Dolph Lundgren was born in 1957 in Stockholm in Sweden. He came to fame with the popularity of action heroes who were muscleed and fit and adept at martial arts. Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, Jean Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal and Arnold Schwarzenegger were all very popular at the same time. Lundgren has a degress in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney. He made his film debut in the James Bond thriller “A View to a Kill” in 1985. His other films include “Rocky Four”, “Showdown in Little Toyko” and more recently “The Expendables”.
Men’s Health Interview:
Critics have never
been kind to Dolph Lundgren. They’ve call him “grinning and glistening” when they’re trying to be nice, and “expressive as wood” when they’re not. “Watching (Lundgren) think hard is a painful experience,” noted aWashington Post review of 1989’s Red Scorpion. “May well be the only man in the universe who can make Mr. (Jean-Claude) Van Damme look like an actor,” a New York Times critic wrote of Lundgren in 1992’s Universal Soldier. Film academic Christine Holmlund, summing up Lundgren’s career in the 2004 book Action and Adventure Cinema, wrote “Lundgren is limited by his size and dead pan delivery: though often compared to Arnold (Schwarzenegger), he has less range.”
For someone who’s had such a difficult time convincing critics of his merit, he’s one of the few action stars who gets respect (and real fear) from his audience. In 2009, three armed and masked burglars broke into Lundgren’s home in Marbella, Spain, tied up his wife, and went about ransacking the place. But then one of them noticed a Lundgren family photo in the bedroom and recognized the action star. He alerted his cohorts, and they made the unanimous decision to flee the crime scene immediately. Apparently they were less concerned with Lundgren’s wooden acting than his ability to break their collective faces. Perhaps they were afraid of ending up like Apollo Creed, who Lundgren famously “killed” in the 1985 filmRocky IV.
To be fair, it’s not completely irrational to be terrified by Lundgren. As Roger Moore, who worked with Lundgren in the James Bond film View To a Kill, once said “Dolph is larger than Denmark.” That’s hyperbole, but just slightly. Lundgren, a native of Stockholm, Sweden, stands at a golem-like 6 foot 5 inches and weighs in at around 250 pounds of pure neck-snapping muscle. Oh, and he also has a black belt in Kyokushin kaikan karate. While filming Rocky IV, he punched Sylvester Stallone so hard that he sent Sly to intensive care for nine days. If that’s not intimidating enough, he’s also smart. Lundgren has a masters in chemical engineering from the University of Sydney, and speaks five languages (Swedish, English, German, French and Japanese). He also dated musician Grace Jones during the 1980s, hung out at the infamous den of disco iniquity Studio 54, and lived in New York City when it was fun and dangerous.
Lundgren’s life has admittedly sometimes been more interesting than his movies. But in recent years, Lundgren has been on the verge of something like a comeback. He was the most two-dimensional part of 2010’s all-star action epic The Expendables, and he returns for the sequel, The Expendables 2, this Friday, August 17. It may not be thought-provoking cinema, but Lundgren’s performance should keep his house safe from burglars for at least another year.
I called Lundgren as he was waiting in LAX to board a flight to Madrid, as part of his world Expendables 2 media tour. He was soft-spoken, humble, and quick to laugh, particularly at himself. In other words, the exact opposite of every movie character he’s ever played.
Men’s Health:Expendables 2 has a lot of stars, and presumably a lot of egos. Did everybody get along?
Dolph Lundgren: Oh yeah. There was just a core group that worked together on most of the movie. It was Sly (Stallone) and me and Jason (Statham) and Terry (Crews) and Randy (Couture) and the Chinese guy, Jet Li. We were the ones working all the time. When guys like Bruce (Willis) and Arnold (Schwarzenegger) came in, it was just for a week or two. But everybody was excited to be part of a team and in a big movie. Some of these guys, like Chuck Norris, haven’t done a film in like seven years. So nobody came with big egos.
MH: Just big entourages?
DL: A few guys had that. They’d show up with a lot of people, especially Arnold and Chuck. Bodyguards and entourages, all that stuff.
MH: I understand the former Governator having bodyguards. But what does Chuck Norris need bodyguards for? I thought he could kill a guy with his pinkie.
DL:(Laughs.) I don’t know about that. Having bodyguards is just part of being famous, I think.
MH: How many bodyguards do you have?
DL: None.
MH: Because you don’t need them, or you could crack somebody’s spine just by staring at them?
DL:(Laughs.) I’m not that good.
MH: Among action stars, is there cheating?
DL: Cheating how?
MH: Like steroids. I talked to Charlie Sheen and he said he used steroids while he was making Major League. And that was a baseball movie.
DL:(Laughs.) That’s funny. Charlie took steroids? That’s probably the mildest form of drug he ever took. No, I like Charlie. I like him a lot. He’s a nice guy. But him saying he took steroids, that’s like me claiming I took aspirin. Anyway, what’s your question?
MH: Are steroids common in action movies? Part of the job requires having big, rippling, cinematic muscles. It must be tempting for some of these stars.
DL: Oh sure. It never was for me, because I was already a big guy when I started making movies. I didn’t need to be any bigger. So steroids didn’t make any sense. But if you’re a regular-sized actor and you’re in a movie where you’re supposed to be some pumped-up guy who takes his shirt off, yeah, steroids make sense.
MH: You’ve seen it?
DL: Well, I… (long pause.) I haven’t witnessed the injections personally. But I recognize when it’s happening. You know which guys are doing steroids and which ones aren’t.
MH: You can tell just by looking?
DL: Oh yeah. It’s pretty obvious. You can see the difference. There’s a soft roundness to steroid muscles that you don’t get when you’re lifting weights or doing martial arts or things like that. I don’t judge anybody. Everybody has their own life and people do what they want. It’s like smoking pot. If you experiment with it, it doesn’t mean you’re the devil, and it doesn’t mean you’ve ruined your body. It just means you tried it.
“Men;s Health” interview can also be accessed online here.
William Marshall was born in 1917 in Chicago. His first film was “Money and the Woman” in 1940. His films include “State Fair” in 1945, “Murder in the Music Hall”, “Blackmail” and “The Impure Ones”. He was married to three beautiful actresses, Michele Morgan, Micheline Presle and Ginger Rogers. He died in Paris in 1994.
His obituary in “The Los Angeles Times”:
G. William Marshall, an American actor and producer whose marriages to film stars probably made him better known than his dramatic career, has died, it was reported Saturday. Marshall, whose four wives included Ginger Rogers and Michele Morgan, died Wednesday, according to a legal notice placed by his family in the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro. The place and cause of death were not announced. He was believed to be 76. Other information was not available. The announcement was placed by Mike Marshall, his son by Morgan, his first wife, and Tonie Marshall, his daughter by his second wife, actress Micheline Presle.
The onetime vocalist with the Fred Waring orchestra was also married to Rogers and actress Corinne Aboyneau and was a friend of Clark Gable, Errol Flynn and Marilyn Monroe. He became Rogers’ fifth husband in 1961 in a North Hollywood church ceremony. He recounted his professional and marital life in his 1983 memoirs, “The Sixth Season.” Morgan took him to court to have intimate passages about their life together removed from the book. Born in Chicago, Marshall started his career with Waring in 1936. The next year, Marshall was leading his own band, and he began making film appearances in 1940 with “Flowing Gold” and “Santa Fe Trail.” His credits are often confused with those of another actor of the same name, who has appeared in films since the early 1950s. Marshall’s other acting credits include “Belle of the Yukon” in 1944; “State Fair” in 1945; “Murder in the Music Hall,” “Earl Carroll Sketchbook” and “That Brennan Girl,” all in 1946, and “Calendar Girl” and “Blackmail” in 1947. Marshall directed and produced “Adventures of Captain Fabian” in 1951, and he directed “The Phantom Planet” in 1961.
Bradford Dillman was born in San Francisco in 1930. After graduation he joined the United States Marine Corp. He was given a contract with 20th Century Fox and cast as the lead in “A Certain Smile” with Joan Fontaine and Christine Carere. Other films at this time included “Compulsion” with Orson Welles, “In Love and War” with Robert Wagner, Dana Wynter and France Nuyen. He matured into a very capable characted actor and made many films including “Sudden Impact” and “The Way We Were”. He was also a frequent guest star on television. He was long married to the top model and actress Suzy Parker until her death in 2003. “Cinema Retro” interview with Bradford Dillman here.
His IMDB entry:
Dark-haired, Ivy League-looking Bradford Dillman, whose white-collar career spanned nearly five decades, possessed charm and confident good looks that were slightly tainted by a bent smile, darting glance and edgy countenance that often provoked suspicion. Sure enough, the camera picked up on it and he played shady, highly suspect characters throughout most of his career.
The actor was born in San Francisco on April 14, 1930, to Dean and Josephine Dillman. Yale-educated, he graduated with a B.A. in English Literature. Following this he served with the US Marines in Korea (1951-1953) before focusing on acting as a profession. Studying at the Actors Studio, he spent several seasons apprenticing with the Sharon (CT) Playhouse before making his professional acting debut in “The Scarecrow” in 1953.
Dillman took his initial Broadway bow in Eugene O’Neill‘s play “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1956, originating the author’s alter ego character Edmund Tyrone and winning a Theatre World Award in the process. This success put him squarely on the map and 20th Century-Fox took immediate advantage by placing the darkly handsome up-and-comer under contract. Cast in the melodrama A Certain Smile (1958), he earned a Golden Globe for “Most Promising Newcomer” playing a Parisian student who loses his girl (Christine Carère) to the worldly Italian roué Rossano Brazzi. He followed this with a strong ensemble appearance in In Love and War (1958), which featured a cast of young rising stars including Hope Lange and Robert Wagner. More acting honors followed after completing the film Compulsion (1959), which told the true story of the infamous 1920s kidnapping/murder case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. He went on to share a “Best Actor” award at the Cannes Film Festival with fellow co-stars Dean Stockwell, who played the other youthful murderer, and veteran Orson Welles.
Though he was a magnetic player poised for stardom, Dillman’s subsequent films failed to serve him well and were generally unworthy of his talent. Though properly serious and stoic as the title character in Francis of Assisi (1961), the film itself was stilted and weakly scripted. A Circle of Deception (1960) was a misguided tale of espionage and intrigue, but it did introduce him to his second wife, supermodel-cum-actress Suzy Parker. While A Rage to Live (1965) with Suzanne Pleshette was trashy soap material,The Plainsman (1966) was rather a silly, juvenile version of the Gary Cooper western classic. As a result of these missteps–and others–he began to top-line lesser quality projects or play supporting roles in “A” pictures. His nothing role as Robert Redford‘s college pal-turned Hollywood producer in The Way We Were (1973) and his major roles in the ludicrous The Swarm (1978) and Lords of the Deep (1989) became proof in the pudding. His last good film role was in O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh (1973), although he did play an interesting John Wilkes Booth in the speculative re-enactment drama The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977) and had a fun leading role in the Jaws (1975)-like spoofPiranha (1978).
Dillman bore up very well on TV over the years, subsisting on a plethora of mini-movies and guest spots on popular series, playing everything from turncoats to frauds and from adulterers to psychotics. He earned a Daytime Emmy for his appearance in The ABC Afternoon Playbreak: Last Bride of Salem (1974) and starred in two series–Court Martial(1965), as a military lawyer, and King’s Crossing (1982), as an alcoholic parent and teacher attempting to straighten out. He also spent a season on the established nighttime soap Falcon Crest (1981) in 1982.
He is the father of five children. One daughter, Pamela Dillman has worked as an actress, narrator, director and teacher of acting. Bradford launched a late-in-the career sideline as an author. The football fan inside him compelled him to write “Inside the New York Giants” (1995), a book that rated players drafted by the team since 1967. Two years later he published his memoirs, the curiously-titled “Are You Somebody?: An Actor’s Life.” He hasn’t been seen on since a few guest star shots on “Murder, She Wrote” in the mid-90s.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Bradford Dillman was born in San Francisco in 1930. After graduation he joined the United States Marine Corp. He was given a contract with 20th Century Fox and cast as the lead in “A Certain Smile” with Joan Fontaine and Christine Carere. Other films at this time included “Compulsion” with Orson Welles, “In Love and War” with Robert Wagner, Dana Wynter and France Nuyen. He matured into a very capable characted actor and made many films including “Sudden Impact” and “The Way We Were”. He was also a frequent guest star on television. He was long married to the top model and actress Suzy Parker until her death in 2003. “Cinema Retro” interview with Bradford Dillman here.
His IMDB entry:
Dark-haired, Ivy League-looking Bradford Dillman, whose white-collar career spanned nearly five decades, possessed charm and confident good looks that were slightly tainted by a bent smile, darting glance and edgy countenance that often provoked suspicion. Sure enough, the camera picked up on it and he played shady, highly suspect characters throughout most of his career.
The actor was born in San Francisco on April 14, 1930, to Dean and Josephine Dillman. Yale-educated, he graduated with a B.A. in English Literature. Following this he served with the US Marines in Korea (1951-1953) before focusing on acting as a profession. Studying at the Actors Studio, he spent several seasons apprenticing with the Sharon (CT) Playhouse before making his professional acting debut in “The Scarecrow” in 1953.
Dillman took his initial Broadway bow in Eugene O’Neill‘s play “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1956, originating the author’s alter ego character Edmund Tyrone and winning a Theatre World Award in the process. This success put him squarely on the map and 20th Century-Fox took immediate advantage by placing the darkly handsome up-and-comer under contract. Cast in the melodrama A Certain Smile (1958), he earned a Golden Globe for “Most Promising Newcomer” playing a Parisian student who loses his girl (Christine Carère) to the worldly Italian roué Rossano Brazzi. He followed this with a strong ensemble appearance in In Love and War (1958), which featured a cast of young rising stars including Hope Lange and Robert Wagner. More acting honors followed after completing the film Compulsion (1959), which told the true story of the infamous 1920s kidnapping/murder case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. He went on to share a “Best Actor” award at the Cannes Film Festival with fellow co-stars Dean Stockwell, who played the other youthful murderer, and veteran Orson Welles.
Though he was a magnetic player poised for stardom, Dillman’s subsequent films failed to serve him well and were generally unworthy of his talent. Though properly serious and stoic as the title character in Francis of Assisi (1961), the film itself was stilted and weakly scripted. A Circle of Deception (1960) was a misguided tale of espionage and intrigue, but it did introduce him to his second wife, supermodel-cum-actress Suzy Parker. While A Rage to Live (1965) with Suzanne Pleshette was trashy soap material,The Plainsman (1966) was rather a silly, juvenile version of the Gary Cooper western classic. As a result of these missteps–and others–he began to top-line lesser quality projects or play supporting roles in “A” pictures. His nothing role as Robert Redford‘s college pal-turned Hollywood producer in The Way We Were (1973) and his major roles in the ludicrous The Swarm (1978) and Lords of the Deep (1989) became proof in the pudding. His last good film role was in O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh (1973), although he did play an interesting John Wilkes Booth in the speculative re-enactment drama The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977) and had a fun leading role in the Jaws (1975)-like spoofPiranha (1978).
Bradford Dillman
Dillman bore up very well on TV over the years, subsisting on a plethora of mini-movies and guest spots on popular series, playing everything from turncoats to frauds and from adulterers to psychotics. He earned a Daytime Emmy for his appearance in The ABC Afternoon Playbreak: Last Bride of Salem (1974) and starred in two series–Court Martial(1965), as a military lawyer, and King’s Crossing (1982), as an alcoholic parent and teacher attempting to straighten out. He also spent a season on the established nighttime soap Falcon Crest (1981) in 1982.
He is the father of five children. One daughter, Pamela Dillman has worked as an actress, narrator, director and teacher of acting. Bradford launched a late-in-the career sideline as an author. The football fan inside him compelled him to write “Inside the New York Giants” (1995), a book that rated players drafted by the team since 1967. Two years later he published his memoirs, the curiously-titled “Are You Somebody?: An Actor’s Life.” He hasn’t been seen on since a few guest star shots on “Murder, She Wrote” in the mid-90s.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Bradford Dillman, a Broadway and film actor known for his roles in the original Broadway production of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” and the movie “Compulsion,” died on Jan. 16 in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 87.
His manager, Ted Gekis, said the cause was complications of pneumonia.
Mr. Dillman began acting professionally in 1953 and had his breakthrough three years later in “Long Day’s Journey,” playing Edmund Tyrone, the peacekeeping younger brother in a deeply dysfunctional family. The director, José Quintero, picked him out of 500 applicants, The New York Times reported in 1959.
It was a very different role from the dark characters he would become known for, but it earned him a 1957 Theater World Award and a contract with 20th Century Fox.
In 1959, Mr. Dillman won a Golden Globe for most promising newcomer, starring that year with Orson Welles and Dean Stockwell in “Compulsion,” a film based on the Leopold and Loeb murders in Chicago.
In the movie, Mr. Dillman portrayed Artie Straus (a stand-in for the real-life Richard Loeb), an arrogant law student from a socially prominent family who persuades a classmate (Mr. Stockwell) to help him commit the perfect crime as a demonstration of their superior intellect.
It would become one of his best-known performances.
“Bradford Dillman emerges as an actor of imposing stature as the bossy, over-ebullient and immature mama’s boy, Artie,” A. H. Weiler wrote in a Times review.
Mr. Dillman, Mr. Stockwell and Mr. Welles shared best actor honors at the Cannes Film Festival.
In an interview with The Times shortly after “Compulsion” was released, Mr. Dillman gave some insight into his acting philosophy, criticizing what he called “ ‘the beat’ acting style.” He said it made a mockery of the Actors Studio and Lee Strasberg’s Method.
“To me this much-touted new ‘technique’ is a reversion to the animalistic, a declaration of spiritual bankruptcy, a shedding of hard-won civilized sentiments like tenderness, honor, self-respect, loyalty, friendship, love,” he said. “All this glaring out at the world from beneath furrowed brows, these shufflings and shamblings and evasivenesses, the self-hate projections, the affected stammerings and word repetitions and vowel swallowings. To me these are ridiculous, infantile.”
The Times’s Lawrence J. Quirk quoted him approvingly and wrote: “Dillman is an individualist and a breaker of rules. He dares to dress neatly. He dares to be a gentleman. He scorns white buckskins, clean or dirty. He doesn’t scratch. He doesn’t mumble. He doesn’t spout phrases like ‘gas it, man!’ He doesn’t hate himself. He isn’t lonely.”
Bradford Dillman was born in San Francisco on April 14, 1930, to Dean Dillman, a stockbroker, and the former Josephine Moore. After attending St. Ignatius High School in San Francisco, he went cross-country to enroll in the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut, where he performed in school plays before graduating and entering Yale.
He continued to act in amateur productions as a student at Yale and, during summer breaks, in Santa Barbara, Calif., where his parents lived. He earned a degree in literature from Yale in 1951. After graduation, he served in the Marines during the Korean War. He was discharged with the rank of first lieutenant in 1953.
After his military service he turned down a scholarship to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London when he was offered a role in an Off Broadway production.
His acting career was prolific, with at least 140 film and television credits. He rarely turned down a job.
He had children, he said, “and had to put food on the table,” he told Variety in 1995, calling himself “a Safeway actor.”
Mr. Dillman played prominent roles in “The Enforcer” and “Sudden Impact,” the third and fourth films in the “Dirty Harry” series, and won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1975 for his work on the TV series “The ABC Afternoon Playbreak.”
In 1973, he returned to Eugene O’Neill’s work, playing Willie Oban in a film adaptation of “The Iceman Cometh.” He also acted occasionally on the TV series “Murder, She Wrote,” starring Angela Lansbury, a friend.
Offscreen, Mr. Dillman was a writer of both fiction and nonfiction. His books include “Inside the New York Giants” (1995) and “Dropkick: A Football Fantasy” (1998), as well as the novels “That Air Forever Dark” (2001) and “Kissing Kate” (2005). He also wrote a memoir, “Are You Anybody? An Actor’s Life” (1997).
Mr. Dillman was married twice: to Frieda Harding McIntosh from 1956 to 1962, and to Suzy Parker, a model and actress, from 1963
Carol Lynley obituary in “The New York Times” in 2019.
Carol Lynley a child model who went on to an intense film acting career mirroring the country’s transformation from the modest Eisenhower era into the sexually frank 1960s, died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 77.
The cause was a heart attack, according to Trent Dolan, a friend.
Ms. Lynley may be best remembered as the naïve, soft-spoken adolescent who becomes pregnant by her equally wide-eyed boyfriend, played by Brandon De Wilde, in the 1959 film “Blue Denim.” It was a role she had originated on Broadway the year before, when she was 16.
Ms. Lynley made at least half a dozen high-profile Hollywood movies over the next eight years, but by the time she was in her mid-20s her star had faded and she was never solidly in the public eye again.
Still, she did make a notable if brief comeback in 1972, when she turned up wearing hot pants and go-go boots in the disaster movie “The Poseidon Adventure,” singing (or at least lip-syncing) the Oscar-winning song “The Morning After.”
Her career may have been, at least partly, a victim of unfortunate marketing. In the late 1950s and early ’60s, Hollywood’s publicity machine had three blond teenage actresses to promote. In a case of extreme image segmentation, Sandra Dee was promoted as the pampered rich girl, Tuesday Weld as the bad girl and Ms. Lynley as the good girl — studious, sensitive, wholesome and just a bit prim.
Hound-dog Man, poster, US poster art, from left: Carol Lynley, Fabian, (aka Fabian Forte), 1959. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
This worked well enough with the characters she played in her debut film, the Disney drama “The Light in the Forest” (1958), set in pre-Revolutionary America; in “Blue Denim”; and in “Hound-Dog Man” (1959), in which she starred opposite the teenage idol Fabian. But beginning when she was 19, Ms. Lynley turned to portrayals of more knowing characters, like the small-town author Allison MacKenzie, who has an affair with her publisher, in “Return to Peyton Place” (1961), a disappointing sequel. That film was followed by a sex comedy, “Under the Yum Yum Tree” (1963), with Jack Lemmon and Dean Jones, and by the drama “The Cardinal” (1963), in which she played both Tom Tryon’s wayward sister and her character’s daughter.
She was 23 when she posed discreetly nude in Playboy magazine and played the title role in “Harlow” (1965), a biographical film about the 1930s screen star and sex symbol Jean Harlow. That same year, she won some positive reviews as a distraught young mother in Otto Preminger’s “Bunny Lake Is Missing,” but neither critics nor fans responded to her in the same way as they had during her teenage years.
From the 1970s onward, Ms. Lynley worked mostly in television, doing guest appearances on various shows (she was in the original television film “Fantasy Island” and in at least 10 episodes of the series that it spawned, as well as the television film that later became the Darren McGavin series “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”) and in low-profile movies, some of the straight-to-vid
Brenda Vaccaro was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939 to parents of Italian origin. She began her acting career on Broadway and starred in “Cactus Flower” with Lauren Bacall and Barry Nelson in 1965. She made an impact on film in 1969 along with Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in the wonderful “Midnight Cowboy”. She went on to an impressive film career. Her films include “Summertree” with Michael Douglas, “Once is Not Enough” with Kirk Douglas and Alexis Smith in 1975 and more recently she gave a very sensitive performance in “The Boynton Beach Club”.
Her TCM Biography:
A husky-voiced actress who segued from beautiful leading lady to earthy character parts, Brenda Vaccaro enjoyed success in a variety of mediums. She earned three Tony nominations for her stage work in the 1960s, won a Golden Globe nomination for her role as a socialite paying Jon Voight for sex in “Midnight Cowboy” (1969), and an Oscar nomination for “Jacqueline Susann’s Once Is Not Enough” (1975). Although she was an accomplished dramatic actress, audiences embraced her most as a wisecracking second banana to everyone from Faye Dunaway in “Supergirl” (1984) to Barbra Streisand in “The Mirror Has Two Faces” (1996), as well as an in-demand voiceover actress.
The Emmy-winning Vaccaro earned an impressive array of TV credits as well, but found it harder to book jobs as she grew older. She did earn excellent reviews with the lead role in the gentle romantic comedy “Boynton Beach Club” (2005) and for a brilliant supporting turn as Al Pacino’s sister in the Dr. Kevorkian biopic, “You Don’t Know Jack” (HBO, 2010). Even 50 years into her career, Vaccaro remained a vital, formidable actress with the training and talent to deliver award-caliber performances – if Hollywood would only give the veteran performer the chance.
Born Nov. 18, 1939 in Brooklyn, NY to Christine M. and Mario A. Vaccaro, a pair of Italian-American restaurateurs, Brenda Buell Vaccaro was raised in Texas, where her parents co-founded the nationally-renowned Mario’s Restaurant. After high school, Vaccaro returned to New York City to study acting, making her Broadway debut in the 1961 comedy, “Everybody Loves Opal,” for which she won the Theatre World Award. Pairing her unmistakable husky voice with her acting talent, Vaccaro immediately stood out to critics and fans alike, and she earned a long string of Broadway credits, including “Cactus Flower” in 1965, “How Now, Dow Jones” in 1967, and “The Goodbye People” in 1968 – earning a Tony nomination for each of those roles.
Already the owner of a lengthy television résumé, her breakthrough in film came with the controversial hit “Midnight Cowboy” (1969), for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination playing a sexually voracious socialite who helps Jon Voight start up his male hustling business. She also earned a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising Newcomer with her role of a sharp-witted secretary in “Where It’s At” (1969).
She ably supported Robert Mitchum as his sweetheart in the powerful but downbeat “Going Home” (1971), then won an Emmy for her performance in the revue by and about women, “The Shape of Things” (1974). After four years away from the big screen, Vaccaro roared back with a Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated turn as wisecracking magazine editor Linda Riggs in “Jacqueline Susann’s Once Is Not Enough” (1975).
She tackled the tough role of a woman battling a gang of Canadian punks intent on rape in the dark, but cerebral horror thriller, “Death Weekend” (1976) and then earned an Emmy nomination for the short-lived “Sara” (CBS, 1975-1976), about a frontier schoolteacher. Vaccaro played James Brolin’s wife in the NASA conspiracy thriller “Capricorn One” (1977) – for which she earned a Best Supporting Actress Saturn Award nomination – and a threatened passenger in the cheesy-but-effective disaster smash, “Airport ’77” (1977).
Vaccaro worked constantly and successfully in all genres, but comedy was her forte, and she marked memorable turns as a villain’s sexually frustrated wife in “Zorro, the Gay Blade” (1981) and as Faye Dunaway’s wisecracking fellow witch in “Supergirl” (1984). She impressed even in subpar material, perfecting the art of stealing a project from the supporting sidelines. She chewed up scenery to delightful effect as top teen model Nicollette Sheridan’s stage mother/manager in the campy Morgan Fairchild nighttime soap, “Paper Dolls” (ABC, 1984).
Fleshing out her résumé with impressive guest-starring TV credits, Vaccaro kept busy, earning an Emmy nomination for an appearance on “The Golden Girls” (NBC, 1985-1992), as the widow of Dorothy’s cross-dressing, never-seen brother. The actress continued to be an in-demand second banana, ably sparring with Valerie Harper in “Stolen: One Husband” (CBS, 1990) and Ann-Margret in “Following Her Heart” (NBC, 1994), before playing the mother of J y (Matt LeBlanc) in “The One with the Boobies” episode of “Friends” (NBC, 1994-2004).
Besides a small role in “Love Affair” (1994) with Warren Beatty, Annette Bening and Katharine Hepburn (in the latter’s last screen performance), Vaccaro continued to lend her trademark raspy voice to numerous animated TV projects. Whether or not they could identify her by name, millions of children had grown up hearing Vaccaro voice characters on everything from “Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey” (ABC, 1977), “The Smurfs” (NBC, 1981-89), “The Jetsons Meet the Flintstones” (syndicated, 1987), “Darkwing Duck” (ABC, 1991-92) to “The Critic” (ABC, 1994; FOX, 1995), “Johnny Bravo” (Cartoon Network, 1997-2004) and “American Dad!” (FOX, 2005- ). She essayed great humor and vulnerability on the big screen as Barbra Streisand’s frumpy best friend in the Oscar-nominated hit, “The Mirror Has Two Faces” (1996), in which she had to deal with feelings of abandonment when Streisand transforms from ugly duckling to swan.
A role that ech d her “Midnight Cowboy” success, Vaccaro earned good notices for a sweetly delusional customer of male prostitute James Franco in “Sonny” (2002), as well as for the lead role in the kind-hearted ensemble comedy, “Boynton Beach Club” (2005), which followed the lives and loves of a group of senior citizens in a Florida retirement community. Vaccaro played both tough and tender as a woman who is unexpectedly widowed when a neighbor (Renée Taylor) accidentally runs over her husband; she then must deal with her family and friends’ attempts to help her recover. Despite the vivid proof of her ability, Vaccaro, like many aging actresses, found it difficult find work in later years.
Although she was still able to notch the occasional prominent credit, like an episode of “Nip/Tuck” (FX, 2003-10), the offers slowed to a trickle, and she considered quitting show business completely and moving to France to be near her husband’s family. Luckily, fate conspired to put Vaccaro on the radars of the production team making “You Don’t Know Jack” (HBO, 2010), a pedigreed film about the life and career of controversial doctor-assisted-suicide advocate, Jack Kevorkian. Director Barry Levinson and star Al Pacino – who was an old theater buddy of the actress and at one time had shared a manager with her – were both fans of Vaccaro’s work, and she landed the role of Kevorkian’s protective sister, Margo Janus. Reviewers raved about the film, especially about Vaccaro’s performance, predicting she would be shortlisted for all the top awards. She was indeed nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie in 2010. Critics and fans alike hoped that it would be a turning point for the actress, and she would find herself as in-demand as her talent – regardless of her age – deserved.
The TCM biography can also be accessed online here.
Chad Everett is a ruggedly handsome actor who played young Dr. Joe Gannon on the TV drama “Medical Center,” has died. He was 75.
Everett died Tuesday at his home in the Los Angeles area after battling lung cancer, his daughter Katherine Thorp told the Associated Press. Everett’s wife of 45 years, actress Shelby Grant, died of an aneurysm in June 2011 at 74.
Although Everett had a range of TV and movie roles over a career that began in the early 1960s, he made a lasting impression as Dr. Gannon on “Medical Center.” The dramatic series aired on CBS from 1969 to 1976 and followed the personal and professional lives of the staff at a teaching hospital in Los Angeles.
“Understatement is apparently a highly salable commodity on TV,” a Washington Post reporter wrote in a 1975 article on male stardom. “Chad Everett, a big city type, seldom stoops to histrionics as he lethargically makes his rounds on ‘Medical Center.’ ”
Everett arrived in Hollywood from the Midwest. He was born Raymond Lee Cramton in South Bend, Ind., on June 11, 1937, and grew up in Dearborn, Mich., where his father was a race car driver and racing mechanic. He studied drama at Wayne State University in Detroit.
“I went into acting because I’m easily bored,” Everett told The Times in 1966, several years after he had changed his name for professional reasons. “I had tried — in my own juvenile way — music, football, business with my father. All of them bored me. Acting seemed to give vent to a lot of different feelings.”
He landed jobs on episodic TV shows beginning in 1961 and then won a featured role on the TV western “The Dakotas” in 1963.
He signed a contract with MGM in 1964 and appeared in “Made in Paris” with Ann-Margret and “The Singing Nun” with Debbie Reynolds in 1966.
Everett worked steadily in television before and after “Medical Center,” appearing as a regular in “Hagen,” “The Rousters,” “McKenna,” “Melrose Place,” “Manhattan, AZ” and as recently as last year on “Chemistry,” a USA network drama.
His movie roles included parts in “Airplane II: The Sequel” (1982), the 1998 remake of”Psycho”and “Mulholland Dr.” (2001).
Everett was taken to court three times by actress Sheila Scott, who claimed he was the father of her son Dale, who was born in 1973. The long-running paternity dispute ended in 1981 when a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury ruled in favor of Everett, who steadfastly denied the claims.
In addition to Thorp, he is survived by his other daughter, Shannon Everett, and six grandchildren.
TCM Overview:
A masculine leading man on television and in the occasional feature during the late 1960s and 1970s, Chad Everett rose to fame as a young doctor on the popular drama “Medical Center” (CBS, 1969-1976) before enjoying a long career as a series lead and guest player on the small screen for over four decades. Everett left the Midwest in 1960 for Hollywood, where he enjoyed a minor career as a youthful romantic lead in modest features like “Made in Paris” (1966) and “The Singing Nun” (1966). “Medical Center,” which partnered him with James Daly as surgeons at a Los Angeles university hospital, thrust him into stardom, but he never found a subsequent project that equaled its popularity. However, Everett remained a constant presence on television well into the new millennium, playing gracefully aging fathers, stern authority figures and even the occasionally mature romantic role. Though never a critical favorite nor highly lauded for his work, Chad Everett was a dependable performer, which granted him a rarity in show business â¿¿ steady work for over a half-century.
Viveca Lindfors was born in Uppsala, Sweden in 1920. She became a theatre and film star in her native country before coming to Hollywood in 1946. She starred with Ronald Reagan and Virginia Mayo in “Night unto Night”, with Margaret Sullavan in “No Sad Songs for Me” and wih Charlton Heston and Lizabeth Scott in “Dark City”. By the mid 50’s she was make in Europe making films there. She did return on occasion to the U.S. to make films e.g. in 1965 in “Sylvia” with Carroll Baker and in 1973 in “The Way We Were” with Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand. In 1994 she was back in the U.S. again making “Stargate”. Viveca Lindfors died in her home town in Sweden in 1995 at the age of 74.
Her “Los Angeles Times” obituary:
Viveca Lindfors, the sultry Swedish screen and stage actress who delighted Hollywood and Broadway with her liberated lifestyle as well as her acting and in her later years became known for her one-woman shows, died Wednesday. She was 74.
Miss Lindfors died of complications from rheumatoid arthritis in her native Uppsala, Sweden, her daughter, Lena Tabori of New York City, told The Times on Wednesday.
Tabori said her mother, who lived in Manhattan, had been in Sweden to do her one-woman production, “In Search of Strindberg.” She said Miss Lindfors had regretted being unable to attend the Los Angeles Film Festival for the screening of her most recent film, “Summer in the Hamptons,” which is scheduled for release next month. Miss Lindfors appeared in scores of films, plays and television shows over more than half a century, still turning on the charm as her hair grayed.
When the enduring actress toured her one-woman show “I Am Woman” at age sixtysomething, a Times theater critic wrote: “[She] retains a magical, casually battered and untended beauty. When she smiles, the world lights up. There is strength, but also tenderness in the sculptured, kittenish face. Grit, hauteur and dignity are all part of the svelte persona. This is a woman telling us she’s been through it all and, my dear, she’s still here.” Married and divorced four times, Miss Lindfors often earned attention for her sexual politics and lifestyle as well as for her work. She described her colorful life to critical acclaim in a 1981 autobiography, “Viveka . . . Viveca.” One of the vignettes in the book humorously describes her, at the age of 54, refereeing a squabble between her 5-year-old granddaughter and a 61-year-old suitor concerning who would get to sleep with grandmother that night. “I was wild. I was ahead of my time in feeling sexual liberation,” she candidly told The Times in 1975. “I married my first husband because the gossips said no man would ever want to marry anyone as promiscuous as I was.”
The tall and talented brunette beauty, born Elsa Viveca Torstensdotter Lindfors in Uppsala, trained at Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theater and appeared in several Swedish films and plays before moving to Hollywood in 1946 under contract to Warner Bros. She made her Hollywood debut in “To the Victor” in 1947.
The actress relocated to New York in 1952 for her Broadway breakthrough role as “Anastasia,” and because of what became her longest marriage (18 years), to playwright-director George Tabori.
Miss Lindfors commuted between the coasts for decades, never equaling the stardom of her Swedish role models Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo, yet always finding producers eager to hire her and audiences willing to enjoy her work. Among her memorable Broadway plays along with “Anastasia” were “Miss Julie” in 1955, “Brecht on Brecht” in 1961, and her later one-woman shows. She won acting honors at the Berlin Film Festival for the feature films “Four in a Jeep” in 1951 and “No Exit” in 1962. Her myriad other films include “No Sad Songs for Me,” “Moonfleet,” “The King of Kings,” “The Way We Were,” “Welcome to L.A.,” “Creepshow” and last year’s “Stargate.” Unlike many beautiful actresses, Miss Lindfors worried little about aging, even when Tabori left her for a much younger woman. “Any qualms I might have had about advancing years were dispelled a long time ago when I decided not to be put down by America’s worship of youth,” she told The Times on her 53rd birthday.
Miss Lindfors is survived by her daughter; two sons, John Tabori of Washington, D.C., and Kristoffer Siegel Tabori of Los Angeles, and four grandchildren. Memorial services will be planned early next year in New York and Sweden, Lena Tabori said.
The above obituary can also be accessed online here.
The Halliday Brand, poster, Viveca Lindfors, 1957. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Journey Into Light, poster, Sterling Hayden, Viveca Lindfors, 1951. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)Digital Camera
Virna Lisi was born in Ancona, Italy in 1936. She made her debut in her home country in “Line of Steel” in 1953. In the mid 60’s she went to Hollywood where she made three films “How to Murder Your Wife” with Jack Lemmon, “Not With My Wife You Don’t” with Tony Curtis and George C. Scott and “Assault on a Queen” with Frank Sinatra. Back in Italy she made “The Secret of Santa Vittoria” with Anthony Quinn and Anna Magnani. In 1994 she delivered a stunning performance in “La ReineMargot”. Sadly Virna Lisi died in December 2014.
Her “Telegraph” obituary:
Virna Lisi, the Italian actress, who has died aged 78, enjoyed a brief burst of fame in Hollywood in the 1960s before decamping back to Europe, frustrated at being cast as what she saw as blonde eye-candy; nearly three decades later she won the best actress award at Cannes for her portrayal of the scheming Catherine de Medici in Patrice Chéreau’s costume epic Queen Margot (1994).
She was born Virna Lisa Pieralisi in Ancona on November 8 1936, the daughter of a marble exporter, and began appearing in the Italian cinema at the age of only 17, having been discovered by two Neapolitan producers ; she was soon also working extensively on both stage and television, and her beauty secured her a spot advertising a brand of toothpaste with the slogan: “con quella bocca può dire ciò che vuole” (with that mouth, she can say whatever she wants). She made several films in France, including La Tulipe Noire (Black Tulip, 1964), alongside Alain Delon, and before she was 30 she had come to the attention of Hollywood.
In 1965 she starred with Jack Lemmon and Terry-Thomas in the romantic comedy How to Murder Your Wife. Lemmon has the part of Stanley Ford, a well-off New York cartoonist who is leading a happy-go-lucky bachelor existence until, at a party, he witnesses the comely Virna Lisi bursting out of a large cake in a bikini. The next morning he wakes to find her in bed with him, and discovers that he has married her in a drunken stupor; the relationship goes downhill from there.
Virna Lisi later described the film as “very successful, but very light”, and she was no more complimentary (“trivial fluff”) about Not With My Wife, You Don’t (1966), in which she is an Italian nurse during the Korean War who falls in love with two United States Air Force pilots (Tony Curtis and George C Scott).
As for Assault on a Queen (1966), an action-adventure movie in which she co-starred with Frank Sinatra, in her judgment it was “not very good”.
She then turned down an offer to star in Barbarella (1968), later explaining: “They said, ‘You will look wonderful with wings and long silver hair.’ I said that I wanted to play something, a role, a real part.” The opportunity went to Jane Fonda, but 30 years later Virna Lisi claimed to have no regrets: “Maybe I’ve made some wrong choices in my career, but I don’t think that was one of them.”
Virna Lisi took the bold step of buying out her contract with United Artists and returning to Europe, making an enduring career in both film and television, principally in her native Italy. She did not entirely abandon English-language roles, for example co-starring with Anthony Quinn in Stanley Kramer’s The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969), in which an Italian wine-producing village conceals from the Germans a million bottles of wine in the aftermath of the fall of Mussolini .
In 1977 Virna Lisi won critical praise for her role as the sister of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, directed by Liliana Cavani, famous for drawing out superb performances from Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling in The Night Porter (1974); and she gained further plaudits for her performance in Luigi Comencini’s Buon Natale… Buon Anno (1989).
Her most successful role could hardly have been further removed from Hollywood’s casting of her as a frivolous blonde. As Catherine de Medici in Queen Margot, set in Reformation France and based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas, she forces her daughter Marguerite de Valois (Isabelle Adjani) to marry the Protestant Henry of Navarre (Daniel Auteuil) and helps to orchestrate the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of Protestants in 1572.
Although not everyone was enamoured of the film – The New York Times called it “chaotic, overheated and bizarrely anachronistic”, and likened Virna Lisi’s character to “Nosferatu with a wig” – the judges at Cannes voted her the year’s best actress. “I heard Clint Eastwood announce my name on the stage,” she later recalled. “It was a shock. My God! This was just a small part. My son, who was sitting next to me, whispered and told me not to cry. I got up there and cried as if I were a little starlet. It was very stupid, but, then, it had taken me 35 years to get there.”
It was a source of pride to her that her looks had nothing to do with the accolade: “It must have been difficult for [the film makers] to find anyone who was willing to look as ugly as this woman. I spent three hours in make-up every morning with them pinning things in my hair, to make me look ugly.” Peeling off the make-up and hair required another hour at the end of the day’s filming.
Virna Lisi’s later films include Follow Your Heart (1996), in which he plays an elderly woman dying of cancer. Her performance was rewarded with an Italian Golden Globe for best actress.
In 2002 she made Il più bel giorno della mia vita (The Best Day of My Life), appearing as a widowed grandmother living in her family’s crumbling villa in Rome.
Virna Lisi married, in 1960, Franco Pesci, an architect. He died in 2013, and she is survived by their son.
Virna Lisi, born November 8 1936, died December 18 2014
ARABELLA, US poster art, Virna Lisi, bottom from left: Terry-Thomas, James Fox, Virna Lisi, Terry-Thomas, Margaret Rutherford, 1967 ACHTUNG AUFNAHMEDATUM GESCHÄTZT PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Copyright: xCourtesyxEverettxCollectionx MSDARAB EC006
Dack Rambo was born in 1941 in California. He and his brother Dirk were child and then later teenage actors. They both played in “The New Loretta Young Show”. He made many television appearances including “Dallas” and “Murder She Wrote”. His film roles include 1970’s “Which Way to the Front” and “Rich and Famous” in 1981. Sadly his brother was killed in a road accident and Dack Rambo himself died in 1994 at the age of 52.
His IMDB mini biography:
Dack (given name Norman) and identical twin brother, Dirk Rambo (Orman), were born in sunny California in 1941. Dack’s noticeable difference was a mole on his left cheek. Both happened upon an acting career, at age 21, after being discovered by Loretta Young for her TV show, while sitting in a church pew.
The sons of Lester and Beatrice Rambo, the brothers also had another brother and sister, Bill and Beverly. Dack’s early training began as a student of Vincent Chase and Lee Strasberg, and both boys found employment, following the one-season stint on Loretta’s TV show, in 1963. While Dirk found success on episodic-TV (The Virginian (1962), Dragnet 1967 (1967)), Dack went on to a couple of other TV series, including Never Too Young (1965) and The Guns of Will Sonnett (1967). Dirk was tragically killed in 1967, after being struck by a drunken driver.
A stunned Dack ventured on, however, and eventually found a secure place for his dark good looks in 70s and 80s glossy drama and secondary action. He played many a calculating lover in both daytime (All My Children (1970), Another World (1964)) and prime-time (Dallas (1978)) soaps, while showing off his athletic skills in such outdoor adventure series as Sword of Justice (1978). Later in his career, he worked up a few action leads in low-budget filming. In 1991, while appearing on Another World (1964), Dack discovered he had contracted AIDS and made a courageous decision to retire in order to focus on awareness of this deadly disease. He was extremely candid as to his bisexuality and detrimental lifestyle, advocating safe sex and helping to establish an international data bank for AIDS research. He died of complications in 1994 at age 52.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
His IMDB biography can also be accessed online here.
She won acting honors at the Berlin Film Festival for the feature films “Four in a Jeep” in 1951 and “No Exit” in 1962. Her myriad other films include “No Sad Songs for Me,” “Moonfleet,” “The King of Kings,” “The Way We Were,” “Welcome to L.A.,” “Creepshow” and last year’s “Stargate.” Unlike many beautiful actresses, Miss Lindfors worried little about aging, even when Tabori left her for a much younger woman. “Any qualms I might have had about advancing years were dispelled a long time ago when I decided not to be put down by America’s worship of youth,” she told The Times on her 53rd birthday.
