Hollywood Actors Archives

Hurd Hatfield

Hurd Hatfield was born in 1917 in New York City. He came to fame with his role in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” with Angela Lansbury. His other roles include “El Cid”, “King of Kings” and “The Boston Strangler”. He lived in Ireland and died there in 1998.

: Destination Murder

: El Cid

: The Picture of Dorian Gray

: Crimes of the Heart

: The Left Handed Gun

: King of Kings

: The Boston Strangler

: The Diary of a Chambermaid

His obituary by Tom Vallance in “The Independent”:

THE ACTOR Hurd Hatfield will always be associated with the film role that made him a star, that of the aesthetic young man who remains youthful through the years while a portrait of himself in the attic displays the aberrations of his life, in MGM’s film version of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

He would later say, however, that the role was a curse as well as a blessing, for within five years he was appearing in B movies, and throughout the rest of his life he would be associated with that single role, despite a long and varied career in film, television and particularly theatre. “I have been haunted by The Picture of Dorian Gray,” he said. “New York, London, anywhere I’m making a personal appearance, people will talk about other things but they always get back to Dorian Gray.” Coincidentally, until recently Hatfield’s appearance remained remarkably youthful, and he became accustomed to being asked if he kept a painting of himself in his attic.

He was born William Rukard Hurd Hatfield in New York City in 1918. He won a scholarship to study acting at Michael Chekhov’s Dartington Hall company in Devon, England, and made his professional debut in the spring of 1939 playing the Baron in scenes from The Lower Depths at the company’s theatre. Returning to the United States with Chekhov’s company, he toured as Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, Caleb Plummer in Cricket on the Hearth, and Gloucester in King Lear, before making his Broadway debut as Kirilov in The Possessed (1939).

This adaptation of several Dostoevsky works into one sombre 15-scene play ran for only 14 performances, with both the acting and Chekhov’s direction deemed excessively stylised. While the company was playing on the West Coast, Hatfield was signed by MGM and cast as Lao San in the studio’s 1944 adaptation of Pearl Buck’s epic novel Dragon Seed, about the effect of Japanese invasion on a family of Chinese farmers. “That was some experience,” said Hatfield later. “A nightmare! Walter Huston was my father, Katharine Hepburn my sister, Aline MacMahon from New York my mother, Turkish Turhan Bey my brother, Russian Akim Tamiroff my uncle – it was a very odd Chinese family!”

Hatfield then auditioned for the role of vain young sensualist who trades his soul for eternal youth in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). “Oscar Wilde’s original Dorian is blond and blue-eyed,” he said later, “and here I was, this gloomy-looking creature. I almost didn’t go to the audition, and when I did, all these blond Adonises were to the right and left of me. I looked like one of their agents!”

The director Albert Lewin had just written and directed a successful transcription of Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence, and he was given a large budget to make an opulent and literate version of Wilde’s novel, though critics objected to the many liberties that were taken with the story. The strict censorship of the time worked to some extent in the film’s favour, making the suggestions of corruption and decadence all the more telling for being oblique.

Harry Stradling’s photography, which blazed into colour from black-and- white when it showed the ageing, increasingly dissolute portrait (by Ivan Albright), won an Academy Award. George Sanders was ideally cast as the cynical misogynist Lord Henry Wotton and Angela Lansbury won an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Sybil Vane, the music-hall singer whose plaintive rendition of “Little Yellow Bird” wins Gray’s heart before he is persuaded by Wotton to jilt her cruelly.

Hatfield’s enigmatic, passive performance was given a mixed reception (one critic described his lack of facial animation to that of an actress playing Trilby while under the hypnotic spell of Svengali). Variety reported, “He plays it with little feeling, as apparently intended, and does it well . . . he’s singularly Narcissistic all the way.” The majority felt that the actor’s immobile features and flat tones suggested the mixture of beauty and depravity called for, but although the film was a great success it failed to ignite Hatfield’s film career. “The film didn’t make me popular in Hollywood,” he commented later. “It was too odd, too avant- garde, too ahead of its time. The decadence, the hints of bisexuality and so on, made me a leper! Nobody knew I had a sense of humour, and people wouldn’t even have lunch with me.”

His next film was an independent production, the off-beat Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), adapted by Burgess Meredith from Octave Mirbeau’s 1900 novel Le Journal d’une femme de chambre and directed by Jean Renoir, who was a great admirer of Paulette Goddard, Meredith’s wife and the star of the film. In this strongly cast production, Hatfield held his own as the consumptive son of a wealthy landowner who finds strength and redemption through the love of a chambermaid, but the film, now regarded as a minor classic, was only a succes d’estime at the time of its release, and Hatfield returned to MGM to play a subsidiary role as one of the scientists working on the atom bomb in the studio’s semi-documentary of the weapon’s development, The Beginning or the End (1947).

He had a better role in Michael Curtiz’s enjoyable thriller The Unsuspected (1947), as an artist driven to alcohol by his wife’s infidelities. In Walter Wanger’s costly but ponderous Joan of Arc (1948), Hatfield played Father Pasquerel, chaplain to Joan (Ingrid Bergman), but, when this was followed by roles as the villain in two B movies, The Checkered Coat (1950, as a psychotic killer called Creepy) and Chinatown at Midnight (1950), he decided to return to the stage.

In 1952 he appeared on Broadway as Dominic in Christopher Fry’s Venus Observed, directed by Laurence Olivier, and the following year played Lord Byron and Don Quixote in Tennessee Williams’s Camino Real, directed by Elia Kazan. He was Prince Paul in the Broadway production of Anastasia (1954), played the title role in Julius Caesar in the inaugural season of the American Shakespeare Festival at Connecticut, Stratford (1955) and appeared as Don John in John Gielgud’s legendary production of Much Ado About Nothing (1959).

He occasionally returned to Hollywood, notably for two sexually ambivalent roles: the epicene follower of Billy the Kid (Paul Newman) in Arthur Penn’s film of Gore Vidal’s The Left-Handed Gun (1958) and a homosexual antique dealer considered a suspect in The Boston Strangler (1968) – the scene in which he is questioned by a liberal police officer (Henry Fonda) was one of the most potent in the film. He was in two of 1965’s epics, King of Kings and El Cid, and in 1986 returned to the screen to play the ailing grandfather of Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek and Diane Keaton in Crimes of the Heart.

His prolific television work included The Rivals and The Importance of Being Ernest (both 1950), the title roles in The Count of Monte Cristo (1958) and Don Juan in Hell (1960), episodes of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Murder She Wrote, and in 1963 an Emmy-nominated performance as Rothschild in The Invincible Mr Disraeli. In recent years he toured Germany, Northern Ireland, Latvia and Russia in The Son of Whistler’s Mother, a one-man play about James McNeill Whistler, and in July 1997 he made a personal appearance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in connection with an exhibition of paintings by Albright (including Dorian Gray).

A bachelor, Hurd Hatfield had lived for many years on an estate in Ireland (he also owned a house on Long Island), commuting for acting assignments. He recently stated that he had accepted his permanent association with the role of Gray, even though the film had for him been “a terrible ordeal in self- control, everything being so cerebral”. He added, “But not many actors are fortunate enough to have made a classic. One friend told me it’s a good thing I didn’t make Dracula and have my entire professional life dominated by that!”

William Rukard Hurd Hatfield, actor: born New York 7 December 1918; died Monkstown, Co Cork 25 December 1998.

For “The Independent” obituary on Hurd Hatfield, please click here.

George Brent. TCM Overview.

George Brent made his screen debut in “Under Suspicion” (1930). Initially a slightly tough talking New York type, Brent proved an effective romantic foil to a wide variety of dominant female stars of the 1930s and 40s, most notably at Warner Brothers, where he was tenured from 1932 to 1942. Capable of playing the strong but silent type, or the urbane and cynical, Brent often spent his screen time desiring his leading lady or being pursued by her. His playing was invariably professional and amiable if not dynamic or idiosyncratic, and so he proved a natural in “women’s films” in which the focus was securely on a more galvanizing female actor who was a bigger star. Among his female paramours over the years were Bebe Daniels (“42nd Street,” 1933), Greta Garbo (“The Painted Veil,” 1934), Ginger Rogers (“In Person,” 1935), Myrna Loy (“The Rains Came,” 1939), Barbara Stanwyck (“My Reputation,” 1946), and Claudette Colbert (“Bride for Sale,” 1949).

Brent most often appeared as romantic lead in deferential support to three of Warners’ classiest star actresses: Kay Francis (“Living on Velvet,” 1935, “Give Me Your Heart,” 1936, “Secrets of an Actress,” 1938); Ruth Chatterton (“The Crash,” 1932, “Female,” 1933), to whom he was married from 1932 to 1934; and, particularly, Bette Davis (“Front Page Woman,” 1935, “Jezebel,” 1938, “Dark Victory,” 1939, “The Great Lie,” 1941). He also occasionally enjoyed a role off the beaten path, as in Robert Siodmak’s memorable Gothic melodrama, “The Spiral Staircase” (1946).

Brent sustained his prolific output after he and Warners parted company, but his films gradually diminished in importance in the later 40s. Very much a leading man type, he never made the transition to character roles, and so left the cinema in 1953 after appearing in a series of minor efforts. Two of his other four wives were actresses Constance Worth and Ann Sheridan (opposite whom he made “Honeymoon for Three,” 1941). Brent came out of retirement for 1978’s “Born Again”. The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

For an article on George Brewnt please click here.

Angel On The Amazon, poster, US poster art, George Brent (left), Constance Bennett (second left), Vera Ralston (center), 1948. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Submarine D-1, poster, Wayne Morris, Pat O’Brien, George Brent on window card, 1937. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Dictionary of Irish biography:

Brent, George (1904–79), actor, was born George Nolan 15 March 1904 at Main St., Ballinasloe, Co. Galway, son of John Nolan, shopkeeper, and Mary Nolan (née McGuinness). Orphaned in 1915, he moved briefly to New York where he was cared for by an aunt, returning later to Dublin to finish his education. He took up acting at the Abbey Theatre, where he had already played some minor roles but, suspected by the British authorities of IRAinvolvement, he fled to Canada, where he continued to act, working in stock companies for two years. He again travelled to New York, finding work with stock companies and founding three of his own. His appearances on Broadway in the late 1920s were noticed in Hollywood. He was talented, but his good looks and reliability were as important in ensuring that he achieved over a hundred screen credits during his career. Most of these were in Warner Brothers productions (1930–53).

Never a powerful box-office draw, he was employed by the studio to carry middle-ranking projects while providing support to A-list stars in larger undertakings. Unambitious and without pretensions, he was happy to take the money while performing quietly and professionally. This led unkind reviewers to describe his performances as having ‘all the animation of a penguin’ and as varying between those in which he was with or without a moustache. Once he abandoned the ‘rugged hero’ roles in which he was initially cast, he provided competent but understated portrayals, making him an ideal foil for the domineering leading ladies of this period. In 1934 he delivered just such a performance opposite Greta Garbo in the screen adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s ‘The painted veil’. He was also a good foil for Merle Oberon, Olivia de Havilland, Joan Fontaine, Mary Astor, Barbara Stanwyck (four times), Ruth Chatterton (four times), and Bette Davis (eleven times). Davis was one of the many leading ladies with whom he had affairs and Ruth Chatterton was the second (1932–4) of his six wives. He married two other actresses, Constance Worth (1937) and Ann Sheridan (1942–3).

His best performances were probably in Jezebel (1938), for which Davis won an Oscar; Dark victory (1939) with Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Ronald Reagan; The rains came (1939), a disaster movie with Tyrone Power; and The spiral staircase (1945), a horror-thriller set in England. He never filmed in Ireland, but starred with James Cagney in a movie about an Irish-American regiment, The fighting 69th (1940). His career entered a terminal slide in the late 1940s when he appeared in dross such as The corpse came C.O.D. (1947), a severe decline for someone who had acted in 42nd Street (1933). When the movie offers dried up he starred in a TV series, Wire service (1956–9), before retiring to run his horse-breeding ranch in California. He made one more brief cameo in the movies playing a judge in the dire Born again (1978), the story of Nixon aide George Colson’s discovery of Christianity when jailed after Watergate. He died of emphysema 27 May 1979 in California

Barry Coe (Wikipedia)

Barry Coe was an American actor who appeared in film and on television from 1956-1978. Many of his motion pictures parts were minor, but he co-starred in one series, Follow the Sun, which aired on ABC during the 1961-1962 season, and also played the recognizable “Mr. Goodwrench” on TV commercials in the 1970s and 1980s.

Born Barry Clark Heacock, his name was changed to Joseph Spalding Coe when his mother Jean Elizabeth Shea married Joseph Spalding Coe Sr. in 1940 in Los Angeles. His father Francis Elmer “Frank” Heacock, a writer and publicist for Warner Brothers, was killed in an auto accident in North Hollywood, CA, April 5, 1940.

Coe attended the University of Southern California and was discovered by a talent scout during a trip with his fraternity to Palm Springs in the mid-1950s. He was signed under contract for 20th Century Fox as an actor.

Coe’s early roles included appearances in House of Bamboo (1955), How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955), On the Threshold of Space (1956), and D-Day the Sixth of June(1956). He guest starred in an episode of Cheyenne, “The Last Train West” and had a small role in Elvis Presley‘s Love Me Tender (1956). He was in adaptations of The Late George Apley and ‘Deep Water’ for The 20th Century Fox Hour.

Coe’s first really notable role was playing the lustful Rodney Harrington in the original Peyton Place (1957) film, based on the bestselling Grace Metalious 1956 novel of the same name.

He followed it with a support part in an independent Western, Thundering Jets (1958), then went back to Fox for The Bravados (1958) with Gregory Peck, and A Private’s Affair (1959), a service musical. He played Carroll Baker‘s more age appropriate boyfriend in But Not for Me at Paramount.

Coe had good support roles in One Foot in Hell (1960) with Alan Ladd and The Wizard of Baghdad (1961). In 1960, Coe secured a Golden Globe award for the Most Promising Newcomer – Male, along with James Shigeta, Troy Donahue, and George Hamilton.

In 1961 Coe and Brett Halsey played magazine writers Paul Templin and Ben Gregory, respectively, with Gary Lockwood as their researcher, Eric Jason on the ABC television network series Follow the Sun from September 17, 1961, through April 8, 1962. The program was set in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the writers often ventured into private detective work. Despite some memorable episodes, Follow the Sun was cancelled after twenty-nine segments.

After Follow the Sun folded, Coe appeared in a support role in Fox’s The 300 Spartans (1962)^[6] then guest starred in 1962 on the first episode of the fourth season of NBC‘s Western series Bonanza. He portrayed ranch hand Clay Stafford, who reveals himself to be the “fifth” Cartwright, a half brother to Little Joe (Michael Landon) via their mother Marie. Although stepfather Ben Cartwright (Lorne Greene) and Joe take Clay at his word, the other Cartwright brothers, Hoss (Dan Blocker) and Adam (Pernell Roberts) are skeptical and intend to investigate Clay’s claim. The episode called “The First Born” could have introduced Coe as a new cast member. Entertainment writer Hal Ericson reported that friction (i.e. job security) on the set caused Bonanza producers to stick with the three brothers.

Cole was given the lead in a low budget independent film, A Letter to Nancy (1965). He guest starred on Voyage to the Bottom of the Seaand appeared as an unnamed communications aide in Fantastic Voyage (1966) and as Walt Kilby in The Cat (1966).

Coe had a semiregular role on Bracken’s World and could be seen in The Seven Minutes (1971) and One Minute Before Death (1973).

He starred as Fred Saunders in Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls in 1973 and as an unnamed reporter in Gregory Peck‘s MacArthur in 1977. His last film role was as diving instructor Tom Andrews in Jaws 2 in 1978. He had a brief stint as Joel Stratton in the ABC soap operaGeneral Hospital in 1974. There were other television appearances too, including CBS‘s Mission: Impossible starring Peter Graves, and The Moneychangers, .^[4]

From the late 1970s into the early 1980s, Coe was “Mr. Goodwrench” in television advertising for a chain of national auto parts stores under General Motors.^[4]

Until his death, Coe was married to the former Jorunn Kristiansen, who was a Norwegian beauty queen in the 1950s and now a painter (born 1940). Their son is William Shea Coe (born 1966). In the 1980s, Barry Coe’s daughter attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Barry Coe had a side business in nutritional supplements—Adventures in Nutrition; labels for the containers were printed by Joe Faust. He lived in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California for several years.

CNN Obituary in 2019.

CNN —

Golden Globe-winning actor Barry Coe, who had roles in “Bonanza” and films like 1957’s “Petyon Place” and “Jaws 2,” died last month after a battle with with myelodysplastic syndrome, according to an obituary. He was 84.

Coe died in Palm Desert, California, on July 16, the obituary says.

Coe, whose real name was Barry Clark Heacock, co-starred in the 1957 movie “Peyton Place,” about the sordid doings in a small New England town, which starred Lana Turner and was later turned into a primetime soap opera on ABC. Actor Ryan O’Neal would go on to play Coe’s role from the film, a character named Rodney Harrigton, in the TV series.

Three years later, Coe picked up a Golden Globe award for most promising male newcomer for his role in “A Private Affair.” The Globes stopped giving out the award in the 80s.

His other credits include roles in films like Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender” and “One Foot in Hell” and a TV series called “Follow the Sun,” which aired for one season.

His family has asked that donations be made in his name to Habitat for Humanity

Barry Coe was the quintessential “Golden Age” starlet who perfectly captured the transition from the clean-cut 1950s “Adonis” to the more rugged, television-oriented leading man of the 1960s. While he never reached the A-list heights of a Paul Newman, a critical analysis of his career reveals an actor of immense understated charm and a “sturdy” reliability that made him a favorite of major studios like 20th Century Fox.

The Coe Archetype: The “Polished Everyman”

Coe’s screen presence was defined by his athletic build, a classic “Ivy League” handsomeness, and a vocal delivery that was calm and reassuring. Critically, Coe represented the “Idealized Post-War American.” He wasn’t the brooding rebel (like Dean) or the tortured intellectual (like Clift); he was the man who looked like he could navigate a high-stakes board meeting and a weekend sailing trip with equal ease.

Key Critical Analyses of His Work

**1. Peyton Place (1957)**

The Role: Rodney Harrington.
Critical Analysis: In this massive cinematic event, Coe was tasked with playing the “Golden Boy” of a scandal-ridden town.
The Technique: Coe’s performance is a masterclass in “surface vs. depth.” While he possessed the requisite physical perfection for the role, he infused Rodney with a sense of quiet entrapment. Critics noted that he held his own against established powerhouses like Lana Turner, providing a grounded, “moral” center to the film’s melodramatic excesses. This role earned him a Golden Globe for “Most Promising Newcomer.”

**2. The 300 Spartans (1962)**

The Role: Phylon.
Critical Analysis: In this historical epic, Coe played the youthful, romantic lead.
Insight: Amidst the armored stoicism of Richard Egan and the theatricality of the production, Coe provided the film’s emotional stakes. He utilized a more “modern” acting style—less declamatory than his peers—which made his character’s personal journey feel urgent and relatable to a contemporary 1960s audience.

**3. Follow the Sun (1961–1962)**

The Role: Ben Gregory, a freelance magazine writer in Hawaii.
Critical Analysis: This TV series (co-starring Brett Halsey) allowed Coe to refine his “Professional Adventurer” persona.
The Dynamic: Coe and Halsey pioneered a specific type of “Bantering Masculinity” that would become a staple of 1970s and 80s television (later seen in Hart to Hart or Magnum, P.I.). Coe’s Ben Gregory was sophisticated, witty, and intellectually curious—a departure from the “tough-guy” private eyes of the era.

**4. The Seven Minutes (1971)**

The Role: Jerry Sanford.
Critical Analysis: In this Russ Meyer-directed legal drama about censorship, Coe transitioned into “mature” leading man territory.
The Shift: He moved away from the “pretty boy” image of the 50s to play a man of principled conviction. Critics praised his “steely” focus, noting that his earlier breezy charm had hardened into a compelling, authoritative screen presence.

Critical Summary: The “Smooth” Professional

Attribute	Barry Coe’s Style
Physicality	Athletic and “unforced”; he moved with a natural, suburban grace.
Vocal Profile	Mid-range, clear, and “trustworthy.”
The Niche	The “Reliable Hero”—the man you wanted on your side in a crisis.
Legacy	He bridged the gap between the “Studio System” glamour and the “Television Professionalism” of the late 20th century.

The “Brink’s Man” and Later Career

Interestingly, a significant part of Coe’s critical legacy is his decade-long stint as the “Brink’s Man” in national commercials. While some viewed this as a step down from film, others analyzed it as the ultimate realization of his persona: the face of security, reliability, and American strength. Coe’s career serves as a reminder that “stardom” isn’t always about transformative character acting; sometimes, it’s about the perfect calibration of a persona to fit the cultural needs of the time. He was the “calm in the storm” of the 1960s

Guy Madison obituary in “The Independent” in 1996.

Guy Madison made his film debut in “Since You Went Away” a 1944 U.S. film about life on the home front during World War Two. Madison had only a few minutes screen times with the stars Jennifer Jones and Robert Walker, but he made sufficent impact with the general audience that he was awarded a studio contract. He is perhaps best known for his 1950’s television series “Wild Bill Hickcock”, Guy Madison died in 1996.

David Shipman’s obituary on Guy Madison in “The Independent”:Guy Madison was described by his studio’s publicists as “a dreamboat” – one of the several non-threatening leading men of the post-war period, fresh-faced and just on the right side of rugged. He didn’t make it in that capacity, but was to have a prolific 40-year career in westerns. Tallulah Bankhead said, “He made all the other cowboys look like fugitives from Abercrombie and Fitch” (the New York gentlemen’s outfitters).He was a linesman before the Second World War, in which he served as a marine. A picture in a naval magazine (so the story went) caught the attention of a Hollywood talent scout, Helen Ainsworth, who recommended him to David O. Selznick. Selznick gave him a small role in his Home Front morale-booster Since You Went Away (1944), as a marine who heckles Jennifer Jones and Robert Walker in a bowling-alley.

He was only on the screen for three minutes, but the studio received 43,000 fan letters. Selznick’s talent agent, Henry B. Willson, had already seen his potential and had changed the actor’s name, from Robert Moseley to Guy Madison, for his new career – as he would do later for such other handsome movie hulks as Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter. Selznick himself was making few movies, so he loaned Madison and Dorothy McGuire to RKC for Till the End of Time (1946), in which she was a war widow, uncertain whether she should or could make a second start with Madison. The New York Times found itself “quite exasperated by their juvenile behaviour” and added that Madison “is a personable youngster, but he has much to learn about the art of acting”.

Most reviewers felt similarly about Honeymoon (1947), which was situated in Mexico City. Selznick loaned Madison and Shirley Temple to RKO for this, to little benefit for all concerned. After Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven (1948), again on loan-out, Selznick dropped Madison – as he did most of his contract-players, all of whom were straining at the bit because he charged far more for their services than he paid them. Madison went on to play Wild Bill Hickok on radio from 1951 to 1956 and also, from 1952, on television. He was one of the first names from the big screen to enter the new medium.

It revived his career at a time when ironically Hollywood was trying to combat it with new techniques, 3-D and CinemaScope. Warner Bros put Madison in the 3-D western The Charge at Feather River (1953), and 20th Century-Fox into its wide-screen The Command (1954). He never stopped working thereafter, though there were no other major credits. In the 1960s he was one of the several names to go to Italy to make costume spectaculars and spaghetti westerns. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked mainly in television, following a series, Bullwhip, in the 1950s, which was not one of the more memorable of all the television westerns of that time. He joined some other grizzled veterans of the era – James Arness, Ty Hardin, Robert Horton – for an ill-advised telemovie, Red River (1988), which didn’t compare with the Howard Hawks classic on which it was based.

His first wife was the beautiful and haunted Gail Russell, who was already an alcoholic when they married; but for that, her career might have been much more successful than his.

David Shipman

Robert Ozell Moseley (Guy Madison), actor: born Bakersfield, California 19 January 1922; married 1949 Gail Russell (marriage dissolved), 1954 Sheilah Connolly (one son, three daughters; marriage dissolved); died Palm Springs 6 February 1996.

“The Independent” obituary can also be accessed on-line

TCM Overview

Though she shared the screen with such stars as Elvis Presley, Montgomery Clift and Anna Magnani in the course of her brief acting career, Dolores Hart received more notice in Hollywood history books for her decision to abandon stardom for life as a nun in 1963

. A pert, intelligent and confident performer, Hart proved equally capable at both high drama like “Wild is the Wind” (1957) and lightweight fare like “Loving You” (1957), the first of two films opposite Presley, and “Where the Boys Are” (1960).

A retreat to the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in 1959 left Hart feeling a void in her life that could not be filled by acting, and in 1963, she left Hollywood to take her vows as a nun. For the next four decades, Hart led the monastic life of a Benedictine nun, returning occasionally to the spotlight to recall her religious calling, most notably for a 2012 documentary short, “God is the Bigger Elvis,” which received an Oscar nomination. Though her film career was an admirable footnote in her life, Hartâ¿¿s dedication to her religious order was proof positive that some things held greater resonance than Hollywood stardom.

She was born Dolores Hicks in Chicago, IL on Oct. 20, 1938. The daughter of actor Bert Hicks and his wife, Harriet, she was also related by marriage, through an aunt, to singer Mario Lanza. Her fatherâ¿¿s career immediately enamored Hart to such an extent that she planned to become an actress at an early age. But her parentsâ¿¿ divorce halted her chances of being a child performer, and she escaped the chaos of their split by relocating to Chicago to live with her grandparents. There, she received an education in Hollywood films from her grandfather, a projectionist at a local movie theater. Hart eventually returned to Los Angeles, where she earned the lead role in a school production of Saint Joan. A friend with connections to Paramount sent word to producer Hal Wallis about Hart, and he brokered a screen test and contract with the studio for her while she was still in her teens.

GOD IS THE BIGGER ELVIS, US poster art, Dolores Hart, 2012. HBO Films/Courtesy Everett Collection HBO/Courtesy Everett Collection ACHTUNG AUFNAHMEDATUM GESCHÄTZT PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xHBO/CourtesyxEverettxCollectionx MCDGOIS EC010

Hart made a considerable splash with her first film role as Elvis Presleyslove interest in the 1957 musical drama “Loving You” (1957). The success of the film made Hart an in-demand supporting performer, and she was soon cast in major productions like George Cukor’s Wild is the Wind” (1957) with Anthony Quinn and Anna Magnani, and “Lonelyhearts” (1958), a sanitized take on Nathaneal Wests novel Miss Lonelyhearts, with Montgomery Clift, Myrna Loy and Maureen Stapleton.

That same year, she reteamed with Presley for one of his best features, Michael Curtizâ¿¿s “King Creole” (1958). Such a string of prestigious projects seemed to indicate that Hart was destined for stardom.

But while filming the Western “The Plunderers” (1959), Hart began to feel pangs of doubt about the life of a professional actor. She experienced a career triumph that year with her Broadway debut in “The Pleasure of His Company” (1959), which earned her a Tony Award nomination and a Theatre World Award. She was later approached to reprise her performance in a 1961 film version, but soon discovered that Debbie Reynolds had been cast in the role.

Disillusioned and weary from the play’s schedule, she was advised by a friend to take a retreat at the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, CT. Hart found the experience physically and, more important, spiritually rejuvenating, and would return to the abbey several times over the next two years.

Hart worked steadily throughout 1960, scoring a hit with the then-controversial “Where the Boys Are” (1960) as one of four college girls exploring their sexuality while on spring break.

Her turn in “Francis of Assisi” (1961) as a young aristocrat who gave up her worldly possessions to follow the 13th century saint (Bradford Dillman) by becoming a nun proved remarkably prescient; after completing “The Inspector” (1962), an emotionally taxing film in which she played a Holocaust survivor, and the lightweight comedy “Come Fly With Me” (1963), Hart realized that she was in spiritual crisis. She broke off her engagement to Los Angeles businessman Don Robinson and returned to the Regina Laudis abbey, where she turned her back on the motion picture industry and began taking vows to become a nun.

Hart became Sister Dolores Hart after completing her vows in 1970. She embraced the monastic life of the order, which included several hours of prayer a day and maintaining the farm and property at the abbey.

Hart also spearheaded a project to further develop the abbey’s connection to the community around them through yearly theater productions, some of which were co-funded through her relationship with Hollywood talent like Paul Newman and Patricia Neal. In 1999, Hart suffered a crippling bout of peripheral idiopathic neuropathy disorder, a neurological disorder that left her wheelchair-bound for months.

After her recovery, Hart, who became Prioress of the Abbey in 2001, returned to Hollywood for the first time in 43 years to help raise awareness about the disorder, and later testified before a Congressional hearing on her ordeal. In 2012, Hart made headlines for her appearance on the red carpet at the 2012 Academy Awards. She was promoting the documentary short subject “God is the Bigger Elvis” (2012), which chronicled her journey from Hollywood to the abbey. It was her first appearance at a Hollywood event since 1959.

By Paul Gaita

The TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.

Career overview

Dolores Hart (born 1938) is an American actress who enjoyed a rapid and promising rise in late‑1950s Hollywood—starring opposite Elvis Presley and working with major directors—before astonished the industry by leaving it all behind at age 24 to become a Benedictine nun. Her short film career (1956–1963) is distinguished by freshness, poise, and understated intelligence; her later life as Mother Dolores Hart at the Abbey of Regina Laudis has made her a symbol of faith, disciplined vocation, and the moral complexity of celebrity.

Early life and entry into film

Born Dolores Hicks in Chicago on October 20, 1938, Hart was the only child of two struggling actors, Bert and Harriett Hicks. She was raised largely by her grandparents, converted to Catholicism at age 10, and studied acting at Marymount College in Los Angeles . During a campus production of Joan of Lorraine, a Paramount scout saw her and arranged a screen test for producer Hal Wallis, who was seeking a wholesome love interest for Elvis Presley’s second film, Loving You (1957) .

Hollywood ascent (1957 – 1963)

• Loving You (1957) – As Susan Jessup, Hart’s unaffected warmth and melodic voice counterbalanced Presley’s raw charisma. Critics praised her “clean, natural ease” and MGM’s publicity called her “a Grace Kelly of middle America” .

• Wild Is the Wind (1957) – Supporting Anna Magnani, Anthony Quinn and Anthony Franciosa, Hart proved she could register within adult melodrama.

• King Creole (1958) – Her reunion with Elvis deepened rather than repeated the earlier chemistry; she played a more independent, practical woman amid the film’s New Orleans noir décor .

• Broadway debut – The Pleasure of His Company (1958–59) – Her performance earned the Theatre World Award and a Tony nomination for Featured Actress, confirming her as more than a studio ingénue .

• Where the Boys Are (1960) – As Merritt, the thoughtful co‑ed among Connie Francis, Paula Prentiss, and Yvette Mimieux, Hart anchored the film’s mix of breezy youth culture and moral inquiry; her measured performance gave the comedy unexpected coherence .

• Lisa (1962) – Playing a concentration‑camp survivor opposite Stephen Boyd, she delivered her most mature work: nuanced, haunted, and moralistic, earning praise when the film received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Picture – Drama .

• Francis of Assisi (1961) – Portraying Saint Clare, she first donned the habit on film, an experience she later identified as the seed of her spiritual calling .

Her final film was the airline comedy Come Fly with Me (1963). That same year she broke off her engagement, entered the Benedictine Abbey in Bethlehem, Connecticut, and adopted the religious name Mother Dolores Hart, exchanging a rising star’s career for a life of prayer and service.

Acting style and screen persona

Natural sincerity & restraint: At a time when method intensity was becoming fashionable, Hart’s power lay in composure—quiet listening, subtle reaction.
Moral luminosity: She projected intelligence and decency without sanctimony, a quality directors used to offset more flamboyant co‑stars.
Voice & presence: Trained in theatre, she delivered dialogue with precise timing and musical phrasing that suggested introspection rather than naiveté.
Emotional clarity: Particularly in Lisa and Francis of Assisi, she showed understated conviction rather than overt religiosity, conveying faith and trauma through stillness.

These attributes also explain her later vocation: the same discipline, serenity and purpose that grounded her screen performances found outlet in monastic life.

Critical evaluation

Strengths
- A rare blend of beauty and credibility; audiences trusted her characters’ decency.
- Technical steadiness unusual in so brief a career.
- Ability to register moral metamorphosis—her heroines often moved from naiveté to discernment with unforced truth.

Limitations
- Short career left relatively small range to judge; most parts emphasized rectitude, offering little chance for darker or comic experimentation.
- Typecasting as the wholesome “good girl” limited the complexity of material available in Hollywood’s gender conventions of the 1950s.

Nonetheless, within those confines she achieved remarkable emotional intelligence. Lisa and Where the Boys Are hinted at the substantive dramatic actor she might have become.

Withdrawal and second vocation

In 1963 Hart entered the Abbey of Regina Laudis, where she later became Prioress. She has since documented her journey in the memoir The Ear of the Heart (2013). Her departure from stardom fascinated the press: an actress who once kissed Elvis Presley in Loving You now lived cloistered behind Benedictine walls. For many observers, that decision transformed her life story into a parable about modern celebrity, vocation, and authenticity (; ).

Legacy and significance

Though her acting career comprised barely ten films, Hart’s work captures a transitional moment in American popular culture—the bridge between 1950s studio innocence and 1960s modern realism. She embodied the wholesomeness studios prized while bringing thoughtfulness that hinted at new social sensibilities.

Her later religious choice expanded that legacy beyond art: she became a public figure of conviction and purpose, an enduring reminder that vocation can take unexpected forms. In cinematic terms, she remains—like her character in Lisa—a quiet moral presence whose integrity transcends the frame.

In summary: Dolores Hart’s film work is remembered for sincerity, clarity, and grace; her life beyond film turned those same qualities into theology. She stands as both a footnote in Hollywood history and a profound emblem of personal authenticity—a performer whose brief career and lifelong faith continue to intrigue audiences and scholars alike.

Guardian obituary in July 2020.

Dame Olivia de Havilland, who has died aged 104, was one of the last surviving cast members of Gone With the Wind (1939). Her portrayal of the saintly Melanie Hamilton earned her an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress and, to the modern eye, while Vivien Leigh’s Scarlett now seems mannered, de Havilland’s precocious maturity is still touching.

She was four times nominated for a best actress Academy Award, and won twice, for To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949). But her impact on her industry extended far beyond her acting ability. Her sufferings under the restrictions of the notorious Hollywood studio system pushed her to take her employers, Warner Brothers, to court. It cost her several years of her career, but her victory – still referred to as the “De Havilland decision” – changed irrevocably the way that actors would be treated by studios.

De Havilland had originally been signed to a seven-year contract at Warner Brothers just as the studio, also home to the director Michael Curtiz and leading man Errol Flynn, was exploring a new physical freedom on sound stages and locations to create a series of swashbucklers.

Her sweetness, and evident crush on Flynn (“You’d have been in trouble, too,” she once said about how overwhelming it was to partner him on screen, at the age of 19) made her the perfect damsel, in Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Dodge City (1939), Santa Fe Trail (1940), They Died With Their Boots On (1941), and, best of all, as Maid Marian in the 1938 Adventures of Robin Hood, in which she was sparky enough not to seem soppy.

She began to build a quiet strength and was loaned out to David O Selznick at his request to play the virtuous Melanie in Gone With the Wind. Then, determined not to go back to being “the girl” at Warners, playing ingenues, she rebelled, refusing to take the parts offered to her, and found herself suspended for six months.

She returned to work in The Strawberry Blonde (1941), cast as a plain woman (no prosthetics – plainness was implied in the script and by severity of hair-do) alongside Rita Hayworth, and in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), as a schoolmarm who is a suave con artist’s ticket to a US visa. She was nominated for an Oscar for that.

When her seven years at Warners ended after Princess O’Rourke (1943), the company would not release her, adding her periods of suspension to her contract. “You were a great celebrity but also a slave,” she said, so she read the small print and sued Warners under old Californian laws that prohibited employers from treating workers as serfs. She won and the De Havilland decision, along with a judicial ruling fought for Bette Davis, ended the old studio system by limiting contracts to a total of seven years, suspensions included.

The battles lasted for three years, and, kept off-screen throughout, De Havilland toured US military hospitals in the Pacific where she talked to and comforted wounded service personnel. After her court win Warners warned other studios off her, although she eventually found work at Paramount.

She returned in 1946 in To Each His Own, as the mother of an illegitimate child whose father had been killed in war, and who had turned over the baby for adoption. De Havilland’s good sense tempered the drama’s weepiness, and she won her Oscar at last.

In The Dark Mirror, the same year, she played rivalrous twin sisters; a Hollywood in-joke, for De Havilland’s younger sister, Joan Fontaine, had made a slower professional start, but had beaten her to an Oscar. (The sisters were estranged for most of their adult lives.)

De Havilland went on taking risks: she played a psychiatric patient in Anatole Litvak’s The Snake Pit (1948): meant as a plea for humane treatment in asylums, it now looks as crude as the shock treatment it advocated.

She won her second Oscar in 1949, for William Wyler’s The Heiress, an adaptation of Henry James’s novella Washington Square. Near the end of the film, De Havilland, bundled up in knitted mittens and tippets to conceal her natural glamour, addresses Montgomery Clift, playing a fortune-hunter who years earlier failed to elope with her.

She refuses him another chance. She can be cruel, she says: “I’ve been taught by masters.” You don’t quite believe the cruelty, but you do believe the strength behind the delivery. De Havilland was accused of being unsympathetic, but it took nerve to play a woman who achieves a solitary dignity only after being derided and rejected by father and would-be lover, and it was one of her finest roles.

De Havilland was just into her 30s, yet her career was petering out: her hard-won savvy was not overtly sexual enough. She was offered Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, but felt uncomfortable with the lewdness in the role, which went to Leigh. Fontaine had broken through in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca; De Havilland’s du Maurier film, My Cousin Rachel (1952), was more like a valediction.

She appeared on Broadway as Juliet in 1951, more plausibly as the Shavian wife Candida in 1952, and returned, alongside Henry Fonda, in A Gift of Time, in 1962.

Like other ageing female stars in the 1960s, she was tormented viciously onscreen, beside Davis in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), and in Sam Peckinpah’s television movie Noon Wine (1966). In the 70s and 80s, retreating to small TV roles, she won a Golden Globe in Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna (1986).

Born in Tokyo, Olivia was the daughter of British parents, Lillian (nee Ruse), an actor, and Walter de Havilland, a patent lawyer related to the family of aviators. After separating from Walter, Lillian took the three-year-old Olivia and the infant Joan to California. Her paternal family originated in the Channel Islands; her cousin Geoffrey was the aircraft designer responsible for producing the famous second world war plane, the Mosquito.

Olivia went to a convent school and, at 17, was spotted in a college production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The director Max Reinhardt, on the lookout for girls with appearances classier than the local cheerleader norm, cast her as Hermia in the same play, first live in the Hollywood Bowl and then in the Warner Brothers film of 1935: “You are my discovering!” he boasted.

De Havilland had early been a member of the screen actors’ union and was a staunch liberal, campaigning for Franklin D Roosevelt and Harry Truman; in 1958 she was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, then in its dying throes. The US gave her the National Medal of Arts in 2008, France made her a chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 2010, and in 2017 she was made a DBE.

In the docudrama series Feud: Bette and Joan (2017), chronicling the rivalry between Davis and Joan Crawford, De Havilland was portrayed by Catherine Zeta-Jones. The real-life De Havilland objected to how its creators “used my identity without my consent and put false words in my mouth, including having me publicly calling my sister, Joan Fontaine, a ‘bitch’.” But in March 2018 a California appeals court dismissed her lawsuit on grounds of free speech.

There were romances with James Stewart and John Huston before she married, in 1946, and divorced, in 1952, the novelist Marcus Goodrich, with whom she had a son, Benjamin, who died in 1991.

She met Pierre Galante, then editor of the magazine Paris-Match, at the 1955 Cannes film festival, and moved to France after their marriage. They divorced in 1979, but she cared for him in his last illness in 1998; their daughter, Gisèle, survives her.

• Olivia Mary de Havilland, actor, born 1 July 1916; died 26 July 2020

Cathleen Nesbitt IMDB

Cathleen Nesbitt hailed from Belfast where she attended Queen’s University. In 1911 she joined the Irish Players and performed with them in the U.S. in Synge’s “The Well of the Saints” and “The Playboy of the Western World”. She was the love of the poet Rupert Brooke who was to die in World War One. An interesting article on their releationship can be sourced on the Telegraph website here.

Over the next thirty years she made many British theatre and film appearances. In 1951 she was on Broadway with Audrey Hepburn in “Gigi” and made her first American film in 1953 which was “Three Coins in the Fountain”. In 1956 she was back on Broadway again in “My Fair Lady”.Her last film was in 1980 when she made “The Never Never Land” at the age of 92. She died two years later.

IMDB entry:

The Calendar by Edgar Wallace (1875-1932), 1929. Lady Panniford, played by Cathleen Nesbitt (1888-1982), left, and Garry Anson, played bu Owen Nares (1888-1943), right. The Play, vol. 55, no. 331, (Photo by Culture Club/Getty Images) *** Local Caption ***

Diminutive, genteel Cathleen Nesbitt was a grand dame of the theatre on both sides of the Atlantic in a career spanning seven decades. Among almost 300 roles on stage, she excelled at comic portrayals of sophisticated socialites and elegant mothers. Hollywood used her, whenever a gentler, sweeter version of Gladys Cooper was needed, yet someone still possessed of a subtly sarcastic wit and turn of phrase. Cathleen attended Queen’s University in Belfast and the Sorbonne in Paris. Encouraged by a friend of her father – none other than the legendary Sarah Bernhardt – to enter the acting profession, she was taken on by Victorian actress and drama teacher Rosina Filippi (1866-1930). Cathleen’s first appearance on stage was in 1910 at the Royalty Theatre in London. This was followed in November 1911 by her Broadway debut with the touring Abbey Theatre Players in ‘The Well of the Saints’.

From here on, and for the rest of her long life, she was never out of a job, demonstrating her range and versatility by playing anything from villainesses to being a much acclaimed Kate in Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, Perdita in ‘The Winter’s Tale’, Audrey Hepburn‘s grandaunt in ‘Gigi’, the Dowager Empress in ‘Anastasia’ and the gossipy ‘humorously animated’ Julia Shuttlethwaite of T.S. Eliot‘s ‘The Cocktail Party’. Her Mrs. Higgins in ‘My Fair Lady’, Brooks Atkinson described as played with ‘grace and elegance’, which also pretty much sums up Cathleen’s career in films.

Her first motion picture role was a lead in the drama The Faithful Heart (1922), adapted from an Irish play. She then absented herself from the screen for the next decade, resurfacing in supporting roles in British films, though rarely cast in worthy parts, possible exceptions being Man of Evil (1944) and Jassy (1947). Her strengths were rather better showcased during her sojourn in Hollywood, which began in 1952. In addition to prolific appearances in anthology television, she also appeared in several big budget films, most memorably as Cary Grant‘s perspicacous grandmother in An Affair to Remember (1957) and as gossipy Lady Matheson (alongside Gladys Cooper) in Separate Tables (1958). One of her last roles of note was as Julia Rainbird, who instigates the mystery in Alfred Hitchcock‘s final film, Family Plot (1976).

On the instigation of her friend Anita Loos, author of ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’, Cathleen wrote her memoirs, ‘A Little Love and Good Company’ in 1977. For her extraordinarily long career in the acting profession, she was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Honours List the following year. She retired just two years prior to her death in 1983 at the age of 93.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Her obituary in “The Los Angeles Times” can be accessed here.

Pier Angeli (Wikipedia)

Pier Angeli was born in 1932 and was an Italian-born television and film actress. Her American cinematographic debut was in the starring role of the 1951 film Teresa, for which she won a Golden Globe Award for Young Star of the Year – Actress. She had one son with Vic Damone, her first husband, and another son with Armando Trovajoli, her second husband. Her twin sister is the actress Marisa Pavan.

Angeli made her film debut with Vittorio De Sica in Domani è troppo tardi (1950) after being spotted by director Léonide Moguy and De Sica.^[2] MGM launched her in Teresa(1951), her first American film, which also saw the debuts of Rod Steiger and John Ericson. Reviews for this performance compared her to Greta Garbo, and she won the New Star of the Year–Actress Golden Globe. Under contract to MGM throughout the 1950s, she appeared in a series of films, including The Light Touch with Stewart Granger. Plans for a film of Romeo and Juliet with her and Marlon Brando fell through when a British-Italian production was announced.

While filming The Story of Three Loves (1953), Angeli started a relationship with costar Kirk Douglas. She next appeared in Sombrero, in which she replaced an indisposed Ava Gardner, then Flame and the Flesh (1954). After discovering Leslie Caron, another continental ingénue, MGM lent Angeli to other studios. She went to Warner Bros. for both The Silver Chalice, which marked the debut of Paul Newman, and Mam’zelle Nitouche. For Paramount, she was in contention for the role of Anna Magnani‘s daughter in The Rose Tattoo, but the role went to Marisa Pavan, her twin sister. MGM lent her to Columbia for Port Afrique (1956). She returned to MGM for Somebody Up There Likes Me as Paul Newman’s long-suffering wife (Angeli’s former lover, James Dean, was to play the starring role, which went to Newman after Dean’s death). She then appeared in The Vintage (1957) and finished her MGM contract in Merry Andrew.

During the 1960s and until 1970, Angeli lived and worked in Britain and Europe, and was often screen-credited under her birth name, Anna Maria Pierangeli. Her performance in The Angry Silence (1960) was nominated for a Best Foreign Actress BAFTA, and she was reunited with Stewart Granger for Sodom and Gomorrah (1963), in which she played Lot’s wife. She had a brief role in the war epic Battle of the Bulge (1965). 1968 found Angeli in Israel, top billed in Every Bastard a King, about events during that nation’s recent war.

According to Kirk Douglas‘ autobiography, he and Angeli were engaged in the 1950s after meeting on the set of the film The Story of Three Loves (1953). Angeli also had a brief romantic relationship with James Dean. She broke it off because her mother was not happy with their relationship as he was not Catholic.

Angeli was married to singer and actor Vic Damone from 1954 to 1958. During their marriage, they appeared as guests on the June 17, 1956 episode of What’s My Line?. Their divorce was followed by highly publicized court battles for the custody of their only child, son Perry (1955–2014).

Angeli next married Italian composer Armando Trovajoli in 1962. She had another son, Howard, in 1963. She and Trovajoli were separated in 1969.

In 1971, at the age of 39, Angeli was found dead of a barbiturate overdose at her home in Beverly Hills. She is interred in the Cimetière des Bulvis in Rueil-Malmaison, Hauts-de-Seine, France.

Angeli was portrayed by Valentina Cervi in the 2001 TV movie James Dean, which depicted her relationship with Dean. In 2015, she was portrayed by Alessandra Mastronardi in the James Dean biopic Life.

Robert Wagner. Overview.

Robert Wagner recently celebrated his 90th birthday and he is still making movies after sixtyseven years in show business. He published his autobiography “Pieces of My Heart” in 2008. He first came to public attention as the young injured soldier in “With A Song in My Heart” which starred Susan Hayward. He had a contract with 20th Century Fox and throughout the 50’s he made some very popular films including “Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef”, “Prince Valient”, “A Kiss before Dying”, “Broken Lance”, “Titanic” and “In Love and War”. In the 1960’s he made the transition to television and over the years he had several popular series including “Hart to Hart”. More recently he has starred in the Austin Power movies. Robert Wagner’s website can be accessed here.

TCM Overview:

The epitome of the handsome and debonair Hollywood star, actor Robert Wagner – known to friends as “R.J.” – played romantic heroes and upstanding young men in a string of mostly unmemorable 1950s-60s-era features, before finding lasting fame as one of television’s smoothest-of-the-smooth leading men. Wagner brought old-school class to the ABC action-drama “It Takes a Thief” (ABC, 1968-1970) and, more importantly, showed a knack for light comedy with his roles in “Switch” (CBS, 1975-1980) and “Hart to Hart” (ABC, 1979-1984). He also made headlines in his personal life – most notably for being half of one of Hollywood’s most beloved couples – after marrying the beautiful Natalie Wood – not once but TWICE. It was her tragic, mysterious death by drowning which sealed their legend and caused an outpouring of love and support for the actor.

Original Cinema Quad Poster – Movie Film Posters

This good will carried over year after year as the veteran actor aged gracefully, settled into a happy marriage with actress Jill St. John, and was always welcomed warmly with numerous appearances on both the big and small screen – most memorably as Mike Meyer’s Number Two in the “Austin Powers” film franchise. Born Robert John Wagner Jr. on Feb. 10, 1930 in Detroit, MI, Wagner’s father was a steel industry executive, leaving the family to relocate to Los Angeles when he was in grade school. He was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps, but after a turn in drag (as Priscilla Alden) in a high school production of “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” Wagner began to think about acting as his profession. A job at the Bel-Air Country Club, where he caddied to such stars as Clark Gable, gave him further inspiration, so he announced to his father than he intended to become an actor. Robert Wagner Sr. gave his son an ultimatum – he would have one year to find success in Hollywood or quit and get into the steel business. Fortunately for Wagner Jr., his first job came shortly after his father’s declaration with a bit part in “The Happy Years” (1950). More small roles followed, but his appearance as a hospitalized paratrooper in “With a Song in My Heart” (1952), about American singer Jane Froman (Susan Hayward), led to a contract with 20th Century Fox. Supporting roles in notable films like John Ford’s “What Price Glory” (1952) and the John Phillip Sousa biopic “Stars and Stripes Forever” (1953) – for which he earned a Golden Globe nomination – eventually led to starring roles – though pictures like “Beneath the 12-Mile Reef” (1953) and “Prince Valiant” (1954) asked little more of him than to look handsome. It took the intervention of actor Spencer Tracy to pull him out of the teen idol doldrums. The much respected Tracy took the young man under his wing and asked that he be cast as his son Joseph, who is tormented by his brothers for being half-Native American, in the dramatic Western “Broken Lance” (1954). The opportunity led to other substantial parts for Wagner, including “A Kiss Before Dying” (1956), which had him playing against type as a psychotic killer, and “Between Heaven and Hell,” for which he played a wealthy playboy who undergoes an emotional transformation during World War II. Wagner underwent a transformation of his own in 1956 when he became involved with another up-and-coming talent, former child actress (“Miracle on 34th Street” (1947)), Natalie Wood. The attractive pair was splashed across numerous magazine covers, and their marriage in 1957 earned them even further press. But their personal lives and careers floundered. Despite having proven his talents, Wagner’s status as a leading man faltered in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and after Wood’s contract was suspended for refusing to appear in a film in Europe, the couple experienced significant financial difficulties.

The pressures caused a strain on their marriage, and Wagner and Wood eventually divorced in 1962. They would later admit that they were simply too young to get married. Extremely distraught, Wagner fled to Europe, where he appeared as a soldier in the war epic, “The Longest Day” (1962). While there, he met and became involved with a fellow actor, Marion Marshall. The new couple was married in 1963, and a daughter, Katie, followed in 1964. Wagner’s film career slowed considerably during the 1960s. He enjoyed a few notable projects, including “The Pink Panther” (1963) – he was blinded for a month after an accident on the set involving industrial cleaning agents – and two films with Paul Newman – “Harper” (1966) and the racing drama “Winning” (1969) – but for the most part, he was tapped for his good looks and resonant voice in forgettable movies like “Don’t Just Stand There!” (1968) and “The Biggest Bundle of Them All” (1969. In 1968, he took the supposed step down by signing on to his first television series with “It Takes a Thief.” As a suave burglar turned spy, Wagner’s looks and charm were a considerable asset. Although the show lasted just two seasons, it gave his star a considerable boost, earning him his second Golden Globe nomination and first Emmy nod. From 1970, Wagner worked constantly and almost exclusively on television, guesting on series like “The Streets of San Francisco” (ABC, 1972-77) and the acclaimed World War II drama, “Colditz” (BBC, 1972-74). He also reunited romantically with Wood after a chance encounter in 1971. Though Wood was married and with a daughter at the time (future actress Natasha Gregson Wagner), the couple reignited their relationship, and, to the delight of true romance fans everywhere, remarried in 1972. A daughter, Courtney, was born in 1974 – their only biological child together.

Finally happy together, Wagner and Wood appeared in several highly regarded television projects, most notably a production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1976) with Laurence Olivier as Big Daddy. Wagner also made several theatrical features during this period, including the star-packed “The Towering Inferno” (1974) and “Midway” (1976). In addition to all his responsibilities, he found time to dabble in TV production, offering up to producer Aaron Spelling an idea he and Wood had conjured up; an idea which blossomed into the iconic jiggle show of them all – “Charlie’s Angels” (ABC, 1976-1981). In 1975, Wagner starred in his second series, “Switch,” a drama co-starring his lifelong friend, Eddie Albert, whom he had met on the set of “The Longest Day.” The pair played detectives who specialized in elaborate cons to trap criminals. A relatively popular series, it lasted two seasons before ending its network run in 1978. The following year, Wagner signed on to play millionaire Jonathan Hart, who dabbled in detective work with his wife Jennifer (Stephanie Powers), in “Hart to Hart.” Created by novelist Sidney Sheldon and produced by Aaron Spelling, the series was glossy, campy fun and a huge hit. Wagner earned numerous Golden Globe and Emmy nods for his tongue-in-cheek work. network run in 1983, Wagner was only too content to concentrate solely on raising his three daughters. But Wagner’s popularity did not allow him to stay away for too long. By 1985, he was appearing regularly in episodic series and TV movies, including the short-lived drama series, “Lime Street” (CBS, 1985) – which was touched by tragedy when, only a few episodes in, Wagner’s onscreen daughter, Samantha Smith, died in a plane crash, hastening the series’ demise.

He hosted “Saturday Night Live” (NBC, 1975- ) in 1989, and appeared in a string of popular “Hart to Hart” reunion TV-movies between 1993-96. Wagner also took time from his newly busy schedule in 1990 to marry actress and long-time girlfriend, Jill St. John, with whom he appeared in many stage productions for charity. Still undeniably handsome as he reached his sixth decade, Wagner settled comfortably into the role of “old Hollywood pro,” contributing numerous supporting turns in big budget films like “Wild Things” (1997), “Crazy in Alabama” (1999) and “Play It To The Bone” (1999). He even parodied his own smooth-as-silk image, starring as the diabolical but dense Number Two, henchman to Dr. Evil in “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” (1997), “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” (1999), and briefly in “Austin Powers in Goldmember” (2002). In the latter film, Wagner shared the role with Rob Lowe, who played a younger version of Number Two and who offered a note-perfect imitation of Wagner’s plummy voice and gentlemanly demeanor.

Wagner remained exceptionally busy for the next few years, appearing on countless television shows and providing his unique perspective on Hollywood for many show business documentaries. He also served as the host for the “Hour of Stars” (Fox Movie Channel, 2002- ), which showcased episodes from the TV anthology series “The 20th Century Fox Hour” (CBS, 1955-57), on which Wagner had once appeared. Long considered one of the most pleasant and friendly men in the entertainment business, Wagner showed an aggressive side in 2000, when he sued Aaron Spelling Productions for breach of contract over his participation in a failed revival of “Charlie’s Angels” called “Angels 88.” He filed suit again in 2003 for profits from the “Angels” theatrical features, but a California appeals court ruled against him in 2007. Back onscreen and staying contemporary for the kiddies, Wagner made memorable guest appearances on hit shows like “Las Vegas” (NBC, 2003- ), “Hope & Faith” (ABC, 2003-06) and “Boston Legal” (ABC, 2004- )