandberg and his wife Rheta Mason. She and her family were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a nontrinitarian Christian church whose membership includes much of Utah's population.
In 1985, Cavanaugh married Kevin James Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh was her married name and she kept it throughout her career. The marriage ended in a divorce within a few years. She never remarried. She started performing voice roles c. 1988. In 1990, she had a guest role in the live-action sitcom "Cheers". She played Terry Gardner, the new roommate of bartender Woody Boyd (played by Woody Harrelson). The co-habitation does not work out because Terry's jealous ex-husband attempts to reclaim her as his spouse.
Cavanaugh had much more success as a voice actress in the 1990s, while her live-action roles were few. In 1997, she had a memorable guest-appearance in the science fiction series "The X-Files". She played Amanda Nelligan, a woman impregnated by a shape-shifter. The shape-shifter in question primarily used his skills to seduce women, and the investigating agents eventually found out that he had fathered at least 5 children.
Cavanagh abruptly chose to retire from acting in 2001, for personal reasons. Previously recorded episodes featuring her voice continued to be released until 2003. She was replaced by Nancy Cartwright as the voice of Chuckie Finster, and by Candi Milo as the voice of Dexter.
Cavanagh lived in retirement until her death in December 2014. She died at her home in Cedar City, Utah. No cause of death was mentioned in press announcements. She was 51-years-old. Her remains were cremated. Her ashes were scattered into the Great Salt Lake, the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere. Cavanagh is fondly remembered by animation fans,. A number of the television series in which she appeared have maintained cult followings for decades.- Actor
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Clovis Cornillac was born on 16 August 1967 in Lyon, Rhône, France. He is an actor and director, known for A Very Long Engagement (2004), Asterix at the Olympic Games (2008) and Eden Log (2007). He has been married to Lilou Fogli since 30 August 2013. They have one child. He was previously married to Caroline Proust.- Actor
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Cole Jensen was born on 16 August 2001. He is an actor, known for The Invention of Lying (2009), Daredevil (2015) and Wrong (2012).- Coraje Ábalos was born on 16 August 1972 in Santiago del Estero, Argentina. He is an actor, known for Déjate querer (1993), Quereme (1994) and Drácula (1999).
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Cristin Milioti was born and raised in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. She has Jewish, Italian, Belgian, Czech, and Irish ancestry, and calls her family "Olive Garden Italian." In middle school, she found her love of acting at Long Lake Camp for the Arts in New York. She attended Cherry Hill High School East, graduating in 2003. She took acting classes at New York University, but dropped out during her freshman year. However, she is listed in the university's advertising.- Crystal took her first dancing classes (tap) when she was three years old. This led to the beginning of her professional career, which started with commercials at age 7. About the time she was 12 years old, Crystal stopped interviewing and auditioning for commercials; explaining that "they're like huge crowded cattle calls...". At age 11, she had her first acting role on television in Fatal Judgement (1988), a movie co-starring Patty Duke. Later, at age 12 and beyond, she went on to make occasional appearances on The Wonder Years (1988), a show in which her older sister, Danica McKellar, co-starred. At the age of 14, Crystal McKellar appeared in her second made-for-TV movie, Judgment (1990).
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Dale Raoul was born on 16 August 1956 in Missoula, Montana, USA. She is an actress, known for Blast from the Past (1999), Seven Pounds (2008) and The Mexican (2001). She has been married to Ray Thompson since 19 June 1986.- Dallys Ferreira was born on 16 August 1984 in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay.
- Daniel Stewart Sherman was born on 16 August 1970 in San Rafael, California, USA. He is an actor, known for Lodge 49 (2018), Marshall (2017) and Run All Night (2015).
- Dominik García-Lorido was born in Miami, Florida, the daughter of Maria Victoria "Marivi" Lorido and actor Andy García. She is the eldest of four children, with sisters Daniella, Alessandra, and brother Andrés. Her parents are both of Cuban descent, and her father was born in Havana. She grew up in Los Angeles and began dancing at the age of three.
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Born in Depression-era Texas, Donnie Dunagan moved with his parents to Memphis as a young child. There, as a three-year-old, he was taught to tap dance by a neighbor and entered in a talent contest at the Orpheum Theatre. Donnie won the $100 prize and caught the attention of a movie talent scout in the audience, who arranged for the family to come by train to Hollywood. The blonde moppet made his film debut in "Mother Carey's Chickens" (1938), played the son of the "Son of Frankenstein" (1939) and provided the voice of young Bambi for the 1942 animated classic. Dunagan later became a career Marine (1952-77), serving in Vietnam and working in counter intelligence.- Actor
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Donovan Jerome Leitch is an English-born actor and documentary maker. He is a member of the band Camp Freddy, and was a founding member of neo-glam group Nancy Boy along with Jason Nesmith. Son of pop singer Donovan Leitch (born Donovan Philips Leitch) and Enid Karl, born on August 16, 1967 in London UK.- Actress
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Elpidia Carrillo was born on 16 August 1961 in Paracuaro, Michoacan, Mexico. She is an actress and producer, known for Predator (1987), Salvador (1986) and Nine Lives (2005).- Actress
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Evanna Patricia Lynch is an Irish actress. Born in the town of Termonfeckin in Ireland, she is one of four children to Donal and Marguerite Lynch. Her acting career began in 2007 when she competed in an open audition against nearly 15,000 girls, and won the coveted role of Luna Lovegood in the "Harry Potter" movie franchise. She appeared in four Harry Potter films and became a main character in the final two films in 2010 and 2011. She also voiced her character in their tie-in video games. She continues to pursue acting and does charity work for organizations such as the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Ireland and The Harry Potter Alliance, of which she is a member of the Board of Advisors.- Music Department
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Eydie Gorme was born in New York on August 16, 1928 to Sephardic Jewish parents. Her father, Nessim Gormezano, was a Turkish-born tailor who changed his last name when he arrived in the United States. She began singing straight out of high school, with various big bands. But her big break came after she auditioned for, and joined, "The The Tonight Show (1953) Show" in 1953. There, for $90 a week, she sang solos and sang duets with the up-and-coming Steve Lawrence. The two performed on the show for five years, and married in 1957. After their "Tonight Show" stint, the pair had a short-lived TV show of their own, The Steve Lawrence-Eydie Gorme Show (1958). Then, Lawrence entered the Army leaving Gorme, a new mother, to frequent the night club circuit on her own. Two years later, when Lawrence was discharged, the couple came to a decision to enter show business more professionally. Their career took off, with audiences drawn to their penchant for the classics in favor of rock 'n' roll, as well as their spontaneous banter.- Actor
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A former college athlete at the University of Texas, Fess studied drama in the early fifties and debuted in Springfield Rifle (1952). He made only a handful of movies until he was signed by Walt Disney to star in the "Davy Crockett" series. When Walt was looking for an actor to play the part of Davy, he screened the sci-fi movie Them! (1954) with James Arness. When he saw Fess in a scene, he chose him over Arness and Fess became an instant celebrity when "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier" debuted in 1955. His appeal with children was enormous with the coon-skinned hat, the #1 hit song "The Ballad Of Davy Crockett", The Davy Crockett Bubble Gum Cards and Comic Books. But the craze ended almost as fast as it started in 1956, and Fess was typecast. Fess appeared in other Disney movies dealing with the early years of Davey and also in non-Crockett parts such as Old Yeller (1957). By 1959, unable to achieve the success that he had gained as Crockett, his career had leveled off. He made guest appearances on a number of television shows, but his attempted return to television in the series Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1962) was not successful. Unable to procure the rights to play Crockett from Disney, Fess tried the frontiersman role once again with the TV series Daniel Boone (1964). He played this role for six years and the fact that he had a beautiful red-headed wife in a color series did not hurt him at all. After Daniel Boone (1964), Fess retired from the screen and went into real estate, which was profitable. He was later forced to sue his "Daniel Boone" producers over the profits generated by the series.- Actor
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Frank Gifford was born on 16 August 1930 in Santa Monica, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Jerry Maguire (1996), Viva Knievel! (1977) and Spin City (1996). He was married to Kathie Lee Gifford, Astrid Gifford and Maxine Avis Ewart. He died on 9 August 2015 in Riverside, Connecticut, USA.- Writer
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Frankie Boyle was born on 16 August 1972 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. He is a writer and actor, known for Hangar 10 (2014), Revolver (2001) and Gasping (2014).- Actor
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American actor Gary Clarke was born Clarke Frederic L'Amoreaux of French and Mexican ancestry. Raised in the predominantly Chicano neighbourhood of East Los Angeles, he was determined to become an actor by the time he attended high school. His first performing engagements were in community theatre in San Gabriel, followed by stage appearances in Glendale and drama studies at the Pasadena Playhouse. At the same time, Clarke made ends meet as a machine operator and newspaper delivery man.
He made his TV debut in 1957, followed by his first motion picture lead the following year in Dragstrip Riot (1958), a low budget AIP release which cashed in on the prevailing trend for youth-oriented car racing and biker gang pictures. Clarke alternated supporting roles with occasional leads in several other genre pictures: as a young horror movie actor, hypnotized and transformed by a vengeful make up artist into a homicidal lycanthrope in How to Make a Monster (1958); as one of two escaped convict stowaways in Missile to the Moon (1958), an inept, ultra-low budget remake of Cat-Women of the Moon (1953) (with even shoddier props and special effects); as a love-struck teen whose life is complicated by conservative parents, the bride-to-be's thuggish ex-boyfriend, a junkie brother and a likely gallery of assorted pushers and mobsters in Date Bait (1960); and as a college undergraduate bent on seducing a particularly hard-to-get sorority sister in the predictable teen comedy Wild Wild Winter (1966).
On TV, Clarke had a semi-regular role as Dick Hamilton, younger brother of Lucy, the secretary of private eye Michael Shayne (1960) (Richard Denning). This character was specifically created for the show and did not appear in the original novels by Brett Halliday. Perhaps thanks to his boyish face and easy-going personality, Clarke became an audience favourite as Steve Hill, a close buddy of the Trampas character (played by Doug McClure) during the first two seasons of the hit western series The Virginian (1962). When Hill was phased out in 1964, Clarke moved on to play an Arizona Territory cavalry officer in Hondo (1967) and made guest appearances in diverse shows and made-for-TV movies.
In 1966, he began surreptitiously submitting scripts for the NBC spy sitcom Get Smart (1965) as 'C. F. Lamoreaux', in the process creating the character of Hymie the Robot (played perfectly deadpan by Dick Gautier) in a set of six episodes. The show's creators, Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, were well aware of this little subterfuge, but they liked his ideas. When Clarke eventually owned up that he had been an actor on The Virginian, their response was "we watch TV too".
Clarke continued through the 70s and 80s in occasional TV guest spots. He popped up several times as a police officer in Dynasty (1981) and played four different characters in The Young Riders (1989). He had a small role in the A-grade western Tombstone (1993), as U.S. Marshal Crawley Dake (1936-1890), the lawman who first deputized Virgil Earp. In Parkland (2013), he played Vice Admiral George Burkley (1902-1991), physician to three U.S. presidents, who was among those present during JFK's ill-fated Dallas motorcade.
Clarke has also briefly sidelined as a vocalist, releasing the single "Tomorrow May Never Come" (co-written by Jackie DeShannon) for RCA Victor in 1962, and a cover of the theme from The Virginian ("Lonesome Tree"), backed by "One Summer in a Million" for Decca Records in 1963.
Clarke's second wife (1964-70) was the actress Pat Woodell (best known as Bobbie Jo Bradley in TV's Petticoat Junction (1963)). He has been married since 1991 to Jerrene Beatty and is the father of two daughters. His hobbies have been said to be riding horses and motorcycles and playing golf.- Writer
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Born Luigi Montefiori in 1942 near Genoa, Italy, the future actor provided artwork for various advertising agencies in Genoa before moving to Rome in 1966. Though he intended to further his art career, he became involved with a crowd of film people who urged him to put his good looks to advantage in the movies. Parts in Italian westerns soon followed, usually under the pseudonym "George Eastman". (He once reportedly missed out on a role in a Franco Nero western because his height made Franco Nero look too short.) Never quite "typed", the actor soon moved into other film genres playing good guys, bad guys, and good-bad guys. These parts often exploited his athletic physique by having him remove his shirt, perhaps most memorably in Lina Wertmüller's _Belle Starr (1968) where he suffered through a memorable torture scene involving a boot-spur. However, a few parts in English-language films, such as Charlton Heston's _Call of the Wild, The (1972)_ failed to significantly broaden his appeal. He also began to write or collaborate on scripts and in 1989 he directed his first movie: _DNA Formula Letale (1989)_. Details on his private life are sketchy but some sources indicate that he's the father of a daughter.- Actor
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George Stults was born on 16 August 1975 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for 7th Heaven (1996), Super Capers: The Origins of Ed and the Missing Bullion (2008) and What Lies Above (2004).- Actor
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Gillespi was born on 16 August 1965 in Monte Grande, Esteban Echeverría, Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is an actor and composer, known for El camino de Tico Tico (2019), Kapanga todoterreno (2009) and Recordando el show de Alejandro Molina (2011).- Actor
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At various times in his life a rancher, deputy sheriff and rodeo performer, this huge, towering (6' 5") beast of a man was born George Glenn Strange in Weed, New Mexico, on August 16, 1899, but grew up a real-life cowboy in Cross Cut, Texas. He taught himself (by ear) the fiddle and guitar at a young age and started performing at local functions as a teen. In the late 1920s, Glenn and his cousin, Taylor McPeters, better known later as the western character actor Cactus Mack, joined a radio singing group known as the "The Arizona Wranglers" that toured throughout the country.
They both started providing singing fillers in film westerns in the early 1930s. Glenn would play extra or bit roles for a number of years B Western and serials. One of his first roles was uncredited as a soldier, in tin armor, as part of "Ming's Army", in the science fiction classic serial "Flash Gordon"(1936/I). He would perform as a cowhand, rustler, accomplice, sidekick, or plain old warbling, harmonica-blowing cowboy. Eventually in the late 30s, his billing improved and he evolved into a full-time bad guy in hundreds of "B" westerns. He was seen (or glimpsed) in many of the popular serials of the day, including The Hurricane Express (1932), Law of the Wild (1934),
The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939), and Riders of Death Valley (1941). It was his massive build that helped him break into the Universal horror picture genre of the 1940s. Horror star Boris Karloff had grown weary and fearful of his Frankenstein Creature typecast and abandoned the role. Glenn was the perfect replacement for the job and made his monstrous debut with House of Frankenstein (1944), quickly followed by House of Dracula (1945). It was he who played the Creature in the cult horror/comedy classic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) as part of the monstrous trio of Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man.
As the "B" western started faded off into the sunset in the 1950s, Strange moseyed on over to TV work. He played the nemesis "Butch Cavendish" and later reprised the role, after a prison escape, on "The Lone Ranger" (1949). Among other TV roles, he capped off his career with a steady (12 years) role as Sam the bartender on the classic Gunsmoke (1955) series from 1962 until shortly before his death from lung cancer in 1973.- The lesser-known sister of Joan Blondell, she performed in around two dozen Hollywood features. First appearing on Broadway in the 1935 "Three Men on a Horse", she made her silver screen debut with The Daredevil Drivers (1938). Gloria co-starred with Ronald Reagan in Accidents Will Happen (1938), then saw most of her work in the 1940s as the voice of Disney's 'Daisy Duck'. With the coming of television, she was kept busy with I Love Lucy (1951), Thriller (1960), and other fare. During the mid-1950s she had the regular role of 'Honeybee Gillis' on The Life of Riley (1953). Following her turn as 'Gloria' in Calvin and the Colonel (1961) up to 1962, she retired in Los Angeles, where she died of cancer.
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Greyson Michael Chance is an American singer, songwriter and pianist whose April 2010 performance of Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" at a sixth-grade music festival became a hit on YouTube, gaining over 36 million views. Two of his original compositions, "Stars" and "Broken Hearts", gained over 4 and 6 million views respectively on his YouTube channel. His debut single, "Waiting Outside the Lines," was released in October 2010.
Chance was born in Wichita Falls, Texas and now resides in Edmond, Oklahoma. He has English, German, 1/8th Bohemian (Czech), and 1/8th Polish, ancestry.
He is the youngest child of Scott and Lisa Chance; he has an older sister, Alexa, and an older brother, Tanner, both of whom also play music.
Chance began playing the piano at the age of 8 and has had three years of piano lessons, but no formal vocal training. His inspiration comes from Lady Gaga; after seeing her performance of "Paparazzi" at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, he said: "I was awestruck by her performance.
Chance also admires Christina Aguilera, the rock band Augustana, R&B singer John Legend, singer-songwriter Elton John and late Beatle John Lennon.- Actress
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Hope Olaidé Wilson was born in the UK. She is an actress and producer, known for Spenser Confidential (2020), Solace (2018) and The Last Ship (2014).- Jacobo Winograd is known for Loco x vos (2016).
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James Francis Cameron was born on August 16, 1954 in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada. He moved to the United States in 1971. The son of an engineer, he majored in physics at California State University before switching to English, and eventually dropping out. He then drove a truck to support his screenwriting ambition. He landed his first professional film job as art director, miniature-set builder, and process-projection supervisor on Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) and had his first experience as a director with a two week stint on Piranha II: The Spawning (1982) before being fired.
He then wrote and directed The Terminator (1984), a futuristic action-thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton. It was a low budget independent film, but Cameron's superb, dynamic direction made it a surprise mainstream success and it is now regarded as one of the most iconic pictures of the 1980s. After this came a string of successful, bigger budget science-fiction action films such as Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). In 1990, Cameron formed his own production company, Lightstorm Entertainment. In 1997, he wrote and directed Titanic (1997), a romance epic about two young lovers from different social classes who meet on board the famous ship. The movie went on to break all box office records and earned eleven Academy Awards. It became the highest grossing movie of all time until 12 years later, Avatar (2009), which invented and pioneered 3D film technology, and it went on to beat "Titanic", and became the first film to cost two billion dollars until 2019 when Marvel took the record.
James Cameron is now one of the most sought-after directors in Hollywood. He was formerly married to producer Gale Anne Hurd, who produced several of his films. In 2000, he married actress Suzy Amis, who appeared in Titanic, and they have three children.- Jean Sincere was born on 16 August 1919 in Mount Vernon, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Incredibles (2004), Roxanne (1987) and Glee (2009). She was married to Charles Carmine Zambello. She died on 3 April 2013 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Jeffrey Perry is an American actor of stage, television, and film. He is known for his role as Richard Katimski on the teen drama My So-Called Life, Thatcher Grey on the medical drama series Grey's Anatomy, Cyrus Beene on the political drama series Scandal, all for ABC, and as Inspector Harvey Leek on the CBS crime drama Nash Bridges.- Actress
- Producer
Jennifer Mudge was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Somebody Somewhere (2022), The Irishman (2019) and Nostalgia (2018).- Actor
- Producer
Jesse Woodrow has had a very successful career in Hollywood. He has modeled and been a spokesman for the biggest and brightest companies from around the world such as Skyy Vodka, Beefeater, L'Oreal, Coors Light, Guess, Apple computers, and Yves Saint Laurent. Casting Directing great, Mali Finn (Avatar, Titanic, The Matrix) recognized his talent early on and cast him in his first ever role opposite Reese Witherspoon, Josh Brolin and Alessandro Nivola in the 20th Century Fox feature film, Best Laid Plans. Aaron Spelling saw Jesse and loved his performance so much in a Warner Brothers/Spelling Pilot that he asked Pamela Shae to cast him and then write Jesse on the WB TV Series, Charmed for which he is most notable for playing Rose McGowan's boyfriend, 'Glen' as a recurring character for 2 years. He appeared in a Feria by L'Oreal commercial with Beyonce, Jessica Alba and Milla Jovovich as the launching of the men's color products. One of his recent projects, The Unborn won an "Edgar Short Story" award for the screenplay written by Serita Stevens prior to shooting the film. The Unborn, Directed by Samuel Benavides, was picked up for world wide television distribution on the Sundance Channel, DirecTV, iTunes and Amazon.com! The icing on the cake? The Unborn won the oldest, most prestigious film festival award, The Platinum Remi. The indie horror flick Mr. Woodrow starred in called, Something's Wrong in Kansas, is to be released this year. Mr. Woodrow's staring role in the SAG-AFTRA feature film, Tableau Vivant is set to be released August 15, 2014. Mr. Woodrow also stars in Blackbird staring Danny Glover & Minnie Driver & produced by Ryan Kavanaugh (21, Limitless, The Fighter, Salt), Amar'e Stoudemire (New York Knicks), and Relativity Media (The Social Network, Oblivion, Savages, The Bourne Legacy) and directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood.It is set to be released, November 14, 2014.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Joaquin Cordero was born in the city of Puebla in Mexico. Shortly after his birth his family moved to Mexico City, and in the following years he studied in a seminary and even considered becoming a priest, but eventually he decided to pursue a law career. By the mid forties, after three years of law classes, against his family's wishes he decided to become an actor. He initially appeared in bit parts, but by the early fifties he was getting larger parts. Eventually he became one of the most prolific and popular actors in Mexican cinema, he also went on to do theatre, television and throughout his career won numerous awards, and even today, into his early eighties, he is still as active as ever.- Actor
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John Challis is an accomplished character actor, personality and raconteur whose wide-ranging career has gone from classical roles on the stage to heavies in television drama, a multitude of policemen, sitcom stardom, pantomime performances and even a one-man show.
He wanted to act from a young age but was encouraged to get a "proper" job, so he worked as a trainee estate agent for a short time. He also had a job delivering groceries. He got into acting through a travelling children's theatre and never attended drama school. Performances in regional repertory theatre followed. He ended up in the Royal Shakespeare Company during the 1960s and made his television debut in The Newcomers (1965). His imposing physical stature helped him gain roles as police officers in Softly Softly (1966) and Crown Court (1972). He was also cast in a recurring role in the BBC's long-running police drama Z Cars (1962) as Sergeant Culshaw. He then played heavies in The Sweeney (1975) and Doctor Who (1963) (both for director Douglas Camfield, who would also later cast him in Beau Geste (1982)).
He worked with David Jason for the first time in the sitcom Open All Hours (1976). In 1980, he landed a guest role (as another policeman) in Citizen Smith (1977). His performance impressed the writer, John Sullivan, so much that he promised he would find another part for him. This led to him being cast as Boycie, the second-hand car salesman, in the first series of Only Fools and Horses (1981). It would go on to become one of the longest-running and most popular sitcoms of all time and Challis would be a regular in it. In 2005, Challis began starring in a spin-off, The Green Green Grass (2005). In 2011, he released his autobiography, "Being Boycie", which was followed by "Boycie & Beyond" in 2012. These led to Challis entertaining audiences by touring a one-man show, "Only Fools and Boycie".- John Louie was born on 16 August 1970 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He is an actor, known for Gremlins (1984), They Call Me Bruce (1982) and Riptide (1984).
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John McArdle was born on 16 August 1949 in Liverpool, England, UK. He is an actor and director, known for Prime Suspect 5: Errors of Judgement (1996), Finney (1994) and Seaforth (1994). He is married to Kathy Jamieson. They have two children.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Sir John Standing is one of England's most respected stage, film and television actors. From a distinguished acting dynasty which includes his great-grandfather Herbert Standing (1846-1923), grandfather Sir Guy Standing (1873-1937) and mother, the actress Kay Hammond, John Robert Leon Standing, born in London on August, 16, 1934, succeeded his father Sir Ronald Leon, as the 4th baronet in 1964.
A one-time art student and avid painter, Sir John attended both Millfield Preparatory School and Eton College and made his debut on stage in minor roles in the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company's production of "Titus Andronicus." In London from 1959, he worked productively on the London stage (Bristol Old Vic, Chicester, Haymarket, Royal Court) for two decades with a resume that included "The Darling Buds," "The Irregular Verb to Love," "See How They Run," "The Clandestine Marriage," "The Cherry Orchard," "The Fighting Cock," The Beaux' Stratgem," "The Importance of Being Earnest" (as Algernon), "Ring Around the Moon," "The Alchemist," "Arms and the Man, "A Sense of Detachment" by John Osborne, "Saint Joan," "Dead-Eyed Dicks," "Plunder," "The Philanderer" and, most notably, as Elyot Chase in Noël Coward's "Private Lives," co-starring Maggie Smith and directed by John Gielgud, which was taken to Broadway in 1975.
Lesser known for his work on the big screen, a few BBC-TV guest parts came to Sir John's way before he entered films in 1962 with featured roles in the light comedy A Pair of Briefs (1962) and romantic drama Young and Willing (1962). Standing followed these with performances in such films as King Rat (1965), The Psychopath (1966), Walk Don't Run (1966), A Touch of Love (1969), All the Right Noises (1970), X, Y & Zee (1972), Au Pair Girls (1972), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), The Legacy (1978), The Sea Wolves (1980), The Elephant Man (1980), Privates on Parade (1983), Nightflyers (1987), Chaplin (1992), Mrs Dalloway (1997), and a starring role as a businessman who opens a brothel with his playboy son after the death of his wife in the dramedy 8 ½ Women (1999).
Sir John had more prestigious work come to him on TV. He lightened up at times as he died as a aristocratic politician who falls for a working class model in the British comedy series The Other 'Arf (1980) and a spy partnered with Tom Conti in Old Boy Network (1992), but found more rewarding work in the classic mini-series The First Churchills (1969), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979), Windmills of the Gods (1988), The Choir (1995), Club V.R. (1996) and Drovers' Gold (1997).
In the U.S., he has graced numerous weekly programs including L.A. Law (1986), Civil Wars (1991), and Murder, She Wrote (1984) and co-starred briefly with Robert Wagner and the late Samantha Smith in the action series Lime Street (1985), which ended abruptly with the young girl's death in a plane crash. The 13-year-old Smith became an instant celebrity after writing a touching and concerned letter to the then Soviet President Yuri Andropov about the relations between the two dominant powers and being invited to Russia.
Into the millennium, the elderly Standing has remained extremely busy playing a number of distinguished lords and higher-ups, especially with British TV appearances ("The Vice," "In Deep," "Keen Eddie," "MidSommer Murders," "Game of Thrones," "The Crown") and in above-par TV movies and miniseries including Longitude (2000), Love in a Cold Climate (2001), The Falklands Play (2002), The Gathering Storm (2002), King Solomon's Mines (2004), The Line of Beauty (2006), Fallen Angel (2007), The Other Wife (2012), Patrick Melrose (2018) and King Lear (2018).
Divorced from actress Jill Melford, Sir John's second wife, actress Sarah Forbes, is the daughter of director Bryan Forbes and actress Nanette Newman.- Producer
- Writer
- Actor
Jonathan Prince was born on 16 August 1958 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA. He is a producer and writer, known for American Dreams (2002), Four Weddings and a Funeral (2019) and American Soul (2019).- Joren Seldeslachts was born on 16 August 1986 in Leuven, Flanders, Belgium. He is an actor, known for Blind (2007), Dubbelleven (2010) and Ménajeux-à-Trois (2017).
- Jose Luis Clerc is known for Videomatch (1990), The 1981 Davis Cup (1981) and Pura Química (2010). He has been married to Gisela Medrano since 2008. They have one child.
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Josh Casaubon was born in Brunswick, Maine and raised in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. After a stint at the University of Maine, he served four years in the United States Army as an infantryman, stationed in Hawaii. While there, he received numerous awards and was selected for the Special Forces, but chose instead to begin a career as a writer. He was honorably discharged and moved to New York City in the summer of 2001. While attending New School University, he immersed himself in the diverse cultures of the West Village and found himself wandering into small theaters, sneaking into "Inside the Actors Studio" sessions on 12th Street and chatting with local bohemians until sunrise. He discovered his passion for acting and has since performed in dozens of television shows, plays and films and has never looked back, though he spends a large amount of his free time writing.- Josh Clark was born on 16 August 1955 in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. He is an actor, known for McFarland, USA (2015).
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Julia Chalene Newmeyer was born on August 16, 1933, in Los Angeles, California, the eldest of three children. Her father, Don, was a one-time professional football player (LA Buccaneers, 1926), her mother, Helene Jesmer, was a star of the Follies of 1920 and later became a fashion designer under the professional name of Chalene. From an early age, Julie studied piano, dance, and classical ballet. She graduated from high school at the age of 15, and spent a year touring Europe with her mother and brother. She became prima ballerina for the Los Angeles Opera. She attended UCLA studying classical piano, philosophy, and French.
Newmar went to New York and tried out for Broadway musicals; in 1955, she made her Broadway debut as the ballerina in "Silk Stockings". She won acclaim for her role as Stupefyin' Jones in "Li'l Abner". Though audiences and critics alike were stupefied by her good looks, that was not the compliment Newmar wanted.
Newmar wanted to be known for her comedy, as she told the New York Times: "Tell me I'm funny, and it's the greatest compliment in the world." She had beauty, brains and a fantastic sense of humor. Promoting her various Broadway and off-Broadway show appearances, she often posed as a pin-up girl. Making the transition to television, Newmar appeared in Rod Serling's science-fiction series The Twilight Zone (1959), playing Miss Devlin (devil). As physical perfection, Julie was perfect to play Rhoda the Robot in My Living Doll (1964); the sitcom had an enthusiastic cult following. In 1966, urged on by her friends, she tried out for and was cast as Catwoman (a character she had never heard of) in the wildly popular television series Batman (1966) On account of a movie commitment, Newmar was unavailable to play Catwoman in the third season. (Her role was taken over by Eartha Kitt.)
Newmar was very busy in the 1960s and 1970s, making guest appearances in many television series and several television movies. She toured the country in stage productions of "Damn Yankees" and "Dames at Sea", among others. Becoming an entrepreneur, in 1977, Newmar turned up in People magazine wearing her new invention, Nudemar pantyhose. In the 1980s, she appeared in nine films while she was busy raising her son and working in the real-estate business. Newmar went back to UCLA to take a few real-estate courses. In 1991, she toured in a stage production of "The Women". Still very active, and very beautiful, she occasionally has appeared at fan conventions.- Actress
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- Music Department
Catherine Davis Higgins is an American voice actress and singer. She is best known for her roles in English-language versions of anime, most notably as Sakura Haruno in the Naruto franchise, Ami Mizuno / Sailor Mercury in the Viz dub of Sailor Moon (1992), Saber in the Fate/stay night (2006), and CC in Code Geass (2006). From 2010 to 2013, Higgins also voiced Miles "Tails" Prower in Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series, and in 2021, she would briefly return to voice new lines for Tails in Sonic Colors: Ultimate (2021) and Sonic Colors: Rise of the Wisps (2021) despite Colleen O'Shaughnessey having officially succeeded her by that point. Additionally, she is also the current voice of Princess Aurora in various Disney media, and has also done voice work for various shows such as Lucky Star (2007), The Legend of Korra (2012), and Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (2010), among others.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Kathie Lee Gifford was the co-host of the fourth hour of "TODAY," alongside Hoda Kotb from 2008 until April 5th, 2019. The Gifford-Kotb hour had been hailed as appointment television by Entertainment Weekly, and "TODAY's happy hour" by USA Today. In 2014, Gifford penned the critically acclaimed "TODAY, the Musical," featuring the hosts and crew of the show, and each month she had written a new song for the popular segment, Everyone Has a Story. She was inducted into the Broadcast & Cable Hall of Fame in 2015. Prior to NBC News, Gifford served as the co-host of "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee" for 15 years, where she received 11 Emmy nominations. She was also a correspondent for "Good Morning America" for three years. A playwright, producer, singer, songwriter and actress, Gifford has starred in numerous television programs and movies in her 40-year career. She has her own record label and has written several musicals including Broadway's SCANDALOUS, which received a Tony nomination for Best Actress in 2012. Gifford also starred on Broadway in "Putting it Together" and "Annie." Gifford authored four NY Times bestselling books including "Just When I Thought I'd Dropped My Last Egg," "I Can't Believe I Said That," "The Rock, The Road and the Rabbi", and the popular children's book "Party Animals." She recently co-wrote and recorded "He Saw Jesus", "Jesus is His Name" and "Love Me to Death." She also launched GIFFT, a line of wine with the Scheid Family Vineyards in Monterey, CA. Most recently she had her directorial debut for the short film, THE GOD WHO SEES, featuring Nicole C. Mullen. The duo co-wrote the music in the film. Gifford lends support to numerous children's organizations including Childhelp and the Association to Benefit Children, which spawned Cassidy's Place and Cody House, named after her two children. A devoted humanitarian, she received an honorary degree from Marymount University for her humanitarian work in labor relations. Gifford is on Twitter and Instagram @KathieLGifford.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ketty Lester was born on 16 August 1934 in Hope, Arkansas, USA. She is an actress, known for Blue Velvet (1986), Killing Them Softly (2012) and Little House on the Prairie (1974).- Actor
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Kevin G. Schmidt began his career at age nine and has starred in blockbuster feature films Cheaper by the Dozen I & II with Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt, The Butterfly Effect with Ashton Kutcher, Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, and American Wrestler: The Wizard with Jon Voight. Kevin's feature film roles have generated over one-billion dollars in the global box office. On the television screen, Kevin played Noah Newman on highest-rated and longest-running soap opera, The Young and the Restless, starred in Princess Protection Program with Millennial icons Selena Gomez & Demi Lovato, received an Emmy for Ensemble Cast in Steven Spielberg's science-fiction thriller, Taken, and co-starred in many other award-winning shows, such as NCIS, BONES, Numbers, Without A Trace, King of Queens, CSI: NY, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Monk.
Behind the scenes, Kevin has also seen great success. At 18 years old, he wrote, produced, directed, and sold a dance-instructional DVD, starring Alyson Stoner (of Missy Elliot's Work It music video fame), to STARZ Media. By 28, Kevin wrote, produced, and starred in the Autism Society's award-winning independent feature film Randy's Canvas. At 30, he successfully launched a 24-hour broadcast television station for the Calvert County government in Maryland, focusing on community and educational content.
To date, Kevin has written, produced, edited, and directed over two-hundred hours of unscripted, scripted, and live-broadcast content.
Outside of the entertainment industry, Kevin has advised in the launch, scaling, and exit of two prominent female-founded companies in the natural and organic consumer products space. He is co-founder of the natural and organic lifestyle brand, Hapbee Company, a board member of SchoolGrown, a California non-profit focused on the advancement of sustainable farming practices and hemp research, and Advisory Council Member for Digital Media Arts at the College of Southern Maryland.- Producer
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- Actress
Born in Warsaw, Poland. Moved to Bartlesville, Oklahoma at age 5. Attended Oklahoma State University and Auburn University. Graduated with B.S. in Broadcast Journalism.
Kinga's on camera work has encompassed a broad range of characters and projects. From acting in stirring dramatic pieces playing a woman with schizophrenia and delusional multiple personality disorder to light hearted comedies, romantic leads and tough adventurous characters.
She has traveled the world as a journalist reporting on intense subjects like police corruption in Mexico, gangs in LA, women in the sex trade and natural disasters.
On the lighter side of hosting she has covered countless red carpet events and hosted shows on food, cars, travel, history, sports, video games and music.
Kinga also hosted her own sketch comedy show where she played various characters.
As a hobby she writes children's books.
For a while she had a food blog that had a comedic slant on delicious things she discovered around the world.
Behind the camera, Kinga often writes and produces her own pieces.
Kinga enjoys surfing, scuba diving, skydiving, hiking and travel.
She loves sharks and has gone cage diving many times.- Actress
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Kipp Hamilton was born on 16 August 1934 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for The Unforgiven (1960), Mike Hammer (1958) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964). She was married to Donald Thorman Rosenfeld and Dave Geisel. She died on 29 January 1981 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.- Actress
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Laura Innes was born on August 16, 1957 in Pontiac, Michigan. She was introduced to professional theater by her father, who often took the family to the Stratford Festival of Canada in Stratford, Ontario. With the support of her father, she attended Northwestern University and earned a degree in theater. She went on to appeared in several theater productions before her film debut in Brian De Palma's The Fury (1978), played the role of Jody. She then played the daughter to Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara in the short-lived sitcom The Stiller & Meara Show (1986). In the fall of 1995, she joined the ensemble cast of the NBC medical drama ER (1994) in its second season. She played the role of the experienced, but abrasive, Dr. Kerry Weaver. Her performance earned her three Primetime Emmy Award nominations.- Additional Crew
Lee Blakeley was born on 16 August 1971 in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, England, UK. He is known for Carmen (2002) and Faust (2004). He was married to Jonathan Foster. He died on 4 August 2017 in London, England, UK.- Les Beasley was born on 16 August 1928 in Crockett, Texas, USA. He was a producer, known for Bill & Gloria Gaither Present: The Best of Gospel Singing Jubilee Number One (1994), Bill & Gloria Gaither Present: The Best of Gospel Singing Jubilee Number Four (1995) and Bill & Gloria Gaither Present: The Best of Gospel Singing Jubilee Number Two (1994). He was married to Frances Beasley. He died on 17 November 2018 in Florida, USA.
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Entrancing, gorgeous Lesley Ann Warren started gearing towards a life in show business right off the bat as a young ballerina who trained at the School of American Ballet at the age of 14. Little did she know that Hollywood stardom would arrive on her doorstep in the form of a "Cinderella" story.
The New York-born actress (August 16, 1946) is the daughter of a night club singer, Margot Warren (née Verblow), and real estate agent, William Warren. Her mother had earlier given up her own entertainment career for marriage and family. Growing up, Lesley attended the Professional Children's School at the age of 6 and High School of Music & Art as a young teenager. At age 17, she studied under Lee Strasberg at his Actors Studio, the youngest student to ever be accepted at the time.
Looking for on-camera work, the teenager appeared unbilled as Shelley Winters's young daughter in the melodrama The Chapman Report (1962) and was given a bit in the daytime TV show "The Doctors." The slender, young hopeful gathered early musical stage experience in such shows as "Bye Bye Birdie" (as swooning teen Kim McAfee), then made an auspicious Broadway debut in "110 in the Shade", the 1963 musical version of "The Rainmaker," and won Broadway's "Most Promising Newcomer" Award. She subsequently received the Theatre World Award for her lead work as a "cat burglar" opposite Elliott Gould in the very short-lived (8 performances) musical "Drat! The Cat!" in 1965.
The attention Lesley received from this brief stage venture, however, led to her capturing the beguiling title role in the Richard Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein II TV musical production of Cinderella (1965) with Stuart Damon as her Prince and a glittering, all-star cast in support. The Walt Disney people immediate signed the exquisite "Cinderella" to a fresh-faced ingénue contract. Co-starring in the moderately-received musical showcases The Happiest Millionaire (1967) and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band (1968), Lesley became convinced that she needed to quickly nip the saccharine stereotype in the bud if she was to grow and sustain as an adult actress.
Rebelling against her studio-imposed image, Lesley left Disney determined to pursue roles with more depth, drama and character. Changing her name temporarily to "Lesley Warren" to reinforce her more mature goal, she was hired in 1970 to replace Barbara Bain in the long-running espionage series Mission: Impossible (1966) when Bain left over contractual issues. Audiences were quite cool in their reception to the "new and improved" Lesley and didn't buy her as a femme-fatale replacement for the cool and aloof Ms. Bain.
After only one season, Lesley realized her mission to grow was impossible (in spite of an encouraging Golden Globe nomination) and left the show, seeking greener pastures in the TV mini-movie market. She displayed a wide range of vulnerable neurotics as well as sexier ladies that began to alter her pristine image. Such 1970s material included the plane crash adventure Seven in Darkness (1969) as one of several blind survivors; the love drama Love Hate Love (1971) co-starring Ryan O'Neal; a failed pilot in the title role of Cat Ballou (1971); a mild western as one of The Daughters of Joshua Cabe (1972); the exotic "silent star" biopic The Legend of Valentino (1975); the rags-to-riches story Harold Robbins' 79 Park Avenue (1977), for which she won a Golden Globe award; the epic WWII story Pearl (1978); and the social melodramas Betrayal (1978) and Portrait of a Stripper (1979). Lesley also impressed with her starring roles in the Civil War miniseries Beulah Land (1980) and as a Polish-Jewish immigrant in Evergreen (1985). On stage, she ambitiously attempted to recreate Scarlett O'Hara opposite Pernell Roberts's Rhett Butler in a 1973 Broadway-bound musical version of "Gone with the Wind: The Musical." The show quickly died on the West Coast before ever reaching New York.
In the early 1980s, Lesley's movie career resurrected itself with a priceless performance as kingpin James Garner's whiny-voiced, peroxide-blonde spitfire Norma Cassidy in the slapstick musical Victor/Victoria (1982). Earning both Oscar and Golden Globe nominations, this delightful, scene-stealing turn was followed by a couple of other quality offbeat films that were directed by Alan Rudolph -- Choose Me (1984) and Songwriter (1984). Warren went on to receive a Golden Globe nomination supporting Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson in the former, and a People's Choice Award for the latter. She continued to attempt to spread her wings as a worldly "cougar" type opposite young blond and boyish Christopher Atkins in the critically-panned drama A Night in Heaven (1983). She also played Miss Scarlet in the movie version of the board game Clue (1985).
Award-worthy TV roles for Lesley with a Golden Globe performance as a successful madam in the miniseries Harold Robbins' 79 Park Avenue (1977). She also received Emmy and Golden Globe noms as the conflicted wife of a naval officer turned Russian double agent (Powers Boothe) in Family of Spies (1990), as well as for her Cable Ace nom for her work as a barmaid who aspires to be a country-western singer in Baja Oklahoma (1988). In 1997, she returned to Broadway with the musical revue "Dream" co-starring Margaret Whiting, which focused on classic "Golden Age" standards.
Entering her sixth decade of acting, Lesley remains highly active well into the millennium with often high-maintenance roles in such films as the Losing Grace (2001), Secretary (2002), My Tiny Universe (2004), When Do We Eat? (2005), The Shore (2006), Stiffs (2010), I Am Michael (2015), The Sphere and the Labyrinth (2015) and 3 Days with Dad (2019). Among her later TV credits are "Touched by an Angel," "The Practice," "Less Than Perfect," "American Princess," and a recurring role as an overly dependent mom named Jinx in the mystery crime series In Plain Sight (2008). Her dim, riotous Norma Cassady role had TV often pitching her as a scatter-brained comedienne, as in her recurring TV guest parts on Will & Grace (1998) and Desperate Housewives (2004).
Lesley has a son, actor/producer Christopher Peters, from her 1967-'73 marriage to makeup artist/hair stylist-cum-film producer Jon Peters. Since 2000, she has been married to advertising exec and sometime actor Ron Taft, a former vice-president at Columbia.- Actress
- Soundtrack
This most consummate, vibrant and versatile actress established a distinguished reputation on the stage, in films and on TV. The former Miss Chicago of 1948 beauty pageant winner and Miss America semifinalist was born in Oak Park, Illinois. Her family was impoverished and her parents divorced early on. Young Lois used make-believe to escape her reality by creating small plays in her backyard, which led to an affinity with the idea of acting. Having set her sights on the stage she joined a community theatre at the tender age of eleven and appeared on local radio and television. She later continued her training at Chicago's Goodman Theatre and then studied 'the method' at the Actors' Studio in New York City, eventually making her Broadway debut in Dalton Trumbo's "The Biggest Thief in Town" (1948) using the stage moniker "Lydia Scott" (her given name, she felt, was too plain and sounded "schoolmarmy").
Lois was understudy to Barbara Bel Geddes for the role of "Maggie the Cat" in the original 1955 Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's Pulitzer-Prize winning "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", staged by Elia Kazan. Occasionally, she got to play "Maggie", herself. Of her (own personal favourite) role as Blanche DuBois in the 1973 stage production of "A Streetcar Named Desire", New York Times critic Clive Barnes wrote: ""Miss Nettleton plays Blanche as a woman of nearly unshatterable courage." Williams himself called her one of the greatest actresses with whom he had ever worked. Not surprisingly then, that the self-confessed method actress went on to win the prestigious Clarence Derwent Award for her performance in "God and Kate Murphy".
Lois was married for seven years to Jean Shepherd, a radio host and television humorist. She and Shepherd clicked after she called his nightly radio show at WOR in the 1950s and the beguiled Shepherd broadcast their telephone conversations on the air. They later appeared together in Shepherd's off-Broadway play "Look Charlie" in 1959.
While her official film debut came in the 1962 adaptation of Tennessee Williams's "Period of Adjustment", Lois had previously played a bit part in Elia Kazan's classic A Face in the Crowd (1957), scripted by Budd Schulberg. She subsequently acted in many movies, but most of her best work was on stage and in television where she appeared in everything from sitcoms to soap operas. In a 1985 interview she referred to herself as 'a gypsy actress', saying "I always wanted to be as different in everything as possible". Consistently selective, on the lookout for 'interesting' characters and mature roles to play, she tackled pretty much every genre -- even playing one of Londo Mollari's bitchy wives in Babylon 5 (1993). She gave a particularly fine performances in the classic 1961 "Midnight Sun" episode of The Twilight Zone (1959). She declared her own personal favourite screen role to have been that of the Israeli prosecutor (opposite Maximilian Schell) in the American Film Theater production of The Man in the Glass Booth (1975). Roger Ebert for the New York Times wrote "She has a steadiness and intelligence and doesn't back down. She's the closest thing the film has to a moral center."
A charming and gracious actress, Lois was nominated six-times for Emmy Awards. She won twice for her TV work: for the daytime special The American Woman: Portraits of Courage (1976) and for "A Gun for Mandy" (1983), an episode of the syndicated religious anthology Insight (1960).- Lori Rom was born on 16 August 1975 in Red Bank, New Jersey, USA. She is an actress, known for Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008), He Got Game (1998) and Charmed (1998). She is married to Ronnie Steadman.
- Lorraine Gary was born on August 16th, 1937 in New York. Lorraine was raised in Los Angeles. At age 16, she won a best actress award in a competition at the prestigious Pasadena Playhouse. She was offered a scholarship to enroll at the Pasadena Playhouse, but declined said offer and attended Columbia University as a political science major, instead. Lorraine began her acting career in the late 60s doing guest appearances on several popular TV shows. Gary achieved her greatest and most enduring fame with her excellent portrayal of Sheriff Roy Scheider's caring and concerned wife in the first two "Jaws" pictures. Lorraine further demonstrated her considerable versatility with funny performances in the amusing comedies Car Wash (1976), Zero to Sixty (1978) and 1941 (1979). Among the television programs she's done guest spots on are The Rookies (1972), Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969), Kojak (1973), Ironside (1967), The F.B.I. (1965), The Virginian (1962), McCloud (1970) and Dragnet 1967 (1967). She came out of voluntary retirement to assume a rare substantial starring role in the regrettably dreadful Jaws: The Revenge (1987) but, alas, hasn't acted in anything since that ill-received feature. She's been married to MCA president Sid Sheinberg for 60 years. Her sons, Bill Sheinberg and Jonathan Sheinberg are both film producers. Moreover, Marty McFly's mother in Back to the Future (1985) was named after Lorraine Gary.
- Music Artist
- Actress
- Composer
The remarkable, hyper-ambitious Material Girl who never stops re-inventing herself, Madonna has sold over three hundred million records and CDs to adoring fans worldwide. Her film career, however, is another story. Her performances have consistently drawn scathing or laughable reviews from film critics, and the films have usually had tepid, if any, success at the box office. Born Madonna Louise Ciccone in August 1958 in Bay City, Michigan, she moved to New York in 1978 and studied with renowned choreographer Alvin Ailey, joined up with the Patrick Hernandez Revue, formed a pop/dance band called Breakfast Club and began working with then-boyfriend Stephen Bray on recording several disco-oriented songs. New York producer/D.J. Mark Kamins passed her demo tapes to Sire Records in early 1982 and the rest is history. The 1980s was Madonna's boom decade, and she dominated the music charts with a succession of multimillion-selling albums, and her musical and fashion influence on young women was felt around the globe. Madonna first appeared on screen in two low-budget films marketed to an adolescent audience: A Certain Sacrifice (1979) and Vision Quest (1985). However, she scored a minor cult hit with Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) starring alongside spunky Rosanna Arquette. Madonna's next effort with then husband Sean Penn, Shanghai Surprise (1986), was savaged by critics, although the resilient star managed to somewhat improve her standing with her next two films, the offbeat Who's That Girl (1987) (although she did receive decidedly mixed reviews, they weren't as negative as those of her previous effort) and the quirky Damon Runyon-inspired Bloodhounds of Broadway (1989). The big-budget and star-filled Dick Tracy (1990) had her playing bad girl "Breathless Mahoney" flirting with Warren Beatty, but the epic failed to catch fire at the box office. Taking an earthier role, Madonna was much more entertaining alongside Tom Hanks and Geena Davis in A League of Their Own (1992), a story about female baseball players during W.W.II. However, she again drew the wrath of critics with the sexy whodunit Body of Evidence (1992). Several other minor screen roles followed, then Madonna starred as Eva Perón in Evita (1996), a fairly well received screen adaptation of the hugely successful Broadway musical, for which she received a Golden Globe for Best Actress. The Material Girl stayed away from the movie cameras for several years, returning to co-star in the lukewarm romantic comedy The Next Best Thing (2000), followed by the painful Swept Away (2002). If those films weren't bad enough, she was woefully miscast as a vampish fencing instructor in the James Bond adventure Die Another Day (2002). After finally admitting that her acting days were over, Madonna began a directing career in 2008 with the barely remembered Filth and Wisdom (2008) and a year later she reunited with Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991) director Alek Keshishian to develop a script about the relationship between the Duke of Windsor and the Duchess of Windsor that led to his abdication in 1936: the result, a movie named W.E. (2011), starring James D'Arcy and Andrea Riseborough as the infernal but still royal couple, was released in 2011 to lukewarm critics but it gathered one Oscar nomination for costumes and won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song for "Masterpiece".- Actress
- Soundtrack
Vivacious, blonde Mae Clarke was exposed to cinema from an early age, her father being an organist in a motion picture cinema. Growing up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, she learned how to dance. At the tender age of 13 she was already performing in nightclubs and amateur theatricals. In 1924, she was one of "May Dawson's Dancing Girls", a New York cabaret act, where she was "discovered" by producer Earl Lindsay and promptly cast in a minor part at the Strand Theatre on Times Square. She then performed as a dancer and burlesque artist at the Strand Roof nightclub, situated above the theatre (which was managed by Lindsay) and at the Everglades Club, earning $40 a week. While there she struck up a lifelong friendship with fellow actress Ruby Stevens, who would later change her name to Barbara Stanwyck.
In 1926, Clarke got her first chance in "legitimate" theater, appearing in the drama "The Noose" with Stanwyck and Ed Wynn. This was followed by the musical comedy "Manhattan Mary" (1927). The following year (1928), at age 17, she married her first husband, Lew Brice, brother of Fanny Brice. After further vaudeville experience, Clarke was screen-tested by Fox and landed her first movie role in 1929. While she was top-billed in films like Nix on Dames (1929), she was clearly headed for B-movie status and left Fox just over a year later. This resulted in better roles for her, though she was generally cast in "hard-luck" roles. She played prostitute Molly Malloy in the hugely successful Lewis Milestone-directed The Front Page (1931)) and, on the strength of this performance, was signed by Carl Laemmle Jr. at Universal and cast to star in Waterloo Bridge (1931) as a ballerina-turned-streetwalker, a part made famous by Vivien Leigh in the sanitized MGM remake, Waterloo Bridge (1940). Reviewer Mordaunt Hall described Clarke's complex performance as "capital" (New York Times, September 5, 1931).
Also in 1931, she had the brief and uncredited (but iconic) role for which she will always be known: the hapless girlfriend on the receiving end of a grapefruit pushed into her face by James Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931). She later appeared with Cagney (a close friend in real life) in still more adversarial scenes, in Lady Killer (1933) and Great Guy (1936). She had some feisty comedy roles in Three Wise Girls (1931) with Jean Harlow, and starring in Parole Girl (1933). She was third-billed in James Whale's Frankenstein (1931), as Elizabeth, the title character's bride-to-be. Her best moment in the film -- one of sheer terror -- comes when she is confronted by the monster (Boris Karloff) in her own bedroom. Sadly, Clarke's career suffered several major setbacks, beginning in 1932, from which it never fully recovered. She had a nervous breakdown in June of that year (and another in 1934), most likely caused by overwork and marital problems. This was followed by a serious car accident in March of 1933. In addition to that, her sexy screen personae became restricted by the new, strict Hollywood Production Code.
When she returned to the screen it was to be in B-pictures. She had some rewarding parts in some films for Republic, notably The House of a Thousand Candles (1936) and the civil war romance Hearts in Bondage (1936), with Lew Ayres. Despite an image change from frizzy blonde to brunette she had few opportunities to shine after 1938, except, perhaps, as heroine of the Republic serial King of the Rocket Men (1949). By the beginning of the 1950's, she was largely reduced to doing cameos and walk-on roles, at best playing minor parts in westerns. She did, however, make several notable appearances on television, particularly on The Loretta Young Show (1953).
Clarke, a star of Pre-Code Hollywood, fell on hard financial times towards the end of her life. After her last film appearance in Watermelon Man (1970), she retired to the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles and devoted her remaining years to her favorite hobby: painting in the style of Swiss abstract artist Paul Klee. She died there of cancer in 1992, aged 81.- Manuel Veiga was born on 16 August 1964 in Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. He was an actor and writer, known for El complot dels anells (1988), Turismo (2008) and Dos billetes (2009). He died on 8 January 2019 in Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.
- Additional Crew
- Actress
Marcella Lentz-Pope was born in Los Angeles County, California, USA. She is an actress, known for Superbad (2007), Boardwalk Empire (2010) and The Social Network (2010).- Marek Frackowiak was born on 16 August 1950 in Lódz, Lódzkie, Poland. He was an actor, known for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015), Pierwsza milosc (2004) and True Law (2012). He was married to Ewa Zlotowska. He died on 6 November 2017 in Poland.
- Mario Markic is known for En el camino (1995), Telenoche (1966) and Premios Martín Fierro de Cable 2010 (2010).
- Writer
- Actress
- Stunts
Marneen Lynne Fields was born in Minot, North Dakota, on August 16th. She's the only daughter of Robert Leo Fields II, a country-western singer and square dance caller who became the inventor of the Inflatable Door Seal, and Ruby Marie Farris-Fields a homemaker who had dreams of becoming a writer. Marneen was a sickly child born with emphysema and an enlarged heart who wasn't expected to live to be five years old. As a young second grader, Marneen was somewhat of a child prodigy in math taking algebra classes with teenagers at the local high school. She was an exceptional young athlete winning first place in all the races one day at her elementary school track meet along with being a shortstop softball all-star making the Culver City Newspaper each week. One year she won the dance contest at the park during the Easter Egg Hunt Program and wanted to be a dancer when she grew up. Marneen was also a multi-musician playing keyboard, string bass, and clarinet in her elementary school band. She started doing handstands and back-bends those years and the neighborhood kids would line the block following her, counting to see how far she could walk on her hands.
She was awarded Athlete of the Year in 9th grade (beating out all the boys), for obtaining the highest scores on the President's Physical Fitness Tests at Sinaloa Jr. High School in Simi Valley, California. At sixteen years old Marneen created and opened the first Simi Valley Parks and Recreations program in gymnastics for children and adults of all ages including handicapped children of all types, mentally challenged, deaf and blind. In 1972 she won Most Talented Cheerleader out of all the cheerleaders at the Southern California Cheerleader Camp in Santa Barbara, California. That same year she lost all the hearing in her left ear due to a throat infection that left her severely hearing impaired. The infection destroyed 80% of her hearing nerves in the left ear just missing her equilibrium nerves and making her legally half deaf. Had the infection hit Marneen's equilibrium nerves she would not have gone on to achieve what she achieved in her early career in gymnastics and stunts. Marneen continued to coach gymnastics throughout college and during her early career as a stunt woman.
In 1973 Marneen Fields graduated Royal High School in Simi Valley, California with a major honor. She was one of three women in the United States awarded a full-ride athletic scholarship in gymnastics to Utah State University in Logan, Utah where she also minored in theater arts and dance. In the early 70s, It was rare for women to be awarded athletic scholarships in gymnastics, they didn't give them to women back then. At USU Marneen was the number one gymnast for the college competing at the national intercollegiate class one advance all-around level due to her ability to perform moves similar to Olympic Gold Medalist Olga Korbut. She was ranked third in the entire state of Utah, third on floor exercise and fifth on balance beam.
During the summer of 1976, she was home from college in Ventura, California recovering from an ankle reconstruction surgery when she was discovered by legendary stuntman Paul Stader (Cary Grant's double). Paul recognized the champion gymnastic talent in Marneen and recruited her to join his famous film and TV stunt school to become a Hollywood stunt woman. By December 1976 Marneen landed her first acting role being cast by Eddie Foy III as one of the mischievous schoolmates in the MOW "The Spell," and she also landed the stunt job performing the backward high fall from the top of the hanging rope in the gymnasium. By 1977 she was a regular stunt performer on the hit TV series, "The Man from Atlantis." On the series, Marneen performed risky high dives, including a dive out of a helicopter into a swimming pool to resuscitate a dying Patrick Duffy. That year she became the first woman photographed doing the famous Man from Atlantis swim at the bottom of the ocean floor. But, it wasn't until the summer of 1977 when she appeared opposite Clint Eastwood in "The Gauntlet," and she performed the highly dangerous backward jump with a half twist off the moving train into only some sand that she launched to the top of stunt world. For fifteen years, Marneen appeared on TV shows and movie screens around the world performing many more dangerous high falls on MOWs like, "Goliath Awaits" and "Death Ray 2000"; high dives on "Man from Atlantis"; feet first jumps out of airplanes on "The Rockford Files," and off tall buildings on "Quincy"; fight scenes on "Wonder Woman" and "The Return of Mike Hammer"; underwater scuba work on "Project UFO"; and fire scenes on "The Runner Stumbles." By 1985 Marneen had been coined Hollywood's Original Fall Girl and awarded a Fall Girl license plate by J.P. Bill Catching and the Stuntman's Association. Marneen tackled more dangerous stunt jobs as she got cast in many stunt acting roles performing her own stunts along with straight acting roles on prime time TV shows and in feature films.
Wikipedia lists Marneen Fields as one of the prominent stunt women and stunt actresses of the 1970s and 1980s. During those years, the world saw her versatility as an actress, and great gymnastic talent as a stunt woman, step into the shoes of 100 of the world's most famous actresses to perform death-defying feats for them, and for herself when cast in a role that required a stunt. Some of the film and TV shows she's appeared in and the actresses she did stunts for are: Jane Seymour "Battlestar Galactica," Priscilla Presley "The Fall Guy," Shirley Jones "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure," Michelle Phillips "The Man with Bogart's Face," Morgan Fairchild "Time Express," Belinda Montgomery "The Man from Atlantis," Mary Crosby "Dynasty," Samantha Doane "The Gauntlet," Linda Purl "Matlock," Natasha Richardson "Patty Hearst," Karen Black "Police Story: Confessions of a Lady Cop," Linda Hamilton "Murder She Wrote," Melanie Griffith "She's in the Army Now," Tovah Feldshuh "Terror out of the Sky," Dee Wallace "The Howling," Kim Cattrall "The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries," Barbara Hershey "From Here to Eternity," Heather Menzies "Logan's Run," and many more.
By 1978 Marneen had become somewhat of an Angelina Jolie, in smaller roles, but never the less, performing her own stunts when landing acting roles. She kept her stunt woman day job as her career transformed from stunt woman to stunt actress to respected character actress. She got cast in more stunt actress jobs by famous directors like Stanley Kramer "The Runner Stumbles," Irwin Allen "The Swarm," Peter Medak "Otherworld," and James Fargo "Scarecrow and Mrs. King" to name a few. She got cast as an actress and stunt-actress to work opposite in scenes with A-List actors like Clint Eastwood "The Gauntlet," Dick Van Dyke "The Runner Stumbles," Jeff Goldblum "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Bruce Boxleitner "Scarecrow and Mrs. King," Fred MacMurray and Olivia DE Havilland "The Swarm," George Kennedy "Airport 79 - The Concord," Mary Waronov and Marjoe Gortner "Hellhole," and others. From 1979-1985 Marneen received professional training as an actress by celebrity acting coaches, Jeff Corey "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," and Victor French son-in-law to the great Lee J. Cobb and co-star on two Emmy winning series with Michael Landon, "Little House on the Prairie" and "Highway to Heaven." It was during those years that Marneen set new goals to become a famous actress one day as she also appeared in fifteen theatrical productions throughout the Los Angeles area.
Marneen's dreams to become a famous actress finally started to come true by the mid-80s when she became the first woman to come from the pure stunt arena to land the large co-star role in the Arkoff International Production of "Hellhole" as the religious insanity victim who receives the chemical lobotomy in highly dramatic scenes opposite Mary Woronov and Marjoe Gortner. During the filming director, Pierre DeMoro was quoted saying, "Marneen Fields displays a Sissy Spacek star quality." By 1988 Marneen Fields received significant industry recognition as an actress when she found herself featured on the coveted page three of "Star Magazine" in an article titled, "Clint Eastwood's Hug Changed My Life: Shapely Stunt Gal is Now an Actress." The article displayed a sexy glamour photo of Marneen taken by celebrity photographer Alan Houghton (Sophia Loren, Natalie Wood, and Kim Basinger). During the photo-shoot, Alan told Marneen she was the most versatile actress he had ever photographed.
Cut to, a wicked twist of fate involving a near-fatal car accident that derailed Marneen's blossoming acting career and ended her stunt and stunt acting careers. Marneen's personal life ironically imitating her creative life of surviving disasters on screen. With years lost to recovery from the crash that required a series of life-threatening abdominal operations, along with a diagnosis of third stage melanoma and losing part of her right thigh to the disease. Marneen spent the next decade not fighting Freddy Krueger as she did in "A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge," but fighting for her life while enduring heights of continual excruciating pain. For a decade, Marneen never thought she would return to doing normal everyday tasks like hanging laundry, let alone ever get on her feet again to perform. After fifteen years of extremely stressful career demands performing dangerous falls onto her spinal column doing stunt work, combined with the near-fatal car crash, and numerous pelvic operations, these tragedies would leave Marneen having to live and deal with significant Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for the rest of her life.
By channeling a resilience and a faith that has defined Marneen's life so far, she fought through the pain and faced all the world could throw at her by learning to roll with the punches. In the end she would emerge from this lonely tunnel of horrors spiritually heartbroken, physically shattered, and emotionally devastated. Eventually, she found the courage to summon her enormous reserves of strength and find a new belief in triumphantly reinventing herself. Today she continues to act and has become a potent force both in the public spotlight as an award-winning pop-blues-soft rock singer, and behind the scenes as a scriptwriter, ASCAP composer, producer, director, and an author. Healed by music and reaching her childhood dreams to become a famous singer, Marneen has breathed new life, direction, and purpose into her career. Her rich, passionate, alto voice compared to the late Grammy Hall of Fame artist Whitney Houston, while her pop-rock compositions have been compared to acclaimed Grammy-winning songwriter Diane Warren.
2023 will see two books about Marneen's life and career publish, "Cartwheels & Halos: The True Marneen Lynne Fields Story" and "Rollin' with the Punches: An Examination of the Stunt and Acting Careers of Marneen Fields. (40 Years of Surviving Highfalls, Hellholes, and Freddy's Fingernails)." In 2019 Marneen published an eBook, paperback book, and audio-book she's written on the craft of acting titled, "The Illusive Craft of Acting: An Actor's Preparation Process." The books are available on Amazon, Smashwords, CDBaby, and all the popular outlets as are her original award-winning compositions.- Actor
- Producer
Marshall Manesh was born in Iran. He lost his father at an early age and was raised by his beloved mother, whom he feels he got his strength from to make it in show biz. He came to the United States in the mid '70s and joined the Persian Theater Group and traveled extensively through out the US, Canada and Europe for 8 years. His debut film was "True Lies" as Jamal Khaled, directed by James Cameron. Marshall has done more than 100 feature films, television projects and more than 40 commercials. He had a recurring roles on Will & Grace as Mr. Zamir, How I Met Your Mother as Ranjit, Scrubs as Dr. Akbar, and was also a series regular on Andy Barker P.I.- Actress
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Additional Crew
Martha Hagen was born on 16 August 1969 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. She is an actress, known for The State (1993), Orange Quarters (1998) and Stella Shorts 1998-2002 (2002). She has been married to Michael Ian Black since 17 October 1998. They have two children.- Actor
- Producer
Mauricio Islas was born on 16 August 1973 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico. He is an actor and producer, known for The Spring (2001), Perseguidos (2016) and Prisionera (2004). He was previously married to Patricia Villasaña.- Menachem Begin was an Israeli politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of Israel. Before the creation of the state of Israel, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944, against the British mandatory government, which was opposed by the Jewish Agency. As head of the Irgun, he targeted the British in Palestine. Later, the Irgun fought the Arabs during the 1947-48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine and its chief Begin was also noted as "leader of the notorious terrorist organization" by the British government and banned from entering the United Kingdom.
- Mirella D'Angelo was born on 16 August 1956 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. She is an actress, known for Caligula (1979), Hercules (1983) and Tenebrae (1982).
- Director
- Producer
Noam Murro was born on 16 August 1961 in Jerusalem, Israel. He is a director and producer, known for 300: Rise of an Empire (2014), Watership Down (2018) and Smart People (2008).- Director
- Additional Crew
- Animation Department
Cartoonist Otto Messmer was born in Union City (then known as West Hoboken), NJ, on Aug. 16, 1892. He showed an aptitude for drawing as early as grammar school, and his teachers encouraged him to follow that path. After graduating he took a correspondence course in art and attended the Thomas School of Art in New York City. He took a job with an advertising agency, illustrating fashion catalogs, but never lost his passion for drawing. One day his brother took him to a vaudeville act that showed the films of pioneering animator Winsor McCay and Messmer knew what career path he was going to follow. He began drawing his own comic strips and submitting them to newspapers. He also applied to several animation studios in New York for work as a set painter. Producer Jack Cohn at Universal saw Messmer's comic strips, however, liked them and hired him as an animator.
Messmer devised a character called "Motor Mat", a daredevil race driver, and brought it to Cohn. Cohn showed it to well-known animators Pat Sullivan and Henry 'Hy' Mayer, who were so impressed with it that they both asked Messmer to work with them. Messmer chose Mayer and helped him animate his series "The Travels of Teddy", based on the exploits of Mayer's friend Theodore Roosevelt. After Messmer finished that project he went to work for Pat Sullivan. Unfortunately for both of them, Sullivan was arrested for rape in 1917, convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. Messmer went back to Hy Mayer, but was soon drafted into the army and fought in World War I, returning to the US in 1919. By that time Sullivan was out of prison, and the two went back to making animated films.
Later that year Sullivan and Messmer received an order from Paramount Screen Magazine, which made news, travelogue and cartoon shorts, to create a cartoon character (the animator it had originally contracted with was late turning it in) and Sullivan told Messmer to do it on his own. Messmer made the character a sassy, all-black cat and called the cartoon "Feline Follies". It was quite successful and Paramount ordered an entire series of the cat's adventures. Messmer originally called the character "Master Tom" but by the third entry in the series the name had changed to Felix (a combination of "feline" and "felicity").
In 1921 Paramount Pictures decided to close down its Screen Magazine division, and Sullivan managed to get back the rights to Felix the Cat, which had actually belonged to Paramount (even though Sullivan's studio had created it). He then went to Warner Bros. to try to get a distribution deal, but the studio wasn't interested. However, M.J. Winkler, the secretary to Harry Warner, was interested and she and Sulivan eventually signed a production/distribution deal for the Felix the Cat series.
The first entry under the deal was Felix Saves the Day (1922), and it wasn't long before the series was an even bigger hit than it was under Paramount, even managing to secure distribution in Canada. The Messmer/Winkler Felix cartoons were praised for their imagination, humor, puns and intelligence. The success of the series resulted in the company securing an international distribution deal in 1922 that required more than double the number of entries from the previous year, with the resultant expansion of the studio.
Felix was a huge hit with the public, which took him to heart. In 1923 the company turned Felix into a comic strip, which ran until 1943. The strip was popular, but never achieved the status of the cartoons. In addition, the international distribution made the character a worldwide hit.
Felix's popularity began to wane with the coming of sound. Rather than jump wholeheartedly into sound cartoons, as Walt Disney did, Sullivan simply added sound effects to some new Felix films (and went back and did the same to some older entries). The result was shoddy and not up to the standards of the Disney sound cartoons. By 1931 Felix had been eclipsed by a new character, which incorporated both sound effects and dialogue as integral parts of the film, and not just add-ons: Mickey Mouse.
Television revived Felix's career, and new cartoons were created especially for that medium. This time he didn't carry the films alone--he was accompanied by his bulldog Rock Bottom, the eccentric Professor, his somewhat nerdy nephew Poindexter and his "Magic Bag of Tricks".
Otto Messmer died on October 28, 1983, in Fort Lee, NJ, at 91 years of age.- Actor
- Producer
- Executive
Parker Charles William Young was born in Tucson, Arizona, to Karl and Zarina Young. He is the oldest of three children, and as a youth he enjoyed playing sports, rock climbing, paintballing, and exploring the Sonoran desert. In high school, football became Parker's main focus. As a sophomore he started on the Varsity team, and by senior year he was captain. Parker first took the stage as a junior in high school as part of a one act play; that is if you don't count the mandatory theater class in middle school, or the time that he rapped Dr. Dre's "Forgot About Dre" in the 5th grade talent show. The one act play that he was a part of took first place out of three student written plays at the school's "one act play competition." The victory was small and seemingly insignificant, but it was enough to inspire Parker to "give this acting thing a shot." With the encouragement of his drama teacher, Parker decided to take acting more seriously, and thus his senior year became a whirlwind of preparing for college while juggling theater and football. Upon graduation Parker packed his bags and headed to Los Angeles for college. But when he got to LA he decided to drop out of school before he even started and dove head first into the entertainment industry; in other words headshots, acting class, and background work. Parker's break came when he booked the role of "Ryan Shay" on ABC's hit show Suburgatory, the hyperactive jock neighbor to Jeremy Sisto, and son of Ana Gasteyer and Chris Parnell. Following Suburgatory, Parker became a lead in the critically acclaimed Fox comedy, Enlisted, as the youngest of 3 brothers (Geoff Stultz and Chris Lowell) who are all soldiers in the US Army. In the film world, Parker starred in the Flower Films produced "Animal" and the upcoming indie "Fourth Man Out." Parker resides in Los Angeles and enjoys staying active in a variety of different ways including rock climbing, Krav Maga, yoga, and camping. When he's not breaking a sweat you will most likely find him at the beach, on his motorcycle, or reading at Barnes & Noble. That is if he's not off backpacking somewhere with no cell service.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Abandoned as an infant, and then raised by wolves in the Mojave Desert, is certainly not an accurate description of Paul's upbringing. Rather, he was the son of an Air Force Major and a hospital administrator. Paul and his three sisters moved from Sacramento, California to Anchorage, Alaska to Phoenix, Arizona, finally settling down in Denver, Colorado.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Certainly one of France's supreme farceurs in the classic tradition, comedian Pierre Richard was born to an upper crust family with an embarrassing riches of middle names as he was christened Pierre Richard Maurice Charles Leopold Defays. Working and building up his trade at the Paris Music Hall in the early years, he appeared in small movie roles throughout most of the 60s. In the 70s, however, he aimed his genius directly towards film and succeeded beyond the wildest expectations. Directing and co-writing many of his slapstick vehicles, his characters often have taken on an hilariously guileless persona and, coupled with his innate gift for klutzy physical comedy, have become an audience favorite for nearly four decades. His superior work in Distracted (1970) and The Troubles of Alfred (1972) was immediately recognized and this led to the international crossover hit The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (1972) in which Richard played a naive, innocent concert musician plucked by chance to become a superspy on a top secret mission. A potent association in the 1960s and 1970s with actor/producer/director Yves Robert and the 1980s with writer/director Francis Veber and actor Gérard Depardieu produced several comedy classics: Very Happy Alexander (1968), The Return of the Tall Blond Man (1974), La Chèvre (1981), The ComDads (1983) and The Fugitives (1986). Many of Richard's classic comedies, including The Toy (1976), have spawned Hollywood remakes and imitations, though most pale compared to the originals.