Lisa Lu was born in China in 1927. In her teens she came to live in the U.S. In 1960 she starred opposite James Stewart in “The Mountain Road”.
Kieu ChinhLisa Lu
Other films include “Demon Seed” with Julie Christie, “Saint Jack” with Ben Gazzara and “The Jou Luck Club” in 1993 with France Nuyen and Tsai Chin.
TCM overview:
Attractive Chinese actress who landed several leading roles in American films in the early 1960s.
Lu played opposite James Stewart in the war adventure “The Mountain Road” (1960) and also acted major roles in “Rider on a Dead Horse” and “Woman Hunt” (both 1962).
When actor Kam Tong left his role as the “Hey Boy” on TV’s popular “Have Gun Will Travel” for a season, Lu filled in as the “Hey Girl”, who each week brought hired gun Paladin (Richard Boone) his next job.
Although Lu played fairly routine exotic roles in “Terror in the Wax Museum” (1973) and the short-lived TV series “Anna and the King” (1972, based on “The King and I”), she spent much of the 70s acting in Hong Kong and Taiwan, winning awards for films including “The Arch” (1970) and “The Empress Dowager” (1973).
The latter proved apt preparation for a similar role Lu played almost 15 years later in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Last Emperor” (1987).
Wayne Wang’s “The Joy Luck Club” (1993) also gave her a good role as a mother who tells her daughter stories over mah-jongg.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Mildred Natwick was born in 1905 in Baltimore. She had a prestigous stage career but also made many films and was featured in several John Ford movies most particularly “3 Godfathers” in 1948, “She Wore A Yellow Ribbon” and “The Quiet Man”. She was delightful as Grizelda in “The Court Jester” in 1956. ” The chalice from the place contains the brew that is true”. She was also seen to good effect in”Barefoot in the Park” with Robert Redford and JaneFonda in 1967. Her last fim was “Dangerous Liasions” in 1988. She died in 1994 at the age of 89.
“The Guardian” obituary:
Mildred Natwick, who has died aged 89, could have echoed the words of Widow Quin in The Playboy Of The Western World, the role she played on Broadway in 1946: “You’ll swear the Lord God formed me to be living lone.” For if the stage or screen required someone to portray an elderly widow, eccentric maiden aunt or fussy duenna, she fitted the bill perfectly.
Natwick, who never married, came from a wealthy Baltimore family, and studied at Bryn Mawr, the posh girls college in Philadelphia, where she was a senior at the time Katharine Hepburn was a junior. From the start of her professional career in New York, aged 24, Natwick usually played women older than herself. Her favourite stage roles included Proserpine Garnett in Shaw’s Candida; Madame Arcati, the dotty medium in Coward‘s Blythe Spirit; Volumnia in Coriolanus, and the wise-cracking widowed mother-in-law of Robert Redford (his last stage appearance) in Neil Simon’s Barefoot In The Park, a part she also played in London, and in the 1967 movie version, for which she was nominated for an Oscar.
Natwick made her film debut as an Irish prostitute in John Ford’s The Long Voyage Home in 1942. Ford cast her again as sturdy self-reliant women in Three Godfathers, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (both 1949) and The Quiet Man (1952). But it was Alfred Hitchcock who supplied her with a plum part in the black comedy, The Trouble With Harry (1955). Natwick is humorously quirky as Miss Gravely, the old maid who discovers the corpse of the title, and touching in her love for ageing sea captain Edmund Gwenn. Seeing Gwenn struggling to pull “Harry” along over rough ground, she comments heartlessly: “What seems to be the trouble, Captain?”
She is also a delight as convent-girl Lucille Bremer’s grotesquely over-refined Aunt Armarilla in Vincente Minnelli’s decorative fantasy,Yolanda And The Thief (1945). “You’ll love the blue room,” she enthuses to her niece. “But, Madame, you are quartered there,” says one of her servants. “You would have loved the blue room,” she coos regretfully.
But perhaps her most famous lines in the movies were her tongue-twisting instructions to Danny Kaye in The Court Jester (1956). “The chalice from the palace has the pellets with the poison; the vessel with the pestle, not the flagon with the dragon, has the brew that is true.”
Mildred Natwick celebrated her 83rd birthday during the shooting of Stephen Frears’s Dangerous Liaisons (1988), in which she gave a finely modulated performance as Valmont’s aunt, Madame de Rosemonde, at whose country estate much of the sexual intriguing takes place.
Mildred Natwick, born June 19, 1905; died October 25, 1994.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
A disarming character lady quite capable of scene-stealing, Mildred Natwick was a well-rounded talent with distinctively dowdy features and idiosyncratic tendencies who, over a six-decade period, assembled together a number of unforgettable matrons on stage and (eventually) film and TV. Whimsical, feisty, loony, stern, impish, shrewish, quizzical, scheming — she greatly enhanced both comedies and dramas and, thankfully, her off-centered greatness was captured perfectly on occasion by such film directors as John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Neil Simon.
A short, plumpish, oval-eyed figure with a unique flowery, honey-glazed voice, Natwick was born on June 19, 1905 (some sources list 1908) to Joseph (a businessman) and and Mildred Marion Dawes Natwick. The Baltimore native graduated from both the Bryn Mawr School (in Baltimore) and also from Bennett College in Dutchess County, N.Y., where she majored in drama. Breaking into the professional field touring on stage, Miss Natwick joined the Vagabonds in the late 1920s, a non-professional group from Baltimore. She later became part of the renowned University Players at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, whose rising performers at the time included Henry Fonda, Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart.
Natwick made her Broadway bow in the 1932 melodrama “Carry Nation,” directed byBlanche Yurka with Esther Dale in the title role. In the cast was Joshua Logan, whom she befriended and later corroborated with when he turned director. She then continued her momentum on 1930s Broadway with “Amourette” (1933), “Spring in Autumn” (1933), “The Wind and the Rain” (1934), “The Distaff Side” (1934) “End of Summer” (1936), “Love from a Stranger” (1936), “The Star-Wagon” (1937), “Missouri Legend” (1938), “Stars in Your Eyes” (1939) (directed by Logan), and “Christmas Eve” (1939).
Natwick did not come to films until middle age (35) with the John Ford classic The Long Voyage Home (1940), in which she played a Cockney floozie. Despite her fine work in this minor part, she did not make another film until her landlady role five years later in The Enchanted Cottage (1945) supporting Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young. Not a great beauty by Hollywood standards, Natwick learned quickly in Hollywood that if she were to succeed, it would be as a character performer. Ford himself picked up on her versatility and used her repeatedly in several of his post-war classics — 3 Godfathers (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and The Quiet Man (1952).
Preferring the theatre to movies, MIldred received her first Tony nomination for her sharp, astute work in Jean Anouilh‘s “Waltz of the Toredors” in 1957 and recreated her character in a TV special. She seemed to move effortlessly from the classics (“Medea,” “Coriolanus”) to chic comedy (“Ladies in Retirement,” “The Importance of Being Earnest”). Receiving great applause as the beleaguered, overly-winded mother in Neil Simon‘s “Barefoot in the Park” on Broadway in 1963, she transferred the role to film four years later. The cinematic Barefoot in the Park (1967) earned Mildred a well-deserved Oscar nomination for “best supporting actress”. She switched things up again with Harold Pinter‘s theatrical “Landscape,” and then again in 1971 when she made her debut in a singing role in the John Kander–Fred Ebb musical, “70, Girls, 70” (1971) in which she earned a second Tony nomination. Her last Broadway show came as a replacement in “Bedroom Farce” in 1979.
With only the slightest of gesture, look or tone of voice, Mildred’s characters could speak volumes and she became an essential character player during the 1970s as an offbeat friend, relative or elderly on TV and film. She was awarded the Emmy for her playing of one of The Snoop Sisters (1972)_ alongside the equally delightful Helen Hayes in the short-lived TV series. Both played impish Jessica Fletcher-type mystery writers who solve real crimes on the sly. She also played Rock Hudson‘s quirky mother in McMillan & Wife(1971) and a notable dying grandmother in a guest appearance of the critically-lauded TV series drama Family (1976). Her final film came with a small regal role as Madame de Rosemonde in Dangerous Liaisons (1988) with Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Never married, Mildred was called “Milly” by close friends and family and was the first cousin of Myron ‘Grim’ Natwick, the creator of Betty Boop for the Max Fleischer cartoon studio and prime animator for Disney’s Snow White character. She died of cancer at age 89 in New York City.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Piper Laurie was born in 1932 in Michigan. She won a contract to Universal Studios in the early 1950’s and made such films as “The Prince Who Was A Thief” with Tony Curtis, “Son if Ali Baba” also with Curtis in 1952. She gave a wonderfully realised performance opposite Paul Newman in “The Hustler”. She retired for a number of years to raise her daughter and came back in force as a character actress to be reckoned with in the 1970’s. She played Sissy Spacek’s mother in “Carrie”.
IMDB entry:
Piper Laurie was born Rosetta Jacobs in Detroit, Michigan, on January 22, 1932, to Charlotte Sadie (Alperin) and Alfred Jacobs, a furniture dealer. Her father was a Polish Jewish immigrant and her mother was of Russian Jewish descent. Her father moved the family to Los Angeles, California, when she was 6-years-old. Rosetta was a pretty red-haired little girl, but very shy, so her parents sent her to weekly elocution lessons. In addition to her lessons in Hebrew school, she studied acting at a local acting school, and this eventually led to work at Universal Studios.
Universal had signed her as a contract player when she was only 17-years-old, and changed her screen name to Piper Laurie. She was cast in the movie, Louisa (1950), and became very close friends with her costar, Ronald Reagan. She was then cast in Francis Goes to the Races (1951) with Donald O’Connor, Son of Ali Baba (1952) with Tony Curtis, and Ain’t Misbehavin’ (1955) with Rory Calhoun. The studio tried to enhance her image as an ingénue with press releases stating that she took milk baths and ate gardenia petals for lunch. Although she was making $2,000 per week, her lack of any substantial roles discouraged her so much that by 1955 when she received another script for a Western and “another silly part in a silly movie”, she dropped the script in the fireplace, called her agent and told him she didn’t care if they fired her, jailed her or sued her.
From there, she went to New York City to study acting, and worked on live television, starring in The Hallmark Hall of Fame version of “Twelfth Night” (1957), “The Days of Wine and Roses” (1958) with Cliff Robertson, which debuted on Playhouse 90 on October 2, and as “Kirsten” in the Playhouse 90 version of “Winterset” (1959). In 1961, she got the part of Paul Newman‘s crippled girlfriend in the classic film, The Hustler (1961). She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for that role of “Sarah Packard”. That same year, she was interviewed by a writer/reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, Joe Morgenstern. She liked his casual dress and lifestyle and, 9 months later, they were married. When she did not receive any substantial acting offers after The Hustler (1961), she retreated with her husband to Woodstock, New York, where she pursued domestic activities such as baking (her grandfather’s trade) and raising her only daughter, Anne, born in 1971. In 1976, she accepted the role of “Margaret White”, the eccentric religious zealot mother of a shy young psychic girl named Carrie (1976), played by Sissy Spacek. Piper received her second supporting Oscar nomination for this role. She and her husband divorced in 1981, she moved to Southern California and obtained many film and television roles.
She got a third Oscar nomination for her role as “Mrs. Norman” in Children of a Lesser God (1986), and won an Emmy that same year for her acting in Promise (1986), a television movie with James Garner and James Woods. She has appeared in more than 60 films, from 1950 to the present. Ms. Laurie has appeared in many outstanding television shows from “The Best of Broadway” in 1954, to roles on “Playhouse 90” in 1956, roles on St. Elsewhere (1982), Murder, She Wrote (1984), Matlock (1986), Beauty and the Beast (1987), ER (1994), Diagnosis Murder (1993) and Frasier (1993). Her daughter, Anne Grace, has made her a grandmother, and though she lives in Southern California, she frequently visits her daughter in New York.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: garyrick96@hotmail.com
Piper Laurie passed away in October 2023 at the age of 91.
The above iMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Variety obituary in October 2023:
Piper Laurie, who blossomed as an actress only after extricating herself from the studio system and went on to rack up three Oscar nominations, has died. She was 91.
Laurie’s manager Marion Rosenberg confirmed the news to Variety, writing, “A beautiful human being and one of the great talents of our time.”
Laurie scored her first Oscar nomination for her work opposite Paul Newman in 1961’s classic poolhall drama “The Hustler,” in which she played an alcoholic who memorably tells Newman’s character, “Look, I’ve got troubles and I think maybe you’ve got troubles. Maybe it’d be better if we just leave each other alone.”
Though she informally retired to raise a family for more than a decade, she returned to film and television in the mid-’70s and racked up an impressive roster of characterizations, including Oscar-nominated turns in “Carrie” and in “Children of a Lesser God,” in which she played Marlee Matlin’s icy mother. Laurie was truly chilling in “Carrie,” as the mother of the shy telekinetic girl of the title who has, in the words of Roger Ebert, “translated her own psychotic fear of sexuality into a twisted personal religion.”
Her performance as the plotting, power-hungry Catherine Martell in David Lynch’s landmark TV series “Twin Peaks” brought her two of her nine Emmy nominations. The actress won her only Emmy for her role in the powerful 1986 “Hallmark Hall of Fame” entry “Promises,” in which James Wood starred as a schizophrenic and James Garner as his brother, with Laurie’s character offering help to the pair.
She scored her last Emmy nomination in 1999 for a guest role on sitcom “Frasier” in which she played the mother of a radio psychologist played by Christine Baranski and clearly modeled after Dr. Laura Schlessinger.
The actress negotiated herself out of her contract with Universal in the mid-’50s after a series of ingenue roles in mediocre films and turned in an impressive supporting performance in Robert Wise’s “Until They Sail” (1957), with Jean Simmons, Paul Newman and Joan Fontaine.
She then headed east; in New York she appeared in television productions of “Twelfth Night” and “Caesar and Cleopatra.” She picked up Emmy nominations for original drama “The Deaf Heart” on “Studio One in Hollywood” and “Days of Wine and Roses” with Cliff Robertson on “Playhouse 90.” Director Robert Rossen spotted her working at the Actors Studio and offered her the role of the crippled alcoholic Sarah Packard in the drama “The Hustler,” which brought her an Oscar nomination as best actress in 1961.
Soon thereafter she married writer Joseph Morgenstern, later a film critic, and left show business to start a family, living in Woodstock, N.Y.
By the mid-’70s she was ready to work again and appeared in a Broadway revival of “The Glass Menagerie” and in an episode of PBS’ “Nova” science series as pioneer family planning champion Margaret Sanger.
Laurie took Brian De Palma’s “Carrie” almost as a lark. But her tongue-in-cheek but terrifying performance in the horror film brought her a second Oscar nomination in the supporting category. She followed that up with an Australian drama “Tim,” starring a young Mel Gibson, as well as films including “Ruby,” “The Boss’s Son” and “Return to Oz.”
She also began regular work on television in such TV movies as “In the Matter of Karen Ann Quinlan”; the Judy Garland biography “Rainbow”; 1981’s “The Bunker,” in which she played Magda Goebbels to Anthony Hopkins’ Hitler, drawing an Emmy nomination; “The Thorn Birds,” which brought her another Emmy nom; and 1986’s “Promise,” for which she won an Emmy for supporting actress. She was also guesting on TV series, picking an Emmy nom in 1984 for her work on “St. Elsewhere.”
Bigscreen work during the late ’80s and ’90s included “Appointment With Death,” “Other People’s Money,” “Wrestling Ernest Hemingway,” “Storyville,” “Rich in Love,” and “The Crossing Guard.” In the well-regarded period dramedy “The Grass Harp,” she reunited with her “Carrie” co-star Sissy Spacek but this time played her sister (they also both appeared in the 2001 telepic “Midwives”).
In the 1990s and 2000s she guested on the likes of “ER,” “Diagnosis Murder,” “Touched by an Angel,” “Will and Grace” and “Law and Order: SVU.” She appeared steadily in a series of telepics.
Her last film appearances included “Eulogy” (2004), in which she stood out as the matriarch of a dysfunctional family; “The Dead Girl,” in which she played another cruel mother, this one bed-ridden; “Hounddog,” as the stern grandmother of rape victim Dakota Fanning; and “Hesher,” in which she memorably shared a bong with the stranger, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who insinuates himself into her household.
Born Rosetta Jacobs in Detroit on Jan. 22, 1932, she was plucked out of Los Angeles High School at age 17 and signed to a Universal contract for $250 a week, which would run up to $1,750 a week after seven years.
She made her debut as Ronald Reagan’s daughter in the 1950 film “Louisa” and then went on to star in a series of undistinguished comedies and musicals, including a foray into the Francis the talking mule series called “Francis Goes to the Races.” As an ingenue she was the love interest of such up-and-comers as Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson and established stars including Tyrone Power and Victor Mature.
Among the early forgettable films were “Johnny Dark,” “Dangerous Mission,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “No Room for the Groom.”
“I hated what I was doing,” she later told a journalist. But she also admitted that the regular work helped her develop and move on to more gratifying projects.
Laurie and Morgenstern divorced in 1981. She is survived by a daughter, Anne Grace
Lois NettletonCome Fly With Me, poster, US poster, Pamela Tiffin, Dolores Hart, Lois Nettleton, Hugh O’Brian, Karl Bohm, Karl Malden, 1963. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Lois Nettleton was born in 1927 in Illinois. Her career was maninly on television although she made some interesting films such as”Period of Adjustment” with Jane Fonda in 1962 “Mail Order Bride” in 1964 and “Come Fly With Me” with Dolores Hart & Karl Malden. Lois Nettleton died at the age of 80 in 2008.
TCM Overview:
An actress renowned within Hollywood circles, but who has never connected on successful TV series or become more of a “Don’t I know you?”, Lois Nettleton has appeared in regular roles in several series and been featured in movies. She may be best recalled for guest appearances on top TV series: such as when she played the station manager with the hots for Lou Grant on an episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (CBS), or Dorothy’s lesbian friend who falls for Rose on an episode of “The Golden Girls” (NBC). Nettleton, whose appearance can come across as fraught, anxious, or strong, studied at the Goodman Theatre in her native Chicago and at the Actors Studio in New York. She made her Broadway debut in 1949 in “The Biggest Thief in Town” and understudied Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie in Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1955). She made her TV debut while still a New York stage actor in anthology series produced there as well as on the soap opera “The Brighter Day” (1954). Nettleton won attention after starring on Broadway in “God and Kate Murphy” (1959), which led to her first feature film of significance, “Period of Adjustment” (1962), in which she was in a troubled marriage with Anthony Franciosa. Along with Delores Hart, she was a flight attendant who falls in love on a TransAtlantic flight in “Come Fly With Me” (1963). To satisfy his late father’s wishes, Keir Dullea married a widowed Nettleton in “Mail Order Bride” (1964). Additionally, she played a schoolmarm with surprise sexuality in “Dirty Dingus McGee” (1970). Nevertheless in the last two decades, film roles became sporadic. Nettleton was in support of Maximilian Schell in “The Man in the Glass Booth” (1975) and oddly cast as the hard-working but under-loved Dulcie Mae in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” (1982), proving she was incapable of giving a bad performance. By 1994, Nettleton’s feature film canon included such lesser efforts as “Mirror Mirror 2: Raven Dancer,” a low-budget effort in which she was the evil sister.
The small screen has provided more ongoing opportunities. Among Nettleton’s early roles was that of Lucille (played by June Lockhart in the feature) in CBS’ adaptation of “Meet Me In St. Louis” (1959). Her first primetime series was the forgotten “An Accidental Family” (NBC, 1967), in which she was neighbor to the widowed Jerry Van Dyke and Nettleton seemed to relish her role as the cheating executive married to mousy “housefrau” Chuck McCann in the gender-switching late-night comic serial “All That Glitters” (syndicated, 1977). She played the wife of an unscrupulous Anthony Zerbe in “Centennial” (NBC, 1978) and was a scatterbrained Penny Sycamore in the 1987 syndicated series version of the stage classic “You Can’t Take It With You”. She also spent a year (1988-89) opposite Carroll O’Connor on the CBS drama “In the Heat of the Night”.
Nettleton’s work in TV longforms began with “Any Second Now” (ABC, 1969), in which she was a photographer’s rich wife who loses her memory–and along with it the knowledge that her husband has tried to kill her. Her subsequent TV movies and miniseries have included “Washington: Behind Closed Doors” (ABC, 1977), and a turn as a blacklisted actress (based on real-life Kim Hunter) in the 1975 CBS effort, “Fear on Trial”. From 1996 to February 1998, she had the recurring role of Virginia Benson, the adoptive mother of troublemaker Carly (Emmy-winner Sarah Brown), on the ABC daytime drama “General Hospital”.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Jane Rusell was born in Minnesota in 1921. She was under contract to Howard Hughes and made her film debut with the widely publicised “The Outlaw” which was released in 1946. Over the next dozen years she starred opposite the most popular leading men of the period including Clark Gable, Robert Mitchum, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Richard Egan and Cornel Wilde. Her more popular films include “The Revolt of Mamie Stover”, “The Paleface”, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and “The Tall Men”. She died in 2011.
Mark Cousin’s obituary in “The Guardian”:
The actor Jane Russell, who has died aged 89, was among the most desired women of the 20th century. She had great erotic force and great likability. Russell made just over 20 films, but only a handful of those are remembered: her first film, The Outlaw (1943); the comedy western The Paleface (1948), with Bob Hope; and the musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), co-starring Marilyn Monroe.
The Outlaw, produced by Howard Hughes, was famously promoted with a series of publicity stills showing Russell lying in the hay, and bending down to pick up bales. The experience made her savvy about the vulgarity of the film industry. Her breasts were less covered and more fetishised, lit, photographed, designed and dreamed about than any woman’s in the cinema had been until that time. Hughes even designed a special bra for her to wear in the film (although she chose not to use it). On the film’s much-delayed nationwide release, it was denounced by the church. Surprisingly Russell, a devout Christian since childhood, was unperturbed. Later she would become one of the most regular church attenders in Hollywood and tried to convert Monroe, who went along to one service but said afterwards that it wasn’t her thing.
Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was born in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her mother was an actor who became a lay preacher. Her father was an office manager whose family came from Inverness. At a young age, Russell moved to the San Fernando Valley in southern California with her parents. She was brought up on a ranch, with four brothers, horses and fruit trees. From the beginning she was a tomboy, preferring a plaid shirt and jeans to dresses; the theme of getting out of trousers and into something slinky, or vice versa, turned up in her more personal films, such as The French Line (1953) and The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown (1957).
Throughout her life Russell hated what she saw as feminine fussiness. She felt that women should be treated the same as men – no special privileges – yet insisted that she was in no way a feminist. “A man should be the head of the household,” she once told me, “and a woman should be the heart.”
In 1940, a nationwide search by Hughes for a new, voluptuous actress took Russell to Hollywood. She screen-tested, liked what she saw – Hughes and the director Howard Hawks photographed her from above the eyeline, in a way that minimised her solid jawline – and got the part of Rio McDonald, an Irish-Mexican girl caught in a Freudian love triangle between Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday, in The Outlaw.
After the agonising humourlessness of working with Hughes (who was obsessed with her and tried to sleep with her), it was a great relief to Russell to do a comedy, The Paleface, in which she played Calamity Jane. She loved the quick pace of the filming, was delightfully droll with her annihilating put-downs, and she and Hope became lifelong friends. It was he who cracked one of the famous jokes about her, introducing her as “the two and only Miss Russell”.
She was next teamed with Robert Mitchum for two RKO films, His Kind of Woman (1951), in which she was entrancing, singing Five Little Miles from San Burdoo, and Macao (1952). He called her “Iron John”, and she said that they were like brother and sister. Their shared dark good looks and big boned-ness made them appear alike.
Russell starred again with Hope in a sequel, Son of Paleface (1952), and also made another western, Montana Belle (1952). Her next important film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, based on the novel by Anita Loos, still dazzles because of the sisterliness of the friendship between Monroe and Russell, playing the showgirls Lorelei Lee and Dorothy Shaw respectively. They were, as the song put it, “just two little girls from Little Rock”. Russell’s performance is particularly generous and women loved her for it. Her song Ain’t There Anyone Here for Love?, performed in a gymnasium against a backdrop of dancing athletes, gained her a large gay following. She later starred in Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1955), based on another novel by Loos.
In 1943 Russell had married the American football player Bob Waterfield. As the result of an illegal abortion, she was unable to have children. The couple adopted an Irish boy, Thomas, and she became a campaigner for adoption, lobbying for the rights of Americans to adopt children from overseas. They later adopted another son, Robert, and a daughter, Tracy. In 1954, she and Waterfield set up an independent production company, Russ-Field. She read scripts, worked hard and her subsequent films were intelligent. The Tall Men (1955) with Clark Gable was one of the best of her nine westerns, and in the proto-feminist The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956) she played a prostitute fighting her way.
In the delightful comedy The Fuzzy Pink Nightgown, Russell played a movie star who is abducted, grows to like her kidnappers, swaps dresses for jeans and a plaid shirt and says lines such as “That splendid career of mine? Don’t mix me up with the girl in the movies … all that’s only make-believe.” Those in the know could see how personal it was, and how sardonic its comments were on Hollywood. The film flopped, Russell got fewer offers, turned down some good films, had an affair, started seeing a psychiatrist and closed down Russ-Field. She and Waterfield divorced and, in 1968, she married the actor Roger Barnett. Just three months after the wedding, he died.
The film industry had changed and Russell felt that she had been left behind. She started drinking and was briefly imprisoned for drink-driving. In the 70s, she also started to appear in Playtex bra advertisements on television, once more becoming a household name. She married her third husband, John Peoples, in 1974.
I got to know her in the late 90s when she and John came to Scotland. She was exactly as Mitchum described her: no-nonsense and down to earth. She did her make-up in five minutes, laughed a lot and was unforgettably generous with her time and stories. My first glimpse of her was in her hotel – no make-up, shower-cap over her head. She visited Edinburgh Castle and took a train to Inverness to see where her relatives came from. Over dinner she would talk about Mitchum and the director Raoul Walsh, and John, a Texan vegetarian, would tell stories of barbecues on the White House lawn for presidents. They were both fervently anti-Clinton Republicans and her last words to my girlfriend were “get married”. Russell came to our home, drank iced tea and left her shocking pink lipstick on the glass, which I still have, unwashed.
Russell said that in the whole of her movie career she had had little creative satisfaction. She always worked with macho film-makers and wished she had worked with a “woman’s director” such as George Cukor. When John died in 1999, she was on her own again. I asked her once how often she was happy. She replied: “Sometimes life is a valley of tears and sometimes it’s the top of the mountain.” How often the top of the mountain? “Oh, often, very often.”
She is survived by Thomas, Tracy and Robert, and her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
• Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell, actor, born 21 June 1921; died 28 February 2011
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
THE FRENCH LINE, US poster art, Jane Russell, 1954
Dorothy Provine was born in 1935 in South Dakota. On television in 1959 she starred in “The Alaskans” with Roger Moore in 1959 and “The Roaring Twenties”. She had a profilic movie career throughout the 1960’s and made “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”, “Good Neighbour Sam” with Jack Lemmon and Romy Schneider in 1964, “The Great Race” and “Never A Dull Moment”. On her marriage to director Robert Day in 1968, she practically retired and moved to live in the state of Washington where she died in 2010 at the age of 75.
“Guardian” obituary:
Although her career in films and television ended about 40 years ago, there are still viewers who cherish the memory of the perky blonde singer, dancer and actor Dorothy Provine, who has died of emphysema aged 75. Most memorable was her vibrant performance as Pinky Pinkham, the charleston-dancing flapper in the TV series The Roaring 20s (1960-62). Provine was in all 45 episodes of the series, which was set in Chicago and revolved around the speakeasy where Pinky performed to an audience that inevitably consisted of racketeers. According to Time magazine in May 1961: “It is Dorothy’s oooohing and shimmying that have kept the series afloat.”
Provine had incited much oooohing herself in the title role of The Bonnie Parker Story (1958), a gritty, unglamorised, low-budget depiction of the two-person crime wave during the Depression, released nine years before Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde made the duo world-famous. Provine’s feisty portrayal (in her feature film debut) of the gun-toting criminal who linked up with Clyde Barrow (thinly disguised here as Guy Barrow to protect his family, who were still alive), seemed to promise a film career on a par with her more buxom blonde contemporaries, Mamie Van Doren and Jayne Mansfield, the sort that gentlemen preferred in the late 1950s. (Marilyn Monroe, of course, was hors concours.) But Provine, for all her physical attributes and several sexy roles, could not conceal her girl-next-door persona, which gradually emerged in the mid-60s.
Provine was born in Deadwood, South Dakota, but was brought up in Seattle, where her parents ran a nightclub. She graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in theatre arts in 1957. After only a few appearances in amateur productions of musicals, she was spotted by a Hollywood talent scout and given the lead in The Bonnie Parker Story.
Despite her good notices, Provine was offered only two B-movies in 1959: Riot in Juvenile Prison and The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock, their come-hither titles promising more than they delivered. In the former, the 24-year-old Provine played a juvenile delinquent, one of a number of young women introduced into a male prison that had been made co-ed by a liberal governor. The mildly amusing latter film had Provine accidentally turned into the giant of the title by the inventor Lou Costello (in his last film).
At the same time, Provine was a regular on TV, gaining her first series, The Alaskans (1959-60), set during the Yukon goldrush of the 1890s, in which she played a saloon owner and singer called Rocky Shaw who has attracted an adventurer, Roger Moore. The onscreen romance reflected the fact that Moore had fallen for Provine in real life, which almost caused a rift between him and his wife, Dorothy Squires. Frank Sinatra then dated her for a while, but there was no question of marriage as the Catholic Provine would not wed an already twice-divorced man.
In her biggest hit, The Roaring 20s, she delightfully sang at least one vintage number in each episode, and she also had a top 20 hit in the UK with one example, Don’t Bring Lulu, in 1961. Provine was cast as the cool wife of the put-upon Milton Berle in Stanley Kramer’s mammoth homage to slapstick comedy, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), in which she is the only one of the avaricious group hunting the $350,000 of stolen cash who wants no part of the fought-over money.
Provine then played what could be called “a good sport” in half a dozen comedy films, the sort that Ethan Coen felt “had a very weird, wooden aesthetic that nobody’s interested in any more”, but which he loved as a child. These included the tame but entertaining sex farce Good Neighbour Sam (1964), in which she co-starred with Jack Lemmon as his suburban wife; That Darn Cat! (1965), a Walt Disney movie in which she and the cleancut Dean Jones were upstaged by the feline of the title; Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die (1966), a contrived James Bond pastiche with Provine as an English spy; Who’s Minding the Mint? (1967), as the girlfriend of Jim Hutton’s US mint employee; and the riskily titled Never a Dull Moment (1968), opposite Dick Van Dyke. In between, she made a terrific cameo appearance in The Great Race (1965), singing, in a saloon again, He Shouldn’t-a, Hadn’t-a, Oughtn’t-a Swang On Me!
It was while making Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die in Brazil that she met the English-born director Robert Day, who was shooting Tarzan and the Great River there. Despite her previous qualms about divorced men – Day gained a divorce on the grounds of adultery with Provine – the couple married in 1968, and she retired from show business, appearing in only three TV shows in the 1970s.
She is survived by her husband and son, also called Robert, and her sisters Patricia and Susan.
• Michele Dorothy Provine, actor and singer, born 20 January 1935; died 25 April 2010
The above “Guardian” obituary can also beaccessed online here.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Flashy, leggy, bouffant blonde Dorothy Provine was a solid screen representation of the Kennedyesque era — when life seemed so full of fun, so innocent and so optimistic. This sparkling beauty also gave TV audiences a double dose blast to the past via her popular co-starring roles on late 50s/early 60s series TV. A talented girl whose comedic gifts were never sufficiently tapped into by Hollywood, Dorothy nevertheless secured a dedicated fan base merely on her sunny smile, creamy good looks and carefree radiance alone.
Graduating from the University of Washington with a degree in Theater Arts. Hollywood folklore has it that the South Dakota-born (but raised in San Francisco) actress landed the role of the notorious femme bank robber in the low-budget “B” film The Bonnie Parker Story (1958) just three days after arriving in Hollywood. It certainly proved to be a lucky break, although it didn’t clinch the movie stardom she might have expected. On the contrary, Dorothy was forced to languish in such predicable programmers as Riot in Juvenile Prison (1959) and Live Fast, Die Young (1958), while playing the gigantic, radiation-exposed love interest in the poorly-executed The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock(1959) opposite rolypoly comedian Lou Costello in his only film effort after breaking up with partner Bud Abbott. Fortunately, TV made up for her lack of success on film.
Signed up by Warner Bros. and seemingly better suited for the small screen, Dorothy became one of the more visible female faces on TV and would be best remembered for her period roles as 1890s saloon singer Rocky Shaw, the friend of “Gold Rush” fortune seekers Roger Moore and Jeff York in The Alaskans (1959) and, better yet, as Pinky Pinkham, the Charleston-dancing flapper in the Warner Bros. adventure series The Roaring 20’s (1960).
A vivacious guest on scores of other TV shows, Dorothy occasionally reappeared in lightweight 1960s films wherein she generally projected a squeaky-clean image playing various sparkly housewives, girlfriends and sisters. She was part of the all-star zaniness in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) as Milton Berle‘s wife; appeared as Jack Lemmon‘s bright-eyed better half in the suburban comedy Good Neighbor Sam (1964); played Hayley Mills‘s beleaguered older sis in the feline caper That Darn Cat! (1965); had a slam-bang cameo as Lily Olay the barroom singer who belts out the memorable “He Shouldn’t-A, Hadn’t-A, Oughtn’t-A Swang on Me” in the slapstick farce The Great Race(1965); showed up as the true-blue gal pining for Jim Hutton in the bank heist comedyWho’s Minding the Mint? (1967); and made her last silver screen appearance alongsideDick Van Dyke_ in the comedy Never a Dull Moment (1968), which did not live up to its title.
During this time Dorothy occasionally made use of her vocal talents on the live stage, and appeared briefly as a duo with George Burns in a 1963 Las Vegas nightclub act, replacing Burns’ ailing wife Gracie Allen, who by this time had fully retired due to serious heart problems. Eventually, however, she lost interest in her career.
Dorothy abruptly left the business in 1969 after marrying director Robert Day, who was involved in several of the Tarzan movies. She showed up a couple of times on TV in the 70s but, for the most part, found her self-imposed retirement completely to her liking. The couple moved permanently to Bainbridge Island, Washington in 1981, and there she found contentment simply gardening and tending to her animals. They had one son,Robert Day Jr., who became a musician. Dorothy battled emphysema in her last years and died at a nearby hospice on April 25, 2010, at age 75.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.ne
Diana Muldaur has had a very profilic television career with the occasional film. She was born in New York City in 1938. Her films include “The Swimmer” with Burt Lancaster in 1968,”Numbaer One” with Charlton Heston and Jessica Walter, “The Lawyer” with Barry Newman and “One More Train to Rob” with George Peppard and France Nuyen in 1971, She has also starred in the “Star Trek” series on TV.
TCM Overview:
Mature, intelligent actress whose wide TV experience ranges from the jungle adventure “Born Free” to “The Tony Randall Show” to “Star Trek” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation”. Muldaur’s refined features, well-modulated alto voice and characteristic serenity have lent both a relaxed charm and moral fiber to her characters, though her work as bitchy lawyer Rosalind Shays on “L.A. Law” suggests another, largely untapped dimension. Despite several decades of work, Muldaur is best remembered by many as Sam’s placid, witty girlfriend Chris on the long-running series “McCloud”. Muldaur’s first husband, actor James Mitchell Vickery, died in 1979.
Kathryn GraysonKathryn Grayson That Midnight Kiss, poster, US poster, Kathryn Grayson, Mario Lanza, 1949. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Howard Keel & Kathryn Grayson Poster Characters: Fred Graham Petruchio & Film: Kiss Me Kate 1950 Director: George Sidney 26 November 1953 PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: MaryxEvansxAFxArchive 12077019 editorial use only
Kathryn Grayson was born in 1922 in North Carolina. She appeared in many of the great MGM musicals including “Anchors Aweigh” in 1945, “Showboat” in 1951 , “Kiss Me Kate” and “The Vagabond King” She died in 2010.
Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:
When coloratura soprano Kathryn Grayson, who has died aged 88, sang five songs, including an aria from La Traviata, in MGM’s all-star patriotic parade, Thousands Cheer (1943), she began her 10-year reign as the prima donna of Hollywood. With her china-doll features, little turned-up nose and patrician manner, Grayson raised the tone of more than a dozen musicals. Although opera managers did not beat a path to her door, her clear, slightly shrill, small voice carried well on film in popular classics and operatic scenes.
Her classical training led her not to the opera house, but to the radio, in particular The Eddie Cantor Show, on which she was discovered by an MGM talent scout at the age of 18 in 1940. In the same year, she married the minor film actor John Shelton.
In her first film, Grayson, who was born Zelma Hedrick in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, played the title role opposite Mickey Rooney in Andy Hardy’s Private Secretary (1941), in which she sang Johann Strauss’s Voices of Spring prettily. The following year, loaned out to RKO, she chirped a few songs in Rio Rita, a vehicle for Abbott and Costello. At MGM, she was the charming juvenile lead in Seven Sweethearts and The Vanishing Virginian, both directed by Frank Borzage. However, her career, like her voice, hit the heights with Thousands Cheer (1943), in which Grayson, in uniform, lifted wartime audiences’ spirits by singing The United Nations March, with music by Dmitri Shostakovich.
The Hungarian-born producer Joe Pasternak, who had been the mentor of teenage canary Deanna Durbin at Universal, and had a taste for well-scrubbed nubile sopranos, now found a new protege in Grayson. He produced seven of her musicals, in which he attempted to bring a whiff of the concert hall and the opera house – and to spread mittel-European schmaltz – into mittel-America.
In Anchors Aweigh (1945), she spent more than two hours trying to get a singing audition with José Iturbi, helped by sailors Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, both in love with her. Grayson made two further films with Sinatra: It Happened in Brooklyn (1947), in which the pair deliver an ill-conceived rendition of Là Ci Darem la Mano from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and the dismal The Kissing Bandit (1948), enlivened by her rendition of Love Is Where You Find It.
In Vincente Minnelli’s kitschy finale from Ziegfeld Follies (1945), she sings There’s Beauty Everywhere against a background of huge rocks, nymphs and mammoth bubbles. Two Sisters from Boston (1946) found her singing at the Metropolitan Opera with the great Danish heldentenor Lauritz Melchior (without a rehearsal) in a meaningless mish-mash of an opera based on themes by Mendelssohn and Liszt.
It was inevitable that the petite Grayson would be paired with the beefy and strident tenor Mario Lanza in That Midnight Kiss (1949) and The Toast of New Orleans (1950). They got to sing a number of operatic love duets together, but Grayson refused to work with Lanza again because of his boorish behaviour.
Thereafter, Grayson found her best partner in the virile baritone Howard Keel. In Show Boat (1951), the first of their three musicals together, she was perfectly cast as Magnolia, who falls for gambler Keel. Her finest moments were a joyous reprise of Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man of Mine, and when, at a New Year’s party, after her small voice singing After the Ball has failed to penetrate the noisy crowd, her father (Joe E Brown) stills them and encourages her to sing up, which she does touchingly.
By this time, Grayson had divorced Shelton (in 1946) and was about to divorce the crooner Johnnie Johnston (in 1951). She had a daughter, Patricia, with the latter, who “was too much of a golf fiend and party man”, whereas Grayson was a homebody. With her new-found freedom, Grayson unwisely left MGM after Lovely to Look At (1952), also with Keel, for a four-picture contract with Warners. Her reason was that she wanted to do concert and television work, which MGM would not allow her to do. However, the Warner Bros contract was terminated after two mediocre vehicles, The Desert Song (1953) and So This Is Love (1953), in the latter of which she made a fine attempt to play Grace Moore, the opera and film star of the 30s.
Grayson returned to her old studio in triumph in Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate (1953), proving that she had more fun in her than she had previously been permitted to reveal, especially when letting her hair down in the number I Hate Men. She also matches Keel in two lyrical duets, So in Love and Wunderbar. But the kissing for Grayson had to stop when, after one further film, the undistinguished The Vagabond King (1956), she retired from the cinema and appeared only in nightclubs and on stage. She replaced Julie Andrews as Guenevere in the original Broadway production of Camelot (1962), as well as touring in other musicals including Show Boat and Kiss Me Kate. In the 1980s, much to the delight of many faithful fans, she toured Britain in her one-woman show, An Evening With Kathryn Grayson, with her figure much enlarged and her voice only slightly diminished. She is survived by her daughter.
• Zelma Kathryn Elisabeth Grayson, actor and singer, born 9 February 1922; died 17 February 2010
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Efrem Zimbalist Jr was born in 1918 in New York City, the son of the famous violinist Efrem Zimbalist and opera singer Alma Gluck. He is most famous for two recurring roles on television in “77 Sunset Strip” from 1958 until 1964 and then “The F.B.I.” from 1965 until 1974. His films include “A Faver in the Blood” with Angie Dickinson, “Home Before Dark” with Jean Simmons, “The Crowded Sky” with Rhonda Fleming and Troy Donahue in 1960 and “Cab to Canada” with Maureen O’Hara. His most recent film is “The Delivery” in 2008. His daughter is the actress Stephanie Zimbalist. He died in 2014.
His “Guardian” obituary:
It would have been difficult to predict, when Efrem Zimbalist Jr was growing up in New York, the son of the concert violinist Efrem Zimbalist and the opera singer Alma Gluck, surrounded by leading lights in the arts world, that his main claim to fame later in life would be playing a private investigator in the television series 77 Sunset Strip and a police inspector in The FBI.
Zimbalist, who has died aged 95, had been acting professionally since 1945, and had already appeared in eight feature films, without having made much impact, when he was cast as the private eye Stu Bailey in 77 Sunset Strip in 1958. It ran for six years, and Zimbalist became a household name.
He was cool and smart as Bailey, an Ivy Leaguer with a background in second world war intelligence who set up his own detective agency in Los Angeles. His younger partner was Jeff Spencer (Roger Smith), and they were often helped by a young, finger-snapping, slang-talking parking lot attendant called Kookie (Edd Byrnes). Byrnes made a record, Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb), that was a transatlantic hit and spawned a catchphrase. The 77 Sunset Strip show was considered to be one of the most swinging on television in the late 1950s and early 60s.
Zimbalist was born in New York, grew up on an estate in the Connecticut countryside and received an expensive education in New England. His mother, born in Romania as Reba Feinsohn, sang at the Metropolitan Opera, and was one of the first singers to make records. His father, the Russian-born virtuoso, did much to revive interest in early violin music, and became director of the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia.
Zimbalist Jr trained at the Yale School of Drama (from which he was expelled for bad grades) and the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. He then enlisted in the army and during service in Europe was wounded and received the Purple Heart. After the war, the director and writer Garson Kanin, a friend of the family, gave Zimbalist his first professional role in his Broadway production of Robert E Sherwood’s The Rugged Path (1945), which starred Spencer Tracy.
He continued to act on the Broadway stage with the American Repertory Theatre. His roles in ascending order were a Roman soldier in George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion (1946); The Duke of Suffolk in Shakespeare’s Henry VIII (1946); and Eilert Lovborg in Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (1948), with Eva Le Gallienne in the title role, and Zimbalist’s wife, Emily McNair, as Thea Elvsted. In 1949, he was cast as one of the four sons (the cruellest) of a ruthless businessman (Edward G Robinson) in Joseph L Mankiewicz’s film noir House of Strangers. In the meantime, Zimbalist had produced a double bill of Gian Carlo Menotti operas, The Medium and The Telephone, on Broadway. Its critical and surprising commercial success led to his following it up with Menotti’s The Consul (1950), which won the New York Drama Critics’ award and the Pulitzer prize for the best musical in 1950.
But his joy was short-lived. His wife died of cancer in the same year, leaving their two children, Efrem and Nancy. Making an abrupt decision to abandon acting, he served as assistant director/researcher to his father at the Curtis Institute of Music.
He returned to acting in 1954, in a daytime television soap called Concerning Miss Marlowe, and to Broadway in 1956, in Noël Coward’s Fallen Angels, in which he played the seductive Frenchman Maurice Duclos. In the same year, he married Stephanie Spaulding, and, thanks to the director Joshua Logan, gained a contract with Warner Bros, which exploited his good looks and suave, though rather bland, personality in secondary roles.
He was a southern officer in Band of Angels (1957), which starred Clark Gable andYvonne De Carlo; a playboy army flyer wooing Natalie Wood in Bombers B-52 (1957); and in uniform again on a second world war cruiser in The Deep Six (1958), with Alan Ladd. In Home Before Dark (1958), with Jean Simmons as a psychiatric patient, he was a gentle pipe-smoking professor who faces antisemitism. It remained his favourite screen role. More significant, however, was Girl on the Run (1958), which served as a pilot for 77 Sunset Strip. “I didn’t want to do television, but it was in my contract,” Zimbalist recalled. “I had a horror of being stuck in some series and never being heard from again. But Jack Warner said, ‘Look, television is the business today. Don’t worry. We’ll keep an eye on you. We won’t let that happen.'”
While playing Bailey, Zimbalist found time to appear in several more films. On loan to Columbia, he was Lana Turner’s illicit lover in the lurid melodrama By Love Possessed (1961). He was a political hopeful in A Fever in the Blood (1961), opposite Angie Dickinson – one of his few leads, Warners hoping to cash in on his TV fame – and a sex therapist in George Cukor’s The Chapman Report (1962).
In 1965 he landed another plum TV role in The FBI, and remained in the series for nine years. As Inspector Lew Erskine he tracked down all sorts of criminals – rapists, terrorists and serial killers – before, at the end of the show, stepping out of character and giving a report of real criminals and fugitives wanted by the FBI.
In the meantime, Zimbalist continued in a few films, such as Wait Until Dark (1967), as the husband of a blind woman (Audrey Hepburn), who is terrorised in their apartment during his absence. He played a blinded pilot in Airport 1975 and, much later, lampooned his FBI image in Hot Shots! (1991). However, he was mainly seen in TV movies and series, such as Remington Steele in the 80s (as the silver-tongued con artist Daniel Chalmers), in which his daughter Stephanie Zimbalist starred opposite Pierce Brosnan. His smooth baritone was also used to narrate and do voiceovers.
In 2003, he published his memoirs, My Dinner of Herbs, and a year later came out of retirement to act with his daughter again in a stage production of Tennessee Williams’s Night of the Iguana in Ventura, California.
His wife Stephanie died in 2007; and his daughter Nancy in 2012. He is survived by his daughter Stephanie and his son, Efrem Zimbalist III.
• Efrem Zimbalist Jr, actor, born 30 November 1918; died 2 May 2014
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
It’s hardly surprising that the son of renowned concert violinist Efrem Zimbalist Sr.(1889-1985) and opera singer Alma Gluck (1884-1938) would desire a performing career of some kind. Born in New York City on November 30, 1918, surrounded by people of wealth and privilege throughout his childhood, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. received a boarding school education. Acting in school plays, he later trained briefly at the Yale School of Drama but didn’t apply himself enough and quit. As an NBC network radio page, he auditioned when he could and found minor TV and stock theatre parts while joining up with the Neighborhood Playhouse.
Following WWII war service with the Army infantry in which he was awarded the Purple Heart after being wounded, a director and friend of the family, Garson Kanin, gave the aspiring actor his first professional role in his Broadway production of “The Rugged Path” (1945) which starred Spencer Tracy. With his dark, friendly, clean-scrubbed good looks and a deep, rich voice that could cut butter, Zimbalist found little trouble finding work. He continued with the American Repertory Theatre performing in such classics as “Henry VIII” and “Androcles and the Lion” while appearing opposite the legendary Eva Le Gallienne in “Hedda Gabler”.
Zimbalist then tried his hand as a stage producer, successfully bringing opera to Broadway audiences for the first time with memorable presentations of “The Medium” and “The Telephone”. As producer of Gian Carlo Menotti‘s “The Consul”, he won the New York Drama Critic’s Award and the Pulitzer Prize for best musical in 1950. An auspicious film debut opposite Edward G. Robinson in House of Strangers (1949) brought little career momentum due to the untimely death of his wife Emily (a onetime actress who appeared with him in “Hedda Gabler” and bore him two children, Nancy and Efrem III) to cancer in 1950. Making an abrupt decision to abandon acting, he served as assistant director/researcher at the Curtis School of Music for his father and buried himself with studies and music composition.
A perfect gentleman on and off camera, Zimbalist’s severest critics tend to deem his performances bland and undernourished. Managing to override such criticisms, he maintained a sturdy career for nearly six decades. In 1991, he made fun of his all-serious reputation and pulled off a Leslie Nielsen-like role in the comedy parody Hot Shots!(1991). In addition to theater projects over the years, he has made fine use of his mellifluous baritone performing narrations and cartoon voiceovers, including that of Alfred the butler on a “Batman” animated series.
In 2003, he completed his memoirs, entitled “My Dinner of Herbs”. The father of three, grandfather of four and great-grandfather of three, he settled in Santa Barbara and later in Solvang, California with longtime second wife Stephanie until her death in 2007 of cancer. Their daughter, also named Stephanie (Stephanie Zimbalist), is the well-known actress who appeared with Pierce Brosnan in the Remington Steele (1982) television series, in which Zimbalist had a recurring role. He and his daughter also appeared on stage together in his later years, their first being “The Night of the Iguana”. His eldest daughter Nancy died in 2012.
Zimbalist died peacefully at his Solvang home of natural causes at the age of 95 on May 2, 2014.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
