Teen
List activity
104 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
133 people
- Actress
- Soundtrack
American actress and operatic singer (soprano), born Jacqueline Nutt, in Hamilton, Ontario. She began her career on Canadian radio at the age of five. Her family later moved to California where she was enrolled in Hollywood's Mar-Ken school, graduating in 1945. For more than fourteen years, Gale made a name for herself as half of a nightclub and stage double act with Nelson Eddy, singing duets originally made famous by Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. She also had a brief Hollywood career, beginning as a child actress in They Shall Have Music (1939) under the Hollywood-imposed stage name Jacqueline Nash. As Gale Sherwood, she later starred in the title role of Blonde Savage (1947), a PRC Poverty Row jungle adventure. The picture was directed by journeyman Steve Sekely who was so delighted with the result that he elected to get himself credited as 'S.K. Seely'. Gale had a couple more leads in the children's film Rocky (1948) (about a boy and a dog -- not the boxer), Song of My Heart (1948) (a rarely seen minor Tchaikovsky biopic, released by Allied Artists) and a made-for-television version of the musical The Desert Song (1955), in which she starred as Margot opposite Nelson Eddy. After Eddy's death in 1967, Gale appeared in the musical 'Showboat' at the Los Angeles Musical Centre. She retired soon after and lived the rest of her life in Florida where she passed away at the age of 88.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio, the last of three children born to a mathematics teacher and his wife. Eleanor caught the acting bug early and began performing in school plays. She was was so serious about becoming an actor, that she attended the Rice Summer Theatre on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, beginning when she was 15 years old. She was offered her first screen test by a 20th Century-Fox talent scout while attending Rice, but turned the opportunity down to gain professional stage experience in Cleveland after graduating from high school.
She moved on to California to continue her acting studies at the Pasadena Playhouse. It was there, while sitting in the audience of a play being put on at the Playhouse, that she was again offered a screen test - this time from a Warner Brothers' scout - and again declined, wanting to finish her first year at the Playhouse. When the year was up, Eleanor contacted Warner Brothers to take them up on their offer of a screen test and was signed as a contract player two days after it was shot.
She was cast in Raoul Walsh's They Died with Their Boots On (1941), but her performance was left on the cutting room floor.
She was then cast in short subjects and given other assignments typical of novice film actors, to enable them to learn their craft, such as voice-acting and appearances in other actors' screen tests. Finally, she was promoted to the B-picture unit, making her feature debut in Busses Roar (1942).
Her beauty meant she was not forgotten, and she was cast in one of Warner Brothers' biggest productions for the 1943 season, the pro-Soviet Mission to Moscow (1943), directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Walter Huston as the U.S. ambassador to the USSR. Eleanor played his daughter in the film, which became notorious in the McCarthy era for its glorification of "Uncle Joe" Stalin. The film proved significant to Eleanor, as she met a future husband on the set, Navy Lieutenant. Fred L. Losse, Navy dentist. The marriage was a brief wartime affair, lasting from March 21, 1943, to December 5, 1944.
She went back to the B's with The Mysterious Doctor (1943), then bounced back to the A-list for Between Two Worlds (1944), a remake of the Leslie Howard vehicle Outward Bound (1930) in which she played Paul Henreid's fiancee (both die from suicide, but in Hollywood logic that didn't mean they couldn't frolic together on the silver screen). Eleanor then made two more B-quickies in 1944, Crime by Night (1944) and The Last Ride (1944), before graduating to the A-list for good with Pride of the Marines (1945) with John Garfield.
In the 1946 Warner Bros. remake of Of Human Bondage (1946), she took the role that Bette Davis had made good in 1934 (ironically, at rival RKO). Though Parker would be gaining kudos and Oscar nominations by the beginning of the next decade, her portrait of Mildred was weak in comparison with Davis's dynamic performance.
Parker received the first of her three Best Actress Oscar nominations for playing a prisoner in Caged (1950), and won the best actress award at the Venice Film Festival. She was also nominated the next year for playing the cop's wife who shared a secret with the neighborhood abortionist in William Wyler's Detective Story (1951). Her third and last Oscar nod came for Interrupted Melody (1955), wherein she played an opera singer struck down by polio. She could easily have been nominated that same year for her portrayal of Frank Sinatra's faux crippled wife in Otto Preminger's brooding masterpiece The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), adapted from the novel by Nelson Algren.
Parker proved herself to be a supremely talented and very versatile lead actress. The versatility was likely one of the reasons she never quite became a major star. Audiences attending a movie starring Parker never knew quite what to expect of her; if they even remembered she was the same actress they had seen before in a different type of role in another picture. Her turns in Detective Story (1951) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) could not have been more different. Parker's stardom and subsequent fame (and remembrance) suffered from her focusing on being a serious actress and creating a character who fit the motion picture she was in, rather than playing a character over and over, as most actors do. She probably best remembered for the relatively tame part as the Baroness in The Sound of Music (1965).
She received an Outstanding Lead Actress Emmy nomination in 1963 for her appearance in The Eleventh Hour (1962) episode Why Am I Grown So Cold? Despite the success of The Sound of Music (1965) being completely attributed to #1 box office sensation Julie Andrews, it's probably Parker's best-remembered role.
Her appearances in such fare as The Oscar (1966) (the cast of which the Playboy Magazine reviewer derided as "has-beens and never-will-bes") and the movie adaptation of Norman Mailer's indescribable existential potboiler An American Dream (1966) with fellow Oscar-nominee Stuart Whitman signaled that Miss Parker was now inscribed on the list of the has-beens.
She had one last hurrah, winning a Golden Globe nomination in 1970 as best lead actress for her role in the TV series Bracken's World (1969), but unfortunately times had changed during the tumultuous 1960s. Her last film role was in a Farrah Fawcett bomb, Sunburn (1979). Subsequently, she appeared very infrequently on TV, most recently in Dead on the Money (1991).
Eleanor Parker retired far too soon for those who were her fans, and those who appreciated a superb actress.- Mary Jane Irving was born on 20 October 1913 in Columbia, South Carolina, USA. She was an actress, known for The White Lie (1918), Scotty of the Scouts (1926) and The Godless Girl (1928). She was married to Robert Carson. She died on 17 July 1983 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Minnesota-born Noel Neill's ambition was to be a journalist like her father, the editor of a Minneapolis newspaper. However, she was hired by Bing Crosby to sing at the Turf Club at the race track in Del Mar, California (Crosby was one of the owners). Shortly thereafter, in 1941, she was signed to a contract by Paramount Pictures. She got early experience in television by hosting and performing on several experimental programs broadcast locally in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, and it was around that time that she began appearing in serials, first at Columbia and then for Republic. While she is best known for playing Lois Lane in the TV series Adventures of Superman (1952) beginning in the second season in 1953, she actually first played Lois in the 1948 serial Superman (1948). She replaced Phyllis Coates in the part when the series went on hiatus and Coates accepted a leading part in another TV series before the hiatus ended. When the series ended in 1957, Neill retired from the industry.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ann Gillis was born Alma Mabel Conner on February 12, 1927, in Little Rock, Arkansas. At age seven, she appeared in her first film, Men in White (1934), as an extra. During the next two years, she had uncredited appearances in six more films until she received her first major role in King of Hockey (1936). Warner Brothers Studios gave significant screen time to Gillis in this movie, in hopes that she would become another Shirley Temple. Although (like all child stars of the 1930s) she never achieved Temple's level of fame, for the next several years Gillis starred in many films, almost always playing a spoiled, bratty character. She had two rare sympathetic roles as Becky Thatcher in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) and as the title character in Little Orphan Annie (1938). One scene in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer called for her to go into screaming hysterics when her character was trapped in a cave of bats, and Gillis delivered in a powerful performance that is probably the most memorable scene of her film career. As Gillis grew older, however, her career slowed down, and she left Hollywood in 1947. When she left Hollywood she married Paul Ziebold and had 2 sons. She then divorced, relocated to New York City and married Richard Fraser, a Scottish-born actor (they had a son born in 1958). During the 1950s and '60s, Gillis made sporadic television appearances, and in 1959, she hosted a national telecast presentation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Gillis and her husband moved to England in 1961, and they were living in London when they heard of a casting call for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) that called for an American actress living in the city. Gillis auditioned and got the role, this was her final film.- Susan Whitney was born in November 1940 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress, known for The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952), Mike Hammer (1958) and Telephone Time (1956).
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Glenda Farrell began as the archetypal wisecracking blonde in 1930s gangland films like Little Caesar (1931) and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932). Diminutive, grey-eyed and undeniably sassy, she was a seasoned performer long before Warner Brothers snapped her up as a contract player in 1929. She made her debut on the stage as a 7 year-old playing Little Eva in "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Via provincial theatre Glenda eventually made her way to Broadway where she scored a palpable hit in "Life Begins" (later recreating her role for the screen). That attracted the Hollywood talent scouts and her movie contract followed in due course. Though seemingly destined for typecasting as hardboiled gangster molls, showgirls and gold diggers, it was her role as fast-talking, resourceful girl reporter Torchy Blane in her own series of films (beginning with Smart Blonde (1937)) that made her a star, albeit a minor one. She later recalled "Warners never made you feel you were just a member of the cast. They might star you in one movie and give you a bit part in the next...You were still well paid and you didn't get a star complex. We were a very close group..."
Glenda was also paired with another livewire, Joan Blondell, for a series of high octane, madcap farces which consistently made money at the box office. Inevitably, though, her roles became more and more repetitive. After her contract with Warner Brothers expired, she continued to appear with diminishing effectiveness in films for Universal (1938) and Columbia (1942-44). In the 50s, Glenda made the transition to more mature character roles, alternating screen work with Broadway plays -- pretty much throughout the remainder of her acting career -- eventually winning a Primetime Emmy Award in 1963 as Best Supporting Actress for the television series Ben Casey (1961). She took ill during a stage performance of "Forty Carats" in New York in 1969 and died at her home two years later. As the wife of a former U.S. Army colonel, Glenda became the only actress to be interred in the cemetery of West Point Military Academy.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Carol Byron was born on 24 June 1937 in San Marcos, California, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for The Twilight Zone (1959), Fireball 500 (1966) and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952).- Tammy Lea Marihugh was born in Los Angeles to part-time Hollywood stand-in, Malcolm Marihugh and his wife, Ellie, a former bank clerk, both of whom encouraged and helped their daughter's career so that by the time she was six, Marihugh had earned about S35,000 from winning child beauty contests, working as a model and appearing on TV. At four, Ellie took Tammy to a local photographer for some photos to send to her family back in Minot, ND. The photographer thought Tammy was so photogenic that he offered free pictures whenever she wanted them if he could use Tammy's photos for his own ads. Ellie agreed and Tammy's photo began appearing in several local Los Angeles newspapers. In December 1957, she won a TV Shirley Temple Smile contest. She was then offered a bit part in Playhouse 90 on CBS, where she recalled making $200 "just for smiling into the camera." In 1958, nearly 209,000 children entered photos for the "Howdy Doody" TV Show Smile Contest, and Tammy won, with a prize of $10,000. She toured the country, appeared several times on NBC, and posed for magazine covers. During October and November of 1958, she appeared several times on the popular Candid Camera-style show, People Are Funny, hosted by Art Linkletter. On the show, she was given thousands of dollars in play money, which on one episode she took to various stores trying to buy her father a 50-cent gift and on another, she tried to give away a kitten in public but found it hard to do so. She became very popular from these appearances and in April 1959, she joined the cast of The Bob Cummings Show in its final season with a contract paying $500 per episode. She appeared at the 1960 PATSY Awards, representing Asta, the dog from the 1957-1959 TV series The Thin Man. She soon began to get movie offers and debuted on the theatrical screen in 1960's The Last Voyage, playing the daughter to parents Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone. In June of 1960, Tammy was anointed "Little Miss Hot Dog", symbolizing the July celebration sponsored by the National Hot Dog Month Council. She became the youngest "Miss Hot Dog" in history. In December of that year, she became her parent's landlord when a judge approved her buying a six-room house for $16,000 near the MGM Studio, where she was signed to a seven-year contract making $500-700 weekly. Producer George Pal personally recommended her for the part of Gretel in The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. She was instead cast as Pauline Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm's daughter. This was to be Tammy's final movie appearance and by the mid-1960's, she stopped appearing on TV as well. After a 1964 guest appearance on the CBS sitcom My Three Sons, it was five years later until her next and final acting role, also on My Three Sons, in a 1969 episode.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Marlene Willis was born on 13 January 1942 in Levelland, Texas, USA. She was an actress, known for Attack of the Puppet People (1958), Rockabilly Baby (1957) and The Loretta Young Show (1953). She was married to Kerry Hodges. She died on 29 March 1982 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Terry Burnham was born on 8 August 1949 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Imitation of Life (1959), Shirley Temple's Storybook (1958) and Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966). She died on 7 October 2013 in Long Beach, California, USA.- Karen Green is known for Because of You (1952), The Eve Arden Show (1957) and Captain Midnight (1954).
- Carol Dempster was born on 9 December 1901 in Duluth, Minnesota, USA. She was an actress, known for Sally of the Sawdust (1925), That Royle Girl (1925) and Isn't Life Wonderful (1924). She was married to Edwin S Larsen. She died on 1 February 1991 in La Jolla, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Lois Butler was born on 13 March 1931 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. She was an actress, known for Mickey (1948), The Boy from Indiana (1950) and High Lonesome (1950). She was married to Hall Bartlett. She died on 19 June 1989 in Los Angeles County, California, USA.- Kristine Miller was born Jacqueline Olivia Eskesen, the daughter of Johannes Eskesen, vice-president of Standard Oil of Argentina, headquartered in Buenos Aires, where Miller was born. Miller's mother, Myrtle Bennett Witham, was an Orpheum Circuit singer from Fresno, California. After a decade in Argentina, the family moved to Myrtle's hometown of Fresno for a year, then to Copenhagen, Denmark in 1932. In 1938, before the beginning of the Second World War in Europe, they moved back to Fresno, then on to San Francisco.
Due to traveling internationally as a child, Miller speaks English, Spanish and Danish fluently, and has a working knowledge of Portuguese and German. Miller said of her childhood, "My mother was a professional singer and I think she was eager for me to go into the entertainment field." However, after she played a main role in her high school's production of George S. Kaufman "The American Way" (1939), her taste for show-business began to form. In one version of how she was discovered by Hollywood, in 1944 the 18-year-old Miller saw an opportunity when a Warner Brothers talent scout was to attend one of her school's performances. The scout never showed up, so she sent a letter and photograph to the studio, and garnered a screen test at Warner, where she changed her name to Kristine Miller. Though she failed the screen test, she was noticed by producer Hal B. Wallis, who was then feuding with the studio head, Jack L. Warner. Under acrimonious circumstances, Wallis left Warner Brothers for Paramount Pictures. Wallis brought with him Miller and another actress that also failed a screen test at Warner, the 21-year-old Lizabeth Scott.
At Paramount, Miller made her debut, an uncredited bit part, opposite fellow newcomer Scott in You Came Along (1945). Miller played a showgirl and was billed as "Jacqueleen Eskeson." The pair would appear together in five films, four of them produced by Hal Wallis.
In July 1946, it was announced that Hal Wallis planned to star Miller in the film version of the Broadway play, "Beggars Are Coming to Town" (1945), a noirish story of betrayal and vengeance. Wallis intended this to be Miller's breakout role. In the winter of 1946, Miller appeared briefly in Western noir, Desert Fury (1947). She played the priggish Claire Lindquist, daughter of a corrupt judge.
Immediately after Desert Fury, Wallis began work on "Deadlock", the original project name for "Beggars Are Coming to Town". Again Miller would be cast with "Desert Fury"'s Burt Lancaster and Wendell Corey. After weeks of rehearsals on the Modjeska Canyon location, under the direction of Byron Haskin, Miller suddenly became the second leading lady. Lizabeth Scott, ever competitive with all actresses, grabbed the Kay role for herself. Miller later recalled, "(Wallis) planned to star me in "I Walk Alone". He tested me with Burt; it was a wonderful test. But then Lizabeth Scott decided she wanted the role, and Lizabeth got whatever she wanted-from Hal Wallis! [laughs] So, I got the second part instead." The 21-year-old Miller was recast as the slumming socialite divorcée, Alexis Richardson. Miller was afraid that playing a "meanie" role might typecast her. In designing Miller's wardrobe, Edith Head was impressed by Miller's physique, describing it as "the most exciting figure since Betty Grable." The resulting film was renamed I Walk Alone (1947). Despite Miller's fears of being typecast as a femme fatale, film historians tend to typecast her "as always playing the 'good girl.'"
In early May, 1948, the 23-year-old Miller was loaned out again, this time to 20th Century Fox for "West of Tomorrow"-her first leading lady role. The screenplay was based on William Bowers' play of the same name. During WWII in New Guinea, a US Army Air Force squadron has been assigned to protect Australia and despite having inflicted heavy casualties on the Japanese, they supernaturally had none themselves. Miller played Jean Gillis, a Broadway actress and former anti-war activist, who joined the USO after her husband's death at Dunkirk. By happenstance, she ends up having to entertain the airmen by herself when she finds out the rest of her troupe is stranded. During an improvised "dinner dance," she learns about the pilots' wives and girlfriends and their hopes for the future, but equally learns about herself. Arthur Franz makes his film debut as Miller's love interest. The next morning, all but the squadron leader and Jean are killed after an attack on the airstrip. Similar to Death Takes a Holiday (1934), the airmen reach the epiphany of their lives in the few hours they spend with Jean. The resulting film was released as Jungle Patrol (1948), the sole film that Miller had 1st-place billing. Despite Miller's preference for Bowers' original title, the film is her personal favorite.
After establishing herself as a "discovery" of Hal Wallis, Miller soon found herself left behind. In an interview with Mike Fitzgerald, she was quoted as saying, "Hal called me the 'Viking Girl.' He didn't know what to do with me." The situation was aggravated by the return of veteran actors from overseas, either in uniform or the USO. Compounded by the economic slump after the war, rise of television and the breakup of the studio system, Miller's initial difficulties during the war years would be multiplied many fold. Miller's prospects began to look a little better when she met journalist and film producer Mark Hellinger, who felt sure that she could become a star. But Hellinger died suddenly in 1947, and Miller soon found herself making a living with the usual small roles that she had always been given. Of the nine films she would make under contract to Paramount, three were loan-outs to other studios, two of which were more significant than her Paramount films, with the exception of I Walk Alone. Typical of the Paramount years, in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), she was cast as the wife of the investigating detective but was recast as the mistress of the physician, dropping from 3rd to 13th place in billing.
Later that year, she moved on to a more substantial part, again opposite Lizabeth Scott, in Too Late for Tears (1949). In her third and last loan-out-this time to United Artists-Miller played Kathy Palmer, the sister-in-law of Jane Palmer (Scott), whom she suspects has murdered her brother. As she is romanced by Don DeFore, the pair quietly investigate the shady dealings of Jane.
At the end of 1948, Miller made a brief appearance in the "weepie" Paid in Full (1950). In the last film she would do for Paramount, Miller was to play Nancy Langley, the younger modeling sister of Jane (Lizabeth Scott), a department store illustrator, who allows her younger sister to marry Bill Prentice (Robert Cummings), despite Jane's love for him. A few years later, Jane has an argument with Nancy, who catches Jane and Bill having an affair. Distraught, Jane backs up her car and accidentally kills her young niece. But as with 'I Walk Alone', Miller's role was given to another actress-Diana Lynn. Miller ended up playing a bridesmaid at Nancy's wedding, dropping from 3rd to 10th place in billing. In February 1949, it was announced that Miller's contact with Paramount was dropped due to the post-war slump in the film industry. That December, Miller's marriage with television executive, William Schuyler, was announced.
Undaunted by career setbacks, Miller tried her hand with smaller studios such as Monogram and Republic Pictures, though she would still work for the occasional big studio. Miller also made further incursions in the then-new medium of television, which she began before her contract with Paramount was dropped. Despite the demands of raising a family, the 1950s would be Miller's most prolific years, seeing her as a television regular. Throughout the '50s, she was able to display a broader acting range than when under Paramount and Hal Wallis. Though Miller missed out on being Lizabeth Scott's younger sister in "Paid in Full", she played a younger sister in the noirish Shadow on the Wall (1950), which also involved two sisters competing over the same man. The older sister, played by Ann Sothern, discovers that her younger, married sister is having an affair with Sothern's fiancé, which leads to murderous results and short screen-time for Miller. Though never leaving the noir genre, Miller would begin her reputation for Westerns with Young Daniel Boone (1950), but as the female lead.
Later that year she would return to the Western genre with High Lonesome (1950). John Drew Barrymore is a misunderstood teenager, Cooncat, who creates a rift between Miller's rancher father and her fiancé, who believes Cooncat murdered his parents.
In the fall of 1951, Miller was cast as an Eastern European in the Cold War thriller, The Steel Fist (1952), opposite Roddy McDowall. Miller played Marlina, a young woman who hides a student protester (McDowall) from the communists. In the spring of 1952, Miller appeared in her second femme fatale role. In "The Iron Banner Story," an episode of Dangerous Assignment (1950), an espionage series starring Brian Donlevy, she played Lilli Terrescu, a woman with a dark secret in post-war Greece. As with The Steel Fist, Miller used her accent skills in two Dangerous Assignment episodes and later in The Millionaire episode, "The Anton Bohrman Story." Later in the year, Miller was the second female lead in her first musical, Tropical Heat Wave (1952).
On July 27, 1953, Miller finally married William Schuyler in Santa Barbara. That October, it was announced that the Schuylers were expecting their first baby.
In 1954, Miller appeared as the second leading lady in three films. Flight Nurse (1953), starring Joan Leslie, was a drama about US Air Force flight nurses in the Korean War. Miller is a fellow officer of Leslie, involved in a romantic triangle with two pilots. Geraldine (1953) is a comedy starring Mala Powers. In the noir Western Hell's Outpost (1954), Miller again costarred with Leslie. "Hell's Outpost" would introduced Miller to Jim Davis, who would be the male lead for the only television series that Miller had a continuing role in. During that year, Miller made two appearances on the television series The Lone Wolf (1954), starring Louis Hayward. In one episode, Miller played an adulterous wife reminiscent of "The Shadow on the Wall", but is shot by the cuckolded husband instead. She also made a guest appearance as Mrs. Manning on Republic's first television series, Stories of the Century (1954), starring Mary Castle and Miller's old "Hell's Outpost" costar, Jim Davis.
In 1955, Miller returned to "Stories of the Century" to star in her most famous role-Margaret "Jonesy" Jones. The series concerned a pair of railroad detectives dealing with cases from the 1850s to the first decade of the 20th century, "wrapping them around previously shot films and serials to save money." Typically, the Jones character would do reconnaissance before Matt Clark (Jim Davis) arrived, misleading everyone into thinking the two were not working together. Originally Miller was to star in the series, but was unable due to her first pregnancy. As a result, Mary Castle, a Rita Hayworth lookalike, took her place for the first 26 episodes. Castle had portrayed Clark's fellow detective Frankie Adams. After Castle quit or was fired, Miller replaced her, much to the disappointment of the then director, William Witney, who left after directing a few episodes with Miller. Despite the change of leading lady and the replacement of Witney, "Stories of the Century" with Miller went on to be the first Western to win an Emmy Award in 1955. Despite the award and excellent ratings, the series was cancelled.
After the cancellation of Century, Miller changed genres with the first of four appearances on Science Fiction Theatre (1955). In "The Strange Dr. Lorenz" (1955), she played the wife of a physician, whose debilitating condition is cured by a miraculous royal jelly. But the jelly has an unexpected side-effect. In "Operation Flypaper" (1956) she and Vincent Price are scientists trying to catch a thief who can suspend time. During this period, Miller would make three Western films in succession: Thunder Over Arizona (1956), Domino Kid (1957) and The Persuader (1957), a religious Western starring William Talman. Miller would rejoin Jim Davis for the last time in an episode of M Squad (1957)-"The Case of the Double Face" (May 23, 1958), starring Lee Marvin. Miller is married to a mild-mannered, bespectacled Davis, who is accused by the Chicago police of being a jewel thief. Miller's last film role was in The Heart Is a Rebel (1958), a religious drama starring Ethel Waters.
Miller's last television appearance was as Ruth Hudson in the 1961 episode "Prince Jim" of NBC's Tales of Wells Fargo (1957), starring Dale Robertson. Of the genres and cross-genres spanning her film career, Miller participated in making five traditional noirs, one noir-thriller, four Westerns, two noir Westerns, one religious Western, three military dramas, two comedies, one comedy-drama, one soap opera, one religious drama and one musical. Seven of Miller's roles were walk-ons or deleted from the final film. Her television work involved similar genres. In contradistinction to being only a supporting actress as described by most film historians, she was leading lady in six of 22 films.
Due to demands of family and her husband's business, Miller retired from acting. The Schuylers left Los Angeles for the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1960s. Previous to the move, her husband was setting up television stations throughout Northern California, such as Sacramento's KSCH and KTVU in Oakland. Together with William they founded two television stations in Monterey-KMST and the Spanish-language KSMS. The Schuylers eventually settled on the Monterey peninsula in 1969, where William became president of the Schuyler Broadcasting Corporation. The Schuylers later lived in Idaho during the 1990s, where they started two television stations. They returned to Monterey in June 2001. Ever civic-minded since her Hollywood days, Kristine Miller has lectured on her experience in film and television in Monterey as well as participating in local charitable activities. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Better known for her scandalous private life than for her mild film input, the story goes that blonde, extremely well-endowed Dolores Moran was checked out at an annual Sacramento Elks Lodge picnic in 1941 by a Warner Brothers talent scout in the early 40s and a starlet was born.
Born in Stockton, California in 1926, this bombshell looker, a one-time drive-in car hop, had started collecting beauty titles as a teen ("Queen of the Butte County Fair") by the time the major studio took notice of her and signed her up. The studio immediately promoted the darker-haired-now-platinum blonde as a WWII pin-up and her cover-girl appearances on magazines became a favorite with GI soldiers. Beginning in 1942, she would start out as set decoration (including Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)) and would typically be utilized in small, decorative film parts. She achieved a bit of distinction, or perhaps distraction, in a couple of larger roles -- Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins' tearjerker Old Acquaintance (1943), Bogie and Bacall's To Have and Have Not (1944), and Jack Benny's The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945).
Moran's reputation of having affairs with married film heavyweights had already preceded her by the time the 22-year-old began dating 42-year-old producer Benedict Bogeaus, who was married to starlet Mimi Forsythe at the time. Bogeaus divorced his wife and married Moran in late 1946. Two years later Dolores bore him a son. Sadly, in 1952, Bogeaus' former wife committed suicide.
Secondary roles followed for Moran with Too Young to Know (1945) and the film noir The Man I Love (1946). Dolores first worked with her producer/husband in the film Christmas Eve (1947). Her film career sagged after that as her Svengali-like husband insisted she appear strictly in his pictures from Johnny One-Eye (1950) and Count the Hours! (1953) to her last role as a burlesque queen in Silver Lode (1954), often giving her roles that showed off her "bad girl" image. In between she appeared on TV: "Dangerous Assignment," "My Hero" and Mr. & Mrs. North".
The turbulent marriage of Dolores and Benedict finally came to an end in 1962. Moran decided to lay low after this and, as such, little was heard about her until newspapers reported her death from cancer at age 56 in 1982.- Kathleen Case was born on 31 July 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for Human Desire (1954), Running Wild (1955) and Highway Patrol (1955). She died on 22 July 1979 in North Hollywood, California, USA.
- Susan Strasberg was born in New York City on May 22, 1938. From the time of her birth, she was destined to be an actress, as her father was Lee Strasberg, acting coach at the famed Actors Studio in New York. In 1953, Susan made her acting debut in the episode Catch a Falling Star (1953) of the Goodyear Playhouse (1951) when she was just 15 years old. However, her true stage debut was on Broadway in the title role of "Diary of Anne Frank" in 1955. From that time on, Susan would devote part time to the stage and part time to the screen. Her first movie role was a fourth-billed part in Picnic (1955). That spot wasn't bad, considering she was still relatively new to the screen and her co-stars were William Holden, Kim Novak, Rosalind Russell, Cliff Robertson and Arthur O'Connell.
After making The Cobweb (1955) later that same year, she went back to perform on the stage. It just wasn't on-screen that she co-starred with big names; in 1957 she shared the stage with Helen Hayes and Richard Burton in "Time Remembered". In 1958, Susan returned to the big screen again in Stage Struck (1958). Although her billing wasn't anywhere near what it was with "Picnic", the picture got good reviews. For the remainder of her acting career, Susan alternated among the stage, screen and television. Wherever there was an acting role, she was there to appear in it. She spent some time in Europe, particularly Italy, making films for the rabid fans there. During the course of her tenure, she appeared in three documentaries about her old friend Marilyn Monroe. The first two were Marilyn Monroe: Beyond the Legend (1986) and Remembering Marilyn (1988). The third was Marilyn Monroe: Life After Death (1994). On January 21, 1999, Susan lost her struggle with breast cancer in New York City. She was a youthful 60 years old. - Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Viola Dana (real name Virginia Flugrath) was born in Brooklyn, NY, on June 26, 1897. She was the middle sister of three sisters (the other two were Edna Flugrath and Shirley Mason). She made her film debut in 1914 in Molly the Drummer Boy (1914). The following year she received top billing playing "Gladiola Bain" in Gladiola (1915). She was in top demand as evidenced by securing another lead in The Innocence of Ruth (1916). She continued to turn in great performances, particularly as Katie O'Doone in Bred in Old Kentucky (1926). Viola's final silver screen role was in 1929's One Splendid Hour (1929). The last the general public saw her was in a documentary about 'Buster Keaton' called Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow (1987).
Viola died on July 3, 1987, at age 90.- Actress
- Soundtrack
She was born of Irish ancestry as Joan Agnes Theresa Brodel, the daughter of an accountant and a pianist. She was educated at Catholic schools in Toronto, Montreal and Detroit. There were three sisters, her older siblings being Mary and Betty. Together, they made up a successful vaudeville act, the Brodel Sisters. Trained in singing, dancing and dramatics from early childhood, Joan began on stage at the age of nine. The Brodel's entry into in show biz at such a tender age had much to do with supporting their impoverished parents during the Depression years. With her sisters, Joan performed on radio and in nightclubs. The most talented of the trio, she excelled at impersonations, her repertoire including Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Jimmy Durante and Maurice Chevalier. While Mary played the saxophone and Betty the piano, Joan was a wiz on the accordion and the banjo. One night, during a performance at the Paradise Club in New York, she was singled out by an MGM talent scout and promptly signed for six months with a salary of $200 a week. Her first role of note was as Robert Taylor's young sister in the period drama Camille (1936). She did not last long at MGM, but, in 1940, was signed by Warner Brothers. Voice coaching smoothed her Midwestern accent and Joan Brodel became Joan Leslie, ostensibly 'to avoid confusion' with Warner's star comedienne Joan Blondell.
Little Joan was all but 14 years old when her movie career began in earnest. Her ability to cry on cue proved instrumental in her selection for the pivotal role of Velma, the club-footed girl helped by gangster Roy Earle (Humphrey Bogart) in High Sierra (1940). This role, by her own account, put her on the map. In between working as a photographers model, Joan flourished in A-grade productions, playing Gary Cooper's sweetheart in Sergeant York (1941) (despite a 24-years age difference), co-starring and dancing with James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and featuring in the top half of the bill in the aptly named, star-studded musical extravaganza Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943). She did her bit for the war effort too, dancing with servicemen in Hollywood Canteen (1944) and being featured in the movie along with her sister Betty. By 1942, Joan had acquired a wholesome reputation as the all-American girl-next-door. Life Magazine described her as "looking every inch the schoolgirl she is" and her greatest asset being "a manner of projecting sweet innocence without seeming too sugary". Before long, however, the relationship between Joan and her studio began to sour.
By 1945, the quality of her roles had begun to deteriorate. She made a couple of so-so pictures with Robert Alda, Rhapsody in Blue (1945) (an entertaining, but highly fictionalised biopic of George Gershwin) and Cinderella Jones (1946). After appearing in Two Guys from Milwaukee (1946), Joan, demanding more mature roles, took Warner Brothers to court. Having made her point, her contract was dropped. Between 1947 and 1954, Joan freelanced, often for Poverty Row outfits like Eagle-Lion, Lippert and Republic. She became yet another fatality of Hollywood typecasting, another example of an attractive ingenue, a promising starlet and a potential major star who ended up as a low budget western lead. Still, later interviews suggested that she rather enjoyed acting in her handful of second-string westerns and they earned Joan a Golden Boot Award in 2006 for contributions to the genre. She finally had another co-starring turn, billed behind Jane Russell and Richard Egan in The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956), thereafter restricting her appearances to the small screen. Joan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Vine Street.
In her later private life, Joan was devoted to various Catholic charities and to raising her identical twin daughters. As Joan Caldwell, an obstetrician's widow, she founded a Chair in Gynecologic Oncology at the University of Louisville. Joan died in October 2017 at the age of 90.
She quit her acting career to raise her identical twin daughters Patrice and Ellen. Both daughters are now Doctors, teaching at universities.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Lynne Carver was born on 13 September 1916 in Douglas, Arizona, USA. She was an actress, known for The Bride Wore Red (1937), Dulcy (1940) and Everybody Sing (1938). She was married to John Burt, William J. Mullaney, Nicholas Nayfack and R. C. McClung. She died on 12 August 1955 in New York City, New York, USA.- Jo Ann Sayers (real name: Miriam Lucille Lilygren) was born in Seattle, Washington. Named after Moses' dancer-sister Miriam, she danced as a child, took violin and piano lessons and acted in school plays. She attended the University of Washington with hopes of becoming a lawyer, but was drawn to the drama department instead. An agent "spotted" her and offered her a chance to make a screen test, which in turn led to Sayers' brief but busy run in Hollywood features and shorts. While under contract at MGM, Sayers was among the multitudes to test for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). She later co-starred with Shirley Booth in the Broadway smash "My Sister Eileen," but left the show after a year and a half to marry. She subsequently worked in summer theater, radio and TV. Widowed after the death of her second husband, Sayers resides in Princeton, New Jersey.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
A vastly talented musical performer, Peggy Ryan found stardom dancing alongside partner Donald O'Connor as Universal's answer to Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney. Paired up in many a low-budget WWII-era musical, she was best known for her dancing feet, but she was no slouch in the singing department and her buoyant personality added plenty of zest to the escapist fare she appeared in.
Christened Margaret O'Rene Ryan, Peggy was, as they say, born in a trunk in 1924 to a pair of vaudeville dancers ("The Merry Dancing Ryans") and, by age two, the pint-sized scene-stealer was already selling her heart out on stage alongside her parents. No glamour girl, Peggy had a very plaintive face, prominent nose and gangly figure, similar to a Virginia Weidler, so she was wise enough to play it up for laughs. Discovered by George Murphy, the young girl earned a part in Universal's enjoyable tune fest Top of the Town (1937), where the little Irish charmer managed to steal a dance alongside Murphy. Other movies beckoned, sometimes in teary dramas such as The Women Men Marry (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940). With the movie What's Cookin' (1942), she teamed with O'Connor for the first time. The two were a sensation and sparked many musical programmers with their clowning, mugging, intricate dance steps, and indefatigable style. The jitterbugging twosome romped through Private Buckaroo (1942), Give Out, Sisters (1942), Get Hep to Love (1942), Top Man (1943), The Merry Monahans (1944), Chip Off the Old Block (1944) and Bowery to Broadway (1944) during their peak. During this period she married Jimmy Cross and had a son, James Michael Cross, who later died in a 1987 car accident.
Peggy began to freelance in post-war years and found employment with other studios. She was paired up with dancer Ray McDonald for the films Shamrock Hill (1949) and All Ashore (1953) and began seeing him off screen as well. They eventually married, had a child named Kerry, and toured together across the U.S. in a nightclub act for a few years until their marriage folded. She decided to retire from films following her third marriage to Hawaiian announcer/emcee/columnist Eddie Sherman. She choreographed book shows here and there ("The Music Man", "Funny Girl"), but basically settled down in Hawaii. In later years, she came out of semi-retirement to appear in a small recurring part as the Governor of Hawaii's secretary, Jenny, on TV's popular Hawaii Five-O (1968) in 1968. She remained a sporadic presence throughout the run of the show. After teaching tap dancing for decades on the sly, Peggy moved to Las Vegas with her family. A trouper to the end, she formed a group of middle-aged dancers called "The TNT's" and performed in and about town. In 2003, she suffered her first mini-stroke, dying a year later in what was reported to be complications from multiple strokes on October 30, 2004.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ann E. Todd was born Ann Todd Phillips on August 26, 1931, in Denver, Colorado. Both of her parents had extensive careers in music; her father, Burrill Phillips, was an accomplished composer and pianist. Ann also had one brother, Stephen, who was born in 1937 (and died in 1986). Ann was adopted and raised by her maternal grandparents; her official adopted name was Ann Todd Mayfield. Her grandparents took her to the movies often and hoped that she would one day become a child star like Shirley Temple (incidentally, she would have a small role as Temple's little sister in The Blue Bird (1940)). Ann's grandparents eventually prodded her into a career in film, and although she was not particularly interested in acting -- her childhood ambition was to be a pilot -- she excelled at it and became one of the most popular child stars of the 1930s and '40s. In the early 1940s, she added E to her professional name to avoid being mistaken for British actress Ann Todd (nevertheless, the two were and are frequently confused). Despite her success -- she appeared in some 27 films between 1939 and 1951 -- Ann quit acting in the 1950s. She married Robert Basart on January 29, 1951 in Berkely, California. In 1959, she was reunited with her parents, and following in her parents' footsteps, she pursued a career in music. Ann received a master's degree in music history from the University of California at Berkeley (UCB). She taught music history in San Francisco for three years and then served as the music librarian for UCB for 21 years. During this time, Ann also founded a publishing company, Fallen Leaf Press, and had two children, a daughter and a son. Her husband Robert died on February 7, 1993 in Berkely. As of this writing (2008), Ann is retired and living in northern California.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Hazel Brooks was born on 8 September 1924 in Cape Town, South Africa. She was an actress, known for Body and Soul (1947), Sleep, My Love (1948) and The Basketball Fix (1951). She was married to Cedric Gibbons and Dr. Rex Ross. She died on 18 September 2002 in Bel-Air, California, USA.- Betty Carse was born on 8 December 1920 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. She was an actress, known for Three on a Match (1932). She died on 1 June 1987 in San Luis Obispo County, California, USA.
- Actress
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Virginia Davis was born on December 31, 1918, in Kansas City, Missouri. Her father was a traveling furniture salesman and spent much time away from home. With her husband gone for weeks at a time, Margaret Davis, a housewife, focused all her attention on her daughter; she began taking Virginia to dancing lessons and modeling auditions when she was 2. A striking child with long curls, Virginia was soon appearing in advertisements that played between films in local theaters. She also entered Georgie Brown's Dramatic School in Kansas City, where she studied drama and dance. In the summer of 1923, 22-year-old Walt Disney, a struggling but ambitious director, saw Virginia in an advertisement in a Kansas City theater and immediately decided to hire her. He quickly contacted Margaret Davis, who was eager to advance her Virginia's career. Alice's Wonderland (1923), the first short film of the Alice series, was filmed at the Davis home in Kansas City; both Margaret Davis and Walt Disney made brief appearances (which marked Disney's first live appearance in one of his own cartoons). After filming, Disney returned to Hollywood and began to build his movie empire with only forty dollars and one short film starring little Virginia Davis. The Davis family soon followed Disney to Hollywood, although their daughter's career was not the only reason for the move; Virginia had suffered a pneumonia and other health problems, and her doctor told her parents that she would be healthier in a drier, warmer climate. Virginia signed her first contract with Disney for a salary of $100 a month, and she began filming the Alice shorts in Walt Disney's first studio, his uncle's garage. His brother Roy O. Disney was the cameraman, and the Disney family dog Peggy appeared in many of the films. The Alice shorts became very popular, providing Disney with his first national success. But as the series progressed, Disney became more interested in the animation aspect, which minimized Virginia's live-action role; she only made about thirteen of the Alice shorts before her contract was severed. She later auditioned for the role of voice of Snow White in Disney's film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), but she didn't get the role because her mother refused to accept the frugal salary. Virginia had some small roles in full-length films, including The Harvey Girls (1946), before she left acting to earn a degree from the New York School of Interior Design. She later became an editor for the 1950s magazine "Living for Young Homemakers," and in the 1960s, she began working for real estate agents in Connecticut and later California. In 1992, interest was renewed in the Alice series. Living in retirement in Montana, Virginia was suddenly overwhelmed by the number of fans seeking to honor her and the remarkable role she played in the birth of Walt Disney Studios. She was the guest of honor at the Pordonone Silent Film Festival in Italy in 1992, and she was inducted as a Disney Legend in 1998. Virginia also became very active in silent film festivals and events at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.- Actress Peggy Ann Garner was born Feb. 3, 1932, in Canton, Ohio. Her father was an English-born attorney, William H. Garner, who served as a U.S. Army officer during World War II. Virginia, her determined mother, got Peggy into summer stock and modeling before she was six. Estranged from her husband, Virginia moved with her daughter to Hollywood a year later. Peggy was cast in several films before gaining fame as Francie Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945). After years of separation and estrangement, her parents were divorced in 1947. Peggy, who had a falling out with her mother, went to court to have her father appointed as her guardian.
By the time she reached 20, she had moved from Hollywood to New York to try her talents on Broadway. She spent much of the 1950s living and working in New York, studying with the Actors Studio. She appeared on stage with Dorothy Gish in The Man in 1950, A Royal Family in 1951 and Home is the Hero in 1954. She also was in the road company of Bus Stop in 1955. She received Harvard's Hasty Pudding Award for Woman of the Year in 1956.
Her film career began to fade as she grew older, but she did stage and television work as well as a few other films, never recapturing her childhood fame. Even while earning her living as a real estate broker in the 1960s and as a fleet automobile sales manager during the 1970s, she dreamed of a return to the screen.
She was married and divorced three times. Her second husband was actor Albert Salmi, by whom she had a daughter, Catherine who died shortly after her mother Peggy's untimely death from cancer. Peggy's mother Virginia outlived both her only child and only grandchild. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Barbara Whiting was born on 19 May 1931 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Dangerous When Wet (1953), Beware, My Lovely (1952) and Home, Sweet Homicide (1946). She was married to Gail Smith. She died on 9 June 2004 in Pontiac, Michigan, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
A promising blue-to-gray-eyed, blonde-haired child actress of the post-WWII years who had more talent than she was given credit for, little Constance Beekman "Connie" Marshall was born on April 28, 1933 in New York City. Her parents were not of show business stock, her father being a lieutenant with the Allied Military Government in Europe. She was a direct descent of this country's fourth Chief Justice, John Marshall, and was a descendant of Gerardus Beekman, the first Colonial Governor of New York.
Sensitive-looking and sad-eyed, Connie Marshall broke into the competitive side of show business quite young as a pig-tailed model for commercial newspapers and magazines. Frequently used by New York photographers, artists and caricaturists, she began her acting career a year later by happenstance. A failed screen test taken in Hollywood was, by luck, seen by 20th Century-Fox director Lloyd Bacon, who just happened to be casting the role of little Mary Osborne in the warm family comedy-drama, Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944). The film went on to star the future husband and wife team of Anne Baxter and John Hodiak, who first met and fell in love while shooting this picture. Director Bacon stopped looking when he came across young Connie.
Educated at the Gardner School in New York, where she appeared in a few plays, and the Fox Studio School, Connie also studied ballet and ballroom dancing. She made a strong impression in her very first film, with a natural forlorn ease as one of the Osborne children that also included up-and-coming Bobby Driscoll. With Connie's second picture Sentimental Journey (1946), she was handed her best weepy-eyed showcase. Terminally ill Julie Beck (played by Maureen O'Hara) adopts an orphan girl (played by Marshall) so Julie's husband, William (John Payne), will have someone to care for after she passes away. Connie held her own and received rave reviews.
She continued to show precocious promise in the post-war years in both sentimental drama and lightweight comedy with Dragonwyck (1946) as the daughter of Vincent Price; Home, Sweet Homicide (1946) as an amateur young sleuth who tries to solve a neighborhood murder aided by brother and sister Peggy Ann Garner and Dean Stockwell; Mother Wore Tights (1947) as the daughter of song-and-dance team Betty Grable and Dan Dailey; and the noted comedy classic, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) as the elder daughter of the titular couple, Mr. and Mrs. Blandings (played by, respectively, Cary Grant and Myrna Loy). She would work with the silver screen's top movie stars over the years, including Gene Tierney and Joan Crawford, but once she outgrew her precociousness, her career began to fade away. She attempted TV with the short-lived series Doc Corkle (1952) and appeared as a feisty teen co-star opposite Gene Autry in his film oater Saginaw Trail (1953), but by 1954, after an unbilled part in Rogue Cop (1954), she was out of the business.
Marshall was forgotten until 2006 when -- five years after her passing -- news of her death on May 22, 2001 at age 68 from cancer became public. Although her potential was never fully utilized, she most certainly deserves a place in the Hollywood annals as one of filmdom's more talented young actors.- British actress Pamela Franklin has worked with many notable actors and directors throughout her career. A somewhat underrated actress, she had a wide range of emotions that she brought to her many versatile characters. Franklin was born in Yokohama, Japan, and her father was an importer/exporter. She initially studied dance at the Elmhurst School of Ballet in England (now the Elmhurst School for Dance). She made her film debut at age 11 as "Flora" in The Innocents (1961) alongside Deborah Kerr and a year later appeared as "Tina" in The Lion (1962) with William Holden and Trevor Howard. She has worked with many directors including Ronald Neame, Jack Clayton, and John Huston. Franklin is most remembered for her performance as the rebellious "Sandy" in the The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) which starred Maggie Smith and also as the hapless kidnap victim in The Night of the Following Day (1969) in which she appeared with Marlon Brando and Rita Moreno.
Franklin later carved out a niche as a "scream queen" in a handful of 1970s horror features. She portrayed the psychic medium in The Legend of Hell House (1973) which also featured Roddy McDowall. For many years, Franklin made several guest appearances on hit TV shows. In the early 1970s, she married actor Harvey Jason whom she met on the set of Necromancy (1972) and had two children. Franklin retired from acting in the early 1980s. - Diane's career began at 14 playing Louisa in 'The Sound of Music' at the Palace Theatre in London. She was then a dancer at The London Palladium before playing Penny Richardson in the television series 'Crossroads' for 18 months. Best known for playing Jenny in the film 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' she appeared in plays and shows in London's West End and on television, spending some time in 'Coronation Street' and was an original cast member of 'Emmerdale Farm' She married Derek Ryan in 1973 took a career break to have children Amy born 1978 and Christopher in 1984 then started to teach drama at Act One Beginners in East Grinstead and to write a musical.
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Jane Carr came to America with the Royal Shakespeare Company's Nicholas Nickleby in 1986. She had an early success with the TV series "Dear John" and has worked extensively on TV ever since, most recently in "Better Things" and "Legends of Tomorrow". Carr appeared in many plays with the Royal Shakespeare Company and The National Theatre of Great Britain. In the US she has trod the boards in Lettice and Lovage, Noises Off, She Stoops to Folly, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Blithe Spirit, Sylvia, What the Butler Saw, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Habeas Corpus, The Cider House Rules, Stuff Happens, and Pride and Prejudice. On Broadway she has appeared as Mrs Brill in Mary Poppins and Miss Shingle in the Tony award-winning musical " A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder". Carr has also participated in many radio productions with LA Theatre works and has lent her voice to many cartoons.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Kay Tapscott was born on 27 June 1933 in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. She was an actress, known for South Pacific (1958), The Ladies Man (1961) and Hi, Buddy (1943). She died on 8 August 2001.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Demure British beauty Jean Simmons was born January 31, 1929, in Crouch End, London. As a 14-year-old dance student, she was plucked from her school to play Margaret Lockwood's precocious sister in Give Us the Moon (1944). She had a small part as a harpist in the high-profile Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), produced by Gabriel Pascal, starring Vivien Leigh, and co-starring her future husband Stewart Granger. Pascal saw potential in Simmons, and in 1945 he signed her to a seven-year contract to the J. Arthur Rank Organization, and she went on to make a name for herself in such major British productions as Great Expectations (1946) (as the spoiled, selfish Estella), Black Narcissus (1947) (as a sultry native beauty), Hamlet (1948) (playing Ophelia to Laurence Olivier's great Dane and earning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination), The Blue Lagoon (1949) and So Long at the Fair (1950), among others.
In 1950, she married Stewart Granger, and that same year, she moved to Hollywood. While Granger was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Rank sold her contract to Howard Hughes, who then owned RKO Pictures. Hughes was eager to start a sexual relationship with Simmons, but Granger put a stop to his advances. Her first Hollywood film was Androcles and the Lion (1952), produced by Pascal and co-starring Victor Mature. It was followed by Angel Face (1952), directed by Otto Preminger with Robert Mitchum. To further punish Simmons and Granger, Hughes refused to lend her to Paramount, where William Wyler wanted to cast her in the female lead for his film Roman Holiday (1953); the role made a star of Audrey Hepburn. A court case freed Simmons from the contract with Hughes in 1952. They settled out of court; part of the arrangement was that Simmons would do one more film for no additional money. Simmons also agreed to make three more movies under the auspices of RKO, but not actually at that studio - she would be lent out. MGM cast her in the lead of Young Bess (1953) playing a young Queen Elizabeth I with Granger. She went back to RKO to do the extra film under the settlement with Hughes, titled Affair with a Stranger (1953) with Mature; it flopped.
Simmons went over to 20th Century Fox to play the female lead in The Robe (1953), the first CinemaScope movie and an enormous financial success. Less popular was The Actress (1953) at MGM alongside Spencer Tracy, despite superb reviews; it was one of her personal favorites. Fox asked Simmons back for The Egyptian (1954), another epic, but it was not especially popular. She had the lead in Columbia's A Bullet Is Waiting (1954). More popular with moviegoers was Désirée (1954), where Simmons played Désirée Clary to Marlon Brando's Napoleon Bonaparte. Simmons and Granger returned to England to make the thriller Footsteps in the Fog (1955). She then starred in the musical Guys and Dolls (1955) with Brando and Frank Sinatra; she used her own singing voice and earned her first Golden Globe Award. Simmons played the title role in Hilda Crane (1956) at Fox, a commercial failure. So, too, were This Could Be the Night (1957) and Until They Sail (1957), both at MGM. Simmons had a big success, though, in The Big Country (1958), directed by Wyler. She starred in Home Before Dark (1958) at Warner Bros. and This Earth Is Mine (1959) with Rock Hudson at Universal.
Simmons divorced Granger in 1960 and almost immediately married writer-director Richard Brooks, who cast her as Sister Sharon opposite Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry (1960), a memorable adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel. That same year, she co-starred with Kirk Douglas in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus (1960) and played a would-be homewrecker opposite Cary Grant in The Grass Is Greener (1960).
Off the screen for a few years, Jean captivated moviegoers with a brilliant performance as the mother in All the Way Home (1963), a literate, tasteful adaptation of James Agee's "A Death in the Family". However, after that, she found quality projects somewhat harder to come by, and took work in Life at the Top (1965), Mister Buddwing (1966), Divorce American Style (1967), Rough Night in Jericho (1967), The Happy Ending (1969) (a Richard Brooks film for which she was again Oscar-nominated, this time as Best Actress).
Jean continued making films well into the 1970s. In the 1980s, she appeared mainly in television miniseries, such as North & South: Book 1, North & South (1985) and The Thorn Birds (1983). She made a comeback to films in 1995 in How to Make an American Quilt (1995) co-starring Winona Ryder and Anne Bancroft, and most recently voiced the elderly Sophie in the English version of Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle (2004). She now resided in Santa Monica, California, with her dog, Mr. Gates, and her two cats, Adisson and Megan. Jean Simmons died of lung cancer on January 22, 2010, nine days before her 81st birthday.- Hazel-eyed Glaswegian Elizabeth Sellars enrolled at Lincoln's Inn (in central London) to study law with the intention of becoming a barrister. Somehow, this fell through, though she continued to nurture a lifelong interest in the legal profession which kept her reading law books well into her acting career. Perhaps on the advice of her flatmate Jean Hardwicke (niece of the famous thespian Cedric), Elizabeth attended a theatrical audition and thereafter went on to study acting at RADA and at the Bristol Old Vic. Beginning in 1941, she spent several years on the repertory stage in her native Scotland before making her London debut five years later opposite Alec Guinness in "The Brothers Karamazov". Her first major hit was at the West End in "Tea and Sympathy" in the role of the housemaster's wife. Elizabeth's career in British films spanned the years from 1948 to 1960. Following her marriage to Francis Austin Henley, a consultant gastrointestinal surgeon at the Central Middlesex Hospital, her appearances became rather less frequent though she continued to pop up from time to time on the small screen.
Elizabeth was a reluctant star. Often dissatisfied with the material on offer, she once lamented "we're expected to sink back into the background and look nice". Between 1951 and 1952, she took a sabbatical for nearly a year to travel through Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) where she developed a great fondness for Oriental philosophy, art and spicy curries (to add to her other pastimes of studying Roman law, horse riding and swimming). She did manage to fit a film career into her busy schedule and this encompassed a number of noteworthy performances, often as wily, faithless or jilted wives or 'the other woman'. A fruitful sojourn in Hollywood led to back-to-back appearances in The Barefoot Contessa (1954) (as Humphrey Bogart's wife), Désirée (1954) (as Julie Clary, Bonaparte's sister-in-law) and Prince of Players (1955) (as Asia Booth, sister of Edwin Thomas and John Wilkes). Her best acting was reserved for the British cinema with gritty roles in The Shiralee (1957) and (as an alcoholic mother) in The Hireling (1973). Of her role in The Stranger in Between (1952), a London journalist described her as having "lashings of glamour of a breathless, brooding type usually reserved for sultry Hollywood." While perhaps not a beauty in the conventional sense, she projected intelligence, wit and often humour which made her a favourite with British movie audiences in the 50s. The director Charles Crichton thought her personality resembled the "early allure of Ingrid Bergman and the power of Bette Davis."
During the 60s, Elizabeth alternated between TV work and the stage. As a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon she proved her mettle as a serious actress in the classics, notably "Troilus and Cressida" (as Helen), "Hamlet" (as Gertrude) and "Richard III" (as Queen Elizabeth). She retired in 1990 and passed away in France at the venerable age of 98 on December 30 2019. - Actress
- Soundtrack
One of the world's most underrated Academy Award-winning actresses, Jennifer Jones was born Phylis Lee Isley on 2 March 1919 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Flora Mae (Suber) and Phillip Ross Isley, who ran a travelling stage show. As a young aspiring actress, she met and fell for young, handsome, aspiring actor Robert Walker. They soon married, and moved to Chicago in order to fulfill their dreams of becoming film stars. Though their plans (initially) fell through, Phyllis began working as a model; sporting mainly hats, gloves and jewelry, and also occasionally found some work on local radio stations, where she provided the voice for various characters in radio programmes, along with her husband.
In a last-ditch attempt to pursue her dream, Phyllis traveled to Selznick studios for a reading which would ultimately change her life. It was that day where she met David O. Selznick, and after that, her career began to take shape. Initially, Phyllis thought the audition went terribly and stormed out of the studios in tears, only to be chased by Selznick, who assured her she had been fine. Although she didn't get that particular part (which was for the iconic character, Scarlett O'Hara, which would ultimately go to Vivien Leigh, in one of the most famous castings in Hollywood's history), Phyllis was given a contract with Selznick studios. In short order, Phyllis was 'renamed' to the alliterative Jennifer Jones, and was cast over thousands of other hopefuls in the role of Bernadette Soubirous in The Song of Bernadette (1943).
For her moving portrayal of the sickly teenager who sees a vision of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes and devotes her life to her by becoming a nun, Jones won the Academy Award for best actress in a leading role on 2 March 1944 (coincidentally her 25th birthday) beating out stiff competition such as Ingrid Bergman (who later became a close friend of hers), Greer Garson, Joan Fontaine and Jean Arthur.
Now, considered a 'true' star, Jones' career was marked out and moulded for her by Selznick, who would become the love of her life. They began an affair and eventually she left her husband and two sons for the producer, which ultimately led Walker to an untimely death, attributed to alcohol and drug abuse instigated due to their separation. As for her career, Jones took on the supporting role of Jane Hilton, a headstrong teenage girl who grows up fast when her fiance is killed in action during WWII, in Since You Went Away (1944). For her performance Jones received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination, but lost out to Ethel Barrymore for None But the Lonely Heart (1944). Jennifer continued to deliver strong performances, receiving further best actress Oscar nominations for Love Letters (1945) (she lost to Joan Crawford for Mildred Pierce (1945)) and Duel in the Sun (1946), (she lost to Olivia de Havilland for To Each His Own (1946)) which saw her cast against type as the seductive biracial beauty Pearl Chavez.
Jones continued to produce memorable performances throughout the 1940s , including Portrait of Jennie (1948). In the 1950s she received her fifth and final Oscar nomination for Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), losing out to Anna Magnani for The Rose Tattoo (1955).
Despite her success within the film industry, Jones was a very private person and managed to stay out of the spotlight that dominated so many other performers' lives. But a lack of publicity led to a lack of roles, a trend that amplified when Selznick died in 1965. She appeared in fewer and fewer films, and after a moderately successful supporting performance in The Towering Inferno (1974) Jones decided to make that role her swan song, bowing out of the film industry. She did, however, try to revive her film career in later years by campaigning for the role of Aurora Greenway in Terms of Endearment (1983), but Shirley MacLaine was cast instead and as a result, won the Oscar for best actress.
Jennifer Jones died 17 December, 2009, in Malibu, California. In the 21st century, Jones may not be as well known as other actresses of her time such as Ingrid Bergman, Katharine Hepburn, Greer Garson, Bette Davis etc. But for those who know of her and her extraordinary talent, she is alluring to watch and her acting abilities extended far greater than most of her contemporaries.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Edith Fellows was born on May 20, 1923, in Boston, Massachusetts. When she was a year old, she and her father and grandmother moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. As a toddler, Edith was pigeon-toed and had trouble walking, and one doctor suggested that dance lessons might cure this condition. At age four, Edith entered Henderson's School of Dance, where she was spotted by a man claiming to be a talent scout, who told her grandmother that he could get Edith into show business for a fifty-dollar fee. The dance school raised the money, but when Edith and her grandmother arrived in Hollywood, they discovered that the address the man had given them did not exist, and they realized he was a fraud. Stranded in Hollywood with no means to return to North Carolina, Edith's grandmother began doing housework to earn a living. While she worked, she left Edith with a neighbor and her young son. One day Edith was taken along when the neighbor's son had an audition for the film Movie Night (1929), and she ended up getting the part. Although she never become a child star, Edith appeared in many popular films of the 1930s, most notably Pennies from Heaven (1936). She also proved herself to be a very versatile actress, playing roles ranging from a spoiled rich girl, as in Heart of the Rio Grande (1942), to a poor orphan girl, as in Pennies from Heaven. Edith was even given her own series, The Five Little Peppers, while under contract to Columbia, and she made four of the Pepper films (the first was Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1939)) in two years. Between 1929 and 1954, Edith appeared in some fifty films, mostly in juvenile roles due to her short 4' 10" stature. But her career suddenly slowed down in the mid-1950s. Between 1955 and 1980, she appeared in only one film, Lilith (1964), in which she had a bit part. During this time, Edith chose to focus on her family life; she had married producer Freddie Fields in 1946, and their only child, daughter Kathy, was born in 1947. But Edith and Fields divorced in 1955, and the end of her marriage, coupled with other factors, caused Edith to have a nervous breakdown. She recovered, and in 1981, she returned to acting in numerous supporting roles on television. In 1985, fellow former child actor Jackie Cooper announced plans to make a TV movie based on Edith's life, but this project never happened.- Actress
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Having toured the world with husband, Kajar the Magician's Show 'Magicadabr', Jean Darling settled in Dublin and became an author of dozens of short mysteries for Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazines and Horror Fantasy for Whispers Magazine, etc. In 1980 she became Aunty Poppy (named for her home State flower) writing and telling over 450 children's story on both RTE radio and TV. Jean has also written several radio plays broadcast on RTE.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Virginia Welles, born Virginia Francine Welter, was an American actress who had ingenue roles, primarily at Paramount Pictures, where she was under contract, in the late 1940s. She was a native of Wausau, Wisconsin, the daughter of Frank and Phyllis (Wheldon) Welter. Her father was a theatre manager. While still in high school, she was noticed by a Hollywood talent scout while attending the wedding of her sister Gwen in California. The scout sought permission to do a screen test for Virginia. Her parents agreed, but Virginia chose to complete high school and attend Stephens College in Missouri, where she studied under the great American stage actress Maude Adams. She finally went to Hollywood to follow up on her screen test and was given a part in Columbia's _Kiss and Tell (1945)_ (qv and renamed Virginia Welles). Subsequently she was signed to a contract by Paramount Pictures and made a handful of films there throughout the remainder of the 1940s. Dropped by Paramount in 1949, she freelanced for a couple of years before retiring from the movies in 1951. She made one final film in 1956, as well as a few infrequent television appearances throughout the 1950s, but was essentially retired. She had married automotive financier Henry George Stix Kuh in 1949. They divorced in 1977, five years after an automobile accident seriously injured their daughter Patsy. Virginia Wells Kuh spent thirty years caring for her daughter, until Virginia's death in 2002.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ruth Terry was born Ruth McMahon in Benton Harbor, Michigan, in 1920. She got her start in show business as a child when she would sing with the band in a dance hall where her father worked as a bouncer. She began entering amateur talent contests in the local area, and her beautiful singing voice resulted in her winning many of them. When she was in fourth grade her parents decided that she would embark on a professional singing career, and to that end took her out of school (her education continued with private teachers). She kept winning talent contests, and later became part of a vaudeville act called The Capps Family and Ruthie Mae. She eventually won a spot singing on a Chicago radio station, then she got her own 15-minute time slot on a station in South Bend, Indiana. At 12 years of age she won a contract to sing with a prestigious Chicago musical group, The Paul Ash Chicago Theater Orchestra. After that engagement she went to New York and got a job as a song plugger for composer Irving Berlin, who was a friend of her aunt's. She eventually got her own nightclub act--changing her name to Ruth Terry at the suggestion of gossip columnist Walter Winchell--and soon headed to Miami, where she was engaged to sing at several prestigious nightspots and hotels, and while there she was spotted by talent scouts from 20th Century-Fox. In 1937 she was playing in Chicago with bandleader Ted Lewis when Fox offered her a contract--and all this while she was barely 16 years old.
She was brought to Hollywood by Fox and given diction and acting lessons, and the studio soon put her in her first picture, International Settlement (1938), although she only had one line. She stayed with Fox for two more years, until she was dropped in 1939. In 1940 she was signed by Howard Hughes, who eventually sold her contract to Republic Pictures. It was at Republic where she began making westerns, a genre in which she would spend a lot of time. She made westerns with Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Robert Livingston, among others. Her contract with Republic ended in 1947, and she made only one other film, for Columbia, before retiring. She soon married, for a second time, and she and her husband moved to Canada. The marriage ended in 1957, and she moved back to the US. In 1962, as a favor to a friend, she did a small part in a low-budget horror film, Hand of Death (1962).- Actress
- Soundtrack
Phyllis Brooks was born on 18 July 1915 in Boise, Idaho, USA. She was an actress, known for Dangerously Yours (1937), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938) and Charlie Chan in Reno (1939). She was married to Torbert H. Macdonald. She died on 1 August 1995 in Cape Neddick, Maine, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Of Irish, English, and Scottish descent, Maureen Paula O'Sullivan was born on May 17, 1911 in Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland. Her father was Charles Joseph O'Sullivan, an officer in the Connaught Rangers, and his wife, the former Mary Fraser (or Frazer). She was educated at Catholic schools in Dublin, Paris, and London (Convent of the Sacred Heart, Roehampton, where a fellow student was fellow future actress Vivien Leigh). Even as a schoolgirl, Maureen desired an acting career, despite her father's initial opposition. She studied hard and read widely. When the opportunity to be an actress came along, it almost dropped in her lap. American film director Frank Borzage was in Dublin in 1929, filming Song o' My Heart (1930), when the 18 year old met him. He suggested a screen test, which she took. The results were more than favorable and she won the substantial role of Eileen O'Brien, then went to Hollywood to complete filming.
Once in sunny California, Maureen wasted no time landing roles in other films such as Just Imagine (1930), The Princess and the Plumber (1930), and So This Is London (1930). She was perhaps MGM's most popular ingenue throughout the 1930s in a number of non-Tarzan vehicles. In 1932, she teamed up with Olympic medal winner Johnny Weissmuller for the first time in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), as Jane Parker. Five other Tarzan films followed, the last being Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942). The Tarzan epics rank as one of the most memorable series ever made. Most people agree that those movies would not have been as successful as they were, had it not been for the talent, grace, and radiant beauty of O'Sullivan. But she was more than Jane Parker. She went on to roles in such films as The Flame Within (1935), David Copperfield (1935), and Anna Karenina (1935). She turned in another fine performance in Pride and Prejudice (1940). After the 1940s, however, she made fewer films, primarily for personal reasons, i.e. caring for her large family.
It isn't always easy to walk away from a lucrative career, but O'Sullivan did because she wanted to devote more time to her husband, John Farrow, an Australian-American writer, and their seven children: Michael, Patrick, Maria (a.k.a. Mia Farrow), John, Prudence, Theresa (a.k.a. Tisa Farrow), and Stephanie Farrow. The couple were married from 1936 until his death in 1963. After her last Tarzan venture she asked for release from her contract to care for her husband who had just left the U.S. Navy with typhoid. She did not retire completely and still found time to make occasional movies and television programs, as well as operate a bridal consulting service (Wediquette International).
O'Sullivan made her Broadway debut opposite Paul Ford in "Never Too Late" (November 27, 1962-April 24, 1965), a great success. She would appear on Broadway again in various vehicles through 1981, and later also co-produced two Broadway productions. Later movie patrons remember her as Elizabeth Alvorg in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) (playing opposite fellow silver screen film veteran Leon Ames). Her final celluloid role was in The River Pirates (1988). Some made-for-television movies followed and she retired completely in 1996, two years before her death in Scottsdale, Arizona on June 23, 1998 during heart surgery. She was 87 years old.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Mary Jane Saunders was born on 12 October 1942 in Pasadena, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Sorrowful Jones (1949), A Woman of Distinction (1950) and The Girl Next Door (1953). She was married to Jay Johnstone. She died on 20 January 2021 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Proficient in Greek and Latin and self-taught in classic literature, Sonja Sutter was a captivating actress who achieved dramatic depths on both stage and screen during a career which commenced in 1951. A banker's daughter, she had completed a rudimentary education in her home town (Freiburg) where she also made her theatrical debut. She was 'discovered' for the screen by Luis Trenker during an audition for a Heimatfilm and passed along to the director Slatan Dudow who gave her a pivotal role in his post-war drama Frauenschicksale (1952). Affiliated with both East and West German cinema, Sutter then appeared in several prestige pictures, including Das Schweigen im Walde (1955) and Die Barrings (1955). Not until five years later did she get another opportunity to demonstrate her talent as the titular star of Lissy (1957), directed by Konrad Wolf. This anti-fascist drama, chronicling the lives of a working class family in 1930's Berlin under the Nazis, became one of Wolf's most famous films and was also the high point of Sutter's film career. Perhaps too closely identified with a particular type of character, she received fewer film offers from the West in the 60's. The creation of the Berlin Wall effectively ended her association with DEFA. Returning to the stage, Sutter became an ensemble member of the iconic Vienna Burgtheater in 1959. Her tenure with the company lasted four decades, with as many as seventy leading roles to her repertoire. She also regularly performed at the Salzburg Festival, her roles ranging from Strindberg's "Queen Christina" and Schiller's "Intrigue and Love" (Kabale und Liebe) to Gute Werke in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's medieval play "Everyman". Towards the end of her career, she concentrated increasingly on TV work, often guesting as genteel ladies in popular crime shows like Tatort (1970), Derrick (1974) and The Old Fox (1977).
- Actress
- Soundtrack
The dark, petulant beauty of this petite American film and musical star worked to her advantage, especially in her early dramatic career. Anne Marie Blythe was born of Irish stock to Harry and Annie (nee Lynch) Blythe on August 16, 1928 in Mt. Kisco, New York. Her parents split while she was young and she, her mother and elder sister, Dorothy, moved to New York City, where the girls attended various Catholic schools. Already determined at an early age to perform, Ann attended Manhattan's Professional Children's School and was already a seasoned radio performer, particularly on soap dramas, while in elementary school. A member of New York's Children's Opera Company, the young girl made an important Broadway debut in 1941 at age 13 as the daughter of the characters played by Paul Lukas and Mady Christians in the classic Lillian Hellman WWII drama "Watch on the Rhine", billed as Anne (with an extra "e") Blyth. She stayed with the show for two years.
While touring with the play in Los Angeles, the teenager was noticed by director Henry Koster at Universal and given a screen test. Signed on at age 16 as Ann (without the "e") Blyth, the pretty, photographic colleen displayed her warbling talent in her debut film, Chip Off the Old Block (1944), a swing-era teen musical starring Universal song-and-dance favorites Donald O'Connor and Peggy Ryan. She followed it pleasantly enough with other "B" tune-fests such as The Merry Monahans (1944) and Babes on Swing Street (1944). It wasn't until Warner Bros. borrowed her to make self-sacrificing mother Joan Crawford's life pure hell as the malicious, spiteful daughter Veda in the film classic Mildred Pierce (1945) that she really clicked with viewers and set up her dramatic career. With murder on her young character's mind, Hollywood stood up and took notice of this fresh-faced talent.
Although Blyth lost the Best Supporting Actress Oscar that year to another Anne (Anne Revere), she was borrowed again by Warner Bros. to film Danger Signal (1945). During filming, she suffered a broken back in a sledding accident while briefly vacationing in Lake Arrowhead and had to be replaced in the role. After a long convalescence (over a year and a half in a back brace) Universal used her in a wheelchair-bound cameo in Brute Force (1947).
Her first starring role was an inauspicious one opposite Sonny Tufts in Swell Guy (1946), but she finally began gaining some momentum again. Instead of offering her musical gifts, she continued her serious streak with Killer McCoy (1947) and a dangerously calculated role in Another Part of the Forest (1948), a prequel to The Little Foxes (1941) in which Blyth played the Bette Davis role of Regina at a younger age. Her attempts at lighter comedy were mild at best, playing a fetching creature of the sea opposite William Powell in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) and a teen infatuated with a much-older film star, Robert Montgomery, in Once More, My Darling (1949).
At full-throttle as a star in the early 1950s, Blyth transitioned easily among glossy operettas, wide-eyed comedies and all-out melodramas, some of which tended to be overbaked and, thereby, overplayed. When not dishing out the high dramatics of an adopted girl searching for her birth mother in Our Very Own (1950) or a wrongly-convicted murderess in Thunder on the Hill (1951), she was introducing classic standards as wife to Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso (1951) or playing pert and perky in such light confections as Katie Did It (1950). A well-embraced romantic leading lady, she made her last film for Universal playing a Russian countess courted by Gregory Peck in The World in His Arms (1952). MGM eventually optioned her for its musical outings, having borrowed her a couple of times previously. She became a chief operatic rival to Kathryn Grayson at the studio during that time. Grayson, however, fared much better than Blyth, who was given rather stilted vehicles.
Catching Howard Keel's roving eye while costumed to the nines in the underwhelming Rose Marie (1954) and his daughter in Kismet (1955), she also gussied up other stiff proceedings like The Student Prince (1954) and The King's Thief (1955) will attest. Unfortunately, Blyth came to MGM at the tail end of the Golden Age of musicals and probably suffered for it. She was dropped by the studio in 1956. She reunited with old Universal co-star Donald O'Connor in The Buster Keaton Story (1957). Blyth ended her film career on a high note, however, playing the tragic title role in the The Helen Morgan Story (1957) opposite a gorgeously smirking Paul Newman. She had a field day as the piano-sitting, kerchief-holding, liquor-swilling torch singer whose train wreck of a personal life was destined for celluloid. Disappointing for her personally, no doubt, was that her singing voice had to be dubbed (albeit superbly) by the highly emotive, non-operatic songstress Gogi Grant.
Through with films, Blyth's main concentration (after her family) were musical theatre and television. Over the years a number of classic songs were tailored to suit her glorious lyric soprano both in concert form and on the civic light opera/summer stock stages. "The Sound of Music", "The King and I", "Carnival", "Bittersweet", "South Pacific", "Show Boat" and "A Little Night Music" are but a few of her stage credits. During this time Blyth appeared as the typical American housewife for Hostess in its Twinkie, cupcake and fruit pie commercials, a job that lasted well over a decade. She made the last of her sporadic TV guest appearances on Quincy M.E. (1976) and Murder, She Wrote (1984) in the mid-1980s.
Married since 1953 to Dr. James McNulty, the brother of late Irish tenor Dennis Day, she is the mother of five, Blyth continues to be seen occasionally at social functions and conventions.- Thelma Salter was born on 15 January 1908 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for The Wasted Years (1916), Huckleberry Finn (1920) and The Crab (1917). She was married to Edward Kaufman. She died on 17 November 1953 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Like many another pretty girl, Edna Murphy got to Hollywood via modeling. She was a top New York photographer's model when she made her film debut in 1918. By 1920 she had worked her way up to starring roles, and Fox put her in a serial, Fantomas (1920), that was quite well received. She made films for a couple of more studios before she finally signed with Pathe, which put her back in serials again. Her career never really got out of serials or B pictures, and, having married producer/director Mervyn LeRoy in 1927, she retired from the screen in 1933.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Dolores del Rio was the one of the first Mexican movie stars with international appeal and who had meteoric career in the 1920s/1930s Hollywood. Del Rio came from an aristocratic family in Durango. In the Mexican revolution of 1916, however, the family lost everything and emigrated to Mexico City, where Dolores became a socialite. In 1921 she married Jaime Del Río (also known as Jaime Martínez Del Río), a wealthy Mexican, and the two became friends with Hollywood producer/director Edwin Carewe, who "discovered" del Rio and invited the couple to move to Hollywood where they launched careers in the movie business (she as an actress, Jaime as a screenwriter). Eventually they divorced after Carewe cast her in her first film Joanna (1925), followed by High Steppers (1926), and Pals First (1926). She had her first leading role in Carewe's silent version of Pals First (1926) and soared to stardom in 1928 with Carewe's Ramona (1928). The film was a success and del Rio was hailed as a female Rudolph Valentino. Her career continued to rise with the arrival of sound in the drama/romance Bird of Paradise (1932) and hit musical Flying Down to Rio (1933). She later married Cedric Gibbons, the well-known art director and production designer at MGM studios.
Dolores returned to Mexico in 1942. Her Hollywood career was over, and a romance with Orson Welles--who later called her "the most exciting woman I've ever met"--caused her second divorce. Mexican director Emilio Fernández offered her the lead in his film Wild Flower (1943), with a wholly unexpected result: at age 37, Dolores del Río became the most famous movie star in her country, filming in Spanish for the first time. Her association with Fernández' team (cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, writer Mauricio Magdaleno and actor Pedro Armendáriz) was mainly responsible for creating what has been called the Golden Era of Mexican Cinema. With such pictures as Maria Candelaria (1944), Las abandonadas (1945) and Bugambilia (1945), del Río became the prototypical Mexican beauty. career included film, theater and television. In her last years she received accolades because of her work for orphaned children. Her last film was The Children of Sanchez (1978).- Actress
- Soundtrack
American leading lady of the 1930s and 1940s, Virginia Bruce was born in Minnesota but grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and came to California to attend college. Her blond good looks got her an entry into films, and after a few extra roles and bit parts she began to make serious inroads as a leading woman in secondary films and as the "other" woman in more prestigious productions. She married screen legend John Gilbert, then in his decline. Subsequently she was married to director J. Walter Ruben and to Turkish producer/director Ali Ipar, for whom she appeared in some Turkish films all but unseen in America. She died in 1982.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Lydia Reed was born on 23 August 1944 in Mitchell Field, New York, USA. She is an actress, known for High Society (1956), The Vampire (1957) and Matinee Theatre (1955). She has been married to Mario Rodolfo Travaglini since 16 January 1967. They have one child. She was previously married to Byron George Stiegemeyer.- Beverly Washburn was born on 25 November 1943 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress, known for Old Yeller (1957), Star Trek (1966) and When the World Came to San Francisco (2015). She is married to Michael Radell.
- Actress
Sue George was born on 15 April 1933 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Gidget (1959), Climax! (1954) and Overland Trail (1960). She was married to James A. Thobe. She died on 27 September 2021 in Kern County, California, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Fay Eunice McKenzie was born February 19, 1918 into a show business family where she was the youngest of two sisters and an actress cousin, and made her screen debut at only ten weeks old in "Station Content" (1918) in which she was carried in the arms of Gloria Swanson. Her parents, Eva & Bob "Pops" McKenzie were already veteran performers and apparently wanted their daughter to get an early start in films. She nearly stole the show from Oliver Hardy as "the baby" in the Alice Howell short "Distilled Love" (filmed in 1918 but released two years later). By the time she was six, Fay was considered an old hand, having played diverse parts in her father's stock company. Among her early films was the 1924 Photoplay Medal Winner, "The Dramatic Life of Abraham Lincoln."
A native of Hollywood, she got most of her schooling on movie sets including the famous Little Red Schoolhouse at MGM. Her classmates included Betty Grable, Ann Rutherford and June Storey. As a teenager in the early 1930's Fay appeared in a number of low budget westerns with Wally Wales and Buddy Roosevelt as well as the all-star MGM musical "Student Tour" (1934). In 1937 she starred in the cult propaganda film about the dangers of marijuana entitled "Assassin of Youth". She also had a small part in the 1939 classic "Gunga Din". Her first Broadway venture was at age 17 and in 1940 she appeared as Miss Hollywood in "Meet the People", a popular review of that season starring Jack Gilford and Jack Albertson.
But she is probably best remembered for her work with Gene Autry at Republic Studios, where she was the feminine interest in "Down Mexico Way" (1941), "Sierra Sue" (1941), "Home in Wyomin'" (1942), "Heart of the Rio Grande" (1942) and "Cowboy Serenade" (1942). Finally getting the leading lady roles she deserved, the raven-haired beauty was an immediate hit with audiences. In 1942 Republic co-starred her with Don 'Red' Barry in the war-time flag waver, "Remember Pearl Harbor!" During WWII she toured with the Hollywood Victory Caravan and appeared in dozens of USO shows with various show biz legends including Frank Sinatra, Phil Silvers and Desi Arnaz. At the same time she could be heard on radio in "Pabst's Blue Ribbon Town" starring Groucho Marx. Featured film roles continued to come her way with Universal's "The Singing Sheriff" (1944), Warner Bros' "Night and Day" (1946) and "Murder in the Music Hall" (1946), the latter filmed at her home studio of Republic.
In 1946 she married the dark, husky actor Steve Cochran, but their union was short lived and they divorced two years later. She went back to Broadway to appear opposite comedian Bert Lahr (best known as The Cowardly Lion in "The Wizard of Oz") in the 1946 revival of "Burlesque." During the 1950's she studied with Sanford Meisner and at The Actor's Studio with Lee Strasberg in NYC. She was seen to favorable advantage on a number of TV shows including "The Millionaire" (1959), "Mr. Lucky" (1960), "Bonanza" (1961), and "Experiment in Terror" (1962).
She also appeared in a number of films for close friend and director Blake Edwards, including "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961) as the party guest laughing in the mirror, "The Party" (1968) and "S.O.B." (1981). She was especially proud of "The Party" with Peter Sellers and agreed to play the cameo role of Alice Clutterbuck (the hostess of the party) because the script was co-written by her husband, Tom Waldman. She and Waldman married in 1949 and had two children Tom Jr. and Madora. Waldman Sr. passed away in 1985. Her older sister Ella "Lolly" McKenzie was also an actress and was married to well-known comedian Billy Gilbert. Her other sister Ida Mae McKenzie started in silent films as well and went on to work behind the scenes of popular game shows including the original "Hollywood Squares".
McKenzie traveled extensively as a Christian Science Practitioner, lecturing all over the country and in Europe. In 2012 she received the Career Achievement Award at the Cinecon Classic Film Festival and in 2017 she was on-hand to present some of her family's home movies at the TCM Film Festival (those films are now housed the Academy Film Archive in Hollywood). During the summer of 2018 she made a cameo appearance alongside her son Tom as Mrs. Van Proosdy in the film "Kill A Better Mousetrap". Her performance marks the first century-spanning career in motion picture history. She passed away peacefully in her sleep on the morning of April 16th at the age of 101. She is survived by her son, actor Tom Waldman, Jr., daughter Madora McKenzie Kibbe and her two grandchildren.- Kathy Frye was born on 6 August 1928 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), The Pinch Singer (1936) and Women in the Night (1948). She was married to Stanley Morrison Smith. She died on 10 October 1991 in Riverside, California, USA.
- Patricia Northrop was born on 15 April 1930 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress, known for Our Gang Follies of 1936 (1935), The New Revue (1953) and The Kate Smith Hour (1950).
- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Marion Davies was one of the great comedic actresses of the silent era and into the 1930s.
Marion Cecelia Douras was born in the borough of Brooklyn, New York on January 3, 1897, the daughter of Rose (Reilly) and Bernard J. Douras, a lawyer and judge. Her parents were both of Irish descent. Marion had been bitten by the show biz bug early as she watched her sisters perform in local stage productions. She wanted to do the same. As Marion got older, she tried out for various school plays and did fairly well. Once her formal education had ended, Marion began her career as a chorus girl in New York City, first in the pony follies, and eventually found herself in the famed Ziegfeld Follies. But she wanted to do more than dance. Acting, to Marion, was the epitome of show business and aimed her sights in that direction. Her stage name came when she and her family passed the Davies Insurance Building. One of her sisters called out "Davies!!! That shall be my stage name", and the whole family took on that name.
Her first film was Runaway Romany (1917), when she was 20. Written by Marion and directed by her brother-in-law, the film wasn't exactly a box-office smash, but for Marion, it was a start and a stepping stone to bigger things. The following year Marion starred in two films, The Burden of Proof (1918) and Cecilia of the Pink Roses (1918). The latter film was backed by newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst. When Marion moved to California, she already was involved with Hearst. They lived together at his San Simeon castle, an extremely elaborate mansion which stands as a California landmark to this day. At San Simeon, they threw grand parties, many of them in costume. Frequent guests included Carole Lombard, Mary Pickford, Sonja Henie, and Dolores Del Río - basically all the top names in Hollywood and other celebrities including the mayor of New York City, President Calvin Coolidge, and Charles Lindbergh. Davies and Hearst would continue a long-term romantic relationship for the next 30 years. Because of Hearst's newspaper empire, Marion would be promoted as no actress before her.
She appeared in numerous films over the next few years, with The Cinema Murder (1919) being one of the most suspenseful. In 1922, Marion appeared as Mary Tudor in the historical romantic epic, When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922). It was a film into which Hearst poured in millions of dollars as a showcase for her. Although Marion didn't normally appear in period pieces, she turned in a wonderful performance, and the film turned a profit. Marion remained busy, one of the staples in movie houses around the country. At the end of the twenties, it was obvious that sound films were about to replace silents. Marion was nervous because she had a stutter when she became excited and worried she wouldn't make a successful transition to the new medium, but she was a true professional who had no problem with the change. Time after time, film after film, Marion turned in masterful performances. In 1930, two of her better films were Not So Dumb (1930) and The Florodora Girl (1930). By the early 1930s, Marion had lost her box office appeal and the downward slide began.
Had she been without Hearst's backing, she possibly could have been more successful. He was more of a hindrance than a help. Hearst had tried to push MGM executives to hire Marion for the role of Elizabeth Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934). Louis B. Mayer had other ideas and hired producer Irving Thalberg's wife, Norma Shearer instead. Hearst reacted by pulling his newspaper support for MGM without much impact. By the late 1930s Hearst was suffering financial reversals and it was Marion who bailed him out by selling $1 million of her jewelry. Without her, the Hearst Corporation might not be where it is today. Hearst's financial problems also spelled an end to her career. Although she had made the transition to sound, other stars fared better, and her roles became fewer and further between. In 1937, a 40-year-old Marion filmed her last movie, Ever Since Eve (1937). Out of films and with the intense pressures of her relationship with Hearst, Davies turned more and more to alcohol. Despite those problems, Marion was a very sharp and savvy business woman.
When Hearst died in 1951, Marion did not really know what was going on. The night before, there had been a lot of people in the house. Marion was very upset by the large crowd of family and friends. She said it was too noisy, and they were disturbing Hearst by talking so loud. She was upset and had to be sedated. When she woke, her niece, Patricia Van Cleve Lake, and her husband, Arthur Lake, told her that Hearst was dead. Upon Patricia's death, it was revealed she had been the love child of Davies and Hearst. Marion was banned from Hearst's funeral.
She later started many charities including a children's clinic that is still operating today. She was very generous and was loved by everyone who knew her. She went through a lot, even getting polio in the 1940s. Marion married for the first time at the age of 54, to Horace Brown. The union would last until she died of cancer on September 22, 1961 in Los Angeles, California. She was 64 years old.- Actress
- Soundtrack
This saucy and engaging Tennessee born-and-bred brunette beauty came into the world on March 2, 1913, the daughter of John Thomas Weaver and Ellen Martin, both non-professionals. She attended private and high schools while growing up and attended the University of Kentucky and the University of Indiana. Showing early signs of a musical talent, she instinctively made use of her beauty and singing capabilities as she strove to find a place for herself in the entertainment business.
Paying her dues as a band singer, model, and stage performer (with the McCauley Stock Company and in Billy Rose's Shrine Minstrels), Marjorie made an inauspicious film debut in Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (1934) in an uncredited bit part. 20th Century Fox saw something special in her, however, and signed her up in 1936. Her first few years were uneventful playing a round of alluring bit parts as chorus girls and secretary/receptionist types. Moving up the credits ladder she found lead and second lead femme roles coming her way, typically essaying the resourceful but wholesome daughter, paramour or "girl Friday" type opposite a number of virile and handsome leading men, including Ricardo Cortez in The Californian (1937); Tyrone Power in Second Honeymoon (1937); Warner Baxter in I'll Give a Million (1938); John Barrymore in Hold That Co-ed (1938); and Cesar Romero in The Cisco Kid and the Lady (1939). In the comedy Sally, Irene and Mary (1938), Alice Faye, Joan Davis and Marjorie made up the distaff trio of starry-eyed hopefuls (Marjorie played "Mary"), while providing lovely distraction in a couple of The Ritz Brothers vehicles -- Life Begins in College (1937) and Kentucky Moonshine (1938). One of her best parts came opposite Henry Fonda as Mary Todd to his Abe Lincoln in the quality bio-drama Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). She was also top-billed in such programmers as Murder Among Friends (1941) and Man at Large (1941). Most of her assignments, however, were relegated to "B" pictures and following co-star roles in two "Charlie Chan" and three "Michael Shayne" mysteries, Marjorie left Fox (in 1942) by choice and free-lanced. Her rating did not improve much, however, although she was seen to good advantage in the serial The Great Alaskan Mystery (1944). She made her last inconsequential movies with Fashion Model (1945) and Leave It to Blondie (1945).
Marjorie decided to retire from the business in 1945 and, save for an unbilled part (by accident) in We're Not Married! (1952) over at Fox, that was all she wrote. Married to Don Briggs in 1943, she and her husband had a son and daughter, Joel and Leigh, and later owned and operated a classy liquor establishment in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. She died following a stroke in 1994.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Nina Mae McKinney is known as the seductress "Chick" from Hallelujah (1929), the first all-black, all-sound musical. Even though she was acknowledged as a great actress, singer and dancer by audiences in the U.S. and Europe, today she is mostly forgotten. She certainly had the looks, enthusiasm, and acting talent to succeed. But as she and other black women of her time learned, there wasn't much work for a black woman other than as a maid, "mammy" figure, or prostitute. Hollywood was scared to take a chance on an attractive black woman, to make her into a glamorous sex symbol as they would with an attractive white actress. There would be no true glamorous black female sex symbol until Lena Horne's arrival in 1942. Nina learned, as did other black actresses, that there was little success to be had after an initial big splash.
McKinney was born in 1913 in the small town of Lancaster, South Carolina, eventually to become an international figure as an actress, singer and band leader. Her given name was Nannie Mayme McKinney. Her parents, Hal and Georgia McKinney, moved from Lancaster to New York City and left the child with her great-aunt, Carrie Sanders. "Aunt Carrie" lived in a small apartment in the backyard of Col. Leroy Springs, father of businessman and flying ace Elliott White Springs. Aunt Carrie worked as a cook and housekeeper for the Springs family. As soon as Nannie Mayme was old enough she ran errands for Lena Jones Springs, who gave her a bicycle to ride to the post office to pick up the mail. Nannie Mayme's first public performances were riding stunts, or "cutting capers", as amazed bystanders called it. She appeared in plays at the black Lancaster Industrial School (founded by Springs), where she quickly learned the lines of the entire cast.
At about age 13 she headed for New York to stay with her mother, Georgia Crawford McKinney. Choosing Nina Mae as her stage name, she managed to get a job as a chorus girl in the Broadway play "Blackbirds". Her lively performance caught the attention of MGM producer/director King Vidor, who gave her a starring role in Hallelujah (1929). It was the first all-black sound musical features, even though many theaters billed the film as "a story of murder and redemption in the Deep South." This melodrama was not widely acclaimed at the time, but movie historians now see it as an interesting introduction to black theater (one critic described it as having "a crude power").
Nina was signed by MGM to a five-year contract, but in that period she made only two films, Safe in Hell (1931) and Reckless (1935) (in which she didn't even appear on screen; she dubbed Jean Harlow's songs). Hollywood could accept black character actresses like Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen having a close relationship with white characters in a film, but would not allow a beautiful black actress the same natural role. However, her first film gave her the opportunity to appear in a number of all-black cast or black-themed films, including Sanders of the River (1935) with Paul Robeson, Dark Waters (1944) and Pinky (1949) (as Rozelia), which is considered her finest film.
She had much more success on stage. She played Jeanne Eagels' role in "Rain" at Harlem's famed Apollo Theatre. She proved that she could well have become one of America's enduring performers--she had the talent, the beauty, and the star power, but she realized that the doors to real success were permanently barred to her in Hollywood. She soon left the U.S. for Europe. She made film and stage appearances all over the Continent, from Paris and London to Dublin and Budapest, and became known as "The Black Garbo".
When war broke out in Europe she returned to New York, where she married jazz musician Jimmy Monroe and put together a band and toured the country. In the 1950s and 1960s she lived in Athens, Greece, where she was known as the "Queen of Night Life." In the late 1960s she came back to New York but did not perform, and died in New York City in 1967, at age 54, of a heart attack. Her death went virtually unnoticed; trade papers such as Variety and black publications such as Jet and Ebony didn't even print an obituary, and one newspaper that did only called her an "entertainer" and didn't name the church where the funeral would be held.
Not everyone forgot her, though; in her home town of Lancaster, South Carolina, on a wall across from the Courthouse, is a mural with portraits of famous people from Lancaster. Among them two faces stand out. One is former President Andrew Jackson. The other is Nina.- Joan Felt was born on January 18, 1931, in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Her mother was quite a famous piano player in the 1930s. Six-year-old Joan made her film debut in Walking Down Broadway (1938). She played the role of Sunny, and changed her name from Felt to Carroll. A role in Two Sisters (1938) followed, and the next year she had supporting roles in Barricade (1939) and Tower of London (1939). It wasn't until 1940 when Joan had her breakthrough. She had important parts in Anne of Windy Poplars (1940) and especially Primrose Path (1940), as Ginger Rogers' younger sister. In 1941, she won her first lead role in Obliging Young Lady (1942) as Bridget Potter, a young girl stuck in the middle of her parents' divorce case. The film costarred Ruth Warrick.
In 1942, she was the first child star from Hollywood to appear in a Broadway play.This play, "Panama Hattie", garnered Carroll national fame, and she was featured in many magazine articles and newspapers. In 1943, she won her second lead role in Petticoat Larceny (1943), in which she played Joan Mitchell, a radio star who goes undercover to get a better feel of her roles. That film reunited Joan with Warrick.
In 1944, she played Agnes, the middle sister between Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). In 1945, she had an important supporting role in The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), which starred Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman. That same year she appeared in Tomorrow, the World! (1944), after which she retired. - Ellen Hall was born on 18 April 1923 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Range Law (1944), Lawless Code (1949) and Brand of the Devil (1944). She died on 24 March 1999 in Bellevue, Nebraska, USA.
- Claire James was born on 23 April 1920 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. She was an actress, known for Voodoo Man (1944), Navy Blues (1941) and Hop Harrigan America's Ace of the Airways (1946). She was married to Dr. Peter Louis Hoffman, William Girard, Raymond Dorsey and Busby Berkeley. She died on 18 January 1986 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Karin Nellemose was born on 3 August 1905 in Copenhagen, Denmark. She was an actress, known for Mens porten var lukket (1948), Master of the House (1925) and Kampen mod uretten (1949). She was married to Torben Anton Svendsen. She died on 5 August 1993 in Charlottenlund, Denmark.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Massachusetts-born Jean Rogers had hoped to study art in New York and Europe upon graduation from high school, but her plans changed when she won a national beauty contest in 1933 and was offered a contract by a Hollywood producer. She was soon signed by Warner Bros., and a year later jumped ship to Universal. She began appearing in several of the studios' serials, with 1936's "Flash Gordon" being her most fondly remembered role. Given her delicate blond beauty and the skimpy outfits she wore, it was no wonder she was lusted after so fiercely by archvillain Ming the Merciless (and most of the male audience). Universal took her out of the serial unit and put her in a string of B pictures. Unsatisfied with the way her career was going, and the fact that the studio refused to give her a raise, she left Universal for 20th Century Fox in 1939. Two years later the spunky Rogers left Fox for the same reasons she left Universal, and signed with MGM, where she found the treatment more to her liking. She walked off the Culver City lot in 1943 when studio boss Louis B. Mayer discovered that she planned to get married, and forbade her to do so. Althugh she freelanced over the next few years, nothing much really came of it, and after making "The Second Woman" in 1951, she retired to raise her family.- Actress
- Soundtrack
About as reliable as one could ever find, character actress Mary Treen was a familiar face to most and could always be counted on to bring a bit of levity to any film scene. A minor actress for much of her career, she managed to secure a plain, unassuming niche for herself in 40s, 1950s/60s Hollywood.
She was born Mary Louise Summers in St. Louis, Missouri in 1907, her father dying while she was still an infant. Raised in Southern California by her mother, who once performed under the stage name Helene Sullivan, and her stepfather, a physician, she attended Westlake School for Girls as well as a convent where she tried out successfully in school plays.
Treen began dancing in vaudeville shows and revues before seeking her fame in the movies. Tall (5'9") and stringy-framed, she formed a musical comedy duo with Marjorie Barnett, who was 5'3", billing themselves as "Treen and Barnett: Two Unsophisticated Vassar Co-eds". Much of the comedy was centered around their difference in height. Not a beauty by Hollywood standards, she relied on humor to get attention. In 1934, Warner Brothers signed her up after seeing her in a local play.
After three years, she freelanced. Her scores of pudgy-cheeked nurses, waitresses, career girls, wallflowers and confidantes enhanced many a comedy or, at the very least, offered a brief respite in a heavier drama. A few of her highlights would include such films as Kentucky Moonshine (1938), I Love a Soldier (1944) (the role was written especially for her), Don Juan Quilligan (1945), and the Christmas classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946) (as James Stewart's cousin Tilly). In later years both Jerry Lewis and Elvis Presley utilized her talents in their movie vehicles.
She was given a bit more to do on television and actually stole some scenes as maid/baby nurse Hilda Hinkelmeyer on The Joey Bishop Show (1961) for three seasons. She typically guested on lightweight sitcoms such as "The Andy Griffith Show", "Green Acres", "Here's Lucy", "Happy Days", and "The Dukes of Hazzard".
Perhaps because she could play old maid types so easily in later years, she was often thought to have never married. She actually did marry in 1944 to Herbert C. Pearson, a wholesale liquor dealer. They had no children. He died in 1965. She later moved in with her ex-vaudeville partner, Marjorie Barnett-Klein, also widowed. In later years the two performed their old routines to the delight of other senior citizens. Treen was living in Balboa Beach, California when she died of cancer in 1989, aged 82.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson was born on September 29, 1904 in London, England, to Nancy Sophia (Greer) and George Garson, a commercial clerk. Of Scottish and Ulster-Scots descent, Garson displayed no early interest in becoming an actress. Educated at the University of London intending to become a teacher, she opted instead to take a job at an advertising agency. During her off hours she appeared in local theatrical productions, gaining a reputation as an extremely talented and charismatic performer. During a stage production of "Old Music," Garson was offered a studio contract by MGM Vice President of Production Louis B. Mayer while he was on a visit to London looking for new talent. Garson's very first film under that arrangement was the immensely popular Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), earning her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress - the first of six she would receive. The following year would see Greer in the highly acclaimed Pride and Prejudice (1940) as "Elizabeth Bennet". 1941 saw her earn a second nomination for her role as Edna Gladney in Blossoms in the Dust (1941), but it was the moving, if propagandist, Mrs. Miniver (1942), in a role that she would forever be known by, that actually brought her the Oscar statuette as Best Actress.
As Marie Curie in Madame Curie (1943), she would draw yet another nomination, and the same the next year in Mrs. Parkington (1944). It began to seem that any movie she was part of would be an automatic success. Sure enough, in 1945, she won yet another nomination, for her role as "Mary Rafferty" in The Valley of Decision (1945). Still, Garson began to chafe at the unbroken stream of "noble woman" roles in which the studio was casting her. MGM felt that they had an winning formula and saw no compelling reason to alter it. Two standard seven-year contract extensions kept her at MGM until 1954 when, by mutual consent, she left the only studio she had ever known. In 1946, Greer appeared in Adventure (1945), which was a flop at the box-office. 1947's Desire Me (1947) was no less a disaster, downward spiral finally arrested with the hit That Forsyte Woman (1949). The next year, she reprised her role as "Kay Miniver" in The Miniver Story (1950), though audiences were unsurprisingly put off by her character's untimely demise from cancer, leaving screen husband Walter Pidgeon to soldier on alone.
For the remainder of the 1950s, she endured several predictably unappreciated films. Then, 1960 found her cast in the role of Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello (1960). This film was, perhaps, her finest work and landed her seventh and final Academy Award nomination. Her final screen appearances were in The Singing Nun (1966) as "Mother Prioress" and The Happiest Millionaire (1967). After a few TV movies, Garson retired to the New Mexico ranch she shared with her husband, millionaire Buddy E.E. Fogelson. She concentrated on the environment and other various charities. By the 1980s, she was suffering from chronic heart problems, prompting her to slow down. That was the cause of her death on April 6, 1996 in Dallas, Texas, at age 91.- Ravishing redhead Elaine Stewart came onto the film scene in the early 1950s and decorated a number of eastern and western films as well as crimers as a second-tier MGM star. Her striking, shapely beauty and "come hither" sensuality was on full display throughout the decade, often as a temptress or schemer. By the early 1960s, however, she had faded from view, prompted by her 1963 marriage to a game show producer. She then came out of her Beverly Hills retirement in the early 1970s made a modest return to TV in the 70s charming daytime audiences on the game show circuit.
Elaine was born Elsy Henrietta Maria Steinberg on May 31, 1930 in Montclair, N.J., the daughter of German immigrants, Maria Hedwig (Hänssler) and Ulrich Ernst Steinberg, a police sergeant, who was of Frisian background. A one-time usherette and cashier at her hometown movie theatre. Elaine developed very quickly into a beautiful young woman. After a brief stint as a medical assistant, and while still a teen, she was eventually taken on by the Conover Modeling Agency. Changing her name to the more glamorous-sounding Elaine Stewart, her whistle-worthy portfolio and beauty awards eventually caught the attention of Hollywood executives.
Movie mogul Hal B. Wallis offered the wannabe starlet the small, unbilled role of a nurse in the Dean Martin/Jerry Lewis slapstick comedy Sailor Beware (1952). MGM subsequently signed the glamour girl to a contract with the intention of building her up as a dark-haired Marilyn Monroe type. The build-up was gradual with window-dressing bits as a chorine, stewardess and the like in such MGM films as Singin' in the Rain (1952), You for Me (1952) and Everything I Have Is Yours (1952). She then moved up the movie ladder to more visible parts in Sky Full of Moon (1952) and, most pointedly, as Lila, the sexy lush and opportunist who has a marvelous "descending staircase" bit in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). During this time, she became a popular pin-up and made the cover of Life Magazine. She later appeared nude on the Playboy Magazine pages (September, 1959).
She hit sultry "B" co-star status the following year in the semi-documentary-styled police drama Code Two (1953) opposite Ralph Meeker, appeared briefly as the ill-fated queen "Anne Boleyn", mother to "Queen Elizabeth" in the Jean Simmons starrer Young Bess (1953); provided lovely distraction in the macho war film Take the High Ground! (1953) alongside Richard Widmark; played a princess-in-peril in The Adventures of Hajji Baba (1954) and, co-starring with Gene Kelly and Van Johnson, glamoured up the musical Brigadoon (1954). She left MGM around 1956, and finished off the decade with the films Night Passage (1957), The Tattered Dress (1957) and Escort West (1959). In the early 1960s, she made a couple of films both here and abroad and her standard sultry allure could be witnessed on such TV dramas as Burke's Law (1963) and Perry Mason (1957).
Briefly married to actor Bill Carter in the early 1960s, she later wed Emmy Award-winning game show creator Merrill Heatter and left her career to raise two children. In 1972, she became a co-hostess of the Heatter-Quigley game show Las Vegas Gambit (1972) with perennial game show emcee Wink Martindale and later partnered in the dice-rolling gamer High Rollers (1975) with Alex Trebek.
Following an extended illness, the actress died in Beverly Hills at the age of 81 in June of 2011. She was survived by her second husband Merrill Heatter, son Stewart Heatter and daughter Gabrielle Heatter. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Lucy Marlow was born on 20 November 1932 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Queen Bee (1955), My Sister Eileen (1955) and A Star Is Born (1954). She was married to Andrew Carey. She died on 18 December 2018 in Beaumont, California, USA.- She was born on September 2, 1940 to Lawrence and Doris Trickett, in Kansas City, Kansas. Vicki attended the University of Nebraska for one year before detouring to Hollywood, California. There she worked for several years as a studio actress for Columbia Pictures. Unfulfilled by Hollywood, Vicki resumed her education and studied History and Anthropology at Cal State Fullerton. She secured a teaching credential and taught at University High School in Irvine until her retirement. She was an avid traveler and could boast visiting six continents. In retirement, she worked as a lecturer for Princess Cruises, and volunteered as a docent at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.
- Gina Gillespie was born on 20 September 1951 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress, known for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Shirley Temple's Storybook (1958) and Law of the Plainsman (1959). She has been married to James D. MacDonald since 5 May 1973.
- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Elegant, quintessentially British Valerie Hobson was the daughter of a British army officer. She studied dancing at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and appeared onstage for the first time at age 16, but she contracted a case of scarlet fever and decided to give up dancing for acting. She journeyed to Hollywood, but became disillusioned with the studio system and returned to Britain, where she was often cast in aristocratic roles.
She married producer Anthony Havelock-Allan and subsequently appeared in many of his films. They divorced in 1952. She then married politician -- and future notorious sex-and-espionage-scandal figure -- John Profumo and gave up her acting career. She stood strongly by Profumo during that distasteful period. In her later years she was devoted to charity work. She died in 1998, aged 81.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born into a prominent Mormon family in Utah, Laraine Day's acting career began after her parents moved to Long Beach, California, where she joined the Long Beach Players. She appeared in her first film in 1937 in a bit part, then did leads in several George O'Brien westerns. Signing a contract with MGM, she achieved popularity playing the part of Nurse Lamont in that studio's "Dr. Kildare" series. An attractive, engaging performer, she had leads in several medium-budget films for various studios, but never achieved major stardom. She was married for 13 years to baseball manager Leo Durocher, and took such an active interest in his career and the sport of baseball in general that she became known as "The First Lady of Baseball".- Muriel Hutchison was born on 10 February 1915 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Women (1939), Another Thin Man (1939) and ...One Third of a Nation... (1939). She was married to John P. Nicholson (art dealer). She died on 24 March 1975 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
The youngest of five children, and born with the drab, unlikely name of Josephine Cottle on April 5, 1922, this pleasantly appealing, Texas-born, auburn-haired beauty was only seventeen months old when her father, William, passed away. The family moved from Bloomington (her home town) to McDade (between Austin and Houston), where her mother, Minnie, made ends meet as a seamstress and milliner. The family eventually settled in Houston, where Gale took dance and ice skating lessons, developed a strong interest in acting, and performed in high school dramatics. Encouraged by her teachers, Gale by chance entered and was chosen the winner of a local radio talent contest called Jesse L. Lasky's "Gateway to Hollywood" in 1939. This took her and her mother to Hollywood, where she captured the national contest title.
Handed the more exciting stage moniker of "Gale Storm", she was soon put under contract to RKO Pictures. Although she was dropped by the studio after only six months, she had established herself enough to find work elsewhere, including at Monogram and Universal. Appearing in a number of "B" musicals, mysteries and westerns, her wholesome, open-faced prettiness made her a natural for filming. The programmers, however, that she co-starred in were hardly the talk of the town. Making her inauspicious debut with Tom Brown's School Days (1940), her '40s movies bore such dubious titles as Let's Go Collegiate (1941), Freckles Comes Home (1942), Revenge of the Zombies (1943), Sunbonnet Sue (1945), Swing Parade of 1946 (1946), and Curtain Call at Cactus Creek (1950), indicating the difficulty of finding material worthy of her talent. Arguably, her better movies include the family Christmas tale It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), which co-starred Don DeFore; the overlooked western comedy The Dude Goes West (1948) opposite Eddie Albert; and the film noir piece The Underworld Story (1950) with Dan Duryea.
After years of toiling in films, Gale finally turned things around at age 30 by transplanting herself to the small screen. Her very first TV series, My Little Margie (1952), which was only supposed to be a summer replacement series for I Love Lucy (1951), became one of the most watched sitcoms in the early '50s while showing up in syndicated reruns for decades. Co-starring the popular film star Charles Farrell as her amiable dad, Gale's warmth and ingratiating style suited TV to a tee, making her one of the most popular light comediennes of the time. She segued directly into her second hit series as a cruise ship director in The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna (1956), which was better known as "Oh! Susannah" after it went into syndication. Co-starring woebegone Zasu Pitts as the ship's manicurist and her "Ethel Mertz" counterpart, this show lasted a season longer than her first.
In the midst of all this, the (gasp!) thirty-something star dared to launch her own Las Vegas nightclub and pop recording careers. Always looking much younger than she was, she produced a number of Billboard chart makers, including "I Hear You Knocking" (her first hit), "Memories Are Made of This", "Ivory Tower" and her own cover of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love". Her most successful song of the decade was "Dark Moon", which peaked at #4.
Gale's film career took a sharp decline following the demise of her second series in 1960. Most of her focus was placed modestly on the summer stock or dinner theater circuit, doing a revolving door of tailor-made comedies and musicals such as "Cactus Flower", "Forty Carats", "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and "South Pacific". She finally appeared again on TV in a The Love Boat (1977) segment in 1979 after nearly a two-decade absence. It was later revealed in Gale's candid autobiography "I Ain't Down Yet" (1981) and on the talk show circuit that the disappearance was triggered by a particularly vicious battle with alcohol. Years later, Gale became an outspoken and committed lecturer, helping to remove the stigma attached to such a disease, particularly as it applied to women.
Fully recovered, she has been widowed twice (by actor Lee Bonnell in 1986 and Paul Masterson in 1996). Incredibly accommodating over the years, Gale has appeared on the nostalgia and film festival circuits to the delight of her many fans. She died on June 27, 2009, at a Danville, California convalescent home at age 87.- Patti McCarty was born on 11 February 1921 in Healdsburg, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Fuzzy Settles Down (1944), Outlaws of the Plains (1946) and Fighting Valley (1943). She died on 7 July 1985 in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA.
- Allene Roberts was born on 1 September 1928 in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. She was an actress, known for The Red House (1947), The Sign of the Ram (1948) and Bomba on Panther Island (1949). She was married to Ralph Cochran. She died on 9 May 2019 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA.
- Actress
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Julie London recorded 32 albums during her career. Forced to give up band singing when her true age was discovered, she was primarily a torch singer. Her vocal range was described by "sultry" and "low-keyed". Her own favorite singers were Barbra Streisand and Roberta Flack.
She was known in some circles as "The Liberty Girl" for helping establish Liberty Records, where she began singing in 1955, as a successful label. Her many hit albums on that label include "Julie Is Her Name", "Calendar Girl" with some borderline erotic (for the time) cover photography by Gene Lester, "About the Blues", "Your Number, Please", "Send For Me", "Love Letters", "The End of the World", "In Person at the Americana", "The Wonderful World of Julie London" and the provocatively titled "Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast".
Her most popular song, "Cry Me a River", was written by her former classmate/boyfriend Arthur Hamilton and produced by Bobby Troup. Her four most-sought-after and successful albums are "About the Blues (1957), "Feeling Good" (1965), "Easy Does It" (1968) and "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy" (1969). (Her version of "Yummy Yummy Yummy" was featured on the HBO television series Six Feet Under (2001).) Billboard Magazine named her the most popular female vocalist for 1955, 1956 and 1957".- Actress
- Soundtrack
Although she made her career playing the quintessential Parisian coquette, Fifi D'Orsay was actually a Canadian. She was born Yvonne Lussier in Montreal, Québec, in 1904. At the age of 20 she arrived in New York, determined to become an actress. She was met by Helen Morgan, whom she knew from Montreal. Morgan put up the young Yvonne and taught her the ropes about finding jobs. She was soon hired to appear in The Greenwich Village Follies after an audition in which she sang "Yes! We Have No Bananas" in French and told the director that she was an ex-Follies Bèrgere showgirl from Paris. The director renamed her Mademoiselle Fifi". During the run she became involved with vaudeville veteran Edward Gallagher (who, with Al Shean, formed the hit comedy act "Gallagher and Shean"), who was 37 years her senior. He taught her "all the little tricks of the business". She said, "I wanted to learn everything about show business and he taught me - believe me!" She and Gallagher put together a vaudeville act and worked together for two years. When they parted ways, she was teamed with Herman Berrans by noted vaudeville sketch writer Herman Timberg. They put together an act that featured Fifi as a saucy music student and Berrans as her teacher, and it soon became a hit on the Orpheum circuit. Hollywood beckoned and on the strength of a favorable screen test, she dumped her fiancé (Berrans' brother Freddie) and took off for Hollywood. By this time she had adopted the last name "D'Orsay", after her favorite perfume. She continued her career in movies, alternating them with highly paid appearances in vaudeville. In 1950 the Palace Theatre revived vaudeville and Fifi returned to sparkling acclaim. She was one of the first major stars to appear on television in its early days, and later acted in such series as Bewitched (1964), Adventures in Paradise (1959) and Perry Mason (1957), among other shows. In 1971-72, at the age of 67, she appeared on Broadway in the Stephen Sondheim musical "Follies". She played "Solange LaFitte", a former Follies headliner (a character more than just a little reminiscent of her own life and career). Her song "Ah, Paris" was strong and sexy and helped make the cast album a success. "Follies" opened April 4, 1971, at New York's Winter Garden Theatre and ran for 522 performances. It won seven Tony Awards and the New York Drama Critics' Award for Best Musical. Fifi died on December 2, 1983- Actress
- Soundtrack
Gorgeous, brown-eyed, chestnut-maned Sherry Jackson began her promising career as a pig-tailed, pleasant-looking child actress. Born in Idaho on February 15, 1942, she was the only daughter of four children born to Maurita Kathleen Gilbert and Curtis Loys Jackson, Sr. Her father died when she was 6, and the family relocated to Los Angeles. Her mother married television writer/director/actor Montgomery Pittman, who died of cancer in 1962. Sherry's mother provided her daughter drama, singing and dancing lessons as a child. The story goes that the little girl was discovered by a talent agent while she and her mother were waiting for a bus. She began her career at age 7 with small, un-billed bit parts in You're My Everything (1949), For Heaven's Sake (1950), Lorna Doone (1951), The Great Caruso (1951), and two of the "Ma and Pa Kettle" films series, Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town (1950) and Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm (1951), as Susie Kettle, one of the couple's numerous children.
Sherry gained more attention as her parts increased in size, holding her own among the Hollywood's movie elite, including moppet star Bobby Driscoll in When I Grow Up (1951); John Garfield and Patricia Neal in The Breaking Point (1950); and rugged Steve Cochran in the "B" western The Lion and the Horse (1952). She earned good notices as John Wayne's daughter in Trouble Along the Way (1953), but her most impressive role during this time was as a Portuguese youngster who witnesses a vision in the religious offering The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952). At age 11, she made appearances on both "The Roy Rogers Show" and "The Gene Autry Show". She literally grew up on the small screen as Danny Thomas' daughter Terry Williams on the comedy series The Danny Thomas Show (1953) which co-starred Jean Hagen as her mother and Rusty Hamer as her pesky younger brother. A cast change occurred in 1956 when Hagen, who did not get along with Danny Thomas, opted to leave the show (Hagen's character was killed off between seasons) and a step-mother (played by Marjorie Lord) and step-sister (played by Angela Cartwright) helped increase the ratings. During the show's run, she was given a strong teen role in the film drama Come Next Spring (1956) as the daughter of Ann Sheridan and Steve Cochran.
Named a "Deb Star" in 1959, Sherry played a number of beguiling victims or bewitching vixens on such 60's programs as "77 Sunset Strip," "Mr. Novak," "The Twilight Zone," "Hawaiian Eye," "Gunsmoke," "Perry Mason," "Gomer Pyle," "The Virginian," "My Three Sons," "Batman" and "The Wild, Wild West." On film, the vivacious beauty was pretty much relegated to minor cult worship in low-budgets or exploitation films -- Wild on the Beach (1965), Gunn (1967), The Mini-Skirt Mob (1968) and The Monitors (1969). One could usually spot Sherry somewhere as a biker babe, party chick, capricious rich girl or scantily-clad fem-fatale with character names such as "Comfort", "Shasta", "Lola" and "Mona" pretty much putting a stamp on her typecast.
Her adult work remained a sexy standard throughout the 1970's as seen in the TV-movies Wild Women (1970), Hitchhike! (1974), The Girl on the Late, Late Show (1974), Returning Home (1975), and Casino (1980). She also reprised her role as Terry Williams in the premiere episode (only) of the series Make Room for Granddaddy (1970) and appeared in the glamorous title role of Brenda Starr, Reporter (1979), an unsold TV pilot. As a guest star, she participated in such well-established series as "Love, American Style", "Get Christie Love", "The Rockford Files", "Matt Helm", "Barnaby Jones", "The Streets of San Francisco", "Starsky & Hutch", "The Incredible Hulk", "Fantasy Island", "Charlie's Angels", and "CHiPs".
A few forgettable films came her way with Cotter (1973), Bare Knuckles (1977) and Stingray (1978), but she grew hard-pressed to find more challenging parts. By the early 1990s, a frustrated Sherry let her career slide away. She was last seen onscreen of an episode of the soap opera "Guiding Light" in 1992. Never married, she was involved in a fairly long-term relationship with business executive and horse breeder Fletcher R. Jones. That ended in 1972 when he died in a small plane crash.- Madge was born as Margaret Philpott in Texas. She got her start in theater working with a stock company in Denver. Put under a personal contract by a Broadway producer, Madge got her big break when she replaced Helen Hayes in the Broadway play "Dear Brutus". Her success as a stage actress led to her being signed by Fox Pictures. After appearing in a number of movies in the early 20's, Madge was best remembered for her performances in 'Lorna Doone (1922)' and 'The Iron Horse (1924)'. A strong will contrasted the screen image of innocence and led to disagreements over roles by the late 20's. Madge had been cast in a number of movies each year and was in Fox's first dialogue feature 'Mother Knows Best (1928)'. But her refusal to work in the film 'The Trial of Mary Dugan', which was bought expressly for her, led to her contract with Fox being terminated. It would be 3 years until she returned to the screen in the cult favorite 'White Zombie (1932)' with Bela Lugosi, but her career was not going anywhere as Madge was just one of those old silent stars. For the next few years, she appeared in a small number of low budget films and by 1936 her film career was over. In 1943, she would again appear in the headlines when she shot her lover, millionaire A. Stanford Murphy after he jilted her to marry another woman. She did marry two other men, Carlos Bellamy, whose last name she kept, and then to Logan F. Metcalf. Both marriages ended in divorce. She has no children.
- Carole Gallagher was born on 24 February 1923 in San Francisco, California, USA. She was an actress, known for The Falcon Out West (1944) and The Denver Kid (1948). She was married to Leroy Vincent Mcpeek and Dick Foran. She died on 29 August 1966 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
She was a child prodigy and pianist at age 10. Her first movie was There's Magic in Music (1941) aka The Hard-Boiled Canary (1941), under the name Dolly (a short version of her real name, Dolores) Loehr. She signed a long-term contract with Paramount in 1942 and had her name changed to Diana Lynn. She had good parts in The Major and the Minor (1942), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943), and Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1944). She got fewer roles as she matured; she did do My Friend Irma (1949) and My Friend Irma Goes West (1950), based on the popular radio sitcom, and Bedtime for Bonzo (1951), and had a nice career on TV. Her first marriage was from 1948 to 1954 to architect John C. Lindsay (no children); then, on December 6, 1956, she married Mortimer C. Hall, president of L.A. radio station KLAC. His mother was Dorothy Schiff, then publisher of the New York Post. She had four children with him between 1958 and 1964. They moved to New York City so he could assume a post on his mother's paper. Diana Lynn passed away on December 17, 1971, of a stroke/brain hemorrhage in Los Angeles.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Anne Baxter was born in Michigan City, Indiana, on May 7, 1923. She was the daughter of a salesman, Kenneth Stuart Baxter, and his wife, Catherine Dorothy (Wright), who herself was the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright, the world-renowned architect. Anne was a young girl of 11 when her parents moved to New York City, which at that time was still the hub of the entertainment industry even though the film colony was moving west. The move there encouraged her to consider acting as a vocation. By the time she was 13 she had already appeared in a stage production of 'Seen but Not Heard'", and had garnered rave reviews from the tough Broadway critics. The play helped her gain entrance to an exclusive acting school.
In 1937, Anne made her first foray into Hollywood to test the waters there in the film industry. As she was thought to be too young for a film career, she packed her bags and returned to the New York stage with her mother, where she continued to act on Broadway and summer stock up and down the East Coast. Undaunted by the failure of her previous effort to crack Hollywood, Anne returned to California two years later to try again. This time her luck was somewhat better. She took a screen test which was ultimately seen by the moguls of Twentieth Century-Fox, and she was signed to a seven-year contract. However, before she could make a movie with Fox, Anne was loaned out to MGM to make 20 Mule Team (1940). At only 17 years of age, she was already in the kind of pictures that other starlets would have had to slave for years as an extra before landing a meaty role. Back at Fox, that same year, Anne played Mary Maxwell in The Great Profile (1940), which was a box-office dud. The following year she played Amy Spettigue in the remake of Charley's Aunt (1941). It still wasn't a great role, but it was better than a bit part. The only other film job Anne appeared in that year was in Swamp Water (1941). It was the first role that was really worth anything, but critics weren't that impressed with Anne, her role nor the movie. In 1942 Anne played Joseph Cotten's daughter, Lucy Morgan, in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). The following year she appeared in The North Star (1943), the first film where she received top billing. The film was a critical and financial success and Anne came in for her share of critical plaudits. Guest in the House (1944) the next year was a dismal failure, but Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944) was received much better by the public, though it was ripped apart by the critics. Anne starred with John Hodiak, who would become her first husband in 1947 (Anne was to divorce Hodiak in 1954. Her other two husbands were Randolph Galt and David Klee).
In 1946 Anne portrayed Sophie MacDonald in The Razor's Edge (1946), a film that would land her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She had come a long way in so short a time, but for her next two films she was just the narrator: Mother Wore Tights (1947) and Blaze of Noon (1947). It would be 1950 before she landed another decent role--the part of Eve Harrington in All About Eve (1950). This film garnered Anne her second nomination, but she lost the Oscar to Judy Holliday for Born Yesterday (1950). After several films through the 1950s, Anne landed what many considered a plum role--Queen Nefretiri in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). Never in her Hollywood career did Anne look as beautiful as she did as the Egyptian queen, opposite Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner. After that epic, job offers got fewer because she wasn't tied to a studio, instead opting to freelance her talents. After no appearances in 1958, she made one film in 1959 Season of Passion (1959) and one in 1960 Cimarron (1960).
After Walk on the Wild Side (1962), she took a hiatus from filming for the next four years. She was hardly idle, though. She appeared often on stage and on television. She wasn't particularly concerned with being a celebrity or a personality; she was more concerned with being just an actress and trying hard to produce the best performance she was capable of. After several notable TV appearances, Anne became a staple of two television series, East of Eden (1981) and Hotel (1983). Her final moment before the public eye was as Irene Adler in the TV film Sherlock Holmes and the Masks of Death (1984). On December 12, 1985, Anne died of a stroke in New York. She was 62.- Actress
- Soundtrack
An Alabama native she made a name for herself playing good girl roles in the 1940s. The middle of six children she was born in Birmingham, Alabama on Christmas Day 1919 to William and Gladys Early, both of whom had originally come from Montgomery. She was raised on the family chicken farm rooted in home-sprung tradition and religious faith. Her early acting endeavors usually involved her work in Christmas and Easter pageants at her local Baptist church but in the mid-1930s she found herself starring in leading roles while touring in stock companies, which found her performing in various stage productions in New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
In 1936 while starring in "Idiot's Delight" on Broadway she was spotted by a talent scout who brought her to California for an RKO screen test. She made her screen debut in Stage Door (1937) followed by turns in Jezebel (1938), Judge Hardy and Son (1939), Strike Up the Band (1940), Andy Hardy's Private Secretary (1941), and Stage Door Canteen (1943). With 13 film titles to her resume she left movies in 1946 following her appearance in Cinderella Jones (1946) and moved to Laguna Beach where she spent the remainder of her life working as a receptionist for a local doctors office and she continued to be active in the Baptist church and Republican politics. She died in 2000 from complications of congestive heart failure at age 80.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Theresa Harris appeared with more stars of the Golden Era of Hollywood than anyone else. She sang, she danced, she appeared in movies and TV. She graced the screen with her magnetic presence and most times stole scenes from the top stars of the day every chance she got and made a lot of dull films worthwhile. Although stereotyped by receiving only maid roles, Theresa stepped outside the stereotype any chance she got, to show she was glamorous, classy, beautiful, and a true actress. While she often played maids, she always showed dignity, grace, and demanded respect. Theresa didn't exactly fit the mammy/maid stereotype fore she was a petite beauty, a stark contrast from Louise Beavers and Hattie McDaniel, and Theresa was one of the very few black women to not fit that stereotype on screen.
There were quite a few movies in which Theresa got a chance to let her light shine and make you forget her maid costume and see her as a talented actress. In the pre-Code classic Baby Face (1933), she and Barbara Stanwyck had equal screentime, which was rare between black and white actors at that time. Playing Chico, Stanwyck's friend and co-worker, Harris gave a moving and memorable performance that contributed to the film becoming one of the essentials of the classic genre. Theresa was allowed to be sexy, glamorous, and her own person, not simply a servant who jumped at her employer's every beck and call, a rarity for a black actress in a maid part in the 1930s, and a true friendship was shared between Stanwyck and Harris' characters, another rarity. In Professional Sweetheart (1933), Harris played a spunky, sexy maid who teaches Ginger Rogers a thing or two about being "hot", and ends up replacing Rogers as a singer, singing a hot song on the radio that turns on the white male listeners, another shocker and rarity at the time for a black actress. But pre-Code movies usually pushed the envelope, which shows in both 'Baby Face' and 'Professional Sweetheart'. Though Theresa played maid roles most of her movie career, she had showed moments of excellence in many other films such as Hold Your Man (1933), Black Moon (1934), Gangsters on the Loose (1937), Jezebel (1938), The Toy Wife (1938), Tell No Tales (1939), Buck Benny Rides Again (1940), Love Thy Neighbor (1940), Blossoms in the Dust (1941), Cat People (1942), and I Walked with a Zombie (1943), among others.
Theresa was a versatile talent; besides acting, she could sing beautifully and dance divinely, when she had the chance in such movies as Thunderbolt (1929), 'Baby Face', 'Professional Sweetheart', Banjo on My Knee (1936), 'Buck Benny Rides Again', What's Buzzin', Cousin? (1943), and The French Line (1953). When Theresa got the chance to show her beauty and sex appeal, it was often with her screen boyfriend, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson; they were dynamic on screen together in 'Buck Benny Rides Again' and 'What's Buzzin', Cousin?'. In the former, they sing and dance tap, classical, Spanish, and swing in a musical number, "My, My".
Theresa Harris was perhaps the hardest-working woman in Hollywood, appearing in close to 90 films, working at every major studio with most of the big stars. She was respected by studio executives, producers, directors, and co-workers alike, who sometimes went out of their way to get her more lines and screentime. Harris married a doctor and retired from the movies in the late 1950s, living comfortably after having carefully invested the money she made during her career in the films. She was a patient woman who never gave up hope that there would come a time when she would be able to play more than just maid parts. Nevertheless, in every role, she displayed class, dignity, beauty, and true acting talent, not simply the old stereotypes associated with black actors at that time.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Brunette Dorothy Jordan was a graduate of Southwestern University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Trained as a ballerina, she first graced the stage as a chorus girl in top flight musicals, like "Funny Face" (1927), with Fred Astaire, and "Treasure Girl" (1928), with Gertrude Lawrence and Clifton Webb. This led to what turned out to be a fairly short and desultory movie career, beginning with a run-of-the-mill thriller, Black Magic (1929). Dorothy was soon cast as assorted sultry dames in Devil-May-Care (1929) and Call of the Flesh (1930), opposite Latin star Ramon Novarro. Rather more demure was her Bianca, the overtly obedient (but deceptively cunning) younger sister of Kate (Mary Pickford) in The Taming of the Shrew (1929). Contemporary critics were frequently unimpressed with Dorothy's acting, whether it was speaking her lines too quickly (Hell Bound (1931)) or delivering them as a 'memory citation' (Beloved Bachelor (1931)). She gave rather better account of herself in more downtrodden waif-like roles, notably as Marie Dressler's daughter in Min and Bill (1930), as an unwed mother in Bondage (1933) and as simple-minded Southern girl Betty Wright in The Cabin in the Cotton (1932).
After her marriage to famed producer Merian C. Cooper in 1933 -- and finding decent roles ever harder to come by -- Dorothy gave up acting to raise a family. She emerged from retirement in 1937, unsuccessfully screen testing for the role of Melanie in Gone with the Wind (1939). She made a second comeback upon her husband's successful entreaties to a long-term friend and collaborator, the director John Ford. Dorothy appeared in supporting roles in three of Ford's films, before leaving the screen for the final time. In her later years, she became somewhat reticent about discussing her career as a movie actress.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Beginning as a chorus girl at age 14, Ruth Chatterton became a Broadway star with "Daddy Long Legs" in 1914. She appeared in such shows as "Mary Rose" and "Come Out of the Kitchen" before moving to Hollywood in 1925. As her film career faded in the late 1930s, she returned to the stage in revivals, and radio and TV performances, including "Hamlet." In the 1950s, she began a successful writing career. She had no children.- Adrienne Dore was born on 23 May 1910 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, USA. She was an actress, known for Beyond London Lights (1928), The Famous Ferguson Case (1932) and The Rich Are Always with Us (1932). She was married to Burt Kelly. She died on 26 November 1992 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Movita Castaneda was an American actress best known for having been the second wife of actor Marlon Brando. She was eight years older than Brando. In films, she played exotic women/singers, such as in Flying Down to Rio (1933) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), of which she was the last surviving cast member. She is the mother of Miko Castaneda Brando and Rebecca Brando Kotlizky.
Movita was born in Nogales, Arizona, on a train travelling between Mexico and Arizona. Movita began her acting career singing the Carioca to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire's first dance number in the first film in which the famous duo appeared together, Flying Down to Rio (1933). She continued playing exotic women in American and Spanish language films in the 1930s, most notably as a Tahitian girl, Tehanni in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) alongside Clark Gable and Franchot Tone.
After appearing in a few more minor westerns and a few television parts, she met the actor Marlon Brando in the late 1950s, after his breakup with Anna Kashfi. They married in 1960, and they had two children. Brando played the role of Fletcher Christian in the 1962 remake of the 1935 film in which Movita had played a Tahitian girl, Tehanni. Brando then married his co-star Tarita Teriipaia.
Castaneda died on February 12, 2015 at the age of 98.
Six months later, Marlon's first wife, Anna Kashfi, died on August 16, 2015, at the age of 80.- Actress
- Soundtrack
They didn't come packaged any sweeter or lovelier than Anne Shirley, a gentle and gracious 1930s teen film actress who didn't quite reach the zenith of front-rank stardom and retired all too soon at age 26. On film as a toddler, she went through a small revolving door of marquee names before legally settling (at age 16) on the name Anne Shirley, the name of her schoolgirl heroine in Anne's most famous film of all -- Anne of Green Gables (1934).
Manhattan-born Anne was christened Dawn Evelyeen Paris on April 17, 1918. Her father died while she was still a baby, and she and her widowed mother lived a very meager New York existence at first. At the age of 16 months, the child was already contributing to the household finances as a photographer's model, using sundry different monikers, including Lenn Fondre, Lindley Dawn and Dawn O'Day. With this source of monetary inspiration, her mother sought work for her daughter in films as well, and at the age of 4, Anne (billed as Dawn O'Day) made her first feature with The Hidden Woman (1922). She showed enough promise in the film Moonshine Valley (1922), as a young girl who manages to reunite her separated parents, that she and her mother made a permanent move from New York to California. Scarce work for such a young child, but Anne managed to find it with minor roles in The Rustle of Silk (1923) and The Spanish Dancer (1923) for Paramount Pictures. During her adolescence she often appeared as the leading stars' daughter in films such as Mother Knows Best (1928) with Madge Bellamy, Sins of the Fathers (1928) starring Jean Arthur and Liliom (1930) with Charles Farrell. Oftentimes she would play the female star of the film as a child, such as Janet Gaynor's in 4 Devils (1928), Frances Dee's in Rich Man's Folly (1931) and Barbara Stanwyck's in So Big! (1932).
After a rash of unbilled parts, Anne was used by Vitaphone for a series of 1930s short subjects. By her teen years she had developed before the very eyes of Hollywood into a petite and lovely young brunette. Casting agents took notice. Following roles in Rasputin and the Empress (1932) with the three Barrymores and The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1933) starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Loretta Young, Anne was tested among hundreds of young aspirants and captured the role of Anne Shirley in Lucy Maud Montgomery's classic novel Anne of Green Gables (1934), imbuing the character with all the spirit and charm (not to mention talent) necessary. She officially became a teen celebrity after changing her moniker for the final time in conjunction with the release of the film.
Prominent misty-eyed ingénue leads came her way as a result of playing a swamp girl in Steamboat Round the Bend (1935) alongside Will Rogers and in M'Liss (1936) opposite John Beal, but her resume became littered with meek B-level comedies and weak dramas, such as Chasing Yesterday (1935), Too Many Wives (1937) and Meet the Missus (1937), that did little to advance her career. Finally at age 19, she found a role to match her "Green Gables" success playing Barbara Stanwyck's daughter in the classic weeper Stella Dallas (1937). The interaction between the two was magical, and both Barbara and Anne were nominated for Oscars (Anne in the supporting category) for their superb portrayals . Both lost, however, to Luise Rainer and Alice Brady, respectively.
During this time of major success, Anne met and eventually married actor John Payne in 1937. The popular Hollywood couple had one child, Julie Payne, who became an actress for a time in the 1970s. Her subsequent career was full of promise, but with every quality picture bestowed upon her, such as Vigil in the Night (1940) and The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), came a faltering one that hurt her career, including Career (1939) and West Point Widow (1941). Especially disappointing was her long-anticipated "Green Gables" sequel Anne of Windy Poplars (1940), which received very lackluster reviews.
The still-young actress finished on top, however, opposite Dick Powell in the classic movie mystery Murder, My Sweet (1944). Divorced from John Payne in 1943 and tiring of the Hollywood rat race she had endured since a child, however, Anne decided to end her career after her second marriage, to the movie's producer Adrian Scott, in 1945. Never an ambitious actress, Anne stayed with her career as long as she did primarily to please her mother. Her three-year marriage to Scott was unable to withstand the legal troubles of her husband's 1947 blacklisting (he was one of the "Hollywood 10" imprisoned during the McCarthy era for his communist affiliations). Her 1949 marriage to screenwriter Charles Lederer, the nephew of actress Marion Davies, was her longest and most fulfilling. Their son, Daniel, was born the following year. He inherited his father's writing talent and grew up to become a poet.
Never tempted to resume her career at any time, she remained a charming and gracious socialite in the Hollywood circle. A painter on the side, she at one point entertained the thought of becoming a behind-the-scenes worker, such as a dialogue coach, but it was never pursued aggressively. Her husband's sudden death in 1976 triggered a severe emotional crisis for Anne, who turned for a time to alcohol. Recovered, she lived the rest of her life completely out of the limelight, dying in 1993 of lung cancer at age 75. Her granddaughter by daughter Julie (via her marriage to screenwriter Robert Towne) is the actress Katharine Towne, who has appeared in such films as Mulholland Drive (2001).
Not as well remembered as an actress of her award-worthy caliber should be, perhaps had Anne Shirley given Hollywood a longer tryout and added a bit more bite to her rather benign, sweetly sentimental image, her star would be brighter today. Nevertheless, her film work has unarguably brightened the silver screen.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Laura La Plante was 15 years old when she entered films as a Christie Comedy Bathing Beauty. By 1921, she had played a number of roles including a Tom Mix Western called The Big Town Round-Up (1921) for Fox and The Old Swimmin' Hole (1921) for First National. Laura, now 17, next signed with Universal, where she appeared in shorts, serials and many supporting roles. Over the next few years, she would become one of the leading stars at Universal and acted in in dramas, mysteries and comedies. Some of her more important films were the adventure Crooked Alley (1923), the comedy Sporting Youth (1924), the drama Smouldering Fires (1925) and the mystery The Cat and the Canary (1927). One of her successful comedies, Skinner's Dress Suit (1926), was directed by her husband, William A. Seiter. When sound came to Universal, she was one of the silent film stars who made the transition. She played a leading role in the sound film Show Boat (1929) and made her first all-talking picture with Hold Your Man (1929). By 1930, she decided that she had enough and left Universal, which terminated her contract. She went to England, where she would appear in a few more films over the years. Laura returned to Hollywood in 1935, where she again retired from the screen.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Shapely brunette Colleen Townsend was born on December 21, 1928 in the Los Angeles area and started her brief career as a Twentieth Century Fox starlet in 1947 at the age of eighteen. A Mormon at the time by choice, she had completed a year and a half at Brigham Young University in Utah when discovered by Hollywood scouts. For years she appeared unbilled in sentimental comedy before finally earning a featured role in the drama The Walls of Jericho (1948). Gracing the cover of Life magazine, she was hailed as one of Hollywood's more promising fresh-faced starlets. She then appeared in two other pictures, the modest homespun comedy Chicken Every Sunday (1949) as the daughter of Dan Dailey and Celeste Holm, and, her better known, the war comedy When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950) with Dailey again and Corinne Calvet, before calling it quits.
In 1950, Colleen abruptly changed the course of her life by devoting herself to religion. She abandoned Hollywood and began speaking at churches and Youth for Christ evangelistic events. She attended the San Francisco Theological Seminary and in 1950 married one of her fellow seminarians, Louis H. Evans, Jr. It is assumed she renounced Mormonism as her husband became pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Hollywood. In 1954, Colleen (Townsend) Evans returned to acting but in roles produced by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association -- Oiltown, U.S.A. (1954) and Souls in Conflict (1955).
Colleen has served as a pastor's wife at churches from Southern California to Washington D.C. A strong advocate for human rights, she has consulted with the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Human Rights issues and has served on the boards of several ministries, including the Christian College Coalition and World Vision and International Justice Mission. She has served as the first female chair of a Billy Graham Crusade and continues to travel the country as a speaker and author of inspirational books, including "A New Joy" (1973) and "A Deeper Joy" (1982). She co-wrote "My Lover, My Friend" (1976) with husband Louis.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Carmen De Lavallade was born on 6 March 1931 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She is an actress, known for Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), Big Daddy (1999) and The Hours (2002). She was previously married to Geoffrey Holder.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Marcia Mae Jones was born on August 1, 1924, into an acting family. Her mother, Freda Jones, was an actress, and all three of her siblings -- Margaret Jones, Macon Jones, and Marvin Jones -- were child actors. But Marcia Mae had the most successful career, and she was the only one of her siblings to become a child star.
She made her acting debut when she was just six months old, when director James Cruze saw her in her baby carriage and immediately cast her as the baby in his film Mannequin (1926). Her first major role was in Night Nurse (1931), in which she played one of two siblings targeted for murder for their inheritance by a sinister household retainer. By age 10, she had appeared in several dramatic films. In 1936, she played a terrified victim of school bullying in These Three (1936), a role that brought her much attention. In 1937, she played the crippled Klara in Heidi (1937). The film starred two other child actors, Delmar Watson (as with Marcia Mae, all of Delmar's siblings were actors) and Shirley Temple. Despite Marcia Mae being four years older than Temple, the two girls acted well together and would appear together again, in The Little Princess (1939). Marcia Mae also worked with several other child stars of the 1930s, including Jane Withers, Bonita Granville, Jackie Moran, Sybil Jason, and her favorite, Jackie Cooper.
Marcia Mae's first husband was a merchant marine with whom she had two children. This union ended in divorce. Her film career began to slow down in the early 1950s, after which she largely appeared in television roles. By 1952, she was employed as a switchboard operator in the law firm of Greg Bautzer. Her adult life was marred by the suicide of her second husband, Bill Davenport, and problems with alcohol. She eventually conquered her alcohol dependency and became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.- This tiny (4' 11"), appealing, coquettish-looking Hollywood actress had only a few active years in early talkies before her career took a bad hit. A few years after that she joined other shattered 1930s hopefuls (Peg Entwistle, Gwili Andre, Peggy Shannon) as tragic symbols of unrequited stardom.
Sidney Fox was born Sidney Liefer in New York City on December 10, 1907 (many resources inaccurately give 1910 as her birth date), the daughter of Joseph Liefer. Sidney began contributing to her family income as a teenager in a variety of ways - as a model on Fifth Avenue and a lovelorn columnist to, name two. At one point she entertained the thought of a law career, but her acting desires soon took over. She joined a stock company in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where she performed in such shows as "The Big Pond," "Wedding Bells," "The Ghost Train" and "Gregory's Woman."
Back in New York she made her Broadway debut in 1929 with the popular comedy "It Never Rains" at the Republic Theatre, then garnered more attention the next year with another comedy role in "Lost Sheep", which served as her breakthrough into films. Discovered by Universal mogul Carl Laemmle Jr., she was placed directly into a starring role opposite Bette Davis (in her film debut as well) in Bad Sister (1931). In an odd bit of casting, it was innocent-eyed Sidney who played the scheming, vixenish sister and the formidable Bette playing the timid, sympathetic one in a movie that also co-starred up-and-comer Humphrey Bogart.
Guided by Laemle, Jr., Universal continued their buildup of the pert and girlish brunette starlet with appearances in more pictures. Named one of 13 "Wampas Baby Stars" of 1931, she also began making the covers of such movie magazines as "Modern Screen" and "Movie Mirror". Sidney continued making strides in film comedy co-starring with Spencer Tracy in 6 Cylinder Love (1931) and, more importantly, Paul Lukas in Strictly Dishonorable (1931), the latter arguably the best role of her career as the Southern girl who attracts the attention of an Italian opera star (Lukas). Amazingly, she received top billing over Universal horror icon Bela Lugosi in her best-remembered film, Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), but Lugosi easily stole the proceedings from the rather overly dramatic ingénue.
Sidney's performances in film tended toward the saccharine and obviousness and this one-dimensional aspect hurt a number of her films, including the dramatic "soapers," Nice Women (1931), Afraid to Talk (1932) and, notably, Midnight (1934), in which she ineffectively re-teamed with Bogart. Sweet and simple in style, she seemed better suited towards lighter comedy and one of her better films at the time was Once in a Lifetime (1932) co-starring funny guy Jack Oakie. Targeted by gossip-mongers as to her "professional relationship" with Laemmle, Jr., she avoided the Hollywood limelight for a time and tried her luck appearing in such European features as Don Quixote (1933), directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, and Die Abenteuer des Königs Pausole (1933) [The Adventures of King Pausole], but to little avail.
A stormy marriage to Universal Studios editor Charles Beahan (they married in December of 1932) did not help matters as she became more famous for her tabloid-feeding off-camera life than for the films she was making. They had no children. Her last three pictures -- Midnight (1934), Down to Their Last Yacht (1934) a School for Girls (1934) -- did nothing to reverse her downhill fortunes in Hollywood, although she remained a romantic leading lady throughout her career and was never reduced to bit parts. The following years included some work here and there on the Orpheum Theatre circuit, on radio and a brief return to Broadway in a replacement role. Then there was nothing.
Illness and depression set in, not helped by her unhappy, abusive marriage. On the morning of November 15, 1942, the 34-year-old actress was found dead in her Beverly Hills bedroom by her husband after consuming a fatal number of sleeping pills. A most probable suicide, she was buried in Mt. Lebanon Cemetery in Queens, New York. Little remembered today, lovely Sidney Fox remains a sad footnote in the Hollywood annals but her pictures still deserve a curious look. - Born Priscilla Jones Shortridge on March 8, 1914 in Indianapolis, the daughter of a locomotive mechanic. The voluptuous, dark-haired Priscilla Lawson was a professional model in her early twenties. When she was crowned "Miss Miami Beach" in 1935 and found work as an Earl Carroll chorus girl in an area casino.
A rather exotic, severe-looking beauty, her pageant title caught the eye and attention of Universal Pictures and earned her a contract. She began in starlet bit parts and was confined mostly to similar small roles as nurses, hat check girls, native girls, switchboard operators and secretaries in such movies as His Night Out (1935), The Great Impersonation (1935), The Phantom Rider (1936) and The Big Broadcast of 1937 (1936) for the duration of her Hollywood career. She did earn occasional featured parts in a few films including Rose Bowl (1936), Double Wedding (1937), The Girl of the Golden West (1938), Test Pilot (1938) and Heroes of the Hills (1938).
Priscilla capped her brief, rather unremarkable 1930's career as the sexy, conniving Princess Aura, daughter of Ming the Merciless in the classic cliffhanger Rocket Ship (1938), a role that made her a minor cult figure. Universal dropped her within a year or so and MGM picked her up in 1937. Her movie career was over, however, in less than a half a decade. making her last appearances in walk-ons as a hairdresser in The Women (1939) and a barmaid in Billy the Kid (1941).
Married briefly at age 18, she later married to movie actor Alan Curtis, her second husband but the marriage was short-lived. Priscilla later joined the Women's Army Corps. under her married name in World War II. It is believed that she lost a leg in a war-related incident (jeep accident) and later managed a stationary shop in Los Angeles after leaving active service.
He ex-husband, Curtis, died on February 2, 1953, at the relatively young age of 43. Priscilla herself would die just a few years later on August 27, 1958, at age 44 in the Veterans' Administration hospital in Los Angeles. Her death was due to cirrhosis of the liver and upper gastrointestinal bleeding from a duodenal ulcer. - Nancy Drexel was born on 6 April 1910 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Mason of the Mounted (1932), Partners (1932) and Speed Madness (1932). She was married to Thomas H. Ince Jr.. She died on 19 November 1989 in San Juan Capistrano, California, USA.
- Actress
- Additional Crew
Shirley Olivia Mills was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1926 and moved to southern California as a child.
She became the star of an independent film which achieved great fame, Child Bride (1938) when she was 12 years old; she describes it in detail on her "official" Website on a separate page devoted to memories of that film along with still photos of it. Other pages on the site are devoted to The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and Nine Girls (1944), two more films in which she appears.
Mills had extensive training in performing arts prior to her first big role, and those skills figured importantly in her success, which included great discipline and professionalism from a very young age in areas of dancing, declamation, recitation, and public speaking.
She became an accomplished dancer and appeared in World War II era movies with the "Jivin' Jacks And Jills" dance group in seven movies as a "Jivin' Jill" dancer. She worked with a very young Donald O'Connor, who emerged as a teen dance star in the early 1940s in "B" dance movies.
Mills appeared in major Hollywood studio movies through the 1940s and into the 1950s, during which decade she also appeared on major network television programs.
She appeared and acted with major Hollywood actors including Henry Fonda, Errol Flynn, Shirley Temple, Donald O'Connor, and the Andrews Sisters.
She appeared in movies directed by major Hollywood studio directors including John Ford (who won the Best Director Academy Award for The Grapes Of Wrath in which Shirley Mills appeared as "Ruthie Joad"), Michael Curtiz, Alfred Hitchcock, George Cuckor, Alan Dwan, Charles Burton, Andre De Toth, George Marshall, William Castle, and Joseph Kane.
In addition to her career as a child and teen film star, Mills also worked as a professional dancer and a photo and advertising model for Coca-Cola, Russell Stover Candies, and many other companies. She appeared on magazine covers often during the 1940s, and went on to work as a nightclub performer, stage personality, and as a marketing and public relations sales specialist for computer data processing services in the early 1960s. She was one of the earliest women to become prominent in the computer data-processing field.
Later, she became an independent businesswoman and started a Bel Air, California-based company specializing in party and social event-planning called "A Party For All Seasons." She achieved prominence as a specialist in Jewish weddings although she was not born Jewish.
She cared for her aged parents into their old age. Her father died in 1976 after suffering several strokes, and her mother died in 1979 after suffering from kidney failure.
In 1977, she married retired clergyman Mel Hanson, and lived with him on a cattle ranch in Southern California. She also owned an alfalfa ranch in Northern California which she later sold. Her husband died in a tragic automobile accident 18 years after they were married.
During her retirement years, she often appeared at movie nostalgia and memorabilia conventions. A photo on her website shows her in 2005 (at age 79) with Darryl Hickman, the child actor who appeared as her screen brother in The Grapes Of Wrath (1940).
In 2005, a 13-minute documentary was made featuring Mills recalling her work on The Grapes of Wrath in 1940.
In 2009, her website reported that she had become bedridden and no longer made public appearances. She was 83 years old in 2009.- Kathleen Crowley represented her home state of New Jersey in the Miss America pageant in 1949, placed sixth and (with the scholarship money she won) enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New York. She played the plum title roles in prestigious TV productions of A Star Is Born (1951) and Jane Eyre (1951), caught the eye of Hollywood and became a 20th Century-Fox contractee in 1952. Freelancing after leaving the studio, she kept busy in feature films (mostly Westerns and horror/sci-fi titles) and TV. Crowley turned up at film conventions in Memphis, Baltimore and New Jersey before her death in 2017.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Jo Ann Marlowe was born Jo Ann Mares in Schuyler, NE in 1936 to Edward and Theora Mares.
Jo Ann was discovered on a family vacation in Hollywood at age 4 by a Warner Brothers director in a restaurant. The family relocated to California and Jo Ann took the stage name Jo Ann Marlowe.
Jo Ann acted for the next 10 years in 29 motion pictures including Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) which won an Oscar for James Cagney. Jo Ann played the role of 6 year old Josie Cohan. She is best known as the younger daughter, Kay, in Mildred Pierce (1945) with Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth.
Jo Ann left acting and went on to law school at Loyola University in Los Angeles and became a lawyer.
On September 10, 1960 she married John F. Dunne in California. The couple had a daughter, Kimberly who was born in 1963. The couple divorced in April 1968 in Los Angeles.
Jo Ann was a Chief Trial Lawyer for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles until she suffered injuries in an accident in the late 1960's. Jo Ann was left in a coma until her death more than 22 years later when she died at her mother Theora Mares' home in Los Angeles.
Her mother Theora survived her until February 2011 when she passed away at age 96.
Jo Ann and her parents are buried at San Fernando Mission cemetery.