Kier Dullea was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1936. He is best known for his lead performance in the Stanley Kubrick classic “2001: A Space Oddity” in 1968. His other movies include “The Hoodlum Priest”, “Male Order Bride”, “Bunny Lake is Missing” and “The Fox” with Sandy Dennis and Anne Heywood.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Tall, slim, remote and boyishly handsome, one of Keir Dullea’s most arresting features are his pale blue eyes and, at one time, they were featured all over the screen in a number of watershed films of the 1960s. A major, up-and-coming film star from the “Camelot” years straight through the turbulent era of the U.S.-Viet Nam War, he never quite reached international fame. His shining star may have suffered a power outage into the next decade, but he persevered quite well on T.V. and (especially) the stage in a career now surpassing five decades.
Dullea, who was born in Cleveland, Ohio, is the son of two book-store owners, and he was raised in New York’s Greenwich Village section. He graduated from George School in Pennsylvania and attended both Rutgers and San Francisco State before deciding to pursue summer stock and regional theatre. Attending the Neighborhood Playhouse, he made his New York City acting debut in a production of “Sticks and Bones” in 1956. His first big break came with the pilot program of the Route 66 (1960) series, and he proceeded to find other TV roles in Naked City (1958), Checkmate (1960) and various dramatic programs.
Following stage work in “Season of Choice” (1959) and “A Short Happy Life” (1961), Dullea made an auspicious film debut in a leading role with The Hoodlum Priest (1961), playing a troubled street gang member who crosses paths with Don Murray‘s determined minister. The young actor’s characters from then on seemed to walk a dangerous tight-rope of emotions, and his apparent versatility at such a young age led him to a number of other psychologically scarred portrayals. Tending to play men younger than he really was, none were more disturbed than his haphephobic adolescent David (Dullea was twenty-six at the time) in the deeply felt love story David and Lisa (1962). Paired beautifully with Janet Margolin‘s schizophrenic Lisa, Dullea won the Golden Globe Award for “Most Promising Male Newcomer.”
In the World War II military drama The Thin Red Line (1964)he played an edgy, nervous-eyed private who is pushed to his murderous brink by a brutal sergeant on Guadacanal. In Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) Dullea portrayed the incestuous brother of Carol Lynley, who may or may not figure into the disappearance of Lynley’s child. Keir also costarred as the mysterious intruder who inserts an emotional wedge between gay lovers Anne Heywood and Sandy Dennis in the ground-breaking film about homosexuals, The Fox(1967).
Topping that off, Dullea played the salacious Marquis De Sade himself in a relatively tame, internationally flavored production of De Sade (1969). The apex of his film career, however, came with his lead role in Stanley Kubrick‘s epic science-fiction film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), as the astronaut Dr. David Bowman.
In the realm of stage acting, Keir made his debut on Broadway in 1967 with “Dr. Cook’s Garden” costarring Burl Ives, and Dullea won some “flower power” stardom two years later as a sensitive young blind man who attempted to wriggle free of his protective, overbearing mother. His character also pursues love with a free-spirited girl, played byBlythe Danner, in the play “Butterflies Are Free.” By the time the movie of this story was released in 1972 both stars had been replaced by Goldie Hawn and Edward Albert.
Dullea next went abroad to seek film work in England and in Canada, but with lukewarm results. He continued to show his odd-man-out appeal on the Broadway stage as “Brick” in 1970, and in the Broadway revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in 1974, acting along with Elizabeth Ashley as “Maggie,” and in the black comedy “P.S. Your Cat Is Dead!” one year later.
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In the years since then, Dullea has acted steadily on the stage in New York City, and in U.S. regional theatres, in productions of “Sweet Prince,” “The Seagull” and “The Little Foxes,”among others. His cinematic roles since 1970 have included another “mysterious stranger” in The Next One (1984), and he also reprised his “David Bowman” role in 2010(1984), the sequel to “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Dullea has had four wives: his first was actress Margot Bennett, and he and his third wife, Susie Fuller (whom he met during the British performances of “Butterflies are Free” in London), cofounded the Theater Artists Workshop of Westport in 1983. Dullea, Fuller and her two children resided in London for quite a while. After Fuller’s death in 1998, Dullea married for the fourth time in 1999 to actress Mia Dillon, who is best known for portraying the character “Babe” in in the play, “Crimes of the Heart” in New York City. Just a few weeks later they appeared together in the play “Deathtrap.”
Dullea has worked infrequently in television roles. Among his more recent work in movies has been the role of a senator in The Good Shepherd (2006), along with Matt Damon andAngelina Jolie, which was directed by Robert De Niro.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
TCM Overview:
Raised in NYC’s Greenwich Village where his parents ran a bookstore, clean-cut, sensitive-looking leading man Keir Dullea acted in stock and with various repertory companies before finally appearing Off-Broadway in “Season of Choice” (1959). He gained immediate attention for his first two film roles, as the doomed juvenile delinquent in “The Hoodlum Priest” (1961) and as the young emotionally disturbed protagonist of Frank Perry’s “David and Lisa” (1962). Looking younger than his years, he continued to play intense, neurotic youths in movies like “The Thin Red Line” (1964), “Bunny Lake Is Missing” (1965) and “Madame X” (1966), finally breaking the typecasting as the man who intrudes upon a lesbian relationship in the film of D H Lawrence’s novella, “The Fox” (1967). After his memorable turn as astronaut David Bowman in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), his career seemed ready to blast into a new dimension, but his misses outnumbered his hits in the 1970s and 80s, due as much to his apathy as anything.
Kevin Dobson was born in New York City in 1943. He first came to prominence as the sidekick Crocker to Telly Savalas’s “Kojack” which ran from 1973 until 1978. His films include “Midway” in 1976, “All Night Long” with Barbra Streisand and “Dirty Work”. He starred in the TV series “Knot’s Landing” from 1982 until 1993.
TCM Overview:
Leading man with appeal to both women and blue collars, who still has traces of his Queens, NY, accent, and who has sustained 25 years of TV stardom, Kevin Dobson is best recalled as the right hand to “Kojak,” Lt. Bobby Crocker (CBS, 1973-1978), and as Mack MacKenzie on the long-running “Knots Landing” (CBS, 1982-1993). Dobson was attending NYU and working on the Long Island Railroad to support himself when his girlfriend — whom he later married — suggested he try to do TV commercials for make money instead of railroad work while trying to study. He won a few commercials and toured with a production of “The Impossible Years” by Walter Kerr. When he returned to New York, he was hooked, and began studying at the Neighborhood Playhouse. He won bit parts in three films made in the east — “Love Story” (1970), “Klute” (1971), and “The French Connection” (1971) — before heading to Los Angeles, where his first TV gig was in an episode of “The Mod Squad,” but he found himself working as a fireman on the Santa Fe Railroad to make ends meet. The break came when he was cast as Lt. Crocker in “Kojak” (CBS, 1973-1978). Telly Savalas bossed Dobson around for 100 episodes, but Dobson won the hearts of the younger women watching the show. Under contract to Universal, which made the series, he was put into a co-starring role in the feature film “The Battle of Midway” (1976) and in his first TV movie, “The Immigrants” (syndication, 1978). He holds the distinction of having been one of Barbra Streisand’s screen husbands, but, alas for Dobson, it was in one of La Streisand’s few box office turkeys, “All Night Long” (1981). In 1981, Dobson had his first TV series as a lead, “Shannon” (CBS), playing a New York police detective who relocates to San Francisco with his son. The show lasted only a season, but he then joined “Knots Landing” as tough federal prosecutor MacKenzie, who eventually married Michele Lee. Starting in 1988, Dobson also frequently directed episodes of the series. “Knots Landing” also gave Dobson the profile to star in TV movies, many produced through his own company — and for which his wife, Susan, was executive producer. Among the more recent were “Dirty Work” (USA, 1992), in which he was an ex-cop turned bailbondsman, and “If Someone Had Known” (CBS, 1995), in which he must arrest his own daughter. In 1996, he was the older and wiser Leo McCarthy on “FX: The Series” for syndication, and he returned to “Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac” (CBS, 1997). As for Lt. Crocker, according to his appearance in “Kojak: It’s Always Something” (ABC, 1990), which reprised the 1970s characters, Crocker had become an attorney and Assistant DA.
Kim Darby is to-day best known for her performance as Mattie Ross in the original version of “True Grit” which starred John Wayne back in 1969. Kim Darby was born in 1947 in Los Angeles. She made her film debut in “Bye Bye Birdie” in 1963. She went on to feature in the underrated “Bus Riley’s Back in Town” with Michael Parks and “The Strawberry Statement”. She is married to actor James Westmoreland.
TCM Overview:
Kim Darby rose to fame as the young woman who asks John Wayne to help her avenge her father’s murder in “True Grit” (1969), but while Wayne won an Academy Award for his efforts, Darby’s spunky quality did not translate into ingenue status and she proved hard to cast. By the 1980s, her work had become sporadic.
A Hollywood native, Darby began performing as a child (billed as Derby Zerby) with her parents, who were known professionally as ‘The Dancing Zerbies’. She was a teen-ager when she appeared as an extra in the film “Bye Bye Birdie” (1963) and made her speaking debut on an episode of the TV series “Mr. Novak” (NBC, 1964). She had her first speaking role in a film with “Bus Riley’s Back in Town” (1965), but did not get her big break until “True Grit”. She was rushed into several subsequent films, including “Norwood” (1970), a vehicle to help launch Glen Campbell in films in which Darby played a pregnant and rejected woman he chances to meet. The same year she was the protesting woman whose presence lures Bruce Davison into the anti-war movement in “The Strawberry Statement” (1970). In 1978, Henry Winkler pursued Darby in “The One and Only” and she was the professor dismayed by the changes in Jason Bateman in “Teen Wolf Too” (1987).
While Darby began in TV in the mid-60s on “Mr. Novak” as a high school student with problems, and subsequently appeared in the pilots for both “Ironside” (1967) and “The Streets of San Francisco” (1972), her work on the small screen has been infrequent. She had a supporting role as Virginia Calderwood on the original “Rich Man, Poor Man” miniseries during the 1976-77 season, and also co-starred in “The Last Convertible” (NBC, 1981). Darby made her TV-movie debut with “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” (ABC, 1973) and was still making occasional TV appearances in the 90s: she had a small role in the children’s movie “Secret of the Lizard Woman”, a 1995 ABC Saturday Special.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
James Shigeta was born in Hawaii in 1933. He served in the U.S Marine Corps during the Korean War. His breatkthrough role came in 1959 in Samuel Fuller’s cult classic “The Crimson Kimono” with Glenn Corbett and Victoria Shaw. His other films include “Bridge to the Sun” with Carroll Baker, “Flower Drum Song” with Miyoshi Umeki and Nancy Kwan and “China Cry” with France Nuyen in 1990. He died in August 2014.
His obituary in “The Independent”:
he Japanese-American actor and singer James Shigeta starred in two major films of 1961, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Flower Drum Song, in which he sang the hit ballad, “You Are Beautiful”, and the drama Bridge to the Sun, in which he played a Japanese diplomat married to an American (Carroll Baker).
The latter was the US’s official entry in the Venice Film Festival, and Shigeta was hailed as the first Oriental romantic leading man since Sessue Hayakawa in the silent era. His big-screen stardom, though, was not sustained, but he continued to have an active career on TV and stage, and became a notable character actor. His memorable roles include supplying the voice for General Li in Disney’s animated feature, Mulan (1998), and a telling few minutes in Die Hard (1988), in which he played the executive who refuses to give a bank security code to a vicious terrorist (Alan Rickman). “You’re just going to have to kill me,” he says, prompting Rickman to shoot him in the head.
Known as a “Sansei”, a third-generation American of Japanese ancestry, Shigeta was born in Honolulu in 1929, one of six children of a plumber. He attended New York University to major in creative writing, but switched to his first love, music, winning a popular talent show before enlisting as a Marine in the Korean War, rising to the rank of Staff Sergeant.
After the war he headed the cast of a musical revue in Japan, achieving immense popularity. His record of “Love Letters in the Sand” (a hit for Pat Boone in the US and UK) sold more than 2m copies, at the time the best-selling record in Japanese history. He had to find a tutor to teach him the Japanese language, and headlined both television and stage musicals. Returning to the US to star in television spectaculars with Dinah Shore and Shirley MacLaine, he headlined a revue, Holiday in Japan, in Las Vegas produced by MacLaine’s husband Steve Parker.
He made his US screen debut in Samuel Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono (1959) as one of two cops who fall for a key witness. He then played featured roles in Walk Like a Dragon (1960), as a Chinese man in the turn-of-the-century West who resents the treatment of his race, and Cry for Happy (1961), a farce dealing with culture clash as Navy men invade a Japanese brothel.
He sang on screen for the first time when given the romantic lead in Flower Drum Song as Wang Ta, who is in love with showgirl Nancy Kwan, unaware that he is loved by two others, a shy Chinese immigrant (Myoshi Umeki) and an older woman (Reiko Sato). A dramatic dream ballet depicting the confused passions, choreographed by Hermes Pan, featured Shigeta in close-ups while a masked double handled the more ambitious dance movements.
In 1962 Shigeta signed to a record label co-founded by Fred Astaire, Choreo, and made an album, We Speak The Same Language, featuring mainly show tunes, such as Rodgers and Hart’s “This Funny World” and Strouse and Adams’ “I’ve Just Seen Her”. It revealed an appealing baritone, but his acceptance the same year of a guest spot in TV’s Naked City indicated that screen roles were not being offered.
It was five years before his next film, supporting Elvis Presley in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), subsequent films including Lost Horizon (1973), The Yakuza (1975), and Midway (1976) as Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. In 1969 he returned to the stage as star of a highly successful touring version of The King and I.
He appeared in over 100 television series and films, including Dr Kildare, The Outer Limits, Perry Mason, Hawaii Five-O, Kung Fu, Streets of San Francisco, The Rockford Files, The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote. His last television role was in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Throughout his career, he refused to be questioned about his private life.
James Shigeta, actor and singer: born Honolulu 17 June 1929; died Los Angeles 28 July 2014.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Robert F. Lyons was born in 1939 in Albany, New York. He made his debut on television on an episode of “I Dream of Jeannie” in 1966. He was soon making feature films and his movies of note include “Pendleum” with Jean Seberg and George Peppard in 1969,”Getting Straight” with Elliot Gould and Candice Bergen and “The Todd Kilings” with Gloria Grahame.
TCM Overview:
Boyish lead of counter-culture films who made transition to more “solid guy” character roles in the 1970s and 80s. Best remembered for his hilarious turn in “Getting Straight” (1970), as Elliot Gould’s stoner buddy whose lame attempts at dodging the draft ultimately cause him to enlist in the Marines. After playing a charming Manson type who drives an unstable younger boy to multiple murder in “The Todd Killings” (1971), and a Harvard pot dealer opposite Barbara Hershey in “Dealing: Or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues” (1972), Lyons could be found in more standard action fare.
John Rubinstein was born in 1946 in Los Angeles. His father was the famous Polish born concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein. His films include “Red Dragon”, “Someone to Watch Over Me” and “The Boys from Brazil”.
IMDB entry;
John Rubinstein is an actor, director, composer, singer, and teacher. He was born in Los Angeles, California in 1946, the same year his father, the renowned Polish-born concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein, became an American citizen. He is the youngest of four children. His sister Eva danced and acted on Broadway, creating the role of Margo in the original production of “The Diary of Anne Frank”; she later became an internationally known photographer. His brother Paul recently retired from his career as a stockbroker in New York; his sister Alina is a psychiatrist in Manhattan. John attended St. Bernard’s School and Collegiate School in New York City, and then returned to Los Angeles in 1964 to study theater at UCLA. During his college years he began his professional career as an actor, appearing in 1965 with Howard Keel in Lerner and Loewe’s “Camelot” in San Carlos and Anaheim; playing a role in the Civil War film “Journey to Shiloh”; and starting his long list of television appearances in shows such as “The Virginian”, “Dragnet”, and “Room 222”. It was also at UCLA that he began composing and orchestrating music: incidental music for theatrical plays, and a musical, “The Short and Turbulent Reign of Roger Ginzburg”, with book and lyrics by David Colloff, that won the 1967 BMI Varsity Musical Award as Best Musical.
Rubinstein made his Broadway acting debut in 1972, and received a Theater World Award, for creating the title role in the musical “Pippin”, directed by Bob Fosse. In 1980 he won the Tony, Drama Desk, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, and Drama-Logue Awards for his portrayal of James Leeds in Mark Medoff’s “Children Of A Lesser God”, directed by Gordon Davidson. Other Broadway appearances were in Neil Simon’s “Fools”, and David Rabe’s “Hurlyburly”, both directed by Mike Nichols; Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial”, which earned him another Drama Desk nomination; David Henry Hwang’s “M. Butterfly”; “Getting Away With Murder”, by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by Jack O’Brien, and the musical “Ragtime”, directed by Frank Galati. In 1987 he made his off-Broadway debut at the Roundabout Theater as Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, with Stephen Lang and John Wood, and subsequently performed in “Urban Blight” and “Cabaret Verboten”. In 2005 he received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Lead Actor in a Play, as well as nominations for both the Outer Critics’ and Drama League Awards, for his portrayal of George Simon in Elmer Rice’s “Counsellor-at-Law”, directed by Dan Wackerman at the Pecadillo Theatre.
His appearances in regional theaters include the musicals “Camelot” (at various times as Tom of Warwick, Mordred, and King Arthur) and “South Pacific”; the role of Billy in David Rabe’s “Streamers”, Ariel in “The Tempest”, Marchbanks in Shaw’s “Candida”, both Sergius and Bluntschli (alternating nights with Richard Thomas) in Shaw’s “Arms And The Man”, several roles in Arnold Weinstein’s “Metamorphoses”, directed by Paul Sills at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, “Sight Unseen” at L.A.’s Odyssey Theatre, “The Torch-Bearers” and “Our Town” at the Williamstown Theater Festival, Arthur Miller’s “Broken Glass” at Monterey Peninsula College, and Warren Smith in “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” (in a 160-city National Tour). In 1985 He starred in “Merrily We Roll Along” at the La Jolla Playhouse, in a version newly re-written by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by James Lapine. He was the original Andrew Ladd III in A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, opened the play in New York off-Broadway, and later performed it on Broadway, in San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. He created the role of Molina in “Kiss Of The Spider Woman”, the musical by Terrence McNally, John Kander, and Fred Ebb, directed by Harold Prince, and the role of Kenneth Hoyle in Jon Robin Baitz’s “Three Hotels”. In 1997, he played Tateh in the American premiere run of the musical “Ragtime”, by Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty, and Lynn Ahrens, directed by Frank Galati, at the Shubert Theater in Los Angeles, receiving both an L. A. Drama Critics Circle nomination and a Drama-Logue Award as Best Actor in a Musical, and continued in the show both in Vancouver and on Broadway. He appeared opposite Donald Sutherland in Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s “Enigmatic Variations” at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, and at the Savoy Theatre in London’s West End; played the Wizard of Oz in the hit musical “Wicked”, by Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz, directed by Joe Mantello, at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles for 18 months; and starred with John Schuck and Ken Page in the world premiere of a musical version of “Grumpy Old Men” in Winnipeg at the Manitoba Theatre Centre.
His 24 feature films include Atlas Shrugged Part II; Hello, I Must Be Going, which opened the 2012 Sundance Festival; 21 Grams; Red Dragon; Mercy; Another Stakeout; Someone To Watch Over Me; Daniel; The Boys From Brazil; Rome and Jewel; Choose Connor; Sublime; Jekyll; Kid Cop; Getting Straight; Zachariah; The Trouble with Girls; Journey To Shiloh; and The Car. He has acted in over 200 television films and series episodes, including Arthur Miller’s “The American Clock” (CableAce Award Nomination), “Mrs. Harris”, “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town”, “Norma And Marilyn”, “The Sleepwalker”, “Working Miracles”, “In My Daughter’s Name”, “Perry Mason”, “Voices Within: The Lives Of Truddi Chase”, “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles”, “Skokie”, “Movieola”, “Roots: The Next Generations”, and “A Howling In The Woods”. He received an Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of Jeff Maitland III in the ABC series “Family”, a role he played for five years; and he starred for two years with Jack Warden in the CBS series “Crazy Like A Fox”. He has played recurring parts on “The Fosters”, “Perception”, “The Mentalist”, “Desperate Housewives”, “Parenthood”, “No Ordinary Family”, “Greek”, “The Wizards of Waverly Place”, “Dirty Sexy Money”, “Day Break”, “Angel”, “The Guardian”, “The Practice”, “Star Trek: Enterprise”, “Girlfriends”, “Robocop: the Series”, “The Young and the Restless”, and “Barbershop.”
Mr. Rubinstein has composed, orchestrated, and conducted the musical scores for five feature films, including Jeremiah Johnson (directed by Sidney Pollack) and The Candidate, (directed by Michael Ritchie), both starring Robert Redford; Paddy (with Milo O’Shea); The Killer Inside Me (with Stacy Keach); and Kid Blue (with Dennis Hopper); and for over 50 television films, among them the Peabody Award-winning “Amber Waves”, “The Dollmaker” (starring Jane Fonda), “A Walton Wedding”, “The Ordeal Of Patty Hearst”, “Choices Of The Heart”, and “Emily, Emily”, as well as the weekly themes for “Family” and “China Beach”.
He spent six years as host for the radio program “Carnegie Hall Tonight”, broadcast on l80 stations in the United States and Canada, and two years as the keyboard player for the jazz-rock group Funzone. He has recorded over 100 audio books, including 25 of the best-selling Alex Delaware novels by Jonathan Kellerman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Independence Day” by Richard Ford, Tom Clancy’s “Debt Of Honor” and “Op Center”, and E. L. Doctorow’s “City of God”, “World’s Fair”, and “All The Time In The World”.
In 1987, Rubinstein made his directorial debut at the Williamstown Theater Festival, staging Aphra Behn’s “The Rover”, with Christopher Reeve and Kate Burton; the following season he directed the first American-cast production of Christopher Hampton’s “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”, with Dwight Schultz and Dianne Wiest. Off-Broadway, he directed the New York premieres of “Phantasie”, by Sybille Pearson, and “Nightingale”, by Elizabeth Diggs; and the world premiere of A. R. Gurney’s “The Old Boy”, with Stephen Collins. At the Cape Playhouse in Massachusetts, he staged “Wait Until Dark”, with Hayley Mills and William Atherton. For NYU, he directed productions of “The Three Sisters” and “Macbeth”; for UCLA, “Company”; and for USC, “Brigadoon”, “Into The Woods”, “On The Town”, “City of Angels”, and “The Most Happy Fella”. In Los Angeles, at Interact Theatre Company, of which he has been a member since 1992, he co-directed and starred in the revival of Elmer Rice’s Counsellor-At-Law, winning Drama-Logue Awards and L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards in both categories, as well as Ovation Awards for Ensemble Acting and Sound Design; the production itself won 22 awards; he also directed and acted in Sondheim and Lapine’s “Into The Woods” and “A Little Night Music”, and Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man”, and also directed Sheridan’s “The Rivals” and Frank Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls”. For television, he directed the CBS Schoolbreak Special “A Matter Of Conscience”, which won the Emmy Award for Best Children’s Special in 1990, an episode of the CBS series “Nash Bridges”, the ABC AfterSchool Special miniseries “Summer Stories”, and three episodes of the TV series “High Tide”.
In 2011, Rubinstein provided commentary for the online web-casting of the XIVth International Tchaikovsky Competition, a classical music competition held in Moscow. He teaches courses in musical theater audition and acting for the camera, and directs the annual spring musical, at the University of Southern California.
His most rewarding experience has been participating in the lives of his five children: Jessica, Michael, Peter, Jacob, and Max.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: John Rubinstein
The above IMDB entry;
John Rubinstein is an actor, director, composer, singer, and teacher. He was born in Los Angeles, California in 1946, the same year his father, the renowned Polish-born concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein, became an American citizen. He is the youngest of four children. His sister Eva danced and acted on Broadway, creating the role of Margo in the original production of “The Diary of Anne Frank”; she later became an internationally known photographer. His brother Paul recently retired from his career as a stockbroker in New York; his sister Alina is a psychiatrist in Manhattan. John attended St. Bernard’s School and Collegiate School in New York City, and then returned to Los Angeles in 1964 to study theater at UCLA. During his college years he began his professional career as an actor, appearing in 1965 with Howard Keel in Lerner and Loewe’s “Camelot” in San Carlos and Anaheim; playing a role in the Civil War film “Journey to Shiloh”; and starting his long list of television appearances in shows such as “The Virginian”, “Dragnet”, and “Room 222”. It was also at UCLA that he began composing and orchestrating music: incidental music for theatrical plays, and a musical, “The Short and Turbulent Reign of Roger Ginzburg”, with book and lyrics by David Colloff, that won the 1967 BMI Varsity Musical Award as Best Musical.
Rubinstein made his Broadway acting debut in 1972, and received a Theater World Award, for creating the title role in the musical “Pippin”, directed by Bob Fosse. In 1980 he won the Tony, Drama Desk, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, and Drama-Logue Awards for his portrayal of James Leeds in Mark Medoff’s “Children Of A Lesser God”, directed by Gordon Davidson. Other Broadway appearances were in Neil Simon’s “Fools”, and David Rabe’s “Hurlyburly”, both directed by Mike Nichols; Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial”, which earned him another Drama Desk nomination; David Henry Hwang’s “M. Butterfly”; “Getting Away With Murder”, by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by Jack O’Brien, and the musical “Ragtime”, directed by Frank Galati. In 1987 he made his off-Broadway debut at the Roundabout Theater as Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, with Stephen Lang and John Wood, and subsequently performed in “Urban Blight” and “Cabaret Verboten”. In 2005 he received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Lead Actor in a Play, as well as nominations for both the Outer Critics’ and Drama League Awards, for his portrayal of George Simon in Elmer Rice’s “Counsellor-at-Law”, directed by Dan Wackerman at the Pecadillo Theatre.
His appearances in regional theaters include the musicals “Camelot” (at various times as Tom of Warwick, Mordred, and King Arthur) and “South Pacific”; the role of Billy in David Rabe’s “Streamers”, Ariel in “The Tempest”, Marchbanks in Shaw’s “Candida”, both Sergius and Bluntschli (alternating nights with Richard Thomas) in Shaw’s “Arms And The Man”, several roles in Arnold Weinstein’s “Metamorphoses”, directed by Paul Sills at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, “Sight Unseen” at L.A.’s Odyssey Theatre, “The Torch-Bearers” and “Our Town” at the Williamstown Theater Festival, Arthur Miller’s “Broken Glass” at Monterey Peninsula College, and Warren Smith in “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” (in a 160-city National Tour). In 1985 He starred in “Merrily We Roll Along” at the La Jolla Playhouse, in a version newly re-written by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by James Lapine. He was the original Andrew Ladd III in A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, opened the play in New York off-Broadway, and later performed it on Broadway, in San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. He created the role of Molina in “Kiss Of The Spider Woman”, the musical by Terrence McNally, John Kander, and Fred Ebb, directed by Harold Prince, and the role of Kenneth Hoyle in Jon Robin Baitz’s “Three Hotels”. In 1997, he played Tateh in the American premiere run of the musical “Ragtime”, by Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty, and Lynn Ahrens, directed by Frank Galati, at the Shubert Theater in Los Angeles, receiving both an L. A. Drama Critics Circle nomination and a Drama-Logue Award as Best Actor in a Musical, and continued in the show both in Vancouver and on Broadway. He appeared opposite Donald Sutherland in Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s “Enigmatic Variations” at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, and at the Savoy Theatre in London’s West End; played the Wizard of Oz in the hit musical “Wicked”, by Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz, directed by Joe Mantello, at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles for 18 months; and starred with John Schuck and Ken Page in the world premiere of a musical version of “Grumpy Old Men” in Winnipeg at the Manitoba Theatre Centre.
His 24 feature films include Atlas Shrugged Part II; Hello, I Must Be Going, which opened the 2012 Sundance Festival; 21 Grams; Red Dragon; Mercy; Another Stakeout; Someone To Watch Over Me; Daniel; The Boys From Brazil; Rome and Jewel; Choose Connor; Sublime; Jekyll; Kid Cop; Getting Straight; Zachariah; The Trouble with Girls; Journey To Shiloh; and The Car. He has acted in over 200 television films and series episodes, including Arthur Miller’s “The American Clock” (CableAce Award Nomination), “Mrs. Harris”, “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town”, “Norma And Marilyn”, “The Sleepwalker”, “Working Miracles”, “In My Daughter’s Name”, “Perry Mason”, “Voices Within: The Lives Of Truddi Chase”, “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles”, “Skokie”, “Movieola”, “Roots: The Next Generations”, and “A Howling In The Woods”. He received an Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of Jeff Maitland III in the ABC series “Family”, a role he played for five years; and he starred for two years with Jack Warden in the CBS series “Crazy Like A Fox”. He has played recurring parts on “The Fosters”, “Perception”, “The Mentalist”, “Desperate Housewives”, “Parenthood”, “No Ordinary Family”, “Greek”, “The Wizards of Waverly Place”, “Dirty Sexy Money”, “Day Break”, “Angel”, “The Guardian”, “The Practice”, “Star Trek: Enterprise”, “Girlfriends”, “Robocop: the Series”, “The Young and the Restless”, and “Barbershop.”
Mr. Rubinstein has composed, orchestrated, and conducted the musical scores for five feature films, including Jeremiah Johnson (directed by Sidney Pollack) and The Candidate, (directed by Michael Ritchie), both starring Robert Redford; Paddy (with Milo O’Shea); The Killer Inside Me (with Stacy Keach); and Kid Blue (with Dennis Hopper); and for over 50 television films, among them the Peabody Award-winning “Amber Waves”, “The Dollmaker” (starring Jane Fonda), “A Walton Wedding”, “The Ordeal Of Patty Hearst”, “Choices Of The Heart”, and “Emily, Emily”, as well as the weekly themes for “Family” and “China Beach”.
He spent six years as host for the radio program “Carnegie Hall Tonight”, broadcast on l80 stations in the United States and Canada, and two years as the keyboard player for the jazz-rock group Funzone. He has recorded over 100 audio books, including 25 of the best-selling Alex Delaware novels by Jonathan Kellerman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Independence Day” by Richard Ford, Tom Clancy’s “Debt Of Honor” and “Op Center”, and E. L. Doctorow’s “City of God”, “World’s Fair”, and “All The Time In The World”.
In 1987, Rubinstein made his directorial debut at the Williamstown Theater Festival, staging Aphra Behn’s “The Rover”, with Christopher Reeve and Kate Burton; the following season he directed the first American-cast production of Christopher Hampton’s “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”, with Dwight Schultz and Dianne Wiest. Off-Broadway, he directed the New York premieres of “Phantasie”, by Sybille Pearson, and “Nightingale”, by Elizabeth Diggs; and the world premiere of A. R. Gurney’s “The Old Boy”, with Stephen Collins. At the Cape Playhouse in Massachusetts, he staged “Wait Until Dark”, with Hayley Mills and William Atherton. For NYU, he directed productions of “The Three Sisters” and “Macbeth”; for UCLA, “Company”; and for USC, “Brigadoon”, “Into The Woods”, “On The Town”, “City of Angels”, and “The Most Happy Fella”. In Los Angeles, at Interact Theatre Company, of which he has been a member since 1992, he co-directed and starred in the revival of Elmer Rice’s Counsellor-At-Law, winning Drama-Logue Awards and L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards in both categories, as well as Ovation Awards for Ensemble Acting and Sound Design; the production itself won 22 awards; he also directed and acted in Sondheim and Lapine’s “Into The Woods” and “A Little Night Music”, and Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man”, and also directed Sheridan’s “The Rivals” and Frank Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls”. For television, he directed the CBS Schoolbreak Special “A Matter Of Conscience”, which won the Emmy Award for Best Children’s Special in 1990, an episode of the CBS series “Nash Bridges”, the ABC AfterSchool Special miniseries “Summer Stories”, and three episodes of the TV series “High Tide”.
In 2011, Rubinstein provided commentary for the online web-casting of the XIVth International Tchaikovsky Competition, a classical music competition held in Moscow. He teaches courses in musical theater audition and acting for the camera, and directs the annual spring musical, at the University of Southern California.
His most rewarding experience has been participating in the lives of his five children: Jessica, Michael, Peter, Jacob, and Max.
Jeannie Carson was born in 1928 in Pudsey, Yorkshire. She had some leading roles in British films before she became popular in America on television in the series “Hey Jeannie” in 1956. Her UK movies include “As Long As They’re Happy” and “An Alligator Named Daisy”. She is married to the actor Biff McGuire and livces in California.
In her early British films, she performed under the name Jean Carson, but later changed her given name to “Jeannie” to avoid confusion with the similarly named American actress Jean Carson.[2] Carson became an over-night star in Love From Judy, a musical by Hugh Martin and Jack Gray, and produced by Emile Littler, that played at the Saville Theatre in London from 1952 to 1953.
In 1956, Carson starred in her own series Hey, Jeannie!, which aired on CBS. The series lasted one season before being canceled in 1957.
In 1960, Carson married her second husband, actor Biff McGuire,[2] while both were starring in the Broadway revival of Finian’s Rainbow. The couple toured together in 1961 in Camelot, with McGuire as King Arthur and Carson asGuenevere. Later, they performed at the Seattle Repertory for fifteen years, often together. McGuire and Carson live in Los Angeles.
June Havoc was born in Vancouver in 1910. She was the sister of Gypsy Rose Lee. Her films include “Four Jacks and a Jill” in 1942, “Gentleman’s Agreement” in 1947 and “Can’t Stop the Music” in 1980 which starred Village People. She died at the age of 97 in Connecticut.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Musical theater devotees will undoubtedly know that the song “Let Me Entertain You” was from the classic musical “Gypsy”, the born-in-a-trunk story of resilient kid troopers Gypsy Rose Lee and June Havoc who were mercilessly pushed into vaudeville careers by an unbearably headstrong mother. While the lesser-talented Gypsy, of course, became the legendary ecdysiast who turned stripping into an art form, sister June survived her “Baby June” vaudeville child days of old and the tougher road of Depression-era dance marathons to become a reputable actress of stage, screen and TV, among other things. While June may have immortalized in “Gypsy,” based on her older sister’s memoirs, it was a bittersweet notoriety as she felt it was a very unjust, hurtful and highly inaccurate portrait of her. It also caused a deep rift between the sisters that lasted for well over a decade.
The Canadian-born actress (she was born in Vancouver, not Seattle) entered the world in 1912 (some sources insist 1913 or 1916, but Havoc confirmed her true birth date in 2006), the younger daughter of audacious “stage mother” Rose Thompson Hovick and her husband, John Olaf Hovick, a cub reporter for a Seattle newspaper. Baby June was primed for stardom by Rose by age 2 and was soon dancing with the great ballerina Anna Pavlova and appearing in Hal Roach film shorts (1918-1924) with Harold Lloyd. A flexible, high-kicking vaudeville sensation at 5, she was featured front-and-center in an act completely built around her (“Dainty June and Her Newsboys”). Earning around $1,500 a week at her peak, the delightful child star had audiences eating out of the palm of her little hand while sharing the stage with the likes of “Red-Hot Mama” Sophie Tucker and “Baby Snooks” Fanny Brice. The unrelenting pressures and suffocating dominance of her mother, however, led to a capricious elopement at age 13 with a young boy from the act (Bobby Reed, who inspired the dancing character of Tulsa in “Gypsy”). They married in North Platte, Nebraska with each lying about their age. By the time the Depression hit, however, vaudeville, the nation’s economy and her marriage had all collapsed.
Now a mother of a young daughter, April (born out of wedlock in 1930, April Kent acted briefly in the 1950s and died of a heart attack in 1998), June made ends meet by modeling, posing and toiling in dance marathons. The blonde, blue-eyed stunner also found work in stock musicals and on the Borscht Belt circuit. She made her Broadway debut in the musical “Forbidden Melody in 1936”. Years passed before she earned her big break as Gladys in Rodgers and Hart’s classic musical “Pal Joey” opposite Van Johnsonand Gene Kelly in 1940. As a result of their scene-stealing work, the trio earned movie contracts – the two men heading off to the MGM studio and June to RKO.
Unlike her male counterparts, June found herself inextricably caught up in “B” level material. Her film debut in the war-era Four Jacks and a Jill (1942) was followed by the equally ho-hum Powder Town (1942) and Sing Your Worries Away (1942), neither requiring much in the line of acting. Her personality was big for the screen due to her broad vaudeville background, but she nevertheless could show some true grit and talent on occasion, particularly with her support role in My Sister Eileen (1942).
For the next few years she experienced both highs and lows. Her Broadway shows were either hits, such as the musical “Mexican Hayride” (1944) (for which she won the Donaldson Award), and the dramatic “The Ryan Girl” (1945), or complete misses, which included a musical version of the Sadie Thompson saga Rain. June’s film acting continued to be a stumbling block, scoring best when asked to play brassy, cynical dames. While she fared well as the femme fatale in Intrigue (1947), the racist secretary in Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), and the gun moll The Story of Molly X (1949), more often than not, she was handed second-rate fodder to flounder in such as The Iron Curtain (1948), Once a Thief (1950) and Follow the Sun (1951). She appeared on TV in the early 50s, and she received her own short-lived vehicles as a lawyer in Willy (1954) and as host of her own show The June Havoc Show (1964).
After completing her last film Three for Jamie Dawn (1956), June refocused on stage and TV – particularly the former. She earned some of her best reviews both here and abroad in later years: Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Mistress Sullen in “The Beaux’ Stratagem,” Sabina in “The Skin of Our Teeth,” Millicent in “Dinner at Eight,” Jenny in “The Threepenny Opera,” Mrs. Swabb in “Habeas Corpus,” and Mrs. Lovett in “Sweeney Todd”. In 1982 she pulled out all the stops on Broadway and gave a real Rose’s Turn as a Miss Hannigan replacement in “Annie”.
June expanded her talents to include both playwriting and directing. In addition to “I Said the Fly,” she wrote “Marathon ’33” (based on her Depression-era struggles) and received a 1964 Tony nomination for directing the play. June became the artistic director of the New Orleans Repertory Theatre in 1970, and later went on tour with her own one-woman show “An Evening with June Havoc”. On stage and broaching age 80, the never-say-die actress appeared 8in a production of “Love Letters” and “An Old Lady’s Guide to Survival”.
June’s mid-career biography “Early Havoc” was published in 1959. Married three times (her last husband, producer/director/writer William Spier died in 1973), June was long estranged from her sister, none too happy with Gypsy’s portrayal of her in the best-selling memoir, “Gypsy” and equally dismayed of her Baby June character in the smash musical hit. The girls, noted for their trademark elongated faces and shapely gams, were estranged as children as well, but eventually patched things up for a time as adults. The sisters didn’t truly grow close until Gypsy told June that she was dying of lung cancer in 1970. June elaborated more about her relationship with her sister in her second autobiography, “More Havoc” in 1980.
Ms. Havoc died peacefully on March 28, 2010, at her home in Stamford, Connecticut of natural causes. She was 97 years young.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Johnnie Ray was born in 1927 in Oregon. He was very popular vocalist in the early 1950’s with a string of hits on both sides of the Atlantic. He had a starring role in the movie “There’s No Business Like Show Business” with starred Ethel Merman, Marilyn Monroe and Mitzi Gaynor in 1954. He died in 1990 at the age of 63.
IMDB entry: One of the greatest of the transition singers between the crooners and the rockers, Johnnie Ray was the only son of Elmer and Hazel Ray. After partially losing his hearing in a youthful accident, he began singing locally in a wild, flamboyant style, unlike any other white singer up to that time, that eventually made him an international sensation. His early songs, such as, the two sided multi million seller, “Cry”/ “The Little White Cloud ThatCried”, were major hits. In 1954,he co starred alongside Marilyn Monroe, Donald O’Conner, Dan Dailey, Mitzi Gaynor and Ethel Merman in the big screen musical “There’s No Business Like Show Business”(1954). Following up on his previous recording success,in 1952,he had a #4 US Pop hit with, the 1930 standard, “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home”. In 1954, he covered The Drifters’ R n B hit “Such A Night”, peaking at #18 US Pop. In 1956, he had an early Rockabilly hit with “Just Walkin’ In The Rain”, a million seller that rose to #2 US Pop. His brushes with the law and openness, at that time,regarding his homosexuality, may have contributed to a decline in popularity in The US. He had a comeback in The US, in the 1970s, with TV appearances on “The Andy Williams Show” and “The Tonght Show With Johnny Carson” He remained popular in the UK and Australia until his death.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: <anthony-adam@tamu.edu>/efffee@aol.com
