Ken Wahl was a popular American actor in the 1980’s and 90’s. He was born in 1954 in Chicago. He first came to international recognition with “The Wanderers” in 1979. He starred with Paul Newman in “Fort Apache, the Bronx” and then starred himself in the New Zealand thriller “Race for the Yankee Zephyr”. In 1987 he starred in the cult television series “Wiseguy”. The show ran for three years. Ill health as a result of an accident in 1992 has hampered his career. He was an intelligent charismatic actor and it is hoped that he returns to the screen again soon.
TCM Overview:
A tall, dark, down-to-earth leading man, typically in streetwise parts, Ken Wahl had no previous acting training or experience when he auditioned for, and landed, the role of street gang member Richie Gennaro in Philip Kaufman’s “The Wanderers” (1979). His subsequent film work has been sporadic and uneven. Wahl was well-cast as Paul Newman’s partner in Daniel Petrie’s unsatisfying cop drama “Fort Apache, The Bronx” (1981). He was teamed romantically with Bette Midler in the aptly named “Jinxed!” (1982); their off-screen animosity spilled onscreen. While “The Soldier” (1982) offered his first leading role in an action pic, Wahl fared no better, delivering a rather one-note wooden performance. In Sidney J. Furie’s “Purple Hearts” (1984), Wahl was successfully repositioned as a romantic lead, portraying a doctor in Vietnam who falls for a nurse (Cheryl Ladd). His reteaming with Furie, 1991’s “The Taking of Beverly Hills” was meant to cast the actor as an action hero, but the results were pallid. As was his second feature with Daniel Petrie, “The Favor” (filmed in 1990; released in 1994), in which he was object of desire of both Harley Jane Kozak and Elizabeth McGovern.
Wahl gained his highest profile and is perhaps best known as the tough but troubled undercover agent Vinnie Terranova in “Wiseguy” (CBS, 1987-90). During his three year tenure on the series, he brought nuanced shadings to his character who often found himself attracted to the individuals he was investigating. During the first season, the interplay between Wahl and villain Ray Sharkey was multi-layered. Wahl established similar rapport with actors as varied as Kevin Spacey and Joan Severance, Stanley Tucci, William Russ and Patti D’Arbanville. Wahl’s early TV credits include the short-lived crime series “Double Dare” (CBS, 1985) and the TV-movies “Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission” (NBC, 1985) and “Gladiator” (ABC, 1986). In 1990, he left “Wiseguy” in a dispute with the producers, but his career failed to take off as he had hoped. His subsequently returned to the small screen opposite Lisa Hartman Black in “Search for Grace” (CBS, 1994), a drama that more than owed a debt to Kenneth Branagh’s feature “Dead Again”. In 1996, Wahl reprised his role of Vinnie Terranova in “Wiseguy” (ABC), but the results were somewhat disappointing.
Health problems were among the factors that have slowed Wahl’s career. He was critically injured in motorcycle accidents in 1984 and 1992, and in 1993 was rumored to have a brain tumor (which he subsequently denied). Recurrent spinal surgeries have kept him in headlines but away from the cameras for the most part.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
The grand dame of English theater and a prolific screen actress, Gladys Cooper was one of the most revered performers of her generation. She began appearing as a photographic model as a child, and after her stage career began she became a popular pin-up postcard model for British troops during World War I. Her first film appearance was in the silent feature “The Eleventh Commandment” in 1913, but she continued acting on stage, earning notice for work in plays such as Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” in 1938 at the Open Air Theatre. Her first important film role was in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rebecca,” and she had a supporting role in Alexander Korda’s classic romance “That Hamilton Woman.” One of her most famous roles came in 1942 when she played the mother of Bette Davis’s character in the psychological drama “Now, Voyager”; both she and Davis earned Oscar nominations for their roles. Cooper remained a busy actress throughout the rest of the ’40s and ’50s and earned another Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her work in the historical drama “The Song of Bernadette.” When the golden age of TV began, Cooper found steady work in classic dramatic shows like “Playhouse 90” and “Twilight Zone,” appearing in three episodes of Rod Serling’s sci-fi classic. Nearing the end of her career she had a starring role in the con-men sitcom “The Rogues” with co-star Charles Boyer, and played Mrs. Higgins in the film musical “My Fair Lady” earning plaudits–and awards–for both roles.
Maggie McNamara seemed destined for major stardom in the early 1950’s. However her career soon petered out with just an occassional role therafter. She was born in New York City in 1928. She replaced Barbara Bel Geddes on Bradway in “The Moon Is Blue” in 1951. She played the same part on film with David Niven. Her performance earned her an Academy Award nomination. She was one of the leads in the very popular 20th Century Fox movie “Three Coins in the Fountain” and appeared opposite Richard Burton in “Prince of Players”. She did not make another film until 1963 when her old mentor Otto Preminger cast her as Tom Tryon’s sister in “The Cardinal”. She then retired from acting. Maggie McNamara died in 1978. Link to article on Maggie McNamara here.
Article on Maggie McNamara and “The Moon Is Blue”by ‘Fritz and the Oscars”:
An Oscar nomination never will be and never has been a guarantee for a long and successful career as an actor. A lot of actors and actresses disappeared from the public eye after their nomination but there are surely not a lot of Oscar-nominated performers that seem as obscure as Maggie McNamara. Few names in this category provoke such an universal reaction of ‘Who is that?` like hers, except maybe the nominees in the 20s and early 30s. A lot of times, these unknown performers can surprise with a wonderful performance and make me want to know more about them. But to be honest, Maggie McNamara isn’t among them. Her performance in The Moon is Blue came and go and she disappeared from my memory rather quickly and I only checked out her name again on the internet to find some information about her for this review.
There I learned that Maggie McNamara followed her Oscar-nominated debut with a performance in the Best-Picture-nomineeThree Coins in the Fountain but after that, things seemed to fall out of place for her. She only acted in a few more films until she became a typist in New York and then committed suicide in 1978, following a history of mental illness. It’s a tragic end to a performer who might have had a great career but we will never know what went wrong. One thing that must might worked against her was maybe the fact that Maggie McNamara began her career in the same year another actress appeared who was even better suited for the kind of roles Maggie McNamara could have played. Just looking at a picture of her, one can’t help but compare her to Audrey Hepburn – the same delicacy, the same sweet appearance but Maggie McNamara didn’t have the same charming aura and charisma and so she probably must have considered herself lucky to even have been cast in The Moon is Blue. One year later, this part would probably have naturally been offered to Audrey Hepburn.
Well, there is no sense in speculating about the possibilities of a career that never was – so what about this Oscar-nominated debut? I didn’t know what to expect of The Moon is Blue before I watched it, I only heard that it was ‘daring’ and had problems with censors in 1953. So, I didn’t know what would be offered to me but somehow I certainly didn’t expect a plot about a young actress who meets an architect, played by William Holden who must have been a sort of lucky charm for actresses in the 50s when it came to Oscar nominations, on the top of the Empire State Building and then follows him to his apartment where she is courted by both him and the father of his ex-fiancé, played by David Niven. It all sounds rather risky and could have been an amusing comedy of manners, but The Moon is Blue is a movie that seems to think of itself as the height of sophistication and wordplay but unfortunately, it all comes together as an incredibly lifeless, dull and sometimes even unpleasant experience. Like a lot of Neil-Simon-plays, The Moon is Blue has everyone talk in such an invariable mix of jibes, jokes, supposedly clever observations or statements but it unfortunately never develops and constantly circles around the same topic – two men who want nothing more than to bed a girl they just met while she keeps up her proper façade and protects her virginity with the most serious dedication.In the role of the younger suitor, William Holden gives a performance her could do in his sleep while David Niven, who received a Golden Globe, adds some charm and style to the proceedings but the film solely depends on the central performance by Maggie McNamara. And she does succeed in bringing an unique approach to this part but what seems like a breath of fresh air begins to resemble never-ending repetition much too soon. In her first scenes, Maggie McNamara is able to create a certain fascination around her character. She possesses some of the sweetness and naivety that Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron showed that year but at the same time her Patti is obviously more aware of the world – and sex. Maggie McNamara has the thankless job of playing a character who seems perfectly innocent and inexperienced while endlessly talking about sex and ‘virginity’. The trick is that Patti knows everything about sex but decided to wait for the right man. This certainly separates her from the other nominees of 1953 who were either very active in the sexual business or seemed like they never even heard of sex. So, Maggie McNamara’s Patti is a woman who knows what she wants and what she wants to keep but the script so many times bends her character and uses her to proclaim its own sense of failed wit and cleverness that her character basically remains more a scratch than a real woman. Patti says that she doesn’t want to be seduced but at the same time she sees no problem in flirting with two men at the same time, sitting on one’s lap and kissing him.
The movie’s and Maggie McNamara’s problem is that what sounds so modern and open is actually very old-fashioned and done in a way to reach the audience of 1953. Like most other nominees that year, Maggie McNamara has to play an underwritten character but is able to bring a lot more to the movie thanks to her own charm and personality. She plays Patti with an disarming openness and honesty. There seems to be no topic she doesn’t want to talk about but she plays all this with a combination of unique naivety and honest seriousness that very often leaves the other characters speechless, but always in a rather humorous and entertaining kind of way. She’s a woman who is constantly talking about what’s in her mind and who obviously takes everything very seriously but Maggie McNamara plays it all in a manner that is neither playful nor overly earnest – instead, she finds a wonderful combination of both extremes. When William Holden tells her that he can build a cathedral, she earnestly wonders what a cathedral costs these days – a small one. In the hands of Maggie McNamara, Patty sees herself as a very practical and logical woman who may seem rather old-fashioned in her ideas and believes but who is a very lively and lovely spirit. All the time, Maggie McNamara shows that Patti is well aware of what’s in the mind of this man, but she has her own way of handling things. She willingly walks in the cave of the lion but she will surely not allow the lion to eat her (if you forgive this comparison). Maggie McNamara also finds the right tone for her voice which contains an interesting freshness and a bubbly charm that helps her to preventThe Moon is Blue from becoming a complete disaster.
The main problem is that everything that is interesting and fascinating about Maggie McNamara and Patti O’Neill becomes old and uninteresting very soon. Maggie McNamara suffers from a screenplay that is constantly asking her to find new ways to shock or delight the audience but the combination of naivety and seriousness begins to feel very one-dimensional after one gets used to the character and one can’t help but wonder why William Holden and David Niven would continue to be so completely smitten by this strange woman whom they just met a few hours ago. Maggie McNamara plays Patti’s uniqueness in a way that becomes too monotonous too soon and one feels a certain relief when this chatterbox leaves the scenery for a while after having talked almost non-stop for 45 minutes.
Just like the character of Patti O’Neill is neither Princess Ann nor Eloise Kelly, Maggie McNamara possesses neither the sweet charm of Audrey Hepburn nor the sassy personality of Ava Gardener but she finds a balance between them that, as long as it lasts, feels surprisingly intriguing. She doesn’t have the staying power of the other nominees that year which isn’t the fault of Maggie McNamara but of the screenplay that doesn’t offer her one memorable moment or one truly note-worthy line but her performance is still something that is worthwhile in itself.
Maggie McNamara’s biggest success in The Moon is Blue is that she can make Patti a realistic character. Just like Leslie Caron inLili she has to play a woman who seems so unbelievable in everything she does and who, like Ava Gardener in Mogambo, has to say so many lines that could ruin the whole performance – but Maggie McNamara also found an approach to this part that helped to improve the character thanks to the personality and charm of the actress. The thing is that Maggie McNamara had a big disadvantage in her part compared to her other nominees – thatThe Moon is Blue has absolutely no idea what to do with its leading lady. As mentioned, she gets to speak the saucy lines but her character is shockingly underdeveloped – she is actually supposed to be an aspiring actress but there is absolutely no sense in this aspect since it is only mentioned once and neither the script nor Maggie McNamara ever remind the viewer of it again. And during The Moon is Blue, one also rather gets the feelings that she tries to become housewife of the year as she basically spends the whole movie either talking or doing housework in another man’s apartment.
It’s an overall very unsatisfying movie and leading character – Maggie McNamara tries her best but unfortunately both her performance and her part don’t develop and that way loses the interest of the viewer very soon. Still, Maggie McNamara leaves her own distinct mark on this part and even though Audrey Hepburn would seem like an obvious choice for a different actress in this part, it’s doubtful that she could have portrayed the combination of innocence and a much too-mature spirit in the same effective way. It’s a charming and interesting piece of work that unfortunately couldn’t really rise above the material but the lively presence of Maggie McNamara is still the only reason thatThe Moon is Blue doesn’t fail completely. A promising debut to a career that sadly never happened.
Born on April 19, 1923 (some references list 1925), in Rochester, New York, actor Hugh O’Brian had the term “beefcake” written about him during his nascent film years in the early 1950s, but he chose to avoid the obvious typecast as he set up his career. He first attended school at New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, then Kemper Military School in Booneville, Missouri. Moving from place to place growing up, he managed to show off his athletic prowess quite early. By the time he graduated from high school, he had lettered in football, basketball, wrestling and track. Originally pursuing law, he dropped out of the University of Cincinnati in 1942 (age 19) and enlisted in the Marine Corps. Upon his discharge he ended up in Los Angeles. He died in September 2016 at the age of 91.
“Daily Telegraph” obituary:
Come Fly With Me, poster, US poster, Pamela Tiffin, Dolores Hart, Lois Nettleton, Hugh O’Brian, Karl Bohm, Karl Malden, 1963. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Hugh O’Brian, who has died aged 91, was one of the first American actors to achieve television celebrity in 1950s Britain as the marshal of Dodge City in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.
More than 200 black-and-white episodes of the series were shown on the fledgling ITV network between 1956 and 1962. Handsome and square-jawed, O’Brian landed the starring title role because he resembled the real Wyatt Earp (1848-1929) as a young lawman in late 19th-century Kansas and later in Tombstone, Arizona.
It was the first television western to be aimed specifically at adults. Series appealing to children such as The Cisco Kid and The Lone Ranger had been scheduled for late afternoon slots. Inspired by the legendary events of the real-life frontier marshal, Earp played in after-dinner prime time and transformed O’Brian into one of television’s first sex symbols.
His distinctive portrayal of what the show’s theme song described as the “brave, courageous and bold” frontier lawman was marked by a black frock coat, a gold brocade waistcoat, string tie and flat-brimmed black hat. Although by modern lights the action is ponderously slow, the series built steadily in the American television ratings, finally ranking as the nation’s fourth most popular programme.
In the course of the series, O’Brian’s Earp encountered such historical figures as John Wesley Hardin, the Thompson Brothers and Doc Holliday, as well as Earp’s brothers Virgil and Morgan. After six seasons, it concluded with an epic five-episode story in which Earp, with the help of his brothers and Doc Holliday, took on Old Man Clanton and the Ten Percent Gang in a final showdown at the OK Corral.
Of Irish, German and French descent, Hugh O’Brian was born Hugh Charles Krampe on April 19 1925 at Rochester, New York. The family moved several times during his childhood to keep pace with his father’s career as a sales executive, but eventually settled in Chicago, where Hugh attended Hirsch High School.
His degree course at the University of Cincinatti was interrupted by the war, and he served in the US Marines, becoming at 18 one of their youngest drill instructors on account of some earlier military training. On demobilisation he had planned to study Law at Yale, but changed his mind after acting with a small theatre group in Los Angeles, stepping in when a friend fell ill. He sold menswear and women’s lingerie, and worked as a dustman, to pay his way through drama school.
Under the stage name Jaffer Gray, he took supporting roles while appearing at a theatre in Santa Barbara, California, but by the time he landed his first film part in 1950 had changed his name to Hugh O’Brian, an accidental mis-spelling of his mother’s maiden name O’Brien. His debut as a polio victim in Never Fear (1950) led to a contract with Universal, for whom he appeared in 18 pictures, including Seminole (1953) and Saskatchewan (1954). When the ABC television network was looking for a star for The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp in 1955, the story consultant Stuart Lake (whose controversial 1931 biography of Earp had inspired the series) recommended O’Brian because of his resemblance to the real-life character.
During the series, O’Brian became adept with Earp’s trademark “Buntline Special” pistols with extended barrels and shoulder stock, which allowed him to fire accurately over long distances. Some experts now think these weapons were a fabrication by the journalist Ned Buntline rather than authenticated historical fact. O’Brian played the last character that his old friend John Wayne ever killed on the screen in Wayne’s final film The Shootist (1976), considering it a great honour, before recreating his Wyatt Earp role for television in Guns of Paradise (1990), The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991) and the independent film Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone (1994).
Away from the cameras, he dedicated much of his time to Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY), a non-profit youth leadership development programme that enrols 10,000 second-year high school students every year. O’Brian had been inspired in this endeavour in 1958 when he spent nine days visiting the missionary Dr Albert Schweitzer in Africa. Since its inception, more than 355,000 young people in 20 countries have taken part.
He married for the first time in 2006, when he was 81. He and his wife, the former Virginia Barber, his long-standing girlfriend, were serenaded by their close friend, the actress Debbie Reynolds.
Hugh joined a little theater group and a Santa Barbara stock company where he developed his acting chops and slowly built up his résumé. He was discovered for TV by director/actress Ida Lupino which opened the door to his signing with Universal Studios for films. Hugh’s gentlemanly ruggedness, similar to a James Garner or a Gene Barry, was ideal for pictures, and his lean physique and exceptionally photographic mug had the modest, brown-eyed, curly-haired looker plastered all over the movie magazines. He rebelled against the image for the most part and, as a result, his years with Universal were not as fruitful as they could have been. For the duration, he was pretty much confined as a secondary player to standard action pictures such as Red Ball Express(1952), Son of Ali Baba (1952) and Seminole (1953). It was Rock Hudson who earned all of the Universal glamour guy roles and the out-and-out stardom that could easily have been Hugh’s.
In 1954, he left Universal to freelance but did not fare any better until offered the starring role in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955) on TV, a year later. It became a mainstay hit and Hugh an “overnight” star. During his six-year run on the western classic, he managed to show off his singing talents on variety shows and appeared on Broadway. The handsome bachelor remained a durable talent throughout the 60s and 70s with plentiful work on the summer stock stage and on TV, including the series Search(1972), but never got the one role to earn the critical attention he merited.
A sports enthusiast, his hobbies have included sailing, tennis, swimming and long-distance bicycling and his many philanthropic efforts have not gone unrecognized. His proudest achievement is the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership (HOBY), which he founded in 1958 after spending considerable time with Dr. Albert Schweitzer and his clinic in Africa. Struck by the impassioned work being done by Schweitzer, O’Brian set up his own program to help develop young people into future leaders. O’Brian has since been awarded honorary degrees by several prestigious institutions of higher learning. The perennial bachelor finally “settled down” and tied the knot at age 81 with long-time companion Virginia Barber who is close to three decades his junior. They live in his Benedict Canyon home. He is at this time working on an autobiography
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
TCM Overview:
A handsome action star of TV and the occasional feature film, Hugh O’Brian is best recalled for playing the title role in “The Life and Times of Wyatt Earp” (ABC, 1955-61), which was more a serialized drama than a standard Western. He later reprised the role in the 1991 NBC miniseries “Luck of the Draw: The Gambler Returns” and in “Wyatt Earp Returns to Tombstone” (CBS, 1994).
Educated at a military school, O’Brian was reportedly the youngest drill instructor in the history of the Marine Corps when he assumed those duties at age 18. After attending the University of Cincinnati and UCLA, O’Brian broke into films in 1950 in the song-and-dance feature “No Fear” and as a Western desperado in “The Return of Jesse James.” Usually cast in supporting roles, he continued in action films, like “Battle at Apache Pass” (1952) and “The Man From the Alamo” (1953). Voted the most promising male newcomer of 1953 by the Hollywood Foreign Press, O’Brian moved to more substantial roles like the lyricist who wins Mitzi Gaynor’s heart in “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (1954) and the antagonist of Native Americans in “White Feather” (1955). He turned to comedy, playing off his good looks (not unlike Rock Hudson), in “Come Fly With Me” (1963) as the object of a flight attendant’s glances on a transatlantic flight. O’Brian was a cowboy hired to create a ranch in Africa in “Africa – Texas Style!” (1967), and, more recently, had a supporting role in “Doing Time on Planet Earth” (1988).
The actor became a bona fide star, however, on the small screen. He began appearing in anthology series in the 50s like “Fireside Theatre” and “The Loretta Young Theatre” before landing his signature role as Earp. O’Brian later appeared on panel shows and in guest shots, returning to the series grind as a secret agent with a transmitter in his ear for constant contact with command central in “Search” (NBC, 1972-73). He continued to make the occasional guest appearance into the 90s on shows such as “Murder, She Wrote” and “L.A. Law.” The actor has also made several TV-movies, ranging from “Wild Women” (ABC, 1970) to the pilot for “Fantasy Island” (ABC, 1977). More recently, he played a member of the establishment in need of Marshall Dillon in “Gunsmoke: The Last Apache” (CBS, 1990).
After he found TV stardom, O’Brian also discovered the theater. He made his Broadway debut in the musical “Destry Rides Again” (1959) and appeared again on Broadway in “First Love” (1963). Equally at home in light comedy or musicals, he headed national tours of “Cactus Flower” (1967-68), “1776” (1972) and “Guys and Dolls” (1979).
Jordan Christopher (October 23, 1940 – January 21, 1996) was an American actor and singer. He was the lead singer of The Wild Ones, who recorded the original version of the rock classic “Wild Thing” after Christopher had left the band.
Born in Youngstown, Ohio, to Macedonian immigrants Eli and Dorothy Zankoff, he moved at an early age to Akron, where his father ran a downtown bar.
Christopher became interested in singing with the rise of rock & roll, spending much of his time at the music clubs in Akron’s black section. He formed a doo-wop group called the Fascinations, who released unsuccessful singles on several small labels in the early 1960s.
Christopher’s break came when he joined The Wild Ones, the house band at New York’s Peppermint Lounge, as singer and guitarist. After a residency at the Peppermint Lounge of eight months, The Wild Ones were hired to play at Arthur, the Manhattan discothèque operated by Sybil Williams, then recently divorced from Richard Burton. Within a month of meeting, Christopher and Williams – eleven years his senior – began dating and married in 1966. They had a daughter named Amy, and he had a daughter named Jodi from a previous marriage.
Thanks to the publicity Williams received as the ex-wife of Richard Burton, there was great interest in Arthur, and The Wild Ones were able to secure a recording contract with United Artists records, releasing an album, The Arthur Sound. However, Christopher left the band shortly after its release to develop an acting career. Producer Gerry Granahan later commissioned Brill Building songwriter Chip Taylor to write a song specifically for the band. “Wild Thing” – sung by the band’s new lead vocalist, Chuck Alden, not Christopher – was the result.[1]
Christopher continued to act intermittently, and he worked behind the scenes with his wife in her operation of the New Theatre on 54th Street in New York City and Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, New York .
Christopher died of a heart attack on January 21, 1996.
Edward Winter was a versatile American actor best remembered for his role as Colonel Flagg in TV’s long running “Mash”. He was born in 1937 in Ventura, California. He began his career on Broadway and starred in Cabaret” in 1967 and then later in “Promises, Promises”. His film’s include “Porky’s Two” and “From the Hip”. He died in 2001.
Obituary in “The New York Times”:
dward Winter, a character actor who worked in theater, films and television, died on March 8 in Los Angeles. He was 63 and had Parkinson’s disease.
Mr. Winter began his acting career in 1962 with the San Francisco Actors Workshop and then moved to New York, where he appeared in productions of ”Galileo,” ”Danton’s Death,” ”The Country Wife,” ”The Condemned of Altona” and ”The Caucasian Chalk Circle.”
He made his Broadway debut in the 1966 musical ”Cabaret” as Ernst, and was nominated for a Tony Award as best supporting actor.
Mr. Winter appeared on television as Colonel Flagg in the series ”M*A*S*H.” His film credits included ”A Change of Seasons,” ”The Buddy System” and ”Porky’s II.”
Shirley Temple is regarded as the most popular child actress ever on film. Her films during the Depression in the 1930’s provided light relief to a weary public. Maybe we need her again to-day. She was born in 1928 in Santa Monica, California. Among her best remembered films are “Heidi”, “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm”, “Little Miss Broaday” and “A Little Princess”. As she matured she film roles became more infrequent although she was very effective in “Since You Went Away” as one of the daughters of Claudette Colbert on the home front. Jennifer Jones was the other. She also starred in John ord’s “Fort Apache” with Henry Fonda. After retiring from film, she entered the world of politics and joined the Republican party. She served as U.S. Ambassador to Ghana from 1974 until 1976 and Ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1989 till 1992. She died in 2014.
Her obituary in “The Economist”:
THERE had to be a dark side to Shirley Temple’s life. Biographers and interviewers scrabbled around to find it. The adorable dancing, singing, curly-haired moppet, the world’s top-earning star from 1935 to 1938, surely shed tears once the cameras were off. Her little feet surely ached. Perhaps, like the heroine of “Curly Top”, she was marched upstairs to bed afterwards by some thin-lipped harridan, and the lights turned resolutely off.
Not a bit of it. She loved it all, both then and years later, when the cuteness had gone but the dimples remained. Hadn’t her mother pushed her into it? No, just encouraged her, and wrapped her round with affection, including fixing her 56 ringlets every night and gently making her repeat her next day’s lines until sleep crept up on her. Hadn’t she been punished cruelly while making her “Baby Burlesks”, when she was three? Well, she had been sent several times to the punishment box, which was dark and had only a block of ice to sit on. But that taught her discipline so that, by the age of four, she would “always hit the mark”—and, by the age of six, be able to match the great Bill “Bojangles” Robinson tap-for-tap down the grand staircase in “The Little Colonel”.
To some it seemed a stolen childhood, with eight feature films to her name in 1934, her breakthrough year, alone. Not to her, when Twentieth-Century Fox (born out of struggling Fox Studios that year on her glittering name alone) built her a little bungalow on the lot, with a rabbit pen and a swing in a tree. She had a bodyguard and a secretary, who by 1934 had to answer 4,000 fan-letters a week. But whenever she wanted to be a tomboy, she was. In the presidential garden at Hyde Park she hit Eleanor Roosevelt on the rump with her catapult, for which her father spanked her.
The studios were full of friends: Orson Welles, with whom she played croquet, Gary Cooper, who did colouring with her, and the kind camera crews. She loved the strong hands that passed her round like a mascot, and the soft laps on which she was plumped down (J. Edgar Hoover’s being the softest). The miniature costumes thrilled her, especially her sailor outfit in “Captain January”, in which she could sashay and jump even better; as did her miniature Oscar in 1935, the only one ever awarded to somebody so young. Grouchy Graham Greene mocked her as “a complete totsy”, but no one watching her five different expressions while eating a forkful of spinach in “Poor Little Rich Girl” doubted that she could act. She did pathos and fierce determination (jutting out that little chin!), just as well as she did smiles.
Her face was on the Wheaties box. It was also on the special Wheaties blue bowl and pitcher, greeting people at breakfast like a ray of morning sunshine. Advertisers adored her, from General Electric to Lux soap to Packard cars. After “Stand up and Cheer!” in 1934 dolls appeared wearing her polka-dot dress, and after “Bright Eyes” the music for “The Good Ship Lollipop” was on every piano, as well as everyone’s brains: “Where bon-bons play/ On the sunny beach of Peppermint Bay.”
Her parents did not tell her there was a Depression on. They mentioned only good things to her. Franklin Roosevelt declared more than once that “America’s Little Darling” made the country feel better, and that pleased her, because she loved to make people happy. She had no idea why they should be otherwise. Her films were all about the sweet waif bringing grown-ups back together, emptying misers’ pockets and melting frozen hearts. Like the dog star Rin Tin Tin, to whom she gaily compared herself, she was the bounding, unwitting antidote to the bleakness of the times.
A toss of curls
She was as vague about money as any child would, and should, be. Her earnings by 1935 were more than $1,000 (now $17,000) a week—from which she was allowed about $13 a month in pocket money—and by the end of her career had sailed past $3m (now $29m). But when she found out later that her father had taken bad financial advice, and that only $44,000 was left in the trusts, she did not blame him. She remembered the motto about spilt milk, and got on with her life.
Things appeared to dive sharply after 1939, when her teenage face—the darker, straighter hair, the troubled look—failed to be a box-office draw. She missed the lead in “The Wizard of Oz”, too. She shrugged it off; it meant she could go to a proper school for the first time, at Westlake, which was just as exciting as making movies. By 1950 she had stopped making films altogether; well, it was time. She couldn’t do innocence any more, and that was what the world still wanted. Her first husband was a drunk and a disaster, but the marriage brought her “something beautiful”, her daughter Susan. The second marriage, anyway, lasted 55 years. She lost a race for Congress in 1967: but when that door closed another opened, as an ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. Breast cancer was a low point, but she learned to cope with it, and helped others to cope. “I don’t like to do negatives,” she told Michael Parkinson. “There are always pluses to things.”
In the films, her sparkling eyes and chubby open arms included everyone; one toss of her shiny curls was an invitation to fun. Her trademark was, it turned out, that rare thing in the world, and rarer still in Hollywood: a genuine smile of delight.
Yvonne de Carlo was born in Vancouver in 1922. Her real name is the slightly less glamourous Peggy Middleton. She made many popular films in the 1940’s and 1950’s including “Criss Cross”, “Brute Force”, “The Ten Commandments” and “Band of Angels”. In 1964 she was in the hit TV series “The Munsters” as Lily Munster and won a whole new generation of fans. In 1971 she starred on Broadway in the iconic Sondheim show “Follies” along with Alexis Smith and Gene Nelson. She died in 2007.
Her obituary in “The Independent”:
n her first starring role, Yvonne De Carlo was billed as “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World”. In Hollywood biopics, her beauty inspired both Rimsky-Korsakov and Wagner. Although critics of her earlier assembly-line costume extravaganzas dubbed her “Yvonne the Terrible”, the reliable De Carlo worked steadily for the better part of five decades, appearing on the big screen opposite such icons as Bob Hope, Burt Lancaster, Clark Gable, John Wayne and Charlton Heston, on the small screen as the vampiresque Lily in The Munsters and on Broadway in Follies, singing “I’m Still Here”, Stephen Sondheim’s triumphant anthem of showbiz survival, that boasts the line, “Then you career from career to career.”
Who else could have played Lily Munster, Lola Montez, Calamity Jane, Scheherazade, Mary Magdalene and Moses’s wife Sephora?
She was born Margaret Yvonne Middleton in Vancouver, Canada in 1922. She began dancing at an early age and, after moving to the United States, worked as a dancer and movie extra, graduated to short subjects, and finally made her feature-film début at Columbia Picture in Harvard, Here I Come (1942), a low-comedy “B” picture, starring the boxer “Slapsy Maxie” Rosenbloom. Like the film, her role was small, but a contract with Paramount Pictures followed.
Between 1942 and 1944 she acted in no less than 19 films, making subliminal appearances in This Gun For Hire, Let’s Face it, So Proudly We Hail!, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Road to Morocco and a host of forgotten Paramount quickies.
Throughout the Second World War, the Queen of Universal Pictures was Maria Montez, whose ludicrous pieces of Technicolored high camp earned the studio a fortune. In 1945 De Carlo inherited the Montez mantle, beginning with Salome – Where She Danced (1945). She played an exotic dancer who, when knowledge of her espionage activities during the Franco-Prussian War came to light, fled to America. Soon she so dazzled the hard-bitten citizens of Drinkman’s Wells, Arizona, that they changed the name of their town to Salome, Where She Danced. The critic James Agee called the film “The funniest deadpan parody I have ever seen.”
She consolidated her stardom in Frontier Gal (1945), giving an assured comedy performance (in a role turned down by Montez) and singing three songs. Song of Scheherezade (1947) was the film involving dancer De Carlo’s romance with young Russian naval cadet Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (Jean-Pierre Aumont). This outrageous fantasy ended with her dancing the Scheherezade ballet, the music she had inspired, at the St Petersburg Opera House.
Despite strong performances in two Burt Lancaster films, the taut prison drama Brute Force (1947) and the heist thriller Criss Cross (1949), she was mostly cast in such formula westerns as Black Bart (1948, as Lola Montez), Calamity Jane and Sam Bass and The Gal Who Took the West (both 1949), and such formula easterns as The Desert Hawk (1950, as the actual Princess Scheherazade) and Slave Girl (1947), which was so disastrous the desperate studio added a talking camel and other farcical sequences and released it as a satire.
Harold Arlen and Leo Robin wrote the Oscar-nominated “For Every Man There’s a Woman” and other fine songs for Casbah (1948), a musical remake of Algiers, but De Carlo just had to look sensuous while Tony Martin, as Pepe LeMoko, sang them all. She did sing in Buccaneer’s Girl (1950), but this pirate yarn was a typical Universal all-action potboiler.
Away from Hollywood, she suddenly confounded her detractors with deft comedy performances in two well-received British films. In Hotel Sahara (1952), set during the Second World War, she and her fiancé (Peter Ustinov) ran a small North African inn which kept changing sides according to the nationality of its occupiers. In The Captain’s Paradise (1953), Alec Guinness, the blissfully contented skipper of a Tangier-to-Gibraltar ferry, had ideally contrasting wives in both ports: the fiery De Carlo in Tangier and the cosily domestic Celia Johnson on Gibraltar.
In Sea Devils (1953) De Carlo was a British spy during the Napoleonic wars. That same year she spied for the French in Fort Algiers, singing “I’ll Follow You”, for which she wrote the lyrics. She sang again as a sultry Caribbean café performer in Flame of the Islands (1956), and romanced Richard Wagner (Alan Badel) in the dismal Magic Fire (1956).
In 1957 the veteran Raoul Walsh, who had directed Sea Devils, gave De Carlo her meatiest screen role. Set before the Civil War and filmed largely on location in Louisiana, Band of Angels cast her as a well-reared southern belle who, when it’s revealed that her mother was a slave, is herself sold into slavery. She is bought by a rakish southern millionaire – Clark Gable, making an anticlimactic return to Gone with the Wind territory.
Perhaps because she had played Sephora in The Ten Commandments two years earlier, she was next cast as Mary Magdalene in the Italian film La Spada e la Croce (The Sword and the Cross, 1958). As an attractive widow working as John Wayne’s housekeeper, she aroused the jealousy of Wayne’s estranged wife (Maureen O’Hara) in McLintock! (1963), and in A Global Affair (1964) acted opposite the 61- year-old Bob Hope, severely miscast as the footloose young UN diplomat pursued by a bevy of beautiful women of various nationalities.
From 1964 to 1966 De Carlo lived in a dark, cobwebby mansion at 1313 Mockingbird Lane. As the 137-year-old Lily Munster, she slept in a coffin with, appropriately, a lily clutched to her chest. Her beloved husband Herman (Fred Gwynne), a bashful clone of Frankenstein’s monster, was Lily’s idea of male beauty; after meeting a handsome male in one of the 70 episodes, she commented, “He looks like Cary Grant – poor man!” The success of The Munsters spawned the feature film Munster, Go Home (1966) and the TV movie The Munsters’ Revenge (1981).
At the age of 49, De Carlo, along with her fellow Hollywood veterans Alexis Smith and Gene Nelson, appeared in Stephen Sondheim’s spectacular Broadway musical Follies (1971). The show was set in a crumbling, soon-to-be-razed New York theatre where various editions of the fictitious Weismann Follies had been presented. On its bare stage, Dimitri Weismann held a farewell reunion of some of the performers he had employed in his revues over the years. One of these artistes was Carlotta Champion (De Carlo), an ageing Hollywood star.
Impressed with her large vocal range, Sondheim wrote De Carlo a solo number, the wickedly witty “Can that Boy Fox-Trot” (“A false alarm, / A broken arm, / An imitation Hitler and with littler charm, / But oh, can that boy fox-trot!”). She sang it well and, during the show’s Boston try-out, Sondheim tried to build the number for her, but his efforts failed. “The problem with the one-joke song,” he later said, “is that as the song goes on and on, the joke becomes less funny.”
He solved his problem by sitting down with De Carlo and letting her tell him the story of her life. He then went to his hotel room and proceeded to write her a replacement number, the superb “I’m Still Here” (“First you’re another / Sloe-eyed vamp / Then someone’s mother / Then you’re camp . . .”).
Her Broadway success seemed to mean little to Hollywood, where De Carlo was offered nothing more interesting than TV movies (in one of which she played Zorro’s mother) and such minor films as Satan’s Cheerleaders (1977), Nocturna, Granddaughter of Dracula (1979), The Man with Bogart’s Face (1980), Guyana: cult of the damned (1980), Silent Scream (1980), American Gothic (1987) and Oscar (1991).
Another line in “I’m Still Here” was “I’m almost through my memoirs”. De Carlo’s autobiography, Yvonne, was published in 1987.
Dick Vosburgh
Her “Independent” obituary can also be accessed here.
Marin Sheen was born in 1940 in Dayton, Ohio. He first came to public attention in the brilliant “Badlands”. His other major film credits include “Da”, “Catholics”, “Gettysburg”, “Apocalypse Now” and “Wall Street”. He had a major success with the long running “The West Wing”. Marftin Sheen is a well-known and respected activist. He is the father of actors Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen. He is an Irish citizen.
TCM Overview:
One of the busiest, most conscientious actors who ever worked in Hollywood, Martin Sheen put together a Herculean body of work – though much of it forgettable – that contained enough highlights to consider him to be among the great actors of his generation. After establishing himself as a youth run amok, most notably in “Badlands” (1973), Sheen grew over the years into a patriarchal figure whose rectitude and social responsibility kept with his liberal Catholic activism. A proud family man who saw all four children enter the acting business, with sons Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen enjoying lucrative careers of their own, he was perhaps most noted for his performance in Francis Ford Coppola’s storied “Apocalypse Now” (1979), on which he suffered a near-fatal heart attack while seen onscreen in a drunken, unscripted meltdown the director incorporated into the finished product. But he subdued his rebellious ways with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, while putting his political activism to the fore with an enduring portrayal of an idealistic president on “The West Wing” (NBC, 1999-2006), which allowed him to put his two greatest passions – acting and activism – on full display. …
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
