Actors and Actresses Who Have Passed
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Born in New York City of humble means, character player James Coco was the son of Feliche, an Italian shoemaker, and Ida (Detestes) Coco. Shining shoes as a youngster with his father, his interest in acting occurred early on as a child. At age 17 he toured with a children's theatre troupe for three years portraying Old King Cole and Hans Brinker. Intensive study with acting guru Uta Hagen led to his Broadway debut at age 29 in "Hotel Paradiso" in 1957, but he earned his first acting award, an Obie, for his performance in the 1961 off-Broadway production of "The Moon in Yellow River". He went on to win a second and third Obie for his performances in the plays "Fragments" (1967) and "The Transfiguration of Benno Blimppie" (1977). Dark, hefty and prematurely balding, he proved to be a natural on the comedy stage and in scores of commercials (notably as Willy the plumber in the Drano ads) throughout the 1960s. Other comedy theater highlights included roles in "Auntie Mame," "Everybody Loves Opal," "A Shot in the Dark," "Bell, Book and Candle" and "You Can't Take It With You".
In the late 60s he formed a strong collaboration with playwright Terrence McNally and appeared in an off-Broadway double-bill of his one-act plays (his one-act was entitled "Witness") in 1968, followed by "Here's Where I Belong" a failed 1968 Broadway musical variation of the Steinbeck play "East of Eden" that closed on opening night. Their most notable alliance occurred the following year with the play "Next," which ran more than 700 performances and earned Coco a Drama Desk award. Sixteen years later, and shortly before Coco's death, the two reunited for the 1985 Manhattan Theatre Club production of "It's Only a Play".
Coco also earned kudos for his work in Neil Simon comedies, and "The Last of the Red Hot Lovers" (1969), which was specifically written for him, earned him a Tony Award nomination as Best Actor. The two later joined forces for a Broadway revival of the musical "Little Me" and the hilarious film comedy spoofs Murder by Death (1976) and The Cheap Detective (1978), in addition to his moving support role as Marsha Mason's depressed gay actor/friend in Only When I Laugh (1981), which garnered his sole Oscar nomination.
Achieving stardom first on stage, Coco's other films were a mixed bag with more misses (Ensign Pulver (1964), Man of La Mancha (1972) (as Sancho Panza), The Wild Party (1975), Scavenger Hunt (1979)) than hits (A New Leaf (1971)). On the TV screen, Coco fronted two short-lived 1970s comedy series, Calucci's Department (1973) and The Dumplings (1976), and also appeared in daytime soaps (The Edge of Night (1956) and "The Guiding Light"). Throughout his career he played an amusing number of characters on such sitcoms as Maude (1972) and Alice (1976) and also played bathos and pathos to great effect, not only winning an Emmy for his dramatic performance on a St. Elsewhere (1982) episode but appearing opposite Doris Roberts as the brittle Van Daan couple in the TV version of The Diary of Anne Frank (1980). One of his last TV assignments was a recurring role on the sitcom "Who's The Boss?" in 1986-1987.
In his last years, Coco received attention for his culinary talents and best-selling cookbooks. The James Coco Diet, an educational book which included chapters on menu planning and behavior modification as well as choice recipes), was just one that he promoted on the talk show circuit. It is probably not a coincidence that he often played characters with extreme food issues. Suffering from obesity (5'10", 250 lbs.) for most his adult life, the talented actor died unexpectedly of a heart attack in New York City in 1987 at the age of 56, and was buried in St. Gertrude's Roman Catholic Cemetery in Colonia, New Jersey.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Lanky, charismatic and versatile actor with an amazing grin that put everyone at ease, James Coburn studied acting at UCLA, and then moved to New York to study under noted acting coach Stella Adler. After being noticed in several stage productions, Coburn appeared in a handful of minor westerns before being cast as the knife-throwing, quick-shooting Britt in the John Sturges mega-hit The Magnificent Seven (1960). Sturges remembered Coburn's talents when he cast his next major film project, The Great Escape (1963), where Coburn played the Australian POW Sedgwick. Regular work now came thick and fast for Coburn, including appearing in Major Dundee (1965), the first of several films he appeared in directed by Hollywood enfant terrible Sam Peckinpah.
Coburn was then cast, and gave an especially fine performance as Lt. Commander Paul Cummings in Arthur Hiller's The Americanization of Emily, where he demonstrated a flair for writer Paddy Chayefsky's subtle, ironic comedy that would define his performances for the rest of his career.
The next two years were a key period for Coburn, with his performances in the wonderful 007 spy spoof Our Man Flint (1966) and the eerie Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966). Coburn followed up in 1967 with a Flint sequel, In Like Flint (1967), and the much underrated political satire The President's Analyst (1967). The remainder of the 1960s was rather uneventful for Coburn. However, he became associated with martial arts legend Bruce Lee and the two trained together, traveled extensively and even visited India scouting locations for a proposed film project, but Lee's untimely death (Coburn, along with Steve McQueen, was a pallbearer at Lee's funeral) put an end to that.
The 1970s saw Coburn appearing again in several strong roles, starting off in Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), alongside Charles Bronson in the Depression-era Hard Times (1975) and as a disenchanted German soldier on the Russian front in Peckinpah's superb Cross of Iron (1977). Towards the end of the decade, however, Coburn was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which severely hampered his health and work output for many years. After conventional treatments failed, Coburn turned to a holistic therapist, and through a restructured diet program, made a definite improvement. By the 1990s he was once again appearing regularly in both film and TV productions.
No one was probably more surprised than Coburn himself when he was both nominated for, and then won, the Best Supporting Actor Award in 1997 for playing Nick Nolte's abusive and alcoholic father in Affliction (1997). At 70 years of age, Coburn's career received another shot in the arm, and he appeared in another 14 films, including Snow Dogs (2002) and The Man from Elysian Fields (2001), before his death from a heart attack in November of 2002. Coburn's passions in life included martial arts, card-playing and enjoying Cuban cigars (which may have contributed to his fatal heart attack).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Janet Waldo provided the quintessential voice of the swooning, overly dramatic teenager for numerous generations -- from the 1940s swinging babysitters to the 1960s groovy chick. A bouncy, perennially-youthful brunette, Janet Marie Waldo was born on February 4, 1919, in Grandview, Washington, and began entertaining in church plays as a youth. Urged on by her singer mother, she studied at the University of Washington and performed in plays. She was discovered by none other than Paramount star Bing Crosby, when he and his talent scouts conducted a contest and invited her to try out for it, which she won. Crosby next invited Janet (accompanied by her mother) to California and the rest is history.
Janet met a Paramount talent scout that signed her up for small roles in movies, including the Crosby films, Sing, You Sinners (1938) and The Star Maker (1939). Unable to completely break out of her bit-part cycle as assorted hat-check girls, receptionists, and telephone operators, she did manage a few co-starring roles in such Tim Holt westerns, such as The Bandit Trail (1941) and Land of the Open Range (1942) before setting her career sights on radio in 1943.
It was Crosby himself who introduced her to radio and she fell in love with the medium and its possibilities. As the eternal teen in "Meet Corliss Archer", her voice became a household sound and it was obvious that. her vocal talents would become her biggest moneymaker. She also performed on radio's "One Man's Family", "The Gallant Heart", and "Star Playhouse". She played the cigarette girl on both Red Skelton and Art Linkletter's programs, and teenager Emmy Lou on Ozzie Nelson on both his radio and TV shows. In 1952, she filmed one classic I Love Lucy (1951) episode, The Young Fans (1952) playing an extremely lovesick teenaged girl, who fell for Ricky Ricardo, although she was past 30 at the time.
In 1948 Janet married writer-director-producer Robert E. Lee of "Inherit the Wind" and "Auntie Mame" fame. She curtailed her career activities sharply for some time in order to raise her two children. She even turned down the opportunity to return to her popular role of Corliss Archer when the radio series was revamped for TV in 1951, and Lugene Sanders from the "Life of Riley" series took on the part instead. After sporadic appearances on stage, Janet established herself as one of the top female voice artists in the early 1960s when she gave vocal life to hip high schooler Judy Jetson in the prime-time Hanna-Barbera cartoon series The Jetsons (1962), a role that she would go on to play well past the age of 70. Her vocal range led her to become a Hanna-Barbera staple for over three decades, providing hundreds and hundreds of voices, old and young, to both Saturday morning and feature film cartoons. Some of her better known characters include Granny Sweet, Penelope Pitstop, Superman's Lana Lang, the Addams Family's Morticia Addams, the title role in Josie and the Pussycats (1970) and Princess on Sandy Frank's Battle of the Planets (1978).
Janet was a member of the California Artists Radio Theatre (CART) and performed frequently on the smaller L.A. stages over the years. The woman with a thousand voices continued doing radio shows and commercial voice-overs (Electrosol), and making personal appearances. Long married to playwright/TV writer Robert E. Lee until his death in 1994, the couple had two children (Jonathan, Lucy). Diagnosed with a benign but inoperable brain tumor in 2011, she died five years later, age 97, on June 12, 2016, in Encino, California. She is interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Undoubtedly the woman who had come to epitomize what we recognize today as "celebrity," Zsa Zsa Gabor, is better known for her many marriages, personal appearances, her "dahlink" catchphrase, her actions, gossip, and quotations on men, rather than her film career.
Zsa Zsa was born as Sári Gabor on February 6, 1917 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman) and Vilmos Gabor (born Farkas Miklós Grün), both of Jewish descent. Her siblings were Eva Gabor and Magda Gabor. Zsa Zsa studied at a Swiss finishing school, was second runner-up in the fifth Miss Hungary pageant, and began her stage career in Vienna in 1934. In 1941, the year she obtained her first divorce, she followed younger sister Eva to Hollywood.
A radiant, beautiful blonde, Zsa Zsa began to appear on television series and occasional films. Her first film was at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Lovely to Look At (1952), co-starring Kathryn Grayson and Red Skelton. She next made a comedy called We're Not Married! (1952) at 20th Century Fox with Ginger Rogers. It was far from a star billing; she appeared several names down the cast as a supporting actress. But in 1952 she broke into films big time with her starring role opposite José Ferrer in Moulin Rouge (1952), although it has been said that throughout filming, director John Huston gave her a very difficult time.
In the following years, Zsa Zsa slipped back into supporting roles in films such as Lili (1953) and 3 Ring Circus (1954). Her main period of film work was in the 1950s, with other roles in Death of a Scoundrel (1956), with Yvonne De Carlo, and The Man Who Wouldn't Talk (1958) with Anna Neagle; again, these were supporting roles. By the 1960s, Zsa Zsa was appearing more as herself in films. She now appeared to follow her own persona around, and cameo appearances were the order of the day in films such as Pepe (1960) and Jack of Diamonds (1967). This continued throughout the 1970s.
She was memorable as herself in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991), in which she humorously poked fun at a 1989 incident where she was convicted of slapping a police officer (Paul Kramer) during a traffic stop. She spent three days in jail and had to do 120 hours of community service. Such infamous incidents contributed to her becoming one of the most all-time recognizable of Hollywood celebrities, and sometimes ridiculed as a result. She was also memorable to British television viewers on The Ruby Wax Show (1997).
In 2002, Gabor was reported to be in a coma in a Los Angeles hospital after a horrifying car accident. The 85-year-old star was injured when the car she was traveling in hit a utility pole in West Hollywood, California. The reports about her coma eventually proved to be inaccurate.
Zsa Zsa's life, spanning two continents, nine husbands, and 11 decades, came to an end on December 18, 2016, when she died of cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California. She was 99.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Allan Melvin was born on 18 February 1923 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Flash Gordon (1979), Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends (1981) and Archie Bunker's Place (1979). He was married to Amalia Faustina Sestero. He died on 17 January 2008 in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Harvey Korman was a lanky, popular TV comedy veteran with a flair for broad comic characterizations, who shone for a decade as leading man and second banana par excellence on The Carol Burnett Show (1967).
Harvey Herschel Korman was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Ellen (Blecher) and Cyril Raymond Korman, a salesman. His parents, both immigrants, were from Russian Jewish families. A persistent television presence since the early 1960s, Korman's first break was a stint as a featured performer on The Danny Kaye Show (1963), a lively musical variety series in which Korman began working in the format which he would soon master--providing sturdy support to a multi-talented star in a wide variety of comedy sketches. Boasting large, expressive features and a wonderfully mutable voice, Korman could play a wide assortment of characters. Perhaps his first classic characterization was provided for The Flintstones (1960) wherein he was the distinctively snooty voice of The Great Gazoo, a little helmeted space man from the future consigned to the Earth's past in punishment for his crimes.
Korman garnered four Emmys for his work with Carol Burnett over the years. Ironically Korman would never again find such a successful showcase for his talents though he certainly tried, appearing in several busted pilots and short-lived sitcoms. Almost exclusively a comic actor, he stretched a bit to play straight man Bud Abbott opposite Buddy Hackett's Lou Costello in the disappointing TV biopic Bud and Lou (1978). He directed and/or produced sitcom episodes and TV comedy specials. An occasional actor in films, Korman made his feature debut with a supporting role in The Last of the Secret Agents? (1966). Several film roles followed until he gained his widest exposure with a major supporting role in Mel Brooks' classic Western spoof Blazing Saddles (1974). He fared well in Brooks' High Anxiety (1977) and History of the World: Part I (1981). He acted in two 1994 features: the blockbuster live-action version of The Flintstones (1994) (providing the voice of the Dictabird) and the poorly received but lavishly produced Radioland Murders (1994).- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Craggy-faced, athletic veteran character actor who played hard-bitten or menacing types in numerous westerns and crime dramas. One of five brothers, Woodward grew up in Arlington, Texas. He had a keen interest in aviation early on and took flying lessons from 1941, getting his pilot's license and subsequently served in both World War II (Army Air Corps) and Korea (Military Air Transport Command). Woodward first acted at Arlington State College, majoring in music and drama. He appeared for a while with the Margo Jones Repertory Theatre '47 in Dallas and then went back to study for a degree in corporate finance at the University of Texas, graduating in 1948. At one time, he sang with a jazz band and as a member of a barber shop quartet as well as having a regular weekly gig as a talk show host on local radio. Possessed of a powerful bass-baritone voice, Woodward's ultimate ambition had been to sing for the Metropolitan Opera. That didn't pan out. Neither did his hope that moving to Hollywood in 1955 might open the door to a career in musicals. Instead, he successfully auditioned at Disney for The Great Locomotive Chase (1956), followed by a part in the western pioneer saga Westward Ho, the Wagons! (1956). His first big break was as co-star opposite Hugh O'Brian in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955), playing the role of Earp's deputy Shotgun Gibbs for four seasons. This effectively typecast him as a western genre actor with a record number of guest spots on Gunsmoke (1955) and Wagon Train (1957). Nonetheless, his most famous role was that of ""the man with no eyes", a sinister chain gang overseer in Cool Hand Luke (1967), distinguished by perpetually wearing reflective sunglasses. He also made two appearances on Star Trek (1966) (most famously as Simon Van Gelder, the first human with whom Spock 'mind melds') and played the shrewd Armani-suited oil tycoon Punk Anderson in 55 episodes of Dallas (1978).
Thomas Morgan Woodward was awarded the Golden Boot Award from the Hollywood Motion Picture and Television Fund in August 1988. In 2009, he became an inductee into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Privately, he was a respected authority on Early American Aircraft. According to his website, his main hobby was "restoring, rebuilding and flying antique airplanes".- Actress
- Soundtrack
Her father was a butcher. In 1913 she met and married matinée idol DeWolf Hopper Sr. and in 1915 they moved to Hollywood, where both began active film careers. He became a star with Triangle Company, she began in vamp parts and turned to supporting roles. After her divorce she appeared in dozens of films, becoming known as "Queen of the Quickies". In 1936 she started a gossipy radio show and two years later commenced a 28-year stint as a newspaper gossip columnist, rival of Louella Parsons. In her last films she mostly played herself, a tribute to her influence in Hollywood. Her son became famous as investigator Paul Drake in the Perry Mason (1957) series.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
As might be said for the late and great comedians Harvey Korman and Madeline Kahn, it seems that Mel Brooks was the only director on the planet who knew how to best utilize this funnyman's talents on film. Brooks once remarked that, whenever he cast Dom in one of his films he'd add an extra two days to the shooting schedule because of delays between takes due to the constant laughter from cast and crew at Dom's improvisations.
The lovable, butterball comedian was a mainstay on 1960s and '70s TV variety as a "second banana," or comic-relief player. While his harsher critics believed his schtick would be better served in smaller doses, Dom nevertheless went on to find some range in a few moving, more restrained projects. Those few glimpses behind all the mirth and merriment revealed a dramatic actor waiting to be unleashed. As they say, behind every clown's smile, one finds tears.
He was born Dominick DeLuise on August 1, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York, to parents John, a sanitation engineer, and Vicenza (DeStefano) DeLuise, both Italian immigrants. A natural school-class clown, his irrepressible sense of humor helped Dom fit in at school, and he started drawing belly laughs fairly young in his very first school play that had him portraying an inert copper penny! He later attended New York's High School of Performing Arts, but when it came to college, he decided to major in biology at Tufts University, outside Boston. That decision failed to expunge the idea of being a comedian from his head and heart, however, and that determination finally prevailed.
Dom's formative years as an actor were spent apprenticing at the Cleveland Playhouse, where which he gamely played roles in everything from contemporary shows like "Guys and Dolls" and "Stalag 17" to classics like "The School for Scandal" and even "Hamlet." He earned his first professional paycheck playing the titular Bernie the dog in "Bernie's Last Wish." Dom also got a taste of what it was like in front of the camera in Cleveland, appearing on the local TV kiddie's show "Tip Top Clubhouse."
Back in NYC, he took over the lead role of Tinker the toymaker in another children's local program, Tinker's Workshop (1954), for one season in 1958. He also started making noise on the off-Broadway scene. Appearing in the plays "The Jackass" and "All in Love," he became part of the featured ensemble of the 1961 musical revue "An Evening with Harry Stoones," which included 19-year-old Barbra Streisand. More outlandish musical roles came his way in the early 1960s with "Little Mary Sunshine" (as Corporal Billy Jester) and "The Student Gypsy, or the Prince of Liederkrantz" (his Broadway debut as Muffin T. Raggamuffin). While appearing in the lighthearted summer stock spoof "Summer & Smirk" in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Dom met fellow performer Carol Arthur (née Carol Arata). They married on November 23, 1965. Their three sons, Peter DeLuise, Michael DeLuise and David DeLuise all eventually found their way into show business. In 1971, Dom returned successfully to Broadway in a perfectly-suited Neil Simon vehicle, "The Last of the Red Hot Lovers."
Dom was first noticed on the smaller screen, creating the sketch character of Dominick the Great, a magician who tries in vain to mask his inept prestidigitations with feigned dignity on Garry Moore's popular show. The comedian truly thrived in this TV variety atmosphere and soon began popping up seemingly everywhere: (The Hollywood Palace (1964), The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967), The Jackie Gleason Show (1966)). Balding, blushing, dimpled and moon-faced (comparisons to a ripe tomato were not wide of the mark), he was readily equipped with a high-wattage, Cheshire Cat smile that became his trademark. At his best, looking embarrassed or agitated, the laughs usually came at his own expense, whether playing a panic-stricken klutz or squirming nervous-Nelly type. Dom took his magician character to the ensemble comedy show The Entertainers (1964), which also showcased Carol Burnett and Bob Newhart, and found more regular employment as a bumbling private eye in puppeteer Shari Lewis' daytime children's program, and as a foil for Dean Martin on the entertainer's regular and summer replacement shows. Dom again repeated his Dominick the Great character on Martin's show and received great reception. He later found himself part of Martin's "in-crowd" of comedians on his "celebrity roasts."
Dom's obvious comic genius was more readily evident, and succeeded better, in tandem with other performers than it was on its own. Hosting duties for his very first comedy/variety program The Dom DeLuise Show (1968), which featured wife Carol as part of the regular roster, lasted only one summer. The sitcom Lotsa Luck! (1973), which showcased Dom as bachelor Stanley Belmont having to contend with a live-in mother (a harping Kathleen Freeman) and sister (an ungainly Beverly Sanders), was canceled after its first season. He gave it a rest for awhile before trying once again with the sketch-like sitcom The Dom DeLuise Show (1987), but it, too, quickly faded. Another brief stint was as host of a revamped Candid Camera (1991).
While Dom made an unlikely film debut as a high-strung Air Force technician in the gripping nuclear drama Fail Safe (1964) starring Henry Fonda, it was in zany, irreverent comedy that he found his true calling. Appearing in support of others such as Sid Caesar and Mary Tyler Moore, respectively, in the so-so comedies The Busy Body (1967) and What's So Bad About Feeling Good? (1968), he proved a delight as an inept, dim-witted spy in the Doris Day caper The Glass Bottom Boat (1966).
Mel Brooks first cast Dom as the miserly Russian Orthodox priest, Father Fyodor, in his film The Twelve Chairs (1970), and found plenty of room for the comedian after that -- as campy director Buddy Bizarre in Blazing Saddles (1974), the silly-ass director's assistant in Silent Movie (1976), Emperor Nero in History of the World: Part I (1981), the voice of the cheese-oozing Pizza the Hutt in the "Star Wars" parody Spaceballs (1987), and as Sherwood Forest's very own puffy-cheeked Godfather, Don Giovanni, in Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993).
A very close friend of action star Burt Reynolds, Dom romped through a number of Reynolds' freewheeling films as well, including Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), The Cannonball Run (1981) and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982). One of his finest scene-stealing film roles, in fact, was as Reynolds' schizo pal in The End (1978). Dom went on to direct a number of stage productions for his close friend at the Burt Reynolds Theatre in Jupiter, Florida -- among them "Butterflies Are Free," "Same Time, Next Year" (starring Burt and Carol Burnett), "Brighton Beach Memoirs" (starring son Peter), and the musical "Jump" (featuring wife Carol). Still another comic buddy, Gene Wilder, handed Dom the roles of the indulgent opera star in The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975) and harassed movie mogul Adolf Zitz in The World's Greatest Lover (1977). Dom later joined Wilder once again, along with Wilder's wife Gilda Radner, in the leaden comedy Haunted Honeymoon (1986), a clumsy haunted-house spoof that even Dom, in full drag, could not salvage.
Change-of-pace roles were few and far between. One that did come Dom's way was the compulsive-eating protagonist in Fatso (1980). Directed by and co-starring Brooks' wife Anne Bancroft, Dom managed to mix comedy with pathos. Obesity was also a chronic, real-life problem for the comedian and, at one point in 1999, it was reported that he had tipped the scales at 325 lbs. On a positive note, this passion for food actually fed into a more lucrative sideline -- as a respected chef and culinary author ("Eat This" and "Eat This Too") in which he appeared all over the tube cooking and demonstrating his favorite recipes. He also found time to write children's books on the side.
Dom tackled broad comedy films with great abandon -- a wallflower he was not -- but they were hit-or-miss. Some of his biggest misses were the Mae West disaster Sextette (1977), the Dudley Moore showcase Wholly Moses! (1980) (although Dom was arguably the best thing in it), Loose Cannons (1990), in which he appeared as portly pornographer Harry "The Hippo" Gutterman, Driving Me Crazy (1991), which filmed far away in Germany, and The Silence of the Hams (1994), a parody on the horror genre in which he played Dr. Animal Cannibal Pizza.
Films could also be a family affair. True to life, Dom played a sympathetic kiddie show host in the moving TV-movie Happy (1983). Also the executive producer, he was joined by wife Carol and all three sons in the cast. In addition, Dom offered a cameo in Between the Sheets (2003), a film written by Peter, directed, edited and executive-produced by Michael, and featuring roles for the rest of the family.
Dom's voiceover skills did not go untapped, either, in films including the animated features The Secret of NIMH (1982), An American Tail (1986) and All Dogs Go to Heaven (1989), plus all of their offshoots. The heavily-bearded DeLuise even displayed scene-stealing antics on the operatic scene, once playing the speaking part of Frosch the Jailer in Johann Srauss II's operetta "Die ," at the Metropolitan Opera.
Suffering from various physical ailments in later years, some of which were exacerbated by his chronic obesity and diabetes, Dom's health declined, and he died in 2009 at age 75. His wife and three children survive him, as do three grandchildren.- Actor
- Music Department
- Producer
Don Messick is a legendary voice actor who spent his entire adult-hood in entertainment. He started out wanting to be a ventriloquist. Thankfully for cartoon lovers that career didn't pan out. How do you think his potential career would've stacked up against Edgar Bergen and later, Paul Winchell? No matter, Messick made his way to the hallowed halls of MGM in the early '50s on the recommendation of another voice actor, Daws Butler. At the time, MGM/Tex Avery were doing the theatrical "Droopy" cartoons. Bill Thompson, known for his hilarious voices on the radio show 'Fibber McGee and Molly', borrowed his Wallace Wimple voice and applied it to Droopy. Whenever Thompson couldn't make it to a session, MGM would ask Daws Butler to fill-in. Daws had been working for MGM since the mid '40s. Later, Daws apparently grew tired of the role and suggested Don Messick be Bill Thompson's fill-in. Butler, it's been said, literally squeezed his cheeks together to try and get that sound for Droopy while Messick simply thickened his tongue and loosened his jaws. Messick made the rounds and did every voice-over role large and small in this era. In 1957 Hanna-Barbera started their own company after departing from MGM...Daws Butler and Don Messick were the two voice actors the animation titans employed during the early days. Don was always heard as the "second banana" character or a walk-on. At various times he was the villain. His voice was heard as the 'narrator' on all of the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. On "Ruff and Reddy", the duo's first made-for-TV cartoon series, Don was heard as "Ruff" the cat and as the Droopy-sounding "Professor Gizmo". Messick was also the narrator who interracted with the duo and got caught up in the action much like a soap opera announcer on radio. Daws was "Reddy", the dog, among other nameless characters in the show. In this 1957-1966 time span, Don Messick was cast as Daws Butler's voice partner and as the cartoon narrator. "Boo-Boo" was the little friend of "Yogi Bear" who lived in Jellystone Park. Yogi stole "pic-a-nic" baskets while Boo-Boo always tried, unsuccessfully, to steer Yogi to a more safer life always reminding him "the Ranger isn't going to like it, Yogi". The Ranger in question was "Ranger Smith", the park ranger who always chased and stopped Yogi's latest schemes. Messick gave voice to the Ranger. Daws was Yogi. In other programs, Messick was heard as "Pixie Mouse" to Daws Butler's "Dixie Mouse" and "Mr. Jinx". On "Snagglepuss", Messick was always heard as the villain, mostly the befuddled "Major Minor". Daws was Snagglepuss. In Huckleberry Hound, Daws was the star character while Messick usually did the narration as well as played a villain. Messick would later provide the voices of "Astro" and "RUDI" on the Jetsons. As a versatile voice actor, Messick performed a dozen wacky space aliens on the space cartoons of the mid '60s. The gibberish of "Gloop" and "Gleep" on the Herculoids cartoon was Messick. "Blip", "Igoo", "Zorak", "Tundra", and "Zoc" are just a few of the characters that Messick groaned or grunted for in the outer space cartoons...his most famous non-verbal voice is the snickering dog, "Muttley"...later called "Mumbley". "Richochet Rabbit", "Vapor Man", "Falcon 7", "Dr. Benton Quest", and "Multi-Man" are other voices from Messick in that era. In 1969 he provided the voice for his most famous role, "Scooby-Doo". Throughout the '70s and beyond, Messick gave voice to this cowardly great dane. In 1980 he became the voice of nephew, "Scrappy-Doo", while in later versions Daws Butler was on hand as "Scooby-Dum". On the 1977 Laff-a-Lympics cartoon, Messick not only announced the show but he performed some of the characters too. "Papa Smurf" became Messick's biggest original character in the '80s but he remained busy providing voices for his older characters in new Hanna-Barbera productions. Daws Butler and Mel Blanc were also living off their famed characters by reprising the voices in numerous made-for-TV cartoon movies and Saturday morning TV in the late '70s on into the next decade. Messick remained a much-used voice actor and in 1988 ABC announced "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo". Messick was back in the role and voiced the character until it's demise in 1990. His friend and voice partner, Daws Butler, passed away in 1988. In 1989 Mel Blanc passed away leaving Don Messick, June Foray, Stan Freberg, and Paul Winchell as the remaining link to the classic era. In 1989 The Smurfs went out of production. On the new Tiny Toon Adventures, Messick was heard as "Hamton Pig", a role he remained with until his mysterious retirement in 1996 at the age of 69 which was later revealed to be a result of a stroke. Don Messick died in 1997, closing a chapter in animation history in the process.- Actor
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Comedic actor Howard ("Howie") Jerome Morris, of Jewish heritage, was born in The Bronx, New York, on September 4, 1919. This short, quicksilver comic of TV's "Golden Age" also went on to possess one of the finest vocal instruments for animation. Classically trained on the Shakespearean stage, he forged his own destiny in an entirely different direction after a chance meeting with Carl Reiner in a radio workshop. Following military service in World War II, in which the two entertained troops together (they appeared in Army productions of "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" directed by none other than Maurice Evans, they returned to the professional entertainment fold and appeared together in a 1946 road company of the stage musical "Call Me Mister." Howie also went on to be featured on Broadway as Rosencrantz in "Hamlet" and in the original production of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." He and Reiner would reconnect when asked to come aboard as part of the acting repertory team on Your Show of Shows (1950) and its successor Caesar's Hour (1954), the classic sketch TV show of the 1950s that starred Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. After years of "second banana" TV success, Howie wished for "top banana" stardom and sought work as such with varying degrees of success.
On the New York stage he co-starred as the leprechaun Og in a 1960 revival of "Finian's Rainbow" and, from the early 1960s on, his mastery of dialects and vocal versatility made him an important staple at the Hanna-Barbera animation studio, offering hundreds upon hundreds of voices for The Flintstones (1960), The Jetsons (1962), Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1971), and other such classic Saturday morning cartoon shows as well as the popular voices of Adam Ant, Gerald McBoing-Boing, Beetle Bailey and Jughead Jones. He would intersperse this work with some catchy offbeat characterizations in front of the camera, usually comedic but occasionally dramatic, on both the big and small screens. He added zest to a host of standard comedy films including Boys' Night Out (1962) with Kim Novak, The Nutty Professor (1963) and Way... Way Out (1966), both with Jerry Lewis, and Mel Brooks' spoofs High Anxiety (1977) and History of the World: Part I (1981). As for television, Howie directed Danny Thomas and Andy Griffith in their respective sitcoms, and made a wonderfully eccentric impression on-camera as the grizzled, bucolic, rock-tossing Ernest T. Bass on Griffith's 60's show. The role became such a popular character that Howie was invited to play it sporadically for three seasons.
Morris also turned to film directing and helmed such fluff as Who's Minding the Mint? (1967), With Six You Get Eggroll (1968) and Don't Drink the Water (1969), the last-mentioned written by Woody Allen. Seen more than heard during his twilight career, he continued on with directing commercials and popped up here and there well into the 1990s in comic cameos and as a vocal artist. Married five times (twice to one woman) with four children in all, Howie suffered from poor health in later years and died of congestive heart failure at age 84, on May 21, 2005. He was buried at Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
George Burns was an American actor, comedian, singer, and published author. He formed a comedy duo with his wife Gracie Allen (1895-1964), and typically played the straight man to her zany roles. Following her death, Burns started appearing as a solo performer. He once won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and continued performing until his 90s. He lived to be a centenarian, was viewed as an "elder statesman" in the field of comedy.
Burns was born under the name "Nathan Birnbaum" in 1896, and was nicknamed "Nattie" by his family. His father was Eliezer "Louis" Birnbaum (1855-1903), a coat presser who also served a substitute cantor at a local synagogue in New York City. His mother was Hadassah "Dorah" Bluth (1857-1927), a homemaker. Both parents were Jewish immigrants, originally from the small town of Kolbuszowa in Austrian Galicia (currently part of Poland). Kolbuszowa had a large Jewish population until World War II, when the German occupation forces in Poland relocated the local Jews to a ghetto in Rzeszów.
The Birnbaums were a large family, and Burns had 11 siblings. He was the 9th eldest of the Birnbaum Children. In 1903, Louis Birnbaum caught influenza and died, during an ongoing influenza epidemic. Orphaned when 7-years-old, Burns had to work to financially support his family. He variously shined shoes, run errands, selling newspapers, and worked as a syrup maker in a local candy shop.
Burns liked to sing while working, and practiced singing harmony with three co-workers of similar age. They were discovered by letter carrier Lou Farley, who gave them the idea to perform singing in exchange for payment. The four children soon started performing as the "Pee-Wee Quartet", singing in brothels, ferryboats, saloons, and street corners. They put their hats down for donations from their audience, though their audience was not always generous. In Burns' words: "Sometimes the customers threw something in the hats. Sometimes they took something out of the hats. Sometimes they took the hats."
Burns started smoking cigars c. 1910, when 14-years-old. It became a lifelong habit for him. Burns' performing career was briefly interrupted in 1917, when he was drafted for service in World I. He eventually failed his physical exams, due to his poor eyesight.
By the early 1920s, he adopted the stage name "George Burns", though he told several different stories of why he chose the name. He supposedly named himself after then-famous baseball player George Henry Burns (1897-1978), or the also famous baseball player George Joseph Burns (1889-1966). In another version, he named himself after his brother Izzy "George" Birnbaum, and took the last name "Burns" in honor of Burns Brothers Coal Company.
Burns performed dance routines with various female partners, until he eventually married his most recent partner Gracie Allen in 1926. Burns made his film debut in the comedy short film "Lambchops" (1929), which was distributed by Vitaphone. The film simply recorded one of Burns and Allen's comedy routines from vaudeville.
Burns made his feature film debut in a supporting role of the musical comedy "The Big Broadcast" (1932). He appeared regularly in films throughout the 1930s, with his last film role for several years appearing in the musical film "Honolulu" (1939). Burns was reportedly considered for leading role in "Road to Singapore" (1940), but the studio replaced him with Bob Hope (1903-2003).
Burns and Allen started appearing as comic relief for a radio show featuring bandleader Guy Lombardo (1902-1977). By February 1932, they received their own sketch comedy radio show. The couple portrayed younger singles, until the show was retooled in 1941 and started featuring them as a married couple. By the fall of 1941, the show had evolved into a situational comedy about married life. Burns and Allen's supporting cast included notable voice actors Mel Blanc, Bea Benaderet, and Hal March.
The radio show finally ended in 1949, reworked into the popular television show "The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show" (1950-1958). Allen would typically play the "illogical" housewife, while Burns played the straight man and broke the fourth wall to speak to the audience. The couple formed the production company McCadden Corporation to help produce the show.
Allen developed heart problems during the 1950s, and by the late 1950s was unable to put up the energy needed for the show. She fully retired in 1958. The show was briefly retooled to "The George Burns Show" (1958-1959), but Burns comedic style was not as popular as that of his wife. The new show was canceled due to low ratings.
Following Allen's death in 1964, Burns attempted a television comeback by creating the sitcom "Wendy and Me" (1964-1965) about the life of a younger married couple. The lead roles were reserved for Ron Harper and Connie Stevens, while Burns had a supporting role as their landlord. He also performed as the show's narrator.
As a television producer, Burns produced the military comedy "No Time for Sergeants", and the sitcom "Mona McCluskey". As an actor, he mostly appeared in theaters and nightclubs. Burns had a career comeback with the comedy film "The Sunshine Boys" (1975), his first film appearance since World War II. He played faded vaudevillian Al Lewis, who has a difficult relationship with his former partner Willy Clark (played by Walter Matthau). The role was met with critical success, and Burns won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. At age 80, Burns was the oldest Oscar winner at the time. His record was broken by Jessica Tandy in 1989.
Burns had his greatest film success playing God in the comedy film "Oh, God!" (1977). The film 51 million dollars at the domestic box office, and was one of the greatest hits of 1977. Burns returned to the role in the sequels "Oh, God! Book II" (1980) and "Oh, God! You Devil" (1984). He had a double role as both God and the Devil in the last film.
Burns had several other film roles until the 1990s. His most notable films in this period were the musical comedy "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1978), the comedy film "Just You and Me, Kid" (1979), the caper film "Going in Style" (1979), and the fantasy-comedy "18 Again!" (1988). The last of the four featured him as a grandfather who exchanges souls with his grandson.
Burns' last film role was a bit part in the mystery film "Radioland Murders" (1994), which was a box office flop. In July 1994, Burns fell in his bathtub and underwent surgery to remove fluid in his skull. He survived, but his health never fully recovered. He was forced to retire from acting and stand-up comedy.
On January 20, 1996, Burns celebrated his 100th birthday, but was in poor health and had to cancel a pre-arranged comeback performance. In March 1996, he suffered from cardiac arrest and died. He was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Glendale, next to Gracie Allen.- Actor
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Walter Matthau was best known for starring in many films which included Charade (1963), The Odd Couple (1968), Grumpy Old Men (1993), and Dennis the Menace (1993). He often worked with Jack Lemmon and the two were Hollywood's craziest stars.
He was born Walter Jake Matthow in New York City, New York on October 1, 1920. His mother was an immigrant from Lithuania and his father was a Russian Jewish peddler and electrician from Kiev, Ukraine. As a young boy, Matthau attended a Jewish non-profit sleep-away camp. He also attended Surprise Lake Camp. His high school was Seward Park High School.
During World War II, Matthau served in the U.S. Army Air Forces with the Eighth Air Force in Britain as a Consolidated B-24 Liberator radioman-gunner, in the same 453rd Bombardment Group as James Stewart. He was based at RAF Old Buckenham, Norfolk during this time. He reached the rank of staff sergeant and became interested in acting.
Matthau appeared in the pilot of Mister Peepers (1952) alongside Wally Cox. He later appeared in the Elia Kazan classic, A Face in the Crowd (1957), opposite Patricia Neal and Andy Griffith, and then appeared in Lonely Are the Brave (1962), with Kirk Douglas, a film Douglas has often described as his personal favorite. Matthau then appeared in Charade (1963) with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. In 1968, Matthau made his big screen appearance as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple (1968) alongside Jack Lemmon. The two were also in the sequel (The Odd Couple II (1998)) as well as Grumpy Old Men (1993) and Grumpier Old Men (1995). Matthau was in Dennis the Menace (1993), alongside Mason Gamble. On July 1, 2000, Matthau died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California. He was 79 years old.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Jack Lemmon was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to Mildred Lankford Noel and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., the president of a doughnut company. His ancestry included Irish (from his paternal grandmother) and English. Jack attended Ward Elementary near his Newton, MA home. At age 9 he was sent to Rivers Country Day School, then located in nearby Brookline. After RCDS, he went to high school at Phillips Andover Academy. Jack was a member of the Harvard class of 1947, where he was in Navy ROTC and the Dramatic Club. After service as a Navy ensign, he worked in a beer hall (playing piano), on radio, off Broadway, TV and Broadway. His movie debut was with Judy Holliday in It Should Happen to You (1954). He won Best Supporting Actor as Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts (1955). He received nominations in comedy (Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960)) and drama (Days of Wine and Roses (1962), The China Syndrome (1979), Tribute (1980) and Missing (1982)). He won the Best Actor Oscar for Save the Tiger (1973) and the Cannes Best Actor award for "Syndrome" and "Missing". He made his debut as a director with Kotch (1971) and in 1985 on Broadway in "Long Day's Journey into Night". In 1988 he received the Life Achievement Award of the American Film Institute.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Jack Warden was born John Warden Lebzelter, Jr. on September 18, 1920 in Newark, New Jersey, to Laura M. (Costello) and John Warden Lebzelter. His father was of German and Irish descent, and his mother was of Irish ancestry. Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, at the age of seventeen, young Jack Lebzelter was expelled from Louisville's DuPont Manual High School for repeatedly fighting. Good with his fists, he turned professional, boxing as a welterweight under the name "Johnny Costello", adopting his mother's maiden name. The purses were poor, so he soon left the ring and worked as a bouncer at a night club. He also worked as a lifeguard before signing up with the U.S. Navy in 1938. He served in China with the Yangtze River Patrol for the best part of his three-year hitch before joining the Merchant Marine in 1941.
Though the Merchant Marine paid better than the Navy, Warden was dissatisfied with his life aboard ship on the long convoy runs and quit in 1942 in order to enlist in the U.S. Army. He became a paratrooper with the elite 101st Airborne Division, and missed the June 1944 invasion of Normandy due to a leg badly broken by landing on a fence during a nighttime practice jump shortly before D-Day. Many of his comrades lost their lives during the Normandy invasion, but the future Jack Warden was spared that ordeal. Recuperating from his injuries, he read a play by Clifford Odets given to him by a fellow soldier who was an actor in civilian life. He was so moved by the play, he decided to become an actor after the war. After recovering from his badly shattered leg, Warden saw action at the Battle of the Bulge, Nazi Germany's last major offensive. He was demobilized with the rank of sergeant and decided to pursue an acting career on the G.I. Bill. He moved to New York City to attend acting school, then joined the company of Theatre '47 in Dallas in 1947 as a professional actor, taking his middle name as his surname. This repertory company, run by Margo Jones, became famous in the 1940s and '50s for producing Tennessee Williams's plays. The experience gave him a valuable grounding in both classic and contemporary drama, and he shuttled between Texas and New York for five years as he was in demand as an actor. Warden made his television debut in 1948, though he continued to perform on stage (he appeared in a stage production in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1966)). After several years in small, local productions, he made both his Broadway debut in the 1952 Broadway revival of Odets' "Golden Boy" and, three years later, originated the role of "Marco" in the original Broadway production of Miller's "A View From the Bridge". On film, he and fellow World War II veteran, Lee Marvin (Marine Corps, South Pacific), made their debut in You're in the Navy Now (1951) (a.k.a. "U.S.S. Teakettle"), uncredited, along with fellow vet Charles Bronson, then billed as "Charles Buchinsky".
With his athletic physique, he was routinely cast in bit parts as soldiers (including the sympathetic barracks-mate of Montgomery Clift and Frank Sinatra in the Oscar-winning From Here to Eternity (1953). He played the coach on TV's Mister Peepers (1952) with Wally Cox.
Aside from From Here to Eternity (1953) (The Best Picture Oscar winner for 1953), other famous roles in the 1950s included Juror #7 (a disinterested salesman who wants a quick conviction to get the trial over with) in 12 Angry Men (1957) - a film that proved to be his career breakthrough - the bigoted foreman in Edge of the City (1957) and one of the submariners commended by Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster in the World War II drama, Run Silent Run Deep (1958). In 1959, Warden capped off the decade with a memorable appearance in The Twilight Zone (1959) episode, The Lonely (1959), in the series premier year of 1959. As "James Corry", Warden created a sensitive portrayal of a convicted felon marooned on an asteroid, sentenced to serve a lifetime sentence, who falls in love with a robot. It was a character quite different from his role as Juror #7.
In the 1960s and early 70s, his most memorable work was on television, playing a detective in The Asphalt Jungle (1961), The Wackiest Ship in the Army (1965) and N.Y.P.D. (1967). He opened up the decade of the 1970s by winning an Emmy Award playing football coach "George Halas" in Brian's Song (1971), the highly-rated and acclaimed TV movie based on Gale Sayers's memoir, "I Am Third". He appeared again as a detective in the TV series, Jigsaw John (1976), in the mid-1970s, The Bad News Bears (1979) and appeared in a pilot for a planned revival of Topper (1937) in 1979.
His collaboration with Warren Beatty in two 1970s films brought him to the summit of his career as he displayed a flair for comedy in both Shampoo (1975) and Heaven Can Wait (1978). As the faintly sinister businessman "Lester" and as the perpetually befuddled football trainer "Max Corkle", Warden received Academy Award nominations as Best Supporting Actor. Other memorable roles in the period were as the metro news editor of the "Washington Post" in All the President's Men (1976), the German doctor in Death on the Nile (1978), the senile, gun-toting judge in And Justice for All (1979), the President of the United States in Being There (1979), the twin car salesmen in Used Cars (1980) and Paul Newman's law partner in The Verdict (1982).
This was the peak of Warden's career, as he entered his early sixties. He single-handedly made Andrew Bergman's So Fine (1981) watchable, but after that film, the quality of his roles declined. He made a third stab at TV, again appearing as a detective in Crazy Like a Fox (1984) in the mid-1980s. He played the shifty convenience store owner "Big Ben" in Problem Child (1990) and its two sequels, a role unworthy of his talent, but he shone again as the Broadway high-roller "Julian Marx" in Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway (1994). After appearing in Warren Beatty's Bulworth (1998), Warden's last film was The Replacements (2000) in 2000. He then lived in retirement in New York City with his girlfriend, Marucha Hinds. He was married to French stage actress Wanda Ottoni, best known for her role as the object of Joe Besser's desire in The Three Stooges short, Fifi Blows Her Top (1958). She gave up her career after her marriage. They had one son, Christopher, but had been separated for many years.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Born September 30, 1952, in Royton, near Oldham, England, Jack Wild was discovered by talent agent June Collins, mother of rock star Phil Collins. His breakthrough came when he landed the role of Oliver in the London stage production of "Oliver!" When it came to casting the film, the role of the Artful Dodger went to Jack, a role that resulted in his getting an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Fresh from this success, Jack was offered the lead role in the American television series H.R. Pufnstuf (1969). This Sid Krofft and Marty Krofft production featured Wild as a boy marooned in an enchanted land with puppets and actors in elaborate costumes. The success of this program led to Wild reprising the role for the film version, Pufnstuf (1970). Other roles followed, including Melody (1971) and Flight of the Doves (1971). Around the same time, Wild released three albums ("The Jack Wild Album"; "Everything's Coming up Roses", featuring along with cover numbers a couple of new songs written by up-and-coming songwriter Lynsey de Paul; and "Beautiful World"). By 1972, however, he was already being demoted to the role of supporting actor for The Pied Piper (1972). He also appeared in Our Mutual Friend (1976). He returned to films in two small roles: the miller's son in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) and a peddler in Basil (1998). Wild underwent surgery for oral cancer in July 2004, and had some vocal cords and part of his tongue removed. Unfortunately, the cancer proved untreatable and he died on 1 March 2006.- Actor
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Jackie Cooper was born John Cooper in Los Angeles, California, to Mabel Leonard, an Italian-American stage pianist, and John Cooper. Through his mother, he was the nephew of actress Julie Leonard, screenwriter Jack Leonard, and (by marriage) director Norman Taurog. Jackie served with the Navy in the South Pacific toward the end of World War II. Then, quietly and without publicity or fanfare, compiled one of the most distinguished peacetime military careers of anyone in his profession. In 1961, as his weekly TV series Hennesey (1959) was enhancing naval recruiting efforts, accepted a commission as a line officer in the Naval Reserve with duties in recruitment, training films, and public relations. Holder of a multi-engine pilot license, he later co-piloted jet planes for the Navy, which made him an Honorary Aviator authorized to wear wings of gold-at the time only the third so honored in naval aviation history. By 1976 he had attained the rank of captain, and was in uniform aboard the carrier USS Constellation for the Bicentennial celebration on July 4. In 1980 the Navy proposed a period of active duty at the Pentagon that would have resulted in a promotion to rear admiral, bringing him even with Air Force Reserve Brigadier General James Stewart. Fresh on the heels of a second directing Emmy, he felt his absence would impact achieving a long-held goal of directing motion pictures, and reluctantly declined. (The opportunity in films never materialized.) Holds Letters of Commendation from six secretaries of the Navy. Was honorary chairman of the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation and a charter member of VIVA, the effort to return POW-MIAs from Vietnam. Upon retirement in 1982, he was decorated with the Legion of Merit by Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr.. Other than Stewart, no performer in his industry has achieved a higher uniformed rank in the U.S. military. (Glenn Ford was also a Naval Reserve captain, and director and Captain John Ford was awarded honorary flag rank upon his 1951 retirement from the Naval Reserve).- Actor
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Jim Henson never thought that he would make a name of himself in puppetry; it was merely a way of getting himself on television. The vehicle that achieved it was Sam and Friends (1955), a late-night puppet show that was on after the 11:00 news in Washington DC. It proved to be very popular and inspired Jim to continue using puppets for his work. He made many commercials, developing the signature humor that Henson Productions is known for. A key reason for the success of his puppets is that Jim realized he didn't need to hide puppeteers behind a structure when they were in front of a camera. All he had to do was instruct the camera operators to focus on the puppets and keep the puppeteers out of the frame. This allowed the puppets to dominate the image and make them more lifelike. This work on puppets and television would lead to separate projects that had different goals. The first one was his work on the The Jimmy Dean Show (1963) with the character Rowlf the Dog, the oldest clearly identified character that Henson Productions still uses. This show provided an income that allowed Jim to work on a pet project. That project was Time Piece (1965), a surrealistic short about time which was nominated for best live-action short Oscar. Henson shot to prominence when he was approached to use his muppets for the revolutionary educational show Sesame Street (1969). The show was a smash hit and his characters have become staples on public television. Unforetunately, this also led to Henson being typecast as only an entertainer for children. He sought to disprove that by being part of the initial crew of Saturday Night Live (1975), but his style and that of the creative staff simply didn't jibe. It was this circumstance that encouraged him to develop a variety show format that had the kind of sophisticated humor that "Sesame Street (1969)" didn't work with. No American broadcaster was interested, but British producer Lew Grade was. This led to The Muppet Show (1976). It initially struggled both in the ratings and in the search for guest stars, but in the second season it became a smash hit and would eventually become the most widely watched series in television history. Hungry for a new challenge, Henson made The Muppet Movie (1979), defying the popular industry opinion that his characters would never work in a movie. The film became a hit and spawned a series of features which included the moody fantasy The Dark Crystal (1982), which was a drastic and bold departure from the amiable tone of his previous work. The most successful TV work in the 1980s was Fraggle Rock (1983), a fantasy series specifically designed to appeal to as many cultural groups as possible. During this time he also established the Creature Shop, a puppet studio that became renowned for being as brilliant with puppetry as ILM was at special effects. When he died all too soon in 1990, he was indisputably one of the geniuses of puppetry. More importantly, he was a man who achieved his phenomenal success while still retaining his social conscience and artistic integrity as his work in promoting environmentalism and his brilliant The Storyteller (1987) series respectively attest to.- Actor
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- Director
Richard Hunt did not have a face known to many -- his voice was known more than anything else. He was a major stronghold behind Jim Henson's "Muppets". 'Scooter', 'Janice', 'Sweetums' and a few others, were some of the "Muppets" that Richard was a performer and puppeteer of. He helped pave the way for Jim Henson and his company from the 1970s through the early 90s, until his surprising death in 1992 of AIDS.- Actor
- Additional Crew
- Music Department
Puppeteer, actor, musician, and master of voices, Jerry Nelson originally joined Henson & Company as a temporary replacement for Frank Oz, who had been drafted into the armed services in the 60's. He later re-joined the crew as a full-time performer in the 70's, and has since been heavily involved in almost every major Muppet project, including Sesame Street (1969), The Muppet Show (1976), Fraggle Rock (1983) and feature films. Memorable characters include "The Count", "Herry Monster", "Mumford the Magician", "Robin the Frog", "Crazy Harry" and "Gobo". Come the late 1990s, Nelson has begun to focus more on his musical career but continues his involvement in The Muppets.- Actor
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- Producer
Bil Baird and his wife Cora Baird, the driving forces behind the Bil & Cora Baird Puppets, were pioneer entertainers in U.S. TV, when commercial television in the States was taking its first baby steps. Much of what early viewers could view on that seven-inch screen, with its eerie, whitish glow in a darkened room where a family gathered round to watch in wonder, had come from radio. But the Bairds' medium - their marionettes - was strictly visual, and the audience was regaled. Their first venture on TV, a 15-minute program called Life with Snarky Parker (1950) was directed by none other than Yul Brynner. They and their puppets went on to star in other shows, and the Bairds were featured performers on CBS's attempt to wrest away some of the audience from NBC's "Today" show with its "The Morning Show" (1954), which initially featured their principal newsman, Walter Cronkite. As well, delineated marvelously by the music of Ukrainian-born composer Sergei Prokofiev, the Baird Puppets provided the visual enhancement for Art Carney's narration of the 1958 ABC-TV special, "Art Carney Meets Peter and the Wolf."- Actress
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- Producer
Cora Baird was born on 26 January 1912 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for The Sound of Music (1965), Shirley Temple's Storybook (1958) and The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays (1957). She was married to Bil Baird. She died on 7 December 1967 in New York City, New York, USA.- Byron Whiting was born on 12 March 1929 in New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Since I Don't Have You (1995) and The Great Santa Claus Switch (1970). He died on 13 October 2019 in Tennessee, USA.
- Additional Crew
- Special Effects
- Actor
Faz Fazakas was born on 5 April 1918 in Essex County, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for Labyrinth (1986), The Muppet Movie (1979) and The Dark Crystal (1982). He was married to Eleanor Louise Jewett. He died on 28 September 2013 in Olivebridge, New York, USA.- Additional Crew
- Actress
- Art Department
Caroly Wilcox was born on 16 May 1931 in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for The Muppet Movie (1979), Sesame Street (1969) and The Muppet Show (1976). She died on 9 January 2021.- Additional Crew
- Special Effects
- Actor
Kermit Love was born on 7 August 1916 in Spring Lake, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for The Muppet Movie (1979), Sesame Street (1969) and Follow That Bird (1985). He died on 21 June 2008 in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA.- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Caroll Spinney was born on 26 December 1933 in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Sesame Street (1969), The Muppet Movie (1979) and The Great Muppet Caper (1981). He was married to Debra Spinney and Janice Spinney. He died on 8 December 2019 in Woodstock, Connecticut, USA.- Additional Crew
- Visual Effects
- Art Department
Don Sahlin was born on 19 June 1928 in Stratford, Connecticut, USA. He is known for The Muppet Movie (1979), The Muppet Show (1976) and Sesame Street (1969). He died on 19 February 1978 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
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Born in the Bronx, New York to Russian Jewish immigrant parents (Isidor "Ira" and Rita Blucher Miller), Richard Miller served in the U.S. Navy for a few years and earned a prize title as a middleweight boxer. He settled in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s, where he was noticed by producer/director Roger Corman, who cast him in most of his low-budget films, often as dislikeable sorts, such as a vacuum-cleaner salesman in Not of This Earth (1957). His most memorable role would have to be that of the mentally unstable, busboy/beatnik artist Walter Paisley, whose clay sculptures are suspiciously lifelike in A Bucket of Blood (1959) (a rare starring role for him), and he is also fondly remembered for his supporting role as the flower-eating Vurson Fouch in Corman's legendary The Little Shop of Horrors (1960).
Miller spent the next 20 years working in Corman productions, and starting in the late 1970s was often cast in films by director Joe Dante, appearing in credited and uncredited walk-on bits as quirky chatterboxes, and stole every scene he appeared in. He has played many variations on his famous Walter Paisley role, such as a diner owner (Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)) or a janitor (Chopping Mall (1986)). One of his best bits is the funny occult-bookshop owner in The Howling (1981). Being short (so he never played a romantic lead or a threatening villain) with wavy hair, long sideburns, a pointed nose and a face as trustworthy as a used-car dealer's, he was, and is to this day, an immediately recognizable character actor whose one-scene appearances in countless movies and TV shows guarantee audience applause.- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Director
Handsome and elegant George Peppard occasionally displayed considerable talent through his career, whether action roles or dramatic. Following Broadway and television experience, he made a strong film debut in The Strange One (1957). He started getting noticed when he played Robert Mitchum's illegitimate son in the popular melodrama Home from the Hill (1960). He then established himself as a leading man, giving arguably his most memorable film performance as Audrey Hepburn's love interest in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961). Seen by the studios as a promising young star, Peppard was subsequently cast in some of the major blockbusters of the early/mid-1960s: How the West Was Won (1962), The Victors (1963), The Carpetbaggers (1964) and Operation Crossbow (1965). He reached the peak of his popularity in another such lavish production, The Blue Max (1966), in which he effectively played an obsessively competitive German flying officer during World War I.
However, by the late 1960s, he seemed to settle as a tough lead in more average, often hokum, adventures, including House of Cards (1968), Cannon for Cordoba (1970) and The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972). In the early 1970s, his declining popularity was temporarily boosted thanks to the television series Banacek (1972). With his film roles becoming increasingly uninteresting, he acted in, directed and produced the drama Five Days from Home (1978), but the result was rather disappointing. In the mid-1980s, he again obtained success on television as Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith, the cigar-chomping leader of The A-Team (1983). George Peppard died at age 65 of pneumonia on May 8, 1994 in Los Angeles, California. He is buried alongside his parents in Northview Cemetery in Dearborn, Michigan.- Actress
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Audrey Hepburn was born as Audrey Kathleen Ruston on May 4, 1929 in Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium. Her mother, Baroness Ella Van Heemstra, was a Dutch noblewoman, while her father, Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston, was born in Úzice, Bohemia, to English and Austrian parents.
After her parents' divorce, Audrey went to London with her mother where she went to a private girls school. Later, when her mother moved back to the Netherlands, she attended private schools as well. While she vacationed with her mother in Arnhem, Netherlands, Hitler's army took over the town. It was here that she fell on hard times during the Nazi occupation. Audrey suffered from depression and malnutrition.
After the liberation, she went to a ballet school in London on a scholarship and later began a modeling career. As a model, she was graceful and, it seemed, she had found her niche in life--until the film producers came calling. In 1948, after being spotted modeling by a producer, she was signed to a bit part in the European film Nederlands in zeven lessen (1948). Later, she had a speaking role in the 1951 film, Young Wives' Tale (1951) as Eve Lester. The part still wasn't much, so she headed to America to try her luck there. Audrey gained immediate prominence in the US with her role in Roman Holiday (1953). This film turned out to be a smashing success, and she won an Oscar as Best Actress.
On September 25, 1954, she married actor Mel Ferrer. She also starred in Sabrina (1954), for which she received another Academy Award nomination. She starred in the films Funny Face (1957) and Love in the Afternoon (1957). She received yet another Academy Award nomination for her role in The Nun's Story (1959). On July 17, 1960, she gave birth to her first son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer.
Audrey reached the pinnacle of her career when she played Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), for which she received another Oscar nomination. She scored commercial success again playing Regina Lampert in the espionage caper Charade (1963). One of Audrey's most radiant roles was in the fine production of My Fair Lady (1964). After a couple of other movies, most notably Two for the Road (1967), she hit pay dirt and another nomination in Wait Until Dark (1967).
In 1967, Audrey decided to retire from acting while she was on top. She divorced from Mel Ferrer in 1968. On January 19, 1969, she married Dr. Andrea Dotti. On February 8, 1970, she gave birth to her second son, Luca Dotti in Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland. From time to time, she would appear on the silver screen.
In 1988, she became a special ambassador to the United Nations UNICEF fund helping children in Latin America and Africa, a position she retained until 1993. She was named to People's magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world. Her last film was Always (1989).
Audrey Hepburn died, aged 63, on January 20, 1993 in Tolochnaz, Vaud, Switzerland, from appendicular cancer. She had made a total of 31 high quality movies. Her elegance and style will always be remembered in film history as evidenced by her being named in Empire magazine's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time".- Actor
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Mickey Rooney was born Joe Yule Jr. on September 23, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. He first took the stage as a toddler in his parents vaudeville act at 17 months old. He made his first film appearance in 1926. The following year, he played the lead character in the first Mickey McGuire short film. It was in this popular film series that he took the stage name Mickey Rooney. Rooney reached new heights in 1937 with A Family Affair, the film that introduced the country to Andy Hardy, the popular all-American teenager. This beloved character appeared in nearly 20 films and helped make Rooney the top star at the box office in 1939, 1940 and 1941. Rooney also proved himself an excellent dramatic actor as a delinquent in Boys Town (1938) starring Spencer Tracy. In 1938, he was awarded a Juvenile Academy Award.
Teaming up with Judy Garland, Rooney also appeared in a string of musicals, including Babes in Arms (1939) the first teenager to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a leading role, Strike Up the Band (1940), Babes on Broadway (1941), and Girl Crazy (1943). He and Garland immediately became best of friends. "We weren't just a team, we were magic," Rooney once said. During that time he also appeared with Elizabeth Taylor in the now classic National Velvet (1944). Rooney joined the service that same year, where he helped to entertain the troops and worked on the American Armed Forces Network. He returned to Hollywood after 21 months in Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1946), did a remake of a Robert Taylor film, The Crowd Roars (1932) called Killer McCoy (1947) and portrayed composer Lorenz Hart in Words and Music (1948). He also appeared in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard. Rooney played Hepburn's Japanese neighbor, Mr. Yunioshi. A sign of the times, Rooney played the part for comic relief which he later regretted feeling the role was offensive. He once again showed his incredible range in the dramatic role of a boxing trainer with Anthony Quinn and Jackie Gleason in Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). In the late 1960s and 1970s Rooney showed audiences and critics alike why he was one of Hollywood's most enduring stars. He gave an impressive performance in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film The Black Stallion (1979), which brought him an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor in a Supporting Role. He also turned to the stage in 1979 in Sugar Babies with Ann Miller, and was nominated for a Tony Award. During that time he also portrayed the Wizard in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with Eartha Kitt at New York's Madison Square Garden, which also had a successful run nationally.
Rooney appeared in four television series': The Mickey Rooney Show (1954) (1954-1955), a comedy sit-com in 1964 with Sammee Tong called Mickey, One of the Boys in 1982 with Dana Carvey and Nathan Lane, and The New Adventures of the Black Stallion (1990) from 1990-1993. In 1981, Rooney won an Emmy Award for his portrayal of a mentally challenged man in Bill (1981). The critical acclaim continued to flow for the veteran performer, with Rooney receiving an honorary Academy Award "in recognition of his 60 years of versatility in a variety of memorable film performances". More recently he has appeared in such films as Night at the Museum (2006) with Ben Stiller and The Muppets (2011) with Amy Adams and Jason Segel.
Rooney's personal life, including his frequent trips to the altar, has proved to be just as epic as his on-screen performances. His first wife was one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, actress Ava Gardner. Mickey permanently separated from his eighth wife Jan in June of 2012. In 2011 Rooney filed elder abuse and fraud charges against stepson Christopher Aber and Aber's wife. At Rooney's request, the Superior Court issued a restraining order against the Aber's demanding they stay 100 yards from Rooney, as well as Mickey's other son Mark Rooney and Mark's wife Charlene. Just prior, Rooney mustered the strength to break his silence and appeared before the Senate in Washington D.C. telling of his own heartbreaking story of abuse in an effort to live a peaceful, full life and help others who may be similarly suffering in silence.
Rooney requested through the Superior Court to permanently reside with his son Mark Rooney, who is a musician and Marks wife Charlene, an artist, in the Hollywood Hills. He legally separated from his eighth wife in June of 2012. Ironically, after eight failed marriages he never looked or felt better and finally found happiness and peace in the single life. Mickey, Mark and Charlene focused on health, happiness and creative endeavors and it showed. Mickey Rooney had once again landed on his feet reminding us that he was a survivor. Rooney died on April 6th 2014. He was taking his afternoon nap and never woke. One week before his death Mark and Charlene surprised him by reunited him with a long lost love, the racetrack. He was ecstatic to be back after decades and ran into his old friends Mel Brooks and Dick Van Patten.- Actress
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The legendary actress set a record when at age 82, she appeared on Dancing with the Stars (2005). Cloris Leachman was born on April 30, 1926 in Des Moines, Iowa to Berkeley Claiborne "Buck" Leachman and the former Cloris Wallace. Her father's family owned a lumber company, Leachman Lumber Co. She was of Czech (from her maternal grandmother) and English descent. After graduating from high school, Leachman attended Illinois State University and Northwestern University, where she majored in drama. After winning the title of Miss Chicago 1946 (as part of the Miss America pageant), she acted with the Des Moines Playhouse before moving to New York.
Leachman made her credited debut in 1948 in an episode of The Ford Theatre Hour (1948) and appeared in many television anthologies and series before becoming a regular on The Bob & Ray Show (1951) in 1952. Her movie debut was memorable, playing the doomed blonde femme fatale Christina Bailey in Robert Aldrich's classic noir Kiss Me Deadly (1955). Other than a role in Rod Serling's movie The Rack (1956) in support of Paul Newman, Leachman remained a television actress throughout the 1950s and the 1960s, appearing in only two movies during the latter decade, The Chapman Report (1962) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Though she would win an Oscar for Peter Bogdanovich's adaptation of Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show (1971) and appear in three Mel Brooks movies, it was in television that her career remained and her fame was assured in the 1970s and into the second decade of the new millennium.
Leachman was nominated five times for an Emmy Award playing Phyllis Lindstrom, Mary Tyler Moore's landlady and self-described best friend on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) and on the spin-off series Phyllis (1975). She won twice as Best Supporting Actress in a comedy for her "Mary Tyler Moore" gig and won a Golden Globe Award as a leading performer in comedy for "Phyllis", but her first Emmy Award came in the category Outstanding Single Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in 1973 for the television movie A Brand New Life (1973). She also won two Emmy Awards as a supporting player for Malcolm in the Middle (2000).
She was married to director-producer George Englund from 1953 to 1979. They had five children together. Cloris Leachman died of natural causes on January 27, 2021 in Encinitas, California.- Actor
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Gavin MacLeod's pleasing, agreeable manner on two hit TV series in the 1970s and '80s belied a number of shady villains he portrayed in his early career. Born Allan George See in Mt. Kisco, New York, on February 28, 1931, and raised in Pleasantville, he was the son of Margaret (Shea) and George See, a gas station owner who was part Chippewa Indian (Ojibwa). He followed his 1952 graduation from Ithaca College (Fine Arts major) with Air Force military duty, then moved to New York City and worked for a while as an usher and elevator operator at Radio City Music Hall. Focusing on acting, he changed his stage name to "Gavin McLeod."
A solid break on Broadway in "A Hatful of Rain" in 1956 led to a move to Los Angeles in an attempt to break into film and TV. MacLeod began to earn a minor reputation as a second-string heavy in such crime shows as "The Thin Man," "Steve Canyon," "Manhunt," "Mr. Lucky," "Peter Gunn," "Michael Shayne," "The Untouchables" and "Perry Mason." This led to a regular comedy role as part of the McHale's Navy (1962) TV series. He also managed several film roles, although far down the credits, with I Want to Live! (1958), Compulsion (1959), Pork Chop Hill (1959), Operation Petticoat (1959), Twelve Hours to Kill (1960), High Time (1960), War Hunt (1962) and McHale's Navy (1964). He was a member of the superb supporting cast of The Sand Pebbles (1966). He returned to Broadway in "The Captains and the Kings" in 1962.
MacLeod's career more or less flowed and ebbed until 1972, when his shiftless typecast was shattered forever. As Murray Slaughter, the balding, beaming, wisecracking, gleaming-toothed news writer on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), MacLeod became a happy household name. From then on, he could only be envisaged as a lovable schmuck and nice guy. From there he went on to another benign starring role with the TV series, The Love Boat (1977), as the ingratiating Captain Stubing.
On the down side, "Love Boat" marred MacLeod's chances to be considered for more challenging work, and his inability to cope with success led to alcoholism and divorce from second wife Patti. However, he later turned his life around, remarried his wife, and they both wrote a book called "Back on Course" (1987). MacLeod continued sporadically on the musical stage ("Gypsy," "Annie Get Your Gun," "Gigi"), in TV reunions ("Love Boat" specials) and as a TV guest ("Murder, She Wrote," "Touched by an Angel," "The King of Queens," "Oz," "That 70s Show," "JAG" and "The Comeback Kid").- Actress
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Making people laugh was only one facet of Valerie Harper's career, which extended from the stage to television and feature films. A native of Suffern, New York -- "I was born to suffer" -- Harper began her career as a dancer with the corps de ballet at Radio City Hall during its spectacular heyday. She gradually moved into acting, working in everything from industrial shows to regional theatre to the Second City comedy troupe of Chicago. Eventually, she made it to Broadway in productions of Dear Liar, the Tony Award winning Story Theatre, Something Different and Metamorphosis. Stardom came with television, including four Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe for her work in The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) and Rhoda (1974), in which the latter she played the title role. Harper won Harvard's Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year, and her Rhoda's Wedding episode set that 1974's ratings record. Since retiring Rhoda Morganstern to re-runs, Harper was active on stage and in movies. Her feature films included Freebie and the Bean (1974), Chapter Two (1979), The Last Married Couple in America (1980) and Blame It on Rio (1984). In television, she starred on all three networks in movies of the week, including Farrell for the People (1982) (NBC), Don't Go to Sleep (1982) (ABC) and An Invasion of Privacy (1983) (CBS). A strong supporter of women's rights, Harper worked since the mid-80s on a film with second husband Tony Cacciotti which will probably never reach fruition after all this time, based on a true story involving domestic violence.- Actor
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Edward Asner was born of Russian Jewish parentage in Kansas City, to Morris David Asner (founder and owner of the Kansas City-based Asner Iron & Metal Company) and his wife Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Seliger). After attending college, Ed worked various jobs, including in a steel mill, as a door-to-door salesman and on an assembly line for General Motors. Between 1947 and 1949, he attended the University of Chicago. The onset of the Korean War saw him drafted into the U.S. Army Signals Corps and posted to France where he was primarily assigned clerical tasks. Upon demobilization, Asner joined the Playwrights Theatre Company in Chicago but soon progressed to New York. In 1955, he appeared off-Broadway in the leading role of the beggar king Jonathan Peachum in Brecht's Threepenny Opera. Five years later, he made his debut on the Great White Way in the courtroom drama Face of a Hero, co-starring alongside Jack Lemmon. He also began regular TV work in anthology drama.
From the early '60s, Asner, now based in California, earned his living as a busy supporting actor. His many noted guest appearances included turns in Route 66 (1960), The Untouchables (1959), The Fugitive (1963), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964) (sinister dictator-in-exile Brynov), The Invaders (1967) (twice -- as aliens) and How the Ghosts Stole Christmas (1998) (one of a couple of ghostly residents in a haunted mansion). Heavy-set and distinctively gravelly-voiced, Asner established his reputation as tough, robust and uncompromising (though, on occasion, good-hearted) authority figures. Excellent at conveying menace, he was memorably cast as the brutish patriarch Axel Jordache in Rich Man, Poor Man (1976) and as the slave ship's morally conflicted master, Captain Thomas Davies, in Roots (1977), which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award in 1977. The immensely prolific Asner (417 IMDB screen credits!) would receive seven Emmys in total (from 21 nominations), all Primetime, and become the only actor to win in both the comedy and drama category for the same role. That was also the part which made Asner a household name: the gruff, snarky newspaper editor Lou Grant (1977). Grant began as a mainstay on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970), a 30-minute sitcom.
When the character was promoted to West Coast editor of The Los Angeles Tribune, Asner went on to star in his own much acclaimed drama series. Despite consistently high ratings, the show was axed after five seasons amid rumours of disharmony between the star and producers, possibly due to the former's outspoken political views. Indeed, Asner has been a controversial figure as an activist and campaigner, engaged in a variety of humanitarian and political issues. A self-proclaimed liberal Democrat, he published a book in 2017, amusingly titled "The Grouchy Historian: An Old-Time Lefty Defends Our Constitution Against Right-Wing Hypocrites and Nutjobs."
Between 1981 and 1985, Asner served twice as President of the Screen Actors Guild, during which time he was critical of former SAG President Ronald Reagan -- then the president of a greater concern -- for his Central American policy. In 1996, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame and in 2002 received the Screen Actors Guild's Life Achievement Award. In addition to appearing on screen and stage, he performed extensive work for radio, video games and animated TV series. He voiced the lead character Carl Fredricksen in Pixar's Oscar-winning production of Up (2009), starred as Santa in Elf (2003), and played Nicholas Drago in The Games Maker (2014). Ed passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 91 on August 29, 2021.- Actress
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Betty White was born in Oak Park, Illinois, to Christine Tess (Cachikis), a homemaker, and Horace Logan White, a lighting company executive for the Crouse-Hinds Electric Company. She was of Danish, Greek, English, and Welsh descent.
Although she was best known as the devious Sue Ann Nivens on the classic sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970) and the ditzy Rose Nylund on The Golden Girls (1985), Betty White had been in television for a long, long time before those two shows, having had her own series, Life with Elizabeth (1952) in 1952.
She was married three times, lastly for eighteen years, until widowed, to TV game-show host Allen Ludden.
She was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame and she was known for her tireless efforts on behalf of animals.
Betty White died on 31 December 2021, at the age of 99.- Actress
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Missouri born-and-bred Betty Ann Lynn was born in Kansas City. Her name is as light, breezy and innocent as the characters she played on film and TV. She is pleasantly remembered for playing TV's sweet-as-apple-pie "Thelma Lou," who had the tough end of the bargain as the ever-patient girlfriend of Don Knotts's neurotic "Barney Fife" character on The Andy Griffith Show (1960). It took a second reunion decades later to finally get those two characters married. While Betty enjoyed other entertainment outlets such as film and the stage, it is her "Thelma Lou" character that remains indelibly etched in the minds of all her fans.
Betty came from a musical background as the daughter of a singer and began her career as a young teen performing in both supper clubs and on Broadway; in such musical productions as "Walk with Music" (1940) and "Oklahoma!," the latter as a dancing replacement. She even entertained the troops with her light soprano at USO tent shows towards the end of World War II. In the late 1940s, after being "discovered" in the short-lived Broadway production of "Park Avenue," the fresh-faced Betty was signed on as a starlet for Twentieth Century Fox and appeared in several of their popular movies, billed herself briefly as "Betty Ann Lynn" before abruptly dropping her middle name from the credits.
Betty made her movie debut in a small, sprightly role in the classic Clifton Webb comedy Sitting Pretty (1948). After another minor part in Apartment for Peggy (1948), she earned a featured part playing kid sister to Barbara Bates in June Bride (1948) starring Bette Davis and Robert Montgomery. She continued the momentum, all in a same airy vein, as the bobby-soxer daughter of stars Loretta Young in Mother Is a Freshman (1949) and Fred MacMurray and Maureen O'Hara in Father Was a Fullback (1949). After appearing again in pictures starring Clifton Webb and Bette Davis (Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and Payment on Demand (1951), respectively), her blossoming film career lost major ground. Betty instead focused on 50s TV and also returned to the stage with a production of "The Moon Is Blue" (1954). She still appeared occasionally on the larger screen but, for the most part, was either unbilled or the pictures themselves were obscure. While on hiatus from the Disney series, "Texas John Slaughter" (1959), Betty tested and won the recurring role of Deputy Barney Fife's steady girl on Andy Griffith's homespun series. She became part of the small-town ensemble for five seasons -- until Knotts officially left the series to try out, full-time, in motion pictures. The producers were thinking of keeping her on the show but Betty felt her role was incomplete, without her connection to Don Knotts, after Barney Fife left.
TV work continued, never straying far from her wholesome image, with recurring roles on Family Affair (1966) and My Three Sons (1960) and guest parts on The Farmer's Daughter (1963), The Smith Family (1971) and Little House on the Prairie (1974). After a 1978 part on an episode of Barnaby Jones (1973), little was seen of her until she rejoined the Mayberry cast for a reunion in the TV movie Return to Mayberry (1986). In the same year, Andy Griffith hired her to play his secretary in a handful of episodes for his Matlock (1986) series. Betty's last acting role on TV occurred in 1990 and, save for a stage appearance in "Love Letters" in 2002 opposite another former Mayberry resident Howard Morris, she officially left acting.
Residing in the same West Hollywood home since 1950, she moved out of state to Mount Airy, North Carolina - the primary real-life inspiration for the fictional Mayberry. The never-married former actress lived in a retirement community there till her death on October 16, 2021 at the age of 95.- Actor
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Enduring, strong-featured, and genial star of US cinema, Burt Reynolds started off in T.V. westerns in the 1960s and then carved his name into 1970s/1980s popular culture, as a sex symbol (posing nearly naked for "Cosmopolitan" magazine), and on-screen as both a rugged action figure and then as a wisecracking, Southern type of "good ol' boy."
Burton Leon Reynolds was born in Lansing, Michigan. He was the son of Harriette Fernette "Fern" (Miller) and Burton Milo Reynolds, who was in the army. After World War II, his family moved to Riviera Beach, Florida, where his father was chief of police, and where Burt excelled as an athlete and played with Florida State University. He became an All Star Southern Conference halfback (and was earmarked by the Baltimore Colts) before a knee injury and a car accident ended his football career. Midway through college he dropped out and headed to New York with aspirations of becoming an actor. There he worked in restaurants and clubs while pulling the odd TV spot or theatre role.
He was spotted in a New York City production of "Mister Roberts," signed to a TV contract, and eventually had recurring roles in such shows as Gunsmoke (1955), Riverboat (1959) and his own series, Hawk (1966).
Reynolds continued to appear in undemanding western roles, often playing a character of half Native American descent, in films such as Navajo Joe (1966), 100 Rifles (1969) and Sam Whiskey (1969). However, it was his tough-guy performance as macho Lewis Medlock in the John Boorman backwoods nightmare Deliverance (1972) that really stamped him as a bona-fide star. Reynolds' popularity continued to soar with his appearance as a no-nonsense private investigator in Shamus (1973) and in the Woody Allen comedy Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972). Building further on his image as a Southern boy who outsmarts the local lawmen, Reynolds packed fans into theaters to see him in White Lightning (1973), The Longest Yard (1974), W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975) and Gator (1976).
At this time, ex-stuntman and longtime Reynolds buddy Hal Needham came to him with a "road film" script. It turned out to be the incredibly popular Smokey and the Bandit (1977) with Sally Field and Jerry Reed, which took in over $100 million at the box office. That film's success was followed by Smokey and the Bandit II (1980) and Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983). Reynolds also appeared alongside Kris Kristofferson in the hit football film Semi-Tough (1977), with friend Dom DeLuise in the black comedy The End (1978) (which Reynolds directed), in the stunt-laden buddy film Hooper (1978) and then in the self-indulgent, star-packed road race flick The Cannonball Run (1981).
The early 1980s started off well with a strong performance in the violent police film Sharky's Machine (1981), which he also directed, and he starred with Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) and with fellow macho superstar Clint Eastwood in the coolly received City Heat (1984). However, other projects such as Stroker Ace (1983), Stick (1985) and Paternity (1981) failed to catch fire with fans and Reynolds quickly found himself falling out of popularity with movie audiences. In the late 1980s he appeared in only a handful of films, mostly below average, before television came to the rescue and he shone again in two very popular TV shows, B.L. Stryker (1989) and Evening Shade (1990), for which he won an Emmy. In 1988, Burt and his then-wife, actress Loni Anderson, had a son, Quinton A. Reynolds (aka Quinton Anderson Reynolds), whom they adopted.
He was back on screen, but still the roles weren't grabbing the public's attention, until his terrific performance as a drunken politician in the otherwise woeful Striptease (1996) and then another tremendous showing as a charming, porn director in Boogie Nights (1997), which scored him a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Like the phoenix from the ashes, Reynolds resurrected his popularity and, in the process, gathered a new generation of young fans, many of whom had been unfamiliar with his 1970s film roles. He then put in entertaining work in Pups (1999), Mystery, Alaska (1999), Driven (2001) and Time of the Wolf (2002). Definitely one of Hollywood's most resilient stars, Reynolds continually surprised all with his ability to weather both personal and career hurdles and his almost 60 years in front of the cameras were testament to his staying ability, his acting talent and his appeal to film audiences.
Burt Reynolds died of cardiac arrest on September 6, 2018, in Jupiter, Florida, U.S. He was eighty two.- Actor
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Born and raised in New York City, Robert Loggia studied journalism at the University of Missouri before moving back to New York to pursue acting. He trained at the Actors Studio while doing stage work. From the late 1950s he was a familiar face on TV, usually as authoritative figures. Loggia also found work in movies such as The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Scarface (1983) and Big (1988). Always in demand, Loggia worked until his death, at 85, from complications of Alzheimer's.- Actor
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WWII veteran, dance instructor and diversely talented stage & screen actor were all inclusions on the resume of this perpetually busy US actor who didn't get in front of the cameras until around the time of his fortieth birthday. The stockily built Charles Durning was one of Hollywood's most dependable and sought after supporting actors.
Durning was born in Highland Falls, New York, to Louise Marie (Leonard), a laundress, and James Gerald Durning. His father was an Irish immigrant and his mother was of Irish descent. Durning first got his start in guest appearances in early 1960's TV shows. He scored minor roles over the next decade until he really got noticed by film fans as the sneering, corrupt cop "Lt. Snyder" hassling street grifter 'Robert Redford' in the multi award winning mega-hit The Sting (1973). Durning was equally entertaining in the Billy Wilder production of The Front Page (1974), he supported screen tough guy Charles Bronson in the suspenseful western Breakheart Pass (1975) and featured as "Spermwhale Whalen" in the story of unorthodox police behavior in The Choirboys (1977).
The versatile Durning is equally adept at comedic roles and demonstrated his skills as "Doc Hopper" in The Muppet Movie (1979), a feisty football coach in North Dallas Forty (1979), a highly strung police officer berating maverick cop Burt Reynolds in Sharky's Machine (1981), and a light footed, dancing Governor (alongside Burt Reynolds once more) in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982). Durning continued a regular on screen association with Burt Reynolds appearing in several more feature films together and as "Dr. Harlan Elldridge" in the highly popular TV series Evening Shade (1990). On par with his multitude of feature film roles, Durning has always been in high demand on television and has guest starred in Everybody Loves Raymond (1996), Monk (2002) and Rescue Me (2004). Plus, he has appeared in the role of "Santa Claus" in five different television movies.- Gerry Johnson was born on 4 April 1918. She was an actress, known for The Man Called Flintstone (1966), The Flintstones (1960) and My Dog, Buddy (1960). She was married to Warren Martin Johnson. She died on 24 January 1990 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Peter Michael Falk was born on September 16, 1927, in New York City, New York. At the age of 3, his right eye was surgically removed due to cancer. He graduated from Ossining High School, where he was president of his class. His early career choices involved becoming a certified public accountant, and he worked as an efficiency expert for the Budget Bureau of the state of Connecticut before becoming an actor. On choosing to change careers, he studied the acting art with Eva Le Gallienne and Sanford Meisner. His most famous role is that of the detective Columbo (1971); however, this was not his first foray into acting the role of a detective. During a high school play, he stood in for such a role when the original student actor fell sick. He has been married twice, and is the father of two children:Catherine, a private detective in real life, and Jackie. He was diagnosed with dementia in 2008, which was most likely brought on by Alzheimer's disease, from which he died on June 23, 2011.- Actor
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Of Greek descent on both sides, the son of immigrants, Savalas was a soldier during World War II, although most of his enlistment records were destroyed in a fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1973. He later studied psychology at Columbia University under the GI Bill.
Iconically bald, he often played character roles, sometimes as sadists or psychotics. He became famous in the 1970s when his role as Det. Theo Kojak in the TV movie The Marcus-Nelson Murders (1973) was expanded into the gritty Kojak (1973) TV series (1973-78).- Actress
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Madeline Kahn was born Madeline Gail Wolfson of Russian Jewish descent on September 29, 1942 in Boston, Massachusetts, to Freda Goldberg (later known as Paula Kahn), who was still in her teens, and Bernard B. Wolfson, a garment manufacturer. She began her acting career in high school and went on to university where she trained as an opera singer and starred in several campus productions, ultimately earning a doctorate in her chosen field.
Kahn's best-known work came in Paper Moon (1973) with Ryan O'Neal, which was followed the next year by Mel Brooks's outrageous Blazing Saddles (1974) as Lili Von Shtupp, a cabaret singer who was obviously based on Marlene Dietrich's performance in Destry Rides Again (1939). Kahn was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in both movies. In 1998, she lent her voice to the character of "Gypsy" in A Bug's Life (1998).
On December 3, 1999, Madeline Kahn died of ovarian cancer in New York City, after a yearlong or so battle, during part of which time she was a cast member of Cosby (1996), aged 57.- Actor
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Academy Award-winning actor John Houseman's main contribution to American culture was not his own performances on film but rather, his role as a midwife to one of the greatest actor-directors-cinematic geniuses his adopted country ever produced (Orson Welles) and as a midwife to a whole generation of actors as head of the drama division of the Juilliard School.
Houseman was born Jacques Haussmann on September 22, 1902 in Bucharest, Romania, to May (Davies) and Georges Haussmann, who ran a grain business. His father was from an Alsatian Jewish family, and his mother, who was British, was of Welsh and Irish descent. John was raised in England, where he was educated. He emigrated to America in 1925, establishing himself in New York City, where he directed "Four Saints in Three Acts" for the theater in 1934. He founded the Mercury Theatre along with Orson Welles (whom he affectionately called "The Dog-Faced Boy"). Their most important success was a modern-dress version of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", in which the spectre of Hitler and Mussolini's Fascist states were evoked.
As a producer assigned to Unit 891 of the Federal Theater Project funded by the government's Works Progress Administration, he produced the legendary production "Cradle Will Rock", a musical about the tyranny of capitalism, with music by Marc Blitzstein, creative input from Welles, and starring leftists Howard Da Silva and Will Geer. The production was so controversial, it was banned before its debut, although the did manage to stage one performance. On Broadway, apart from the Mercury Theatre and the WPA, Houseman directed "The Devil and Daniel Webster" (1939) and "Liberty Jones" and produced "Native Son" (1941). During World War II, Houseman went to work for the Office of War Information and was involved in broadcasting radio propaganda for the Voice of America. After the war, Houseman returned to directing and produced Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's version of Julius Caesar (1953).
He had produced his first film, Orson Welles' Too Much Johnson (1938), while with the Mercury Theatre. He was involved with the pre-production of Citizen Kane (1941) but fell out with Welles due to Welles' already legendary ego. He produced a score of major films and was involved in three television series before devoting his life to teaching. He helped establish the acting program at New York's famous Julliard School for the Arts, where he influenced a new generation of actors. Ironically, he had appeared in only one major movie, in a supporting role, before being tapped to replace James Mason in The Paper Chase (1973). He won an Academy Award for the role and began a 15-year career as a highly sought after supporting player.
John Houseman, who wrote three volumes of memoirs, "Run-Through" (1972), "Front and Center" (1979) and "Final Dress" (1983), died at age 86 on October 31, 1988 after making major contributions to the theater and film.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Bill Paxton was born on May 17, 1955 in Fort Worth, Texas. He was the son of Mary Lou (Gray) and John Lane Paxton, a businessman and actor (as John Paxton). Bill moved to Los Angeles, California at age eighteen, where he found work in the film industry as a set dresser for Roger Corman's New World Pictures. He made his film debut in the Corman film Crazy Mama (1975), directed by Jonathan Demme. Moving to New York, Paxton studied acting under Stella Adler at New York University. After landing a small role in Stripes (1981), he found steady work in low-budget films and television. He also directed, wrote and produced award-winning short films including Barnes & Barnes: Fish Heads (1980), which aired on Saturday Night Live (1975). His first appearance in a James Cameron film was a small role in The Terminator (1984), followed by his very memorable performance as Private Hudson in Aliens (1986) and as the nomadic vampire Severen in Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark (1987). Bill also appeared in John Hughes' Weird Science (1985), as Wyatt Donnelly's sadistic older brother Chet. Although he continued to work steadily in film and television, his big break did not come until his lead role in the critically acclaimed film-noir One False Move (1991). This quickly led to strong supporting roles as Wyatt Earp's naive younger brother Morgan in Tombstone (1993) and as Fred Haise, one of the three astronauts, in Apollo 13 (1995), as well as in James Cameron's offering True Lies (1994).
Bill died on February 25, 2017, in Los Angeles, from complications following heart surgery. He was 61.- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
David Ogden Stiers was born in Peoria, Illinois, to Margaret Elizabeth (Ogden) and Kenneth Truman Stiers. He moved with his family to Eugene, Oregon, where he graduated from North Eugene High School in 1960. At the age of twenty, he was offered $200 to join the company of the Santa Clara Shakespeare Festival for three months. He ended up staying for seven years, in due course playing both King Lear and Richard III. In 1969, he moved to New York to study drama at Juilliard where he also trained his voice as a dramatic baritone. He joined the Houseman City Center Acting Company at its outset, working on such productions as The Beggar's Opera, Measure for Measure, The Hostage and the hit Broadway musical The Magic Show for which he created the character 'Feldman the Magnificent'. He lent his voice to animated films, with Lilo & Stitch (2002) being his 25th theatrically-released Disney animated film. He was also an avid fan of classical music and conducted a number of orchestras, including the Yaquina Chamber Orchestra in Newport, Oregon, where was the principal guest conductor.
His other theatrical work included performances with the Committee Revue and Theatre, the San Francisco Actor's Workshop, The Old Globe Theatre Festival in San Diego and at the Pasadena Playhouse in Love Letters with Meredith Baxter. As a drama instructor, he worked at Santa Clara University and also taught improvisation at Harvard. In addition to his long-running role in M*A*S*H (1972), Stiers' work on television also included the excellent mini-series North & South: Book 1, North & South (1985), North & South: Book 2, Love & War (1986), The First Olympics: Athens 1896 (1984) and roles in such productions as Anatomy of an Illness (1984), The Bad Seed (1985), J. Edgar Hoover (1987), The Final Days (1989), Father Damien: The Leper Priest (1980) and Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry (1986). Among his screen credits were The Accidental Tourist (1988), The Man with One Red Shoe (1985), Creator (1985), Harry's War (1981), Magic (1978) and Oh, God! (1977).
Above all, the prodigious talent that was David Ogden Stiers will be most fondly remembered as the pompous, ever-so articulate Major Charles Emerson Winchester III in M*A*S*H. He had found that taking on the role was -- from the beginning -- an easy choice. Stiers saw and loved the movie version. Moreover, he had a fond regard of fellow actor Harry Morgan (who played the character of Colonel Potter) as a kind of fatherly role model. In retrospect, Stiers viewed his experiences with the show as a career highlight, saying "No matter how much you read about the M*A*S*H company, the evolution of it, the quite beautiful human stance it takes, you will not know how much it means ". In his spare time on the set he often annoyed the security guards by skateboarding at 25 miles an hour and "cheerfully thumbing his nose at them".
David died of bladder cancer on March 3, 2018, in Newport, Oregon. He was 75.- Actor
- Producer
- Music Department
Legendary actor Christopher Plummer, perhaps Canada's greatest thespian, delivered outstanding performances as Sherlock Holmes in Murder by Decree (1979), the chilling villain in The Silent Partner (1978), the iconoclastic Mike Wallace in The Insider (1999), the empathetic psychiatrist in A Beautiful Mind (2001), the kindly and clever mystery writer in Knives Out (2019), and as Leo Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009). It was this last role that finally brought him recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, when he was nominated as Best Actor in a Supporting Role, one of three Academy Award nominations he received in the 2010s, along with All the Money in the World (2017) (as J. Paul Getty) and Beginners (2010); he won for the latter role. He will also likely always be remembered as Captain Von Trapp in the atomic bomb-strength blockbuster The Sound of Music (1965), a film he publicly despised until softening his stance in his autobiography "In Spite of Me" (2008).
Christopher Plummer was born Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer on December 13, 1929 in Toronto, Ontario. He was the only child of Isabella Mary (Abbott), a secretary to the Dean of Sciences at McGill University, and John Orme Plummer, who sold securities and stocks. Christopher was a great-grandson of John Abbott, who was Canada's third Prime Minister (from 1891 to 1892), and a great-great-great-grandson of Presbyterian clergyman John Bethune. He had Scottish, English, Anglo-Irish, and Cornish ancestry. Plummer was raised in Senneville, Quebec, near Montreal, at his maternal grandparents' home.
Aside from the youngest member of the Barrymore siblings (which counted Oscar-winners Ethel Barrymore and Lionel Barrymore in their number), Plummer was the premier Shakespearean actor to come out of North America in the 20th century. He was particularly memorable as Hamlet, Iago and Lear, though his Macbeth opposite Glenda Jackson was -- and this was no surprise to him due to the famous curse attached to the "Scottish Play" -- a failure.
Like another great stage actor, Richard Burton, early in his career Plummer failed to connect with the screen in a way that would make him a star. Dynamic on stage, he didn't succeed as a younger leading man in films. Perhaps if he had been born earlier, and acted in the studio system of Hollywood's golden age, he could have been carefully groomed for stardom. As it was, he shared the English stage actors' disdain -- and he was equally at home in London as he was on the boards of Broadway or on-stage in his native Canada -- for the movies, which did not help him in that medium, as he has confessed. As he aged, Plummer excelled at character roles. He was always a good villain, this man who garnered kudos playing Lucifer on Broadway in Archibald Macleish's Pulitzer Prize-winning "J.B.".
Plummer won two Emmy Awards out of seven nominations stretching 46 years from 1959 and 2011, and one Genie Award in six nominations from 1980 to 2009. For his stage work, Plummer has racked up two Tony Awards on six nominations, the first in 1974 as Best Actor (Musical) for the title role in "Cyrano" and the second in 1997, as Best Actor (Play), in "Barrymore". Surprisingly, he did not win (though he was nominated) for his masterful 2004 performance of "King Lear", which he originated at the Stratford Festival in Ontario and brought down to Broadway for a sold-out run. His other Tony nominations show the wide range of his talent, from a 1959 nod for the Elia Kazan-directed production of Macleish's "J.B." to recognition in 1994 for Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land", with a 1982 Best Actor (Play) nomination for his "Iago" in William Shakespeare's "Othello".
Until the 2009 Academy Awards were announced, it could be said about Plummer that he was the finest actor of the post-World War II period to fail to get an Academy Award. In that, he was following in the footsteps of the late great John Barrymore, whom Plummer so memorably portrayed on Broadway in a one-man show that brought him his second Tony Award. In 2010, Plummer finally got an Oscar nod for his portrayal of another legend, Lev Tolstoy in The Last Station (2009). Two years later, the first paragraph of his obituary was written when the 82-year-old Plummer became the oldest person in Academy history to win an Oscar. He won for playing a senior citizen who comes out as gay after the death of his wife in the movie Beginners (2010). As he clutched his statuette, the debonaire thespian addressed it thus: "You're only two years older than me darling, where have you been all of my life?"
Plummer then told the audience that at birth, "I was already rehearsing my Academy acceptance speech, but it was so long ago mercifully for you I've forgotten it." The Academy Award was a long time in coming and richly deserved.
Plummer gave many other fine portrayals on film, particularly as he grew older and settled down into a comfortable marriage with his third wife Elaine. He continued to be an in-demand character actor in prestigious motion pictures. If he were English rather than Canadian, he would have been knighted. (In 1968, he was appointed Companion of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honor and one which required the approval of the sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II.) If he lived in the company town of Los Angeles rather than in Connecticut, he likely would have several more Oscar nominations before winning his first for "The Last Station".
As it is, as attested to in his witty and well-written autobiography, Plummer was amply rewarded in life. In 1970, Plummer - then a self-confessed 43-year-old "bottle baby" - married his third wife Elaine Taylor, a dancer, who helped wean him off his dependency on alcohol. They lived happily with their dogs on a 30-acre estate in Weston, Connecticut. He thanked her from the stage during the 2012 Oscar telecast, quipping that she "deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for coming to my rescue every day of my life." Although he spent the majority of his time in the United States, he remained a Canadian citizen. He died in his Weston, Connecticut home on February 5, 2021 at age 91.
His daughter, with actress Tammy Grimes, is actress Amanda Plummer.- Actor
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Actor Ted Knight paid his dues with nearly two decades of relatively obscure dramatic, often villainous television work, before finding enduring fame in a scene-stealing supporting turn on a classic 1970s sitcom, hilariously overplaying a silver-haired, self-important imbecile. Although the conceited "stuffed shirt" typecast plagued him for the rest of his career, the self-proclaimed "Polish Prince of Comedy" continued on good-naturedly, earning lead status on his own comedy series. The Connecticut-born actor was christened Tadeusz (Theodore) Wladyslaw Konopka, the son of a Polish-American family in his native town of Terryville, Connecticut. A high school dropout, he enlisted for World War II duty and eventually became a decorated member of the A Company, 296th Combat Engineer Battalion.
During his tour of duty, Ted developed an interest in acting, returning home in the post-war years to study his craft in Hartford, Connecticut, at the Randall School of Dramatic Arts. A fascination with puppetry and ventriloquism led to his first steady paycheck, as the host of a children's radio show (WJAR) in Providence, Rhode Island (1950-1955). Following this, Ted found more work (WROW-TV) in Albany, New York, hosting a children's variety show while playing radio announcer for its sister radio station, WROW.
Heading west to Los Angeles, California in 1957, Ted spent most of his early years providing slick commercial voiceovers and earning minor roles on television (Sea Hunt (1958)) and film (Psycho (1960)). He appeared regularly on the short-lived, The New Loretta Young Show (1962), and the daytime soap opera, The Young Marrieds (1964). Other television guest appearances sprouted including dramatic (The Twilight Zone (1959), The Fugitive (1963), Gunsmoke (1955), Highway Patrol (1955), Bonanza (1959), Combat! (1962)) as well as occasional comedic parts (McHale's Navy (1962), Gomer Pyle: USMC (1964), Get Smart (1965)). But nothing monumental pushed his career forward.
Ted's well-modulated voice was his moneymaker during the lean years, whether as an announcer/narrator or cartoon voice character. However, this anonymity ended went he copped the role of inept, pearly-toothed WJM anchorman "Ted Baxter" on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970). The arrogant but highly insecure character earned Knight two supporting Emmy trophies (1973, 1976) but severely pigeon-holed him for the rest of his career. However, the genial actor made the best of it and continued on stage ("Some of My Best Friends") and in commercials and TV spots that were similar in persona. In 1975, a musical album entitled "Hi, Guys!" (a catchphrase of the Baxter character) was released, which included a series of bizarre novelty songs.
Knight eventually starred opposite Nancy Dussault in his own television series, Too Close for Comfort (1980), which had a healthy run despite the fact that Knight, as the lead, was more subdued than on the Mary Tyler Moore classic. Renamed "The Ted Knight Show" after it became a syndicated series, the series finally ended in 1986 only due to Knight's terminal illness. The actor's sole post-Ted Baxter movie role was as a judge in the golf-themed comedy, Caddyshack (1980), in which he continually bumped heads with the film's star, Rodney Dangerfield.
Knight was initially diagnosed with cancer in 1977, for which he was treated over an extended period of time. In 1985, the television star's conditioned worsened and the 62-year-old actor died on August 26, 1986, following surgery for a growth in his urinary tract. He was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California (his marker reads Theodore C. Konopka), and was survived by his wife of 38 years, Dorothy Knight (nee Smith), and their three children, Ted Knight Jr., Elyse Knight and Eric Knight.- Actor
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David Fitzgerald Doyle was born in Lincoln, Nebraska December 1, 1929. He was the son of Mary Ruth Fitzgerald and Lewis Raymond (Lum) Doyle, a prominent Lincoln attorney. His maternal grandfather was John Fitzgerald, a prominent banker and railroad builder in Nebraska. His paternal grandfather was T. J. Doyle, also an attorney. He was one of three children, including brother John, an attorney, and sister Mary, an actress. He grew up in Lincoln and attended Cathedral grade school. He then went to Campion, a Jesuit prep school in Wisconsin. He made his acting debut at age six and played children's roles in local productions. He was a member of the Community Theater in Lincoln. He was in Life with Father (1947). Doyle entered the University of Nebraska in 1945 and he was expected to become a lawyer, as had four generations of Doyles. But the young Doyle preferred to spend him time in the theater department. A fellow classmate at the University of Nebraska was Johnny Carson. Doyle appeared frequently on his college buddy's late night talk show during the 1960s. Doyle ranked sixth in the state on his law school entrance exams. But the theater still called him and he chose acting over a career in law. He moved to New York after college. He got his break in 1956 when he replaced Walter Matthau in the Broadway production of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957). His first wife, Rachel, died after injuries in a freak fall from a stairway in 1968. While doing a revival of "South Pacific" a year later, he met Anne Nathan and they were married. After Broadway, Doyle moved to California and was cast as Walt Fitzgerald in the television series, Bridget Loves Bernie (1972). A string of character roles followed, and Doyle is probably best remembered as the lovable private detective, Bosley, on the Charlie's Angels (1976) series. Doyle couldn't escape the legal profession and portrayed an attorney, Ted Holmes, on the daytime soap opera, General Hospital (1963) during 1986. Doyle is best remembered for his distinctive, raspy voice which earned him the voice role in several animated series and movies. He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on February 26, 1997 at age 67.- Actor
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Don Adams was born in New York, to a father of Hungarian Jewish descent, and a mother of German and Irish ancestry. He had a sister, Gloria, and a brother, Dick Yarmy. He served in the U.S. Marines in World War II and contracted malaria during the fighting on Guadalcanal island. After the war he began a career as a stand-up comic. He married singer Adelaide Adams and adopted her last name as his stage surname. He had seven children altogether, (four with his first wife, two with his second, one with his third): Caroline Adams, Christine, Catherine, Cecily Adams, Stacey Adams, Sean, Beige. His television career began when he won the Ted Mack & the Original Amateur Hour (1948) talent contest. His most famous role, of course, is as bumbling, incompetent, clueless yet endearing secret agent Maxwell Smart in the classic sitcom/spy spoof Get Smart (1965), although he also had a career as a television director and a Broadway and theatrical dramatic actor.- Actor
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Donald Jay Rickles was born May 8, 1926 in New York. Following the Golden Era of Hollywood, he remained active until early 2017. He got his start in night clubs, toiling for over 20 years, until 1958, when he made his film debut in Run Silent Run Deep (1958). The movie was a big hit. Afterward, Rickles continued acting, starring in films like X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963), Bikini Beach (1964), Enter Laughing (1967), and Kelly's Heroes (1970). In 1973, Don became a regular on Dean Martin's Celebrity Roasts.
From 1973-84, he appeared frequently on Dean's show, paying tribute to some of his friends, like Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, and was even the roast master on the roast for Dean Martin himself. In 1976, he had his own TV series CPO Sharkey (1976), which enjoyed a two year run. After 1984, he slowed down, appearing in a few minor film roles. In 1995, he made a comeback, appearing with Tom Hanks and Tim Allen in Toy Story (1995) in the role of the grouchy Mr. Potato Head. In 1999, he returned as Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story 2 (1999). He died on April 6, 2017, in Los Angeles, California, aged 90. He is interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California, in the Courts of Tanach.- Actor
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Don Knotts, the legendary television character actor, was born Jesse Donald Knotts on July 21, 1924 in Morgantown, West Virginia, to William Jesse Knotts and the former Elsie Luzetta Moore. He was the youngest of four sons in a family that had been in America since the 17th century.
His first stint as an entertainer was as a ventriloquist, performing paid gigs at parties and other events in Morgantown. He decided to make a stab at a career in show business, moving to New York City after graduating from high school, but he only lasted in the Big Apple for a few weeks. He decided to go to college, enrolling at West Virginia University but, when World War II engulfed America, he enlisted in the United States Army. The 19-year-old soldier was assigned to the Special Services Branch, where he entertained the troops. It was while in the Army that Don ditched ventriloquism for straight comedy.
Don returned to West Virginia University after being demobilized. After graduating with a degree in theater in 1948, he married and moved back to New York, where connections he had made while in the Special Services Branch helped him break into show business. In addition to doing stand-up comedy at clubs, he appeared on the radio, eventually playing the character "Windy Wales" on "The Bobby Benson Show". From 1953 to 1955, he was a regular on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow (1951). Destiny intervened when he was cast in the small role of the psychiatrist in the Broadway play "No Time for Sergeants", which starred Andy Griffith, who would play a large part in Don's future career. Don also appeared in the film adaption of the play with Griffith.
Don's big break before he hooked up again with Andy Griffith was a regular gig on the The Steve Allen Plymouth Show (1956) hosted by Steve Allen, starting in 1956. He became well-known for his "nervous man" shtick in the "Man-on-the-Street" segments that were a staple of Allen's show. His character in the segments was a very nervous man obviously uptight about being interviewed on camera. He developed this into the fidgety, high-strung persona that he used successfully for the rest of his career.
When "The Tonight Show" moved to Hollywood in 1959 with new host Jack Paar, Don also moved to California as a regular. However, he was soon cast in Andy Griffith's new television series about a small-town sheriff, The Andy Griffith Show (1960), in the role that would make him a legend. For playing "Deputy Barney Fife", Don was nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor five times from 1961 to 1967, winning each time. He soon tasted big-screen success, starring in The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964). Don cut back his appearances on The Andy Griffith Show (1960) to concentrate on making movies after signing a five-year contract with Universal Pictures. For Universal, Don appeared in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966), The Reluctant Astronaut (1967), The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968), The Love God? (1969) and How to Frame a Figg (1971). His mid-1960s popularity as a movie comedian began to wane towards the end of the decade, and the contract was not renewed. Don returned to television as the star of his own variety show, but it was quickly canceled.
During the 1970s, Don had a spotty career, appearing in regional theater and making guest appearances on other television series. He eventually made some slapstick movies with Tim Conway for the Walt Disney Company, but it wasn't until the end of the decade that he tasted real success again. He was cast as would-be-swinger landlord "Ralph Furley" on the popular sitcom Three's Company (1976) after the original landlords, "The Ropers", were spun off into their own series. Since the show was canceled in 1984, he appeared as "Barney Fife" for a 1986 reunion of The Andy Griffith Show (1960) and in television guest spots, including a recurring gig as the pesky neighbor "Les Calhoun" on Griffith's Matlock (1986) series until 1992.
He remained busy for the next ten years touring with plays and doing voice-over work for cartoons. In 2005, Don provided the voice of "Mayor Turkey Lurkey" in Disney's animated film Chicken Little (2005). It turned out to be one of his final films. He died at age 81 on February 24, 2006.- Actor
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Brooklyn-born Don Diamond's most famous role is probably that of the scheming and ambitious, but inept and somewhat cowardly, underling Crazy Cat to Frank DeKova's Chief Wild Eagle in the cult western comedy series F Troop (1965). By the time he got that role he had been an actor for quite some time, starting out in radio in the early 1940s, where he discovered that he had a knack for picking up dialects, especially Spanish. He became so proficient in it that many believed he was actually Spanish or Mexican, when in reality his family came from Russia. His facility in that dialect got him the role as the Mexican sidekick of Kit Carson in the early TV series The Adventures of Kit Carson (1951). He also landed a recurring part as a Spanish corporal, "Corporal Reyes", in the Disney TV series Zorro (1957). In addition to his TV and film work, he did much voice-over work in both cartoons and commercials, such as voicing Toro from the DFE series, Tijuana Toads.- Actor
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Andy Griffith is best known for his starring roles in two very popular television series, The Andy Griffith Show (1960) and Matlock (1986). Griffith earned a degree in music from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In the 1950s, he became a regular on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) and The Steve Allen Plymouth Show (1956). He was featured in the Broadway play "No Time for Sergeants" (1955) for which he received a Tony nomination, and he later appeared in the film version. His film debut was in the provocative and prophetic A Face in the Crowd (1957), in which Griffith gave a performance that has been described as stunning.
On The Andy Griffith Show (1960), Griffith portrayed a folksy small-town sheriff who shared simple heartfelt wisdom. The series was one of the most popular television series in history. It generated some successful spin-offs, and the original is still seen in reruns to this day. Griffith created his own production company in 1972, which produced several movies and television series. In 1981, he was nominated for an Emmy for his portrayal in Murder in Texas (1981). In 1983, Griffith was stricken with Guillain-Barre syndrome, but he recovered after rehabilitation. In 1986, he produced and starred in the very successful television series Matlock (1986). The series spawned numerous television movies as well. When he accepted the People's Choice Award for this series, he said this was his favorite role. Andy Griffith died at age 86 of a heart attack in his home in Dare County, North Carolina on July 3, 2012.- Actor
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George Lindsey quickly became an icon on television in the 1960's playing the part of 'Goober Pyle" on the The Andy Griffith Show (1960). He replaced Jim Nabors who portrayed "Gomer Pyle" who ran the "fillin station" on "The Andy Griffith Show." As Jim Nabors was tapped for his own show Gomer Pyle: USMC (1964), cousin "Goober" was introduced to become the new mechanic and running the "fillin station" on "The Andy Griffith Show." He fit in perfectly with his country wit, impersonations of Cary Grant, "Judy, Judy, Judy," and playing the a dim-witted bulb often to the consternation of Sheriff Andy Taylor. He always wore his stocking type cap which always looked worn and dirty. Lindsay played this role also in Mayberry R.F.D. (1968) and continued playing basically the same and other characters on Hee Haw (1969) for many years. Although he did not perform in a myriad of shows, he was always recognizable as Goober and did not have a shortage of work. Between "The Andy Griffith show" and "Hee Haw," this provided him with almost 25 years worth of work a busy schedule for anyone. George frequented other country and western TV shows and movies including Gunsmoke (1955), Cannonball Run II (1984), Take This Job and Shove It (1981), and others. But he also found work on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962), The Rifleman (1958), The Twilight Zone (1959), and many others. George provided much comedic relief to millions of viewers for over a generation and will never be forgotten by those who enjoyed him.- Actor
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Will Geer was born William Aughe Ghere in Frankfort, Indiana, to Katherine (Aughe), a teacher, and Roy Aaron Ghere, a postal worker. Will admired his grandfather, a man who said hello to trees by their Latin names and who had used what he brought back to Indiana from the California gold rush to build Frankfort's first opera house. Will pursued a college major in botany, from Chicago through a Master's degree at Columbia, but ultimately gave in to his need to perform. Starting with touring company tent shows and river boats, his six-decade career included Broadway, movies, television; many Shakespeare roles; one-man performances as Walt Whitman and Mark Twain. His best known role was his last, Zebulon Walton, grandpa in the long-running television series The Waltons (1972). Less well-known was his life-long role as a political agitator and radical ("Someone who goes to the roots, which is the Latin derivation of radical") and folklorist/folksinger - he toured U.S. government work camps in the 1930s, singing with Woody Guthrie and Burl Ives. He was blacklisted during the McCarthy era for refusing to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In 1951, he formed the "Theatricum Botanicum," a repertory theater in Topanga Canyon, California, where he not only coached actors but also encouraged outdoor philosophical discussion and, of course, folksinging. At his deathbed, his family sang "This Land Is Your Land" and recited Robert Frost poems. His ashes lie in a corner of the Shakespearean garden on the grounds of his Theatricum Botanicum.- Actor
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Clifford Parker Robertson III became a fairly successful leading man through most of his career without ever becoming a major star. Following strong stage and television experience, he made an interesting film debut in a supporting role in Picnic (1955). He then played Joan Crawford's deranged young husband in Autumn Leaves (1956) and was given leads in films of fair quality such as The Naked and the Dead (1958), Gidget (1959) and The Big Show (1961).
He was born to Clifford Parker Robertson Jr. and Audrey Olga (nee Willingham) Robertson. Robertson Jr. was described as "the idle heir to a tidy sum of ranching money". They have divorced when he was a year old, and his mother died of peritonitis a year later in El Paso, Texas. Young Cliff was raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Eleanor Willingham as well as an aunt and uncle.
He supplemented his somewhat unsatisfactory big-screen work with interesting appearances on television, including the lead role in Days of Wine and Roses (1958). Robertson was effective playing a chilling petty criminal obsessed with avenging his father in the B-feature Underworld U.S.A. (1961) or a pleasant doctor in the popular hospital melodrama The Interns (1962). However, significant public notice eluded him until he was picked by President John F. Kennedy to play the young JFK during the latter's World War II experience in PT 109 (1963).
Moving into slightly better pictures, Robertson gave some of his best performances: a ruthless presidential candidate in The Best Man (1964), a modern-day Mosca in an updated version of Ben Jonson's "Volpone", The Honey Pot (1967), and most memorably as a mentally retarded man in Charly (1968), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor. His critical success with Charly (1968) allowed him to continue starring in some good films in the 1970s, including Too Late the Hero (1970), The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid (1972), and Obsession (1976).
He starred in, directed and co-produced the fine rodeo drama J W Coop (1971) and, less interestingly, The Pilot (1980). He remained active mostly in supporting roles, notably playing Hugh Hefner in Star 80 (1983). More recently, he had supporting parts in Escape from L.A. (1996) and Spider-Man (2002).
Robertson died on September 10, 2011, just one day after his 88th birthday in Stony Brook, New York.- Actor
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Born on October 1, 1921, in White Plains, New York, gruff veteran character actor James Whitmore earned early and widespread respect with his award-winning dramatic capabilities on Broadway and in films. He would later conquer TV with the same trophy-winning results.
The son of James Allen Whitmore and Florence Crane, he was educated at Connecticut's Choate School after receiving a football scholarship. He later earned his BA from Yale University in 1944 before serving with the Marines in World War II. Following his honorable discharge he prepared for the stage under the G.I. bill at the American Theatre Wing, where he met first wife Nancy Mygatt. They married in 1947 and went on to have three sons together -- Steve, Dan and actor/director James Whitmore Jr..
Applause and kudos came swiftly for Whitmore while under both the Broadway and film banners. After appearing with the Peterborough, New Hampshire, Players in the summer of 1947 in "The Milky Way," Whitmore made a celebrated Broadway debut as Tech Sergeant Evans in "Command Decision" later that year. His gritty performance swept the stage acting trifecta -- Tony, Donaldson and Theatre World awards. In later years Whitmore would often comment that most of his satisfaction came from performing on the live stage.
Hollywood soon took notice of Whitmore. Clark Gable happened to be starring in the film version of Command Decision (1948), and it was hoped that Whitmore would get to recreate his award-winning role. But it was not to be. Song-and-dance star Van Johnson, who was looking for straight, serious roles after a vastly successful musical career, was given the coveted part. The disappointment didn't last long, however, and Whitmore made an auspicious film bow the following year with a prime role in the documentary-styled crime thriller The Undercover Man (1949) starring Glenn Ford and Nina Foch. Whitmore scored brilliantly with his second film as well. Battleground (1949), another war picture, was highly praised and the actor became the talk of the town upon its initial release, grabbing both the Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for "supporting actor" for his efforts.
Hardly the handsome, matinée lead type, Whitmore nevertheless primed himself up for leading roles in a character vein and found a fine range of material come his way. He showed off his soft inner core as a religious, moral-minded family man opposite Nancy Reagan [Reagan] in the inspirational drama The Next Voice You Hear... (1950); featured his usual saltier side alongside Marjorie Main in Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone (1950); ably portrayed a hunchbacked crook in The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and displayed customary authority as a security chief in the stoic military drama Above and Beyond (1952) starring Robert Taylor. Elsewhere, he played it strictly for laughs as a Runyonesque gangster partnered with Keenan Wynn in the classic MGM musical Kiss Me Kate (1953); portrayed a valiant cop fighting off gigantic mutant ants in the intelligent sci-fi thriller Them! (1954); a hard-hitting social worker in Crime in the Streets (1956) and even made the most of his small role as Tyrone Power's manager in The Eddy Duchin Story (1956).
By 1959, the craggy-faced actor known for his trademark caterpillar eyebrows, turned more and more toward the small screen, with memorable roles in The Twilight Zone (1959), The Detectives (1959) (working again with Robert Taylor), Ben Casey (1961) and a host of live theater dramas. He also starred in his own series as attorney Abraham Lincoln Jones in The Law and Mr. Jones (1960), which lasted two seasons.
Every so often a marvelous character would rear its pretty head and interest him back to the big screen. Notable of these were his white man passing for black in the controversial social drama Black Like Me (1964); his weary veteran cop in Madigan (1968); and his brash, authoritative simian in the classic sci-fi Planet of the Apes (1968).
Divorced from wife Nancy after more than two decades, Whitmore married actress Audra Lindley, best known on TV as Mrs. Roper of Three's Company (1976) fame, in 1972. The couple forged a strong acting partnership as well, particularly on stage, and maintained a professional relationship long after their 1979 divorce. Whitmore and Lindley were lauded for their appearances together in such plays as "The Magnificent Yankee," "On Golden Pond," "The Visit," "Foxfire" and "Love Letters," among others.
In the 1970s the actor transformed into a magnificent one-man-show machine playing such celebrated and inspiring historical/entertainment icons as Will Rogers, Harry Truman and Theodore Roosevelt. He disappeared into these historical legends so efficiently that even the powers-that-be had the good sense to preserve them on film and TV in the form of Will Rogers' USA (1972); Give 'em Hell, Harry! (1975), which earned him his second Oscar nomination; and Bully: An Adventure with Teddy Roosevelt (1978).
In his twilight years, Whitmore showed he still had what it took to touch movie audiences, most notably as the fragile prisoner-turned-parolee who cannot adapt to his late-life freedom in the classic film The Shawshank Redemption (1994). On TV he continued to win awards, copping a TV Emmy for a recurring part on The Practice (1997) in the late 1990s. A household face in commercials as well, one of his passions was gardening and he eventually became the spokesman for Miracle-Gro plant food.
Whitmore remarried (and re-divorced, 1979-1981) his first wife Nancy briefly before finding a lasting union with his fourth wife, actress-turned-author Noreen Nash, whom he married broaching age 80 in 2001. Whitmore died of lung cancer on February 6, 2009, after having been diagnosed in mid-November 2008.- Producer
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Marc Wilmore was born on 4 May 1963 in Fontana, California, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for The Simpsons (1989), In Living Color (1990) and The PJs (1999). He was married to Soumaya Wilmore. He died on 30 January 2021 in Pomona, California, USA.- Actor
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Wilford Brimley was born on 27 September 1934 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. He was an actor, known for The Natural (1984), In & Out (1997) and Cocoon (1985). He was married to Beverly Berry and Lynne Brimley. He died on 1 August 2020 in St. George, Utah, USA.- Actor
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Felix Silla was born on January 11, 1937 in a small village outside Rome, Lazio, Italy. Silla trained as a circus performer, came to the United States in 1955, and toured with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Show. His multiple talents -- as a bareback rider, trapeze artist and tumbler -- brought him to Hollywood where he became a stuntman, starting with the Gig Young-Shirley Jones vehicle, A Ticklish Affair (1963).
His best-known roles are the maniacal, miniature "Hitler" who menaces George Segal in The Black Bird (1975) and Cousin Itt on The Addams Family (1964). He had doubled -- often for children -- in such hits as The Towering Inferno (1974), The Hindenburg (1975) and Battlestar Galactica (1978). Between movies, he frequently appears in Las Vegas and Reno nightclubs with his own musical combo, "The Original Harmonica Band".
Silla and wife Sue Silla -- a "little person", like himself -- were married from 1965 until Felix's death on April 16, 2021, and had three children, Bonnie, Michael and Diana.- Actor
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Peter Ustinov was a two-time Academy Award-winning film actor, director, writer, journalist and raconteur. He wrote and directed many acclaimed stage plays and led numerous international theatrical productions.
He was born Peter Alexander Freiherr von Ustinow on April 16, 1921 in Swiss Cottage, London, the son of Nadezhda Leontievna (née Benois) and Jona Freiherr von Ustinow. His father was of one-quarter Polish Jewish, one-half Russian, one-eighth Ethiopian, and one-eighth German descent, while his mother was of one-half Russian, one-quarter Italian, one-eighth French, and one-eighth German ancestry. Ustinov had ancestral connections to Russian nobility as well as to the Ethiopian Royal Family. His father, also known as "Klop Ustinov", was a pilot in the German Air Force during World War I. In 1919, Jona Freiherr von Ustinow joined his own mother and sister in St Petersburg, Russia, where he met his future wife, artist Nadia Benois, who worked for the Imperial Mariinsky Ballet and Opera House in St Petersburg.
In 1920, in a modest and discreet ceremony at a Russian-German church in St Petersburg, Ustinov's father married Nadia. In February 1921, when she was seven months pregnant with Peter, the couple emigrated from Russia in the aftermath of the Communist Revolution. Young Peter was brought up in a multilingual family. He was fluent in Russian, French, Italian and German, as well as English. He attended Westminster College (1934-37), took the drama and acting class under Michel St Denis at the London Theatre Studio (1937-39), and made his stage debut in 1938 at the Stage Theatre Club in Surrey. He wrote his first play at the age of 19. In 1939, he made his London stage debut in a revue sketch, then had regular performances with the Aylesbury Repertory Company. The following year, he made his film debut in Hullo, Fame! (1940).
From 1942-46, Ustinov served with the British Army's Royal Sussex Regiment. He was batman for David Niven, and the two became lifelong friends. Ustinov spent most of his service working with the Army Cinema Unit, where he was involved in making recruitment films, wrote plays and appeared in three films as an actor. At that time he co-wrote and acted in The Way Ahead (1944) (aka "The Immortal Battalion").
Ustinov had a stellar film career as actor, director, and writer. Among his numerous screen acting gems were his unparalleled, Academy Award-nominated interpretation of Nero in Quo Vadis (1951) and roles in Max Ophüls's masterpiece Lola Montès (1955), Barefoot in Athens (1966), The Comedians (1967), Robin Hood (1973) and Logan's Run (1976). He also wrote and directed such brilliant films as Billy Budd (1962), Lady L (1965) and Memed My Hawk (1984). He was awarded two Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, one for his role in Spartacus (1960) and one for his role in Topkapi (1964), and received two more Oscar nominations as an actor and writer. His career slowed down a bit in the 1970s, but made a comeback as Hercule Poirot in Death on the Nile (1978) by director John Guillermin. In the 1980s, Ustinov recreated Poirot in several subsequent television movies and theatrical films, including Evil Under the Sun (1982) and Appointment with Death (1988), while his cinema work in the 1990s also includes his superb performance as Professor Gus Nikolais in George Miller's excellent dramatic film, Lorenzo's Oil (1992), a character partially inspired by Hugo Wolfgang Moser, a research scientist who had been director of the Neurogenetics Research Center at the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University.
His expertise in dialectic and physical comedy made him a regular guest of talk show hosts and late-night comedians. His witty and multidimensional humor was legendary, and he later published a collection of his jokes and quotations summarizing his wide popularity as a raconteur. He was also an internationally acclaimed TV journalist. Ustinov covered over 100,000 miles and visited more than 30 Russian cities during the making of his well-received BBC television series Russia (1986).
In his autobiographies, "Dear Me" (1977) and "My Russia" (1996), Ustinov revealed his observations on his life, career, and his multicultural and multi-ethnic background. He wrote and directed numerous stage plays, successfully presenting them in several countries. His drama, "Photo Finish", was staged in New York, London and St. Petersburg, Russia, where Ustinov directed the acclaimed production, starring Elena Solovey and Petr Shelokhonov. Ustinov also served as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF and a president of WFM, a global citizens movement. Ustinov served as Rector of Dundee University for six years. He was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Royal Society of Arts in 1957 and was knighted in 1990.
From 1971 until his death in 2004, Ustinov's permanent residence was a château in Bursins, Vaud, Switzerland. He died of heart failure on March 28, 2004, in a clinic in Genolier, also in Vaud. His funeral service was held at Geneva's historic Cathedral of St. Pierre, and he was laid to rest in the village cemetery of Bursins. He was survived by three daughters (Tamara, Pavla, and Andrea) and one son (Igor). His epitaph may be gleaned from his comment, "I am an international citizen conceived in Russia, born in England, working in Hollywood, living in Switzerland, and touring the World".- Music Department
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Alan Thicke was born on 1 March 1947 in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Canada. He was an actor and writer, known for Growing Pains (1985), Raising Helen (2004) and That's My Boy (2012). He was married to Tanya Callau, Gina Marie Tolleson and Gloria Loring. He died on 13 December 2016 in Burbank, California, USA.- Actor
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John Hoyt was born on 5 October 1905 in Bronxville, New York, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for When Worlds Collide (1951), Spartacus (1960) and Brute Force (1947). He was married to Dorothy Marion Oltman and Marion Virginia Burns. He died on 15 September 1991 in Santa Cruz, California, USA.- Actor
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William Dennis Hunt was born on 1 March 1944 in the USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Flesh Gordon (1974), Dragonfly (2002) and Chaplin (1992). He died on 14 June 2020 in the USA.- Actor
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Deadpan comedian Charles Sydney Grodin (originally Grodinsky) was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania of Russian/Polish ancestry and raised in a Jewish orthodox home. He attended the University of Miami but dropped out, opting instead for the life of a struggling actor. The movie A Place in the Sun (1951) was said to have steered him towards his chosen profession. In his own words: "It was two things. One is I think I developed an overwhelming crush on Elizabeth Taylor. And two, Montgomery Clift made acting look like 'Gee, well that looks pretty easy - just a guy talking.'".
After a spell with Uta Hagen (1956-59), he attended Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio before making his stage debut on Broadway in 1962. Though he appeared on screen from as early as 1954, Grodin did not make a great deal of headway in this medium until he attracted critical notice playing the small but crucial role of obstetrician Dr. C.C. Hill in Rosemary's Baby (1968). More substantial roles soon followed. His first major starring turn was in The Heartbreak Kid (1972), a black comedy written by Neil Simon and directed by Elaine May. Grodin managed to inject charm and humanity in what was essentially an egotistical central character. Film reviewer Roger Ebert praised his performance, describing the actor as a "kind of Dustin Hoffman-as-overachiever", an opinion which was echoed by Vincent Canby of the New York Times. Ironically, Grodin had earlier turned down the pivotal role in The Graduate (1967) which propelled Hoffman to stardom (he also -- probably unwisely -- spurned the role of oceanographer Matt Hooper in Jaws (1975) which instead went to Richard Dreyfuss).
Grodin's ultimate breakthrough came on the Broadway stage in "Same Time Next Year" (1975) (opposite Ellen Burstyn), a hugely successful romantic comedy about two people, each married to someone else, who conduct an extramarital affair for a single day over the course of 24 years in the same room of a northern Californian inn. Though the two leads left the show after seven months, Grodin was now much sought-after in Hollywood as a droll comic actor and cast in a string of hit comedies: Heaven Can Wait (1978), Seems Like Old Times (1980), The Lonely Guy (1984) and Midnight Run (1988). He also appeared to sterling effect in the underrated farce The Couch Trip (1988), in which he co-starred with Walter Matthau and Dan Aykroyd as the brittle psychiatrist and radio host Dr. George Maitlin. Arguably his most popular box office success was opposite the titular Saint Bernard canine in the family-oriented comedy Beethoven (1992). Despite less than enthusiastic critical reviews, the film was a hit with audiences, grossed $147.2 million worldwide and spawned a sequel.
In the mid-1990s, Grodin reinvented himself as a television host (The Charles Grodin Show (1995)) and political commentator. He made frequent guest appearances on talk shows with Carson or Letterman, typically adopting the persona of a belligerent tongue-in-cheek character to facilitate "comically uncomfortable situations on the set". Grodin was also a prolific author, both of fiction and non-fiction. An autobiography was entitled "It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here: My Journey Through Show Business" (1989). Charles Grodin died at age 86 of bone marrow cancer on May 18, 2021 at his home in Wilton, Connecticut.- Susan Fleetwood was born on 21 September 1944 in St. Andrews, Scotland, UK. She was an actress, known for Clash of the Titans (1981), Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) and The Sacrifice (1986). She died on 29 September 1995 in Salisbury, England, UK.
- Freda Jackson was born in Nottingham, England in 1908, the daughter of a railway porter. After studying at High Pavement School and the University College there, she became a schoolteacher but gave up her career to study acting at the Royal College of Art, in London. Her first professional stage appearance was in Northampton, England in 1934, before moving on to London's West End in 1936. In 1938 she joined the prestigious Old Vic company, touring with them in Europe and Egypt. She played Shakespeare at Stratford on Avon in 1940, but it was in 1945 that she gained fame in 'No Room at the Inn' in London. Following this success she went on to play many starring roles. In total Freda Jackson appeared in some sixty two major stage roles in England and overseas.
At the same time she appeared in twenty six films, including Sir Laurence Olivier's 'Henry V', David Lean's version of Dicken's 'Great Expectations', Tony Richardson's 'Tom Jones', and the Hammer Horror classic 'Brides of Dracula'. Not content with this she also appeared in several classic British television shows, including Maigret, Adam Adamant Lives, and Blake's 7, together with a number of more serious dramas.
Freda Jackson, who was married to the painter Henry Bird ARCA, died in 1990. - Actress
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Flora Robson knew she was no beauty, but her wise and sympathetic face would become a familiar - indeed, shining - ornament of the 1930s and '40s silver screen. Though not sure of acting as a career in her early years, she first appeared on stage when 5 years old. She was educated at Palmer's Green High School and went on still in her teens to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, winning a Bronze Medal in 1921. Between 1921-23 she performed in London and Oxford, but both uncertainty and the unstable income of acting convinced her to spend the next few years working at a factory welfare officer in east London.
Still, her versatility, even in her youth, as a budding character actress of the first water, was noticed. In 1929 a friend urged her to join the Cambridge Festival Theatre where she remained two years.
By 1931 she was in residence at the Old Vic with as varied roles as Herodias in "Salome" (1931), a drunken prostitute in Bridie's "The Anatomist", Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth in "Macbeth", and Gwendolen in "The Importance of Being Earnest" (both in 1933).
She stayed with the Old Vic until 1934, but she was already turning to the film with her debut in A Gentleman of Paris (1931).
Her dexterity as screen monarchs began shortly thereafter as Russian Empress Elisabeth in The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934). Flora even had a place in television history in the pre-WWII British TV production of Anna Christie (1937).
She was a forceful Livia in Josef von Sternberg's ill-fated and unfinished I, Claudius (1937), but gave a hint of her future potential with her rousing Queen Elizabeth I in Alexander Korda's Fire Over England (1937) with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.
The year 1939 was extremely busy for Robson. It marked her first association with British director Michael Powell in his The Lion Has Wings (1939) and Smith (1939) and the unsurprising call from Hollywood.
There she was lauded quickly for 2 roles that year: as the domineering wife of Paul Muni in We Are Not Alone (1939) and opposite fellow British stars Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, and David Niven as narrator and housekeeper Ellen Dean in the haunting Wuthering Heights (1939). Her compelling Elizabeth marked her for a reprise of the role in the Errol Flynn swashbuckler The Sea Hawk (1940) in which she played the role to the hilt.
Among early screen Elizabeth standouts, Florence Eldridge in Mary of Scotland (1936) resembled the historical queen and the more famous Bette Davis displayed the manner and temperament with her usual command (though it is hard not to feel it's Bette playing her - albeit - brilliant self and not Elizabeth) in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), but Robson seemed to best personify the total person and spirit of 'good Queen Bess'.
Flora's film career was marked with a character versatility which had and continued to mark precious time for stage work (as in her murderess Ellen Creed in "Ladies in Retirement" (Broadway, 1950). In 1941, she returned to war-torn London to boldly continue theater performances to a grateful country. After the war, it was a full life of crisscrossing the Atlantic. Though some British critics were not impressed with her return to Hollywood to play the overly protective mulatto servant of Ingrid Bergman in Saratoga Trunk (1945), it was an outstanding tour-de-force character performance honored with an Oscar nomination.
Among other memorable roles in the late 1940s, even her reflective Anglican Sister Philippa in Powell's visually stunning and provocative Black Narcissus (1947) displays her depth as a solid character actress. Another quarter of a century of roles was accented with memorable theatrical performances as Lady Macbeth on Broadway (1949) and as Paulina in Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale" (1951), production by John Gielgud, to add to a kaleidoscope mix of movies from 1948 to 1981 and a sprinkling of character pieces on British TV, when she retired from the stage in 1969.
The material success of Hollywood played a part in her much deserved honor as Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1952 and her ascension as Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1960. Kenneth Barrow wrote a biography Flora: The Life of Dame Flora Robson (1981). Flora had the further honor of rating 2 portraits in London's National Portrait Gallery for her full and distinguished life.- Actor
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Laurence Olivier could speak William Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them", said English playwright Charles Bennett, who met Olivier in 1927. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England, to Agnes Louise (Crookenden) and Gerard Kerr Olivier, a High Anglican priest. His surname came from a great-great-grandfather who was of French Huguenot origin.
One of Olivier's earliest successes as a Shakespearean actor on the London stage came in 1935 when he played "Romeo" and "Mercutio" in alternate performances of "Romeo and Juliet" with John Gielgud. A young Englishwoman just beginning her career on the stage fell in love with Olivier's Romeo. In 1937, she was "Ophelia" to his "Hamlet" in a special performance at Kronborg Castle, Elsinore (Helsingør), Denmark. In 1940, she became his second wife after both returned from making films in America that were major box office hits of 1939. His film was Wuthering Heights (1939), her film was Gone with the Wind (1939). Vivien Leigh and Olivier were screen lovers in Fire Over England (1937), 21 Days Together (1940) and That Hamilton Woman (1941).
There was almost a fourth film together in 1944 when Olivier and Leigh traveled to Scotland with Charles C. Bennett to research the real-life story of a Scottish girl accused of murdering her French lover. Bennett recalled that Olivier researched the story "with all the thoroughness of Sherlock Holmes" and "we unearthed evidence, never known or produced at the trial, that would most certainly have sent the young lady to the gallows". The film project was then abandoned. During their two-decade marriage, Olivier and Leigh appeared on the stage in England and America and made films whenever they really needed to make some money.
In 1951, Olivier was working on a screen adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel "Sister Carrie" (Carrie (1952)) while Leigh was completing work on the film version of the Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She won her second Oscar for bringing "Blanche DuBois" to the screen. Carrie (1952) was a film that Olivier never talked about. George Hurstwood, a middle-aged married man from Chicago who tricked a young woman into leaving a younger man about to marry her, became a New York street person in the novel. Olivier played him as a somewhat nicer person who didn't fall quite as low. A PBS documentary on Olivier's career broadcast in 1987 covered his first sojourn in Hollywood in the early 1930s with his first wife, Jill Esmond, and noted that her star was higher than his at that time. On film, he was upstaged by his second wife, too, even though the list of films he made is four times as long as hers.
More than half of his film credits come after The Entertainer (1960), which started out as a play in London in 1957. When the play moved across the Atlantic to Broadway in 1958, the role of "Archie Rice"'s daughter was taken over by Joan Plowright, who was also in the film. They married soon after the release of The Entertainer (1960).- Actor
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Born Paul Wilchinsky on December 21, 1922, the son of Sol and Clara Wilchinsky, Paul Winchell grew up to be the most beloved ventriloquist of American children. Ironically, as famous as Paul was, his dummy, Jerry Mahoney, was probably more famous. Not since Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy in the previous two decades had a ventriloquist and his dummy known equal celebrity.
Entering the spotlight on the Edward Bowes "Original Amateur Hour" (1948), he began working soon after in a review show in which Major Bowes would showcase the winners of his radio program. He started his television career on the CBS program The Bigelow Show (1948) in 1948; The Paul Winchell Show (1950), originally called "The Spiedel Show," in 1950; and, finally, the best-known of his shows Winchell-Mahoney Time (1965). With a clubhouse premise, his dummies Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff--another of Paul's characters--as the clubhouse leaders, and the music of the bandleader Milton Delugg. A new innovation of Winchell's was to replace the dummy's hands with those of puppeteers who were hidden behind the dummies in a crate. Winch also played many serous dramatic roles on television without his dummy sidekicks.
What may be even more famous is that he created the voice of Tigger for the Walt Disney Company's "Winnie The Pooh" motion-picture series, based on the famous books by A.A. Milne. He played the role behind the scenes until 1999, when he was replaced by Jim Cummings, who also voiced Pooh from the time that Sterling Holloway died. He was also the voice of many other world-famous cartoon characters.
A little-known fact about Winchell is that he was one of the original inventors of an artificial heart--years before the first successful transplant with such of a device--an automobile that runs on battery power, a method for breeding tilapia, and many other inventions that are still around today.- Actor
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Signifying intelligence, eloquence, versatility and quiet intensity, one of the more important, critically acclaimed black actors to gain a Hollywood foothold in the 1970s was Paul Winfield. He was born in 1939 in Dallas, Texas, where he lived in his early years before moving with his family to Los Angeles' Watts district. He showed early promise as a student at Manual Arts High School, earning distinction with several performance awards. As a senior, he earned his first professional acting job and extended his theatrical education with a two-year scholarship to the University of Portland in Oregon. Subsequent scholarships led to his studies at Stanford and Los Angeles City College, among other colleges. He left U.C.L.A. just six credits short of his Bachelor's degree.
Paul's first big break came in 1964 when actor/director Burgess Meredith gave him a role in Le Roi Jones' controversial one-act play "The Dutchman and the Toilet". Director Meredith cast him again four years in "The Latent Heterosexual" with Zero Mostel. Although he won a contract at Columbia Pictures in 1966 and built up his on-camera career with a succession of television credits, he continued to focus on the legitimate stage. A member of the Stanford Repertory Theatre, he concentrated on both classic and contemporary plays. In 1969, Paul joined the Inner City Cultural Center Theatre in Los Angeles for two years, which offered a drama program for high school students.
In the late 1960s, Paul redirected himself back to performing on television and in films with guest work in more than 40 series on the small screen, including a boyfriend role on the first season of the landmark black sitcom Julia (1968) starring Diahann Carroll. In films, he was given a featured role in the Sidney Poitier film The Lost Man (1969), and earned comparable roles in R.P.M. (1970) and Brother John (1971) before major stardom occurred.
1972 proved to be a banner year for Paul after winning the male lead opposite Cicely Tyson in the touching classic film Sounder (1972). His towering performance as a sharecropper who is imprisoned and tortured for stealing a ham for his impoverished family earned him an Oscar nomination for "Best Actor" -- the third black actor (Sidney Poitier and James Earl Jones preceded him) to receive such an honor at the time.
From there a host of films and quality television roles began arriving on his doorstep. In mini-movies, Paul portrayed various historical/entertainment giants including Thurgood Marshall, Don King and baseball's Roy Campanella, and was Emmy-nominated for his portrayal of Martin Luther King, Jr. in King (1978) with Sounder co-star Cicely Tyson as wife Coretta. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he earned solid distinction in such prestige projects as Backstairs at the White House (1979), Roots: The Next Generations (1979) (another Emmy nomination), The Sophisticated Gents (1981), The Blue and the Gray (1982), Sister, Sister (1982), James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain (1985), Under Siege (1986) and The Women of Brewster Place (1989).
Although the big screen did not offer the same consistent quality following his breakthrough with Sounder, he nevertheless turned in strong roles in Conrack (1974), Huckleberry Finn (1974), A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich (1977) (again with Ms. Tyson), Damnation Alley (1977), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and White Dog (1982).
Surprisingly, Paul never achieved the promise of a Sidney Poitier-like stardom and his roles diminished in size. Relegated to character roles, he still appeared in such quality television as Breathing Lessons (1994), although he was not the major focus. After two nominations, he finally won the Emmy for a guest performance as a judge on Picket Fences (1992). Paul's showier work at this period of time included the film Catfish in Black Bean Sauce (1999) and a surprise cross-dressing cameo as Aunt Matilda in Relax... It's Just Sex (1998).
On stage, Paul graced such productions as "Richard III" (at New York's Lincoln Center Theatre), "Othello", "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "The Seagull", "A Few Good Men", "Happy Endings" and "Checkmates", which became his sole Broadway credit. Paul also served as Artist in Residence at the University of Hawaii and subsequently at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
In his final years, Winfield narrated the A&E crime series City Confidential (1998), appeared as a teacher in a television adaptation of his earlier success Sounder (2003), and enjoyed a recurring role as Sam for many years on the series Touched by an Angel (1994).
Suffering from obesity and diabetes in later life, Paul Winfield passed away from a heart attack at age 64 in 2004, and was survived by a sister, Patricia. His longtime companion of 30 years, set designer and architect Charles Gillan Jr. predeceased him by two years.- Actress
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One of four children, Blackman was born in London's East End, to Edith Eliza (Stokes), a homemaker, and Frederick Thomas Blackman, a statistician employed with the Civil Service. She received elocution lessons for her 16th birthday (at her own request), and later attended the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which she paid for by working as a clerical assistant in the Civil Service. She was also a dispatch rider for the Home Office during World War II, playing an important role in the war effort.
Blackman received her first acting work on stage in London's West End as an understudy in "The Guinea Pig". She continued with roles in "The Gleam" (1946) and "The Blind Goddess" (1947), before moving into film. She debuted with Fame Is the Spur (1947), starring Michael Redgrave.
Blackman suffered a nervous breakdown following her divorce from Bill Sankey, a man 12 years her senior, who's jealousy, fraudulent business practices, and emptying of her bank accounts took it's toll. After hospitalisation Blackman began counselling, which would last for years, and began rebuilding her career.
TV series work also came her way again, most notably the highly popular The Avengers (1961), co-starring Patrick Macnee as John Steed. As the leather-clad "Catherine Gale", Blackman showcased her incredible beauty, self-confidence, and athletic abilities. Her admirable qualities made her not only a catch for the men, but also an inspirational figure for the 1960s feminist movement.
Blackman took on the role of Greek goddess Hera in popular movie adventure Jason and the Argonauts (1963) with Ray Harryhausen and melodrama Life at the Top (1965) with Laurence Harvey. She then played "Pussy Galore" in the classic James Bond film Goldfinger (1964). Blackman went toe to toe with Sean Connery's womanizing "007" and created major sparks on screen.
Blackman continued to work consistently in films and tv, while also appearing on stage where she earned rave reviews as the blind heroine of the thriller "Wait Until Dark" as well as for her dual roles in "Mr. and Mrs.", a production based on two of Noël Coward's plays. She also enjoyed working with her second husband, actor Maurice Kaufmann, in the play "Move Over, Mrs. Markham" and the film thriller Fright (1971). She proved a sultry-voiced sensation in various musicals productions such as "A Little Night Music", "The Sound of Music", "On Your Toes", and "Nunsense."
In the new millennium, Honor was seen in such films as Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), Color Me Kubrick (2005), Reuniting the Rubins (2010), I, Anna (2012) and Cockneys vs Zombies (2012), as well as the British TV serieses Water, Water, Everywhere (1920) The Royal (2003) Coronation Street (1960), long running series Casualty (1986) and finally You, Me & Them (2013), her last role after her retirement several years earlier.
Divorced from Kaufmann in 1975 (although they remained friends until his death, Blackman even cared for him during his 13 year battle with cancer), Blackman never remarried, revealing in an interview that she simply preferred single life, "Basically I'm a shy person and I like my own company". Unable to conceive, the couple adopted two children, Lottie and Barnaby, in '67 and '68 respectively.
The ever-lovely and eternally glamorous star continued to find regular work into her 90s, including co-starring in the long-running English hit comedy series The Upper Hand (1990) and performing her one-woman stage show, "Wayward Women"
Honor Blackman died on April 5, 2020, in Lewes, Sussex. She was 94.- Although he did not turn to the stage until middle age after two decades in the Royal Navy, Jack Gwillim was a notable actor on both sides of the Atlantic. During the 1950s he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare company in Stratford, England, for three years during Sir Anthony Quayle's stint as artistic director, and a member of the Old Vic Company for a further three years. His extensive theatre credits included many leading roles in the West End including "Sacred Flame" with Gladys Cooper and Wendy Hiller, "The Right Honourable Gentleman" with Quayle, "The Dark is Light Enough" with Dame Edith Evans, "Castle In Sweden" with Diane Cilento, "Portrait Of Murder", "A Kind Of Folly" with Dame Flora Robson, "You Never Can Tell" and "Merchant Of Venice" with Sir Ralph Richardson. In 1969 he emigrated to the United States, working in top regional theaters, off-Broadway and Broadway. His Broadway credits include the role of Col. Pickering in Rex Harrison revival of "My Fair Lady", and Ingrid Bergman's husband in "The Constant Wife" directed by Sir John Gielgud. Other Broadway shows included "Ari", "MacBeth" with Christopher Plummer and 'Glenda Jackson (I)', "Romeo and Juliet", "Lost in the Stars" with Brock Peters, "The Iceman Cometh" with James Earl Jones and with the Old Vic "MacBeth", "Romeo and Juliet" with Claire Bloom, "Richard II" and "Troilus and Cressida." He did numerous tours in the U.S including "Laurette" with Judy Holliday.
On stage he has worked with such actors as Sir Ralph Richardson, Sir Anthony Quayle, Dame Judith Anderson, Judi Dench, Sir Michael Redgrave and Richard Burton. He is also known for war films such as Pursuit of the Graf Spee (1956) with Peter Finch, The One That Got Away (1957), North West Frontier (1959) with Lauren Bacall and Sink the Bismarck! (1960). His work in epics includes Solomon and Sheba (1959) with Yul Brynner, Cromwell (1970) with Richard Harris, Oscar-winning films Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Patton (1970) and A Man for All Seasons (1966). His work in cult favorites includes Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981) with Sir Laurence Olivier. His work in "Hammer" films includes Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960) with Peter Cushing, Circus of Horrors (1960) and The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964). He also co-starred in the Disney hit In Search of the Castaways (1962) with Maurice Chevalier and Hayley Mills.
His voice work can be heard on Caedmon Records in "Anthony & Cleopatra", "King John", "Macbeth", "Richard II", "Titus Andronicus", "Troilus and Cressida", "Hamlet", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and "Henry IV" parts I and II and "Henry V". - Actor
- Writer
Douglas Wilmer was born on 8 January 1920 in London, England, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for Octopussy (1983), Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and El Cid (1961). He was married to Anne Harding and Elizabeth Joan Melville. He died on 31 March 2016 in Ipswich, Suffolk, England, UK.- Before there was a George Lucas and Harrison Ford running around creating special-effects excitement, there was a virile, boyishly handsome actor named Kerwin Mathews who was entertaining audiences battling a variety of creatures courtesy of pioneer special effects guru Ray Harryhausen. Harryhausen's legendary monsters of the late 50s and early 60s earned cult film infamy and it was those wondrous storybook fantasies and the Harryhausen association that also put Kerwin on the Hollywood map.
Born an only child in Seattle, Washington, on January 8, 1926, Kerwin's parents split up while he was quite young and he and his mother relocated to Janesville, Wisconsin. He developed an early interest in acting while performing in high school plays. Following a couple of years in the Army Air Force during WWII, Kerwin studied at Beloit College in Wisconsin on both dramatic and musical scholarships. He later taught speech and drama at the college and also found acting jobs in regional theater. In the early 1950s, after teaching high school English in Lake Geneva, Wisconin, for a few years, he decided to make the big trek to Hollywood to seek out his fame and fortune.
While training at the Pasadena Playhouse, Kerwin met a casting agent for Columbia Pictures and was eventually signed to a seven-year contact after winning over the approval of studio boss Harry Cohn. Finding a number of roles on TV, he acquitted himself quite well with his film debut in 5 Against the House (1955) as one of four college pals (the others being Guy Madison, Brian Keith and Alvy Moore) who decide to carry out a faux casino robbery in Las Vegas, a plan that backfires badly. The offbeat ensemble picture drew good reviews and Kerwin was off and running.
Following decent showings in the crime yarn The Garment Jungle (1957) and war flick Tarawa Beachhead (1958), he found respect as a middleweight talent, but truly came into his own in the Saturday afternoon-styled adventure fantasies popular with the school crowd. An agile fencer with fine all-American looks, he won the opportunity to play the role of the dauntless hero in Columbia's classic The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). Out to rescue fair damsel Kathryn Grant (who later became Mrs. Bing Crosby), he battled everything in his path -- from a colossal, one-eyed Cyclops to a fire-spewing dragon. The final climactic battle scene was his Errol Flynn / Basil Rathbone-like swordplay against a dexterous, sword-swinging skeleton, all courtesy of Harryhausen.
Kerwin worked with Harryhausen's stop-motion creations again in The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960) as a doctor whose foes this time around included a giant squirrel and alligator. He then played the countrified folk legend Jack the Giant Killer (1962) and again found himself saving a princess while pitted against evil wizards and other specially-designed effects (by Jim Danforth). Other less arduous films he made included the WWII war drama The Last Blitzkrieg (1959) with Van Johnson, the crime thriller Man on a String (1960) with Ernest Borgnine and his third-billed role behind Spencer Tracy and Frank Sinatra in The Devil at 4 O'Clock (1961) in which he and Tracy played priests.
By the early 1960s Kerwin was typecast in adventure tales and was now searching for work overseas to display his stoic heroics, though his efforts were mostly for naught in such empty spectacles as Italy's The Warrior Empress (1960) ["The Warrior Princess"] opposite Gilligan's Island (1964) star Tina Louise; England's The Pirates of Blood River (1962); and the Franco-Italian co-production Shadow of Evil (1964) ["Panic in Bangkok"]. He fared somewhat better in the British-made Maniac (1963) in a change-of-pace role and received some of his best notices on TV playing composer Johann Strauss Jr. in Disney's 1963 TV biopic The Waltz King: Part 1 (1963) (and "Part 2").
Kerwin's career ended in 1978 after making a small sprinkling of appearances in low-budget sci-fi and horror films, plus some TV guest appearances throughout the decade. By this time he had already moved to San Francisco and spent his later years selling antiques and furniture. He was also a stalwart patron of the arts and supporter of the city's various opera and ballet companies. Kerwin died overnight in his sleep at age 81 in his San Francisco home, survived by his partner of 46 years Tom Nicoll. - Associated with gritty, flashy film villainy, veteran character actor Torin Herbert Erskine Thatcher was born in Bombay, India to British parents on January 15, 1905. The son of a police officer (who died when Torin was 10) and a voice/piano teacher, he was educated in England at the Bedford School and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
A former schoolteacher, he appeared on the London stage, notably the Old Vic, in 1927 before entering British films in 1934. He would be notable for his stage prowess in the works of Shaw, Shakespeare, and the Greek tragedies. Among his earlier stage plays was a 1937 version of "Hamlet" which starred Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. During World War II he served with the Royal Artillery and achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was an extremely imposing, powerfully built specimen and it offered him a number of tough, commanding, often sinister roles over the years primarily in larger-than-life action sequences.
Thatcher began in minor roles and progressed to better ones in a number of classic British films in the late 1930s and 1940s as the years went on. They included Sabotage (1936), Dark Journey (1937), Night Train to Munich (1940), Major Barbara (1941), I See a Dark Stranger (1946), The Captive Heart (1946), Great Expectations (1946), as Bentley ("The Spider") Drummle, Jassy (1947) and The Fallen Idol (1948).
In Hollywood from the 1950s on, the actor's looming figure and baleful countenance were constantly in demand, gnashing his teeth in a slew of popular costumers such as The Crimson Pirate (1952), Blackbeard, the Pirate (1952) as reformed pirate Sir Henry Morgan, The Robe (1953), Helen of Troy (1956) as Ulysses, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) as the evil, shaven-domed magician Sokurah who shrinks the princess to miniature size, Witness for the Prosecution (1957) as the prosecuting attorney, The Miracle (1959) as the Duke of Wellington, the Marlon Brando/Trevor Howard remake of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), and Hawaii (1966).
Thatcher returned to the stage quite frequently, notably on Broadway, in such esteemed productions as "Edward, My Son" (1948), "That Lady" (1949) and "Billy Budd" (1951). In 1959 he portrayed Captain Keller in the award-winning play "The Miracle Worker" with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.
Also a steady fixture on American TV from the mid-1950's on, Torin appeared in a number of quality TV anthologies ("Omnibus," "Playhouse 90, "Zane Grey Theatre") before making fairly steady guest appearances on such shows as "The Millionaire," "Ellery Queen," "Peter Gunn," "Wagon Train," "Bonanza," "Perry Mason," "The Real McCoys," "The Untouchables," "My THree Sons," "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea," "Perry Mason," "Get Smart," "Lost in Space," "Star Trek," "Gunsmoke," "Daniel Boone," "Mission: Impossible," "Night Gallery," "Search" and "Petrocelli." He also showed up in support in the TV movies The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1968) starring Jack Palance and Brenda Starr (1976), his final on-camera appearance, starring Jill St. John.
Diagnosed with cancer, Thatcher died on March 4, 1981, in Thousand Oaks, California (near Los Angeles). The widower of TV actress Rita Daniel, he was long married to second wife, Anne Le Borgne, at the time of his death. - Actor
- Producer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Tall, bald and nearly always bearded, Sid Haig provided hulking menace to many a low-budget exploitation film and high-priced action film.
Sid Haig was born Sidney Eddie Mosesian on July 14, 1939 in Fresno, California, a screaming ball of hair. His parents, Roxy (Mooradian) and Haig Mosesian, an electrician, were of Armenian descent. Sid's career was somewhat of an accident. He was growing so fast that he had absolutely no coordination. It was decided that he would take dancing lessons, and that's when it all began. At the age of seven, he was dancing for pay in a children's Christmas Show, then a revival of a vaudeville show... and on it went.
Sid also showed a musical inclination, particularly for the drums. So when his parents got tired of him denting all the pots and pans in the house, they bought him a drum set. The music was in him and he took to it immediately, a born natural. First it was swing, then country, then jazz, blues and rock 'n' roll. Sid always found it easy to make money with his music, and did very well. One year out of high school and signing a recording contract is not too bad. Sid went on to record the single "Full House" with the T-Birds in 1958. However, back while he was in high school, Sid got bitten by the "acting bug". Alice Merrill was the head of the drama department at that time and gave him all the encouragement in the world to pursue an acting career. The clincher came in his senior year. The way that the senior play was cast was that she would double cast the show, then have one of her friends from Hollywood come up and pick the final cast.
You see, Merrill was quite famous as an actress on Broadway and kept up her contacts in the business. When the appointed day came, the "friend" that showed up was Dennis Morgan, a big musical comedy star from the 1940s. The rest is history -- he picked Sid for the role, then two weeks later came back to see the show and told Sid that he should continue his education down south and consider acting as a career path. Two years later, Sid enrolled in the world famous Pasadena Playhouse, the school that trained such actors as Robert Preston, Robert Young, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, and so on. After two years of "actor's hell" (non-stop 7:00 am to 11:00 pm with homework thrown in just for the fun of it), it was time to move on to the big "H", Hollywood! Sid did so with longtime friend and roommate Stuart Margolin (Angel on The Rockford Files (1974)).
Sid's first acting job was in Jack Hill's student film at UCLA. It was called The Host (2000), which was released in 2004 on DVD as a companion to Switchblade Sisters (1975), another Hill film. That role launched a 40-year acting career during which Haig appeared in over 50 films and 350 television series. He has proven himself quite valuable to such filmmakers as producer Roger Corman. He also became a staple in the pictures of Jack Hill, appearing in Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told (1967), Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974). Haig's other memorable credits include George Lucas' THX 1138 (1971), and the James Bond opus Diamonds Are Forever (1971) (he is one of the Slumber Brothers, and got to toss a topless Lana Wood from the window of a high-rise Vegas hotel).
Among his most significant television credits are appearances on such landmark series as The A-Team (1983), T.J. Hooker (1982), The Dukes of Hazzard (1979), Quincy M.E. (1976), Hart to Hart (1979), Fantasy Island (1977), Charlie's Angels (1976), Police Woman (1974), The Rockford Files (1974), The Six Million Dollar Man (1974), Mannix (1967), Mission: Impossible (1966), Gunsmoke (1955), Get Smart (1965), Here's Lucy (1968), The Flying Nun (1967), Daniel Boone (1964), Star Trek (1966), Batman (1966) and The Untouchables (1959).
Sid was never one to give-up on anything but after nearly 40 years of carrying a gun (except for the occasional Jack Hill or Roger Corman film), his dreams of being recognized as a more than competent actor were fading. Then in 1992, frustrated with being typecast, Sid retired from acting and quoted, "I'll never play another stupid heavy again, and I don't care if that means that I never work, ever." This just proves that if you take a stand people will listen, for Quentin Tarantino wrote for Sid the role of the judge in Jackie Brown (1997). Then things got better, much better. During the mid and late 1990s, Sid managed a community theatre company, as well as dabbled occasionally in theater in Los Angeles.
Then in 2000, Sid came out of his self-imposed retirement at the request of Rob Zombie for a role in Zombie's debut film House of 1000 Corpses (2003). He starred as the fun-loving, but murderous, Captain Spaulding. This role breathed new life into Sid's acting career and earned him an award for Best Supporting Actor in the 13th Annual Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, as well as an induction into the Horror Hall of Fame. Sid's character Captain Spaulding became an icon for the new horror genre. Sid has recently enjoyed success as Captain Spaulding once again in Rob Zombie's follow-up to House of 1000 Corpses (2003), entitled, The Devil's Rejects (2005). For this film, Sid received the award for best Actor in the 15th Annual Fangoria Chainsaw Awards, as well as sharing the award for "Most Vile Villain" at the First Annual Spike TV Scream Awards with Leslie Easterbrook, Sheri Moon Zombie and Bill Moseley as The Firefly Family.
In the 2000s and 2010s, Sid continued to enjoy his renewed success as an actor. In September 2019, he was hospitalized after falling in his home in Los Angeles, California. While recovering, he suffered from a lung infection after vomiting in his sleep. He died on September 21, 2019, from complications of the infection at age 80.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Character actor Bernard Behrens was born on September 28, 1926 in London, England. Behrens grew up in poverty in Depression-era London and did his level best to surmount the dire reality of his dismal situation by sneaking into movie theaters as a youngster and aspired to become an actor since the age of seven. A child evacuee during World War II, Bernard was forced to live by his wits with a foster family. Behrens not only acted in stage productions for the Bristol Old Vic in the United Kingdom, but also with the Canadian Players, Halifax's Neptune Theatre (he starred in the Canadian premiere of "Mary, Mary" at this particular venue), Toronto's Crest Theatre, as well as the Shaw and Stratford Festivals in Canada. Outside his stage work, Bernard also acted in a handful of films and made guest appearances on numerous television programs. His last acting role on stage was playing Young Farley in a Shaw Festival production of "Belle Moral." Diagnosed with dementia four years prior to his death, Behren's final years were spent in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada, then, during the last year of his life, was in Perth, Ontario, Canada, where he was cared for in Lanark Lodge. Bernard died at age 85 on September 19, 2012 in Perth, Ontario, Canada. The husband of actress Deborah Cass, who along with Behrens was a founding member of the Neptune Theatre under the directorship of Leon Major, died in 2004. Behrens was survived by his sons Mark, Adam, and Matthew and his grandchildren Kate, Spenser, and Taylor.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born in Burbank, California, USA on October 18, 1960, Erin Moran was the youngest daughter of Sharon and Edward Moran, who have five other children. She attended Walter Reed Junior High School for one year and North Hollywood High School for another year. Her first professional acting job was in a TV commercial. She played Richie Cunningham's baby sister, Joanie Cunningham, on ABC's Happy Days (1974); however, this was not Erin's first major TV series. She was a regular on the series, Daktari (1966). She has also made guest appearances on TV series such as The Waltons (1972), Family Affair (1966), My Three Sons (1960), The Courtship of Eddie's Father (1969), Gunsmoke (1955), The Smith Family (1971), and The F.B.I. (1965).
Erin Moran has worked on feature films with Debbie Reynolds in How Sweet It Is! (1968), with Godfrey Cambridge in Watermelon Man (1970), and with Wayne Newton in 80 Steps to Jonah (1969).
Like many other child actors, Erin had difficulty finding roles as an adult. Following the cancellation of Happy Days (1974) in 1984, she made occasional guest appearances on scripted and reality shows. She eventually moved away from Hollywood after her home was foreclosed on.
On April 22, 2017, she died in Corydon, Indiana, where she had been living with her husband of 23 years; she was 56 years old.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Character player Alan Reed was a strong, gruff, burly presence on '40s and '50s film and TV but he would be best remembered for his equally strong, gruff, distinctive voice on radio and TV. In 1960, he gave vocal life to the bombastic prehistoric cartoon character Fred Flintstone on the prime-time TV series The Flintstones (1960), the character being inspired by the Ralph Cramden husband on the popular earlier sitcom The Honeymooners (1955). It is this direct association that continues to keep his name alive today. Reed himself thought up and introduced the Flintstonian catchphrase "Yabba dabba doo!" (improvised from a script calling for Fred to say "Yahoo!") for his beloved animated character to the delight of children everywhere.
Born Herbert Theodore Bergman on August 20, 1907 in New York City, to Jewish parents of Lithuanian/Ukrainian descent, he received his early education at Washington High School and studied theatre at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After majoring in journalism at Columbia University, he decided to pursue to acting at such places as Provincetown Playhouse and toured in vaudeville shows. He supplemented his income operating a candy factory and worked as a social director at a country club.
A master of over 22 foreign dialects, Reed also worked steadily on Broadway with the Theatre Guild. His vocal talents were well suited for radio, becoming a prime announcer for that medium. In addition to billing himself as Teddy Bergman, he sometimes was credited under the moniker Alan Reed for more dramatic parts, eventually settling in on the Reed name. Reed was featured on the best radio shows of the time including "The Shadow," "Crime Doctor," "Abie's Irish Rose," "The Life of Riley," "The Fred Allen Show," "Life with Luigi" (which he later took to TV), and "My Friend Irma."
Once in Hollywood, Reed deserted the Bergman name completely. Sporting a comic Runyonesque appeal, he played in such fare as The Redhead and the Cowboy (1951), Emergency Wedding (1950), and Here Comes the Groom (1951). His more dramatic roles came with The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) and The Desperate Hours (1955). One of his most unusual parts was his portrayal of Pancho Villa in Viva Zapata! (1952) starring Marlon Brando. He also supplied the voice of "Boris" in Disney's Lady and the Tramp (1955). Featured in many TV shows, the popular prehistoric cartoon and its various offshoots made up most of Reed's later work after The Flintstones (1960) premiered.
Long married to a former Broadway actress, Finette Walker, one of their three children, actor/producer Alan Reed Jr., entered show business as a teenager. Reed started billing himself as Alan Reed, Sr. to avoid any confusion. Working up until his death, Reed died in Los Angeles from heart disease and emphysema at age 69 on June 14, 1977. Reed's incomplete autobiography was extensively used to publish his son's own biographical tribute: Yabba Dabba Doo: The Alan Reed Story.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Mel Blanc, known as "The Man of Thousand Voices" is regarded as the most prolific actor to ever work in Hollywood with over a thousand screen credits. He developed and performed nearly 400 distinct character voices with precision and a uniquely expressive vocal range. The legendary specialist from radio programs, television series, cartoon shorts and movie was rarely seen by his audience but his voice characterizations were famous around the world.
Blanc under exclusive contract until 1960 to Warner Brothers voiced virtually every major character in the Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoon pantheon. Characters including Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Wile E. Coyote,The Roadrunner, Yosemite Sam, Sam the Sheepdog, Taz the Tazmanian Devil, Speedy Gonzales, Marvin the Martian, Foghorn Leghorn, Pepé la Pew, Charlie the Dog, Blacque Jacque Shellacque, Pussyfoot, Private Snafu among others were voiced by Blanc.
After 1960, Blanc continued to work for Warner Brothers but began to work for other companies once his exclusive contract ended. He worked for Hanna-Barbera voicing characters including Barney Rubble, Dino the Dinosaur, Cosmo Spacely, Secret Squirrel, Captain Caveman, Speed Buggy, Wally Gator among others. He provided vocal effects for Tom & Jerry in the mid 1960's working with fellow Warner Bros. alum, Chuck Jones at what would become MGM Animation. In the mid 1960's, Blanc originated and voiced Toucan Sam for the Kellogg's Fruit Loops commercials. He would later go to originate and voice Twiki for Buck Rogers and Heathcliff in the late 1970's and early 1980's.- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Daws Butler spent the greater part of his career as one of the premier voice-over actors in Hollywood- providing the voices for such well- known characters as Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick-Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, Jinks the cat, Dixie the mouse, Augie Doggie, Peter Potamus, Wally Gator, Hokey Wolf, Super Snooper, Blabber Mouse, Cogswell Cogs, Elroy Jetson and many others. He also provided the voices for such long-running commercial characters as Snap, diminutive companion of Crackle and Pop of noisy cereal fame, as well as Cap'n Crunch, spokesman for a somewhat quieter breakfast treat.
Butler was born in Toledo, Ohio and spent his formative years in Oak Park, Illinois. Although his initial ambition was to be a cartoonist, he had a talent for vocal humor and mimicry as well. Paradoxically, he was also quite shy. As a sort of self- imposed therapy, he forced himself to address large audiences by entering local amateur contests and performing impersonations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rudy Vallee and a Model T Ford starting on a cold morning (an audience favorite). He found that the laughter and applause he got in response was well worth the effort and it clinched his decision to pursue an acting and performing career. Eschewing the last few months of his senior year in high school, he began appearing in Chicago theaters and nightclubs along with two other impersonators he had met along the way. Because they all maxed out at around five feet, two inches in height and primarily did impressions of radio personalities, they billed themselves as "The Three Short Waves."
After two years in the Navy during World War II, during which he met and married Myrtis Martin of Albemarle, N.C. (whose next-door neighbor provided the inspiration for what would later become the southern drawl of Huckleberry Hound), Butler ferried his wife and son out to Hollywood. He finally broke into radio, performing in dramatic as well as comedy programs and specializing in dialects and a wide range of vocal characterizations.
In 1949, Butler and Stan Freberg were featured in a new television puppet show called "Time for Beany." Butler was the voice of a propeller-capped kid named Beany while Freberg voiced his best pal, Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent. During five years of five shows a week, they were honored with two Emmy awards.
At Capitol Records in the early 1950s, Butler and Freberg co-wrote and co-voiced a comedy record takeoff on the TV show "Dragnet," called "St. George and the Dragonet." Not only was Jack Webb flattered and amused by the record, but it was the first comedy record to sell more than a million copies. Butler's and Freberg's partnership produced several other comedy platters beloved by disc jockeys across the country, even today. Butler was also a part of Freberg's comedy ensemble on the Stan Freberg Radio Show in the summer of 1957 and on a later and very popular comedy single called "Christmas Dragnet."
After lengthy and very productive collaborations with famed animators/directors Tex Avery and Walter Lantz, Butler embarked on yet another inspired partnership, with William Hanna and Joseph Barbera at Hanna-Barbera Productions. There, beginning in the late 50s, Butler created his most famous cartoon characterizations, aided and abetted by another gifted voice actor, Don Messick-Boo Boo and Ranger Smith to Butler's Yogi Bear and Pixie the Mouse to his Dixie, among others.
For legendary cartoon producer Jay Ward, Butler, along with fellow actors and friends June Foray and Bill Scott, performed in two animated series, "Fractured Fairy Tales" and "Aesop and Son." His long-running Cap'n Crunch character was also a Jay Ward creation.
In his later years, Butler established a popular and respected actors' workshop in his home, training talented students not only in voice- over techniques, but in all areas of acting, including the physical. On that subject, especially, one had only to witness Butler's histrionic physicality when voicing Yogi Bear or his laid- back, sleepy-eyed mien as he became Huckleberry Hound to understand why he considered facial expression and physical movement as essential as sound in producing a living, breathing character. One of Butler's star workshop students was Nancy Cartwright, later the voice of Bart Simpson on "The Simpsons." Daws Butler passed away on May 19, 1988 of a heart attack, having just completed three Yogi Bear films and 15 new half-hour Yogi Bear cartoon shows. He also lived to see the rebirth of The Jetsons for a new generation, voicing 30 of the new shows along with all the members of the original cast. During his longest- standing creative collaboration, the 30-odd years with Hanna-Barbara Productions, Daws Butler performed in the neighborhood of 40 different characters. In the years that followed his death, seven actors were required to replace them all.- Jean Thurston Vander Pyl was an American actress and voice actress. Although her career spanned many decades, she is best known as the voice of Wilma Flintstone for the Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Flintstones (1960). In addition to Wilma Flintstone, she also provided the voices of Pebbles Flintstone, Rosie the robot maid on the animated series The Jetsons (1962), Goldie, Lola Glamour, Nurse LaRue and other characters in Top Cat (1961), Winsome Witch on The Secret Squirrel Show (1965) and Ogee on The Magilla Gorilla Show (1964).
- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Hal Smith was born on 24 August 1916 in Petoskey, Michigan, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The Great Race (1965), The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977) and The Andy Griffith Show (1960). He was married to Vivian M. Angstadt. He died on 28 January 1994 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
- Producer
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Margot Kidder was born Margaret Ruth Kidder in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, to Jocelyn Mary "Jill" (Wilson), a history teacher from British Columbia, and Kendall Kidder, a New Mexico-born mining engineer and explosives expert. Margot was a delightful child who took pride in everything she did. At an early age, she became aware of the great emotions she felt towards expressing herself, and caught the acting bug. As a child, she wrote in a diary that she wanted to become a movie star, and that one day it would happen, but she had to overcome something else first. She was aware that she was constantly facing mood swings, but didn't know why. At odd times, she would try to kill herself - the first time was at age 14 - but the next day she would be just fine. Her father's hectic schedule and moving around so much didn't help matters, either, causing her to attend 11 schools in 12 years. Finally, in an attempt to help Margot with her troubles, her parents sent" her to a boarding school, where she took part in school plays, such as Romeo and Juliet", in which she played the lead.
After graduation, Margot moved to Los Angeles to start a film career. She found herself dealing with a lot of prejudice, and hotheads, but later found solace with a Canadian agent. This was when she got her first acting job, in the Norman Jewison film Gaily, Gaily (1969). This led to another starring role in Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970), in which she co-starred with Gene Wilder. After some harsh words from the film's director, Margot temporarily left films to study acting in New York, doing television work to pay her bills, but when the money ran out, she decided it was time to make a second try at acting. When she arrived in Hollywood she met up at a screen test with actress Jennifer Salt, resulting in a friendship that still stands strong today. Margot and Jennifer moved into a lofty beach house and befriended other, then unknown, struggling filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg and Susan Sarandon, among others. Late nights would see the hot, happening youngsters up until all hours talking around a fire about how they were all going to change the film industry. It was crazy living and within the Christmas season, Margot had become involved with De Palma, and as a Christmas present he gave her the script to his upcoming film Sisters (1972). Margot and Salt both had the leads in the film, and it was a huge critical success.
The film made branded Margot as a major talent, and in the following years she starred in a string of critically acclaimed pictures, such as Black Christmas (1974), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), 92 in the Shade (1975) - directed by Thomas McGuane, who was also her husband for a brief period - and a somewhat prophetic tale of self-resurrection, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975).
After three years of being a housewife, looking after her daughter Maggie and not working, Margot decided it was time to let her emotions take control and get back into acting. Once her marriage to McGuane was over, she eyed a script that would change her life forever. Her new agent referred her to a little-known director named Richard Donner. He was going to be directing a film called Superman (1978), and she auditioned for and secured the leading female role of Lois Lane. That film and Superman II (1980) filmed simultaneously. After the success of "Superman" she took on more intense roles, such as The Amityville Horror (1979) and Willie & Phil (1980). After that, Margot starred in numerous films, television and theater work throughout the 1980s, including Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). When the 1990s erupted with the Gulf War, Margot found herself becoming involved in politics. She made a stir in the biz when she spoke out against the military for their actions in Kuwait. She also appeared in a cameo in Donner's Maverick (1994).
In 1996, as she was preparing to write her autobiography, she began to become more and more paranoid. When her computer became infected with a virus, this gave her paranoia full rein, and she sank into bipolar disorder. She panicked, and the resulting psychological problems she created for herself resulted in her fantasizing that her first husband was going to kill her, so she left her home and faked her death, physically altering her appearance in the process. After an intervention took place, she got back on her feet and started the mental wellness campaign. Since then, she resumed her career in film, television, and theatre, including appearing in a Canadian stage production of "The Vagina Monologues", and in films like The Clown at Midnight (1998).
Margot died on May 13, 2018, in Livingston, Montana.- Actor
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A 1941 graduate of Mary D. Bradford High School in Kenosha, where he served on the student council and participated in forensics under dramatic coach John Davies, he took second place in the National Forensics League national contest in Lexington, Kentucky in dramatic declaration and oratorical declamation. (The Kenosha team won the meet that year over 800-plus contestants.) By 1948, he was working in radio and joined television in its infancy, becoming the commercial announcer for "I Love Lucy" in 1951. He was married for sixty years.- Actor
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Christopher D'Olier Reeve was born September 25, 1952, in New York City, to journalist Barbara Johnson (née Barbara Pitney Lamb) and writer/professor F.D. Reeve (Franklin D'Olier Reeve). He came from an upper-class family; his paternal grandfather was CEO of Prudential Financial, and one of his maternal great-grandfathers was Supreme Court Associate Justice Mahlon Pitney.
When Reeve was four, his parents divorced. His mother moved him and his brother Benjamin to Princeton, New Jersey, and married an investment banker a few years later. After graduating from high school, Reeve studied at Cornell University while at the same time working as a professional actor. In his final year at Cornell, he was one of two students selected (Robin Williams was the other) to study at New York's famous Juilliard School, under the renowned John Houseman. Although Christopher is best known for his role as Superman (1978), a role which he played with both charisma and grace, his acting career spans a much larger ground. Paralyzed after a horse riding accident, he died suddenly at age 52 after several years of living and working with his severe disability.- Actor
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Stocky, genial-looking supporting actor Ned Beatty was once hailed by Daily Variety as the "busiest actor in Hollywood."
Ned Thomas Beatty was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Margaret (Fortney) and Charles William Beatty. He grew up fishing and working on farms. His hometown of St. Matthews, Kentucky, is hardly the environment to encourage a career in the entertainment industry, though, so when asked, "How did you get into show business?" Beatty responded, "By hanging out with the wrong crowd." That "crowd" includes some of the industry's most prominent names, such as John Huston, Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman, Paul Newman, Richard Burton, Charlton Heston, Marlon Brando and Robert Redford.
Beatty garnered praise from both critics and peers as a dedicated actor's actor. He started as a professional performer at age ten, when he earned pocket money singing in gospel quartets and a barber shop. The big city and bright lights did not come easy, though. The first ten years of Beatty's career were spent at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia. He then moved on to the Erie Playhouse in Pennsylvania, the Playhouse Theater in Houston, Texas, and the prestigious Arena Stage Company in Washington, D.C. He was also a member of Shakespeare in Central Park, Louisville, Kentucky. Later, he appeared in the Broadway production of "The Great White Hope". At the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, he won rave reviews when he starred in "The Accidental Death of an Anarchist."
In 1971, Beatty was chosen by director John Boorman for the role of Bobby Trippe in the hit film/backwoods nightmare Deliverance (1972). Co-star Burt Reynolds and Beatty struck up a friendship, and Ned was then cast by Burt in several other films together, including White Lightning (1973), W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975), and the abysmal Stroker Ace (1983). Ned's talents were also noticed by others in Hollywood and he was cast in many key productions of the 1970s turning in stellar performance, including an Academy Award nomination of Best Supporting Actor for his role in Network (1976). Beatty was also marvelous in Nashville (1975), under fire from a crazed sniper in The Deadly Tower (1975), an undercover FBI man in the action comedy Silver Streak (1976), as Lex Luthor's bumbling assistant, Otis, in the blockbuster Superman (1978) ... and he returned again with Gene Hackman to play Otis and Lex Luthor again in Superman II (1980).
Beatty continued to remain busy throughout the 1980s with appearances in several big budget television productions including The Last Days of Pompeii (1984). However, the overall caliber of the productions in general did not match up to those he had appeared in during the 1970s. Nonetheless, Beatty still shone in films including The Big Easy (1986) and The Fourth Protocol (1987). Into the 1990s, Beatty's work output swung between a mixture of roles in family orientated productions (Gulliver's Travels (1996), Back to Hannibal: The Return of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (1990), etc.) taking advantage of his "fatherly" type looks, but he could still accentuate a hard edge, and additionally was cast in Radioland Murders (1994) and Just Cause (1995). His many other films include The Toy (1982), All the President's Men (1976), Wise Blood (1979), Rudy (1993), Spring Forward (1999), Hear My Song (1991) -- for which he earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor -- Prelude to a Kiss (1992), He Got Game (1998) and Cookie's Fortune (1999). Beatty's numerous television credits include three years on the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993), Streets of Laredo (1995) and The Boys (1993).
Beatty received an Emmy Award nomination for Best Actor for his performance in Friendly Fire (1979) opposite Carol Burnett, and a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Family Channel's Magic Hour: Tom Alone (1989). Other notable credits include The Wool Cap (2004), The Execution of Private Slovik (1974), A Woman Called Golda (1982), Pray TV (1982), the miniseries Robert Kennedy and His Times (1985), Lockerbie: A Night Remembered (1998) and T Bone N Weasel (1992). He also had a recurring role on Roseanne (1988) and performed musically on television specials for Dolly Parton and The Smothers Brothers.
In 2001, Beatty returned to his theatrical roots starring in London's West End revival production of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" with Brendan Fraser. He also appeared in the production on Broadway in 2003/2004 with Jason Patric and Ashley Judd. In 2006, Beatty completed three features to be released next year: The Walker (2007); Paul Schrader's film also starring Woody Harrelson, Kristin Scott Thomas and Lily Tomlin; Paramount Pictures' Shooter (2007) starring Mark Wahlberg; and Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Mike Nichols's film with Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Julia Roberts. Also in the 21st century, Beatty turned out a terrific performance in the popular Where the Red Fern Grows (2003). Blessed with eight children, Ned Beatty enjoyed golf and playing the bass guitar. He gave himself until the age of 70 to become proficient at both. He died at age 83 of natural causes on June 13, 2021 in Los Angeles, California.- Actress
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British actress Dame Diana Rigg was born on July 20, 1938 in Doncaster, Yorkshire, England. She has had an extensive career in film and theatre, including playing the title role in "Medea", both in London and New York, for which she won the 1994 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.
Rigg made her professional stage debut in 1957 in the Caucasian Chalk Circle, and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1959. She made her Broadway debut in the 1971 production of "Abelard & Heloise". Her film roles include Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1968); Lady Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper (1981); and Arlene Marshall in Evil Under the Sun (1982). She won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the BBC miniseries Mother Love (1989), and an Emmy Award for her role as Mrs. Danvers in the adaptation of Rebecca (1997). In 2013, she appeared with her daughter Rachael Stirling on the BBC series Doctor Who (2005) in an episode titled "The Crimson Horror" and plays Olenna Tyrell on the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011).
From 1965 to 1968, Rigg appeared on the British television series The Avengers (1961) playing the secret agent Mrs. Emma Peel. She became a Bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), playing Tracy Bond, James Bond's only wife, opposite George Lazenby. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) at the 1988 Queen's New Years Honours for her services to drama. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) at the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours for her services to drama.
Dame Diana Rigg died of lung cancer on September 10, 2020, she was 82 years old.- Actor
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Hal Holbrook was an Emmy and Tony Award-winning actor who was one of the great craftsmen of stage and screen. He was best known for his performance as Mark Twain, for which he won a Tony and the first of his ten Emmy Award nominations. Aside from the stage, Holbrook made his reputation primarily on television, and was memorable as Abraham Lincoln, as Senator Hays Stowe on The Bold Ones: The Senator (1970) and as Capt. Lloyd Bucher on Pueblo (1973). All of these roles brought him Emmy Awards, with Pueblo (1973) bringing him two, as Best Lead Actor in a Drama and Actor of the Year - Special. On January 22, 2008, he became the oldest male performer ever nominated for an Academy Award, for his supporting turn in Into the Wild (2007).
He was born Harold Rowe Holbrook, Jr. on February 17, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Eileen (Davenport), a vaudeville dancer, and Harold Rowe Holbrook, Sr. Raised primarily in South Weymouth, Massachusetts by his paternal grandparents, Holbrook attended the Culver Academies. During World War II, Holbrook served in the Army in Newfoundland. After the war, he attended Denison University, graduating in 1948. While at Denison, Holbrook's senior honors project concerned Mark Twain.
He later developed "Mark Twain Tonight!," the one-man show in which he impersonates the great American writer Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens. Holbrook learned his craft on the boards and by appearing in the TV soap opera The Brighter Day (1954). He first played Mark Twain as a solo act in 1954, at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania. The show was a success that created a buzz. After seeing the performance, Ed Sullivan, the host of TV's premier variety show, featured him on The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) on February 12, 1956. This lead to an international tour sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, which included appearances in Iron Curtain countries. Holbrook brought the show to Off-Broadway in 1959. He even played Mark Twain for President Dwight D. Eisenhower. The 1966 "Mark Twain Tonight" Broadway production brought Holbrook even more acclaim, and the Tony Award. The show was taped and Holbrook won an Emmy nomination. He reprised the show on Broadway in 1977 and in 2005. By that time, he had played Samuel Clemens on stage over 2,000 times.
Among Holbrook's more famous roles was "The Major" in the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller's "Incident at Vichy", as Martin Sheen's significant other in the controversial and acclaimed TV movie That Certain Summer (1972), the first TV movie to sympathetically portray homosexuality, and as Abraham Lincoln in Carl Sandburg's acclaimed TV biography of the 16th President Lincoln (1974), a role he also portrayed in excellent performances too in North & South: Book 1, North & South (1985) and North & South: Book 2, Love & War (1986). He also is known for his portrayal of the enigmatic "Deep Throat" in All the President's Men (1976), one of the major cinema events of the mid-'70s. In the 1990s, he had a regular supporting role in the TV series Evening Shade (1990), playing Burt Reynolds' character's father-in-law.
Hal Holbrook died on January 23, 2021, at 95 years, in Beverly Hills. He was buried in McLemoresville Cemetery in Tennessee with his wife Dixie Carter.- Actor
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Art Carney was an American actor with a lengthy career but is primarily remembered for two roles. In television, Carney played municipal sewer worker Ed Norton in the influential sitcom "The Honeymooners" (1955-1956). In film, Carney played senior citizen Harry Coombes in the road movie "Harry and Tonto" (1974). For this role, Carney won the Academy Award for Best Actor.
In 1918, Carney was born in an Irish American family in Mount Vernon, New York. His father was publicist Edward Michael Carney, and his mother was housewife Helen Farrell. Carney was the youngest of the family's six sons. He was educated at Mount Vernon High School (at the time called "A.B. Davis High School").
In the 1930s, Carney was a singer with the orchestra of big band leader Horace Heidt (1901-1986). They appeared often in radio shows, and were regulars in the pioneering game show Pot o' Gold (1939-1947). Carney had an uncredited cameo in the film adaptation "Pot o' Gold" (1941), which was his film debut.
His career was interrupted when he was drafted for World War II service. He served as an infantryman and machine gun crewman for the duration of the war. He fought in the Invasion of Normandy (1944), where he was wounded in the leg by shrapnel. Following his injury, his right leg was shorter than his left one. He walked with a limp for the rest of his life.
Following the War, Carney appeared regularly on radio as a character actor. He also served as a celebrity impersonator, imitating the voices of (among others) Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Dwight David Eisenhower. He had a recurring role as the Red Lantern in the fantasy adventure series "Land of the Lost" (1943-1948), and another as Charlie the doorman in radio and television version of the sitcom The Morey Amsterdam Show (1948-1950).
Carney was first paired with fellow actor Jackie Gleason (1916-1987) in 1950, in a comedy sketch appearing in the variety series "Cavalcade of Stars" (1949-1952). Gleason appeared as lunchroom loudmouth Charlie Bratten, and Carney as mild-mannered victim Clem Finch. Due to good chemistry between the two actors, Carney became a show regular and appeared in several other comedy sketches with Gleason. "Cavalcade of Stars" was eventually reworked into "The Jackie Gleason Show" (1952-1957), with Gleason as the lead actor and Carney as his sidekick.
The most notable of the recurring sketches was "the Honeymooners", pairing the verbally abusive Ralph Kramden (Gleason) with his optimistic best friend Ed Norton (Carney). The sketch eventually was eventually given its own series, "The Honeymooners" (1955-1956). The series only lasted for 1 season, and a total of 39 episodes. The sitcom was canceled due to low ratings, but found success in syndication. Its depiction of the American working class was popular and influenced several other sitcoms. The popular animated sitcom "The Flintstones" (1960-1966) started as a Honeymooners parody, with the character Barney Rubble based on Ed Norton.
Due to his popularity as Gleason's sidekick, Carney was offered a number of lead roles in television. He starred in the television special "Art Carney Meets Peter and the Wolf" (1958), adapted from the story "Peter and the Wolf" (1936) by Sergei Prokofiev. He was eventually given his own show "Art Carney Special" (1959-1961), which was not particularly successful.
Carney had few notable guest star roles in television during the 1960s. He played an alcoholic department store Santa Claus in the episode "The Night of the Meek" (1960) of The Twilight Zone, and portrayed the villain "The Archer" in two episodes of "Batman". He opened the 1970s by playing both Santa Claus and villain Cosmo Scam in the Christmas television special "The Great Santa Claus Switch" (1970), where he appeared alongside Jim Henson's Muppets.
Carney had suffered a career decline until the 1970s, in part due to his alcoholism. He first found success in film as the leading character "Harry and Tonto" (1974), as a lonely senior citizen who goes on a cross-country journey with his pet cat. His critical success in the role and winning an Academy Award helped revive his career. He was offered many new film roles, though few leading ones.
Among his better-known film roles were the deranged preacher John Wesley Gore in "W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings" (1975), aging detective Ira Wells in "The Late Show" (1977), senile surgeon Dr. Amos Willoughby in "House Calls" (1978), and thrill-seeking bank robber Al in "Going in Style". During this period, Carney won both the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor and the Pasinetti Award for Best Actor.
Carney had a notable role in the television film "Star Wars Holiday Special" (1978) as Trader Saun Dann, a member of the Rebel Alliance. In the 1980s, Carney was mostly reduced to minor roles again. He is better remembered as the kind-hearted farmer Irv Manders in the horror film "Firestarter" (1984) and theatrical producer Bernard Crawford in the comedy-drama "The Muppets Take Manhattan" (1984). He mostly retired from acting by the late 1980s.
Carney emerged from retirement to play the supporting role of Frank Slater in "Last Action Hero" (1993). Frank is depicted as the "favorite second cousin" of the film's protagonist Jack Slater (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger). Frank's death provided motivation for the revenge-seeking protagonist. Frank's final line in the film was "I'm outta here", and this was indeed Carney's last appearance in a film before his death.
Carney lived in retirement until 2003. He died in his sleep in November 2003, in his home near Westbrook, Connecticut. His death was attributed to unspecified "natural causes". He was 85 years old and had reportedly managed to stay sober since he originally quit drinking in 1974. He is interred at the Riverside Cemetery in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
Carney was survived by his wife Jean Myers, who died in October 2012. Carney was the grandfather of politician Devin Carney, who served in the Connecticut General Assembly.- Martin Henry Balsam was born on November 4, 1919 in the Bronx, New York City, to Lillian (Weinstein) and Albert Balsam, a manufacturer of women's sportswear. He was the first-born child. His father was a Russian Jewish immigrant, and his mother was born in New York, to Russian Jewish parents. Martin caught the acting bug in high school where he participated in the drama club. After high school, he continued his interest in acting by attending Manhattan's progressive New School. When World War II broke out, Martin was called to service in his early twenties. After the war, he was lucky to secure a position as an usher at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. By 1947, he was honing his craft at the Actors Studio, run at that time by Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg. His time at the Actors Studio in New York City allowed him training in the famous Stanislavsky method. Despite his excellent training, he had to prove himself, just like any up and coming young actor. He began on Broadway in the late 1940s. But, it was not until 1951 that he experienced real success. That play was Tennessee Williams' "The Rose Tattoo". After his Broadway success, he had a few minor television roles before his big break arrived when he joined the cast of On the Waterfront (1954). In the 1950s, Martin had many television roles. He had recurring roles on some of the most popular television series of that time, including The United States Steel Hour (1953), The Philco Television Playhouse (1948), Goodyear Playhouse (1951) and Studio One (1948). In 1957, he was able to prove himself on the big-screen once again, with a prominent role in 12 Angry Men (1957), directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Henry Fonda. All of Martin's television work in the 1950s did not go to waste. While starring on an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), Hitchcock was so impressed by his work, that he offered him a key supporting role of Detective Milton Arbogast in Psycho (1960). His work with Hitchcock opened him up to a world of other acting opportunities. Many strong movie roles came his way in the 1960s, including parts in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Cape Fear (1962) and The Carpetbaggers (1964). One of the proudest moments in his life was when he received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for A Thousand Clowns (1965). It was soon after that he began accepting roles in European movies. He soon developed a love for Italy, and lived there most of his remaining years. He acted in over a dozen Italian movies and spent his later life traveling between Hollywood and Europe for his many roles. After a career that spanned more than fifty years, Martin Balsam died of natural causes in his beloved Italy at age 76. He passed away of a stroke at a hotel in Rome called Residenza di Repetta. He was survived by his third wife Irene Miller and three children, Adam, Zoe and Talia.
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Billy Barty was born William John Bertanzetti on October 25, 1924 in Millsboro, Pennsylvania. He began performing at age three and began making pictures in 1927. He played Mickey Rooney's little brother in the "Mickey McGuire" comedy shorts series. He was equally adept in both comedy and drama, and generally gives an added zest to any production he is associated with. He founded the Little People of America in 1957 and the Billy Barty Foundation in 1975. He possessed an immense talent and energetic charm that added a much needed shot in the arm to many series and films. Billy Barty died at age 76 of heart failure on December 23, 2000 in Glendale, California.- Actor
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Small in stature at only 2' 11", but big in demand onscreen, the diminutive Angelo Rossitto was one of Hollywood's busiest "small" actors and appeared in over 70 feature films between 1927 until 1987.
Born in Omaha, Nebraska in February 1908, Rossitto first appeared in silent films alongside stars such as Lon Chaney and John Barrymore. In subsequent years Rossitto also regularly popped up alongside Bela Lugosi in villainous roles, and was a stunt double for Shirley Temple.
Angelo portrayed dwarfs, midgets, gnomes and pygmies as well as aliens and monsters in film productions ranging from woeful to wonderful. Probably best remembered as one of the circus members in the highly controversial Tod Browning film Freaks (1932), as shoeshine man / street informer, "Little Moe", the friend of Robert Blake in the police drama TV series Baretta (1975), and then at age 77 and nearly blind, Rossitto co-starred as the megalomaniacal scientist "Master Blaster" in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985).
He died in September 1991 from complications during surgery.- Actor
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Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant", Grant is said to have replied, "So would I."
Cary Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904 in Horfield, Bristol, England, to Elsie Maria (Kingdon) and Elias James Leach, who worked in a factory. His early years in Bristol would have been an ordinary lower-middle-class childhood, except for one extraordinary event. At age nine, he came home from school one day and was told his mother had gone off to a seaside resort. However, the real truth was that she had been placed in a mental institution, where she would remain for years, and he was never told about it (he would not see his mother again until he was in his late 20s).
He left school at age 14, lying about his age and forging his father's signature on a letter to join Bob Pender's troupe of knockabout comedians. He learned pantomime as well as acrobatics as he toured with the Pender troupe in the English provinces, picked up a Cockney accent in the music halls in London, and then in July 1920, was one of the eight Pender boys selected to go to the United States. Their show on Broadway, "Good Times", ran for 456 performances, giving Grant time to acclimatize. He would stay in America. Mae West wanted Grant for She Done Him Wrong (1933) because she saw his combination of virility, sexuality and the aura and bearing of a gentleman. Grant was young enough to begin the new career of fatherhood when he stopped making movies at age 62.
One biographer said Grant was alienated by the new realism in the film industry. In the 1950s and early 1960s, he had invented a man-of-the-world persona and a style - "high comedy with polished words". In To Catch a Thief (1955), he and Grace Kelly were allowed to improvise some of the dialogue. They knew what the director, Alfred Hitchcock, wanted to do with a scene, they rehearsed it, put in some clever double entendres that got past the censors, and then the scene was filmed. His biggest box-office success was another Hitchcock 1950s film, North by Northwest (1959) made with Eva Marie Saint since Kelly was by that time Princess of Monaco.
Although Grant retired from the screen, he remained active. He accepted a position on the board of directors at Faberge. By all accounts this position was not honorary, as some had assumed. Grant regularly attended meetings and traveled internationally to support them. The position also permitted use of a private plane, which Grant could use to fly to see his daughter wherever her mother Dyan Cannon, was working. He later joined the boards of Hollywood Park, the Academy of Magical Arts (The Magic Castle - Hollywood, California), Western Airlines (acquired by Delta Airlines in 1987) and MGM.
Grant expressed no interest in making a career comeback. He was in good health until almost the end of his life, when he suffered a mild stroke in October 1984. In his last years, he undertook tours of the United States in a one-man-show, "A Conversation with Cary Grant", in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. On November 29, 1986, Cary Grant died at age 82 of a cerebral hemorrhage in Davenport, Iowa.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Grant the second male star of Golden Age of Hollywood cinema (after Humphrey Bogart). Grant was known for comedic and dramatic roles; his best-known films include Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959) and Charade (1963).- Actor
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Felix Silla was born on January 11, 1937 in a small village outside Rome, Lazio, Italy. Silla trained as a circus performer, came to the United States in 1955, and toured with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Show. His multiple talents -- as a bareback rider, trapeze artist and tumbler -- brought him to Hollywood where he became a stuntman, starting with the Gig Young-Shirley Jones vehicle, A Ticklish Affair (1963).
His best-known roles are the maniacal, miniature "Hitler" who menaces George Segal in The Black Bird (1975) and Cousin Itt on The Addams Family (1964). He had doubled -- often for children -- in such hits as The Towering Inferno (1974), The Hindenburg (1975) and Battlestar Galactica (1978). Between movies, he frequently appears in Las Vegas and Reno nightclubs with his own musical combo, "The Original Harmonica Band".
Silla and wife Sue Silla -- a "little person", like himself -- were married from 1965 until Felix's death on April 16, 2021, and had three children, Bonnie, Michael and Diana.- Actor
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Veteran Polish-born character actor Ned Glass grew up in New York. After working in vaudeville he started acting in small parts on Broadway from the early 1930s. He gained further experience in the capacity of theatrical production supervisor before entering motion pictures in 1937 as an MGM contract player. Until the mid-1950s he was seen primarily in tiny supporting roles as clerks, reporters, bank tellers and small-time managers. His career was briefly put on hold after being blacklisted during the McCarthy era, but, with help from friends like John Houseman and Moe Howard (of The Three Stooges fame) he managed to get enough film work to make ends meet.
By 1953, Ned began to find a new lease of life in television where his roles were more varied and substantial. This afforded him the opportunity to fully develop his screen persona: that of the balding, weedy, perpetually nervy conman or weaselly stooge, often delivering barbed repartee or wisecracks in a heavy Brooklyn accent. Ned was at his best in comedy, put to good use in several episodes of Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners (1955), and adapting well to anything else with a New York theme, from Kojak (1973) to Barney Miller (1975). He had many other good guest-starring roles on television, including several shifty characters in The Untouchables (1959), and as Freddie the Forger in Get Smart (1965) ('Do I Hear a Vaults?',1970). He was twice nominated for Emmy Awards, first for an episode of Julia (1968) (as Sol Cooper); the second time for Bridget Loves Bernie (1972) (Uncle Moe Plotnick).
From the time he played Doc in West Side Story (1961), Ned also began to land some meatier roles on the big screen, including the character of Popcorn in Experiment in Terror (1962), and as Doc Schindler, in one of the funniest 60's comedies, The Fortune Cookie (1966), directed by Billy Wilder. His best portrayal was that of the wily Leonard Gideon, sharpest of the villainous trio (the others being James Coburn and George Kennedy) on the trail of a quarter of a million dollar loot in gold, in the Hitchcockian thriller Charade (1963).
Ned continued playing crusty reprobates in films and on television, his last being a small-time thief in an episode of Cagney & Lacey (1981). He died two years later in Encino, California, at the age of 78.