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- Music Department
- Writer
Writer, dialogue writer and songwriter of Indian cinema. Born in Pallam, India, in 1913, to prominent poet Karimalil Kesava Pillai. He himself began writing poetry and traveled throughout India writing about and promoting the non-violence creed of Gandhi. At one point, he was asked to write some songs for a traveling theatre company and then first realized the commercial potential of work as a songwriter. He wrote songs for several successful theatre troupes and also wrote numerous plays (though few if any were produced). He began his film career in 1947, composing songs for a Malay language film, Vellinakshatram. He found a close friend and partner in V. Dakshinamurthy, and the two wrote songs for many films together. He also translated both songs and dialog for films dubbed into Malay. He edited the Malaysian version of two films, one in Hindi (Badal) and one in Telugu language (Natya Tara). Late in his career, he put his multi-lingual talents to work translating classic works and creating a highly successful Hindi-Malayalam dictionary. He died in 2000.- Indian actor who turned later in life to primarily spiritual roles, in Hindi and Bengali films. He made his debut onscreen in Nauk Dubi in 1947 and worked for many years with top Indian directors. In the 1970s, his life took a spiritual turn and he became a follower of Dadaji, the Indian activist and philosopher. He wrote a 1989 book about his experiences, Destiny with Dadaji. In later years, he played numerous deities in religious and mystical films. He played the god Lord Vishnu in many films. He died in 1993.
- Composer
- Producer
- Writer
Indian musician, composer and film producer, born in Kakinada, Godavari, India, on the subcontinent's eastern shore in 1915. His first work was composing songs and music for theatrical events. In 1946, he served as composer and musical director for the film Palletoori Pilla, and married its star, Anjali Devi in 1948. Together they worked on numerous films, initially with him as composer or musical director, and later as he began to produce the films. He partnered with her in a production company, Anjali Pictures, headquartered in Madras. He died at 75 in Madras on January 25, 1990. He was survived by his wife. Their granddaughter is the Indian-American actress Sai Lang.- Actor
- Writer
American character actor, a fixture both in Westerns and in the comedies of Preston Sturges. Although frequently billed as "Alan" Bridge, he was born Alfred Morton Bridge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1891 (not as "Alford" Bridge in 1890, as his tombstone erroneously states), he and his sister, future actress Loie Bridge, were raised by their mother Loie and her second husband, butcher Wilmer Shinn. Following service as a corporal in the U.S. Army infantry in the first World War, Bridge joined a theatrical troupe which also included several of his relatives. The 1920 census showed him on tour in Kansas City, Missouri. He dabbled in writing and in 1930 sold a script to a short film, Her Hired Husband (1930). He followed this with a B-Western script, God's Country and the Man (1931), in which he made his film debut as an actor. For the next quarter century, he managed the atypical achievement of maintaining a career in both B-Westerns and in bigger dramatic and comedy features. Ten films for director Preston Sturges represent probably his most familiar contribution to Hollywood history. Bridge also appeared frequently on television until his death in 1957 at 66.- Actor
- Stunts
- Additional Crew
American leading man of silent Westerns whose career was much overshadowed by that of his more famous brother Jack Hoxie. He grew up in the backwoods and mountains of Idaho. His older brother had become a champion rodeo rider, a talent he parlayed into early success in cowboy movies. Following in his brother's footsteps, Al Hoxie moved to Los Angeles, not yet twenty years old. His brother Jack soon got him work as a stuntman and wrangler, and Al doubled for his brother and other actors in numerous films of the early 1920s. He began to get bit parts, and then bigger roles, in his brother's films and then on his own. A Poverty Row studio called Anchor Films saw potential in the strapping cowboy with the famous (last) name. They signed him to play the lead in a series of Westerns, which then led to a new series contract with producer Bud Barsky. None of these pictures ventured far beyond mediocre, and with the coming of sound in the late 1920s, Hoxie, with no great following, quit the business. He returned to his Northwest roots for several years, then returned to Los Angeles, this time to work as a conductor on the Red Line streetcars. For a few years he was a forest ranger, then went into law enforcement, first for the Anaheim, California, police department, and then for the Patton State Hospital. While there, Hoxie regained some public attention by disarming a deranged man with hostages. He was presented California's highest award for bravery, the California Medal of Honor. He retired thereafter and spent his remaining years in Redlands, California, where he died in 1982, seventeen years after the death of his more famous older brother.- Born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1886 (some sources say 1887 or 1888, but U.S. Census records confirm 1886), he taught school. He became active in the theatre and was eventually signed by William Fox. Appearing in films for Fox as well as Samuel Goldwyn, Roscoe became best known as leading man opposite Theda Bara, with whom he starred in at least seven films. Initially known as Albert Roscoe, in the latter part of his career he appeared more frequently as Alan Roscoe.
- Actor
- Writer
- Director
British-born supporting actor, primarily in the films of Charles Chaplin, for whom Austin also worked as an assistant director and co-writer. His career paralleled that of Chaplin, but dwindled prior to the coming of sound. His brother, William Austin, had a lengthy Hollywood career as a character actor.- Mexican character actor who achieved his greatest success in U.S. films. He was born in Mexico city, living in numerous places throughout the country. He received a private education in Houston, Texas as a teenager, but dropped out and roamed about doing an assortment of jobs. His family, however, brought him back to Mexico City, where he subsequently found work in the struggling Mexican film industry. He appeared in many Mexican films before director John Huston offered him the role of Gold Hat in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Bedoya stole the scenes in which he appeared as the smiling cutthroat and delivered the famous line about not needing any "stinking badges". He made a number of popular films in the U.S. in the next nine years, but a drinking problem destroyed his health. He died of a heart attack at the age of 53.
- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
This elegant actor of the golden age of German cinema appeared in several masterpieces, before the cameras of such inspired geniuses as Lang, Lubitsch and Murnau. Vocation had come rather late in his life, though. Abel was indeed already 33 when he made his first film. Beforehand, he had been a forester, a gardener and a shopkeeper. But one day, while watching a film with Asta Nielsen, he was struck by revelation. He decided at once to become an actor and with the help of Nielsen in person he started a fruitful screen career. He also wrote and directed a few films. He died too soon aged only 57, but having honored the German screen with his noble, dignified figure in more than a hundred pictures.- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Tall, but never standing uptight, even looking a bit sloppy; a drowsy look but with a twinkle of irony in the eye; a grumbling tone but not without some sympathy underlying; a winning drawling Paris accent;
You may have recognized Alfred Adam, the French actor par excellence.
Adam could as well be the nasty type as the regular working-class Parisian, the cuckold as the local Casanova, a general as a chauffeur, a gangster as a policeman, a peasant or the richest man in the village, an ordinary butcher as an eccentric. While being always convincing with, in addition, this Gallic touch that made (and still makes) him a treat to look at and to listen to.
Born in 1908 in Asnières, a North-West suburb of Paris, Alfred Adam proved multi-talented as of a young age. Besides becoming an actor, he studied civil engineering, wrote plays (his most famous being 'Sylvie et le fantôme'), penned film screenplays and dialogs and even the argument for a Roland Petit ballet. He also showed a life long interest in reading, sport (boxing, tennis, soccer), good food and friendship. He was a local figure in Montmartre where he lived, gaily strolling the streets in his long long coat and his wide wide hat.
But acting was his main activity and he did interpret scores of roles, whether at the theater, for the cinema or television.
Trained at the Conservatoire by Louis Jouvet, he worked for him between 1935 and 1939 before being hired by another great name, Charles Dullin and becoming a member of the Comédie Française. Ever an open-minded artist, Alfred Adam never said no to a good light comedy.
As far as movies are concerned he debuted in 1935 in Jacques Feyder's masterpiece 'La kermesse héroïque'. His greatest role is unquestionably that of Cornudet, the Republican who is the only one to defend a brave prostitute against self-righteous bourgeois and nobles in Christian-Jaque's film version of Maupassant's 'Boule de Suif'. He was also very good as the chauffeur and confidante of Gabin in Verneuil's memorable 'Le President' and an absolute delight as Maréchal de Villeroy, that old codger, in Bertrand Tavernier's 'Que la fête commence'
The only regret we can have is that Adam accepted too many roles in minor pictures. He would have been amazing in pictures by Renoir, Clouzot, Grémillon or Carné.- Alma Rubens was born Alma Genevieve Reubens in San Francisco, California. She was interested in entertaining at an early age. Like most young girls, she enjoyed fantasy play acting and by the time she was 19 had become a full-fledged star. She didn't have to wait long like some of the starlets who haunted casting offices continually. Her break came in 1916 in the film Reggie Mixes In (1916). Six more films followed that year, and she won critical acclaim in The Half-Breed (1916). In 1917 she again starred in a box-office smash, The Firefly of Tough Luck (1917). She became a busy young actress with role after role and hit after hit. In 1924, as Mildred Gower, she performed magnificently in The Price She Paid (1924). After a busy 1925, Alma suddenly found it difficult to obtain work, but it was not because her star had suddenly dimmed--it was because of her addiction to heroin. The money she made dwindled away in search of the next high. She was in and out of mental asylums, but it didn't really help much because she was still dabbling in drugs. Weakened by her habit, she died in Los Angeles in 1931, of pneumonia. She was less than a month away from her 34th birthday. Her final two films were two years earlier, Show Boat (1929) and She Goes to War (1929).
- Spanish stage actress who made a few films. She was born Ana Adamuz Viva in 1900, in the tiny village of El Cañuelo, about 30 miles northeast of Màlaga, the town she would grow up in. (Some sources suggest Màlaga itself, or Escañuela in Jaen, as her birthplace, and 1886 or 1901 as her birth year, but the most reliable sources appear to favor the information stated above.) She attended the Academia de Declamación in Màlaga and came under the patronage of the Marquesa de Villapadierna, who helped her gain entry to some of the most prominent theatrical companies in Spain. Adamuz (she dropped her last name for the stage) made her dramatic debut in the Carmen Cobeña company, in Angel Guimerá's play Tierra Baja. She toured the United States with several companies, including one of her own, and appeared in the Spanish premiere productions of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband and An Unimportant Woman. She starred in Spanish translations of Bayard Veiller's The Trial of Mary Dugan and Emlyn Williams's The Corn is Green, as well as scores of plays of Spanish origin. She managed her own theatre company in Madrid and was an activist for dramatists' rights. She appeared in a mere handful of films. She retired shortly after her final film and stage appearances in 1948, though she lived another 23 years. She died in Madrid in 1971 and was buried at Cementerio de Nuestra Señora de la Almudena in Madrid. A street was named in her honor in her home city of Màlaga.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Rotund comic character actor of American films. Born Andrew Vabre Devine in Flagstaff, Arizona, he was raised in nearby Kingman, Arizona, the son of an Irish-American hotel operator Thomas Devine and his wife Amy. Devine was an able athlete as a student and actually played semi-pro football under a phony name (Jeremiah Schwartz, often erroneously presumed to be his real name). Devine used the false name in order to remain eligible for college football. A successful football player at St. Mary & St. Benedict College, Arizona State Teacher's College, and Santa Clara University, Devine went to Hollywood with dreams of becoming an actor. After a number of small roles in silent films, he was given a good part in the talkie The Spirit of Notre Dame (1931) in part due to his fine record as a football player. His sound-film career seemed at risk due to his severely raspy voice, the result of a childhood injury. His voice, however, soon became his trademark, and he spent the next forty-five years becoming an increasingly popular and beloved comic figure in a wide variety of films. In the 1950s, his fame grew enormously with his co-starring role as Jingles P. Jones opposite Guy Madison's Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1951), on television and radio simultaneously. In 1955, before the Hickok series ended, Devine took over the hosting job on a children's show retitled Andy's Gang (1955), in which he gained new fans among the very young. He continued active in films until his death in 1977. He was survived by his wife and two sons.- Writer
- Actor
- Production Manager
Spanish screenwriter. He was born in Tudela in the province of Navarra on January 17, 1911. He attended the Lyceum and Faculty of Law in Zaragoza, from which he graduated with a degree in literature. In 1928 he joined the editorial office of the Zaragoza newspaper "El Noticiero." During the Spanish Civil War, he served as a war correspondent and was wounded while reporting on the conflict. In October 1936, he was appointed director of the San Sebastian newspaper "Unidad." In 1942 he moved to Madrid. He became noted as a theater critic, broadcasting reviews on Radio España. His journalistic quality and the merits of his style earned him the "Sotomayor" (1941) and "Virgen del Carmen" (1943) awards for excellence. He was secretary general of the journalists' trade union (1943-1946) as a specialist in social and economic problems. He was also the holder of the Film Literature chair at the Instituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias Cinematograficas (IIEC), a training center for Spanish filmmakers. As a screenwriter, he received the First Hispano-American Film Festival (1948) award for his adaptation of Cervantes' Don Quixote of La Mancha. He died in Madrid, 26 June 1989.- Italian actor who was brought to America as a young leading man, but died before living up to his promise. Born Lido Manetti, he studied civil engineering in his native Italy, but entered the theatre and then films subsequent to his schooling. After a number of Italian films, he was noticed by a Universal studio talent scout and brought to Hollywood. After a brief stay at Universal, where he was renamed Arnold Kent, he signed a contract with Paramount. He was playing a prominent role in The Four Feathers (1929) at the time of his death, which resulted from his being struck one evening on a Hollywood street by a car driven, coincidentally, by a film extra. He was replaced in the film and his scenes reshot. He was 28.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Lean, tall American character actor Arthur Hunnicutt was known for playing humorously wise rural roles. He attended Arkansas State Teachers College in his native state, but was forced to drop out in his third year due to lack of funds. He joined a theatre company in Massachusetts, then migrated to New York, where he began to find acting roles on Broadway and on tour. He played in numerous productions, including the leading role in "Tobacco Road", a part his rangy country persona was made for. He took a few roles in small films in the early 1940s, then returned to stage work. In 1949 he came back to Hollywood permanently and began a long career as a reliable supporting player. His wonderfully written and vibrantly played role in the Howard Hawks Western The Big Sky (1952) won him acclaim and an Oscar nomination for Supporting Actor. He continued playing similar characters, almost always sympathetic, for the remainder of his career. He was stricken with cancer of the tongue and died in 1979.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Danish leading woman of German films who became one of the greatest stars of the silent era. A native of the Copenhagen suburb of Vesterbro, Nielsen was the daughter of a coppersmith and a washerwoman, both of whom died before Nielsen was fifteen. Her stage debut came as a child in the chorus of the Kongelige Teater's production of Boito's opera "Mephistopheles." She studied at the Royal Theatre School of Copenhagen and embarked upon a stage career in her late teens. She toured Scandinavia and became one of the highest-paid and most popular stage actresses of her time and place. In 1909, director Urban Gad suggested that the silent screen would allow her to transcend her Danish language barrier, and she agreed appear in his film 'Afgrunden (1910)'. The film was successful and Nielsen was encouraged to continue in this new art form. A German distributor, Paul Davidson, invited Nielsen to Germany, where he was building a film studio which would eventually become Europe's largest--the Universum Film Union A.-G. (or Ufa). Nielsen and her director, Gad, whom she had married, went to Germany and spent the next quarter century there. She became one of the true superstars of the silent screen, a tragic heroine whose photograph during the First World War accompanied German and also British and French troops into battle. Among her notable films after the war was a version of "Hamlet, " which was not so much a Shakespearean film as it was an exploration of a then-current theory that the real Hamlet had been, in fact, a woman. Nielsen played the title role. She continued to play a wide variety of roles in Germany and occasionally in Denmark and Norway, never losing the respect and popularity she had maintained almost from the beginning of her career. She abandoned her film work just as sound was taking over the industry. Aside from one or two brief forays in talkies, her acting was thereafter confined to the stage. She died in 1972 at the age of 89, shortly after her fifth marriage.- American playwright, many of whose plays were filmed. The leading light of early twentieth-century light comedy and farce and one of the most commercially successful playwrights of his era, Hopwood, a native of Cleveland, Ohio, graduated from the University of Michigan, which would later be the beneficiary of much of his substantial estate. He began a career as a journalist for a Cleveland newspaper as its New York correspondent, but within a year had one of his plays, "Clothes," produced on Broadway. Thereafter followed a string of hits written solely or in collaboration, among them "Getting Gertie's Garter," "The Bat," and "Seven Days." His plays were looked upon at the time as extremely risqué and one of them, "The Demi-Virgin," which featured suggestive subject matter and near-nude actresses, led to a Supreme Court determination over its alleged obscenity. (The court ruled in Hopwood's favor.) His Prohibition-era plays of flappers, bathtub gin, and jazz were iconic for his age, and his own life was reflected in aspects of his plays. He was a heavy drug and alcohol user, and he kept his homosexuality tightly concealed. Despite making millions of dollars a year in royalties, he was known as a tightwad. An inveterate proponent of night life, he died while vacationing on the Riviera under somewhat mysterious circumstances. Ultimately it was ruled that he had drowned, though bruises on his body and the simultaneous presence in the vicinity of an angry ex-lover who had reportedly threatened him have kept suspicion alive. The University of Michigan established the Hopwood Prize with his bequest, providing funds and education for many future leading lights of the American theatre.
- Director
- Producer
- Writer
Indian producer, director, screenwriter, and film distributor, and father of film critic Taran Adarsh. The elder Adarsh was born in Jodhpur on January 6, 1925. He entered the film business as a distributor for films in Bombay (now Mumbai) and in Rajasthan, for the Central Cine Circuit and the Cine Club, respectively. In 1950, he opened his own cinemas in Madhya Pradesh. He began producing and then writing and directing films in the mid-1950s. One of his earliest films, as producer and director, was Fashionable Wife (1959), which starred actress Jaymala, who became Adarsh's wife. Adarsh specialized in religious films. He also worked as a film critic and trade reporter. Adarsh died October 10, 1992.- Strongman who won role of Maciste in Cabiria (1914), and took the character's name as his own stage name in a series of films for the next 14 years. After Pagano's death, the character of Maciste was played by several other actors.
- British author, journalist, and playwright. Before serving as drama critic for the London Daily Express, Hastings clerked in the British War Office and wrote stories and sketches for various newspapers and magazines including "The Bystander," for which he was assistant editor. He wrote a number of plays, including "The New Sin" and "The Angel in the House." He died at 47 in London following a long illness.
- American leading actress who made a brief foray into films. A native of Denison, Texas, Pearson worked as an usher in a movie theatre and as a model before becoming an actor. Producer David O. Selznick introduced her to actor John Garfield, who was instrumental in her being cast opposite him in Force of Evil (1948). However, she did scarcely any more film work before retiring from the screen and devoting herself exclusively to the stage.
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Hungarian journalist who became a war correspondent for American newspapers before turning to Hollywood, where he worked for several film studios as a writer and story supervisor. Following service in the First World War as a correspondent for the New York Sun, he signed with M-G-M as a writer. Later he was employed by Universal Pictures and, at the time of his death following a brief illness, was story supervisor for First National Pictures. His cremated remains were returned to Hungary.- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
American actor who started as a boy in silent films and worked for three and a half decades, mainly in small parts. The eldest child of American stevedore George E. Hall and his English wife Constance L. Fletcher, Ben Hall began making appearances in films when he was little more than ten years old. After a handful of movies, his family moved to Weehawken, New Jersey, and in 1918, Ben took work as a bank clerk in Manhattan. But by 1920, Ben and his mother had moved to Los Angeles (where they were joined later by his younger brother George Jr.). Hall worked as a property man for the studios for a time, but eventually began to get small roles and was eking out a living as an actor again by 1926. He became a minor but fairly frequently-used member of the "John Ford Stock Company," and did eight films for John Ford between 1929 and 1946. Most memorable among these bit roles was probably that of the barber who slicks down and perfumes Wyatt Earp's hair in My Darling Clementine (1946). Hall left acting in 1949, though he lived for another 36 years.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Character actor of distinctly American persona who nevertheless made several films in Britain before returning to the U.S. to carve out a career as a familiar face in American movies. Short, bald and built like a tank with a streetwise character and a Damon Runyan accent, Welden played countless gangsters and smalltime hoods, often with a comic aspect. He was the henchman who beat the snot out of Bette Davis in Marked Woman (1937) and gunned down Elia Kazan in City for Conquest (1940), and made numerous appearances as crooks on Adventures of Superman (1952). As a sideline, he owned Nutcorn, a popular Beverly Hills confectionery. He retired from acting in his sixties.- Actor
- Casting Director
- Casting Department
American character actor who became a casting director following an accident, then returned to acting years later. The son of a New York policeman, Remsen lived a colorful life before turning to acting. He made his film debut in 1959 and was busy before the cameras in both film and television. Five years later, however, a collapsing crane on the set of the TV series No Time for Sergeants (1964) broke his back and nearly killed him. He recuperated for months and was able to walk again with crutches, but he believed his acting career was ended. He became a casting director, eventually heading the casting department of Lorimar Productions. While casting the film Brewster McCloud (1970), he was given a role by director Robert Altman. Though he continued to work in casting with his wife and partner Barbara Dodd, he resumed his acting career, working in scores of films and television episodes, most of the time requiring only a cane to walk. He appeared in many of Altman's films and was a popular figure in the film industry for his generosity and his vivid story-telling. He died in his sleep at age 74 in 1999.- Writer
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
American songwriter who composed hundreds of songs, many of them now standards. The daughter of a journalist, Whitson was born in Hickman County, Tennessee, where she collaborated with her sister Alice on lyrics. She also wrote poetry and was widely published as a poet and fiction writer. In 1909, she had a hit with her song "Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland," repopularized years later in the film In the Good Old Summertime (1949). Her most enduring song came in 1910: "Let Me Call You Sweetheart." She died at 51 in Nashville and was buried there.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
British-born actress who appeared in both British and American films, but who found her greatest success in Hollywood second leads. After a variety of jobs, including nurse, chorus girl and milkmaid, Barnes entered vaudeville. She appeared in more than a score of short comedies with comedian Stanley Lupino before making her feature bow in 1931. Two years later she achieved prominence as one of the half-dozen wives of the King in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). The following year she moved to Hollywood and began a career as the smart-aleck pal of the lead or as the angry "other woman." Barnes also played numerous leading roles, but spent most of the 1930s and 40s in strong supporting parts. In 1940 she married football star (and later producer) M.J. Frankovich and after the war, they moved to Italy and appeared in several films there and elsewhere in Europe. She retired from films in 1954, but returned for a few roles in the late 60s and early 70s. She worked busily with numerous charities until her death in 1998.- Cinematographer
- Director
- Producer
American-born English inventor and technician, a pioneer of early cinema design, photography, development, and patents. He was born to English parents in Richmond, Virginia, on July 23, 1854. His parents moved with young Birt to North Carolina and started a plantation there. However, the U.S. Civil War erupted and both parents died defending the plantation. Young Acres, orphaned at 10, went to live with his aunt in Virginia. She recognized his artistic and inventive talents and sent him to Paris to study at the Sorbonne Art Studios. He became enthralled with photography and began to study the science of cameras and the potential for moving pictures. Upon his return from France, he set out on a long journey through the American West. He worked as a lumberjack and studied and traded with Native American tribes. Eventually, his love of photography led him to move to England, where he opened a photography and painting studio in Ilfracombe, Devon. He applied himself to the study and development of photographic chemistry. He wrote scholarly articles on photography and chemical development and became rather well-known in the photographic community. He was invited to join the Royal Meteorological and Photographic Societies. In 1891, he was invited to take over the running of Elliott & Sons, the leading British maker of photographic plates and paper. He moved to London with his relatively new family. He was especially fond of nature photography and developed a slide projector which could crudely replicate, by shuffling rapidly through images, the motion of waves, clouds, and wind-blown trees, a precursor using the persistence of vision effect that would make motion pictures possible. In 1894, Acres met Robert W. Paul, who was interested in creating films that could be shown on Thomas A. Edison's new kinetoscope. Together they invented a camera that would make 35 mm films compatible with Edison's machine. Acres used it to create the first film to be shot in England, Clovelly Cottage, Barnet (1895) or "lncident in Clovelly Cottage," filmed at Acres's home. Acres and Paul began making films of various sporting events as well as human interest and comedy pieces. But the two men were incompatible partners and split up angrily in 1895. Each went his own way, and they became competitors in the business of projector manufacture and sales. Acres in January, 1896, presented the first public projection of motion picture film in Britain with screenings at the Lyonsdown Photographic Club and the Royal Photographic Society. He presented his films at a Royal Command Performance at Marlborough House that summer and was invited to photograph the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Cardiff Exhibition. With a prescient concept of a home-movie market, he invented a 17.5 mm camera called the Birtac that used half the normal amount of film and was small enough to be used by non-professional individuals. His original projector, the Kineopticon, or Kinetic Lantern, he continued to develop and improve. He founded a company, The Northern Photographic Works (later Whetstone Photographic Works), in London. He continued to invent and develop products for motion picture photography, but was reluctant to take part in the increasing entertainment market for films. Thus his business began to suffer, since he preferred to promote (and lecture about) scientific and nature-oriented cinema. He was twice bankrupted and by 1900 had abandoned the film business. He died from peritonitis following appendicitis on December 27, 1918, at 64, survived by his wife of 27 years, Annie, and their two children. He is buried in Walthamstow Cemetery in Greater London.- Actor
- Music Department
- Composer
American singer-songwriter who appeared in a number of low-budget Westerns, but was most renowned as the leader of the singing group, The Sons of the Pioneers. The son of an Army officer, Nolan attended the University of Arizona after his father retired to that state. He studied music and poetry in college, then drifted around the country writing songs. He took a lifeguard job in Los Angeles in 1929, then joined Tim Spencer and Leonard Slye (the future Roy Rogers) in a singing group called "The Rocky Mountaineers". The group evolved into "The Pioneer Trio" and then The Sons of the Pioneers. When Rogers left the group to become a singing cowboy in Westerns, Nolan became the de facto leader of "The Sons of Pioneers". The group became very popular on radio, due not only to its innovative western harmonizing, but also to the numerous songs Nolan composed for the group. Several of them, including "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" and "Cool Water", became not only standards but classics of the style. The Sons of the Pioneers appeared in many B-Westerns, often performing in musical numbers, but just as often playing sidekicks to the stars, particularly Rogers. Nolan left the group in 1949 and concentrated on writing songs. He continued to record with the group, intermittently, through the 1950s. In 1979, he recorded his last album, "The Sound of a Pioneer". It was his first recording in nearly two decades. A friendly but introverted man who liked to keep to himself, Nolan had the looks, the charm, and the voice to compete with Rogers for stardom in musical Westerns, but chose rather to remain on the screen periphery as the amiable friend of the hero, devoting his energies to writing and singing some of the most memorable songs of the era. Nolan died in 1980.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
American Western star and character actor whose career spanned six decades. The son of director Robert N. Bradbury, he appeared in vaudeville with his parents and with his twin brother Bill Bradbury appeared as a child in a series of 16 semi- documentary short films directed by their father, The Adventures of Bob and Bill. As Bob Bradbury Jr., he played juvenile roles in silent films, then took the stage name Bob Steele in 1927. He appeared in scores of films during the Thirties, rising to B-Western stardom and an apparently solid position as one of Republic Studios' top draws. Occasionally he made an appearance in more prominent films, as in his role as Curly in Of Mice and Men (1939). But he remained primarily a figure in Westerns. His stardom diminished by the mid-40s, and he spent the next quarter-century in character roles, some highly visible, such as his part in The Big Sleep (1946). But he also eventually turned up as a virtual extra in pictures like Shenandoah (1965). He appeared often on television and regained some fame in his role as Trooper Duffy in F Troop (1965). He died at St. Joseph's Hospital in Burbank, California, following a long illness.- Composer
- Music Department
- Actor
Slovenian composer, musician, conductor. Adamic was in Ribnica in the Duchy of Carniola in Slovenia on August 9, 1912. He attended Poljane Grammar School, attended the National Piano Conservatory at 13, and received his degree in piano from Ljubljana Music Academy in 1941, having already completed courses in organ, trumpet, and composition. Somehow he managed to graduate from a course in law at the same time. He played accordion and saxophone in a jazz band up until the opening of the Second World War. During the war, he served with the Slovenian partisans and was wounded in a German attack. Following the war, he maintained a frantic and widespread career, conducting the RTV Slovenia Big Band, scoring hundreds of films and stage plays, and creating music for the Slovenian song festival. He also wrote many pop songs, chamber pieces, children's songs, operas, and music for radio plays. He carried on just as busy a performing career, playing concerts as pianist for a variety of orchestras around Europe and North America. He was given scores of awards and honors in his native country and throughout Europe, and he served as head of numerous musical organizations including the Slovenian Composers Association. One major event colored his personal life badly. On August 31, 1950, he shot Zdravko Rus, a friend of Adamic's underage mistress Breda Kruh, in the back. That same year, he was tried for the killing and sentenced to a suspended sentence of one year in prison for manslaughter. His career did not seem to suffer, and his work continued without respite for much of the rest of his life. He received the coveted Preseren Award, Slovenia's highest cultural honor, in 1979, for his body of work. He was also a noted photographer and was the subject of several major exhibitions. He retired from RTV Ljubljana, where he was director of music production and head of the music department, in 1981. He died November 3, 1995, in Ljubljana, survived by his wife Barbara and their daughter Alenka. Since 1999, The Association of Slovenian Bands has awarded annually the Bojan Adamic Award. A memorial plaque was dedicated to his memory in 2000, at his birthplace in Ribnica.- Actor
- Producer
American supporting player specializing in tough guys. Of Serbian extraction, he was born in Nevada in 1917. As a young man, he boxed in amateur bouts and had early training in theatre at the Pasadena Playhouse. He joined the Air Corps during World War II and was assigned to the troupe performing the Moss Hart Broadway tribute to the Corps, Winged Victory, acting under his first chosen stage name, Barry Mitchell. He appeared in the film version of the show, and after the war became active in radio drama as well as theatre. John Huston spotted him in a play and cast him as a bad guy in The Asphalt Jungle (1950), under the new sobriquet of Brad Dexter. Throughout the Fifties, he continued to play hard cases of a usually villainous stripe, in both crime dramas and Westerns. His most famous role came as one of title characters in The Magnificent Seven (1960), albeit his fame was considerably eclipsed by most of the other members of that band: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, and James Coburn. He continued acting into the 1970s, then made a shift into producing.- Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
Son of character actor Robert Keith and stage actress Helena Shipman. He grew up on the road with his parents while they toured in plays. First appeared at age 3 in film Pied Piper Malone (1924) with his father. Began acting in radio programs and on stage before World War II. Joined the Marines and served as a machine gunner. Returned to Broadway stage after the war and branched out into television and film. Worked as an extra in several films before achieving speaking roles and subsequent stardom.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Buck Jones was one of the greatest of the "B" western stars. Although born in Indiana, Jones reportedly (but disputedly) grew up on a ranch near Red Rock in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), and there learned the riding and shooting skills that would stand him in good stead as a hero of Westerns. He joined the army as a teenager and served on US-Mexican border before seeing service in the Moro uprising in the Philippines. Though wounded, he recuperated and re-enlisted, hoping to become a pilot. He was not accepted for pilot training and left the army in 1913. He took a menial job with the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West Show and soon became champion bronco buster for the show. He moved on to the Julia Allen Show, but with the beginning of the First World War, Jones took work training horses for the Allied armies. After the war, he and his wife, Odelle Osborne, whom he had met in the Miller Brothers show, toured with the Ringling Brothers circus, then settled in Hollywood, where Jones got work in a number of Westerns starring Tom Mix and Franklyn Farnum. Producer William Fox put Jones under contract and promoted him as a new Western star. He used the name Charles Jones at first, then Charles "Buck" Jones, before settling on his permanent stage name. He quickly climbed to the upper ranks of Western stardom, playing a more dignified, less gaudy hero than Mix, if not as austere as William S. Hart. With his famed horse Silver, Jones was one of the most successful and popular actors in the genre, and at one point he was receiving more fan mail than any actor in the world. Months after America's entry into World War II, Jones participated in a war-bond-selling tour. On November 28, 1942, he was a guest of some local citizens in Boston at the famed Coconut Grove nightclub. Fire broke out and nearly 500 people died in one of the worst fire disasters on record. Jones was horribly burned and died two days later before his wife Dell could arrive to comfort him. Although legend has it that he died returning to the blaze to rescue others (a story probably originated by producer Trem Carr for whatever reason), the actual evidence indicates that he was trapped with all the others and succumbed as most did, trying to escape. He remains, however, a hero to thousands who followed his film adventures.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Brilliant, distinguished American director, particularly of Westerns, whose simple, bleak style disguises a complex artistic temperament. The adopted son of a wealthy hardware retailer, Boetticher attended Culver Military Academy and Ohio State University, where he excelled in football and boxing.
Following his schooling Boetticher, something of an adventurer, went to Mexico and transformed himself into a formidable professional matador. His school chum, Hal Roach Jr., used his film connections to get Boetticher minor jobs in the film industry, most importantly the job of technical adviser on the bullfighting romance Blood and Sand (1941). By studying the work of the film's director, Rouben Mamoulian, and from editor Barbara McLean, he gained a thorough grounding in filmmaking.
After an apprenticeship as a studio messenger and assistant director, he was given a chance to direct, first retakes of scenes from other directors' films, then his own low-budget projects. For producer John Wayne Boetticher filmed his first prominent work, a fictionalization of his own experiences in Mexico, Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), although the work was re-edited without Boetticher's approval by his mentor, John Ford (the director's cut was restored several decades later).
Following a number of sprightly but inconsequential programmers in the early 1950s, Boetticher formed a partnership with actor Randolph Scott which, with the participation of producer Harry Joe Brown and writer Burt Kennedy, led to a string of the most memorable Western films of the 1950s, including 7 Men from Now (1956) and The Tall T (1957). He directed a sharp gangster film, The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960), then, with his wife Debra Paget, left for Mexico to film a monumental documentary on famed matador Carlos Arruza. The travail of the next seven years, which Boetticher detailed in his autobiography "When In Disgrace", included near-fatal illness, divorce, incarceration in jails, hospitals and an insane asylum, and the accidental deaths of Arruza and most of the film crew. The film, Arruza (1972), was both an exquisite documentary and a testament to Boetticher's immutable drive. Though he returned to Hollywood to form a partnership with Audie Murphy, they completed only one film together before Murphy's death in 1971.
Since then Boetticher completed another documentary and had announced several feature films in preparation. He died at age 85.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
American screenwriter and director--particularly of westerns--Burt Kennedy was the son of performers. He was part of their act, "The Dancing Kennedys", from infancy. He served in World War II as a cavalry officer and was highly decorated. After the war he joined the Pasadena Community Playhouse, but was ousted after one play as an actor for missing rehearsal. He found a job writing radio programs such as "Hash Knife Hartley" and "The Used Story Lot", then used his army fencing training to land work as a stunt fencer in films. Kennedy was hired to write 13 scripts for a proposed television program, "Juan and Diablo", with plans for John Wayne's Batjac Co. contract player Pedro Gonzalez Gonzalez to star. The show was never produced, but Kennedy was kept on at Batjac to write films for producer Wayne. His initial effort, 7 Men from Now (1956), was a superb western, the first of the esteemed collaboration between director Budd Boetticher and star Randolph Scott. Kennedy wrote most of that series, as well as a number of others for Batjac, although it would be nearly 20 years before Wayne actually appeared in the film of a Kennedy script. In 1960 Kennedy got his first job as director on a western, The Canadians (1961), but it was a critical failure. He turned to television where he wrote and directed episodes of Lawman (1958), The Virginian (1962) and most notably Combat! (1962). He returned to films in 1965 with the successful The Rounders (1965), later producing and directing the pilot for the TV series of the same name.
His output since then has consisted of a number of popular Westerns, both theatrical and for television, as well as an occasional non-Western, but always with his trademark humor and stylish dialogue.- French character actor of silent films and talkies. Born in Orléans in 1880, he studied with Paul Mounet at the Paris Conservatory. He made his stage debut in Paris in 1900 and spent a number of years learning his craft and developing into a familiar performer on the Paris stage. A contract with Gaumont Studios led to scores of appearances in early silent films, and he continued as a respected and familiar portrayer of character roles into his seventies.
- Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carl Betz formed a repertory theatre company while still in high school, then worked in summer stock. He served in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, then attended Carnegie Tech. Following graduation, he worked as a radio announcer. He made his Broadway debut in "The Long Watch". He was given a contract at Twentieth Century-Fox, and appeared in supporting roles in a number of films before moving into television. After a brief period working in soap operas, he was cast as Dr. Alex Stone on the popular The Donna Reed Show (1958) and spent eight years there. He followed that show with another series, Judd for the Defense (1967), in which he played a masterful attorney. He worked primarily in television, in both guest appearances and TV movies, throughout the Seventies, though he continued to work on stage around the U.S. He fought a gallant fight against early cancer and died in 1978.
- American character actor noted for his deep, rich voice. Young made his Broadway debut in the early 1930s, appearing in such plays as "Page Pygmalion", "The Man Who Reclaimed His Head", "Late Wisdom" and "Yesterday's Orchids". Moving to Hollywood in 1936, he began getting small film roles and soon graduated to frequent appearances in B-Westerns and serials, occasionally as a supporting lead, but most often as a heavy. He was Dick Tracy's brother in Dick Tracy (1937) and was a familiar face in many oaters and serials at Republic, where he was a contract player, occasionally working under the stage name Gordon Robert. In 1941, Young returned to Broadway to star in "Cuckoos On the Hearth" by Parker Fennelly. Back in Hollywood, he made Westerns throughout the Forties, then began appearing in better roles in better films, becoming a late favorite of John Ford. His line in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend", has become synonymous with Ford. Young retired in 1970 and died in 1994, at the age of 89. He is often confused with Carleton G. Young, a radio performer who made a few films and who was the father of actor Tony Young.
- British actor, primarily in America. Owen directed theatre productions and served as a casting director for the stage as well as for Paramount Pictures. He was also a professional playreader for a production agency. Following a week's illness, he died of diphtheria at 55 in Rockville Center, New York, and was buried there.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
American character actor of gruff voice and appearance who was a fixture in Hollywood pictures from the earliest days of the talkies. The fifth of seven children, he was born in the first minute of 1891. He was a boisterous child, and at nine was tried and acquitted for attempted murder in the shooting of a motorman who had run over his dog. He worked as a lumberjack and investment promoter, and briefly ran his own pest extermination business. In his late teens, he gave up the business and traveled aimlessly about country. In San Francisco, an attempt to romance a burlesque actress resulted in an offer to join her show as a performer. He spent the next dozen years touring the country in road companies, then made a smash hit on Broadway in "Outside Looking In". Cecil B. DeMille saw Bickford on the stage and offered him the lead in Dynamite (1929). Contracted to MGM, Bickford fought constantly with studio head Louis B. Mayer and was for a time blacklisted among the studios. He spent several years working in independent films as a freelancer, then was offered a contract at Twentieth Century Fox. Before the contract could take effect, however, Bickford was mauled by a lion while filming 'East of Java (1935)'. He recovered, but lost the Fox contract and his leading man status due to the extensive scarring of his neck and also to increasing age. He continued as a character actor, establishing himself as a character star in films like The Song of Bernadette (1943), for which he received the first of three Oscar nominations. Burly and brusque, he played heavies and father figures with equal skill. He continued to act in generally prestigious films up until his death in 1967.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Ray portrayed simple unaffected country bumpkins in silent rural melodramas. Unfortunately, Ray let Hollywood turn him into a headstrong egotist. Alienating most producers, he put up his own money to finance a major feature called The Courtship of Myles Standish (1923). The film was a miserable failure that wiped out Ray's fortune. Comeback attempts were hampered by the advent of the sound picture.- Actor
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Location Management
American film character actor who appeared in primarily comedic roles from the 1920s through the 1950s. Born Fehmer Christy Chandler (named after his uncle, well-known architect Carl Fehmer), in Kingston, New York to Colonel George F. Chandler and the former Martha Schultze (a sportswriter and daughter of Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Carl Schultze), by the age of 12, he was appearing as a dancer and entertainer in local stage shows. His father, an army surgeon and organizer of the New York State Police, enrolled him in a military academy, The Manlius School, which he attended for three years, serving with distinction and rising to the school rank of corporal. At 16, though he was being groomed by his family for a military career, he dropped out to work on a tramp steamer and, later, to pursue work in vaudeville and to study dance at the school of famed choreographer Ned Wayburn. Chandler maintained a successful career throughout the 1920s as a dancer and comedian in vaudeville and burlesque, at times teamed with Naomi Morton, granddaughter of vaudeville and Broadway star Sam Morton. In 1930, Chandler, still billed as Fehmer Chandler, joined the cast of the Liberty Bell Filling Station radio show starring Chic Sale, as Rodney Gordon, the assistant to Wheel Wilkins (Sale), proprietor of the titular gas station. Two years later, he landed a role in the Ben Hecht-Gene Fowler Broadway play The Great Magoo. Spotting him there, film producer David O. Selznick signed Chandler, now billed under his boyhood nickname Chick, to a film contract at RKO, telling the press that Chandler was "a cross between Lee Tracy and James Cagney." Chandler, who had done behind-the-camera work for director Charles Brabin in 1923 and had appeared in at least one silent film as an actor, turned full-time to movie acting with his first films under contract, Sweepings and Melody Cruise, in 1933. He appeared mainly in supporting roles, mostly comic, in nearly 120 films over the next 36 years. Under the pseudonym Guy Fehmer, Chandler wrote a screenplay about racing called The Quitter. In 1955, Chandler was cast in the starring role of Toubo Smith in the adventure series Soldiers of Fortune, alongside John Russell as Tim Kelly. In the show, Smith and Kelly traveled the world engaging in treasure hunts, rescues, and exploration adventures. It brought Chandler his greatest fame. During the off-seasons, he toured the country in stock and musical theatrical productions such as Harvey and Annie Get Your Gun. He was also a regular on the short-lived 1961 NBC comedy series One Happy Family. In February 1925, Chandler became engaged to Ziegfeld Follies performer and Christy model Dorothy Knapp, whom he had met in his uncle Howard Chandler Christy's studio in or around 1922. Knapp broke off the engagement to pursue her career further, and Chandler then became partnered, both privately and professionally, with 17-year-old Sallie Sharon, whom he met at West Point. The pair formed a vaudeville team, but never married. On April 4, 1931, Chandler married Eugenia "Jean" Frontai, a former contract performer with David Belasco's theatrical company. They were married 57 years, until Chandler's death from a heart attack on September 30, 1988. (Jean Chandler followed her husband in death [from cancer] the next day in the same hospital, South Coast Medical Center.) The couple had no children.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Colorful character actor of American Westerns. Named "Chill" as an ironic comment on his birth date being the hottest day of 1902. A musician from his youth, he performed from the age of 12 with tent shows, in vaudeville, and with stock companies. While performing in vaudeville in Kansas City, he married ballet dancer Betty Chappelle, with whom he had two children. He formed a musical group, Chill Wills and His Avalon Boys. During an appearance at the Trocadero in Hollywood, they were spotted by an RKO executive, subsequently appearing as a group in several low-budget Westerns. After a prominent appearance with The Avalon Boys as both himself and the bass-singing voice of Stan Laurel in Way Out West (1937), Wills disbanded the group and began a solo career as a usually jovial (but occasionally sinister) character actor, primarily in Westerns. His delightful portrayal of Beekeeper in The Alamo (1960) won him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, but his blatant and embarrassing campaign for the Oscar cost him the award and subjected him to a great deal of humiliation -- and probably cost the film a number of awards as well. His wife died in 1971, and he remarried, to Novadeen Googe, in 1973. He continued to work in films and television, usually in roguishly lovable good-ol'-boy parts, up until his death in 1978.- Actor
- Stunts
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
American stuntman, long associated with John Wayne, who doubled for most of the great Western and action stars of the 1950s-1980s. His parents, Bert and Hazel Hayward, were cattle ranchers on a farm near Hyannis, Nebraska, about sixty miles east of Hayward's birthplace in Alliance. He spent his early youth working cattle, then, at 16, left home to join the rodeo circuit as a bronc rider and horse trainer. In 1947, he arrived in Los Angeles and sought work as a wrangler. He began doing stunts in 1949 on The Fighting Kentuckian (1949), doubling John Wayne. The two became pals and Hayward subsequently stunted and doubled Wayne on nearly two dozen of the latter's films. Excelling at all sorts of horseback stunts, Hayward doubled most stars of the period who found themselves in Westerns or otherwise astride a horse, including Marlon Brando, Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, and Gregory Peck. He graduated into stunt coordination, arranging the stunts on films such as The Deadly Companions (1961) and the TV series The Rat Patrol (1966). He played small roles in numerous films and TV shows, and his appearance often served as an accurate predictor of an upcoming fight scene. He retired from stuntwork in 1981, and from acting in 1989. Hayward was a member of the unofficial "John Ford Stock Company," a lifetime member of the Stuntmen's Association of Motion Pictures and an inductee into the Stuntmen's Hall of Fame. He died from Hodgkin's Disease at his home in North Hollywood, California, in 1998.- Actor
- Stunts
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
American stuntman who also played minor roles in scores of movies. Son of Allie W. and Jannie Hamm Roberson. Raised on cattle ranches in Shannon, Texas, and Roswell, New Mexico, he left school at 13 to become a cowhand and oilfield roughneck. He married and took his wife and daughter to California, where he joined the Culver City Police Department and guarded the gate at MGM studios. Following army service in World War II, he returned to the police force. During duty at Warner Bros. studios during a labor strike, he met stuntman Fred Kennedy, who alerted him to a stunt job at Republic Pictures. Roberson got the job, due both to his expert horsemanship and his resemblance to John Carroll, whom Roberson doubled in his first picture, Wyoming (1947). His close physical resemblance to John Wayne led to nearly 30 years as Wayne's stunt double. He often played small roles and stunted in other roles in the same film, which frequently resulted in his "shooting" himself once the picture was cut together. He graduated to larger supporting roles in westerns for Wayne and John Ford, and to a parallel career as a second-unit director. At the time of his death, he was one of the most respected stunt men in Hollywood.- Stunts
- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Cliff Lyons was an American actor, stuntman and second-unit director, primarily of Westerns, particularly the films of John Ford and John Wayne.
Lyons, the son of Garrett Thomas Lyons and Wilhamena Johnson Lyons, was raised on a South Dakota farm, though his family lived for a time in Memphis, TN, where he attended business school. An expert horseman, he gave up the notion of a business career and opted for the rodeo arena instead, touring the country and eventually reaching Los Angeles at the age of 21. With accomplished cowboys in great demand, Lyons quickly became involved in movies, working both as a stuntman and actor. After only a couple of bit parts, he was signed by low-budget producer Bud Barsky to do seven inexpensive Westerns directed by Paul Hurst, with Lyons and Al Hoxie alternating as the hero and the heavy. Lyons and Hoxie alternated in another Western series produced by Morris R. Schlank, and, as Cliff "Tex" Lyons, he seemed headed for minor stardom as a B-Western lead.
Unfortunately, Lyons' voice was not well-suited for sound and the talkie revolution confined him to small roles. As his small shot at stardom faded, however, his career as a stunt double for stars big and small was on the rise. He doubled such cowboy stars as Tom Mix, Ken Maynard, Buck Jones and Johnny Mack Brown. In 1936 he worked with John Wayne for the first and struck up a personal and business relationship that would remain strong for three decades. Wayne was influential in getting Lyons his first work as a second-unit director and in introducing Lyons to John Ford, for whom Lyons would do some of his finest work. Lyons' reputation as a stunt coordinator is comparable to that of acknowledged master Yakima Canutt, with whom Lyons partnered on numerous occasions. Perhaps Lyons' most impressive work was the massive and dynamic battle sequences of Wayne's The Alamo (1960).
He was married from 1938-55 to actress Beth Marion, with whom he had two sons. Cliff Lyons died in 1974 at 72, not long after coordinating stunts for Wayne's The Train Robbers (1973).- Noted American stage director and acting teacher who appeared in a few films. A provocative and illuminating director whose special province was the works of Tennessee Williams, Ventura served as artistic director of Theatre West in Los Angeles and, for the last few years of his life, as the principal teacher at the Actors Studio's West Coast workshop. An athletic and charismatic man who was more likely to be mistaken for a beach boy than an acting teacher, he made a few films, mostly low-budget action pictures. But it is his dynamic work for the stage and his brilliant capabilities as a teacher for which he will always be most noted in the theatrical world. He died in 1990 from the sudden onslaught of complications from AIDS.
- Australian actress who worked primarily in Britain and specialized in superior, upper-crust sorts. Browne began her stage career in Melbourne but moved to England at the age of 21 and quickly brightened the West End with her sharp delivery and stylish sense of comedy. Her film appearances were sporadic, though she made several pictures memorable with her presence, particularly The Ruling Class (1972) as the libidinous Lady Claire.
While touring the Soviet Union in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of "Hamlet, " Browne encountered the expatriate British spy Guy Burgess, and this bizarre meeting became the basis of the television film An Englishman Abroad (1983), for which Browne won the BAFTA Best Actress award for playing herself. She met Vincent Price when they co-starred in Theater of Blood (1973), and married him in 1974. He was at her side when she died at 77 following a long struggle with breast cancer.