Hollywood Actors
Stephen Brooks
Born in Columbus, Ohio, Brooks was best known as Special Agent Jim Rhodes in the television series The F.B.I., and his guest appearance as Ensign Garrovick in the classic Star Trek episode “Obsession“. He was born in 1942 and died in 1999
Gwen Verdon
Bill Drysdale’s “Guardian” obituary of Gwen Verdon from 2000.
Bill Drysdale
A great problem for today’s dance students aspiring to careers in musical theatre is the shortage of role models. Gwen Verdon, who has died aged 75, was one of the last great exponents, with direct experience – both as a performer and choreographic muse to her late husband, Bob Fosse – of a dance tradition which traces its roots back to the work of Jack Cole, whom she assisted in the 1940s.For the last two decades, the Broadway music tradition, embodied by Oklahoma! and nurtured by director/choreographers such as Agnes de Mille, Gower Champion, Jerome Robbins, Joe Layton and Fosse himself, has been deposed by the British musical, owing more to the traditions of European operetta.
So the extraordinarily successful revival of Chicago – Verdon was its original Roxie Hart in 1975 – followed by the show, Fosse, has been a revelation of the extraordinary standards of dance creativity that prevailed in musicals after the second world war. It was Verdon’s tireless industry, and devotion to her husband’s memory, that enabled these revivals to materialise.
She was born in Culver City, California, the daughter of British-born parents. Her father was an MGM technician, and her mother, who had trained with the modern-dance company Denishawn, opened her own school. Verdon, her legs weakened by childhood illness, got her early dance training from Ernest Belcher, who also trained Cyd Charisse.
Initially, she followed her first husband, James Henaghan, into journalism, reviewing films and nightclub acts. The marriage was over by 1947, but thus it was that she discovered the work of jazz-dance pioneer Cole, and eventually joined his nightclub act. Later, she became his assistant, replacing Carol Haney, who left to work with Gene Kelly.
Cole choreographed Verdon’s Broadway debut revue, Alive And Kicking (1950), which flopped. She was not ambitious to be a star, preferring her role of choreographer’s assistant, but Cole was a volatile and abusive task master, and, eventually, she took refuge with Michael Kidd, starring on Broadway in Can-Can (1953) – for which she received dazzling reviews and a Tony award. For Fosse, she starred as Lola in Damn Yankees (1955), won another Tony, and repeated her performance in the 1958 movie.
As a performer, Verdon had a unique quality of comic sexuality. This protected her endearingly innocent, vulnerable personality from slipping into outright vulgarity – unlike Fosse, who frequently strayed into conflict with his producers through his highly individual attitudes to portraying sexuality in dance.
During her time with Cole, Verdon made minor dancing appearances in movies, coached Jane Russell, and taught Marilyn Monroe the steps for her number in the movie Gentleman Prefer Blondes. She was perfect casting for the role of Charity in Sweet Charity (1966), the musical based on Fellini’s 1957 film, Le Notte Di Cabiria.
Her other leads in musicals were New Girl In Town (1958), and Redhead (1959), both choreographed by Fosse, the latter show directed by him, and both winning Tonys for Verdon. When her dancing career was over, she also found success as a character actress, in such films as Cocoon (1985), The Cotton Club (1984) and Woody Allen’s Alice (1990).
She had married Fosse in 1960, but he was a notorious womaniser (a fact he made no secret of in his autobiographical film, All That Jazz), though despite their agreeing to live apart, he and Verdon were never divorced. She remained devoted to the man and his work, and was with him when he died of a heart attack during a tour of a revival of Sweet Charity in 1987. She had no difficulty in collaborating with Ann Reinking, an ex-mistress and muse of her husband’s, on Fosse (1999), a celebration and retrospective of his work.
Verdon was universally loved and admired by the dancers in the London production of Fosse. Neil Johnson, who dances Percussion in the show, remarked: “Gwen has a way of really stretching you, drawing strengths out of you that you didn’t know you had. She once put me through that number five times in an afternoon. By the end of the rehearsal, I could scarcely walk.”
Somehow that steely strength, tempered by years of emotional stress, never appeared to coarsen her vulnerable and touching personality. She is survived by a daughter from her marriage to Fosse, a son from her first marriage, four grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
Gwen Verdon, dancer, born January 16 1925; died October 18 2000
The above “Guaedian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
TCM overview:
Born in Germany, where her father was stationed with the US Army. A top model, Blakely made her screen debut in 1972 and has since alternated between film and TV. She turned in noteworthy roles in “The Lords of Flatbush” (1974), as Julie Prescott in the TV miniseries “Rich Man, Poor Man” (1976), and as Frances Farmer in the TV film, “Will There Really Be a Morning?” (1983). Divorced from screenwriter Todd Merer and married since 1982 to producer Steve Jaffe.
2005 “Independent” obituary:
Flipper brought Brian Kelly’s face into millions of homes around the world, along with a tame dolphin whose wile and skills helped to keep trouble at bay over 88 episodes. As Porter Ricks, the ran
Brian Kelly, actor and producer: born Detroit, Michigan 14 February 1931; married 1966 Laura Devon (one son; marriage dissolved), 1972 Valerie Ann Romero (one daughter; marriage dissolved); died Voorhees, New Jersey 12 February 2005.
The 1960s children’s television series Flipper brought Brian Kelly’s face into millions of homes around the world, along with a tame dolphin whose wile and skills helped to keep trouble at bay over 88 episodes. As Porter Ricks, the ranger at Coral Key Park’s marine reserve in Florida, Kelly played the widowed father of two young boys, Sandy and Bud, in a programme that oozed wholesome family values.
At worst schmaltzy, at best providing exciting action and adventures on screen for young viewers, Flipper (1964-67) was renowned for the quality of its underwater photography. The series was filmed in Miami and the Bahamas, and was made by the Hungarian-American Ivan Tors’s production company, which continued its speciality in wildlife shows with Daktari, about a vet in a remote African game reserve. Suzy, the dolphin picked to take the limelight in Flipper, was transported from location to location in a crate filled with foam and water.
Kelly himself first played Ricks in the 1964 feature film Flipper’s New Adventure, a sequel to the previous year’s Flipper. He took over the role from Chuck Connors, who was best known for playing villains on screen, and gave the character a milder side in the family-friendly adventure.
Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1931, the son of Harry F. Kelly, who later served as the state’s governor, Kelly joined the Marine Corps during the Korean War, before studying law at the University of Michigan. But, after acting at school and university and finding a summer job as a male model, he left his studies to make radio and television commercials in Detroit, where he was spotted by a Hollywood talent scout.
His breakthrough came with a regular role, as Brian, in the police drama 21 Beacon Street (1959) and he followed it by playing Scott Ross, the racing car designer who owns a garage in partnership with a mechanic, in the adventure seriesStraightaway (1961-62).
Kelly made his feature film début in Thunder Island (1963), a hit-man drama co-written by the actor Jack Nicholson, beforeFlipper beckoned. He was back in the water for Around the World Under the Sea (1966), as one of a team of six scientists in an experimental submarine. It was a drama made by Ivan Tors Films in the wake of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and similar films.
He later starred in an Italian-French spaghetti western, Spara, Gringo, Spara ( Shoot, Grinto, Shoot, 1968). Then, three days into shooting the romantic drama The Love Machine, Kelly was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident, which left his right arm and leg paralysed.
After winning $750,000 in a legal settlement, he used the money to build houses, aiming to produce films with the profits from their sale. His great success was in buying the rights to Philip K. Dick’s 1968 science-fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and giving the film option to the actor Hampton Fancher, who turned it into a screenplay. Many drafts later, it becameBlade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott, with Kelly credited as executive producer.
Anthony Hayward
The above “Independent” onituary can also be accessed online here.
George Arliss
One of the oldest actors on the screen in the 1920s and 1930s, George Arliss starred on the London stage from an early age. He came to the United States and starred in several films, but it was his role as British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in Disraeli (1929) that brought him his greatest success.
Miyoshi Umeki & Pat Suzuki
Tom Vallance’s obituary in “The Independent” in 2007:
Miyoshi Umeki, a demure, appealing actress with a wistful smile and the ability to convey unfettered innocence, was the first Asian performer to win an Oscar. In her first Hollywood film, Sayonara (1957), an adaptation of James A. Michener’s novel about American servicemen in occupied Japan in the early Fifties, she gave an extraordinarily moving performance as Katsumi, a Japanese woman who falls in love with and marries an American airman. When he is ordered back to the United States, but told that he may not take his wife with him, the couple commit suicide.
Umeki won the Oscar as best supporting actress for her performance, and Red Buttons, who played her husband, won the supporting actor award. In 1959 she triumphed on Broadway as a star of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song, for which she received a Tony nomination.
Born in Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan, in 1929, Miyoshi (meaning “beautiful life”) Umeki was one of nine children. She became a radio and nightclub singer in her teens, recorded for RCA Japan (billed as Nancy Umeki), and after the Second World War she became known to American occupation forces in Japan, where she was the first singer to record American songs. Later she stated that she used to feel disturbed that she was paid: “Old family have strange custom. Girl shouldn’t work. I felt bad because now I’m getting paid, really working.”
In 1955 a talent scout advised her to move to New York City, where she sang in nightclubs, appeared on Tennessee Ernie Ford’s television show, and acquired a recording contract with Mercury Records. The television personality Arthur Godfrey, known as a shrewd talent-spotter, gave her a regular slot on his morning variety show, Arthur Godfrey and His Friends, and she was seen on the programme by the director Joshua Logan, who was preparing Sayonara and realised that she would be ideal to play the tragic Katsumi. Umeki’s only prior movie experience had been in Japan, where she played a Siamese cat in a fairy tale.
Umeki’s Oscar win was something of a surprise – the tipped favourites were Elsa Lanchester in Witness for the Prosecution and Carolyn Jones for The Bachelor Party – and Umeki told the audience: “I wish someone would help me right now. I didn’t expect, and have nothing in my mind.” Though she was the first Asian to win the award, another Asian was nominated the same year – Sessue Hayakawa for his supporting performance in The Bridge on the River Kwai.
The stage musical Flower Drum Song started life as a novel by C.Y. Lee about the conflicts between first- and second-generation Chinese living in San Francisco, and its dramatic possibilities appealed to the songwriting team of Rodgers and Hammerstein. Richard Rodgers recalled, “Josh Logan had told me about a Japanese girl named Miyoshi Umeki who had a slight but adequate voice, and she turned out to be just right for the shy heroine.”
In Flower Drum Song, directed by Gene Kelly, she was perfectly cast as the naive mail-order bride who arrives in San Francisco with her father and promptly falls in love. With this realisation, she introduced one of the finest of the musical’s songs, “I Am Going to Like It Here”. Umeki was nominated for a Tony for her performance, and she repeated the role in the film version, produced by Ross Hunter in 1961. “It was the first time a mainstream Hollywood film had an all-Asian cast,” said her co-star Nancy Kwan. “The Asian community was very excited about that.” In this moderately faithful transcription, Umeki sang the three numbers she had introduced on Broadway: “I Am Going to Like It Here”, lovingly filmed with Umeki mostly in mid-close-up as she walks in the garden, “A Hundred Million Miracles”, and the amusing duet she shares with Jack Soo, “Don’t Marry Me”.
With roles for Asians still limited, Umeki appeared in only three more movies. She was a geisha girl in Cry For Happy (1961), a comedy in which four Navy men are unknowingly billeted at a geisha house, then she had roles in The Horizontal Lieutenant and A Girl Named Tamiko (both 1962). She was more prolific on television, doing guest spots in several shows including Dr Kildare, Rawhide, The Donna Reed Show and The Virginian. From 1969 to 1972 she had a recurring role as Mrs Livingston, philosophical if sometimes confused housekeeper, in the situation comedy The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, starring Bill Bixby, who described her as “the best actress I’ve ever worked with”. When the show’s run ended, Umeki retired.
Her last television appearance was in a salute to Oscar Hammerstein in 1972, and in recent years she refused to give interviews. (She was a notable absentee from the documentary on Flower Drum Song that was made to accompany the recently released DVD.)
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Tom Vallance
TCM Overview:
As a teenager in her native Japan, Miyoshi Umeki began her show business career as a singer and dancer. She often performed on radio programs and in nightclubs. In the 1950s, she attempted to translate that success in the USA, landing a spot on “Arthur Godfrey and His Friends”, one of the many music-variety series then in vogue. In 1957, Umeki was cast as the Japanese woman who falls in love with an American soldier (Red Buttons) despite the US government’s policy banning interracial marriage in “Sayonara”. As the doomed bride, the beautiful actress offered a heart-breaking turn that earned her that year’s Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress.
As the studio system was in the beginnings of its decline, actresses in general were beginning to have a difficult time finding good roles. For an Asian woman, the problems were further compounded. Despite winning an Oscar, Umeki was unable to land a suitable follow-up and instead turned to Broadway where she starred in the 1958 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Flower Drum Song”, playing Mei Li, an illegal Chinese immigrant who arrives in the USA searching for a husband. While not on par with the best of the Rodgers and Hammerstein catalogue, “Flower Drum Song” was pleasant and popular, earning several Tony Award nominations, including one for its leading lady. When Universal adapted the material for the big screen, the studio took the rather unusual step of hiring Umeki to recreate her stage role. (Often those who appeared on Broadway were replaced by more bankable stars.)
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Although she acquitted herself in the 1961 film version of “Flower Drum Song”, Umeki still found additional roles scarce. In fact, the actress was to appear in only three additional movies, “Cry for Happy” (1961), “The Horizontal Lieutenant” (1962) and “A Girl Named Tamiko” (1963). Taking time off for motherhood, Umeki moved back to the small screen, garnering legions of fans among baby boomers as the wise and dependable housekeeper Mrs. Livingston on the ABC sitcom “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” (1969-72). After the series ran its course, she operated a dance studio in North Hollywood for close to 20 years. In 1999, there was a flurry of misinformation about the actress when author Donald Reuter claimed he had tried to track her down without success for a book he was working on. Convinced she had “vanished”, his comments reprinted in tabloid newspapers — and the fact Umeki was one of the few living Oscar winners not present at a tribute on an annual telecast of the awards — fueled speculation about her whereabouts. The reality, though, was hardly a mystery; Umeki had retired to Hawaii.
Eva Moore was born on February 9, 1870 in Brighton, East Sussex, England. She was an actress, known for The Old Dark House (1932), Blind Justice (1934) and Old Iron (1938). She was married to H.V. Esmond. She died on April 27, 1955 in Maidenhead, Berkshire, England.
| H.V. Esmond | (1891 – 17 April 1922) (his death) (2 children) |
Eva Moore
Anyone who knows me are aware that I am a bit of a movie buff. Over the past few years I have been collecting signed photographs of my favourite actors. Since I like movies so much there are many actors whose work I like.
