Adrian Booth was born in 1917 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She also acted under the name of Lorna Gray. Her films include “Daughter of Don Q” in 1946 and “Dakota”. She was long married to actor David Brian.
BRIMSTONE, US poster, top from left: Rod Cameron, Adrian Booth, Walter Brennan, bottom right: Forrest Tucker, 1949
New York Times obituary in 2017.
Adrian Booth, a versatile film actress who also took pies to the face alongside the Three Stooges, died Sunday, April 30, 2017. She was 99.
Relatives of the actress announced Booth’s death in a post via social media.
Booth appeared in several Three Stooges short films including a memorable pie-throwing scene in “Three Sappy People.” She played Sherry, a spoiled wife. Other Stooges shorts included “You Nazty Spy!”, “Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise,” and “Rockin’ Thru the Rockies.”
She was born Virginia Pound July 26, 1917, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
During the 1930s, when she became a contract player with Columbia Pictures, studio executives renamed her Lorna Gray. She played parts in “Flying G-Men” alongside Robert Paige, “Pest From the West” with Buster Keaton, and the above-mentioned Stooges film shorts.
Her films included “Red River Range,” a 1938 film starring John Wayne; “O, My Darling Clementine,” a 1943 film starring the country music singer Roy Acuff as a singing sheriff; and “Hold ‘Em Navy.” In the latter film, her birth name appeared in the credits.
Booth also played the lead character’s secretary, Gail Richards, in Republic Pictures’ 1944 “Captain America” film serials about the comic book superhero.
After leaving Columbia in 1945, she took a different stage name, Adrian Booth, and had retained the name ever since. She retired from her film career after marrying the actor David Brian in 1949; he preceded her in death in 1993.
In 2007, Booth told writer John Beifuss that she had a great time working for Republic Pictures in films such as “Along the Oregon Trail” and “Home on the Range.”
“They were so good to me,” Booth said. “Every time I started a picture, my boss would send me flowers.”
After appearing in the Three Stooges film shorts, she became good friends with the Stooge Larry Fine. She called Fine, who died in 1975, “a very sweet boy.”
For her work in Western films and TV series, Booth received the Golden Boot Award in 1998. She was a frequent film festival attendee even into her 90s.
Alvy Moore was born in 1921 in Indiana. His first role was in 1952 in “Okinawa”. His other films include “Susan Slept Here” in 1954, “5 Against the House”, “Screaming Eagles” and “Early Warning”. Despite been featured prominently in many feature films, he was often credited in the cast lists which is a shame as he was always a fine actor. He died in 1997 in Palm Desert, California.
TCM Overview:
A comic player of feature films and TV, Alvy Moore will always be remembered as county agent Hank Kimball on the long-running CBS sitcom “Green Acres” (1965-71). Wearing a trademark hat, Hank Kimball made Eddie Albert’s life nuts by never quite knowing the answer to any agricultural question, but hedging the situation with double-talk.
Moore studied drama in his native Indiana before serving in the Marines during WWII, during which he participated in the battle for Iwo Jima. Post-war, he furthered his training at the Pasadena Playhouse. Moore succeeded David Wayne in the role of Ensign Pulver opposite Henry Fonda’s “Mister Roberts” on Broadway, and later toured with the play. As if life were following art, he made his screen debut playing the quartermaster in “Okinawa” (1952). For much of the 1950s, he was relegated to small roles in features, like his turns opposite Marilyn Monroe in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953) and as Mitzi Gaynor’s boyfriend in “There’s No Business Like Show Business” (1954). Frustrated by his stalled career, Moore supplemented his income by purchasing an interest in an iron foundry that made tile tabletops and considered abandoning his dream. He had one of his better roles as the wisecracking member of a group out to rob a casino in the crime caper “Five Against the House” (1955), co-starring Brian Keith and Kim Novak. While he appeared in support of stars like Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall in “Designing Woman” (1957) and Jack Lemmon in “The Wackiest Ship in the Army” (1961), his roles remained decidedly supporting. He remained active in features into the 1980s, generally in small parts such as a gas station mechanic in a sheriff in “Dr. Minx” (1975), and a chili salesman in “The Horror Show” (1989), among others. With L Q Jones, he formed a producing partnership that resulted in the above-average thriller “The Brotherhood of Satan” (1971), about a town overtaken by a coven of witches, and the futuristic black comedy “A Boy and His Dog” (1975), starring Don Johnson. Moore also reprised the voice for Grandpa in “Here Comes the Littles” (1985), a feature based on the 1983 ABC animated series.
Moore found his greatest success on the small screen. In 1955, he was the narrator for the ABC series “Border Collie” and that same year appeared as a reporter in the “What I Want To Be” segments of “The Mickey Mouse Club” (ABC). He amassed numerous guest credits on series, including “My Little Margie”, “Pete and Gladys”, “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “The Andy Griffith Show”. Moore remained active into the 1990s, with guest appearances on “Frasier” (NBC, 1994, as a patient) and “The Pursuit of Happiness” (NBC, 1995, as a wedding guest).
In TV longforms, Moore played a distraught father in “Cotton Candy” (NBC, 1978) and the first mayor in “Little House: The Last Farewell” (NBC, 1989). He also revived the character of Hank Kimball in “Return to Green Acres” (CBS, 1990).
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
George Maharis is best known for his role in the cult TV series of the 1960’s “Route 66”. He was born in 1928 in Astoria, New York of Greek parentage. He studied at the Actor’s Studio and acted on the stage in New York. His fil debut was in 1960 in Otto Preminger’s “Exodus”. That same year he was cast as Buz Mordock in “Route 66” with Martin Milner. He left the series midway through the third year and was replaced by Glenn Corbett. He made some further movies including in 1964 “Quick Before It Melts”, “The Satan Bug” a thriller with Anne Francis, “Sylvia” with Carroll Baker and “A Covenant With Death” with Katy Jurado. He guest-starred in may television series, one of the last was “Murder She Wrote” with Angela Lansbury in 1990.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Tall, dark and handsome, not to mention a charismatic rebel of 60s Hollywood, actor George Maharis (real Greek family name is Mahairas) was born in 1928 in Astoria, New York as one of seven children. His immigrant father was a restaurateur. George expressed an early interest in singing and initially pursued it as a career, but extensive overuse and improper vocal lessons stripped his chords and he subsequently veered towards an acting career.
Trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Sanford Meisner and the Actor’s Studio withLee Strasberg, the “Method” actor found roles on dramatic TV, including a few episodes of “The Naked City,” and secured an early name for himself on the late 1950s’s off-Broadway scene, especially with his performances in Jean Genet‘s “Deathwatch” andEdward Albee‘s “Zoo Story”. Producer/director Otto Preminger “discovered” George for film, offering the actor a choice of five small roles for his upcoming film Exodus (1960). George chose the role of an underground freedom fighter.
One of the episodes George did on the police drama “The Naked City” series (“Four Sweet Corners”) wound up being a roundabout pilot for the buddy adventure series that would earn him household fame. With the arrival of the series Route 66 (1960), the actor earned intense TV stardom and a major cult following as a Brandoesque, streetwise drifter named Buzz Murdock. Partnered with the more fair-skinned, clean-scrubbed, college-educated Tod Stiles (Martin Milner, later star of Adam-12 (1968)), the duo traveled throughout the U.S. in a hotshot convertible Corvette and had a huge female audience getting their kicks off with “Route 66” and George. During its peak, the star parlayed his TV fame into a recording career with Epic Records, producing six albums in the process and peaking with the single “Teach Me Tonight”.
For whatever reason, Maharis left. His replacement, ruggedly handsome Glenn Corbett, failed to click with audiences and the series was canceled after the next season. Back to pursuing films, the brash and confident actor, with his health scare over, aggressively stardom with a number of leads but the duds he found himself in — Quick Before It Melts(1964), Sylvia (1965), A Covenant with Death (1967), The Happening (1967), and The Desperados (1969) prime among his list of disasters — hampered his chances. The best of the lot was the suspense drama, The Satan Bug (1965), but it lacked box-office appeal and disappeared quickly. Moreover, a 1967 sex scandal (and subsequent one in 1974) could not have helped.
Returning to TV in the 70s, George returned to series TV with the short-lived The Most Deadly Game (1970) co-starring fellow criminologists Ralph Bellamy and Yvette Mimieux(who replaced the late Inger Stevens who committed suicide shortly before shooting was about to start). The decade also included a spat of TV-movies including the more notableThe Monk (1969) and Rich Man, Poor Man (1976). In between he appeared in Las Vegas nightclubs and summer stock, and was one of the first celebrities to pose for a nude centerfold in Playgirl (July 1973).
His last years brought about the occasional film, most notably as the resurrected warlock in The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) and an appearance in the horror thrillerDoppelganger (1993). Maharis’ TV career ended with guest parts on such popular but unchallenging shows such as “Fantasy Island” and “Murder, She Wrote”.
Maharis’ later years were spent focusing on impressionistic painting. He has been fully retired since the early 1990s.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
New York Times obituary in 2023:
George Maharis, TV Heartthrob of ‘Route 66,’ Is Dead at 94
He appeared in Off Broadway roles before starring on CBS as one of two young men who find adventure crossing the country in a Corvette convertible.
George Maharis, the ruggedly handsome New York-born stage actor who went on to become a 1960s television heartthrob as a star of the series “Route 66,” died on Wednesday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 94.
His longtime friend and caretaker, Marc Bahan, confirmed the death.
Mr. Maharis’s greatest fame arose from the role of Buz Murdock, one of two young men who traveled the country in a Corvette convertible finding a new adventure and drama (and usually a new young woman) each week on CBS’s “Route 66.”
“Route 66” began in 1960, and Mr. Maharis left the show in 1963. His co-star, Martin Milner, got a new partner, played by Glenn Corbett, and the series continued for one more season.
Mr. Maharis attributed his departure to health reasons (he was suffering from hepatitis), but Karen Blocher, an author and blogger who interviewed him and other principal figures on the show, wrote in 2006 that the story was more complex.
Herbert B. Leonard, the show’s executive producer, “thought he’d hired a young hunk for the show, a hip, sexy man and good actor that all the girls would go for,” Ms. Blocher wrote.
“This was all true of Maharis,” she went on, “but not the whole story, as Leonard discovered to his anger and dismay. George was gay, it turned out.”
Ms. Blocher attributed Mr. Maharis’s departure to a number of factors. “The producers felt betrayed and duped when they learned of Maharis’s sexual orientation, and never trusted him again,” she wrote, adding, “Maharis, for his part, started to feel that he was carrying the show and going unappreciated.”
Mr. Maharis was arrested in 1967 on charges of “lewd conduct” and in 1974 on charges of “sex perversion” for cruising in men’s bathrooms.
He did not discuss his sexuality in interviews, but he proudly described being the July 1973 nude centerfold in Playgirl magazine in an interview with Esquire in 2017.
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“A lot of guys came up to me and asked me to sign it for their ‘wives,’” he said.
Mr. Maharis had done well-received work in theater before becoming a television star. In 1958 he played a killer in an Off Broadway production of Jean Genet’s “Deathwatch.” Writing in The Times, Louis Calta described Mr. Maharis’s performance as “correctly volatile, harsh, soft and cunning.”
Two years later, he appeared in Edward Albee’s “Zoo Story” in its Off Broadway production at the Provincetown Playhouse. That year he was one of 12 young actors given the Theater World Award. The other winners included Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda, Patty Duke and Carol Burnett. In 1962, he was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on “Route 66.”
Mr. Maharis told a writer for The Times in 1963 that he treated the TV series like a job in summer stock theater.
“The series taught me how to maintain my integrity and not be sucked in by compromise,” he said.
George Maharis was born in the Astoria section of Queens on Sept. 1, 1928, the son of a Greek restaurateur. He attended Flushing High School and later served in the Marines.
Before succeeding as an actor, he told interviewers, he had worked as a mechanic, a dance instructor and a short-order cook. But he had aspired to a singing career first, and after he became a television star he recorded albums, including “George Maharis Sings!,” “Portrait in Music” and “Just Turn Me Loose!” At least one single, “Teach Me Tonight,” became a hit.
After leaving “Route 66,” Mr. Maharis appeared in feature films, including “Sylvia,” with Carroll Baker, and “The Satan Bug,” a science-fiction drama, both from 1965. He tried series television again in 1970 as the star of an ABC whodunit, “The Most Deadly Game,” with Ralph Bellamy and Yvette Mimieux, but the show lasted only three months.
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In the 1970s and early ’80s, he made guest appearances on other television series, including “Police Story,” “The Bionic Woman” and “Fantasy Island.” He did occasional television films, including a poorly reviewed 1976 “Rosemary’s Baby” sequel. He worked infrequently in the 1980s and made his final screen appearance in a supporting role in “Doppelganger,” a 1993 horror film starring Drew Barrymore.
Information about his survivors was not immediately available.
Because of his filming schedule when the shows aired, Mr. Maharis did not have a chance to watch “Route 66” until it was rereleased on DVD in 2007, he told the website Route 66 News that year.
“I was really surprised how strong they were,” he said. “For the first time, I could see what other people had seen.”
In a 2012 reappraisal of the show in The New York Times, Neil Genzlinger praised the literary quality of the scripts and commented, “This half-century-old black-and-white television series tackled issues that seem very 21st century.”
Several actors who went on to greater renown appeared on the show, including Martin Sheen, Robert Redford, Robert Duvall and Barbara Eden.
In an interview in 2007 with The Chicago Sun-Times, he reflected on his “Route 66” days and on how the country had changed since then. “You could go from one town to the next, maybe 80 miles away, and it was a totally different world,” he said. “Now you can go 3,000 miles and one town is the same as the next
Jill Clayburgh was a terrific actress who had some wonderful performance on film in the late 70’s and early 80’s. She was born New York in 1944. After attending Sarah Lawerence College, she joined the Charles Street Repertory Theater in Boston. She acted on Broadway in musicals such as “The Rothchilds” and “Pippin”. Her breakthrough film role came with “Silver Streak” with Gene Wilder in 1976. She gave a heartbreaking performance in “An Unmarried Woman” with Alan Bates. She then starred with Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson in “Semi-Touch” and with Reynolds again and Candice Bergen in “Starting Over” in 1979. She went to Italy to make “La Luna” for Bernardo Bertolucci. As the 80’s progresses, her film roles become more intermittent. She married the playwright David Rabe and was rearing her family. In more recent years, she was very active on television and o the stage. In 2006 she was on Broadway in “Barefoot in the Park”. Jill Clayburgh died in 2010. The actress Lily Rabe is her daughter.
Ronald Bergan’s obituary of Jill Clayburgh in “The Independent”:
The actor Jill Clayburgh, who has died of leukaemia aged 66, was one of the brightest female stars of the 1970s, yet was somewhat forgotten in the decade that followed. “If they don’t give me good parts in movies, I’m just not going to do them. And there’s a time when they just move on to the next person,” Clayburgh said prophetically at the height of her fame in 1978. Perhaps conservative Hollywood did not really know how to cope with an independent-minded, intelligent performer who refused to be pigeonholed.
Born in Manhattan, New York, Clayburgh was the daughter of wealthy parents. Her father was the vice-president of two large companies and her mother was a secretary to the Broadway producer David Merrick. As a child, Clayburgh was inspired to become an actor when she saw Jean Arthur as Peter Pan on Broadway in 1950. She was educated in New York, at the exclusive, all-girl Brearley school and then at Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied religion, philosophy and literature.
She began acting as a student in summer stock and, after graduating, joined the Charles Street repertory theatre company in Boston, where she met another up-and-coming actor, Al Pacino, with whom she was to have a five-year relationship. The next step was New York, where she appeared in several off-Broadway productions.
She moved on to Broadway in the musicals The Rothschilds (1970) and Pippin (1972), and Tom Stoppard’s philosophical farce, Jumpers (1974). But it was film acting that really excited Clayburgh. “One of the things I like about the movies is the adventure of it,” she said. “I like going to different places and I like doing a different scene every day.”
In 1963, while still at Sarah Lawrence, Clayburgh had made her screen debut as the bride-to-be in The Wedding Party, co-directed by her fellow student Brian De Palma in 16mm and grainy monochrome. However the film was not released until six years later when Robert De Niro (credited, in his supporting role, as Robert Denero) had made his name.
It took Clayburgh much longer to become a recognisable face. She had an absurd role as a Jewish Marxist in the unfunny Portnoy’s Complaint (1972), and had little to do as Ryan O’Neal’s ex-wife in The Thief Who Came to Dinner (1973) and as the stripper murder-victim of George Segal in The Terminal Man (1974). Then she was unexpectedly cast as Carole Lombard opposite James Brolin’s Clark Gable in the stunningly banal Gable and Lombard (1976), from which only she emerged with any dignity.
Clayburgh had the kind of warmth and witty sophistication barely seen in Hollywood since Lombard and Jean Arthur. This was demonstrated in Silver Streak (1976), an entertaining throwback to 1930s comedy-thrillers, where she played the lady on a train who tangles with Gene Wilder; and in Semi-Tough (1977), as the beautiful free-thinking woman living in a platonic threesome with two American football players (Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson) until one of them makes a forward pass.
These carefree, liberated characters led the director Paul Mazursky to give Clayburgh the title role in An Unmarried Woman (1978). Here, in one film, she proved that she was equally adept at drama and comedy. As a woman making herself a new life after being deserted by her husband, she overcame many of the superficial aspects of the script thanks to her ability to show both strength and vulnerability. Her performance earned her the best actress award at Cannes and an Oscar nomination.
The following year, she was nominated for another Oscar, this time for Alan J Pakula’s Starting Over (1979), in which she played another unmarried woman, but with a different emphasis. Her character is a schoolteacher who, having been hurt by a relationship, keeps any emotional involvement at bay by remaining deliberately dowdy.
Clayburgh seized the chance to work with the director Bernardo Bertolucci in Italy on La Luna (1979), playing an internationally renowned singer who has an incestuous relationship with her spoiled teenage son. Clayburgh had all the strength and glamour required by this opaque, operatic film. However, in the 80s, she had a singular lack of success, despite luminous performances. She was splendid in It’s My Turn (1980), as a mathematics professor who has an affair with an ex-baseball player (Michael Douglas), and as the first female judge appointed to the US supreme court in First Monday in October (1981), alienating and then attracting her shabby liberal colleague (Walter Matthau).
She gave another excellent, yet unappreciated, portrayal in I’m Dancing As Fast As I Can (1982), as a pill-popping film-maker who goes cold turkey. It was adapted, from Barbara Gordon’s autobiographical book, by the Tony-award winning playwright David Rabe, whom Clayburgh had married in 1979.
Sadly her powerful performance as a lawyer defending a Palestinian in Costa-Gavras’s Hanna K (1983) was little seen, due to pressure from pro-Israeli groups, who deemed it “anti-Israeli” and managed to limit its circulation. Upset by the film’s reception, Clayburgh gave up cinema for three years, during which time she was busy bringing up her children and tending the garden of the family’s home in Mount Kisco, New York.
In 1984 she returned to Broadway in Noël Coward’s Design for Living, alongside Raul Julia and Frank Langella. Her return to cinema was unpropitious: in the silly whodunnit Where Are the Children? (1986) she was required to cry a lot. But she was amusing as a snooty New York journalist researching an article in the Louisiana bayou in Andrey Konchalovsky’s comedy-melodrama, Shy People (1987), which flopped. There followed a series of minor roles in best-forgotten movies. Parallel to her film career, she appeared regularly on television, including five episodes (from 1999 to 2001) of the legal comedy Ally McBeal, as Ally’s mother; and as the wealthy socialite Letitia Darling in all 23 episodes of Dirty Sexy Money (2007-09).
In her last Broadway performance, Clayburgh played the mother in a 2006 revival of Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park. The New York Times critic Ben Brantley praised her “winning way with dialogue that can make synthetic one-liners sound like filigree epigrams”.
She is survived by David, her children Michael and Lily (who is also an actor), her stepson, Jason, and her brother, James.
• Jill Clayburgh, actor, born 30 April 1944; died 5 November 2010
Te above obituary from the “Independent” can also be accessed on line here.
Genteel, lady-like British actress who was a much respected theatrical star in the 1920’s and 30’s, both in her own country and in the United States. Born in Hove, Sussex, in March 1900, she took to the stage at the age of seventeen, as Ela Delahay in ‘Charley’s Aunt’. She played Peter Pan three years later and married the first of her actor husbands, Seymour Beard. By the mid-1920’s, Edna had become the toast of London for her performances in ‘Fallen Angel’ (with Tallulah Bankhead), and, a role she made her own, as Teresa (Tessa) Sanger, in ‘The Constant Nymph’ (opposite Noel Coward and, later,John Gielgud). With the part of Tessa, she also enjoyed a successful run on Broadway in 1926, which was followed by another Margaret Kennedy play, ‘Come With Me’. She married her co-star, Herbert Marshall after divorcing Beard in 1928.
Edna started in films as early as 1921, but made little headway until Michael and Mary(1931), in which she recreated her role from the London stage. She then co-starred again with husband Herbert Marshall in Faithful Hearts (1932), but neither of these films received much international exposure. Her only Hollywood film at this time was The Key(1934), which, though directed by Michael Curtiz, was ,alas, ‘low-key’ as far as critical plaudits or box office were concerned. She had smallish parts in other British films, South Riding (1938), and the original version of Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Man Who Knew Too Much(1934), as the mother of kidnapped Nova Pilbeam. Not until 1939, did a worthy motion picture role come her way in the shape of the forlorn wife, whom violinist Leslie Howarddeserts for Ingrid Bergman in Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939). Other noteworthy screen roles were her Catherine Apley in The Late George Apley (1947), and the housekeeper Martha of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) which the New York Times review of June 27 considered ‘by far the best performance’ in the picture. Edna’s film appearances were few and far between, and only a handful adequately showcased her talents as an actress, which are so abundantly evident from the body of her work in the theatre.
BFrom 1939 a U.S. resident and a nationalised citizen by the early 1950’s, Edna continued her frequent triumphant returns to the stage. Her most celebrated performances on Broadway were in Terence Rattigan‘s ‘The Browning Version’, as downtrodden housewife Millie Crocker-Harris, and ‘Harlequinade’ (1949), both co-starring Maurice Evans; and as the titular character ‘Jane’ (1952), a play adapted by S.N. Behrman from a W. Somerset Maugham short story. Brooks Atkinson described her performance as the timorous spinster as both ‘comic’ and ‘forceful’. In her last significant role on stage, she co-starred with Brian Aherne and Lynn Fontanne in the romantic comedy ‘Quadrille’ (1954-55), directed by Alfred Lunt and outfitted by Cecil Beaton, who also designed the costumes. Edna retired from acting in the early 1960’s and died in a clinic in Geneva, Switzerland in 1974.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Jill Ireland was born in London in 1936. Her flm debut was in 1955 in “Simon and Laura”. Her other films include “Carry on Nurse”, “Robbery Under Arms” and “Three Men in a Boat”. In the early 60’s she went to Hollywood with her then husband David McCallum. After her divorce, she married actor Charles Bronson and made many films with him including “The Mechanic”, “Hard Times”, “Breakout” and “Love and Bullets”. Jill Ireland died in Malibu in 1990.
TCM Overview{
Attractive blonde professional dancer turned actor who made her screen debut in 1955. Ireland has often been paired with actor/husband Charles Bronson and was formerly married to actor David McCallum. Late in life she attracted considerable attention and respect for her lengthy and courageous battle with breast cancer, as well as with her other personal and family misfortunes.
Her IMDB entry:
Jill Ireland was an Anglo-American actress best-known for her appearance as “Leila Kalomi”, the only woman Mr. Spock ever loved (in the Star Trek (1966) episode, Star Trek: This Side of Paradise (1967)) and for her many supporting roles in the movies ofCharles Bronson, her second husband. She is also known for her battle with breast cancer, having written two books on her fight with the disease and serving as a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society.
She was born Jill Dorothy Ireland on April 24, 1936 in London, England, to a wine merchant and his wife, Dorothy, who was fated to outlive her daughter. Young Jill started her entertainment career as a dancer and made her credited screen debut, in 1955, inMichael Powell‘s Oh… Rosalinda!! (1955), after a bit part in another movie. Two years later, she married actor David McCallum, with whom she co-starred in the Stanley Bakeraction picture, Hell Drivers (1957). In the mid-1960s, they moved to the United States so McCallum could star as agent “Ilya Kuryakin” in the TV series, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.(1964). She got steady work on American TV and would co-star with her husband in five episode of the series in 1964, 1965 and 1967.
Ireland divorced McCallum, with whom she had three sons, in 1967. The following year, she married Charles Bronson, who was several years away from superstar status. They had first met when McCallum introduced them on the set of The Great Escape (1963). With Bronson, she had two children, a daughter born to the couple, and an adopted daughter.
They first co-starred together in the French movie, Rider on the Rain (1970) (“Rider on the Rain”), in 1970 (she had first played an uncredited bit part in his movie, Lola (1970), released that same year), a movie that made Bronson a major star in Europe. They starred in 13 more pictures in the next 17 years, a period during which Bronson rivaledClint Eastwood as the biggest movie star in the world in the early and mid-1970s before his star waned in the 1980s. Ireland only appeared in one TV episode, one TV-movie and one theatrical picture that didn’t star Bronson in that time.
She was diagnosed with cancer in her right breast in 1984 and underwent a mastectomy. She wrote about her battle with the disease and her advocacy for the the American Cancer Society led to the organization giving her its Courage Award. Ireland was presented with the award from President Ronald Reagan.
Jill Ireland died of breast cancer at her home in Malibu, California on May 18, 1990. She was 54 years old.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Eva La Gallienne was born in London in 1899. Her father was the British poet Robert La Gallienne and her mother was a Danish journalist. She made her stage debut at the age of 15 on the London stage in “Monna Vanna”. In 1915 she went to New York and virtually all of her acting career was in the U.S. In 1921 she had a stunning success in Ferenc Molnar’s “Liliom”. She had many trumphs on Broadway and on the stage in the U.S. over the years. Her film appearances are few but choice. Of particular interest are “Prince of Players” with Richard Burton in 1955 and in 1980, “Resurrection” with Ellen Burstyn and Sam Sheperd. She guest starred on “St Elsewhere” with Brenda Vaccaro in 1984. Eva la Gallienne died in 1991 at the age of 92.
TCM Overview:
This legendary stage star won renown for her performances on Broadway, in productions by the repertory theater she founded, including “Liliom” (1921) and “The Swan” (1923). In the 1930s, she played the lead in “Peter Pan,” the White Queen in “Alice in Wonderland,” Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet,” and the lead in a summer production of “Hamlet” (1937) which she also staged.
In 1926, Le Gallienne founded a national repertory theater, the Civic Repertory Theater in New York, similar to England’s Old Vic, which presented the classics at popular prices ($1.50 top ticket price). She not only starred in the majority of productions, until the company folded in 1933 as a consequence of the Depression, but she also staged, translated and produced most of the plays. Le Gallienne then lectured at colleges and toured the country, returning to Broadway in “Uncle Harry” and “The Cherry Orchard.” In 1946, she organized the short-lived American Repertory Theater with Margaret Webster and Cheryl Crawford. Later stage triumphs included “Mary Stuart” in which she toured from 1957 to 1962 and “The Royal Family” (1976). Le Gallienne reprised her role (the matriarch of a theatrical family modeled on the Barrymores) in an acclaimed television production which earned her an Emmy. She also produced and starred in an acclaimed TV version of “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” (1958). Le Gallienne appeared in a handful of films, perhaps most memorably as Ellen Burstyn’s grandmother in “Resurrection” (1980), for which she received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress.
The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Legendary stage actress Eva Le Gallienne’s life began just as grandly as the daughter of poet Richard Le Gallienne. Sarah Bernhardt was her idol growing up and, at age 18, was brought to New York by her mother. Making her London debut with “Monna Vanna” in 1914, she proved a star in every sense of the word. She appeared on Broadway first in “Liliom” in 1921 and lastly at the Biltmore Theatre in 1981 with “To Grandmother’s House We Go,” which won her a Tony nomination at age 82. Noted for her extreme boldness and idealism, she became a director and muse for theatre’s top playwrights, a foremost translator of Henrik Ibsen, and a founder of the civic repertory movement in America. A respected stage coach, director, producer and manager over her six decades, Ms. Le Gallienne consciously devoted herself to the Art of the Theatre as opposed to the Show Business of Broadway and dedicated herself to upgrading the quality of the stage. She ran the Civic Repertory Theatre Company for 10 years (1926-1936), producing 37 plays during that time. She managed Broadway’s 1100-seat Civic Repertory Theatre (more popularly known as The 14th Street Theatre) at 107 14th Street from 1926-32, which was home to her company whose actors included herself, J. Edward Bromberg, Paul Leyssac,Florida Friebus, and Leona Roberts. Her gallery of theatre portrayals would include everything from Peter Pan to Hamlet. Sadly, she almost completely avoided film and TV during her lengthy career. However, toward the end of her life, she did appear in a marvelous 1977 stage version of “The Royal Family” on TV and rendered a quietly touching performance as Ellen Burstyn‘s grandmother in Resurrection (1980), for which she received an Oscar nomination.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Mary Peach is a South African-born British film and television actress who was born on October 20, 1934, in Durban, South Africa. She is known for her roles in films such as Cutthroat Island (1995), Scrooge (1970), and The Projected Man (1966). She has also appeared in numerous British films and television series over the years, including A Gathering of Eagles (1963) which was made in Hollywood opposite Rock Hudson and Rod Taylor and the BBC adaptation of The Three Musketeers (1966). Peach was married to film producer Thomas Clyde from 1961 until their divorce, and they had two children together. She later married screenwriter and director Jimmy Sangster in 1995, and remained married to him until his death in 2011. Peach was also considered for the role of Steed’s new assistant in The Avengers (1961) after Diana Rigg left the show
Madeleine Carroll was born in 1906 and was an English actress, popular both in Britain and America in the 1930s and 1940s. At the peak of her success she was the highest-paid actress in the world, earning $250,000 in 1938.
Carroll is remembered for her role in Alfred Hitchcock‘s The 39 Steps (1935). She is also noted for abandoning her acting career after the death of her sister Marguerite in the London Blitz, to devote herself to helping wounded servicemen and children displaced and maimed by the war.
Carroll was born at 32 Herbert Street (now number 44) in West Bromwich, Staffordshire, daughter of John Carroll, an Irish professor of languages from County Limerick, and Helene, his French wife. She graduated from the University of Birmingham, with a B.A. degree; while at university she appeared in some productions for the Birmingham University Dramatic Society. She was a French mistress at a girls’ school in Brighton for a year.
Carroll wanted to act and left teaching to look for roles. She got a job in the touring company of Seymour Hicks.
She made her stage debut with a touring company in The Lash. Widely recognised as one of the most beautiful women in films (she won a film beauty competition to start herself off in the business), Carroll’s aristocratic blonde allure and sophisticated style were first glimpsed by film audiences in The Guns of Loos in 1928.
Carroll had a big hit with I Was a Spy (1933), which won her an award as best actress of the year. It was directed by Victor Saville.
She played the title role in the play Little Catherine. Abruptly, she announced plans to retire from films to devote herself to a private life with her husband, the first of four.
Carroll attracted the attention of Alfred Hitchcock and in 1935 starred as one of the director’s earliest prototypical cool, glib, intelligent blondes in The 39 Steps. Based on the espionage novel by John Buchan, the film became a sensation and with it so did Carroll. Cited by The New York Times for a performance that was “charming and skillful”, Carroll became very much in demand. The success of the film made Hitchcock a star in Britain and the US, and established the quintessential English ‘Hitchcock blonde’ Carroll as the template for his succession of ice cold and elegant leading ladies.[13] Of Hitchcock heroines as exemplified by Carroll film critic Roger Ebert wrote:
The director wanted to re-team Carroll with her 39 Steps co-star Robert Donat the following year in Secret Agent, a spy thriller based on a work by W. Somerset Maugham. However, Donat’s recurring health problems intervened, resulting in a Carroll–John Gielgud pairing. In between the films she made a short drama The Story of Papworth (1935).
Ronald Colman and Madeleine Carroll in The Prisoner of Zenda, 1937
Poised for international stardom, Carroll was the first British beauty to be offered a major American film contract. She accepted a lucrative deal with Paramount Pictures and was cast opposite George Brent in The Case Against Mrs. Ames (1936).
On radio, Carroll was a participant in The Circle (1939) on NBC, discussing “current events, literature and drama” each week. In 1944, she was the host of This Is the Story, an anthology series dramatising famous novels on the Mutual Broadcasting System. At the tail end of radio’s golden age, Carroll starred in the NBC soap opera The Affairs of Dr. Gentry (1957-59). She also was one of a group of four stars who rotated in taking the lead in each week’s episode of The NBC Radio Theater (1959).
Carroll returned to Britain after the war. She was in White Cradle Inn (1947). She went back to the US and was reunited with MacMurray for An Innocent Affair (1948). Her last film was The Fan (1949).
A commemorative monument and plaques were unveiled in her birthplace, West Bromwich, to mark the centenary of her birth. Her story is one of rare courage and dedication when at the height of her success she gave up her acting career during World War II to work in the line of fire on troop trains for the Red Cross in Italy after her sister was killed by a German air raid – for which she was awarded the American Medal of Freedom. She was also awarded the Legion of Honour by France for her tireless work in fostering relations postwar amity between France and the United States.
