Birthdays: May 18
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A veteran of stage and screen, award-winning actress Miriam Margolyes has achieved success on both sides of the Atlantic. Winner of the BAFTA Best Supporting Actress award in 1993 for The Age of Innocence (1993), she received Best Supporting Actress at the 1989 LA Critics Circle Awards for her role in Little Dorrit (1987) and a Sony Radio Award for Best Actress in 1993. She voiced "Fly, the dog" in Babe (1995).
Major credits include Yentl (1983), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), I Love You to Death (1990), End of Days (1999), Sunshine (1999), Cold Comfort Farm (1995), Cats & Dogs (2001), and Magnolia (1999). She played "Prof. Sprout" in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002). More recently, she appeared in Stephen Hopkins', The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), Modigliani (2004), István Szabó's Being Julia (2004) and Ladies in Lavender (2004) (with Dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench).
Memorable television credits include Old Flames (1990), Freud (1984), The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1986), Blackadder (1982), The Girls of Slender Means (1975), Oliver Twist (1985), The History Man (1981), Vanity Fair (2004), and Supply & Demand (1997).
Stage credits include Peter Hall's Los Angeles production of "Romeo & Juliet"; "She Stoops to Conquer" and "Orpheus Descending" (both also for Peter Hall); "The Threepenny Opera" (directed by Tony Richardson); "The White Devil" at The Old Vic (for Michael Lindsay-Hogg); the Bristol Old Vic production of "The Canterbury Tales"; and her own award-winning one-woman show, "Dickens' Woman".
In the 2002 Queen's New Years Honours List, Queen Elizabeth II awarded her the OBE for her services to Drama.- Adamari Lopez was born on May 8th, in Puerto Rico. When she was 8 years old she appeared in the telenovela "Maria Eugenia" in which she was given a good part. She then had roles in "Yo se Que entita", "Vivir Para Ti", "Aventurera". When she was 12, she participated in projects from Puerto Rico-Venezuela - Diana Carolina and El Angel del Barrio, and after she returned home she worked in the theater in the plays "Romeo y Julieta", "Panorama Deste el Puente".
She has taken part in the movies Linda Sara (1994), "La Guagua Airea", "Heroes de Otra Patria", _Paradise Lost (1999)_. In Puerto Rico she received the TV Novelas award for best actress of the second plan for a miniseries "Hasta el Fondo del Dolor" in 1992. In 1993, she won best actress, for the telenovela "Liros Y Suenos", and in 1998 she was recognized as the actress, who can play any role. In 1999, she won the award Quijote for her international work. The same year Adamari went to Mexico to work for Televisa. She has played in the telenovelas _"Sin Ti" (1998)_, Camila (1998), _"Locura de amor" (2000/I)_. Her excellent acting has been recognized in Mexico. - Actress
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Alana Stewart was born on 18 May 1945 in San Diego, California, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Delivered (2011), Wasted in Babylon (1999) and Evel Knievel (1971). She was previously married to Rod Stewart and George Hamilton.- Music Department
- Composer
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Pop/rock singer, songwriter and guitarist Albert Louis Hammond was born on May 18, 1944 in London, England. He was the second of three children. His father was a firefighter. Hammond grew up in Gibraltar and learned how to fluently speak both English and Spanish. Albert sang in the church as a kid and was a choir boy. In 1958 Hammond and his friend Richard Cartwright began performing as a duo in both Spain and Gibraltar. In 1960 Albert joined the band The Diamond Boys, who performed at nightclubs in Madrid. Hammond subsequently dropped out of school to pursue a career in music. In 1966 Albert co-founded the British vocal group Family Dogg, who had a Top 10 UK radio hit with "A Way of Life" in 1966. It was during this time that Hammond met fellow musician and future songwriting collaborator Mike Hazelwood. In 1972 Albert scored a massive international smash with the fine and touching song "It Never Rains in Southern California;" the song peaked at #5 on the US pop charts and sold a million copies worldwide. Such equally excellent follow-up songs as "The Free Electric Band," "Down by the River," "I'm a Train," and "I Don't Wanna Die in an Air Disaster" likewise did well. Among the many artists Hammond has co-written songs for are The Hollies ("The Air That I Breathe"), Johnny Matthis ("99 Miles from LA"), Leapy Lee ("Little Arrows"), Joe Dolan ("Make Me an Island," "You're Such a Good Looking Woman"), The Pipkins ("Gimme Dat Ding"), Chicago (""I Don't Wanna Live Without Your Love"), Johhny Cash ("Smokey Factory Blues"), Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias ("To All the Girls I've Loved Before"), Leo Sayer ("When I Need You"), Tina Turner ("Love Thing," "I Don't Wanna Lose You"), Ziggy Marley & The Melodymakers ("Give a Little Love"), and Starship ("Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now"). In the late 70's Albert recorded a bunch of Spanish language singles and albums that were extremely successful in Spain. In 1988 Hammond wrote "One Moment in Time," which was performed by Whitney Houston at the Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. More recently Albert released the album "Revolution of the Heart" in 2005. His son Albert Hammond, Jr. is a member of the popular garage rock band The Strokes. Albert Hammond was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 19, 2008.- Music Department
- Actor
- Composer
Ali Zafar is one of Asia's most multi-faceted talents and Pakistan's most celebrated artiste. An accomplished actor, musician/ singer-songwriter/producer and a fine artist, Ali is the first actor from Pakistan to have taken his work global by being the first Pakistani to feature as the main lead in the mainstream Bollywood market with 6 feature films to his credit and 3 box office hits. His work in music set new standards of imagination and creativity both in his songs and music videos & has definitively shaped the nature of Pakistan's burgeoning music industry since his first album selling over 4 million copies worldwide. His consistent desire/efforts to push the boundaries for South Asian actors in Pakistan has pioneered new avenues for local actors, following in his footsteps into the mainstream Indian film industry popularly known as "Bollywood". He has been chosen as ambassador to the largest brands in the world including Coca-Cola, Samsung, Sprite, Yamaha, Nokia, Pepsi Cola, Telenor, etc. and was voted as "the sexiest Asian man" in the British magazine Eastern Eye beating the likes of Hrithik Roshan, Shahrukh Khan etc. He was featured alongside one of the most popular stars in the world, Shahrukh Khan in the film "Dear Zindagi".
A passionate humanitarian with a seasoned history of supporting those in need, Ali is the chair of The Ali Zafar Foundation to help empower those less fortunate. He specifically focuses on women's education and empowerment and to that end is an ambassador for Girl Rising and an academy member of the Global Teacher Prize alongside Freida Pinto and Chelsea Clinton.- Actor
- Producer
Allen Leech was born on 18 May 1981 in Killiney, County Dublin, Ireland. He is an actor and producer, known for The Imitation Game (2014), Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) and Downton Abbey (2010). He has been married to Jessica Blair Herman since 5 January 2019.- Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Andreas from a working-class Greek-American family. Attracted from early childhood to being on stage when at 4 his mother took him to see a community theater performance, he took theatre as an extra-curricular activity in high school. He then majored in it at St. Louis University, where he worked his way through school doing things like waiting on tables. Next, after earning a drama fellowship, Katsulas received a Master's Degree in Theater Arts from one of the nation's top schools for the genre, Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
With never a doubt or hesitation, Andreas jumped right into the professional theater world, performing in plays in his native St. Louis with the Loretto-Hilton Repertory Theater. This was followed by work with the Theatre Company of Boston. After that, Katsulas moved to New York to some challenging off-off-Broadway theater at La Mama. This was followed by a fifteen-year heart and soul involvement with Peter Brook's International Theatre Company in Paris, performing around the world with a challenging combination of improvisational theater in every imaginable circumstance and space, and "prepared" theater pieces in traditional, as well as unconventional, theatrical spaces. Katsulas trod the boards from Lincoln Center in New York and The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to the "mean streets" of Brooklyn and marketplaces in remote African Villages. There were performances from elite Theater Festivals in Iran, Avignon and Belgrade: in prisons & mental institutions; at rock quarries in Australia; on barrios in Venezuela; in sewage plants in Switzerland; winding through the streets of Venice, Italy; in the fields with farm workers in California, near the lakes of Minnesota with Native Americans, in sometimes extreme conditions like snow, rain, and intensive heat.
During a hiatus from the stage, a part in Michael Cimino's The Sicilian (1987) brought Andreas to Los Angeles, after which he was immediately cast as Joey Venza in Ridley Scott's Someone to Watch Over Me (1987), then as Arthur, the chauffeur, in Blake Edwards's Sunset (1988).
In early 2005, Andreas was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer; he passed away a year later, in Los Angeles. He had lived there since 1986, and had hoped to return to working in the theater before his far-too-early death, just over three months shy of his 60th birthday. - Asia Vieira was born on 18 May 1982 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is an actress, known for A Home at the End of the World (2004), Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1990) and Goosebumps (1995).
- Actor
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Berto Colon was born on 18 May 1973 in Ponce, Puerto Rico. He is an actor, known for Conviction (2016), Orange Is the New Black (2013) and Show Me a Hero (2015).- Actor
- Soundtrack
Bill Macy was born on 18 May 1922 in Revere, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for The Jerk (1979), Maude (1972) and Analyze This (1999). He was married to Samantha Harper and Judith Janus. He died on 17 October 2019 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
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Bob Stephenson was born in sunny Camarillo, California, where he skateboarded, Boogie Boarded, played baseball and soccer, had a huge Lego collection, and watched loads of television. He was a latch-key kid to John Stephenson, a mechanical/civil engineer for the government, and Olive Stephenson, who had her masters in nursing. He went to a fancy boarding school (Stevenson) in Pebble Beach, California, where he designed and built sets for the theatrical department, and followed a best friend to The College of Idaho, where he played NCAA soccer. After two years in Idaho he transferred to UC Santa Barbara to continue his long tradition of making great friends and receiving poor grades. Upon graduating (5 year plan) he moved to Los Angeles, became a PA and began writing. A few notable directors (David Kellogg, Simon West, David Fincher, Spike Jonze...) read his work and hired him to write music video and commercial treatments. It wasn't long before they asked him to audition for commercials and the films they were directing and the rest is history. This guy is Amazing!!- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Brian Cutler was born on 18 May 1945 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Catalina Caper (1967), Emergency! (1972) and Mork & Mindy (1978). He is married to Jill Cutler.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Candice Azzara was born on 18 May 1945 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. She is an actress, known for Catch Me If You Can (2002), Fatso (1980) and Easy Money (1983).- Carlene Olson was born on 18 May 1955 in the USA. She is an actress, known for Frightmare (1983), Fraternity Row (1977) and Loski ft Stormzy: Flavour (2020). She was previously married to Michael Biehn.
- Castor Virgil Hetfield was born on 18 May 2000 in San Francisco, California, USA.
- Actor
- Stunts
Chad Donella was born on 18 May 1978 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is an actor, known for Knox Goes Away (2023), Shattered Glass (2003) and Final Destination (2000). He has been married to Joni Bertin since 2007.- Actress
- Composer
- Producer
Chantal Kreviazuk is a Canadian-born singer and songwriter from Winnipeg, Manitoba who began playing piano from ear at the age of three.
It wasn't though until 1994, while finding herself in Italy, Chantal was in a motorcycle accident and began thinking it was time to take her musical talents seriously. In 1996, she was finally signed to Sony Canada and her debut album, "Under These Rocks and Stones" was released. "Surrounded", "Wayne" and "Believer", all singles off the album, climbed the music charts and put Chantal on the map for all to see.
In 1998, Chantal recorded a cover of John Denver's, "Leaving on a Jetplane" for the Armageddon movie soundtrack, which went double platinum.
With her climbing success, Chantal released her sophomore album "Colour Moving and Still" in 1999 and the lead single, "Before You", a song about her then-fiance and now-husband, Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida, peaked within the top ten on the Much Music charts. Her other single that year, "Feels Like Home" was recorded for the Dawson's Creek soundtrack, as well as the film, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and has become one of her most iconic love tunes.
After tying the knot with Raine, Chantal concentrated on building and being there full-time for her family of three children, all boys. She returned to the music scene in 2002 with her third album, "What If It All Means Something" with the lead single "In This Life" receiving incredible airplay globally with an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and placing on the Adult Top 40, Album Heatseekers and Billboard music charts.
Since 2002, Chantal, now a two-time Juno Award winner for 'Best Pop Album' and 'Best Female Artist', released four other albums "Ghost Stories", "Since We Met: The Best of 1996-2006", "Plain Jane" and the 2012 live album, "In This Life".
Besides being in the spotlight, Chantal has written numerous hits for artists such as Kelly Clarkson (Walk Away), Drake (Over my Dead Body), Gwen Stefani (Rich Girl), Pit Bull & Christina Aguilera (Feel this Moment), along with other artists such as Avril Lavigne, Shakira, Josh Groban and Carrie Underwood. In 2014, Chantal's collaboration song with Kendrick Lamar and Jay Rock, "Pay For It" was performed on Saturday Night Live, and her written song "Wasted Love" for NBC The Voice's Matt McAndrew hit #1 on iTunes.
For her charity work with 'War Child Canada' amongst other notable organizations, at the 2014 Juno Awards, Chantal, alongside her husband Raine Maida, won the prestigious "Allan Waters Humanitarian Award". MTV has coined Chantal and Raine "one of Canada's most influential cultural couples" and "Canadian royalty".
With 2015 here, Chantal has once again charted the music airwaves with her latest single, I Will Be, a song in partnership with Kids Help Phone that speaks to her desire to want to help those who feel alone and isolated.- Actor
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- Soundtrack
Chow Yun Fat is a charismatic, athletically built and energetic Asian-born film star who first came to the attention of western audiences via his roles in the high-octane/blazing guns action films of maverick HK director John Woo.
Chow was born in 1955 on the quiet island of Lamma, part of the then-British colony of Hong Kong, near its famous Victoria Harbour. His mother was a vegetable farmer and cleaning lady, and his father worked on a Shell Oil Company tanker. Chow's family moved to urban Hong Kong in 1965 and in early 1973, Chow attended a casting call for TVB, a division of Shaw Bros. productions. With his good looks and easy-going style, Chow was originally a heartthrob actor in non-demanding TV and film roles. However, his popularity increased with his appearance as white-suited gangster Hui Man-Keung in the highly popular drama TV series Shanghai Beach (1980).
In 1985, Chow started receiving acclaim for his work and scored the Golden Horse (Best Actor) Award in Taiwan and another Best Actor Award from the Asian Pacific Film Festival for his performance in Hong Kong 1941 (1984). With these accolades, Chow came to the attention of Woo, who cast Chow in the fast-paced gangster film A Better Tomorrow (1986) (aka "A Better Tomorrow"). The rest, as they say, is history. The film was an enormous commercial success, and Chow's influence on young Asian males was not dissimilar to the adulation given to previous Asian film sensations such as Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. Nearly every young guy in Hong Kong ran out and bought himself a "Mark Coat," as they became known--a long, heavy woolen coat worn by Chow in the movie (although it is is actually very unsuited to Hong Kong's hot and humid climate).
Further hard-edged roles in more John Woo crime films escalated Chow's popularity even higher, and fans all over the world flocked to see A Better Tomorrow II (1987) (aka "A Better Tomorrow 2"), The Killer (1989) (aka "The Killer"), and Hard Boiled (1992) (aka "Hard Boiled"). With the phenomenal global interest in the HK action genre, Chow was enticed to the United States and appeared in The Replacement Killers (1998) with Mira Sorvino, The Corruptor (1999) with Mark Wahlberg, and, for a change of pace, in the often-filmed romantic tale of Anna and the King (1999).
Chow then returned to the Asian cinema circuit and starred in the critically lauded kung fu epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) (aka "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"). His wide appeal can be seen in his "boy next door" type of personality and his ability to play such a broad spectrum of roles from a comedic buffoon to a lovestruck Romeo to a trigger-happy professional killer. A highly entertaining and gifted actor with dynamic on-screen presence, Chow continues to remain in strong demand in many film markets.- Claudia Bryar was born on 18 May 1918 in Guymon, Oklahoma, USA. She was an actress, known for Psycho II (1983), Bad Company (1972) and Hill Street Blues (1981). She was married to Paul Bryar. She died on 16 June 2011 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Cynthia Preston is an actor, producer, Co-founder of Cyndicate VR Productions, and Co-founder of Dame 51, a writer's collaborative. She is both Canadian and American. She is known for her roles in Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Carrie, Total Recall 2070, and she starred in Whale Music which was the opening film at TIFF that year and was nominated for Best Picture in Canada. She has appeared in 41 films, played the lead in 19, and has been in more than 240 episodes of television. Among her many credits, Cynthia is the voice of Princess Zelda in The Legend of Zelda animated series. Recently, the short film Mute, which Cynthia produced and stars in, was on the festival circuit and won awards at the Imagine This Women's Film Festival, Worldfest Houston International Film Festival, the Toronto International Women Film Festival, and The Blue Ridge Film Festival. Cynthia was nominated for Best Performance at the Hollywood North Film Awards for her portrayal of Stephen King's Monette. Cynthia is writing a feature film and a series, producing a VR project, and has signed on to direct two short films.- Dale Branston is an Actor, known for Beauty And The Beast (2017), Jerry Springer - The Opera (TV Movie/Stage), Hackers (Movie), Starlight Express (Stage), Zorro - The Musical (Stage), The Woman In White (Stage), Love Never Dies (Stage) and comes from a background of Youth Opera and professional West End Musical Theatre. He lives In London.
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Dale Launer was born on 19 May 1952 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for My Cousin Vinny (1992), Ruthless People (1986) and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Tony Award-nominated stage, screen, television actress and comedian Denny Dillon was born on May 18, in Cleveland, Ohio. Her professional career began six weeks after moving to NYC in 1973, when she made her Broadway debut as Agnes in the highly anticipated revival of Gypsy starring Angela Lansbury. Other Broadway credits include The Skin of Our Teeth, Harold and Maude, Enchanted April, and the 1983 Gershwin musical: My One and Only starring Tommy Tune and Twiggy which garnered Dillon a Tony Award nomination (Best Featured Actress in a Musical).
In 1975 she and comedy partner Mark Hampton guest-starred on the third episode of the original Saturday Night Live performing their "Talent Night in the Convent". In 1980-81 she became a member of SNL's first replacement cast.
She scored a hit in her first motion picture, opposite John Travolta in an unforgettable cameo wiping his brow as Doreen in the 1977 iconic Saturday Night Fever. After that auspicious debut, Dillon went on to appear with Al Pacino in Arthur Hiller's Author! Author!, Sidney Lumet's Garbo Talks, Anthony Harvey's Grace Quigley opposite Katharine Hepburn and Betty Thomas' Only You. She voiced the character of Glyptodon in the first Ice Age film which was Oscar-nominated in 2003 for Best Animated Feature.
In 2006 she was part of Paul Greengrass' Oscar-nominated thriller, United 93 whose cast was awarded "best ensemble" by the Boston Critics Society. Recently she appeared in Academy Award winner Halle Berry's directorial debut Bruised as Crazy Esther, and is featured in the comedy Paint opposite Owen Wilson .
A familiar television face, Dillon won a CableACE award "Best Actress in a Comedy Series" for the hit HBO comedy series Dream On (1990-1996). Other television credits include: Women in Prison, Night Court, Designing Women, Nash Bridges, Louie, and Law & Order: SVU. She recently completed a guest stint on Darren Star's new TV comedy series for Netflix, Uncoupled starring Neil Patrick Harris.
Presently Denny is filming the fourth season of the supernatural-thriller television series created by M.Night Shayamalan: Servant on Apple TV+.- Signed on as a Warner Brothers starlet, bouncy, blonde-coiffed Diane McBain would develop a burgeoning career as lively '60s "bad girl" and "spoiled rich girl" types on film and TV. Born in Cleveland, Ohio on May 18, 1941, the family moved to California while still young and she started things off as a "sweet 16" model in print and commercial ads. Eventually TV got more than just a glimpse of this diverting beauty after a WB talent agent spotted her in a Los Angeles play and signed her on during her senior year at Glendale High School.
After busily apprenticing on various TV projects, Diane made her first big splash in 1960 (age 19) with a prominent role in Ice Palace (1960) co-starring Richard Burton, Carolyn Jones and Martha Hyer. Brimming with style and confidence, Diane was quickly ushered into other films as Warner's answer to Carroll Baker, winning parts in two consecutive soapers. The first was Parrish (1961) with beef-cake film star Troy Donahue and screen legend Claudette Colbert; the other was the title role in Claudelle Inglish (1961) opposite up-and-comers Chad Everett and Robert Logan. Neither the tawdry scripts nor the box office receipts were anything to write home about unfortunately, and her leading lady career in films started to flounder with such fodder as The Caretakers (1963) with Joan Crawford, A Distant Trumpet (1964), yet again with Donahue, and Spinout (1966). The last was one of Elvis Presley' later vehicles that signified an inevitable fadeout was on the horizon. Significantly better was her dizzy good time girl and socialite "Daphne Dutton" on the hip Warner Bros. series Surfside 6 (1960) alongside Van Williams (later TV's "Green Hornet") and Donohue. The show ran for two seasons.
Diane proved popular with the teen set with her devilish débutantes and snobby sophisticates, even accompanying Bob Hope on one of his USO tours of South Vietnam in 1966/67. On the cult series Batman (1966), she played "Pinky Pinkston" (with pink hair, pink outfits and a pink dog). By the late 1960s, however, her career began drifting into exploitation with terrible titles like I Sailed to Tahiti with an All Girl Crew (1969), Maryjane (1968) and The Mini-Skirt Mob (1968) (miscast as a biker chick) representative of what she was being handed.
Diane instead lay low for a time focusing instead on her child, Evan Burke, more or less splitting from the Hollywood scene. A few plays (Amanda in "The Glass Menagerie") and low budget films came her way, and in the 1980s she was seen a bit more on daytime soaps. The still young-looking and ever-elegant Diane was out and about in the 1990s as well, playing good-looking grandmas on such shows as Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996). The victim of a rape attack in 1982, Diane chose to rise above her traumatic circumstances and help others as a rape counselor. - Actor
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Dirch Hartvig Passer was born on May 18, 1926, on Østerbro, Copenhagen, to Ragnhild Fich and Capt. Vilhelm Passer (seaman). He never did well in school, being the class clown, which had a negative effect on his grades. He did especially badly in mathematics, which came to follow him the rest of his life. When Passer left school he wanted to become an actor, but his father insisted that he should become a seaman like himself. In 1944 he attended maritime school. Life at sea, however, did not go well - he was seasick all the time.
After his failure as a seaman he had all kinds of small jobs. In 1946 he made his stage debut with "Six Comrades [seks kammerater]" in "Riddersalen". In the same year he was accepted to theatre school: De Frederiksbergske Teatres elevskole. After he had completed this education in 1948 he had many small parts in different plays all around Denmark's theatres. He made his film debut in 1947 as an extra in the Danish movie Lykke paa rejsen (1947) and teamed up with Ove Sprogøe in the 1950s in many films. He became famous in 1953 with Ved Kongelunden... (1953), which let all of Denmark see his comedic genius. He made many other well-received Danish films, such as The Baroness from the Gas Station (1960), Mig og min lillebror (1967), Sommer i Tyrol (1964), the Mafia-movies and Charles tante (1959).
Passer worked from 1967 to 1974 at the famous "Cirkusrevyen på Bakken", where he was responsible for their greatest success ever. Many of the sketches which he made here were so famous that they are seen all over the world. He made his last film in 1978, Fængslende feriedage (1978).
In 1978 he acted in the "Tivolirevy", which he continued until his death on stage of a heart attack on September 3, 1980. Like all great comedians, he always wanted to play serious parts in movies and plays, but never got the chance. Dirch Passer was without a doubt the greatest Danish comedian ever.- Actor
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Blond, boyishly handsome Dwayne Hickman, the younger brother of Darryl Hickman, followed in his sibling's tiny footsteps as a moppet film actor himself. Born Dwayne Bernard Hickman in Los Angeles on May 18, 1934, the brothers had a younger sister as well, Deidre (born 1940). He had minor roles in such films as Captain Eddie (1945) (Darryl had a major role in this), The Secret Heart (1946), The Boy with Green Hair (1948), Mighty Joe Young (1949), The Happy Years (1950) (again with Darryl in a major role), and topped his youthful film career as "Nip Worden" in the canine movie series "Rusty", which began with The Son of Rusty (1947) and ended with Rusty's Birthday (1949).
Graduating from Cathedral High School in 1952 (Darryl graduated from the same school in 1948), Dwayne enrolled at Loyola Marymount University. He returned to Hollywood following college studies and, unlike his brother, focused strongly on television work, making appearances on such series as Public Defender (1954), The Loretta Young Show (1953), The Lone Ranger (1949), and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952). He also appeared in the Paul Newman/Joanne Woodward comedy film Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! (1958) playing the secondary teen couple with Tuesday Weld. He grabbed major comedy attention, especially from young female baby-boomers, as Chuck, the girl-crazy nephew, in The Bob Cummings Show (1955). (Cummings became his mentor.)
Hickman then played the titular lovesick title high school teen in The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959), the role for which he is best known, and in which he was reunited with Tuesday Weld as the prime object of his attention, although Weld did not remain with the series for the entirety of its run. Laying low for a few years, Hickman returned to the screen, making a strong impression in the western film Cat Ballou (1965), and then began hanging out with the young beach crowd in several AIP movies including Ski Party (1965), How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (1965), and Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965), and a few slapstick comedies such as Sergeant Dead Head (1965) and Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding! (1967). He guested on a mix of comedic and dramatic TV shows including Combat! (1962), Mod Squad (1968), Ellery Queen (1975), The Flying Nun (1967), and Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974).
In the 1970s, Hickman began working behind the scenes as a publicist, a Las Vegas entertainment director and, most successfully, as a programming executive for CBS. He would return only occasionally to acting. He revisited his Dobie Gillis character, albeit a fully grown-up version, in such made-for-television movies as Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis? (1977) and Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis (1988). In addition to guest appearances on Murder, She Wrote (1984) and Hi Honey, I'm Home (1991), he appeared in glorified cameos in High School U.S.A. (1983), had a recurring role on Clueless (1996), and was glimpsed in Cops n Roberts (1995), A Night at the Roxbury (1998), and Angels with Angles (2005). He began episodic directing chores in the 1980's, working on such episodes as "Charles in Charge", "Designing Women", "Head of the Class", "Harry and the Hendersons", and "Sister, Sister". In 1994, he published his biography, aptly titled 'Forever Dobie'.
Thrice wed, Hickman has two children -- one by his first wife, actress/model/beauty pageant winner Carol Christensen (1963-1972) who appeared a few times on "Dobie Gillis", and the other by his present wife, actress/voiceover artist Joan Roberts, to whom he has been married since 1983.- Eiko Matsuda was born on 18 May 1952 in Yokohama, Japan. She was an actress, known for In the Realm of the Senses (1976), Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal (1970) and Tatto of the Jack (1970). She died on 9 March 2011 in Tokyo, Japan.
- Elizabeth Rogers was born on 18 May 1934 in Austin, Texas, USA. She was an actress, known for The Towering Inferno (1974), An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) and Star Trek (1966). She was married to Erik L. Nelson. She died on 6 November 2004 in Tarzana, California, USA.
- Emma Renee Engle is an American Actress, Model and Dancer who was born on the 18th of May 2003, in Watertown NY, to Tonia Engle. She is the youngest of 5 girls and one brother. Before making her journey to California to pursue her dreams of acting at the young age of 7 years old, Emma spent her days growing up in the small community with a population of just 13,700 people in Seabrook Texas. Emma enjoyed her elementary school years at Big Springs Elementary School. Emma could often be found creating an audience for herself, so that she could perform her scripts, that she would spend hours writing herself . She was and is still very involved for her age. Very dedicated to everything she sets her mind too. One of her real passions is working with the homeless people, always trying to make a difference.
At 7 years old Emma was invited to IMTA LA while attending Neal Hamil Agency to pursue her modeling career. Emma came to California in January 2012 to attend the 5 day competition. Walking away that year with Headshot of the Year, Swimsuit Model of the Year, Most Sought After Actresses of the year amongst many other great honors. After the competition Emma and her family returned home to Seabrook Texas, that is until many LA managers and agents contacted her about representation. At that point Emma and her family took a long hard look at her talent and decided that they believed in her as much as Hollywood did and they decided to take their chance on helping her chase her dream. Her single mom sold their home and everything they owned, packed up a UHAL and away they drove towards the bright lights with nothing more than that dream and a lot of hope and dedication.
The Engle family was informed that this would be a long shot and warned Emma that she would be up against tens of thousands of other children her age competing for the same roles. And that the talent increased by thousands more during pilot and episodic season. Within the first week of locating to California, Emma was scoring auditions left and right and immediately booked her first National commercial with LG. She was able to work with the very talented Tony Goldwyn. After booking this first national commercial she quickly started booking many national commercials and also her dream role beside Ariana Grande and Jennette McCurdy with the amazing creator Dan Schneider in Nickelodeons Sam And Cat ( see reel), giving her the long awaited accomplishment of becoming a SAG/ AFTRA member.
Emma moving to California was a decision that her family never thought twice about never looking back with no regrets.
Emma recently had the opportunity to work not once, but twice with everyone's favorite actor Rob Lowe and Fred Savage on the Grinder in 2015 and then again on Code Black as Kaya ( see reel) a young girl with a crush that is attacked by a shark on Malibu Beach.
Emma feels that once she has worked beside Adam Sandler, and she has walked across the stage at the Nickelodeon Choice Awards and The Oscars that she will have achieved her greatest goal in life.
Emma continues to live in Los Angeles California with her mother and three sisters, Hannah, Zoe and Kiara. - Actress
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Emmy Robbin was born on 18 May 1982 in Silverspring, Maryland, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Machete Kills (2013), Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) and Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World (2011).- Actor
- Soundtrack
Ezio Pinza was born on May 18, 1892 in Rome, Lazio, Italy as Fortunato Pinza. He was an actor, known for the Broadway play, South Pacific, movies, Mr. Imperium (1951) and Tonight We Sing (1953). He was married to Doris Leak and Augusta Casinelli. He died on May 9, 1957 in Stamford, Connecticut, USA.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Felicia Pearson was born on 18 May 1980 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for The Wire (2002), The Family Plan (2023) and Guns and Grams (2016).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Fran Jeffries was born on 18 May 1937 in Mayfield, California, USA. She was an actress, known for The Pink Panther (1963), Sex and the Single Girl (1964) and Harum Scarum (1965). She was married to Steven Schaeffer, Richard Quine, Dick Haymes and Edward Emile Belasco, Jr.. She died on 15 December 2016 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
One of seven children, Frank Capra was born on May 18, 1897, in Bisacquino, Sicily. On May 10, 1903, his family left for America aboard the ship Germania, arriving in New York on May 23rd. "There's no ventilation, and it stinks like hell. They're all miserable. It's the most degrading place you could ever be," Capra said about his Atlantic passage. "Oh, it was awful, awful. It seems to always be storming, raining like hell and very windy, with these big long rolling Atlantic waves. Everybody was sick, vomiting. God, they were sick. And the poor kids were always crying."
The family boarded a train for the trip to California, where Frank's older brother Benjamin was living. On their journey, they subsisted on bread and bananas, as their lack of English made it impossible for them to ask for any other kind of foodstuffs. On June 3, the Capra family arrived at the Southern Pacific station in Los Angeles, at the time, a small city of approximately 102,000 people. The family stayed with Capra's older brother Benjamin, and on September 14, 1903, Frank began his schooling at the Castelar Elementary school.
In 1909, he entered Los Angeles' Manual Arts High School. Capra made money selling newspapers in downtown L.A. after school and on Saturdays, sometimes working with his brother Tony. When sales were slow, Tony punched Frank to attract attention, which would attract a crowd and make Frank's papers sell quicker. Frank later became part of a two-man music combo, playing at various places in the red light district of L.A., including brothels, getting paid a dollar per night, performing the popular songs. He also worked as a janitor at the high school in the early mornings. It was at high school that he became interested in the theater, typically doing back-stage work such as lighting.
Capra's family pressured him to drop out of school and go to work, but he refused, as he wanted to partake fully of the American Dream, and for that he needed an education. Capra later reminisced that his family "thought I was a bum. My mother would slap me around; she wanted me to quit school. My teachers would urge me to keep going....I was going to school because I had a fight on my hands that I wanted to win."
Capra graduated from high school on January 27, 1915, and in September of that year, he entered the Throop College of Technology (later the California Institute of Technology) to study chemical engineering. The school's annual tuition was $250, and Capra received occasional financial support from his family, who were resigned to the fact they had a scholar in their midst. Throop had a fine arts department, and Capra discovered poetry and the essays of Montaigne, which he fell in love with, while matriculating at the technical school. He then decided to write.
"It was a great discovery for me. I discovered language. I discovered poetry. I discovered poetry at Caltech, can you imagine that? That was a big turning point in my life. I didn't know anything could be so beautiful." Capra penned "The Butler's Failure," about an English butler provoked by poverty to murder his employer, then to suicide."
Capra was singled out for a cash award of $250 for having the highest grades in the school. Part of his prize was a six-week trip across the U.S. and Canada. When Capra's father, Turiddu, died in 1916, Capra started working at the campus laundry to make money.
After the U.S. Congress declared War on Germany on April 6, 1917, Capra enlisted in the Army, and while he was not a naturalized citizen yet, he was allowed to join the military as part of the Coastal Artillery. Capra became a supply officer for the student soldiers at Throop, who have been enrolled in a Reserve Officers Training Corps program. At his enlistment, Capra discovered he was not an American citizen; he became naturalized in 1920.
On September 15, 1918, Capra graduated from Throop with his bachelor's degree, and was inducted into the U.S. Army on October 18th and shipped out to the Presidio at San Francisco. An armistice ending the fighting of World War One would be declared in less than a month. While at the Presidio, Capra became ill with the Spanish influenza that claimed 20 million lives worldwide. He was discharged from the Army on December 13th and moved to his brother Ben's home in L.A. While recuperating, Capra answered a cattle call for extras for John Ford's film "The The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1919) (Capra, cast as a laborer in the Ford picture, introduced himself to the film's star, Harry Carey. Two decades later, Capra, designated the #1 director in Hollywood by "Time" magazine, would cast Carey and his movie actress wife Olive in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) for which Carey won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination).
While living at his mother's house, Capra took on a wide variety of manual laboring jobs, including errand boy and ditch digger, even working as an orange tree pruner at 20 cents a day. He continued to be employed as an extra at movie studios and as a prop buyer at an independent studio at Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street, which later became the home of Columbia Pictures, where Capra would make his reputation as the most successful movie director of the 1930s. Most of his time was spent unemployed and idle, which gave credence to his family's earlier opposition to him seeking higher education. Capra wrote short stories but was unable to get them published. He eventually got work as a live-in tutor for the son of "Lucky" Baldwin, a rich gambler. (He later used the Baldwin estate as a location for Dirigible (1931)).
Smitten by the movie bug, in August of that year, Capra, former actor W. M. Plank, and financial backer Ida May Heitmann incorporated the Tri-State Motion Picture Co. in Nevada. Tri-State produced three short films in Nevada in 1920, Don't Change Your Husband (1919), The Pulse of Life (1917), and The Scar of Love (1920), all directed by Plank, and possibly based on story treatments written by Capra. The films were failures, and Capra returned to Los Angeles when Tri-State broke up. In March 1920, Capra was employed by CBC Film Sales Co., the corporate precursor of Columbia Films, where he also worked as an editor and director on a series called "Screen Snapshots." He quit CBC in August and moved to San Francisco, but the only jobs he could find were that of bookseller and door-to-door salesman. Once again seeming to fulfill his family's prophecy, he turned to gambling, and also learned to ride the rails with a hobo named Frank Dwyer. There was also a rumor that he became a traveling salesman specializing in worthless securities, according to a "Time" magazine story "Columbia's Gem" (August 8, 1938 issue, V.32, No. 6).
Still based in San Francisco in 1921, producer Walter Montague hired Capra for $75 per week to help direct the short movie The Ballad of Fisher's Boarding House (1922), which was based on a poem by Rudyard Kipling. Montague, a former actor, had the dubious idea that foggy San Francisco was destined to become the capital of movies, and that he could make a fortune making movies based on poems. Capra helped Montague produced the one-reeler, which was budgeted at $1,700 and subsequently sold to the Pathe Exchange for $3,500. Capra quit Montague when he demanded that the next movie be based upon one of his own poems.
Unable to find another professional filmmaking job, Capra hired himself out as a maker of shorts for the public-at-large while working as an assistant at Walter Ball's film lab. Finally, in October 1921, the Paul Gerson Picture Corp. hired him to help make its two-reel comedies, around the time that he began dating the actress Helen Edith Howe, who would become his first wife. Capra continued to work for both Ball and Gerson, primarily as a cutter. On November 25, 1923, Capra married Helen Howell, and the couple soon moved to Hollywood.
Hal Roach hired Capra as a gag-writer for the "Our Gang" series in January, 1924. After writing the gags for five "Our Gang" comedies in seven weeks, he asked Roach to make him a director. When Roach refused (he somewhat rightly felt he had found the right man in director Bob McGowan), Capra quit. Roach's arch rival Mack Sennett subsequently hired him as a writer, one of a six-man team that wrote for silent movie comedian Harry Langdon, the last major star of the rapidly disintegrating Mack Sennett Studios, and reigning briefly as fourth major silent comedian after Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. Capra began working with the Harry Langdon production unit as a gag writer, first credited on the short Plain Clothes (1925).
As Harry Langdon became more popular, his production unit at Sennett had moved from two- to three-reelers before Langdon, determined to follow the example of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, went into features. After making his first feature-length comedy, His First Flame (1927) for Sennett, Langdon signed a three-year contract with Sol Lesser's First National Pictures to annually produce two feature-length comedies at a fixed fee per film. For a multitude of reasons Mack Sennett was never able to retain top talent. On September 15, 1925, Harry Langdon left Sennett in an egotistical rage, taking many of his key production personnel with him. Sennett promoted Capra to director but fired him after three days in his new position. In addition to the Langdon comedies, Capra had also written material for other Sennett films, eventually working on twenty-five movies.
After being sacked by Sennett, Capra was hired as a gag-writer by Harry Langdon, working on Langdon's first First National feature-length film, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926). The movie was directed by Harry Edwards who had directed all of Harry Langdon's films at Sennett. His first comedy for First National, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926) did well at the box office, but it had ran over budget, which came out of Langdon's end. Harry Edwards was sacked, and for his next picture, The Strong Man (1926), Langdon promoted Capra to director, boosting his salary to $750 per week. The movie was a hit, but trouble was brewing among members of the Harry Langdon company. Langdon was increasingly believing his own press.
His marriage with Helen began to unravel when it is discovered that she had a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy that had to be terminated. In order to cope with the tragedy, Capra became a work-a-holic while Helen turned to drink. The deterioration of his marriage was mirrored by the disintegration of his professional relationship with Harry Langdonduring the making of the new feature, Long Pants (1927).
The movie, which was released in March 1927, proved to be Capra's last with Harry Langdon, as the comedian soon sacked Capra after its release. Capra later explained the principle of Langdon comedies to James Agee, "It is the principal of the brick: If there was a rule for writing Langdon material, it was this: his only ally was God. Harry Langdon might be saved by a brick falling on a cop, but it was verboten that he in any way motivated the bricks fall."
During the production of Long Pants (1926), Capra had a falling out with Langdon. Screenwriter Arthur Ripley's dark sensibility did not mesh well with that of the more optimistic Capra, and Harry Langdon usually sided with Ripley. The picture fell behind schedule and went over budget, and since Langdon was paid a fixed fee for each film, this represented a financial loss to his own Harry Langdon Corp. Stung by the financial set-back, and desiring to further emulate the great Chaplin, Harry Langdon made a fateful decision: He fired Capra and decided to direct himself. (Langdon's next three movies for First National were dismal failures, the two surviving films being very dark and grim black comedies, one of which, The Chaser (1928), touched on the subject of suicide. It was the late years of the Jazz Age, a time of unprecedented prosperity and boundless bonhomie, and the critics, and more critically, the ticket-buying public, rejected Harry. In 1928, First National did not pick up his contract. The Harry Langdon Corp. soon went bankrupt, and his career as the "fourth major silent comedian" was through, just as sound was coming in.)
In April of 1927, Capra and his wife Helen split up, and Capra went off to New York to direct For the Love of Mike (1927) for First National, his first picture with Claudette Colbert. The director and his star did not get along, and the film went over budget. Subsequently, First National refused to pay Capra, and he had to hitchhike back to Hollywood. The film proved to be Capra's only genuine flop.
By September 1927, he was back working as a writer for Mack Sennett, but in October, he was hired as a director by Columbia Pictures President and Production Chief Harry Cohn for $1,000. The event was momentous for both of them, for at Columbia Capra would soon become the #1 director in Hollywood in the 1930s, and the success of Capra's films would propel the Poverty Row studio into the major leagues. But at first, Cohn was displeased with him. When viewing the first three days of rushes of his first Columbia film, That Certain Thing (1928), Cohn wanted to fire him as everything on the first day had been shot in long shot, on the second day in medium shot, and on the third day in close-ups.
"I did it that way for time," Capra later recalled. "It was so easy to be better than the other directors, because they were all dopes. They would shoot a long shot, then they would have to change the setup to shoot a medium shot, then they would take their close-ups. Then they would come back and start over again. You lose time, you see, moving the cameras and the big goddamn lights. I said, 'I'll get all the long shots on that first set first, then all the medium shots, and then the close-ups.' I wouldn't shoot the whole scene each way unless it was necessary. If I knew that part of it was going to play in long shot, I wouldn't shoot that part in close-up. But the trick was not to move nine times, just to move three times. This saved a day, maybe two days."
Cohn decided to stick with Capra (he was ultimately delighted at the picture and gave Capra a $1,500 bonus and upped his per-picture salary), and in 1928, Cohn raised his salary again, now to to $3,000 per picture after he made several successful pictures, including Submarine (1928). The Younger Generation (1929), the first of a series of films with higher budgets to be directed by Capra, would prove to be his first sound film, when scenes were reshot for dialogue. In the summer of that year, he was introduced to a young widow, Lucille Warner Reyburn (who became Capra's second wife Lou Capra). He also met a transplanted stage actress, Barbara Stanwyck, who had been recruited for the talkie but had been in three successive unsuccessful films and wanted to return to the New York stage. Harry Cohn wanted Stanwyck to appear in Capra's planned film, Ladies of Leisure (1930), but the interview with Capra did not go well, and Capra refused to use her.
Stanwyck went home crying after being dismissed by Capra, and her husband, a furious Frank Fay, called Capra up. In his defense, Capra said that Stanwyck didn't seem to want the part. According to Capra's 1961 autobiography, "The Name Above the Title," Fay said, "Frank, she's young, and shy, and she's been kicked around out here. Let me show you a test she made at Warner's." After viewing her Warners' test for The Noose (1928), Capra became enthusiastic and urged Cohn to sign her. In January of 1930, Capra began shooting Ladies of Leisure (1930) with Stanwyck in the lead. The movies the two made together in the early '30s established them both on their separate journeys towards becoming movieland legends. Though Capra would admit to falling in love with his leading lady, it was Lucille Warner Reyburn who became the second Mrs. Capra.
"You're wondering why I was at that party. That's my racket. I'm a party girl. Do you know what that is?"
Stanwyck played a working-class "party girl" hired as a model by the painter Jerry, who hails from a wealthy family. Capra had written the first draft of the movie before screenwriter Jo Swerling took over. Swerling thought the treatment was dreadful. According to Capra, Swerling told Harry Cohn, when he initially had approached about adapting the play "Ladies of the Evening" into Capra's next proposed film, "I don't like Hollywood, I don't like you, and I certainly don't like this putrid piece of gorgonzola somebody gave me to read. It stunk when Belasco produced it as Ladies of Leisure (1930), and it will stink as Ladies of Leisure, even if your little tin Jesus does direct it. The script is inane, vacuous, pompous, unreal, unbelievable and incredibly dull."
Capra, who favored extensive rehearsals before shooting a scene, developed his mature directorial style while collaborating with Stanwyck, a trained stage actress whose performance steadily deteriorated after rehearsals or retakes. Stanwyck's first take in a scene usually was her best. Capra started blocking out scenes in advance, and carefully preparing his other actors so that they could react to Stanwyck in the first shot, whose acting often was unpredictable, so they wouldn't foul up the continuity. In response to this semi-improvisatory style, Capra's crew had to boost its level of craftsmanship to beyond normal Hollywood standards, which were forged in more static and prosaic work conditions. Thus, the professionalism of Capra's crews became better than those of other directors. Capra's philosophy for his crew was, "You guys are working for the actors, they're not working for you."
After "Ladies of Leisure," Capra was assigned to direct Platinum Blonde (1931) starring Jean Harlow. The script had been the product of a series of writers, including Jo Swerling (who was given credit for adaptation), but was polished by Capra and Robert Riskin (who was given screen credit for the dialogue). Along with Jo Swerling, Riskin would rank as one of Capra's most important collaborators, ultimately having a hand in 13 movies. (Riskin wrote nine screenplays for Capra, and Capra based four other films on Riskin's work.)
Riskin created a hard-boiled newspaperman, Stew Smith for the film, a character his widow, the actress Fay Wray, said came closest to Riskin of any character he wrote. A comic character, the wise-cracking reporter who wants to lampoon high society but finds himself hostage to the pretensions of the rich he had previously mocked is the debut of the prototypical "Capra" hero. The dilemma faced by Stew, akin to the immigrant's desire to assimilate but being rejected by established society, was repeated in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and in Meet John Doe (1941).
Capra, Stanwyck, Riskin and Jo Swerling all were together to create Capra's next picture, The Miracle Woman (1931), a story about a shady evangelist. With John Meehan, Riskin wrote the play that the movie is based on, "Bless You, Sister," and there is a possibly apocryphal story that has Riskin at a story conference at which Capra relates the treatment for the proposed film. Capra, finished, asked Riskin for his input, and Riskin replied, "I wrote that play. My brother and I were stupid enough to produce it on Broadway. It cost us almost every cent we had. If you intend to make a picture of it, it only proves one thing: You're even more stupid than we were."
Jo Swerling adapted Riskin's play, which he and his brother Everett patterned after Sinclair Lewis' "Elmer Gantry." Like the Lewis novel, the play focuses on the relationship between a lady evangelist and a con man. The difference, though, is that the nature of the relationship is just implied in Riskin's play (and the Capra film). There is also the addition of the blind war-vet as the moral conscience of the story; he is the pivotal character, whereas in Lewis' tale, the con artist comes to have complete control over the evangelist after eventually seducing her. Like some other Capra films, The Miracle Woman (1931) is about the love between a romantic, idealizing man and a cynical, bitter woman. Riskin had based his character on lady evangelist Uldine Utley, while Stanwyck based her characterization on Aimee Semple McPherson.
Recognizing that he had something in his star director, Harry Cohn took full advantage of the lowly position his studio had in Hollywood. Both Warner Brothers and mighty MGM habitually lent Cohn their troublesome stars -- anyone rejecting scripts or demanding a pay raise was fodder for a loan out to Cohn's Poverty Row studio. Cohn himself was habitually loathe to sign long-term stars in the early 1930s (although he made rare exceptions to Peter Lorre and The Three Stooges) and was delighted to land the talents of any top flight star and invariably assigned them to Capra's pictures. Most began their tenure in purgatory with trepidation but left eagerly wanting to work with Capra again.
In 1932, Capra decided to make a motion picture that reflected the social conditions of the day. He and Riskin wrote the screenplay for American Madness (1932), a melodrama that is an important precursor to later Capra films, not only with It's a Wonderful Life (1946) which shares the plot device of a bank run, but also in the depiction of the irrationality of a crowd mentality and the ability of the individual to make a difference. In the movie, an idealistic banker is excoriated by his conservative board of directors for making loans to small businesses on the basis of character rather than on sounder financial criteria. Since the Great Depression is on, and many people lack collateral, it would be impossible to productively lend money on any other criteria than character, the banker argues. When there is a run on the bank due to a scandal, it appears that the board of directors are rights the bank depositors make a run on the bank to take out their money before the bank fails. The fear of a bank failure ensures that the failure will become a reality as a crowd mentality takes over among the clientèle. The board of directors refuse to pledge their capital to stave off the collapse of the bank, but the banker makes a plea to the crowd, and just like George Bailey's depositors in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), the bank is saved as the fears of the crowd are ameliorated and businessmen grateful to the banker pledge their capital to save the bank. The board of directors, impressed by the banker's character and his belief in the character of his individual clients (as opposed to the irrationality of the crowd), pledge their capital and the bank run is staved off and the bank is saved.
In his biography, "The Name Above the Picture," Capra wrote that before American Madness (1932), he had only made "escapist" pictures with no basis in reality. He recounts how Poverty Row studios, lacking stars and production values, had to resort to "gimmick" movies to pull the crowds in, making films on au courant controversial subjects that were equivalent to "yellow journalism."
What was more important than the subject and its handling was the maturation of Capra's directorial style with the film. Capra had become convinced that the mass-experience of watching a motion picture with an audience had the psychological effect in individual audience members of slowing down the pace of a film. A film that during shooting and then when viewed on a movieola editing device and on a small screen in a screening room among a few professionals that had seemed normally paced became sluggish when projected on the big screen. While this could have been the result of the projection process blowing up the actors to such large proportions, Capra ultimately believed it was the effect of mass psychology affecting crowds since he also noticed this "slowing down" phenomenon at ball games and at political conventions. Since American Madness (1932) dealt with crowds, he feared that the effect would be magnified.
He decided to boost the pace of the film, during the shooting. He did away with characters' entrances and exits that were a common part of cinematic "grammar" in the early 1930s, a survival of the "photoplays" days. Instead, he "jumped" characters in and out of scenes, and jettisoned the dissolves that were also part of cinematic grammar that typically ended scenes and indicated changes in time or locale so as not to make cutting between scenes seem choppy to the audience. Dialogue was deliberately overlapped, a radical innovation in the early talkies, when actors were instructed to let the other actor finish his or her lines completely before taking up their cue and beginning their own lines, in order to facilitate the editing of the sound-track. What he felt was his greatest innovation was to boost the pacing of the acting in the film by a third by making a scene that would normally play in one minute take only 40 seconds.
When all these innovations were combined in his final cut, it made the movie seem normally paced on the big screen, though while shooting individual scenes, the pacing had seemed exaggerated. It also gave the film a sense of urgency that befitted the subject of a financial panic and a run on a bank. More importantly, it "kept audience attention riveted to the screen," as he said in his autobiography. Except for "mood pieces," Capra subsequently used these techniques in all his films, and he was amused by critics who commented on the "naturalness" of his direction.
Capra was close to completely establishing his themes and style. Justly accused of indulging in sentiment which some critics labeled "Capra-corn," Capra's next film, Lady for a Day (1933) was an adaptation of Damon Runyon's 1929 short story "Madame La Gimp" about a nearly destitute apple peddler whom the superstitious gambler Dave the Dude (portrayed by Warner Brothers star Warren William) sets up in high style so she and her daughter, who is visiting with her finance, will not be embarrassed. Dave the Dude believes his luck at gambling comes from his ritualistically buying an apple a day from Annie, who is distraught and considering suicide to avoid the shame of her daughter seeing her reduced to living on the street. The Dude and his criminal confederates put Annie up in a luxury apartment with a faux husband in order to establish Annie in the eyes of her daughter as a dignified and respectable woman, but in typical Runyon fashion, Annie becomes more than a fake as the masquerade continues.
Robert Riskin wrote the first four drafts of Lady for a Day (1933), and of all the scripts he worked on for Capra, the film deviates less from the script than any other. After seeing the movie, Runyon sent a telegraph to Riskin praising him for his success at elaborating on the story and fleshing out the characters while maintain his basic story. Lady for a Day (1933) was the favorite Capra film of John Ford, the great filmmaker who once directed the unknown extra. The movie cost $300,000 and was the first of Capra's oeuvre to attract the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, getting a Best Director nomination for Capra, plus nods for Riskin and Best Actress. The movie received Columbia's first Best Picture nomination, the studio never having attracted any attention from the Academy before Lady for a Day (1933). (Capra's last film was the flop remake of Lady for a Day (1933) with Bette Davis and Glenn Ford, Pocketful of Miracles (1961))
Capra reunited with Stanwyck and produced his first universally acknowledged classic, The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932), a film that now seems to belong more to the oeuvre of Josef von Sternberg than it does to Frank Capra. With "General Yen," Capra had consciously set out to make a movie that would win Academy Awards. Frustrated that the innovative, timely, and critically well-received American Madness (1932) had not received any recognition at the Oscars (particularly in the director's category in recognition of his innovations in pacing), he vented his displeasure to Columbia boss Cohn.
"Forget it," Cohn told Capra, as recounted in his autobiography. "You ain't got a Chinaman's chance. They only vote for that arty junk."
Capra set out to boost his chances by making an arty film featuring a "Chinaman" that confronted that major taboo of American cinema of the first half of the century, miscegenation.
In the movie, the American missionary Megan Davis is in China to marry another missionary. Abducted by the Chinese Warlord General Yen, she is torn away from the American compound that kept her isolated from the Chinese and finds herself in a strange, dangerous culture. The two fall in love despite their different races and life-views. The film ran up against the taboo against miscegenation embedded in the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association's Production Code, and while Megan merely kisses General Yen's hand in the picture, the fact that she was undeniably in love with a man from a different race attracted the vituperation of many bigots.
Having fallen for Megan, General Yen engenders her escape back to the Americans before willingly drinking a poisoned cup of tea, his involvement with her having cost him his army, his wealth, and now his desire to live. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932) marks the introduction of suicide as a Capra theme that will come back repeatedly, most especially in George Bailey's breakdown on the snowy bridge in It's a Wonderful Life (1946).
Despair often shows itself in Capra films, and although in his post-"General Yen" work, the final reel wraps things up in a happy way, until that final reel, there is tragedy, cynicism, heartless exploitation, and other grim subject matter that Capra's audiences must have known were the truth of the world, but that were too grim to face when walking out of a movie theater. When pre-Code movies were rediscovered and showcased across the United States in the 1990s, they were often accompanied by thesis about how contemporary audiences "read" the films (and post-1934 more Puritanical works), as the movies were not so frank or racy as supposed. There was a great deal of signaling going on which the audience could read into, and the same must have been true for Capra's films, giving lie to the fact that he was a sentimentalist with a saccharine view of America. There are few films as bitter as those of Frank Capra before the final reel.
Despair was what befell Frank Capra, personally, on the night of March 16, 1934, which he attended as one of the Best Director nominees for Lady for a Day (1933). Capra had caught Oscar fever, and in his own words, "In the interim between the nominations and the final voting...my mind was on those Oscars." When Oscar host Will Rogers opened the envelope for Best Director, he commented, "Well, well, well. What do you know. I've watched this young man for a long time. Saw him come up from the bottom, and I mean the bottom. It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Come on up and get it, Frank!"
Capra got up to go get it, squeezing past tables and making his way to the open dance floor to accept his Oscar. "The spotlight searched around trying to find me. 'Over here!' I waved. Then it suddenly swept away from me -- and picked up a flustered man standing on the other side of the dance floor - Frank Lloyd!"
Frank Lloyd went up to the dais to accept HIS Oscar while a voice in back of Capra yelled, "Down in front!"
Capra's walk back to his table amidst shouts of "Sit down!" turned into the "Longest, saddest, most shattering walk in my life. I wished I could have crawled under the rug like a miserable worm. When I slumped in my chair I felt like one. All of my friends at the table were crying."
That night, after Lloyd's Cavalcade (1933), beat Lady for a Day (1933) for Best Picture, Capra got drunk at his house and passed out. "Big 'stupido,'" Capra thought to himself, "running up to get an Oscar dying with excitement, only to crawl back dying with shame. Those crummy Academy voters; to hell with their lousy awards. If ever they did vote me one, I would never, never, NEVER show up to accept it."
Capra would win his first of three Best Director Oscars the next year, and would show up to accept it. More importantly, he would become the president of the Academy in 1935 and take it out of the labor relations field a time when labor strife and the formation of the talent guilds threatened to destroy it.
The International Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences had been the brainchild of Louis B. Mayer in 1927 (it dropped the "International" soon after its formation). In order to forestall unionization by the creative talent (directors, actors and screenwriters) who were not covered by the Basic Agreement signed in 1926, Mayer had the idea of forming a company union, which is how the Academy came into being. The nascent Screen Writers Union, which had been created in 1920 in Hollywood, had never succeeded in getting a contract from the studios. It went out of existence in 1927, when labor relations between writers and studios were handled by the Academy's writers' branch.
The Academy had brokered studio-mandated pay-cuts of 10% in 1927 and 1931, and massive layoffs in 1930 and 1931. With the inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt took no time in attempting to tackle the Great Depression. The day after his inauguration, he declared a National Bank Holiday, which hurt the movie industry as it was heavily dependent on bank loans. Louis B. Mayer, as president of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, Inc. (the co-equal arm of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association charged with handling labor relations) huddled with a group from the Academy (the organization he created and had long been criticized for dominating, in both labor relations and during the awards season) and announced a 50% across-the-board pay cut. In response, stagehands called a strike for March 13th, which shut down every studio in Hollywood.
After another caucus between Mayer and the Academy committee, a proposal for a pay-cut on a sliding-scale up to 50% for everyone making over $50 a week; which would only last for eight weeks, was inaugurated. Screen writers resigned en masse from the Academy and joined a reformed Screen Writers Guild, but most employees had little choice and went along with it. All the studios but Warner Bros. and Sam Goldwyn honored the pledge to restore full salaries after the eight weeks, and Warners production chief Darryl F. Zanuck resigned in protest over his studio's failure to honor its pledge. A time of bad feelings persisted, and much anger was directed towards the Academy in its role as company union.
The Academy, trying to position itself as an independent arbiter, hired the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse for the first time to inspect the books of the studios. The audit revealed that all the studios were solvent, but Harry Warner refused to budge and Academy President 'Conrad Nagel' resigned, although some said he was forced out after a vote of no-confidence after arguing Warner's case. The Academy announced that the studio bosses would never again try to impose a horizontal salary cut, but the usefulness of the Academy as a company union was over.
Under Roosevelt's New Deal, the self-regulation imposed by the National Industrial Relations Act (signed into law on June 16th) to bring business sectors back to economic health was predicated upon cartelization, in which the industry itself wrote its own regulatory code. With Hollywood, it meant the re-imposition of paternalistic labor relations that the Academy had been created to wallpaper over. The last nail in the company union's coffin was when it became public knowledge that the Academy appointed a committee to investigate the continued feasibility of the industry practice of giving actors and writers long-term contracts. High salaries to directors, actors, and screen writers was compensation to the creative people for producers refusing to ceded control over creative decision-making. Long-term contracts were the only stability in the Hollywood economic set-up up creative people,. Up to 20%-25% of net earnings of the movie industry went to bonuses to studio owners, production chiefs, and senior executives at the end of each year, and this created a good deal of resentment that fueled the militancy of the SWG and led to the formation of the Screen Actors Guild in July 1933 when they, too, felt that the Academy had sold them out.
The industry code instituted a cap on the salaries of actors, directors, and writers, but not of movie executives; mandated the licensing of agents by producers; and created a reserve clause similar to baseball where studios had renewal options with talent with expired contracts, who could only move to a new studio if the studio they had last been signed to did not pick up their option.
The SWG sent a telegram to FDR in October 1933 denouncing this policy, arguing that the executives had taken millions of dollars of bonuses while running their companies into receivership and bankruptcy. The SWG denounced the continued membership of executives who had led their studios into financial failure remaining on the corporate boards and in the management of the reorganized companies, and furthermore protested their use of the NIRA to write their corrupt and failed business practices into law at the expense of the workers.
There was a mass resignation of actors from the Academy in October 1933, with the actors switching their allegiance to SAG. SAG joined with the SWG to publish "The Screen Guilds Magazine," a periodical whose editorial content attacked the Academy as a company union in the producers' pocket. SAG President Eddie Cantor, a friend of Roosevelt who had bee invited to spend the Thanksgiving Day holiday with the president, informed him of the guild's grievances over the NIRA code. Roosevelt struck down many of the movie industry code's anti-labor provisions by executive order.
The labor battles between the guilds and the studios would continue until the late 1930s, and by the time Frank Capra was elected president of the Academy in 1935, the post was an unenviable one. The Screen Directors Guild was formed at King Vidor's house on January 15, 1936, and one of its first acts was to send a letter to its members urging them to boycott the Academy Awards ceremony, which was three days away. None of the guilds had been recognized as bargaining agents by the studios, and it was argued to grace the Academy Awards would give the Academy, a company union, recognition. Academy membership had declined to 40 from a high of 600, and Capra believed that the guilds wanted to punish the studios financially by depriving them of the good publicity the Oscars generated.
But the studios couldn't care less. Seeing that the Academy was worthless to help them in its attempts to enforce wage cuts, it too abandoned the Academy, which it had financed. Capra and the Board members had to pay for the Oscar statuettes for the 1936 ceremony. In order to counter the boycott threat, Capra needed a good publicity gimmick himself, and the Academy came up with one, voting D.W. Griffith an honorary Oscar, the first bestowed since one had been given to Charles Chaplin at the first Academy Awards ceremony.
The Guilds believed the boycott had worked as only 20 SAG members and 13 SWG members had showed up at the Oscars, but Capra remembered the night as a victory as all the winners had shown up. However, 'Variety' wrote that "there was not the galaxy of stars and celebs in the director and writer groups which distinguished awards banquets in recent years." "Variety" reported that to boost attendance, tickets had been given to secretaries and the like. Bette Davis and Victor McLaglen had showed up to accept their Oscars, but McLaglen's director and screenwriter, John Ford and Dudley Nichols, both winners like McLaglen for The Informer (1935), were not there, and Nichols became the first person to refuse an Academy Award when he sent back his statuette to the Academy with a note saying he would not turn his back on his fellow writers in the SWG. Capra sent it back to him. Ford, the treasurer of the SDG, had not showed up to accept his Oscar, he explained, because he wasn't a member of the Academy. When Capra staged a ceremony where Ford accepted his award, the SDG voted him out of office.
To save the Academy and the Oscars, Capra convinced the board to get it out of the labor relations field. He also democratized the nomination process to eliminate studio politics, opened the cinematography and interior decoration awards to films made outside the U.S., and created two new acting awards for supporting performances to win over SAG.
By the 1937 awards ceremony, SAG signaled its pleasure that the Academy had mostly stayed out of labor relations by announcing it had no objection to its members attending the awards ceremony. The ceremony was a success, despite the fact that the Academy had to charge admission due to its poor finances. Frank Capra had saved the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and he even won his second Oscar that night, for directing Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). At the end of the evening, Capra announced the creation of the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award to honor "the most consistent high level of production achievement by an individual producer." It was an award he himself was not destined to win.
By the 1938 awards, the Academy and all three guilds had buried the hatchet, and the guild presidents all attended the ceremony: SWG President Dudley Nichols, who finally had accepted his Oscar, SAG President Robert Montgomery, and SDG President King Vidor. Capra also had introduced the secret ballot, the results of which were unknown to everyone but the press, who were informed just before the dinner so they could make their deadlines. The first Irving Thalberg Award was given to long-time Academy supporter and anti-Guild stalwart Darryl F. Zanuck by Cecil B. DeMille, who in his preparatory remarks, declared that the Academy was "now free of all labor struggles."
But those struggles weren't over. In 1939, Capra had been voted president of the SDG and began negotiating with AMPP President 'Joseph Schenck', the head of 20th Century-Fox, for the industry to recognize the SDG as the sole collective bargaining agent for directors. When Schenck refused, Capra mobilized the directors and threatened a strike. He also threatened to resign from the Academy and mount a boycott of the awards ceremony, which was to be held a week later. Schenck gave in, and Capra won another victory when he was named Best Director for a third time at the Academy Awards, and his movie, You Can't Take It with You (1938), was voted Best Picture of 1938.
The 1940 awards ceremony was the last that Capra presided over, and he directed a documentary about them, which was sold to Warner Bros' for $30,000, the monies going to the Academy. He was nominated himself for Best Director and Best Picture for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), but lost to the Gone with the Wind (1939) juggernaut. Under Capra's guidance, the Academy had left the labor relations field behind in order to concentrated on the awards (publicity for the industry), research and education.
"I believe the guilds should more or less conduct the operations and functions of this institution," he said in his farewell speech. He would be nominated for Best Director and Best Picture once more with It's a Wonderful Life (1946) in 1947, but the Academy would never again honor him, not even with an honorary award after all his service. (Bob Hope, in contrast, received four honorary awards, including a lifetime membership in 1945, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian award in 1960 from the Academy.) The SDG (subsequently renamed the Directors Guild of America after its 1960 with the Radio and Television Directors Guild and which Capra served as its first president from 1960-61), the union he had struggled with in the mid-1930s but which he had first served as president from 1939 to 1941 and won it recognition, voted him a lifetime membership in 1941 and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1959.
Whenever Capra convinced studio boss Harry Cohn to let him make movies with more controversial or ambitious themes, the movies typically lost money after under-performing at the box office. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932) and Lost Horizon (1937) were both expensive, philosophically minded pictures that sought to reposition Capra and Columbia into the prestige end of the movie market. After the former's relative failure at the box office and with critics, Capra turned to making a screwball comedy, a genre he excelled at, with It Happened One Night (1934). Bookended with You Can't Take It with You (1938), these two huge hits won Columbia Best Picture Oscars and Capra Best Director Academy Awards. These films, along with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and It's a Wonderful Life (1946) are the heart of Capra's cinematic canon. They are all classics and products of superb craftsmanship, but they gave rise to the canard of "Capra-corn." One cannot consider Capra without taking into account The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932), American Madness (1932), and Meet John Doe (1941), all three dark films tackling major issues, Imperialism, the American plutocracy, and domestic fascism. Capra was no Pollyanna, and the man who was called a "dago" by Mack Sennett and who went on to become one of the most unique, highly honored and successful directors, whose depictions of America are considered Americana themselves, did not live his cinematic life looking through a rose-colored range-finder
In his autobiography "The Name Above the Title," Capra says that at the time of American Madness (1932), critics began commenting on his "gee-whiz" style of filmmaking. The critics attacked "gee whiz" cultural artifacts as their fabricators "wander about wide-eyed and breathless, seeing everything as larger than life." Capra's response was "Gee whiz!"
Defining Hollywood as split between two camps, "Mr. Up-beat" and "Mr. Down-beat," Capra defended the up-beat gee whiz on the grounds that, "To some of us, all that meets the eye IS larger than life, including life itself. Who ca match the wonder of it?"
Among the artists of the "Gee-Whiz:" school were Ernest Hemingway, Homer, and Paul Gauguin, a novelist who lived a heroic life larger than life itself, a poet who limned the lives of gods and heroes, and a painter who created a mythic Tahiti, the Tahiti that he wanted to find. Capra pointed to Moses and the apostles as examples of men who were larger than life. Capra was proud to be "Mr. Up-beat" rather than belong to "the 'ashcan' school" whose "films depict life as an alley of cats clawing lids off garbage cans, and man as less noble than a hyena. The 'ash-canners,' in turn, call us Pollyannas, mawkish sentimentalists, and corny happy-enders."
What really moves Capra is that in America, there was room for both schools, that there was no government interference that kept him from making a film like American Madness (1932). (While Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Joseph P. Kennedy had asked Harry Cohn to stop exporting Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) to Europe as it portrayed American democracy so negatively.) About Mr. Up-beat and Mr-Downbeat and "Mr. In-between," Capra says, "We all respect and admire each other because the great majority freely express their own individual artistry unfettered by subsidies or strictures from government, pressure groups, or ideologists."
In the period 1934 to 1941, Capra the created the core of his canon with the classics It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can't Take It with You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Meet John Doe (1941), wining three Best Director Oscars in the process. Some cine-historians call Capra the great American propagandist, he was so effective in creating an indelible impression of America in the 1930s. "Maybe there never was an America in the thirties," John Cassavetes was quoted as saying. "Maybe it was all Frank Capra."
After the United States went to war in December 1941, Frank Capra rejoined the Army and became an actual propagandist. His "Why We Fight" series of propaganda films were highly lauded for their remarkable craftsmanship and were the best of the U.S. propaganda output during the war. Capra's philosophy, which has been variously described as a kind of Christian socialism (his films frequently feature a male protagonist who can be seen a Christ figure in a story about redemption emphasizing New Testament values) that is best understood as an expression of humanism, made him an ideal propagandist. He loved his adopted country with the fervor of the immigrant who had realized the American dream. One of his propaganda films, The Negro Soldier (1944), is a milestone in race relations.
Capra, a genius in the manipulation of the first form of "mass media," was opposed to "massism." The crowd in a Capra film is invariably wrong, and he comes down on the side of the individual, who can make a difference in a society of free individuals. In an interview, Capra said he was against "mass entertainment, mass production, mass education, mass everything. Especially mass man. I was fighting for, in a sense, the preservation of the liberty of the individual person against the mass."
Capra had left Columbia after "Mr. Smith" and formed his own production company. After the war, he founded Liberty Films with John Ford and made his last masterpiece, It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Liberty folded prior to its release (another Liberty film, William Wyler's masterpiece, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) was released through United Artists). Though Capra received his sixth Oscar nomination as best director, the movie flopped at the box office, which is hard to believe now that the film is considered must-see viewing each Christmas. Capra's period of greatness was over, and after making three under-whelming films from 1948 to '51 (including a remake of his earlier Broadway Bill (1934)), Capra didn't direct another picture for eight years, instead making a series of memorable semi-comic science documentaries for television that became required viewing for most 1960's school kids. His last two movies, A Hole in the Head (1959) and Pocketful of Miracles (1961) his remake of Lady for a Day (1933) did little to enhance his reputation.
But a great reputation it was, and is. Capra's films withstood the test of time and continue to be as beloved as when they were embraced by the movie-going "masses" in the 1930s. It was the craftsmanship: Capra was undeniably a master of his medium. The great English novelist Graham Greene, who supported himself as a film critic in the 1930s, loved Capra's films due to their sense of responsibility and of common life, and due to his connection with his audience. (Capra, according to the 1938 "Time" article, believed that what he liked would be liked by moviegoers). In his review of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Greene elucidated the central theme of Capra's movies: "Goodness and simplicity manhandled in a deeply selfish and brutal world."
But it was Capra's great mastery over film that was the key to his success. Comparing Capra to Dickens in a not wholly flattering review of You Can't Take It with You (1938), Green found Capra "a rather muddled and sentimental idealist who feels -- vaguely -- that something is wrong with the social system" (807). Commenting on the improbable scene in which Grandpa Vanderhof persuades the munitions magnate Anthony P. Kirby to give everything up and play the harmonica, Greene stated:
"It sounds awful, but it isn't as awful as all that, for Capra has a touch of genius with a camera: his screen always seems twice as big as other people's, and he cuts as brilliantly as Eisenstein (the climax when the big bad magnate takes up his harmonica is so exhilarating in its movement that you forget its absurdity). Humour and not wit is his line, a humor that shades off into whimsicality, and a kind of popular poetry which is apt to turn wistful. We may groan and blush as he cuts his way remorselessly through all finer values to the fallible human heart, but infallibly he makes his appeal - to that great soft organ with its unreliable goodness and easy melancholy and baseless optimism. The cinema, a popular craft, can hardly be expected to do more."
Capra was a populist, and the simplicity of his narrative structures, in which the great social problems facing America were boiled down to scenarios in which metaphorical boy scouts took on corrupt political bosses and evil-minded industrialists, created mythical America of simple archetypes that with its humor, created powerful films that appealed to the elemental emotions of the audience. The immigrant who had struggled and been humiliated but persevere due to his inner resolution harnessed the mytho-poetic power of the movie to create proletarian passion plays that appealed to the psyche of the New Deal movie-goer. The country during the Depression was down but not out, and the ultimate success of the individual in the Capra films was a bracing tonic for the movie audience of the 1930s. His own personal history, transformed on the screen, became their myths that got them through the Depression, and when that and the war was over, the great filmmaker found himself out of time. Capra, like Charles Dickens, moralized political and economic issues. Both were primarily masters of personal and moral expression, and not of the social and political. It was the emotional realism, not the social realism, of such films as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), which he was concerned with, and by focusing on the emotional and moral issues his protagonists faced, typically dramatized as a conflict between cynicism and the protagonist's faith and idealism, that made the movies so powerful, and made them register so powerfully with an audience.- Actress
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Gail Strickland attended acting courses at Florida State University, then studied with Sanford Meisner. She made her debut on television in the series 'As the World Turns' and she landed her first theatrical role (as the schoolteacher who has all the answers) in Donald Driver's 'Status Quo Vadis' (1971-1972). Going out to California, she appeared as guest star in the series "Barnaby Jones", 'Hawaii Five-O', 'Police Story' and in other productions, before signing as Maureen Stapleton's partner in the television picture, 'The Gathering', and playing opposite Beau Bridges in 'The President's Mistress' Her first theatrical movie was 'The Drowning Pool', starring Paul Newman.- Actor
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A minor prototype of the "Runyon-esque" character for more than three decades, Polish-born actor George E. Stone (né Gerschon Lichtenstein, on May 18, 1903) was, in actuality, a close friend of writer Damon Runyan and would play scores of colorful "dees, dem and dos" cronies throughout the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. With great names such as Johnnie the Shiek, Boots Burnett, Ice Box Hamilton, Wires Kagel, Ropes McGonigle, Society Max, and Toothpick Charlie, Stone delighted audiences in scores of crimers for decades.
A vaudeville and Broadway hoofer in the interim, the runt-sized Stone (5'3") finally scored in his first "grownup" part as the Sewer Rat in the silent drama 7th Heaven (1927) starring the once-popular romantic pair Charles Farrell and (Academy Award winner) Janet Gaynor. As "Georgie" sounded too child-like, he began billing himself as "George E. Stone." From there he was featured in a number of "tough guy" potboilers, particularly for Warner Bros. So typed was he as a henchman or thug, that he found few films outside the genre. His gunsels often possessed a yellow streak and could be both broadly comic or threatening in nature, with more than a few of them ending up on a morgue slab before film's end, including his Earl Williams on The Front Page (1931) and Otero in the classic gangster flick Little Caesar (1931).
Included in George's many films were a number of Oscar-quality pictures , including The Racket (1928), Cimarron (1931), Five Star Final (1931), 42nd Street (1933), Viva Villa! (1934), Anthony Adverse (1936), North West Mounted Police (1940), Pickup on South Street (1953), The Robe (1953), Broken Lance (1954), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Guys and Dolls (1955), Some Came Running (1958), Some Like It Hot (1959), Pocketful of Miracles (1961). Arguably, Stone's most popular, if not prolific, role was when he replaced Charles Wagenheim as The Runt in the second of the "Boston Blackie" film series, Confessions of Boston Blackie (1941) that starred Chester Morris as the title detective. The series lasted eight years.
Suffering from failing eyesight in later years, George was virtually blind by the late 1950s but, thanks to friends, managed to secure sporadic film and TV work. From 1958 on, Stone could be glimpsed in a recurring role on the popular courtroom series Perry Mason (1957) as a court clerk. Married to second wife Marjorie Ramey in 1946, 64-year-old George died following a stroke on May 26, 1967 in Woodland Hills, California, and was survived by two sisters.- Music Artist
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George Harvey Strait Sr. is an American country music singer, songwriter, actor, and music producer. Strait's success began when his first single "Unwound" was a hit in 1981, signaling the arrival of the Neotraditional movement. During the 1980s, seven of his albums reached number one on the country charts. In the 2000s, Strait was named Artist of the Decade by the Academy of Country Music, elected into the Country Music Hall of Fame, and won his first Grammy award for the album Troubadour. Strait was named CMA Entertainer of the Year in 1989, 1990 and 2013, and ACM Entertainer of the Year in 1990 and 2014. He has been nominated for more CMA and ACM awards and has more wins in both categories than any other artist.- Gustavo Escanlar was a writer and actor, known for Las Novias de Travolta (2009) and El hombre de Walter (1995). He died on 12 November 2010 in Montevideo, Uruguay.
- Heinz-Harald Frentzen was born on 18 May 1967 in Mönchengladbach, Germany. He has been married to Tanja Frentzen since October 1999. They have three children.
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Héléna Noguerra was born on 18 May 1969 in Brussels, Belgium. She is an actress and director, known for Heartbreaker (2010), Alleluia (2014) and Les filles, personne s'en méfie (2002).- Actress
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Holly Aird was born in Aldershot, Hampshire on the 18th May, 1969. She showed a huge interest in ballet so she started to attend a local dance school. At the age of nine, young Holly was picked out by a casting director to star in The History of Mr. Polly (1980).
Her first acting appearance went well, and she began getting even more roles, such as The Tale of Beatrix Potter (1983) and The Flame Trees of Thika (1981).
It was around the time that Holly was filming The Flame Trees of Thika (1981) that her parents divorced but they stayed good friends and were always supportive in her pursuit of fame.
Holly is one of only a few actresses who manage the difficult transition from child/teenage actor to adult actress. She is now most well-known as "Nancy Thorpe/Garvey" in Soldier Soldier (1991) and, more recently, for her role as forensic pathologist, "Frankie Wharton", in the BBC series, Waking the Dead (2000), which she left at the end of season four to concentrate on her family.
Her personal life certainly hasn't been easy. Holly married actor James Purefoy but they divorced in 2002, only a few years after the birth of their son, Joseph Purefoy, who suffered from a rare blood disease which had both mum and dad at his bedside in the hospital. Joseph has now recovered and Holly has had a second child, Nelly Merritt, with her second husband, Toby Merritt, after meeting him on the set of Waking the Dead (2000)'s second season.- Actor
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Hugh Keays-Byrne was born in 1947 in Kashmir, India. In 1973, he moved to Australia, where he began an acting career. He is a well respected theater, film and TV actor in Australia. Hugh became noticed after roles in Stone (1974), Mad Dog Morgan (1976) and The Trespassers (1976). He landed his first leading role in TV film The Death Train (1978), and year later he became internationally well-known for his role of Toecutter in highly praised apocalyptic SF film Mad Max (1979).
Hugh has continued to work on TV, usually in smaller parts, and he is known for his performance as Mr. Stubb in the mini-TV series Moby Dick (1998) and TV series "Farscape".- Ingo Schwichtenberg was born on 18 May 1965 in Hamburg, Germany. He was an actor, known for Helloween: I Want Out (1988), Helloween: Halloween (1987) and Helloween: I'm Alive, Live (1987). He died on 8 March 1995 in Hamburg, Germany.
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Mr. Johnson grew up on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii and started playing guitar at the age of 14. Before releasing albums on Universal Records, he became a professional surfer who was sponsored by Quiksilver. Jack studied Film at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), during which time he began writing songs as well as making documentary surf films. While Jack was in college at UCSB, he was in a band called "Soil". He played backup guitar for "Soil" and opened for Dave Matthews Band and Sublime in 1995 at the Santa Barbara Bowl. His demo recordings found fans in the ears of new friends such as Ben Harper and Garrett Dutton of "G. Love" & Special Sauce. After the great success of Jack's first studio album, he went on to work with Mario Caldato Jr. and Ben Stiller in subsequent musical and video projects.- Actor
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Jack Raine was born on 18 May 1897 in Willesden, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Julius Caesar (1953), The Middle Watch (1930) and Not as a Stranger (1955). He was married to Theodora Moreau Wilson, Sonia Somers and Binnie Hale. He died on 30 May 1979 in South Laguna, California, USA.- Actor
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Jack Whitaker was born on 18 May 1924 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for Deadly Heroes (1993), Nightmare in Suburbia (2008) and Animated Stories from the Bible (1987). He was married to Patricia Whitaker, Nancy Chaffee and Bertha Raring. He died on 18 August 2019 in Devon, Pennsylvania, USA.- Scottish-born actor James Donald was born in Aberdeen on May 18, 1917, and took his first professional stage bow some time in the late 30s. He finally attained a degree of stardom in 1943 for his sterling performance in Noël Coward's "Present Laughter", which starred Coward himself. Subsequent post-war theatre work included "The Eagle with Two Heads" (1947), "You Never Can Tell" (1948) and "The Heiress" (1949) with Ralph Richardson, Peggy Ashcroft and Donald Sinden.
Rather humorless in character with a gaunt, intent-looking face and no-nonsense demeanor, James made his debut in British films in 1942, fitting quite comfortably into the stoic war-era mold with roles in such noteworthy military sagas as In Which We Serve (1942) and The Way Ahead (1944). Ably supporting such top-notch actors as Spencer Tracy and Deborah Kerr in Edward, My Son (1949) and Elizabeth Taylor and Stewart Granger in Beau Brummell (1954), he also managed to head up a number of films including White Corridors (1951) in which he and Googie Withers play husband and wife doctors who try to balance career and marriage; Charles Dickens' The Pickwick Papers (1952) as "Nathaniel Winkle", and Project M7 (1953) as a scientist obsessed with his work. In addition, he earned superb marks for a number of quality films in the 1950s and 1960s. His portrayal of painter 'Vincent Van Gogh''s brother "Theo" in Lust for Life (1956) with Kirk Douglas, was quite memorable, as was his trenchant work in the WWII POW dramas The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), The Great Escape (1963), and King Rat (1965). Most of the men he played were intelligent, moral-minded and honorable. While continuing to perform on stage, he also gained TV exposure. James received an Emmy nomination for his role as "Prince Albert" opposite Julie Harris in Victoria Regina (1961), and performed the part of the cruel-eyed stepfather "Mr. Murdstone" in the period remake of David Copperfield (1970) toward the end of his career. Off the screen for a number of years, he died of stomach cancer on August 3, 1993 in England. He was 76. - Actor
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James Stephens was born on 18 May 1951 in Mount Kisco, New York, USA. He is an actor and director, known for The Getaway (1994), Empire of Ash (1988) and Two of a Kind (1983). He has been married to Priscilla Taylor since 1973.- Jean Anglade was born on 18 May 1915 in Thiers, Puy-de-Dôme, France. He was a writer, known for Les mains au dos (2016), La pomme oubliée (1973) and Apostrophes (1975). He was married to Marie Ombret. He died on 22 November 2017 in Clermont-Ferrand, Puy-de-Dôme, France.
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Born in Boston to Evangeline Tomlinson and John Sinclair Macpherson. Jeanie Macperson was educated at Madame de Facq's school in Paris, the Kenwood Institute in Chicago and took dancing lessons from Theodore Kosloff. Her stage experience began when she got the lead in a school play and was awarded a gold medal by the Chicago Musical College. She made her professional debut in the musical show, "Havana", then had a part in William C. de Mille's "Strongheart", which was going out on the road. During her years as an actress Jeanie worked with Florence Lawrence and Mary Pickford. She later was given her own unit at Universal and wrote and directed as well as acted in two-reelers. After leaving Universal, she was signed by Cecil B. DeMille as a writer. According to the 1938-39 Motion Picture Almanac, she is also credited as having collaborated on Cleopatra (1934) (Paramount) and adapted "Lafitte the Pirate" (basis for The Buccaneer (1938) from Paramount). She went to Rome for direction and story supervision for ERA Productions, Vittorio Mussolini's company.- Jenn Gotzon's career break came playing Pres. Nixon's daughter Tricia in the Oscar-nominated "Frost/Nixon", which launched Gotzon starring in many family films on Amazon winning awards and nominations for The Farmer and The Belle: Saving Santaland, Doonby, God's Country, Forgiven, Unbridled and My Daddy Is In Heaven. Producer, speaker, author, jewelry creator, International model and award-winning actress, Jenn Gotzon brings a natural radiance, emotional depth and transformed ability to the protagonist roles she plays on-screen revealing hope to the human condition.
Gotzon is married to her actor-producer husband Jim E. Chandler sharing their love story in "The Farmer and The Belle: Saving Santaland," a funny Christmas movie for the family. The movie has a message to bring value about inner beauty to girls and women inspired by Gotzon's personal life. Gotzon created the #Beauty Bracelet with five charms (smooth, coin sized with a Tiffany inspired chain) engraved with affirmative sayings to overcome life's lies about your physical appearance. This bracelet is the main story point in the family, Christmas movie, "The Farmer and The Belle: Saving Santaland" and is selling on QVC. Gotzon also co-authored with Michelle Cox (Hallmark's When God Calls the Heart) her first book, a devotional that unlocks revelation to the #Beauty Bracelet called Divine Beauty: Becoming Beautiful based on God's Truth. All products can be purchased at WWW.TheFarmerandTheBelle.net/shop.
With 2 Oscar-nominated films, under her belt, playing historical characters - Tricia Nixon in Ron Howard's "Frost/Nixon" & British captive Lydia in "Alone Yet Not Alone" - Jenn's developed an uplifting brand as an American leading lady in wholesome and redemptive movies. Jenn Gotzon appears as the cover model on several magazines including Valley Social who printed, "Gotzon continuously garners awards for her Meryl Streep chameleon-like transformations" inspired from the Hollywood casting director Bill Dance after he saw Jenn win "Best Actress" for her protagonist role in short film "Stained." He told the press, "I felt like I was watching a young Meryl Streep on screen."
Top film critic in the family market, Ted Baehr with Movieguide, states, "Jenn Gotzon reveals character with an extraordinary emotional range better than almost anyone in Hollywood today!" Ted has influenced Jenn's career as a mentor guiding her to strive for excellence in storytelling.
Jenn has won awards from the Film Advisory Board for her performance as a destructive alcoholic party girl in "Doonby" opposite of John Schneider and Ernie Hudson. Followed by a festival "Best Actress" nod for her role as the Ferrari-driving egocentric firm partner in "God's Country." She received best actress for "Forgiven" playing hostage bound pastor's daughter and good-nature, adulterated wife in "The Good Book." Gotzon received recent success for bringing harmony to the racial divide through her first comedic role in the trending award-winning comedy "Love Different." Jenn's movies sell strong to her loyal following in the faith & family market: USA, Brazil, Europe & Asia.
From a small country town in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, Gotzon was raised in the church by supportive parents Ronnie and Jo-Ann who encouraged her to be active in sports and school activities. She became an all-star softball player, avid skier and learned leadership in student council. Her mom taught her how to pray and have faith, while her dad instilled stamina and confidence in her creativity saying, "If it were easy, everyone would do it."
Jenn warmly appreciates Chartreuse Talent Management in Allentown, PA who got her started with acting classes, pageants and public speaking at age 15. Her dedication to personal growth lead her to continue her education at The New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts two-year program in NYC and Joanne Baron / DW Brown Studio two-year conservatory in LA. In 1998, Gotzon moved to Orlando, FL to be a dancer for Walt Disney World's Entertainment Department as Sassy Buzz in the inaugural parade for the brand new Animal Kingdom. She is proud to say she is now fluent in Bumble Bee. Eventually, Gotzon made her way out west working in human resources for Google acclimating googles. In 2002, she landed her first protagonist role in romantic-drama "Julie and Jack" (directed by James Nguyen best known for his cult-classic "Birdemic") earning her a Best Actress award in the San Francisco independent film market. Finally, she journeyed south of San Francisco to the lights and glamour of Hollywood. She learned about Studio productions by doing stand-in work and made featured appearances on TV shows "Pushing Daisies", "House", "CSI: NY" and films "Yes Man" and "500 Days of Summer".
In 2008, she was blessed to help make cinematic history by starring in the dramatic short film "Stained" which was the first film ever shot on the RED Camera to win multiple awards at a film festival pulling in an astounding 13 accolades including a Best Actress award to Gotzon. A few months later, she received the Rising Star award for her ROM-com short "Chemistry" where festival judges started saying, "Jenn Gotzon has the effervescence of Reese Witherspoon and the emotional depth of Kate Winslet."
Later that year, her career exploded on the red carpet at the world premiere of "Frost/Nixon" in London at the BFI Film Festival. Her attributes were championed and encouraged by her late publicist and dear friend, Scotty Dugan. His red carpet vision came to fruition with Gotzon gracing the covers of magazines, newspapers and even appeared as a guest speaker for the Academy at the Aspen Academy Film Screening for her involvement playing one of the First Family members. Even though her character Tricia was in six scenes and all cut out to a few glimpses, independent filmmakers saw Gotzon's star rising.
In March 2010, Jenn was offered her first major lead role in "Doonby" surrounded by a veteran all-star cast: John Schneider, Ernie Hudson and Robert Davi. Since then, Jenn Gotzon has starred in over 20 film and television productions many of which were directly offered. She is proud to say that every one of these roles have remained in line with her passion: to entertain, to impact, to inspire and ultimately bring hope to audiences everywhere. Gotzon has a motivational speaking program called "Inspiring Audiences" where she travels nationwide and pioneers opportunities to show the movies she stars in, followed by in-depth conversation about moral lessons of the movie and an innovative exercise to help people grasp the passions of their heart to begin living their dreams.
Because of Jenn's brand to impact and inspire audiences, in 2014, China's most famous celebrity makeup artist, Brother Zhen, hired Jenn Gotzon to be the face of his company Jubilee. Her chameleon looks have her appearing on billboards and advertisements across Asia until 2018. Brother Zhen and his extraordinary team transformed Jenn into some of the most fascinating art depicted in photography. Some of those pictures are in the IMDb gallery. - During World War II and its aftermath, Joel Kupperman was one of the most famous children in the country, and also one of the most loathed.
From 6 to 16, Joel was a star on "The Quiz Kids," a popular radio program that later migrated to television. He captivated Marlene Dietrich and Orson Welles by performing complex math problems, joked with Jack Benny and Bob Hope, charmed Eleanor Roosevelt and Henry Ford. He played himself in a movie ("Chip Off the Old Block," in 1944), addressed the United Nations and was held up as an exemplar of braininess to a generation of children. - While doing his national service he ran three theatres helping to rehabilitate servicemen then joined The Old Vic Theatre School for acting training and after completion accepted an invitation from Tyrone Guthrie to join the theatre's company headed by Donald Wolfit. Spending a season there he appeared in King Lear and Tamburlaine then moved into London's West End appearing in such as Pay the Piper, The Burning Boat, The Devils Disciple, the Rule of Three and The Happiest Millionaire. Moving into films he appeared in such as Funeral in Berlin, Diamonds Are Forever and Pope Joan. Being fluent in German he was cast as a German in such as Operation Crossbow. and Attack on the 'iron Coast. On television he played Chingachgook in the serial of The Last of the Mohicans which won him an Emmy nomination as Best Actor, Over 10 years he took four roles in the series Dr Who and guest starred in such series as Blakes Seven and Red Dwarf and the second and third series of The Survivors. Other roles include parts in Redcap, Minder, Bergerac, The Bill and Casualty. His two sons Sebastian and Daniel are also actors.
- John Shelton was born on 18 May 1915 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for The Time of Their Lives (1946), Road to the Big House (1947) and Foreign Agent (1942). He was married to Lorraine Elise Ludwig, Irene Winston, Kathryn Grayson, Sally Sage and Marti Stanley. He died on 17 May 1972 in Colombo, Ceylon [now Sri Lanka].
- Actress
- Producer
- Director
First-generation Chinese-American actress Jona Xiao has quickly become "one to watch" in the entertainment industry, portraying dynamic characters in some of the most talked-about projects in film and television. Jona has solidified her ability to bring characters to life in the comedic world, while seamlessly tapping into her range in dramatic projects.
In 2021 Jona can be seen as Daisy in Starz's critically acclaimed crime drama series, "Hightown". Executive Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the series follows one woman's journey (Monica Raymund) to sobriety, intertwined with an unfolding murder investigation. An integral addition to the storyline, Jona shines as the bubby yet edgy Daisy, opposite Luis Guzman. Daisy proves she can handle herself in any situation. "Hightown" is slated to debut season 2 on October 17, 2021.
Jona also recently starred as the supervillain Rainbow Raider in The CW's "The Flash," and starred as Shen May in Netflix's "Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness".
In March 2021, Jona lent a powerful voice as Young Namaari in Disney's fantasy action- adventure animated film "Raya and the Last Dragon" (Disney+).
Her previous film credits include "Gifted" for Fox Searchlight Pictures opposite Chris Evans, Jenny Slate, and Octavia Spencer, "Spider-Man: Homecoming" (Columbia Pictures) and "Keeping Up with the Joneses" (Twentieth Century Fox) alongside Gal Gadot, Zach Galifianakis, and Jon Hamm.
Over the years, Jona has appeared in top television series including recurring on BET's "Being Mary Jane" as Natalie Wu and recurring on AMC's critically acclaimed series "Halt and Catch Fire" as Julie Yang, the first female coder on Team Mutiny. Other TV credits include: "Bones," "Trophy Wife," and "Rizzoli & Isles."
Jona grew up in St. Louis, Missouri where she began acting in middle school. While performing was always one of Jona's greatest passions, she also loved sports and in high school was an Academic All-American and All-State lacrosse player. When not on set, Jona taps back into her love of sports, bringing her known competitive edge. She was a quarterback on the National US Women's flag football prelim roster. She's also a dodgeball player and an avid board game enthusiast. Jona is incredibly passionate about helping others succeed, leading her to build Career ACTivate, a company that has helped thousands of actors get great reps and book more work.- Pope John Paul II was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his death in 2005. He was elected pope by the second papal conclave of 1978, which was called after John Paul I, who had been elected in August to succeed Pope Paul VI, died after 33 days. Cardinal Wojtyla was elected on the third day of the conclave and adopted the name of his predecessor in tribute to him. Born in Poland, John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope since Adrian VI in the 16th century and the second-longest-serving pope after Pius IX in modern history.
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Karel Roden is an internationally known actor who was most recently seen in the United States in director Jaume Collet-Serra's "Orphan," starring Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard, and in Guy Ritchie's "RocknRolla," opposite Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson and Thandie Newton. His work can also be seen in such films as the hit comedy "Mr. Bean's Vacation," starring Rowan Atkinson; Wayne Kramer's "Running Scared," opposite Paul Walker and Vera Farmiga; Paul Greengrass' wildly successful "The Bourne Supremacy," the second film in the franchise starring Matt Damon; Guillermo del Toro's comics-based action thrillers "Hellboy" and "Blade II"; "Bulletproof Monk," starring Chow Yun-Fat and Seann William Scott; and "15 Minutes," starring Robert De Niro and Edward Burns.
Roden has been nominated several times and recently won a prestigious Czech Lion Award for Best Actor for his work in the film "Guard No. 47," produced in his native country, the Czech Republic. He has acted in numerous Czech films, including "Jménem krále"; "The Eye"; "Holka Ferrari Dino"; "Bathory"; "Little Girl Blue"; "Bestiar"; "Vaterland - Lovecký deník"; and "Wild Flowers." Roden has also acted in a variety of films produced throughout Europe, including France's "Largo Winch," from director Jérôme Salle and starring Kristin Scott Thomas; Spain's "The Abandoned," Poland's "Summer Love"; and the UK's "Shut Up and Shoot Me" and "The Last Drop." He appeared as himself in Jan Nemec's documentary "Late Night Talks with Mother."
On the small screen, Roden has appeared in the US series "The Philanthropist," the UK series "MI-5" and "The Scarlet Pimpernel," and in countless Czech productions, including the series "Trapasy" and the telepic "A Christmas Tale."
A graduate of the Prague Dramatic Academy of Fine Arts, Roden hails from a long tradition of Czech actors: his younger brother, Marian, is also an actor, and both men followed in the footsteps of their father and grandfather. Roden's upcoming films include the horror thriller "Andrassy Street 60.," opposite Talia Shire and Barry Corbin; the German period drama "Habermann"; and "Alois Nebel," an animated feature from the Czech Republic.- Actress
- Producer
Katie was born in Ontario, Canada, where she began her acting career at the age of five in commercials. Katie has just completed her B.A. degree in English with an emphasis in film and media studies and a minor in Theater from the University of Florida. Go Gators! She moved to Los Angeles, California upon graduation to further her career. Her brother, Andrew (Drew) Seeley, is an actor and singer.- Laisha Wilkins was born on 18 May 1976 in Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico. She is an actress, known for The Zwickys (2014), Mujeres asesinas (2008) and Un gancho al corazón (2008).
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Laura Esquivel was born on 18 May 1994 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is an actress, known for Tu cara me suena - Argentina (2013), Patito feo (2007) and Il mondo di Patty - La festa di Patty al cinema (2010).- Liam Sullivan was schooled at Illinois College while having his first fling with the acting profession in regional theater. He then studied drama at Harvard, made his way to New York and first appeared on Broadway in "The Constant Nymph" in 1951. He later returned to the West Coast to perform in an LA stage production of "Mary Stuart". By the early 1950s, he began appearing in television, his Romanesque features and precisely modulated voice ideally suited to smoothly roguish, arrogant or cynical gents, adept at caustic or witty repartee. He was a familiar presence across all genres, from western to science fiction.
Among his many TV credits two stand out above all: his sadistic philosopher-king Parmen from the Star Trek (1966) episode "Plato's Stepchildren",; and his obnoxious social-climbing upstart Jamie Tennyson in "The Silence" (The Twilight Zone (1959)) who unwisely accepts a bet for a half-million dollars that he can remain silent for a year (based on a short story by Anton Chekhov, entitled "The Bet"). Liam appeared in another Twilight Zone episode, "The Changing of the Guard", but this time was overshadowed by Donald Pleasence, who delivered arguably the most poignant performance of his career.
During the latter stages of his life, Liam combined acting with writing and, just prior to his death, was working on a novel. He was also in the process of compiling a biographical history of the Eli Bridge Company who built the innovative 'Big Eli' Ferris Wheel in Jacksonville, Illinois in May 1900. Founded by his ancestor W.E.Sullivan, the business is still run by members of the Sullivan family. - Born in Cambridge, England, and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, Lillian pursued acting from a young age, honing her craft and learning her personal strengths as an actor through professional theatre, singing, musical theatre, movement, mask and film training. Lillian took her experience to the next level in the drama program at Canterbury High School in Ottawa, one of Canada's top high schools for the arts. Upon graduating at the top of her class, Lillian spent a year in England, where she worked as an Au Pair and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). She then moved to Canada's West Coast to attend one of the country's top theatre conservatories, Studio 58, in Vancouver, where she resides today. At Studio 58, Lillian was introduced to all aspects of the acting field and was recognized with the Jean & Walter Ball Memorial Scholarship for strong comedic ability and dedication to the program. One month after graduating, she booked her first supporting lead role in a feature film, The Miracle Season, starring alongside Academy Award winners Helen Hunt and William Hurt.
Lillian has since starred in feature films on Netflix, Prime, and HBO Max, recently booking the role of Cinderella's hilarious and evil step-sister in the popular five-film franchise "A Cinderella Story.". This role landed her a Leo Nomination (British Columbia film and television award) for Best Supporting Actress.She has also made Guest Star appearances on hit shows, including A Million Little Things, Wu Assassins, The Flash, and Supernatural. Lillian is currently filming on set, starring alongside Hunter King in the upcoming Hallmark Channel film, "Professional Bridesmaid". - Actress
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Luisana Lopilato was born on 18 May 1987 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is an actress and composer, known for Casados con hijos (2005), Chiquititas: Rincón de luz (2001) and Nafta Súper (2016). She has been married to Michael Bublé since 31 March 2011. They have four children.- Actor
- Cinematographer
- Composer
Luke Kleintank mainly starred in 8 episodes of "Bones" as Finn Abernathy, starting in November 2011, alongside Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz. Over the course of a few years, has been in The Hot Dog in the Competition (10 November 2011), The Bump in the Road (9 April 2012), The Don't in the Do (16 April 2012), The Partners in the Divorce (24 September 2012), The Patriot in Purgatory (12 November 2012), The Friend in Need (18 February 2013), The Maiden in the Mushrooms (1 April 2013), and The Turn in the Urn (31 March 2014).- Actress
This blonde stunner and German-born foreign import started life on May 18, 1908, in Berlin as Nathalie Margoulis (or perhaps Natalia Lyech) the daughter of a Russian banker and French pediatrician. The family moved to Paris when she was young where she received her schooling both there and in Switzerland. While little is known about her father, her mother was Ina Löscht (née Blumenfeld), who served at a French field hospital at the onset of WWII.
Lya broke into the business as a model and first appeared on film in the Francis Lederer starrer Maman Colibri (1929). MGM, checking out European actors, took notice of Lya and signed her, among others including Charles Boyer, to perform in French-language version of Hollywood movies. It was during this time she starred in the classic Luis Buñuel film L'Age d'Or (1930), which was co-written by none other than Salvador Dalí.
Returning to Hollywood, she failed to hit stardom as her thick accent was a primary hindrance. During this turbulent time, she met and married actor Charles Morton in 1931. That very brief marriage produce one daughter. A second marriage in 1932 to business manager Percy Montague also ended quickly. She became a U.S. citizen in 1933. Touring successfully with the 1936 play "Night of January 16", only one decent film came her way, The Great Gambini (1937), but more money problems and an emotional breakdown stopped the momentum dead in its tracks. She made a brief return to Paris to perform in the play "The King's Dough" but was forced to escape with rise of Nazism. Left destitute now, she made a failed suicide attempt with pills.
Following unbilled parts in such films as George White's 1935 Scandals (1935) and Vagabond Lady (1935), she made a comeback of sorts, courtesy of a Warner Bros. contract, with the film Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939). This success led to roles in The Return of Doctor X (1939) and her last, Murder in the Air (1940), starring Ronald Reagan. A third short-lived marriage occurred with Chicago vending machine operator John Gunnerson, who was once married to silent star Anna Q. Nilsson.
The war-era 1940s saw major financial and career setbacks once again, eventually filing for bankruptcy. Later work included torch song singing as a club chanteuse and writing as a fashion newspaper columnist. Her life vastly improved following her stable fourth marriage to George Feit, which lasted until her death. The couple settled in Newport Beach, California where she involved herself in charity work. Lya died of a heart ailment at age 78, on June 2, 1986.- Producer
- Actress
- Executive
Liverpool born, Academy Award and Emmy nominated Producer Lynette Howell Taylor is the founder of 51 Entertainment.
Lynette produced Bradley Cooper's directorial debut A Star Is Born, which was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, in addition to receiving numerous nominations from the Golden Globes, AFI, Critic's Choice, The National Board of Review, SAG, DGA, PGA, and BAFTA. Lynette served as Executive Producer on Derek Cianfrance's HBO limited series I Know This Much Is True starring Mark Ruffalo, which is based on the best-selling novel by Wally Lamb, and earned Ruffalo an Emmy for Best Lead Actor in a Limited Series. Under the 51 Entertainment banner, Lynette is developing the Netflix film project, Lady Business, as well as adaptations of Jennifer Donnelly's bestselling novels Stepsister and Poisoned alongside Made Up Stories and Endeavor Content with the aim of building a revisionist fairy tale universe of films and television. This past year, she produced the 92nd Academy Awards Ceremony, which took place on February 9, 2020 at the Dolby Theatre. Lynette produced Captain Fantastic, written and directed by Matt Ross and starring Academy Award-nominee Viggo Mortensen. The film won multiple awards around the world including the Best Director prize in Cannes Un Certain Regard. She previously produced Matt Ross' 28 Hotel Rooms, which premiered in Sundance and was released theatrically in 2012. Lynette produced Brie Larson's directorial debut Unicorn Store.
She is married to Graham Taylor (co-president of Endeavor Content) and has two children.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Marco Perella was born on 18 May 1949 in Houston, Texas, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Boyhood (2014), A Scanner Darkly (2006) and Friday Night Lights (2004). He has been married to Diane Perella since 1984. They have two children.- Actress
Maria Ruiz is a Spanish film, TV and theatre actress. She was the female lead in Antonio Bandera's feature film Summer Rain (El camino de los Ingleses), and she is well known for her role as Carmina Ordoñez in the movie "Paquirri" (Salvador Calvo) and for other film titles such as "Un buen día lo tiene cualquiera" (Santiago Lorenzo) and TV series (El síndrome de Ulises, Los simuladores).- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Graduate of Woodridge High School in Peninsula, Ohio.
Attended Kent State University (1970-73) in Kent, Ohio, to focus on attaining an art degree. While at Kent State Mothersbaugh met Jerry Casale and Bob Lewis, who ultimately joined him in forming the 1970-80s avant-garde band Devo.
Awarded an honorary doctorate degree (2008) from Kent State in humane letters. Dr. Mothersbaugh has reciprocated KSU in diverse fashion as is his style-- gifting it with music & art, as well as time-- which is spent touting the Kent State experience through public promotions & media spots.- Actor
- Producer
Marlon Moreno was born on 18 May 1966 in Cali, Colombia. He is an actor and producer, known for El Capo (2009) and Her Mother's Killer (2020).- Actress
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- Soundtrack
Cuban-American singer who made a major pop debut in 1988 with her hit song "Toy Soldiers." Born in California to a Cuban emigre family, Martika dabbled on various children's television shows such as Kids Inc. before moving on to recording success.- Producer
- Actor
Martin Bregman was born on 18 May 1926 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and actor, known for Dog Day Afternoon (1975), The Shadow (1994) and The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002). He was married to Cornelia Sharpe and Elizabeth Driscoll. He died on 16 June 2018 in New York City, New York, USA.- Mary Borgstrom was born on 18 May 1916 in Saskatchewan, Canada. She died on 3 April 2019 in Provost, Alberta, Canada.
- Manly, chiseled, exceedingly handsome, very agile Massimo Girotti was an engineering student and polo/swimming star before entering films in 1939. He began auspiciously in serious leads, most notably Roberto Rossellini's Desire (1946), Luchino Visconti's Obsession (1943) and Vittorio De Sica's The Gates of Heaven (1945), while his physical stature and all-round athletism were put to good use in actioneers such as Spartaco (1953) in which he played the pre-Kirk Douglas slave-turned-leader role of Spartacus. By the 60s, however, Girotti was reduced to support roles in swashbuckling adventure and badly-dubbed sand-and-spear spectacles, appearing only occasionally in well-mounted films of quality, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini's Teorema (1968), Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972) and Visconti's The Innocent (1976). He died only a few weeks before the release of his last film, Ferzan Özpetek's Facing Windows (2003).
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Matt Long was born and raised in Winchester, Kentucky and started acting early on in school plays in elementary school. He continued to act throughout his college years and after graduating from Western Kentucky University, Matt moved to New York. While playing at the Williamstown Theater Fest in Massachusetts he was spotted by his current manager and soon after that he was set to star as alpha bro Jack McCallister in his television-debut in Jack & Bobby (2004). Matt currently resides in Los Angeles, loves the outdoors and enjoys hiking and backpacking when he is not working.- Music Department
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Meredith Willson--musician, playwright, and composer--was best known for the book, words, and music for The Music Man (1962). He wrote two other musical plays, including The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964). Many of his songs are standards, including "You and I", "May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You", "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas", "Seventy-Six Trombones", and "Till There Was You", which was a surprising song choice for a hit record by The Beatles. Willson left his hometown of Mason City in 1919 to attend Damrosch Institute (now Juilliard) in New York. He played flute and piccolo in John Philip Sousa's band from 1921 to 1923 and then joined the New York Philharmonic Orchestra from 1924 to 1929. In 1930 he got a job in radio in California. Radio was his primary source of income over the following 25 years. He also composed several orchestral works during the '30s and '40s, including symphonies for The Great Dictator (1940) and The Little Foxes (1941). In 1951, stage producers Martin and Feuer proposed that Willson write a musical comedy about his Iowa boyhood. With his common touch, they said, it was sure to be a hit. After seven years, he finally got what turned out to be his masterpiece onto the stage. "The Music Man", which Willson said was "an Iowan's attempt to pay tribute to his home state", premiered on Broadway in 1957. Robert Preston recreated his most famous role and Willson's most famous character, that of Professor Harold Hill, in the film production of The Music Man (1962).- Composer
- Actor
- Producer
This German hit producer is married to one of Germany's greatest singers, Sandra. He produced her biggest hits "Maria Magdalena", "In The Heat Of The Night", "Heaven Can Wait", "Innocent Love", "Hiroshima", "Don't Be Agressive" during the 80s and the early 90s.- Michaël Llodra is a French former professional tennis player.
He was a successful doubles player with three Grand Slam championships and an Olympic silver medal, and has also had success in singles, winning five career titles and gaining victories over Novak Djokovic, Juan Martín del Potro, Tomás Berdych and Robin Söderling.
Llodra is one of the last remaining serve-and-volleyers in the top ranks of men's professional tennis, a tactic aided by his left-handed serve which allows him to create unusual angles. Llodra has been called the 'best serve and volleyer in the world'. - Michael is an award-winning Canadian actor with over 90 credits under his belt. He is well known for his portrayal of deeply layered mad man, Barry Nyle, in the critically acclaimed cult favorite, BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW. Beyond the Black Rainbow screened at the TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL, and Michael's outstanding performance landed him a VFCC award for Best Actor in a Canadian Film and a nomination for Best Supporting Actor from the New York Film Critics Poll.
Michael's most recent guest starring roles include SIREN, THE BLACKLIST, BLINDSPOT, SUPERGIRL, AGENT X, BATES MOTEL, THE 100 and SUPERNATURAL.
Aside from being a veteran to Television, Michael is becoming quite well known in the indie film circles, he received rave reviews from Glenn Kenny at The New York Times for his role in SOLLERS POINT. Additional film credits include: HOLLOW IN THE LAND, TWO FOR THE MONEY, WE'RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLDS FAIR and many more. Michael has frequently collaborated with director Neill Blomkamp, most recently in his feature, Demonic. - Producer
- Writer
- Actress
Nancy Juvonen was born on 18 May 1967 in Marin County, California, USA. She is a producer and writer, known for Donnie Darko (2001), Charlie's Angels (2000) and Charlie's Angels (2019). She has been married to Jimmy Fallon since 22 December 2007. They have two children.- Nathaniel Parker was born in England in 1962. The son of Sir Peter Parker and Dr. Jill Parker, he decided at the age of nine that acting would be his career of choice. His first public performances were with the National Youth Theatre, a breeding ground for many British actors. After attending The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts (LAMDA), Nathaniel became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Before exiting the stage for the screen, Nathaniel portrayed "Bassanio" in The Merchant Of Venice, participating in both the London and Broadway productions. The production was directed by the critically acclaimed Sir Peter Hall and starred Dustin Hoffman.
His first feature film, War Requiem (1989), was directed by the highly acclaimed British maverick Derek Jarman, and starred Tilda Swinton and Lord Laurence Olivier. Nathaniel is perhaps best known for his participation in period dramas such as the part of "Laertes" in Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990), "Rochester" in Wide Sargasso Sea (1993) and "Cassio" in his brother Oliver Parker's version of Othello (1995), starring Laurence Fishburne. He also appeared in the Chris Farley comedy Beverly Hills Ninja (1997) and the Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston box office hit, The Bodyguard (1992). Parts in projects such as Into Thin Air: Death on Everest (1997) and David (1997) helped Nathaniel gain momentum in the world of television, but it was roles like "Rawdon Crawley" in Vanity Fair (1998) and "Gabriel Oak" in Far from the Madding Crowd (1998) that thrust him into the spotlight and solidified his career on the small screen. Currently, Nathaniel portrays "Detective Thomas Lynley" in the BBC series The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (2001). Now in its third season, the show has become an international success, earning rave reviews the world over. Returning to Hollywood in 2003, Nathaniel can be seen in cinemas soon, portraying "Master Edward Gracey" in Walt Disney Pictures The Haunted Mansion (2003), starring Eddie Murphy. - Nick Wyman was born on 18 May 1950 in Portland, Maine, USA. He is an actor, known for Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987), Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995) and Maid in Manhattan (2002). He has been married to Beth McDonald since 1979. They have three children.Nicholas Wyman
- Producer
- Actress
Olivia Harrison was born on May 18, 1948, in Los Angeles, California. She is a producer, known for the Emmy Award winning George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011), and the Grammy award winning Concert for George (2003). She was married to George Harrison from 1978 until his death in 2001.- Patrick St. Esprit was born on 18 May 1954 in the USA. He is an actor, known for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), Green Zone (2010) and We Were Soldiers (2002).
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Best recalled as the eldest son and first member of the "Bonanza" Cartwright clan to permanently leave the Ponderosa in the hopes of greener acting pastures, dark, deep-voiced and durably handsome Pernell Roberts' native roots lay in Georgia. Born Pernell Elvin Roberts, Jr. on May 18, 1928, in North Carolina and moved to Waycross as an infant, he was singing in local USO shows while still in high school (where he appeared in plays and played the horn). He attended both Georgia Tech and the University of Maryland but flunked out of both colleges, with a two-year stint as a Marine stuck somewhere in between. He eventually decided to give acting a chance and supported himself as a butcher, forest ranger, and railroad riveter during the lean years while pursuing his craft.
On stage from the early 1950s, he gained experience in such productions as "The Adding Machine," "The Firebrand" and "Faith of Our Fathers" before spending a couple of years performing the classics with the renowned Arena Stage Company in Washington, DC. Productions there included "The Taming of the Shrew" (as Petruchio), "The Playboy of the Western Word," "The Glass Menagerie," "The Importance of Being Earnest," and "Twelfth Night." He made his Broadway debut in 1955 with "Tonight in Samarkind" and that same year won the "Best Actor" Drama Desk Award for his off-Broadway performance as "Macbeth," which was immediately followed by "Romeo and Juliet" as Mercutio. Other Broadway plays include "The Lovers" (1956) with Joanne Woodward, "A Clearing in the Woods" (1957) with Kim Stanley, a return to Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" (1957) and "The Duchess of Malfi" (1957). He returned to Broadway fifteen years later as the title role opposite Ingrid Bergman in "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" (1972).
Pernell then headed for Hollywood and found minor roles in films before landing the pivotal role of Ben Cartwright's oldest and best-educated son Adam in the Bonanza (1959) series in 1959. The series made Roberts a bona fide TV star, while the program itself became the second longest-running TV western (after "Gunsmoke") and first to be filmed in color. At the peak of his and the TV show's popularity, Pernell, displeased with the writing and direction of the show, suddenly elected not to renew his contract and left at the end of the 1964-1965 season to the utter dismay of his fans. The show continued successfully without him, but a gap was always felt in the Cartwright family by this abrupt departure. The story line continued to leave open the possibility of a return if desired, but Pernell never did.
With his newfound freedom, Roberts focused on singing and the musical stage. One solo album was filled with folks songs entitled "Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies." Besides such standard roles in "Camelot" and "The King and I," he starred as Rhett Butler to Lesley Ann Warren's Scarlett O'Hara in a musical version of "Gone with the Wind" that did not fare well, and appeared in another misguided musical production based on the life of "Mata Hari." During this period he became an avid civil rights activist and joined other stalwarts such as Dick Gregory, Joan Baez and Harry Belafonte who took part in civil rights demonstrations during the 60s, including the Selma March.
The following years were rocky. He never found a solid footing in films with roles in rugged, foreign films such as Tibetana (1970) [The Kashmiri Run], Four Rode Out (1969), making little impression. He maintained a viable presence in TV, however, with parts in large-scale mini-series and guest shots on TV helping to keep some momentum. In 1979 he finally won another long-running series role (and an Emmy nomination) as Trapper John, M.D. (1979) in which he recreated the Wayne Rogers TV M*A*S*H (1972) role. Pernell was now heavier, bearded and pretty close to bald at this juncture (he was already wearing a toupee during his early "Bonanza" years), but still quite virile and attractive. The medical drama co-starring Gregory Harrison ran seven seasons.
The natural-born Georgia rebel was a heavily principled man and spent a life-time of work fighting racism, segregation, and sexism, notably on TV. He was constantly at odds with the "Bonanza" series writers of his concerns regarding equality. He also kept his private life private. Married and divorced three times, he had one son, Jonathan Christopher, by first wife Vera. Jonathan was killed in a motorcycle crash in 1989. In the 1990s, Pernell starred in his last series as host of FBI: The Untold Stories (1991). It had a short life-span.
Retiring in the late 1990s, Roberts was diagnosed with cancer in 2007 and died about two years later at age 81 on January 24, 2010, survived by fourth wife Eleanor Criswell. As such, the rugged actor, who never regretted leaving the "Bonanza" series, managed to outlive the entire Cartwright clan (Dan Blocker died in 1972; Lorne Greene in 1987); and Michael Landon in 1991).- Music Artist
- Actor
- Producer
In a singing (and sometimes acting) career that spanned over six decades, the name Perry Como has come to mean that warm, smooth, easy-listening, general-audience, slow-flame romance that characterized popular music in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. It has also come to represent an overall good feeling. Telling of the success of the appeal of that good feeling early on in his career, during just a single week in the 1940s, the music industry pressed and sold 4 million Como records. In the 1950s, 11 of his singles sold well over 1 million copies each. In more than six decades of singing, his records sold more than 100 million copies; 27 individual prints reached the million-record mark.
Christened Pierino Como in Canonsburg, Pa., and one of a family of 13 children, Como pursued a career as a barber before he launched his singing career. At 11, he was working after school cutting hair in a barbershop. Before long he had set his sights on owning his own shop -- even making monthly payments toward one. He enjoyed singing, however, and let go of his barbershop ambitions soon after high school and his marriage to his high school sweetheart, Roselle Beline. It didn't take long to prove that he had talent and soon landed a spot in the Freddie Carlone Orchestra, where he made $28 a week touring the Midwest. In 1937, he joined the Ted Weems orchestra and was featured on the band's "Beat the Band" radio program. His career was on the rise. But, with the start of WWII and the eventual breakup of Weems' band, Como found himself back in Canonsburg in a barbershop cutting hair -- not for long, however. CBS radio soon offered him a weekly show at $100 a week and RCA signed him to a recording contract that garnered him in the next 14 years 42 Top 10 hits, a feat bettered only by Bing Crosby. These hits included "Dig You Later (A Hubba-Hubba-Hubba)," "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows," "They Say It's Wonderful," "Surrender" and "Some Enchanted Evening." The 1945 rendition of "Till the End of Time," (a song associated with the movie "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" and based on Chopin's "Polonaise in A-Flat Minor") was perhaps his most memorable hit from this era. Other hits were on the lighter side of romance and included "Hot Diggity" and the forever a favorite "Papa Loves Mambo."
It was also during his singing career in the 1940s that Como appeared in three films for Twentieth Century Fox. His parts were unfortunately less than memorable, partly because of his overpowering screen presence of his co-star Carmen Miranda. But Como did have a screen presence, and he found its niche in the magic of the living room theater when he made his television debut in 1948 with NBC's "The Chesterfield Supper Club." In 1950, he was at the helm of his own show with CBS: "The Perry Como Show," which ran for five years. Back on NBC in 1955 he achieved his greatest success in the medium with an eight-year run. This was the show that featured his theme song: "Sing Along With Me." The show included the talents of the Ray Charles Singers and announcer Frank Gallop. It was also in this show where he developed and honed the image of the cardigan-wearing, relaxed, wholesome nice-guy that has been his trademark ever since. In 1956 and '57 he won Emmy Awards for most outstanding television personality. The show itself won Peabody and Golden Mike awards. During his tenure with this show he also received the Recording Industry Association of America's first ever Gold Disc Award for his rendition of "Catch a Falling Star." He retired from his show in 1963, opting to work only occasionally on t.v. specials. These specials included his traditional Christmas shows. After two decades of just canned music, he returned to live performances in the 1970s, playing Las Vegas and other circuits; he even did a sell-out tour of Australia. The 1970s also gave rise to his million record seller "It's Impossible." In one of his most gratifying moments in his career, President Reagan presented Como with a Kennedy Center award for outstanding achievement in the performing arts.- Though character actress Priscilla Pointer may be better known as the mother of Amy Irving, she has enjoyed a major stage, film and TV career herself for over four decades. The New York-born performer was trained on the stage and appeared in several tours and Broadway shows, including "A Streetcar Named Desire", "The Country Wife" and "The Condemned of Altona". Many of these were under the direction of husband Jules Irving, a former actor, whom she married in 1947. Together, they co-founded the San Francisco Actor's Workshop along with Herbert Blau and Beatrice Manley. Forsaking her career for a time to raise her children, Pointer returned full time and, at the age of 40+, decided to set her sights on film and TV. She seemed to be everywhere in the 1970s and 1980s as somebody's mom, both brittle and resilient. She also proved to be dependable as a stern, no-nonsense teacher, doctor or judge. She played the mother of daughter Amy Irving in the cult shocker Carrie (1976), Diane Keaton in Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977), Sean Penn in The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) and Kyle MacLachlan in Blue Velvet (1986). On the nighttime soap hit Dallas (1978), she played mom to Victoria Principal's character. In 1979, her husband Jules passed away and, two years later, she married actor Robert Symonds. They have appeared together quite frequently on stage, including the plays "Voices" and "The Road to Mecca".
- Raúl Amundaray was born on 18 May 1937 in Caracas, Venezuela. He was an actor, known for Cristal (1985), El engaño (1968) and Por amarte tanto (1993). He died on 21 January 2020 in Houston, Texas, USA(undisclosed).
- Ray Lonnen was born on 18 May 1940 in Bournemouth, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Holly (1972), Harry's Game (1982) and Doctor Who (1963). He was married to Lynn Dalby, Jean Conyers and Tara Ward. He died on 11 July 2014 in the UK.
- Reggie Jackson is a baseball Hall of Famer nicknamed "Mr. October" because of his great World Series status. He hit 3 homeruns in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series, the most homeruns ever by one player in a World Series game. He currently works for the New York Yankees
- Actor
- Composer
- Director
Riccardo Zinna was born on 18 May 1958 in Naples, Campania, Italy. He was an actor and composer, known for Gomorrah (2008), Capri (2006) and Nirvana (1997). He died on 20 September 2018 in Naples, Campania, Italy.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Richard Brooks was an Academy Award-winning film writer who also earned six Oscar nominations and achieved success as a film director and producer.
He was born Reuben Sax on May 18, 1912, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants. He graduated from West Philadelphia HS, attended Philadelphia's Temple University for two years, before dropping out and later working as a sports reporter and radio journalist in the 1930s. After a stint as a writer for the NBC network, he worked for one season as director of New York's Mill Pond Theatre, and then headed to Los Angeles. There he broke into films as a script writer of "B" movies, Maria Montez epics, serials, and did some radio writing. During the Second World War, he served with the US Marines for two years.
Richard Brooks made his directorial debut with MGM's Crisis (1950) starring Cary Grant. He scripted and directed The Brothers Karamazov (1958) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and two years later won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for Elmer Gantry (1960). He had six Oscar nominations and 25 other nominations during his film career. Brooks was a writer and director of Chekhovian depth, who mastered the use of understatement, anticlimax and implied emotion. His films enjoyed lasting appeal and tended to be more serious than the usual mainstream productions. Brooks was regarded as "independent" even before he officially broke away from the studio system in 1965. In the 1980s, he had his own production company.
Richard Brooks died of a heart failure on March 11, 1992, in Beverly Hills, California, and was laid to rest in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6422 Hollywood Blvd., for his contribution to the art of motion picture.- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Rick Wakeman's work on the classic albums of the progressive rock band Yes, his hugely successful solo albums, as well as his contributions to classic David Bowie songs, has earned him a reputation as one of rock's greatest ever keyboardists. Wakeman was educated at Drayton Manor County Grammar School. Classically trained on the piano, he later attended the Royal College of Music but left without graduating. He first made his name as a session musician at Trident Studios. Among his notable early work was playing Mellotron on David Bowie's breakthrough single "Space Oddity".
Bowie subsequently asked Wakeman to play on his "Hunky Dory" album, which has become one of his most acclaimed works and produced the songs "Life on Mars", "Changes" and "Oh! You Pretty Things", which all featured Wakeman on piano. In the early 1970s, Wakeman was one of the most sought after keyboardists in Britain. He played on albums by The Strawbs and was receiving offers to join the progressive rock band Yes and David Bowie's band The Spiders from Mars at the same time. He chose to join Yes and during his time with the band they recorded several of the most famous albums of the progressive rock genre, including "Fragile", "Close to the Edge" and "Tales from Topographic Oceans". Wakeman also recorded some hugely successful solo albums during the 1970s, principally "The Six Wives of Henry VIII", "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" and "The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table".
In the late 1970s, Wakeman and progressive rock in general fell out of favour with the arrival of punk rock. Nevertheless, he was able to continue with work as a musician and continued to record his own albums, although they were not as commercially successful. In his later life he has become just as well known as a radio and television broadcaster.- Actor
- Producer
- Composer
Rob Base was born on 18 May 1967 in Harlem, New York, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Iron Man 2 (2010), Bumblebee (2018) and Spies in Disguise (2019).- Actor
- Producer
Prolific American character actor of primarily villainous roles. The son of German parents, Cincinnati feed-store manager August Wilke and his wife Rose, Robert Joseph Wilke grew up in Cincinnati. He worked as a lifeguard at a Miami, Florida, hotel, where he made contacts in the film business. He was able to obtain work as a stuntman and continued as such until the mid-'40s, when he began getting actual roles in low-budget westerns and serials. A prominent appearance as one of the heavies in High Noon (1952) led to work in higher-quality films. He worked extensively in television as well as movies, and became an enormously familiar face, though a fairly anonymous one to the general public. His weathered visage made him a perfect western bad guy, but he occasionally played sympathetic parts as well, as in Days of Heaven (1978). An expert golfer, he was said by his friend Claude Akins to have earned more money on the golf course than he ever did in movies. He died in 1989.- With that impish, gap-toothed grin, nervous bundle of energy, Robert Morse could never be contained long enough to become a film star. The live stage would be his calling.
He was born Robert Allen Morse on May 18, 1931, in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of May (Silver) and Charles Morse, who worked at a record store. His father was of German Jewish descent and his mother was of Russian Jewish ancestry. He developed an interest in performing in high school. Moving to New York, he joined elder brother Richard who was already studying acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Robert made his debut with the musical "On the Town", in 1949, and trained with Lee Strasberg, before making his inauspicious film debut in The Proud and Profane (1956), but movie offers were few. Instead, he brightened up the lights of Broadway as "Barnaby Tucker" in "The Matchmaker" (and in the film version of The Matchmaker (1958)), as well as in "Say, Darling" (Tony nomination in 1958), "Take Me Along" (Tony nomination in 1959) and his best-known role as the ever-ambitious "J. Pierpont Finch" in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying", in which he finally won the Tony, in 1961, while singing his signature song, "I Believe in You", to himself in the mirror. He took that role to film, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), six years later.
Morse's best movie roles also came in the 60s, as a Britisher arranging his uncle's funeral in the cult favorite, The Loved One (1965), and as Walter Matthau's philandering buddy/advisor in A Guide for the Married Man (1967). His offbeat musical talents were used for the intriguing experimental James Thurber-like TV series, That's Life (1968), with E.J. Peaker, which combined sketches, monologues and musical interludes, but the show lasted only one season.
Overall, Bobby's work has never been less than interesting with no gray areas in his performances -- ranging from bizarre to irritating, from frenzied to fascinating. After earning acclaim and another Tony-nomination as the cross-dressing musician on the lam in "Sugar", a Broadway musical version of Some Like It Hot (1959), Morse appeared less and less -- his eccentricities proving both difficult to cast and to deal with.
Following an unfulfilling stint on the daytime soap, All My Children (1970), he came back in grand style in the one-man tour de farce, Tru (1992), based on the life of the equally-eccentric Truman Capote - a perfect fit, if ever there was one, between actor and role. With this role, Bobby became one of the choice few to ever win Tony awards for both a musical and dramatic part. At the age of 85, Morse returned to the lights of Broadway in the 2016 revival of "The Front Page" starring Nathan Lane.
Robert continued to be seen in odd roles from time to time, such as "Grandpa" in the revamped TV movie, Here Come the Munsters (1995). Into the millennium, he focused on TV work. He made a huge dramatic impression as an advertising agency founder Bertram Cooper on the popular series Mad Men (2007) and earned five Emmy nominations. He also impressed as Dominick Dunne on the series American Crime Story (2016) and provided the TV voice of Santa Claus in the animated short series Teen Titans Go! (2013).
Married twice, his five children include actresses Andrea Doven, Hilary Morse and Robin Morse. Robert Morse died on April 20, 2022, in Los Angeles. He was 90. - Producer
- Actor
Ron Yerxa was born on 18 May 1947. He is a producer and actor, known for Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Election (1999) and The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019).- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
Russell Sams was born in Clinton, Tennessee, USA. He is an actor and director, known for The Good Lord Bird (2020), Supernatural (2005) and The Rules of Attraction (2002).- Ryan Hadison Cooley (born May 18, 1988) is a Canadian television actor from Ontario, best known for his role as J.T. Yorke on Degrassi: The Next Generation. He's from Orangeville, Ontario and graduated from Orangeville District Secondary School in 2006. He is currently a student at The University of Toronto.
Prior to joining the Degrassi cast, he had a two-year run as Pleskit, the alien lead in the television series I Was A Sixth Grade Alien. Cooley's other television credits include the series, Are You Afraid Of The Dark?, Queer as Folk, Lexx: The Series" and Life with Derek. He has also appeared in the features Sachsenhausen 1944, Toy Men Disney Channel movie The Color of Friendship, the Animal Planet movie Cybermutt and CBC TV movie Happy Christmas Miss King alongside his Degrassi co-star Lauren Collins. In 2006, Cooley was nominated for a Young Artist Award (LA) the category of Best Performance In a TV Comedy Series.
Ryan enjoys James Bond movies and basketball. He hopes to continue in the entertainment business once he graduates from the University of Toronto where he is working on his third year toward a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre.
His father, Charlie Cooley, is a drummer for the Canadian Idol winner Kalan Porter. His father used to be in the band Prairie Oyster. Ryan listens to old Rat Pack type music, such as Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and Sammy Davis Jr.