Hollywood Actors
It can only be a matter of surmise how Geraldine Pge might have fared on screen in the days of long-term contracts and build-ups. As it happens she was there . fleetingly in the old days and nothing much did happen to her. She returned intermittently once her Broadway demonstrated her ability. She was a star of the new breed, working in films, TV and the theatre, ith no great fuss about status” – David Shipman – “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years” (1972).
Geraldine Page was born in 1924 in Kirksville, Missouri. She trained in method acting with Lee Strasberg. She is a reknowned interpreter of the work of Tennessee Williams and won rave reviews for her performance in the Boradway 1952 production of “Summer and Smoke” as Alma, a role she repeated in the 1962 film adaptation with Laurence Harvey. Her movie breakthrough role had been in “Hondo” with John Wayne in 1953. Her other films include “Sweet Bird of Youth”, “Dear Heart” with Glenn Ford and Angela Lansbury, “The Beguiled” with Clint Eastwood, “The Pope of Greenwich Village” and “The Trip to Bountiful” for which she won the Oscar. Geraldine Page died suddenly in New York in 1987 while appearing in “Blithe Spirit”. Her husband was actor Rip Torn.
TCM Overview:
Described by playwright Tennessee Williams, whose troubled heroines she often portrayed on stage and screen, as “the most disciplined and dedicated of actresses,” Geraldine Page burst upon the NYC theatrical scene as the Southern spinster hoping for one last chance at love in a highly celebrated 1952 revival of Williams’ “Summer and Smoke”, which put both Page and off-Broadway on the map. On the strength of that performance, she secured roles in two movies released in 1953, “Taxi” and “Hondo”, receiving her first of eight Oscar nominations for her supporting turn as an abandoned ranch wife who falls for John Wayne in the latter.
Despite this formidable introduction to movies, Page returned to her first love to make her Broadway debut in “Midsummer” in 1953. The following year, she appeared in Broadway productions of “The Immoralist” (with James Dean and Louis Jordan) and “The Rainmaker” (opposite Darren McGavin). No great beauty, Page displayed an unparalleled repertoire of tics and mannerisms that sometimes marred otherwise fine performances and other times enhanced them. After an eight-year absence from features, Page’s highly-strung, eccentric persona finally broke through in the 1961 film version of her star-making “Summer and Smoke”, which she followed by reprising her Broadway success as Williams’ fading screen star Alexandra Del Lago in “Sweet Bird of Youth” (1962), earning back-to-back Best Actress Oscar nominations.
Offered the female lead in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” on Broadway in the 60s, the Method-trained Page insisted that Lee Strasberg be present during the rehearsals, a demand which cost her the role and branded her with the reputation as somewhat difficult. Choosy about what parts she accepted, Page frequently turned down work that did not suit her taste. Her forte was sexually guarded and/or repressed women or women who just hadn’t had a chance at the brass ring, and her ability to project the deep emotions of these characters guaranteed her standing as one of the best actresses of her generation. Brilliant as the spinster sister whose love for brother Dean Martin borders on the incestuous in “Toys in the Attic” (1963), she was a desperate wooer of Glenn Ford in “Dear Heart” (1965) before earning her fourth Oscar nomination (as Best Supporting Actress) as the doting mother (opposite husband Rip Torn) of Peter Kastner in Francis Ford Coppola’s “You’re a Big Boy Now” (1966). Memorable (and Oscar-nominated) for her no-holds barred, comic fight with friend Carol Burnett in “Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972), she also contributed a performance of exquisite, enclosed self-pity to Woody Allen’s first dramatic effort, the Bergmanesque “Interiors” (1978), earning her third Academy Award nomination as Best Actress.
Like many New York actors, Page was a regular performer during television’s Golden Age in the 50s, but she became more selective regarding small screen roles after her movie career took off. She played Xantippe in NBC’s “Hallmark Hall of Fame” adaptation of Maxwell Anderson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Barefoot in Athens” (1966), about the early days of Socrates, and a month later delivered an Emmy-winning performance as Aunt Sookie in ABC’s “A Christmas Memory” (adapted from the story by Truman Capote), a role she would reprise for “A Thanksgiving Visitor” (ABC, 1968) earning a second Emmy Award. She appeared infrequently during the 70s (i.e., “Live Again, Die Again” ABC, 1974; “Something For Joey” CBS, 1977) but stepped up her output considerably during the 80s, acting in acclaimed vehicles like the miniseries “The Blue and the Gray” (CBS, 1982) and “The Dollmaker” (ABC, 1984). She also portrayed Sally Phelps in the “American Playhouse” presentation of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” (PBS, 1986) and closed out her TV career impressively as a concentration camp survivor in “Nazi Hunter: The Beate Klarsfield Story” (ABC, 1986).
Despite her screen success, Page never turned her back on the theater. She was a great proponent of off-Broadway and regional theater, appearing throughout her career with repertory companies like the Academy Festival Theatre (Lake Forest, Illinois), where she was able to play another choice Williams’ role in 1974, that of Blanche in “A Streetcar Named Desire”. She performed in two Actors Studio productions (“Strange Interlude” 1963 and “Three Sisters” 1964, which was filmed) and continued to appear on Broadway in such productions as “Black Comedy” (1967), “Absurd Person Singular” (1974) and “Agnes of God” (1982). She smoked like a chimney for her Oscar-nominated role as the mother of a slain policeman in “The Pope of Greenwich Village” (1984) and finally took home a Best Actress statue for “A Trip to Bountiful” (1985), luminously portraying an elderly woman who fulfills her fervent desire of visiting the small Texas town of her youth. Page capped her big screen career as the maid of the house in which Bigger Thomas goes to work in “Native Son” (1986) and was appearing on Broadway as the eccentric medium Madame Arcati in a revival of Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit” at the time of her death.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed here.
Estelle Winwood was born in 1883 in Kent and died in Los Angeles in 1984 at the age of 101. She was still acting at 96, some record. She had made her movie debut in the British “House of Trent” in 1933. In 1937 she was in Hollywood making “Quality Street” with Katharine Hepburn but did not make another film until “The Glass Slipper” in 1955. She then began a busy career as a character actress. Among her films are “The Swan”, “This Happy Ending”, “Alice and Kicking”, “Darby O’Gill and the Little People” and “Murder by Death” where she was hilarious as the wheelchaird bound nurse of Elsa Lanchester.
IMDB entry:
When Estelle saw the girl on a white horse at the circus, she then decided that she wanted to be an actress. And she was from the age of 5, to the disapproval of her father. Her mother had her train with the Liverpool Repertory Company, and Estelle performed in many plays and many roles in the West End. In 1916, she made her debut on Broadway and worked with a number of acclaimed stage actors. Estelle spent the rest of the ‘teens and ’20s working in plays on both sides of the Atlantic. Being an actor in the theater, Estelle was not about to be one of those who acted in flicks and held out for a very long time. In fact, besides a small role in a few English films in the early 1930s, her real debut was Quality Street (1937), a picture that she undertook when she was in her 50s. Anyway, that was enough as it would be almost two decades before she would return to the big screen. She appeared on the stage in the plays “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” “Ten Little Indians,” and “The Importance of Being Earnest.” But, in 1955, Estelle did return to the movies as Leslie Caron‘s “fairy godmother” in The Glass Slipper (1955). Estelle would spend the next 10 years appearing in films, often cast as eccentric, frail old ladies, some of whom could be deadly. Not to be left out, Estelle also would work on Television, doing guest spots in a number of shows. At 84, Estelle played a woman who was enamored by crooked Zero Mostel in the comedy The Producers (1967). Her last film would be the detective spoof Murder by Death (1976). When Estelle was asked, on the occasion of her 100th birthday, how she felt to have lived so long, she replied, “How rude of you to remind me!”.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Fontana <tony.fontana@spacebbs.com>
The bove IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Article on Estelle Winwood on “Tina Aumont’sEyes” website:
A wonderful stage actress and later character performer who specialized in dotty busybodies, Estelle Winwood’s first love was the stage, where she would spend the first twenty years of her career before gaining her first movie appearance.
Born in Kent, England, on January 24th 1883, Estelle was acting in London’s West End before moving to New York in 1916 where she made her Broadway debut. The next two decades were spent commuting between London and New York where Estelle excelled in theatre, appearing in many popular productions including ‘Moliere’ (1919), ‘The Tyranny of Love’ (1921), ‘ The Taming of the Shrew’ (1925), ‘Fallen Angels’ (1927), and ‘The Admirable Crighton’ (1931).
After a handful of minor roles, Winwood’s first part of note was in the George Stevens romancer ‘Quality Street’ (’37) starring Katherine Hepburn and Franchot Tone. Estelle was very good as a suspicious neighbour and helped liven up this rather dull production. After a few television roles (which included playing the medium Madame Arcati in a 1946 version of ‘Blithe Spirit’) Winwood’s next movie would not be until 1955, when she played Leslie Caron’s Fairy Godmother in the Cinderella story ‘The Glass Slipper’. The following year she was a jovial barmaid in the terrific suspenser ‘23 Paces to Baker Street’ (’56), and then had a wonderfully eccentric role as Grace Kelly’s great-aunt Symphorosa in Charles Vidor’s lush romantic comedy ‘The Swan’ (’56).
One of Winwood’s most memorable roles came a couple of years later when she played Curd Jürgens’ alcoholic housekeeper in the charming Blake Edwards romp ‘This Happy Feeling’ (’58), which also starred Debbie Reynolds and a young John Saxon. Estelle was great fun and stole the show as a cocktail loving lush. Estelle was then a sort of Disney villain in the early Sean Connery adventure ‘Darby O’Gill and the Little People’ (‘59), playing the interfering mother to Kieron Moore’s local bully. Her best role at this time though was in the enjoyable retirement-home comedy ‘Alive and Kicking’ (’59), playing a bored resident seeking adventure in old-age, alongside the excellent Kathleen Harrison and Sybil Thorndike.
Winwood’s next movie role was in the bar scene in John Huston’s ‘The Misfits’ (’61), playing a kindly old lady collecting money for the church. After playing Kim Novak’s neighbour in the Jack Lemmon caper ‘The Notorious Landlady’, Winwood had a fun part as a witch in Bert I. Gordon’s enjoyable spoof ‘The Magic Sword’ (both ’62). Back among the A-list, Estelle was then Bette Davis’s aunt in the exciting evil-twin thriller ‘Dead Ringer’ (’64), directed by Davis’ ‘Now, Voyager’ co-star Paul Henreid.
After guest spots on ‘Perry Mason’ and ‘Bewitched’, Estelle found 1967 to be a very diverse year. First she was Vanessa Redgrave’s lady-in-waiting in Joshua Logan’s overlong but lavish musical ‘Camelot’, and then a neighbour with a missing cat, in Curtis Harrington’s watchable thriller ‘Games’. Finally she was memorable in Mel Brooks’ cult comedy ‘The Producers’, playing an amorous old lady backing Zero Mostel’s certain-to-flop musical. After more television work Winwood’s final movie was the very funny spoof ‘Murder by Death’ (’76), playing the aged nurse to Elsa Lanchester’s Miss Marbles. She was a joy to watch and once again stole the show from a fantastic cast that included Oscar winners Alec Guinness, Maggie Smith and David Niven. Estelle’s final screen appearance was in a 1980 episode of ‘Quincy’ which, at 96 years of age, made her the oldest actor working in America.
Married four times, Estelle Winwood died in her sleep in California, on June 20th 1984, aged 101. In an acting career of over 80 years, she was the oldest member of the Screen Actors Guild at the time of her death. A wonderful scene-stealer and vastly talented actress, the shrewd Estelle Winwood was a perfectionist who didn’t suffer fools and always called the shots on her career path. And what a diverse career it was!
Favourite Movie: 23 Paces to Baker Street
Favourite Performance: Alive and Kicking
Donald Sutherland was born in 1935 in Saint John’s New Brunswick, Canada. He has an impressive array of outstaning contribution to films especially in the 1970’s and continues to give sterling performances to-day. He trained for the stage on Britain and began his career in British movies. His movie debut came in 1963 in “The World Ten Times Over”. His other U.K. films include “Fanatic” with Tallulah Bankhead and “Sebastian” with Dirk Bogarde. His international breakthrough role came with “Mash” in 1970. This was followed by “Kelly’s Heroes”, “Alex in Wonderland”, “Don’t Look Now”, “The Day of the Locust”, “The Eagle Has Landed”, “Nothing Personal” and “Eye of the Needle”. he is the father of actor Kiefer Sutherland.
TCM Overview:
Perhaps one of the most prolific and widely recognized actors of his generation, Donald Sutherland made a career playing some of the most unusual and memorable characters in cinema history. Though best known for playing odd, off-beat roles, like a hippie tank commander in “Kelly’s Heroes” (1970), an anti-authoritarian surgeon in “M*A*S*H” (1970), a novice private investigator in “Klute” (1971) and a stoner college professor in “Animal House” (1978), Sutherland cut a wide swath of characters throughout his career, mainly in order to avoid being typecast as eccentric weirdos. Critical acclaim for several of his performances – especially “Ordinary People” (1980) and “JFK” (1991) – was abundant, but he rarely received any awards – a surprising revelation given the breadth and quality of his work. Nonetheless, Sutherland maintained a steady career despite a long lull in the mid-1980s, even expanding his horizons into series television with “Commander in Chief” (ABC, 2005-06) and “Dirty Sexy Money” (ABC, 2007-09); two projects that, although short-lived, earned him further critical raves. Boasting a career that spanned more than five decades and 150 productions, Sutherland established himself as one of the most prolific, inventive and respected actors ever to grace either screen.
Born on July 17, 1935 in St. John, New Brunswick, Canada, Sutherland was raised in neighboring Bridgewater, Nova Scotia. His father, Frederick, was a salesman and head of the local bus, gas and electric company, and his mother, Dorothy, was a mathematics teacher. When he was 14, Sutherland was heard on CKBW as the youngest news reader and disc jockey in Canada. After high school, he studied engineering at the University of Toronto, but he quickly made the switch to an English major and began acting in school productions, making his stage debut in “The Male Animal” in 1952. He graduated UT in 1956, then moved to England where he attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. He went immediately to work in provincial repertory companies, landing roles in several stage productions in London, including “August for the People.” Sutherland was performing in a West End production of “Spoon River Anthology” when he was offered his first film, the dual role of a soldier and a witch (who end up fighting each other at the end) in “Castle of the Living Dead” (1964).
A couple of years after his film debut, Sutherland had moved to the United States where he continued taking strides to advance his career. He made his first American screen appearance in “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), playing a one of 12 soldiers in military prison during World War II, who are sent on a dangerous mission that gives them the chance to regain their honor. After bit parts in “Sebastian” (1968) and “Oedipus the King” (1968), Sutherland landed meatier supporting roles in “Joanna” (1968) and “Interlude” (1968). Then, without really meaning to, Sutherland suddenly made a name for himself in Robert Altman’s Korean War satire “M*A*S*H” (1970), playing misfit surgeon Hawkeye Pearce, whose love of nurses and moonshine martinis were the only things keeping him and fellow surgeon Trapper John McIntyre (Elliott Gould) sane amidst the chaos of war. Because of the antiwar fervor of the late-1960s, early-1970s, “M*A*S*H” was one of the year’s biggest hits, both critically and financially, turning an unknown Sutherland into an overnight star.
Hot on the heels of “M*A*S*H,” Sutherland was seen in yet another war-themed comedy, “Kelly’s Heroes” (1970), playing one of his most notorious and ultimately beloved characters, Oddball, a Bohemian tank commander who joins forces with a ragtag group of Army soldiers (led by Telly Savalas and Clint Eastwood) on a mission 30 miles behind Nazi lines to steal a large cache of gold. He achieved his first substantial critical acclaim for an excellent performance as a rural private detective who follows the sordid life of a prostitute (Jane Fonda) while on the trail of a killer in “Klute” (1971). Throughout the decade, Sutherland, despite his best efforts, was in danger of being typecast as a stoned-out goofball or an off-the-wall freak, thanks in large part to his rather unconventional looks. Luckily, he had both the sense and the talent to transcend the problem. In “Johnny Got His Gun” (1971), Sutherland was Jesus Christ, while in “Steelyard Blues” (1973), he was a demolition driver released from prison after serving time for larceny, and who gathers a band of misfits together to restore an old World War II plane in which to fly away to live in a nonconformist world.
Despite having made his name with “M*A*S*H” and “Klute” – both critical successes – Sutherland managed to make his share of duds, like “Lady Ice” (1973) and “S*P*Y*S” (1974), a ridiculously dull espionage comedy that reunited him with Elliot Gould. He was rather one-note as an ambitious and wealthy Hollywood powerbroker in the otherwise worthy adaptation of John Schlesinger’s entertainment satire, “The Day of the Locust” (1975), before returning to the comfortable confines of World War II action in “The Eagle Had Landed” (1976), playing an English-hating Irishman who helps arrange a Nazi plot to kidnap Winston Churchill on British soil. After being cast as an everyman Casanova in “Il Casanova di Federico Fellini” (1976) and appearing briefly in the often uproarious spoof “Kentucky Fried Movie” (1977), Sutherland scored another landmark role, playing a pot smoking college professor who takes the girlfriend (Karen Allen) away from an irresponsible, but irrepressible fraternity leader (Tim Matheson) in “National Lampoon’s Animal House” (1978). Sutherland was once again memorable in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978), bringing forth a palpable paranoia as a Department of Health employee contending with an alien invasion of soul-possessing spores.
Sutherland forever obliterated being typecast with his subtle portrayal of an emotionally conflicted father in “Ordinary People” (1980), director Robert Redford’s extraordinary Oscar-winning look at a so-called perfect family. Though ultimately overlooked by the Academy Awards, Sutherland was exceptional as a family man dealing with the death of a child and the love for his wife (Mary Tyler Moore). Unfortunately, his critical success with “Ordinary People” failed to translate into other meaty roles; instead leading to the miserable satire “Gas” (1981) and the rather uninspired caper comedy “Crackers” (1984). Meanwhile, an ill-received stage performance as Humbert Humbert in Edward Albee’s “Lolita” in 1981 helped keep him off the stage for a good 18 years – critics savaged the play, forcing the production to be canceled after only 12 performances. Sutherland, on the other hand, was spared from most of the critical drubbing the play received. After a 15 year absence, he returned to the small screen to play Ethan Hawley, a grocery store clerk who dreams of buying back his store from corrupt local bankers, in “John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent” (CBS, 1983), one of the few highlights for Sutherland in the 1980s.
While he remained prolific throughout the decade, Sutherland was mired in career doldrums that made his earlier successes more out of focus with time. Unexceptional features like the uneven murder mystery “Ordeal by Innocence” (1984), the flat-out dull period epic “Revolution” (1985), and the ineptly unfunny espionage comedy “The Trouble With Spies” (1987) only helped give rise to the notion that Sutherland’s career was in trouble. He returned to more dramatic fare with “A Dry White Season” (1989), playing a South African schoolteacher ignorant of the horrors of apartheid and who turns radically against the system when his gardener’s son is viciously murdered. Once the 1990s rolled around, however, Sutherland suddenly found himself in better films. He had a small, but integral role in “JFK” (1991), playing the mysterious Mr. X, a former black ops officer who feeds vital background information to New Orleans district attorney, Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner), the only person to bring a trial in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Despite being onscreen for only 15 minutes, Sutherland’s compelling performance made an indelible impression and remained one of the most remembered sequences in Oliver Stone’s exceptional film.
After a series of high-profile, but ultimately forgettable roles in “Backdraft” (1991), “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1992) and “Outbreak” (1995), Sutherland received rare award recognition for his performance in “Citizen X” (HB0, 1995), an exceptional thriller about an eight-year investigation by an obsessed Russian detective (Stephen Rea) into the serial killings of 52 women and children. Sutherland received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Special for his portrayal of Colonel Fetisov, the investigator’s supportive boss who helps him fight the bureaucracy of the Soviet state. Building off that success, he was superb as the law school professor and mentor of a novice lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) in “A Time to Kill” (1996), then gave an understated and overlooked performance as famed track coach Bill Bowerman in “Without Limits” (1998), an engaging look at the ill-fated track star, Steve Prefontaine (Billy Crudup). Sutherland rounded out the millennium with more underwhelming projects, including the mediocre features “Fallen” (1998) and “Virus” (1999), and the above average made-for-television movie, “Behind the Mask” (CBS, 1999), in which he played a doctor who forms a father-son relationship with a mentally-challenged man (Matthew Fox).
Alongside charismatic turns as a sex-minded, over-the-hill astronaut in Clint Eastwood’s amusing “Space Cowboys” (2000), and as William H. Macy’s hit man father in “Panic” (2000), Sutherland occasionally slummed his way through routine big screen thrillers, including the easily dismissed Wesley Snipes action thriller, “The Art of War” (2000). He continued finding compelling roles on television, however, namely as a small time hood looking to make a big score in “The Big Heist” (2001), and as Clark Clifford, political advisor to Lyndon Johnson, in John Frankenheimer’s acclaimed “Path to War” (HBO, 2002). In 2003, Sutherland enjoyed a renaissance on the big screen, delivering a charming performance as the mentor to a professional thief (Mark Wahlberg) in the hit remake “The Italian Job” (2003), and as Nicole Kidman’s doting Southern dad in “Cold Mountain” (2003). In “Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot” (TNT, 2004), he played a sinister old man who deals in antiques and has taken residence in a haunted mansion on a hill. Though not as frightening as the original made-for-television version, this new rendition nonetheless delivered plenty of chills. Sutherland continued the horror trend with yet another version of “Frankenstein” (Hallmark, 2004), though this particular version remained faithful to Mary Shelley’s original novel.
Taking a different turn on the small screen, he appeared as a regular in his first scripted series, “Commander In Chief” (ABC, 2005-06), a political drama about a female vice president (Geena Davis) who assumes the presidency after the death of her predecessor. Sutherland played the right-wing Speaker of the House and next in line for the job, who tries to convince the vice president to step aside so he can grab hold the reigns of power. He then earned his second Emmy award nomination in a supporting role in the miniseries, “Human Trafficking” (Lifetime, 2005), starring Robert Carlyle and Mira Sorvino, before playing the Bennett family patriarch in the lively adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” (2005). While Sutherland maintained a steady supporting presence on the big screen, his fate on “Commander in Chief” suddenly became uncertain in early 2006. Though critically acclaimed, the show steadily lost its audience over the course of its first and only season because of faulty scheduling and a revolving door of showrunners who continually changed the series’ tone and direction.
By May 2006, when ABC pulled the series from the lineup for the all-important sweeps, Sutherland expressed deep disappointment with the show’s inevitable cancellation and the diminishing of his character into a cartoonish villain through clever editing. Despite a nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the 2006 Golden Globe Awards, Sutherland was not seen playing Speaker of the House the next fall. Meanwhile, Sutherland had a small and rather clandestine role as a mysterious colonel who keeps a watchful eye on an international arms dealer (Nicolas Cage) on the verge of a breakdown in the under-appreciated “Lord of War” (2005). After appearing as part of the ensemble cast in “American Gun” (2005), a series of interwoven stories commenting on the proliferation of guns in America and their impact on society, Sutherland played the patriarch of an early-19th century family terrorized by an evil spirit in “An American Haunting” (2006).
After a co-starring role in “Reign Over Me” (2007), a compelling drama about two former college roommates (Don Cheadle and Adam Sandler) coping with life after 9/11, Sutherland played a billionaire with a mega-yacht who is convinced by a good-natured surf bum (Matthew McConaughey) to join him on a treasure hunt for several chests of gold in “Fool’s Gold” (2008). Back on television, he was delightful as the patriarch of a wealthy, but dysfunctional Manhattan family whose secrets are protected by an idealistic young lawyer (Peter Krause) in “Dirty Sexy Money” (ABC, 2007-09). Sutherland earned plenty of critical kudos and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television. Sutherland went from ultra-modern New York to 12th century England when he portrayed the doomed Bartholomew, Earl of Shiring, in the miniseries adaptation of Ken Follett’s epic novel “The Pillars of the Earth” (Starz, 2010). The following year, he lent big screen support to “The Mechanic” (2011), a remake of the Charles Bronson thriller starring Jason Statham, and the Roman centurion adventure tale “The Eagle” (2011), starring Channing Tatum. Sutherland once again played the villain, this time portraying President Coriolanus Snow in “The Hunger Games” (2012), the autocratic leader of a futuristic America where adolescents are forced into a life-or-death competition as entertainment for the masses.
Ellen Corby is best known for her role as the grandmother in the long running television show “The Waltons”. She has also had a lenghty career as a character actress. She was born in 1911 in Racine, Wisconsin. Her movie debut came in “Rafter Romance” in 1933. Among her many supporting parts are films such as “The Spiral Staircase” in 1945, “Till the End of Time”, “It’s A Wonderful Life”, “I Remember Mama”, “Little Women” and “Madame Bovary” in 1949. Ellen Corby was in “The Waltons” from 1971 until 1980 returning to the show after suffering a stroke. She also starred in some Walton movies, the last been “A Walton Easter” in 1997. Ellen Corby died in 1999 at the age of 87.
Tom Vallance’s obituary of Ellen Corby in “The Independent”:
Of Scandinavian origin, she was born Ellen Hansen in Racine, Wisconsin in 1913 and started to work in the film industry as a continuity girl in 1934. After 12 years she switched to acting and made her screen debut in Henry Hathaway’s film noir The Dark Corner (1946), with a telling bit part as a cleaning woman who finds a dead body.
It was the first of many roles for the dark-haired, thin-lipped actress as servants, spinsters or gossipy neighbours in films including Cornered (1946), It’s A Wonderful Life (1946), The Spiral Staircase (1946) and Forever Amber (1947). Her finest screen role was in I Remember Mama (1947), George Stevens’s beguiling transcription of Kathryn Forbes’ novelised reminiscences of growing up as a part of a Norwegian family in San Francisco.
Corby was immensely touching as homely middle-aged Aunt Katrin who falls in love with the local undertaker (Edgar Bergen) and is fearful of her family’s scorn (“If they laugh at me I yump in the river”). Nominated for an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress, she had stiff competition (Barbara Bel Geddes in the same film, Jean Simmons in Hamlet, Agnes Moorehead in Johnny Belinda, and Claire Trevor, who won the award for her role in Key Largo).
Subsequent roles included that of a midwife delivering Emma Bovary’s child in Vincente Minnelli’s Madame Bovary and a prominent role in John Cromwell’s stark depiction of life in a women’s prison, Caged (1950). Corby provided welcome light relief in the film as the scatterbrained killer of her abusive husband (“Who is this Pearl Harbor?”).
In Allan Dwan’s torrid thriller Slightly Scarlet (1957) she was maidservant to red-headed sisters Rhonda Fleming and Arlene Dahl, and in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) she was part of the film’s most contentious sequence, as the boarding-house receptionist who denies to the hero James Stewart that her tenant (Kim Novak) has been in the house that day though Stewart has seen her enter the building and appear at the window (the sequence is never explained).
Corby appeared frequently as a guest star on television series, and was in so many western shows (including Wagon Train, The Virginian and Rifleman) that she was awarded the Golden Boot Award by the Motion Picture and Television Fund in 1989. She had her first regular role in a television series as Martha the family maid in Please Don’t Eat The Daisies, based on Jean Kerr’s book about an unusual suburban family.
The show ran for two years (1965-67), but it was The Waltons, first transmitted in 1972, which was to prove the greatest success of Corby’s career. Based on Earl Hamner Jr’s reminiscences of his childhood during the Depression years in the South, and set in the Blue Ridge Mountains of rural Jefferson County, Virginia, it was considered the most wholesome of television programmes with moralistic homilies a-plenty. To the surprise of many, it proved an enormous hit and vanquished its main competition, The Flip Wilson Show, then one of the most popular on television.
The warm family drama, seen through the eyes of the eldest son John Boy, who wanted to be a novelist, was reputedly not a big hit in the large cities, but was loved by middle and rural America as well as in many other countries, including Britain. For her role as acerbic Esther (Grandma) Walton, Corby won the Emmy Award as Best Supporting Actress in a Drama three times (in 1973, 1975 and 1976).
When she suffered a stroke in 1977 (the season in which the Waltons moved out of the Depression and into the Second World War), her character was written out of the series with an illness, and Corby was seen only in the season’s final episode, when Grandma came home to Walton’s Mountain though partly incapacitated (it was one of the most the show’s most sentimentally affecting segments). It was Ellen Corby’s last appearance on the series, which finished in 1981, but she returned to play Grandma again in three television movies based on the show, A Day of Thanks on Walton’s Mountain (1982), A Wedding on Walton’s Mountain (1983) and A Walton’s Easter (1997).
Ellen Hansen (Ellen Corby), actress: born Racine, Wisconsin 3 June 1913; died Los Angeles 14 April 1999.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Elizabeth Ashley was born in 1939 in Florida but raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She won critical acclaim on Broadway for “Take Her, She’s Mine” and “Barefoot in the Park” but did not appear in the roles in the movies. The roles were played by Sandra Dee and Jane Fonda. In 1964 she made her film debut in a major role in “The Carpetbaggers” with George Peppard, Carroll Baker and Alan Ladd. She had leading roles in “The Third Day”, “Ship of Fools” and “Coma”.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
ove her or not, award-winning actress Elizabeth Ashley can always be counted on to give her all. Grand in style, exotic in looks, divinely outgoing in personality and an engaging interpreter of Tennessee Williams‘ florid Southern-belles on stage, she was born Elizabeth Ann Cole on August 30, 1939, in Ocala, Florida. The daughter of Arthur Kingman and Lucille (Ayer) Cole, the family moved to Louisiana where Elizabeth graduated from Louisiana State University Laboratory School (University High) in Baton Rouge in 1957.
The liberal-minded Elizabeth immediately embarked upon an acting career following her education and relocated to New York. Briefly using her real name, her big, breakthrough year occurred in 1959 when she made her off-Broadway debut with “Dirty Hands”, played “Esmeralda” in the Neighborhood Playhouse production of “Camino Real” and took on Broadway with Dore Schary‘s “The Highest Tree”. Now using the marquee name of Elizabeth Ashley, the 1960s proved to be even better, taking her to trophy-winning heights. After understudying the lead roles in Broadway’s “Roman Candle” and “Mary, Mary”, she won the role of “Mollie” in the delightful comedy “Take Her, She’s Mine” and won both the “supporting actress” Tony and Theatre World Awards for it. Neil Simon was quite taken by the new star and created especially for her the role of “Corie Bratter” in 1963’s “Barefoot in the Park” opposite ‘Robert Redford’. She received another Tony nomination, this time for “Best Actress”. In addition to these theatrical pinnacles, Elizabeth also found happiness in her private life when she met and married (in 1962) actor James Farentino, who was also on his way up. This happiness, however, was short-lived…the marriage lasted only three years. The attention she earned from Broadway led directly to film offers and she made a highly emotive debut in Harold Robbins glossy soaper The Carpetbaggers (1964), headlining handsome George Peppard. The critics trashed the movie but Elizabeth sailed ahead…temporarily.
Following intense roles in the superb all-star film epic Ship of Fools (1965) and the psychological crime drama The Third Day (1965), which again starred Peppard, the still-married Elizabeth divorced her husband and wed Peppard in 1966, taking a hiatus to focus on domestic life. The couple went on to have son Christian Peppard (born 1968), who would later become a writer.
The Peppard-Ashley marriage was a volatile one, however, and the twosome ultimately divorced in 1972. Wasting no time, Elizabeth returned to the stage and also went out for TV roles. Abandoning a film career that had just gotten out of the starting gate proved detrimental and she never did recapture the momentum she once had. Broadway, however, was a different story. The dusky-toned actress pulled out all the stops as “Maggie the Cat” in Tennessee Williamss “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1974) co-starring Keir Dullea and as “Sabina” in Thornton Wilder‘s “The Skin of Our Teeth” the following year, and she was back on top. Other heralded work on the live stage would include “Caesar and Cleopatra” opposite Rex Harrison, “Vanities” and, notably, “Agnes of God”, for which she received the Albert Einstein Award for “excellence in the performing arts”.
Following “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” for which she won a third Tony nomination, Elizabeth struck up a close friendship with author Williams. Over time, she would play and come to define three of his (and the theater’s) finest female roles: “Mrs. Venable” in “Suddenly, Last Summer” (1995), “Alexandra Del Lago” in “Sweet Bird of Youth (1998) and “Amanda Wingfield” in “The Glass Menagerie (2001). In addition, she also appeared in Williams’ “Eight by Tenn” (a series of his one-act plays), “Out Cry”, “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore” and “The Red Devil Battery Sign”. In 2005, 31 years after playing “Maggie”, she was again a success in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, this time as “Big Mama”.
Elizabeth went on to sink her teeth into a number of other famous plays as well, all peppered with her inimitable trademark flourish: “Martha” in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”, “Isadora Duncan” in “When She Danced”, Maria Callas in “Master Class” and the scheming “Regina” in “The Little Foxes”, to name a few. On 90s TV, she found daytime soaps to her liking with eye-catching parts on Another World (1964) and All My Children(1970). She also appeared in the ensemble cast of Burt Reynolds‘ series Evening Shade(1990). Occasional serious film supports in Rancho Deluxe (1975) and Coma (1978) were often intertwined with campier, over-the-top ones such as her psychotic lesbian inWindows (1980).
Overcoming a series of tragic, personal setbacks — a third divorce, a boating accident, a NY apartment fire and a rape incident — the still-lovely Elizabeth continues to demonstrate her mettle and maintain a busy acting schedule on stage (“Enchanted April”, “Ann & Debbie”), film (Happiness (1998), The Cake Eaters (2007)) and TV. Elsewhere, her memoir “Actress: Postcards from the Road” (1978) became a best seller. She was also a founding member of the Board of Directors of the American Film Institute while serving on the first National Council of the Arts during the administrations of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and has also served on the President’s Committee for the Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Awards.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
TCM overview:
A gifted, spirited Broadway lead of the early 1960s (“Take Her She’s Mine” 1961, “Barefoot in the Park” 1963), Elizabeth Ashley has also proven popular on talk shows where she has become a quick-talking raconteur with the edge of someone fraught, wrought and distraught.
Ashley spent more than two decades as a Broadway star before becoming known to TV audiences playing the eccentric Aunt Frieda on “Evening Shade” (CBS, 1990-94). While still a teen-ager when she made her Broadway debut in 1959 in “The Highest Tree”, she was a mere 22 when she won a Tony for “Take Her, She’s Mine”. A nervous breakdown, about which she later wrote in her book, “Postcards From the Road” (1978), almost derailed her career, but she bounced back, starring on Broadway as the idealistic young bride to Robert Redford’s slightly stuffy groom in Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park” and has since gone on to shine as Maggie in the 1974 revival of Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, the chain-smoking psychiatrist in “Agnes of God” and in revivals of “The Skin of Our Teeth” and “Caesar and Cleopatra”. In 1995, she returned once again to Broadway (and Williams) portraying Violet Venable in “Suddenly Last Summer”.
Ashley made her screen debut in “The Carpetbaggers” (1964), as the second of the women George Peppard loves and leaves on his way up the ladder. (They subsequently married after meeting on the film). In “Ship of Fools” (1965), she was a young married woman taking guidance from Vivien Leigh. Subsequent roles have been sporadic and decidedly supporting, including “The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday” (1976), “Paternity” (1981), and even “Dragnet” (1987).
Ashley first appeared on TV in a 1960 episode of “The Dupont Show of the Month” and appeared in numerous episodics during the decade, as well as doing celebrity player turns on such game shows as “Password”. She even guest hosted NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” in 1982. Ashley made her TV-movie debut “Harpy” (CBS, 1971) and has occasionally participated in the genre. She also appeared on the NBC soap opera “Another World” for a short period in 1990, but her most extensive TV work was the four seasons she was a member of the ensemble of “Evening Shade”, alongside her “Paternity” co-star Burt Reynolds. In 1996, she was cast as the eccentric romantic novelist with whom Brooke Shield must contend on the NBC sitcom pilot “Suddenly Susan”. It was later announced, however, that the show would be completely overhauled and taken in a new direction, and Ashley’s character was dropped.
RThe above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Elizabeth Hartman was born in 1943 in Youngstown, Ohio. She made a splendid movie debut in “A Patch of Blue” with Sidney Poitier and Shelley Winters. She went on make “The Group” with a bevy of marvellous actresses including Jessica Walter, Candice Bergen, Joan Hackett and Shirley Knight. In 1971 she gave a terrific performance in Don Siegel’s superb “The Beguiled” with Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page. Elizabeth Hartman sadly passed away in 1987 in Pittsburgh.
Article on Elizabeth Hartman by Robert Temple can be accessed here.
Article in the “Los Angeles Times” by SANDRA HANSEN KONTE
PITTSBURGH — I can’t wait until I’m 45 and get all those great parts. –Elizabeth Hartman, in a 1971 interview.
The first reports of 43-year-old Elizabeth Hartman’s June 10 suicide here were sketchy. Homicide detectives weren’t sure just who the slight woman was who had thrown herself from the fifth-story window of her efficiency apartment. A handful of neighbors volunteered what they knew. She was an unemployed actress, they thought, who had starred long ago in some movie with Sidney Poitier.
She would have hated that description. Even though she was subsisting on disability insurance, Social Security benefits and family handouts, even though her days were spent with various psychiatrists or wandering through the Carnegie Art Museum or merely sitting, listening to records, when somebody asked Hartman what she did, she replied, “I’m a film actress.”
Some of her therapists thought that this was another of her fantasies. But she was.
In 1965, at age 21, she was nominated for a best-actress Academy Award in her movie debut as a blind girl in “A Patch of Blue” (but lost to Julie Christie in “Darling”). She won a Golden Globe Award for most promising female newcomer. She was voted one of 1966’s Stars of Tomorrow by the American Film Exhibitors. Columnist Hedda Hopper predicted glowingly that “those who watch her at work tell me she can’t miss.”
Biff Hartman (her nickname originated from her sister’s childhood inability to pronounce \o7 Elizabeth\f7 ) of Youngstown, Ohio, had gone West and taken on the city that had been the object of so many of her childhood dreams.
And, in her own words, the city had won.
“All actresses are probably very paranoiac,” she once said in an interview with the New York Times, “and never accept the fact they’re good. You keep thinking: ‘Nobody wants me, I can’t get a job.’ That initial success beat me down. It spiraled me to a position where I didn’t belong. I was not ready for that.”
After she died, once co-star Poitier issued the following statement: “It saddens me to think she’s no longer with us. She was a wonderful actress and a truly gentle person. We have lost a distinguished artist.”
(Another “Patch of Blue” co-star, Shelley Winters, declined comment. Her spokesperson at International Creative Management offered, “She’s busy. She was asked to appear in a documentary about Marilyn Monroe and she turned that down, too.”)
(Calls by Calendar to the Warners Bros. representative for Clint Eastwood, who starred with Hartman in “The Beguilded,” were not returned.)
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette magazine editor George Anderson had a harder edge: “I think hers was a tragic American career that peaks at the beginning and has no follow-up. It’s a common Hollywood story.”
The headline in another Pittsburgh paper summed it up. “Failing Career/Mental Problems Blamed in Actress Suicide Here.”
Those closest to Hartman get angry when it is suggested that it was just her faltering movie career that propelled her out that window. “There’s so much more to it,” says her sister, Janet Shoop. “That’s what’s so hard for people to understand about mental illness. It’s not always outward. Hartman desperately wanted to resume her career. But, in the end, it was just too difficult for her to do so.”
Zohra Lampert was born in 1937 in New York City. She acted on the Boradway stage before making her film debut in a small role in 1959 in “Odds Against Tomorrow” which starred Harry Belafonte and Gloria Grahame. She had a small but telling role in Elia Kazan’s “Splendour in the Grass” with Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood. In 1971 she had the lead role in the cult thriller “Let’s Scare Jessica to Death”.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Solemn, Middle Eastern-looking Zohra Lampert had a touching, understated quality to her talent that should have gone further in the film business than it did. Somehow she never got the bigger breaks necessary for top-flight stardom. Still and all, this comely actress with soft, vulnerable features managed to contribute a number of genuinely affecting performances, particularly on TV. Born in New York City, the daughter of Russian-born hardware store owners, Lampert attended Manhattan’s High School of Music and Art and later graduated from the University of Chicago. After a stint with the Lincoln Center Repertory Theatre, she made an impressive mark on Broadway with Tony-nominated performances in “Look We’ve Come Through” in 1961 and “Mother Courage and Her Children” in 1963. Films also came her way in the early ’60s and she scored well for her humble, deeply stirring performance as Ernest Borgnine‘s Italian wife in the minor crime story Pay or Die (1960), and stole a touching scene from Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty as Beatty’s careworn spouse in Splendor in the Grass (1961). Those two performances alone should have lifted her to the heights of a star, but strangely they didn’t. Lampert was deemed a chameleon-like actress who didn’t quite fit into the Hollywood structure as a personality type. Instead she moved into a few noticeable supporting film roles along with an occasional low-budget lead, her best being the cult chiller Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971). By the ’70s, she was performing primarily on the small screen in character roles and was earning Emmy-winning notice for her endeavors. In later years, she found some really quirky ladies to inhabit, but has since been seen less and less.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
In the hugely successful US television series Perry Mason (1957-66), Barbara Hale, who has died aged 94, played Della Street, Mason’s secretary. She reprised the role in 29 TV movies between 1985 and 1995. Della’s indefatigable calm and poise established her as a partner to the LA lawyer Mason (Raymond Burr) and his investigator, Paul Drake (William Hopper). Although Hale’s all-American girl-next-door looks had seen her cast typically as supportive wives in her film career, in Perry Mason she was a single career woman, who out-bantered Drake’s flirtatious advances in almost every episode. “When we started it was the beginning of women not working at home,” she said. “I liked it that she was not married.”
The series was a triumph of casting. William Talman, as the always-losing district attorney Hamilton Burger, and Ray Collins, as the police detective Arthur Tragg, were great character actors. Mason’s creator, Erle Stanley Gardner, reportedly leaped from his chair during test screenings for Burr, a classic film noir heavy, shouting “that’s Perry Mason”. Although publicists tried to promote the idea of a romance between Burr and Hale, in reality he lived with a man, though he and Hale became devoted friends, with a common love of horticulture. Burr bred orchids, and named one after his co-star.
Hale’s role in Perry Mason was not big in terms of screen time – she joked that she basically had six scenes and costume changes to denote the changing of days – but its impact was strong enough for her to win an Emmy in 1959 as best supporting actress.
Her path to Hollywood was a highly publicised Cinderella story. Daughter of Willa (nee Calvin) and Luther Hale, she was born in DeKalb, Illinois, and grew up in nearby Rockford, where her father was a landscape gardener. She was 19 and studying at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art when she was spotted by a modelling agent. The agent sent photos to the RKO movie studio, which summoned Hale to Los Angeles. She was sitting in a casting director’s office when a phone call came asking for a starlet to replace one who had fallen ill. Hale was sent to the set of Gildersleeve’s Bad Day (1943) and made her film debut. Although studio publicity trumpeted her instant stardom, in reality she had but a single line, and went unmentioned in the credits.
But she landed a contract at RKO, and got her first screen credit in the Frank Sinatra movie Higher and Higher (1943). Her first starring role came opposite Robert Young in a gambling comedy, Lady Luck (1946). At RKO, she met the actor Bill Williams (born Wilhelm Katt), and after making West of the Pecos (1945) together, in which Hale starred with Robert Mitchum, they married. Williams would go on to star on television as Kit Carson in a successful western series. Hale, a more talented actor, was trapped in lesser studio parts until she too found success on the smaller screen.
Her best RKO parts came working with child actors, Dean Stockwell in Joseph Losey’s The Boy With Green Hair (1948) and Bobby Driscoll in Ted Tetzlaff’s noirish The Window (1949), her penultimate RKO release. She moved to Columbia, where she generally played adoring wives and steadfast girlfriends. Her light touch saw her cast with James Stewart and James Cagney, and opposite Robert Cummings in the early Frank Tashlin comedy The First Time (1952).
She had the title role in Lorna Doone (1951) but became a feature in low-budget but interesting Columbia westerns, including André de Toth’s remake of Sahara, Last of the Comanches (1953) and Joseph H Lewis’s 7th Cavalry (1956), her last Columbia picture. She then worked in episodic television such as Playhouse 90, and made The Oklahoman (1957) with Joel McCrea, and an interesting picture about a manufactured western movie star, Slim Carter (1957), alongside both her husband and Hopper. Ironically, in her last feature film before Perry Mason, Desert Hell, she played the unfaithful wife of a Foreign Legion commander.
When CBS cancelled Perry Mason, Hale reverted to episodic television, including a spot on Burr’s successful police series Ironside and regular roles in Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. She had a telling part in the original “disaster movie”, Airport (1970), and in 1975 she played the lead opposite Steve Brodie in the unforgettable disaster of a film The Giant Spider Invasion.
When, in 1985, NBC produced a TV movie, Perry Mason Returns, Hale was back as Della, and her son, William Katt, was cast as Paul Drake Jr, replacing Hopper, who had died in 1970. It was so successful that NBC produced 25 more movies before Burr’s death in 1993, and three more starring Hal Holbrook, cast not as Mason but as Wild Bill McKenzie. The last of the three, in 1995, was Hale’s final acting appearance.
Bill Williams died in 1992. Hale is survived by her son, and two daughters, Judy and Juanita.
• Barbara Hale, actor, born 18 April 1922; died 26 January 2017
Anyone who knows me are aware that I am a bit of a movie buff. Over the past few years I have been collecting signed photographs of my favourite actors. Since I like movies so much there are many actors whose work I like.