Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 26 of 128

Bette Midler

TCM overview:

Bette Midler built a successful stage, screen and recording career on the basis of her self-styled “Divine Miss M” character – a sassy, hip-wagging classic “broad” archetype. She was quick with the comebacks, took no guff and had a tendency to burst into tunes from the Great American Songbook. Her initial stage fame and string of nostalgia-tinged hit albums in the 1970s eventually led to big screen success, with dramas like the pseudo Janis Joplin biopic “The Rose” (1980) and three-hankie chick flick “Beaches” (1990). She also lent appropriately outrageous variations of Miss M to comedies including “Ruthless People” (1986), “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” (1986) and “The First Wives Club” (1996). In an era where stage, screen and recording crossover success was rare, only Liza Minnelli rivaled Midler when it came to endless concert tour schedules and triumph in all genres. More than 30 years into her career, the entertainer was still scoring hits with such albums as 1998’s Bathhouse Betty and the televised special of her acclaimed Caesar’s Palace act “Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On” (HBO, 2010). As a film star, live performer and winner of Grammy, Emmy and Golden Globe awards, Midler was an entertainment icon of the highest order.

The Divine Miss M was born on Dec. 1, 1945 to a seamstress mother and housepainter father from Paterson, NJ. The couple had moved to Hawaii just prior to Midler’s birth, where her father landed a job at a Navy yard. The transplanted Jewish East Coasters were a bit of an oddity in the rural South Pacific sugar cane fields, but Midler developed a quick wit to combat her outsider status, winding up as a well-liked class clown and notorious performer. Along with two other girls, she formed a vocal trio that played school events and eventually began to book gigs entertaining at adult venues. As soon as the senior class president and valedictorian accepted her diploma in 1963, she headed right into the entertainment field, putting in a year in the Drama Department at the University of Hawaii before landing a small role in the film adaptation of James Michener’s “Hawaii” (1966).

Midler spent her first big paycheck on a move to New York City, where, after a short stint as a go-go dancer, she went to an open call for a national tour of “Fiddler on the Roof” and ended up in the Broadway cast, taking over the part of Tzeitel in February 1967 and staying with the role for three years. After a run as The Acid Queen in a Seattle Opera Association production of “Tommy,” Midler returned to New York, determined to focus on her singing career. After rave club reviews which took note of her powerful pipes, she was booked on all the top variety TV shows of the day. She took a 16-week engagement that electrified the towel-clad gay clientele of the Continental Baths, where Barry Manilow backed her on piano. It was at that time that the larger-than-life persona of ‘The Divine Miss M’ – and along with it, a loyal gay following – was born.

Atlantic Records signed Midler to a record deal and released her debut album, The Divine Miss M, in 1972. The bawdy, red-haired performer with the wide, toothy smile built her career on being outrageous, but also balanced the camp by interspersing a few tears for the human spirit amidst the sequins and fringes. Musically, her early work “nailed the nostalgia thing” with Andrews Sisters takeoffs – i.e. “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” – and 1960s girl group numbers, as well as including blues and show tunes in her broad musical spectrum. The album went gold and won her the Grammy for Best New Artist. Midler developed a larger version of her earlier cabaret revue and performed “Clams on the Halfshell” at the Palace Theater, earning a Special Tony Award in 1974. On a complete roll, she spent the next three years on national and international concert tours, wowing the gays and the straights who poured in to worship Ms. Divine.

Unfortunately, sales dropped off sharply for her third LP, Songs for the New Depression (1976), but she retained a loyal concert following and picked up her first Emmy as the star of “Bette Midler: Ol’ Red Hair Is Back” (NBC, 1977). She made her first impact as a film actress in Mark Rydell’s “The Rose” (1978), earning a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a high-strung, burned-out singer loosely based on Janis Joplin. The soundtrack LP went platinum in 1980, aided by the Top Ten title song which became a bona fide smash single. A Midler concert film and soundtrack entitled “Divine Madness” came out later that year, as did her first book, A View from a Broad, a humorous memoir of her first world tour. Midler was at the top of her game, but bad advice from her agent led her to take a screen role in the aptly named comedy “Jinxed!” (1982). She suffered greatly, warring with co-star Ken Wahl and director Don Siegel and ultimately serving as scapegoat when the picture flopped. The film’s failure followed her firing of her back-up singers the Harlettes, who successfully sued and later won a $2 million judgment. The twin debacles helped bring on a nervous breakdown, which kept her off the screen for four years, though she remained busy with concert work and TV specials.

Midler bounced back with a formidable focus on big screen comedies throughout the 1980s. Signed by Disney in 1986, she proved herself a deft, aggressive comedienne in a skein of profitable films, beginning with the bright satire “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” (1986) and continuing through the enjoyable if forgettable “Outrageous Fortune” (1987) and “Big Business” (1988), in which she and Lily Tomlin each played identical twins. Probably the best of her movies during this period was the clever black comedy “Ruthless People” (1986), which hilariously paired her with Danny DeVito as a thoroughly despicable couple. She formed her own production company, All Girl Productions, and made her first foray into producing with the moderately successful “Beaches” (1988), co-starring alongside Barbara Hershey as a charismatic New York cabaret performer in a tale of the lifelong bond between girlfriends. Bette also performed the film’s theme, “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” which became her first No. 1 hit, won a Grammy, and along with “The Rose,” became one of her two definitive numbers.

The studio, sensing it was on to something, cast her in two old-fashioned follow-up tearjerkers, but Jeffery Katzenberg’s wrong-headed passion for “Stella” (1990) earned Premiere magazine’s kiss of death: “A must to avoid.” She fared somewhat better in Rydell’s “For the Boys” (1992) as a World War II USO performer, a seemingly natural fit for Midler, based on her earlier success with the Andrews Sisters’ material. The picture revealed a flair for drama not really tapped since “The Rose” and earned Midler a second Best Actress Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe win, but audiences avoided the big-budget musical like the plague. She next teamed with Woody Allen to portray a married couple for Paul Mazursky’s “Scenes from a Mall” (1991), but it did not come close to Midler’s earlier comedic success. Her outlandish appearance as a long-deceased witch in Disney’s “Hocus Pocus” (1993), suggesting a return to the zany fare that made Midler a bankable movie star seven years earlier, could not save the ghoulish, effects-laden bomb that was deemed a discredit to Disney “family entertainment” by film critic Leonard Maltin.

The year 1993 marked Midler’s overdue return to live concert performances with “Experience the Divine,” which was capped by a record-breaking 30-night stand at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. That same year, she gave a tour-de-force performance as Mama Rose in a TV remake of the musical classic “Gypsy” (CBS), which earned her a second Golden Globe Award. Midler returned to big screen comedy full-force when teaming with Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn in Hugh Wilson’s “The First Wives’ Club” (1996), a film about women whose husbands have left them for younger beauties which – thanks to the collective star power of the threesome – became one of the surprise hits of the season. She also starred with Dennis Farina in “That Old Feeling” (1997), about a divorced couple whose romantic yearnings are rekindled at their daughter’s wedding, as well as returned to the mic to earn an Emmy for “Bette Midler – Diva Las Vegas” (HBO, 1997). She garnered another Emmy nomination for her guest turn as a secretary in the final episode of the long-running CBS series “Murphy Brown” (CBS, 1988-1998) in 1998, before kicking off the international “Divine Miss Millennium” tour the following year, welcoming in 2000 with a New Year’s Eve performance at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.

After a pair of box office failures with the Jacqueline Susann biopic “Isn’t She Great?” (2000) and the pallid comedy “Drowning Mona” (2000), Midler agreed to headline a sitcom in an effort to revive her acting career. In “Bette” (CBS, 2000-01), she played a variation of herself – a showbiz veteran juggling the demands of career, marriage and motherhood. Despite initially positive reviews, ratings were so-so and negative gossip about behind-the-scenes problems plagued the series’ image. After dabbling in the executive producer role when she helped bring “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” (2002) to the big screen, Midler reunited with former collaborator Barry Manilow to record Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook for Columbia Records. The album was a bit of a surprise hit and went gold, in addition to earning the pair a Grammy nod.

Midler spent the following year-plus back on the road with her “Kiss My Brass” concert tour and made a return to theaters in 2004 with her role as Bobbie Markowitz, a Jewish writer and recovering alcoholic in the remake of the cult classic “The Stepford Wives.” Midler and Manilow recreated their previous album success with 2005’s Bette Midler Sings the Peggy Lee Songbook and Midler returned to the studio in 2006 to record Cool Yule, a Grammy-nominated album of pop holiday classics. Helen Hunt lured Midler back to the big screen to star as her biological mother in Hunt’s pet project, the comedic drama “Then She Found Me” (2008). That same year, the 62-year-old powerhouse began a two-year run of “Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On” at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.

Midler appeared in theaters for a second time that year in an updating of George Cukor’s 1950s melodrama “The Women” (2008) co-starring with Meg Ryan, Annette Bening and Eva Mendes. Unfortunately, despite the star power of its all-female cast, the reinvention of “The Women” did little to improve upon the original and quickly disappeared from screens. Midler took part in a far more successful, if artistically less ambitious project two years later when she voiced the eponymous feline super villain in the family action-comedy “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore” (2010). Recognized for doing what she did best, “Bette Midler: The Showgirl Must Go On” (HBO, 2010) picked up an Emmy nomination the following year and the 2010 album Memories of You found Midler waxing nostalgic with a compilation of her lesser known standards. Beginning in 2011, Midler uncharacteristically stayed behinds the scenes as one of the producers on the Broadways production of the musical “Priscilla: Queen of the Desert” and went on to win the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.

By Susan Clarke

The above TCM overview can also be accessed on line here.

TCM Overview:

A cultured and debonair star with a mellifluous voice, actor Vincent Price developed a reputation portraying campy villains in a number of horror films. Though he began his career on the British stage, Price made his name as a supporting character player in noirs like “Laura” (1944), “The Long Night” (1947) and “The Bribe” (1949) before becoming inextricably tied to horror, thanks to his turn as the vengeance seeking wax sculptor in the classic “House of Wax” (1953). From there, he solidified his standing with “The Mad Magician” (1954) before appearing in mainstream studio fare like “While the City Sleeps” (1956) and “The Ten Commandments” (1956). After earning cult status with “The Fly” (1958) and its sequel “Return of the Fly” (1959), Price began a collaboration with low-budget producer Roger Corman on a series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, including “House of Usher” (1960), “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1961), and “The Raven” (1963). He hit a career low point with a pair of overly-campy James Bond spoofs, while revealing his role as the arch villain Egghead on “Batman” (ABC, 1966-68). Price wound down his career in the next decades using his distinctive voice in a number of projects, most notably Tim Burton’s stop-motion short “Vincent” (1982) and Michael Jackson’s seminal music video, “Thriller” (1983). Price made his final film appearance in Burton’s fantastical “Edward Scissorhands” (1990), before succumbing to lung cancer in 1993 and leaving behind a legacy forever entwined with the horror genre.

Born on May 27, 1911 in St. Louis, MO, Price was raised in a wealthy home by his father, Vincent, the president of a candy manufacturing company, and his mother, Marguerite. Price received a top-notch education, attending the private St. Louis Country Day School before earning bachelor degrees in history and language from Yale University. While attending the Ivy League school, he began to dabble in performing, particularly in Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. Price moved on to the University of London, where he studied history and studied art at the Courtald Institute. During his time in the British Isles, Price began to perform on stage professionally and made his stage debut in a production of “Chicago” at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. In 1935, he delivered a sterling performance as the Prince Regent in the Gate Theatre’s production of “Victoria Regina,” which made its way across the Atlantic for a triumphant performance on Broadway. Price’s success on stage soon led to a film career, starting with his debut in “Service De Luxe” (1938) and graduating to more prominent parts such as Raleigh in the costume drama “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex” (1939).

Price soon moved into playing the villain in several films and turned in strong performances in straight dramas, notably in Otto Preminger’s “Laura” (1944), opposite Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, and Anatole Litvak’s “The Long Night” (1947). Price continued to play the heavy in noirs like “The Web” (1947), “Rogue’s Regiment” (1948) and “The Bribe” (1949), before landing the lead role of a conman and expert forger in “The Baron of Arizona” (1950). Following supporting roles in “His Kind of Woman” (1951) and “The Las Vegas Story” (1952), Price became almost exclusively associated with the horror genre, thanks to his role as the revenge-driven sculptor in the 3-D classic of the macabre, “House of Wax” (1953), a film with which he was indelibly entwined for the rest of his career, and that led to starring roles in other horror pictures like “The Mad Magician” (1954). He next supported Victor Mature and Piper Laurie in the noir thriller “Dangerous Mission” (1954), and had a cameo as the real Casanova in the Bob Hope comedy “Casanova’s Big Night” (1954). After turns in Howard Hughes’ troubled production “Son of Sinbad” (1955) and Fritz Lang’s “While the City Sleeps” (1956), his theatrical flair was also put to good use as the villainous Baka in Cecil B. DeMille’s epic remake of his “The Ten Commandments” (1956), starring Charlton Heston and Yule Brynner.

While amassing a number of supporting roles in major pictures, Price continued to be a star in lower budget horror, and further cemented his stature in that genre as the scientist-turned-fly’s brother in the cult favorite “The Fly” (1958) and the sequel “Return of the Fly” (1959). He also appeared as an eccentric millionaire in the original version of “House on Haunted Hill” (1959), which was remade 40 years later. In the early 1960s, Price began appearing in movies produced by American International Pictures, a busy studio that specialized in churning out cheapie teen genre fare for drive-ins. He often worked with famed low-budget director Roger Corman, for whom he starred in a series of stylish gothic chillers loosely based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, including “House of Usher” (1960), “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1961), “The Raven” (1963), and “The Masque of the Red Death” (1964); AIP sometimes teamed Price with aging Hollywood icons Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone. He went on to appear in “Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine” (1965), an obvious spoof of the James Bond classic “Goldfinger” (1964), which spawned the dreadful sequel “Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs” (1966).

Price was also a fine arts collector, chef and lecturer of some note. He published books on art and cuisine, ranging fromDrawings of Delacroix (1962) to The Come Into the Kitchen Cook Book, (1969), co-authored with second wife Mary. From 1966-68, Price gleefully spoofed his onscreen image playing the villain Egghead on the camp series “Batman” (ABC, 1966-68), a role that he relished. Meanwhile, he broadened his horizons and made his Broadway musical debut in “Darling of the Day” (1968), before touring the United States and later the world in “Diversions and Delights,” his one-man play about Oscar Wilde. He continued to appear onscreen, of course, delivering classically campy turns in “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” (1971) and its sequel, “Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972). Price counted “Theatre of Blood” (1973) among his favorite credits, in which he played Edward Lionheart, a Shakespearean ham who exacts bloody vengeance on his critics by dispatching them in recreations of the Bard’s famous death scenes. He next starred in the British-made horror film “Madhouse” (1974) and stayed across the pond for the strange comedy “Percy’s Progress” (1974), about a man who undergoes the world’s first penis transplant.

Price next starred opposite Sam Waterston and Donald Pleasence in the thriller “Journey into Fear” (1975) and joined the all-star cast of the spoof “Scavenger Hunt” (1979), which featured an ensemble cast that included Tony Randall, Cloris Leachman, Roddy McDowall, James Coco and Ruth Gordon. In the late-1970s, Price found the horror movies were not as popular as they once were and began shifting toward more voiceover work, having already been noted for his rarified diction tinged with a hint of malice. He also found his career to be winding down just a bit, and thus made fewer appearances as he had in the past. In 1981, he began serving an eight-year stint as the urbane, gently sinister host of the PBS series “Mystery!” (1980-88), which showcased adaptations of famed horror stories. At the same time, he was contacted for his services by two self-avowed Vincent Price fans. First, Price was asked to narrate up-and-coming filmmaker Tim Burton’s stop-motion short, “Vincent” (1982), as well as supplied the spoken word narration for Michael Jackson’s landmark song and video “Thriller” (1983). He next appeared onscreen opposite old friend Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the horror spoof “House of the Long Shadows” (1983), and followed that with a turn in the over-the-top “Bloodbath at the House of Death” (1984).

Price provided the voice for the diabolical Professor Ratigan, the Dr. Moriarty-like villain of the Disney animated feature, “The Great Mouse Detective” (1986). His last major role in a feature was Mr. Maranov, the transplanted Russian nobleman who charms Bette Davis and Lillian Gish in Lindsay Anderson’s “The Whales of August” (1987). Price was a major influence on filmmaker Tim Burton, who idolized his screen persona as a child and led to the morbid adoration that was the subject of “Vincent.” Burton later cast him as the kindly old inventor who creates the titular “Edward Scissorhands” (1990), a role that was cut down in size because of Price’s worsening emphysema brought about by a lifetime of smoking cigarettes. The brief, but charming appearance proved to be Price’s last appearance on film. He later made an appearance on the small screen in the television movie “The Heart of Justice” (TNT, 1993), the very last time he was on any screen. Price eventually succumbed to lung cancer on Oct. 25, 1993. He was 82 years old.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed on line here.

New York Times obituary in 1989:

John Loder, an actor whose tenure of more than 30 years in British and American movies was credited largely to his good looks and his imposing physique, has died in England. He was 90 years old and had homes in London and Buenos Aires.

Mr. Loder, who died in late December, was born John Muir Lowe, in York, England. He was educated at Eton and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, England, and at Eton College. In World War I, he served with the 15th Hussars in North Africa, France and Gallipoli, Turkey. He was taken prisoner in early 1918. His 1977 autobiography was titled ”Hollywood Hussar.” Started as an Extra

His first film appearance was as an extra in a 1926 German feature, ”Madame Wants No Children,” which starred Marlene Dietrich.

Mr. Loder left Europe for Hollywood and had roles in Paramount’s first talking picture, ”The Doctor’s Secret,” in 1929. He was also in Rin-Tin-Tin’s first sound picture, in 1930.

Among the scores of British and American films he performed in were the 1937 British version of ”King Solomon’s Mines,” with Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Paul Robeson, Roland Young and Anna Lee, Alfred Hitchcock’s ”Sabotage” (1936), ”Eagle Squadron” (1942), ”Passage to Marseilles” (1944) and ”Lorna Doone” (1935), considered his best British movie. His last films included ”Gideon’s Day” (1958), ”Esquiu” (1965) and ”The Firechasers” (1970). Although he had a variety of roles, his specialty seemed to be the jilted husband. Noted Portrayals

Critics considered his best portrayals to be Ianto, the eldest son in ”How Green Was My Valley” (1941), and Elliott Livingston, opposite Bette Davis, in ”Now, Voyager” (1942).

Another significant Loder film was ”Dishonored Lady” (1947), in which he appeared with Hedy Lamarr, who became his third wife in 1943 and from whom he was divorced when they made the movie together. They had a son and daughter.

His other wives were Sophie Kabel, with whom he had a son; Micheline Cheirel, with whom he had a daughter; Evelyn Carolyn Auffmordt, and Alba Julia Lagomarsino, whom he married in 1958

Joan Crawford. Blackglama: What Becomes a Legend Most?

New York Times obituary in 1977:

Joan Crawford, who rose from waitress and chorus girl to become one of the great movie stars, died yesterday of a heart attack in her apartment at 158 Cast. 68th Street. She gave her age as 69, but some reference works list her as two to four years older.

Miss Crawford had been a director of the Pepsi‐Cola Company since the death of her fourth husband, Alfred N. Steele, the board chairman of the company, in 1959, but she had not been actively involved in the business in recent months.

A spokesman for Pepsi‐Cola said Miss Crawford had no history of cardiac trouble and had appeared to be in good health except for recent. complaints of hack pains.

Miss Crawford was a quintessential superstar—an epitome of timeless glamour who personified for decades the dreams and disappointments of millions of American women.

With a wind‐blown bob, mocking eyes and swirling short. skirt, she spun to stardom in 1928, frenziedly dancing the Charleston atop a table in the silent melodram,a Our Dancing Daughters.”

As a frivolous flapper she quickly made a series of spin‐offs, including “Our Modern Maidens,” “Laughing Sinners” and This Modern Age.” Endowed with a low voice, she easily made the transition to sound pictures and went on to become one of the more‐endurable movie queens.

Her career, a chorine‐to‐grande dame rise, with some setbacks, was due largely to determination, shrewd timing, flexibility, hard work and discipline.

Self‐educated and intensely professional, Miss Crawford studied and trained assiduously to learn her art. She made the most of her large blue eyes, wide mouth, broad shoulders and slim figure and eventually became an Oscar‐winning dramatic actress.

From Youth to Aged

In more than 80 movies, she adapted easily to changing times and tastes. When audiences began to tire of one image, she toiled to produce a new one. She made the changes with pace‐setting makeup, coiffures, costumes—and craftsmanship.

Exhibitors voted her one of the 10 top money‐making stars from 1932 through 1936, and in the late 1930’s she was one of the highest‐paid actresses. With a finely structured, photogenic face and highstyle gowns usually designed by Adrian, she idealized what many women wished to be.

In 1945, when her career seemed to be foundering, she rebounded as a doting mother and ambitious waitress who rises to wealthy restauranteur in “Mildred Pierce,” a role that won her an Academy Award as best actress.

‘A Script Stealer’

Despite the Cinderella‐type roles in many of her early movies, which many reviewers came to term “the Crawford formula,” she fought tenaciously for varied and challenging parts, just as she later fought to remain a great star, with what one writer called “the diligence of a ditchdigger.”

In her autobiography, “A Portrait of Joan,” written with Jane Kesner Ardmore and published in 1962 by Doubleday & Company Inc., she acknowledged that “I was always a script stealer,” which got her into “Our Dancing Daughters.” She boldly cajoled producers, directors and writers to gain good roles.

When Norma Shearer refused to play a mother in the 1940 drama “Susan and God,” Miss Crawford was offered the role. She responded, “I’d play Wally Beery’s grandmother if it’s a good part!”

Her major portrayals included a wanton stenographer in the star‐studded adaptation of Vicki Baum’s “Grand Hotel”; Sadie Thompson, W. Somerset Maugham’s vulgar but vulnerable prostitute, in “Rain”; Crystal, a husband‐stealing siren in Clare Soothe Luce’s satire “The Women”; scarred blackmailer in “A Woman’s Face”; a schizophrenic in “Possessed,” and the target of a homicidal husband in “Sudden Fear.”

Quarrels Publicized

With dedication and skill, she also made commercial successes of what many reviewers scored as inferior vehicles with implausible plots and synthetic dialogue. In 1962 she began a new career in the horror genre, with “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” co‐starring Bette Davis.

In later years, the indomitable Miss Crawford was involved in a number of publicized quarrels because of what some colleagues called her imperiousness, and her admitted bluntness toward actors that she regarded as incompetent, undisciplined or unprofessional.

She reveled in being a star and exhaustively cultivated her fan clubs and fans, predominantly women, with gifts and personally written notes—key efforts in maintaining their steadfast loyalty. She expressed delight in having “a hundred people clutching at my coat, clamoring for autographs.”

Life Imitated art in the late 1950’s when, between movies, she embarked on a career as a businesswoman—a representative‐in‐glamour for the Pepsi‐Cola Company.

Elected to Board

In 1955 she married Alfred N. Steele, the company’s board chairman and chief executive officer. Her previous marriages to three actors—Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Franchot Tone and Phillip Terry—had ended in divorce.

Mr. Steele logged more than 100.000 miles a year in revitalizing the soft‐drink company’s worldwide activities. She started traveling with him, flying to gala openings of new bottling plants and conventions and serving as hostess of parties on their trips, as well as in their spacious East Side Manhattan penthouse.

In 1959, two days after her husband died of a heart attack, she was elected the first woman director of the company’s board.

She made scores of national tours, promoting Pepsi‐Cola and her films. Accompanying her were large entourages and at least 15 trunks and suitcases for a wardrobe of up to 10 costume changes

In New York, Miss Crawford became a leading benefactor, fund ‐ raiser and honorary official for dozens of philanthropies, explaining to an interviewer in 1971, “I’ve been on the receiving end of so much good that I feel I have to give something back.”

Among her many honors were election as a fellow of Brandeis University and designation in 1965 as the first Woman of the Year by the United Service Organizations of New York for her qualities as “an actress, an executive, humanitarian.”

The actress had long wanted to have children, but, she wrote, she was plagued by miscarriages. She adopted four children: Christina, who also became an actress; Christopher, and Cynthia and Cathy, who were twins.

Of French and Irish descent, Miss Crawford was born Lucille LeSueur in San Antonio. She listed her birth date as March 23, 1908, but many reference works put it at two to four years earlier. Her parents, Thomas and Anna Johnson LeSueur, separated before her birth, and her mother soon married Henry Cassin, owner of a vaudeville theater in Lawton, Okla. She was known for years as Billie Cassin.

Quit Stephens College

Her youth was harsh. Her family, including her elder brother, Hal LeSueur, moved to Kansas City, Mo., about 1916. Her mother and stepfather soon separated and, from the age of 9, she had to work, first in a laundry, helping her mother, and then in two private schools, St. Agnes Academy and the Rockingham School, where she was the only working student, cooking, washing dishes, waiting on tables and making beds for 30 other youngsters. She did not object to working, she recalled, but to being treated as a slave.

Work prevented her from attending classes. The wife of Rockingham’s headmaster often punished her, with broomhandle floggings, she wrote, and falsified her records, which enabled her to enter Stephens College in Columbia, Mo., as a working student. After about three months, aware that she was not academically prepared, she withdrew.

Dancing was her main outlet, and in her early teens she won a Charleston contest in a Kansas City cafe, She worked as a salesgirl, pinching pennies for dancing lessons.

M.‐G.‐M. Screen Test

Vowing “to be the best dancer in the world,” she went to Chicago, where she danced and sang in a cafe, and then to Detroit, where J. J. Shubert, the producer, picked her from a nightclub chorus line to dance on Broadway in his 1924 revue “Innocent Eyes.”

Spotted by Harry Rapf, a talent scout for Metro‐Goldwyn‐Mayer, she was offered a screen test. Passing it, she signed a six‐month contract for $75 a week and, on Jan, 1, 1925, set out for Hollywood.

The freckle‐faced, 5‐foot‐4½‐inch‐tall dancer was a little plump, but soon slimmed down by daily jogging, decades before it was voguish.

She plunged into her movie apprenticeship as a chorus girl in “Pretty Ladies,” a Zasu Pitts comedy; an ingdnue in “Old Clothes” with Jackie Coogan, and a featured dancing role in “Sally, Irene and Mary.” she was voted a Wampas “baby star,” won a new contract and, because Lucille LeSueur was regarded as awkward to pronounce, was given the name Joan Crawford, the winning entry in a movie‐magazine contest.

She gained experience and billing playing opposite such actors as Lon Chaney, William Haines and John Gilbert, and rocketed to fame in “Our Dancing Daughters.” She passed the talking and singing test in 1929, in “Untamed,” co‐starring Robert Montgomery, and made eight movies over the years with Clark Gable, most of their box‐office hits. They included “Dancing Lady,” gliding with Fred Astaire in his movie debut, and “Strange Cargo.”

At M.‐G.‐M, Miss Crawford occasionally broke away from stereotyped casting and won acclaim for distinctive performances. But the best roles went to Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer, the wife of Irving G. Thalberg, the studio’s executive production manager. After the two actresses retired, Greer Garson got the plums. Frustrated by formula films, which she termed “undiluted hokum,” Miss Crawford asked Metro to drop her contract in 1942, and she left the studio after 17 years.

She joined Warner Brothers, but rejected scripts for more than two years until her triumphal return in “Mildred Pierce,” adapted from a mordant novel by James M. Cain.

Image Is Ageless

In this and many other movies, she showed. as Richard Schickel wrote in “The Stars,” published in 1962, a mastery “of what the trade knows as the ‘woman’s picture’,” in which “she suffers incredible agonies of the spirit in her attempts to achieve love and or success. The women suffer along with Miss Crawford, but are reassured by what they know of her own career, which clearly states that a woman can triumph in a man’s world.”

In her later career she projected a kind of ageless image. Her roles included the emotionally confused “Daisy Kenyon,” a carnival girl and convict in “Flamingo Road,” a shrew in “Harriet Craig,” a hoofer in “Torch Song,” a western ranchgang leader in “Johnny Guitar,” a lonely spinster who marries a psychotic youth in “Autumn Leaves” and many other vehicles of ordeal and anguish.

After “…Baby Jane,” Miss Crawford, tenaciously holding on to stardom, made a number of thrillers, some of them grisly, and appeared occasionally in television dramas and episodes. She long talked of going on the stage, but uncharacteristically said later that she lacked “the guts” to appear before a large live audience.

Imposed Discipline

In Hollywood she had determinedly improved herself, developing culture and polish. Her first marriage, to Douglas Fairbanks Jr., introduced her to the exotic social world of Pickfair, the home of Douglas Sr. and Mary Pickford. Franchot Tone helped her study classical drama and innovative acting techniques. Miss Crawford later described her marriages to them and to Phillip Terry as “dollhouse” unions. But her marriage to Mr. Steele, she said, gave her greater emotional stability than she had ever known.

Some interviewers wrote that she imposed her perfectionism on her four adopted children, being overly strict with them. To these assertions, she replied: “I’ve tried to provide my children with what I didn’t have: constructive discipline, a sense of security, a sense of sharing,” “Sloppiness has never been tolerated in our home, nor has rudeness,” and “They’re going into a world that isn’t easy, a world where unless you are selfsufficient and strong, you can be destroyed.”

Some years ago, leaving Manhattan’s “21” Club, she was greeted by a group of construction workers, one shouting, “Hey, Joanie!” She cordially shook hands with several of them. One surveyed her carefully and remarked: “They don’t make them like you anymore, baby.”

Miss Crawford is survived by her four children: Mrs. Cathy Lalonde, Mrs. Cynthia Jordan Crawford, Christina Crawford, and Christopher, and four grandchildren

IMDB entry:

Lucille LeSueur’s parents separated before she was born. By age 16 she had three different stepfathers, one of whom (a vaudeville theater manager) had given her the name Billie Cassin. By 1915 she, her brother Hal and their mother lived in Kansas City, and Billie worked in a laundry with her mother and also as a menial to pay school tuition. Winning an amateur dance contest in 1923 led to chorus work in Chicago, Detroit and New York. On New Year’s Day of 1925 she left for Hollywood. Before her second picture, a Photoplay contest led to the name Joan Crawford. With Our Dancing Daughters (1928) she became a star. She had a string of successes playing socialites or rags-to-riches shop girls, most notably as Crystal Allen in The Women (1939). She stayed with MGM for 18 years, signing with Warners in 1943. Mildred Pierce (1945) was a defining role and won her an Oscar.

After more than 70 films, she married Alfred Steele, chairman of the board of the Pepsi-Cola Co., a company with which she remained as a board member and spokesman after her husband’s fatal heart attack in 1959. In 1972 when the company’s executives saw no further use for her, they pushed her out. After that, she referred to the CEO as “Fang”.

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) brought new careers to both Crawford andBette Davis in 1962–although the two despised each other–but the ensuing roles were neither numerous nor flattering. Horrified by a photo taken of her in 1974, she retired completely, devoting herself to Christian Science and the increasing use of vodka. Her four adopted children received little from her $2-million estate: $77,500 each for Cathy and Cindy, nothing for Christopher or Christina Crawford “for reasons best known to them”.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Ed Stephan <stephan@cc.wwu.edu>

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Wikipedia entry:

Al Corley (born May 22, 1956 in Wichita, Kansas) is an American actor, singer and producer. In the late 1970s, he worked as a doorman at Studio 54. He would later appear in a VH1 Behind the Music special on Studio 54 to recount his experiences.

Corley is best known as the first actor to play Steven Carrington on the 1980s soap opera Dynasty. After that, Corley acted in 14 movies, then produced five. Corley left Dynasty at the end of the second season in 1982^[1]^[2] after complaining about Steven’s “ever-shifting sexual preferences”^[3] and wanting “to do other things”.^[2] The character was recast in 1983 with Jack Coleman; the change in appearance attributed to plastic surgery after an oil rig explosion.^[1]^[2] Coleman remained on the show until 1988, but Corley returned to the role of Steven for the 1991 miniseries Dynasty: The Reunion when Coleman was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts.^[3]

He was also known as a singer in the 1980s. His 1984 new wave single “Square Rooms“, from his debut album of the same name became a number one hit in France (in 1985), also reaching No. 6 in Switzerland, No. 12 in Italy (in 1985), No. 13 in Germany, No. 15 in Austria and No. 80 in the U.S. The same year, he released “Cold Dresses”, which was also a big hit in France, reaching No. 5. His second album, Riot of Color was released in 1986, and a third album, Big Picture followed in 1988.

He was married in 1989 to actress Jessika Cardinahl. They have three children: Sophie Elena, Ruby Cardinahl and Clyde Nikolai Corley. Before his marriage, he had a brief romance with pop star Carly Simon. It was Corley (with his back to the camera) that appeared with Simon on the cover art shot for her 1981 album Torch.

He resides in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles.

The above Wikipedia entry can also be accessed online here.

Wikipedia entry:

James Timothy “Tim” Daly (born March 1, 1956) is an American stage, screen and voice actor, director and producer. He is best known for his television role as Joe Hackett on theNBC sitcom Wings and for his voice role as Superman/Clark Kent in Superman: The Animated Series, as well as his recurring role of the drug-addicted screenwriter J.T. Dolan on The Sopranos for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award. He starred as Pete Wilder on Private Practice from 2007 to 2012.

Daly was born in New York City,^[1] the only son and youngest child of actors James Daly and Mary Hope Newell.^[He is the younger brother of actress Tyne Daly, who is 10 years his senior, and is a brother-in-law of television and film composer Mark Snow.^[3] He has two other sisters, Mary Glynn (Snow’s wife)^[4] and Pegeen Michael. He is of part Irish ancestry. Daly attended The Putney School,^[5] where he started to study acting.

Daly began his professional career while a student at Vermont‘s Bennington College, where he studied theatre and literature, in which he now holds a Bachelor of Arts,^]and acted in summer stock. He graduated from college in 1979 and returned to New York to continue studying acting and singing.

Daly debuted on stage when he was seven years old in Jenny Kissed Me by Jean Kerr, together with his parents and two sisters. He appeared for the first time on TV when he was 10 years old in an American Playhouse adaptation of An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen, which starred his father James Daly. He dreamed about a sports or music career and also considered becoming a doctor or a lawyer, but finally decided to become an actor. Daly started his professional acting career when he appeared in a 1978 adaptation of Peter Shaffer‘s play Equus.

His first leading film role was in the film Diner, directed by Barry Levinson, in which he shared screen time with actors including Kevin Bacon and Mickey Rourke. Starring roles soon followed in Alan Rudolph‘s feature, Made in Heaven, the American Playhouse production of The Rise & Rise of Daniel Rocket, and the CBS dramatic series, Almost Grown created by David Chase.

In theatre he has starred in the Broadway production of Coastal Disturbances by playwright Tina Howe opposite Annette Bening and received a 1987 Theatre World Award for his performance. He has also starred in Oliver, Oliver at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Mass Appeal by Bill C. Davis and Bus Stop by William Inge at Trinity Square Repertory, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams at the Santa Fe Festival Theatre, A Knife in the Heart and A Study in Scarlet at the Williamstown Playhouse, and Paris Bound at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. During this time, Daly also starred in the CBS television miniseries I’ll Take Manhattan as Toby Amberville.

Daly describes himself as being highly self-critical in regards to his career. In an interview with New Zealand ‘ZM’ radio personality Polly Gillespie Tim was quoted to say “I think part of it (his self-critical nature) is passed down to me from my parents who are actors. The theatre was our temple… When you entered you were expected to live up to the example of this glorious place.”

The above Wikipedia entry can also be accessed online here

Philip Friend

From “Answers” :

British actor Philip Friend made his stage bow in 1935 and his film debut in 1939, after which he settled into his peculiar niche as the bargain-counter Errol Flynn. The titles of Friend’s English and American films pretty much tell the whole story: Sword in the Desert (1949), Buccaneer’s Girl (1950), The Story of Robin Hood (1958). Friend was cast in the potentially star-making title role in The Highwayman (1951), based on the famed Alfred Noyes narrative poem. Alas, this movie barely moved until the last five minutes–just long enough for Friend and leading lady Wanda Hendrix to get killed off and then reappear as ghosts. Philip Friend was active in movies, TV and Broadway until the ’70s, always one tiny step away from true stardom. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

IMDB entry:

A professional singer at the age of three, Mel Torme was a genuine musical prodigy. As a teenager, he played the drums in Chico Marx‘s band and earned the nickname “The Velvet Fog” because of his smooth, mellow high baritone voice. In the 1940s, he formed his own group, the Mel-Tones, one of the first jazz-influenced vocal groups. As a solo musician, he had a number one hit in 1949 called “Careless Love” and several lesser hits. He also acted in films and wrote several books, including biographies of Judy Garland and Buddy Rich. Torme’s career included some songwriting, too. One of his most well-known compositions, “The Christmas Song”, was written in midsummer as Torme relaxed by the pool.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Sujit R. VarmaT

Tom Vallance’s obituary of Mel Torme in “The Independent”:

SINGER, ACTOR, writer, composer, arranger, drummer and pianist, Mel Torme was extraordinarily versatile, but he will primarily be remembered as one of the supreme popular vocalists of this century, a superb song stylist equally persuasive handling tender love-songs, swinging rhythm numbers or giving a cool jazz sound to the best of popular song.

As a singer, his name ranks in the top echelon along with Crosby and Sinatra, but he excelled them when it came to jazz stylings, particularly with the series of superb recordings he made with arranger Marty Paich starting in the mid-Fifties. As a composer, his best-known work, “The Christmas Song” (“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire . . .”), is a perennial favourite, and his books include a novel, a biography of the drummer Buddy Rich and his own autobiography, It Wasn’t All Velvet. That title is an oblique reference to the label given him by the disc jockey Fred Robbins, “The Velvet Fog”, an attempt to sum up the warm, mellow timbre that gave Torme’s voice its unmistakable individuality.

Torme (his surname originally had no accent) was born in Chicago in 1925, to Russian-Jewish immigrants. His father was a grocer, but Mel’s musical talents were promoted by his mother, who demonstrated sheet-music in Woolworth’s and taught her young son new songs as they came out. He later cited as other influences the radio, to which he was “addicted”, and the woman who used to look after him during the week but played barrel-house piano with an all-girl band at weekends.

At the age of four, Torme made his singing debut with the Coon-Sanders Orchestra at the Blackhawk Restaurant for $15 a session. It was while seated on the drummer Carlton Coon’s knee that Torme decided he also wanted to play the drums. By the age of six, he was a regular vaudeville performer at weekends, his income helping support the family during the worst of the Depression, and until his voice changed he was one of the busiest child actors on radio.

The youngster’s two greatest enthusiasms were movies and swing music, particularly that of Duke Ellington. At Hyde Park School in Chicago he played drums in the school band, and at 15 composed his first song, the Ellingtonian “Lament for Love”, which became a hit in 1941 when recorded by Harry James. Torme (he had now added an accent) left high school in 1942 when the veteran bandleader Ben Pollack offered him a job drumming and singing with the Chico Marx band (actually formed and led by Pollack). The following year he made his screen debut in Higher and Higher.

Though primarily a showcase for the new crooner teenagers were swooning over, Frank Sinatra (already regarded by Torme as “the best singer in the world”), the film featured Torme in several numbers including a lively duet with Marcy McGuire, “Minuet in Boogie”. For his next film, Pardon My Rhythm (1944), Torme wrote two of the songs as well as playing the drummer boyfriend of teenage soprano Gloria Jean.

It was a time when vocal groups were extremely popular, and Pollack told Torme he had found a quartet of college graduates, the Schoolkids, who needed a lead-singer and arranger. Impressed by the talents of the four singers (Sheldon Disruhd, Betty Beveridge, Ginny O’Connor and Bernie Parke), Torme fashioned them, with himself as lead vocalist, into one of the finest groups of the time, the Mel-Tones, inspired by the pioneering work in group harmonies already done by the Modernaires, Six Hits and a Miss and Kay Thompson. “I patterned the group after a saxophone section,” said Torme, “with two altos (the girls), two tenors (Bernie and myself) and a baritone (Sheldon).” When Disruhd was drafted into the army, singer- arranger Les Baxter replaced him, and the team appeared on screen with Torme in his next film, Let’s Go Steady (1945), which had songs by Torme and co-starred June Preisser.

In 1946 Torme had small roles in two movies, Night and Day and Janie Gets Married, while with the Mel-Tones he filled a heavy schedule of radio and armed services appearances. During a brief period with Decca records in 1945 the Mel-Tones cut two sides with Bing Crosby, but it was their 1946 period with Musicraft that produced their finest recording work, including their classic version of “What is This Thing Called Love?” with Artie Shaw’s orchestra, hailed as “ahead of its time” by Orchestra World. “What made the record a stand-out,” said Torme later, “were the advanced harmonies, the originality of singing backgrounds to instrumental solos and the overall hard-swinging sound.”

Another of Torme’s outstanding arrangements was “It Happened in Monterey”, for which he wrote special lyrics and effectively used “Ramona” (a song by the same composer, Mabel Wayne, and with the same chord structure) as counter-melody. At the end of the year the group, which appealed to connoisseurs more than the general public, disbanded and Torme went solo.

Signed by MGM, he made his best film, Charles Walters’s musical Good News (1947), in which as one of the collegiates attending Tait College he sang “The Best Things in Life are Free” and was part of the ensemble numbers “He’s a Ladies’ Man” and “Lucky in Love” – his solo of “Just Imagine” was cut from the final print. In Words and Music (1948), the film biography of Rodgers and Hart, he sang “Blue Moon” – he was originally also scheduled to duet “Mountain Greenery” with June Allyson but the number was instead performed by Perry Como and Allyn McLerie.

“Blue Moon” was to become Torme’s first solo record hit, reaching second place in the Hit Parade, and it started Torme’s “Velvet Fog” period in which he was a favourite of teenagers. “I spent most of the Fifties getting over the `Velvet Fog’ image,” he later said.

As a composer he had formed a fruitful partnership with ex-drummer Robert Wells. Their evocative “Christmas Song” was recorded by Nat “King” Cole in 1946 and subsequently by virtually every top singer including Sinatra and Crosby. Other songs included “A Stranger in Town” and “Born to be Blue”, while for Disney’s 1948 film So Dear To My Heart they successfully conceived an extended narrative paean to rural pleasures, the eight-minute “County Fair”. This piece was a precursor to a 35-minute tone poem written by Torme alone in 1949, “California Suite”, which became Capitol Records’ first long-playing album when recorded by Torme with the Mel-Tones and Peggy Lee (as “Susan Melton”).

Although his records were a hit with teenagers and disc-jockeys, Torme’s debut at the Copacabana night-club in New York was disastrous, his youth and self-confidence alienating the elderly patrons. “I sang Harold Arlen’s `Ill Wind’ and a lot of other high-class material,” he said later. “I thought I was going to kill those people and I was greeted with ennui.” The columnist Dorothy Killgallen called him “an egotistical little amateur” and other reviews were equally unkind. The singer later confessed that he was never one to proclaim false modesty or downgrade his talents. (The comments in his autobiography about his former wife, the British actress Janette Scott and her mother Thora Hird would certainly win him no awards for gallantry.) “All my wives have been beautiful,” he once said, “but I’m bad at picking women who are good for me.”

Though the early Fifties were productive – records for Capitol, numerous personal appearances, his own television show mixing music and interviews (“one of the first chat shows”, he said later), his career musically went into highest gear in 1955 when he signed with a new jazz label, Bethlehem Records, and was told to choose his own material and arrangers.

This was a golden age for lovers of popular music, the long-playing album having transformed the record industry. Classic albums like Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours, Peggy Lee’s Black Coffee and Ella Fitzgerald’s Song Books were being made.

Just as Sinatra had discovered the perfect arranger for his style in Nelson Riddle, Torme discovered Marty Paich, who had been writing for Shelley Manne’s small jazz group. “They were jazz charts for horns, but rich in content and ideas. I had a strong idea he would be a masterful writer for strings and woodwinds.” The album It’s a Blue World, with Paich one of five arrangers, was released on Torme’s 30th birthday and was followed by an even better set, the first wholly Torme-Paich album, entitled Mel Torme and the Marty Paich Dek-tette (“a 10-man combo patterned after the Gerry Mulligan Tentet and the early Miles Davis nonet sides”).

One of its numbers, “Lulu’s Back in Town”, with an introduction composed by Torme (“You’ve heard about Margie . . .”), was to become one of the singer’s trademark songs, along with “Blue Moon” and “Mountain Greenery”. The last-named song had been part of Torme’s programme when he appeared at the Crescendo Club in Los Angeles in 1954. His performance had been recorded live by Coral Records and in mid-1956 it was issued in Britain. The disc jockey Alan Dell played “Mountain Greenery” to tremendous audience response, the track was quickly issued as a single and it shot to No 1 on the Hit Parade. Coming to Britain, Torme made a successful tour of the country, topped the bill at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London for two weeks, and made records with Ted Heath, Cyril Stapleton and Roland Shaw.

The following year Torme made his acting debut on television with an acclaimed performance as Mickey Rooney’s brother in Rod Serling’s The Comedian, directed by John Frankenheimer, and he recorded another album with the Paich Dek-tette, Mel Torme Sings Fred Astaire. When the Bethlehem label went out of business, the Torme-Paich collaboration continued on other labels – for Tops they made Prelude to a Kiss, on which Torme provided linking dialogue between the songs, which included Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s “Something to Live For”, and for Verve they made three superb sets: Torme, which included such neglected gems as “Gloomy Sunday” and “The House is Haunted” and an eight-minute arrangement of Arlen and Mercer’s “Blues in the Night” that transforms the number into a rhapsodic tone-poem; Back in Town, which reunited Torme with the Mel-Tones in the clarity of stereo recording; and Mel Torme Swings Shubert Alley.

These albums demonstrate that cool jazz need not necessarily be cold, ballads such as the wistful “Nobody’s Heart” being immensely moving without becoming mawkish. Torme was, wrote the music critic Will Friedwald, “a perfect example of what a jazz-derived pop singer should be . . . His ability to breathe life into the words of a song rivals anyone this side of Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra.”

In 1963 Torme was asked to work on Judy Garland’s television series, writing special material, selecting songs and occasionally performing. The traumatic events that followed became the subject of a book by Torme, The Other Side of the Rainbow (1970). Torme’s other books included a western, Dollarhide (1955, written under the assumed name Wesley Butler Wyatt and later adapted by Torme as an episode of the television series The Virginian), a novel about a singer, Wynner (1985), his autobiography It Wasn’t All Velvet (1988) and Traps (1991), a biography of his great friend the late drummer Buddy Rich. In 1978 the two men had made an album, Together Again – For the First Time, but the most productive partnership that Torme had in later years was with the pianist George Shearing.

In 1982 the couple were recorded live at a concert and the resulting record won Torme a Grammy Award as Best Male Jazz Vocalist. The following year their next album, Top Drawer, won Torme the award for a second time and further albums followed, most of them displaying the Torme voice as rich as ever, his phrasing as persuasive, his sense of pitch and rhythm as sharp. Shearing’s eloquent piano was particularly appropriate on such ballads as “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” and “The Folks Who Live on the Hill”.

In 1975 Bing Crosby was asked by a disc jockey whose records he would want to have on a desert island. Along with jazz musicians, Crosby mentioned just one vocalist – Torme; adding, “Any singer that goes to hear this guy sing has got to go and cut his throat. He’s the best musical performer I’ve ever seen.” Torme himself told the jazz critic Whitney Balliett 11 years ago: “I’m a dogged perfectionist with a desperate desire to be super- professional. Do I dare say I finally am?”

Melvin Howard Torme (Mel Torme), singer, songwriter, actor, composer, pianist, drummer and arranger: born Chicago 13 September 1925; four times married (two sons, three daughters); died Los Angeles 5 June 1999.

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

TCM Overview:

The distinguished career of stage and screen veteran Kate Nelligan was graced by creative highs and accolades. An actress whose range encompassed both roles of passion and harsh resolve, the Canadian native made her way to the illustrious stages of England before taking aim at the equally impressive stages on Broadway. From the stark drama of David Hare’s “Plenty” to the silver screen whimsy of “Frankie and Johnny” (1991), Nelligan’s career was a testament to the actress’ ability to diversify her talents while successfully avoiding the punishment of being typecast.

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Bette Midler

Vincent Price

John Loder

New York Times obituary in 1989:

Joan Crawford

New York Times obituary in 1977:

Al Corley

Timothy Daly

Phillip Friend

Mel Torme

Kate Nelligan

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