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Ross Hunter

Ross Hunter was a very successful Hollywood producer who began his career as an actor. He was born in 1920 in Cleveland, Ohio. His acting debut in movies was in 1944 in “Louisiana Hayride”. His other acting credits on film include “Hit the Hay” and “The Bandit of Sherwood Forest”. As a producer, he was involved in such popolar successes as “Magnificent Obsession” with Rock Hudson, “All that Heaven Allows”, “Captain Lightfoot”, “Midnight Lace”, “Pillow Talkl2 and “Airport”. He died in 1996.

David Shipman’s “Independent” obituary:

Ross Hunter was one of the most successful producers in Hollywood’s history. He followed his hunches or, as he himself put it, “the way life looks in my pictures is the way I want life to be. I don’t want to hold a mirror up to life as it is”. Variety called Airport (1970) “a handsome, often dramatically involving epitaph to a bygone brand of film-making”. As much could be said of all Hunter’s pictures. In the New York Times, Vincent Canby described it as “an immensely silly film”, but went on to add that “it will probably entertain millions of people who no longer care very much about movies”. That was also true of most of Hunter’s pictures.

A former schoolteacher who dabbled in acting, his first job in Hollywood was as the romantic interest in Louisiana Hayride (1944). Leads followed in a handful of other Columbia B-movies, but when offers dried up he returned to teaching. After some stage work, producing and directing, he was back in the studios as dialogue director and occasional writer. In 1951 he became an Associate Producer at Universal, which had seldom made a wiser move.

Hunter’s first film as producer, Take Me to Town (1953), starred Ann Sheridan, perhaps the most undervalued of all the great Hollywood stars. Barbara Stanwyck starred in Hunter’s second film, All I Desire. Like many gay men, Hunter idolised the big female stars. Those who arrived at Universal were not always on the way down, but they had in common the fact that they had made their names elsewhere. Hunter put them back into glossy melodramas – but the sort which American critics found so old-fashioned that Universal showed its films only to the trade press in Britain for the whole of that decade.

Those two particular movies were directed by Douglas Sirk, a German emigre. When he and Hunter made a pro-Indian Western, Taza, Son of Chochise (1954), it seemed to prove that they were happy in any genre. Its star was Rock Hudson, whose career received a huge impetus when he played opposite Jane Wyman in Magnificent Obssession (1954), and Hunter reunited the stars and director for another tearjerker, All That Heaven Allows (1956), with Wyman as a widow who defies New England society by marrying her gardener.

Anne Baxter co-starred with Hudson in One Desire (1955) and with Jeff Chandler in the fifth and worst version of The Spoilers (1955), while Debbie Reynolds arrived for two sentimental tributes to teenagers, Tammy and the Bachelor (1957) and This Happy Feeling (1958); and Barbara Stanwyck did her woman-of-the-world job again in another remake, There’s Always Tomorrow (1956). June Allyson did two more remakes, Interlude (1957) and My Man Godfrey (1957).

But if Hunter’s policy of remakes looked haphazard to his bosses he did come up trumps with Imitation of Life (1959), in which Lana Turner took Claudette Colbert’s old role as a widow who is having trouble with her daughter. The public turned up in large numbers to see Turner, whose career was unharmed by the scandal a year earler, when her daughter knifed her lover. Hunter immediately put her into another glossy melodrama, Portrait in Black (1960), but yet another rehash, Madame X (1966) found patrons no longer anxious to see Turner.

However, in teaming Hudson with Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1958), Hunter set off Universal’s most successful series of films since the Deanna Durbin musicals. They were based on the slapstick comedies of Durbin’s era, with luscious people in plush settings and more than a hint of salaciousness. Hudson only did three with Day, although as he said himself people thought there were more. The only other one produced by Hunter himself was The Thrill of It All (1963), when Day’s frustrating husband was, in fact, James Garner.

The Chalk Garden (1964) should be noted, if only because it turned Enid Bagnold’s play into a vehicle for moppet Hayley Mills. The Pad and How to Lose It (1966) was another travesty of another superior West End drama, in this case Peter Shaffer’s The Private Ear. Hunter then engaged Julie Andrews, Hollywood’s brightest new talent, for a musical set in the 1920s, Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967): like most of his films the tone was excessive but the star was showcased beautifully, and admirably supported by such drolls as Beatrice Lillie and Carol Channing. The result was the biggest success in Universal’s history, taking more than $15 million in the domestic market, but three years later Hunter’s Airport, from a novel by Arthur Hailey, topped that with a whopping $45 million. At this point Hunter set his sights on remaking Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon (1973) – with music. This was one of the most prestigious movies in Columbia’s past and they had no intention of selling the rights to Universal. Hunter moved to Columbia, engaged Burt Bacharach and Hal David to write the score, with a cast headed by Peter Finch, Liv Ullmann, John Gielgud and Michael York, who recalled Hunter as ebullient and radiating confidence – qualities sorely needed when critics scoffed at the result. Their notices killed any box-office potential and with it, overnight, Hunter’s movie career. He moved to Paramount in 1974, but the work he did there was for television: The Lives of Jenny Dolan (1975), the pilot for a series with Shirley Jones, and The Moneychangers (1976), a mini-series from Arthur Hailey’s novel, with Kirk Douglas and Anne Baxter. These aired on NBC, which Hunter joined to produce another mini-series, The Best Place To Be (1978), with Donna Reed and Helen Hayes.

David Shipman

Martin Fuss (Ross Hunter), film producer, actor: born Cleveland, Ohio 6 May 1926; died Los Angeles 10 March 1996.

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

Jo Morrow. Wikipedia.

Jo Morrow was born in 1939 in Texas. Her films include “10 North Frederick” in 1958 with Gary Cooper and Suzy Parker and “Our Man in Havana” with Alec Guinness and Maureen O’Hara and in 1963, “Sunday in New York” with Jane Fonda and Rod Taylor.

“Wikipedia” entry:

Jo Morrow (born November 1, 1939 in Cuero, Texas as Beverly Jo Morrow^[1]), is an American film actress. Through a “Be a Star” contest she won a film contract with 20th Century Fox (with Gary Cooper in Ten North Frederick) in 1958.

After only one film with 20th Century-Fox she moved to Columbia Pictures, allegedly because a producer at 20th Century Fox tried to make a pass at her.

At Columbia she made some ten films and a dozen TV series episodes between 1958 and 1963, the most notable being Our Man in Havana, in which she played Alec Guinness‘ daughter Milly.

In 1963 she married Jack Barnett, songwriter for Jimmy Durante.^[1] The 1964 birth of a deaf daughter forced her to give up movies for motherhood.

She had a brief comeback in a few exploitation films and TV series episodes in the 1970s.

John Schneider was born in Mount Kisco, New York in 1960. He is best known for his leading role in the hit TV series “The Dukes of Hazzard” which ran from 1979 until 1985. His films include “Grand Slam” in 1990 and “Highway Heartbraker”.

IMDB entry:

John Richard Schneider was born April 8, 1960, in Mt. Kisco, New York. His parents divorced when he was two. John began acting at the age of eight. He was in many plays in New York. He and his mother moved to Atlanta, Georgia, when he was fourteen. He got involved in the local theater and was in many local productions. He had a small part in Smokey and the Bandit (1977) starring Burt Reynolds.

His big break came when he won the role of Bo Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard (1979) on CBS from 1979-1985. He auditioned for the role pretending he was a genuine country boy. He had a weeks growth of beard and held a beer can claiming he was from Snellville, Georgia. He later became a very successful country singer and had several hit songs including “I’ve Been Around Enough To Know” and “Country Girls.” He has since opened Faith Works Productions in San Antonio, Texas. He also appears in Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993) as Daniel Simon/Red McCall.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Stacey Sanders <tsanders@comsource.net

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Steve Reeves obituary in “The Guardian” in 2000.

New of the death – at the age of 74 – of Steve Reeves, the American body-building champion and star of 1950s mythological movies like Hercules, termed his films “European-made”. They were, in fact, “Italian-made”, though they made him the highest-paid European star of the time.

His first film, made in Rome in 1957 by the director Pietro Francisci, and called in Italian Le Fatiche di Ercole (The Labours Of Hercules), was to launch a box-office genre for the Italian cinema, much as with spaghetti westerns a few years later.

Ironically, Reeves came close to becoming the symbol of that second cult genre too. When Mario Bonnard, the director making The Last Days Of Pompeii in 1959, fell ill during shooting, the film was finished by Sergio Leone, who, watching Reeves at work as the centurion, thought seriously of casting him as the nameless cowboy in A Fistful Of Dollars.

Reeves later told an Italian journalist: “I turned the part down because it seemed to me impossible that the Italians could make a western. I was wrong. And Clint Eastwood was perfect for the part.” Reeves also said that he had been offered the part of James Bond before Sean Connery.

Even though he was born in Montana, the same state as his childhood hero Gary Cooper, the young Reeves never aspired to become an actor; indeed, most of the Italian directors who worked with him thought he never became one. It was, of course, his muscles that made him famous.

He won the Mr America title in 1947, when he was 21, and followed it up by becoming, first, Mr World, and then Mr Universe (twice, in 1948 and 1950). He was tested by De Mille for the lead in Samson And Delilah, but apparently Victor Mature was preferred.

A photo of Reeves, as the young Mr Universe, reached Francisci’s casting desk when he was preparing the Hercules film in 1957. There was an illustrious precedent for putting muscles before acting talent in casting mythological heroes.

What is generally considered the first masterpiece in cinema history, Pastrone’s Cabiria (1914), featured a strongman character, Maciste, whose name was invented by the poet Gabriele d’Annunzio. He was played by a docker from Genoa.

The idea of returning to the mythological genre had come from scriptwriter Ennio de Concini, who had great difficulty finding a producer. I remember being summoned to a press conference in Rome when Reeves arrived to start filming. None of us journalists had ever heard of him, and didn’t think he would make a good story.

The projected film seemed like a potboiler, and it only became a cult event when the enterprising American producer, Joe Levine, bought it, dubbed it into English and spent $1m launching it in the US – it made him a fortune.

The market soon became saturated with imitations, and both ancient history and mythology were ransacked for muscular heroes. Reeves himself became the muscle-man most in demand, but as his salary increased proportionately, producers were signing up anybody who had won a bodybuilding contest.

Most of them had even less acting potential than Reeves, but a former Tarzan, Gordon Scott, was his top competitor. They appeared together in Romulus And Remus, made in 1962 by Sergio Corbucci, one of the best genre directors of Cine Città. Corbucci said that Reeves’s muscles “seemed made of cornflour”, and that when he had to lift actress Virna Lisi in the air (she couldn’t have weighed more than 50 kilos), he dropped her. During that film, Reeves left Scott with a broken nose, although apparently by accident.

During the filming of The Last Days Of Pompeii, Reeves dislocated his shoulder when his chariot slammed into a tree, but he continued working in Italy and was to star in 18 films over the next decade. Among his pictures was an off-beat Thief Of Baghdad, directed in 1960 by the documentarist Bruno Vailati. Although he’d missed out on A Fistful Of Dollars, he did do a western in 1968, his last film before returning to America, A Long Ride From Hell.

Reeves married his secretary, Aline, and they settled on a ranch in California, where he bred horses. He continued to take an interest in fitness, wrote a workout guide, Building The Classic Physique The Natural Way, and instructed others in bodybuilding, which he believed could help youngsters turn away from drugs.

His wife died in 1989.

Steve Reeves, bodybuilder and actor, born January 21 1926; died May 1 2000

Joan Bennett was born in 1910 in New Jersey, the daughter of actor Richard Bennett and younger sister of actress Constance Bennett. During the 1930’s she had a prolific career in movies as a pretty blonde ingenune in such movies as “Little Women” with Katharine Hepburn in 1933. In the early 1940’s, she changed her hair colour to dark and had a totally new career as a femme fatale in film noir such as “Scarlet Street” and “Woman in the Window”. In 1950 she eased into matron roles a bit too early and starred as the mother of Elizabeth Taylor in “Father of the Bride”. In the 1970’s, she scored a major success on television in the series “Dark Shadows”. She died in 1990.

TCM Overview:

Personable, extremely pretty and prolific star of a wide range of films in the 1930s and 40s. Bennett began her film career as a demure blonde ingenue (e.g. in George Cukor’s “Little Women” 1933, William K. Howard’s breathtaking “The Trial of Vivienne Ware” 1932). Raoul Walsh’s delightful “Me and My Gal” (1932), though, did give her an offbeat chance to indulge in sharp wisecracking. Early on her acting abilities seemed a bit modest, but Bennett’s warm speaking voice and quietly piquant charm gave her considerable appeal as a screen personality.

Gregory LaCava’s pioneering study of mental health problems, “Private Worlds” (1935), gave Bennett an unusually good acting opportunity, and the sensitivity and vulnerability she brought to the role showed the increasing resonance she was bringing to her screen work. If she never did possess the acting bravura of Hollywood’s most intense dramatic divas, Joan Bennett was nonetheless intriguing, likable and highly watchable, her sometimes aloof, serene presence highly effective at suggesting muffled passion. In 1938 she followed the trend of going brunette and parting one’s hair in the middle (inspired by Hedy Lamarr’s strong first Hollywood impression), and the look stuck. “Trade Winds” (1938) was an enjoyable Tay Garnett romp, and “The Housekeeper’s Daughter” (1939) gave Bennett a good Hal Roach comedy, but she soon developed into a sultry, brunette fixture who proved outstanding in several 1940s films noirs. Sometimes sympathetic, sometimes a femme fatale, Bennett acted in a quartet of Fritz Lang thrillers, “Manhunt” (1941), “Woman in the Window” (1944), “Scarlet Street” (1945) and “Secret Beyond the Door” (1948), which represent some of her best work in film.

Bennett also appeared in a wide variety of other films during this time, ranging from the semi-musical period drama, “Nob Hill” (1945) to the interesting Hemingway adaptation “The Macomber Affair” (1947), which traded in on her more seductive noir roles. As middle age approached, Bennett shifted to the role of witty and nurturing mother in Vincente Minnelli’s comedies “Father of the Bride” (1950) and “Father’s Little Dividend” (1951). She was also especially fine as a mother whose family is jeopardized in Max Ophuls’s unusual noir, “The Reckless Moment” (1949).

Her career was short-circuited in 1951 after her husband, producer Walter Wanger, shot her agent, Jennings Lang, accusing the latter of being a “homewrecker”. She was offered few film roles after that (Douglas Sirk’s “There’s Always Tomorrow” 1956, in which she supported Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray), though she returned to the stage in several national tours. Later in life Bennett could be seen in a leading role on TV on the highly enjoyable cult Gothic soap opera, “Dark Shadows” (1966-71) and her last film appearance was in Dario Argento’s cult horror film, “Suspiria” (1976).

Daughter of famed stage (and occasionally screen) actor Richard Bennett, sister of fellow film star Constance Bennett, and also sister of actress Barbara Bennett; she was married to Wanger (her second husband) from 1940 to 1965.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

2450139 Confirm or Deny: CONFIRM OR DENY, US poster, from left: Don Ameche, Joan Bennett, 1941. TM & Copyright © 20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection; (add.info.: Affiche du film CONFIRM OR DENY, (US poster) de Archie Mayo et de Fritz Langfrom avec left: Don Ameche, Joan Bennett, 1941.); Everett Collection.

Dennis Morgan was born in 1908 in Wisconsin. He was a stalwart of films of the 1940’s especially Warner Bros Productions. His film debut was in “Suez” with Annabella and Tyrone Power in 1936. Among his other movies are “The Great Ziegfeld””Kitty Foyle”, “In This Our Life”, “My Wild Irish Rose” and “This Woman Is Dangerous”. He died in 1994.

David Shipman’s obituary on Dennis Morgan in the “Independent”:

DENNIS MORGAN is as inextricably linked to Warner Bros as James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart. He reigned at the studio for just over a decade, the 1940s. He was comfortable, good-looking, well-mannered: the antithesis of the gritty Bogart, and it is a telling comment on the Hollywood of that era that he replaced him in two movies that he turned down, Bad Men of Missouri (1941) and God is My Co-Pilot (1945).

And what of Morgan in Casablanca? It has long been a bad joke but true, that the unprepossessing Ronald Reagan was the original choice for Rick; and the very first press release listed his co-stars as Ann Sheridan and Dennis Morgan, both of whom would have brought to the roles – presumably those played by Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henried – an individuality which is the prerequisite of true stars. It was apparent before Hollywood and he himself realised it, since he spent a couple of years at MGM as Stanley Morner (his real name) and another at Paramount as Richard Stanley. But catch him singing ‘A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody’ on the fantastic wedding-cake set of The Great Ziegfeld (1936) or as the First Mate in King of Alcatraz (1938) or any of the other dozen films he made: he had star potential.

Warners recognised this, rechristened him Dennis Morgan and put him on the assembly-line with Wayne Morris, Arthur Kennedy, Jeffrey Lynn, Eddie Albert and Ronald Reagan – likeable young lugs squiring the heroine till Bogart, Cagney or Flynn came crashing down to sweep her up.

It was the perceptive Sam Wood – always careful in his casting – who saw something more in Morgan, taking him to RKO to be the shallow Philadelphia playboy who marries and deserts Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle (1940). Warners then took a second look and cast him as Olivia de Havilland’s fiance in In This Our Life (1942) – snitched away by her sister, Bette Davis, and driven by her to drink and then suicide. He was up against another of the studio’s bitches in The Hard Way (1942), Ida Lupino – ‘the John Dillinger of the one- night stands’ as he put it.

The film was notable in as much as he and Jack Carson played a vaudeville team, and over the years Warners were to pair them in another half-dozen movies, Morgan as the easy-going singer who always got the girl and Carson as the loud-mouthed but cowardly braggard-comic who was given the air. No one thought they were Hope and Crosby, least of all themselves. They actually played themselves with identical screen personas in It’s a Great Feeling (1949), trying to persuade Warners that Doris Day – not playing herself – had screen potential; and she, starting her movie career, was to achieve a stardom greater than all of their other musical leading ladies put together.

Morgan twinned with the equally pleasing Jane Wyman in Cheyenne (1947) and The Lady Takes a Sailor (1949). He was also a match for such formidable co-stars as Sheridan in Shine On, Harvest Moon (1944) and One More Tomorrow (1946), Barbara Stanwyck in Christmas in Connecticut (1946) and Ginger Rogers in Perfect Strangers (1950). He wasn’t swamped by Joan Crawford in This Woman is Dangerous (1952), as a nice doctor who rescues her from a gangster, saving her form a life of crime.

That was his penultimate film for Warners; after a western, Cattle Town (1952), they let him go, adrift in a Hollywood where more dynamic stars were in demand – Marlon Brando, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster. Morgan made only a few more movies and then, in 1959, appeared in a television series, 21 Beacon Street. Thereafter he raised cattle on a ranch near Fresno, California.

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

Mark Damon was born in 1933 in Chicago. He has had a long and profilic career appearing in Roger Corman movies, Spagettiti Westerns and daytime American soaps. His film debut was in 1956 in “Inside Detroit”. Other films include “Between Heaven and Hell”, “Young and Dangerous”, “The Party Crashers” and “Johnny Yuma”.

Dean Paul Martin was born in 1951 in Santa Monica, California. He was the son of actor & singer Dean Martin. He starred opposite Ali MacGraw in the 1979 movie about tennis, “Players”. In 1985 he starred in the TV series “Misfits of Science”. In 1987 he was killed in an airplane crash. He left a son by his marriage to Olivia Hussey.

IMDB entry:

The son of Rat Pack member Dean Martin, Dean Paul Martin initially showed interest in a singing career, and was also a talented tennis player, which served him well in his role opposite Ali McGraw in 1979’s The Players. An avid pilot and a captain in the California Air National Guard, Martin was killed when his F-4 Phantom jet fighter crashed into the San Bernadino Mountains in a snowstorm during a routine flight on March 21, 1987.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Mark Myers

Albert Sharpe was born in Belfast in 1985. He created the role of Finian McLonergan in “Finian’s Rainbow” on Broadway. His films include “I See A Dark Stranger” with Deborah Kerr in 1946, “Portrait of Jennie” with Jennifer Jones in 1948 and of course his most famous role in “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” in 1959 with Sean Connery and Janet Munro. He died in 1970.

IMDB entry:

Albert Sharpe was born on April 15, 1885 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was an actor, known for Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959), Royal Wedding (1951) and Brigadoon(1954). He died on February 13, 1970 in Belfast.

Talented Irish actor, long a member of the famous Abbey Players, but perhaps best known in America for creating the role of Finian McLonergan in the original Broadway production of “Finian’s Rainbow” in 1947 and starring in the title role of Disney’s “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” twelve years later. His last ten years were spent in quiet retirement until his death in 1970 at the age of 85.

Walt Disney had seen him in the Broadway production of “Finian’s Rainbow.” He kept him in mind for the title role in the long delayed “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” which wasn’t made until 1959.

Played many vaudeville houses while touring Europe in a 50-year career, at one time partnering in a comic act with actor Joe Carney.

Attend Christian Brothers School in Belfast and started show business as a boy there selling programs at the Empire theater and as a magician’s assistant.

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Ross Hunter

Jo Morrow

Jo Morrow. Wikipedia.

John Schneider

Steve Reeves

Steve Reeves obituary in “The Guardian” in 2000.

Joan Bennett

Dennis Morgan

Mark Damon

Dean Paul Martin

Albert Sharpe

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