Hollywood Actors Archives

Maureen O’Sullivan

Maureen O’Sullivan obituary in “The Independent” in 1998.

Maureen O’Sullivan was born in Boyle Co. Roscommon in 1911. She studied at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton outside London. One of her class mates was Vivien Leigh. In 1929 she met director Frank Borzage who was in Ireland. He brought Maureen O’Sullivan to Hollywood to make “Song O ‘My Heart” with the great Irish tenor John McCormack. In 1932 she starred in one of her most famous roles Jane to Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan in “Tarzan, the Ape Man”. In all she made six Trarzan films and she is regarded as the definite Jane. She had a contract with MGM and starred in such classics as “The Thin Man”, “A Day at the Races”, “Anna Karenina” and “David Copperfield” as Dora Spenlow. In 1942 she retired to rear her family. She had seven children in all. In 1948 she returned to film making in “The Big Clock” with Ray Milland and Charles Laughton which was directed by her husband the Australian John Farrow. She had a remarkably long career and made over 65 films over a 65 span. She died in 1998. Maureen O’Sullivan’s daughter is the actress and activist Mia Farrow.

“The Independent” obituary by Tom Vallance:THE DELICATELY beautiful, Irish-born actress Maureen O’Sullivan will be best remembered for two reasons – her performance as Jane in a string of Tarzan films opposite Johnny Weissmuller, and as the real-life mother of Mia Farrow. She memorably quipped, when told that Frank Sinatra was hoping to marry her daughter, “At his age, he should mary me.

O’Sullivan’s own career was a long and distinguished one, including performances in such major Hollywood films as The Thin Man, Pride and Prejudice, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Anna Karenina, A Day at the Races, The Big Clock, and more recently Hannah and Her Sisters, in which she played mother to her daughter Mia.

Born in Boyle, Ireland, in 1911, O’Sullivan had had no acting training when she was noticed by the director Frank Borzage at a dinner-dance of Dublin’s International Horse Show. He had the waiter send her a note: “If you are interested in being in a film, come to my office tomorrow at 11am”, and subsequently he cast her as the daughter of tenor John McCormack in Song O’ My Heart (1930), which was being partly filmed in Erin before completion in Hollywood.

Though O’Sullivan’s inexperience was apparent, the film was a great success and the studio (Fox) gave the new actress a contract. Her next film was the futuristic musical, Just Imagine (1930), after which she was teamed with the studio’s top star Will Rogers in The Princess and the Plumber (1930). O’Sullivan later expressed dissatisfaction with her treatment by the studio, feeling that they used her as a threat to their top female star Janet Gaynor, who was on suspension for more money and a new contract. When Gaynor settled with the studio, O’Sullivan’s roles became smaller and the following year, her contract was terminated.

“I felt lonely, forsaken and unwanted,” she said later, but in 1932 she was signed to a contract by MGM and immediately cast as Jane in Tarzan, The Ape Man with the Olympic swimming champion Johnny Weissmuller as her co-star. In the Tarzan books, the heroine is Jane Porter of Baltimore, but MGM made her Jane Parker of London (O’Sullivan had been educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton, and her accent was totally convincing). The actress had not read any Tarzan books, and recalled that the author Edgar Rice Burroughs sent her copies of them. “He was a nice guy,” she said recently, “and thought Johnny and I were the perfect Tarzan and Jane, which is lovely.”

O’Sullivan, besides her attractiveness, brought a sense of humour plus an appealing blend of sophistication and innocence to the girl who teaches the jungle-bred hero how to speak, starting with “Tarzan . . . Jane” (not “Me Tarzan, you Jane” as commonly misquoted). The second of the series, Tarzan and His Mate (1934) is generally considered the best, matching the first in lyrical beauty and excelling it in excitement and dramatic impetus. “Everyone cared about the Tarzan pictures,” said O’Sullivan, “and we all gave of our best. They weren’t quickies – it often took a year to make one.”

What the critic DeWitt Bodeen called the “sweet paganism” of the first two films is missing from the later ones, partly because of pressures from moralist groups who objected to the scanty costumes, and in particularly a sequence in Tarzan and His Mate (later cut), in which Tarzan tugs on Jane’s garment as they dive into the water and when she surfaces part of her breast is exposed. “It started such a furore,” recalled O’Sullivan, “with thousands of women objecting to my costume.”

In subsequent films Jane’s costume was more substantial while Tarzan’s loin-cloth was lengthened. Tarzan Escapes was started in 1934, but was over two years in the making, mainly because its first cut was too frightening and violent (including a vampire bat sequence). One of the directors brought in to re-shoot the material was John Farrow, who fell in love with O’Sullivan. The couple had to wait for two years for a papal dispensation because of a previous divorce of Farrow’s, but their subsequent marriage lasted 27 years (until the director’s death in 1963) despite his heavy drinking and infidelities. The couple had seven children – three sons and four daughters, the eldest girl Maria growing up to become the actress Mia Farrow. Between the Tarzan films, MGM cast O’Sullivan as ingenue in over 40 films – leading roles in B pictures but usually supporting roles in major ones.

She was the distraught daughter who asks investigator Nick Charles to locate her missing father in The Thin Man (1934), the first of the series and the start of a lifelong friendship between the actress and Myrna Loy (“I loved Maureen’s warm exuberance,” wrote Myrna Loy later). In The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), she was Henrietta, the romantically rebellious younger sister of Elizabeth Barrett, and in George Cukor’s classic film of David Copperfield (1935) she was Dora, David’s silly and ill-fated wife.

She was a flirtatious relative of Anna (Greta Garbo) in Anna Karenina (1935) and in Tod Browning’s bizarre Devil Doll (1936) she was the daughter of a wrongly convicted banker who gets his revenge by reducing his enemies to the size of dolls. With Allan Jones, she provided the romantic element in A Day at the Races (1937, starring the Marx Brothers) – O’Sullivan played the owner of the sanatorium over which Dr Quackenbush (Groucho) is put in charge – and she came to England in 1938 to film A Yank at Oxford in which she vied with Vivien Leigh for Robert Taylor. (Leigh had been O’Sullivan’s best friend at Roehampton when they were girls). One of the film’s uncredited writers was F. Scott Fitzgerald, who reputedly developed a romantic admiration for the actress and built up her part.

O’Sullivan was unhappy, though, that she was primarily identified with the role of Jane, and asked the studio to release her from the Tarzan series. A script was written in which the couple would have a son (adopted to placate the censors), and Jane would be killed by a hostile tribe, but when word leaked out, public protest proved so great that the studio re-shot the ending of Tarzan Finds a Son (1939) and gave O’Sullivan a raise in salary.

She was given the role of Jane Bennett in Pride and Prejudice (1940) but this was her last major MGM film, and when her contract expired after Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942), O’Sullivan settled down to raise her large family. She returned to films in 1948 in her husband’s fine film noir The Big Clock, playing the wife of a magazine editor (Ray Milland), and followed this with another of Farrow’s films Where Danger Lives (1950) as a girlfriend of the doctor (Robert Mitchum).

In the mid-1950s she hosted a television show, Irish Heritage, but spent most of her time nursing Mia through a bout of polio. In 1958 her son Michael was killed in an aeroplane crash while taking flying lessons and in 1963 her husband died.

O’Sullivan had by then begun an active career in the theatre and in 1962 had opened in a hit comedy Never Too Late, receiving the best notices of her career as a middle-aged wife who becomes pregnant. Wrote Variety: “She looks great and handles light comedy with a warm, gracious flair.” She starred with the same leading man, Paul Ford, in the screen version (1965). She also starred in the Broadway version of the British comedy No Sex Please, We’re British (1973), gave an excellent performance in an all-star revival of Paul Osborn’s Morning At Seven (1983), and continued until a few years ago to be active in television.

O’Sullivan often professed a desire to remarry: “Children don’t take the place of a husband,” she said. “Many women – and I am one of them – need both.” In the late 1960s she fell in love with the actor Robert Ryan and it was thought that they would wed, but he then became ill and died in 1973, with O’Sullivan at his bedside. In 1983 she finally married again, to James E. Cushing, a building contractor.

A liberal, outspoken woman – when her two sons were arrested for possession of marijuana she commented that if youths want to indulge in activities it is their decision – she played mother to Mia in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), but Allen fired her from his film September (1987) and five years later, when his romance with her daughter broke up, she denounced him as a “desperate and evil man”. Over the years she came to appreciate the eternal appeal of the Tarzan films and their place in cinema history. “It’s nice to be immortal,” she stated, “and film has given us immortality.”

Maureen Paul O’Sullivan, actress: born Boyle, Co Roscommon, Ireland 17 May 1911; married 1936 John Farrow (died 1963; two sons, four daughters, and one son deceased) 1983 James E. Cushing; died Phoenix, Arizona 22 June 1998.

This obituary can also be accessed on-line here.

Dictionary of Irish Biography

Contributed by

Dolan, Anne

O’Sullivan, Maureen Paula (1911–98), actress, was born 17 May 1911 at Boyle, Co. Roscommon, one of the five children of Major Charles Joseph O’Sullivan of the Connaught Rangers, and his wife, Mary Lovatt (née Fraser). Educated briefly at a convent in Dublin, she also attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton in London. She completed her education at a convent in Boxmoor and at a finishing school in Paris.

Strikingly attractive, O’Sullivan was discovered in 1929 at the Dublin horse show ball by an American director, Frank Borzage, who was in Dublin casting actors for the film Song o’ my heart(1930), a musical starring John McCormack (qv). Signed by Twentieth Century Fox, she had minor roles in four more films before being dismissed by the studio in 1930. Following some films for independent studios, she signed for MGM in October 1931, embarking on her most famous role, of Jane to Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan in Tarzan the ape man (1932). Her second appearance as Jane, in Tarzan and his mate (1934), provoked an outcry from the Catholic Legion of Decency. Her provocative costumes were subsequently altered for later films such as Tarzan escapes (1936), Tarzan finds a son! (1939), and Tarzan’s secret treasure (1941). Throughout her career her supporting roles were generally superior to her more major parts, and she was critically acclaimed for her performances as Henrietta in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), Dora Splenlow in David Copperfield (1935), Kitty in Anna Karenina (1935), Judy Standish in A day at the races (1937), and Jane Bennett in Pride and prejudice(1940). During the war she appeared in war shorts and advertisements for the Canadian government and travelled to various American cities to promote British and Greek war relief. In 1941 she was honoured at the ninth naval district’s governor’s day. After her sixth Tarzan film, Tarzan’s New York adventure(1942), she retired from the cinema for four years, devoting her time instead to radio broadcasts and local charities.

O’Sullivan returned to the screen in 1948 in The big clock. In 1949 she formed an independent film company devoted to films of a family theme, and in the 1950s she began a career in television drama that lasted for forty years. She also wrote a series of short stories for children which were later broadcast on radio. Theatre roles predominated in the 1960s and 1970s, and were only briefly punctuated by a short and unsuccessful period as co-host of The today show in 1964. She made periodic returns to the cinema in the 1980s and was highly praised for her brief role in Woody Allen’s Hannah and her sisters (1986). Allen dismissed her from his film September in 1987 and courted her public displeasure five years later when he separated acrimoniously from her daughter Mia Farrow. Celebrated throughout her career by various catholic guilds, she was honoured at George Eastman House at the 1982 Festival of Artists. In 1983 she received an honorary doctorate from Sienna College and in 1988 she was honoured by a parade in her native Boyle. Altogether she appeared in over seventy feature films, and numerous television dramas.

She married on 12 September 1936 John Neville Villiers Farrow, an Australian film director and producer; she was his second wife. They had seven children, two of whom, Mia and Tisa, became actors. He died in January 1963, and she had an affair with the actor Robert Ryan in the late 1960s. On 22 August 1983 she married James E. Cushing, a building contractor. She died 22 June 1998 at Phoenix, Arizona.

Sources

John J. Concannon and F. E. Cull (ed.), The Irish-American who’s who (1984), 655; Irish-American Magazine (Feb. 1989), 32–8; Connie J. Billips, Maureen O’Sullivan, a bio-bibliography (1990); Ir. Times, 24 June 1998; Daily Telegraph, 25 June 1998; The Independent, 25 June 1998; Times, 25 June 1998; Michael Glazier (ed.), The encyclopaedia of the Irish in America (1999), 757

Alexander Godunov was born in Sakhalin, Russia in 1949. He joined the Bolshoi Ballet in 1971 and soon became it’s premier dancer. He also began acting in Russian films and played Count Vronsky in “Anna Karenina” in 1974. Whilst touring with the Bolshoi in New York in 1979, he defected and was granted political asylum. He joined the American Ballet and danced with them until 1982. In the mid 80’s he turned to acting. He wa seen with Harrison Ford in “Witness” where he played an Amish farmer. In “Die Hard” with Bruce Willis, Godunov played a violent German terrorist. His last film was “The Zone” in 1995. He died the same year at the age of 45.

“Independent” obituary:

Alexander Godunov was a dancer of handsome stature and blond good looks. He possessed a virtuoso technique and enjoyed a career of glamorous highlights in ballet and film; but his triumphs were short-lived.

From Igor Moiseyev’s Young Dancers Company, to Bolshoi Ballet, to American Ballet Theatre, to Hollywood, he brought a glossy trail of spectacular appearances that glowed brightly in the limelight of the moment.

Born in Riga in 1949, Godunov first studied ballet in his native city where he was a classmate of Mikhail Baryshnikov. In 1964 the Wonder-Boy Baryshnikov joined the Vaganova Choreographic Academy in Leningrad. A year later Godunov endeavoured to follow him but could not obtain a permit. Much dismayed, he resorted to Moscow and continued his studies at the Bolshoi Choreographic School where he was fortunate enough to be taught by that consummate artist Sergei Koren.

After graduating in 1967 he spent three years with Moiseyev’s Young Dancers Company before returning to the Bolshoi fold as a soloist. He made his debut as the youth in Chopiniana and appeared in a number of classical roles in such ballets as Swan Lake, Giselle, The Nutcracker and Don Quixote.

His fame soared when Maya Plisetskaya gave him the role of Karenin in her ballet Anna Karenina (1972). He succeeded Nicolai Fadeyechev as her regular partner and danced a flamboyant Jose to her Carmen in the Alberto Alonso production of that name. He brought a panache to everything he did. He won a gold medal in the Moscow International Ballet Competition in 1973. His future with the Bolshoi seemed assured.

He married Ludmilla Vlasova, a dancer renowned for spectacular lifts. She was considerably older than him. He was a man who needed mothering. In August 1979, during the Bolshoi season in New York, Godunov decided to defect. There were dramatic scenes, with his wife sitting for three days on a plane at Kennedy airport while Soviet officials debated her freedom of choice to stay with her husband or to separate. In the end she elected to return to the Soviet Union.

It was a curious stroke of fate that Godunov’s path should cross again with that of his old class-mate Baryshnikov; or was Baryshnikov, who had become the idol of American ballet, the crucial spur for his defection? At any rate, Godunov defected in order to join American Ballet Theatre of which Baryshnikov was the star and was due to be appointed its artistic director the following year.

Godunov’s career with ABT was loaded with publicity: he was the golden boy, the talk of the town. His every appearance in the repertoire was hailed by press and public with eulogies amounting almost to hysteria, but after three years he was told there were no new roles for him. He did some guest appearances in South America under the banner Godunov and Friends and danced Swan Lake with Eva Evdokimova at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin.

During this time he built up a very close friendship with the film star Jacqueline Bisset, with whom he went to live in Los Angeles. She introduced him to movie agents and a new career in film and television opened up for him.

Godunov loved the United States and took a great interest in politics. He settled permanently in Hollywood and spent much time at the studio of Tatiana Riabouchinska, widow of David Lichine, who had been a star of de Basil’s Ballet Russe in the 1930s. Recently he had found time to visit his mother in Riga and only a month ago was filming in Budapest.

Playing in turn a kindly farmer, a tempestuous orchestral conductor and a vicious terrorist, Alexander Godunov displayed a remarkable range of characterisation in his first three film roles, and it can only have been his apparently tenuous grasp and pronunciation of the English language that impeded his movie career, writes Tom Vallance.

His debut, in Peter Weir’s Witness (1985), was particularly well received. In this popular thriller he plays an Amish farmer in love with a young widow (Kelly McGillis) whose son has witnessed a murder in New York City. Godunov makes clear (with a minimum of dialogue) the farmer’s unease as he senses a rival in the tough cop (Harrison Ford) who joins the non-violent community to trap the killers; and he retains audience sympathy with an engaging portrait of rustic equanimity.

In Richard Benjamin’s hyperactive comedy The Money Pit (1986), Godunov prudently underplayed his role as a tempestuous conductor, self-described as “shallow and self-centred”, lending droll understatement to expressions of his temperament (“The union forces me to allow you to go to lunch,” he tells his orchestra, “in spite of the way you played”) and conceit – when his ex-wife splits with her new boyfriend he comments, “He’s lost a wonderful woman and I know what it’s like – I’ve lost many.” Some of his lines, though, were less easily discerned behind his thick accent.

John McTiernan’s Die Hard (1988) was one of the best thrillers of the decade, and as the most sinister of the arch- villain Alan Rickman’s team of lethal terrorists, Godunov uses his blond athleticism to menacing effect as he stalks the hero (Bruce Willis) through the high-rise building that has been commandeered by the killers. Their encounter culminated in a particularly ferocious hand-to- hand struggle, with Godunov ultimately the vanquished.

It is surprising that after this telling role in a cinematic blockbuster, Godunov made only two further screen appearances and in horror films that had only limited release: Willard Carroll’s The Runestone (1992), in which an archaeologist is turned into a monster by a piece of rock, and Waxwork 2: Lost in Time.

Boris Alexander Godunov, dancer, actor: born Riga 28 November 1949; married 1971 Ludmilla Vlasova (marriage dissolved 1982); died Los Angeles c18 May 1995.

The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Madlyn Rhue obituary in “Los Angeles Times” in 2013

Madlyn Rhue was a lovely, talented actress whose career was sadly curtailed by the onset of multiple sclerosis. She was born in Washington D.C. in 1935. She began making television appearances from 1955 in such shows as “Cheyanne” and “Gunsmoke”. In 1959 she was one of the nuns with Carroll Baker in “The Miracle” and then starred with Rosalind Russell and Ray Danton in ” A Majority of One”. She also starred in “Escape from Zahrain” with Yul Brynner and “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. By the late sixties she was back regularly on television and guest starred on most of the major series. She acted in a wheelchair in several episodes of “Murder She Wrote” as the liberian of Cabot Cove. Madlyn Rhue died in 2003.

“Los Angeles Times” obituary:December 18, 2003|Dennis McLellan | Times Staff Writer

Madlyn Rhue, a veteran television character actress whose long battle with multiple sclerosis forced an end to her career in the mid-1990s after nearly a decade of intermittent roles performed from her wheelchair, has died. She was 68.

Rhue died Tuesday after a bout with pneumonia at the Motion Picture and Television Fund hospital in Woodland Hills, a spokeswoman for the hospital said. Rhue had moved into the retirement community’s long-term care facility in 1998.

Rhue appeared in only a few movies, including “Operation Petticoat,” “The Ladies Man” and “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.”

But, beginning in the late 1950s, the attractive actress with the large, expressive hazel eyes was a familiar presence on television for more than three decades. Among scores of guest-shot credits were “Have Gun-Will Travel,” “Cheyenne,” “The Untouchables,” “Route 66,” “Perry Mason,” “Rawhide,” “The Fugitive,” “I Spy,” “Hart to Hart” and “CHiPS.”

Rhue also was a regular on “Bracken’s World,” “Executive Suite” and “Houston Knights,” and she had recurring roles on “Fame” and “Days of Our Lives.”

“She played everything from a sexy chorus girl to a devious murderer to a corporate executive — she did it all,” Rhue’s longtime friend Faye Mayo, a former actress, told The Times on Wednesday.

Rhue was in her professional prime in 1977 when she was diagnosed with MS, a chronic, progressive disease of the central nervous system.

“At first, they said I had ‘slow foot’ — muscles that have gone lax,” she told The Times in 1987.

Rhue feared that, if anyone discovered that she had the disease, she might never work again. So, with the exception of close friends such as Mayo and actress Suzanne Pleshette, she kept the diagnosis a secret for years.

As the disease took its toll on her legs, she stopped wearing high heels to avoid falling. But even after she had to rely on first one cane, then two, she managed to keep working by using furniture or other objects on the set for support.

“I was telling people I had a car accident,” Rhue told The Times. When people continued to ask what was wrong, she made up other alibis, including that she was having trouble with an arthritic hip.

About 1985, her legs had become so weak that she could get around only in a wheelchair.

“For a period of 11 months after that, I had no work. It was scary,” she told People magazine in 1987, the year she was playing the role of a wheelchair-bound ballistics expert on the CBS police drama “Houston Knights.”

“By this time,” she said, “it became apparent that I would have to invent a giant accident to explain the wheelchair or start telling the truth.”

After landing the role in “Houston Nights,” she placed a full-page ad in Variety headlined, “See the new Madlyn Rhue.”

Jay Bernstein, the show’s executive producer, had encouraged Rhue to audition for the role.

“This isn’t charity, believe me,” Bernstein, who had known Rhue for 20 years, told United Press International at the time. “The primary thing is that she’s the right actress for the right part.”

After going public with her MS, Rhue was asked to participate in a National Multiple Sclerosis Society ad campaign.

She initially turned it down, telling the Los Angeles Times that she had thought that the organization wanted her to do what she called “poor me” ads.

“I didn’t want to do any of that look-how-I’ve-been- victimized jazz,” she said. She changed her mind after learning that the campaign would feature people with MS doing everything from scuba diving to skydiving.

The 1988 ad showing Rhue in her wheelchair noted that she “can’t walk so well anymore, but she can still perform.” It was headlined, “Even with MS, Madlyn Rhue Is On a Roll.”

Born Madleine Roche in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 3, 1935, she was the younger of two daughters of a mother who was a wholesaler of women’s clothes and a father who walked out when she was born.

Rhue lived in Baltimore and several other cities before moving to Los Angeles, where she graduated from Los Angeles High School and studied drama at Los Angeles City College. After moving to New York City to study acting, she worked briefly as a dancer at the Latin Quarter.

Mayo said the last TV series Rhue appeared on was “Murder, She Wrote,” in which she played the recurring character of a librarian.

Series star Angela Lansbury reportedly had heard that Rhue was in danger of losing her Screen Actors Guild medical coverage because she was short of meeting the annual earnings requirement.

“So she created this character for her and brought her in every three or four episodes,” Mayo said. “People who had worked with Madlyn and loved her kept giving her the opportunity to work.”

Rhue was known for her lusty sense of humor and upbeat attitude — even after she was bedridden.

“She enchanted everybody who came to visit her,” said Mayo. “No matter what befell her physically, her concern was always for other people.”

Rhue also was a talented artist whose paintings have been exhibited in galleries across the country.

Rhue married actor Tony Young in 1962. They had no children and were divorced in 1970. She is survived by a sister, Carol. The funeral will be private, but a public memorial service is being planned.

The above “Los Angeles Times” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Joan Fontaine obituary in “The Guardian”.

Her “Guardian” obituary by Veronica Howell:

It was hard to cast the lead in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1939. The female fans of the bestseller were very protective of the naive woman whom the widower Max de Winter marries and transports to his ancestral home of Manderley. None of the contenders – including Vivien Leigh, Anne Baxter and Loretta Young – felt right for the second Mrs de Winter, who was every lending-library reader’s dream self.

To play opposite Laurence Olivier in the film, the producer David O Selznick suggested instead a 21-year-old actor with whom he was smitten: Joan Fontaine. The prolonged casting process made Fontaine anxious. Vulnerability was central to the part, and you can see that vulnerability, that inability to trust her own judgment, in every frame of the film. The performance brought Fontaine, who has died aged 96, the first of three Oscar nominations.

She was born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland to British parents – Walter, a lawyer, and Lillian, an actor – in Tokyo, where her father was working. Her parents divorced when she was two and, along with her older sister, Olivia de Havilland, she grew up in California.

Olivia’s beauty won her lead roles on the arm of Errol Flynn, while Fontaine – who took her professional name from her mother’s remarriage, to George Fontaine – lagged behind. No less fine-boned but more tentative, Fontaine seemed somehow more British than her sister. She tried out on the West Coast stage and took small movie parts, advancing gradually in 1939 to be the dewy thing sighed over byDouglas Fairbanks Jr in Gunga Din and the dopiest of The Women in George Cukor’s film of Clare Boothe Luce’s Broadway play.

Meanwhile, De Havilland had been nominated for an Oscar for her performance in that year’s Gone With the Wind. Selznick seems to have intuited that Fontaine’s envy and distress about her more glamorous sibling would inform her playing of the chatelaine of Manderley.

The period from the late 1930s to the end of the second world war is usually seen as an era of ever stronger movie women: career gals, swell dames and tough cookies. But there was a genre of threatened-women films, too: not the physical threat of modern stalker/slasher films, but something subtler, where a woman is destroyed by her fears and insecurities about men and her social competence.

In Rebecca and in Suspicion (1941), Fontaine’s next film for Hitchcock, the heroines – although that’s rather too active a noun for them – marry men more exciting and worldly than they believe they are entitled to. In Rebecca, Fontaine is tempted to take her own life because she is made to feel unworthy of her husband (although he proves to be a lying murderer); in Suspicion she comes near to a breakdown because she believes that her husband (Cary Grant) is trying to murder her.

Fontaine had deserved an Oscar for Rebecca (she lost to Ginger Rogers for Kitty Foyle), but she won for Suspicion, beating De Havilland (nominated for Hold Back the Dawn). Rebecca had updated Charlotte Brontë, so it seemed fitting that Fontaine was cast as Jane Eyre, opposite Orson Welles as Mr Rochester, in a 1943 film directed by Robert Stevenson. She has the wary stubbornness all right, but not the soul afire under the alpaca frock.

There was another Oscar nomination (for The Constant Nymph, 1943) and another Du Maurier adaptation, Frenchman’s Creek (1944). Her onscreen tension appealed to audience sympathy when she was young, and it could also be used, with skill, to suggest sinful scheming, as in Ivy (1947), in which she played a poisoner. But the best film she made was Max Ophüls’s Letter from An Unknown Woman (1948), in which her nervous romanticism was heightened into heroism. Her character had once adored a concert pianist neighbour and become one of his many conquests (and pregnant by him). She abandons her safe marriage and child for one more assignation with the weary creep – only to find he does not remember her. She is just another lovely face.

If, at this point, Fontaine had moved to, say, France she might have had 10 or 20 good years and films, clad in couture to flatter the physical sophistication she had achieved by her 30s. Instead, she was indifferent in Hollywood films by directors who should have made better – The Emperor Waltz (Billy Wilder, 1948), Born to Be Bad (Nicholas Ray, 1950), Serenade (Anthony Mann, 1956), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956) and Until They Sail (Robert Wise, 1957). There was a rather pearls-and-twinset Lady Rowena in the glum Ivanhoe (1952) – did she take the part to prove she could do what her sister had done so well in swashbucklers? – and a then shocking suggestion of an interracial affair with Harry Belafonte in Island in the Sun (1957). In her last major film she was the support – significantly, the sister – in F Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night (1962).

Fontaine appeared twice on Broadway as a replacement for current stars, in lieu of Deborah Kerr in Tea and Sympathy, in 1954, and succeeding Julie Harris in Forty Carats, in 1968, both parts closely linked to her introverted screen roles. She continued on stage, though never Broadway again, until she was in her 70s, and worked in television (most successfully a soap, Ryan’s Hope, in 1980) and TV movies, her last appearance being in Good King Wenceslas, on the Family Channel, in 1994.

In her autobiography, No Bed of Roses (1978), she was fearlessly honest about the fearfulness that had dominated all of Hollywood in her prime. Yet in her own life, Fontaine was a brave pilot of planes and balloons, and a deep-sea diver. She married and divorced four husbands: the actor Brian Aherne, the film producer William Dozier, the screenwriter Collier Young and the journalist Alfred Wright.

She is survived by her daughter, Deborah, from her second marriage, a grandson, and her sister.

This “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed here.

Hope Lange obituary in “The Guardian” in 2003.

Hope Lange was a very pretty actress who starred in some of 20th Century Fox’s most popular films of the late 1950’s. She was born in 1933 in Redding, Connecticut. She was a child actress and at the age of nine made her Broadway debut in “The Patriots” in 1943. Her first film role was “Bus Stop” in 1956 with Marilyn Monroe and Don Murray whom she married. Among her other popular films were “Peyton Place”, “The Young Lions” and “The Best of Everything”. In the sixties she had a popular success with the TV series “The Ghost and Mrs Muir”. In one of her later films “Just Cause” it seemed odd to see her play the mother-in-law of Sean Connery, when she was a few years younger than him. Hope Lange died in 2003.

Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:

In the mid-1950s, 20th Century Fox decided to put a group of young actors under contract, calling them Showcase Stars. They all posed linking arms, staring with optimism at the camera. Standing among Patricia Owens, Christine Carere, Dolores Michaels and Diane Varsi was Hope Lange, who has died of an intestinal infection aged 72.Only Lange was to gain any real semblance of film stardom. The gentlemen at Fox preferred blondes, and the demure and refined Lange contrasted with Marilyn Monroe, who had emerged as the epitome of 1950s eroticism. In fact, Lange made her screen debut in Bus Stop (1956), as the sympathetic waitress who befriends dancehall girl Monroe – and that after director Joshua Logan turned down Marilyn’s demand that Lange dye her hair because the star did not want to share the screen with another blonde.

According to Don Murray, who played the cowboy enamoured of Marilyn, and who married Lange the same year, she “was considered a great beauty, and a serious and dedicated actor who didn’t pay attention to being glamorous”.

Largely eschewing glamour, Lange gave a sensitive performance in Peyton Place (1957), the film for which she is most remembered, and for which she was Oscar-nominated. In this glossy melodrama of dark doings behind the curtains of a small New England town, she played Selena Cross, who lives in a shack, literally on the wrong side of the tracks from her middle-class best friend, is raped by her drunken stepfather (Arthur Kennedy) and is then accused of murdering him.

Born to show-business parents in Redding Ridge, Connecticut, Lange appeared on Broadway at the age of 12, in Sidney Kingsley’s Pulitzer prize-winning play The Patriots (1945). As a teenager, she worked as a waitress at a Greenwich Village restaurant run by her widowed mother. She also walked the dog of Eleanor Roosevelt, who had a house in the village. A photograph of Lange and the Scots terrier appeared in the newspapers, and she was offered work as a model.

She resumed her acting career in her early 20s, appearing in live television dramas before attracting the attention of Fox producer Buddy Adler, who put her in some of the studio’s biggest and widest CinemaScope films.

Apart from Peyton Place, however, there was not much meat in the roles. She was the feminine interest in the misnamed The True Story Of Jesse James (1957), which was dominated by Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter as the outlaw brothers. In The Young Lions (1958), she played the quiet Vermont girl who marries Jewish GI Montgomery Clift before he goes off to war, and, in the same year, she was the sweetheart of cowardly marine Robert Wagner in In Love And War.

She had far more to do in The Best Of Everything (1959), a delirious example of that decade’s kitsch. Although dominated by the ageing Joan Crawford, playing a bitter and unfulfilled publishing executive, Lange held her own as a young hopeful in the business. At the beginning of the film, she declares that “if I’m not married by the time I’m 26, I may have to take myself a lover”, then later throws herself at Stephen Boyd. “Please make love to me, even if you don’t love me,” she begs, “26 is too far ahead.”

In reality, Lange, who was already 28, was nearing the end of her Fox contract, and her marriage to Don Murray. In 1961, having played a psychiatrist to the delinquent Elvis Presley in Wild In The Country – she encourages him to go to college and become a writer – she went freelance.

Now divorced, she began a relationship with Glenn Ford, who insisted that she co-star with him in Pocketful Of Miracles (1961), a situation that angered the director Frank Capra, who had wanted Shirley Jones for the part. As it turned out, the film, a dated remake of his 1933 masterpiece Lady For A Day, was an inglorious end to Capra’s career, with Lange miscast as the flashy nightclub owner Queenie Martin, who keeps pressing bootlegger Dave the Dude (Ford) to marry her. Lange also co-starred with Ford in Love Is A Ball (1963), playing a wild millionairess on the French Riviera, to his racing driver posing as her chauffeur.

This frothy nonsense, desperately trying to be satirical about the rich, was Lange’s last film for five years. She retired from acting during her marriage to producer-director Alan Pakula, returning only after their separation in 1968 (they divorced the following year) to star in a US television series The Ghost And Mrs Muir, opposite Edward Mulhare.

· Hope Lange, actor, born November 28 1931; died December 19 2003

Her “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed here.

This was followed by her sweet housewife role in The New Dick Van Dyke Show (1971-74), but the show was cancelled after Lange refused to sign for a fourth season because CBS would not show an episode implying that the couple were having sex in their bedroom. “They have three children, for Pete’s sake. Was that by immaculate conception?” she exclaimed.

She married theatre producer Charles Hollerith Jr in 1986. He survives her, as do the son and daughter of her first marriage.

Over the next few decades, Lange continued to guest frequently in TV shows, and appeared sporadically in feature films. In 1974, as Charles Bronson’s wife in Death Wish, she spent most of her time in a coma, before dying; in 1985, she was in A Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge; and, the following year, she was Laura Dern’s mother in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. In 1977, she appeared on Broadway in Same Time, Next Year, opposite her ex-husband Murray.

Laurence Harvey (TCM Overview)

In both life and death, actor Laurence Harvey commanded a sort of unusual fascination from both the public and press. A strikingly handsome performer, he was also exceptionally cold, occasionally cruel and prone to making statements in the press about his own talents, which were largely underused in his three decades on film, save for a handful of projects like “Room at the Top” (1959) and “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962).

In both films, his chilly screen presence made for memorable performances, first as a ruthless social climber in “Room” and later as a brainwashed solder in “Candidate.” Before and after these assignments, he languished in low-budget dramas, save for a brief stint at the top of the Hollywood heap in “The Alamo” (1960) and “Butterfield 8” (1960).

His luck ran out in the late 1960s, and he languished in obscurity until his death from cancer in 1973. But in the decades that followed his passing, Harvey’s legacy and performances – at once riveting and repelling – commanded a small but dedicated cult who celebrated his eccentric star and its sporadic bursts of brilliance.

Born Laruschka Mischa Skikne in Joniskis, Lithuania on Oct. 1, 1928, Laurence Harvey was the youngest of three sons by Boris and Ella Skikne, who immigrated with their children to Johannesburg, South Africa in 1934.

He joined the South African Army while still in his teens, and as a member of its entertainment unit, performed across Egypt and Italy during World War II. Upon his discharge, he relocated to London after winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

There, he billed himself as Laurence Harvey, a name reportedly inspired by either the Harvey Nichols department store chain or the sherry Harvey’s Bristol Cream. Even as a tyro actor, Harvey was well known for living far beyond his means, and allegedly worked as a male prostitute to make ends meet while performing with the Library Theatre.

He made his feature debut as a callous heel who caused his brother’s own death in the low-budget thriller “House of Darkness” (1948), and would essentially repeat variations on that role throughout his career. Signed to contracts with Associated British Studios and later Romulus Pictures, Harvey labored through a string of undistinguished films and roles while working to establish himself as a stage star with the Memorial Theatre at Stratford. There, he received almost unanimously negative reviews, which were exacerbated by a series of self-aggrandizing interviews in which he staunchly defended his own talents

. He finally landed a movie hit with his Hollywood debut, “King Richard and the Crusaders” (1954) opposite Rex Harrison and George Sanders, but almost immediately deflated any positive response with an aloof turn as Romeo in Renato Castellani’s 1954 film version of “Romeo and Juliet,” which won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival, despite an abundance of critical brickbats. His debut on Broadway in “Island of Goats” (1955) closed after only a week, though it netted Harvey a Theatre World Award.

Upon his return to England, Harvey launched his film career with Romulus anew, though with decidedly unfortunate results. He was soundly panned for turns in Christopher Isherwood’s “I Am a Camera” (1955), which later served as the inspiration for “Cabaret” (1972), and slogged through several more flops before landing his defining role in “Room at the Top” (1959). Cast as Joe Lampton, an ambitious and amoral social climber who left a wake of emotional destruction in his drive to success, Harvey’s performance was cited as one of the defining elements of the New British Cinema, which eschewed the quaintness of the past in favor of gritty vérité stories of postwar London. He received both Oscar and BAFTA nominations for his performance, which re-ignited Hollywood’s interest in him.

After another acclaimed turn in “Expresso Bongo” (1959) as an oily talent scout who exploited his latest discovery, a hapless pop star (Cliff Richard), Harvey began a lengthy tenure in Hollywood. He arrived with a bang, landing starring roles in two major features: the John Wayne-directed epic “The Alamo” (1960) and “Butterfield 8” (1960), starring Elizabeth Taylor. Both arrived in theaters with a thud, with budgetary overruns and a tasteless Oscar campaign sinking “The Alamo,” and Taylor’s scandalous union with co-star Eddie Fisher undermining “Butterfield,” despite her Oscar win for Best Actress.

He soldiered on, but found few viewers for “Walk on the Wild Side” (1962) or “Summer and Smoke” (1962), his second turn in a Tennessee Williams adaptation after “Butterfield 8.” He was also developing a reputation as a difficult and unlikable performer on sets; his “Wild Side” co-star Capucine found him physically unappealing in their love scenes, while Jane Fonda spared no quarter to the press in describing Harvey as wooden and unprofessional.

There was a brief uptick in popularity as one of the Brothers Grimm in “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm” (1962), and then a chance at renewed stardom with a controversial film being readied by director John Frankenheimer.

With “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962), Harvey found another perfect role in Raymond Shaw, an Army sergeant captured by the Communists during the Korean War who is programmed through subliminal suggestion to assassinate a string of political targets.

The scion of a powerful conservative family, Shaw was handsome, charming, polite and a complete blank, having lost his identity to rigorous brainwashing. The soulless quality of the character seemed to echo Harvey’s own emotionless core, and it seemed to realign his career in a positive direction. However, his subsequent pictures, which included his producing and directorial debut with the violent and surreal crime picture “The Ceremony” (1963) and Martin Ritt’s “The Outrage” (1964) were pilloried in the press, with Harvey receiving the brunt of their ire.

He briefly rebounded with John Schlesinger’s “Darling” (1965) as a cynical ad executive who romanced bored socialite Julie Christie, and reprised his star-making turn in “Life at the Top” (1965), a less well-received sequel to “Room at the Top.” After that, his career went into a lengthy spiral, with careless performances in forgettable films like “The Spy with a Cold Nose” (1965). In 1968, he took over direction of the Cold War thriller “A Dandy in Aspic” when Anthony Mann died before its completion. The film also served as his introduction to model Paulene Stone, who became his third wife and the mother of his only child, Domino Harvey.

Harvey drifted through the early 1970s in a string of forgotten and failed projects. Some were well intentioned, like Stuart Rosenberg’s “WUSA” (1970), which echoed his best-known role in “Manchurian Candidate” with its story of conspiracies and assassinations. Others, like “The Deep” (1970) for Orson Welles, never saw the light of day. He gave one final, full-bodied turn in a 1972 episode of “Night Gallery” (NBC, 1970-72) as a scheming rotter whose attempt to murder a rival backfired in a horrific manner. Audiences, however, could not help but notice that the actor, who was only 45, looked at least a decade older. The cause was stomach cancer, which claimed his life shortly after he completed “Welcome to Arrow Beach” (1973), a grisly horror film about a Korean War veteran-turned-cannibal. In death, he continued to receive slings and arrows from an array of sources ranging from actor Robert Stephens and Frank Sinatra’s valet to wife Paulene Stone. His daughter, Domino, followed a similarly tragic career path that took her from model to bounty hunter before her death from a drug overdose in 2005. Her life story was highly fictionalized by director Tony Scott in “Domino” (2005) with Keira Knightley in the title role. The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Elsa Lanchester

Elsa Lanchester was the character actress par excellance. When one saw her name in the credits of a movie, you eagerly anticipated her appearance becasue she enlivened all the films she appeared in. Her droll delivery was always a delight. She was born in 1902 in London. As a child she had been a dance with the troupe managed by Isadora Duncan. She married Charles Laughton in 1929. She had appeared in revue in London but went with Laughton to Hollywood in the early 1930’s. Her career was subordinated to his, which was a great pity becasue I think she was the much more talented of the two. In 1935 she made her most famous film “THe Bride of Frankenstein”. She was exceptional in “David Copperfield”, “Lassie Come Home”, “The Razor’s Edge”, “Come to the Stable”, “The Big Clock”, “Mystery Street” and “Witness for the Prosecution”. Her autobiography which was published a few years before her death in 1986. Rare footage of interview with Elsa Lanchester on the Dick Cavett Show can be viewed here.

Article on Elsa Lanchester on “Tina Aumont’s Eyes” website:

With her large eyes and upturned nose, Elsa Lanchester was not your conventional film beauty, but with her vast talent and distinctive qualities, she went on to have a fantastic career spanning 55 years, even if she was often typecast as the lovable spinster or dotty old woman.

Born Elizabeth Lanchester Sullivan in London, on October 28th 1902, Elsa held early dreams of becoming a dancer, and by 1922 was busy performing on stage. In 1924 she opened a nightclub in London, but closed it in 1928 as her film career was starting to take off. The following year Elsa married actor Charles Laughton and, although theirs was an open marriage, they would stay together until Laughton’s death in 1962.

Lanchester’s first role of note came in 1933 when, alongside Laughton, she played Anne of Cleves in ‘The Private Life of Henry VIII’, which deservedly won Laughton the Best Actor Oscar. 1935 was the breakthrough year for Lanchester when she played W.C. Fields’ maid in George Cukor’s ‘David Copperfield’, and then earned screen immortality with her portrayal of the Bride, in James Whale’s masterpiece ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’ (’35). I have always found her wild-haired creature strangely attractive, as she sashays across the screen with her arms out-stretched and making her hissing sounds. Even though it’s a brief role at the end of the picture, it remains Lanchester’s most iconic part. Another memorable performance at this time was when she played Hendrickje the maid, in Alexander Korda’s excellent biopic ‘Rembrandt’ (’36), which boasted a superb turn by Laughton in the title role.

Relocating to America in 1940, Lanchester was given some excellent supporting roles including that of Roddy McDowall’s impoverished mother in the hugely popular family drama ‘Lassie Come Home’ (’43), which brought 11 year old Elizabeth Taylor to the fore. Following minor parts in a couple of superb movies; ‘The Razor’s Edge’ and ‘The Spiral Staircase’ (both ’46), Elsa was charming as Matilda the maid, in the Cary Grant romantic comedy ‘The Bishop’s Wife’ (’47). After supporting Laughton and Ray Milland in the 1948 noir ‘The Big Clock’, Elsa received her first Oscar nomination for her fine portrayal of a religious painter in Henry Koster’s French nun drama ‘Come to the Stable’ (’49), starring Loretta Young and Celeste Holm.

After playing a countess in the 1950 Joel McCrea western ‘Frenchie’, and lusting after Clifton Webb’s former matinee idol in the excellent comedy ‘Dreamboat’ (’52), Elsa was the bearded lady in the minor Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis vehicle ‘3 Ring Circus’ (’54). A fun part followed as Leslie Caron’s witty stepmother in the delightful musical ‘The Glass Slipper’ (’55), MGM’s colourful take on Cinderella. I loved Elsa’s stuffy yet kindly nurse; Miss Plimsoll, in Billy Wilder’s superb courtroom thriller ‘Witness for the Prosecution’ (’57), sparring endlessly with Charles Laughton’s recovering barrister. Elsa would receive her second Oscar nomination for her wonderful performance. Another fun role followed with the Richard Quine sleeper ‘Bell, Book and Candle’ (’58), as witch Kim Novak’s dotty aunt.

A handful of Disney appearances came next, first with a small role as a disgruntled nanny in ‘Mary Poppins’ (’64), ‘That Darn cat!’ (’65), as a prying neighbour, and (my childhood favourite) ‘Blackbeard’s Ghost’ (’68), as an elderly descendant of Peter Ustinov’s mischievous spirit. Another eccentric role followed with the enjoyable Patty Duke vehicle ‘Me, Natalie’ (’69), as Patty’s oddball landlady, and then Daniel Mann’s interesting cult horror ‘Willard’ (’71), in which she played the ailing mother to Bruce Davison’s social outcast. Another horror, albeit a bad one, followed with ‘Terror at the Wax Museum’ (’73), slumming it alongside aging stars Ray Milland and Broderick Crawford. I loved her funny turn as Jessica Marbles, in Neil Simon’s hilarious star-filled spoof ‘Murder by Death’ (’76), playing a lovable sleuth wheeling around her childhood nurse; 93 year old Estelle Winwood. Elsa’s final movie was the pleasant Robby Benson comedy ‘Die Laughing’ (’80), before her retirement to the Hollywood hills.

On Boxing Day 1986, Elsa Lanchester died from pneumonia in her Californian home. She was 84 years old. A supremely talented actress, Elsa brought humour, mischief and warmth to a wealth of movies and television appearances. From small scene-stealing roles to large-scale melodramas, it was always a joy to see her smiling face up there on the screen. A true and unique one-off!

Favourite Movie: The Razor’s Edge
Favourite Performance: Witness for the Prosecution

The above article can also be accessed online here.

Original Cinema Quad Poster – Movie Film Posters

“The wide range of Mary Astor took her, with total conviction, from bitchy vixens to sensible mothers, sweethearts to dangerous femme fatales. Although one often thinks of her as appearing in other star’s movies, she is very much one of the outstanding players of Hollywood’s prime decades. ” – “The Encyclopedia of Hollywood Film Actors” by Barry Monush.

“Among buffs at least, Mary Astor’s reputation today stands second to none. During a very long career she made many films that have been much-revived, and her acting, incisive but delicate, is not the least factor in their reappearance. Inevitably, in over 100 films, she played the same part countless times, with a neat line in bitches at one end and syrupy moms at the other. The only consistent in her portrayals were her beauty and a brittleness, she was never less than competent and frequently more. She chose to be a featured player, which meant that her parts were often small and non-sustaining. She had to make the maximum effect in a few minutes. It is know that she cared little for her craft, but much thought and sensitivity went into her best interpretations. Given a big – and sometimes difficult- role, as in “Dodsworth” and “The Maltese Falcon”, she achieved greatness” – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars” (1970).

Mary Astor had a very long career stretching back to silent film. She was born in 1906 in Quincy, Illnois. She made her film debut in 1920 in the silent film “The Scarecrow”. In 1926, John Barrymore cast her opposite him in “Don Juan”. Her beautiful speaking voice ensured a smooth transition to sound movies. Throughout the 1930’s she gave several fine performances. In “Dodsworth” she was particularly effective opposite Walter Huston. In 1941 she played Brigid O’ Shaughnessy in “The Maltese Falcon” opposite Humphrey Bogart. The following year she won the Academy Award for “The Great Lie” with Bette Davis. In the late 40’s she made a series of mother roles including “Little Women” with Margaret O’Brien, Elizabeth Taylor, June Allyson and Janet Leigh. Her last film was “Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte” with Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland in 1964. Mary Astor became a well-respected author. She died in 1987.

An overview of her career on TCM, please click here.

Gordon MacRae obituary in “Los Angeles Times”.

“In the 30s, Bing Crosby virtually had the field to himself. Over at Warners, Dick Powell also crooned, at RKO Fred Astaire sang as he tapped and at MGM Nelson Eddy gave out in stentorian tones. None of the other male singers made much impression or stayed long. In the 40s, after the success of Frank Sinatra, there was a new influx – Perry Como, Dick Haymes, Andy Russell. Crosby stayed way out in front. Gordon MacRae, also came to movies via radio and records, and he developed into one of the best singing stars – almost as easy as Bing, more animated than Como or Haymes, more virile then was Sinatra of the 40s” – David Shipman – “The Great Movie Stars – The International Years”.

Gordon MacRae was a fine singer who has made an impression in several fine musicals e.g. “Oklaholma”, “Carousel”, “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” and “The Desert Song”. He was born in 1921. In 1948 he made his film debut in “The Big Punch” and his cinema peak was in the 1950’s. He made many fine recordings including several albums with Jo Stafford. Gordon MacRae died in 1986 at the age of 64.

Obituary in “Los Angeles Times”:

Gordon MacRae, the clean-cut, full-throated baritone who triumphed over the alcoholism that threatened a career which peaked with his portrayal of Curly in the film version of “Oklahoma,” died today at Bryan Memorial Hospital in Lincoln, Neb.

He was 64, said hospital spokesman Edwin Shafer, who added that MacRae had been hospitalized since November suffering from cancer of the mouth and jaw and pneumonia.

Although he appeared in several successful stage, radio and television programs, MacRae will best be remembered for two film musicals–“Carousel” and “Oklahoma.” In each he appeared opposite Shirley Jones, and her lilting soprano proved an appealing complement to MacRae’s sonorous baritone.

Father Saw Talent

MacRae was the son of “Wee Willie MacRae,” a singer turned businessman who encouraged his son’s innate talent.

The young MacRae was a page boy with NBC who joined “Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights” as a vocalist in 1941. He had minor roles on Broadway and radio but was drafted into the Army in 1943. After the war he starred on NBC radio on the old “Teentimers” show, but his career didn’t really take off until Warner Brothers signed him to a contract in the late 1940s.

In all he made 25 films including “West Point Story,” “The Best Things in Life Are Free” and “Look for the Silver Lining.”

But by the 1970s his life and his career were in decline because of his drinking.

“I was one hell of a drunk,” he said in 1982, referring to the Lakeside Club in North Hollywood as his prep school for alcoholics. “I used to stand at the bar and try to out-drink Bogey (Humphrey Bogart) and Errol Flynn.”

Couldn’t Remember Lyrics

In 1978, a year after he was unable to sing in concert in South Carolina because he couldn’t remember his lyrics, he entered an alcoholism treatment center in Lincoln.

He lived in Lincoln with his second wife, Elizabeth, until his death because “it reminded me of my hometown” (East Orange, N.J.).

One of his last appearances was in Las Vegas in October, 1982, shortly before he suffered a stroke.

It was a benefit for the National Council on Alcoholism, which MacRae adopted as a favored charity after his own recovery.

He referred to the occasion as “our third annual Follies Berserk” but on a more serious note reflected how “you hit bottom, then you make up your mind. I’m sober 23 months now.”

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

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Maureen O’Sullivan

Maureen O’Sullivan obituary in “The Independent” in 1998.

Dictionary of Irish Biography

Alexander Godunov

Madlyn Rhue

Madlyn Rhue obituary in “Los Angeles Times” in 2013

Joan Fontaine

Joan Fontaine obituary in “The Guardian”.

Hope Lange

Hope Lange obituary in “The Guardian” in 2003.

Laurence Harvey

Laurence Harvey (TCM Overview)

Elsa Lanchester

Elsa Lanchester

Mary Astor

Gordon MacRae

Gordon MacRae obituary in “Los Angeles Times”.

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