Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 114 of 128

Deanna Durbin

It’s A Date, poster, US poster, Deanna Durbin, 1940. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Deanna Durbin was one of the most popular film stars of the 1940’s and is credited with saving the fortunes of Universal Studios. She was born in Winnipeg, Canada in 1921. She made her first film for that studio “Three Smart Girls” in 1936. Her unique singing voice made her very popular and she had a string of very popular movies over the next dozen years. Some of her movies are “The Amazing Mrs Holliday” in 1943, “Christmas Holiday” and “Up in Central Park” in 1948. That same year she made her final film “For the Love of Mary”. At the age of 27 she retired after her marriage and went to live in France where remained until her death in 2013.

Michael Freedland’s obitury of Deanna Durbinin “The Guardian”:

When a teenage Deanna Durbin appeared on screen in the 1930s, wearing a decorous white dress with her hands clasped together, singing with a bell-like purity, audiences sighed contentedly. And so did film and music executives. In the days when child stars were wholesome, Durbin was everyone’s idea of the perfect girl next door, and she was a huge money-spinner. Audiences flocked to see her musical comedies and, after she had trilled numbers such as It’s Raining Sunbeams (in the film One Hundred Men and a Girl, 1937), Home Sweet Home (in First Love, 1939) and Waltzing in the Clouds (in Spring Parade, 1940), her fans queued to buy the latest record bearing her name.

Durbin, who has died aged 91, was the antithesis of the Hollywood glamour girl – which made her the kind of star that teachers liked to offer as an example to their students. Her films were tailored to fit both her personality, which made the word “vivacious” seem like an understatement, and her singing voice, which was feminine, sweet, mature beyond her years and extraordinarily powerful.

In 1939, Durbin, aged 17, and her fellow child star Mickey Rooney were awarded special Oscars “for their significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth and, as juvenile players, setting a high standard of ability and achievement”. Ten years and fewer than 20 films later, she suddenly announced her retirement from show business.

She was born Edna Mae Durbin in Winnipeg, Canada. Her parents took her to live in California when she was a baby. From the age of eight she started taking voice lessons and when she was 14 she was recommended to the MGM studio boss Louis B Mayer, who planned to cast her in a biopic of the opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink. She was due to play the diva as a child, but the film was never made.

In those days, there was a way into movies that is no longer available: the studio put her into what was called a “short subject”, and allowed the public to judge. In 1936, audiences saw her in the short Every Sunday and approved; Mayer saw it and did not. Judy Garland was also featured in the film and she and Durbin sang together, but the much more gauche-looking Garland appealed more to the mogul than the prettier Durbin, who he decided was a little too womanly for what he had in min

Mayer let her go, but his notion of box-office poison was another studio’s sweet success. Universal was going broke and the idea of a new star who had two very obvious advantages – she had great talent and came very cheap – was extremely tempting. Universal cast Durbin in a film called Three Smart Girls (1936), about a trio of plucky sisters determined to reunite their estranged parents. Its box-office success is generally held to have been responsible for saving the studio from bankruptcy.

The film, combined with her appearance on Eddie Cantor’s radio show in 1936, announced her as a new star. In the late 1930s and through much of the 40s, Durbin was a top box-office attraction. She was prolific, too: her second film, One Hundred Men and a Girl (with an orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski), was followed by Mad About Music (1938), in which she played a girl with a rich imagination; That Certain Age (1938), co-written byBilly Wilder; and Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939), a sequel to her debut feature, with the sisters this time caught up in a romantic conflict. When Durbin had her first screen kiss – with Robert Stack in First Love, a riff on the Cinderella plot – it filled columns in the American newspapers for weeks.

In It’s a Date (1940), Kay Francis and Durbin played mother-and-daughter actors. The New York Times’s reviewer noted a “plot which leaks at every pore” but praised “the young-girlish magic which [Durbin] is able to evoke with her pretty personality and … her phenomenal vocal cords”.

Eventually, the inevitable happened: Durbin and her bosses had different ideas about what represented the right kind of vehicle. She tried very hard to shake off her girl-next-door image with films such as Christmas Holiday (1944), directed by Robert Siodmak and adapted from W Somerset Maugham’s novel: Durbin and her co-star Gene Kelly were both cast against type, she as a nightclub hostess and he as a killer. Lady on a Train (1945), another film noir, also dealt with murder, but Universal did not think that changing Durbin’s personality represented good business.

The conflict led to an unhappiness which was compounded by Durbin’s divorce, in 1943, after two years of marriage to the film executive Vaughn Paul. Her second marriage, to the producer Felix Jackson, also ended in divorce, this time after four years, in 1949. She and Jackson had a daughter, Jessica.

The light comedy For the Love of Mary (1948) was her swansong. The Universal producer Joe Pasternak constantly tried to change her mind, but Durbin told him: “I can’t run around being a Little Miss Fix-It who bursts into song – the highest-paid star with the poorest material.”

In 1950, she married the producer and director Charles David, with whom she had a son, Peter. She then withdrew from show business and lived in France, closely guarding her privacy for decades. In a rare interview, given in 1983 to the film journalist David Shipman, she said: “I did not hate show business. I loved to sing. I was happy on the set. I liked the people with whom I worked and after the nervousness of the first day, I felt completely at ease in front of the camera. I also enjoyed the company of my fellow actors … What I did find difficult was that this acquired maturity had to be hidden under the childlike personality my films and publicity projected on me.”

Charles David died in 1999. On 30 April, via the Deanna Durbin Society, Peter announced that she had died “several days ago”.

• Deanna Durbin (Edna Mae Durbin), singer and actor, born 4 December 1921; died April 2013

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

Martin Hewitt was discovered by Franco Zefferelli and starred in “Endless Love” opposite Brooke Shields in 1981. His other films include “Yellowbeard” and “Two Lane Junction”.

“Wikipedia” entry:

Martin Hewitt (born February 19, 1958 in San Jose, California) is an American actor. He is best known for his film debut as David Axelrod in Franco Zeffirelli‘s Endless Love (1981), as Dan in Yellowbeard and his role as Chad Douglas Fairchild in Zalman King‘s Two Moon Junction (1988). He also played the role of Michael in the film The Falling (1985). As of 2000, he was living in Los Osos, California developing and selling home inspection software and running his own home inspection business, but has appeared in television shows as recently as 2003. He has a daughter and a son with wife Kerstin.

Project X, poster, US poster, from left: Rita Colton, Jack Lord, Rita Colton, Keith Andes, 1949. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Keith Andes was born in 1920 in New Jersey. He had a minor role in 1944 in “Winged Victory” and then three years later was one of Loretta Young’s Swedish brothers in “The Farmer’s Daughter”. In 1952 he appeared with Marilyn onroe and Barbara Stanwyck in “Clash By Night” and “Blackbeard the Pirate” with Robert Newton. In 1963 he starred with Glynis Johns in the television series “Glynis”. His later films included “Tora, Tora, Tora” and “And Justice For All”. Keith Andes died in 2005 at the age of 85.

Tom Vallance’s “Independent” obituary on Keith Andes:

A blond actor with an impressive physique and brooding good looks, Keith Andes made a strong impression in several films of the early Fifties – he played Marilyn Monroe’s possessive boyfriend in Clash by Night (1952). He also possessed a fine baritone that was heard to advantage on the stage – he was Lucille Ball’s leading man in her only Broadway musical Wildcat (1960) – and he could have been a natural successor to Howard Keel had not Hollywood cut back on musicals in the late Fifties.

Born John Charles Andes in New Jersey in 1920, he graduated from Temple University and worked in radio as an actor and singer prior to joining the Army Air Force. He had wanted to be a pilot but failed cadet training, and when Moss Hart’s morale-boosting play Winged Victory was being produced with an all-servicemen cast, Andes won the role of a flyer in both the play (1943) and the film version that followed in 1944.

Andes had his first starring role on Broadway, by then using the name Keith Andes, in a revival of the operetta The Chocolate Soldier (1947), with choreography by George Balanchine, a new libretto by Guy Bolton and some scene-stealing comedy from Billy Gilbert. Opinions of Andes were varied – the critic George Jean Nathan found him “embarrassing to both song and story” – but he was given the Theatre World Award for the year’s best performance in a musical. The same year, he was seen on screen in The Farmer’s Daughter, which won Loretta Young an Oscar.

He returned to Broadway in 1950 to take over from Alfred Drake as Fred Graham in Kiss, Me, Kate, starring in the show for over a year. He then signed with RKO, and was cast in Fritz Lang’s Clash By Night (1952) – Monroe documentaries often include the scene in which he playfully tightens a towel around her throat to signify his jealousy.

Other RKO movies included a spirited swashbuckler, Blackbeard the Pirate (1952), the thriller Split Second (1953), Back from Eternity (1956), as a co-pilot stranded with crash survivors in the jungle, and The Girl Most Likely (1957), a musical remake of the comedy Tom, Dick or Harry, with Jane Powell the bemused heroine trying to choose between three suitors. Andes was the handsome millionaire she almost marries before settling for true love, but though the film was a musical he was given no songs. (His only singing on screen was in the 1955 Universal musical, The Second Greatest Sex, an uninspired attempt to put Lysistrata into a western setting.)

A short spell as a contract player at Universal included roles in Away All Boats (1956), and Interlude (1957, as the doctor boyfriend of June Allyson, patiently waiting for her to end an affair with a married man). His role in Damn Citizen (1958), that of a police chief charged with ridding his department of corruption, was the inspiration for a short-lived television series in which he starred, This Man Dawson (1959). Television had given his singing a showcase when he played Johann Strauss Jnr in The Great Waltz (1955), co-starring Patrice Munsel and Jarmila Novotna. Andes sang duets with both ladies, and in a tour de force conducted the orchestra while singing a vocal version of the Overture to Die Fledermaus.

His most memorable singing role came when Lucille Ball cast him as her leading man in the musical Wildcat (1960). The Cy Coleman/Carolyn Leigh songs given to Andes included a humorous duet with Ball, “Give a Little Whistle”, and the paean to oil drilling “Corduroy Road”. Happily, these numbers are preserved on the original cast album, although the show closed after six months due to Ball’s health. “Lucy was a hard-working woman,” said Andes:

What she didn’t have, though, was the stage discipline as opposed to television discipline. She was the lead and she needed to pace herself, and she never learned how to do that. The show could have run for three years at least.

While appearing in Wildcat, Andes divorced his first wife and married the actress Shelah Hackett, although that marriage also ended in divorce. He toured in the national production of Man of La Mancha (1968) and although he played guest roles in television series, he had virtually retired by the Seventies.

I was divorced, my kids were grown, and that is when I bought a boat and lived on it and ran charters on it over to Catalina and down to Mexico and back. I just had a ball.

A dedicated weight-lifter who went to the gym five days a week, he was also a chain-smoker, and had been stricken with a series of health problems that led to his apparently committing suicide by asphyxiation.

Tom Vallance

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

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

1950s and 60s second lead actor Keith Andes fits into the strappingly handsome and virile mold that encompassed the likes of George Nader, Guy Madison, and Jeffrey Hunter. Although he may not be as well remembered as the aforementioned, he managed to maintain a reliable career on radio (from age 12), stage, TV and films for over three decades. Born John Charles Andes on July 12, 1920, in Ocean City, New Jersey, Keith found work on radio singing and acting throughout his high school years. While serving with the Air Force during WWII, he performed in the patriotic 1943 Broadway stage show “Winged Victory” and, after being seen by studio mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, was given a minor part in the film version the following year. Keith returned to Hollywood in the post-war years and won the role of one of Loretta Young‘s brothers (the others being Lex Barker and James Arness) in the classic film The Farmer’s Daughter (1947). His enviable physique and photogenic good looks made the blond looker an obvious choice to continue in both rugged adventures and beefcake drama but his output was fairly minimal. InClash by Night (1952), one of his best roles, he dallied hot and heavy with a youngMarilyn Monroe and, in Blackbeard, the Pirate (1952), he demonstrated some expert swashbuckling skills. Meanwhile on the musical front, Keith proved he had a resilient baritone. He won a Theatre World Award for “The Chocolate Soldier” in 1947 and, subsequently, starred in “Kiss Me Kate” with Anne Jeffreys of TV’s Topper (1953) fame. More notably, he appeared opposite Lucille Ball in her only Broadway musical “Wildcat” in 1960, winding things up playing “Don Quixote” for over 400 performances in “Man of La Mancha” in 1968. Ironically, the movie studios did not take advantage of his musical prowess, appearing in a bland role with Jane Powell and singing one musical number inThe Girl Most Likely (1958). Beside numerous episodic appearances, he appeared in two television series: This Man Dawson (1959) and the sitcom Glynis (1963), the latter starring popular Brit actress Glynis Johns. Both were short-lived. Slowing down by the 1970s, he appeared very infrequently on camera while finding occasional voiceover work. Sadly, his final years were marred by extreme ill health, including bladder cancer, and he committed suicide in his Santa Clarita, California home at age 85.

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

Elizabeth Allen was born in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1929.She had a career on stage, screen and television. On the stage in 1965, Stephen Sondheim’s “Di I Hear A Waltz” starred Allen with Sergio Franchi. On screen she starred opposite Charlton Heston in “Diamond Head” and John Wayne in John Ford’s “Donovan’s Reef”. On television she starred in one of the classics of “The Twilight Zone” entitled “The After Hours” with Anne Francis. Elizabeth Allen died in New York aged 77 in 2006.

Her “Guardian” obituary:From The New York Times review of John Ford’s Donovan’s Reef (1963) starring John Wayne: “Ford, best when he’s faced with an unknown talent, brings out the ability of Elizabeth Allen, a darkling beauty. She’s delightful as a Boston ice cube whose melting point is Wayne.”

Elizabeth Allen, who has died aged 77, was not exactly “an unknown talent” when she made Donovan’s Reef but, although she had been in two features previously and three after, it was the only film in which she had a chance to show what she could do.

As Ameilia, the refined daughter of a roughneck doctor, she is more than a match for scallywag Wayne as “Guns” Donovan. Ameilia: “I had the strangest feeling that you were going to kiss me.” Donovan: “What?” Ameilia: “Well, I have been kissed before.” Donovan: (kisses her). Ameilia: “I thought I’d been kissed before.” (Kisses him back.)

Born Elizabeth Ellen Gillease in New Jersey, she had a brief career as a model and singer, before getting the job on TV’s The Jackie Gleason Show in the early 1950s, when she became known as the “away we go” girl, because of the phrase she used when introducing the portly comedian’s skits.

Then, in late 1957, Allen was given her big break by Peter Ustinov, who cast her as the female juvenile lead in his cold-war satire, Romanoff and Juliet. (The part was taken by the very different Sandra Dee in the 1961 film.) After the year’s run on Broadway, she appeared in From the Terrace (1960) as a hedonistic society girl who tries to persuade her friend Joanne Woodward to stray from hubby Paul Newman, believing that everybody sleeps around as if it were a big game.

At the same time, Allen continued her career in television, particularly remembered for the role of a mysterious saleswoman in a store where mannequins come alive in a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone. Then she was back on Broadway as Magda in The Gay Life (1961), an Arthur Schwartz-Howard Dietz musical based on Anatol by Arthur Schnitzler. Despite having only one number, Come A-Wandering With Me, Allen was nominated for a Tony award.

She would be nominated again four years later for her role as the American spinster finding romance in Venice in Do I Hear a Waltz? (based on Arthur Laurents’ The Time of the Cuckoo), the only collaboration between Richard Rodgers (music) and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics), this time singing eight numbers including the delightful title song. (She can still be heard on the original cast album.)

Allen was reunited with Ford for a sexy part in the comic Dodge City sequence, with Jimmy Stewart as Wyatt Earp, in the director’s last Western, Cheyenne Autumn (1966). However, television took up most of her time in the 1960s and 1970s with guest appearances in The Man From UNCLE (as a seductive enemy agent) and Dr Kildare among many others.

The stage continued to attract her with a leading role in Sherry! (1967), a musical version of The Man Who Came to Dinner, which ran just two months but has since gained cult status.

Allen ended her career in 1983, after starring, as elegant as ever, in three daytime television soap operas: as an upper crust hostess in Another World and its spin-off, entitled Texas, and as a selfless doctor in The Guiding Light.

Elizabeth Allen, who married and divorced Baron Carl von Vittinghoff-Schell, was a philanthropist who donated money for animal rights and environmentalist causes. She had no children.

· Elizabeth Allen (Elizabeth Ellen Gillease), actor, born January 25 1929; died September 19 2006

The above entry can also be accessed online here.

Michael Anderson Jnr

Michael Anderson Jnr was born in 1943 in Hillingdon, Middlesex, He is the son of the reknowned film director Michael Anderson. His first film was “The Moonraker” in 1958 with George Baker, Sylvia Syms and Gary Raymond. He made “Tiger Bay” and “In Search of the Castaways” with Hayley Mills and won critical praise as the son of Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum in the Australian drama “The Sundowners” in 1960. He went then to Hollywood and made such films as “Major Dundee” and “The Glory Guys”. In 1965 he was improbably cast as the brother of John Wayne and Dean Martin in “The Sons of Katie Elder”. He had a critical sucess with the television series “The Monroes” in 1966. He has guested on many of the premier television series.

“Wikipedia” entry:

He was born in Hillingdon, Middlesex, into a theatrical family. His grandparents and great-great-aunt were actors. His father is the film director Michael Anderson, Sr. He is the stepson of actress Adrienne Ellis, and stepbrother of actress Laurie Holden. His brother is producer David Anderson.

Anderson trained at the Arts Educational School in drama and ballet. He appeared in seventy-two films between 1956 and 1998, the most notable of which include The Sundowners(1960), In Search of the Castaways (1962), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Major Dundee (1965) and Logan’s Run (1976, which his father directed).

In the 1966-1967 season, Anderson co-starred with Barbara Hershey, who portrayed his sister, in an ABC family western series, The Monroes.

He guest starred as well in episodes of ABC’s Stoney Burke and Love, American Style along with Hawaii Five-O on CBS.

David Knight

Although David Knight is a U.S. born actor, virtually all his cinema career has been in the British Isles.

He was born in 1928 in Niagara Falls. He had lead roles from his first film “The Young Lovers” in 1954 with Odile Versois.

His best film is probably “Lost” in 1955 with Julia Arnall. This film features a wonderful collection of British actors in small parts e.g. Barbara Windsor, Joan Hickson, Shirley Anne Field, Thora Hird, Joan Sims and Marjorie Rhodes.

David Knight’s last UK feature was “Nightmare” in 1964. After a further few years of television work, he returned to theatre work in the U.S.

IMDB entry:

David Knight was born on January 16, 1928 in Niagara Falls, New York, USA as David Stephen Mintz. He is an actor, known for Nightmare (1964), Chance Meeting (1954) andAcross the Bridge (1957). He is married to Wendy McClure. They have two children.

Obituary in “Rundus” in 2020.

On Sunday, December 20, 2020 David Stephen Knight, actor and professor of theatre, loving husband to Wendy McClure Knight, and father of two children passed away at the age of 92. David Knight was born January 16, 1928 in Niagara Falls, New York to parents The Reverend Eugene Mintz and Leticia Knight-Mintz. He grew up in New Jersey and attended college at Syracuse University in New York and Whittier College in California before receiving a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London in 1952.

He was quickly contracted to The Rank Organization and acted in more than 10 movies including The Young Lovers (1954), On Such a Night (1956), Across the Bridge (1957), A Story of David: The Hunted (1960), and Nightmare (1964). He also starred in numerous television shows and theatre productions in London’s famous West End, including starring as Bud Frump in the original London production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” at the Shaftesbury Theatre (1963-1964) and The Lives of Benjamin Franklin (1974). He was a member for the British Actors’ Equity organization in the United Kingdom since the 1950s, and the U.S. Actors Equity Association since the mid-1970s.

David met Scottish dancer and actress Wendy McClure and the two were married on November 25, 1963. The couple had two children, Eugene and Moyra, while living in London. In 1975, during the economic downturn in the United Kingdom, he moved with his family to Winnipeg, Manitoba to teach theater at the University of Manitoba. A year later, in 1976, the family moved to Urbana, Illinois where he was professor of theatre and subsequently became Head of the Theatre Department at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois. There, he partnered with his wife to develop the nationally-ranked professional acting program and the Illinois Repertory Theater where he was Artistic Director.

David and his wife Wendy retired from the university in August 20, 1997 as Professor Emeritus in Theater, and where the David and Wendy Knight undergraduate endowed scholarship remains to assist aspiring acting students. He influenced hundreds of students throughout his tenure, many of whom have highly successful careers in the arts today. After retirement, David and Wendy moved to Westminster, Colorado, where they had previously worked at the University of Colorado Shakespeare Festival. David starred in “Macbeth” and codirected “Comedy of Errors” with Wendy in 1982 and 1983 respectively. In retirement, they traveled extensively, and continued to support the arts by attending the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and the Central City Opera. They celebrated 57 years of marriage on November 25, 2020.

In addition to being a brilliant actor with a remarkable natural talent, David was a gifted teacher with a powerful work ethic who was dedicated to the craft of acting. In his personal life, he was a loving father, a dedicated husband, a voracious reader, and a leader in his community. He is survived by his wife Wendy, children Eugene Knight (wife Chutima) and Moyra Knight (husband Michael MacLean), grandchildren Ewan and Annabelle MacLean; Jupiter, Joseph, and Jasper Knight, and brother Eugene Mintz.

“For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13

David Selby was born in 1941 in Morganstown, West Virginia. He is best known for his role in the long running television series “Dark Shadows” from 1968 until 1971. On film he has starred with Barbra Streisand in “Up the Sandbox” and with Alec Guinness and Richard Jordan in “Raise the Titanic”.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Actor David Selby, highly regarded for his villainous work on both daytime and nighttime soap classics, was born in Morgantown, West Virginia. He attended West Virginia University and graduated with both B.S. and M.A. degrees from West Virginia University, then earned a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Following many years on the stock stage (from 1961), David finally attracted infamous attention when he signed on as Quentin Collins, a werewolf, on the gothic daytime drama “Dark Shadows” in 1968. He inherited heartthrob status briefly with the role and even recorded two songs during the show’s run, “Quentin’s Theme” and “I Wanna Dance With You.” After the series’ demise, he made his movie debut with Night of Dark Shadows (1971), the second film based on the cult series. He broached top film stardom in the early 1970s after co-starring with Barbra Streisand in Up the Sandbox (1972) and Ron Leibman in The Super Cops (1974), and continued his high-profiled pace with New York theatre productions of “The Heiress” (1976), with Jane Alexander and Richard Kiley, and “Eccentricities of a Nightingale” (1976) with Betsy Palmer, but things didn’t quite pan out. In the 1980s, however, steady TV work helped put an extra shot of adrenalin back into David’s career, notably as the cunning Richard Channing on the nighttime soap “Falcon Crest,” a role he played from 1982 until 1990. David has graced most of the popular series over the years including “The Waltons,” “Police Woman,” “Kojak,” “Family,” “Touched by an Angel,” and “Ally McBeal.” He has also appeared sporadically in white-collar film support with roles in Dying Young (1991), White Squall (1996) and Surviving Christmas (2004) to his credit. David continues to perform on stage as well. He portrayed Abraham Lincoln in his own play “Lincoln and James” in 1997 and 1998, and penned the play “Final Assault” which premiered in 2003. He is a staple player in radio drama with the L.A. Theatre Works these days. David and longtime wife Chip have three children.

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

Dan Duryea was , like Zachary Scott, one of the great villians of film. He was born in White Plains, New York in 1907. He came to film with “The Little Foxes” in 1941 with Bette Davis, Patricia Collinge and Teresa Wright. Some of his other great films are “The Pride of the Yankees”, “Scarlet Street”, “The Woman in the Window” and “Criss Cross”. He died in 1968.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Dan Duryea was definitely the man you went to the movies for and loved to hate. His sniveling, deliberately taunting demeanor and snarling flat, nasal tones set the actor apart from other similar slimeballs of the 1940s and 1950s. From his very first picture, the highly acclaimed The Little Foxes (1941), in which he portrayed the snotty, avaricious nephew Leo Hubbard who would easily sell his own mother down the river for spare change, the tall, lean and mean Duryea became a particularly guilty pleasure, particularly in film noir, melodramas and westerns.

Born in White Plains, New York, on January 23, 1907, the son of a textile salesman, Dan expressed an early interest in acting and was a member of his hometown high school’s drama club. Majoring in English at Cornell University and president of his university’s drama society, he abruptly changed the course of his career after deciding that the advertising business was perhaps a more level-headed pursuit. The frantic pace in such a cutthroat field, however, unexpectedly triggered a mild heart attack in his late 20s, and he gave it all up to return to his first love–acting. In the long run…all the better for filmgoers.

Following some summer stock experience, Duryea made his Broadway debut in a bit part in the Depression-era play “Dead End” in 1935. He progressed to the leading role of Gimpy later in the show’s year-long run and never looked back. It was his yellow-bellied varmint in Broadway’s “Missouri Legend” in 1938 that led to his delicious assignment as nephew Leo in “The Little Foxes” starring Tallulah Bankhead the following year. Playing the part for the entire Broadway run, he then capped it off by joining the national tour. Fortunately, when Samuel Goldwyn bought the film rights, Duryea was not excluded and the actor made his highly auspicious film debut in The Little Foxes (1941) with Bette Davis replacing Ms. Bankhead as the mercurial Regina.

Broadway became a distant memory for Dan following his move to 1940s film. In fact, he never returned. Seldom venturing into the “nice guy” arena either, audiences continued to revel in his perpetual mean streak and waited anxiously for his character to receive his comeuppance by the end of the reel, whether by gunshot, poison or even the electric chair. Co-starring in “A”-quality films at the onset, he played a henchman in Billy Wilder‘sBall of Fire (1941) opposite Gary Cooper, then played Cooper’s nemesis again as both a snide reporter in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) and as a gunslinger who takes pot shots at him in Along Came Jones (1945). He continued to harass other stars too, none more so than Edward G. Robinson in the dark and superb Fritz Lang films The Woman in the Window (1944) (again a blackmailer) and Scarlet Street (1945) (an art forger).

He signed with Universal at the peak of his villainy, but the post-WWII move resulted in a lack of quality films. More often than not he found himself mired in such “B” grade outings as Black Bart (1948) and River Lady (1948). His talents were blighted in light comedy as well, as in the case of his starring butler role in The Swindlers (1946), where he is somewhat overshadowed by Ella Raines and William Bendix.

“Once a scoundrel, always a scoundrel” was his motto. He redeemed his unsavory worth somewhat with fine work in Another Part of the Forest (1948), this time playing Oscar Hubbard in a prequel to “The Little Foxes”, and in Criss Cross (1949), where he gets to off both Burt Lancaster and Yvonne De Carlo.

While most of Duryea’s 1950s films were considered average, more sympathetic roles surfaced for him in the form of Chicago Calling (1951), Thunder Bay (1953), Battle Hymn(1957) and Kathy O’ (1958). The 1950s also saw a noticeable move towards TV. This included his own brief series China Smith (1952) / The New Adventures of China Smith(1954), along with guest appearances on such popular series as Wagon Train (1957). He received an Emmy nomination in 1957 for one of his rare “nice guys” in an episode ofGeneral Electric Theater (1953).

Duryea’s celluloid reputation as a heel did not extend into his personal life. Long married (from 1932) to Helen Bryan and a family man at heart (he was once a scoutmaster and PTA parent!), he had two children. One of them, Peter Duryea became an actor for about a decade in the mid-’60s; father and son, in fact, appeared together in the western filmsTaggart (1964) and The Bounty Killer (1965). A second son, Richard, became a talent agent.

Duryea found the pickings slim in his final years and even went overseas to drum up some work in European low-budgeters, including “spaghetti westerns.” In 1967 he appeared in Winchester 73 (1967), a made-for-TV remake of one of his more popular 1950s western films, Winchester ’73 (1950). His last acting work came in the recurring form of shady conman Eddie Jacks on the popular night-time soap serial Peyton Place(1964).

Wife Helen died in January of 1967 of heart problems and Dan followed her to the grave a year later at age 61 after being diagnosed with cancer. They were buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles.

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

2470769 Le cambrioleur: THE BURGLAR, Dan Duryea (bottom), Jayne Mansfield (right), 1957; (add.info.: Affiche du film Le cambrioleur (THE BURGLAR) de Paul Wendkos avec Dan Duryea, Jayne Mansfield, 1957); Everett Collection; it is possible that some works by this artist may be protected by third party rights in some territories.

Craig Stevens had been in films for years when he won widwspread popularity on television in 1958 with his performance in the title role of “Peter Gunn”. His films include “Dive Bomber” in 1941 where he met his wife Alexis Smith, “Since You Went Way” and “The Doughgirls”. Craig Stevens died in 2000. Alexis Smith predeceased him.

His “Telegraph” obituary:

American actor best known for his role as the television detective Peter Gunn

CRAIG STEVENS, who has died aged 81, played the suave private investigator Peter Gunn in the American television series of the same name which began in 1958.

Detective Peter Gunn was one of those lady-killer private eyes of the late 1950s and 1960s who existed in a world of salubrious uptown offices and sleazy night-time jazz clubs. Gunn’s own well-appointed workplace was at 351 Ellis Park Road, Los Angeles, but from time to time he would saunter over to Mother’s jazz club to watch his blonde girlfriend Edie (Lola Albright) take to the stage as resident singer.

Each episode presented Gunn with a client in a tight corner or a crime to solve. His work entailed frequent fights, but the urbane Gunn – often aided by his police lieutenant friend Jacoby – would always be standing at the end, coolly dusting down his Ivy League clothes.

The programme’s director, Blake Edwards, shot the action in a modified film-noir style. Most memorable of all was the jazzy score by Henry Mancini – later to be reincarnated in such films as The Blues Brothers, several television advertisements and the odd pop song.

Peter Gunn, which was considered exceptionally violent for its time, was broadcast on NBC from 1958 to 1960 and on ABC in 1960-61. It then came to Britain where it also proved hugely popular. It did much to launch Blake Edwards’s career, and Mancini’s score resulted in two bestselling albums for RCA, The Music from Peter Gunn and More Music From Peter Gunn.

Craig Stevens was born Gail Shikles Jnr on July 8 1918 at Liberty, Missouri, the son of a school teacher. He read Dentistry at Kansas University before deciding that acting was more for him.

Moving to Hollywood, he trained at Paramount’s acting school, worked at the Pasadena Playhouse and in 1941 signed for Warner Brothers. His first feature film was Dive Bomber, in which he played one of Errol Flynn’s co-pilots.

The film’s leading lady was Alexis Smith, and later that year Stevens was given the romantic lead opposite her as a bridge-builder in Steel Against the Sky. They married three years later. Alexis Smith went on to become a star, while Stevens languished as a dependable support. Nevertheless, the marriage endured happily until her death in 1993.

Stevens’s other credits during the 1940s included God is My Co-Pilot (1945) and Humoresque (1946), in which he was one of the gigolos buzzing around a socialite, Joan Crawford. After The Blues Busters (1950) and Abbott and Costello Meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1953), he played the boyfriend of Jane Russell in The French Line (1954), and then the trusty sidekick of a town tyrant in the light-hearted western Buchanan Rides Alone (1958).

Although he had by then appeared in 13 films, his casting on television as Peter Gunn was his big break. After that, he played the globe-trotting photo-journalist Mike Strait in 20 episodes of the ATV series Man of the World (1962-63). Also featuring a score by Mancini, the series took Stevens to many colourful corners of the world – from south-east Asia to the Amazon – usually assisted by his svelte sidekick Maggie.

Thereafter, Stevens worked mainly in theatre, often opposite his wife, who had retired from the screen in 1959. He did, however, team up again with Blake Edwards in 1967 to make the film Gunn, and he appeared in Killer Bees (1974). His last film role was in Blake Edwards’s Hollywood satire SOB (1981). From time to time, he appeared on television shows such as Dallas.