Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 104 of 114

Debbie Reynolds

Debbie Reynolds was born in El Paso, Texas in 1932. Her family moved to California and she began her show business career as a teenager. Her first film was “June Bride” in 1948. She became a very popular MGM contract player during the 1950’s and scored a big success with “Singing In the Rain” with Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor. She went on to make “Tammy and the Batchelor” in 1957, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” in 1964 among many others. She is the mother of Carrie Fisher from her marriage to Eddie Fisher. She died in December 2016, just a day after the death of her daughter actress Carrie Fisher.

“Guardian” obituary:

When Debbie Reynolds, wearing a skimpy pink flapper’s dress, burst out of an enormous cake at a Hollywood party in Singin’ in the Rain (1952), she simultaneously burst into screen stardom. In fact, it was the sixth film appearance of Reynolds, who has died aged 84, but her first starring role. The casting of the inexperienced 19-year-old was a risk taken by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, the co-directors of the classic MGM musical about the early days of talkies. The gamble paid off, but not without some sweat and strain.

“There were times when Debbie was more interested in playing the French horn somewhere in the San Fernando Valley or attending a Girl Scout meeting,” Kelly recalled. “She didn’t realise she was a movie star all of a sudden.” Reynolds herself admitted later: “I was so confused. It seemed dumb to me … reporting to the studio at 6am, six days a week and shooting till midnight. I didn’t know anything about show business. “I learned a lot from Gene,” she added. “He is a perfectionist and a disciplinarian – the most exacting director I’ve ever worked for … Every so often, he would yell at me and make me cry. But it took a lot of patience for him to work with someone who had never danced before. It’s amazing that I could keep up with him and Donald O’Connor. This little girl from Burbank sure had a lot of spirit.”

Daughter of Maxene (nee Harmon) and Ray Reynolds, she was born Mary Frances Reynolds in El Paso, Texas. Her father was a railroad mechanic and carpenter, who lost his job at the height of the Great Depression. After living from hand to mouth for a while, the family moved to Burbank, California when her father got a job with the Southern Pacific railroad. While at high school, Reynolds entered and won the Miss Burbank beauty contest. One of the requirements was “talent”, which she fulfilled by lip-syncing to a record of Betty Hutton singing I’m a Square in the Social Circle, which earned her a Warner Bros contract. (It was Jack Warner who gave her the name of Debbie.) But after a bit part in the Bette Davis comedy June Bride (1948), and playing June Haver’s bubbly young sister in The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady (1950), she took up a contract with MGM, where she flourished, on and off, throughout the 50s and early 60s.

Prior to Singin’ in the Rain, Reynolds was noticed, in what amounted to a cameo, lip-syncing I Wanna Be Loved By You to the singer Helen Kane’s voice in Three Little Words (1950). In Two Weeks with Love (1950), as a younger sister again, this time Jane Powell’s, the cute 5 ft 2in Reynolds stopped the show with the 6ft 3in Carleton Carpenter in two numbers: Abba Dabba Honeymoon and Row, Row, Row, with her nifty tap dancing belying her statements of never having danced before Singin’ in the Rain.

Reynolds’s lively opening Charleston number in her breakthrough film has her singing and dancing All I Do Is Dream of You with a dozen other chorus girls; she keeps up brilliantly with Kelly and O’Connor in the cheery matinal greeting Good Mornin’, danced and sung around a living room – even though during some of the more challenging steps, she stands by and lets the two men dance around her – and she is touching in the lyrical duet You Were Meant For Me with Kelly, who switches on coloured lights and a gentle wind machine on a sound stage to create a make-believe atmosphere.

In the plot, a silent screen star, Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen, unforgettable), has a risibly squeaky voice for sound movies and, unknown to the public, is dubbed by Kathy Selden (Reynolds). In reality, however, Debbie’s singing voice was dubbed by the uncredited Betty Noyes, and Hagen herself provided the speaking voice for Debbie, dubbing her on screen because Reynolds was then handicapped by what Donen called “that terrible western noise”.

An effervescent Reynolds went on to star in a series of charming youthful musicals, this time using her own pleasant singing voice. I Love Melvin (1953) was one of the best, with Reynolds paired again with O’Connor. The film opens with A Lady Loves, a musical dream sequence in which Debbie sees herself as a big movie star courted by Robert Taylor. This gives her a chance to be classy, in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Later she features in a witty acrobatic number entitled Saturday Afternoon Before the Game in which she is dressed as a ball being tossed around by a football team.

There followed The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, Give a Girl a Break (both 1953), Susan Slept Here, Athena (both 1954), Hit the Deck and The Tender Trap (both 1955). In the latter, a romantic comedy, Frank Sinatra is a confirmed bachelor and Reynolds is determined to trap him into marriage. In the same year, 23-year-old Reynolds married the 27-year-old crooner Eddie Fisher. They became the darlings of the fan magazines, and co-starred in Bundle of Joy (1956), a feeble musical remake of the 1939 Ginger Rogers-David Niven comedy, which capitalised on their personalities as a happy young couple and the rumours of her pregnancy. (Reynolds gave birth to a daughter, Carrie, in October 1956.)

Meanwhile with the film musical in a moribund state, Reynolds showed that she could get by in straight acting roles, the first proof being in The Catered Affair (1956), a slice of Hollywood realism, with Reynolds as the daughter of working-class parents (Bette Davis and Ernest Borgnine). This failed at the box office, unlike Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), which was one of Reynolds’s greatest successes, the theme song of which (“I hear the cottonwoods whisp’rin’ above, Tammy! Tammy! Tammy’s in love!”) remained high in the hit parade for months. This entertaining piece of whimsy gave Reynolds, as a backwoods girl in love with a wealthy man (Leslie Nielsen), what was an archetypal role – a naive girl thrust into a sophisticated world … and triumphing.

In 1957, Eddie and Debbie were best man and matron of honour at the wedding in Acapulco of Fisher’s lifelong friend the impresario Mike Todd to Elizabeth Taylor. A little over a year later, Todd was killed in a plane crash, and Taylor sought solace in Fisher’s arms, causing a huge Hollywood scandal. Taylor, who had been cast as the Grieving Widow, now found herself in the role of the Vamp, while Reynolds was widely and sympathetically portrayed as the Wronged Woman. However, the outraged moralistic public was unaware that the Fisher-Reynolds marriage was already in tatters, although they continued to play America’s sweethearts in public, mainly because Debbie was pregnant with their son Todd (named after Mike) and they were worried that divorce would damage their popularity ratings. But divorce was inevitable and, on 12 May 1959, Taylor, who had converted to Judaism when she married Todd, married Fisher at a synagogue in Las Vegas.

Despite being the divorced mother of two small children, Reynolds was never more active. In 1959, she was among the top 10 Hollywood box-office stars and appeared four movies that year: The Mating Game, Say One for Me, The Gazebo and It Started With a Kiss. None were world-beaters, but they got by on her effortless charm.

In November 1960, Reynolds married the millionaire shoe-store magnate Harry Karl, and pursued her career with added vigour, though her roles hardly varied, whether she was playing Fred Astaire’s nubile daughter in The Pleasure of His Company or a feisty young widow with two children in The Second Time Around (both 1961) or a pioneer woman in the sprawling Cinerama western How the West Was Won (1962), in which she is the only character who makes it through from the first reel to the last, ageing from 16 to 90.

In The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), for which she was Oscar-nominated, Reynolds throws herself around energetically in the title role of the backwoods girl (shades of Tammy, but with added robustness) who enters high society and survives the Titanic, displaying everything she had learned from past musicals, especially in the dance numbers Belly Up to the Bar, Boys and I Ain’t Down Yet.

After playing a man resurrected as a woman in the tiresome Goodbye Charlie (1964), and the title role in The Singing Nun (1966), the mawkish biopic of the guitar-strumming Belgian nun who composed the hit song Dominique, she finally managed to bid farewell to her ingenue “tomboy” persona and portray a mature adult in Divorce American Style (1967). A rare Hollywood comedy with teeth, it cast Reynolds and Dick Van Dyke against type as a squabbling couple, who utter not a word as they prepare for bed in the best sequence. “That was a really hard part to get,” Reynolds commented. “The producer didn’t want me. He didn’t think I could play an ordinary married woman. I think he thought I had to be all ‘diva’d up’ and in a musical.”

When Reynolds, now in her mid-30s, saw her film career gradually slowing to a virtual halt, she reinvented herself as a cabaret performer, appearing most frequently on stage in Las Vegas. Reynolds also shifted her attention to US television starting with 18 episodes of The Debbie Reynolds Show (1969-70), a sitcom resembling I Love Lucy, in which she played a suburban housewife with ambitions to become a newspaper reporter. She continued to appear regularly on TV for the next four decades. What’s the Matter With Helen? (1971), a campy murder tale set in 1930s Hollywood in which Reynolds and Shelley Winters run a school for budding Shirley Temples, would be her last feature film for 20 years.

By the early 1970s, her marriage to Karl was heading for the rocks, mainly because of his infidelities but also because he had gambled away both their fortunes. Luckily, Reynolds was still bankable and, immediately after her divorce in 1973, she made her Broadway debut in a revival of the 1919 musical hit Irene. The show, which ran for 18 months, gained Reynolds a Tony nomination, and was the first of several stage musicals she would appear in over the years: Annie Get Your Gun, The Unsinkable Molly Brown and Woman of the Year among them.Reynolds returned to the big screen in the 90s, where she showed that she had lost none of her comic timing playing a number of sweet-voiced monster mums, having maintained her doll-like looks. These included Albert Brooks’s Mother (1996), her first leading film role for 27 years, In & Out (1997) and Zack and Reba (1998), as well as appearing in 10 episodes of Will and Grace on TV, portraying Grace’s mother, a would-be star whose propensity for breaking out into show tunes and impressions dismays her daughter. Reynolds was also known as Princess Leia’s mother, after Carrie Fisher found fame in the Star Wars movies Aside from performing, Reynolds had many other interests. In 1991, she bought a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, where she displayed part of her extensive collection of vintage Hollywood props, sets and costumes. But after her marriage to the real-estate developer Richard Hamlett ended in 1996, she was forced to declare bankruptcy the following year. She later reopened her museum in Hollywood. Reynolds was also an indefatigable fund-raiser for The Thalians (a charitable organisation that provides mental health services from pediatrics to geriatrics in Los Angeles).

Carrie Fisher died the day before her mother, after a suspected heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles. Reynolds is survived by her son, Todd.

Debbie Reynolds (Mary Frances Reynolds), actor and singer, born 1 April 1932; died 28 December 2016

TCM Overview:

Entertainer Debbie Reynolds embodied the cheerful bounce and youthful innocence of the post World War II era, buoying the genre’s goodnatured hokum with her sincere charm and energy. One of a long line of girls-next-door like Doris Day and June Allyson, Reynolds was never as sultry as Day could be, and was more of a showbiz cheerleader and less of a tomboy than either. In her most successful films like “Tammy and the Bachelor” (1957) and “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), she was often cast as a sincere young adult in the throes of puppy love – never the virgin chased by rogues like Day or the placid housewife like Allyson. Her squeaky clean image came in handy when, in the biggest Hollywood scandal of the 1950s, her then-husband, crooner Eddie Fisher, left her and their two children, Carrie and Todd, for sultry screen goddess, Elizabeth Taylor. Not surprisingly, the public was more than on Reynolds’ side as the jilted wife. Once that furor died down, Reynolds was left to reinvent herself. In the late 1960s, when new sexual mores suddenly rendered the docile suburban female image a thing of the past, Reynolds shifted her focus to nightclub and theatrical stages. She was absent from the big screen for decades but settled into a comfortable presence in the American fabric by returning to film in the 1990s with funny mom roles in films like “Mother” (1996) and “In and Out” (1997) and hysterical guest appearances as the over-the-top mother of Grace Adler (Debra Messing) on “Will & Grace” (NBC, 1998-2006). Reynolds brought both self-mocking and nostalgia to these and other well-received comedic outings, using her persona as a perennially perky throwback to mine genuine laughs well into her 70s.

Mary Frances Reynolds was born in El Paso, TX, on April 1, 1932. Her railroad worker father moved the family to Southern California when Reynolds was young, and growing up in Burbank, Reynolds performed with the town symphony and was active in school plays. When she was 16, she was crowned Miss Burbank in a beauty contest and subsequently MGM and Warner Bros. courted her for a movie contract. The latter won out, but Reynolds mostly treaded water there for two years, playing only a modest part in “The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady” (1950). She moved to MGM in 1950 and made an instant impression in small roles in her first two films, impersonating 1920s “boop-oop-a-doop” singer Helen Kane in the biopic “Three Little Words” (195) and teaming with equally cute boy-next-door Carleton Carpenter in “Two Weeks with Love” (1950), which included a high-speed rendition of the novelty song “Aba Daba Honeymoon” that hit No. 3 on the Billboard charts. The studio and directors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen responded by casting her in a leading role, complete with star billing, in the brilliant musical, “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952). Her pleasant alto sold several old-time song standards and Reynolds, not a trained hoofer, literally danced her feet raw to keep up buoyantly onscreen with Kelly and Donald O’Connor. Best of all, her acting conveyed the sincerity of the aspiring neophyte that was both the role and the performer. Just like her role in “Singin’ in the Rain,” a star was born.

During her tenure at MGM, Reynolds performed primarily in musicals; none of which approached the landmark status of her first big success. The underrated “Give a Girl a Break” (1953) was full of ideas and energy, but as was typical of MGM and the studio system, “Athena” (1954) and “Hit the Deck” (1955) were too formulaic. The lively and playful comedienne overdid the teen boisterousness in “Susan Slept Here” (1954) but had a more successful foray into romantic comedy with “The Tender Trap” (1955). A standout was her most sober film of the period – one of only two or three dramas she ever acted in – “A Catered Affair” (1956), where Reynolds provided tender and quietly touching work that her sis-boom-ba roles rarely called upon. As the studio system disintegrated, Reynolds turned to freelancing, enjoying a big hit with “Tammy and the Bachelor” (1957), whose theme song, the highly sentimental but equally memorable “Tammy,” gave Reynolds a second smash hit single (five weeks at No. 1). The film also marked one of the occasional “country girl” roles which she would also play in “The Mating Game” (1958). Reynolds had begun appearing on TV by this time, and was a semi-regular on “The Eddie Fisher Show” (NBC, 1953-57), starring the popular crooner Reynolds had wed in 1955. Together, Reynolds and Fisher were second only to Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh as “America’s Sweethearts.”

The first of several unsuccessful marriages showed its sour side in 1958, when Fisher announced that he was leaving Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor, the widow of his recently deceased best friend, producer Mike Todd, who had perished in a plane crash. The attendant public sympathy for Reynolds – now a single mother of two – meshed well with her wholesome screen persona, which had fully matured by the time of “This Happy Feeling” (1958). At the time of the scandal of all scandals, Reynolds ranked as one of the top ten box office stars in both 1959 and 1960. In 1962, she joined the all-star cast of the Oscar-nominated epic “How the West Was Won” and two years later starred in the screen adaptation of the aptly titled musical, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” (1964), one of her best vehicles, and one which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Raising her two children, future director Todd Fisher and future actress and author Carrie Fisher, kept Reynolds busy; her screen career, which relied to some extent on her youthful, girlish qualities, slowly began to decline. Worse, the new frankness in films began to date her image. When she finally did try a Doris Day-style sex farce with “Divorce American Style” (1967) and “How Sweet It Is” (1968), even that vogue was waning. A few TV spots and a first try at a series, “The Debbie Reynolds Show/Debbie” (NBC, 1969-1970) did little to stem the tide. Her last feature acting for over 20 years, though, was striking. “What’s the Matter with Helen?” (1971), a late entry in the often unpleasant “aging female star” horror subgenre, was redeemed by a very offbeat story, Curtis Harrington’s directorial flair, and fine acting.

Effectively out of films before age 40, Reynolds enjoyed smash success on Broadway with a revival of the old musical chestnut “Irene” in 1973, played the London Palladium in a 1975 revue, and polished to a lively sparkle the nightclub talent she had first tested earlier in her career. Live performing kept Reynolds busiest for the next 20 years, though she occasionally surfaced in a the recurring role of the title character’s acerbic mother on the sitcom “Alice” (CBS, 1976-1985) and did likewise on “Jennifer Slept Here” (NBC, 1983-84). She tried her hand at helming another series with the unsuccessful “Aloha Paradise” (ABC, 1981), a “Fantasy Island/Love Boat” rip-off with Reynolds as a female Ricardo Montalban, and enjoyed a feisty role as a woman cop teamed with her son in the TV movie, “Sadie and Son” (CBS, 1987). She also basked in the boom of nostalgia for her studio heyday when she purchased a Las Vegas hotel and casino and added a Hollywood Movie Museum packed with the memorabilia she had been collecting for decades. The largest collection of its kind in the world, Reynolds’ memorabilia included over 40,000 costumes including Dorothy’s ruby slippers and the white dress Marilyn Monroe wore in her infamous 1952 LIFE magazine photo spread. Ever the hard worker, Reynolds performed constantly at her own hotel’s nightclub to make the enterprise fly, and her love of the work and her finely honed presence kept her venture afloat.

After being known for decades as “the mother of Princess Leia” after daughter Carrie struck iconic status with her role in “Star Wars” (1977), Reynolds blithely withstood gossip surrounding her daughter’s 1987 novel, Postcards from the Edge when wags assumed it was actually about their actual relationship. Even Mike Nichols’ 1990 film version made the mother into something of a attention-craving gorgon. Fisher always said it was an homage to her mother, not an exact portrait of their sometimes strained relationship. The ensuing decade saw Reynolds own return to the big screen, first in Oliver Stone’s “Heaven and Earth” (1993). Her renaissance really began when, at her daughter’s suggestion, Albert Brooks cast Reynolds in the title role of his critically acclaimed “Mother” (1996). Reynolds received raves for her rich characterization of a sunny and loving but subtly disapproving and forbidding parent. The widespread attention she received helped pave the way for her casting as Kevin Kline’s mother in “In and Out” (1997). The following year, she starred as a magical matriarch in the Disney Channel Original Movie “Halloweentown” (1998) and went on to make regular guest appearances on the hit sitcom “Will & Grace” as Grace’s highly critical entertainer mother. She worked steadily as a voice actor in family fare, including “The Rugrats” (Nickelodeon, 1991-2004) and “Kim Possible” (Disney Channel, 2002-07) and well past the normal retirement age, Reynolds maintained a busy stage schedule as a song and dance gal on the casino and resort circuit.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

It’s A Date, poster, US poster, Deanna Durbin, 1940. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Deanna Durbin was one of the most popular film stars of the 1940’s and is credited with saving the fortunes of Universal Studios. She was born in Winnipeg, Canada in 1921. She made her first film for that studio “Three Smart Girls” in 1936. Her unique singing voice made her very popular and she had a string of very popular movies over the next dozen years. Some of her movies are “The Amazing Mrs Holliday” in 1943, “Christmas Holiday” and “Up in Central Park” in 1948. That same year she made her final film “For the Love of Mary”. At the age of 27 she retired after her marriage and went to live in France where remained until her death in 2013.

Michael Freedland’s obitury of Deanna Durbinin “The Guardian”:

When a teenage Deanna Durbin appeared on screen in the 1930s, wearing a decorous white dress with her hands clasped together, singing with a bell-like purity, audiences sighed contentedly. And so did film and music executives. In the days when child stars were wholesome, Durbin was everyone’s idea of the perfect girl next door, and she was a huge money-spinner. Audiences flocked to see her musical comedies and, after she had trilled numbers such as It’s Raining Sunbeams (in the film One Hundred Men and a Girl, 1937), Home Sweet Home (in First Love, 1939) and Waltzing in the Clouds (in Spring Parade, 1940), her fans queued to buy the latest record bearing her name.

Durbin, who has died aged 91, was the antithesis of the Hollywood glamour girl – which made her the kind of star that teachers liked to offer as an example to their students. Her films were tailored to fit both her personality, which made the word “vivacious” seem like an understatement, and her singing voice, which was feminine, sweet, mature beyond her years and extraordinarily powerful.

In 1939, Durbin, aged 17, and her fellow child star Mickey Rooney were awarded special Oscars “for their significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth and, as juvenile players, setting a high standard of ability and achievement”. Ten years and fewer than 20 films later, she suddenly announced her retirement from show business.

She was born Edna Mae Durbin in Winnipeg, Canada. Her parents took her to live in California when she was a baby. From the age of eight she started taking voice lessons and when she was 14 she was recommended to the MGM studio boss Louis B Mayer, who planned to cast her in a biopic of the opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink. She was due to play the diva as a child, but the film was never made.

In those days, there was a way into movies that is no longer available: the studio put her into what was called a “short subject”, and allowed the public to judge. In 1936, audiences saw her in the short Every Sunday and approved; Mayer saw it and did not. Judy Garland was also featured in the film and she and Durbin sang together, but the much more gauche-looking Garland appealed more to the mogul than the prettier Durbin, who he decided was a little too womanly for what he had in min

Mayer let her go, but his notion of box-office poison was another studio’s sweet success. Universal was going broke and the idea of a new star who had two very obvious advantages – she had great talent and came very cheap – was extremely tempting. Universal cast Durbin in a film called Three Smart Girls (1936), about a trio of plucky sisters determined to reunite their estranged parents. Its box-office success is generally held to have been responsible for saving the studio from bankruptcy.

The film, combined with her appearance on Eddie Cantor’s radio show in 1936, announced her as a new star. In the late 1930s and through much of the 40s, Durbin was a top box-office attraction. She was prolific, too: her second film, One Hundred Men and a Girl (with an orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski), was followed by Mad About Music (1938), in which she played a girl with a rich imagination; That Certain Age (1938), co-written byBilly Wilder; and Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939), a sequel to her debut feature, with the sisters this time caught up in a romantic conflict. When Durbin had her first screen kiss – with Robert Stack in First Love, a riff on the Cinderella plot – it filled columns in the American newspapers for weeks.

In It’s a Date (1940), Kay Francis and Durbin played mother-and-daughter actors. The New York Times’s reviewer noted a “plot which leaks at every pore” but praised “the young-girlish magic which [Durbin] is able to evoke with her pretty personality and … her phenomenal vocal cords”.

Eventually, the inevitable happened: Durbin and her bosses had different ideas about what represented the right kind of vehicle. She tried very hard to shake off her girl-next-door image with films such as Christmas Holiday (1944), directed by Robert Siodmak and adapted from W Somerset Maugham’s novel: Durbin and her co-star Gene Kelly were both cast against type, she as a nightclub hostess and he as a killer. Lady on a Train (1945), another film noir, also dealt with murder, but Universal did not think that changing Durbin’s personality represented good business.

The conflict led to an unhappiness which was compounded by Durbin’s divorce, in 1943, after two years of marriage to the film executive Vaughn Paul. Her second marriage, to the producer Felix Jackson, also ended in divorce, this time after four years, in 1949. She and Jackson had a daughter, Jessica.

The light comedy For the Love of Mary (1948) was her swansong. The Universal producer Joe Pasternak constantly tried to change her mind, but Durbin told him: “I can’t run around being a Little Miss Fix-It who bursts into song – the highest-paid star with the poorest material.”

In 1950, she married the producer and director Charles David, with whom she had a son, Peter. She then withdrew from show business and lived in France, closely guarding her privacy for decades. In a rare interview, given in 1983 to the film journalist David Shipman, she said: “I did not hate show business. I loved to sing. I was happy on the set. I liked the people with whom I worked and after the nervousness of the first day, I felt completely at ease in front of the camera. I also enjoyed the company of my fellow actors … What I did find difficult was that this acquired maturity had to be hidden under the childlike personality my films and publicity projected on me.”

Charles David died in 1999. On 30 April, via the Deanna Durbin Society, Peter announced that she had died “several days ago”.

• Deanna Durbin (Edna Mae Durbin), singer and actor, born 4 December 1921; died April 2013

The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Martin Hewitt was discovered by Franco Zefferelli and starred in “Endless Love” opposite Brooke Shields in 1981. His other films include “Yellowbeard” and “Two Lane Junction”.

“Wikipedia” entry:

Martin Hewitt (born February 19, 1958 in San Jose, California) is an American actor. He is best known for his film debut as David Axelrod in Franco Zeffirelli‘s Endless Love (1981), as Dan in Yellowbeard and his role as Chad Douglas Fairchild in Zalman King‘s Two Moon Junction (1988). He also played the role of Michael in the film The Falling (1985). As of 2000, he was living in Los Osos, California developing and selling home inspection software and running his own home inspection business, but has appeared in television shows as recently as 2003. He has a daughter and a son with wife Kerstin.

David Knight

Although David Knight is a U.S. born actor, virtually all his cinema career has been in the British Isles.

He was born in 1928 in Niagara Falls. He had lead roles from his first film “The Young Lovers” in 1954 with Odile Versois.

His best film is probably “Lost” in 1955 with Julia Arnall. This film features a wonderful collection of British actors in small parts e.g. Barbara Windsor, Joan Hickson, Shirley Anne Field, Thora Hird, Joan Sims and Marjorie Rhodes.

David Knight’s last UK feature was “Nightmare” in 1964. After a further few years of television work, he returned to theatre work in the U.S.

IMDB entry:

David Knight was born on January 16, 1928 in Niagara Falls, New York, USA as David Stephen Mintz. He is an actor, known for Nightmare (1964), Chance Meeting (1954) andAcross the Bridge (1957). He is married to Wendy McClure. They have two children.

Obituary in “Rundus” in 2020.

On Sunday, December 20, 2020 David Stephen Knight, actor and professor of theatre, loving husband to Wendy McClure Knight, and father of two children passed away at the age of 92. David Knight was born January 16, 1928 in Niagara Falls, New York to parents The Reverend Eugene Mintz and Leticia Knight-Mintz. He grew up in New Jersey and attended college at Syracuse University in New York and Whittier College in California before receiving a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London in 1952.

He was quickly contracted to The Rank Organization and acted in more than 10 movies including The Young Lovers (1954), On Such a Night (1956), Across the Bridge (1957), A Story of David: The Hunted (1960), and Nightmare (1964). He also starred in numerous television shows and theatre productions in London’s famous West End, including starring as Bud Frump in the original London production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” at the Shaftesbury Theatre (1963-1964) and The Lives of Benjamin Franklin (1974). He was a member for the British Actors’ Equity organization in the United Kingdom since the 1950s, and the U.S. Actors Equity Association since the mid-1970s.

David met Scottish dancer and actress Wendy McClure and the two were married on November 25, 1963. The couple had two children, Eugene and Moyra, while living in London. In 1975, during the economic downturn in the United Kingdom, he moved with his family to Winnipeg, Manitoba to teach theater at the University of Manitoba. A year later, in 1976, the family moved to Urbana, Illinois where he was professor of theatre and subsequently became Head of the Theatre Department at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois. There, he partnered with his wife to develop the nationally-ranked professional acting program and the Illinois Repertory Theater where he was Artistic Director.

David and his wife Wendy retired from the university in August 20, 1997 as Professor Emeritus in Theater, and where the David and Wendy Knight undergraduate endowed scholarship remains to assist aspiring acting students. He influenced hundreds of students throughout his tenure, many of whom have highly successful careers in the arts today. After retirement, David and Wendy moved to Westminster, Colorado, where they had previously worked at the University of Colorado Shakespeare Festival. David starred in “Macbeth” and codirected “Comedy of Errors” with Wendy in 1982 and 1983 respectively. In retirement, they traveled extensively, and continued to support the arts by attending the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and the Central City Opera. They celebrated 57 years of marriage on November 25, 2020.

In addition to being a brilliant actor with a remarkable natural talent, David was a gifted teacher with a powerful work ethic who was dedicated to the craft of acting. In his personal life, he was a loving father, a dedicated husband, a voracious reader, and a leader in his community. He is survived by his wife Wendy, children Eugene Knight (wife Chutima) and Moyra Knight (husband Michael MacLean), grandchildren Ewan and Annabelle MacLean; Jupiter, Joseph, and Jasper Knight, and brother Eugene Mintz.

“For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” (1 Corinthians 13

David Selby was born in 1941 in Morganstown, West Virginia. He is best known for his role in the long running television series “Dark Shadows” from 1968 until 1971. On film he has starred with Barbra Streisand in “Up the Sandbox” and with Alec Guinness and Richard Jordan in “Raise the Titanic”.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Actor David Selby, highly regarded for his villainous work on both daytime and nighttime soap classics, was born in Morgantown, West Virginia. He attended West Virginia University and graduated with both B.S. and M.A. degrees from West Virginia University, then earned a Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Following many years on the stock stage (from 1961), David finally attracted infamous attention when he signed on as Quentin Collins, a werewolf, on the gothic daytime drama “Dark Shadows” in 1968. He inherited heartthrob status briefly with the role and even recorded two songs during the show’s run, “Quentin’s Theme” and “I Wanna Dance With You.” After the series’ demise, he made his movie debut with Night of Dark Shadows (1971), the second film based on the cult series. He broached top film stardom in the early 1970s after co-starring with Barbra Streisand in Up the Sandbox (1972) and Ron Leibman in The Super Cops (1974), and continued his high-profiled pace with New York theatre productions of “The Heiress” (1976), with Jane Alexander and Richard Kiley, and “Eccentricities of a Nightingale” (1976) with Betsy Palmer, but things didn’t quite pan out. In the 1980s, however, steady TV work helped put an extra shot of adrenalin back into David’s career, notably as the cunning Richard Channing on the nighttime soap “Falcon Crest,” a role he played from 1982 until 1990. David has graced most of the popular series over the years including “The Waltons,” “Police Woman,” “Kojak,” “Family,” “Touched by an Angel,” and “Ally McBeal.” He has also appeared sporadically in white-collar film support with roles in Dying Young (1991), White Squall (1996) and Surviving Christmas (2004) to his credit. David continues to perform on stage as well. He portrayed Abraham Lincoln in his own play “Lincoln and James” in 1997 and 1998, and penned the play “Final Assault” which premiered in 2003. He is a staple player in radio drama with the L.A. Theatre Works these days. David and longtime wife Chip have three children.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Craig Stevens had been in films for years when he won widwspread popularity on television in 1958 with his performance in the title role of “Peter Gunn”. His films include “Dive Bomber” in 1941 where he met his wife Alexis Smith, “Since You Went Way” and “The Doughgirls”. Craig Stevens died in 2000. Alexis Smith predeceased him.

His “Telegraph” obituary:

American actor best known for his role as the television detective Peter Gunn

CRAIG STEVENS, who has died aged 81, played the suave private investigator Peter Gunn in the American television series of the same name which began in 1958.

Detective Peter Gunn was one of those lady-killer private eyes of the late 1950s and 1960s who existed in a world of salubrious uptown offices and sleazy night-time jazz clubs. Gunn’s own well-appointed workplace was at 351 Ellis Park Road, Los Angeles, but from time to time he would saunter over to Mother’s jazz club to watch his blonde girlfriend Edie (Lola Albright) take to the stage as resident singer.

Each episode presented Gunn with a client in a tight corner or a crime to solve. His work entailed frequent fights, but the urbane Gunn – often aided by his police lieutenant friend Jacoby – would always be standing at the end, coolly dusting down his Ivy League clothes.

The programme’s director, Blake Edwards, shot the action in a modified film-noir style. Most memorable of all was the jazzy score by Henry Mancini – later to be reincarnated in such films as The Blues Brothers, several television advertisements and the odd pop song.

Peter Gunn, which was considered exceptionally violent for its time, was broadcast on NBC from 1958 to 1960 and on ABC in 1960-61. It then came to Britain where it also proved hugely popular. It did much to launch Blake Edwards’s career, and Mancini’s score resulted in two bestselling albums for RCA, The Music from Peter Gunn and More Music From Peter Gunn.

Craig Stevens was born Gail Shikles Jnr on July 8 1918 at Liberty, Missouri, the son of a school teacher. He read Dentistry at Kansas University before deciding that acting was more for him.

Moving to Hollywood, he trained at Paramount’s acting school, worked at the Pasadena Playhouse and in 1941 signed for Warner Brothers. His first feature film was Dive Bomber, in which he played one of Errol Flynn’s co-pilots.

The film’s leading lady was Alexis Smith, and later that year Stevens was given the romantic lead opposite her as a bridge-builder in Steel Against the Sky. They married three years later. Alexis Smith went on to become a star, while Stevens languished as a dependable support. Nevertheless, the marriage endured happily until her death in 1993.

Stevens’s other credits during the 1940s included God is My Co-Pilot (1945) and Humoresque (1946), in which he was one of the gigolos buzzing around a socialite, Joan Crawford. After The Blues Busters (1950) and Abbott and Costello Meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1953), he played the boyfriend of Jane Russell in The French Line (1954), and then the trusty sidekick of a town tyrant in the light-hearted western Buchanan Rides Alone (1958).

Although he had by then appeared in 13 films, his casting on television as Peter Gunn was his big break. After that, he played the globe-trotting photo-journalist Mike Strait in 20 episodes of the ATV series Man of the World (1962-63). Also featuring a score by Mancini, the series took Stevens to many colourful corners of the world – from south-east Asia to the Amazon – usually assisted by his svelte sidekick Maggie.

Thereafter, Stevens worked mainly in theatre, often opposite his wife, who had retired from the screen in 1959. He did, however, team up again with Blake Edwards in 1967 to make the film Gunn, and he appeared in Killer Bees (1974). His last film role was in Blake Edwards’s Hollywood satire SOB (1981). From time to time, he appeared on television shows such as Dallas.

Murder Without Tears, poster, US poster art,top left: Joyce Holden; top, second left; Craig Stevens, 1953. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Connie Stevens is an actress, singer and successful business women. She was born in 1938 in Brooklyn, New York. She won a contract with Warner Brothers. She was wonderful in her films with Troy Donahue, “Parrish” and “Susan Slade” in 1961 and “Palm Springs Weekend” in 1963. They also co-starred in the television series “Hawaiian Eye”. She had a U.S. Top Ten hit with “Sixteen Candles”.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Born in Brooklyn of Italian, Irish, and Native-American parentage with the unlikely name of Concetta Anna Ingolia, Connie Stevens was raised by grandparents when her parents (both jazz musicians) filed for divorced. She attended Catholic boarding schools in her formative years and a distinct interest in music led to her forming a vocal quartet called “The Foremost” which was comprised of Connie and three men. Those men later became part of The Lettermen. In Hollywood from 1953, Connie formed yet another vocal group “The Three Debs” while trying to break into films as an extra. Although she managed to co-star in a few mediocre teen dramas such as Young and Dangerous (1957), Eighteen and Anxious (1957), The Party Crashers (1958), and Dragstrip Riot (1958), it was comedian Jerry Lewis who set things in motion by casting the unknown starlet in his comedy Rock-a-Bye Baby (1958). Warner Bros. signed her up for their hot detective series Hawaiian Eye (1959) and she was off. As pert and pretty “Cricket Blake”, a slightly flaky and tomboyish singer/photographer, Connie became an instant teen idol — trendy and undeniably appealing. A couple of record hits came her way including “Sixteen Reasons” and the novelty song “Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb”. Connie’s acting talent was light and limited, however, and some attempts at adult film drama, including the title role in Susan Slade (1961), Parrish (1961), Palm Springs Weekend (1963) andTwo on a Guillotine (1965) came and went. In the 1970s, she refocused on her voice and started lining up singing commercials (Ace Hardware) while subsisting in nightclubs and hotels. Connie eventually built herself up as a Las Vegas headlining act. She also starred on Broadway with “The Star-Spangled Girl” and won a Theatre World Award for her performance in 1967. Comedian Bob Hope‘s made her one of his regular entertainers on his USO tours. Sporadic films came her way every now and then. A TV-movie The Sex Symbol (1974) had her playing a tragic Marilyn Monroe type goddess. There was also innocuous fun with Grease 2 (1982) and Back to the Beach (1987) with Frankie Avalonand Annette Funicello. Episodics on Murder, She Wrote (1984), The Love Boat (1977) andBaywatch (1989) also kept her afloat — but barely. Once wed to actor James Stacy, she later married and divorced singer Eddie Fisher. From her union with Fisher came two daughters, Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher, both of whom became actors. Single with two daughters, and completely out of sync with Hollywood, Connie started experiencing severe financial woes. In the 1990s, the never-say-die personality began a new lucrative career in the infomercial game with skin-care and make-up products. She was unbelievably successful in turning her finances around. Now a self-made tycoon with her own successful beauty line to boot, Connie is living proof that anything can happen in that wild and wacky world called show biz.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

TCM overview:

Actress and singer Connie Stevens was a vivacious presence on television and the pop charts in the early 1960s, thanks to her popularity as Cricket Blake on the hit detective show “Hawaiian Eye” (ABC, 1959-1963) and singles like “Sixteen Reasons.” Stevens’ perky turn as Cricket, a singer and sometime photographer who aided a pair of Honolulu hotel detectives in solving crimes, granted her a brief time as an idol for younger viewers, but after the show’s cancellation, she struggled to maintain her presence in the entertainment business. After her divorce from singer Eddie Fisher in 1969, which gave her daughters Joely and Tricia Leigh Fisher, Stevens doggedly pursued her career as an actress and nightclub crooner throughout the 1970s and 1980s. A reversal of fortune came in the 1990s when she launched a successful line of cosmetics. Throughout the ups and downs of her life, Stevens maintained the same sparkle she showed as Cricket Blake, which endeared her to several generations of fans.

Born Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingoglia in Brooklyn, NY on Aug. 8, 1938, Connie Stevens was the daughter of jazz drummer Peter Ingoglia, who performed under the stage name of Teddy Stevens, and singer Eleanor McGinley. After her parents’ divorce, she was raised largely by grandparents or by the staff of various Catholic boarding schools. Blessed with a pleasant singing voice, she was performing professionally at an early age, first with three male vocalists in a group called the Foremost, and later, in an all-girl group called The Three Debs. At 15, she relocated to Los Angeles with her father, where she adopted his surname and worked as an extra and bit player in various teen-oriented films. 1958 proved to be her breakout year, with the release of her debut album, Conchetta, as well as her first major role as Jerry Lewis’ love interest in “Rock-A-Bye Baby,” a loose remake of “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek” (1944). The following year, she was signed to a contract with Warner Bros., who placed her in their new detective series, “Hawaiian Eye.”

Cast as Cricket Blake, a singer and amateur photographer who helped series’ leads Anthony Eisley and Robert Conrad solve cases on the big island of Honolulu, Stevens quickly rose in popularity among the show’s audience of young viewers. A cross-over appearance on ABC’s other hip crime show, “77 Sunset Strip” (1958-1963) led to a Top 10 single, “Kookie, Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb,” which featured “Sunset” star Edd Byrnes in his series role as suave beatnik Kookie. It was soon followed by “Sixteen Reasons (Why I Love You),” a Top Five hit that stayed on theBillboard charts for over two months. Bigger roles in feature films were the next step in her natural progression, and in 1961, she starred in two films by Delmer Daves: “Parrish” was a potboiler with Troy Donahue – Stevens’ co-star on “Hawaiian Eye” in its final season – as a young man pitted against his stepfather (Karl Malden), an unscrupulous tobacco tycoon, while “Susan Slade” was an outrageous camp fest about an innocent (Stevens) whose unwanted pregnancy leads to a near-Biblical series of tragedies as well as the attention of two competing suitors (Donahue and Bert Convy). When Stevens began dating Elvis Presley offscreen, she essentially assured herself pop culture sainthood.

However, a series of clashes with Warner Bros., including contract disputes regarding “Hawaiian Eye” and a well-publicized outburst over losing the chance to audition for “My Fair Lady” (1962), led to the studio dropping her contract. Stevens was soon adrift in a string of misfires, including the sitcom “Wendy and Me” (ABC, 1964-65), produced by George Burns, who co-starred as her landlord who observes her misadventures through his closed circuit television. Her recording career dried up in the middle of the decade, so she adjusted her focus to stage and screen projects, including a stint on Broadway in 1967’s “The Star-Spangled Girl,” which earned her a Theatre World Award. She was also a regular performer in Bob Hope’s jaunts to Southeast Asia for the USO, which would later influence her documentary, “The Healing” (1997), about Red Cross nurses in Vietnam. After the dissolution of her marriage to actor James Stacy in 1967, she married singer Eddie Fisher, who was coming off the embarrassment of his wife Elizabeth Taylor leaving him for Richard Burton. The Philadelphia-born crooner fathered her daughters, Joely and Tricia Leigh Fisher, both of whom followed in their parents’ footsteps as performers. Stevens and Fisher were divorced in 1969, just two years after being married.

Stevens raised both of her daughters as a single mother, which required her to work constantly in order to make ends meet. There was a steady stream of singing jobs, including headlining stints in Las Vegas and guest starring roles on episodic television and in TV features. With her ingénue days long behind her, Stevens began to play more adult, sexually forthright roles, most notably in 1971’s cult favorite “The Grissom Gang,” as a vampish Depression Era singer, and “Scorchy” (1976), a low-budget crime picture with Stevens as a gun-toting, bed-hopping private eye. She also served as the spokesperson for Ace Hardware in the 1970s, and sang the company’s jingle in numerous television commercials.

The 1980s saw Stevens back on screen in several minor features, most notably “Grease 2” (1982) and “Back to the Beach” (1987), both as vixenish older women who served as temptation for the respective, much younger male leads. She experienced greater success with a line of cosmetic products called Forever Spring, which she launched in 1986 and pitched via informercials. She also became a tireless supporter of various charities, including the Windfeather Project, which the part-Mohican Stevens launched to provide scholarships to Native American students. In 1994, she re-launched her recording career with the LP, Tradition: A Family at Christmas, on which she was joined by her daughters. Three years later, she made her directorial debut with the aforementioned “The Healing,” on which she also served as writer, editor and cinematographer. The documentary was well received at a variety of film festivals, and earned a Best Film award at the 1998 Santa Clarita International Fest. In her sixth decade, Stevens had finally achieved a degree of respect that had eluded her career for so many years.

Her proficiency as a businesswoman, as well as the longevity of her time in the spotlight, contributed to her 2005 election as secretary-treasurer of the Screen Actors’ Guild, the second highest elected position in the governing body. She concluded her tenure with the Guild in 2007, then made her debut as a feature film director with “Saving Grace” (2009), a period drama about a Missouri family whose life was turned upside down by the arrival of a relative (Tatum O’Neal) who was discharged from an asylum

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Claudette Colbert was delightfully deft at high comedy. She made a string of very good romantic comedies through the 1930’s, 40’s and into the 50’s. She also made some strring melodramas. She was born in 1903 in France. Her parents moved to the U.S. She began her career on Broadway but was soon California bound. She won a contract with Paramount Pictures. She made her debut in the silent movie “For the Love of Mike” in 1927. Her career highlights include “It Happened One Night”, “Sign of the Cross”, “Midnight”, “Boon Town”, “Palm Beach Story””Since You Went Away” and “The Egg and I”. Her last film was “Parrish” in 1961 with Troy Donahue. She returned to acting on television in “The Two Mrs Grenvilles” with Ann-Margret in 1987 and won a Golden Globe for her performance at the age of 84. She died in 1996 in Barbados at the age of 92.

Her “Independent” obituary:

The epitome of chic sophistication, Claudette Colbert was as unique among Hollywood heroines as Dietrich or Garbo.

It is no accident, surely, that she flourished at that most European of studios, Paramount, home of Lubitsch and Chevalier, Mamoulian, Von Sternberg and Wilder. Her distinctive high-cheekboned beauty and the throaty individuality of her voice were complemented by superb comic timing and fine technical skill honed by an extensive apprenticeship in the theatre.

She could be warmly compassionate in romantic drama but was unsurpassable in sophisticated comedy. Many of her Thirties comedies with titles like I Met Him In Paris and She Married Her Boss are minor trifles elevated by her presence, and at least three of her comedies, It Happened One Night, Midnight and The Palm Beach Story are among Hollywood’s greatest ever. It is a mark of the respect in which she was held by film-makers that throughout her career sets were built and scenes directed in order to favour the left side of her face, since she was convinced that her right profile was unflattering.

After a long Hollywood career she returned with great success to the theatre, and was 82 years old when she last performed in London, starring with Rex Harrison in Frederick Lonsdale’s Aren’t We All?

Born Lily Claudette Chauchoin in Paris in 1903, she was seven when her family emigrated to New York. Though she did some acting in college, her primary interest was fashion design – later she was to become one of Hollywood’s best-dressed stars – and she was studying fashion when at 20 she so impressed the writer Anne Morrison at a party that she offered her a three-line role in her play The Wild Westcotts.

Over the next five years, she appeared in a succession of mostly short- lived shows, learning from experience and studying the actors she worked with. “Acting schools are all very well,” she said later, “but the way to learn acting is to act, observe others, learn from your betters, learn what not to do – and above, all, to keep working.” The actor Leslie Howard, with whom she had a brief relationship in 1924, encouraged her and persuaded his friend the producer Al Woods to put her under contract but, despite personally good notices, she did not get into a major hit until The Barker (1927) with Walter Huston and Norman Foster.

She and Foster, later a Hollywood actor and director, were married the following year during the play’s London run. Colbert’s first film, For the Love of Mike, made during The Barker’s Broadway run, was directed by Frank Capra but cheaply produced and provoked Colbert to state that films were “off my list permanently”. She was particularly concerned that silent cinema failed to utilise one of her major assets, her voice. The advent of talkies changed her attitude, and in 1929 she signed a Paramount contract.

Only two of her first 15 movies – The Big Pond (1930) and The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), both co-starring Maurice Chevalier – were better than mediocre, and she was grateful when Cecil B. De Mille asked her to play “the wickedest wo-man in the world”, Poppaea, wife of Nero, in The Sign of the Cross (1932). Her performance was acclaimed, while her bath in asses’ milk received immense publicity and has become a famous scene in Hollywood history.

Her career had slumped again when Columbia fortuitously offered her the role of a runaway heiress in It Happened One Night (1934) after Constance Bennett, Miriam Hopkins and Myrna Loy had turned it down. Colbert accepted the role only because it gave her the chance to work with Clark Gable, who had been forced by his studio, MGM, to do the film.

Neither star initially expected much of the low-budget comedy which won five Oscars. Colbert was in fact boarding a train for New York on the night of the ceremony when she was stopped and rushed back to accept her Best Actress award from Shirley Temple. “It did wonders for my image and my private morale,” she said later.

Two more big hits consolidated her status. She played the title role in De Mille’s lavish if largely inaccurate Cleopatra (1934), then elected to star at Universal in a trenchant study of racial intolerance, John Stahl’s Imitation of Life (1934), based on Fannie Hurst’s novel about a young widow who becomes a millionairess marketing the pancake recipe of her black friend (Louise Beavers). While the widow and her daughter move into society, the friend insists on keeping in the background, and when her light-skinned daughter, who faces exclusion and prejudice where her counterpart has privilege and opportunity, tries to pass for white and disowns her mother tragedy follows.

Colbert was now – in 1935 – named one of the top 10 money-making stars, a position she was to hold again in 1936 and 1947. Fred MacMurray had his first major role in her next film, The Gilded Lily (1935), and always credited Colbert for the help she gave him. “She was so patient with me,” he said, “and I learnt more from her about screen acting than I have ever picked up since.” (They were to make six more films together.) Charles Boyer, co-star of Colbert’s next film, Private Worlds (1935), and not yet fully conversant with the English language, would also acknowledge the support he received from the actress, who won a second Oscar nomination for her performance as a psychiatrist in this grim story of mental illness.

Colbert’s first marriage ended in 1935 while she was making Gregory LaCave’s She Married Her Boss. Her co-star Melvyn Douglas later said, “Foster seemed a nice guy, but rather on the slow and stodgy side for a dynamo of sensuality like Claudette.” The same year she married an ear, nose and throat doctor, Joel Pressman, who remained her husband until his death in 1968.

Colbert’s role in Frank Lloyd’s Under Two Flags (1936), based on Ouida’s tale of the Foreign Legion, was an unusual one for her, that of the tempestuous camp-follower “Cigarette” who sacrifices herself for love of a soldier (Ronald Colman). For the same director she starred in Maid of Salem (1937), an account of the 1692 witch-hunts in Massachusetts. (Sixteen years later the playwright Arthur Miller dealt with the same subject more effectively in The Crucible.)

Colbert never seemed entirely comfortable in period pieces, and both audiences and critics were happy when she returned to modern comedy with I Met Him In Paris and Tovarich (both 1937), in which she and Charles Boyer were impoverished Russian nobility working as maid and butler in a Parisian household.

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), with a screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, based on a 1923 Gloria Swanson silent and directed by Ernst Lubitsch, was a disappointment. After a promising start in which Colbert meets Gary Cooper in a Riviera store where she is trying to buy pyjama bottoms while he is trying to purchase just the tops, it becomes contriv-ed and frantic rather than funny.

George Cukor’s Zaza (1939), in which Colbert sang several songs as a French music-hall star, was another failure, but preceded one of her greatest films, Midnight (1939), directed by Mitchell Leisen and brilliantly written by Brackett and Wilder. From the opening shot of Colbert discovered sleeping in a freight car wearing an evening gown and clutching her purse, this story of a stranded showgirl in Paris who gate-crashes a society soiree and gets involved in an increasingly complicated escapade when she is hired by a millionaire to lure a gigolo away from his wife, captivates with brittle wit, expert plotting and fine playing from a cast including John Barrymore and Mary Astor.

Colbert was basically miscast in John Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), her first film in colour, as a farmer’s wife coping with rugged conditions and hostile Indians, and though Boom Town (1940) was one of her most popular films, due to its star-power of Gable, Colbert, Spencer Tracy and Hedy Lamarr, it was basically over-blown soap opera.

Set just after the Spanish Civil War, Leisen’s Arise My Love (1940) was the film the actress would cite as her own favourite and it has some splendidly romantic, dramatic and comic moments as Colbert, playing a reporter, pretends to be the wife of a condemned soldier of fortune (Ray Milland) to save him from a Spanish firing squad, then inevitably falls in love with him. Brackett and Wilder’s screenplay tried to keep pace with changing events in Europe (the story ends after the invasion of France) which resulted in some uneasy shifts of mood in an otherwise impressive work.

Better still was Henry King’s warmly charming piece of Americana Remember The Day (1941), in which Colbert gave a glowing performance as a school teacher who while visiting a now-famous former pupil recalls the past and her sweetheart who was killed in the First World War.

Preston Sturges’ The Palm Beach Story (1942) is one of the screen’s greatest screwball comedies and contains the sequence Colbert later cited as her favourite comic scene. Having left her husband to find a millionaire to finance his inventions, she is climbing into a train’s upper berth when she steps on the face and glasses of a rich passenger (Rudy Vallee).

During the Second World War Colbert’s husband, Joel Pressman, became a navy lieutenant and she spent much time selling war bonds and working for the war effort. Two of her major films were effective wartime propaganda: So Proudly We Hail (1943), a tribute to the nurses in Bataan – though Colbert did not get along with her co-stars Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake – and Since You Went Away (1944), the producer David O. Selznick’s ambitious three-hour tribute to the families at home.

Colbert considered hard before taking the role of the mother to two teenage girls, but it became one of her finest, most deeply felt performances, representing the women left to raise families while their husbands are at war. In one remarkably touching scene Colbert, who has taken a job at a munitions factory, converses with a refugee, now a naturalised American (Alla Nazimova). The director John Cromwell called Colbert “a great star at the height of her powers” and she received her third Academy Award nomination (losing to Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight).

This was to be the last occasion when a truly great performance and great film were to come together in her career – she unfortunately turned down Leisen’s offer to star in To Each His Own, feeling that its story of unwed motherhood was old-hat – Olivia de Havilland won an Oscar for the role. Later she was to withdraw from Capra’s State of the Union when he refused to meet her contractual demands that she finish work by 5pm each day, and lost the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve because of a back injury, a stroke of bad luck that she lamented for the rest of her career.

Instead she appeared in some mild comedies (Practically Yours, 1944, Without Reservations, 1946) and tepid dramas (Tomorrow is Forever, 1945, The Secret Heart, 1946). Tomorrow is Forever had in its favour some movingly intense scenes between Colbert and Orson Welles, while June Allyson, playing her first dramatic role in The Secret Heart, is another who later testified to Colbert’s generosity. “She sensed my insecurities,” wrote Allyson later, “and gave me the moral support and acting tips that made a world of difference.”

Colbert and Fred MacMurray had an enormous box-office hit with The Egg and I (1947) as a city couple trying to run a farm, but the slapstick (lots of falling about in the mud) was far from the sophistication Colbert purveyed so expertly. Jean Negulesco’s Three Came Home (1950) gave her a strong dramatic role as Agnes Newton Keith, a true-life American authoress captured when the Jap-anese invaded Borneo in 1941. Her scenes with Sessue Haya-kawa (as the cultured prison camp commander) were memorable in a gripping film which was too grim to be a major hit.

Colbert had appeared on radio regularly throughout her career, and in 1951 she made her television debut on The Jack Benny Show. Other appearances included The Royal Family of Broadway (1954), The Guardsman (1955) and Blithe Spirit (1956), with Noel Coward and Lauren Bacall.

In 1951 she also returned to the stage, with a tour of Noel Coward’s Island Fling (later known as South Sea Bubble). Though she and Coward were close friends, their temperaments clashed during this production, causing Coward to tell her “I’d wring your neck – if you had one.” She came to Britain to star with Jack Hawkins in The Planter’s Wife (Outpost in Malaya was its US title) based on the native terrorism being faced by rubber planters. The film was a big hit in this country.

The following year Colbert went to France to play a mistress of Louis XIV in Sacha Guitry’s Si Versailles m’etait conte, a lavish but empty pageant. She returned to Broadway in 1955, replacing Margaret Sullavan in Janus, then in 1958 starred in a new play, Leslie Stevens’s The Marriage- Go-Round. The New York Times stated, “The comedy skill of the chief actors is incomparable – they are Charles Boyer and Claudette Colbert, making something gay and iridescent out of something small and familiar.” The play was a hit and Colbert won a Tony nomination.

She made her last film in 1961, Delmer Daves’s Parrish, a turgid soap opera in which Colbert played the mother of Troy Donahue. She continued to make Broadway appearances, among them The Irregular Verb To Love (1963), The Kingfisher (1978) and A Talent For Murder (1981), then in 1984 returned to the London stage (for the first time since The Barker almost 60 years earlier) in Aren’t We All? Her charm and beauty again beguiled the critics and her professionalism allowed her to deal smoothly with the frequent fluffing by Harrison.

Over the last 30 years, she spent much of her time at the home she and her husband had bought long ago in Barbados, and she also had a flat in Paris and an apartment on the East Side of New York.

She remained active socially until recently, always elegantly dressed (one of her closest friends was the late Ginette Spanier, former directrice of the House of Balmain) and exuding bubbly effervescence. Asked what the key was to her ageless beauty, she replied: “Laughter – it’s the key to everything. To a day of gloom or despair, to happy work, to life.”

Tom Vallance

Lily Claudette Chauchoin (Claudette Colbert), actress: born Paris 13 September 1903; married 1928 Norman Foster (marriage dissolved 1935), 1935 Joel J. Pressman (died 1968); died Cobblers Cove, Barbados 30 July 1996.

The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Audrey Christie’s best known film roles are “Carousel” in 1956 as Mrs Mullen the carnival owner and “Splendour in the Grass” as the mother of Natalie Wood in 1961.

IMDB Entry:

Audrey Christie was born on June 27, 1912 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was an actress, known for Splendor in the Grass (1961), Carousel (1956) and Frankie and Johnny (1966). She died on December 19, 1989 in West Hollywood, California, USA. Broadway actress. Made very few films, but appeared in many television guest shots.Originated the role of “Miriam Aarons” in the Broadway production of Clare Boothe Luce‘s play, “The Women”; Paulette Goddard played the part later in the 1939 film, The Women (1939). Attended acting and dancing classes in Chicago and performed in vaudeville from the age of fifteen. Moved on to working in night clubs and on radio shows, before singing and dancing in musical comedies on the stage. Her screen appearances often tended to be in matronly, pompous or otherwise unsympathetic roles, as haughty socialites or strict mothers.