Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 106 of 128

Bonita Granville

Bonita Granville was born in 1923 in Chicago. She achieved international fame with her extraordinary performance as the spiteful child in “These Three” in 1937. She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance. She played Nancy Drew in a series of films about the girl detective. She also starred in some of the Andy Hardy films. Her last film was “The Guilty” in 1947. She died in 1988 at the age of 65.

IMDB entry:

ANDY HARDY’S BLONDE TROUBLE, from left: Bonita Granville, Mickey Rooney, Lee Wilde and Lyn Wilde, 1944

Daughter of Bernard ‘Bunny’ Granville, Bonita Granville was born into an acting family. It’s not surprising that she herself became a child actor, first on the stage and, at the age of 9, debuting in movies in Westward Passage (1932). She was regularly cast as a naughty little girl, as in These Three (1936) where she played Mary, an obnoxious girl spreading lies about her teachers. Her performance left an impression on the audience, and she was nominated for a best supporting actress award. In 1938-39 came the movies she is now best remembered for — playing the bright and feisty detective/reporter Nancy Drew in the Nancy Drew series. She also appeared with Mickey Rooney in a few Andy Hardy movies. She never really had a movie breakthrough, and after marrying oil millionaire & later producer Jack Wrather, she retired from acting in the middle of the 1950s, although she went on to produce the Lassie (1954) TV series.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Mattias Thuresson

After her marriage to oil millionaire Jack Wrather in 1947, she appeared in only three more movies. She became an executive in the Wrather Corp., and first associate producer, then executive producer of the Lassie (1954)TV series. After Wrather’s death in 1984, she took over as chairman of the board. She was also involved in many civic, and cultural groups, and she was chair of American Film Institute, trustee of John F. Kennedy Center, as well as other well known organizations and charities. She died of cancer in Santa Monica in 1988. She & Wrather had four children.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: kenn honeyman

Her IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Patrick Wayne was born in 1939 in Los Angeles and is the son of John Wayne. He played small partsin his father’s films and can be seen in the racing scene in “The Quiet Man” in 1951. He was also in “The Searchers”, “Donovan’s Reef” and “The Commancheros”. In the 1970’s he made “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” and “The People that Time Gorgot” both in 1977.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Possessing his father’s durable good looks, vigor and charm, this tall, strapping, exceedingly handsome second son of John Wayne had huge boots to fill in trying to escape his legendary father’s shadow and corral Hollywood fame on his own terms. But attempt he did and, looking back, he may not have achieved the outright stardom of his father but certainly did quite admirably, making over 40 films in his career — nine of them with his dad.

One of four children born to Duke’s first wife, Patrick John Wayne carried his father’s name, so it seems natural that a similar destiny would be in the making. Patrick made his debut film bit at age 11 in his father classic western Rio Grande (1950) and proceeded to apprentice in The Quiet Man (1952), The Sun Shines Bright (1953), The Long Gray Line (1955), Mister Roberts (1955), and The Searchers (1956), some with and some without his father’s name above the title credits. All the above-mentioned films, however, were helmed by family friend and iconic director John Ford. Following high school, Patrick attended Loyola University and graduated in 1961 (older brother Michael Wayne graduated five years earlier). During this time, he went out on his own to star in his own film, the second-string oater The Young Land (1959). Realizing he was not quite ready to carry his own film, he returned to the family fold and gained more on-camera confidence throughout the 1960s supporting his father in The Alamo (1960), Donovan’s Reef (1963), McLintock! (1963), and The Green Berets (1968). A few exceptions included a role in Ford’s sprawling epic Cheyenne Autumn (1964), his turn as James Stewart‘s son in the frontier adventure Shenandoah (1965) and in An Eye for an Eye (1966) in which he and Robert Lansing played bounty hunters. He also co-starred in the short-lived comedy western series The Rounders (1966).

Following work on his dad’s Big Jake (1971), Patrick broke away again and sought success on his own. Interestingly, he earned more recognition away from the dusty boots and saddle scene and into the sci-fi genre. His career peaked in the late 1970s as the titular hero braving Ray Harryhausen monsters and saving Tyrone Power‘s daughter Taryn in the popular matinée fantasy Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), then battled more special effects creatures in the Edgar Rice Burroughs film adaptation of The People That Time Forgot (1977).

Patrick was a smoother, more gentlemanly version of the Wayne package with a completely captivating smile and accessible personality. He co-starred as a romantic love interest to Shirley Jones in another brief TV series Shirley (1979), and occasionally forsook acting chores to emcee game shows and syndicated variety series. Although the scope of his talent was seldom tested over the years, he was a thoroughly enjoyable presence on all the popular TV shows of the 1970s and ’80s, including Fantasy Island(1977), Murder, She Wrote (1984), Charlie’s Angels (1976), and The Love Boat (1977). And he certainly wasn’t hard on the eyes.

Following the death of older brother Michael in 2003, Patrick became Chairman of the John Wayne Cancer Institute. Divorced in 1978 from Peggy Hunt, he is married (since 1999) to Misha Anderson.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

To view article on Patrick Wayne, please click here.

Earl Holliman was born in 1928 in Louisiana. His first film was “Scared Stiff” in 1953 starring Jerry Lewis and Dean Marin. He was featured in some major films of the 1950’s including “Broken Lance”, “Giant”, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral”, “Forbidden Planet” and “Hot Spell”. He starred with Andrew Prine in “The Wide Country” and with Angie Dickinson in “Police Woman”.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Louisiana-born actor Earl Holliman, after a stint in the Navy, studied at UCLA and the Pasadena Playhouse before earning his break in the Martin/Lewis comedy Scared Stiff(1953). He gained clout after portraying a variety of young, manly characters in rugged westerns and war drama, ranging from dim and/or good-natured to overly impulsive and/or threatening. He won a Golden Globe for his support performance as a girl-crazy brother in The Rainmaker (1956), holding his own against stars Burt Lancaster andKatharine Hepburn. He distinguished himself in a number of “A” grade films around the same time, including Broken Lance (1954) with Spencer Tracy, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral(1957), again with Lancaster, Giant (1956) with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, Visit to a Small Planet (1960), again with Jerry Lewis, Summer and Smoke (1961) withGeraldine Page and The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) with John Wayne.

When the film offers started drying up in the 60s, he found TV a more welcoming medium, scoring in a number of westerns. His virile stance was perfect for a series of crime yarns. It all culminated with a four-year stint as the macho partner to sexy Angie Dickinson in Police Woman (1974), a role that helped make him a household name. Holliman operated the Fiesta Dinner Theatre for many years in San Antonio, Texas.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Ella Raines obituary in “The New York Times” in 1988.

Ella Raines was born in Washington D.C. in 1920. Her first film was “Corvette-K225” in 1943. She went on to make “Cry Havoc”, “Hail the Conquering Hero”, “Phantom Lady”, “The Suspect”, “The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry” amongst others. Ella Raines died in 1988 at the age of 67.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Bill Hafker, pakhuntz @ runestone.n

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Her “New York Times” obituary from 1988:

Ella Raines, an actress who starred in film dramas, comedies and westerns during the 1940’s, died of throat cancer May 30 in Los Angeles. She was 67 years old.

Ms. Raines’s film career took off in 1943. That year she starred opposite Randolph Scott in the wartime thriller ”Corvette K-255” and became the only actress under contract to a new $1 million production company founded by Howard Hawks and Charles Boyer. Her best-known starring role was in the suspense film ”Phantom Lady” in 1944. More often she appeared opposite some of the leading actors of the day, including John Wayne in ”Tall in the Saddle” (1944), Charles Laughton in ”Suspect” (1945) and William Powell in the Charles MacArthur-George S. Kaufman satire ”The Senator Was Indiscreet” (1947). Worked With Preston Sturges

She also worked with the director Preston Sturges in ”Hail the Conquering Hero” (1944). She starred in a television show, ”Janet Dean, R.N.” in 1953-54. More recently, she appeared in an episode of television’s ”Matt Houston,” although she had largely been in retirement.

A two-year marriage to her high-school sweetheart, Kenneth Trout, a lieutenant in the Army Air Force, ended in divorce in 1945. In 1947 she married an Air Force major, Robin Olds. A hero in World War II and Vietnam, he later became a brigadier general and commander of the United States Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. They had two daughters.

After her marriage, Ms. Raines appeared in films less frequently. In 1967, when her husband was serving in Vietnam, she characterized herself in a newspaper article as ”an Army wife” and paid tribute to ”service wives . . . for maintaining a home that is as normal as possible for the children while keeping their worries to themselves.”

She and her husband were divorced in 1975. She is survived by her daughters, Christina Newman and Susan Olds, and a granddaughter.

Robert Ryan . TCM Overview.

A poster for Nicholas Ray’s 1951 war film ‘Flying Leathernecks’, starring John Wayne (left), Robert Ryan and Janis Carter. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

Robert Ryan was born in 1909 in Chicago. In 1944 he joined RKO Studios as a contract player. Among his films are “Act of Violence”, “Beware My Lovely”, “The Set-Up”, the superb “Bad Day at Black Rock” with Spencer Tracy, Anne Francis and John Ericson and “Odds Against Tomorrow”. In the 60’s he participated in such big budget productions as “The Longest Day”, “Battle of the Bulge”, “The Dirty Dozen”, “The Professionals” and “The Wild Bunch”. He died in 1973 at the age of 63.

TCM Overview:

Imposing, ruggedly handsome lead who made his film debut in “Golden Gloves” (1940) and signed with RKO two years later. Ryan hit his stride in the late 1940s playing a string of psychopathic or hard-boiled types, notably the anti-Semitic murderer in “Crossfire” (1947) and the over-the-hill pug in the classic boxing drama, “The Set-Up” (1949)

. He went on to appear in a host of films through the mid-70s, often giving fine performances in decidedly mediocre vehicles. Ryan was memorable as William Holden’s buddy-turned-nemesis in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” (1969).

IMDB entry:

Chicago-born, distinguished U.S. actor and longtime civil rights campaigner, Robert Ryan served in the United States Marines as a drill sergeant (winning a boxing championship) and went on to become a key figure in post WWII American film noir and western productions.

Ryan grabbed critical attention for his dynamic performances as an anti-Semitic bully in the superb Crossfire (1947), as an over-the-hill boxer who refuses to take a fall in The Set-Up (1949) and as a hostile & jaded cop in On Dangerous Ground (1951). Ryan’s athletic physique, intense gaze and sharply delivered, authoritarian tones made him an ideal actor for the oily world of the film noir genre, and he contributed solid performances to many noir features, usually as a vile villain. Ryan played a worthy opponent for bounty hunter James Stewart in the Anthony Mann directed western The Naked Spur (1953), he locked horns with an intrepid investigator Spencer Tracy in the suspenseful Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) and starred alongside Harry Belafonte in the grimy, gangster flick Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Plus, the inventive Ryan excelled as the ruthless “John Claggart” in Billy Budd (1962), and two different WWII US generals – first in the star-filled The Longest Day (1962) and then in Battle of the Bulge (1965).

For the next eight years prior to his untimely death in 1973, Ryan landed some tremendous roles in a mixture of productions each aided by his high-caliber acting skills leaving strong impressions on movie audiences.

He was one of the hard men hired to pursue kidnapped Claudia Cardinale in the hard boiled action of The Professionals (1966), a by-the-book army colonel clashing with highly unorthodox army major Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen (1967), and an embittered bounty hunter (again) forced to hunt down old friend William Holden in the violent Sam Peckinpah western classic The Wild Bunch(1969).

Ryan’s final on-screen performance was in the terrific production of The Iceman Cometh (1973) based on the Eugene O’Neill play and also starring Lee Marvin and Fredric March.

Legend has it that Sam Peckinpah clashed very heatedly with Ryan during the making ofThe Wild Bunch (1969); however Peckinpah eventually backed down when a crew member reminded Sam of Robert Ryan’s proficiency with his fists!

Primarily a man of pacifist beliefs, Ryan often found it a challenge playing sadistic and racist characters that very much were at odds with his own personal ideals. Additionally, Ryan actively campaigned for improved civil rights, restricting the growth of nuclear weapons, and he strongly opposed McCarthyism and its abuse of innocent people. A gifted, intelligent and powerful actor, Robert Ryan passed away on July 11th, 1973 of lung cancer.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: firehouse44@hotmail.com

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

John Bromfield. Wikipedia.

John Bromfield was born in 1922 in South Bend, Indiana. At college he excelled in football and was a boxing champion. In 1948 he was featured as a detective in “Sorry Wrong Number” with Burt lancaster,. Barbara Stanwyck and Ann Richards. His other films include “Revenge of the Creature”. John Bromfield died in 2005 at the age of 83.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

The name may be hard-pressed to anyone but the most devoted film buffs, but dark-haired actor John Bromfield was a “B”-level leading man during the late 1950s. Possessed with a fine build and square-faced handsomeness, he was somewhat of a blend between Steve Cochran and Rory Calhoun, both 1950s hunks

. During his heyday, John headlined a handful of mediocre sci-fi programmers, melodramas and westerns and was often seen in skimpy outfits (especially a swim suit) that showed off his fine physique. Born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1922 and christened Farron Bromfield, his strong athleticism and good looks were not lost on the picture business. By age 26 he was in Hollywood and a contractee of Paramount. His first feature film came in the form of a small role in the Barbara Stanwyck/Burt Lancaster film noir tingler Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) for Paramount. Following the minor documentary/adventure Harpoon(1948) at Paramount, he made his third film, Rope of Sand (1949).

There he met his first wife, the delectable French actress Corinne Calvet, who was a co-star on the film and just starting to create an international stir. The couple married shortly after completing the film in 1948. The pairing proved beneficial for Bromfield and his career but the marriage itself lasted only five years. A featured performer in the early 1950s, he earned leading man status by 1955, but it was a very brief tenure.

The pictures themselves were hardly the talk of the town, including The Big Bluff (1955), Frontier Gambler (1956),Three Bad Sisters (1956), Quincannon, Frontier Scout (1956), Manfish (1956) and Hot Cars (1956), and most of them fell by the wasteside. One of his films, however, managed to earn sci-fi “cult” status — Revenge of the Creature (1955). At around this time he fell for dancer Larri Thomas while on the set of Curucu, Beast of the Amazon(1956) and married her shortly after filming.

Following his last movie (and 20th feature) in Crime Against Joe (1956) with sultry singer Julie London, he switched mediums and corralled the title role (and mild stardom) in the syndicated TV western series Sheriff of Cochise (1956), which was later retitled “U.S. Marshal” during its third season. In 1959, his second marriage ended after only 3 years and his western series soon bit the dust as well.

Unfulfilled with his life as an actor, John abruptly retired in 1960, finding renewed interest as a commercial fisherman. A hunting enthusiast most his life, he was an emcee at Chicago’s annual Sportsman’s Show in the 1980s. Not much else was heard until his recent passing from kidney failure on September 18, 2005, at the age of 83. He is survived by his third wife.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Tuesday Weld. TCM Overview

It was widely assumed that no one with a name like Tuesday Weld was to be taken seriously. Besides, she made films with titles like “Rock, Rock, Rock” and “Sex Kittens Goes to College”. She was/is blonde and cute-faced like Sandra Dee. There was consternation, if not alarm, when, about her tenth film, critics started talking about her as an actress” – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years” (1972).

Tuesday Weld is an actress with a huge cult following. She was born in 1943 in New York city. She was a child model before branching into movies. In 1956 she played the lead in “Rock, Rock, Rock”. In 1959 she played Danny Kaye’s daughter in “The Five Pennies”. Other films include “Return to Peyton Place”, “Wild in the Country” with Elvis Presley in 1961, “Soldier in the Rain” with Steve McQueen and “Falling Down” with Michael Douglas.

TCM Overview:

Luminous, ageless beauty who supported her family as a child model and TV performer; the strains precipitated a nervous breakdown at the age of nine, an alcohol problem at 10 and a suicide attempt at 12. Weld appeared in her first film in 1956 at the age of 13 and, drawing on experience beyond her years, played various oversexed and underage nymphets in a bevy of low-rent productions and the TV series “Dobie Gillis.”

Weld’s tempestuous off-screen adventures made her fodder for the gossip columnists, but she went on to display a quirky, unique talent in several fine dramas, including “The Cincinnati Kid” (1966) and “Pretty Poison” (1968)–in which she suggested both innocence and evil as few performers had since the heyday of Louise Brooks. Her reputation fully rehabilitated, Weld carved a niche as a dependable lead in a number of fine films, from “Lord Love a Duck” (1966), “A Safe Place” (1971), with Orson Welles and Jack Nicholson, and “Play It as It Lays” (1972). Beginning with “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” (1977), which earned her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, she began alternating second leads and character roles with leads in films like “Thief” (1981). She worked more in TV as the 80s progressed, but still performed well in features including “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984). By the 90s, she had all but abandoned acting, appearing in only two features to date, “Falling Down” (1993) and “Feeling Minnesota” (1996). The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Van Johnson was born in 1916 in Newport, Rhode Island. He started acting on Broadway in 1935. He was Gene Kelly’s understudy in the Broadway musical “Pal Joey”. He was first noticed on film in 1942 in “Murder in the Big House” with Faye Emerson. He replaced Lew Ayres in the Dr Kildare series. He won a contract with MGM and made such movies as “The Human Comedy”, “A Guy Named Joe”, “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” and “Brigadoon”. In his later years he guest starred with June Allyson in Angela Lansbury’s “Murder She Wrote”. Van Johnson died in 2008 at the age of 92.

I”Guardian” obituary:

oyishly handsome leading man among the top 10 Hollywood stars of the 1940s

Brian Baxter

Recalling the life of Van Johnson, who has died aged 92, is not simply to remember a talented, once boyishly handsome film and stage star, but a golden era of Hollywood. A time when MGM could claim “more stars than there are in the heavens” and leading men fell into distinct types, of which Johnson’s freckle-faced boy-next-door was one. He also fell into another significant category, the MGM leading man, the guy who squired the gals. Leading ladies such as Elizabeth Taylor, June Allyson and Esther Williams were paired with him, as was Judy Garland and such male luminaries as Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Gene Kelly.

But that was then, and those heydays – in Johnson’s case from the early forties until the mid-fifties – are long gone. In the course of a dozen years he appeared in nearly 50 movies, out of the total of 80 that he notched up between 1942 and 1992. In addition to big screen roles, he starred in many television dramas and mini-series, and guested in such programmes as Batman and Murder, She Wrote. He often returned to the stage, where he began his career in New Faces of 1936, starring in such musicals as The Music Man (on tour and in London) and La Cage aux Folles.

Such a career would have seemed impossible to his resolutely non-showbusiness family. Charles Van Johnson was born in Newport, Rhode Island. His mother, an alcoholic, abandoned the family early on, and he was brought up by his austere Swedish-American father, also called Charles. Johnson’s stepson, Ned Wynn, wrote in his memoir, We Will Always Live in Beverly Hills, that when Johnson became a star he invited his father to Los Angeles and took him to the famous Chasen’s restaurant, only for Charles Johnson to refuse to eat anything but a tuna sandwich. “Van was devastated,” Wynn wrote. “He had wanted to show his father that now, after years of a grey, loveless, miserly life, he was a star, he could afford steak. And the old bastard had beaten him down one more time.”

Johnson moved to New York after finishing high school in 1935. The engaging young man with a bright smile and sandy hair took dancing and singing lessons and began work in the chorus. In 1939 he landed a small part in Pal Joey while understudying the star, Kelly. Just 15 years later, he shared top billing with Kelly in the film version of Brigadoon.

After such useful training, he headed west, making an uncredited debut in Too Many Girls (1940) and securing a contract with Warner Bros. When that lapsed, he was taken up by MGM and became a contract player, joining the illustrious group who made up the largest and most famous group of entertainers ever controlled by one organisation. In an interview in 1985, he recalled his years at MGM with fondness. “It was one big happy family and a little kingdom,” he said. “Everything was provided for us, from singing lessons to barbells. All we had to do was inhale, exhale and be charming. I used to dread leaving the studio to go out into the real world, because to me the studio was the real world.”

Johnson got a lucky break with Dr Gillespie’s New Assistant (1942) where he played the role vacated by Lew Ayres (whose objection to the war made him unemployable in Hollywood for many years). So popular was Johnson that by his third appearance as the assistant he had taken over as star. The following year, Johnson played a pilot guarded over by an angel (Tracy) in A Guy Named Joe, one of the 20 or so films that made him a bobby soxers’ delight. While filming it, however, he had a near-fatal car crash that made him unfit for military service. Helped by the comparative lack of competition – Robert Taylor, James Stewart and Gable had all joined the armed services – he soon became a leading man. In 1944, he received his first top billing in Two Girls and the Sailor. Two years later Johnson entered the list of Hollywood’s top 10 stars, fourth only to Greer Garson, Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman. He was among the all-star cast in the glossy Week-End at the Waldorf (1945), and the dry leading man in two Williams extravaganzas, The Thrill of Romance (1945) and Easy to Wed (1946). By the war’s end he was an established star.

In 1948 he displayed increasing versatility by starring in a sturdy war film, Command Decision, switching to a frothy romance, The Bride Goes Wild, opposite Allyson, and then joining his friend Tracy – and Katharine Hepburn – in Frank Capra’s political satire State of the Union. This sharp movie gave him one of his best parts, and he followed it in 1949 with the engaging In the Good Old Summertime, MGM’s musical reworking (for Garland) of the classic The Shop Around the Corner.

But he was soon back at war in the memorable Battleground (1949), and the early 1950s ushered in even more work – 16 movies between Grounds for Marriage (1951) and his final contract film for MGM, The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), with Taylor. In this busy period he made his last film with Williams, Easy to Love (1953), played a sympathetic priest in When in Rome (1952) and an army captain in Siege at Red River (1954). Also in 1954 came the prestigious but dull Brigadoon.

It looked for a while as though more characterful roles would beckon as he nudged 40. The best of these was in The Caine Mutiny (1954), playing Lieutenant Maryk, the officer who takes command when Captain Queeg (Humphrey Bogart) loses his marbles, only to find them again in the climactic court scene. His director, Edward Dmytryk, thought so highly of him that he (miscast) him in an adaptation of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair (1955), playing the adulterous writer. Much criticism was levelled at the Americanisation of his character. Even so, he returned to Britain to play another writer in the thriller 23 Paces to Baker Street (1956). Here the writer, on the track of a murderer, was hampered by blindness, not guilt, and Johnson received better notices for this.

Sadly these meatier roles did not lead to a sustained change of direction. In 1957, he co-starred with a dog in the amiable Kelly and Me, and later that year took the title role in a television film The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Between then and the late 1960s he alternated between war movies (The Last Blitzkrieg and The Enemy General) and fun comedies (Wives and Lovers and the witty Divorce American Style), but never re-established his earlier fame.

Like other actors of his generation, Johnson found it easier to work in Europe and television, where his experience was more gratefully received than in Hollywood. In the late 1960s and 70s his work in Spain and Italy included Battle Squadron, The Price of Power and The Concorde Affair. These were squeezed between equally forgettable TV dramas such as Call Her Mom (as president) and mini-series such as Rich Man, Poor Man (1976).

I The 1980s and 90s were less busy. He was demoted to vice-president in The Kidnapping of the President (1990), a general in Delta Force Commando II (1990) and a captain in Taxi Killer (1988). There were further films in Italy and some TV work. Among all the dross was a role in Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Even this, playing a supporting role to the tedious antics of the stars, must have been more satisfying than the almost unseen Australian movie, Clowning Around (1992), where after taking fifth billing to a group of nonentities he quietly retired. According to the estimable film-writer Ephraim Katz he could, in his 80s, be found ensconced in a Manhattan penthouse, delighting in his cat Fred and his hobby of painting acrylics.

Though his screen image was generally lighthearted and he referred to himself as “Cheery Van”, Wynn remembered him as anything but. The deprivations of his childhood had made him moody and morose, his stepson wrote. “His tolerance of unpleasantness was minuscule. If there were the slightest hint of trouble with one of the children, or with the house, the car, the servants, the delivery of the newspaper, the lack of ice in the silver ice bucket, the colour of the candles on the dining-room table, Van immediately left the couch, the dinner table, the pool, the tennis court, the party, the restaurant, the vacation, and strode off to his bedroom.”

Johnson had married Ned’s mother, Eve Lynn Abbot, in 1947, only hours after she had divorced the actor Keenan Wynn, a friend of Johnson’s. They had one daughter, Schuyler, but divorced in 1968. Eve died in 2004.

• (Charles) Van Johnson, actor, born 25 August 1916; died 12 December 2008

The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.

In The Good Old Summertime, poster, US poster, Van Johnson, Judy Garland, 1949. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

George Segal

George Segal was born in 1934 in Great Neck, New York. He is a 1955 graduate of Columbia University. In 1961 he made his movie debut in “The Young Doctors”. Other films in which he had leading roles include “Ship of Fools”, “King Rat”, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” and “Lost Command”. He gave a terrific performance in “No Way to Treat A Lady”. George Segal died in 2021 aged 87.

‘Guardian’ obituary in 2021

George Segal, who has died aged 87, was among the leading Hollywood stars from the mid-1960s until the mid-70s, and possessed the gift, as Jack Lemmon did, of making neurotic behaviour not only funny but sympathetic.

In 1965, as the eponymous King Rat in Bryan Forbes’s film set in a Japanese PoW camp, Segal was in his element as a smart-alec American among the stiff-upper-lip British, surviving by conning his fellow prisoners and camp officers. The following year, he was Oscar-nominated as best supporting actor for his role in Mike Nichols’s adaptation of Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were magnificent as the tired middle-aged academic and his wife who vent their long-simmering frustrations on two hapless guests, a young lecturer in biology and an understandably nervous wife. Segal and Sandy Dennis in the latter roles were not overshadowed by the virtuoso seasoned performers.

In the same year, Segal was Biff Loman in a CBS television production of Death of a Salesman, opposite Lee J Cobb (the original Willy Loman), and starred in an intriguing espionage thriller about the activities of neo-Nazis in contemporary Germany, The Quiller Memorandum. It was intriguing partly because Segal’s nervy acting style clashed fruitfully with the dry, understated sarcasm of his co-star, Alec Guinness.

In 1968, he appeared as George to Nicol Williamson’s Lennie in a TV production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and in Sidney Lumet’s Bye Bye Braverman, a New York comedy about a group of Jewish intellectuals who meet at the funeral of an old friend. As the latter proved, Segal’s forte was urbane neuroticism. This was seen to advantage in two films in which he played Jewish sons: No Way to Treat a Lady (1968), as a cop whose girlfriend (Lee Remick) meets disapproval from his mother (Eileen Heckart); and Where’s Poppa? (1970), in which Segal tries to give his mother (Ruth Gordon) a heart attack by dressing in a gorilla suit and jumping on to her bed. “You almost scared me to death,” she cries. “Almost is not good enough,” he replies.

In Loving (1970), Segal was amusing as a New York illustrator who finds that his family life, professional ambitions and extramarital involvements are settling into parallel ruts; and in The Owl and the Pussycat (also 1970), a pleasantly raunchy farce, Segal as a reserved wannabe writer was teamed successfully with Barbra Streisand as a garrulous part-time sex worker.

But his happiest pairing was with Glenda Jackson in the delightful A Touch of Class (1973), the kind of witty sex-war saga that was popular in the 70s, and in which Segal excelled.

The film boosted Segal’s career even further, but by the time the partnership was resumed in Lost and Found (1979), a so-called comedy in which Segal and Jackson played a pair of academics who meet and squabble on the ski slopes, it was heading downwards.

However, back in 1973, Segal was still on a roll with Paul Mazursky’s Blume in Love, a comedy both romantic and satirical, and Robert Altman’s California Split (1974), a freewheeling study of compulsive gambling. Despite having proved he had the emotional weight for drama, Segal decided thereafter to opt for light comedy, though his choices could be misguided. His comic flair failed to rescue The Black Bird (1975), a limp send-up of The Maltese Falcon and the 40s private-eye genre, nor could he do much to salvage The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox (1976), a charmless jumble of western parodies and slapstick in which he was teamed with Goldie Hawn, or Fun With Dick and Jane (1977), with Jane Fonda and Segal as yuppie bank robbers.

Although Segal continued to work regularly throughout the following decades, even scaling some heights, his star power had burned itself out. In 1979, he turned his back on a film that might have rejuvenated his career. He walked off the lot on the first day of shooting Blake Edwards’s 10, protesting at the amount of control he felt his co-star, Julie Andrews, wife of the director, had over the film. He also insisted that his wife, Marion Sobel, should participate in the editing and production. Orion Pictures filed a legal action seeking damages and Segal counter-sued. With the crew and cast standing by, Edwards summoned Dudley Moore to take over the romantic lead, and the film was a huge hit.

Segal was born in New York, the youngest of four children of George Segal, a hop and malt agent, and Fannie (nee Bodkin), and grew up in Great Neck, Long Island. Although the family was Jewish, he was educated at a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania. An accomplished banjo player, Segal played with Bruno Lynch and his Imperial Jazz Band before enrolling at Columbia University to study drama. After graduation, he joined the off-Broadway company Circle in the Square. Following three years’ military service, Segal resettled in New York, becoming one of the original members of Theodore J Flicker’s satirical revue The Premise in 1960.

His film debut was in the entertaining hospital soap opera The Young Doctors (1961), as a rather bland intern. In The New Interns (1964), he was far better as a grim-faced ex-con doctor, and in the same year played a bitter civil war veteran, whom Yul Brynner is contracted to kill, in Invitation to a Gunfighter. In 1965, Segal held his own among a starry cast as a tortured artist in Stanley Kramer’s Ship of Fools, and moved into the most successful period of his career.

In the 80s and 90s, as his film roles declined, Segal found work mainly in TV dramas. In a 1994 episode of The Larry Sanders Show, Larry (alias Garry Shandling), a talkshow host, tries to stay awake while Segal (self-mockingly) reels off the titles of all the movies he has acted in recently that have had difficulty getting released. Afterwards, Larry is heard backstage telling everyone that he has got to start getting some fresh new guests.

Yet Segal did pop up in excellent supporting roles, mainly as fathers, in several films, such as the boorish businessman father of Kirstie Alley’s precocious baby in Look Who’s Talking (1989) and Look Who’s Talking Now (1993); Ben Stiller’s neurotic father in David O Russell’s Flirting With Disaster (1996); and Matthew Broderick’s father in The Cable Guy (1996).

From 1997 to 2003, Segal was looking sharp and playing, with comic finesse, the fashion magazine owner Jack Gallo in the TV sitcom Just Shoot Me!, and had another long-running TV role from 2013 onwards as Albert “Pops” Solomon in The Goldbergs. He was back on Broadway in Art in 1999, and in the same role at Wyndham’s theatre in London in 2001.

His marriage to Marion ended in divorce in 1983, after 27 years. His second wife, Linda Rogoff, whom he married in 1983, died in 1996. Later that year he married Sonia Schultz Greenbaum, his high-school sweetheart, whom he ran into at a class reunion. She survives him, as do two daughters, Polly and Elizabeth, from his first marriage.

George Segal, actor, born 13 February 1934; died 23 March 2021

Ronald Bergan died in 2020