Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 3 of 128

Gena Rowlands

Gena Rowlands was born in 1930 is an American actress, whose career in film, stage, and television has spanned over six decades. A four-time Emmy and two-time Golden Globe winner, she is known for her collaborations with her late actor-director husband John Cassavetes in ten films, including A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980), which earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also won the Silver Bear for Best Actress for Opening Night (1977). In November 2015, Rowlands received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of her unique screen performances.

Rowlands was born on June 19, 1930, in Madison, Wisconsin. Her mother, Mary Allen (Neal), was a housewife who later worked as an actress under the stage name Lady Rowlands.. Her father, Edwin Myrwyn Rowlands, was a banker and state legislator. He was a member of the Wisconsin Progressive Party, and was of Welsh descent. She had a brother, David Rowlands.

Her family moved to Washington, D.C., in 1939, when Edwin was appointed to a position in the United States Department of Agriculture; moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1942, when he was appointed as branch manager of the Office of Price Administration; and later moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota. From 1947–50, she attended the University of Wisconsin, where she was a popular student already renowned for her beauty. While in college, she was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma. She left for New York City to study drama at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

In the early 1950s, Rowlands performed with repertory theatre companies and at the Provincetown Playhouse. She made her Broadway debut in The Seven Year Itch and toured in a national production of the play. Rowlands costarred with Paul Stewart in the 26-episode syndicated TV series Top Secret (1954–55), and she guest starred on such anthology television series as Robert Montgomery Presents, Appointment with Adventure, Kraft Television Theatre, and Studio One (1955). In 1956, she starred in Middle of the Night opposite Edward G. Robinson. She appeared alongside her husband John Cassavetes on an episode (“Fly Baby, Fly”) of the 1959–60 NBC detective series Johnny Staccato. She also appeared on an episode of the NBC western series, Riverboat, starring Darren McGavin, and the ABC adventure series, The Islanders, set in the South Pacific. Also in 1959, Rowlands appeared in the Western series Laramie episode titled “Run to Tumavaca”. Rowlands made her film debut in The High Cost of Loving in 1958.

In 1961–62, she starred in David Miller’s “Lonely are the Brave”, with Kirk Douglas and Walter Mathau and Carroll O’Connor. She starred as Jerri Bondi, the wife of Paul Bondi, (Michael Kane) but still deeply caring for ex-lover, cowboy Jack Burns, (Kirk Douglas) in a fantastically moving performance. In that same season, she appeared on ABC‘s Target: The Corruptors!, starring Stephen McNally. She also guest starred in CBS‘s The Lloyd Bridges Show and ABC’s Breaking Point. In 1963, she guest-starred in an episode on the NBC western series, Bonanza, Laramie and The Virginian, and “The Lonely Hours”, “Murder Case” and “Ride The Nightmare” on CBS’s The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. In 1967, she was cast as socialite Adrienne Van Leyden in the prime time ABC soap opera Peyton Place.

Rowlands and Cassavetes made ten films together: A Child Is Waiting (1963), Faces (1968), Machine Gun McCain (1969), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), A Woman Under the Influence (1974; nomination for Academy Award for Best Actress), Two-Minute Warning (1976), Opening Night (1977), Gloria (1980; nomination for Academy Award for Best Actress), Tempest (1982), and Love Streams (1984).

According to Boston University film scholar Ray Carney, Rowlands sought to suppress an early version of Cassavetes’ first film, Shadows, that Carney says he rediscovered after decades of searching.[12] Rowlands also became involved in the screenings of Husbands and Love Streams, according to Carney. The UCLA Film and Television Archive mounted a restoration of Husbands, as it was pruned down (without Cassavetes’ consent, and in violation of his contract) by Columbia Pictures several months after its release, in an attempt to restore as much of the removed content as possible. At Rowlands’ request, UCLA created an alternative print with almost ten minutes of content edited out, as Rowlands felt that these scenes were in poor taste. The alternative print is the only one that has been made available for rental.

In 1985, Rowlands played the mother in the critically acclaimed made-for-TV movie An Early Frost. She won an Emmy for her portrayal of former First Lady of the United States Betty Ford in the 1987 made-for-TV movie The Betty Ford Story.

In 1988, Rowlands starred in Woody Allen‘s dramatic film Another Woman. She played Marion Post, a middle-aged professor who is prompted to a journey of self-discovery when she overhears the therapy sessions of another woman (Mia Farrow). The review in Time Out described the character’s trajectory: “Marion gets to thinking, and is appalled to realise that so many assumptions about her own life and marriage are largely unfounded: in her desire for a controlled existence, she has evaded the emotional truth about relationships with her best friend (Sandy Dennis), brother (Harris Yulin) and husband (Ian Holm).” Time Out praised the “marvellous” performances in the film, adding, “Rowlands’ perfectly pitched approach to a demanding role is particularly stunning.” Film4 called her performance “sublime”, while Roger Ebert noted that it marked a considerable change in tone from her work with Cassavetes, thus showing “how good an actress Rowlands has been all along.”

In 2002, Rowlands appeared in Mira Nair‘s HBO movie Hysterical Blindness, for which she won her third Emmy. She was later seen in The Notebook (2004), which was directed by her son Nick Cassavetes. The same year, she won her first Daytime Emmy for her role as Mrs. Evelyn Ritchie in The Incredible Mrs. Ritchie. In 2005, she appeared opposite Kate Hudson, Peter Sarsgaard, and John Hurt in the gothic thriller The Skeleton Key.

In 2003, she appeared as Mrs. Hellman in Numb3rs. She played a Nazi survivor whose whole family was killed. The family owned a painting that the Nazis confiscated. Later on the painting reappeared. The new owner lent the painting to an art gallery in Los Angeles but while on display it was stolen. The F.B.I. agent, played by Don Eppes, tries to figure out what really happened. Rowlands received rave reviews for this role. She has been a spokesperson for people who were persecuted by the Nazis so this role was a perfect match for her.

In 2007, she played a supporting role opposite Parker Posey and Melvil Poupaud in Broken English, an independent American feature written and directed by her daughter Zoe Cassavetes. In 2009, she appeared on an episode of Monk (“Mr. Monk and the Lady Next Door”). On March 2, 2010, she appeared on an episode of NCIS as lead character Leroy Jethro Gibbs‘s former mother-in-law, who is embroiled in a murder investigation.[citation needed] In 2014, she starred in the film adaptation of Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks.

Rowlands was married to John Cassavetes from April 9, 1954, until his death on February 3, 1989. They met at the American Academy at Carnegie Hall where they were both students. They had three children, all actor-directors: Nick, Alexandra, and Zoe. Rowlands married retired businessman Robert Forrest in 2012.

Rowlands has stated that she was a fan of actress Bette Davis while growing up. She played Davis’s daughter in Strangers.

Rowlands has been nominated for two Academy Awards, eight Primetime Emmy Awards, one Daytime Emmy Award, eight Golden Globe Awards, three Satellite Awards, and two SAG Awards. Some of her notable wins are a Silver Bear for Best Actress, three Primetime Emmy Awards and one Daytime Emmy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, two National Board of Review Awards, and two Satellite Awards.

In January 2015, Rowlands was presented with a lifetime achievement award by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.At the 2015 Governors Awards, she received an Honorary Academy Award. The press release described Rowland as “an original talent” whose “devotion to her craft has earned her worldwide recognition as an independent film icon”.

Guardian obituary in 2024

Gena Rowlands, who has died aged 94, was in the tradition of formidable performers such as Bette Davis and Joan Crawford yet, unlike them, she always remained an actor rather than a star. She was, said the critic Kent Jones, “finally a little too weird for superstardom”.

She did her most fearless work as part of an informal repertory company (also including Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara and Seymour Cassel) in a string of dense, demanding and highly charged films by her husband, the devoutly independent director John Cassavetes, who favoured rawness and improvisation but scorned compromise. The most comparatively gentle of their collaborations was Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), in which she and Cassel gave what the critic Roger Ebert called “performances so beautiful you can hardly believe it” as mismatched lovers.

Their characters were based loosely on Rowlands and Cassavetes themselves, right down to her penchant for wearing sunglasses at night and his dishevelled appearance.

In A Woman Under the Influence (1974), arguably the couple’s joint masterpiece, Rowlands combined scalding intensity with unflinching vulnerability as Mabel, a wife and mother whose mental health is fast degrading, opposite Falk as her uncomprehending husband. Jones described her performance as “an imaginative feat”, characterised by “her abstracted turns of the head and hands, her overemphatic emotional responses, her violent attempts to eradicate potentially threatening impulses”. It earned her the first of two Oscar nominations.

Opening Night (1977) was an extended, Bergman-esque character study of Myrtle, an actor contending simultaneously with the death of a fan, her own fears that she is over-the-hill, and a sudden loss of faith in her own talent. Now highly regarded, it was panned on its initial US release and played to near-empty cinemas, though Rowlands was rewarded for yet another blistering performance with the best actress prize at the Berlin film festival.

In Cassavetes’s most commercial film, Gloria (1980), she was dynamic as a gun-toting former showgirl protecting a young boy from the mob. The role only came her way after Barbra Streisand turned it down on the basis that it was “too maternal” and “not glamorous enough”. But it brought Rowlands a second Oscar nomination and catered perfectly to her knack for lacing tenderness with grit.

It was precisely that combination to which she responded in her screen idol, Marlene Dietrich. “Rowlands was fascinated with Dietrich’s blend of feminine sexual allure and almost masculine toughness and swagger,” wrote Cassavetes’s biographer, Ray Carney, who noted that she even “adopted a few of Dietrich’s gestures and mannerisms” after becoming obsessed with The Blue Angel while working as a cinema usher in 1950

She was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the daughter of Mary Ellen (nee Neal), an artist and actor, and Edwin Rowlands, a banker and politician, and was something of a sickly child. When her father was appointed, in 1939, to the US department of agriculture, the family moved to Washington DC; they later moved back to Wisconsin, then to Minnesota

Rowlands studied English at the University of Wisconsin, but her deep desire to become an actor led her to abandon her studies and depart for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, with her parents’ blessing. It was there that she met Cassavetes, whom she married in 1954. “It was a hard struggle to convince Gena,” he said. “We agree in taste on absolutely nothing.”

As Carney pointed out, he was “the fast-talking, street-smart city boy. Rowlands was socially smooth and refined; Cassavetes rough-hewn, impulsive, passionate and driven. She cared what people thought; he didn’t. She was cool, poised, charming; he was half-crazy, hot-blooded and Mediterranean. Sparks flew.”

She began her career in repertory and summer stock and was spotted in a production at Provincetown Playhouse, Cape Cod (where she also worked as a wardrobe mistress), which led to her being cast as the Mistress of Ceremonies in All About Love at the Versailles Nightclub theatre in New York in 1951. During a period of unemployment, she wrote storylines for the Crime Does Not Pay comic books (“I could tell you what any three-time loser got for assault and battery in any prison in the country”) before first appearing on Broadway as the understudy for the lead in The Seven Year Itch, later taking over the role and touring with it.

She appeared in Dangerous Corner off-Broadway in 1953 and, two years later, was in The Great Gatsby, part of the Robert Montgomery Presents series, on television. After starring opposite Edward G Robinson in Middle of the Night on Broadway in 1956, she signed to MGM and appeared with José Ferrer in her first film, The High Cost of Loving (1958) – although sadly she was not noticed, since it flopped badly (“I think maybe 50 people saw it,” she said).

She insisted that “I wasn’t planning to go into pictures at all,” yet film and television were to take over her career. She played a small, albeit leading, role opposite Kirk Douglas in the fine Lonely Are the Brave (1962), which remained one of her favourites, and was then directed by Cassavetes in A Child Is Waiting (1963). She had made a brief appearance in her husband’s debut, Shadows (1958), an independent production that broke all the rules of film-making

It was made for a tiny budget with a borrowed camera, with no prospect of being widely shown, yet became a critical and commercial success. Faces (1968), in which Rowlands played a sex worker, equally took the world by storm.

Her performances for Cassavetes are glorious and Rowlands probably never exceeded their power. He directed her in his penultimate film, Love Streams (1984), which reunited her and Cassel, Minnie and Moskovitz themselves, this time as a former couple, now divorced and disillusioned.

The central relationship, though, is between her and Cassavetes, who plays her brother. “Cassavetes and Rowlands, sharing the screen for the last time, edge their performances into tragicomic slapstick,” wrote the critic Dennis Lim. As Jones put it: “Theirs would be one of the cinema’s greatest and most complex on-screen love affairs, if not for the simple fact that it plumbs so much deeper than mere infatuation.”

Their final collaboration came in 1987, two years before Cassavetes’s death from cirrhosis of the liver, when he directed Rowlands and Carol Kane in his play A Woman of Mystery at the Court theatre in Los Angeles. In an otherwise unimpressed review, the LA Times singled out Rowlands, who played a woman going up in the world, as “a strong presence … the feeling is that of a valiant woman who will keep going until she comes to a better place”.

Rowlands made a wealth of other work. She played the mother trying to do right by her children in Paul Schrader’s underrated Light of Day (1987) and the lead in Woody Allen’s Another Woman (1988), which took her away from the more physically extroverted Cassavetes roles. In Allen’s film, in which she portrayed a character who has consistently repressed her emotions, her lovely, shoulder-length blond hair was tied back and darkened. Unfairly, the film was a critical failure and Rowlands’s extraordinary performance was rather overlooked in favour of Gene Hackman’s brief appearances.

Her co-star in Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth (1991), Winona Ryder, said that the way Rowlands lit a cigarette was the best argument for smoking that she had ever seen. Rowlands was cast as an ageing smalltime cabaret singer in Terence Davies’s The Neon Bible (1995). She insisted that “I can’t sing, I can’t hit all the notes”, but for Davies that was what made her so moving.

She was directed by her son Nick in Unhook the Stars (1996), co-starring Gérard Depardieu, and also took parts in Nick’s later films She’s So Lovely (1997), which had a screenplay by John Cassavetes, the weepie The Notebook(2004) and the unconventional Yellow (2012).

In 2006, she wrote the screenplay for and appeared in a segment, directed by Depardieu and Frédéric Auburtin, of the omnibus film Paris, Je T’Aime. The story of a couple who meet for drinks the night before they sign their divorce papers, it co-starred Gazzara. In 2007 she had a supporting role in Broken English, written and directed by her daughter Zoe, and in 2008 provided a voice for the animated film Persepolis.

Olive (2011), in which Rowlands played Tess, was the first full-length film shot entirely on a smartphone. In 2014, she and Frank Langella played a couple facing biological weapons attack in Parts Per Billion; and she and Cheyenne Jackson were a teacher and pupil forming a friendship through dance in Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks.

Throughout her career, Rowlands consistently took roles on television, including in live productions of the 1950s. She appeared in series such as Laramie (1959), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1960), 87th Precinct (1961-62), The Virginian (1963), Bonanza (1963), Dr Kildare (1964) and then Peyton Place (1967-68), which she considered “really fun. They offered me a real ‘Joan Crawford’ bad lady … I came in and married old Mr Peyton and took all the money. I loved it and did it until my unfortunate demise of falling down the grand staircase.”

Rowlands observed: “You have to hand it to television – strangely enough it takes on much more dangerous subjects than movies.” Her TV films included An Early Frost (1985), in which she played the mother of an Aids victim. She won Emmys for her performances in The Betty Ford Story (1987), as the US first lady; Face of a Stranger (1991); Mira Nair’s Hysterical Blindness (2002), which reunited her with Gazzara; and The Incredible Mrs Ritchie (2003), a somewhat dull affair produced by her son to which she lent characteristic gravitas.

In 2009, she was seen in an episode of the TV series Monk, and in 2010 was in NCIS. Two years later she married Robert Forrest, a former businessman.

In 2015 she was awarded an honorary Oscar. Earlier this year, Nick announced that she had been suffering for some years from Alzheimer’s disease.

Rowlands is survived by her three children, Nick, Zoe and Alexandra.

Gena (Virginia Cathryn) Rowlands, actor, born 19 June 1930; died 14 August 2024

Carol White

Carol White was one of the gifted young actors who rose to prominence with the rise of British cinema in the 1960’s. She made a huge impact in the television programme “Cathy Come Home” directed by Ken Loach. She went on to work with Loach again in “Poor Cow” opposite Terence Stamp in 1968. The following year she went to Hollywood and made a tense triller “Dayy’s Gone A Hunting” but sadly her career tapered off significantly thereafter. She died in reduced circumstances in 1991 in Miami at the age of 48.

Her obituary from Bob Meade’s website:

CAROL WHITE, the actress who has died in Florida aged 49, was celebrated for her powerful performance in the title role of Cathy Come Home, Jeremy Sandford’s coruscating account of homelessness on BBC Television, which caused a national sensation in the 1960s. Cathy Come Home was not so much a television play as fierce propaganda. Sandford traced the painful downhill journey of a young couple who began their married life full of hope and gaiety and ended it, separated from their children, as casualties of the Welfare State. After an accident cut the husband’s earnings, the couple lived with unfriendly relations, were evicted from squalid tenements, were driven out of a caravan site and found refuge in a rat-ridden hostel. For all its overemphasis, the production showed with compassion the raw degradation of hostel life. In a tour-de-force of naturalistic acting the highly photogenic Carol White succeeded in making Cathy likeable and eventually extremely moving as the courage and optimism in her wasted away. The diminutive Miss White, a London scrap merchant’s daughter who had already made her mark in the television version of Nell Dunn’s Up the Juction (1965), consequently became something of a Sixties icon. She went on to bring warmth and a plausible innocence to the film Poor Cow, a raw and realistic picture of South London life which opened with a graphic scene of Miss White giving birth while reflecting on the shortcomings of her absent husband (“He’s a right bastard”).

Subsequently Miss White was rather miscast as a jolly virginal girl in Michael Winner’s all too forgettable I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name. However, she made a good impression — when she remembered to substitute a Gloucestershire accent for her native Cockney — as a comely country lass in Dulcima (1971) adapted from a story by H. E. Bates

Miss White showed promise of better things as an actress opposite Alan Bates, Dirk Bogarde and lan Holm in the film of Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer. Her performance as Raisl Bok won her a Hollywood contract in 1968 to make Daddy’s Gone-A-Hunting.

But from then on nothing seemed to go right, and the rest of her career was distinctly chequered. Miss White’s attempts to establish herself in America were dogged by ill fortune. Her name — forever bracketed with her role of Cathy — became more familiar in the press in connection with her amours, divorces, court appearances, drink and drugs than with her acting. “I came to America thinking I was at the very top,” she recalled shortly before her death from liver failure, “and that no one could touch me. But pimps, pushers, liars and ex-husbands brought me crashing down.”-• In 1982 she returned to London to take over the role of Josie from Georgina Hale, in Nell Dunn’s play Steaming, but her comeback ended unhappily when her contract was terminated following several missed performances.

Carol White was born in Hammersmith, London, on April 1 1942. She described her father as “a scrap-metal merchant and a spieler in a fairground and a door-to-door salesman of the elixir of life”. At the age of 11 Carol heard about theatre schools from a hairdresser and thereafter attended the Corona. Miss White made her film debut three years later in Circus Friends and went on to appear in Carry On Teacher, Beat Girl and Never Let Go, in which she played Peter Sellers’s girlfriend. “In those days in British films,” she recalled, “brunettes were ladies and blondes were bits. I wore my hair white and painted my lips red and my eyes dark.” She then married Michael King of the King Brothers singing act and gave up acting for a few years. She returned, this time on the smaller screen in Emergency — Ward 10 and, more notably, as a bright Battersea girl in Nell Dunn’s exhilarating sketch of South London life, Up the Junction. Miss White’s later films for the cinema — not a distinguished collection — included The Man Who Had Power Over Women, Something Big, Made, Some Call It Loving, The Squeeze, The Spaceman and King Arthur and Nutcracker.

She wrote a racy volume of memoirs, Carol Comes Home (1982), in which the Swinging Sixties of purple hearts and Courreges boots gave way to the excesses of Hollywood (“the assault course of a hundred different bedrooms . . . with broken hearts and broken promises left at every corner”), as well as a beauty book, Forever Young. After her divorce from King she married Dr Stuart Lerner, a psychiatrist, and then Michael Arnold, a musician. She had two sons from her first marriage. Jeremy Sandfbrd writes: In her early films Carol captured powerfully the quality of the urban girl-next-door from the less prosperous areas. And in Cathy Come Home she seemed the archetypal young mother, every mother who has ever struggled not to be separated from her children. I last saw her some 10 years ago when she had come over to London and asked me to help her write her autobiography. She had devastating tales to tell about double-dealing Hollywood psychiatrists. Unknown to her, she told me, hers had been paid double her fee by an ex-boyfriend, to “muck her up”. She told me she had come home for good to live the simple life back in Hammersmith, and I never dreamed she would go back to America. She later wrote the book with help from another writer and I have regretted since that it wasn’t me. It seems the classic tale of the pretty but unsophisticated girl who goes to Hollywood. There is no simple moral, though, because Carol, besides being pure and straight, was always reckless, always something of a life gambler.

September 20 1991

The above obituary can also be accessed online here.

Article from Tina Aumont’s Eyes:

Known as the ‘Battersea Bardot’, Carol White used her working class background to enable her to give several natural performances in British dramas, which sometimes mirrored her own turbulent life. Unfortunately, a later problem with alcohol and drug abuse would harm her career, and ultimately end her life.

Born Carole Joan White in Hammersmith, London, on April 1st 1943, Carol studied drama at the Corona Stage Academy. This led to early minor appearances in many of the UK’s best known products at the time. There were ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ parts in ‘Doctor at Sea’(1956), ‘Blue Murder at St. Trinian’s’(1957), ‘Carry on Teacher’, and ‘The 39 Steps’( both 1959). After another dozen or so bits in mainly sexy background roles, Carol’s breakthrough came in Ken Loach’s 1966 social drama ‘Cathy Come Home’, a ground-breaking production, shot as part of ‘The Wednesday Play’ television series. White’s performance was so realistic that for many years afterwards, Carol would quite often be stopped in the streets by people believing her to be Cathy, and offer her money to help her out.

Following ‘Cathy Come Home’, Ken Loach cast Carol as Joy in what would become White’s signature film, the mostly improvised ‘Poor Cow’ (1967). Carol was superb once again as a struggling young mother, married to an abusive criminal (John Bindon). Carol’s final scene where her character gives an interview to camera is astonishingly real and powerful, leaving the viewer with a slight hope of optimism for the much put-upon Joy. The success of ‘Poor Cow’ had everybody knocking on White’s door, with Frank Sinatra and Warren Beatty just two of Carol’s famous new fans.

Travelling to America, White’s Hollywood career got off to an interesting start. Taking the lead role in Mark Robson’s stalker flick ‘Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting’ (1969), the film has gained a cult reputation over the years. A pretty good thriller, it tells the exciting story of a woman who is menaced by the man whose baby she once aborted.

Favourite Movie: The Squeeze
Favourite Performance: Poor Cow

Tony Curtis

Tony Curtis was born 1925 in New York City. He was one of the giants of Hollywood cinema during the 1950’s and early 1960’s. He was under contract to Universal Studios alongside Rock Hudson and Clint Eastwood. Eastwood took a lot longer to break through into film than Curtis and Hudson. Among Tony Curtis’s many fine films are “Some Like it Hot”, “The Great Race”, “Houdini”, The Vikings”, “The Defiant Ones” and “Taras Bulba”, Tony Curtis died in 2010.

His “Guardian” obituary by Brian Baxter:
Born into a family of Hungarian Jews who had emigrated to the US, Bernard Schwartz – the boy who became the actor Tony Curtis – could scarcely have dreamed of the wealth, fame and rollercoaster life that awaited him. Curtis, who has died aged 85, starred in several of the best films of the 1950s, including Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Defiant Ones (1958) and Some Like It Hot (1959). He enjoyed a long career thanks to his toughness and resilience (despite insecurities that demanded years of therapy).

He grew up in the Bronx, New York, the eldest of three sons. As a child, he was ill-treated by his mother, Helen, and spent time in an orphanage. One of his brothers, Robert, was a schizophrenic and the other, Julius, was killed in a traffic accident when Tony was 12. At school he became a member of a gang involved in petty crime, but he escaped into the Scouts. He endured poverty and the Depression and, in 1943, joined the US navy, serving as a signalman in the second world war.
He emerged, aged 20, into a world of opportunities – the first being postwar government funding for GIs to train for a career. He decided on acting (his father, Emanuel, had been an actor before becoming a tailor) and entered the Dramatic Workshop in New York. He took the lead in a Greenwich Village revival of Golden Boy, written by Clifford Odets, and was spotted by a studio talent scout and offered a contract by Universal. He first chose Anthony Adverse as his professional name, inspired by the eponymous hero of a novel by Hervey Allen. A casting director persuaded him otherwise, so he kept “Anthony” and added “Curtis”, anglicising a common Hungarian surname.

Like the far grander MGM, or the Rank Organisation’s “charm school” in the UK, Universal had a policy of training promising talent. The prerequisites were good looks and ambition. Curtis had both in abundance. He made his uncredited film debut in Robert Siodmak’s Criss Cross (1949), as a gigolo who dances with Yvonne de Carlo, watched by the male lead, Burt Lancaster, who later played a significant part in Curtis’s career.%

After this 30-second screen exposure, he notched up 10 appearances in two years, including the westerns Sierra and Winchester 73 (both 1950). He later said that the performances were “guided by testosterone, not talent”. He and the other Universal proteges, including Rock Hudson, were trained in acting, fencing, riding and dancing. By 1951 he was considered ready for the lead in a swashbuckler, The Prince Who Was a Thief, and was married to the starlet Janet Leigh, who later appeared alongside him in films including The Vikings (1958).

Curtis went on to star in a slew of second-grade movies, such as Son of Ali Baba (1952) and Houdini (1953). His big break into A-features came when Lancaster chose him as his co-star in Trapeze (1956). They made a convincing pair of high flyers, and the glossy movie, directed by Carol Reed, was an international hit.

After playing the lead in Blake Edwards’s Mister Cory (1957), Curtis joined Lancaster again in Sweet Smell of Success, produced by Lancaster’s company. A superb screenplay, co-written by Odets, was the launchpad for Alexander Mackendrick’s vividly achieved portrait of obsession and betrayal. Lancaster played the reptilian, all-powerful, New York columnist besotted with his sister. Curtis was Sidney Falco, an unprincipled press agent in thrall to (and fear of) the man who could make him king of the jungle, and willing to sell his pride and soul for the title. It gave Curtis the reviews and credibility for which he had yearned.

Routine movies followed until The Defiant Ones gave him his first and only Oscar nomination, for best actor. This modestly liberal story – an archetypal Stanley Kramer film – proved important for Curtis, who insisted that his black co-star Sidney Poitier share top billing. It was significant as a commercially successful film, making a plea for racial tolerance, directed and acted with force and integrity. Although he did not get the Oscar (which went to David Niven for Separate Tables), Curtis was soon to receive a greater prize – the second great movie of his career, Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot.

After this movie, Curtis’s career declined in quality, if not quantity. Edwards capitalised on his two best roles and cast him opposite his hero Grant in the bright and funny Operation Petticoat (1959), where he played a jokey variation of Sidney Falco. The following year he was in heady if duller company in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, playing Antoninus, the handsome slave who flees from the overtures of his master, Laurence Olivier.

Appearing alongside Jack Lemmon and – less happily – a difficult Marilyn Monroe, Curtis enjoyed three sublime manifestations in the film. First, as one of two jazz musicians who flee from gangsters after witnessing the St Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago in 1929. Second, in drag as a member of the all-girl band which provides his camouflage. And last as a fake oil millionaire – out to seduce Marilyn – played as a wonderful homage to Cary Grant. “Marilyn was an enigma,” he later said. “She was very difficult to read. Marilyn and I were lovers in 1949, 1950, 1951 … It was an important relationship for me.”

He then made two films with the director Robert Mulligan – The Rat Race (1960) and The Great Impostor (1961) – and starred in The Outsider (1961) as Ira Hayes, the Native American hero of the battle of Iwo Jima during the second world war. As Curtis’s career progressed, his marriage to Leigh – who had sacrificed her work for him and their children, Jamie Lee and Kelly – began to disintegrate. They divorced in 1962, and the following year he married the actor Christine Kaufmann, with whom he had two daughters, Alexandra and Allegra. He had some success with Jerry Lewis in the comedy Boeing Boeing (1965) and rejoined Edwards on The Great Race (1965), parodying his charismatic persona with a cocky grin and effortless charm

He had less success with Mackendrick’s Don’t Make Waves (1967), a slow-burn comedy which suffered from studio interference. He then made a strenuous effort for critical acclaim with his role as the serial killer Albert DeSalvo in The Boston Strangler (1968), flashily directed with use of a split screen. More routine films, and a lucrative two-year stint in the television series The Persuaders (1971-72), kept him busy, as did his increased interest in his painting, art collecting and writing. He married the model Leslie Allen in 1968 (having divorced Kaufmann the year before) and dedicated his frantic, exhausting novel, Kid Andrew Cody and Julie Sparrow (1977), to her. He had two sons with Allen, Nicholas and Benjamin.

Occasional meaty parts continued to come his way, including the eponymous gangster in Lepke (1975) and the fading, impotent movie star in the lugubrious The Last Tycoon (1976). He returned to the stage in the 1979 Los Angeles run of Neil Simon’s play I Ought to Be in Pictures. His best work on television was in The Scarlett O’Hara War (1980), as the producer David O Selznick, and the series Vega$ (1978-81). But he had lost his comic lightness of touch and decent parts were rare, although he relished his role as the Senator in Nicolas Roeg’s Insignificance (1985). He was admitted to the Betty Ford clinic for treatment for his alcohol and drug abuse, and his other 80s credits, such as Lobster Man from Mars (1989), revealed his diminishing standing.

Curtis and Allen had divorced in 1982, and he married the lawyer Lisa Deutsch in 1993. They divorced the following year. Curtis talked of quitting show business to open an art gallery in Europe. There were also rumours of a return to the stage opposite Lemmon and of a second novel. In the event, he returned to big and small screens in a desire not to earn money but to keep working. His autobiography was published in 1993, and in the mid-90s he suffered personal trauma as he underwent heart surgery and his son Nicholas died of a heroin overdose.

He married Jill VandenBerg, more than 40 years his junior, in 1998, and said he had never been happier. Curtis relished being remembered for the Mackendrick movies above all, and for his quirky cameos (often uncredited) in numerous films – not least as the “voice” in Rosemary’s Baby (1968). But he remained bitter about the lack of official recognition for his best work, convinced that he lost out on an Oscar for The Defiant Ones because of his “pretty boy” image. On the occasions I met him at his London home in Chester Square, Belgravia, he was always interested in showing his work as an artist. His paintings have been exhibited in Europe and the US, at galleries including the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Curtis is survived by Jill, his daughters Jamie Lee, Kelly and Allegra (who all became actors), another daughter, Alexandra, and his son Benjamin.

• Tony Curtis (Bernard Schwartz), actor, born 3 June 1925; died 29 September

TAINA ELG (WIKIPEDIA)

Taina Elg is one of the few actresses who hail from Finland to star in Hollywood films. She was born in Helsinki in 1930. She trained originally as a ballet dancer. She joined the Sadler Welles Ballet company in London. She was noticed by an American film producer and offered a Hollywood contract. Her first U.S. film was “The Prodigal” with Edmund Purdom and Lana Turner in 1955. She made a number of other films for MGM including “Gaby” and “Diane”. She went on to star with Kay Kendall, Gene Kelly and Mitzi Gaynor in “Les Girls” amusical with songs by Cole Porter. She then went to Britain to film the remake of “The 39 Steps” with Kenneth More. Her film career waned somewhat during the early 1960’s and she acted more frequently on stage and on television. Her son is the famous jazz guitarist Raoul Bjorkenheim. Interview with Taina Elg on “Finland Center” website here.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

One of her country’s most celebrated performers, Finnish actress and dancer Taina Elg was born in 1931 in Impilahti, in Southeastern Finland (located near the Finnish/Russian border). Her home later became a target during the Finnish-Soviet wars between 1939 and 1944 and when it became part of the Soviet Union, the family was forced to leave.

At a very young age, she began her training in ballet and acting. When the family moved to Helsinki, Taina continued with her dance and acting training and eventually was invited to join the Finnish National Ballet. She appeared in a few homeland movies as early as age 10 and found a couple of obscure film roles as a teenager, one in which she danced.

Taina’s international reputation began to grow when she joined the famed Sadler’s Wells ballet dance company (The Royal Ballet) in London and then the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas, in Paris. A serious injury forced her to rethink her dancing career. Fortunately, she was discovered in London by American film producer Edwin H. Knopf and, on the heels of the spectacular Hollywood success fellow Scandinavian Anita Ekberg was having, MGM decided to sign Taina for a seven-year Hollywood contract.

She made her American debut for MGM with the secondary role of Elissa in the Lana Turner biblical costumer The Prodigal (1955). The following year MGM utilized her acting talents in their films Diane (1956), again starring Ms. Turner, and Gaby (1956) withLeslie Caron. For the afore-mentioned work she was honored with a Golden Globe award for female “foreign newcomer”.

Taina was subsequently handed her best all-around opportunity by MGM to display her sublime dancing, sexy figure and comedic acting skills when asked to portray Angèle Ducros in Cole Porter‘s musical Les Girls (1957) opposite Gene Kelly and alongside fellow dazzlers Mitzi Gaynor and Kay Kendall. Receiving her second consecutive Golden Globe (tying with Kendall) for “Best Actress” in a musical, Les Girls (1957) also won the Golden Globe for “Best Picture – Musical” and an Oscar for its costume design.

More films came her way with Imitation General (1958) starring Glenn Ford and Red Buttons; the remake of the classic The 39 Steps (1959) opposite Kenneth More; the African adventure Watusi (1959) with George Montgomery and David Farrar and the war story Mission of Danger (1960), which was actually culled from a few TV episodes. None, however, could match the quality of Les Girls (1957

Ms. Elg’s Hollywood film career went into a steep decline at this juncture and she began focusing on TV projects, foreign films and especially theatre roles. Appearing on stage in such 1960s productions as “Redhead,” “Silk Stockings,” “Irma La Douce,” “West Side Story,” “The Sound of Music” and “There’s a Girl in My Soup,” she finally made her Broadway debut with the musical “Look to the Lilies” in 1970, which was based on the Oscar-winning film Lilies of the Field (1963).

She never found a strong footing again in films and has appeared in less than a handful since. Other than the 1961 Italian spectacle Bondage Gladiator Sexy (1961), she showed up in the musclebound Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s vehicle Hercules in New York (1969),Liebestraum (1991), and the Barbra Streisand feature The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996).

Her love for the stage was obvious and she remained as colorful than ever gracing such musicals as Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music” (1973) in which she sang the haunting “Send in the Clowns.” She also returned to Broadway in later years with the musicals “Where’s Charley?”, for which she earned a Tony nomination, “Nine” and “Cabaret”. She appeared in the national tour of the musical “Titanic” in 1998-1999. On the non-musical stage she had strong roles in “Uncle Vanya,” “I Hate Hamlet” “O Pioneers!” and, more recently, “Requiem for William” and Memory of a Summer” (both 2003).

In 2004, the actress received a special honor from her native Finland, when she was knight by the Order of the Lion of Finland. She is a naturalized American citizen.

The jazz guitarist Raoul Björkenheim is Taina’s son from her first marriage (1953-1958) to Carl “Poku” Björkenheim. In 1985 she was married to Rocco Caporale, an Italian educator and professor of sociology. The couple lived in New York City until his death in 2008.

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

DAVID MCCALLUM. TCM OVERVIEW.

David McCallum was born in 1933 in Glasgow. He began his career in British films in the 1950’s usually as a skinny sullen juvenile deliquent.In the early 1960’s he went to Hollywood and very soon became enourmously in the television series “The Man from Uncle”. He has since gone on to have a very lenghty career on television in the United States. His films include “A Night to Remember”, “Robbery Under Arms” and “The Great Escape”. Interview with David McCallum here.

TCM Overview:

A thoughtful, intense presence on television in America and his native United Kingdom, David McCallum was a pop culture sensation in the mid-1960s as the suave spy, Illya Kuryakin, on “The Man from U.N.C.L.E” (CBS, 1965-68) and later as the avuncular Donald “Ducky” Mallard on “NCIS: Naval Criminal Service Investigation” (CBS, 2003). The Scottish-born McCallum worked his way up the ranks in British film and television before bursting onto the American scene with “U.N.C.L.E.” His cool charm and blonde good looks made him an immediate TV idol, but failed to translate into stardom after the show left the air. McCallum settled into a steady diet of TV appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, frequently essaying mellowed professorial types or pensive government figures, before scoring his late-inning smash with “NCIS.” The rare performer with two major hits to his credit, McCallum’s image and talent ensured his fame for generations of TV fans.

Born David Keith McCallum, Jr. in Glasgow, Scotland on Sept. 19, 1933, he was the son of David McCallum, Sr., the famed principal violinist for numerous orchestras in the United Kingdom, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and cellist Dorothy Dorman. Both parents encouraged McCallum and his brother Iain, who later became a novelist, to pursue their chosen fields; for McCallum, this was initially the oboe, which he studied at the Royal Academy of Music. But when a performance from Shakespeare’s “King John” at a local theater group yielded a positive response from its audience, he switched his focus to acting while keeping music as a secondary interest. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, he made his debut in a 1946 BBC Radio production of “Whom the Gods Love, Die Young.” Bit and supporting roles in British features and on television soon followed, often as troubled youth, as benefiting his brooding intensity. Among his more notable turns during his period was in 1958’s “Violent Playground,” where his psychotic gang member is spurred by poverty and rock and roll to take a classroom of school children hostage

McCallumâ’s American film debut came as the mother-fixated Carl von Schlosser in John Huston’s “Freud” (1962), with Montgomery Clift as the pioneering analyst. The following year, he played Royal Navy Officer Ashley-Pitt, who devised the method of dispersing the dirt from tunnels dug under a POW camp in “The Great Escape” (1963). His co-star in the film, Charles Bronson, later became entangled in a headline-grabbing relationship with McCallum’s wife, actress Jill Ireland. McCallum and Ireland eventually divorced in 1967, which allowed her to marry Bronson. An early American television appearance on “The Outer Limits” (CBS, 1963-65) became one of his most enduring, thanks to the eye-popping makeup applied to McCallum. His character, a bitter Welsh miner, agreed to take part in an evolutionary experiment, which turned him into a hyper-intelligent mutant with a massive domed cranium. The image was memorable enough to make McCallum a go-to for numerous science fiction efforts in the ensuing decades.

In 1964, McCallum was cast as Illya Kuryakin, a minor character on the spy series “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” Despite having only two lines, the producers saw that McCallum and star Robert Vaughn had considerable chemistry together, and boosted the character to co-star status. The move changed McCallum’s career forever. Kuryakin’s cool demeanor, physical proficiency with any weapon, and passion for art, music and science not to mention his wealth of blonde hair made him an immediate favorite among female viewers, whose fan mail to the actor was the most ever received in the history of MGM, which produced the show. For the series three years on the air, McCallum was at the apex of television stardom, and netted two Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe nod, as well as major roles in several films. He was the tormented Judas in George Stevens’s epic Biblical drama “The Greatest Story Ever Told” (1965), and took the lead in a number of minor features, including 1968’s “Sol Madrid” and “Mosquito Squadron” (1969), many of which traded on McCallum’s popularity in “U.N.C.L.E.” by casting him in action-oriented roles. During this period, McCallum also orchestrated and conducted a trio of lush, sonically adventurous records that put unique spins on some of the period’s more popular songs

In the 1970s, McCallum was a fixture on television in both America and England. In the States, he was a staple of science fiction and supernaturally-themed TV features, including “Hauser’s Memory” (NBC, 1970), as a scientist who injected himself with a dying colleagues brain fluid to preserve defense secrets from foreign agents, while “She Waits” (CBS, 1972) cast him as the husband to a possessed Patty Duke. He also briefly returned to series work with “The Invisible Man” (NBC, 1975-76) as a scientist who used his invisibility formula to aid a government agency against evildoers. His work in England hewed more towards dramatic fare: in “Colditz” (BBC, 1972-74), he was an aggressive RAF officer who put aside his anger towards the Nazis to help organize an escape from a notorious German war prison, while in “Sapphire & Steel” (ITV, 1979-1982), he and Joanna Lumley played extraterrestrial operatives who investigated strange incidents involving the time-space continuum. In 1983, he reunited with Robert Vaughn for “The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.” (CBS), which saw Illya retired from espionage to design womenâ¿¿s clothing in New York. The escape of a top enemy spy brings both U.N.C.L.E. men back into action, albeit with other, younger agents. The TV-movie was intended as the pilot for a new version of the series, but the show was never greenlit.

After logging time on countless, unmemorable series like “Team Knight Rider” (syndicated, 1997-98) and “The Education of Max Bickford” (CBS, 2001-02), McCallum found his next hit with “NCIS,” a police procedural drama about Navy investigators. McCallum played Chief Medical Examiner Donald “Ducky” Mallard, an eccentric but highly efficient investigator with a knack for psychological profiling. A close confidante to Mark Harmon’s Jethro Gibbs, he served as father confessor and paternal figure for the show’s offbeat cast of characters. The show’s slow-building popularity brought McCallum back to a television audience made up in part of the children of viewers who sent him fan letters back in the “U.N.C.L.E.” days, granting him a rare burst of second stardom

British film institute obituary in 2023

At one point in the 1960s, David McCallum, who has died at the age of 90, was the hottest British actor in Hollywood. Nicknamed ‘The Blond Beatle’, he had become a pop culture phenomenon for playing a Russian spy on an American TV show at the height of the Cold War. According to MGM, McCallum received more mail from female fans than any other actor in the studio’s history, including Clark Gable and Elvis Presley. Not bad for someone who only had two lines in the pilot.

Born in Glasgow on 19 September 1933, McCallum was the son of classical musicians who settled in Hampstead when his father became leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1936. He became so proficient on the oboe that he took classes at the Royal Academy of Music. However, the thrill of being applauded as Prince Arthur in an amateur production of King John convinced the eight year-old that his future lay in acting.

In 1946, McCallum secured his Equity card after making his radio debut in Whom the Gods Love, Die Young. Several juvenile roles followed at the BBC before McCallum became an assistant stage manager at Glyndebourne on leaving school. Following National Service with the Royal West African Frontier Force, he trained at RADA from 1949 to 1951, where Joan Collins was a classmate.

Repertory stints in Frinton-on-Sea and Oxford ensued before McCallum made his television bow in The Rose and the Ring (1953). More in hope than expectation, he sent photographs to the Rank Organisation and was cast by debuting director Clive Donner as a leather-jacketed James Dean wannabe in the crime drama The Secret Place (1957). Next, he hobbled on crutches as Stanley Baker’s younger brother in the gritty realist thriller Hell Drivers, and married co-star Jill Ireland shortly after the shoot. They were paired as lovers down under in Robbery Under Arms (both 1957) before headlining the seedy crime saga Jungle Street (1960) as a mugger and a stripper.

The Long and the Short and the Tall (1961)

Reuniting with Baker, McCallum impressed as another delinquent in Basil Dearden’s problem picture Violent Playground (1958). His Scouse accent was patchy, although as a gang leader he oozed surly charisma. But two parts as radio operators, in the Titanic drama A Night to Remember (1958) and war story The Long and the Short and the Tall (1961), signalled a shift towards more mature roles, and McCallum left to try his luck in Hollywood.

Although he had been cast as Judas Iscariot in the Biblical epic The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), delays meant that McCallum was already established by the time it was released. Having suffered from an Oedipus complex in John Huston’s Freud and shown sailor Terence Stamp kindness as a gunnery officer in Peter Ustinov’s Billy Budd (both 1962), McCallum guaranteed his place in cult movie folklore as Eric Ashley-Pitt, the POW who earns the nickname ‘Dispersal’ for devising an ingenious way of shifting tunnel soil in The Great Escape (1963).

Yet it was television that proved McCallum’s métier. He gave notice as a time-tweaking inventor and a mutating Welsh miner in two episodes of the sci-fi series The Outer Limits (1963/64). And it was as Illya Kuryakin in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964 to 1968) that he became a superstar. Having only been a minor character in the feature-length 1963 pilot Solo, the Russian with a blonde mop and a penchant for black turtlenecks became equal partners with Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn), as the agents of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement sought to confound the nefarious schemes of the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity, or THRUSH.

Although Kuryakin was intense, introverted and intellectual, McCallum played him with such cool charm and enigmatic wit over 105 episodes that he earned a Golden Globe and two Emmy nominations. He and Vaughn also made eight spin-off features, as well as The Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Fifteen Years Later Affair (1983), a teleplay that started with Kuryakin as a fashion designer.

A comeback series didn’t materialise, but McCallum had exploited his peak fame to record four instrumental albums with producer David Axelrod, one of which contained ‘The Edge’, which was sampled by Dr Dre and resurfaced in Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver (2017). His own excursions as an big-screen action man, Sol Madrid (1968) and Mosquito Squadron (1969), underwhelmed, however, and McCallum retreated back into television.

Following the neglected TV horror movies Hauser’s Memory (1970) and She Waits (1972), McCallum returned to Blighty to play a short-fused RAF officer in Colditz (1972 to 74), Jacobite warrior Alan Breck Stewart in an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped (1978), and an impassive extra-dimensional detective alongside Joanna Lumley in Sapphire & Steel (1979 to 1982). He would later team effectively with Diana Rigg in the miniseries Mother Love (1989) and steal scenes as a gambler in Howard’s Way follow-up show Trainer (1991 to 1992), during a period in which he trod the US guest star circuit following the short-lived sci-fi series The Invisible Man (1975 to 1976).

However, a cameo in the legal series JAG (2003) turned into a 20-year gig, as McCallum reached a new audience as medical examiner Dr Donald Mallard in spin-off show NCIS (2003-). Sporting a bow-tie and dispensing offbeat avuncular wisdom over 457 episodes, ‘Ducky’ so caught McCallum’s imagination that he studied pathology and attended so many autopsies in order to appear credible in the role that he became something of a forensics expert.

David McCallum, 19 September 1933 to 25 September 2023

Victoria Shaw

Victoria Shaw was a beautiful actress who graced U.S. films between the mid 1950’s and the mid 1960’s. She was born in 1935 in Sydney, Australia. She was starting a career as a model when Bob Hope suggested that she travel to Hollywood and attempt a movie career. Her first film was the big box office success “The Eddy DuchinStory” with Tyrone Power and Kim Novak. I think she stole the film from the nominal stars. She went on to make “Edge of Eternity”, “Because Their Young” and “I Aim at the Stars” and the cult “The Crimson Kimono” amongst others. She seemed to put her career on hold after her marriage to actor Roger Moore. After their divorce she returned to film making in “Alverez Kelly” with Richard Widmark and William Holden. She guest starred in many television series. She returned to live in Sydney where she died in 1988 at the age of 53. Her films are in definite need for reappraisal. “Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen” page on Victoria Shaw

TROY DONAHUE OBITUARY IN “THE GUARDIAN” IN 2001.

‘If Troy Donahue could become a movie star, then I could become a movie star,” sings a character in the Broadway musical, A Chorus Line. It is an affectionate put-down of the hunky, blond, blue-eyed teen idol, wildly popular during the era of generation-gap movies in the late 1950s and early 60s.

Donahue, who has died of a heart attack aged 65, shot to star status in A Summer Place (1959), in which he and Sandra Dee made love to the strains of the ubiquitous title-song on a Maine beach. For a short time, the film made him the top fan-mail recipient – mostly from adolescent girls – at Warner Bros studios. “They’d ask me to light a cigarette, and when I did, they screamed and fell down,” he recalled.

However, by the mid-1960s, he was all washed up, so that when producer Robert Evans was offered Marlon Brando for The Godfather (1972), he declared, “Sonny Tufts, Troy Donahue, Tab Hunter, Fabian – put them all together, Brando is colder.”

Troy Donahue was born in New York as Merle Johnson Jr. His father was head of the motion picture division of General Motors; his mother was an aspiring actress. He studied journalism at Columbia University, but acting took up most of his time. After appearing in local rep, his beachboy good looks got him a Hollywood contract and a new name, coined by Henry Willson, the agent who came up with the pseudonyms “Rock Hudson” and “Tab Hunter”.

“It was part of me 10 minutes after I got the name,” Donahue said years later. “It feels so natural. I jump when people call me by my old name. Even my mother and sister call me Troy now.” As an in-joke, he played a character called Merle Johnson in The Godfather Part II (1974).

As part of Universal’s stable of young talent, Donahue made his screen debut in Man Afraid (1957), as a teenage burglar who gets killed in the first few minutes of the movie. The studio then put him into five pictures in 1958, among them This Happy Feeling, in which he spent most of his small part willing a wounded seagull to fly, and Monster On The Campus, which saw him as a student terrified by a giant fish and by a professor turned neanderthal. In Douglas Sirk’s magnificent melodrama, Imitation Of Life (1959), he had the brief but significant role as Susan Kohner’s boyfriend.

But it was Warner Bros who saw Troy Donahue’s potential and cast him in four soap operas directed by Delmer Daves, beginning with A Summer Place. He then got the title role in Parrish (1961), playing a young Connecticut tobacco grower having trouble with three seductive girls (and with his lines).

There followed Susan Slade (1961), in which he was a shy horse-doctor who married Connie Stevens, despite the fact that she was pregnant by another man; and Rome Adventure (1962), in which Suzanne Pleshette opts for the American art student Troy over the Latin charms of Rossano Brazzi.

Troy Donahue and Pleshette married in 1964, though the union only lasted a year. None the less, the couple co-starred in Raoul Walsh’s western, A Distant Trumpet (1964), with Troy as an expressionless lieutenant defending a fort

Previously, he had appeared in two television series, Surfside 6 and Hawaiian Eye. His fleeting time in the limelight came to an end with My Blood Runs Cold (1965), in which he risked his good-guy image as an insane killer who believes he has been reincarnated and is in love with a girl from a past life. It ended his Warner Bros contract.

After a few years away from the screen, Donahue returned, with his clean-cut looks dirtied up, as a Charles Manson-like figure in Sweet Saviour (1971), a nasty exploitation movie. A scene of him knifing people during an orgy was an indication of how much things had changed in the film business.

After his brief moment as a weak Wasp intruder into the Mafia family of The Godfather II, he became addicted to drugs and alcohol, even spending a summer homeless in Central Park, New York. However, by the early 1980s he had sobered up. “I realised that I was going to die,” he explained. “Worse than that, I [thought I] might live the way I was I was living for the rest of my life

In 1989, John Waters gave the almost unrecognisable Donahue a cameo role in Cry-Baby (1989), thus paying tribute to one of the great teen idols of the 1950s, the era in which the film was set. In his latter years, he eked out a living giving acting classes to passengers on the Holland-America cruise line.

Donahue, who was married four times, and was living with the Chinese-born mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao when he died, is survived by a daughter and son

GEORGE NADER OBITUARY IN “THE GUARDIAN” IN 2002

George Nader was born in 1921 in Pasadena, California. He began his film career in 1950 and was under contract to Universal Studios. Among his films are “Carnival Story”, “Away All Boats” and “The Unguarded Moment”. In the mid-1970’s he suffered an eye injury which resulted in him withdrawing from acting and he turned to writing. His 1978 novel”Chrome” is particularly good. He died in 2001. His nephew is the actor Michael Nader.

Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:

Standing 6ft 1in and weighing 180lbs, the he-man film star George Nader, who has died aged 80, was a constant subject of beefcake photos in the 1950s, and frequently exposed his chest in the movies. He stayed in shape most of his life by lifting weights and swimming, and Universal Studios kept trying to bolster his masculine image by setting him up on dates with starlets

In the moral climate of the 1950s, gay stars like Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter and Anthony Perkins were terrified of being exposed, so they all had “beards”, women who provided them with an emblem of spurious virility. But Nader refused to play the game and, although he was not exactly out of the closet, he never married, was seldom seen alone dating a woman, and lived with his longtime companion Mark Miller, who survives him. The couple, who were close friends of Rock Hudson – and beneficiaries of his estate – would often visit restaurants with him.

Many years later, in 1978, Nader had no fears about publishing a homoerotic sci-fi novel called Chrome. The book, now in its sixth printing, tells of a young space cadet who falls in love with a beautiful male robot. In a world where “to love a robot is death”, the earth authorities tear the lovers apart, exiling one to space, the other to earth. Obviously a metaphor about the place of gay men in society, the story is well-written and holds together on its own merits.h

While writing the book, Nader must have found it difficult to forget his first starring role, in Robot Monster (1953), which has, at least, gained a camp reputation as one of the worst films ever made. In it, the poker-faced Nader is one of the last “hu-mans” in existence, battling against the dreaded Ro-man, a gorilla in a space helmet. Shot in four days in Hollywood, in 3-D and stereophonic sound for a paltry $16,000, it raked in more than $1m on its initial run, and got its leading man recognised

Nader, who had gained a BA in theatre arts, and studied acting at the Pasadena playhouse in his home town, had already taken small roles in half a dozen films, mostly B-features. However, a Universal contract in 1954 got him leads in bigger pictures, such as Six Bridges To Cross (1955), playing a kindly cop who takes an interest in criminal Tony Curtis; Lady Godiva (1955), as a Saxon nobleman married to Maureen O’Hara; and the second-rate musical, The Second Greatest Sex (1956), in which he is at the mercy of his bride Jeanne Crain, who organises a sex strike in a small western town to cure the menfolk of their violent tendencies.

Nader, who had won a 1955 Golden Globe award for most promising newcomer, went on to co-star as a navy lieutenant of tough integrity standing up to the unyielding captain Jeff Chandler in Away All Boats (1956), and was a reassuring masculine presence in The Unguarded Moment (1956), as a policeman helping a teacher (a non-swimming Esther Williams) cope with a psychopathic student.

In general, however, Universal, who considered Nader a sub-Rock Hudson, cast him in second features. Thus, after The Female Animal (1958), in which an ageing star (Hedy Lamarr, in her last film role) and her alcoholic daughter (a non-singing Jane Powell) fight over Nader as a movie bit-player, he decided to go freelance.

The move did not exactly enhance his reputation, as the films he appeared in were international hodgepodges, such as The Secret Mark Of D’Artagnan (1962), in which dashing Musketeer Nader attempts to stop an assassination attempt on Louis XIII; or low budget nonsense like The Human Duplicators (1965) and Beyond Atlantis (1973). Nevertheless, Nader achieved widespread fame in Germany, where he played tough FBI agent Jerry Cotton in eight highly successful but rubbishy crime thrillers of the 1960s.

He took to writing sci-fi novels in the mid-1970s, after sustaining an eye injury in a serious car accident. For years, he lived quietly with his partner in Palm Springs, making rare public appearances. Last year, he entered hospital with a life-threatening fever of unknown origin, but, according to his doctor, was “able to put up such a strong fight because of his lifelong devotion to healthy living and fitness”.

· George Nader, actor, born October 19 1921; died February 4 2002

Michel Ray

Michel Ray was born in 1944 in England to an English mother and a Brazilian father. He made his film debut in “The Divided Heart” in 1954. In 1956 he went to America to make “The Brave One” and “The Tin Star” amongst others. In 1962 he was featured in “Lawrence of Arabia”. He ceased acting in 1964 and became a stockbroker.

His IMDB entry:

He was born into a wealthy family having an English mother and a Brazilian father. He was educated in Switzerland where he learnt to ski. His parents were friends of producerMichael Balcon who was looking for a boy who could ski for his 1954 film The Divided Heart (1954). Young Michel fitted the part perfectly and started a film career which culminated in the role of Faraj in Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

This project took eighteen months and caused Michel to look at the affect film work was having on his education. He decided to quit acting. He subsequently attended Harvard where he read business studies. After university he joined White Weld & Co moving on to NM Rothschild and Credit Suisse First Boston. In his London city career in investment banking he made his first millions.

In 1995 he joined Nikko Securities and in 1998 became the first non-Japanese member of the main board. Meantime he had continued his passion for winter sports and was a member of the British Olympic ski team at the 1968 Winter games in Grenoble, France

He was in the team again in ’72 and ’76 competing on these occasions in the luge. He had also married a childhood friend Charlene, daughter of Alfred “Freddie” Heineken. Her mother was Lucille Cummins daughter of a Kentucky Bourbon maker.

Her father Freddie died in January 2002 and left his controlling interest, 50.05%, in the Heineken brewing empire to the couple. It is estimated at three billion pounds sterling or four point two billion dollars. Michel’s life story is more glamorous than many a Hollywood fiction.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Crombie

MailOnline” article on Michel Ray in 2012:

As a teenager, Michel de Carvalho was living every boy’s fantasy. While his friends sat in school, 17-year-old Michel was a movie star, with a coveted role in Sir David Lean’s epic, Lawrence Of Arabia.

Between breaks in filming, he caroused through the fleshpots of Beirut with Hollywood stars Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif, pursued by hordes of adoring females. The film won seven Oscars and would go down in cinema history. Michel, using the stage name Michel Ray, seemed destined for fame.

Many child actors would let the experience go to their heads and veer off the rails, eventually disappearing from view. But Buckinghamshire-born Michel has continued to thrive and enjoy life to the full.

Now aged 68, he is still living out a male fantasy – as a financier with a £5.5 billion fortune and limitless supplies of beer. He did it by deciding to abandon acting on the set of the classic film so that he could enrol at Harvard University.

He also went on to compete in two Winter Olympics as a skier and tobogganer. And he married the love of his life, Charlene Heineken, now 58, the daughter of the late brewery magnate Freddie Heineken. In 2002, the couple inherited the £4 billion controlling stake in the Heineken empire.

The shares have surged and with the recent acquisition of the Tiger beer brand the group’s value has increased by more than £1 billion.

Now chairman of Citi Private Bank’s business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Michel commutes between London, Washington and Holland. ‘I’ve always believed work hard, play hard,’ he says. ‘Life has never been boring – luckily.’

Approaching their 30th wedding anniversary, the couple undoubtedly lead an enviable life, but their lifestyle has never been ostentatious.

Their wealth eclipses that of Sir Philip Green and his wife Tina, as well as the Bransons and the Rausings, but the couple have never appeared in glossy photo spreads or hosted lavish public parties.’I partied in Beirut with the greatest actors of the age’

Instead, they concentrated on raising their five children in England, away from the glare of publicity. But later this month they may be tempted out for a rare appearance – to celebrate the re-release of the film that could so easily have launched Michel into a Hollywood career 50 years ago.

In the biopic of T. E. Lawrence, Michel played Farraj, one of the First World War hero’s two teenage followers. ‘They offered me the choice of the two roles – one dies in quicksand, the other is blown up,’ Michel recalls, speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday about his extraordinary life.

‘I said, ‘‘Which one lasts longer?’’ And they said the one that gets blown up by a detonator near the railway line. So I took that one, because it paid more.

‘Now whenever I tell anyone I was in Lawrence Of Arabia they say, “Oh, were you the one who went down in the quicksand?” And no one can ever remember the other one.’

Sands of time: As a child actor, Michel de Carvalho played the role of Arab boy Farraj opposite Peter O’Toole in the classic film Lawrence Of Arabia in 1962

In fact, Michel appears in one of the film’s most iconic scenes – as he and Lawrence stride into the officers’ mess in Cairo to announce the audacious capture of Aqaba. ‘We’re thirsty,’ Lawrence announces, dusty and dishevelled. ‘We want two large glasses of lemonade . . . there’s been a lot of killing, one way or another.’

During the 18-month shoot in 1961 and 1962 Michel became acquainted with some of the most talented actors of his age – as well as the countless women who pursued them. ‘The parties happened on rest and relaxation days in Beirut. Quite often I went with Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif – and that was super fun,’ he says.’At school I got so much fan mail’

Camel-riding proved more of a challenge. ‘In the beginning it wasn’t pleasant,’ Michel says. ‘You are sitting mostly side-saddle, with the hump coming up in the middle and you’re not really supposed to grip it. On one occasion I was on a camel which suddenly saw its stable – and it bolted for home, which was terrifying.

‘Years later, friends of mine had a 50th birthday party in Egypt. We went up and down the Nile. On one day they organised a camel race. Needless to say, I won.’

‘We couldn’t possibly discuss the fun in an elegant Sunday newspaper… they were the superstars and I was the bag carrier. But even superstars can only handle so much. And then the bag carrier…’

Looking back, Michel appears incredulous at his teenage decision to give up acting on the set of one of the greatest movies. ‘I said – using a huge swear word – ‘‘What am I doing here in the Arabian desert with all these funny people, superstars, Anthony Quinn, Peter O’Toole, Omar Sharif, Jack Hawkins and the rest?’’ Where are my friends? This is a weird life. And then, almost simultaneously I became self- conscious about acting. And I just couldn’t get over my self-consciousness. It was the worst decision I ever made.

Multi-talented: Michel de Carvalho was part of the British Olympic luge team. Here he is pictured at Heathrow Airport before a flight to Japan, where he took part in the Winter Olympics at Sapporo

‘I never usually talk about Lawrence Of Arabia, but I was discussing it with someone last night and they said it wasn’t the worst decision because where would I be today? Some ageing B actor, looking for TV adverts.

‘But I should have stretched out the acting career a bit – maybe until 30.’ Born to a Brazilian diplomat father and an English mother in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, in 1944, Michel fell into acting at the age of ten. His father had died when he was very young and his mother married again, to a wealthy leather merchant.

The family entertained many illustrious figures to dinner in their London home – one was the famous producer Sir Michael Balcon, who needed a young boy who could ski, to star in his film, The Divided Heart. Initially Michel’s mother, Annie, was opposed to the idea of her son appearing on screen. He recalls: ‘But Sir Michael said it was only three months and who knows what will happen – this door has opened, why would you close it?’

Michel was a hit and film offers flooded in. Using his two Christian names as a stage name, Michel Ray was the Daniel Radcliffe of his day – going on to great acclaim in films such as The Brave One and The Tin Star.

Between films, Michel attended a boarding school in Switzerland, honing a gift for languages and developing his passion for skiing.

Rich lives: Michel de Carvalho with his wife Charlene, the Heineken heiress

Aged 17, his star reached a peak with Lawrence Of Arabia. ‘I had massive attention at school,’ he says. ‘I got so much fan mail. I never get that any more – as a banker, you get hate mail.’

Five years after he walked away from acting, just as he was about to take up a graduate place at Harvard Business School, his life took another twist when he was offered the chance to become a member of the British ski team at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France.

‘It wasn’t so much for my skill as for my ability to pay the plane fare,’ says Michel modestly.

His mother was not keen on the idea. She had been relieved when he gave up acting and wanted him to get serious about making a living. ‘I wish I had kept the telegram she sent,’ he says. ‘Every second word was “bum”. It said, “From film bum to ski bum – if you make this totally stupid decision, you will be completely cut off.” So I made the completely stupid decision.’

He delayed taking up his place at Harvard to compete. ‘I told a huge porkie pie to Harvard – I can’t tell you what it was in case they take away my diploma.’

His mother need not have worried. He duly graduated from Harvard and embarked on a career in banking. But he had just begun his second job, at NM Rothschild, when he was asked to join the 1972 GB Olympic team once again – this time in the luge, the fastest and most dangerous style of tobogganing. Nervously, he asked his new boss for time off to compete in Japan. ‘I was sitting at my desk and the internal phone rang. A voice said, “Will you pop up?’’ It was Eddie Rothschild, the chairman of the bank.

‘I went upstairs and Eddie rummaged in his pockets, pulled out £200 – which was my weekly salary – and said, “Let me remind you, young man, in this bank, England comes first.” ’

Michel competed in the luge with his best friend Jeremy Palmer-Tomkinson – the uncle of socialite Tara Palmer- Tomkinson. ‘In the first week of training, my entire body was dark blue,’ he said. ‘When you are in the double luge you really are just fodder – I was the little guy and Jeremy was the big heavy guy on top. In the Japan Olympics, we were really just clowns.’

In 1983, when he was in his late 30s, Michel married Charlene Heineken. ‘Our families both had houses in St Moritz,’ he says. ‘I was ten years older than her so it wasn’t what you would call love at first sight – certainly not on her side.’I met the girl of my dreams, complete with free beer’

‘I always drank Heineken. But the problem was Heineken was the most expensive beer. So when I met my wife I thought, “This is fantastic, I’ll have free beer.” I didn’t realise then that marriage is not just about free beer.’

The couple honeymooned in the Caribbean but suffered a shock on their return. In November 1983, Charlene’s father was kidnapped in Amsterdam and held for ransom for three weeks.

‘It was a baptism of fire,’ says Michel. ‘I was just not prepared for something like that. My father-in-law had no other family but my mother-in-law, my wife and me. Luckily, it all ended well. The ransom was paid and the kidnappers all went to jail.’

In 2002, Freddie Heineken died and Charlene inherited her father’s stake in the family business – which transformed her and Michel, overnight, into one of Britain’s wealthiest couples. Today, Charlene and Michel still play a key role in the business.

Sitting in the desert with Peter O’Toole, Michel could little have dreamt how his life would turn out. ‘I never planned my life,’ he says. ‘The good lord has been kind. If you have a bit of luck, you can do quite a lot. But looking back, it was probably a mistake quitting acting.

‘ Looking back, someone should have said to me, “No, stay with that.” ’

The 50th Anniversary 4K Restoration of Lawrence Of Arabia is in cinemas across the UK from November 23. The Empire Leicester Square will have special preview screenings from next Saturday

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