Actors on the Hollywood Walk of Fame ( G.)
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William Clark Gable was born on February 1, 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio, to Adeline (Hershelman) and William Henry Gable, an oil-well driller. He was of German, Irish, and Swiss-German descent. When he was seven months old, his mother died, and his father sent him to live with his maternal aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania, where he stayed until he was two. His father then returned to take him back to Cadiz. At 16, he quit high school, went to work in an Akron, Ohio, tire factory, and decided to become an actor after seeing the play "The Bird of Paradise". He toured in stock companies, worked oil fields and sold ties. On December 13, 1924, he married Josephine Dillon, his acting coach and 15 years his senior. Around that time, they moved to Hollywood, so that Clark could concentrate on his acting career. In April 1930, they divorced and a year later, he married Maria Langham (a.k.a. Maria Franklin Gable), also about 17 years older than him.
While Gable acted on stage, he became a lifelong friend of Lionel Barrymore. After several failed screen tests (for Barrymore and Darryl F. Zanuck), Gable was signed in 1930 by MGM's Irving Thalberg. He had a small part in The Painted Desert (1931) which starred William Boyd. Joan Crawford asked for him as co-star in Dance, Fools, Dance (1931) and the public loved him manhandling Norma Shearer in A Free Soul (1931) the same year. His unshaven lovemaking with bra-less Jean Harlow in Red Dust (1932) made him MGM's most important star.
His acting career then flourished. At one point, he refused an assignment, and the studio punished him by loaning him out to (at the time) low-rent Columbia Pictures, which put him in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), which won him an Academy Award for his performance. The next year saw a starring role in Call of the Wild (1935) with Loretta Young, with whom he had an affair (resulting in the birth of a daughter, Judy Lewis). He returned to far more substantial roles at MGM, such as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939).
After divorcing Maria Langham, in March 1939 Clark married Carole Lombard, but tragedy struck in January 1942 when the plane in which Carole and her mother were flying crashed into Table Rock Mountain, Nevada, killing them both. A grief-stricken Gable joined the US Army Air Force and was off the screen for three years, flying combat missions in Europe. When he returned the studio regarded his salary as excessive and did not renew his contract. He freelanced, but his films didn't do well at the box office. He married Sylvia Ashley, the widow of Douglas Fairbanks, in 1949. Unfortunately this marriage was short-lived and they divorced in 1952. In July 1955 he married a former sweetheart, Kathleen Williams Spreckles (a.k.a. Kay Williams) and became stepfather to her two children, Joan and Adolph ("Bunker") Spreckels III.
On November 16, 1959, Gable became a grandfather when Judy Lewis, his daughter with Loretta Young, gave birth to a daughter, Maria. In 1960, Gable's wife Kay discovered that she was expecting their first child. In early November 1960, he had just completed filming The Misfits (1961), when he suffered a heart attack, and died later that month, on November 16, 1960. Gable was buried shortly afterwards in the shrine that he had built for Carole Lombard and her mother when they died, at Forest Lawn Cemetery.
In March 1961, Kay Gable gave birth to a boy, whom she named John Clark Gable after his father.- Actress
This beautiful Broadway singer and actress appeared in only one film, portraying the forever-young ice goddess ("she who must be obeyed"), the title character in RKO's 1935 adaptation of H. Rider Haggard's tale, She (1935), opposite Randolph Scott. In the latter 1940s, having entered politics, she would serve two terms in the lower house of the U.S. Congress as a Representative from the state of California. (Her bid in 1950 for a seat in the upper house, the United States Senate, saw defeat at the hands of one Richard Nixon).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Greta Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, 1905, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Anna Lovisa (Johansdotter), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson, a laborer. She was fourteen when her father died, which left the family destitute. Greta was forced to leave school and go to work in a department store. The store used her as a model in its newspaper ads. She had no film aspirations until she appeared in short advertising film at that same department store while she was still a teenager. Erik A. Petschler, a comedy director, saw the film and gave her a small part in his Luffar-Petter (1922). Encouraged by her own performance, she applied for and won a scholarship to a Swedish drama school. While there she appeared in at least one film, En lyckoriddare (1921). Both were small parts, but it was a start. Finally famed Swedish director Mauritz Stiller pulled her from the drama school for the lead role in The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924). At 18 Greta was on a roll.
Following The Joyless Street (1925) both Greta and Stiller were offered contracts with MGM, and her first film for the studio was the American-made Torrent (1926), a silent film in which she didn't have to speak a word of English. After a few more films, including The Temptress (1926), Love (1927) and A Woman of Affairs (1928), Greta starred in Anna Christie (1930) (her first "talkie"), which not only gave her a powerful screen presence but also garnered her an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress (she didn't win). Later that year she filmed Romance (1930), which was somewhat of a letdown, but she bounced back in 1931, landing another lead role in Mata Hari (1931), which turned out to be a major hit.
Greta continued to give intense performances in whatever was handed her. The next year she was cast in what turned out to be yet another hit, Grand Hotel (1932). However, it was in MGM's Anna Karenina (1935) that she gave what some consider the performance of her life. She was absolutely breathtaking in the role as a woman torn between two lovers and her son. Shortly afterwards, she starred in the historical drama Queen Christina (1933) playing the title character to great acclaim. She earned an Oscar nomination for her role in the romantic drama Camille (1936), again playing the title character. Her career suffered a setback the following year in Conquest (1937), which was a box office disaster. She later made a comeback when she starred in Ninotchka (1939), which showcased her comedic side. It wasn't until two years later she made what was to be her last film, Two-Faced Woman (1941), another comedy. But the film drew controversy and was condemned by the Catholic Church and other groups and was a box office failure, which left Garbo shaken.
After World War II Greta, by her own admission, felt that the world had changed perhaps forever and she retired, never again to face the camera. She would work for the rest of her life to perpetuate the Garbo mystique. Her films, she felt, had their proper place in history and would gain in value. She abandoned Hollywood and moved to New York City. She would jet-set with some of the world's best-known personalities such as Aristotle Onassis and others. She spent time gardening and raising flowers and vegetables. In 1954 Greta was given a special Oscar for past unforgettable performances. She even penned her biography in 1990.
On April 15, 1990, Greta died of natural causes in New York and with her went the "Garbo Mystique". She was 84.- Actor
- Producer
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One of Hollywood's most private and guarded leading men, Andy Garcia has created iconic characters while at the same time staying true to his acting roots and personal projects.
Garcia was born Andrés Arturo García Menéndez on April 12, 1956, in Havana, Cuba, to Amelie Menéndez, a teacher of English, and René García Núñez, an attorney and avocado farmer. Garcia's family was relatively affluent. However, when he was two years old, Fidel Castro came to power, and the family fled to Miami Beach. Forced to work menial jobs for a while, the family started a fragrance company that was eventually worth more than a million dollars. He attended Natilus Junior High School and later at Miami Beach Senior High School. Andy was a popular student in school, a good basketball player and good-looking. He dreamed of playing professional baseball. In his senior year, though, he contracted mononucleosis and hepatitis, and unable to play sports, he turned his attention to acting.
He studied acting with Jay W. Jensen. Jensen was a South Florida legend, counting among his numerous students, Brett Ratner, Roy Firestone, Mickey Rourke, and Luther Campbell. Following his positive high school experiences in acting, he continued his drama studies at Florida International University.
Soon, he was headed out to Hollywood. His first break came as a gang member on the very first episode of the popular TV series Hill Street Blues (1981). His role as a cocaine kingpin in 8 Million Ways to Die (1986) put him on the radar of Brian De Palma, who was casting for his gangster classic The Untouchables (1987). At first, he envisioned Garcia as Al Capone's sadistic henchman Frank Nitti, but fearing typecasting as a gangster, Garcia campaigned for the role of "George Stone", the Italian cop who gets accepted into Eliot Ness' famous band of lawmen. Garcia's next notable role came in Black Rain (1989) by acclaimed director Ridley Scott, as the partner of police detective Michael Douglas. He then co-starred with Richard Gere in Internal Affairs (1990), directed by Mike Figgis. In 1989, Francis Ford Coppola was casting for the highly anticipated third installment of his "Godfather" films. The Godfather Part III (1990) included one of the most sought-after roles in decades, the hot-headed son of "Sonny Corleone" and mob protégé of "Michael Corloene", "Vincent Mancini". A plum role for any young rising star, the role was campaigned for by a host of actors. Val Kilmer, Alec Baldwin, Vincent Spano, Charlie Sheen, and even Robert De Niro (who wanted the role changed to accommodate his age) were all beaten out by the up-and-coming Garcia. His performance was Oscar-nominated as Best Supporting Actor, and secured him international stardom and a place in cinematic history. Now a leading man, he starred in such films as Jennifer 8 (1992) and Hero (1992). He won raves for his role as the husband of Meg Ryan in When a Man Loves a Woman (1994) and gave another charismatic gangster turn in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995). He then returned in Night Falls on Manhattan (1996), directed by Sidney Lumet, as well as portraying legendary mobster Lucky Luciano in Hoodlum (1997). In perhaps his most mainstream role, he portrayed a cop in the action film Desperate Measures (1998). Garcia then starred in a few lower-profile projects that didn't do much for his career, but things turned around in 2001, with the first of many projects being his role as a cold casino owner in Ocean's Eleven (2001), directed by Steven Soderbergh. Seeing his removal from Cuba as involuntary, Garcia is proud of his heritage which influences his life and work. One such case is his portrayal of renowned Cuban trumpet player Arturo Sandoval in For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (2000). He is an extremely private man, and strong believer in old-fashioned chivalry. Married to his wife, Maria Victoria, since 1982, the couple has three daughters. One of the most talented leading men around, Garcia has had a unique career of staying true to his own ideals and thoughts on acting. While some would have used some of the momentum he has acquired at different points in his career to get rich off lightweight projects, Garcia has stayed true to stories and films that aspire to something more. But with a presence and style that never seem old, a respect from directors and film buffs, alike, Andy Garcia will be remembered for a long time in film history.- Actress
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Ava Lavina Gardner was born on December 24, 1922 in Grabtown, North Carolina, to Mary Elizabeth (née Baker) and Jonas Bailey Gardner. Born on a tobacco farm, where she got her lifelong love of earthy language and going barefoot, Ava grew up in the rural South. At age 18, her picture in the window of her brother-in- law's New York photo studio brought her to the attention of MGM, leading quickly to Hollywood and a film contract based strictly on her beauty. With zero acting experience, her first 17 film roles, 1942-1945, were one-line bits or little better. After her first starring role in B-grade Whistle Stop (1946), MGM loaned her to Universal for her first outstanding film The Killers (1946). Few of her best films were made at MGM which, keeping her under contract for 17 years, used her popularity to sell many mediocre films. Perhaps as a result, she never believed in her own acting ability, but her latent talent shone brightly when brought out by a superior director, as with John Ford in Mogambo (1953) and George Cukor in Bhowani Junction (1956).
After three failed marriages, dissatisfaction with Hollywood life prompted Ava to move to Spain in 1955; most of her subsequent films were made abroad. By this time, stardom had made the country girl a cosmopolitan, but she never overcame a deep insecurity about acting and life in the spotlight. Her last quality starring film role was in The Night of the Iguana (1964), her later work being (as she said) strictly "for the loot". In 1968, tax trouble in Spain prompted a move to London, where she spent her last 22 years in reasonable comfort. Her film career did not bring her great fulfillment, but her looks may have made it inevitable; many fans still consider her the most beautiful actress in Hollywood history. Ava Gardner died at age 67 of bronchial pneumonia on January 25, 1990 in Westminister, London, England.- Actor
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John Garfield was born Jacob Julius Garfinkle on the Lower East Side of New York City, to Hannah Basia (Margolis) and David Garfinkle, who were Jewish immigrants from Zhytomyr (now in Ukraine). Jules was raised by his father, a clothes presser and part-time cantor, after his mother's death in 1920, when he was 7. He was sent to a special school for problem children, where he was introduced to boxing and drama. He won a scholarship to Maria Ouspenskaya's drama school. He joined the Civic Repertory Theatre in 1932, changing his name to Jules Garfield and making his Broadway debut in that company's Counsellor-at-Law. Joined the Group Theatre company, winning acclaim for his role in Awake and Sing. Embittered over being passed over for the lead in Golden Boy, which was written for him, he signed a contract with Warner Brothers, who changed his name to John Garfield. Won enormous praise for his role of the cynical Mickey Borden in Four Daughters (1938). Appeared in similar roles throughout his career despite his efforts to play varied parts. Children Katherine (1938-1945), David Garfield (1942-1995) and Julie Garfield (1946-). Active in liberal political and social causes, he found himself embroiled in Communist scare of the late 1940s. Though he testified before Congress that he was never a Communist, his ability to get work declined. While separated from his wife, he succumbed to long-term heart problems, dying suddenly in the home of a woman friend at 39. His funeral was mobbed by thousands of fans, in the largest funeral attendance for an actor since Rudolph Valentino.- Actress
- Soundtrack
One of the brightest, most tragic movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Era, Judy Garland was a much-loved character whose warmth and spirit, along with her rich and exuberant voice, kept theatre-goers entertained with an array of delightful musicals.
She was born Frances Ethel Gumm on 10 June 1922 in Minnesota, the youngest daughter of vaudevillians Ethel Marian (Milne) and Francis Avent "Frank" Gumm. She was of English, along with some Scottish and Irish, descent. Her mother, an ambitious woman gifted in playing various musical instruments, saw the potential in her daughter at the tender age of just 2 years old when Baby Frances repeatedly sang "Jingle Bells" until she was dragged from the stage kicking and screaming during one of their Christmas shows and immediately drafted her into a dance act, entitled "The Gumm Sisters," along with her older sisters Mary Jane Gumm and Virginia Gumm. However, knowing that her youngest daughter would eventually become the biggest star, Ethel soon took Frances out of the act and together they traveled across America where she would perform in nightclubs, cabarets, hotels and theaters solo.
Her family life was not a happy one, largely because of her mother's drive for her to succeed as a performer and also her father's closeted homosexuality. The Gumm family would regularly be forced to leave town owing to her father's illicit affairs with other men, and from time to time they would be reduced to living out of their automobile. However, in September 1935 the Gumms', in particular Ethel's, prayers were answered when Frances was signed by Louis B. Mayer, mogul of leading film studio MGM, after hearing her sing. It was then that her name was changed from Frances Gumm to Judy Garland, after a popular '30s song "Judy" and film critic Robert Garland.
Tragedy soon followed, however, in the form of her father's death of meningitis in November 1935. Having been given no assignments with the exception of singing on radio, Judy faced the threat of losing her job following the arrival of Deanna Durbin. Knowing that they couldn't keep both of the teenage singers, MGM devised a short entitled Every Sunday (1936) which would be the girls' screen test. However, despite being the outright winner and being kept on by MGM, Judy's career did not officially kick off until she sang one of her most famous songs, "You Made Me Love You," at Clark Gable's birthday party in February 1937, during which Louis B. Mayer finally paid attention to the talented songstress.
Prior to this her film debut in Pigskin Parade (1936), in which she played a teenage hillbilly, had left her career hanging in the balance. However, following her rendition of "You Made Me Love You," MGM set to work preparing various musicals with which to keep Judy busy. All this had its toll on the young teenager, and she was given numerous pills by the studio doctors in order to combat her tiredness on set. Another problem was her weight fluctuation, but she was soon given amphetamines in order to give her the desired streamlined figure. This soon produced the downward spiral that resulted in her lifelong drug addiction.
In 1939, Judy shot immediately to stardom with The Wizard of Oz (1939), in which she portrayed Dorothy, an orphaned girl living on a farm in the dry plains of Kansas who gets whisked off into the magical world of Oz on the other end of the rainbow. Her poignant performance and sweet delivery of her signature song, 'Over The Rainbow,' earned Judy a special juvenile Oscar statuette on 29 February 1940 for Best Performance by a Juvenile Actor. Now growing up, Judy began to yearn for meatier adult roles instead of the virginal characters she had been playing since she was 14. She was now taking an interest in men, and after starring in her final juvenile performance in Ziegfeld Girl (1941) alongside glamorous beauties Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr, Judy got engaged to bandleader David Rose in May 1941, just two months after his divorce from Martha Raye. Despite planning a big wedding, the couple eloped to Las Vegas and married during the early hours of the morning on July 28, 1941 with just her mother Ethel and her stepfather Will Gilmore present. However, their marriage went downhill as, after discovering that she was pregnant in November 1942, David and MGM persuaded her to abort the baby in order to keep her good-girl image up. She did so and, as a result, was haunted for the rest of her life by her 'inhumane actions.' The couple separated in January 1943.
By this time, Judy had starred in her first adult role as a vaudevillian during WWI in For Me and My Gal (1942). Within weeks of separation, Judy was soon having an affair with actor Tyrone Power, who was married to French actress Annabella. Their affair ended in May 1943, which was when her affair with producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz kicked off. He introduced her to psychoanalysis and she soon began to make decisions about her career on her own instead of being influenced by her domineering mother and MGM. Their affair ended in November 1943, and soon afterward Judy reluctantly began filming Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), which proved to be a big success. The director Vincente Minnelli highlighted Judy's beauty for the first time on screen, having made the period musical in color, her first color film since The Wizard of Oz (1939). He showed off her large brandy-brown eyes and her full, thick lips and after filming ended in April 1944, a love affair resulted between director and actress and they were soon living together.
Vincente began to mold Judy and her career, making her more beautiful and more popular with audiences worldwide. He directed her in The Clock (1945), and it was during the filming of this movie that the couple announced their engagement on set on January 9, 1945. Judy's divorce from David Rose had been finalized on June 8, 1944 after almost three years of marriage, and despite her brief fling with Orson Welles, who at the time was married to screen sex goddess Rita Hayworth, on June 15, 1945 Judy made Vincente her second husband, tying the knot with him that afternoon at her mother's home with her boss Louis B. Mayer giving her away and her best friend Betty Asher serving as bridesmaid. They spent three months on honeymoon in New York and afterwards Judy discovered that she was pregnant.
On March 12, 1946 in Los Angeles, California, Judy gave birth to their daughter, Liza Minnelli, via cesarean section. It was a joyous time for the couple, but Judy was out of commission for weeks due to the cesarean and her postnatal depression, so she spent much of her time recuperating in bed. She soon returned to work, but married life was never the same for Vincente and Judy after they filmed The Pirate (1948) together in 1947. Judy's mental health was fast deteriorating and she began hallucinating things and making false accusations toward people, especially her husband, making the filming a nightmare. She also began an affair with aspiring Russian actor Yul Brynner, but after the affair ended, Judy soon regained health and tried to salvage her failing marriage. She then teamed up with dancing legend Fred Astaire for the delightful musical Easter Parade (1948), which resulted in a successful comeback despite having Vincente fired from directing the musical. Afterwards, Judy's health deteriorated and she began the first of several suicide attempts. In May 1949, she was checked into a rehabilitation center, which caused her much distress.
She soon regained strength and was visited frequently by her lover Frank Sinatra, but never saw much of Vincente or Liza. On returning, Judy made In the Good Old Summertime (1949), which was also Liza's film debut, albeit via an uncredited cameo. She had already been suspended by MGM for her lack of cooperation on the set of The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), which also resulted in her getting replaced by Ginger Rogers. After being replaced by Betty Hutton on Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Judy was suspended yet again before making her final film for MGM, entitled Summer Stock (1950). At 28, Judy received her third suspension and was fired by MGM, and her second marriage was soon dissolved.
Having taken up with Sidney Luft, Judy traveled to London to star at the legendary Palladium. She was an instant success and after her divorce from Vincente Minnelli was finalized on March 29, 1951 after almost six years of marriage, Judy traveled with Sid to New York to make an appearance on Broadway. With her newfound fame on stage, Judy was stopped in her tracks in February 1952 when she became pregnant by her new lover, Sid. At the age of 30, she made him her third husband on June 8, 1952; the wedding was held at a friend's ranch in Pasadena. Her relationship with her mother had long since been dissolved by this point, and after the birth of her second daughter, Lorna Luft, on November 21, 1952, she refused to allow her mother to see her granddaughter. Ethel then died in January 1953 of a heart attack, leaving Judy devastated and feeling guilty about not reconciling with her mother before her untimely demise.
After the funeral, Judy signed a film contract with Warner Bros. to star in the musical remake of A Star Is Born (1937), which had starred Janet Gaynor, who had won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929. Filming soon began, resulting in an affair between Judy and her leading man, British star James Mason. She also picked up on her affair with Frank Sinatra, and after filming was complete Judy was yet again lauded as a great film star. She won a Golden Globe for her brilliant and truly outstanding performance as Esther Blodgett, nightclub singer turned movie star, but when it came to the Academy Awards, a distraught Judy lost out on the Best Actress Oscar to Grace Kelly for her portrayal of the wife of an alcoholic star in The Country Girl (1954). Many still argue that Judy should have won the Oscar over Grace Kelly. Continuing her work on stage, Judy gave birth to her beloved son, Joey Luft, on March 29, 1955. She soon began to lose her millions of dollars as a result of her husband's strong gambling addiction, and with hundreds of debts to pay, Judy and Sid began a volatile, on-off relationship resulting in numerous divorce filings.
In 1961, at the age of 39, Judy returned to her ailing film career, this time to star in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but this time she lost out to Rita Moreno for her performance in West Side Story (1961). Her battles with alcoholism and drugs led to Judy's making numerous headlines in newspapers, but she soldiered on, forming a close friendship with President John F. Kennedy. In 1963, Judy and Sid finally separated permanently, and on May 19, 1965 their divorce was finalized after almost 13 years of marriage. By this time, Judy, now 41, had made her final performance on film alongside Dirk Bogarde in I Could Go on Singing (1963). She married her fourth husband, Mark Herron, on November 14, 1965 in Las Vegas, but they separated in April 1966 after five months of marriage owing to his homosexuality. It was also that year that she began an affair with young journalist Tom Green. She then settled down in London after their affair ended, and she began dating disk jockey Mickey Deans in December 1968. They became engaged once her divorce from Mark Herron was finalized on January 9, 1969 after three years of marriage. She married Mickey, her fifth and final husband, in a register office in Chelsea, London, England on March 15, 1969.
She continued working on stage, appearing several times with her daughter Liza. It was during a concert in Chelsea, London, England that Judy stumbled into her bathroom late one night and died of an overdose of barbiturates, the drug that had dominated her much of her life, on June 22, 1969 at the age of 47. Her daughter Liza Minnelli paid for her funeral, and her former lover James Mason delivered her touching eulogy. She is still an icon to this day with her famous performances in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), and A Star Is Born (1954).- Actress Peggy Ann Garner was born Feb. 3, 1932, in Canton, Ohio. Her father was an English-born attorney, William H. Garner, who served as a U.S. Army officer during World War II. Virginia, her determined mother, got Peggy into summer stock and modeling before she was six. Estranged from her husband, Virginia moved with her daughter to Hollywood a year later. Peggy was cast in several films before gaining fame as Francie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945). After years of separation and estrangement, her parents were divorced in 1947. Peggy, who had a falling out with her mother, went to court to have her father appointed as her guardian.
By the time she reached 20, she had moved from Hollywood to New York to try her talents on Broadway. She spent much of the 1950s living and working in New York, studying with the Actors Studio. She appeared on stage with Dorothy Gish in The Man in 1950, A Royal Family in 1951 and Home is the Hero in 1954. She also was in the road company of Bus Stop in 1955. She received Harvard's Hasty Pudding Award for Woman of the Year in 1956.
Her film career began to fade as she grew older, but she did stage and television work as well as a few other films, never recapturing her childhood fame. Even while earning her living as a real estate broker in the 1960s and as a fleet automobile sales manager during the 1970s, she dreamed of a return to the screen.
She was married and divorced three times. Her second husband was actor Albert Salmi, by whom she had a daughter, Catherine who died shortly after her mother Peggy's untimely death from cancer. Peggy's mother Virginia outlived both her only child and only grandchild. - Director
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Following his service as a naval aviator in WW I, Tay Garnett entered films in 1920 as a screenwriter. After a stint as a gag writer for Mack Sennett and Hal Roach he joined Pathe, then the distributor for both competing comedy producers, and in 1928 began directing for that company. Garnett garnered some attention in the early 1930s with such films as One Way Passage (1932) and Her Man (1930), but his best work came in the mid-'30s and early 1940s with such films as China Seas (1935), Slave Ship (1937) and Seven Sinners (1940). His best known film would have to the John Garfield/Lana Turner vehicle The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), although his version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949) was a well-deserved critical and commercial success as well. Garnett journeyed to England in the early 1950s for several films, but upon his return made only a few pictures before jumping enthusiastically into television. He resurfaced on the big screen in the early 1970s to shoot a pair of minor outdoor epics in Alaska, then retired. He died of leukemia in 1977.- Actress
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Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson was born on September 29, 1904 in London, England, to Nancy Sophia (Greer) and George Garson, a commercial clerk. Of Scottish and Ulster-Scots descent, Garson displayed no early interest in becoming an actress. Educated at the University of London intending to become a teacher, she opted instead to take a job at an advertising agency. During her off hours she appeared in local theatrical productions, gaining a reputation as an extremely talented and charismatic performer. During a stage production of "Old Music," Garson was offered a studio contract by MGM Vice President of Production Louis B. Mayer while he was on a visit to London looking for new talent. Garson's very first film under that arrangement was the immensely popular Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), earning her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress - the first of six she would receive. The following year would see Greer in the highly acclaimed Pride and Prejudice (1940) as "Elizabeth Bennet". 1941 saw her earn a second nomination for her role as Edna Gladney in Blossoms in the Dust (1941), but it was the moving, if propagandist, Mrs. Miniver (1942), in a role that she would forever be known by, that actually brought her the Oscar statuette as Best Actress.
As Marie Curie in Madame Curie (1943), she would draw yet another nomination, and the same the next year in Mrs. Parkington (1944). It began to seem that any movie she was part of would be an automatic success. Sure enough, in 1945, she won yet another nomination, for her role as "Mary Rafferty" in The Valley of Decision (1945). Still, Garson began to chafe at the unbroken stream of "noble woman" roles in which the studio was casting her. MGM felt that they had an winning formula and saw no compelling reason to alter it. Two standard seven-year contract extensions kept her at MGM until 1954 when, by mutual consent, she left the only studio she had ever known. In 1946, Greer appeared in Adventure (1945), which was a flop at the box-office. 1947's Desire Me (1947) was no less a disaster, downward spiral finally arrested with the hit That Forsyte Woman (1949). The next year, she reprised her role as "Kay Miniver" in The Miniver Story (1950), though audiences were unsurprisingly put off by her character's untimely demise from cancer, leaving screen husband Walter Pidgeon to soldier on alone.
For the remainder of the 1950s, she endured several predictably unappreciated films. Then, 1960 found her cast in the role of Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (1960). This film was, perhaps, her finest work and landed her seventh and final Academy Award nomination. Her final screen appearances were in The Singing Nun (1966) as "Mother Prioress" and The Happiest Millionaire (1967). After a few TV movies, Garson retired to the New Mexico ranch she shared with her husband, millionaire Buddy E.E. Fogelson. She concentrated on the environment and other various charities. By the 1980s, she was suffering from chronic heart problems, prompting her to slow down. That was the cause of her death on April 6, 1996 in Dallas, Texas, at age 91.- Actress
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Janet Gaynor was born Laura Gainor on October 6, 1906, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a child, she & her parents moved to San Francisco, California, where she graduated from high school in 1923. She then moved to Los Angeles where she enrolled in a secretarial school. She got a job at a shoe store for the princely sum of $18 per week. However, since L.A. was the land of stars and studios, she wanted to try her hand at acting. She managed to land unbilled bit parts in several feature films and comedy shorts. She bided her time, believing "Good things come to those who wait." She didn't have to wait too long, either. In 1926, at the age of 20, she turned in a superb performance as Anna Burger in The Johnstown Flood (1926). The Hollywood moguls knew they had a top star on their hands and cast her in several other leading roles that year, including The Shamrock Handicap (1926), The Blue Eagle (1926), The Midnight Kiss (1926) and The Return of Peter Grimm (1926). The next year she turned in acclaimed performances in two classic films, 7th Heaven (1927) and Sunrise (1927). Based on the strength of those two films plus Street Angel (1928), Janet received the very first Academy Award for best actress. This was the first and only time an actress won the Oscar for multiple roles. When "talkies" replaced silent films, Janet was one of the few who made a successful transition, not only because of her great acting ability but for her charming voice as well. Without a doubt, Janet had already lived a true rags-to-riches story. Throughout the mid-1930s she was the top drawing star at theaters. She turned in grand performances in several otherwise undistinguished films.
Then came A Star Is Born (1937). She was very convincing as Vicki Lester (aka Esther Blodgett), struggling actress trying for the big time. Told by the receptionist at Central casting "You know what your chances are? One in a hundred thousand," Esther/Vicki replies, "But maybe--I'm that one." For her outstanding performance she was nominated for another Oscar, but lost to Luise Rainer's performance in The Good Earth (1937), her second in as many tries. After appearing in The Young in Heart (1938), Janet didn't appear in another film until 1957's Bernardine (1957). Her last performance was in a Broadway version of Harold and Maude. Although the play was a flop, Janet's performance salvaged it to any degree - she still had what it took to entertain the public. On September 14, 1984, Janet passed away from pneumonia in Palm Springs, California, at the age of 77.- Actress
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It is perhaps ironic that the film for which this performer is best remembered was also her musical swansong and one of her very last motion picture appearances. That was, of course, South Pacific (1958), with Mitzi Gaynor famously cast as feisty Ensign Nellie Forbush, warbling "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair". She had not been first choice for the role: director Joshua Logan wanted Elizabeth Taylor while Richard Rodgers was fixated on Doris Day. Since neither was available, they had to settle on Mitzi. In retrospect, her performance (she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award) was perhaps the best thing about the movie. Hers was the only voice (other than that of Ray Walston) that was not dubbed in post- production. South Pacific was marred by Logan's lethargic direction and by garish hues, due to the use of colour filters in several lengthy sequences. The picture nonetheless became one of the highest grossing films of the 50s.
She was born Francesca Marlene de Czanyi von Gerber of Hungarian aristocratic ancestry. Her father was violinist, cellist and music director Henry de Czanyi von Gerber, her mother Pauline was a dancer. Mitzi began performing in public from the age of four. Her family moved from Detroit to Hollywood when she was eleven. There, she was trained as a ballerina in the corps de ballet. Just three years later, she was on stage as a singer and dancer with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Company in a production of Roberta. While playing the lead in Victor Herbert's Naughty Marietta, Gaynor was discovered by a 20th Century Fox talent scout, auditioned and signed to a seven year contract. She made her screen debut as a dancer in My Blue Heaven (1950), singing 'Live Hard, Work Hard, Love Hard'. The studio kept her initials but changed her name from Gerber to Gaynor, likely in deference to Janet Gaynor, one of their major box-office stars of the 20s and 30s.
Aged 19, vivacious, blonde, slightly snub-nosed and undeniably cute, Mitzi began her career as a lead performer in musicals, acting alongside some of the genre's most prominent names. Now a headliner in her own right, she portrayed 19th century entertainer Lotta Crabtree in the biopic Golden Girl (1951), a South Sea Islander in Down Among the Sheltering Palms (1952) and the 'Queen of Vaudeville', Eva Tanguay, in The I Don't Care Girl (1953). All were minor box-office hits. Arguably her best role was that of Emily Ann Stackerlee in Damon Runyon's Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952), with Gaynor at her exuberant best, dancing and singing "Bye Low". Her final picture -- before Fox dropped her contract-- was the star-studded extravaganza There's No Business Like Show Business (1954). In this, she played second fiddle to Ethel Merman, Marilyn Monroe, Donald O'Connor and Dan Dailey.
That same year (1954) and not long away from the limelight, Gaynor married the very savvy talent agent and public relations executive Jack Bean. Bean soon quit his job with MCA to set up his own agency, Bean & Rose, which was largely about shepherding and rejuvenating Gaynor's career. She signed a new contract with Paramount in 1955 which resulted in a trio of films, the best of which was The Joker Is Wild (1957), starring Frank Sinatra as vaudevillian and night club entertainer Joe E. Lewis and Gaynor as his chorus girl wife. Next up, she played another showgirl in Les Girls (1957). This stodgy and confusingly scripted enterprise was chiefly notable for being Gene Kelly 's final appearance in a major musical and for the show-stopping number "Why Am I So Gone About That Gal?" performed by Kelly and Gaynor (both dressed as bikers, effectively lampooning Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953)).
After South Pacific (a part which her husband managed to secure for her) Gaynor made only a handful of films. Her last effort was For Love or Money (1963), a matrimonial comedy starring Kirk Douglas. In 1963, Gaynor retired from films, explaining that she felt 'kind of ordinary' as an actress. She considered her talents to be better suited to the stage, to live performances. Consequently, the latter part of her career was spent on the nightclub circuit (especially in Las Vegas) and in television specials. In the 90s, Gaynor's career found a new lease of life as a featured columnist for The Hollywood Reporter, chronicling the golden years.
Gaynor's many accolades have included a Golden Laurel (1958). She received a star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard in 1960, and, in 2017, she was inducted into the Great American Songbook Hall of Fame. Jack Bean, her husband of 52 years died of pneumonia at the couple's Beverly Hills home on December 4 2006.- Actor
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A pioneering cowboy star of silent and early talking Westerns, Hoot Gibson was one of the 1920s' most popular children's matinée heroes. In his real life, however, he had a rather painful rags-to-riches-and-back-to-rags career, a problem that seemed to plague a number of big stars who fell victim to their high profile and wound up living too high on the hog.
An unfortunate byproduct of stardom is, of course, the misinformation that is often fed to the public over the years by either overzealous publicity agents or the actor himself. The many variations of just how Gibson earned the name tag "Hoot" is one of them: (1) As a youth, he loved to hunt owls; (2) while a teenager working on a rodeo ranch, other ranch hands called him "Hoot Owl" and that the name was shortened to just "Hoot"; (3) he picked up the nickname while a messenger with the Owl Drug Company; and (4) while touring briefly in vaudeville, he would hoot when the audience cheered and, thus, the nickname.
What facts are known about Hoot is that he was born Edmund Richard Gibson on August 6, 1892, in Tekamah, Nebraska. As a child he grew up among horses and received his first pony at the age of 2-1/2. His family moved to California when he was 7. At age 13 the adventurous youth ran away from home and joined a circus for a time. Later work included punching cows in both Wyoming and Colorado (at the time, a territory and not a state). While working on the Miller 101 Ranch at Fort Bliss, Oklahoma, as a horse wrangler, Hoot developed a strong, active interest in the rodeo scene--in particular, bronco busting. In 1907 he signed a four-year contract with the Dick Stanley-Bud Atkinson Wild West Show, which toured throughout the US and (later) Australia.
By 1910 Hoot had found an "in" to the movie business as one of the industry's first stuntmen (for which he was paid $2.50 for performing stunts or training horses). Director Francis Boggs was looking for experienced cowboys and stunt doubles to appear in his western short Pride of the Range (1910) starring Tom Mix; both Hoot and another future cowboy star, Art Acord, were hired. Hoot lost a solid Hollywood contact in Boggs, however, when the director and his working partner, producer William Nicholas Selig, were both shot in October, 1911, by a mentally disturbed employee (Selig was injured, but Boggs was killed). Gibson managed to find other stunt work in director D.W. Griffith's western short The Two Brothers (1910) and several others for the next few years.
Acting, at this point, was not his bread-and-butter income. Hoot still continued to forge a name for himself on the rodeo circuit with his pal Acord. In 1912, at age 20, he won the title "All-Around Champion Cowboy" at the famed annual Pendleton (Oregon) Round-Up. He also won the steer-roping World Championship at the Calgary Stampede. While on the circuit, he met fellow rodeo rider Rose August ("Helen") Wenger. They eventually married (there is still some question about whether they legally exchanged vows) and she took on the marquee name of Helen Gibson. She even found film stunt work herself and eventually was chosen to replace Helen Holmes as star of the popular movie serial The Hazards of Helen (1914) during mid-filming. Hoot himself had a minor role in the Universal cliffhanger.
Hoot picked up a couple of more strong connections in the film industry with western star Harry Carey and director John Ford. Gibson gained some momentum as a secondary player in a few of their films, including Cheyenne's Pal (1917), Straight Shooting (1917), The Secret Man (1917) and A Marked Man (1917). With the outbreak of World War I, however, Gibson's film career was put on hold. He joined the US Army, eventually attaining the the rank of sergeant while serving with the Tank Corps, and was honorably discharged in 1919. He returned immediately to Universal and was able to restart his career, quickly working his way up to co-star status in a series of short westerns, most of which were directed by his now close friend Ford. The two-reelers usually co-starred either Pete Morrison or Hoor's wife Helen, or sometimes both. Films such as The Fighting Brothers (1919), The Black Horse Bandit (1919), Rustlers (1919), Gun Law (1919), The Gun Packer (1919) and By Indian Post (1919) eventually led to his solo starring success.
During this prolific period, he was frequently directed by George Holt (The Trail of the Holdup Man (1919)), Phil Rosen (The Sheriff's Oath (1920)) and Lee Kohlmar (The Wild Wild West (1921)). It was at this time that he and wife Helen separated and divorced. In the early 1920s, Hoot went on to marry another Helen--Helen Johnson. They had one child, Lois Charlotte Gibson, born in 1923. The couple divorced in 1927.
Superstardom came with the John Ford (I)full-length feature western Action (1921), which was taken from "The Three Godfathers" story. It starred Hoot, Francis Ford and J. Farrell MacDonald as a trio of outlaws on the lam who find a baby. From that point on, both Hoot and Tom Mix began to "rule the west". Gibson's light, comedic, tongue-in-cheek manner only added to his sagebrush appeal, especially to children and women. His vehicles were non-violent for the most part, and he rarely was spotted carrying a gun while riding his palomino horse Goldie. Not a particularly handsome man, his boyish appeal and non-threatening demeanor were his aces in the hole--a major distinction that separated him from the more ascetic cowboy stars of the past.
By 1925 Hoot was making approximately $14,500 a week and spending it about as fast as he was making it. He successfully made the transition to talkies and, in 1930, married popular Jazz-era actress Sally Eilers, a third party to his previous divorce. The couple made three features together: The Long, Long Trail (1929), Trigger Tricks (1930) and Clearing the Range (1931). When she found celluloid success on her own with Bad Girl (1931), Sally decided to split from Hoot professionally and personally. They divorced in 1933.
Hoot lost his Universal contract in 1930, which signified the start of his decline. While he secured contracts with lesser studios during the early 1930s, such as Allied Pictures and First Division Pictures, the quality of his films suffered. By this time Hoot had already begun to feature race cars and airplanes in his pictures. such as The Flyin' Cowboy (1928) and The Winged Horseman (1929). Airplanes in particular became a large, expensive passion of his. In 1933 he crashed his biplane during a National Air Race in Los Angeles, which had pitted him against another cowboy star, Ken Maynard. Fortunately, he survived his injuries.
With the advent of talking films, singing cowboys such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers were becoming the new rage, and both Hoot and Tom Mix felt the kick. Yet he managed a couple of "comebacks" by pairing up with others stars. He joined old silent film teammate Harry Carey and 'Guinn Big Boy Williams' in the "Three Mesquiteers" western Powdersmoke Range (1935), and was billed second to Ray Corrigan in the Republic serial The Painted Stallion (1937).
Hoot left films and toured with the Robbins Brothers and Russell Brothers circuses during 1938 and 1939 before retiring from show business altogether. His multiple divorces and reckless spending habits had taken their toll on his finances. For a time he found work in real estate before Monogram Pictures offered the stocky-framed actor a chance to return in 1943. Hoot teamed up with cowboy star Ken Maynard in the popular "Trail Blazers" series, and the duo were later joined by Bob Steele. Chief Thundercloud replaced a difficult Maynard on a couple of the films, but by the end of the series Gibson and Steele were riding alone together. The nearly dozen films in the series began with Wild Horse Stampede (1943) and ended with Trigger Law (1944), the latter being his last hurrah in films.
Hoot then returned to real estate. By the time he appeared as a surprise guest on the popular sitcom I Married Joan (1952) starring Joan Davis, his Western features of the 1930s and 1940s, as well as those of Maynard, Steele and others were a large staple of films seen by a TV audience that couldn't get enough Western fare. He did a favor for old friend John Ford by appearing in a cameo role in the director's 1959 film The Horse Soldiers (1959). His last movie spotting was a guest cameo in the "Rat Pack" film Ocean's Eleven (1960).
Hoot married a fourth and final time on July 3, 1942, to one-time radio singer and actress Dorothea Dunstan. This marriage took hold and lasted for 20 years until his death. By the 1960s Gibson was on the verge of financial collapse after a series of bad investments. Diagnosed with cancer in 1960, rising medical costs forced him to find any and all work available. He was relegated at one point to becoming a greeter at a Las Vegas casino and, for a period, worked at carnivals.
It was an unhappy end for a cowboy who brought so much excitement and entertainment to children and adults alike. Gibson died of cancer at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, California, just a couple of weeks after his 70th birthday. He was interred in the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. In remembrance, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and, in 1979, was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.- Actor
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The son of singers in the Metropolitan Opera, Billy Gilbert began performing in vaudeville at age 12. He developed a drawn-out, explosive sneezing routine that became his trademark (he was the model for, and voice of, Sneezy in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)). Gilbert's exquisite comic timing made him the perfect foil for such comedians as Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and he was especially memorable as the dim-witted process server Pettibone in His Girl Friday (1940).- Editor
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Film editor John Gilbert won an Academy Award and a BAFTA for Best Film Editing for his work on Mel Gibson's 2016 war drama Hacksaw Ridge. A native of New Zealand, Gilbert has edited 23 feature films including Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, which garnered him the Satellite Award for Best Editing, and nominations for an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award and an ACE Eddie Award. He also edited Director Alison Maclean's Crush, which was nominated for the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or award.
In addition, Gilbert edited Simon Kinberg's 2022 film 355, and 2018's Adrift for Director Baltasar Kormakur. He is currently working on Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo's Damsel for Netflix.- Actress
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Dorothy Gish was born into a broken family where her restless father James Lee Gish was frequently absent. Mary Robinson McConnell a.k.a. Mary Gish, her mother, had entered into acting to make money to support the family. As soon as Dorothy and her sister Lillian Gish were old enough, they became part of the act. To supplement their income, the two sisters also posed for pictures and acted in melodramas of the time. In 1912 they met fellow child actress Mary Pickford, and she got them extra work with Biograph Pictures. Director D.W. Griffith was impressed by both the girls and cast them in An Unseen Enemy (1912), their first picture. Dorothy would go on to star in over 100 two-reel films and features over the years. She would appear in the very successful Judith of Bethulia (1914) with Blanche Sweet. She and her sister Lillian made a number of films together, including the extremely successful Hearts of the World (1918) and Orphans of the Storm (1921). In both films Dorothy would play French girls, but in different periods of time. Lillian would try her hand at directing, with a movie called Remodeling Her Husband (1920), which starred Dorothy and an actor named James Rennie, whom Dorothy would marry and later divorce. While she would excel in pantomime and light comedy, her popularity would always be overshadowed by that of her sister Lillian, who was considered to be one the silent screen's greatest stars. Dorothy would only make a handful of movies in the 1920s, and in Romola (1924)--a costume picture about Italy in the Middle Ages--she would again co-star with Lillian. By 1926 Dorothy had moved to England, where she would star as the title role in Nell Gwyn (1926). Her last silent film would be Madame Pompadour (1927). In 1928 Dorothy would retire from the screen, except for a few occasional roles, and enjoy a long career on the stage.- Actress
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Lillian Diana Gish was born on October 14, 1893, in Springfield, Ohio. Her father, James Lee Gish, was an alcoholic who caroused, was rarely at home, and left the family to, more or less, fend for themselves. To help make ends meet, Lillian, her sister Dorothy Gish, and their mother, Mary Gish, a.k.a. Mary Robinson McConnell, tried their hand at acting in local productions. Lillian was six years old when she first appeared in front of an audience. For the next 13 years, she and Dorothy appeared before stage audiences with great success. Had she not made her way into films, Lillian quite possibly could have been one of the great stage actresses of all time; however, she found her way onto the big screen when, in 1912, she met famed director D.W. Griffith. Impressed with what he saw, he immediately cast her in her first film, An Unseen Enemy (1912), followed by The One She Loved (1912) and My Baby (1912). She would make 12 films for Griffith in 1912. With 25 films in the next two years, Lillian's exposure to the public was so great that she fast became one of the top stars in the industry, right alongside Mary Pickford, "America's Sweetheart".
In 1915, Lillian starred as Elsie Stoneman in Griffith's most ambitious project to date, The Birth of a Nation (1915). She was not making the large number of films that she had been in the beginning because she was successful and popular enough to be able to pick and choose the right films to appear in. The following year, she appeared in another Griffith classic, Intolerance (1916). By the early 1920s, her career was on its way down. As with anything else, be it sports or politics, new faces appeared on the scene to replace the "old", and Lillian was no different. In fact, she did not appear at all on the screen in 1922, 1925 or 1929. However, 1926 was her busiest year of the decade with roles in La Bohème (1926) and The Scarlet Letter (1926). As the decade wound to a close, "talkies" were replacing silent films. However, Lillian was not idle during her time away from the screen. She appeared in stage productions, to the acclaim of the public and critics alike. In 1933, she filmed His Double Life (1933), but did not make another film for nine years.
When she returned in 1943, she appeared in two big-budget pictures, Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942) and Top Man (1943). Although these roles did not bring her the attention she had had in her early career, Lillian still proved she could hold her own with the best of them. She earned an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role of Laura Belle McCanles in Duel in the Sun (1946), but lost to Anne Baxter in The Razor's Edge (1946).
One of the most critically acclaimed roles of her career came in the thriller The Night of the Hunter (1955), also notable as the only film directed by actor Charles Laughton. In 1969, she published her autobiography, "The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me". In 1987, she made what was to be her last motion picture, The Whales of August (1987), a box-office success that exposed her to a new generation of fans. Her 75-year career is almost unbeatable in any field, let alone the film industry. On February 27, 1993, at age 99, Lillian Gish died peacefully in her sleep at her Manhattan apartment in New York City. She never married.- Actress
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Louise Glaum was born on 10 September 1888 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for Sex (1920), Sweetheart of the Doomed (1917) and The Three Musketeers (1916). She was married to Zachary M. Harris and Harry J. Edwards. She died on 25 November 1970 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
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James Gleason was born in New York City to William Gleason and Mina Crolius, who were both in the theatre. He was married to Lucile Gleason (born Lucile Webster), and had a son, Russell Gleason. As a young man James fought in the Spanish-American War. After the war he joined the stock company at the Liberty Theater in Oakland, California, which his parents were running. James and his wife then moved to Portland, Oregon, where they played in stock at the Baker Theater. For several years afterward they toured in road shows until James enlisted in the army during World War I. When he returned he appeared on the stage in "The Five Million." He then turned to writing, including "Is Zat So", which he produced for the NY stage. He also wrote and acted in "The Fall Guy" and "The Shannons on Broadway." Next he wrote The Broadway Melody (1929) for MGM. He collaborated, in 1930, on The Swellhead (1930), Dumbbells in Ermine (1930), What a Widow! (1930), Rain or Shine (1930) and His First Command (1929). He and his wife were then contracted to Pathe, Lucille to act, and James (or Jimmie as he was known) as a writer. Probably his most famous acting role was as Max Corkle, the manager of Joe Pendleton who was wrongly plucked from this life into the next, in the hit fantasy Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941).- Actress
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Paulette Goddard was a child model who debuted in "The Ziegfeld Follies" at the age of 13. She gained fame with the show as the girl on the crescent moon, and was married to a wealthy man, Edgar James, by the time she was 17. After her divorce she went to Hollywood in 1931, where she appeared in small roles in pictures for a number of studios. A stunning natural beauty, Paulette could mesmerize any man she met, a fact she was well aware of. One of her bigger roles in that period was as a blond "Goldwyn Girl" in the Eddie Cantor film The Kid from Spain (1932). In 1932 she met Charles Chaplin, and they soon became an item around town. He cast her in Modern Times (1936), which was a big hit, but her movie career was not going anywhere because of her relationship with Chaplin. They were secretly married in 1936, but the marriage failed and they were separated by 1940. It was her role as Miriam Aarons in The Women (1939), however, that got her a contract with Paramount. Paulette was one of the many actresses tested for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939), but she lost the part to Vivien Leigh and instead appeared with Bob Hope in The Cat and the Canary (1939), a good film but hardly in the same league as GWTW. The 1940s were Paulette's busiest period. She worked with Chaplin in The Great Dictator (1940), Cecil B. DeMille in Reap the Wild Wind (1942) and Burgess Meredith in The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946). She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in So Proudly We Hail! (1943). Her star faded in the late 1940s, however, and she was dropped by Paramount in 1949. After a couple of "B" movies, she left films and went to live in Europe as a wealthy expatriate; she married German novelist Erich Maria Remarque in the late 1950s. She was coaxed back to the screen once more, although it was the small screen, for the television movie The Female Instinct (1972).- Actress
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Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Elaine Johnson in the Chelsea section of Manhattan on November 13, 1955. Her mother, Emma (Harris), was a teacher and a nurse, and her father, Robert James Johnson, Jr., was a clergyman. Whoopi's recent ancestors were from Georgia, Florida, and Virginia. She worked in a funeral parlor and as a bricklayer while taking small parts on Broadway. She moved to California and worked with improv groups, including Spontaneous Combustion, and developed her skills as a stand-up comedienne. Goldberg came to prominence doing an HBO special and a one-woman show as Moms Mabley. She has been known in her prosperous career as a unique and socially conscious talent with articulately liberal views. Among her boyfriends were Ted Danson and Frank Langella. Goldberg was married three times and was once addicted to drugs.
Goldberg had her first big film starring role in The Color Purple (1985). She received much critical acclaim, and an Oscar nomination for her role and became a major star as a result. Subsequent efforts in the late 1980s were, at best, marginal hits. These movies mostly were off-beat to formulaic comedies like Burglar (1987), The Telephone (1988) and Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986). She made her mark as a household name and a mainstay in Hollywood for her Oscar-winning role in the box office smash Ghost (1990). Whoopi Goldberg was at her most famous in the early 1990s, making regular appearances on Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). She admitted to being a huge fan of the original Star Trek (1966) series and jumped at the opportunity to star in "Star Trek: The Next Generation".
Goldberg received another smash hit role in Sister Act (1992). Her fish-out-of-water with some flash seemed to resonate with audiences and it was a box office smash. Whoopi starred in some highly publicized and moderately successful comedies of this time, including Made in America (1993) and Soapdish (1991). Goldberg followed up to her success with Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit (1993), which was well-received but did not seem to match up to the first.
As the late 1990s approached, Goldberg seemed to alternate between lead roles in straight comedies such as Eddie (1996) and The Associate (1996), and took supporting parts in more independent minded movies, such as The Deep End of the Ocean (1999) and How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998). Goldberg never forgot where she came from, hosting many tributes to other legendary entertainment figures. Her most recent movies include Rat Race (2001) and the quietly received Kingdom Come (2001). Goldberg contributes her voice to many cartoons, including The Pagemaster (1994) and Captain Planet and the Planeteers (1990), as Gaia, the voice of the earth. Alternating between big-budget movies, independent movies, tributes, documentaries, and even television movies (including Theodore Rex (1995)).
Whoopi is accredited as a truly unique and visible talent in Hollywood. Perhaps she will always be remembered as well for Comic Relief, playing an integral part in almost every benefit concert they had. Whoopi is also the center square in Hollywood Squares (1998), sometimes hosts the Academy Awards, and is an author, with the book "Book."- Producer
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Famed for his relentless ambition, bad temper and genius for publicity, Samuel Goldwyn became Hollywood's leading "independent" producer -- largely because none of his partners could tolerate him for long. Born Shmuel (or Schmuel) Gelbfisz, probably in 1879, in the Jewish section of Warsaw, he was the eldest of six children of a struggling used-furniture dealer. In 1895 he made his way to England, where relatives Anglicized his name to Samuel Goldfish. There he begged (or stole) enough money for a ticket in steerage across the Atlantic. He reached the US, probably via Canada, in 1898. He gravitated to Gloversville, New York, in the Adirondack foothills, which was then the capital of the US leather glove industry; he became one of the country's most successful glove salesmen. After moving his base of operations to Manhattan and marrying the sister of Jesse L. Lasky, who was then a theatrical producer, Goldfish convinced Lasky and Cecil B. DeMille to go into film production. The new company's first film, The Squaw Man (1914), was one of the first features made in Hollywood; the company later became the nucleus of what would later become Paramount Pictures. As his marriage fell apart, Goldfish dissolved his partnership with Lasky. His next enterprise was the Goldwyn Co., founded in 1916 and named for himself and his partners, brothers Edgar Selwyn and Archibald Selwyn--Goldfish liked the name so much he took it for his own. The Goldwyn Co.'s stars included Mabel Normand, Madge Kennedy and Will Rogers, but its most famous legacy was its "Leo the Lion" trademark, which was adopted by its successor company, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Goldwyn himself was ousted from his own company before the merger, which was why his name became part of MGM even though he himself had nothing to do with the company. After his firing Goldwyn would have nothing to do with partners and went into independent production on his own, and for 35 years was the boss and sole proprietor of his own production company, a mini-studio specializing in expensive "quality" films, distributed initially by United Artists and later by RKO. His contract actors at various times included Vilma Bánky, Ronald Colman, Eddie Cantor, Gary Cooper, David Niven and Danny Kaye. In some cases, Goldwyn collected substantial fees for "lending" his stars to other producers. Touted by publicists for his "Goldwyn touch" and loathed by many of his hirelings for his habit of ordering films recast, rewritten and recut, Goldwyn is best remembered for his films that teamed director William Wyler and cinematographer Gregg Toland.- Actor
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First came to notice as a contestant on Groucho Marx's quiz show, You Bet Your Life (1950). His highly amusing personality won him bit parts in films, and he continued to work as a minor supporting player for years. He is the brother of Jose Gonzales-Gonzales. His most famous role was on John Wayne's movie Rio Bravo (1959).- Actor
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Cuba Gooding Jr. was born on January 2, 1968, in The Bronx, New York. His mother, Shirley (Sullivan), was a backup singer for The Sweethearts. His father, Cuba Gooding, was the lead vocalist for the R&B group The Main Ingredient, which had a hit with the song "Everybody Plays The Fool". His paternal grandfather was from Barbados.
Cuba's father moved the family to Los Angeles in 1972, only to leave them a few years later. Despite this setback, Cuba was able to maintain a positive outlook and overachieved throughout school. He attended four different high schools and was elected class president in three of them. While at high school, Cuba met and fell in love with Sara Kapfer, whom he later lived with for seven years before tying the knot in March 1994.
Following high school, Cuba studied Japanese martial arts for three years before turning his focus toward acting. Early on, he landed guest starring roles on shows like Hill Street Blues (1981) and MacGyver (1985). His first major role was in the 1991 box office surprise Boyz n the Hood (1991). He followed this success with supporting roles in major films like A Few Good Men (1992), Lightning Jack (1994) and Outbreak (1995).
In 1996, Cuba was cast as an arrogant but loyal football player in the Tom Cruise-Cameron Crowe film Jerry Maguire (1996). The film became a huge box office smash and earned Cuba an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His "Show Me The Money" line in the movie became a nationwide catchphrase. The role elevated him to superstar status, as many of Hollywood's top producers began to "show him the money" to appear in their films.
Since Jerry Maguire (1996), Cuba has managed to keep busy with a wide range of roles alongside many of Hollywood's biggest stars. Most recently, he won critical support for his portrayal of a mentally handicapped man in the heartwarming film Radio (2003), another movie about football. In 2002, he was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
He resides in Studio City, California.- Sound Department
- Executive
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Louis Gossett Jr. was one of the most respected and beloved actors on stage, screen and television and was also an accomplished writer, producer and director. Off-screen, he was a social activist, educator, and author dedicated to enriching the lives of others. He was the first African-American to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his unforgettable performance as drill Sergeant Emil Foley in "An Officer and a Gentleman".
Among his other awards were an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor for his portrayal of Fiddler in the groundbreaking ABC series "Roots", a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for "The Josephine Baker Story" and a Golden Globe for "An Officer and a Gentleman". He was nominated for seven Primetime Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes, one Academy Award, five Images Awards, two Daytime Emmy Awards and in 1992 received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He received numerous other honors throughout his illustrious career.
His film debut was in the 1961 classic movie "A Raisin in the Sun" with Sidney Poitier. Other film credits include "The Deep," "Blue Chips," "Daddy's Little Girls," Tyler Perry's "Why Did I Get Married Too?," "Firewalker," "Jaws-3D," "Enemy Mine" and "Iron Eagle" 1-4, among many others. Television credits include "Extant," "Madam Secretary," "Boardwalk Empire," "Family Guy", and "ER", among dozens of others.
Gossett authored the bestselling autobiography "An Actor and a Gentleman", recounting the challenges and triumphs of his 50+ year career. Gossett was recognized as much for his humanitarian efforts as for his accomplishments as an actor. In 2006, he founded The Eracism Foundation which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to eradicating racism. The foundation provides young adults with tools to live a racially diverse and culturally inclusive life. Programs focus on fostering cultural diversity, historical enrichment, education and anti-violence initiatives.
Gossett was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and made his stage debut when he was 17 years old in "Take a Giant Step", which was selected as one of the 10 best Broadway shows of 1953 by the New York Times. He had two sons and resided in Malibu until his death in Santa Monica, California, in 2024, aged 87.- Although Dutch-born silent screen femme fatale Jetta Goudal (pronounced Zhett-eh Goo-doll) may be pretty much forgotten today, she was, in her glorious Hollywood heyday, a star rivaling that of Gloria Swanson and fellow vamps Barbara La Marr and Nita Naldi. The daughter of a Jewish orthodox diamond cutter in Amsterdam, she began her career on stage in Europe, traveling with various theater companies. Arriving in America (New York City) following the WWI armistice (1918), Juliette (Julie) Henriette Goudeket purposely disguised her Dutch and Jewish ancestry and her age, passing herself off as "Jetta Goudal," a Parisienne born in Versailles in 1901 and the daughter of a lawyer.
She first appeared on Broadway in the drama "The Hero" in March of 1921; that September she returned with the melodrama "The Elton Charm". Eventually testing for film. She attracted immediate attention with her first two small film roles and caught the eye of legendary producer/director Cecil B. DeMille. He hired her for what turned out to be some of her (and his) greatest critical successes, including her emotional roles in The Coming of Amos (1925), The Road to Yesterday (1925), White Gold (1927) and The Forbidden Woman (1927). Unfortunately, the exotic allure and element of mystery that made Goudal so popular on-screen came with a price. She was an unrepentant theatrical "grand dame" and possessed a fierce temper well known to the film community.
Her extreme difficulty on the set led to DeMille breaking her contract, which in turn led Goudal to file a landmark lawsuit against him. She charged him with breach of contract, while he claimed her diva-like tirades over every detail of production, from costumes and scenery to mere entrances, caused a multitude of delays and severe financial setbacks for the studio. Goudal, however, won the suit--one reason being that neither DeMille nor the studio could furnish financial records to back up their claims that she cost them untold thousands of dollars--and it set a precedent regarding actors' rights vs. studios' rights. The damage to her career and reputation, however, was sealed and she never recaptured her former glory. Moreover, with the arrival of sound her very thick French accent left her with limited offers.
Goudal married art director Harold Grieve in 1930 and retired from the screen permanently three years later. Along with her husband, she went into interior design and faded from the Hollywood scene. They had no children. Plagued by health problems (heart condition) in the 1960s, she suffered a serious fall in 1973 which left her an invalid. She died in 1985 and was interred in a private room at the Great Mausoleum, Sanctuary of the Angels, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. Her devoted husband was interred next to her upon his death in 1993. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Elizabeth Ruth Grable was born on December 18, 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri, to Lillian Rose (Hofmann) and John Conn Grable, a stockbroker. She had German, English, Irish, and Dutch ancestry. Her mother was a stubborn and materialistic woman determined to make her daughter a star. Elizabeth, who later became Betty, was enrolled in Clark's Dancing School at the age of three. With her mother's guidance, Betty studied ballet and tap dancing.
Betty and her mother set out for California with the hopes of stardom. She attended the Hollywood Professional school but Lillian lied about her daughter's age and Betty (real age 13), landed several minor parts as a chorus girl in early musicals (Whoopee! (1930), New Movietone Follies of 1930 (1930), Happy Days (1929) and Let's Go Places (1930)), initially billed as 'Frances Dean'. In 1932 (real age 15), she signed with RKO Radio Pictures and began to use the moniker 'Betty Grable'. The bit parts continued for the next three years. Betty finally landed a substantial part in By Your Leave (1934). One of her big roles was in College Swing (1938). Unfortunately, the public did not seem to take notice.
The following year, she married former child star Jackie Coogan. They briefly toured on vaudeville and his success boosted hers, but they divorced in 1940. When she landed the role of Glenda Crawford in Down Argentine Way (1940), the public finally took notice of this shining bright star. Stardom came in such comedies as Coney Island (1943) and Sweet Rosie O'Grady (1943).
The public was enchanted with Betty. Her famous pin-up pose during World War II adorned barracks all around the world. With that pin-up and as the star of lavish musicals, Betty became the highest-paid star in Hollywood. After the war, her star continued to rise. In 1947, the United States Treasury Department noted that she was the highest paid star in America, earning about $300,000 a year - a phenomenal sum even by today's standards. Later, 20th Century-Fox, who had her under contract, insured her legs with Lloyds of London for a million dollars. She continued to be popular until the mid-1950s, when musicals went into a decline. Her last film was How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955).
She then concentrated on Broadway and nightclubs. In 1965, she divorced band leader Harry James, whom she had wed in 1943. Her life was an active one, devoid of the scandals that plagued many stars in one way or another. She cared more for her family than stardom.
Betty Grable died at age 56 of lung cancer on July 2, 1973 in Santa Monica, California, five days before Veronica Lake's death. She was interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Gloria Grahame Hallward, an acting pupil of her mother (stage actress and teacher Jean Grahame), acted professionally while still in high school. In 1944 Louis B. Mayer saw her on Broadway and gave her an MGM contract under the name Gloria Grahame. Her debut in the title role of Blonde Fever (1944) was auspicious, but her first public recognition came on loan-out in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Although her talent and sex appeal were of star quality, she did not fit the star pattern at MGM, who sold her contract to RKO in 1947. Here the same problem resurfaced; her best film in these years was made on loan-out, In a Lonely Place (1950). Soon after, she left RKO. The 1950s, her best period, brought her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar and typecast her as shady, inimitably sultry ladies in seven well-known film-noir classics.
Rumors of being difficult to work with on the set of Oklahoma! (1955) helped sideline her film career from 1956 onward. She also suffered from marital and child-custody troubles. Eight years after divorce from Nicholas Ray, who was 12 years her senior (and reportedly had discovered her in bed with his 13 year old son), and after a subsequent marriage to Cy Howard ended in divorce, in 1960 she married her former stepson Anthony Ray (who was almost 14 years younger than she was.) This led former husbands Nicholas Ray and Cy Howard to sue Grahame; each man seeking custody of his respective child, putting gossip columnists and scandal sheets into overdrive. Grahame herself underwent electroconvulsive therapy after the ensuing stress caused a nervous breakdown. Surprisingly, however, Grahame and Anthony "Tony" Ray proved a happy couple. The union would be Grahame's longest marriage, lasting almost 14 years (10 years longer than her previous union with Ray's father); the couple had two children, Anthony Jr. and James.
In 1960, Grahame resumed stage acting, combined with TV work and, from 1970, some mostly inferior films. She was described as a serious, skillful actress; spontaneous, honest, and strong-willed; imaginative and curious; incredibly sexy but insecure about her looks (prompting plastic surgery on her famous lips); loving appreciative male company; "a bit loony". In 1975, she was treated for breast cancer. Five years later, she was diagnosed with cancer again, although it is unclear if this was a new cancer or a metastasis of her breast cancer. Grahame eventually moved to England in 1978. Her busiest period of British and American stage work ended abruptly in 1981 when she collapsed from cancer symptoms during a rehearsal. She wished to remain in Liverpool with her partner, Peter Turner (almost 30 years her junior), but after Turner notified her children of her health condition and impending death, two of her children flew to England to retrieve her, insisting she return to the United States. She died a few hours later that same day of stomach cancer and peritonitis at St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan on October 5, 1981 at age 57.- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
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).- Producer
- Actress
- Director
Daughter of Bernard Granville, Bonita Granville was born into an acting family. It's not surprising that she herself became a child actor, first on the stage and, at the age of 9, debuting in movies in Westward Passage (1932). She was regularly cast as a naughty little girl, as in These Three (1936) where she played Mary, an obnoxious girl spreading lies about her teachers. Her performance left an impression on the audience, and she was nominated for a best supporting actress award. In 1938-39 came the movies she is now best remembered for -- playing the bright and feisty detective/reporter Nancy Drew in the Nancy Drew series. She also appeared with Mickey Rooney in a few Andy Hardy movies. She never really had a movie breakthrough, and after marrying oil millionaire & later producer Jack Wrather, she retired from acting in the middle of the 1950s, although she went on to produce the Lassie (1954) TV series.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Sid Grauman was born on 17 March 1879 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. He was an actor, known for Mad About Music (1938), Hollywood (1923) and Hollywood on Parade No. A-6 (1933). He was married to Rose. He died on 5 March 1950 in Hollywood, California, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
The creator of 'the Shimmy' was a voluptuous, mischievous-eyed blonde dancer who was born Marianna Michalska in Krakow, Poland. Her parents died tragically and she was eventually adopted from an orphanage and her new parents took her to the U.S. in 1909, where she commenced her career singing in her foster-father's Chicago saloon. She then worked as a cabaret dancer in New York City and, so the story goes, discovered 'shimmying' by 'shaking her chemise' out of sheer nervousness during a performance. Whether or not this is true, she managed to attract the attention of pianist and bandleader Frank Westphal, who introduced her to his wife, vaudeville singer Sophie Tucker (whose suggestion, based on a character she had read about in a 10-cent magazine, prompted her stage-name change from 'May Gray' to the decidedly more glamorous 'Gilda.'
The year in which Gilda performed on stage in "The Gaieties of 1919" also saw her first 'scandalising' larger audiences with her hips and shoulders- undulating 'shimmy' (a follow-up to this was her 'Voodoo Dance' of 1923, The illusion of respectability was maintained by keeping her facial expression passive and innocent. Attempts by moral purists to outlaw the 'shimmy' largely failed; for a time it remained the most popular exhibition dance for café society sophisticates and a 'must-have' requirement in the repertoire of any aspiring show girl.The Roaring Twenties offered a talented, extroverted gal many opportunities, and Gilda soon graduated to the big leagues, appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1922. Her signature dance, being ideally suited to cabaret and the revue stage, guaranteed her a profitable run on the Orpheum Circuit. However, what Gilda really craved was to be a movie actress.
Hollywood in the 1920s regularly recruited from the East Coast Stage. This was especially true of producer Jesse L. Lasky, who had built his company, Famous Players Lasky, on the box-office credo of established theatrical stars. Gilda was signed up in 1923. It soon became clear that her dancing attributes, rather than acting abilities, were to be emphasized. Though her first part was a forgettable bit as a nightclub dancer in Lawful Larceny (1923), Gilda soon found herself climbing the slippery pole of Hollywood stardom as the grass-skirted heroine of Aloma of the South Seas (1926), filmed not in the South Pacific but in the Caribbean. Based on a 1925 hit Broadway play, the picture grossed $3 million in the U.S. alone and became the most successful movie of its year. Gilda was to star again, this time for Samuel Goldwyn, in the exotic role of Takla, The Devil Dancer (1927). Sadly, both of these famous films are now considered lost. However, a survivor of Gilda's work is Piccadilly (1929), directed by Ewald André Dupont, a stylish silent melodrama in which Gilda stars as half of a dancing duo in a London nightclub on Piccadilly Circus. Commented the New York Times: "For a long time she has been docketed as an exponent of 'shimmy,' but in 'Piccadilly' she appears to show that acting is not above her" (July 14, 1929). Nonetheless, it must have been vexing for Gilda that co-star Anna May Wong had gathered the majority of critical plaudits. From then on, Gilda was glimpsed on-screen teaching the hootchie-kootchie to Henceforth, Gilda was glimpsed on-screen teaching the hootchie-kootchie to Jeanette MacDonald in Rose-Marie (1936). She was not seen in films again after that.
Having lost most of her savings in the 1929 stock market crash, Gilda fell on hard times. In 1931 she suffered a heart attack. Her three marriages had all ended in divorce. In 1941 she filed for bankruptcy. She briefly returned to the headlines when she launched a million-dollar lawsuit against Columbia that bizarrely claimed that the Rita Hayworth blockbuster Gilda (1946) was actually based on her life. The suit was dropped in 1954, resulting in what the papers claimed to be a 'substantial settlement.' Gilda entered the public consciousness again in 1953, when her philanthropic efforts to bring 6 Polish youngsters into the U.S. and provide for their education was highlighted by NBC's This Is Your Life (1950).
After a bout of food poisoning, Gilda died in December 1959 at the untimely age of 58. In an interview two years earlier, she had wistfully reflected on the Jazz Age, the time of speakeasies and flappers: "They might roar more today, honey, but we had more fun" (LA Times, December 23, 1959). Gilda has a star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Kathryn Grayson was born Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Hedrick in Winston-Salem, NC, on February 9, 1922. This pretty, petite brunette with a heart-shaped face was discovered by MGM talent scouts while singing on the radio. The studio quickly signed her to a contract, and she was given acting lessons along and had to pose for countless publicity photos. Kathryn, a coloratura soprano, made her first film in 1941, a "B" picture called Andy Hardy's Private Secretary (1941). She soon was cast opposite some of MGM's top musical stars of the 1940s, such as Gene Kelly and Mario Lanza. She was paired with Lanza a few times, but the two never got along due mostly to Lanza's hot temper and alcohol abuse. The pairing of Lanza and Grayson would never match the success of lyrical soprano Jeanette MacDonald and baritone Nelson Eddy, although Kathryn and MacDonald did become great friends. Jeanette became a mentor and an older sister figure for Kathryn.
Grayson's most memorable roles came in the early 1950s. They were Show Boat (1951), where she played "Magnolia", opposite Ava Gardner and Howard Keel; Kiss Me Kate (1953), playing actress "Lilli Vanessi", who portrayed "Katherine" in the movie's "show within a show", a musical version of "The Taming of the Shrew". In 1953 she exited MGM, then made only one more film, The Vagabond King (1956), at Paramount. She later worked in nightclubs and on stage.- Producer
- Actor
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Emmy and Academy Award-winning producer Brian Grazer has been making movies and television programs for more than 25 years. As both a writer and producer, he has been personally nominated for four Academy Awards, and in 2002 won the Best Picture Oscar for A Beautiful Mind (2001). In addition to winning three other Academy Awards, "A Beautiful Mind" also won four Golden Globe Awards (including Best Motion Picture Drama) and earned Grazer the first annual Awareness Award from the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign.
Over the years, Grazer's films and TV shows have been nominated for 43 Oscars and 198 Emmys. At the same time his movies have generated more than $15 billion in worldwide theatrical, music and video grosses. Reflecting this combination of commercial and artistic achievement, the Producers Guild of America honored Grazer with the David O. Selznick Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001. His accomplishments have also been recognized by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which in 1998 added Grazer to the short list of producers with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On March 6, 2003. ShoWest celebrated Grazer's success by honoring him with its Lifetime Achievement Award. On November 14, 2005, Grazer was honored in Los Angeles by the Fulfillment Fund. In May 2007 he was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the "100 Most Influential People in the World." On January 24 Grazer, along with his partner Ron Howard, was honored with the Milestone Award by the Producers Guild of America.
In addition to "A Beautiful Mind", Grazer's films include Apollo 13 (1995), for which Grazer won the Producers Guild's Darryl F. Zanuck Motion Picture Producer of the Year Award as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Picture of 1995; and Splash (1983), which he co-wrote as well as produced and for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay of 1986.
Grazer also produced the film adaptation of Peter Morgan's critically acclaimed play "Frost/Nixon" (Frost/Nixon (2008)), directed by Ron Howard. The film was nominated for 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture, and was also nominated for The Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures by the PGA.
Grazer also produced Angels & Demons (2009), the adaptation of Dan Brown's bast-selling novel, and Robin Hood (2010), directed by Ridley Scott and with Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett and Max von Sydow.
Some more of Grazer's feature film credits include the drama The Changeling (2006), directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Angelina Jolie; the Ridley Scott-directed drama American Gangster (2007), staring Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington; The Da Vinci Code (2006), the film adaptation of Dan Brown's international best-seller, starring Tom Hanks and directed by Oscar-winner Ron Howard; the tense drama The Inside Man (2005), directed by Spike Lee and starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster; Flightplan (2005); Cinderella Man (2005); the Sundance acclaimed documentary Inside Deep Throat (2005); the TV series Friday Night Lights (2006); 8 Mile (2002); Blue Crush (2002); Intolerable Cruelty (2003); How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000); The Nutty Professor (1996); Liar Liar (1997); Ransom (1996); My Girl (1991); Backdraft (1991); Kindergarten Cop (1990); Parenthood (1989); Clean and Sober (1988); and Spies Like Us (1985).
Grazer's television productions include Fox's hit Golden Globe and Emmy award winning Best Drama Series 24 (2001), NBC's Peabody Award-winning series "Friday Night Lights" and Fox's Lie to Me (2009), starring Tim Roth, which premiered in January 2009. He is also working on additional television projects including Parenthood (2010), based on his 1989 film, and Wonderland (2000), directed by Peter Berg. His additional television credits include Fox's Emmy award winning-Best Comedy Arrested Development (2003), CBS' Shark (2006), NBC's Miss Match (2003), WB's Felicity (1998), ABC's Sports Night (1998), as well as HBO's From the Earth to the Moon (1998), for which he won the Emmy for Outstanding Mini-Series.
Grazer began his career as a producer, developing television projects. It was while he was executive-producing TV pilots for Paramount Pictures in the early 1980s that Grazer first met Ron Howard, soon to become his friend and business partner. Their collaboration began in 1985 with the hit comedies Night Shift (1982) and Splash (1983), and in 1986 the two founded Imagine Entertainment, which they continue to run together as chairmen.- Director
- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
One of the more prolific American directors, Alfred E. Green entered films in 1912 as an actor for the Selig Polyscope Co. He became an assistant to director Colin Campbell and started directing two-reelers, turning to features in 1917. His career lasted into the mid-1950s but his output was mostly routine, though there were some gems among them. A solid, dependable journeyman, not given to flashy directorial touches, he was picked by Mary Pickford to direct quite a few of her pictures in the 1920s, and he guided Wallace Reid and Colleen Moore in several of their bigger hits. He directed Bette Davis in her Oscar-winning performance in Dangerous (1935) and was responsible for the commercial and critical success of The Jolson Story (1946). That film, however, was followed by a string of routine B pictures.
Green had suffered for many years from arthritis, which got worse as he got older. In an interview, producer Albert Zugsmith recalled that during the filming of Top Banana (1954) Green was so crippled by the disease that he was seldom able to move from the director's chair.
He made his last feature in 1954 and spent the remainder of his career directing episodic TV series.- Camera and Electrical Department
- Cinematographer
- Director
Jack N. Green was born on 18 November 1946 in San Francisco, California, USA. He is a cinematographer and director, known for Unforgiven (1992), The Bridges of Madison County (1995) and Beverly Hills Cop (1984).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Mitzi Green, also known as Mitze Green, was born Elizabeth Keno in The Bronx on October 22, 1920. At age 3, she began appearing in her parents' vaudeville act. In the early 1930s, she starred in several popular films with Paramount Pictures, including Tom Sawyer (1930) and Huckleberry Finn (1931). She became known as "Little Mitzi," and she was the first child star to sign for a multi-picture contract with Paramount. Green had a natural talent for comedy and mimicry, and audiences were impressed by her uncanny imitations of Greta Garbo and George Arliss. She was also a gifted singer, performing two songs in Girl Crazy (1932). But her career as "Little Mitzi" would not last. Green matured quickly, and at age 14 she was cast in an adult role in Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (1934), which marked the end of her career as a child star. Green left Hollywood and spent the next several years performing on Broadway and in night clubs. She starred in the original Broadway production of Rogers' and Hart's Babes in Arms, where she introduced the classic song "My Funny Valentine." During this time she appeared in only one film, Santa Fe Trail (1940), in which she had a bit part. Green's career as an adult star in Hollywood began in 1952, when she re-emerged on screen in Lost in Alaska (1952), opposite Abbott and Costello. She also appeared in Bloodhounds of Broadway (1952) and the sitcom So This Is Hollywood (1955), in which she played a perceptive stunt woman. After many years of retirement, Green died of cancer on May 24, 1969, in Huntington Beach, California. She was 48. She is buried in Eden Memorial Park Cemetery in Mission Hills, California.- Actress
- Soundtrack
As a baby, she was winning beauty contests; as a teenager, with good looks and an attractive contralto voice, she was singing with big bands (most notably Enric Madriguera's orchestra in Latin Club Del Rio in Washington, D.C.. She met Rudy Vallee, her first husband, on the radio where she also enjoyed a brief stint as a singer. At age 15, an attack of palsy left her face partially paralyzed. She claimed that it was through facial exercises to overcome the paralysis that she learned the efficacy of facial expression in conveying human emotion, a skill she was renowned for using in her acting.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Corinne Griffith was a popular star of the silent movies. She started her film career at Vitagraph in 1916 and later moved to First National, where she became one of that studio's biggest stars. At the height of her popularity she was known as the "Orchid Lady of the Screen." Black Oxen (1923) was one of her most popular films. In 1925 she made Déclassé (1925), which featured a young extra named Clark Gable.
Corinne received an Academy Award nomination for her work in The Divine Lady (1928), but sound did not embrace her in the same way that the silent films had. Music was a popular device used in many early sound movies, but she quickly proved that she was not cut out to be a singer, and the fact that her acting style remained rooted in the wooden pre-sound days didn't help matters. Her last Hollywood film was released in 1930. After appearing in an English film in 1932, she retired. She appeared in one final film, Paradise Alley (1962), a low-budget Hugo Haas potboiler.- Director
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- Producer
David Wark Griffith was born in rural Kentucky to Jacob "Roaring Jake" Griffith, a former Confederate Army colonel and Civil War veteran. Young Griffith grew up with his father's romantic war stories and melodramatic nineteenth-century literature that were to eventually shape his movies. In 1897 Griffith set out to pursue a career both acting and writing for the theater, but for the most part was unsuccessful. Reluctantly, he agreed to act in the new motion picture medium for Edwin S. Porter at the Edison Company. Griffith was eventually offered a job at the financially struggling American Mutoscope & Biograph Co., where he directed over four hundred and fifty short films, experimenting with the story-telling techniques he would later perfect in his epic The Birth of a Nation (1915).
Griffith and his personal cinematographer G.W. Bitzer collaborated to create and perfect such cinematic devices as the flashback, the iris shot, the mask and cross-cutting. In the years following "Birth", Griffith never again saw the same monumental success as his signature film and, in 1931, his increasing failures forced his retirement. Though hailed for his vision in narrative film-making, he was similarly criticized for his blatant racism. Griffith died in Los Angeles in 1948, one of the most dichotomous figures in film history.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
Raymond Griffith was born on January 23, 1895 in Boston, Massachusetts into a theatrical family. His parents, James Henry Griffith and Mary Guichard, were both actors, as were his grandfather, Gerald Griffith, and his great grandfather, Thomas Griffith. Young Raymond made his stage debut when he was 15 months old and by the age of seven played the eponymous lead in "Little Lord Fauntleroy." By the time he was eight, he was playing a female role in "Ten Nights in a Barroom."
A childhood case of respiratory diphtheria permanently damaged his vocal chords, and when he was a young boy, Raymond lost his voice while playing a part in "The Witching Hour." "Photoplay" magazine's May 1925 issue reported that his voice went out while he was letting out a scream as his character was about to be beaten, as was required by the script.
"The audience heard a piercing shriek from the boy as he cringed before the whip. That was all. The terror on the boy's face was the terror of realism; he was stricken dumb. He could not speak a line after that scream. He has never spoken a line from the stage since then. His recovery was so gradual that he could not speak above a whisper for years, and he has never recovered the full carrying power, which the stage demands."
The loss of voice was permanent. No longer able to act, Raymond joined a circus, then worked as a dancer and dance teacher at New York City's Grand Central Palace. He subsequently joined the vaudeville circuit, eventually undertaking a European tour with a company of French pantomimists.
Eventually, he joined the U.S. Navy in 1910, when he was 15 years old, and served a two year hitch. Many sources claim his both year as 1890, which likely is the date he gave the Navy in order to enlist.
It has been claimed that after his discharge, he went to California in 1914 where he was hired as an extra by Vitagraph while visiting a friend on a set. Another story has him arriving in California as part of a vaudeville tour and staying to appear in the movies, getting his first job with Kalem in 1915. What is known for sure is that he was working for the L-KO Motion Picture Kompany in 1915, and that he left the studio in early 1916 to work for Mack Sennett, probably primarily as a gag man and scenario writer, though he did perform in Sennett's comedy shorts.
Except for a brief stay at Fox, Griffith worked for Sennett until moving to Triangle in 1917, where he worked as a movie comedian as well as a gagman and scenario writer. Drafted for service in World War I, Griffith was not inducted because of his vocal problems.
Griffith returned to Sennett in 1918, and stayed with him for three years. Eventually, he did less acting and focused more on scenario writing. Leaving Sennett in June 1921 for Marshall Neilan, Griffith returned to acting. The association with Neilan lasted until the Fall of 1922, when he signed with Goldwyn Pictures.
Griffith's first movie for his new studio was the mystery-melodrama "Red Lights" (1924). He appeared in Tod Browning's "The Day of Faith (1923)" with Eleanor Boardman and 'Tyrone Power, Sr.' and "The White Tiger" (1923) with Priscilla Dean and Wallace Beery for Goldwyn, though the latter film was ultimately released by Universal. After the Browning picture, Griffith made just one more movie for Goldwyn, "Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model" (1924) with Hobart Bosworth and Mae Busch before signing on with Famous Players-Lasky (Paramount).
During his Goldwyn period, Griffith created an acting style uniquely his own that was a hybrid of the comedic and the dramatic. In his Goldwyn films he played detectives & journalists and characters not entirely on the side of the law. His characters were not explicitly comic, but the characterizations were infused with Griffith's panache, spiced with comic business that occasionally crossed the threshold into slapstick. The style often tipped the scenarios over into farce. It was this style that attracted the attention of Paramount.
The first movie Griffith made at Paramount was Cecil B. DeMille's "Changing Husbands" (1924). His turn in "Paths to Paradise" (1925) won him the highest critical praise, and "Screenland" predicted that he would soon become Charles Chaplin's top rival. In 1926, he made the Civil War comedy "Hands Up!" (1926) that is widely considered his best comedy. Movie critic Walter Kerr wrote in his 1975 book "The Silent Clowns "'Hands Up!' contains some work that is daring for its period, certainly and some that is masterfully delicate, the work of an inventive, unaggressive, amiably iconoclastic intelligence."
He continued to do highly praised work in 1926, but his two films of 1927 failed to engender positive reviews. Griffith and Paramount subsequently terminated his contract "by mutual consent."
On January 8, 1928, Raymond Griffith married the stage and film actress Bertha Mann, and they spent a six-month honeymoon in Europe. Griffith didn't appear in any movies in 1928, although he reportedly had several projects in development, including one with 'Howard Hughes' (qv. The couple's first child, Raymond, Jr., tragically was stillborn on June 6, 1929. They had a second child, Michael, who was born on July 16, 1931, and adopted a daughter, Patricia, in 1933. They were married almost 29 years, until Griffith's death.
When Griffith returned to movie-making, he was faced with the prospect of sound. He soldiered on despite his vocal handicap, and made two sound short subjects in 1929.
Alas, it was impossible to be a featured actor in the new medium with a voice that barely rose above a whisper. He made one last appearance, uncredited, as the French soldier whom Lew Ayres mortally wounds and then shares his shell-hole for the night in the classic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Because of his wounds, the French soldier cannot speak above a whisper, which enabled Griffith to play the role. The scene, in which the French soldier slowly dies, is made harrowing and haunting by Griffith's performance. Griffith's final appearance onscreen turned out to be one of the most memorable in movie history.
Griffith retired from acting, but not from the movies. He continued to work in the movie industry as a production supervisor and associate producer.
Raymond Griffith was dining at Los Angeles' Masquers Club, a private establishment for actors and producers, on November 25, 1957, when he choked on some food and died of asphyxia. He was 62 years old.- Actress
- Producer
It's hard to be very specific about any dates or events early in the life of Texas Guinan. She loved publicity and frequently improvised facts about herself when she felt they made better stories than the truth. She was born in Waco, Texas, but likely not on a ranch as she often claimed. She was active in vaudeville and theater, and was in many movies (often as the gun-toting hero in silent westerns, more than a match for any man). In the prohibition era, Tex's talents for entertainment and self-promotion came together for a successful career as the owner and hostess in night clubs and speakeasies, where she made certain everyone had a good time.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Alec Guinness was an English actor. He is known for his six collaborations with David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948), Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor), Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962), General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965), and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984).
Guinness is really most remembered for his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' original Star Wars trilogy for which he receive a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In 1959, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to the arts. In the 1970s, Guinness made regular television appearances in Britain, including the role of George Smiley in the serialisations of two novels by John le Carré: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) and Smiley's People (1982). In 1980 he received the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement.
Guinness was also one of three British actors, along with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, who made the transition from Shakespearean theatre in England to Hollywood blockbusters immediately after the Second World War.
Guinness died on 5 August 2000, from liver cancer, at Midhurst in West Sussex.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Steve Guttenberg was born on August 24, 1958 to Ann Newman and Stanley Guttenberg in Boropark, Brooklyn.The family moved from Brooklyn, to Queens, and then to N. Massapequa, where Steve graduated Plainedge High School in 1976. He studied acting both on Long Island and in N.Y.City, moving to L.A. to pursue a film career. His work has ranged from broad comedy to suspense and drama, including number one box office hits and The AFI's chosen 100. Guttenberg made his acting debut in The Boys From Brazil with Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck. From that recognition, he attracted a variety of leading roles including the film classic Diner(1983), which was chosen by Vanity Fair as the Best Film of the Last Thirty Years, and the broad comedy, Police Academy(1984) which continues to be one of the highest earning film franchises ever. in 1985 Guttenberg's fame increased with Cocoon, a life affirming film of the highest order. The science fiction genre continued with Short Circuit(1986), John Badham's ground breaking artificial intelligence film. Steve worked opposite Isabelle Hupert in Curtis Hansen's Bedroom Window(1986), the heralded Hitchcockian thriller, In 1987, Disney released Three Men and a Baby, Leonard Nimoys popular movie about bachelors raising a child. The film went on to announce itself as the number one grossing film of the year ,and provided a successful sequel. On the legitimate stage, Guttenberg appeared in The Boys Next Door(1993) in London's West End, Prelude to a Kiss (1995) on Broadway, and Furthest From The Sun (2000) at the june Lune Theatre in Minneapolis animist recently playing Henry Percy in (20150 The Hudson Warehouse Theatre's production of Henry IV. He has produced an Emmy nominated television special, Gangs, performed in the original Miracle On Ice, and also ABC's The Day After, still one of the most watched television events of this century. Steve has written The Guttenberg Bible, a comedic account of his first ten years in the film industry, and The Kids from DISCO, a superhero children's book relating a story about his nieces and nephews. He guested on Veronica Mars, Party Down, Community and Law and Order,(as every N.Y. actor should). Guttenberg has the record for most original films to go to franchises in film history, and appearing in the most films in The Screen Actors Guild from 1980-1990 tying Gene Hackman. He received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and continues to learn and study his beloved craft. In 2016 Emily Smith and he became happily engaged.- Actor
- Soundtrack
There are very few character actors from the 1930s, '40s or '50s who rose to the rank of stardom. Only a rare man or woman reached the level of renown and admiration, and had enough audience appeal, to be the first name in a cast's billing, a name that got marquee posting. Charles Coburn comes to mind, but there aren't many others. However, one who made it was Edmund Gwenn.
Gwenn was born Edmund Kellaway in Wandsworth, London, on September 26, 1877. He was the oldest boy in the family, which at that time meant he was the only one who really mattered. His father was a British civil servant, and he groomed Edmund to take a position of power in the Empire. However, early on, the boy had a mind of his own. For a while, his inclination was to go to sea, but that ended when one of his forebear's in the Queen's Navy was court-martialed for exceeding his "wine bill". In addition to that, Edmund had poor eyesight and perhaps most importantly, he was his mother's darling, and she kept having visions of shipwrecks and desert island strandings. As for the civil service, to the boy it seemed like a "continent of unexplored boredom".
He attended St. Olaf's College and would attend King's College in London as well. Surprisingly, he excelled at rugby and amateur boxing. Meanwhile, he developed a strong inclination to the stage, partly because of his admiration for the great English actor, Henry Irving. A major roadblock to that ambition, however, was his father, who, at that time, was stationed in Ireland. When Edmund broke the news to his father that he had chosen acting as a career, there followed "a scene without parallel in Victorian melodrama." His father called the theatre "that sink of iniquity." He predicted that, if Edmund went into theatre, he would end up in the gutter, and then literally "showed him the door." Years later his father would admit he had been wrong, but that didn't help the young man during an all-night crossing from Dublin to England during which he had time to reflect. He was penniless. His experience consisted of a few performances in amateur productions, and he knew that if he failed, there was no going back home.
However, in 1895, at the age of eighteen, he made his first appearance on the English stage with a group of amateurs just turned professional, playing two roles, "Dodo Twinkle" and "Damper", in "Rogue and Vagabond". For a long time afterward, he refused to go on stage without a false beard or some other disguise, fearing someone would recognize him and tell his father (it's a bit ironic, by the way, that Edmund's younger brother Arthur would also become an actor using the name of Arthur Chesney). During the next few years, roles were hard to come by but, by 1899, he made his first appearance on the West End in London in "A Jealous Mistake". This was followed by ten years in the hinterlands acting with stock and touring companies, gradually working his way up from small parts to juicier roles. While with Edmund Tearle's Repertory Company, which toured the provinces, he played a different role each night. It was excellent training, in that he acted in everything from William Shakespeare to old melodrama.
About this time, he married Minnie Terry, niece of the more famous actress Ellen Terry, a marriage that evidently was short-lived. Most sources list it as beginning and ending in 1901, perhaps only for a matter of days or even hours. From that point, Gwenn would remain a bachelor for the rest of his life. He seems to have preferred not going into any details about the marriage and divorce, and Minnie Terry, who outlived Gwenn, apparently never mentioned what happened, at least not publicly. That same year, however, he went to Australia and acted there for three years, not returning to London until 1904. There, he took a small part in "In the Hospital", which led to his receiving a postcard from George Bernard Shaw, offering him a leading role as "Straker", the Cockney chauffeur, in "Man and Superman". Gwenn accepted (by this time he was Edmund Gwenn) and the play was a success. Shaw became a sort of professional godfather for him. He appeared in "John Bull's Island", "Major Barbara", "You Never Can Tell", "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" and "The Devil's Disciple", all by Shaw. He spent three years in Shaw's company, years which he called "the happiest I've ever had in the theatre".
From 1908 until 1915, he performed in new plays by noted playwrights of the time, including John Masefield's "The Campden Wonder", 'John Galsworthy''s "Justice" and "The Skin Game", J.M. Barrie's "What Every Woman Knows" and "The Twelve Pound Look", as well as Henrik Ibsen's "The Wild Duck" and Harley Granville-Barker's "The Voysey Inheritance". By this time, World War I had started and Gwenn, despite his poor eyesight, was conscripted into the British Army. Most of his time during "The Great War" was spent drawing supplies up to the front lines, while under fire. He was so successful at this task that, after a year as a private, he received a steady stream of promotions until eventually becoming a captain.
After the War, he returned to the stage and, in 1921, made his first appearance in the US in "A Voice from the Minaret" and "Fedora". He would return to America in 1928 to replace his friend, Dennis Eadie, who had died while in rehearsal for "The House of Arrows", but for most of this time, he was in England doing more stage roles and two dozen British films.
His first appearance on screen was in a British short, The Real Thing at Last (1916) in 1916, while he was still in the army. His next film roles were in Shaw's How He Lied to Her Husband (1931) and J.B. Priestley's The Good Companions (1933). He was also in Unmarried (1920) in 1920 and a silent version of "The Skin Game" (The Skin Game (1921)) as "Hornblower", a role he would reprise in 1931 for a talking version (The Skin Game (1931)) directed by Alfred Hitchcock. From then on, Gwenn was to work steadily until the end of his life. He appeared in English stage plays and films, eventually doing more and more on Broadway and in Hollywood. For example, he played the amiable counterfeiter in "Laburnum Grove" in 1933 (later to become the film Laburnum Grove (1936) in which he would star) and then with the entire British company brought it to New York. He was also a huge success in "The Wookey" in 1942, playing a Cockney tugboat captain. That same year, he appeared as "Chebutykin" in Anton Chekhov's "The Three Sisters", with Katharine Cornell, Ruth Gordon and Judith Anderson. In such illustrious company, Gwenn was hailed by critics as "magnificent" and "superlatively good".
In 1935, RKO summoned him to Hollywood to portray Katharine Hepburn's father in Sylvia Scarlett (1935). From then on, he was much in demand, appearing in Anthony Adverse (1936), All American Chump (1936), Parnell (1937), and A Yank at Oxford (1938). In 1940, he was the delightful "Mr. Bennet" in Pride and Prejudice (1940), then made a 180-degree turn by playing a folksy assassin in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940). The year 1941 brought Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941), One Night in Lisbon (1941), The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) and Scotland Yard (1941). Then came Charley's Aunt (1941), in which he romanced Jack Benny, masquerading as a woman. Other important films included A Yank at Eton (1942), The Meanest Man in the World (1943), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) and Between Two Worlds (1944).
In 1945, he played villain "Albert Richard Kingby" in Dangerous Partners (1945). There is a peculiar scene in this film, which makes one wonder what director Edward L. Cahn was thinking. James Craig and Signe Hasso, the hero and heroine, are being held by the villainous Gwenn in a room, when Gwenn comes in to interrogate them. In the midst of this, the 33-year-old, 6'2" Craig punches the 68-year-old, 5'5" Gwenn in the belly and then forces the doubled-over Gwenn to release them. Admittedly, Craig and Hasso must escape, and Gwenn's character is pretty evil, but knocking the wind out of the old man makes Craig seem like a bully and far less sympathetic.
After "Dangerous Partners", Gwenn was in Bewitched (1945), She Went to the Races (1945), Of Human Bondage (1946), Undercurrent (1946), Life with Father (1947), Green Dolphin Street (1947) and Apartment for Peggy (1948). In Thunder in the Valley (1947), he played one of his most unlikable characters, a father who beats his son, smashes his violin and shoots his dog.
Then in 1947, he struck it rich. Twentieth Century-Fox was planning Miracle on 34th Street (1947). It had offered the role of "Kris Kringle" to Gwenn's cousin, the well-known character actor Cecil Kellaway, but he had turned it down with the observation that "Americans don't like whimsy". Fox then offered it to Gwenn, who pounced on it. His performance was to earn him an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor (at age 71) and, because it is rerun every Christmas season, he would become for many their all-time favorite screen Santa. Accepting the award, Gwenn said, "Now I know there is a Santa Claus". He beat out some stiff competition: Charles Bickford (The Farmer's Daughter (1947)), Thomas Gomez (Ride the Pink Horse (1947)), Robert Ryan (Crossfire (1947)) and Richard Widmark (Kiss of Death (1947)). As soon as he got the part, Gwenn went to work turning himself into Santa Claus. Though rotund, Gwenn didn't feel he was rotund enough to look like the jolly old elf most people expected after having read Clement Moore's "The Night before Christmas", in which Santa "had a broad face and a little round belly / That shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly." He could of course wear padding, but he resisted that as too artificial. So he put on almost 30 pounds for the role, a fair amount for a man of his short stature, and added nearly five inches to his waistline. The problem was that after the film was finished, Gwenn found it hard to lose the extra weight. "I've been stocky all my adult life," he said, "but now I must accept the fact that I'm fat." As was his nature, he didn't get upset, and instead was able to laugh about it. Six years later, when playing an elderly professor in The Student Prince (1954), he had a scene in which he entered the Prince's chamber, struggling with the buttons of a ceremonial uniform. The line he was given was, "I'm too old to wear a uniform," but Gwenn suggested a change which stayed in the finished film, "I'm too old and fat to wear a uniform."
Gwenn had lost his hair early on, and had no more concern about it than he did about his portliness. In a fair number of films, such as Pride and Prejudice (1940), he appears bald, but he also played many roles with a toupee if he felt that worked better for the character. He would select a hairpiece that helped achieve the look he was after for the role. As regards the rest of his appearance, Gwenn is commonly listed as 5'6" tall, which may have been accurate when he was a younger man, but by the time he was a Hollywood regular he appears to be at least two inches shorter. Plagued by weak eyesight since his youth, Gwenn wore a pince-nez for a while, and then glasses, off-screen and sometimes on. Though he enjoyed fine clothes, he does not seem to have been in the least bit vain about any physical shortcomings he may have had. He looked a bit like a benign clergyman, perhaps of the Anglican faith, an image enhanced by his soft, almost soothing voice. He once said he was "always short and stocky, and not a particularly handsome thing. I could never play romantic leads." After "Miracle on 34th Street," however, Gwenn was a star and constantly in demand, especially when the role called for a kindly eccentric.
Gwenn remained a British subject all his life. When he first moved to Hollywood, he lived at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. His home in London had been reduced to rubble during the bombings by the Luftwaffe in World War II. Only the fireplace survived. What Gwenn regretted most was the loss of the memorabilia he had collected of the famous actor Henry Irving. Eventually Gwenn bought a house at 617 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills, which he was to share with his secretary and "confidential man", Ernest C. Bach, and later with former Olympic athlete Rodney Soher.
The year 1950 brought a pair of interesting films. In Louisa (1950) he and Charles Coburn were romantic rivals for the hand of Spring Byington. In one scene Gwenn socks Coburn in the jaw, though Coburn later bests him in arm wrestling. Gwenn wins Byington's hand in the end. He was also delightful in Mister 880 (1950) as a kindly counterfeiter. Gwenn received his second Oscar nomination for his performance, though this time he lost out to George Sanders in All About Eve (1950) He did, however, win the Golden Globe Award.
In 1952 he appeared in Sally and Saint Anne (1952) as Grandpa Patrick Ryan, affecting an Irish brogue for the role. He played football coach Pop Doyle, teamed up with a chimpanzee, in Bonzo Goes to College (1952). "The Student Prince" followed in 1954, as did the science-fiction classic Them! (1954). This film raises an interesting observation. The year before, Cecil Kellaway had appeared in another sci-fi classic, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). Watch the two films together and you'll see that the two cousins are playing essentially the same role, that of an elderly scientist with a lovely daughter who is able to provide the hero, and the audience, with some scholarly background on the dangers they face. The two actors could easily have switched roles. "Them!" is noteworthy, too, in that it was a particularly physically painful part for Gwenn. By this time he was 77 and suffering from advanced arthritis. Several scenes in the movie were filmed in the desert, where the temperature often reached 110 degrees. The costumer had outfitted him in a wool suit for some of the early scenes. Joan Weldon, who played his daughter, has noted that Gwenn was in great discomfort and almost certainly could not have continued without the help of his valet, Ernest.
The next year Gwenn was in It's a Dog's Life (1955) and The Trouble with Harry (1955). His film work has some interesting patterns. "Dog's Life" was at least the third time Gwenn made a film centered on a dog. He had already co-starred with Pal as Lassie in Lassie Come Home (1943) and Challenge to Lassie (1949). "Harry" was Gwenn's fourth picture directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the others being "The Skin Game", Strauss' Great Waltz (1934) and "Foreign Correspondent". Gwenn's last feature film was The Rocket from Calabuch (1956), shot in Spain and released in 1958, when he was 81. As for TV, his most memorable role may have been as a snowman that comes to life in a Christmas night telecast on The Ford Television Theatre (1952) from a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Heart of Gold".
Gwenn's final days were spent at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, California. Having endured terrible arthritis for many years, he had suffered a stroke, and then contracted pneumonia, from which he died at age 81 on September 6, 1959. His body was cremated, and his ashes were originally stored in a private vault at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles. In March 2023, Gwenn's misplaced urn was found in the vault by Hollywood Graveyard creator Arthur Dark and researcher Jessical Wahl. Dark and Wahl created a GoFundMe campaign to fund moving Gwenn's urn to a publicly accessible location and, on December 3, 2023, Gwenn's urn was reinurned in the Cathedral Mausoleum at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Gwenn had appointed Rodney Soher as the executor of his will, in which he had left Minnie Terry one-third of his estate, his sister Elsie Kellaway a third, and Ernest Bach a third, in addition to his clothes, shoes, linens, ties and luggage. However, for some reason, while he was spending his last days at the Motion Picture Home, Gwenn signed a codicil to his will, in which he said he had given Bach the lump sum of $5000, and that was all he was to receive. After Gwenn's death, Bach challenged the codicil, claiming that Gwenn was not of sound mind while in the Home and that some unnamed person--possibly referring to Soher--had unduly influenced Gwenn to change his will. The outcome is not known. There is a story that has been around for years that shortly before he died a visitor observed, "It must be hard [to die]", to which Gwenn replied, "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard". The story and the wording vary somewhat from teller to teller. Gwenn may indeed have said it, but he may have been repeating someone else. The quotation has also been ascribed to several earlier wits, including his mentor George Bernard Shaw and the famous actor Edward Keane. Gwenn's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame can be found at 1751 Vine Street.