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- Lee Chamberlin was born on 14 February 1938 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Loving (1983), All My Children (1970) and Great Performances (1971). She was married to Daniel Edward Chamberlin. She died on 25 May 2014 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
- Director
- Producer
- Actor
Paul Bogart was born on 13 November 1919 in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. He was a director and producer, known for CBS Playhouse (1967), All in the Family (1971) and The Golden Girls (1985). He was married to Alma Jane Gitnick. He died on 15 April 2012 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.- Pearl Shear was born on 19 April 1918 in Washington, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for Remington Steele (1982), Raid on Entebbe (1976) and Lost & Found (1999). She died on 27 July 2009 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
- Texas-born Helen Vinson was born Helen Rulfs in Beaumont on September 17, 1907, the daughter of an oil company exec.. The family eventually settled in Houston, where her inflamed passion for acting was first ignited. While in her teens she married Harry N. Vickerman, a man fifteen years her senior who came from a well-to-do Philadelphia family. Although she was not accepted into the drama department of the University of Texas. She persevered by earning parts in local theater productions. She eventually made her Broadway debut in a walk-on role in a production entitled "Los Angeles" (1927). The stock market crash of 1929 ruined her husband's business and the stress and anguish precipitated divorce proceedings after only five years. Helen gained further notice on Broadway in "Berlin" starring Sydney Greenstreet and "The Fatal Alibi" (1932) with Charles Laughton. During this time she was also noticed by Warner Brothers talent scouts who ushered the svelte blonde straight to Hollywood.
A chic, elegant beauty with a tinge of a Southern drawl, she played both lead and support roles in pre-Code films. Making a strong impression trading insults as the aloof "other woman." Often unsympathetic, self-involved and frequently bitchy and backstabbing. She was not above using her feminine wiles to get her way. She played Kay Francis' epicurean friend in the mild comedy Jewel Robbery (1932), and stood between Loretta Young and David Manners happiness as his wealthy fiance in the soap-styled drama They Call It Sin (1932). In the classic I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), she had a rather bland "nice girl" role as the stylish woman Paul Muni leaves Glenda Farrell for. Appearing opposite a number of diminutive male stars such as Muni, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney and George Raft, whom she danced with in Midnight Club (1933), the almost 5'7" actress was not too popular with the so-called vertically-challenged leading men at Warners and was quickly released from her contract.
Earlier (in 1931) she had earned major Broadway notice as the female lead in the fantasy "Death Takes a Holiday" playing a woman who literally faces Death (played by Philip Merivale). Both she and Merivale missed out on recreating their roles in the 1934 film version when the parts instead went to Fredric March and Evelyn Venable. More film work came Helen's way alongside some of Hollywood's most popular and virile leading men. She played Warner Baxter's castoff wife in Frank Capra's Broadway Bill (1934) and Gary Cooper's problematic mate in The Wedding Night (1935). She appeared with Charles Boyer in Private Worlds (1935); Humphrey Bogart in Two Against the World (1936); James Cagney in Torrid Zone (1940) and even lightened it up a little bit in the Bob Hope/Paulette Goddard comedy Nothing But the Truth (1941). One of Helen's best known film roles, however, came with the plush drama In Name Only (1939) starring Cary Grant and Carole Lombard. In this vintage soaper, Vinson plays a close confidante to the highly manipulative and rancorous Kay Francis, who is married to Grant, who has in turn fallen in love with good-hearted Lombard.
When Helen married the British Wimbledon tennis champion Fred Perry, in 1935. She moved to England for a time. While there she made the films Transatlantic Tunnel (1935), King of the Damned (1935) and Love in Exile (1936), which resulted in little fanfare. They relocated to Los Angeles a couple years later so she could find more work. Perry also hoped he could parlay his sports fame into a movie career. Their highly publicized marriage was short-lived, however. Lasting only five years. After marrying her third husband, stockbroker Donald Hardenbrook, in 1945. Helen gave up her career completely according to the wishes of her husband. The couple remained together until his death in 1976. She had no children from her three marriages. After her retirement, she found varied interests including interior design. For the remainder of her life. She divided home life between Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. Helen passed away in Chapel Hill in 1999 of natural causes at the age of 92. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Already a talented singer and dancer as a child, Georgia matured into a beautiful Hollywood model. Aged 17, she made the cover of 'Redbook' and her face continued to be featured throughout the 1930's and 40's in fashion magazines (Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Ladies Home Journal), on calendars and in advertising. In 1941, she was signed by Warner Brothers and decorated several A-grade productions, generally in small parts and, occasionally, featuring her exquisite voice. She sang 'Should I', in the MGM musical Thousands Cheer (1943), where she met her future husband, the bandleader Kay Kyser. According to Kyser's publicist/band manager, Paul Mosher, Georgia and Kay were speeding through Nevada one night in June 1944, when they were pulled over by a state trooper. In order to avoid the bad publicity of a speeding charge, they swore that they were on their way to get married. Thus preempted, they roused a Justice of the Peace from his sleep and went on to become one of the most successful couples in show business. Georgia continued as vocalist with the Kay Kyser band, as well making appearances on television. She retired in 1951, concentrating on raising her family, collecting antiques and being active in the Chapel Hill (N.C.) historical preservation movement.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Kay Kyser was born on 18 June 1905 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, USA. He was an actor, known for You'll Find Out (1940), That's Right - You're Wrong (1939) and Playmates (1941). He was married to Georgia Carroll. He died on 23 July 1985 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.- Jacques Sandulescu was born on 21 February 1928 in Romania. He was an actor, known for Trading Places (1983), The Owl and the Pussycat (1970) and Great Performances (1971). He died on 19 November 2010 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
- Ken Strong was born on 3 January 1958 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA. He was an actor, known for RoboCop 3 (1993), Love Potion No. 9 (1992) and All My Children (1970). He was married to Kee. He died on 12 January 2010 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
- Hodding Carter III was born on 7 April 1935 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The American Ruling Class (2005), The Men Who Would Be Viking (2003) and Epic History of Everyday Things (2011). He was married to Patricia Ann O'Brien, Patricia Derian and Margaret Ainsworth Wolfe. He died on 11 May 2023 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
- Manly Wade Wellman was born on May 21, 1903, in Kamundongo, Portuguese West Africa (now Angola), where his father, Dr. Frederick Creighton Wellman, was a physician at a British medical outpost. It was there that he first encountered African tales of magic and the spirit world, a fascination that would stay with him for life. His first story published, "The Lion Roared" (Thrilling Tales, 1927), was based on the stories told to him in his African childhood upbringing.
He later moved to the US, going to grade school in Washington, DC, prep school in Salt Lake City and college at Wichita, Kansas, where he received a BA in English in 1926. Around that time he started a friendship with Vance Randolf, an acclaimed folklorist and expert on Ozark mountain magic and traditions. Randolf took Wellman on trips through the Arkansas Ozarks, where Wellman absorbed folk traditions and met the isolated people of the American back country. It was through Randolf that Wellman met folk music legend Obray Ramsey, whose music would have a profound affect on Wellman and his writing.
Also in this period he worked in Wichita on The Beacon and The Wichita Eagle newspapers, and married Frances Obrist "Garfield" (her pen name), who is a horror writer in her own right; she sold her first yarn to Weird Tales magazine in 1939. During the Great Depression Wellman's newspaper work started to dwindle, so he moved to New York where he became Assistant Director of the WPA's New York Folklore Project.
In the late 1920s Wellman was writing for "Ozark Stories" and "Thrilling Tales" magazines, and then in the 1930s and 1940s the bigger publications "Weird Tales", "Wonder Stories" and "Astounding Stories". At this time "Weird Tales" published stories based on three of Wellman's most famous characters: Judge Keith Hilary Persuivant (which he wrote under the pen name Gans T. Fields), psychic detective and New York playboy John Thunstone and possibly his most famous and enduring character, John the Balladeer. He also wrote for comic books (what he called "squinkies") and wrote the first issue of "Captain Marvel Adventures" for Fawcett Publishers. Later he would be called into court to testify against Fawcett in a lawsuit by National (D.C. Comics) about plagiarism of its "Superman" character by the creators of Captain Marvel. Wellman testified that his editors had encouraged their writers to use Superman as the model for Captain Marvel. Though it took three years, National won its case.
In 1946 Wellman won the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Award over William Faulkner for his Native American detective tale "A Star For A Warrior". Apparently Faulkner was quite upset playing second fiddle to a sci-fi and horror writer. He indignantly wrote to the editors of the magazine, proclaiming that he was the father of the French literary movement and the most important American writer in Europe.
After serving as a lieutenant in WW II, Wellman moved his family to Pine Bluff, North Carolina (population 300), to be closer to the folksy backwoods people he was starting to write about. There he immersed himself in American southern mountain folklore and history, becoming an expert on the Civil War and the historic regions and peoples of the Old South. Then in 1951 he made his final move to the college town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he lived out his days writing and teaching fiction.
Wellman built a vacation cabin on what he called Yandro Mountain in the Smokies, next to his friend Obray Ramsey's place, where they would invite friends for a taste of mountain music, food, fun and a good lick of blockade whiskey.
In 1986 Wellman took a fall from which he never recovered and he died on April 5 that year. Before passing on he finished his novel "Cahena", about an African warrior princess (possibly the inspiration for Xena?), and the John the Balladeer short story "Where Did She Wander?". - Writer
- Producer
- Music Department
Tom Waldman was born on 8 July 1922 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for The Party (1968), The Dick Powell Theatre (1961) and Trail of the Pink Panther (1982). He was married to Fay McKenzie. He died on 23 July 1985 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Guy Casaril was born on 1 November 1933 in Miramont-de-Guyenne, Lot-et-Garonne, France. He was a director and writer, known for Astragal (1968), Le rempart des Béguines (1972) and Les novices (1970). He died on 3 May 1996 in Chapel Hill, Queensland, Australia.- Writer
- Additional Crew
Composer, author and teacher, Paul Green was educated at the University of North Carolina (BA, Litt. D.), Cornell University (Litt. D.), Davidson College, Western Reserve University, University of Louisville and Berea College. He was an associate professor of philosophy (1927) and a professor of dramatic art (1939-1944) at the University of North Carolina. During World War II, he served in the US Army Engineer Corps as a Second Lieutenant, and later wrote many books and plays. Since the inception of the National Folk Fest in 1934, he served as its president, and also as president of the National Theatre Conference (1940-1942), and as a member of the executive commission of the US National Commission for UNESCO, was a delegate to the UNESCO conference in Paris and a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1941. Joining ASCAP in 1940, his chief musical collaborators included Kurt Weill. His popular-song compositions include "Oh, Heart of Love", "On the Rio Grande", "Mon Ami, My Friend" and "Johnny's Song".- Richard McKenna was born in 1913 in Mountain Home, Idaho. In 1931 he joined the U.S. Navy, retiring in 1953 as a Chief Machinist Mate. During his time in the Navy he served on the USS Gold Star AG-12, USS Asheville PG-21, USS Edsall DD-219, USS Luzon PG-47, USS Mount Vernon AP-22, USS Wakefield AP-21, USS Washington BB-56, USS Wisconsin BB-64 and USS Van Valkenburgh DD-686. In 1948 he won the Naval Institute Proceedings Enlisted Essay Prize for his article "The Post War Chief Petty Officer: A Closer Look". Upon retirement from the Navy he attended The University of North Carolina, where he met his wife Eva Grice, a librarian at the University. In 1956 he graduated with honors and undertook a career in creative writing. His literary accomplishments include "The Sand Pebbles"--made into a hugely successful film, The Sand Pebbles (1966), with Steve McQueen--"The Left Handed Monkey Wrench" numerous essays and an unfinished book of short stories "The Sons of Martha". He passed away from a heart attack in 1964.
- John grew up in Montreal, Canada. His father was a goalie with the Loyola Warriors and the McGill Redmen. He studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse and currently resides in Santa Monica, CA. He has a lovely wife.
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Erik Darling was born on 25 September 1933 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He is known for Forrest Gump (1994), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and Calypso Heat Wave (1957). He was married to Joan Darling. He died on 3 August 2008 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.- Additional Crew
Barbara Griff was born on 19 February 1943 in the USA. She is known for What's My Line? (1950) and What's My Line? (1968). She died on 19 July 2021 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.- Frederick Thomson was born on 8 December 1926 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was married to Joanne Lucille Lindley. He died on 21 March 1992 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
- William Griffis was born on 12 July 1917 in Hollywood, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Remington Steele (1982), Hunter (1984) and Mr. Destiny (1990). He died on 13 April 1998 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
- Elizabeth Spencer has won many awards in her lifetime. She is a five-time recipient of the O. Henry prize The Voice at the Back Door for short fiction. While considered a Southern writer, Spencer lived in Italy and Canada for many years and many of her stories take place in those countries, including her best-known work, Light in the Piazza. In 1952 she got a recognition award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1953 she received the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship Award. In 1956-1957 she received the Kenyon Review Fiction Fellowship and the First Rosenthal Award. In 1960 she received the McGraw-Hill Fiction Fellowship Award. In 1962 she received the Donnelly Fellowship, Bryn Mawr College. In 1968 she received the Bellamann Award. In 1983 she received the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Award of Merit Medal for the Short Story. In 1985 she was elected to the American Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1988 she received the National Endowment for the Arts Senior Fellowship in Literature Grant. Then in 1992 she received the Salem Award for Distinction in Letters from Salem College and the John Dos Passos Award for Literature. In 1994 she received the North Carolina Governor's Award for Literature. She was the Vice-Chancellor for the Charter Member Fellowship of Southern Writers from 1993 to 1997.
More of her many awards include the J. William Corrington Award for fiction and the Richard Wright Literary Excellence Award for fiction in 1997. In 1998 she received the Fortner Award for Literature. In 1999 she received the Mississippi State Library Award for non-fiction. In 2001 she received the Cleanth Brooks Medal for achievement awarded by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. In 2002 she received the Thomas Wolfe Award for Literature given by UNC-Chapel Hill and the Morgan Foundation and was also inducted into the North Carolina Hall of Fame. - Dean Smith was born on 28 February 1931 in Emporia, Kansas, USA. He was an actor, known for He Got Game (1998), Without Bias (2009) and The Sport Jerks (1998). He was married to Linnea Smith and Margaret Ann Cleavinger. He died on 7 February 2015 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
- Martha Nell Hardy was born on 4 November 1925 in Tennessee, USA. She was an actress, known for Where the Lilies Bloom (1974) and Carolina Low (1997). She was married to William Hardy. She died on 14 October 2005 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
- After attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Charlotte Parry began her professional career as a mimic, imitating stage personalities of the 1890s. She left touring in 1896, settling in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she gave birth to two children. On the death of her first husband, Frank M. Smith, she resumed an active stage career, becoming a highly-regarded "protean artist", specializing in playlets in which she played all (or nearly all) of the characters, rapidly changing costumes, accents and mannerisms. In 1906, she became a critical and popular success in "The Comstock Mystery", a playlet authored by W. H. Clifford; Miss Parry portrayed seven of the eight roles.
By 1913, she had found a new vehicle for her talents, "Into the Light", a psychological fantasy written by Frank Lyman. While the subject matter was different, the structure was similar, with Miss Parry assuming multiple parts, though she disdained being tagged as a "quick-change artist".
Toward the end of the decade, she introduced another routine, "Song & Story of the City", but on several occasions she returned to her first major success, reviving "The Comstock Mystery".
From the 1920s, she spent increasing amounts of time living in London and performing in Europe, having married Joshua Lowe, the London representative of "Variety", better known to readers as "Jolo". When Lowe was killed in an accident after World War II, Charlotte retired from acting and returned to the United States, residing with her daughter Aline. Aline had married Colonel Laurence Cramer, one-time governor of the U. S. Virgin Islands. Charlotte Parry died at the home of her daughter on 2 November 1959 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. - Gertrude Elion was born on 23 January 1918 in New York City, New York, USA. She died on 21 February 1999 in Chapel, North Carolina, USA.
- Slim Mims was born on 9 July 1918 in Richland County, South Carolina, USA. He died on 13 February 1994 in Chapel Hill, Orange County, North Carolina, USA.