99 and out
Famous folk who didn't quite make their century.
List activity
807 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
42 people
- American character actress famed for roles as mothers. Born in a Philadelphia suburb as Mary Kennevan, she became a schoolteacher, but soon gave it up for work as an actress in touring companies. She married actor William Carr and toured extensively with his company. After the turn of the century, he became involved in film production as both an actor and director, and he brought Mary and their six children into the film business with him. Mary made her film debut in 1916, but it was her appearance in Over the Hill to the Poorhouse (1920) which made her a success in movies. It was a tremendous success due in large part to her touching portrayal of a poverty-stricken mother. She followed it with similar roles in scores of films throughout the silent period. A fallow period arrived with the talkies, and Carr found herself nearly destitute, but publicity about her status rallied help to her cause and she found help and occasional work. She spent her later years appearing infrequently, often in films directed by her son Thomas Carr. She died at the age of 99 in November 1973.
- Gabrielle Dorziat was born on 15 January 1880 in Épernay, Marne, France. She was an actress, known for Patricia (1942), Samson (1936) and La fin du jour (1939). She was married to Michel de Zogheb. She died on 30 November 1979 in Biarritz, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France.
- Madoline Thomas was born on 2 January 1890 in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, Wales, UK. She was an actress, known for No Trace (1950), How Green Was My Valley (1960) and Pride and Prejudice (1958). She was married to John W. H. Thomas. She died on 30 December 1989 in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, England, UK.
- Actress
- Writer
- Director
Lillian Diana Gish was born on October 14, 1893, in Springfield, Ohio. Her father, James Lee Gish, was an alcoholic who caroused, was rarely at home, and left the family to, more or less, fend for themselves. To help make ends meet, Lillian, her sister Dorothy Gish, and their mother, Mary Gish, a.k.a. Mary Robinson McConnell, tried their hand at acting in local productions. Lillian was six years old when she first appeared in front of an audience. For the next 13 years, she and Dorothy appeared before stage audiences with great success. Had she not made her way into films, Lillian quite possibly could have been one of the great stage actresses of all time; however, she found her way onto the big screen when, in 1912, she met famed director D.W. Griffith. Impressed with what he saw, he immediately cast her in her first film, An Unseen Enemy (1912), followed by The One She Loved (1912) and My Baby (1912). She would make 12 films for Griffith in 1912. With 25 films in the next two years, Lillian's exposure to the public was so great that she fast became one of the top stars in the industry, right alongside Mary Pickford, "America's Sweetheart".
In 1915, Lillian starred as Elsie Stoneman in Griffith's most ambitious project to date, The Birth of a Nation (1915). She was not making the large number of films that she had been in the beginning because she was successful and popular enough to be able to pick and choose the right films to appear in. The following year, she appeared in another Griffith classic, Intolerance (1916). By the early 1920s, her career was on its way down. As with anything else, be it sports or politics, new faces appeared on the scene to replace the "old", and Lillian was no different. In fact, she did not appear at all on the screen in 1922, 1925 or 1929. However, 1926 was her busiest year of the decade with roles in La Bohème (1926) and The Scarlet Letter (1926). As the decade wound to a close, "talkies" were replacing silent films. However, Lillian was not idle during her time away from the screen. She appeared in stage productions, to the acclaim of the public and critics alike. In 1933, she filmed His Double Life (1933), but did not make another film for nine years.
When she returned in 1943, she appeared in two big-budget pictures, Commandos Strike at Dawn (1942) and Top Man (1943). Although these roles did not bring her the attention she had had in her early career, Lillian still proved she could hold her own with the best of them. She earned an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role of Laura Belle McCanles in Duel in the Sun (1946), but lost to Anne Baxter in The Razor's Edge (1946).
One of the most critically acclaimed roles of her career came in the thriller The Night of the Hunter (1955), also notable as the only film directed by actor Charles Laughton. In 1969, she published her autobiography, "The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me". In 1987, she made what was to be her last motion picture, The Whales of August (1987), a box-office success that exposed her to a new generation of fans. Her 75-year career is almost unbeatable in any field, let alone the film industry. On February 27, 1993, at age 99, Lillian Gish died peacefully in her sleep at her Manhattan apartment in New York City. She never married.- Actor
- Producer
- Writer
A graduate of the University of Minnesota, Eddie Albert was a circus trapeze flier before becoming a stage and radio actor. He made his film debut in 1938 and has worked steadily since, often cast as the friendly, good-natured buddy of the hero but occasionally being cast as a villain; one of his most memorable roles was as the cowardly, glory-seeking army officer in Robert Aldrich's World War 2 film, Attack (1956).- Actress
- Soundtrack
In British films of the 1930s and 1940s, American-born singer Elisabeth Welch made several memorable guest appearances in cabaret sequences, and starred opposite Paul Robeson in two features. Sophisticated, glamorous and charming, her appearances were a refreshing departure from the stereotype of black women perpetuated by Hollywood films of that time. One of her best screen roles was Beulah, the nightclub owner and hostess, in Ealing's Dead of Night (1945). After a long and distinguished career in West End musical theater, Elisabeth returned to the screen in 1979, making a memorable appearance as "A Goddess" in Derek Jarman's The Tempest (1979), singing her theme song, "Stormy Weather".- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Vincent Sherman was born on 16 July 1906 in Vienna, Georgia, USA. He was a director and actor, known for Affair in Trinidad (1952), Counsellor at Law (1933) and All Through the Night (1942). He was married to Hedda Comoraw. He died on 18 June 2006 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Art Department
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Al Hirschfeld was born on 21 June 1903 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He was an actor, known for Fantasia 2000 (1999), Heroes of Comedy (1995) and Rhapsody in Blue (2000). He was married to Louise Kerz, Dolly Haas and Florence Ruth Hobby. He died on 20 January 2003 in New York City, New York, USA.- The man responsible for awarding the coveted Holiday Magazine Restaurant awards has been a wine writer for more than 65 years. He has also been a retailer, an artist, an actor, a restaurateur and even a flight instructor, during World War II. He is also a Buddhist monk.
Robert Lawrence Balzer has always been surrounded by Hollywood celebrities and in 1978 he teamed with producer Duke Goldstone and director - writer Dennis F. Stevens to produce a number of wine programs and commercials featuring the leading wineries of France and California.
As of this writing he has a daily radio program on K-Mozart (105.1 FM in Los Angeles) and is still leading wine programs on cruise ships.
Robert Lawrence Balzer was also the first serious writer-journalist in America. His love affair with wine began with Repeal, about the time he graduated Stanford and joined Balzer's, the family gourmet market on Larchmont Boulevard, just south of Paramount Studios, not far from the heart of Hollywood and mere miles from Beverly Hills. Customers included Cecil DeMille, Alfred Hitchcock, Ingrid Bergman, and Marlon Brando.
In 1936, at the age of 24, Robert Lawrence was put in charge of the market's wine department. At the time, he knew nothing about wine, but soon learned. California wines were beginning to find their way onto retail shelves, after Prohibition's 13-year dry spell.
Balzer put out a customer newsletter praising the wines stocked on the shelves of the Larchmont store; Almaden, Inglenook, and Paul Mason. Will Rogers Jr., a classmate at Stanford, was intrigued by Balzer's writing and in 1937 asked him to write a wine column for his newspaper, the Beverly Hills Citizen.
After writing the first of his 11 books on wine, Robert Lawrence began branching out. He started writing for Travel Holiday magazine, which published his articles for more than two decades and until recently Balzer was the person responsible for granting the coveted Holiday Magazine Restaurant awards. In 1964, he began writing a weekly column for the Los Angles Times Magazine. A few years later, he launched Robert Lawrence Balzer's Private Guide to Food and Wine, quite likely the first wine newsletter in America.
Robert Lawrence also has a spiritual side. Since the early `50s he has studied Buddhism, at one time at a temple in Cambodia where he was ordained a teaching monk. Indeed, teaching may be his greatest passion. Over the years winemakers have made regular pilgrimages to speak to Balzer's classes, which have developed an almost cult like following among students.
At his annual birthday parties, those lucky enough to be invited mingle with owners of the world's greatest wineries, who fly to Southern California, and the City of Tustin, for the event. - A beautiful and durable actress of screen, stage and television, Asherson was born Renée Ascherson in London (dropping the "c" early in her acting career), the younger daughter of Charles Ascherson, a businessman and bibliophile of German-Jewish extraction, and his second wife, Dorothy Wiseman, who wed on 14 December 1910. (Her older sister was Janet Elizabeth Ascherson, born 22 May 1914).
Asherson's parents narrowly avoided being passengers on the fateful maiden voyage of the Titanic in 1912, after Charles Ascherson reportedly canceled the passage due to suffering from appendicitis.
She played the bride of Laurence Olivier's title character in Henry V (1944) (Henry V (1944)). She later appeared in Maniacs on Wheels (1949), a speedway drama with Dirk Bogarde. A frequent co-star of the actor Robert Donat, whom she married in 1953. The couple separated in 1956, but were due to reconcile at the time of his untimely death in London on 9th June 1958, aged 53. - African American actress Juanita Moore entered films in the early 1950s, a time in which few black people were given an opportunity to act in major studio films. Fortunately Moore's roles began improving as Hollywood developed a social consciousness toward the end of the decade. In 1959 she received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Imitation of Life (1959), a glossy updating of a once controversial Fannie Hurst novel about racism. Within the next decade Hollywood underwent several sociological upheavals, and Juanita was one of the beneficiaries. She became a fixture in black-oriented films of the 1960s and 1970s, appearing in such films as Uptight (1968), Thomasine & Bushrod (1974) and Abby (1974). She also appeared in Walt Disney Pictures' The Kid (2000), and was in a total of more than 50 films. Moore retired in 2001 and passed away New Year's Day 2014 . She was 99.
- Cinematographer
- Director
- Producer
A British filmmaker who, over the years, worked as assistant director, cinematographer, producer, writer and ultimately director, Ronald Neame was born on April 23, 1911. His father, Elwin Neame, was a film director and his mother, Ivy Close, was a film star. During the 1920s, he started working at famous Elstree Studios. One of his first jobs was assistant cameraman for Alfred Hitchcock on Blackmail (1929), the first talking picture made in England.
Neame became a cinematographer during the 1930s. In 1942, he and sound designer C.C. Stevens received a special effect Oscar nomination for One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942), a film by the Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger team. In 1944, after working together on In Which We Serve (1942), Neame, David Lean and producer Anthony Havelock-Allan formed a production company, Cineguild. The screenplays for its films Brief Encounter (1945) and Great Expectations (1946) received best writing Oscar nominations.
After a fall-out with Lean and the demise of Cineguild in 1947, Neame turned to directing with Take My Life (1947). As a director, he would be quite versatile, touching genres like comedy (The Promoter (1952), Hopscotch (1980)), psychological studies (The Chalk Garden (1964)), musical (Scrooge (1970)), thriller (The Odessa File (1974)) and even disaster movies (The Poseidon Adventure (1972), the one that started the trend, produced by Irwin Allen). Under Neame's guidance, Alec Guinness won the best actor trophee at the 1958 Venice festival for The Horse's Mouth (1958), a comedy based on a book adapted by Guinness himself. Two years later, John Mills received the same award for Tunes of Glory (1960), also directed by Neame. In 1969, Maggie Smith got her first Oscar for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) under Neame's direction, and in 1970, Albert Finney got his first Golden Globe for his role in Neame's "Scrooge".
In 1996, Neane was awarded Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition for his contributions to the film industry. In 2003, he published his autobiography, "Straight from the Horse's Mouth". Keeping up the family tradition, his son Christopher Neame is a movie producer and his grandson, Gareth Neame, works for the BBC. Ronald Neame died at age 99 of complications from a fall on June 16, 2010 in Los Angeles, California.- Mary Wynn was born on 13 March 1902 in San Francisco, California, USA. She was an actress, known for The Power Divine (1923), Shattered Idols (1922) and The Frame-Up (1923). She was married to Josef Rosenfeld. She died on 22 December 2001 in Calabasas, California, USA.
- Actress
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Additional Crew
Marie Osborne was born on 5 November 1911 in Denver, Colorado, USA. She was an actress, known for Milady o' the Beanstalk (1918), Twin Kiddies (1917) and The Godfather Part II (1974). She was married to Murray F. Yeats and Frank J. Dempsey. She died on 11 November 2010 in San Clemente, California, USA.- Music Department
- Actor
- Producer
A graduate of the Eastman School of Music and a classically trained oboist, Mitch Miller first entered the pop music scene in 1948 at Mercury Records, where he guided such acts as Vic Damone, Frankie Laine and Patti Page to success. In 1950 he was lured by Goddard Lieberson to Columbia Records as that label's A&R director, where he made stars out of Tony Bennett, Johnnie Ray, Guy Mitchell and many others. Miller himself first shot to prominence in the late 1950s with his "Sing Along" series of albums, which ultimately led to his own series, Sing Along with Mitch (1961). His opposition to rock and roll, however, undercut Columbia's market position for several years until after he left the label in 1965. In recent years he has occasionally served as a guest conductor for symphony orchestras across the country.- Actress
- Producer
French actress Renée Saint-Cyr became synonymous with chic comedy and costumed drama, enjoying major success for nearly seven decades before her death after an attack of bronchitis at age 99. Over the years she equipped herself well opposite the established talents of Raymond Rouleau, Jules Berry, Raimu, Noël-Noël, Harry Baur, Pierre Brasseur and Paul Meurisse.
Born Marie Louise Eugénie Vittore on November 16, 1904, and the daughter of a hotel owner and opera singer, Renée was a one-time model who married Charles Leopold Lautner (1894-1938), a wealthy man, at age 21 before entering the acting leagues. After studies at a drama school in Marseilles, she made her film bow starring as one of The Two Orphans (1933) co-starring Rosine Deréan, based on the Gish sisters' silent classic Orphans of the Storm (1921). She took on Lillian's role and would adopt the moniker of Saint-Cyr, supposedly taken from a beloved canine.
Saint-Cyr's alluring beauty, patrician demeanor, and comedic skills gave her great momentum co-starring in such chic 1930's film comedies as Toto (1933), D'amour et d'eau fraîche (1933), Une fois dans la vie (1934) (Once in a Lifetime), Le dernier milliardaire (1934), Paris (1937), L'école des cocottes (1935), Donogoo (1936), Paris (1937) and The Pearls of the Crown (1937), as well as the dramas 27 rue de la Paix (1936) and Marked Girls (1938).
Renée also graced the stage during this time in a production of "The Threepenny Opera," among others. She nixed an offer to sign with 20th Century-Fox, but did star in England's Strange Boarders (1938) and Italy's Red Roses (1940) (Red Roses) co-starring Vittorio De Sica. Into the 1940s war years, she starred in such popular film vehicles as the Hector Berlioz biopic La symphonie fantastique (1942) (The Fantastic Symphony), the title dramatic roles in Marie-Martine (1943) and Paméla (1945), plus Pierre et Jean (1943), Étrange destin (1946) and L'insaisissable Frédéric (1946).
Saint-Cyr left films after shooting The Knight of the Night (1953), Il cavaliere di Maison Rouge (1954) (The Glorious Avenger) (as Marie Antoinette) and Si Paris nous était conté (1956) (as Empress Eugénie}, but returned into the next decade with Coctail party (1960) and Lafayette (1962). By this time, her only child, Georges Lautner, had become an influential film writer and director and had begun churning out a series of standard genre movies that occasionally featured Renee in the cast. Such films included The Monocle (1964), Fleur d'oseille (1967), Quelques messieurs trop tranquilles (1973), Now We've Seen It All! (1976), Ils sont fous ces sorciers (1978), My Other Husband (1983), Room Service (1992).- Ethel Kenyon was born on 17 June 1904 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. She was an actress, known for Branded (1931), By Whose Hand? (1932) and June Moon (1931). She was married to Ernest Victor Heyn, Charles Butterworth and A. Edward Sutherland. She died on 22 January 2004 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Actor, jazz musician and stand-up comedian Jack LeMaire, who got his start in vaudeville, died Oct. 18 in North Hollywood, Calif., of natural causes. He was 99.
LeMaire toured with Bob Hope and Johnny Grant doing stand-up for USO shows, ending each set with a song on his guitar. His passion for playing occasionally overshadowed his love of comedy, and he can be heard on recordings with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, who nicknamed LeMaire "Chords."
LeMaire started working vaudeville as a toddler with his father, George, in "The Ziegfeld Follies," and soon moved on to film work, making 33 silent comedies with Pathe.
Among his other credits were 1958 TV series "Mac King," 1959's "The Lawless Years" and "Bat Masterson" plus 1964's "The Farmer's Daughters."
Later in life, LeMaire appeared as Colonel Sanders in a number of KFC advertisements. Just last year, he performed in a sketch on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno.
Survivors include a son, two daughters, five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. - Make-Up Department
Chances are, if you saw a movie with one of the stars of the 1930s or 1940s, her hair was done by Carmen Dirigo, who passed away on July 25 in Van Nuys at the age of 99.
Dirigo, born Daisy Obradowits, was a prominent hair and wig stylist in Hollywood's Golden Age, working at the various studios and later in television. Among her stable of stars were Joan Bennett, Yvonne De Carlo, Joan Fontaine and her sister, Olivia de Havilland, Ann Blyth, Elena Verdugo, and many others.
She was born in New York on December 30, 1907 and moved with her mother Lilley to Southern California in the 1920s. Soon after, Lilley started a beauty shop on Cahuenga in Hollywood while Carmen went to school. But the younger Dirigo had show business dreams. From an early age, she worked as a dancer at the Egyptian, Chinese, and Pantages theaters doing prologue shows before feature films ran.
At Carmen's urging, Lilley finally attempted to get into the movie business during the last years of the silents. "I kept after her, but she was very shy," Carmen recalled in 1999. "One day, she went and made an appointment at Universal with Carl Laemmle and she sold him on the idea of having a hairstylist established on the lot. She told him that she once saw a picture where the actress is out in the rain, and when she comes in, her hair is all dry. She told him that he could have someone established on each picture to read the script and follow the story and do it accordingly. He thought that was brilliant, and that's how it all started."
By 1933, after taking a state test to get her cosmetology license, Carmen followed her mother and entered the hairstyling field, first working at United Artists. After four years, she moved to Paramount where she first worked with stars like Fontaine and Fredric March. Eight years later, she came to Universal as head of hairstyling, where her mother had broken ground working with legendary makeup artist Jack Pierce, famous for Universal's slate of classic monster films.
Of the rapid pace of the classic studio days, Carmen remembered the structured approach to the work. "They didn't have time to talk about stuff then," she said. "We would get there early, and have to rush to get people out on time. If I had wigs to do, I'd have to be there at 6:30AM and take the wigs off the block. Max Factor's on Highland and three wigmakers out of Universal would ventilate the wigs. Then, I would style them the night before."
One of her biggest challenges at Universal was the 1948 film, Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid which featured underwater photography of star Ann Blyth. "The producer wanted her hair to look as beautiful underwater as out of the water.," she recalled. "I had to get together with a chemist to figure out what we could use that would be pliable in the water. For days, before the picture started, I would be in my department with a fishbowl, and I'd have a hunk of hair which I waved first and sprayed with this chemical. I'd plunk it in the water and swish it around and see if it held the curl. When it did, I knew that it was okay."
While at Universal, Dirigo served as president of the Cinema Hairstylists, an elite association, and was the first hairstylist in the business to get screen credit. In 1951, the nascent television medium beckoned, and she moved to TV on shows including Fireside Theater, which ran until 1955. Around that time,, she did several episodes a CBS show called You Are There, which recreated significant moments from history. For an episode which aired in April, 1955, using wigs and makeup, she and Jack Pierce transformed actor Jeff Morrow into Abraham Lincoln for a staged recreation of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Dirigo's last job in the business was as hairstyling department head for TV's Petticoat Junction, where she worked until 1970. She retired to her house on Coldwater Canyon Boulevard in Van Nuys where she lived the rest of her life. Until a severe fall at home in 2000 left her partially immobilized, Dirigo was an avid equestrian and enjoyed watching her Academy screeners on VHS tapes. She leaves behind no living heirs.
Her legacy, along with her mother's, was creating firm aesthetics for women's hairstyles in films that remains to this day. One Universal press release from 1946 stated: "She is a firm believer in frequent hair style changes and in the choice of simple styles for business and sportswear. Elaborate hairstyles should be created only for evening and formal occasions, she recommends."- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
- Writer
Eve Arnold was born on 21 April 1912 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She was a director and writer, known for The World About Us (1967), Behind the Veil (1973) and Love, Marilyn (2012). She was married to Arnold Arnold. She died on 4 January 2012 in London, England, UK.- Vivian Tobin was born on 12 August 1902 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Sign of the Cross (1932), This Man Is Mine (1934) and The Jitters (1938). She was married to Karl O. Von Hagen. She died on 6 August 2002 in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, USA.
- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Norman Felton was born on 29 April 1913 in London, England, UK. He was a producer and director, known for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) and Robert Montgomery Presents (1950). He was married to Aline Scotts. He died on 25 June 2012 in Santa Barbara, California, USA.- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Director
Gilbert Taylor was born on 21 April 1914 in Bushey Heath, Hertfordshire, England, UK. He was a cinematographer and director, known for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), Flash Gordon (1980) and The Omen (1976). He was married to Dee Vaughan and Eileen Donnelly. He died on 23 August 2013 in Newport, Isle of Wight, England, UK.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Denise Grey was born on 17 September 1896 in Chatillon, Valle d'Aosta, Italy. She was an actress, known for The Party 2 (1982), The Party (1980) and Devil in the Flesh (1947). She was married to Charles Henri Dunkel. She died on 13 January 1996 in Paris, France.- Actress
- Soundtrack
One of the great voices of the Metropolitan Opera, New York-born mezzo-soprano Rise (pronounced REE-za) Stevens made her debut with the company in 1939 as Octavian in Richard Strauss's "Der Rosenkavalier" in a tour performance in Philadelphia. Her other notable roles in 21 years with the company included the two characterizations most associated with her, the title role in Bizet's "Carmen" and Dalila in Saint-Saens's "Samson et Dalila," Laura in Ponchielli's "La Gioconda," Marfa in Mussorgsky's "Khovanschina," Prince Orlofsky in Johann Strauss's "Die Fledermaus," and Hansel in Humperdinck's "Hansel und Gretel." A great beauty as well as a great singer, she enjoyed one of the more successful careers of the many opera singers who made films, most notably in "The Chocolate Soldier" opposite Nelson Eddy and "Going My Way" with Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald. She was also something of a fixture on early TV, appearing frequently on such programs as "The Bell Telephone Hour" and "The Voice of Firestone," where she sang both operatic arias and popular songs. She also appeared on one of the first telecasts from the Met, in 1954, singing Carmen opposite one of her most frequent Don Joses, Richard Tucker.
Since her retirement from opera in 1960, she has continued to play a very active role in the New York fine arts scene. In 1964, she inaugurated the Music Theater of Lincoln Center as Anna Leonowens in a well-received revival of "The King and I," produced by Richard Rodgers, opposite Darren McGavin 's King. Also that year, she became director of the Metropolitan Opera National Company, a touring company which served as a training ground for promising young singers and conductors, many of whom (Marilyn Niska, Ron Boettcher) became members of the regular company. She held this job for three years, until the company ceased operations when the Met could no longer afford to finance it. Since then, she has remained active with the Met as a long-time official of the Metropolitan Opera Guild.
Married to actor Walter Szurovy from 1939 until his death in 2001, their only child is the actor Nicolas Surovy. She continues to live in New York, as active and charming as ever.- Maria von Trapp was born on 28 September 1914 in Zell am See, Salzburg, Austria-Hungary. She died on 18 February 2014 in Stowe, Vermont, USA.
- Writer
- Animation Department
As the creator of 'Scrooge McDuck', Carl Barks did more than any other comic book artist to widen the popularity of Donald Duck, bringing in the process a vast array of memorable supporting characters into the Disney universe, among them Uncle Scrooge himself, Gladstone Gander, Gyro Gearloose (and his Little Helper), the Beagle Boys, and the Junior Woodchucks.
Unlike many other artists working (all anonymously) for the Disney company, Barks did not mindlessly churn out condescending, forgettable stories of a childish nature during his 24-year stint on the Disney Ducks. He consistently produced delightful top-quality material, both in his scripts and in his art as well as in his dialogues, which echoed with deep human resonance. "I polished and polished on the scripts and drawings until I had done the best I could in the time available", he said. In both types of stories -- the 10-page comedies and the longer adventure stories -- he produced between 1942 and 1966, he managed to convey the intricacies and subtleties of the full scope of human emotions (from envy and cynicism and alarm and desperation to joy and scorn and triumph and smugness) while capturing the essence of exotic locations from the four corners of the world (from scorching deserts and primal forests to humid jungles and freezing snow-clad mountains through the urban setting of Duckburg).
His mastery at this is witnessed to by, among others, Newsweek's homage to his artistry and by Time's conclusion that "Scrooge and his creator Carl Barks belong in the great mainstream of American Folklore." Beyond that is the plain fact that he was known to his readers simply as "the good artist" (a descriptor necessary during a time when the Disney company didn't identify any of its cartoonists). His publishers tried in the early '50s to replace him on the 10-page comedies in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories so that he could concentrate on the longer adventure epics in Donald Duck and Uncle $crooge (these were the three titles that contained the bulk of Barks' output through the years); they were promptly flooded with a barrage of pleading and irate letters from readers demanding that "the good artist" be brought back.
Among his many fans were George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg, who were inspired by the adventure comic books. One South American adventure in particular ("The Prize of Pizarro", Uncle $crooge nr 26, June-August 1959) inspired sequences in all three Indiana Jones films (the booby traps both in the lost temple in the opening pre-credits sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and in the final scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), as well as the flood through the mines of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)). In an homage printed in Uncle Scrooge: His Life & Times (edited by Edward Summer and published by Gary Kurtz), Lucas writes that when he discovered the McDuck character as a kid, he liked him "so much that I immediately went out and bought all the Uncle $crooge comics I could find on the newsstand. My greatest source of enjoyment in Carl Barks' comics is in the imagination of his stories .... The stories are also very cinematic .... these comics are a priceless part of our literary heritage." Indeed, the titles of his adventures (many of which were inspired by the National Geographic) duly resonate with exoticism and adventure: "The Mummy's Ring", "Terror of the River", "Mystery of the Swamp", "Ghost of the Grotto", "Lost in the Andes", "Sheriff of Bullet Valley", "Trail of the Unicorn", "The Golden Helmet", "The Seven Cities of Cibola", etc...
His stories were constantly reproduced in Disney comics across the globe, after his retirement in 1966 (the same year that Walt Disney, who was born nine months after Barks, died). And soon his 6,371 comics pages (according to one count) from some 450 comic books were being reprinted (by then computer-colored) in impressive coffee-table volumes and hand-sewn hardback tomes, not just in the United States, but throughout the western world (Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, etc...).
Certainly the most widely read comic book artist of all time, Barks is also in all probability, what with Disney being the world's largest publisher of children's magazines and books (every year over two billion people around the globe read a Disney book or magazine, the company claims), the most widely-read author of any type of reading material of the 20th century.
Born to a homesteading family in Oregon on March 27, 1901, Carl Barks left school at 15 and spent the next two decades "in grim and demanding jobs" (to quote Michael Barrier's "Carl Barks and the Art of the Comic Book". These included rancher, logger, railroad repairman and printer. During the Depression, he went on to become an illustrator for a humor magazine, eventually becoming its most productive member. He joined the Disney studio in 1935, where he became a story man on the animated cartoons of a character created a year earlier (a duck by the name of Donald) and worked with such people as Harry Reeves, Chuck Couch, Jack Hannah, Homer Brightman and Nick George. Health problems eventually forced Barks to leave the Burbank studio during World War II for the dry air of the California desert, where he made the transition to comic books.
And so, it was after the age of 40, in an era when most people had little more than a third of their lives in front of them, that Carl Barks made the fateful jump of his life, the one that would leave his name an immortal one in the annals of what the French call "le neuvième art" (the ninth art form). And yet, it would not be until after his retirement that his name would, slowly but surely, become known to the mainstream public. It was during the 1960s that persistent fans (among them his official biographer, Michael Barrier) finally managed to identify "the good artist" (also dubbed the Duckman and the comic book king), become his correspondents, and proceed to make his name known to the outside world.
Despite having retired (and as his name was slowly becoming famous), "Unca Carl" did not remain inactive. He turned to painting, specifically signed oil paintings of his Disney Ducks, paintings that today easily fetch thousands of dollars and whose prices have occasionally topped $100,000. Indeed, it is easy to forget that Barks' retirement years lasted far longer than his comic book career and he spent many more years before the canvas than he did over the drawing board. In fact, Barks lived to the ripe old age of 99, and it is somewhat amazing to realize how vast an amount of time this actually means. His life spans such an extensive amount of time that his date of birth is further removed from that of his death than it is to the Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the untamed wilderness west of the Mississippi (including Oregon, the region where the Barks family would eventually settle).
He was sprightly and active until the very last. People half his age reported that he could remember events they had long forgotten. His pace was such that during his 1994 trip to Europe (his first outside North America) to celebrate Donald's 60th birthday, young Disney handlers and PR staff (imagine yuppies in their 30s) at Paris' Euro Disneyland had to quicken their pace to keep up with the then-93-year-old man. His philosophy could be summarized in these words: "I worked hard at trying to make something as good as I could possibly make it... I always tried to write a story I wouldn't mind buying myself."- Actress
- Soundtrack
Zita Kabátová was born on 27 April 1913 in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now Czech Republic]. She was an actress, known for Zelary (2003), Rozkosný príbeh (1937) and Manzelství na úver (1936). She was married to Jirí Zavrel and Ludvík Král. She died on 27 May 2012 in Prague, Czech Republic.- Tatyana Eremeeva was born on 4 July 1913 in Arkhangelsk, Russian Empire [now Russia]. She was an actress, known for Stakan vody (1957), Stranitsy zhizni (1948) and Volki i ovtsy (1953). She died on 29 November 2012 in Moscow, Russia.
- Music Department
André Saint-Clivier was born on 8 May 1913 in France. He is known for Marie-poupée (1976), The Wild Child (1970) and Midi Trente (1972). He died on 5 March 2013 in Eure, France.- Composer
- Music Department
- Producer
K. Raghavan was born on 2 December 1913 in Thalassery, Malabar district, British India. He was a composer and producer, known for Unniyarcha (1961), Mamangam (1979) and Devadas (1989). He died on 19 October 2013.- Richard Coogan was born on 4 April 1914 in Short Hills, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for Captain Video and His Video Rangers (1949), Bronco (1958) and Girl on the Run (1953). He died on 12 March 2014 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Undoubtedly the woman who had come to epitomize what we recognize today as "celebrity," Zsa Zsa Gabor, is better known for her many marriages, personal appearances, her "dahlink" catchphrase, her actions, gossip, and quotations on men, rather than her film career.
Zsa Zsa was born as Sári Gabor on February 6, 1917 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jolie Gabor (née Janka Tilleman) and Vilmos Gabor (born Farkas Miklós Grün), both of Jewish descent. Her siblings were Eva Gabor and Magda Gabor. Zsa Zsa studied at a Swiss finishing school, was second runner-up in the fifth Miss Hungary pageant, and began her stage career in Vienna in 1934. In 1941, the year she obtained her first divorce, she followed younger sister Eva to Hollywood.
A radiant, beautiful blonde, Zsa Zsa began to appear on television series and occasional films. Her first film was at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Lovely to Look At (1952), co-starring Kathryn Grayson and Red Skelton. She next made a comedy called We're Not Married! (1952) at 20th Century Fox with Ginger Rogers. It was far from a star billing; she appeared several names down the cast as a supporting actress. But in 1952 she broke into films big time with her starring role opposite José Ferrer in Moulin Rouge (1952), although it has been said that throughout filming, director John Huston gave her a very difficult time.
In the following years, Zsa Zsa slipped back into supporting roles in films such as Lili (1953) and 3 Ring Circus (1954). Her main period of film work was in the 1950s, with other roles in Death of a Scoundrel (1956), with Yvonne De Carlo, and The Man Who Wouldn't Talk (1958) with Anna Neagle; again, these were supporting roles. By the 1960s, Zsa Zsa was appearing more as herself in films. She now appeared to follow her own persona around, and cameo appearances were the order of the day in films such as Pepe (1960) and Jack of Diamonds (1967). This continued throughout the 1970s.
She was memorable as herself in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear (1991), in which she humorously poked fun at a 1989 incident where she was convicted of slapping a police officer (Paul Kramer) during a traffic stop. She spent three days in jail and had to do 120 hours of community service. Such infamous incidents contributed to her becoming one of the most all-time recognizable of Hollywood celebrities, and sometimes ridiculed as a result. She was also memorable to British television viewers on The Ruby Wax Show (1997).
In 2002, Gabor was reported to be in a coma in a Los Angeles hospital after a horrifying car accident. The 85-year-old star was injured when the car she was traveling in hit a utility pole in West Hollywood, California. The reports about her coma eventually proved to be inaccurate.
Zsa Zsa's life, spanning two continents, nine husbands, and 11 decades, came to an end on December 18, 2016, when she died of cardiac arrest in Los Angeles, California. She was 99.- Additional Crew
Marguerite Patten was born on 4 November 1915 in Bath, Somerset, England, UK. She is known for Know Your Onions (1966), Good Cooking for the Family (1964) and Scoff (1988). She was married to Charles (Bob) Alfred Patten. She died on 4 June 2015 in Richmond, Surrey, England, UK.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born Virginia Pound, Lorna Gray was "discovered" by an agent while modeling in a fashion show. She was given a screen test, and Columbia was impressed enough to sign her to a contract. (It was at this time that she was given the name "Lorna Gray", which she kept until 1945, when she changed it to "Adrian Booth".) She was put in the studio's B unit, occasionally loaned out to Republic or Monogram, and when not making features was used in Columbia's comedy shorts, supporting such performers as The Three Stooges and Buster Keaton (where she actually acquitted herself quite well). She left Columbia and began her long career with Republic Pictures in 1941, appearing in westerns, thrillers, horror pictures, and especially the serials in which the studio specialized. She married David Brian in 1948, and after making films for a few more years, retired from the screen in 1951.- Shin'ichi Suzuki was born on 17 October 1898 in Nagoya, Japan. He was married to Waltraud Prange. He died on 26 January 1998 in Nagoya, Japan.
- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Legendary voice actress June Foray was born June Lucille Forer on September 18, 1917 in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Maurice Forer and Ida Edith Robinson, who wed in Hampden, Massachusetts. Her father, who was Jewish, emigrated from Novgorod, Imperial Russia, while her Massachusetts-born mother was of Lithuanian Jewish and French-Canadian descent. Her mother converted to Judaism to marry, and took the name Sarah.
At age 12, young June was already doing "old lady" voices. She had the good fortune of having a speech teacher who also had a radio program in the Springfield area. This teacher became her mentor, and added June to the cast of her show. Eventually her family moved to Los Angeles, where she continued in radio. By age fifteen, she was writing her own show for children, "Lady Makebelieve", in which she also provided voices. June dabbled in both on-camera acting and voice work, but was particularly talented in voice characterizations, dialects and accents. Just like Daws Butler, one of her later co-stars, she was a "voice magician" and worked steadily in radio from the 1930s into the 1950s.
June branched out from radio and began providing voices for cartoon characters. In the 1940s, she provided the voices for a live-action series of shorts, "Speaking of Animals", in which she dubbed in voices for real on-screen animals, a task she was to repeat many years later in an episode of The Magical World of Disney (1954). In the late 1940s June, Stan Freberg, Daws Butler, Pinto Colvig and many others recorded hundreds of children's and adult albums for Capitol Records. Her female characterizations on these records ran the entire gamut from little girls to middle-aged women, old ladies, dowagers and witches. No one seemed to be able to do these same voices with the warmth, energy and sparkle that June did.
In the 1950s June's star in animation not only began to rise but soared when Walt Disney sought her out and hired her to do the voice of Lucifer the cat in Cinderella (1950). The Disney organization continued to use June many times over, well into the 21st century. Warner Brothers also hired her to replace Bea Benaderet and do all of its "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" cartoons. June has done many incidental characters for Warners, but her most famous voice has been that of Granny (in the "Tweety and Sylvester" series). Unfortunately, since Mel Blanc's contract called for exclusive voice credit on these cartoons, June never received credit for all the voices she did. During this time she also appeared on [error].
In 1957, Jay Ward met with June to discuss her voicing the characters of "Rocky the Flying Squirrel" and "Natasha Fatale" in a cartoon series. On November 19, 1959, the show debuted as The Bullwinkle Show (1959), later changing its name to The Bullwinkle Show (1959). June provided many other voices for this show, especially its "side shows" such as "Fractured Fairy Tales" and "Aesop and Son". She did fewer voices for the "Peabody's Improbable History" segment, but she did appear in at least three of those episodes. After the show had been successful for a few years, Ward added one of its most popular segments, "Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties". June was a regular in this side show as Dudley's girlfriend Nell Fenwick.
Since Ward used June exclusively for nearly all his female voices, he showcased her talents as no other producer had before. June missed out on doing voices for three of the show's "Fractured Fairy Tales" because she could not reschedule some bookings to do recording work with Stan Freberg, so Julie Bennett filled in for her on those occasions. Dorothy Scott--co-producer Bill Scott's wife--also filled in for June a few times for "Peabody's Improbable History". Her collaboration with Ward made her incredibly famous, and "Rocky the Flying Squirrel" became her signature voice. To this day June regularly wears a necklace with the figure of Rocky sculpted by her niece Lauren Marems.
Ward later produced two other cartoon series, Hoppity Hooper (1964) and George of the Jungle (1967). June's appearances on "Hoppity Hooper" were limited to the segments of "Fractured Fairy Tales", "Dudley Do-Right" and "Peabody" that aired during its run. On "Fractured Fairy Tales" June did a whole montage of voices similar to those from her Capitol Records days. Her witch voices were so incredibly funny and magnificently done that Disney and Warner Brothers tapped her to provide that same voice for the character of Witch Hazel. She was once again the lone female voice artist, this time on "George of the Jungle". Included on that show were the "Super Chicken" and "Tom Slick" side shows.
In the 1960s, June lost out to Bea Benaderet when she auditioned for the voice of "Betty Rubble" on The Flintstones (1960). June appeared numerous times during the decade in holiday specials such as Frosty the Snowman (1969) and The Little Drummer Boy (1968)). In the 1960s and 1970s, June dubbed in voices for full-length live-action feature films many times. Jay Ward and Bill Scott also had her dub in dialogue for silent movies in their non-animated series Fractured Flickers (1963).
In the early 1970s, June tried her hand at puppetry. She became the voice of an elephant, an aardvark and a giraffe on Curiosity Shop (1971). Around this time she also recorded various voices for the road shows of "Disney on Parade", which toured the US and Europe for several years.
She acted on-camera occasionally over the years, primarily on talk shows, game shows and documentaries; in the early years of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962), she performed a 13-week stint as a little Mexican girl. However, June had said that she prefers to record behind the scenes because she jokingly said "She can earn more money in less time."
June Foray died on July 26, 2017, in Los Angeles, California, U.S. She was ninety nine years old.- Casting Department
- Actor
- Casting Director
Bernie Styles was born on 1 May 1918 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and casting director, known for Witness (1985), Body Heat (1981) and Sliver (1993). He died on 23 August 2017 in Rancho Mirage, California, USA.- Actress
- Writer
English wild rose Joan Morgan who starred in at least 34 drama, crime, comedy movies from childhood, often under the direction of her father Sidney Morgan, making her film debut in Maurice Elvey's 'The Cup Final Mystery' starring Elisabeth Risdon in 1914, followed by 'The Great Spy Raid' starring Harry Lorraine at P&M Films. In 1919 Joan only 14 was so good in her acting ability she was cast opposite the legendary Ellen Terry in Fred Paul's 'Her Greatest Performance' playing her granddaughter. In 1920 Joan was offered a Hollywood contract by the Famous Players-Lasky Film Co who had opened a studio at Islington - soon to become Gainsborough, and hired Joan to play opposite Bryan Washburn in 'The Road to London' in 1921 she got £30 a week, Famous Players offered her $100 a week to start with, her father Sidney Morgan went up to meet them and they said, what do you think to this offer made to your daughter? he said 'not much' and that was that, Joan said, i just died inside. Through the 1920's she was given some stage roles in the West End her father cast her in his films such as her most favourite role 'Little Dorrit' (1920), and perhaps her most memorable role in 'A Lowland Cinderella' (1922) and her last major role 'A Window in Piccadilly' in 1928. Although Joan made a talkie in 1932's 'Her Reputation' she was no longer in demand as an actress, luckily, she was able to step into screenwriting through the 1930's using the name Joan Wentworth Wood, her most successful was 'The Flag Lieutenant'.- Animation Department
- Production Designer
- Art Department
Bob Givens began straight out of high school as an animation checker and 'in-betweener' working primarily for Grim Natwick at Disney studios in 1937. He perfected his drawing technique in subsequent years by attended night classes at the Chouinard Art Institute and the New York Art Students League. In 1940, Bob moved over to Leon Schlesinger's animation unit at Warner Brothers as a layout and storyboard artist. He famously created early model sheets for Bugs Bunny which markedly improved upon Ben Hardaway's original designs. Bob's finished product - with refinements by Tex Avery -- then became more or less the blueprint for future incarnations of the rabbit (Robert McKimson's fine-tuning later resulted in the finished product). Bob's work was initially featured in A Wild Hare (1940), a cartoon which also set the tone for the personalities of both Bugs and his perennial antagonist Elmer Fudd.
In 1942, Bob was drafted into army service and spent the war years making military training films at Culver City under the auspices of Rudolf Ising, one of the original creators of Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies (the other was Hugh Harman). He returned to 'Termite Terrace' after the war, mainly as layout artist for McKimson and Chuck Jones. After 1954, he free-lanced at various animation studios, including U.P.A. (where he worked on Mr.Magoo cartoons), Hanna-Barbera and DePatie-Freleng, in addition creating graphics for numerous Western Publishing comics and children's books. He retired in 2001 after six and a half decades in the animation business, that year also receiving the prestigious Winsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Schmeling was seriously wounded in WW2 when he took part in the attack against Crete in 1941 as a parachutist and spent the rest of the war in a hospital. After the war he became the head of the Coca Cola company in Germany.- Prolific and ubiquitous British bit player Aileen Lewis was born Aileen Mary Halsey on April 9, 1914 in Mullingar, County Westmeath, Ireland. Nicknamed the Duchess because of her regal bearing, Lewis first began appearing in uncredited minor roles in films in the late 1940's and soon started working profusely from the early 1950's onward. Aileen could be frequently spotted looking elegant in a fancy evening gown as a guest at parties, dancing on the floor at a ballroom, or in the audience at either a concert or ballet. Moreover, her trademark aristocratic manner also led to Lewis being often cast as various upper-class ladies holding court with British royalty or as patrons in posh casinos, nightclubs, or restaurants. Her husband Lewis Alexander was a fairly prolific background player in his own right who occasionally popped up in movies with her. Aileen died at age 99 on February 12, 2014 in Felpham, West Sussex, England.