Don Galloway was born in Augusta, Kentucky in 1937. He had a long running success on the detective television series which ran from 1967 until 1975. Prior to this he had a featured role in another excellent detective series “Arrest and Trial”. His films include in 1966 “The Rare Breed” with Maureen O’Hara, James Stewart and Juliet Mills. One of his last film appearances was in “The Big Chill”. He died at the age of 71 in 2008.
Anthony Hayward’s obituary on Don Galloway in “The Independent”:
The dependable character actor Don Galloway, who has died aged 71 after suffering a stroke, became a familiar face to television viewers worldwide as Raymond Burr’s sidekick in the crime drama A Man Called Ironside. But fame was never a goal for the square-jawed Galloway, who played the solid, serious detective sergeant Ed Brown in the series. “It’s a question of values,” he once said. “Some people want to be a star. Some people want to be rich. I really just want to act and to make a living acting.”
Brown was one of three aides to Robert T Ironside, the San Francisco Police Department chief of detectives, played by Raymond Burr, who, having been paralysed from the waist down after a bullet grazed his spine, returns to the department as a wheelchair-bound consultant. Galloway played one sidekick, with Barbara Anderson as the policewoman Eve Whitfield (later Elizabeth Baur as Fran Belding) and Don Mitchell as Ironside’s bodyguard, the reformed tearaway Mark Sanger.
Throughout A Man Called Ironside (1967-75) – titled simply Ironside in the US – each was given the spotlight in alternating episodes. During the first season, Brown found himself falsely accused of assault after the death of a girl in a hippie hangout. Later, he was shot in the spine by a sniper. Experimental surgery that saved him was seen in the second instalment of the two-part story, which was concluded in another series produced by the NBC network, The Bold Ones: The New Doctors (1972). This pioneering “marriage” of two programmes soon became common practice on American TV.
Born in Brooksville, Kentucky, Galloway wanted to become an actor from the age of 12, when his family first bought a TV set. After serving in the US army as a radar operator, he studied drama and fine arts at the University of Kentucky, then moved to New York and took a job as a page at NBC, the US TV network.
His acting break came in the off-Broadway play Bring Me a Warm Body (1962). One critic wrote of him: “If the actor playing the actor who can’t act could act, it would be better.” But Galloway won a Theatre World Award as most promising newcomer. This led to his first big television role, as the first of three actors to play Kip Rysdale in the daytime soap opera The Secret Storm (1962-63). “I was rich and bad,” recalled Galloway of his character. “I got a girl pregnant and then I killed her, and then I went to prison.”
A string of one-off character parts followed in popular series such as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1963), The Virginian (1963, 1966) and Wagon Train (1965). He also had a leading role as the newlywed Dr Tom Gentry in the short-lived sitcom Tom, Dick and Mary (1964-65).
Galloway remained in constant demand, reprising his role as Brown in the TV movie The Return of Ironside (1993) and playing the conservative husband of one of a group of college friends who reunite in the film The Big Chill (1983).
After he left acting, Galloway worked as a deputy sheriff in San Bernardino County, California. He then moved to New Hampshire and wrote a column for the Manchester Union Leader newspaper. Last year, he moved to Reno, Nevada.
In 1963, Galloway married Linda Robinson, an actress who appeared in two episodes of A Man Called Ironside. She survives him, along with their two daughters, Tracy and Jennifer, and his stepchildren, Sheila and Robert.
• Donald Galloway, actor, born 27 July 1937; died 8 January 2009
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Ed Lauter is an accomplished character actor who was born in 1940 in Long Beach, Long Island. Among his films are “The Last American Hero” in 1973, “The Longest Yard”, “Magic” and “Raw Deal”. He died in 2013.
TCM Overview:
As one of Hollywood’s hardest working character actors, Ed Lauter appeared in small supporting roles in more than 200 movies and television shows, in the process becoming an instantly recognizable face though never a household name. His imposing height, fierce squint and effortlessly intimidating demeanor made him a natural for playing authority figures of both the benign and malevolent variety, and his near constant output yielded a number of unforgettable film performances, from the sadistic yet ultimately honorable Captain Knauer in Robert Aldrich’s “The Longest Yard” (1974), to Maloney, the arsonist-turned-gas station owner in Hitchcock’s final film, “The Family Plot” (1976), to Peppy Miller’s dutiful butler in the Academy Award winner for Best Picture, “The Artist” (2011). Lauter was also a familiar face on television, playing the stern Captain Cain on “B.J. and the Bear” (NBC, 1979-1981) and its spin-off, “The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo” (NBC, 1979-1981), as well as the uncharacteristically sympathetic role of Fire Captain Dannaker on “ER” (NBC, 1998-2002), in addition to scores of guest appearances on other series and supporting roles in TV movies. Though audiences may have struggled to remember his name, Ed Lauter’s tough, authoritarian image was a familiar and reliable staple of American film and television.
Edward Matthew Lauter II was born on Oct. 30, 1938 in Long Beach, Long Island, NY, where he was raised by his mother, a former stage actress who had worked with legends like Al Jolson, Fred Astaire and the Marx Brothers. Lauter heeded the call of the stage himself, following a two-year stint in the U.S. Army, working as a stand-up comic and impressionist while studying drama at New York’s Herbert Berghof School. He made his Broadway debut in 1968 in the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony award-winning production of “The Great White Hope” starring James Earl Jones, and his performance caught the attention of casting director Lynn Stalmaster. After “Hope” closed in 1970, Lauter moved to Los Angeles, where Stalmaster immediately put his steely, intimidating look to work in supporting tough guy roles in the feature cop drama “The New Centurions” (1972) starring George C. Scott and in the Westerns “The Magnificent Seven Ride!” (1972) and “Bad Company” (1972), starring Jeff Bridges. Lauter also began appearing in very similar roles on television, playing hardnosed character roles on series including Robert Culp’s detective drama “Hickey & Boggs” (NBC, 1972), “Mannix” (CBS, 1967-1975), Ironside (NBC, 1967-1975), and “Streets of San Francisco” (ABC, 1972-77), rapidly becoming one of America’s most employable character actors.
Much as Lauter had listened to the stories of his mother’s legendary cohorts growing up in the midst of New York’s theater community, he was an apt pupil of Hollywood’s elder statesmen, such as Jack Warner, Burt Lancaster and David Niven, and always eager to take advice. His humble manner and impressive work ethic ingratiated Lauter to many of his cast mates and directors, who frequently recommended Lauter for roles in future films. After working with Lauter on “The New Centurions,” George C. Scott cast him in his own directorial work, “Rage” (1972). Similarly, after working with him in “Bad Company,” Jeff Bridges recommended Lauter for roles in “Lolly-Madonna XXX” (1973) and “The Last American Hero” (1973). In 1974, Lauter landed his most memorable part to date, the sadistic but ultimately honorable Captain Knauer in Robert Aldrich’s “The Longest Yard” (1974). The film’s star, Burt Reynolds, sent a print of the film to director Alfred Hitchcock in the hope of being cast in Hitchcock’s “The Family Plot” (1976). Hitchcock had delayed production while seeking the right actor to play Maloney, the film’s third lead. After screening “The Longest Yard,” Hitchcock found his Maloney, but in Lauter, not Reynolds. Thoroughly impressed, Hitchcock would also cast Lauter in his next film, but died before production could begin.
Lauter would put the “good bad guy” character he had developed in “The Longest Yard” and “Family Plot” to work in films such as “King Kong” (1976) and Richard Attenborough’s “Magic” (1978), but began to find more and more work on television, appearing in TV movies and miniseries such as “How the West Was Won” (ABC, 1979) and “Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones” (CBS, 1980), and landing a recurring role as the draconian Captain Cain on “B.J. and the Bear” (NBC, 1979-1981) and its spin-off series, “The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo” (NBC, 1979-1981). When Lauter did appear on the big screen, it was often at the invitation to work with an old friend, as he did with Charles Bronson on “Death Hunt” (1981) and later in “Death Wish 3” (1985). Occasionally Lauter landed substantial roles in memorable films, as he did playing the unfortunate owner of the titular killer dog in “Cujo” (1983), but more often than not, his apparent drive for constant employment meant taking roles in a number of forgettable films and TV series – from Fred Williamson’s hackneyed “The Big Score” (1983) to “The A Team” (NBC, 1983-87). For every popular drama or big-budget action film like “Youngblood” (1986) or “Raw Deal” (1986), Lauter also worked in a negligible film like “Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise” (1987) or “Gleaming the Cube” (1989).
In 1989, Lauter was cast as Whitney Ashbridge, the commanding officer at the Los Alamos army post, in Rolland Joffe’s “Fat Man and Little Boy” (1989), starring Paul Newman. Lauter’s military background, coupled with his ramrod physique, stern glare and bullet-like bald head, made him ideal for portraying staunch authority figures, particularly military and law officers. He would play variations on that theme in Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989), “My Blue Heaven” (1990), “The Rocketeer” (1990), the Steven King miniseries “Golden Years” (1991), “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (CBS, 1987-1994), “True Romance” (1993), and “The X-Files” (Fox, 1993-2002), only occasionally stepping out of uniform as he did quite effectively as Brandon Fraser’s sympathetic but strict father in “School Ties” (1992). As he had done since he first began acting professionally, Lauter took advantage of typecasting to maintain steady work, though this frequently meant appearing in films and television of questionable quality. During the mid- to late-1990s, Lauter turned in credible supporting performances in Mike Figgis’ acclaimed “Leaving Las Vegas” (1995) and Lee Tamahori’s “Mulholland Falls” (1996), but otherwise his work continued to largely consist of bit parts in forgettable films and made-for-television movies.
A recurring role as Fire Captain Dannaker on “ER” (NBC, 1994-2009) provided Lauter with better material than he had found in film for much of the 1990s, but in 2003, Lauter returned to form with “Seabiscuit,” playing Charles Strub, the investor in the Santa Anita racetrack who brought the famed race horse to Southern California. In 2005, Lauter made another sort of return when he was, with Burt Reynolds, one of the only two original cast members to appear in the remake of “The Longest Yard.” Lauter’s nostalgic appearance in the latter film led to roles in “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” (2006) and the Western “Seraphim Falls” (2006), starring Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan, but the seemingly workaholic Lauter would continue to appear in lesser features, apparently with little or no regard for the quality of the finished product. As the record of his long career had proven, however, the law of averages would still provide Lauter with finer material in which to perform. After several years working in video fodder like “Godspeed” (2009) and “The Prometheus Project” (2010), Lauter once again landed a plum role in the winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture, “The Artist” (2011). He maintained that quality streak in 2012 by playing a fellow baseball scout alongside Clint Eastwood in “Trouble with the Curve.” In May 2013, Lauter was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer; he died on October 16, 2013.
By John Crye
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Inger Stevens obituary in “The New York Times” in 1970.
Inger Stevens the blonde actress who played the beguiling housekeeper on “The Farmer’s Daughter” television series for three years, was found dead in her home today.
The cause of the 35‐year‐old actress’s death was listed as “acute barbiturate intoxica tion.”
The coroner’s office said fur ther tests were under way to determine how the pills came to be taken and whether the death would be ruled a suicide.
Miss Stevens died on the way to a hospital after she was found semi‐conscious in her home.
‘A Hard Luck Girl’
Miss Stevens was one of the few actresses who was able to win fame in television and then move on to stardom in the movies. Despite her successes, she was, in her own words, “very much a hard luck girl.”
On New Year’s Day, 1959, she swallowed 25 sleeping pills and a quantity of ammonia in an attempt to take her own life. On another occasion she nar rowly missed being killed in a fiery plane crash.
In an interview some years ago, Miss Stevens said that in addition to these near‐catastro phies, she often felt depressed over “many other sorrows, in cluding the fact I came from a broken home, my marriage was a disaster, and I am con stantly feeling lonely.”
The actress was born Oct. 48, 1934 in Stockholm. When she was 13, her father, Per Stensland, brought her to this country to live with him, fol lowing the breakup of his mar riage. At the time Mr. Stensland was studying on a Fulbright scholarship at Harvard, but he later remarried and moved to Manhattan, Kan.
Unhappy there, she ran away to Kansas City at 16, and worked as a waitress and then as a $60‐a‐week dancer in a burlesque show. Her father found her, however, and made her return home. After gradua tion from high school, she came to New York, where she met Anthony Soglio, an agent who put her under contract and changed her last name to Stevens.
They were married in 1955, but separated after four months, and in 1958 they were divorced. Miss Stevens did not remarry.
Jan Sterling is a cult favourite among movie buffs. A pencil slim blonde, she was born in 1921 in New York City. She gave a number of incisive performances in such movies as “Johnny Belinda” in 1948, “Caged”, “Mystery Street”, “Appointment With Danger”, “The High and the Mighty” and “Female on the Beach”. Jan Sterling died in 2004 at the age of 82.
Her “Guardian” obituary by Ronald Bergan:
Jan Sterling, who has died aged 82, made her name playing hard-bitten blonde floozies, but beneath the surface she always betrayed a certain fragility. Although Sterling had no qualms about posing for cheesecake photographs, there was a reticence about her personality; nor was she a conventional beauty, one of her eyes being higher than the other, and she had a rather elongated, melancholy face. For one role, she shaved off her eyebrows, which never grew back, so she was required to pencil them in for the rest of her career.
By far her best role was in Billy Wilder’s sardonic Ace In The Hole (1951), in which she was the sluttish, opportunistic wife of a man trapped in a cave, a situation ruthlessly exploited by sensation-seeking journalist Kirk Douglas. When asked to pose for a news photo praying for her husband’s safety, she replies: “I don’t go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons.” But she recognises Douglas as even more unscrupulous than she. “I’ve met some hardboiled eggs in my time, but you – you’re 20 minutes,” Sterling comments wryly.
At the time, Sterling was one of Paramount’s resident broads, playing sharp-tongued gangsters’ molls in both Union Station (1950) and Appointment With Danger (1951). In fact, her film career began (excepting a walk-on in Tycoon, 1947, credited as Jane Darien) in Warners’ Johnny Belinda (1948) as the town tramp, married to the rapist of a deaf-mute girl.
In contrast, in real life, Sterling was extremely refined, having been born Jan Sterling Adriance into a socially prominent and wealthy New York family. After being educated in private schools, she studied acting at Fay Compton’s drama school in London. She made her Broadway debut in 1938, aged 15, as an English schoolgirl in Ian Hay’s Bachelor Born.
1984, Jan Sterling, Edmond O’Brien, 1956
There followed other roles in British plays such as JB Priestley’s When We Were Married (1939), and she played the stage-struck ingénue in Noel Coward’s Present Laughter (1946). But the part that led to her Hollywood contract was that of dumb blonde Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday (1949), having taken over from Judy Holliday. Her co-star was Paul Douglas, whom she married the same year. (Sterling had divorced British actor Jack Merivale.)
In films, Sterling was seen as a tough jail bird in Caged (1950) and Woman’s Prison (1954), and as the witty guardian of a cat that has inherited $30 million in Rhubarb (1951). In Flesh And Fury (1952), she’s a gold digging, night-club singer who latches on to boxer Tony Curtis, before he dumps her for a nice girl.
In 1954, Sterling was Oscar-nominated for best supporting actress in The High And The Mighty as a touching mail-order bride with a questionable past, one of the passengers on a threatened plane. The following year, Sterling, as a jealous killer, competed ably with Joan Crawford in Female On The Beach, and was superb as Robert Mitchum’s estranged, saloon-owner wife in the western Man With The Gun, trying to hide her fears for his safety. In The Harder They Fall (1956), she was again a concerned wife, this time of sports columnist Humphrey Bogart (in his last film), worried about his involvement with a crooked syndicate.
The year before, Sterling and Douglas had gone to England, he to make Joe Macbeth and she to co-star with Edmond O’Brien as the lovers defying Big Brother in the first screen adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984. The original version ends with O’Brien and Sterling being shot, while for the US release, they reform and become loyal to Big Brother!
At the time, Sterling was several months pregnant, while her husband was fighting a losing battle against alcoholism. Her film roles deteriorated, apart from her sympathetic portrayal of a longshoreman’s widow in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1957). After Douglas died of a heart attack, aged 52, in 1959, Sterling took a few years off.
She then returned to the stage, notably in The Front Page (1970) and Come Back, Little Sheba (1974), as the wife of an alcoholic.
On television, Sterling played Mrs Herbert Hoover in the mini-series Backstairs At The White House (1976). In the late 1970s, Sterling settled in London, where she had a long-lasting liaison with director Sam Wanamaker.
Her son, Adams Douglas, died three months ago.
· Jan Sterling, actor, born April 3 1921; died March 26 2004 Her “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Vera Ralston was born in 1919 in Czechoslovakia. She was very famous as an ice skater before making films. She emigated to the U.S. in the early 1940’s. She married Herbert J. Yates the owner of Republic Studios and made over 25 films including “Fair Wind to Java”, “Storm Over Lisbon” and “Dakota”. Vera Ralston died in 2003.
Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian”:
There were few Hollywood actors of the studio era who suffered from as many snide remarks as the Czech-born ice-skater-turned-star Vera Hruba Ralston, who has died aged 81. This was not only because her acting was rather wooden, and her accent thick, but because she was married to Herbert J Yates, the head of Republic Pictures, the man who foisted her on an unwilling public.
Her performance improved slightly from picture to picture, whether in thrillers, romances, westerns or costume dramas, but she was never a box-office attraction. Yates’s fixation was such that he forced exhibitors to run her films by threatening to withhold more popular Republic products from them; it was one of the reasons for the studio’s demise.
She first caught Yates’s attention in 1939 when she toured the US with a show called Ice Vanities. As Vera Hruba, she had won a silver medal at the 1937 Berlin Olympics; she had gone to America with her mother after the Nazis invaded Prague.
In 1941, Yates cast Vera – and the entire company of Ice-Capades – in a film of the same name, an inconsequential musical which revolved around skating numbers. This was followed by Ice-Capades Revue a year later. Then, in 1943, Yates signed Hruba to a long-term contract, adding Ralston to her name. Four years later, at 67, he left his wife and children for the 27-year-old, before marrying her in 1952. He had hoped that Ralston would rival Henie, at 20th Century Fox, billing her as a star who “skated out of Czechoslovakia into the hearts of America”. But after Lake Placid Serenade (1944), she was rarely seen on ice.
Her first real acting role was opposite Erich Von Stroheim and Richard Arlen in The Lady And The Monster (1944), all three of them appearing in Storm Over Lisbon the same year. Still in the B-movie category was Dakota (1945), in which Ralston waited patiently at home while husband John Wayne settled railroad disputes. She co-starred with Wayne again in The Fighting Kentuckian (1949).
Mainly, Ralston was confined to more than a dozen films made by Republic’s journeyman director Joseph Kane. According to Kane, “Vera could have made it rough on everyone, but she never took advantage of that situation. Although she never became a good actress, she was cooperative, hardworking and eager to please.”
Despite this, it was reported that Wayne threatened to leave the studio if forced to work with Ralston again, and Sterling Hayden was offered a bonus to appear opposite her in Timberjack (1955).
Kane directed Ralston in perhaps her best film, Fair Wind To Java (1953), a good adventure yarn with Fred MacMurray as a cynical captain, who falls for native girl Ralston while in search of south seas treasure. The fact that she had a Czech accent was not explained.
In 1956, two Republic stockholders filed a lawsuit against Yates for using company assets to promote his wife as a star, and giving her brother producer status at a salary far beyond his worth. Two years later, Yates had to relinquish his post, and Ralston retired. When he died in 1966, Yates left his wife half of his estate, valued at more than $10m. In 1973, she married businessman Charles DeAlva, 11 years her junior, who survives her.
· Vera Hruba Ralston, ice skater and actor, born June 12 1921; died February 9 2003
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Charles Farrell was born in 1901 in Walpole, Massachusetts. He is best knpwn to-day for a series of films he made with Janet Gaynor. He was long married to actress Virginia Valli. After retiring from films in the 1950’s be became involved in community projects in Palm Springs. He died in 1990.
New York Times obituary in 1990:
Charles Farrell, the gentle-mannered actor whose career spanned four decades, ranging from silent films to talkies to the 1950’s television series ”My Little Margie,” died on Sunday at his home in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 88 years old.
Mr. Farrell was so durable as a performer that Bob Hope is said to have referred to him once as a ”19th-century Fox star.”
An athletic six-footer, he gained fame as the romantic lead in ”Seventh Heaven” (1927). The Times critic Mordaunt Hall said that he was ”splendid” in that role, playing opposite Janet Gaynor.
”Sometimes he may seem to be a little too swaggering, but what of it?” Mr. Hall observed. ”The actions suit the young man’s agreeable bombast. You find that you like him.”
The Seventh Heaven in the silent film was the walk-up Parisian garret where Mr. Farrell, playing an impecunious laborer, made his home.
Mr. Farrell and Miss Gaynor then co-starred in a series of other film romances. For seven years they were movieland’s leading on-screen romantic couple. Then his movie career waned.
His film work included serious as well as romantic roles in such films as ”Wings of Youth” (1925), ”Sandy” (1926), ”The Rough Riders” (1927), ”Aggie Appleby” (1933), ”Fighting Youth” (1935) and ”The Deadly Game” (1942). He retired from films in the 1940’s.
In television he turned to comedy, starring as a widowed father in more than 100 installments of ”My Little Margie,” which was widely popular.
Began as Extra
Charles Farrell was born Aug. 9, 1901 in Onset Bay, Mass., and attended Boston University. He played some stage roles and broke into films as an extra in ”The Cheat” (1923). He then had various supporting parts before ”Seventh Heaven,” which opened in New York at the old Sam H. Harris Theater and remained his best-known movie.
Recalling his movie work in a 1954 interview Mr. Farrell, still handsome and wavy-haired, said: ”They wouldn’t accept my voice. They said I didn’t have diction. When the talkies came in, a lot of stage people came to Hollywood from New York and I knew that I didn’t talk like them, but my voice was me and that’s all there was to it.”
”One fellow kept needling me about improving my diction until I finally sat on him – but good,” he added. ”My life was made miserable. There were other complicating factors, and I decided to move on.”
Resort Hotel Manager
He served in the Navy in World War II and prospered in a new career as a manager and host of the Racquet Club, a private resort hotel in Palm Springs, where he lived with his wife, the former silent film star Virginia Valli, whom he married in 1932; she died in 1968.
Mr. Farrell served as mayor of Palm Springs for several years in the 1940’s and 50’s. He sold the Racquet Club in 1959.
His television career, mainly in the 1950’s, included the starring role in the ”The Charlie Farrell Show” in addition to ”My Little Margie,” in which he played the father of a prankish unmarried daughter, portrayed by Gale Storm.
”I took the part because I’m a ham,” Mr. Farrell said in the 1954 interview. ”The work is not exactly the same as making pictures, but it’s pretty close
A poster for Alfred Santell’s 1932 drama film ‘Tess Of The Storm Country’, starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)
Bonita Granville was born in 1923 in Chicago. She achieved international fame with her extraordinary performance as the spiteful child in “These Three” in 1937. She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance. She played Nancy Drew in a series of films about the girl detective. She also starred in some of the Andy Hardy films. Her last film was “The Guilty” in 1947. She died in 1988 at the age of 65.
IMDB entry:
Bonita Granville ANDY HARDY’S BLONDE TROUBLE, from left: Bonita Granville, Mickey Rooney, Lee Wilde and Lyn Wilde, 1944NANCY DREW: DETECTIVE, Bonita Granville on poster art, 1938.
Daughter of Bernard ‘Bunny’ Granville, Bonita Granville was born into an acting family. It’s not surprising that she herself became a child actor, first on the stage and, at the age of 9, debuting in movies in Westward Passage (1932). She was regularly cast as a naughty little girl, as in These Three (1936) where she played Mary, an obnoxious girl spreading lies about her teachers. Her performance left an impression on the audience, and she was nominated for a best supporting actress award. In 1938-39 came the movies she is now best remembered for — playing the bright and feisty detective/reporter Nancy Drew in the Nancy Drew series. She also appeared with Mickey Rooney in a few Andy Hardy movies. She never really had a movie breakthrough, and after marrying oil millionaire & later producer Jack Wrather, she retired from acting in the middle of the 1950s, although she went on to produce the Lassie (1954) TV series.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Mattias Thuresson
After her marriage to oil millionaire Jack Wrather in 1947, she appeared in only three more movies. She became an executive in the Wrather Corp., and first associate producer, then executive producer of the Lassie (1954)TV series. After Wrather’s death in 1984, she took over as chairman of the board. She was also involved in many civic, and cultural groups, and she was chair of American Film Institute, trustee of John F. Kennedy Center, as well as other well known organizations and charities. She died of cancer in Santa Monica in 1988. She & Wrather had four children.
Patrick Wayne was born in 1939 in Los Angeles and is the son of John Wayne. He played small partsin his father’s films and can be seen in the racing scene in “The Quiet Man” in 1951. He was also in “The Searchers”, “Donovan’s Reef” and “The Commancheros”. In the 1970’s he made “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” and “The People that Time Gorgot” both in 1977.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Possessing his father’s durable good looks, vigor and charm, this tall, strapping, exceedingly handsome second son of John Wayne had huge boots to fill in trying to escape his legendary father’s shadow and corral Hollywood fame on his own terms. But attempt he did and, looking back, he may not have achieved the outright stardom of his father but certainly did quite admirably, making over 40 films in his career — nine of them with his dad.
One of four children born to Duke’s first wife, Patrick John Wayne carried his father’s name, so it seems natural that a similar destiny would be in the making. Patrick made his debut film bit at age 11 in his father classic western Rio Grande (1950) and proceeded to apprentice in The Quiet Man (1952), The Sun Shines Bright (1953), The Long Gray Line (1955), Mister Roberts (1955), and The Searchers (1956), some with and some without his father’s name above the title credits. All the above-mentioned films, however, were helmed by family friend and iconic director John Ford. Following high school, Patrick attended Loyola University and graduated in 1961 (older brother Michael Wayne graduated five years earlier). During this time, he went out on his own to star in his own film, the second-string oater The Young Land (1959). Realizing he was not quite ready to carry his own film, he returned to the family fold and gained more on-camera confidence throughout the 1960s supporting his father in The Alamo (1960), Donovan’s Reef (1963), McLintock! (1963), and The Green Berets (1968). A few exceptions included a role in Ford’s sprawling epic Cheyenne Autumn (1964), his turn as James Stewart‘s son in the frontier adventure Shenandoah (1965) and in An Eye for an Eye (1966) in which he and Robert Lansing played bounty hunters. He also co-starred in the short-lived comedy western series The Rounders (1966).
Following work on his dad’s Big Jake (1971), Patrick broke away again and sought success on his own. Interestingly, he earned more recognition away from the dusty boots and saddle scene and into the sci-fi genre. His career peaked in the late 1970s as the titular hero braving Ray Harryhausen monsters and saving Tyrone Power‘s daughter Taryn in the popular matinée fantasy Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), then battled more special effects creatures in the Edgar Rice Burroughs film adaptation of The People That Time Forgot (1977).
Patrick was a smoother, more gentlemanly version of the Wayne package with a completely captivating smile and accessible personality. He co-starred as a romantic love interest to Shirley Jones in another brief TV series Shirley (1979), and occasionally forsook acting chores to emcee game shows and syndicated variety series. Although the scope of his talent was seldom tested over the years, he was a thoroughly enjoyable presence on all the popular TV shows of the 1970s and ’80s, including Fantasy Island(1977), Murder, She Wrote (1984), Charlie’s Angels (1976), and The Love Boat (1977). And he certainly wasn’t hard on the eyes.
Following the death of older brother Michael in 2003, Patrick became Chairman of the John Wayne Cancer Institute. Divorced in 1978 from Peggy Hunt, he is married (since 1999) to Misha Anderson.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
To view article on Patrick Wayne, please click here.
Earl Holliman was born in 1928 in Louisiana. His first film was “Scared Stiff” in 1953 starring Jerry Lewis and Dean Marin. He was featured in some major films of the 1950’s including “Broken Lance”, “Giant”, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral”, “Forbidden Planet” and “Hot Spell”. He starred with Andrew Prine in “The Wide Country” and with Angie Dickinson in “Police Woman”.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Louisiana-born actor Earl Holliman, after a stint in the Navy, studied at UCLA and the Pasadena Playhouse before earning his break in the Martin/Lewis comedy Scared Stiff(1953). He gained clout after portraying a variety of young, manly characters in rugged westerns and war drama, ranging from dim and/or good-natured to overly impulsive and/or threatening. He won a Golden Globe for his support performance as a girl-crazy brother in The Rainmaker (1956), holding his own against stars Burt Lancaster andKatharine Hepburn. He distinguished himself in a number of “A” grade films around the same time, including Broken Lance (1954) with Spencer Tracy, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral(1957), again with Lancaster, Giant (1956) with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, Visit to a Small Planet (1960), again with Jerry Lewis, Summer and Smoke (1961) withGeraldine Page and The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) with John Wayne.
When the film offers started drying up in the 60s, he found TV a more welcoming medium, scoring in a number of westerns. His virile stance was perfect for a series of crime yarns. It all culminated with a four-year stint as the macho partner to sexy Angie Dickinson in Police Woman (1974), a role that helped make him a household name. Holliman operated the Fiesta Dinner Theatre for many years in San Antonio, Texas.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
