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- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Fritz Lang was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1890. His father managed a construction company. His mother, Pauline Schlesinger, was Jewish but converted to Catholicism when Lang was ten. After high school, he enrolled briefly at the Technische Hochschule Wien and then started to train as a painter. From 1910 to 1914, he traveled in Europe, and he would later claim, also in Asia and North Africa. He studied painting in Paris from 1913-14. At the start of World War I, he returned to Vienna, enlisting in the army in January 1915. Severely wounded in June 1916, he wrote some scenarios for films while convalescing. In early 1918, he was sent home shell-shocked and acted briefly in Viennese theater before accepting a job as a writer at Erich Pommer's production company in Berlin, Decla. In Berlin, Lang worked briefly as a writer and then as a director, at Ufa and then for Nero-Film, owned by the American Seymour Nebenzal. In 1920, he began a relationship with actress and writer Thea von Harbou (1889-1954), who wrote with him the scripts for his most celebrated films: Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924), Metropolis (1927) and M (1931) (credited to von Harbou alone). They married in 1922 and divorced in 1933. In that year, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels offered Lang the job of head of the German Cinema Institute. Lang--who was an anti-Nazi mainly because of his Catholic background--did not accept the position (it was later offered to and accepted by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl) and, after secretly sending most of his money out of the country, fled Germany to Paris. After about a year in Paris, Lang moved to the United States in mid-1934, initially under contract to MGM. Over the next 20 years, he directed numerous American films. In the 1950s, in part because the film industry was in economic decline and also because of Lang's long-standing reputation for being difficult with, and abusive to, actors, he found it increasingly hard to get work. At the end of the 1950s, he traveled to Germany and made what turned out to be his final three films there, none of which were well received.
In 1964, nearly blind, he was chosen to be president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. He was an avid collector of primitive art and habitually wore a monocle, an affectation he picked up during his early days in Vienna. After his divorce from von Harbou, he had relationships with many other women, but from about 1931 to his death in 1976, he was close to Lily Latte, who helped him in many ways.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
The bushy-browed, cigar-smoking wise-cracker with the painted-on moustache and stooped walk was the leader of The Marx Brothers. With one-liners that were often double entendres, Groucho never cursed in any of his performances and said he never wanted to be known as a dirty comic. With a great love of music and singing (The Marx Brothers started as a singing group), one of the things Groucho was best known for was his rendition of the song "Lydia the Tattooed Lady."- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Stan Laurel came from a theatrical family, his father was an actor and theatre manager, and he made his stage debut at the age of 16 at Pickard's Museum, Glasgow. He traveled with Fred Karno's vaudeville company to the United States in 1910 and again in 1913. While with that company he was Charles Chaplin's understudy, and he performed imitations of Chaplin. On a later trip he remained in the United States, having been cast in a two-reel comedy, Nuts in May (1917) (not released until 1918). There followed a number of shorts for Metro, Hal Roach Studios, then Universal, then back to Roach in 1926. His first two-reeler with Oliver Hardy was 45 Minutes from Hollywood (1926). Their first release through MGM was Sugar Daddies (1927) and the first with star billing was From Soup to Nuts (1928). Their first feature-length starring roles were in Pardon Us (1931). Their work became more production-line and less popular during the war years, especially after they left Roach and MGM for Twentieth Century-Fox. Their last movie together was The Bullfighters (1945) except for a dismal failure made in France several years later (Utopia (1950)). In 1960 he was given a special Oscar "for his creative pioneering in the field of cinema comedy". He died five years later.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Jovial, somewhat flamboyant Frank Morgan (born Francis Wuppermann) will forever be remembered as the title character in The Wizard of Oz (1939), but he was a veteran and respected actor long before he played that part, and turned in outstanding performances both before and after that film. One of 11 children of a wealthy manufacturer, Morgan followed his older brother, Ralph Morgan (born Raphael Wuppermann) into the acting profession, making his Broadway debut in 1914 and his film debut two years later. Morgan specialized in playing courtly, sometimes eccentric or befuddled but ultimately sympathetic characters, such as the alcoholic telegraph operator in The Human Comedy (1943) or the shop owner in The Shop Around the Corner (1940). He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for The Affairs of Cellini (1934). Frank Morgan died at age 59 of a heart attack on September 18, 1949 in Beverly Hills, California.- Agatha was born as "Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller" in 1890 to Frederick Alvah Miller and Clara Boehmer. Agatha was of American and British descent, her father being American and her mother British. Her father was a relatively affluent stockbroker. Agatha received home education from early childhood to when she turned 12-years-old in 1902. Her parents taught her how to read, write, perform arithmetic, and play music. Her father died in 1901. Agatha was sent to a girl's school in Torquay, Devon, where she studied from 1902 to 1905. She continued her education in Paris, France from 1905 to 1910. She then returned to her surviving family in England.
As a young adult, Agatha aspired to be a writer and produced a number of unpublished short stories and novels. She submitted them to various publishers and literary magazines, but they were all rejected. Several of these unpublished works were later revised into more successful ones. While still in this point of her life, Agatha sought advise from professional writer Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960). Meanwhile she was searching for a suitable husband and in 1913 accepted a marriage proposal from military officer and pilot-in-training Archibald "Archie" Christie. They married in late 1914. Her married name became "Agatha Christie" and she used it for most of her literary works, including ones created decades following the end of her first marriage.
During World War I, Archie Christie was send to fight in the war and Agatha joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment, a British voluntary unit providing field nursing services. She performed unpaid work as a volunteer nurse from 1914 to 1916. Then she was promoted to "apothecaries' assistant" (dispenser), a position which earned her a small salary until the end of the war. She ended her service in September, 1918.
Agatha wrote "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", her debut novel ,in 1916, but was unable to find a publisher for it until 1920. The novel introduced her famous character Hercule Poirot and his supporting characters Inspector Japp and Arthur Hastings. The novel is set in World War I and is one of the few of her works which are connected to a specific time period.
Following the end of World War I and their retirement from military life, Agatha and Archie Christie moved to London and settled into civilian life. Their only child Rosalind Margaret Clarissa Christie (1919-2004) was born early in the marriage. Agatha's debut novel was first published in 1920 and turned out to be a hit. It was soon followed by the successful novels "The Secret Adversary" (1922) and "Murder on the Links" (1923) and various short stories. Agatha soon became a celebrated writer.
In 1926, Archie Christie announced to Agatha that he had a mistress and that he wanted a divorce. Agatha took it hard and mysteriously disappeared for a period of 10 days. After an extensive manhunt and much publicity, she was found living under a false name in Yorkshire. She had assumed the last name of Archie's mistress and claimed to have no memory of how she ended up there. The doctors who attended to her determined that she had amnesia. Despite various theories by multiple sources, these 10 days are the most mysterious chapter in Agatha's life.
Agatha and Archie divorced in 1928, though she kept the last name Christie. She gained sole custody of her daughter Rosalind. In 1930, Agatha married her second (and last) husband Max Mallowan, a professional archaeologist. They would remain married until her death in 1976.Christie often used places that she was familiar with as settings for her novels and short stories. Her various travels with Max introduced her to locations of the Middle East, and provided inspiration for a number of novels.
In 1934, Agatha and Max settled in Winterbrook, Oxfordshire, which served as their main residence until their respective deaths. During World War II, she served in the pharmacy at the University College Hospital, where she gained additional training about substances used for poisoning cases. She incorporated such knowledge for realistic details in her stories.
She became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1956 and a Dame Commander of the same order in 1971. Her husband was knighted in 1968. They are among the relatively few couples where both members have been honored for their work. Agatha continued writing until 1974, though her health problems affected her writing style. Her memory was problematic for several years and she had trouble remembering the details of her own work, even while she was writing it. Recent researches on her medical condition suggest that she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease or other dementia. She died of natural causes in early 1976. - Robert Keith was an American character actor who appeared in a number of prominent films and was the father of actor Brian Keith. A native of Indiana, Keith joined a stock company as a teenager and developed skills as a writer and actor. He appeared in dozens of plays around the country and on Broadway.
He came to the attention of Hollywood as a writer after his play "The Tightwad" appeared in New York in 1927. He was contracted to write dialog for pictures and managed to act in several as well. He returned to Broadway as a playwright in 1932 and continued to act on the stage in a number of legendary theatre productions including "Yellow Jack", "The Children's Hour" and "Mr. Roberts" (as Doc).
In the late 1940s he returned to film work full-time and became a familiar and respected performer in films of the period. His son Brian, by his second wife, Helena Shipman, appeared with him in several silent films as a child, long before becoming a star in his own right. Robert Keith died in 1966. - Actress
- Soundtrack
Her father was a minister, and when she joined a local stock company as a youngster she changed her name to avoid embarrassing her family. She worked in vaudeville and debuted on Broadway in 1916. Her film debut was in A House Divided (1931). She repeated her stage role in Dead End (1937) as Baby Face Martin (Humphrey Bogart)'s mother, which led to a number of slum mother parts. She played very strong role of Lucy, the dude ranch operator in The Women (1939). She achieved popularity as a comedienne in six 1940s movies made with Wallace Beery e.g., Barnacle Bill (1941). The character which would dominate her remaining career was established when she played Ma Kettle in The Egg and I (1947), for which she received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. She began her co-starring series with Percy Kilbride the following year in Feudin', Fussin' and A-Fightin' (1948) and continued through seven more. Her last movie was a "Kettle" without Kilbride: The Kettles on Old MacDonald's Farm (1957).- Actress
- Music Department
- Additional Crew
Charlotte Greenwood was born Frances Charlotte Greenwood on June 25, 1890, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was a sickly child and her father left the family when she was very young. Charlotte grew into a healthy, six foot tall woman. She started her career dancing in vaudeville where she became known for her long legs. Her signature dance move was doing a high kick. She was nicknamed "Lady Longlegs". In 1915 Charlotte married actor Cyril Ring. She was deeply in love with him but he left her for another woman. Charlotte married songwriter Martin Broones in 1924. Although she dreamed of becoming a dramatic actress she had greater success in comedy. She starred in a series of stage shows playing a man crazy character named "Letty". The character became so popular that Charlotte starred in the movie version So Long Letty in 1929. She appeared in dozens of films including Down Argentine Way, Star Dust, and The Gang's All Here. Charlotte was usually cast as the comedic sidekick and became one the most recognizable character actresses. During World War 2 she joined the Hollywood Victory Caravan and traveled across the country with other film stars raising money. Charlotte returned to the stage in 1950 starring in Cole Porter's Out of This World. She was a devout Christian scientist and her faith made her turn down roles she felt were too risqué. In 1955 she played Aunt Eller in the hit musical Oklahoma. Charlotte made a few more films before retiring. She and Martin enjoyed a very happy marriage until his death in 1971. Charlotte died on December 28, 1977 from natural causes. She was cremated and her ashes were scattered at sea. Since she had no children she left her personal papers to playwright William Luce.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Herbert Marshall had trained to become a certified accountant, but his interest turned to the stage. He lost a leg while serving in World War I and was rehabilitated with a wooden leg. This did not stop him from making good his decision to make the stage his vocation. He used a very deliberate square-shouldered and guided walk, largely unnoticeable, to cover up his disability. He spent 20 years in distinguished stage work in London before entering films. He almost made the transition from the stage directly to sound movies except for one silent film, Mumsie (1927), produced in Great Britain. His wonderfully mellow baritone and British accent rolled out with a minimum of mouth movement and a nonchalant ease that stood out as unique. His rather blasé demeanor could take on various nuances, without overt emotion, to fit any role he played, whether sophisticated comedy or drama, and the accent fit just as well. He filled the range from romantic lead, with several sympathetic strangers thrown in, to dignified military officer to doctor to various degrees of villainy, his unemotional delivery meshing with the cold, impassive criminal character.
He was almost 40 when he appeared in his first picture in Hollywood, The Letter (1929), a film worthy of comparison (but for the primitive sound recording) to the more famous second version (The Letter (1940)) with Bette Davis. Marshall is the murder victim in 1929 and the betrayed husband in 1940. He was heavily in demand in the 1930s, sometimes in five or six pictures a year. Perhaps his best suave comedic role was in Trouble in Paradise (1932), the first non-musical sound comedy by producer-director Ernst Lubitsch--to some, Lubitsch's greatest film. That same year, Marshall did one of his most warmly human, romantic roles in the marvelously erotic Blonde Venus (1932), with the captivating Marlene Dietrich.
Through the '40s, his roles were more of the character variety, but always substantial. He was deviously subtle as the pre-World War II peace leader actually working against peace for a veiled foreign power (Germany) in Foreign Correspondent (1940). The film was one of Alfred Hitchcock 's earliest Hollywood films and definitely an under-rated thriller. Who could forget Marshall's small but standout performance as "Scott Chavez", who at the beginning of Duel in the Sun (1946), with typical Marshall nonchalance, calmly shoots his Indian cantina-entertainer wife for her cheating ways? By the '50s, Marshall was doing fewer movies, but still in varied genres. His voice was perfect to lend credence to some early sci-fi classics, such as Riders to the Stars (1954) and Gog (1954) and the The Fly (1958). He was also busy honing his considerable talent with various early-TV playhouse programs. He also fit comfortably into episodic TV, including a rare five-episode run as a priest on 77 Sunset Strip (1958). All told, Herbert Marshall graced nearly 100 movie and TV roles with an aplomb that remains a rich legacy.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Though a native of South Africa, Cecil Kellaway spent many years as an actor, author and director in Australian live theatre until he tried his luck in Hollywood in the 1930s. Finding he could get only gangster bit parts, he got discouraged and returned to Australia. Then William Wyler called and offered him a part in Wuthering Heights (1939). From then on Kellaway was always in demand when the part called for a twinkling, silver-haired leprechaun.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Henry Hull, the actor who created the role of Jeeter on Broadway in "Tobacco Road," was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on October 13, 1890, the son of a drama critic. Originally intending to become an engineer, Hull became an actor and made his Broadway debut in "Green Stockings" less than two weeks before his 21st birthday, on October 2, 1911. Two years later he appeared again on Broadway in support of John Barrymore in "Believe Me, Xantippe." He then quit the stage to go prospecting for gold, using his skills as a mining engineer. When he failed to find his El Dorado, Hull turned back to acting, appearing in "The Man Who Came Back" in 1916. He made his first films at the nearby World Pictures in 1917, most famously starring as the ill-fated Aleksandr Kerensky in Rasputin, the Black Monk (1917). The following year he appeared in the second film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's famous novel Little Women (1918).
Although he appeared in about a dozen films from just after World War One to the mid '30s, Hull concentrated on the stage until he went to Hollywood to appear as Magwitch in Great Expectations (1934). He even had a play he wrote produced on Broadway, "Manhattan," which made its debut on August 15, 1922, at the Playhouse Theatre and ran for a respectable (for the time) 86 performances.
Hull made his mark in the history of the horror film, one of Hollywood's most venerable genres, by appearing in the title role in Werewolf of London (1935). Six feet tall and slender, Hull had a rich and cultured voice, which put him in demand as a supporting player in the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was, however, somewhat of a mannered actor in a style that went out of favor after the death of John Barrymore, and he often gave a performance, such as that of the newspaper editor in The Return of Frank James (1940), that was a thick slice of ham. However, his mannerisms and plummy voice were perfect for certain roles such as the obnoxious millionaire conceived by populist John Steinbeck for Lifeboat (1944).
Hull's greatest success as an actor was on Broadway, limning Erskine Caldwell's Jeeter in "Tobacco Road," which still ranks as the longest-running drama in the Great White Way's history, opening on December 4, 1933, and closing on May 31, 1941, after 3,182 total performances. (Hull, of course, did not play the entire run; Jeeter was also played by James Barton and Will Geer). By early 1936 Hull was starring on Broadway in Maxwell Anderson's "The Masque of Kings". When John Ford went looking to cast roles in his film version of the play Tobacco Road (1941), he chose lovable old coot Charley Grapewin for Jeeter; Grapewin had been memorable as Grandpa Joad the year before in Ford's classic adaptation of Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath (1940).
Henry Hull's last film appearance was as a sort of chorus along with Jocelyn Brando in The Chase (1966). He was the brother of actor Shelly Hull, the brother-in-law of Shelly's wife Josephine Hull and the father of producer Shelley Hull with his wife, actress Juliet Fremont, with whom he had appeared on Broadway in 1916 in "The Man Who Came Back." Their son Henry Hull Jr. had a minor career on Broadway, appearing in and serving as assistant stage manager in his father's "The Masque of Kings," as well as appearing in the ensemble in the legendary "Hamlet" of John Gielgud that was on Broadway in 1936.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Verna Felton had extensive experience on the stage and in radio before she broke into film and television. Her trademarks was her distinctive husky voice and her no-nonsense attitude. She was quite in demand for voiceover work, as evidenced by her roles in Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Lady and the Tramp (1955). She appeared in many films, but is best remembered as Hilda Crocker in the TV series December Bride (1954), a character she carried over into its spinoff, Pete and Gladys (1960). Verna died in 1966 at 76 years of age of a stroke.- Born in Providence, Lovecraft was a sickly child whose parents died insane. When he was 16, he wrote the astronomy column in the Providence Tribune. Between 1908 and 1923, he wrote short stories for Weird Tales magazine and others. He died in Providence, in poverty, on March 15, 1937. His most famous novel is considered to be "At the Mountains of Madness", about an expedition to the South Pole, which discovers strange creatures beneath a mountain.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Robert Armstrong is familiar to old-movie buffs for his case-hardened, rapid-fire delivery in such roles as fast-talking promoters, managers, FBI agents, street cops, detectives and other such characters in scores of films--over 160--many of them at Warner Brothers, where he was part of the so-called "Warner Brothers Stock Company" that consisted of such players as James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Frank McHugh, Alan Hale and Humphrey Bogart, among others.
Although he could easily be taken for having grown up in a tough area of Brooklyn or the Bronx, he was actually from the Midwest. He was born in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1890, and his father owned a small and profitable flotilla of boats for use on Lake Michigan. Hearing the Siren call of the gold fields in late 19th-century Alaska, however, he packed up the family and headed west. A typical staging place to start north was in Washington state, and the family settled in Seattle. Robert spent a short hitch in the infantry during World War I. Afterwards he decided to go into law and started to study at the University of Washington. However, it wasn't long before that he decided he had a gift for acting and--perhaps influenced by his uncle, playwright and producer Paul Armstrong--decided to follow that path. He hooked up with future Hollywood character actor James Gleason, known to everyone as "Jimmy", who worked for a variety of playhouses in California and Oregon and who was heir to his parents' stock company, which toured across the US. Armstrong joined Gleason's company and returned with them to New York. He started from the bottom up, learning the craft of acting. After moving on to leading roles, he received the prime part in Gleason's own play "Is Zat So?" (1925-1926), a particularly successful play among several he had written (he also directed and produced plays on Broadway into 1928).
Hollywood scouts were watching, and Armstrong found himself with a film contract. He appeared in approximately 10 films in 1928 alone, and after the first five he was able, with the advent of sound, to give voice to the take-charge, mile-a-minute, clenched-teeth delivery that would make him one of the busiest character men in Hollywood--and right alongside him in several of his early 1930s features was his old friend and boss Jimmy Gleason.
It was in 1932 that Armstrong became acquainted with an ambitious and adventurous pair of Hollywood filmmakers. Both were World War I fliers, big-game hunters and animal trappers, and partners in high adventure documentaries, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack had found a friend in rising producer David O. Selznick, who brought them on board at RKO, with Cooper as production idea man. Schoedsack was the technical side of the pair, knowledgeable about the actual physical and technical side of filmmaking, , and became the actual director of their projects, with Cooper as an associate producer and sometime co-director. They turned out what would be the first of a string of horror-tinged adventure movies, The Most Dangerous Game (1932), with Armstrong having a part in it. He got in his usual wisecrack lines but from a less dimensioned character who had an early demise--the film centered on Joel McCrea and still young silent screen veteran Fay Wray. Cooper saw much of himself in Armstrong's general personality and wanted him for a film that he had been wanting to make for quite a few years, an adventure yarn dealing with the stories he had heard during his years making films in jungles all over the world of giant, vicious apes. The resulting film, King Kong (1933), would put Armstrong at stage center as big-time promoter Carl Denham (very much Cooper himself). The film also began co-star Fay Wray on the road to stardom. With Copper and Schoedsack co-directing and the legendary Willis H. O'Brien heading up a visual effects team supporting his for-the-time astounding animated miniature sequences, the film was a treasure trove for RKO, bringing newfound respect for a studio known mostly for its "B" action films and westerns. It was Armstrong's defining moment and set the stage for the plethora of leading man and second lead roles he would play through the 1930s.
A sequel, Son of Kong (1933), followed almost immediately with the same production team and, though not achieving the critical or box-office acclaim as its predecessor, showcased another Armstrong strength--a great sense of comedic timing that had been evident, but not really traded upon, in previous films. The Cooper/Schoedsack team got in one more for 1933, with Armstrong as an uncommon--for him--romantic lead in Blind Adventure (1933), a fast-paced but but often uneven adventure yarn. All the studios wanted him, and what followed was a flood of usually good, crowd-pleasing roles, although still in "B" pictures. Among the better ones were Palooka (1934) and 'G' Men (1935), with Armstrong playing a hard-nosed FBI agent who is mentor and partner to a young James Cagney. With a full menu of adventure yarns and colorful cop and military roles, at the end of the decade Armstrong even played one of America's great folk heroes - Jim Bowie - in Man of Conquest (1939), this time at Republic Pictures.
Armstrong got more of the same in the decade of World War II--although with age he started to slip down the cast list--with some variety, playing a Nazi agent in the spoof My Favorite Spy (1942) and--in somewhat ridiculous "Japanese" makeup--as a Japanese secret-police colonel (named Tojo) with former co-star James Cagney in the escapist romp Blood on the Sun (1945). Finally, Cooper--gorillas still on his mind--came calling for Armstrong again for his Mighty Joe Young (1949), which he made about midway in his association with partner John Ford in their Argosy Pictures venture under the wing of RKO. Armstrong was again a reincarnation of Carl Denham as Max O'Hara, a fast-talking promoter looking for a sensation in "Darkest Africa". The Ford touch is perhaps seen in the cowboys who go along with young Ben Johnson as romantic lead to enthusiastic--to say the least--Terry Moore with her pet gorilla Joe (about half as big as King Kong but definitely no ordinary gorilla). It is a great little movie, with more light-hearted tone than "Kong" and a red-tinted fire scene recalling the silents. It was a Saturday matinée favorite for at least a decade afterward (this writer enjoyed it as his first movie theater adventure as a small child).
Armstrong increasingly went to the small screen through the 1950s. He was a familiar face on most of the TV playhouse programs of the period and did many of the series oaters and crime shows of the period. He received a great send-up as a guest on Red Skelton's variety show when the oft giggling host asked him, "Say, did you ever get that monkey off that building?" Armstrong liked keeping busy and helping friends. One of the latter was Cooper--still promoting as his alter ego Carl Denham in his old age. The two passed away within 24 hours of one another in April of 1973.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Stanley Holloway was a British actor and singer, primarily known for comic monologues and songs. In 1890, Holloway was born in Manor Park, Essex. In 1965, Manor Park was incorporated into Greater London, as part of an administrative reform. It is now part of the London Borough of Newham, in East London.
Holloway's parents were lawyer's clerk George Augustus Holloway (1860-1919) and Florence May Bell (1862-1913). His mother primarily worked as a housekeeper and dressmaker. Holloway's paternal grandfather was Augustus Holloway (1829-1884), a relatively wealthy shopkeeper from Poole, Dorset, who owned his own brush-making business. Holloway's maternal grandfather was lawyer Robert Bell, the boss of George Holloway. Through his mother's side of the family, Stanley Holloway was a great-nephew to theatrical actor Charles Bernard (1830-1894), the father of famous modernist architect Oliver Percy Bernard (1881-1939).
Holloway was named "Stanley", after the famous journalist and explorer Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1909). George Holloway, his father, abandoned his wife and family in 1905, forcing the 15-year-old Stanley Holloway to drop out of school and start working for a living. Stanley received training as a carpenter, but then found a better job as an office clerk. At his free time, he sang at a local choir. He also started a minor singing career, performing sentimental songs such as "The Lost Chord" (1877) by Arthur Sullivan.
In 1907, Holloway started his military service, as an infantry soldier for the London Rifle Brigade. In 1910, Holloway made his theatrical debut, performing in "The White Coons Show", a concert party variety show. From 1912 to 1914, he regularly performed at the West Cliff Gardens Theatre of Clacton-on-Sea, as a baritone singer. In 1913, Holloway was hired as a supporting actor in a concert party headed by then-famous comedian Leslie Henson (1891-1957). Holloway studied Henson's performance style, and came to regard Henson as his mentor.
In 1914, Holloway interrupted his stage career to officially join the British Army, during World War I. He served in the Connaught Rangers, the Irish line infantry regiment. He first taste of military action was fighting against Irish insurrectionists in the Easter Rising (April, 1916). Later in 1916, Holloway was transferred to France and got to experience trench-warfare first-hand. Late in the War, the military decided to use his acting experience to have Holloway perform in army revues, theatrical shows intended to boost the morale of the troops. Holloway was discharged from the Army in May, 1919. World War I was over, and the British Army was demobilizing.
Holloway soon resumed his acting and singing career, and found success in musicals performed at West End theaters. He made his film debut in the silent film "The Rotters" (1921). The first major hit of his theatrical career was becoming a leading performed in the concert party "The Co-Optimists" (1921-1927). Holloway appeared in 1,568 performances of this show over eight years and resumed his part in its 1929 film adaptation.
Holloway's newfound fame opened some new career opportunities for him. In 1923, he was hired as regular performer for BBC Radio, and in 1924 he recorded some of his hit songs for release in gramophone discs. In 1928, he started performing on-stage comic monologues. He created the stage character of "Sam Small", a working-class soldier of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815). Small was very popular with audiences, and Holloway performed this role both on stage and in film.
In the 1930s, Holloway regularly performed in theatrical films by the Ealing Studios, while continuing his successful theatrical career. In 1939, World War II started. At age 49, veteran soldier Holloway was considered too old to re-enlist in the Army. He was hired, however, by the British Film Institute and Pathé News to narrate war-time propaganda films, educational films, and documentaries. Later in the 1940s, he narrated the documentary film series "Time To Remember" for Pathé News. It was a retrospective of British and world history from 1915 to 1942.
In the early 1950s, Holloway appeared in a number of successful films by the Ealing Studios, such as ''The Lavender Hill Mob'' (1951) and ''The Titfield Thunderbolt'' (1953). The company terminated its relationship with him in 1953 (for unclear reasons), and was taken over by the BBC in 1955.
In 1956, Holloway created the role of "Alfred P. Doolittle" in the Broadway production of a new musical play, "My Fair Lady" (1956) by Alan Jay Lerner. The play was an adaption of the play "Pygmalion" (1913) by George Bernard Shaw. Holloway was Lerner's first choice for the role, though Lerner was concerned whether the 66-year-old Holloway still had his resonant singing voice. Holloway relieved Lerner's concerns with an improvised singing performance during their lunch meeting. Doolittle became one of Holloway's most famous roles, and he was hired to reprise the role in the 1964 film adaptation of the musical.
In the 1960s, Holloway was still popular and continued to receive offers for more roles. He had a starring role in the short-lived American sitcom "Our Man Higgins" (1962-1963). He was cast as Higgins, a traditional English butler who found himself employed by a "modern" American suburban family. The series was based on the culture clash between employer and employee from much different backgrounds.
In 1967, Holloway was cast in the British sitcom "Blandings Castle", an adaptation of a series of books by P. G. Wodehouse. The series was popular at the time, but critics felt that Holloway was miscast. The series is considered lost, since BBC erased its tapes of the episodes.
In the early 1970s, Holloway continued regularly appearing in film, but his advanced age limited his potential for notable roles. His last film role was as a crime suspect in the Canadian thriller "Journey into Fear" (1975). He continued regularly appearing in theatre, but poor health forced him into retirement in 1980. He was 90-years-old, when he last performed at the Royal Variety Performance, at the London Palladium.
In January, 1982, Holloway suffered a stroke and died at the Nightingale Nursing Home in Littlehampton, West Sussex. He was buried at St Mary the Virgin Church in East Preston, West Sussex. His second wife, the actress Violet Marion Lane (1913-1997), was eventually buried beside him.
Holloway was married twice. He had four children from his first marriage to Alice "Queenie" Foran, and one child from his marriage to Violet Marion Lane. He was the father of actor Julian Holloway (1944-), and paternal grandfather of the author Sophie Dahl (1977-).- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
The words "suave" and "debonair" became synonymous with the name Adolphe Menjou in Hollywood, both on- and off-camera. The epitome of knavish, continental charm and sartorial opulence, Menjou, complete with trademark waxy black mustache, evolved into one of Hollywood's most distinguished of artists and fashion plates, a tailor-made scene-stealer, if you will. What is often forgotten is that he was primed as a matinée idol back in the silent-film days. With hooded, slightly owlish eyes, a prominent nose and prematurely receding hairline, he was hardly competition for Rudolph Valentino, but he did possess the requisite demeanor to confidently pull off a roguish and magnetic man-about-town. Fluent in six languages, Menjou was nearly unrecognizable without some type of formal wear, and he went on to earn distinction as the nation's "best dressed man" nine times.
Born on February 18, 1890, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was christened Adolphe Jean Menjou, the elder son of a hotel manager. His Irish mother was a distant cousin of novelist / poet James Joyce ("Ulysses") (1882-1941). His French father, an émigré, eventually moved the family to Cleveland, where he operated a chain of restaurants. He disapproved of show business and sent an already piqued Adolphe to Culver Military Academy in Indiana in the hopes of dissuading him from such a seemingly reckless and disreputable career. From there Adolphe was enrolled at Stiles University prep school and then Cornell University. Instead of acquiescing to his father's demands and obtaining a engineering degree, however, he abruptly changed his major to liberal arts and began auditioning for college plays. He left Cornell in his third year in order to help his father manage a restaurant for a time during a family financial crisis. From there he left for New York and a life in the theater.
Adolphe toiled as a laborer, a haberdasher and even a waiter in one of his father's restaurants during his salad days, which included some vaudeville work. Oddly enough, he never made it to Broadway but instead found extra and/or bit work for various film studios (Vitagraph, Edison, Biograph) starting in 1915. World War I interrupted his early career, and he served as a captain with the Ambulance Corps in France. After the war he found employment off-camera as a productions manager and unit manager. When the New York-based film industry moved west, so did Adolphe.
Nothing of major significance happened for the fledgling actor until 1921, an absolute banner year for him. After six years of struggle he finally broke into the top ranks with substantial roles in The Faith Healer (1921) and Through the Back Door (1921), the latter starring Mary Pickford. He formed some very strong connections as a result and earned a Paramount contract in the process. Cast by Mary's then-husband Douglas Fairbanks as Louis XIII in the rousing silent The Three Musketeers (1921), he finished off the year portraying the influential writer/friend Raoul de Saint Hubert in Rudolph Valentino's classic The Sheik (1921).
Firmly entrenched in the Hollywood lifestyle, it took little time for Menjou to establish his slick prototype as the urbane ladies' man and wealthy roué. Paramount, noticing how Menjou stole scenes from Charles Chaplin favorite Edna Purviance in Chaplin's A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923), started capitalizing on Menjou's playboy image by casting him as various callous and creaseless matinée leads in such films as Broadway After Dark (1924), Sinners in Silk (1924), The Ace of Cads (1926), A Social Celebrity (1926) and A Gentleman of Paris (1927). His younger brother Henri Menjou, a minor actor, had a part in Adolphe's picture Blonde or Brunette (1927).
The stock market crash led to the termination of Adolphe's Paramount contract, and his status as leading man ended with it. MGM took him on at half his Paramount salary and his fluency in such languages as French and Spanish kept him employed at the beginning. Rivaling Gary Cooper for the attentions of Marlene Dietrich in Morocco (1930) started the ball rolling for Menjou as a dressy second lead. Rarely placed in leads following this period, he managed his one and only Oscar nomination for "Best Actor" with his performance as editor Walter Burns in The Front Page (1931). Not initially cast in the role, he replaced Louis Wolheim, who died ten days into rehearsal. Quality parts in quality pictures became the norm for Adolphe during the 1930s, with outstanding roles given him in The Great Lover (1931), A Farewell to Arms (1932), Forbidden (1932), Little Miss Marker (1934), Morning Glory (1933), A Star Is Born (1937), Stage Door (1937) and Golden Boy (1939).
The 1940s were not as golden, however. In addition to entertaining the troops overseas and making assorted broadcasts in a host of different languages, he did manage to get the slick and slimy Billy Flynn lawyer role opposite Ginger Rogers' felon in the "Chicago" adaptation Roxie Hart (1942), and continued to earn occasional distinction in such post-WWII pictures as The Hucksters (1947) and State of the Union (1948). His last lead was in the crackerjack thriller The Sniper (1952), in which he played an (urbane) San Francisco homicide detective tracking down a killer who preys on women in San Francisco, and he appeared without his mustache for the first time in nearly two decades. Also active on radio and TV, his last notable film was the classic anti-war picture Paths of Glory (1957) playing the villainous Gen. Broulard.
Adolphe's extreme hardcore right-wing Republican politics hurt his later reputation, as he was made a scapegoat for his cooperation as a "friendly witness" at the House Un-American Activities Commission hearing during the Joseph McCarthy Red Scare era. Following his last picture, Disney's Pollyanna (1960), in which he played an uncharacteristically rumpled curmudgeon who is charmed by Hayley Mills, he retired from acting. He died after a nine-month battle with hepatitis on October 29, 1963, inside his Beverly Hills home. Three times proved the charm for Adolphe with his 1934 marriage to actress Verree Teasdale, who survived him. The couple had an adopted son named Peter. His autobiography, "It Took Nine Tailors" (1947), pretty much says it all for this polished, preening professional.- Cheerio Meredith was born as Edwina Lucille Hoffmann on July 12, 1890 in Missouri. She was originally a stage actress until breaking into films and TV. She was a regular as Emma Brand and Emma Watson on "The Andy Griffith Show" (1960)" and appeared in "One Happy Family" (1961) as Lovey Hackett. She died in 1964 of undisclosed causes after a lengthy illness.
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Edward Arnold was born as Gunther Edward Arnold Schneider in 1890, on the Lower East Side of New York City, the son of German immigrants, Elizabeth (Ohse) and Carl Schneider. Arnold began his acting career on the New York stage and became a film actor in 1916. A burly man with a commanding style and superb baritone voice, he was a popular screen personality for decades, and was the star of such film classics as Diamond Jim (1935) (a role he reprised in Lillian Russell (1940)) Arnold appeared in over 150 films and was President of The Screen Actors Guild shortly before his death in 1956.- English actor Leslie Banks' film career would be negligible compared to his prestigious theatrical one if it were not for four exceptions. Hitchcock, for one, gave him the occasion to shine in two of his films, in a sympathetic role in "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1934) and in an outright unsympathetic one in "Jamaica Inn" (1938) - a telltale illustration, by the way, of the extent of his talent. The actor is also remembered for "Henry V" (1944), Laurence Olivier's masterful adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy. It is fun to hear Banks roll his r's (hey! The year is 1600 after all!) while he introduces and comments the play to the audience of the Globe Theatre. But oddly enough, the thespian never made a bigger impression than in his first screen appearance, way back in 1932. Who indeed has forgotten the ruthless, ferocious, evil Count Zaroff, specializing in human game hunting, from Cooper and Schoedsack's horror classic "The Most Dangerous Game"? Banks' other movies, consisting mostly of B movies and World War II propaganda fare, did not leave a comparable impact. Maybe because Leslie Banks, always more interested in the theatre of which he was a big name, was not demanding enough in the choice of his films. On the boards, that is where he got great parts in great plays: Captain Hook in "Peter Pan", Petruchio in "The Taming of the Shrew", Mr. Chipping in "Goodbye Mr. Chips", James Jarvis in the Kurt Weill musical "Lost in the Stars", and many many others. Born in 1890 in West Derby near Liverpool, he studied at Keble College, Oxford. First wanting to be a parson, he became an actor instead, making his debut in 1911. His reputation rapidly rose, and Banks never stopped working until his untimely death, not only in England but also in the USA where he toured as early as 1912. With only one interruption, though a big one, due to World War I. Banks, who served with the Essex Regiment then, was wounded in the face, one side remaining permanently paralyzed. Which did not prevent him from quickly resuming his activities, at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre first, then in London, New York and Hollywood. Unfortunately, if the delightfully threatening figure of Zaroff will rest forever in our minds, Leslie Banks physically disappeared in 1952, only aged 61, hit by a sudden stroke. He has been missed since.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Born and raised on a farm in Michigan in 1890, Irish-American character actor Harry Shannon had the credentials for becoming a staple player in westerns. He started off his career traveling around with repertory and stock companies and developed his musical abilities in tent shows, burlesque houses and such tuneful Broadway shows as "Oh, Kay!" (1926), "Hold Everything" (1928), "Simple Simon" (1931), and "Pardon My English" (1933). A company member of Joseph Schildkraut's Hollywood Theater Guild, Shannon broke into films at the advent of sound and started things off in comedy film shorts opposite such celebrated players as Bert Lahr, Shemp Howard, and Leon Errol. In the 1940s Shannon established himself in feature-length movies and although he remained a minor, second-string player, he proved himself a durable presence in westerns usually remaining on the good side of the law as sheriffs and bucolic dads. In lighthearted entertainment he could be found as a friendly Irish cop or bartender. He made a slight but memorable impression as Kane's alcoholic father in the classic Citizen Kane (1941), while his last role would be as the grandfather in the musical Gypsy (1962). In between were small parts in such notable films as The Fighting Sullivans (1944), The Jolson Story (1946), High Noon (1952), Touch of Evil (1958), and The Buccaneer (1958). 1950s TV westerns such as Cheyenne (1955), Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), Rawhide (1959), and Gunsmoke (1955) made consistent use of his rustic demeanor. Shannon died in 1964 at age 74.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
James Barton was born on 1 November 1890 in Gloucester City, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The Shepherd of the Hills (1941), The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady (1950) and His Family Tree (1935). He was married to Kathryn M. Mullin and Ottilie Regina Kleinert. He died on 19 February 1962 in Mineola, Long Island, New York, USA.- Judith Lowry was born on 27 July 1890 in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, USA. She was an actress, known for Cold Turkey (1971), The Anderson Tapes (1971) and Phyllis (1975). She was married to Rudd Lowry. She died on 29 November 1976 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Director
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- Editor
Clarence Leon Brown was the son of Larkin Harry and Catherine Ann (Gaw) Brown of Clinton, Massachusetts. His family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, when he was 12 years old. He graduated from Knoxville High School in 1905 and from the University of Tennessee with a B.A. in mechanical and electrical engineering in 1912. After graduation Brown settled in Alabama, where he operated a Stevens Duryea dealership called the Brown Motor Car Co. He soon tired of the car business and, fascinated by the movies, moved to New Jersey to study with French director Maurice Tourneur at Peerless Productions in Fort Lee.
During his career Brown directed or produced more than 50 widely-acclaimed full-length films--many during his long association with prestigious MGM--and worked with many of the industry's most illustrious performers. He also maintained close ties with the University of Tennessee, donating the money necessary to construct the institution's Clarence Brown Theatre during the 1970s and an additional $12 million after his death.- Born in England in 1891, Stanley Ridges would become a protégé of Beatrice Lillie, a star of musical comedies, and spent a great many years learning and honing his craft on the stage. He eventually would make his way over to America, and become a romantic leading man on Broadway. His first film appearance was in Success (1923), but his film career would not begin to take off until he was 43 in Crime Without Passion (1934) opposite Claude Rains. Stanley found himself cast in character roles, as his graying hair put his romantic leading man days at an end. Despite this he was well cast in the horror film Black Friday (1940) opposite Boris Karloff as a beloved professor who becomes the innocent victim of a shooting. To save him Karloff's character transplants part of the brain of the criminal who shot Stanley's character. Stanley goes on to steal the film, doing a Jekyll-and-Hyde act going from the beloved professor to the crass and uncouth criminal.
Ridges would be cast in other memorable films, including The Sea Wolf (1941), Sergeant York (1941), To Be or Not to Be (1942) and The Suspect (1944). His last film would be The Groom Wore Spurs (1951) with Ginger Rogers, before passing away in April of that year. - Jeanne Eagels, one of the most intriguing stars of late silent films and the early talkies, was born Amelia Jean Eagles on June 26, 1890 in Kansas City, Missouri, to Edward and Julia Sullivan Eagles. Young Jean was part of an impoverished family of eight, with three brothers and two sisters. She likely stopped going to school when she was 11 years old.
As a girl, she decided to become an actress after appearing in a Shakespearen play. Of that performance, she said, "I played the grave-digger in 'Hamlet,' first, at the age of seven. They gave me the chance to play Shakespeare because nobody else of the tender age of seven would do so. They wouldn't say the rather amazing words...the other kiddies. I took it all quite seriously and said ALL the words without a quiver. Once I had begun I could not be stopped. I was ill when I was not on the stage. It seemed to me I couldn't breathe in any other atmosphere."
She followed up the experience up by playing bit parts in local theatrical productions. When she was 12 years old, she became a member of the Dubinsky Brothers' traveling stock company, appearing at first as a dancer, but eventually working her way into speaking roles. Eagels soon was playing leading roles in the stock company's repertory, including "Camille," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Later, a myth arose that Eagels' began her career as a circus performer. The 1957 biographical film "The Jeanne Eagels Story" erroneously depicts Eagels' beginning as a hootchie-kootchie dancer in a carnival. The Dubinsky Brothers did use a tent to put on their shows, but they did not present carnival acts but performed popular comedies, musicals, and dramas. The tent was only used during the spring and summer months, while during the colder months, the company performed in theaters and halls in the Midwest.
Jeanne Eagels married the scion of the Dubinsky family, Morris, the oldest of the brothers. She was likely in her teens, and probably had a baby by Morris. Stories about Eagels' past diverge, and in one account, the child was adopted by family friends, while in another, Eagels' baby boy died in infancy, triggering a nervous breakdown for the bereft mother. Eagels and Dubinky separated, likely due to his infidelity. Jeanne eventually left the Dubinksy company and joined another touring stock company, which eventually brought her to New York City.
Eagels decided to make herself over in New York as she fought her way up in the fiercely competitive theatrical world. A brunette, Eagels dyed her hair blonde and said that she was of Spanish and Irish lineage, and that her surname was originally "Aguilar," which loosely translates into English as "eagle." She changed the spelling of her name from "Eagles" to "Eagels," reputedly as she thought it looked better on a marquee. Eliminating her past, she presented herself as an ingÃffÃ'©nue rather than as a divorced woman and mother of a dead infant. She also adopted an English accent as David Belasco, the legendary theatrical impresario, had commented that she spoke like an "earl's daughter."
She began her climb up the greasy pole of Broadway stardom by appearing as a chorus girl. She even served a stint as a Ziegfield girl, but Eagels was determined to establish herself as a dramatic roles, wining bit parts in the plays "Jumping Jupiter" and "The Mind the Paint Girl."
Eagels took a trip to Paris, where she likely studied acting with Beverly Sitgreaves, an expatriate American actress who had appeared with Sarah Bernhardt, Eagels' idol. After Jeanne Eagels' death, there arose a myth that she was a "raw," untrained talent who just happened to have the spark of genius on stage. This is demonstrably false as she had a thorough grounding in technique in her six-year apprenticeship in regional stock companies. She also studied acting with Sitgreaves and with acting coaches in New York. The myth likely is rooted in the biography of Eagels' stage co-star Leslie Howard that was written by his children. Howard was of the opinion that Eagels was untrained, but that likely was rooted in English snobbery vis-ÃffÃ'Â -vis America actors as he had the same opinion of the great Bette Davis. What Howard likely meant that the emotionally erratic Eagels was undisciplined rather than untrained. George Arliss, considered one of the great stage actors at the time he appeared on Broadway with Eagels, would hardly have chosen her to appear in three of his productions if she were not trained and up to giving a fine performance. Arliss was full of praise for Eagels.
In Paris, Eagels attracted the attention of Julian Eltinge, the famous Broadway female impersonator, though they were not introduced. Ironically, when he returned to New York, Eltinge found out that Eagels was to be his co-star in what turned out to be a long tour of the play "The Crinoline Girl." The two became good friends.
Eagels won the role of a prostitute who becomes a faith-healer in the touring company of the play "Outcast" by modeling herself after the play's star, Elsie Ferguson, for her audition. She won the part, and also won great reviews during the tour's swing through the South. When the touring company returned to New York for an off-Broadway engagement, some critics were there to see if Eagels actually did live up to the road reviews of her "Outcast" performance. She did, and the critics were suitably impressed.
The Thanhouser Film Co. cast Eagles in the film of "Outcast" in 1916, which was entitled The World and the Woman (1916) upon its release. Eagels was working during the daytime in films and at night on the stage. Suffering from fatigue and insomnia, she sought treatment and likely became hooked on drugs during this period. With the aid of physician-prescribed dope, Jeanne Eagels continued her hectic dual-career of making movies during the day while acting on stage at night. The routine continued until 1920. Suffering from chronic sinusitis and other maladies, Eagels descended the slippery slope of self-medicating her ills, an unfortunate situation exacerbated by her fondness for drink.
Eagels received great reviews when she starred with George Arliss in the Broadway hit "The Professor's Love Story" in 1917. She followed up their joint triumph with two more co-starring ventures with Arliss, "Disraeli" and the even-more-popular play "Hamilton." Of his co-star, Arliss said that each of the three distinctly different parts she acted were "played with unerring judgment and artistry."
In 1918, she appeared in Belasco's production of "Daddies," an original play about the plight of war orphans starring George Abbott. She quit the hit show either due to exhaustion or because, as rumor had it, she was fed up with Belasco's sexual harassment, though she praised him as a producer.
"Often in the theater there is a feeling of commercialism in every detail; it may not touch one directly, but it is there, and the consciousness that the financial success of the play is perhaps of first importance is decidedly unpleasant. Now, Mr. Belasco puts acting, like every other element of a production, upon an artistic basis. He makes you feel that a thing is important artistically or not at all. Money seems never to be a consideration, yet the making of it follows as a result of making the production as nearly perfect as possible.... That point of view on the producer's part means a great deal to the actor; it leaves him free to do so much, and is an incentive to work toward a faithful portrayal of character. To me everything about Mr. Belasco's theater points toward that one ideal of his -- perfection."
She next appeared in the comedy "A Young Man's Fancy" (1919), followed up by "The Wonderful Thing" (1920). By the time she appeared in the latter, a modest success that played for 120 performances, she had become a true Broadway diva, having to wait for the applause to die down after her entrance before she could deliver her lines. She had her own distinctive ideas on how to give a fresh impression to the audience for each performance:
"Audiences mean as much to an actress as the acoustics of a concert hall mean to a musician. The musician must vary his playing according to his acoustics--according to the sort of room in which his concert is given.... A sort of sixth sense enables me to discern the character of an audience within a few minutes after I have begun to play, and it is only the people for whom I am making this lovable girl live at that one performance that matter. Former audiences are swept from my thought as though they had never been. As far as the audience of the moment is concerned others have never been. What I have done, or have not done, for them doesn't matter to the folk who have come to see the play to-night. I am so very conscious of this that I am able to play to them as though I were creating the part for the first time... I do wrong in speaking of 'playing to an audience,' however. A true artist never 'plays to the audience.' Rather he or she keeps his or her own vision true, and the creation evolves itself."
Her next Broadway appearance, "In the Night Watch" (1921), was another modest success, but she soon was to appear in the play that would make her lasting reputation. The opportunity came her way when another actress turned down the role of the prostitute Sadie Thompson in the theatrical adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's short story "Rain."
On the road in Philidelphia, the play received discouraging reviews, necessitating a rewrite of the second act. By the time the rewritten "Rain" debuted on Broadway on November 7, 1922, at Maxine Elliott's Theatre, all the kinks had been worked out, and the play was a smash, running for 256 performances. When the company returned to Broadway after the road show, re-opening at the Gaiety Theatre on September 1, 1924, "Rain" starring Jeanne Eagels ran for another 648 performances, transferring to the New Park Theatre on December 15, 1924. "Rain" elevated Jeanne Eagels into the pantheon of American theater greats.
John D. Williams, the director of "Rain" said, "In my score of years in the theater Miss Eagels was one of the two or three highest types of interpretive acting intelligences I have met. To work with her on a play was once more to feel one's self in the theater when it was in its finest estate; when a play was not a 'show,' nor even a performance, but a work, which because it had something to say that might clarify life, was a living thing and simply demanded to be heard. It was then that somebody, known or unknown, wrote something that deserved fanatically true fulfillment--and somebody else of magic touch acted it.... Miss Eagels had that touch of magic in character interpretation- the quick exchange of ideas as to the sense of the scene. And then would come the superbly tragic entrance, for example, of Sadie Thompson in the last act of 'Rain,' with its flawless blend of bitter disillusionment, irony, revenge, terror."
Eagels' great performance was acknowledged as responsible for the great success of the play, and although Gloria Swanson had some success playing Sadie in the silent movie version of the play in 1928, Joan Crawford did less well in the role in the 1931 talkie version. Both Swanson and particularly Crawford were upstaged by their leading men, Lionel Barrymore and Walter Huston, respectively. Rita Hayworth's version in 1953, opposite José Ferrer, is barely remembered. Sadie Thompson belonged to Jeanne Eagels, and the touring company of "Rain" toured for four years.
In 1917, Eagels had said, "I am timid and afraid of men and far too busy to become well acquainted with them. My work fills my life, and I should not care to fall in love or marry before I am very, very old -- about thirty-five -- because a woman gives too much of herself when she loves, and that would interfere with her career."
By the time Eagels married her second husband, the stockbroker Edward H. Coy, in 1925 at the age of 35, she had developed a reputation as a temperamental actress who was a hard drinker. Coy had achieved Ivy League gridiron immortality as a 6-foot, 195-pound fullback at Yale, where he was named an All-American in 1908 and 1909 but had turned to the sauce for solace now that the cheers had faded. The incompatibility between the two did nothing to ameliorate her problems with her mood swings or with drink.
After "Rain," she took time off, either turning down offers such as the role of Roxie Hart in "Chicago" (1926) or quitting plays she did sign up for during rehearsals. Finally, she made her Broadway return in the George Cukor-directed light comedy "Her Cardboard Lover" (1926) opposite Leslie Howard. Broadway critics and audiences had grown accustomed to Eagels in more substantial fare, and on opening night, it was Leslie Howard whom the audience cheered, calling for Howard to take curtain calls. Controversially, Eagels took Howard's curtain calls, thanking the audience "on behalf of my Cardboard Lover." The critics, too, wound up praising Howard rather than Eagels.
Eagels fondness for medicating herself and for drink caused problems during the run of the show. Her on-stage behavior could be egregious, as when she stepped out of character and, thirty for the sauce, asked Howard's character for a drink of "water." This caused the stage manager more than once to bring down the curtain during a performance, and Howard left the stage in a huff at one point.
About bad acting, Eagels blamed it on "...[N]ot being a good listener. So few people are. For instance, when you and I are talking here and I say 'no' very deeply and quietly, your reply will be 'yes' with something of a rising inflection, a lighter modulation. You have listened to me and have made a correct tonal reply. On the stage, most of the actors and actresses know their cue words and take their cues, but they haven't listened to the speech preceding their own. The result is a correct enough answer as to word, but not as to tone. There is not tonal intelligence in the reply. Good listeners...so rare."
John D. Williams, her director in "Rain," attributed her greatness on the stage to her great ability to listen while on stage.
"First off, she knew to perfection, and adhered to as to a religion, the art of listening in acting. At every performance, whether the first, or the hundredth, the speeches of the character addressing her were not merely heard but listened to. Hence there was always thought and belief and conviction behind every speech and scene of her own-- the essence of theater illusion."
The drink and drugs apparently were eroding that greatness. However, despite her on-stage antics, "Her Cardboard Lover" was another modest success, playing for 152 performances. After shooting the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film Man, Woman and Sin (1927) with John Gilbert, she toured with the play in the large cities.
Eagels' behavior during the filming of Man, Woman and Sin (1927) was atrocious. Gilbert, whom she reportedly had an affair with, said Eagels was the most temperamental actress he had ever worked with. She would appear late at the studio, and once, she disappeared for several days. The Hollywood trade press credited Eagels disappearance to a drink binge, and at one point, she took off on a two-week vacation to Santa Barbara without informing her director, Monta Bell. Bell asked studio management to terminate Eagels' contract, which they did. Fortunately, there was enough footage so Bell could salvage the film without re-shooting.
John Gilbert said of Eagels, "She seemed to hate the movies for a popularity they could not give her....[The] blind, unreasoning adulation of the movie fans was a type of popularity she spurned. Fundamentally, Jeanne was much superior to us. Movie actors are crazy to be worshiped. Jeanne Eagels wanted to be understood and appreciated."
When the film was released, Eagels' performance received mixed reviews, but the picture was a failure primarily due to the poor reviews garnered by Gilbert. Critics rejected the great lover playing a naive mama's boy in this film. Gilbert's career was salvaged shortly thereafter by the release of his second film with Great Garbo, Love (1927), which was a smash hit at the box office.
When Eagels began touring the East Coast in "Her Cardboard Lover," the Boston engagement was cut in half to one week as Eagels reportedly was ill. After the play moved to Chicago with a revivified Eagels, she divorced Coy in 1928, citing physically abuse and accusing him of breaking her jaw. Eagels claimed that Coy had threatened to wreck her budding movie career by ruining her face. Coy, a heavy boozer like his soon-to-be ex-wife, pleaded no contest and the divorce was granted.
The Mid-Western tour of "Her Cardboard Lover" moved on to Milwaukee, but Eagels was a no-show at both the Milwaukee and the subsequent St. Louis performances. She claimed that she was suffering from ptomaine poisoning, but eye-witness accounts placed her in Chicago on a long boozing binge when she was supposed to have been in Milwaukee. Her indefensible and unprofessional behavior brought her an 18-month suspension from Actor's Equity, which banned her from performing on stage with any other Equity actor for the length of the suspension. The ban essentially ended her stage career in New York and the rest of the country, although it could not stop her from appearing by herself on stage in non-Equity venues. Eagels hit the vaudeville circuit, performing scenes from "Rain." She also appeared in movies as producers were desperate for trained stage people with the advent of sound, and she eventually made more money from the film industry and vaudeville than she ever had from the "legitimate" stage.
Ironically, it was Monta Bell, now working at Paramount's Astoria Studios in New York, who hired Jeanne Eagels for her film comeback. In 1929, Bell announced that even though Equity didn't want Eagels, he wanted her, for she had been the consummate professional during the making of Man, Woman and Sin (1927). The man who had urged the MGM brass to fire her now told the press that he had actually urged MGM to sign Eagels to long-term contract for more pictures.
The first movie Eagels made for Paramount was the Monta Bell-produced The Letter (1929), which reunited Eagels with W. Somerset Maugham. Katharine Cornell had had a Broadway hit with Maugham's play as the murderous adulteress, and Eagels delivered an electrifying, legendary performance in the role on film. After Eagels received rave reviews for her The Letter (1929), Paramount took Bell's advice and signed her to a contract for two more pictures, Jealousy (1929) and The Laughing Lady (1929).
She began shooting "Jealousy" (1929) with the English actor Anthony Bushnell, whom she had hand-picked to be her leading man, but during filming it was apparent that Bushnell's voice was not registering well on the sound equipment. Bushnell was replaced by the up-and-coming star Fredric March, who later said Eagels was "great" to work with, but that the movie they made together was a "stinker." There were rumors that Eagels had suffered a nervous breakdown while filming "Jealousy", but Paramount denied there had been any trouble with their new diva. However, Eagels asked to be let out of her contract for "The Laughing Lady" on the grounds that she was either ill or because she didn't like the script, and the studio obliged, replacing her with Ruth Chatterton.
About her management of her personal affairs, Eagels said, "I cannot bear to transact any of my own business or make any of my own professional arrangements. I have an aversion to it I cannot overcome. I can't read the papers, either. Mention of my personal life, even tho I expect it, acts terribly on my nerves. I suppose I'm an odd person."
It was reported that now that the Actors Equity ban was due to expire in the fall of 1929, Eagels was preparing to return to Broadway. In September, Eagles underwent successful surgery to treat ulcers on her eyes, a condition was caused by her sinusitis. Two weeks after surgery, on the night of October 3, 1929, as Eagels was preparing for a night out on the town, she fell ill and was taken to a private 5th Avenue hospital. In the hospital waiting room, she suffered a convulsion and died.
Three autopsies were conducted over the following three months and reached three different conclusions as to the cause of her death, which was variously attributed as an overdose of alcohol, the tranquilizer chloral hydrate, and heroin in the successive autopsy reports. All three substances likely were in her system when she died, and it was suggested that the unconscious Eagels had received a sedative from the first doctor to treat her, and that subsequently a second doctor, not knowing she had already been sedated, had unknowingly given the unconscious actress a second shot, thus causing the overdose that killed her.
When her estate went through probate, it was worth an estimated $52,000 (approximately $562,000 in 2005 dollars) after her debts and funeral costs were deducted. Dying intestate, the estate went to her mother. A wake was held at Campbell's funeral home in New York City, the same establishment that had handled Rudolph Valentino's funeral. Reportedly, her movie "Jealousy" was playing across the street from the funeral home as she lay in her casket, finally at peace. Her body was sent to Kansas City, where a Catholic mass and requiem was held, and she was laid to rest with her father and a brother.
Eagels was posthumously nominated for a 1929 Best Actress Academy Award for her role in "The Letter," the first actor to be so honored. She lost out to superstar Mary Pickford, one of the founders of the Academy, who took the Oscar home to Pickfair for her performance in "Coquette," her first talkie.
Jeanne Eagels' life was limned in the 1957 film _Jeanne Eagels_, which starred Kim Novak. This film is fictionalized biography that whitewashed the truth about Eagels' life. In recent years, there have been rumors that Eagels enjoyed same-sex relationships with other women, but the rumors remain unsubstantiated. In her lifetime, she was romantically linked to many famous men, including the conductor Arthur Fiedler, the gambler "Nick the Greek" Dandalos, and the theater critic Ward Morehouse. She was pursued by producer David Belasco, theater owner Lee Shubert, and the Prince of Wales, the future Duke of Windsor.
About actors, Jeanne Eagels was quoted as saying, "We are glorious, unearthly people, set above all others because of our genius, our capacity to sway others, to make them laugh and cry, or make them live a romance we but play." In the Academy Award-winning All About Eve (1950), writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz has the critic Addison DeWitt tell the great fictional diva Margo Channing (played by Leslie Howard's other great "untrained" co-star, Bette Davis), "Margo, as you know, I have lived in the theater as a Trappist monk lives in his faith. I have no other world, no other life -- and once in a great while I experience that moment of revelation for which all true believers wait and pray. You were one. Jeanne Eagels another."
The actor playwright Noël Coward said, "Of all the actresses I have ever seen, there was never one quite like Jeanne Eagels," while actress-playwright-Academy Award-nominated-screenwriter Ruth Gordon, a friend of Eagels, said of her, "Jeanne Eagels was the most beautiful person I ever saw and if you ever saw her, she was the most beautiful person YOU ever saw."
Kathleen Kennedy, her co-star in "Rain," said, "I sincerely doubt if Jeanne Eagels really knew, in spite of her pretensions, that she was a great actress. She was. Many times backstage I'd be waiting for my entrance cue and suddenly Jeanne would start to build a scene, and [we] would look up from our books at once. Some damn thing- some power, something- would take hold of your heart, you senses, as you listened to her, and you'd thrill to the sound of her."
John D. Williams, the director of "Rain," called her an acting genius. "Acting genius--that is, the power of enhancing a written character to a plane that neither author nor director can lay claim to -- Miss Eagels had at her beck and call, whether in tragedy or in comedy." - Actor
- Soundtrack
Junius Matthews was born Junius Conyers Matthews on June 12, 1890 in Illinois. He was determined to become a popular radio and television actor. He started out on stage, and got his first role in the classic The Silent Witness (1917), as Bud Morgan. Before the movie The Wizard of Oz (1939), he did the voice of the Tin Woodman on radio. He appeared in many movies, but he became really popular for the role of Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh movies from 1966 to 1977, such as Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966). In 1977, he did the voice of Rabbit in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977). He still did the voice although he was already 87. On January 18, 1978, he died at age 87 of natural causes.- A delightfully irksome, viper-tongued presence who usually played older than she was, actress Cora Witherspoon began her five-decade career in New York playing an elderly lady in the 1910 production of "The Concert". She was 20 years old at the time. Born in 1890, the brown-haired, Louisiana-born character player continued on the Broadway stage after her successful debut and became a generally unsympathetic audience favorite in such popular shows as "Daddy Long Legs," "Lillies of the Field" and "The Awful Truth" for the next two decades.
She began dividing her time between theater and film in the early 1930s wreaking havoc and rattling the nerves of many a male and female star with her imperious gallery of class-conscious matrons, haranguing wives, acidulous spinsters and aggressive busybodies. Notable film contributions were her cryptic socialites in the quality comedies Libeled Lady (1936) and Personal Property (1937), both starring Jean Harlow. She was equally unpleasant in such dramatic fare as Dark Victory (1939), and played her patented society snoot to perfection in the Shirley Temple vehicle Just Around the Corner (1938). A particular standout, and the movie role she is probably best remembered for, was her untidy, henpecking wife Agatha Sousé in the comedy classic The Bank Dick (1940), the prime source of W.C. Fields' misery.
Though her home base was in New York City where she continued to perform in the theater, she made her living commuting to Hollywood in the post-war years, ending her career with brief appearances on TV. She died in 1957 at age 67 in New Mexico. - Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Clara Kimball Young was born Clarisa Kimball on September 6, 1890, to Edward Kimball and the former Mrs. E.M. Kimball, traveling stock company actors with the Holden Co. Though she claimed Chicago as her birthplace, there are no records of her being born in Cook County--which includes Chicago--and she may have been born on one of her parents' tours. Her parents lived in Benton Harbor, Michigan, where her birth name Clarisa changed from the 1890 census to Clairee in the one of 1900, though she once claimed her birth name was Edith.
Young Clarisa Kimball made her professional debut as an actress at the advanced age of three, touring with the Holden Co. with her parents and playing child parts in the company's repertoire. After attending Chicago's St. Francis Xavier Academy, she joined another traveling stock company that took her out west. She married actor James Young, and sometime between 1909 and 1912 they were both hired by the Vitagraph Co. Though she was making $75 a week in the stock company, she accepted Vitragraph's offer of an annual contract paying her $25 a week, as it was steady employment.
In addition to her husband, who was hired as an actor but eventually became one of the company's best directors, Vitagraph hired her parents. The studio, which had been formed at the end of the 19th century as the International Novelty Company by English vaudevillians Albert E. Smith, J. Stuart Blackton and Ronald A. Reader, was a family-friendly company. In addition to the Youngs, it also employed the sisters Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge, the Sidney Drew family, and Maurice Costello and his daughters Dolores Costello and Helene Costello.
Though Clara made dozens of films at Vitagraph, few of them survive. In her early films she was quite charming, and these showcased her natural personality better than did her later dramas. A tall, dark-haired, full-figured gal who was a popular type in the early 20th century, Clara played both conventional leading ladies and light comedy I(at which she excelled). She quickly became a top star at Vitagraph, ranking 17th in a 1913 popularity poll of stars that was topped by Kalem's Alice Joyce.
Clara would soon knock Joyce off her perch atop the popularity charts. When Vitagraph supplemented its normal output of one- and two-reelers in 1914 and '15 with several longer feature films, it paired Young and the equally popular 'Earle Williams' as her leading man. One of their first collaborations, My Official Wife (1914)--a potboiler in the then-popular Russian aristocracy genre, propelled Young and Williams to the top rank of stardom in the polls. The movie, helmed by her husband, made him a major director.
Into this "Garden of Eden" arrived a serpent in the guise of producer Lewis J. Selznick, the vice president of the new World Film Corp., who signed Young to a personal contract in 1914 and proceeded to change her image into that of an unbridled sexpot. In that year's Lola (1914) (aka "Without a Soul"), which was directed by her husband, she played a decent woman who dies and is resurrected, unfortunately lacking a soul (like many producers before and since). Transformed into a "vamp", the heartless Lola sets out to destroy men, resulting in Clara conquering the box office with another huge hit that cemented her reputation as a superstar. Simultaneously, Selznick was destroying the equanimity of his leading lady's home life, leading her husband to remark ruefully to Mabel Normand, "[W]here I made my mistake was in ever inviting that fellow to the house."
In 1916 James Young filed a lawsuit against Selznick for alienation of affections, to which Selznick riposted that the marriage was troubled before he had arrived on the scene. Clara filed charges against her husband, charging cruelty, though eventually it was James Young who obtained a divorce on grounds of desertion on April 8, 1919 (bBy then the Selznick-Kimball Young relationship was on the rocks and in the courts, and there was another correspondent to the divorce).
After playing two man-eating vamps, Clara settled into a series of roles as the traditional hapless heroine whose travails are resolved with a conventional happy ending. She did, however, get to assay the title roles in Camille (1915) and Trilby (1915) with more tragic results, and she got to play some more decadent Russian hussies in Hearts in Exile (1915) and The Yellow Passport (1916).
Screenwriter Frances Marion, her longtime friend, reported that Clara was bored with her roles at World Film and resentful about Selznick's control over her private life. Like many a movie mogul before and since, Selznick was determined to create a public image for his star that matched the roles she played, that of a gloomy tragedienne.
Selznick was an ambitious man who had a habit of alienating his business partners (a trait that would trigger the failure of his last company in 1923). He was ousted as general manager of World Film in February 1916. Three months later he left formed the Clara Kimball Young Film Corp. to produce films for her with himself as president, and Selznick Productions Inc., to distribute both her films and those of independent production companies. Now with exclusive control of her career, Selznick seemed determined to turn her back into the sexpot he made her when he produced her first movie at World. Leaving behind the five-reelers, he launched her in seven-reel extravaganzas, dressed in fashionable wardrobe and parrying risqué subject matter in The Common Law (1916), The Foolish Virgin (1916), The Price She Paid (1915) and The Easiest Way (1917).
She had a falling-out with Selznick after the initial series of four films for the company named for her--but controlled by him--apparently due to the salaciousness of the subject matter and his complete control over her life and career. At this time she became associated with Detroit-based movie exhibitor Harry Garson, with whom she entered into a personal relationship, as she had earlier with Selznick. In February 1917 a knife-wielding James Young attacked Garson as he exited New York City's Astor Theater with his wife.
It was Garson, anxious to make the leap from exhibition to production that former exhibitors like Louis B. Mayer had accomplished, who apparently encouraged her legal campaign to become emancipated from Selznick. She filed a lawsuit against him in June 1917, charging the president of Clara Kimball Young Film Corp. with fraud. She alleged that Selznick had set up dummy corporations to hide profits and had elected himself president of her production company while not allowing her any input into its management. Publicly denying the charge, Selznick obtained an injunction forbidding her to appear in movies produced by any other company. Selznick counter-charged that Young was under the influence of Garson and planned to make films with him as director for her new lover's Garson Productions.
The ball now in her court, Clara announced to the press her plans to take complete control of her career, artistically and financially, by forming her own company. Bristling over her former mentor's turning her into a public sexpot, she announced that she would no longer make pictures that flouted the mores of the censorship boards. In the legal round robin that their troubles degenerated into, Selznick then sued Garson to keep Garson Productions from doing business with Selznick Enterprises, which had a contract to release Clara Kimball Young films. For his part, Garson claimed that Clara's contract with Selznick was broken due to the failure of Selznick's companies to produce and deliver her movies.
The machinations of Selznick nemesis Adolph Zukor, who would later force him into bankruptcy and out of the business in 1923, came into play. Zukor helped finance the formation of the C.K.Y. Film Corp. in August 1917, while secretly acquiring a 50% stake in Selznick's company. Zukor temporarily left Selznick in charge of the renamed Select Pictures Corp., which would release films produced by Young with her own C.K.Y. Film. Corp.
Clara, her parents and her "business manager" Garson moved to California in early 1918, and in June of that year they announced plans to build a studio. To build a stock company for this new studio, Garson hired Blanche Sweet and director Marshall Neilan, and named himself a producer. The output of C.K.Y. Film Corp. continued Selznick's practice of outfitting Clara in fancy duds, but the length of the "features" was cut back to five reels. Intended for an adult audience, the films starring Clara featured female characters who could think for themselves and make their own decisions--ironically a case of wishful thinking for this woman who had had not one but two Svengalis in her life within a short period. She did branch out beyond her Selznick-construed vamp image, though, and appeared in a few comedies, including Cheating Cheaters (1919), which was hailed for its ingenious plot and wonderful supporting performances. Unfortunately, none of the movies produced by C.K.Y Film Corp. have survived.
Conflict with Selznick reared its ugly head again in 1919, when C.K.Y. posted a legal notice as an advertisement in the January 11th issue of "Moving Picture World". In it, Clara declared, "I have this day served notice upon the C.K.Y. Film Corporation of the termination of all contract relations between that company and myself, because of several flagrant violations of the terms of the agreement under which motion pictures has been produced for distribution through the Select Pictures Corporation." The ad also stated that "Cheating Cheaters" would be the last film for the C.K.Y. Film Corp. Declaring themselves independent producers, C.K.Y. and Garson began shooting The Better Wife (1919).
Another legal donnybrook between Trilby and her penultimate Svengali ensued. Selznick claimed that C.K.Y. was under contract to the C.K.Y. Film Corp. until August 21, 1921, and that Select Pictures owned C.K.Y. Film. "The Better Wife" wound up being released by Select Pictures in July 1919, the same month that Equity Pictures Corp. was created to distribute Clara Kimball Young films produced by Garson Productions. Launching their first independent feature, Eyes of Youth (1919), Young placed another advertisement declaring she had her own independent production company. Equity got off to a strong start, as "Eyes of Youth" proved to be a huge hit, her biggest box-office smash since "My Official Wife" made her the top female star in motion pictures back in 1914. Arguably the best film she ever made, "Eyes of Youth" sported fashionable gowns and a first-rate supporting cast, including featured player Rudolph Valentino in his pre-superstar days, and featured high-quality production values. The film was heavily advertised, which paid off at the box office. Her success was short-lived, however, as Selznick launched another legal battle against her and Equity Pictures. His threats to sue exhibitors who showed "Eyes of Youth" forced many canceled bookings, causing Equity Pictures to ultimately sustain a loss despite its healthy box-office intake.
After the qualified success of "Eyes of Youth," Harry Garson decided he wanted to direct. An uninspired director whose control over the medium seemed to deteriorate with experience, he helmed Young's next nine films. The movies, with weaker scripts, turned out badly and the productions were hampered by a lack of capital. The decline of the quality of their films became so blatant that critics scored Garson and Young for the bad direction of her last two films. Young was always mature-looking, even in her youth, and the films contained characters who were supposed to be possessed of a youthful quality now alien to the actress. She had grown old on-screen, violating one of cinema's strongest taboos that still is in effect for actresses.
The "Roaring Twenties" proved her demise. The quality of her films had deteriorated to the point that her 1921 film, Hush (1921) was released on a "states rights" basis rather than as a road show, a sure sign of the waning appeal of the woman who was once the #1 female star in America. Exhibitors would not pay top dollar for her films, and the income from them was sure to drop, as under the "tates Rights" model, exhibitors could show a movie as many times as they wanted within their territory for a contracted period and would only have to pay the initial exhibition fee to the production company, instead of the usual system in which the studio got a percentage of the entire box office.
The financial fortunes of Equity took a hit when the courts held for Selznick, ruling that he was owed $25,000 for each of her next ten films. In addition to fighting Selznick's legal barrage, she was subjected to lawsuits by the Harriman National Bank and Fine Arts Film Corp. The fan magazine "Moving Picture World"' in a case of paid-for editorial content, featured many stories attesting to Young's continued popularity, sometimes accompanied with personal appeals from her to her fans to continue showing their support. By the time Equity released her last two films for the company, What No Man Knows (1921) and The Worldly Madonna (1922), her films had degenerated into the cheap, rushed look of what were known as "Poverty Row" productions. Equity Pictures and Garson Productions ceased to be functioning entities in 1922.
Paramount Pictures head Adolph Zukor reportedly offered Young a Paramount contract if she would promise to keep Harry Garson out of her career, but she refused and signed with Commonwealth Pictures Corp., owned by Samuel Zierler, who allowed her to bring along her favorite director, Garson. Samuel Zierler Photoplay Corp. was to be the producer of her films, which would be distributed by Commonwealth in the state of New York and by Metro Pictures in all other territories.
Times, however, were changing. Boyish figures on women became the rage during the Twenties, and Young had a figure from the late Victorian era, which combined with the mature appearance made her look older than she actually was, and in fact she came across as matronly. It was the time of jazz babies and flaming youth, and a more naturalistic style of acting that damned more florid players as Young as "old-fashioned." Furthermore, by the 1920s the movie industry was becoming more vertically and horizontally integrated. The days of the entrepreneur were through; until 'Burt Lancaster (I)' became a successful independent star-producer after World War II, Charles Chaplin proved to be the last movie star to form and run his own successful production company. Creating new companies to produce and distribute one's films, as Young did, was a difficult process to undertake in the best of times, and the early 1920s saw a decline at the box office due to a postwar recession and an over-expansion of production that did in C.K.Y.'s nemesis, Lewis J. Selznick himself. It was a Sisyphean task Young had set for herself, hampered by a rolling stone named Harry Garson.
Garson was only to direct one film for Zierler, The Hands of Nara (1922), an out-and-out debacle. He was booted upstairs as producer, and experienced directors were assigned to her films, such as the far more capable King Vidor. Trying to turn around the trajectory of a falling star is difficult, and the uneven quality of her new films hurt her, as did changing tastes. Critics and exhibitors, already derisive of an aging star playing young, began carping about overacting. "Variety," the show business bible, published a sort of pre-mortem, commenting on how deeply Young's star had gone into eclipse in just two years due to bad movies. A Wife's Romance (1923) was the last of her films released by Metro, though she would make one more silent picture, the independently produced Lying Wives (1925). Young tried the novel career move of playing a villain, opposite Madge Kennedy's heroine, but the film fared badly with the critics, and the silent film career of Clara Kimball Young was over.
The rest of the Roaring Twenties were spent in vaudeville and cashing in on her former stardom with personal appearances. She eventually ditched Harry Garson and married Dr. Arthur Fauman in 1928. With the advent of sound, RKO Pictures brought her out of retirement for a featured comic role in Kept Husbands (1931), but her attempt to rejuvenate her career was hampered by a public perception that she was a "has-been". She segued over to Poverty Row for lead roles in and Mother and Son (1931)for low-rent Monogram Pictures and Women Go on Forever (1931) for Tiffany Productions, a producer primarily of cheap "hoss operas" and for introducing James Whale to Hollywood with Journey's End (1930). This was the apogee of her career trajectory in talkies, being reduced to bit parts in Poverty Row productions and appearances as an extra in productions at the "major" studios. Her claim to fame at this stage of her career was her appearance in the classic The Three Stooges short Ants in the Pantry (1936).
Her husband Arthur died in 1937, one of a series of personal misfortunes that Young suffered in the 1930s. Her comeback was derailed by bad publicity, as the press chronicled the sad state she had sunk into, the former top box-office star reduced to bit parts and extra work. They had built her up, and now they tore her down, as Hollywood did love its clichés, this one the great star now has-been reduced to the career gutter, a morality play for the masses who read movie magazines.
Young began appearing in westerns, appearing with William Boyd in his "Hopalong Cassidy" series, and productions with Gene Autry and Richard Dix. She even appeared on the radio, but her attempts to make a go of it ultimately failed. Years later she quipped that "during the Depression I had half a mind to take up a tin cup and beg for alms." She announced her retirement in 1941, declaring, "I've been working since I was two years old, I think I deserve the chance to quit and just enjoy life."
Her last film work was in 1941, in bottom-of-the-barrel PRC's Mr. Celebrity (1941) (a.k.a. "Turf Boy"), in which she appeared as herself with another silent-screen-star/has-been, Francis X. Bushman. During the early days of television broadcasting, the major studios' embargo on selling films to TV and a lack of programming meant that many TV stations began airing silent movies to fill air time. Young's surviving silents began to be showcased, giving her a new notoriety. Once again in the public eye, she was interviewed and went on the personal appearance circuit again, this time attending film conventions. In 1956 CBS hired her as the Hollywood correspondent for the original The Johnny Carson Show (1953) that ran for a single season in 1955-56.
At the dawn of the 1960s, Young battled poor health and had to retire to the Motion Picture Home. Frances Marion, the Oscar-winning screenwriter who had remained her friend, said that Young told her, "I was worn out from the long journey, but I have found my way home."
Clara Kimball Young died on October 15, 1960, and was interred at the Grand View Memorial Park in Glendale, California, after a funeral attended by several hundred friends.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Etta McDaniel was born on 1 December 1890 in Wichita, Kansas, USA. She was an actress, known for The Great Man's Lady (1941), What a Man! (1944) and The Pittsburgh Kid (1941). She died on 13 January 1946 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Director
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Edgar Kennedy, who was born on April 26, 1890, near Monterey, California, hit the road as a young man and traveled across the country, working in a succession of jobs. He became a professional boxer, claiming to have gone 14 rounds against The Manassas Mauler, Jack Dempsey.
In addition to his knowledge of the "Sweet Science", Kennedy possessed a good musical voice, and wound up singing in musical shows in the Midwest, his first taste of show business. During his cross-country peregrinations he wound up in Los Angeles, and found himself hired as an actor by comedy producer Mack Sennett. At the Sennett Studios he was allegedly one of the original Keystone Kops, but soon graduated from bit parts to supporting roles in Keystone comedies, including Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) with Charles Chaplin. Kennedy had good roles in other Chaplin movies, but when his contract expired in 1921 he went freelance, though he did occasionally return to Sennett.
After leaving Sennett Kennedy established himself as a first-rate supporting comic, and made a career out of playing harassed businessmen, next-door neighbors, cops, etc. By the late 1920s his craft was most prominently featured in comedies for Hal Roach, Sennett's arch-rival, where he flourished in support of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. It was with Roach that he developed his mastery of the "slow burn", a routine for which he became famous. He often played a none-too-bright policeman brought to the boiling point by the absurdities of Laurel and Hardy. He also directed the two in From Soup to Nuts (1928) and You're Darn Tootin' (1928).
RKO hired Kennedy to appear in a series of comedy shorts called "The Average Man," in which he played the head of a family. The shorts had very tight shooting schedules, often as few as three days, but Kennedy was always a pro and delighted the audience by giving them his all. He made over 200 short subjects and appeared in over 100 feature films, still in demand right up to the day he died of cancer on November 9, 1948.- Actress
- Writer
Marin Sais was descended from one of the earliest Spanish families of California (Marin County was named after one of her ancestors). She was possessed of a fine singing voice. and after graduation from school journeyed to New York to pursue an operatic career. However, not long after her arrival she apparently changed her mind about her career path, and before long she was appearing in two-reel comedies for Vitagraph. Her career progressed steadily, and she was soon working in full-length films and serials. She soon journeyed to Hollywood, and began appearing in westerns, often with Hoot Gibson. She also became a fixture in action serials. In 1920 she married cowboy actor Jack Hoxie, and they appeared in several films together, but divorced five years later. With the coming of sound she began appearing in character roles rather than the leading or featured roles she was used to, and the films she appeared in were often for the cheap independent market. She seemed to specialize in westerns, and with few exceptions her pictures up until her retirement in 1953 were all in that genre.- Director
- Writer
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Originally a writer and artist, William A. Seiter entered films with Selig. He worked from 1915 as a stunt double and bit player at Keystone and quickly graduated to directing comedy shorts. He moved up to features in the 1920s. He married actress Laura La Plante, who he directed in several films, such as Skinner's Dress Suit (1926), He was at his best, though, in charge of comic teams such as Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (he directed what many believe to be their finest film, Sons of the Desert (1933)), Bud Abbott and Lou Costello (Little Giant (1946)) and The Marx Brothers.
Most of his early work was under contract to Universal (1924-28) and Warner Brothers (1928-29). He successfully made the transition to sound and remained much in demand for light comedy, working for RKO (1931-34), 20th Century-Fox (1934-38), Universal (1939-41 and again from 1945-49). He retired in 1954. He is perhaps best remembered for "Sons of the Desert" and the musical Roberta (1935) with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.- Often confused with the British-born comic actor J. Pat O'Malley, who is the better remembered, silent dramatic film star Pat O'Malley had an enduring career that stands on its own. He was of solid Irish-American stock, born in Forest City, Pennsylvania, in 1890. A one-time railroad switchman, he also had circus experience by the time he discovered an interest in movie making. He began with the Kalem Studio in 1913 and appeared in a few Irish films before signing on with Thomas Edison's company in 1914. The following year, he married actress Lillian Wilkes, and three of their children, Eileen, Mary Katherine, and Sheila, would become actors as well. His brother Charles O'Malley was a sometime actor, appearing in westerns on occasion. His first identifiable film is The Alien (1913). He began freelancing in 1916 and from then on, appeared in scores of silents as both a rugged and romantic lead, some classic films being The Heart of Humanity (1918), My Wild Irish Rose (1922), and The Virginian (1923). He did not age well come sound pictures, and he was quickly relegated to supporting parts. He appeared in hundreds upon hundreds of bits (mostly unbilled) until 1956, when he retired. He died a decade later.
- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
Karl Freund, an innovative director of photography responsible for development of the three-camera system used to shoot television situation comedies, was born on January 16, 1890, in the Bohemian city of Koeniginhof, then part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire (now known as Dvur Kralove in the Czech Republic). Freund went to work at the age of 15 as a movie projectionist, and by the age of 17, he was a camera operator shooting shot subjects and newsreels. Subsequently, he was employed at Germany's famous UFA Studios during the 1920s, when the German cinema was the most innovative in the world.
At UFA, Freund worked as a cameraman for such illustrious directors as F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang. For Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924) (aka The Last Laugh), screenwriter Carl Mayer worked closely with Freund to develop a scenario that would employ the moving camera that became a hallmark of Weimar German cinema. One of the most beautiful and critically acclaimed silent films, The Last Laugh (1924) is considered the perfect silent by some critics as the images do most of the storytelling, allowing for a minimal amount of inter-titles. The collaborative genius of Murnau, Mayer, and Freund meant that the images communicated the integral part of the narrative, visualizing and elucidating the protagonist's psyche. Freund filmed a drunk scene with the camera secured on his chest, with a battery pack on his back for balance, enabling him to stumble about and produce vertiginous shots suggesting intoxication.
Director Ewald André Dupont gave credit for the innovative camera work on his masterpiece Variety (1925) (aka Variety) to Freund, praising his ingenuity in an article published in The New York Times. Freund was one of the cameramen and the co-writer (with Carl Mayer and director Walter Ruttmann) on Berlin: Symphony of Metropolis (1927) (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City), an artistic documentary that used a hidden camera to capture the people of the city going about their daily lives. Always technically innovative, Freund developed a high-speed film stock to aid his shooting in low-light situations. This film also is hailed as a classic. Other classic German films that Freund shot were The Golem (1920) (aka The Golem) and Lang's Metropolis (1927).
Now possessing an international reputation, Freund emigrated to the U.S. in 1929, where he was employed by the Technicolor Co. to help perfect its color process. Subsequently, he was hired as a cinematographer and director by Universal Studios, where he cut his teeth, uncredited, as a cinematographer on the great anti-war classic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Universal's first Oscar winner as Best Picture.
Universal's bread and butter in the early 1930s were its horror films, and Freund was involved in the production of several classics. Among his Universal assignments, Freund shot Dracula (1931) and Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), and directed The Mummy (1932). The Mummy (1932) was Freund's first directorial effort, and co-star Zita Johann, who disliked Freund, claimed he was incompetent, which is unfair, seeing as how the film is now considered a classic of its genre. The film uses the undead sorcerer Imhotep's pool with which he can impose his will over the living by spreading some tana leaves on the water, as a visual metaphor for the subconscious. The film is arresting visually due to Freund's cinematic eye that created a sense of "otherness." The film is infused with a dream-like state that seems rooted in the subconscious mind. Freund's other directorial efforts at Universal proved less satisfying.
Moving to MGM, Freund directed just one more motion picture, Mad Love (1935) (aka The Hands of Orlac) a horror classic that utilized the expressionism of his UFA apprenticeship. With the great lighting cameraman Gregg Toland as his director of photography, the collaboration of Freund and Toland created a European sensibility unique for a Hollywood horror film. The compositions of the shots featured arch shapes and utilized the expressive shadows of the best of the European avant-garde films of the 1920s.
But MGM wanted Freund for his genius at camera work. He shot the rooftop numbers for The Great Ziegfeld (1936), another Best Picture Oscar winner, and worked with William H. Daniels, Garbo's favorite cameraman, on "Camille" (1936). He shot Greta Garbo's Conquest (1937) solo, though he never worked with Garbo again. That same year, he was the director of photography on The Good Earth (1937), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
Other major MGM pictures he shot were Pride and Prejudice (1940), for which he received an Academy Award nomination, Tortilla Flat (1942), and A Guy Named Joe (1943). He also worked for other studios, shooting Golden Boy (1939) for Columbia. In 1942, he pulled off a rare double: he was nominated for Best Cinematography in both the black and white and color categories, for The Chocolate Soldier (1941) and Blossoms in the Dust (1941), respectively.
One of the last films he shot for MGM was Two Smart People (1946), starring Lucille Ball. In 1947, he moved on to Warner Bros, where he shot the classic Key Largo (1948) for John Huston. His last film as a director of photography was Michael Curtiz' Montana (1950), which starred Gary Cooper.
Always the technical innovator, Freund founded the Photo Research Corp. in 1944, a laboratory for the development of new cinematographic techniques and equipment. His technical work culminated in his receipt of a Class II Technical Award in 1955 from the Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences for the design of a direct-reading light meter. That same year, he had the honor of representing his adopted country at the International Conference on Illumination in Zurich, Switzerland.
It was perhaps inevitable that the technical and innovation-minded Freund would get to work for a brand new visual medium, television. Lucille Ball, whom he had photographed when she was a contract player at MGM, became his boss when he was hired as the director of photography at Desilu Productions, owned by Ball and her husband, Desi Arnaz. Desilu hired the great Freund as its owners were determined to shoot the show I Love Lucy (1951) on film rather than produce the show live, as was standard in the early 1950s. Most shows were shot live, while a film of the program was simultaneously shot from a monitor, a process that created a "kinescope." The kinescope would be shown in other time zones on the network's affiliates. Desilu's owners disliked the quality of kinescopes, and needed Freund to come up with a solution to their problem of how to maintain the intimacy of a live show on film.
Freund agreed that the show should be shot on film rather than live, as film enabled thorough planning and allowed for cutting, which was impossible with live TV. Freud knew that film would allow Desilu to eliminate the fluffs which were a staple of early television, and would allow the producers to re-shoot scenes to improve the show, if needed.
I Love Lucy (1951) had to be filmed before an audience to retain the immediacy of a live TV show, which meant that the traditional, time-consuming methods of studio production with one camera would not work. Freund decided to shoot I Love Lucy (1951) with three 35mm Mitchell BNC cameras, one of each to simultaneously shoot long shots, medium shots and close-ups. Thus, the editor would have adequate coverage to create the 22 minutes of footage needed for a half-hour commercial network show.
The then-innovative, now-standard technique of simultaneously shooting a situation comedy with three 35mm cameras cut the production time needed to produce a 22-minute program to one-hour. The cameras were mounted on dollies, with the center camera outfitted with a 40mm wide-angle lens, and the side cameras outfitted with 3- and 4-inch lenses. The resulting shots were edited on a Movieola. A script girl in a booth overlooking the stage cued the camera operators. Due to extensive rehearsal time before the show was shot live, the camera operators had floor marks to guide them, but Freund's system was enabled by the script girl overseeing their actions via a 2-way intercom. The system made the shooting, breaking-down, and setting-up process for the next scenes on the three sets of the I Love Lucy (1951) stage very economical in terms of time, averaging one and one-half minutes between shots.
Freund worked out the lighting during the rehearsal period. Almost all of the lighting was overhead, except for portable fill lights mounted above the matte box on each camera. In Freund's system, there were no lighting changes during shooting, other than the use of a dimming board. Since the lighting was mounted overhead on catwalks, power cables were kept off the floor, which facilitated the dollying that was essential for making the system work fluidly.
Freund's solution to the problem of shooting a show on film economically was to make lighting as uniform as possible, taking advantage of adding highlights whenever possible, since a comedy show required high-key illumination. Due to the high contrast of the tubes in the image pickup systems at the television stations, contrast was a potential problem, as any contrast in the film would be exaggerated upon transmission of the film. To keep the film contrast to what Freund called a "fine medium," the sets were painted in various shades of gray. Props and costumes also were gray to promote a uniformity of color and tone that would not defeat Freund's carefully devised illumination scheme.
In a typical workweek, the I Love Lucy (1951) company engaged in pre-production planning and rehearsals on Monday through Thursday. I Love Lucy (1951) was filmed before a live audience at 8:00 o'clock PM on Friday evenings, and Freund's camera crew worked only on that Friday and the preceding Thursday. Freund, however, attended the Wednesday afternoon rehearsal of the cast to study the movements of the players around the sets, noting the blocking and their entrances and exits, in order to plan his lighting and camera work. Thursday morning at 8:00 o'clock AM, Freund and the gaffers would begin lighting the sets, which typically would be done by noon, the time the camera crew was required to report on set to be briefed on camera movements. Then, Freund would rehearse the camera action in order to make necessary changes in the lighting and the dollying of the cameras.
It was during the Thursday full-crew rehearsal that the cues for the dimmer operator were set, and the floor was marked to indicate the cameras' positions for various shots. For each shot, the focus was pre-measured and noted for each camera position with chalk marks on the stage floor. Another rehearsal was held at 4:30 PM with the full production crew. Though a full-dress rehearsal was held at 7:30 PM, with the attendance of the full crew, the cameras were not brought onto the set. The director would take the opportunity to discuss the plan of the show and solicit input from the cast and crew on how to tighten the show and improve its pacing.
The next call for the entire company was at 1:00 PM on Friday to discuss any major changes that were discussed the previous night. After this meeting, the cameras would be brought out onto the stage, and at 4:30 PM, there would be a final dress rehearsal during which Freund would check his lighting and make any required changes.
After a dinner break, the cast and production crew would hold a "talk through" of the show to solicit further suggestions and solve any remaining problems. At 8:00 PM, the cast and production crew were ready to start filming the show before a live audience. Before shooting, one of the cast or a member of the company had briefed the audience on the filming procedure, emphasizing the need for the audience's reactions to be spontaneous and natural.
Shooting was over in about an hour due to the rapid set-ups and break-downs of the crew, which shot the show in chronological order. Due to the thorough planning and rehearsals, retakes were seldom necessary. Camera operators in Freund's system had to make each take the right way the first time, every time, to keep the system working smoothly, and they did. An average of 7,500 feet of film was shot for each show at a cost that was significantly less than a comparable major studio production.
Freund also served as the cinematographer on the TV series Our Miss Brooks (1952), which was shot at Desilu Studios, and Desilu's own December Bride (1954). It was no accident that Desilu productions turned to Karl Freund to realize their dream of creating a high-quality show on film. Freund had the broadest experience of any cameraman of his stature, starting in silent pictures, and then excelling in both B&W and color in the sound era. With his penchant for technical innovation, he was the ideal man to develop solutions for filming a television show. Freund met the challenge of creating high quality filmed images in a young medium still handicapped by its primitive technology.
Freund became the dean of cinematographers in a new medium, with Desilu's I Love Lucy (1951) and its other shows recognized as the gold standard for TV production. His work ensured the fortunes of Desilu Productions, and the personal fortunes of Desilu owners Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, as he provided them with quality films of each show that could be easily syndicated into perpetuity, whereas the live shows filmed secondarily off of flickering TV monitors as kinescopes could not.
After retiring as a cinematographer, Freund continued his research at the Photo Research Corp. He died on May 3, 1969.- Actor
- Writer
After attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Kentucky-born Tom Powers signed with Vitagraph Pictures at 21 years of age, in 1911. He stayed there for two years, then shortly thereafter traveled to England, appearing there in both stage productions and films. When he returned to the US he made a few more pictures, but stopped making movies in 1917 and concentrated exclusively on stage work. He didn't appear onscreen again until 1944, when he acceded to Billy Wilder's request to play Mr. Dietrichson, Barbara Stanwyck's doomed husband, in Double Indemnity (1944). He made up for lost time over the next 12 years, appearing in dozens of pictures--often as a detective, army officer, District Attorney or other authority figure--until 1955, when he died of heart failure in November of that year (his last film, The Go-Getter (1956), was released after his death).- Chieko Higashiyama was born on 30 September 1890 in Chiba, Japan. She was an actress, known for Tokyo Story (1953), Sen-hime (1954) and The Idiot (1951). She died on 8 May 1980.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Tall, athletic leading man, the son of a judge. Lowe was initially slated for the priesthood but switched career paths on several occasions, at one time studying law, then teaching English and elocution. The latter led to his involvement in the acting profession. After briefly appearing in vaudeville, he joined the Oliver Morosco stock company in 1911 and made his Broadway debut six years later in 'The Brat'. Motion pictures soon beckoned, and, with his imposing physique and debonair manner, he quickly rose to becoming a popular matinée idol, the Tuxedo-attired star of such A-grade productions as East of Suez (1925).
In 1926, Lowe was cast, against type, in the role he would be identified with for the remainder of his career: that of the brash and profane Sergeant Harry Quirt in Maxwell Anderson's World War I drama What Price Glory (1926). He also featured in several sequels, invariably co-starring his on-screen adversary Victor McLaglen. After that, Lowe alternated between romantic lead (such as Dinner at Eight (1933)) and tough guy. In the latter category, he gave a strong central performance in the role of Specs Green in Dillinger (1945), one of the slickest productions turned out by little poverty row studio Monogram. The film elicited complaints from a few meekly-inclined civic groups and was even banned in Chicago for two years because of its 'brutal, sensational subject matter'. Irrespectively, it was a winner at the box office.
Edmund Lowe remained much sought-after by producers, having eased effortlessly into supporting roles once his days as a star were over. He worked under contract at 20th Century Fox (1924-27, 1929-32, 1934-35), Paramount (1932-33), MGM (1936) and Universal (1938-39). From the 1940's, he still played leads for smaller studios, free-lanced and later acted in television. Late in his career, he starred in his own half-hour series, Front Page Detective (1951), as a sleuthing newspaper columnist. In private life, Lowe had a reputation for impeccable attire and sartorial elegance. Not as well remembered today as he deserves to be, he is nonetheless immortalized with a star on the 'Walk of Fame' on Hollywood Boulevard.- Producer
- Director
- Writer
Herbert Wilcox was born on 19 April 1890 in West Norwood, London, England, UK. He was a producer and director, known for Victoria the Great (1937), Spring in Park Lane (1948) and The Loves of Robert Burns (1930). He was married to Anna Neagle, Maud Violet Bower and Dorothy Brown. He died on 15 May 1977 in London, England, UK.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ann Codee was born on 5 March 1890 in Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium. She was an actress, known for Kiss Me Kate (1953), So Dark the Night (1946) and Can-Can (1960). She was married to Frank Orth. She died on 18 May 1961 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actress
- Costume Designer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Emma Roldán was born on 3 February 1890 in San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí, Mexico. She was an actress and costume designer, known for The Passion of Berenice (1976), Monja casada, virgen y mártir (1935) and El ahijado de la muerte (1946). She was married to Alfredo del Diestro. She died on 29 August 1978 in Mexico City, Mexico.- Mary Merrall was born on 5 January 1890 in Liverpool, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Dead of Night (1945), The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (1947) and Love on the Dole (1941). She was married to Franklin Dyall, Ian Swinley and John Bouch Hissey. She died on 31 August 1973 in London, England, UK.
- Actor
- Composer
- Music Department
Known as El Zorzal Criollo, the songbird of Buenos Aires, Carlos Gardel is a legendary figure in Uruguay and Argentina. He was born on December 11st, 1890, in Toulouse (France). His place of birth have been claimed by the Uruguayans and Argentinians, however, his Birth Certificate and his Will proves, and leaves no doubt, that Carlos Gardel was born in France. The charismatic singer's career coincided with the development of that intrinsically Argentine cultural icon, the tango (the traditional Argentinean music).
The elite overcame their aversion to the tango's humble origins and open sensuality only when the man and his music were already widely accepted in New York and Paris.
Radio performances and a film career extended this appeal. Gardel's sky-rocketing career was cut short in 1935, when he lost his life in a plane crash in Colombia. An orgy of grief swept from New York to Puerto Rico, and a woman in Havana suicided. Hordes of people thronged to pay their respects as the singer's body made the journey to its final resting place in a Buenos Aires cemetery, traveling via Colombia, New York and Río de Janeiro. Instantly immortal and preserved forever young, his enduring fame is measured by the oft-heard Argentine expression 'Gardel sings better every day'. Sixty years after his death, a devoted following keeps the legend blazing, playing Gardel's music daily, placing a lit cigarette in the hand of the life-sized statue which graces his tomb and keeping his few films in circulation.- Duke Kahanamoku was one of the great Olympic heroes of all time. Born in Hawaii, Duke grew up swimming and entered the 1912 Stockholm Olympics for the United States (Hawaii was not yet a state, but a U.S. possession)and became an international star by winning the Men's 100-Meter Freestyle, something he repeated eight years later at the 1920 Antwerp games (there was no 1916 Olympics as there was World War I) and he won the silver medal while Johnny Weissmuller won the gold (Duke's brother Sam won the bronze) at the 1924 Paris Olympics. All told, Duke won three gold and two silver medals in four Olympic games. He later had a Hollywood career in which he usually played a native chief or a Hawaiian king.
- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Generally spoken of as Swedish theater's most legendary stage actor, Gösta Ekman enjoyed a prolific stage career during his short life, becoming the first real star of Swedish theater. His boyish good looks attracted both sexes, helping to create a massive cult following and elevating him to the status of a living legend. Combined with a beautiful voice and a powerful stage presence, Ekman was able to captivate his audiences.- Actor
- Stunts
Bobby Dunn was born on 28 August 1890 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. He was an actor, known for His Busted Trust (1916), The Thrill Hunter (1926) and Our Alley (1923). He died on 24 March 1937 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Writer
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Dwight D. Eisenhower was born on Tuesday, October 14, 1890, as Dwight David Eisenhower, in Denison, Texas. He was the third of seven sons born to David Jacob Eisenhower and Ida Elizabeth Stover. Both of his parents were of German descent. Eisenhower studied at the West Point Military Academy from 1911-1915. He served with the infantry, became the #3 leader of the tank corps, and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel by the end of the First World War. From 1922-1924 he served in the Panama Canal Zone as executive officer to General, Fox Conner. From 1925-1926 he studied at the Command and General Staff College in Kansas, and from 1928-1933 he served as executive officer to Gen. George V. Moseley: Assistant Secretary of War, in Washington, DC.
Eisenhower was chief military aide to Gen. Douglas MacArthur from 1933-1935. He accompanied MacArthur to the Philippines in 1935, and served there as assistant military adviser to the Philippine government until 1939. Back in Washington, he held various staff positions and was promoted to Brigadier General in September 1941. Shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, on Sunday, December 7th, 1941. Eisenhower was assigned to the General Staff. There he gradually rose to Assistant Chief of Staff under the Chief of Staff, Gen. George C. Marshall. Although Eisenhower had no experience in active military command, Marshall recognized his organizational and administrative strength. It was his association with Marshall that brought Eisenhower to London in June 1942 as Commanding General of the European Theater of Operations. He was also appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces of the North African Theater of Operations, which was renamed the Mediterranean Theater of Operations after the capitulation of the German army in Africa. In September of 1943 Eisenhower oversaw the Allied invasion of Sicily and then of Italy, which led to the immediate surrender of Italian forces in southern Italy. However, the German Winter Line fortifications in Italy, kept fighting even after the fall of Berlin.
Eisenhower was in charge of planning and carrying out the Allied landings in Normandy, France, and the invasion of Germany. The first part of his plan, named Operation Overlord, was the largest seaborne operation in history. Under this plan, 2.8 million Allied troops from 12 nations crossed the English Channel. Starting on Tuesday, June 6th, 1944, known as "D-Day", they landed on the beaches of Normandy, France. After extremely fierce heavy fighting, the Allies breached the fortifications and pushed back the defending German forces. Two months later they reached Paris. Adolf Hitler had ordered the German commander of Paris to destroy the city rather than let it fall into Allied hands, but that officer refused to carry out those orders and eventually surrendered the city to the Allies. After fighting that was not as fierce as was expected, the city of Paris was liberated on Friday, August 25th, 1944. Eisenhower was with French Gen. Charles de Gaulle at the Hotel de Ville, where they greeted the Allied forces and took part in the French victory parade. After liberating Belgium and the Netherlands, the Allied troops crossed into Germany. In 1945 US and Soviet armies linked up on the Elbe River, west of Berlin. Soon Eisenhower met with Russian Gen. Georgi Zhukov and the two made a trip to the Soviet Union; the first (and only) time Eisenhower did so. After the German surrender on Tuesday, May 8th, 1945, Eisenhower was made the Military Governor of the US Occupied Zone in Germany, based in Frankfurt. He ordered the detailed search, documentation, photographing and widespread dissemination of what went on in the Nazi death camps. By actions such as these, Eisenhower began the process of documenting the horrors of the Holocaust.
Although he had never been in action himself, Eisenhower was respected as a brilliant military strategist and skilled political leader during the Second World War. He successfully dealt with conflicting demands from many sides, and managed to mollify such tough and determined personalities as Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery and Gen. George S. Patton. From 1945 to 1948 Eisenhower was Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, and from 1950-1952 was Supreme Commander of all NATO forces.
Eisenhower won the 1952 US presidential elections, with Richard Nixon as his Vice President, and brought the Republicans back to national power after 20 years. He was President from 1953-1960, becoming the first and only army general to serve as President in the 20th Century, formally becoming a civilian during his term in office. He ended the Korean War and offered peaceful co-existence with the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin in 1953. He authorized the 1953 Iranian coup d'etat and the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'etat. He invited Nikita Khrushchev to his first visit to the US in 1959, and hosted him at his farm at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where his children and grandchildren met the family of the Soviet leader. Shortly after that, however, the Soviets shot down an American U2 spy plane, captured the pilot and canceled Eisenhower's reciprocal visit to the Soviet Union. Relations between the two superpowers deteriorated very quickly, leading to an increasingly rapid nuclear arms race and a dangerous standoff in the Cold War.
Domestically, Eisenhower began the modernization and integration of American roads into the interstate highway system, modeled after the autobahn, which he saw in Germany. In spite of some serious setbacks with US-Soviet relations, overall his presidency was a successful example of a non-partisan approach to politics.
After his presidential term expired (US Presidents can only serve two terms), Eisenhower was again commissioned a five-star general in the army. He lived in retirement on his farm in Gettysburg, where he wrote his memoirs. He died on Friday, March 28th, 1969, at the Army Hospital in Washington, DC, and was laid to rest in Abilene, Kansas, at the Eisenhower Presidential Library.
The complete lifetime of Dwight D. Eisenhower, was from Tuesday, October 14th, 1890, to Friday, March 28th, 1969. He lived 28,654 days, equaling 4,093 weeks & 3 days.- Actor
- Stunts
- Location Management
Art Acord was born on 17 April 1890 in Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA. He was an actor, known for Set Free (1927), The Set-Up (1926) and Winners of the West (1921). He was married to Edna Nores, Edythe Sterling and Louise Lorraine. He died on 4 January 1931 in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico.- Frank Conroy was born on 14 October 1890 in Derby, Derbyshire, England, UK. He was an actor, known for The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), The Snake Pit (1948) and The Adventures of Martin Eden (1942). He was married to Helen Robbins. He died on 24 February 1964 in Paramus, New Jersey, USA.
- Merritt Heaton was born on 10 May 1890 in West Jersey Township, Illinois, USA. He died on 26 April 1989 in Toulon, Illinois, USA.
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Someday a clever producer will tell the story of Hollywood's "Poverty Row" of the 1920s-'40s (although Hearts of the West (1975) was a valiant effort, it left a lot to be desired), which was centered on Gower Street. So many fly-by-night production companies--which cranked out mostly westerns, because they were so cheap to shoot--were headquartered there that the area became known as "Gower Gulch." Such a story would have to include Victor Adamson, a man whose unique, if inept, cinematic vision rivaled that of schlockmeister icons Dwain Esper, Robert J. Horner and later, the King of the Hollywood hacks himself, Edward D. Wood Jr..
Although he was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1890, Adamson's family moved to New Zealand when he was very young, and he was raised there. He returned to the USA around 1916 or 1917, and attempted to break into the burgeoning film business in Hollywood, California. He had been a champion horse rider and roper while living on a ranch in New Zealand and thought he was ripe for stardom in westerns. He brought with him a small film he had made in New Zealand and, astonishingly enough, actually managed to find a company willing to release it. After landing a few uncredited small parts in a few small silent movies in 1920s, Adamson decided that the best road to stardom was one he would make himself, so he began to produce, direct, and star in his own films, using the name "Art Mix." (and later under the name "Denver Dixon"). Here's where it gets really confusing: for reasons known only to himself he decided to have an actor named George Kesterson also play the Art Mix character and, in an even more confusing turn of events, once hired a rodeo champion named Bob Roberts to also play "Art Mix." Cowboy superstar Tom Mix eventually filed a copyright infringement suit against Adamson because of his use of the Mix name. In a move that could only happen in Hollywood, Adamson got around that by finding a man whose real name actually was Art Mix and hiring him to play the character--so at one point there were four different men playing a cowboy named Art Mix! Kesterson and Adamson eventually parted ways, but Kesterson used the Art Mix name, despite Adamson's efforts to stop him, for the remainder of his career.
It didn't really matter that much who played "Art Mix," though, as Adamson's films, all low-budget in the extreme with a reputation for laugh-inducing incompetence, were released via the states rights system--in which regional distributors bought the prints outright and kept them in circulation for as long as they could remain spliced together--which meant that not a whole lot of people wound up seeing them anyway. Even the most die-hard western fan had trouble sitting through an Art Mix feature on the bottom half of a Saturday-afternoon matinee. Most of his sound movie productions in the 1930s were filmed in only two or three days with low budgets of $2,000 or so, featuring actors who had trouble remembering their lines, misspelled title cards, headache-inducing editing, a near total lack of understanding of sound, and very often the use of an impaired (visually or otherwise) cinematographer (i.e., his $2,500 out-of-focus extravaganza, Range Riders (1934), in which the cameraman's competence apparently wasn't as important as his willingness to work for next to nothing).
Adamson (working under his pseudonym 'Denver Dixon') continued to produce, direct, and star in his own bottom-of-the-barrel westerns and appeared in small roles in oaters made by others until the late 1930s, when he decided to concentrate his career mainly on writing and acting, confining his roles to small parts in the innumerable B westerns being churned out in Hollywood at the time. He continued acting in small roles in various films and television shows until his death in 1972 from a heart attack at age 82.
His son, director/producer Al Adamson, kept his legacy as well as the family name and reputation alive in the low-budget film market by grinding out micro-budgeted westerns, hilariously inept horror films and vapid softcore sex comedies for decades--he even managed to cash in on the blaxploitation craze of the '70s with a couple of clunkers--until his murder, by a building contractor with whom he was having a legal dispute, in 1995.