Binnie Barnes was born in Islington, North London in 1903. She began her career as a ballroom dance and then went into revue. Her first major film role was as Catherine Parr in 1933 in “THe Private Life of Henry 8th”. By 1936 she was in Hollywood where she met and married the film producer Mike Francovitch. Her last film was as Liv Ullmann’s mother in “40 Carats”. She died in 1998.
“New York Times” obituary:
Binnie Barnes, an English actress who was lured to Hollywood after her role as Catherine Howard in ”The Private Life of Henry VIII,” the 1933 film starring Charles Laughton, died on Monday at her home in Beverly Hills. She was 95. After a stint as a milkmaid at 15, the auburn-haired beauty, who was born in London, flitted through a series of jobs — nurse, chorus girl, dance hostess — before becoming a partner of Tex McLeod, a rope-spinning vaudeville entertainer of the Will Rogers school, eventually assuming the name ”Texas Binnie Barnes,” though she had never met an American cowboy.
In 1929, she made her stage debut in ”Silver Tassie,” which featured Laughton. After a year of dramatic training, she made her film debut in the 1931 English movie ”Night in Montmartre,” starring Heather Angel. Later, in a series of 26 Stanley Lupino comedy shorts, she played vampish character roles. The producer Alexander Korda then signed her to a contract to appear in his films, including ”The Private Life of Henry VIII” and ”The Private Life of Don Juan,” opposite Douglas Fairbanks. After seeing her in ”Henry VIII,” Carl Laemmle Jr., son of the founder of Universal Studios, brought Miss Barnes to Hollywood in 1934 to star opposite Frank Morgan in ”There’s Always Tomorrow.” More than 75 movies followed, including ”Diamond Jim” with Edward Arnold, ”The Adventures of Marco Polo” with Gary Cooper and ”The Three Musketeers” with Don Ameche, in which she typically played a tart-tongued ”man’s woman” — an image she often maintained in public in her earlier years.
”I’m no Sarah Bernhardt,” she once said. ”One picture is just like another to me,” as long as ”I don’t have to be a sweet woman.” In 1940, she married Mike Frankovich, a Columbia studio executive and former football star at the University of California at Los Angeles. He died in 1992. At the end of World War II they moved to Italy, where she made several films, including ”Fugitive Lady” with Janis Paige and Eduardo Cianelli.
She resurrected her career in the 1960’s for a role on ”The Donna Reed Show.” She appeared in ”The Trouble With Angels,” starring Rosalind Russell, in 1966 and in the sequel two years later. In 1973 Miss Barnes appeared in her last film, ”40 Carats,” with Liv Ullmann and Gene Kelly.
She is survived by two sons, a daughter and seven grandchildren.
Binnie Barne’s minibiography on the IMDB website can be accessed here.
Call Out The Marines, poster, from left: Victor McLaglen, Binnie Barnes, Edmund Lowe on window card, 1942. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)In Old California, poster, John Wayne, Binnie Barnes, 1942. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
TCM Overview:
The delicately beautiful Binnie Barnes displayed a versatility and talent that was equally at home in comedies or dramas. While her heyday was primarily from the 1930s to the mid-50s, younger audiences may recall her as Sister Celestine in the genial romp “The Trouble With Angels” (1966) and its 1968 sequel “Where Angels Go… Trouble Follows” (The former was directed by Ida Lupino, whose father Stanley co-starred in several shorts with Barnes in the late 1920s.)
Barrie Chase was a beautiful American singer and actress who became Fred Astaire’s last dancing partner. They appeared on television specials together. She was born in Long Island, New York in 1933. She appeared in the chorus of many a Hollywood musical iuncluding “White Christmas”,”Hans Christian Andersen”, “Brigadoon” and “Pal Joey”. She had dramatic roles in “Cape Fear”and “The George Radt Story”. She retired from show business for domestic life in 1972. Clipon “Youtube” of Fred Astaire and Barrie Chase here.
“Wikipedia” entry:
When she was six, her father, writer Borden Chase, moved the family to California so he could begin a career as a screenwriter. She grew up in Encino and studied ballet. She abandoned her intention to become a ballerina in New York to stay in Los Angeles and help support her mother, pianist Lee Keith, after her parents’ divorce. Her brother was screenwriter Frank Chase. She danced on such live TV programs as The Colgate Comedy Hour and The Chrysler Shower of Stars. It was while she was working as Jack Cole’s assistant choreographer at MGM that Fred Astaire asked her to be his dancing partner on An Evening with Fred Astaire. She made four television appearances as Astaire’s partner in his television specials between 1958 and 1968. The two danced on Hollywood Palace in 1966. During this period, she dated Astaire, a widower.
In 1972, Chase retired from performing to devote herself to her own family. Twice divorced, she is currently married to James Kaufman; the couple has one child.
David Carradine was a gifted actor with a decidedly wild streak. He was one of the sons of the great character actor John Carradine. His other actors brothers are Keith Caddadine and Robert Carradine. David was born in 1936 in Hollywood. He appeared in over 100 films. His first major acting break came when he was cast in the stage production of “The Royal Hunt of the Sun”. In 1972 Martin Scorsese cast him in “Boxcar Bertha” and his film career got underway. Between 1972 and 1975 he starred on TV in the very popular “Kung Fu” series as a Shaolin monk. In 1980 he starred with his brothers and Stacy & James Keach in “The Long Riders”. His career was revived in a major way with Quentin Tarentino’s “Kill Bill”. Sadly David Carradine died in Bangkok in 2009 while on location filming.
“Guardian” obituary:
A member of a distinguished Hollywood family, the actor David Carradine, who has been found dead at the age of 72, was never exactly a star, but had a sporadically interesting film and television career.
The first, and biggest, of his career peaks came with the television series Kung Fu (1972-75), a huge cult hit, mixing western action with eastern philosophy – a long and abiding interest for the actor – in a way that was novel at the time. His character, Kwai Chang Caine, was a Shaolin monk wandering the American west. It was a sad irony that Carradine was to die in the Buddhist centre of Bangkok, Thailand, in what is believed to be a suicide. Originally a TV movie, Kung Fu grew into a show that lasted for 46 episodes.
By the time the series began, Carradine was already 36. After leaving San Francisco State College, he had been a soldier, commercial artist and stage actor. He had appeared in Shakespearean rep and on Broadway, notably in Royal Hunt of the Sun (1965), as the Inca chief Atahualpa. From the early days, he played a variety of races, and his counter-cultural credentials were established with roles in Martin Scorsese’s first film, Boxcar Bertha (1972), and (uncredited) in the director’s celebrated Mean Streets (1973) as a memorable drunk in a ruckus in a bar.
A co-star in the former was Barbara Hershey, his partner in the Kung Fu days. This was a hippie affair – she changed her name to Barbara Seagull, and their child was named Free. They never married, but Carradine was to wed five times. There were two other children and four divorces before his final wife, Anne Bierman.
Though he was born John Arthur Carradine in Hollywood, the name David distinguished him from his actor father John Carradine, a grand old man of Hollywood who claimed to have appeared in more movies than any contemporary. David was his eldest son. When Walter Hill came to make The Long Riders, a 1980 film about the James and Younger gangs, he drew on four different acting families. David topped the bill as Cole Younger, alongside his half-brothers, Keith and Robert.
Carradine’s career took in more than 200 film and TV credits. He started mainly in westerns, playing the title role in a series based on the hit film Shane in 1966. Other memorable movies included Robert Altman’s radical reworking of The Long Goodbye (1973, again uncredited), and the lead in the exploitation film Death Race 2000 (1975), also starring Sylvester Stallone. He was nominated for a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Woody Guthrie in Bound for Glory (1976), which also showcased his abilities as a singer, a talent shared with his brother Keith, who played a country singer in Nashville (1975).
David was in Ingmar Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg (1977), but his star waned after the 1970s, assisted by a gonzo reputation. In 1989 he served 48 hours in jail for drink-driving. Q: The Winged Serpent (1982) gave him a rare interesting part, and he appeared in 12 episodes of the TV mini-series North and South (1985-86), which brought him another Golden Globe nomination. He was to revisit his Kung Fu character again from time to time, in Kung Fu: The Movie (1986) and the TV series Kung Fu: The Legend Continues (1993-97). “Every day,” he once said of the role, which won him several Emmys, “at least six people will come up to me and say ‘Your show changed my life’.”
The actor also turned his hand to directing, initially on the Kung Fu series and in three other feature films, You and Me (1975), Mata Hari (1978) and Americana (1983). But his career had been in the doldrums for some time when the celebrated occupation-reviver Quentin Tarantino cast him in the title role of Kill Bill, Vol 1 and 2 (2003-04), a demonic character that leaned heavily on a screen personality that was freewheeling, laconic, always tending towards the maverick outsider. Carradine said it was as close to him as any part he had played, and it provided him with another onscreen musical number, The Legend of Pai Mai. The director had thought of him for some time: “He wanted it to be a revelation to the world that he would show me like people don’t know me,” Carradine explained. Tarantino drew inspiration from Carradine’s huge autobiography, Endless Highway (1995).
More recently, he was a kung-fu master in a Jonas Brothers video and played a 100-year-old Chinese gangster in the just released Crank: High Voltage. The role, like all of his memorable parts, fitted his personality as an Irish-American with a little Cherokee blood. “I’m like a renegade and that rubs people wrong,” he said.
He is survived by Annie; two daughters, Calista and Kansas, by his first two wives; and Free, later known as Tom.
• David (John Arthur) Carradine, actor, born 8 December 1936; died 4 June 2009
His “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed here.
There were for a while so few good roles for women in films that the selectors of Oscar nominees had a job to come up with five names. When Louise Fletcher was nominated for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” the previous year’s winner Ellen Burstyn appeared on TV to ask the members of the Academy not to vote in this category – since in fact she said the five nominees had all played supporting roles. In the case of Miss Fletcher this may strictly speaking be true, but her superb portrayal of ‘Nurse Ratched’ seemed to dominate the film. It was a notably well acted movie but Flecher’s performance had it been on the stage, was one that you would want to tell your grandchildren about.” – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years”. (1972)
Louise Fletcher won an Academy Award for her first major film role as Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. She was born in 1934 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her father was a Episcopal minister and bother her parents were deaf. Her first film role was in 1963 in the military air-force drama “A Gathering of Eagles” where she shared a scene with the leading lady Mary Peach. She did not make another film for nine years when she made “Thieves” in 1974. Director Milos Forman saw her in the film and offered her the role of Nurse Ratched. She has worked consistently but mainly in supporting roles. Her other films include “Brainstorm” with Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood and Cliff Robertson and “Flowers in the Attic”. Her most recent film is “The Last Sin Eater”. Her Oscar acceptance clip can be viewed here.
TCM overview:
An American film and television actress of considerable and quiet strength, Louise Fletcher won the Academy Award in 1975 as the unforgettable, iron-willed Nurse Ratched in Milos Forman’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” The role and subsequent honors were seen by the press as the high point of Fletcher’s screen career, since none of the projects that followed, which included “Exorcist II: The Heretic” (1979), “Brainstorm” (1983) and “Invaders from Mars” (1987) matched its box office or critical returns. However, Fletcher worked steadily after “Cuckoo’s Nest,” earning Emmy nominations for television turns and accepting the notion of “the Oscar curse” with patience and good humor, confident in the knowledge that she had created one of cinema’s most enduring villains.
Born Estelle Louise Fletcher in Birmingham, AL on July 22, 1934, she was one of four children by Episcopal minister Robert Capers Fletcher and his wife, Estelle Caldwell. Both of Fletcher’s parents were deaf, though she and all of her siblings were born without hearing loss. She was taught to speak by a hearing aunt, who also introduced her to acting. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in drama, she traveled to the West Coast with her roommates, and eventually found herself in Los Angeles without the funds to return home. Fletcher took a job as a receptionist, which paid for acting classes.
Fletcher made her onscreen debut in the late 1950s, landing guest roles on such popular series as “Maverick” (ABC, 1957-1962) and “The Untouchables” (ABC, 1959-1963). However, she left the business in 1963 to raise two sons by her marriage to producer Jerry Bick. A decade passed before she returned to acting, first in the 1974 TV movie “Can Ellen Be Saved” (ABC), and then as bank robber Bert Remsen’s duplicitous sister in “Thieves Like Us” (1974), a remake of the 1948 film directed by Robert Altman and co-produced by her husband. Altman later tailored the role of country singer Linnea Reese for Fletcher – the role even called for her to have two deaf children – but after a falling out with Bick, Altman cast Lily Tomlin as Reese.
Back stage at the ceremony, Forman told Fletcher that after the success of “Cuckoo’s Nest,” he and his cast would next make major flops. Unfortunately, his prediction came true. Forman’s next film was the sprawling historical epic “Ragtime” (1980), while Fletcher was cast as a scientist in John Boorman’s critically reviled “Exorcist II: The Heretic” (1979). Its failure seemed to set the tone for Fletcher’s subsequent career, which was spent largely in forgettable features like “The Magician of Lublin” (1979) and Lewis Teague’s “The Lady in Red” (1979), which cast her as Anna Sage, the madam who helped the FBI track down John Dillinger. In the 1980s, she settled into a series of roles in several cult science fiction films, including Michael Laughlin’s unsettling “Strange Behavior” (1981), its semi-sequel “Strange Invaders” (1983) and Douglas Trumbull’s “Brainstorm” (1983), which was all but forgotten in the scandal surrounding the death of its star, Natalie Wood, who drowned during production in November 1981.
There were a number of missed opportunities for Fletcher in the 1980s. She was originally considered for Shirley MacLaine’s role in “Terms of Endearment” (1983) and her scenes were deleted from Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984). She instead settled for character parts in largely forgettable efforts like “Nobody’s Fool” (1986), Tobe Hooper’s woebegone remake of “Invaders from Mars” (1986), and the lurid film version of V.C. Andrews’ pulp Gothic novel, “Flowers in the Attic” (1987), which earned her a Saturn Award nomination as the film’s villain, a religiously fanatical grandmother who tormented her daughter and grandchildren, the former of which were kept prisoner in her mansion’s attic for years. Her turn in “Invaders from Mars” earned her a Razzie nomination from the Golden Raspberry Awards, which gave her the dubious distinction of earning laurels from Hollywood’s most celebrated and least desired award groups.
However, director Milos Forman had seen Fletcher in “Thieves” and wanted her for a major role in his next picture, an adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Forman made Fletcher audition repeatedly over a six-month period, during which nearly every major actress in Hollywood refused the part of Nurse Ratched, the martinet-like head nurse at a mental hospital. Fletcher eventually won the role, and collaborated closely with Forman to shape the character into a three-dimensional person, rather than the monster as depicted on the page. Fletcher’s turn brought a level of humanity and vulnerability to Ratched, which earned critical acclaim, as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. When Fletcher won the award, she thanked her parents for their support in American Sign Language, creating an enduring moment of genuine emotion in Oscar history. Fletcher also collected a Golden Globe and BAFTA for her iconic performance.
Louise Fletcher
The 1990s saw Fletcher working steadily in both low-budget efforts and Hollywood features. Most were again largely dismissible, though she did earn a following as a steely spiritual leader in numerous episodes of “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” (syndicated, 1993-99). There was also an Emmy nomination for guest appearances on “Picket Fences” (CBS, 1992-96) as Marlee Matlin’s estranged mother, and a Satellite nod for the HBO drama “Breast Men” (1997) as lead David Schwimmer’s mother. In 2004, Fletcher earned her second Emmy nomination as an embittered piano teacher who still harbored regrets over her failed music career on the religious-themed series, “Joan of Arcadia” (CBS, 2003-05). Television continued to provide her with choice roles in subsequent years, including the physician mother of Deanne Bray’s Emma Coolidge, who could turn sound into physical force on “Heroes” (NBC, 2006-2010), William H. Macy’s incarcerated and irascible mother on “Shameless” (Showtime, 2011- ) and Tim Daly’s mom on “Private Practice” (ABC, 2007- ). The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Louise Fletcher, the imposing, steely-eyed actress who won an Academy Award for her role as the tyrannical Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” died on Friday at her home in Montdurausse, France. She was 88.
The death was confirmed by her agent, David Shaul. He did not cite the cause.
Ms. Fletcher was 40 and largely unknown to the public when she was cast as the head administrative nurse at an Oregon mental institution in the 1975 film version of “Cuckoo’s Nest.” The film, directed by Milos Forman and based on a Ken Kesey novel, won a best actress trophy for Ms. Fletcher and four other Oscars, including for best picture, for Mr. Forman as best director and for Jack Nicholson as best actor.
Ms. Fletcher’s acceptance speech stood out that night, not only because she teasingly thanked voters for hating her but also because she used American Sign Language in thanking her parents for “teaching me to have a dream.”
The American Film Institute later named Nurse Ratched as one of the most memorable villains in film history and the second most notable female villain, surpassed only by the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz.”
But at the time of the “Cuckoo’s Nest” release, Ms. Fletcher was frustrated by the buttoned-up nature of her character. “I envied the other actors tremendously,” she said in a 1975 interview with The New York Times, referring to her fellow cast members, many of whom were playing mental patients. “They were so free, and I had to be so controlled.”
Estelle Louise Fletcher was born on July 22, 1934, in Birmingham, Ala., one of four hearing children of Robert Capers Fletcher, an Episcopal minister, and the former Estelle Caldwell, both of whom had been deaf since childhood. She studied drama at the University of North Carolina and moved to Los Angeles after graduation.
She later told journalists that she had trouble finding work because she was so tall — 5 feet 10 inches — and was often cast in westerns, where her height was an advantage. Of her first 20 or so screen roles in the late 1950s and early ’60s, about half were in television westerns, including “Wagon Train,” “Maverick” and “Bat Masterson.”
Ms. Fletcher married Jerry Bick, a film producer, in 1959. They had two sons, and she retired from acting for more than a decade to raise them.
She returned to movies in Robert Altman’s 1974 film “Thieves Like Us” as a woman who coldly turns in her brother to the police. It was her appearance in that film that led Mr. Forman to offer her the role in “Cuckoo’s Nest.”
“I was caught by surprise when Louise came onscreen,” he recalled of watching “Thieves Like Us.” “I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had a certain mystery, which I thought was very, very important for Nurse Ratched.”
Reviewing “Cuckoo’s Nest” in The New Yorker, Pauline Kael declared Ms. Fletcher’s “a masterly performance.”
“We can see the virginal expectancy — the purity — that has turned into puffy-eyed self-righteousness,” Ms. Kael wrote. “She thinks she’s doing good for people, and she’s hurt — she feels abused — if her authority is questioned.”
Ms. Fletcher is often cited as an example of the Oscar curse — the observed phenomenon that winning an Academy Award for acting does not always lead to sustained movie stardom — but she did maintain a busy career in films and on television into her late 70s.
She had a lead role as the Linda Blair character’s soft-spoken psychiatrist in “Exorcist II: The Heretic” (1977) and was notable in the ensemble comedy “The Cheap Detective” (1978), riffing on Ingrid Bergman’s film persona. She also starred with Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood as a workaholic scientist in “Brainstorm” (1983). But she seemed to be relegated to roles with limited screen time, especially when the character was very different from her Nurse Ratched persona.
After a turn as an inscrutable U.F.O. bigwig in “Strange Invaders” (1983), she appeared in “Firestarter” (1984) as a fearful farm wife; the police drama “Blue Steel” (1990) as Jamie Lee Curtis’s drab mother; “2 Days in the Valley” (1996) as a compassionate Los Angeles landlady; and “Cruel Intentions” (1999) as Ryan Phillippe’s genteel aunt.
Only when she played to stereotype, as she did in “Flowers in the Attic” (1987), as an evil matriarch who sets out to poison her four inconvenient young grandchildren, did she find herself in starring roles again. That film was “the worst experience I’ve ever had making a movie,” she told a Dragoncon audience in 2009. She had told the director that she didn’t want her character to be a heavy.
Later in her career, she played recurring characters on several television series, including “Star Trek: Deep Space 9” (she was an alien cult leader from 1993 to 1999) and “Shameless” (as William H. Macy’s foulmouthed convict mother). She also made an appearance as Liev Schreiber’s affable mother in the romantic drama “A Perfect Man” (2013).
Her survivors include her two sons, John and Andrew Bick; her sister, Roberta Ray; and a granddaughter. Ms. Fletcher and Mr. Bick divorced in 1977.
In addition to her home in Montdurausse, a town in southern France, Ms. Fletcher had a home in Los Angeles.
Ms. Fletcher, whose most famous character was a portrait of sternness, often recalled smiling constantly and pretending that everything was perfect when she was growing up, in an effort to protect her non-hearing parents from bad news.
Pretending wasn’t all bad, however, she acknowledged, at least in terms of her profession. That same year she told the journalist Rex Reed, “I feel like I know real joy from make-believe
Ben Murphy is best known for the very popular television series “Alias Smith & Jones” with the late Pete Duel which ran from 1972 to 1973. He was born in Arkansas in 1942. When the series filded, he starred in several other shows. In 1983 he starred in the very popular TV mini-series “The Winds of War”. His film career has not been extensive but he was in “The Graduate”, “Your’s Mine and Ours” and “To Protect and Serve”. Ben Murphy’s website can be accessed here.
“Wikipedia” entry:
Ben Murphy was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Nadine (Steele) and Benjamin E. Castleberry. When his mother remarried in 1956, Ben was adopted by his stepfather, Patrick Henry Murphy.[3] Murphy grew up in Clarendon Hills, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.[1] An alumnus of Benet Academy in Lisle, Illinois,[citation needed] he attended eight colleges before deciding to pursue an acting career.
Murphy appeared in a supporting role in The Name of the Game, a series featuring a rotating leading cast including Tony Franciosa,Gene Barry, and Robert Stack. Murphy played a semi regular role as ‘Joseph Sample’ assistant to Robert Stack’s leading character ‘Dan Farrell’ in Stack’s segments of the show. From 1971 to 1973, he starred in Alias Smith and Jones with Pete Duel (1971–72) andRoger Davis (1972–73). After Alias Smith and Jones, Murphy joined Lorne Greene in the 1973 ABC crime drama Griff. He played detective S. Michael “Mike” Murdock, assistant to Greene’s character, Wade “Griff” Griffin, a Los Angeles retired police officer turned private eye. The series had some notable guest stars but folded after thirteen weeks. In the 1983–84 season, Murphy co-starred with Marshall Colt in the ABC drama series Lottery!. Murphy played Patrick Sean Flaherty, the man who informed lottery winners of their stroke of fortune, and Colt, formerly with James Arness on NBC‘s short-lived crime drama,McClain’s Law, portrayed the Internal Revenue Service agent, Eric Rush, who made sure the winners pay the U.S. government up front.
In 1985, Murphy co-starred as department store heir, Paul Berrenger, on the short-lived drama, Berrenger’s. His character was at odds with his former wife, Gloria (Andrea Marcovicci) and his own father, Simon (Sam Wanamaker) due to his romance with executive, Shane Bradley (Yvette Mimieux). Murphy starred in his own series Gemini Man, in which he played a secret agent who could become invisible for 15 minutes a day through the use of a special wristwatch. However, the show did not run beyond a single season. Murphy has since appeared in guest-starring parts, including having been a murder suspect in CBS‘s Cold Case.
The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
Brian Hyland was born in 1943 and is an American pop singer and instrumentalist who was particularly successful during the early 1960s. He continued recording into the 1970s. Allmusicjournalist Jason Ankeny says “Hyland’s puppy-love pop virtually defined the sound and sensibility of bubblegum during the pre-Beatles era.”Although his status as a teen idol faded, he went on to release several country-influenced albums and had additional chart hits later in his career.
Hyland was born in Woodhaven, Queens, New York City. He studied guitar and clarinet as a child, and sang in his church choir. When aged 14 he co-founded the harmony group the Delfis, which recorded a demo but failed to secure a recording contract. Hyland was eventually signed by Kapp Records as a solo artist, issuing his debut single, “Rosemary”, in late 1959. The label employed the Brill Buildingsongwriting duo of Lee Pockriss and Paul Vance to work with Hyland on the follow-up, “Four Little Heels (The Clickety Clack Song)”, which was a minor hit, and the songwriting duo continued to work with Hyland
Thus in August 1960, Hyland scored his first and biggest hit single at the age of 16, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini“, written by Vance and Pockriss. It was a novelty song that reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100chart, (#8 in the UK) and sold almost a million copies in the first two months of its release, and over two million copies in total. It got rewarded a RIAA certification as a golden disc.
Hyland moved on to ABC-Paramount Records, where he began working with the songwriting and production team of Gary Geld and Peter Udell, and further hits followed with “Let Me Belong to You” and “I’ll Never Stop Wanting You”.[1]
Hyland’s other major hit during this period was 1962’s “Sealed with a Kiss“, which reached #3 in 1962 on both the American and UK Singles Chart.[4][6] It stayed on the US pop chart for eleven weeks and got rewarded as a Recording Industry Association of America golden disc too. Another 1962 hit was “Ginny Come Lately”, which reached #21 on the U.S. chart and #5 in the UK.[4][6] Hyland’s 1962 Top 30 hit “Warmed-Over Kisses (Leftover Love)” incorporated elements of country music into his work, which continued with singles including “I May Not Live to See Tomorrow” and “I’m Afraid to Go Home” and on the 1964 album Country Meets Folk. This approach was out of step with the changes brought about by British Invasion bands. Hyland’s commercial success became limited, but he continued that in vein and had further hits with “The Joker Went Wild” and “Run, Run, Look and See”, working with producer Snuff Garrett and sessionmusicians including J. J. Cale and Leon Russell.
Hyland appeared on national television programs such as American Bandstand and The Jackie Gleason Show, and toured both internationally and around America with Dick Clark in the Caravan of Stars. The caravan was in Dallas, Texas on the day of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963.[7][8] To commemorate the event, Hyland wrote the song “Mail Order Gun”, which he recorded and eventually released on his 1970 eponymous album.
From 1963 through 1969, Hyland scored several minor hits, but none reached higher than #20 (“The Joker Went Wild”) on the U.S. pop chart. An album released in 1964 featured numbers that hearkened back to the 1950s including such hits as “Pledging My Love” and “Moments to Remember”—at a time when The Beatles were sweeping the pop music world with a very different style. Hyland afterward shifted into a phase of recording country music and folk rock styles. Songs such as “I’m Afraid To Go Home” and “Two Brothers” had an American Civil War theme. Hyland played harmonica on a few numbers.
Hyland attempted several departures from the norm, including the psychedelic single “Get the Message” (#91 on the U.S. pop chart), and “Holiday for Clowns” (#94), but despite their more contemporary arrangements, they failed to get much airplay. He went on to chart just two more Top 40 hits, both cover versions, in 1971: “Gypsy Woman” a 1961 hit for The Impressions written by Curtis Mayfield, and “Lonely Teardrops“, a 1959 hit for Jackie Wilson. Hyland recorded them in 1970, and Del Shannon produced the tracks. “Gypsy Woman” reached #3 on the 1970 U.S. pop chart, making it the second-biggest hit of his career, selling over one million copies, and being certified gold by the RIAA in January 1971. Two of his previous hits, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini” and “Sealed with a Kiss” were also awarded gold discs.
In 1975, “Sealed With A Kiss” became a hit again in the UK (#7) and Hyland performed the song on Top Of The Pops on July 31 of the same year. By 1977, he and his family had settled in New Orleans, and in 1979 the In a State of Bayou album, on which he had worked with Allen Toussaint, was issued by the Private Stock label.
In June 1988, Dutch singer Albert West asked Hyland to record some duets of his hits: “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini“, “Sealed With A Kiss” and “Ginny Come Lately”, the latter song had been covered before by Albert West in 1973, becoming his biggest – a huge European continental – hit. “Itsy Bitsy…” was released as a single and reached #43 on the Dutch singles chart. Hyland and West performed on TV shows in Germany, Belgium and a Dutch TV special in Aruba.
Today, Hyland continues to tour internationally with his son Bodi, who assists on drums from time to time.
Brian Murray was born in South Africa in 1937. He began his acting career in Britain and had a prominent supporting role in “The Angry Silence” as one of the thugs menancing Richard Attenborough. His career though has been primarily on the stage in the U.S.A.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
This wonderfully witty, enormously talented, classically-trained theatre actor has yet to find THE film project to transition into twilight screen stardom; yet, at age 70 plus, there is still a glimmer of hope for Brian Murray if one fondly recalls the late-blooming adulation bestowed upon such illustrious and mature stage stars Judi Dench, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy.
Born Brian Bell in September of 1937 in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Shakespearean titan attended King Edward VII School, while there. It must have been a sign. He made his stage bow in 1950 as “Taplow” in “The Browning Version” and continued on the South African stage until 1957. Though he made his film debut fairly early in his career with The League of Gentlemen (1960) and showed strong promise and presence in The Angry Silence (1960), his first passion was, and is, the theatre and instead chose to join the Royal Shakespeare Company where his impressively youthful gallery of credits included those of “Romeo”, “Horatio” in “Hamlet”, “Cassio” in “Othello”, “Edgar” in “Lear” and “Lysander” in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
Eventually Broadway (off- and on-) took notice of this mighty thespian and utilized his gifts quite well over the years. A three-time Tony nominee (for “Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, “The Little Foxes” and “The Crucible”), not to mention a recipient of multiple Obie (“Ashes” and “The Play About the Baby”) and Drama Desk (“Noises Off”, “Travels with My Aunt” and “The Little Foxes”) awards, this lofty veteran continues to mesmerize live audiences with a wide range of parts, both classical and contemporary. Two of his later roles, that of “Sir Toby Belch” in “Twelfth Night” and “Claudius” in “Hamlet”, were taken to TV and film. A more recent movie project was a nice change of pace — voicing the flamboyant role of “John Silver” in the animated feature, Treasure Planet (2002).
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Dennis Cole was an American screen and television actor who featured in several TV series. He was born in 1940 in Detroit. In 1966 he was in his first series “Felony Squad”. He was in “Bracken’s World” and then went on to star with Rod Taylor in the series “Bearcats”. He died in 2009. His obituary in “The New York Times” here.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
A virile, beefcake blond of the late 1960s and 1970s small screen, Dennis Cole certainly had it all going for him, but tragic circumstances prevented an all-out successful career. A rugged TV version of Robert Redford, his tan, chiseled, surfer-fit looks were ideally suited for crime action and adventure stories and he gained ground by appearing everywhere — daytime soaps, prime-time series, mini-movies — you name it.
The Detroit-born and -raised stunner was the son of Joseph C. Cole, a musician during the 1940s and 1950s. His parents, both alcoholics, divorced when he was young (his father later committed suicide). Dennis was first noticed on the pages of physique magazines serving the likes of Robert Henry Mizer (aka Bob Mizer) and his Athletic Models Guild as well as other photographers. Paying his dues as a motion picture and television stuntman, Cole also appeared in an occasional bit part and in the background of a few movie musicals. His photogenic appeal could not be denied for long and eventually he took a front-and-center position, launching his acting career on the short-lived daytime soap Paradise Bay (1965) as a spoiled rich boy who causes tongues to wag after falling for a Mexican girl. However, it was the subsequent nighttime police seriesFelony Squad (1966) alongside veterans Howard Duff and Ben Alexander (of Dragnet(1951) fame) that set Cole’s TV career in high gear. As hunky rookie detective Jim Briggs, Dennis was able to ride high on the fame his two-and-a-half season series offered.
With this success came two very short-lived series: the glossy ensemble drama Bracken’s World (1969) and opposite Rod Taylor as a trouble-prone stud in the more adventurousBearcats! (1971). Females couldn’t get enough of Cole and his athletic skills had males idolizing from afar. Guest appearances on Medical Center (1969), Barnaby Jones (1973),Police Story (1973), Love, American Style (1969), The Love Boat (1977), The Streets of San Francisco (1972) and Police Woman (1974) kept him highly visible in between series runs. During this career peak, he made his Broadway debut in “All the Girls Came Out to Play” in 1972. He also decided to tap into his musical side and dabbled in his own musical revue, which showcased on the Sunset Strip and in Las Vegas. A guest TV appearance on Charlie’s Angels (1976) led to his meeting and, in 1978, marrying “Angel”Jaclyn Smith. As one of Hollywood’s more beautiful couples, they kept cameras flashing for a number of years until their breakup and divorce in 1981.
The early 1980s started off well for Cole as replacement “Lance Prentiss” in the soap-opera The Young and the Restless (1973) in 1981. Very much a product of TV, he was unable to permanently transition into films; he appeared occasionally in dismissible low-budget action fare such as Amateur Night (1986), Death House (1987), Pretty Smart(1987), Dead End City (1988) and Fatal Encounter (1990). He continued showing up on all the popular series of the day, including Silk Stalkings (1991), Murder, She Wrote (1984),Pacific Blue (1996) and Baywatch Nights (1995), among others, while appearing in such legit stage plays as “The Tender Trap”, “Lovers and Other Strangers”, “The Boys in the Band”, and the British farces “Run for You Life” and “Out of Order”. Very much involved with charity work, his endeavors over the years have included an over-two-decade involvement with the Cancer Society (Honorary Chairman), as well as the Arthritis and Cystic Fibrosis foundations.
Dennis’ later personal and professional lives suffered as a result of a chronic alcohol problem, but an even greater setback occurred when his only child, Joey (whom he named after his father), was murdered during a 1991 robbery attempt in Venice, California. He continued to perform on TV and stage (as the “Narrator” in a production of “Blood Brothers” and the James Garner “King Marchan” role in the first national tour of the musical “Victor/Victoria”). Severe injuries suffered while performing in the latter show led to multiple surgeries, a three-year convalescence and a new direction.
Dennis returned to school and started up his own real estate company, setting up an office in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Married for several years to his third wife Marjorie (“Ree”), Dennis filed for divorce in May of 2007, which became final on April 21, 2008. He died at age 69 on November 15, 2009, in a Fort Lauderdale hospital of liver failure.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.
Charles Lane was an American character actor who died at the age of 102 in 2007. His last film was “The Night Before Christmas” which he made when he was 101 years old. He was a solid reliable actor who usually played cranky neighbours or grouchy hotel clerks/sales assistants. He was very active in both film and television. He was never a leading player but was easily identifible in the background or in a supporting part. Among his many films are “It’s A Wonderful Life”, “”You Can’t Take It With You”, “Golden Boy” and “Mr Smith Goes to Washington”.
“Guardian” obituary:
Charles Lane, who has died aged 102, was probably the most celebrated of “I-know-the-face-but-not-the-name” actors. Most filmgoers, some time or other, were bound to have seen the prolific Lane, who made hundreds of appearances in films and on television.
If casting directors wanted a mean-spirited bureaucrat, hard-hearted businessman, tightfisted relative, crotchety clerk or cantankerous neighbour, the thin, sour-faced, bespectacled Lane was their man. On being typecast, he commented that it was “a pain in the ass. You did something that was pretty good, but that pedigreed you into that type of part, which I thought was stupid and unfair. It didn’t give me a chance, but it made the casting easier for the studio.”
Most typical was his role in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) as the rent collector for Mr Henry F Potter (Lionel Barrymore), the richest and meanest man in the county, who owns every institution in Bedford Falls except the Bailey Building and Loan Society. “Look, Mr Potter, it’s no skin off my nose,” Lane says, using his most raspy voice. “I’m just your little rent collector. But you can’t laugh off this Bailey Park any more. Dozens of the prettiest little homes you ever saw. Ninety per cent owned by suckers who used to pay rent to you. The Baileys were all chumps. Every one of these homes is worth twice what it cost the Building and Loan to build.”
Of course, Lane would never be in a role as big as Barrymore’s, though he admitted that “having had so many small parts, there was a [type of] character I played that showed up all the time and people did get to know him, like an old friend.” During his busiest period in films, the 1930s and 40s, he would sometimes play more than one role at once, getting into costume and filming his two or three lines, then hurrying off to another set for a different costume and different role.
Lane was born in San Francisco as Charles Gerstle Levison. Appropriately, he started out as an insurance salesman until an acquaintance, film director Irving Pichel suggested he try acting. His first role in the movies was in the uncredited role of a hotel clerk in Smart Money (1931), which starred Edward G Robinson and James Cagney. After a dozen further uncredited parts, he was named (as Charles Levison) playing the cashier in Blondie Johnson (1933). Capra gave him more than a couple of lines as a gangster in Broadway Bill (1934), a lawyer in Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936), a tax collector in You Can’t Take it With You (1938), newspaper reporters in Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and It’s a Wonderful Life.
For decades, Lane was also a permanently scowling regular on television, in Petticoat Junction as a scheming, cost-cutting railroad executive; The Beverly Hillbillies as an untrustworthy landlord; Dennis the Menace as a drugstore owner, and Soap, as a judge. He was often seen in I Love Lucy in different roles and later played Lucy’s banker boss on The Lucy Show, belying his stern acting persona.
Lane was known to be a gentle, kind, warm and witty man. In 1990, he was rushed to hospital, having difficulty breathing. When asked if he smoked, he replied that he had kicked the habit 45 minutes earlier. He never smoked again. His last performance, as grumpy as ever, was aged 90, in the television remake of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1995). His last public appearance was at the 2005 Emmy awards, when he was honoured as one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild in 1933. Appearing via satellite, he announced: “Hello, I’m Charles Lane. I’m an actor and I’m 100 years old. And, in case anyone’s interested, I’m still available.”
In 1931, Lane married his childhood sweetheart Ruth Covell. They remained together until her death in 2002. He is survived by his son and daughter.
· Charles Lane (Charles Gerstle Levison), actor, born January 26 1905; died July 9 2007
His obituary by Ronald Bergan in “The Guardian” can also be accessed here.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Mean, miserly and miserable-looking, they didn’t come packaged with a more annoying and irksome bow than Charles Lane. Glimpsing even a bent smile from this unending sourpuss was extremely rare, unless one perhaps caught him in a moment of insidious glee after carrying out one of his many nefarious schemes. Certainly not a man’s man on film or TV by any stretch, Lane was a character’s character. An omnipresent face in hundreds of movies and TV sitcoms, the scrawny, scowling, beady-eyed, beak-nosed killjoy who usually could be found peering disdainfully over a pair of specs, brought out many a comic moment simply by dampening the spirit of his nemesis. Whether a Grinch-like rent collector, IRS agent, judge, doctor, salesman, reporter, inspector or neighbor from hell, Lane made a comfortable acting niche for himself making life wretched for someone somewhere.
He was born Charles Gerstle Levison on January 26, 1905 in San Francisco and was actually one of the last survivors of that city’s famous 1906 earthquake. He started out his working-class existence selling insurance but that soon changed. After dabbling here and there in various theatre shows, he was prodded by a friend, director Irving Pichel, to consider acting as a profession. In 1928 he joined the Pasadena Playhouse company, which, at the time, had built up a solid reputation for training stage actors for the cinema. While there he performed in scores of classical and contemporary plays. He made his film debut anonymously as a hotel clerk in Smart Money (1931) starring Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney and was one of the first to join the Screen Actor’s Guild. He typically performed many of his early atmospheric roles without screen credit and at a cost of $35 per day, but he always managed to seize the moment with whatever brief bit he happened to be in. People always remembered that face and raspy drone of a voice. He appeared in so many pictures (in 1933 alone he made 23 films!), that he would occasionally go out and treat himself to a movie only to find himself on screen, forgetting completely that he had done a role in the film. By 1947 the popular character actor was making $750 a week.
Lane’s career was interrupted for a time serving in the Coast Guard during WWII. In post-war years, he found TV quite welcoming, settling there as well for well over four decades. Practically every week during the 1950s and 1960s, one could find him displaying somewhere his patented “slow burn” on a popular sitcom – Topper (1953), The Real McCoys (1957), The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959), Mister Ed (1958), Bewitched(1964), Get Smart (1965), Gomer Pyle: USMC (1964), The Munsters (1964), Green Acres(1965), The Flying Nun (1967) and Maude (1972). He hassled the best sitcom stars of the day, notably Lucille Ball (an old friend from the RKO days with whom he worked multiple times), Andy Griffith and Danny Thomas. Recurring roles on Dennis the Menace (1959),The Beverly Hillbillies (1962) and Soap (1977) made him just as familiar to young and old alike. Tops on the list had to be his crusty railroad exec Homer Bedloe who periodically caused bucolic bedlam with his nefarious schemes to shut down the Hooterville Cannonball on Petticoat Junction (1963). He could also play it straightforward and serious as demonstrated by his work in Twilight Zone (1959), Perry Mason (1957), Little House on the Prairie (1974) and L.A. Law (1986).
A benevolent gent in real life, Lane was seen less and less as time went by. One memorable role in his twilight years was as the rueful child pediatrician who chose to overlook the warning signs of child abuse in the excellent TV movie Sybil (1976). One of Lane’s last on-screen roles was in the TV-movie remake of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1995) at age 90. Just before his death he was working on a documentary on his long career entitled “You Know the Face”.
Cinematically speaking, perhaps the good ones do die young, for the irascible Lane lived to be 102 years old. He died peacefully at his Brentwood, California home, outliving his wife of 71 years, former actress Ruth Covell, who died in 2002. A daughter, a son and a granddaughter all survived him.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
