Paul Roebling was born in Philadelphia in 1934. He studied acting in New York. His major television debut was in “Mrs Miniver” with Maureen O’Hara and Juliet Mills in 1960. Other movies include “Prince of the City” in 1981, “The End of August” and “Blue Thunder”. He died in Arizona aged 60 in 1994.
“New York Times” obituary:
Paul Roebling, a stage, film and television actor, died on Wednesday on a Navajo Indian reservation in the mountains of northern Arizona, where he was vacationing. He was 60 and lived in Manhattan.
The cause of death is under investigation, said his son, Kristian, who declined to provide details.
Mr. Roebling, who was also a film producer and theatrical director, was born in Philadelphia. He was a great-great-grandson of John A. Roebling, who designed the Brooklyn Bridge, and a great-grandson of Washington A. Roebling, the bridge’s chief engineer. A Debut and an Award
He made his theatrical debut when he was 12, in a production of “The Vegetable,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, with the Princeton Players in New Jersey. He first acted on Broadway in 1955 in “The Dark Is Light Enough,” and the next fall he performed in “The Lark,” with Julie Harris. He won an Obie Award in 1962 for his performance as the young Fitzgerald in “This Side of Paradise.”
He was in the original Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’s “Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore” in 1963. In an interview after the playwright had died, Mr. Roebling said Williams “always swore to me that the play was based on an incident in my life that I once told him, about a great lady of the theater.”
“From that he created this fantastical world of Flora Goforth,” Mr. Roebling added.
His film roles included those in “Prince of the City” and “Blue Thunder,” and his television work included a role in the 1991 television movie “Carolina Skeletons.” His voice could be heard in various roles in the documentary “The Civil War” on PBS. He produced the 1972 film “Tomorrow,” which starred Robert Duvall and Mr. Roebling’s wife, Olga Bellin, and he directed the play “Zelda,” at the American Place Theater, with Ms. Bellin in the title role. She died in 1987.
He was also the chairman of the Save the Theaters Committee, which in the 1980’s campaigned to have Broadway’s historic theaters receive landmark status.
He is survived by his son.
The above “New York Times” obituary can also be accessed online here.
“Book’em Danno”, with these words Jack Lord established his place in among the television immortals. He said these word many times in the cult TV series “Hawaii 5 0” which ran from 1968 until 1978. Jack Lord was born Jack Ryan in New York in 1920. He made his Broadway with Kim Stanley in 1954 in “The Travelling Lady”. He played the villain in “The True Story of Lynn Stuart” in 1958 and in 1962 was featured as Felix Leiter in “Dr No” with Sean Connery. He made a popular TV modern Western series “Stoney Burke” the same year. After “Hawaii 5 0” finished it’s long run. he starred on television in “M Station Hawaii” in 1980 with Dana Wynter. He died in 1998.
Tom Vallance’s “Independent” obituary:
The actor Jack Lord will forever be associated with the role he played for 12 straight years on television, Steve McGarrett, head of a fictitious Hawaiian State Police Force, in Hawaii Five-O, one of television’s most successful series, still being shown all over the world.
Though he had been an actor on stage, screen and television for several years, stardom had eluded him and would probably have continued to do so. As an actor on the big screen, the intense, taciturn Lord excelled in villainous roles but as a hero was somewhat bland – in Dr No (1962) he had a prominent role as Felix Leighter, the CIA man who helps Bond discover the identity of the scoundrel who is plotting to take over the world, but his character paled beside that of Sean Connery as Bond. Hawaii Five-O made Lord a household name (and a millionaire). At its peak, the series was seen in 80 countries with an audience estimated at more than 300 million.
Jack Lord
Born John Joseph Patrick Ryan in Brooklyn, New York, in 1920, he was the son of a steamship executive and during high school summers would work as a seaman. He studied at New York University on a football scholarship and majored in art – his paintings are hung in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other galleries. “I’d rather paint than eat,” he once said. “I’m using acting as a way of getting my name before the public. Then my pictures will have a name value.” In fact the Metropolitan purchased a lithograph when Lord was plain J.J. Ryan and only 18 years old.
He was running an art school in Greenwich Village when he decided to take up acting, and for three years he studied at the Neighbourhood Playhouse while working days as a car salesman. He also studied at the Actors’ Studio along with Marlon Brando and Paul Newman, and was given roles in two Broadway plays, The Travelling Lady (1953, for which he won a Theatre World Award) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1954), but in 1955 he went to Hollywood to concentrate on film and television.
He had made his screen debut (billed as John Ryan) in R.G. Springsteen’s The Red Menace (1949), an anti- Communist propaganda thriller that now seems risible and has achieved enough cult status to be issued on laser disc. Lord’s movie career never quite took off – he tested for the leading role of a naive cowboy in Bus Stop (1956) and was told by director Joshua Logan, “You can’t play a virgin, your face looks lived in” – but he had a good year in 1958 with roles in two impressive films directed by Anthony Mann.
In God’s Little Acre, adapted from Erskine Caldwell’s racy bestseller about Georgia farmers in the Depression, a quirky tale resembling Tennessee Williams crossed with Al Capp, Lord was one of Robert Ryan’s sons, Buck, violently jealous of his wife’s attraction to her brother-in-law (Aldo Ray). In Man of the West, he was a particularly sadistic henchman of outlaw Lee J. Cobb, suspicious (rightly) of the hero Gary Coop-er’s motives in rejoining the gang, and in one powerful scene holding a knife to Cooper’s throat and forcing Julie London, as a saloon singer, to strip.
Television, though, was offering Lord more consistently rewarding work, in such series as The Untouchables, Route 66 and Bonanza, and in 1962 he was given a western series, Stoney Burke, though it ran for only one season. “A star like Jack is money in the bank,” said one television producer. “He’s always on time, no bags under his eyes and he always knows his lines.” After many guest roles in such series as The Man from UNCLE, Have Gun Will Travel, The Fugitive and Ironside, Lord was offered the lead in Hawaii Five-O in 1968.
The show initially met local opposition because of its portrayal of crime in the state, but that melted when its depiction of Hawaii’s beauty proved a potent tourist attraction. As the gruff chief who ended each episode capturing the criminals and invariably telling his sidekick (James McArthur), “Book ’em, Danno”, Lord became a top television star. The show ran for 12 years (284 episodes), ending in 1980 with McGarrett finally capturing his long- standing enemy, the crime boss Wo Fat.
Lord had made his home in Hawaii, producing the show and sometimes directing it. When the series finished, he and his wife remained in Hawaii, living in a beachfront condominium in Kahala, and Lord returned to his first love, painting.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Stefanie Powers was born in 1942 in Hollywood. Her film debut came in “Grip of Fear” in 1962 directed by Blake Edwards where she played the sister of Lee Remick. Other movies included “McLintock” with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara, “Palm Springs Weekend” with Troy Donahue and “The Interns” with Suzy Parker and Haya Harayeet. She starred in the television series “The Girl from U.N.C..L.E. in 1966 and of course “Hart to Hart” with Robert Wagner which ran from 1979 until 1984 and was followed by several TV movies of the Harts.
TCM Overview:
A near constant presence on television throughout the 1970s and 1980s, actress Stephanie Powers became known for her always reliable portrayals of smart, sexy and intelligent women. A native of Hollywood, Powers began pursuing her career while still a teenager, landing early roles in films that included “Experiment in Terror” (1962) and “McClintock!” (1963). Her eponymous role as “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.” (NBC, 1966-67) nearly made her a household name, despite being canceled after only one season. Soon after, Powers flourished during the heyday of made-for-television movies, appearing almost weekly, it seemed, in such fare as “Five Desperate Women” (ABC, 1971) and “A Death in Canaan” (CBS, 1978). It was, however, in her role as the elegant and erudite Jennifer Hart opposite Robert Wagner on the adventure series “Hart to Hart” (ABC, 1979-1984) that she would be most associated for the remainder of her career. In 1981, the sudden deaths of her companion, William Holden, and Wagner’s wife, Natalie Wood, within weeks of each other, came as devastating blows at the height of the show’s popularity. In the years that followed, Powers continued the wildlife preservation efforts that she and Holden had been so passionate about, even as she continued to act – albeit less frequently – on select television projects, including a return as Jennifer Hart alongside Wagner in several made-for-TV movies. Boasting a personal life as fulfilling as her vast acting repertoire, Powers continually explored new roles in film, theater, television, and, most importantly, the world at large.
Born Stephania Zofia Federkiewicz on Nov. 2, 1942 in Hollywood, CA, she was the daughter of Polish immigrants. Shortly after changing the family surname to Paul, her father divorced her mother Julie while Stephanie and her older brother Jeff were still quite young. Her mother remarried when Stephanie was about eight years old to Jack Robinson, a jovial man who bred race horses at a nearby ranch. As a young girl, Powers displayed a natural gift for dance and performance, talents that she developed further with instruction at the popular dance studio, Kiddies Ballet Company. It was there that Powers met and trained with two other young girls – Natalie Wood and Jill St. John – whose lives would parallel hers in more ways than she could ever have imagined. Studies at Hollywood High School quickly fell by the wayside, as the 15-year-old Powers began to focus more and more on dancing and acting. Occasionally, she would land a bit part in the odd television series, at that time going by the rather silly stage name of Taffy Paul. Initially cast alongside Wood as a member of the chorus in “West Side Story” (1961), she met Wood’s handsome husband Robert Wagner for the first time, just before being let go from the production.
Powers’ disappointment at being fired from the Oscar-winning film was soon assuaged when she was cast in “Tammy, Tell Me True” (1961), her feature film debut. Although her role in the Sandra Dee comedy was small, it was enough to earn her an invitation to study at Columbia Pictures’ Actors Workshop, a training ground for young talent. It was there that Powers, quite literally, bumped into director Blake Edwards, who offered her a substantial role in the film he was working on at the time, “Experiment in Terror” (1962), a thriller starring Glenn Ford and Lee Remick. In the final years of the long-standing Hollywood system, Powers became one of the last generation of film actors to be signed to an exclusive contract with a major studio – in her case, Columbia. From there it was on to a string of supporting roles in both film and television projects, including the medical drama “The Interns” (1962), starring Cliff Robertson, another romantic comedy featuring Sandra Dee and Bobby Darrin called “If a Man Answers” (1962), as well additional appearances on such popular series as “Bonanza” (NBC, 1959-1973) and “Route 66” (CBS, 1960-64).
The opportunity of a lifetime for any young actress, Powers landed the role of John Wayne’s daughter in the comedic Western “McClintock!” (1963), prior to reprising her portrayal of nurse Gloria Mead in the sequel “The New Interns” (1964). Steadily building her film résumé, she worked with Robertson once again in the Acapulco-set potboiler “Love Has Many Faces” (1965), which starred 1940s sex symbol Lana Turner as an aging socialite with a taste for attractive younger men. That same year, Powers traveled to the U.K., where she landed a leading role opposite the great Tallulah Bankhead and a young Donald Sutherland in the Hammer horror feature “Die! Die! My Darling!” (1965), as a woman terrorized by the fanatical mother (Bankhead) of her dead fiancé. While her feature film career was progressing fairly well, it would be on television where Powers would become a fan favorite. Attractive, athletic and adventuresome, she was the perfect choice to play super-agent April Dancer on the espionage spin-off series “The Girl From U.N.C.L.E.” (NBC, 1966-67). Far campier than its more successful predecessor, Dancer’s battle against the terrorist organization T.H.R.U.S.H. lasted only a single season. Regardless, it was more than enough time for the spirited Powers to endear herself to audiences.
Powers worked onscreen for the first time with Robert Wagner in a 1970 episode of his adventure series “It Takes a Thief” (ABC, 1968-1970), before starring alongside Robert Morse in the nautical comedy “The Boatniks” (1970), the first of two family films the actress would make for Walt Disney Productions. As TV movies became a weekly staple in the early 1970s, Powers proved to be one of its more popular stars, most frequently placed in modestly entertaining thrillers like “Five Desperate Women” (ABC, 1971), “Sweet, Sweet Rachel” (ABC, 1971) and “Paper Man” (CBS, 1971). On the personal front, however, things were not progressing as smoothly. Having recently appeared with him in an episode of the comedy series “Love, American Style” (ABC, 1969-1974), Power’s six year marriage to actor Gary Lockwood came to an end in 1972. In movie theaters that year, she saddled up with Western tough guy Lee Van Cleef for “The Magnificent Seven Ride!” (1972), then two years later hopped a ride on another family-friendly Disney offering, “Herbie Rides Again” (1974).
By now one of the more familiar faces on television, Powers had become a nearly ubiquitous presence on the small screen. In addition to dozens of other appearances, the prolific period saw her making a guest spot on one of the more popular story arcs of “The Six Million Dollar Man” (ABC, 1974-78), in which Steve Austen (Lee Majors) comes face-to-face with the urban legend, Bigfoot (André the Giant). She later joined the cast of the short-lived mystery series “The Feather and Father Gang” (ABC, 1977), in which she played the crime-solving attorney daughter of a former con man (Harold Gould). Powers enjoyed favorable notices for her featured role – once again opposite Cliff Robertson – in the Watergate-inspired miniseries “Washington: Behind Closed Doors” (ABC, 1977), based on the novel by former Nixon aide John Ehrlichman. The following season she played non-fiction author Joan Barthel in the highly praised docudrama “A Death in Canaan” (CBS, 1978), about a Connecticut town that rallies around a teen accused of murdering his mother. Powers next joined stars Roger Moore, David Niven and Elliott Gould for the tongue-in-cheek WWII adventure “Escape to Athena” (1979), in what would be her last feature film appearance for nearly 30 years.
That same year, Powers was cast in what was to become her signature role, that of Jennifer Hart, journalist-turned-sleuth in the mystery-romance series “Hart to Hart” (ABC, 1979-1984). The chemistry between Powers and her co-star Robert Wagner, as ultra-wealthy industrialist Jonathan Hart, was palpable and a joy to watch. Their portrayals of an ’80s version of classic rich amateur detectives Nick and Nora Charles from the “Thin Man” films of the 1930s delighted audiences and helped make ABC the top-rated network for several seasons. Then, at the height of her professional career, tragedy struck close to home for Powers. Throughout most of the previous decade, she had been in a romantic relationship with the much older William Holden, one of Hollywood’s brightest stars of the 1950s. The couple, who had shared a love for adventure and wilderness conservation over the years, spent a great deal of time at his wildlife preserve in Africa. His decades-long battle with alcoholism, however, was becoming more and more of a problem, causing Powers to threaten to leave Holden in 1981 in an effort to push him toward recovery. Sadly, it would not be enough, as on Nov. 12, 1981, Holden, who was intoxicated at the time, died after severely lacerating his head due to a fall in his Santa Monica home.
Utterly devastated, racked with guilt and angry at the press’ focus on Holden’s alcoholism, Powers nonetheless pushed through with her duties on “Hart to Hart,” only to be dealt a second crushing blow mere weeks later. Compounding the current personal tragedy to an almost unbearable degree was the sudden drowning death of Natalie Wood, her childhood friend and the wife of her co-star, Wagner. Determined to move forward and honor the memory of her dear departed companion, Powers founded The William Holden Wildlife Education Center in Kenya in 1982. For his part, Wagner found solace with an old acquaintance, actress Jill St. John – Powers’ and Wood’s childhood chum from ballet class – who he began a seeing in 1982. Wagner and St. John would marry eight years later. When to the surprise of many – including Powers and Wagner – “Hart to Hart” was cancelled in 1984, the actress became far more selective in her choice of television projects, and was inclined to focus more on travel and her ongoing wildlife preservation efforts.
She did, however, accept roles that appealed to her, such as a turn as the mother of Melissa Gilbert and daughter of Maureen Stapleton in the relationship drama “Family Secrets” (1984), a project that marked Powers’ debut as both producer and writer. Other notable roles from this period include screenwriter Montana Gray, the most respectable of a rather scandalous lot in the highly-rated guilty pleasure “Hollywood Wives” (ABC, 1985). Powers won the favor of critics and audiences alike with her turn as Frances Schreuder, a manipulative mother who coerces her son into killing his father for the inheritance in the fact-based “At Mother’s Request” (CBS, 1987). Powers was now producing much of what she starred in, including “Beryl Markham: A Shadow of the Sun” (CBS, 1988). The role of the pioneering adventurer Markham seemed tailor-made for Powers’ real life, reflecting her love of adventure and exotic travel. Hoping to help set the record straight, the actress participated in the bio-documentary “William Holden: The Golden Boy” (Cinemax, 1988). In 1991, Powers made her West End debut in the London production of the musical “Matador,” portraying a character loosely based on Ava Gardner. Her ease on stage may have surprised some, but not Powers, who had honed her theatrical skills previously in such musicals as “Oliver” and “Annie, Get Your Gun.”
After turns on such projects as the courtroom thriller “The Burden of Proof” (ABC, 1992), Powers and Wagner reprised their favorite roles in “Hart to Hart Returns” (NBC, 1993), much to the delight of fans. The pairing, still charming and effortless nearly a decade after the original show’s cancelation, proved popular enough to merit seven more consecutive outings over the next three years. Powers’ rapport and chemistry with Wagner spilled over to work in live theater, as well, when the duo starred in a well-received London production of A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” during their breaks from the “Hart to Hart” movies. Reinvigorated by the recent stage work, Powers stepped into the role of Margo Channing (created on film by Bette Davis and on stage by Lauren Bacall) in a pre-Broadway tour of the award-winning musical “Applause” in 1996. Back on the small screen, she appeared with Margo Kidder in the made-for-TV supernatural thriller “Someone is Watching” (Lifetime, 2000), then enjoyed a recurring role for several episodes of the long-running British medical drama “Doctors” (BBC, 2000- ) in 2001. Powers made a rare return to film with a supporting role as the mother of a woman addicted to a revolutionary new “personal massager” in the British sex comedy “Rabbit Fever” (2006). Health concerns came to the fore, when Powers, a smoker for two decades, was diagnosed with lung cancer in November of 2008. Thankfully, the resilient actress experienced an admirable recovery following surgery and months of intense physical therapy. In 2010, Powers released her memoir, Stefanie Powers: One from the Hart.
By Bryce Coleman
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
James Douglas was born in 1933 in Los Angeles. He is probably best known for his role as Steven Cord in the long running TV series”Peyton Place” with Dorothy Malone from 1965 intil 1969. He was also featured in the series “As the World Turns”. His movies include “Fear Strikes Out” with Anthony Perkins and “Time Limit” with Richard Widmark both in 1957.
Nancy Allen was born in 1950 in New York City. She made her film debut in a small role opposite Jack Nicholson in “The Last Detail” in 1973. Other films included “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” in 1978 and three excellent roles in Brian De Palma’s movies, “Carrie” in 1976, “Dressed to Kill” with Angie Dickinson in 1980 and “Blow Out”. She also starred in “Robocop” with Peter Weller.
IMDB entry:
Nancy Anne Allen was the daughter of a police lieutenant from Yonkers, New York. At a young age, she trained for a dancing career at the High School of Performing Arts, and then attended Jose Quintano’s School for Young Professionals. In dozens of television commercials from the age of 15, Nancy made her first film appearance in The Last Detail(1973) with Jack Nicholson. Three years later, she set the standard for all future “bitch-goddess teenagers” as Chris Hargensen in Stephen King‘s Carrie (1976), taken to the big screen by director Brian De Palma. Nancy then married De Palma in 1979. She next appeared in Steven Spielberg‘s I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978); for the next few years, she appeared only in De Palma’s films: Home Movies (1980), Dressed to Kill (1980), and she starred with John Travolta in Blow Out (1981).
After her divorce from De Palma in 1984, Nancy’s film opportunities were supposedly narrowed, but then she surprised the whole world in 1987 when she performed as Officer Anne Lewis in the sci-fi cult film RoboCop (1987), along with Peter Weller. Here, she set another standard as a tough but at the same time feminine policewoman, whose sex would not interfere with her actions. After the success of RoboCop, she performed as Patricia Gardner in the second sequel in the Poltergeist series. She came back inRoboCop 2 (1990) and in order to get more involved with the character Nancy Allen learned martial arts and police training for real. She returned again in RoboCop 3 (1993), though her co-star Peter Weller did not this time. In 1993, Nancy joined several other veteran stars in Acting on Impulse (1993), and married co-star Craig Shoemaker, in the same year. A few years later, she divorced Craig and some time after she married again.
Interested in projecting the image of a strong but at the same time feminine woman, she managed to get away from the victim roles she was always offered, she also was able to get away from the stereotype of the beautiful but dumb woman in most action films. She is an environmentalist that traded her Volvo car for an Hybrid car in order to set the example. She is also an activist against breast Cancer along with her friend actress Wendie Jo Sperber, who created the foundation WeSpark. Her last appearance on television was on the Inside E! story of her co-star John Travolta and the A&E Biography of Travolta – both appearances in 2004. Nowadays, Nancy Allen lives a quiet life along with her family and friends somewhere in the United States.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Eva Dalila Rojano, thanks to Derek Hazell nancy_tribute@hotmail.com
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Sheree J. Wilson was born in 1958 in Minnesota. She is best known for her role as April Stevens in “Dallas” which she was featured in from 1986 intil 1990 and in “Walker, Texas Ranger” from 1993 until 2001. Her movies include “Crimewave” in 1985 and “Hellbound” in 1994.
IMDB entry:
Sheree J. Wilson has gained worldwide recognition starring in two enormously popular long running television series. Appearing in the hit series Dallas for five seasons playing opposite Patrick Duffy, and then for the entire eight year run of Walker, Texas Ranger opposite Chuck Norris. Currently, Ms. Wilson has starred and produced two feature films, Easy Rider: The Ride Back, a prequel to the cult favorite movie Easy Rider, and The Gundown. She also co-produced a zombie/comedy called Dug Up.
While studying for her degree in fashion merchandising and business, Sheree secretly vied for a career in show business. As with many actors, that ‘lucky break’ came shortly after graduation in 1981 while working in Denver on a fashion shoot. One of the photographers thought Sheree was the model, and introduced her to Vicki Light, head of The Light Company. Vicki in turn introduced her to Wilhelmina, the modeling agenCY from New York, who signed her on the spot. Sheree promptly moved to Manhattan and within eighteen months, had appeared in over thirty commercial campaigns for Clairol, Sea Breeze, Keri-Lotion and Maybelline. Her print work ran in such popular magazines as Mademoiselle, Glamour and Redbook.
After three years of modeling, Sheree’s agent, Vicki Light, called her with an audition in a feature film, urging her to move to Los Angeles. She won the starring role, opposite Louise Lasser, Brian James and Reed Burney, in “Crimewave”, a 1984 black comedy directed by Sam Raimi. Three days after that film wrapped, she was cast in “Velvet,” an ABC/Aaron Spelling MOW/series pilot, in which she played a female “James Bond” character opposite Shari Belafonte. Within the next year, she had a lead with Tim Robbins in “Fraternity Vacation”, a summer comedy in which she played an intellectual beauty who was the object of everyone’s desire.
Producers began to take notice of this dynamic newcomer to Hollywood, and soon she starred in the 1985 CBS television miniseries “Kane & Abel,” with Peter Strauss. This immediately led to “Our Family Honor,” a CBS drama about Irish cops vs. the Mafia, in which she starred with Ray Liotta, Michael Madsen and Eli Wallach. Her career continued to grow including “News at Eleven” with Martin Sheen. And then, in 1986, television producer Leonard Katzman called Sheree to talk about a part he thought was tailor-made for someone with her classic beauty and sassy, fun-loving, energetic nature.
The role was that of ‘April Stevens’ on the CBS mega-hit series “Dallas.” For five seasons she played a brainy, wealthy femme fatale. Her character went from being one of the most powerful women in Dallas and J.R. Ewing’s nemesis, to being one of the warmest characters in town, eventually marrying Bobby Ewing, the show’s ultimate good guy. Ultimately, April Stevens was gunned down during her honeymoon in Paris. Bowing out with a bang, Sheree’s performance earned her the “Soap Opera Digest Award” for Best Death Scene.
In fact, Sheree was pregnant and wanted to leave in order to fully devote herself to motherhood.
At the end of 1992, she signed to do the lead female role of ‘Alex Cahill’ in “Walker, Texas Ranger,” opposite Chuck Norris, which ran for eight seasons.
The daughter of two IBM executives, Sheree was born in Minnesota and moved to Colorado at the age of seven, where she learned to ride horses. Her superb equestrian skills won her first place riding cutting horses in the 1995 National Multiple Sclerosis Rodeo. Her love of horses continues to this day – as she recently rescued a retired racehorse and in 2008 helped establish the “White Bridle Humane Society”, a horse rescue equine therapy non-profit organization in Texas of which she serves as vice-president.
Currently, Sheree resides in Los Angeles.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Sheree J Wilson
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
James Stacy was born in 1936 in Los Angeles. He made his film debut in “Sayonara” in 1957 which starred Marlon Brando. Other movies include “South Pacific” , “Lafayette Escadrille”and “Summer Magic” in 1963 with Hayley Mills. He is best known for his role in the hit Western television series “Lancer”. His career was curtailed by a road accident in 1973.
IMDB entry:
Born Maurice William Elias in Los Angeles, James Stacy is the son of a Lebanese immigrant father and an American-born mother of Irish-Scottish descent. As a teen, Stacy first aspired to play professional football but settled on a career in the movies after a friend coaxed him into taking some acting classes. Adopting the screen name James Stacy after his cousin Stacy and one of his movie idols, James Dean, he made his film debut in an uncredited role as a reporter in Sayonara (1957)) starring Marlon Brando. Garnering little work or recognition in film, Stacy turned to TV. Although he made notable appearances on The Donna Reed Show (1958) and The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet(1952), it wasn’t until 1968 that he gained his first big break, playing a young gunfighter on the TV series, Lancer (1968). Although the show was canceled in 1970, Stacy continued to land smaller roles on TV. In 1973, Stacy lost his left arm and left leg in a serious motorcycle accident that claimed the life of his girlfriend. The resultant medical bills wiped out Stacy’s savings, but his ex-wives and his Hollywood friends rallied round and threw a benefit for him. Two years later, he made his professional comeback as a newspaper editor in the Western film Posse (1975) in a role created expressly for him by the film’s director, Kirk Douglas. Stacy was nominated twice for an Emmy: for “Just a Little Inconvenience” in 1977 and “Cagney & Lacey” in 1986. He retired in 1991.
Stacy’s personal life has been turbulent. Twice-divorced, he was married to actress and singer Connie Stevens (1963-1966) and actress Kim Darby (1968-1969), with whom he has a daughter, Heather.
In the 1970’s Karen Black seemed to feature in every other film from big-budget movies like “The Great Gatsby” in 1974 to Hitchcock’s final film “Family Plot”, “Nashville”, “Airport 1975” to “Day of the Locusts”. She was born in Illinois in 1939. She made her debut in “You’re A Big Boy Now” in 1966. Her more recent movies include “Irene in Time” in 2009. She died in 2013.
Ryan Gilbey ‘s obituary in “The Guardian”:
The New Hollywood movement was primarily a male, auteur-led phenomenon. But the contribution of performers as adventurous and vital as Karen Black, who has died aged 74 from complications from cancer, should not be overlooked. Black was electrified as well as electrifying: her tornado of hair, her fearless physicality and those indelible feline eyes combined to create a woozy and unapologetic sexual energy. She looked offbeat, and she knew how to use that. “I couldn’t have been an actress in the 1930s,” she said, reflecting on her role as a movie extra in The Day of the Locust (1975). “My face moves around too much.”
It was in the late 1960s and 70s that she became one of the great character actors of US cinema in a series of performances in key New Hollywood works. Partly it was that she exhibited qualities outside the skill set of a conventional female lead – she could play volatile and nerve-jangled, or maligned and wounded, without ever approaching caricature, and suddenly these talents came to be much in demand from countercultural film-makers. “Could actors such as Ellen Burstyn, Karen Black, Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall, with their neediness, blankness, oddity, have become leading players in any other decade?” asked Adam Mars-Jones recently in the Guardian. But if her skew-whiff style and appearance were well-suited to a cinema not guilty of undervaluing the marginal, then the humanity she brought to those characters would surely have been recognised in any era or art form.
Her career overlapped with several key figures of New Hollywood: she made her screen debut in Francis Ford Coppola’s own first film, You’re a Big Boy Now (1966), and collaborated more than once with Jack Nicholson, who cast Black in his 1971 directorial debut, Drive, He Said, after co-starring with her in Easy Rider (1969) and Five Easy Pieces (1970). She was also a favourite of Robert Altman, who directed her in Nashville (1975), for which she and many of the cast wrote and performed their own songs, and Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982). Playing herself in Altman’s The Player (1992), she was one of many such celebrity guest stars in that overpopulated satire to be left on the cutting-room floor.)
These parts were strikingly different from one another, but they had in common Black’s knack for conveying her characters’ rich and troubled inner lives, their cramped or thwarted dreams. The consummate example could be found in her Oscar-nominated performance as Rayette, the Tammy Wynette-loving girlfriend to Nicholson’s discontented antihero Bobby Dupea, in Five Easy Pieces. There was a comical but achingly sad intellectual gap between the two. Bobby resented her. Crucially, the audience never did. “I dig [Rayette], she’s not dumb, she’s just not into thinking,” said Black in 1970. “I didn’t have to know anybody like her to play her. I mean, I’m like her, in ways. Rayette enjoys things as she sees them, she doesn’t have to add significances. She can just love the dog, love the cat. See? There are many things she does not know, but that’s cool; she doesn’t intrude on anybody else’s trip. And she’s going to survive.”
She was born Karen Blanche Ziegler in Park Ridge, Illinois, daughter of Norman and Elsie Ziegler, the latter a children’s novelist. She studied at Northwestern University in Illinois from the age of 15, then moved to New York at 17 and took odd jobs and off-Broadway roles. In 1960 she married Charles Black. She was nominated for best actress in the Drama Critics’ Circle awards for playing the lead in The Play Room (1965); Coppola, who was in the audience, cast her in You’re a Big Boy Now. From there, she met Henry Jaglom and Dennis Hopper, both of whom were, like Coppola, part of the coterie of up-and-coming film-makers and actors benefiting from the patronage of Roger Corman. Hopper cast her in Easy Rider as a prostitute who has a bad acid trip in a New Orleans cemetery; Jaglom, who was brought in to help edit the film, insisted that improvised scenes of Black which had been cut should be put back in. Jaglom would continue to help her career as late as 1983 when he gave her the lead in his underrated romantic comedy Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?
She attracted attention for those groundbreaking films with Hopper and Nicholson, and for numerous other fascinating oddities including Cisco Pike (1972), with Kris Kristofferson as a musician turned dealer; a 1972 adaptation of Philip Roth’s comic novel Portnoy’s Complaint; and a foolhardy film version of Ionesco’s absurdist Rhinoceros (1974), with Zero Mostel. But she was not averse to the mainstream. She played the doomed Myrtle in the Coppola-scripted adaptation of The Great Gatsby (1974); she was the flight attendant who must land a plane single-handed in the efficient but much-parodied disaster movie Airport 1975 (1974); and she played a kidnapper in Alfred Hitchcock’s final film, Family Plot (1976). She also became a darling of the horror genre after taking on three roles in the television anthology Trilogy of Terror (1975) and starring in movies such as Burnt Offerings (1976), Invaders from Mars (1986) and House of 1,000 Corpses (2003).
Pickings became steadily slimmer in the 1980s, though her dynamic turn as a post-operative male-to-female transsexual in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean was singled out by Pauline Kael of the New Yorker as Black’s finest work. Kael highlighted her “spectacular tawdry world-weariness” and commended her for “keep[ing] the mawkishness from splashing all over the set. I think this isn’t just the best performance she has given on screen – it’s a different kind of acting from what she usually does. It’s subdued, controlled, quiet – but not parched.” Black worked continuously until becoming ill in 2009. She had a small role in George Sluizer’s Dark Blood, best known now as the film River Phoenix was making when he died in 1993. Illness prevented her from attending the world premiere of a salvaged cut of the film last year in the Netherlands.
Black is survived by her fourth husband, Stephen Eckelberry, whom she married in 1987; and by a son, Hunter, and two daughters, Celine and Diane. Hunter is her son by her third husband, LM Kit Carson, who wrote Paris, Texas, which was filmed with Hunter, then nine years old, playing the main character’s son, also named Hunter.
• Karen Black, actor, born 1 July 1939; died 8 August 2013
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Pia Lindstrom was born in Sweden in 1938. Her mother was Ingrid Bergman and when her mother went to Hollywood to begin her U.S. career, Pia and her father followed. Pia Lindstrom is prinarily known as a television news reporter and commentator but she mas made the occasional film including “Marriage Italian Style” in 1964 and “La Fate” in 1966.
