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.
Bob Cummings was born in 1910 in Joplin, Missouri. In retrospect, he seems to me an underrated actor. He starred in two Hitchcock classics, “Saboteur” in 1942 and “Dial M For Murder” with Grace Kelly and Ray Milland in 1954. He had a hugly successful television series “Love That Bob” in the 1950’s. Bob Cummings died in 1990.
TCM Overview:
Amiable leading man who hit his peak in the early 1940s. Perennially youthful, Cummings started his film career in light comedies but proved his dramatic talents in the two Hitchcock films in which he starred: as the naive, innocent aircraft worker in “Saboteur” (1942) and “Dial M For Murder” (1954) as well as Sam Wood’s “King’s Row” (1942) and Martin Gabel’s “The Lost Moment” (1947).Although he appeared in dramatic roles in many of the anthology series of early TV and won an Emmy for his starring performance in Reginald Rose’s drama “12 Angry Men” (1954), Cummings was best known as the playboy photographer in his popular series “The Bob Cummings Show” (aka “Love That Bob”, 1955-59).
Heaven Only Knows, poster, (aka MONTANA MIKE), from left: Brian Donlevy, Marjorie Reynolds, Jorja Curtright, Robert Cummings (gun), 1947. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Kings Row, poster, top: Ann Sheridan, Robert Cummings, Betty Field, Ronald Reagan on midget window card, 1942. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Marry Me Again, poster, US poster art, from left, Robert Cummings, Marie Wilson, 1953. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
New York Times obituary 1990.
Robert Cummings, an affable, ever-youthful actor who starred in scores of films and four television series, including the situation comedy “The Bob Cummings Show,” died on Sunday evening at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, Calif. He was 82 years old and lived in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley.
The actor’s death resulted from kidney failure and complications of pneumonia, said a hospital spokeswoman, Louella Benson. She said he also suffered from Parkinson’s disease and was admitted to the hospital two weeks ago.
The lean, clean-cut actor specialized in light comedy. Gallant and amused, or bumbling when required, he provided adept professional support for two generations of Hollywood sirens.
But he excelled in superior dramatic roles — as an innocent aircraft worker gulled by spies in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Saboteur” (1942), a stalwart youth in “King’s Row” (1942), an idealistic publisher in “The Lost Moment,” the 1947 Gothic romance, and a murderer’s nemesis in Hitchcock’s “Dial M for Murder” (1954). An Early TV Star
However, it was on television that he won his greatest public, particularly as a swinging photographer seeking out beautiful women in the first “Bob Cummings Show,” broadcast from 1955 to 1959, and later repeatedly shown in syndication under the title “Love That Bob.”
In “The New Bob Cummings Show,” from 1961 to 1962, the actor celebrated his enthusiasm for aviation as an adventurous and high-living charter pilot and amateur detective.
He won an Emmy Award for his 1954 portrayal of a conscientious juror in a murder case in the “Studio One” production of Reginald Rose’s “12 Angry Men,” in the role peformed by Henry Fonda in the 1957 film version. In 1988, Mr. Cummings recalled the award as pivotal because he had previously done many dramatic roles that audiences had forgotten, and after that he won better parts.
Also in television, he performed in many plays on the major anthology series and in two other sitcoms, as a real-estate salesman in “My Hero” from 1952 to 1953 and as a psychiatrist in “My Living Doll” from 1964 to 1965. A Series of Identities
The actor, whose original name was Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings, was born on June 9, 1908, in Joplin, Mo., according to major reference works, although he later gave the year as 1910. His mother was a minister, and his father was a physician who nurtured him with a high-protein diet and food supplements that he later credited for maintaining his youth and vigor.
As a youth he attended public schools in Joplin and spent a year each at Drury College in Springfield, Mo., the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He started a Broadway career in 1931, faking a British accent and using the name Blade Stanhope Conway, and he speedily won roles in several plays and the revues “Earl Carroll’s Vanities” and “The Ziegfeld Follies.”
He sought recognition in Hollywood in 1934 and, learning that Southwestern characters were voguish, adopted a drawl and sought roles in the guise of Brice Hutchens of Texas. But he soon reclaimed his own name and began making about half a dozen movies a year. In World War II, he served as an Army flight instructor.
His more than 100 films included “So Red the Rose” (1935), “College Swing” (1938), “Three Smart Girls Grow Up” (1939), “The Devil and Miss Jones” (1941), “Princess O’Rourke” (1943), “Flesh and Fantasy” (1943), “You Came Along” (1945), “Sleep My Love” (1948), “The Petty Girl” (1950) and “The Carpetbaggers (1964).
Mr. Cummings wrote a book on nutrition, “Stay Young and Vital,” which was published in 1960.
Surviving are his fifth wife, Janie; three sons, Dr. Robert, Bob Jr., and Anthony; four daughters, Melinda Cameron, Patricia Goldhamer, Laurel and Michelle, and nine grandchildren
Audrey Totter The Blue Veil, poster, US poster art, clockwise from left: Richard Carlson, Joan Blondell, Charles Laughton, Agnes Moorehead, Don Taylor, Audrey Totter, Cyril Cusack, Natalie Wood, Everett Sloane; center: Jane Wyman, 1951. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Massacre Canyon, poster, US poster art, from left: Audrey Totter, Phil Carey, 1954. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Champ For A Day, poster, US poster art, from left: Alex Nicol, Audrey Totter, 1953. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Audrey Totter was an extremely versatile actress in American films especially busy in the 1940’s and early 50’s. She was born in 1918 in Joliet, Illinois. She made her movie debut in 1945 in “Main Street After Dark”. She was especially adept as hard-boiled dames in film noir e.g. “The Lady in the Lake” in 1947, “The Unsuspected”,”The High Wall” and “Tension”. She died in 2013.
Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary on Audrey Totter.
I was kissed by Audrey Totter. At least, I share that experience with anybody who has seen Lady in the Lake (1947), when Totter plants her lips on the subjective camera, the surrogate for Robert Montgomery as Philip Marlowe. The film, directed by Montgomery, and based on the Raymond Chandler novel, was shot so that the whole story is seen literally through Marlowe’s eyes.
The role of the magazine editor Adrienne Fromsett, who hires the private eye to find the missing wife of her publisher, was a breakthrough for Totter, who has died aged 95. Previously, she had been in a dozen movies, her hair colour and accent varying so much from film to film that she dubbed herself “the feminine Lon Chaney of the MGM lot”.
Montgomery chose Totter for the part because of her versatility as a radio actor. He felt her familiarity with the radio microphone would stand her in good stead for coping with the subjective camera. Totter recalled: “In motion pictures, you are taught to ignore the existence of the camera, and here you had to treat the camera as another actor. I played to the microphone for years, so it was easy to play to the camera.”
Before making her film debut for MGM in 1944, Totter had worked in radio for six years. In her second film, she provided the sexy off-screen voice of the baser side of the schizophrenic killer Joan Alris Ellis (Phyllis Thaxter) in Bewitched (1945), based on a radio play.
Totter, whose father was Slovenian and whose mother was of Swedish descent, broke into radio after graduating from high school in Joliet, Illinois, the town where she was born. Her first screen appearance was in Main Street After Dark (1945), where her rather sullen, cold detachment – befitting for film noir heroines – was already apparent in her performance as a member of a family of pickpockets. In The Sailor Takes a Wife (1946), she played a vamp, with a black wig and a Hungarian accent, trying to tempt Robert Walker away from sweet June Allyson.
But she first made an impression, fleeting as her role was, as John Garfield’s waitress pickup in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946). “It’s a hot day and that’s a leather seat. And I’ve got on a thin skirt,” she murmurs.
Lady in the Lake was one of five films Totter made in 1947, in which she had roles ranging from Claude Rains’s niece in The Unsuspected, to a psychiatrist, her hair drawn back austerely, trying to help amnesiac Steven Kenet (Robert Taylor) in High Wall. Mainly, Totter played hardboiled dames, until showing a new tenderness in one of her best films, the downbeat boxing drama The Set-Up (1949), directed with gritty realism by Robert Wise. Totter portrayed the wife of an ageing boxer, Stoker Thompson (Robert Ryan), who cannot stand the punishment he keeps taking and anxiously wanders the streets instead of watching his last fight.
In the majority of her other films, Totter could have said, like Mae West: “When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.” In John Berry’s Tension (1949), she is Claire Quimby, who cheats on her husband (Richard Basehart), and gets him blamed for the murder of her boyfriend. She snarls at him: “If you haven’t got enough brains to agree with me, then keep your mouth shut.” In the same year, in Alias Nick Beal (aka The Contact Man), she is a woman recruited by the devil (Ray Milland) as a pawn in his campaign to win the soul of an incorruptible lawyer.
After six years under contract and having been loaned out to various studios, Totter was dropped by MGM in 1951, and was forced to go freelance, apart from a couple of years at Columbia. One of the films she made for the studio was the camp classic Women’s Prison (1955), in which she plays a prisoner who suffers from the sadism of the warden (Ida Lupino).
Having dated the actors Clark Gable, Cary Grant and John Payne, and the producer Ross Hunter, “until he realised he was gay”, in 1953 she married Dr Leo Fred, assistant dean of the school of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and decided to live for her family and not her career.
Totter continued to add spice to several otherwise bland B-pictures in the 50s, and was kept busy on television during the 60s and 70s. Her roles included the feisty head nurse in the TV soap opera Medical Center (1972-76), shot at the old MGM studios, the scene of her noir triumphs in the 1940s.
Fred died in 1995. Totter is survived by their daughter, Mea.
• Audrey Totter, actor, born 20 December 1917; died 12 December 2013
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
• Audrey Totter, actor, born 20 December 1917; died 12 December 2013. Her Guardian obituary can be accessed here.
Charles Herbert was born in 1948 in Culver City, California. He was a brilliant child actor of the 1950’s. His screen debut came in 1954 with “The Long Long Trailer” with Lucille Ball. He went on to make 20 feature films , career highlights being “The View from Pompey’s Head” with Dana Wynter in 1955, “The Fly” with Vincent Price and Patricia Owens in 1958 and “Houseboat” with Cary Grant and Sophia Loren. He died in 2015.
“Telegraph” obituary:
Charles Herbert, who has died of a heart attack aged 66, was a tousle-haired, all-American child star whose life slipped into a spiral of drug abuse after the demise of his career.
Herbert, heavy-browed with an enquiring face, spent little time at school, and made his screen debut at four. He appeared in dozens of films, often in the horror-sci-fi genre, including The Fly (1958), featuring Vincent Price, about an atomic scientist (Al Hedison) experimenting with a teleportation device who accidentally turns himself into a human insect. Herbert played his son, Philippe.
The same year he appeared in the romantic comedy Houseboat, as one of the three children of Cary Grant, a widower who meets a beautiful Italian (Sophia Loren) and moves into a leaky boat with her and his family; in one scene Sophia Loren spins the youngster around a dance floor to the accompaniment of That’s Amore. Herbert featured in numerous television serials as well as films, among them The Twilight Zone, Rawhide, Wagon Train and The Fugitive. In The Miracle Hour (1956), an episode of Science Fiction Theatre, he gave a touching performance as Tommy Parker, a blind boy whose stepfather (Dick Foran) will stop at nothing in his search for a cure.
Charles Herbert (in the dark shirt next to Sophia Loren) in Houseboat Photo: Alamy
By the mid-1960s, however, the telephone had stopped ringing. Herbert found himself, at 21, as another washed-up child actor. “I suffered the curse that inflicts every child star,” he said later. “I grew up. Some, like Shirley Temple, survived. For every Shirley there were a dozen who didn’t.”
Charles Herbert Saperstein was born in the shadow of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Culver City, California, on December 23 1948. His 40-year-old father was an invalid with a heart ailment; his mother, also 40, was his father’s carer. Charles was the family breadwinner by the age of five.
He entered show business when, aged four, he was going shopping on a bus with his mother, and was spotted by a casting agent.
Herbert made his debut in a weekly television show called Half Pint Panel (1952) and soon after that was selected for The Long, Long Trailer (1954), a comedy vehicle for Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Unfortunately, Herbert’s scenes ended up on the cutting-room floor.
His first proper role was in Secret Interlude (1955), followed by Ransom! (1956) with Glenn Ford and Donna Reed (on whose television show Herbert later became a regular), and The Tattered Dress (1957). The film that launched him as a star was the sci-fi chiller The Colossus of New York (1957), and in director William Castle’s 13 Ghosts (1960) he was given star billing alongside adult stars such as Margaret Hamilton and Rosemary DeCamp. In Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960) he was one of Doris Day’s amusing children, although he later claimed that the star had said only three words to him during filming. He spoke warmly, in contrast, about Sophia Loren and Vincent Price.
Herbert said he was “petrified” when filming his best-known role in The Fly. To elicit the most convincing reaction when the camera was rolling, the director kept Herbert away from the set, and when the boy was first shown the grotesque “fly” head, long after everybody else, he “felt physically sick”.
Herbert gave up acting in 1968, and discovered he was in penury. He once explained that he had spent 39 years of his life “on drugs”. But in later years he shook off his addictions and settled in Las Vegas, where he was happy to hear from sci-fi fans and attend film conventions.
He was unmarried.
The above “Telegraph” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Charles Herbert was a mildly popular 1950s child actor with a trademark sulky puss and thick, furrowed eyebrows, who was known for his inquisitive kid besieged by alien beings, including a robot, human fly and several house-haunting ghosts. He racked up over 20 films, 50 TV shows and a number of commercials during his youthful reign. He was born Charles Herbert Saperstein to non-professionals on December 23, 1948, in the Los Angeles area. Noticed by a Hollywood talent agent while riding a bus with his mother, Charles began his career at age 4 on a 1952 TV show entitled “Half Pint Panel”.
Elsewhere on TV, he showed up regularly on series fronted by such stars as Robert Cummings and Gale Storm. This period was marked by amazingly high-profiled performances such as his blind child on the Science Fiction Theatre (1955) episode,Science Fiction Theatre: The Miracle Hour (1956). On the feature film front, Charles made an inauspicious debut in the Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz comedy, The Long, Long Trailer(1953). Although director Vincente Minnelli had handpicked him for the role, his part was completely deleted from the movie. Other tyke roles turned out more positively and in a variety of genres, including the film noir pieces, The Night Holds Terror (1955) and The Tattered Dress (1957), the dramas, Ransom! (1956) and No Down Payment (1957), and the comedies, Houseboat (1958) and Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960). His most recognized genre, however, was sci-fi, and he appeared in a number of films that are now considered classics of that genre. He started off in a bit part as a boy playing tug-of-war with a dead sailor’s cap in The Monster That Challenged the World (1957). Up front and center, he came into his own playing the young son of dead scientific genius Ross Martin, whose brilliant brain is transplanted into what becomes the robot-like The Colossus of New York (1958). He loses another dad (David Hedison) to a botched experiment in The Fly (1958), also starring iconic master of macabre Vincent Price. Lastly, Charles headed up the cast in the somewhat eerie but rather dull and tame William Castle spookfest, 13 Ghosts (1960). Castle handpicked Charles for the child role and even offered the busy young actor top-billing over the likes of Donald Woods, Rosemary DeCamp, Jo Morrow,Martin Milner and Margaret Hamilton if he would appear in his movie. In this haunted house setting, Castle’s trademark gimmick had audiences using 3-D glasses in order to see the ghostly apparitions.
He had another leading role in the fantasy adventure, The Boy and the Pirates (1960), then film offers for Charles completely stopped. Growing into that typically awkward teen period, he was forced to subsist on whatever episodic roles he could muster up, including bits on Wagon Train (1957), Rawhide (1959), The Fugitive (1963), Family Affair (1966) and My Three Sons (1960). By the end of the 1960s, however, Charles was completely finished in Hollywood, having lost the essential adorableness that most tyke stars originally possessed. Unable to transition into adult roles, his personal life went downhill as well. With no formal education or training to do anything else and with no career earnings saved, he led a reckless, wanderlust life and turned to drugs. Never married, it took him nearly 40 years (clean and sober since October, 2005) to turn his life around. During good times and bad, however, he has appeared from time to time at sci-fi film festivals.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Valerie French was born in London in 1928. Her first film was the Italian “Maddalena” in 1954. She subsequently went to Hollywood and made films such as “Jubal” opposite Glenn Ford in and “Decision at undown” with Randolph Scott. Her last major film was “Shalako” with Sean Connery. Brigitte Bardot, Stephen Boyd and Honor Blackman. Valerie French died in 1990 at the age of 62 in New York.
“New York Times” obituary:
Valerie French, who began her career as a much-publicized starlet for Columbia Pictures and became a screen, stage and television actress who specialized in playing a diverse collection of English characters, died Saturday at her home in Manhattan. She was 59 years old. She died of leukemia, said a friend, Tom Seligson, a television producer. Miss French was born in London and spent her early childhood in Spain, returning to England to attend Malvern Girls’ College in Worcestershire and then join the BBC drama department.
After several years in television production, she joined the Theater Royal Repertory Company in Windsor, where she played small parts. After a screen test and a role in the film “The Constant Husband” in 1955, she went to Hollywood and became a contract actress with Columbia Pictures. She starred opposite Glenn Ford and Rod Steiger in “Jubal” (1956) and with Lee J. Cobb in “The Garment Jungle” (1957). On Broadway she acted in “Inadmissible Evidence” (1965) and “Help Stamp Out Marriage!” (1966). In “The Mother Lover,” at the Booth Theater in 1969, she caused something of a sensation by appearing onstage nude with her back to the audience.
Miss French starred Off Broadway in Harold Pinter’s “Tea Party” and “The Basement” in 1968, in a 1980 revival of Noel Coward’s “Fallen Angels,” and as the mother, Helen, in a production of “A Taste of Honey” in 1981. Her television credits include roles in “Have Gun, Will Travel,” “The Prisoner,” “The Nurses,” “Edge of Night” and “Brighter Day.”
Miss French was twice married and twice divorced. In a 1981 interview she said that she and her second husband, the actor Thayer David, had been planning to remarry when he died in 1978.There are no immediate survivors.
Her obituary in “The New York Times” can also be accessed here.
The 27th Day, poster, US poster, Valerie French (bathing suit), 1957. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
Chuck Connors was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1921. He was a professional basketball and baseball player. His first film was “Pat and Mike” in 1952 and his movie highlights include “Good Morning Miss Dove” with Jennifer Jones in 1955, “The Big Country” and “Move Over Darling” with Doris Day. He had success on televsion in the series “Rifleman” and “Arrst and Trial”. Chuck Connors died in 1992 at the age of 71.
His IMDB entry:
Born to immigrant parents from the Dominion of Newfoundland (now part of Canada) Chuck Connors and his two-years-younger sister, Gloria, grew up in a working-class section of the west side of Brooklyn, New York, where their father worked the local docks as a longshoreman.
Chuck’s natural athletic prowess earned him a scholarship to Adelphi Academy, a private high school, and then to Seton Hall, a Catholic college in South Orange, New Jersey. Leaving Seton Hall after two years, on October 20, 1942, he joined the army, listing his occupation as a ski instructor. After enlistment in the infantry at Fort Knox, he later served mostly as a tank-warfare instructor at Camp Campbell, Kentucky, and then finally at West Point. Following his discharge early in 1946, he resumed his athletic pursuits. He played center for the Boston Celtics in the 1946-47 season but left early for spring training with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Baseball had always been his first love, and for the next several years he knocked about the minor leagues in such places as Rochester (NY), Norfolk (VA), Newark (NJ), Newport News (VA), Mobile (AL) and Montreal, Canada (while in Montreal he met Elizabeth Riddell, whom he married in October 1948. They had four sons during their 13-year marriage). He finally reached his goal, playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, in May 1949, but after just five weeks and one at-bat he returned to Montreal. After a brief stint with the Chicago Cubs in 1951, during which he hit two home runs, Chuck wound up with the Cubs’ Triple-A farm team, the L.A. Angels, in 1952. A baseball fan who was also a casting director for MGM spotted Chuck and recommended him for a part in the Spencer Tracy–Katharine Hepburn comedy Pat and Mike (1952). Originally cast to play a prizefighter, but that role went instead to Aldo Ray. Chuck was cast as a captain in the state police. He now abandoned his athletic hopes and devoted full time to his acting career, which often emphasized his muscular 6’6″ physique.
During the next several years he made 20 movies, culminating in a key role in William Wyler‘s 1958 western The Big Country (1958). Also appearing in many television series, he finally hit the big time in 1958 with The Rifleman (1958), which began its highly successful five-year run on ABC. Other television series followed, as did a number of movies which, though mostly minor, allowed Chuck to display his range as both a stalwart “good guy” and a menacing “heavy”.
Chuck Connors died at age 71 of lung cancer and pneumonia on November 10, 1992 in Los Angeles, California. He is buried in San Fernando Mission Cemetery with his tombstone carrying a photo of Connors as Lucas McCain in “The Rifleman” as well as logos from the three professional sports teams he played for: the Dodgers, Cubs and Celtics.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: dinky-4 of Minneapolis (qv’s & corrections by A. Nonymous)
Barbara Loden was born in 1932 in Marion, North Carolina. Her films include “Splendour in the Grass” in 1961 which was directed by her husband Elia Kazan. She directed the film “Wanda” in 1970.Barbara Loden died in 1980 at the age of 48.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
A one-time pin-up beauty and magazine story model, Barbara Loden studied acting in New York in the early 50s and was on the Broadway boards within the decade. She was discovered for films by legendary producer/director Elia Kazan who was impressed with what she did in a small role as Montgomery Clift‘s secretary in Wild River (1960). He moved her up to feature status with her next role as Warren Beatty‘s wanton sister in his classic Splendor in the Grass (1961). As Kazan’s protégé, she appeared as part of Kazan’s stage company in the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater’s production of After the Fall, winning the Tony and Outer Critic’s Circle awards for that dazzling performance. An oddly entrancing, delicate blonde beauty possessed with a Marilyn Monroe-like vulnerability, she impressed in two of his other stage productions as well – But For Whom Charlie and The Changeling . After appearing in the failed movie Fade-In (1968) with Burt Reynolds, she married Kazan and went into semi-retirement. Barbara wrote, directed and starred, however, in a bold independent film entitled Wanda (1970) and became an unexpected art house darling, distinguishing herself as one of the few woman directors whose work was theatrically-released during the period. She won praise in all three departments, nabbing the Venice Film Festival’s International Critics Prize. Supposedly discouraged by a doubting, perhaps even resentful Kazan, Barbara never followed up on this success. She expressed interest and was in the midst of putting together another film, based on the novella The Awakening by Kate Chopin, when she learned in 1978 she had breast cancer. Barbara died two and a half years later, at age 48, after the cancer spread to her liver – before the project ever came to fruition. The Hollywood industry lost a burgeoning talent who just might have opened doors for other women directors had she been given the time.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Article on Barbara Loden in “Tina Aumont’s Eyes” website:
Remembered mainly as the second wife of legendary director Elia Kazan, former pin-up and model; Barbara Loden, would later become an award-winning actress of stage and screen, and the first female director to write, direct and star in their own movie.
Born on July 8th, 1932, Barbara began in television, appearing as a scantily clad sidekick on ‘The Ernie Kovacs Show’ in 1956. Around this time Loden met and married promoter Laurence Joachim, with whom she had a son. Studying acting in New York, it wasn’t long before she was spotted by one of the most acclaimed producer/directors of the day; Elia Kazan, quickly becoming his protégé.
In 1960 Barbara had a small role as a secretary in Kazan’s interesting drama ‘Wild River’, then a slightly bigger part, as Warren Beatty’s reckless sister, in his next feature; ‘Splendor in the Grass’ (’61). On stage, Loden received a Tony award for her excellent portrayal of Maggie, in Arthur Miller’s ‘After the Fall’, again directed by Kazan. A very personal project by playwright Miller, ‘After the Fall’ was based on his failed marriage to Marilyn Monroe. Loden was magnificent in the part and showed enormous range, fully encapsulating this troubled and complicated character.
In what was to be her biggest screen role to date, Barbara was later cast as Burt Lancaster’s ex-wife; Shirley Abbott, in the superb drama ‘The Swimmer’ (’68). Unfortunately, a dispute between the film’s producer Sam Spiegel and director Frank Perry, coupled with rumours of Lancaster feeling overshadowed by her performance, resulted in her scenes being re-shot with Broadway actress Janice Rule. This unhappy experience may have led to Barbara wanting to take full control of her work, and to do things her own way. Now separated from her husband, Loden married Kazan in 1968 and, while in semi-retirement, began working on her own material.
In 1970 and armed with a small budget, Loden made her own independent movie, the semi- autobiographical drama ‘Wanda’. Shot in grainy colour, it’s an absorbing study of an unpredictable, emotionally scarred woman. Set in the coal mining region of Pennsylvania, it tells the story of an abused woman, who leaves her unhappy family life and runs away with a petty criminal who’s planning a bank robbery. Largely improvisational in tone, it’s a very good, if seldom seen movie that sustains to this day, due mainly to Barbara’s remarkable and moving performance. Sadly, success at the Venice and Cannes film festivals did little to boost Loden’s career, and her relationship with Kazan also suffered greatly at the time.
Unable to capitalise on her earlier success, Barbara only made a couple of more features; two shorts in 1975. In 1978, having finally found the source material for another film; ‘The Awakening’, based on Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel, Loden learned that she had breast cancer, and the project was abandoned. Sadly, the cancer spread to her liver, and two years later, aged 48, Barbara died on September 5th, 1980. A sexy, natural actress, Barbara was unfortunately overlooked by many in the industry, who strangely ignored instead of embrace her. Hopefully, with a positive re-appraisal of ‘Wanda’ in the last few years, Barbara Loden just may have finally left a lasting legacy for other women harbouring dreams of making movies.
A tall, fresh-faced leading man, Don Murray first made his mark on the Broadway stage in “The Rose Tattoo” (1951-52), co-starring with Eli Wallach and Maureen Stapleton. The son of a former Ziegfeld girl and a motion picture dance director, Murray was a conscientious objector during the Korean War and worked in Europe assisting refugees and orphans in lieu of military service. When he returned to the USA, he was cast alongside stage legend Mary Martin in Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” (1955). Based on his performance, director Joshua Logan hired the actor for his first film.r2
“Bus Stop” (1956) provided Murray with a strong role as a naive, yet forceful, cowboy romancing a singer (Marilyn Monroe). For his efforts, the actor earned an Oscar nod as Best Supporting Actor. His two subsequent features, “The Bachelor Party” and “A Hatful of Rain” (1957) both provided meaty roles, but later efforts failed to capitalize on his early promise. Murray moved into producing and screenwriting with “The Hoodlum Priest” (1961), a true story about a clergyman who worked with criminals, in which he also starred. His 1970 directing debut, “The Cross and the Switchblade”, was an earnest but uneven feature. A second feature, “Damien” (1977), a biopic of the priest who worked with lepers in Hawaii, has never been released theatrically. The 80s saw Murray in mostly paternal roles (e.g., “Endless Love” 1981; “Peggy Sue Got Married” 1986).
Murray has been a constant fixture on TV since the late 50s. He served as a celebrity panelist on “Made in America” (CBS, 1964) and starred in the Western series “The Outcasts” (ABC, 1968-69).
TV viewers may remember him from the first two seasons of the CBS primetime soap “Knots Landing” (1979-81) as Michelle Lee’s husband. Two later series, “Brand New Life” (NBC, 1989-90) and “Sons and Daughters” (CBS, 1991) were both short-lived. In his TV-movies, Murray has generally been cast in stalwart roles, generally as politicians or businessmen.
From 1956 to 1961, Murray was married to his “Bus Stop” co-star Hope Lange.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
To-day Julie London is primarily known as a singer. Her recording of “Cry Me A River” is a definite classic. She did also make some fine films. She was born in 1926 in Santa Rosa, California. One of her first major film parts was in “The Red House” in 1947. Her other films of interest were mainly Western e.g. “Man of the West” with Gary Cooper and “Saddle the Wind” with Robert Taylor and John Cassavettes, both films were released in 1958. Julie London also starred in the television series “Emergency” from 1972 until 1979 with her husband Bobby Troup. Julie London died in 2000 at the age of 74.
Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary of Julie London:
One of the most evocative sounds of the mid- to late-1950s, issuing from juke boxes, radios and film soundtracks, was the sexy, whispering voice of Julie London, who has died aged 74. Her own view was that she had “only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of oversmoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate.”
London’s biggest hit was her first single, Cry Me A River, which was released in 1955, included on her first album, Julie Is Her Name, and sold more than 3m copies. Her voluptuous features on the album cover were described by publicists as “generating enough voltage to light up a theatre marquee”.
Similarly, the cover of her Calendar Girl album featured 12 glamorous shots, and, for her 1961 album, Whatever Julie Wants, she was guarded by armed security men as she posed beside $750,000 worth of furs, jewels and piles of money. In her movies, she looked her best in period costume, especially in westerns, where she decorated many a saloon bar.
London was born Julie Peck in California. Her parents, Jack and Josephine, were a vaudeville song-and-dance team, on whose radio show their daughter sang from an early age. In 1941, the family moved to Los Angeles, and, while working as a lift operator in a department store, Julie was discovered by talent agent Sue Carol, Alan Ladd’s wife, and given a screen test.
Her first role, at 18, was as a jungle girl – with flowers in her blonde hair – in the risible Nabonga (1944), whose best friend was the eponymous gorilla, until handsome Buster Crabbe showed up. London acquitted herself well, but the cheapie picture did not lead to big film roles. Meanwhile, however, she was making a reputation as a singer with the Matty Malnech Orchestra.
In 1947, she married the actor Jack Webb, later famous on the radio and television police series, Dragnet, and worked only a little while bringing up their two daughters. She had a good part as Susan Hayward’s amorous younger sister in the southern saga, Tap Roots (1948), and played a navy wife in Task Force (1949), starring Gary Cooper.
After she divorced Webb in 1953, London entered a brief period during which, in her own words, she lacked self-confidence. This changed when she met jazz musician and songwriter Bobby Troup, who guided her singing career and helped her become a top female vocalist from 1955 to 1957. The couple married in 1959, and had a daughter and twin sons.
Troup once remarked: “She is not a Julie London fan. She honestly doesn’t realise how good she is. She’s never really been a performer, she doesn’t have that need to go out and please an audience and receive accolades. She’s always been withdrawn, very introverted. She hated those big shows.”
However, London continued to sing in nightclubs, cut discs, and record title songs from her films, such as Saddle The Wind (1958) and Voice In The Mirror (1958), which she also composed. In the latter, she showed growing maturity as an actress, playing the wife of an alcoholic.
As a dancehall singer, humiliated and raped by Lee J Cobb, then avenged by Gary Cooper, in Anthony Mann’s allegorical Man Of The West (1959), she struck a tragic note. In The Wonderful Country (1959), she was won by Robert Mitchum after her husband had conveniently been killed by Apaches, and, in Night Of The Quarter Moon (1959), she shocked San Francisco society when, as John Drew Barrymore’s bride, she admitted to having a black grandparent.
In 1972, having been out of the public eye for some time, London began her role as Nurse Dixie McCall in the television hospital series, Emergency. The show, which was produced and often directed by her first husband Webb, also starred her second husband, Troup. For five years, London was a star once more, reminding fans of the days when, to quote the writer Joseph Lanza, she “was a blend of Dionysian flesh and Detroit steel, streamlined car and cocktail shaker combined”.
• Julie London, actress-singer, born September 26 1926; died October 18 2000
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
