Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 40 of 128

Leonid Kinskey

Tom Vallance’s “Independent” obituary:

ONE OF Hollywood’s most distinctive character actors, often known as “The Mad Russian”, Leonid Kinskey was a lanky, shock-haired eccentric with a wrinkled brow and wide grin who specialised in comic continentals with fractured English and manic enthusiasm. Among his most memorable portrayals were the barman who effusively kisses Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, the gigolo who takes Betty Grable on the town in Down Argentine Way and one of the unworldly professors in Ball of Fire. Occasionally he would be cast in less genial roles, and was chillingly effective as the oily informer in Algiers and a snivelling coward in So Ends Our Night.

Though his countrymen often assumed that he was American (“When I played Russians in the movies they made me so exaggerated no real Russian would believe me”), Kinskey was actually born in St Petersburg in 1903. Sent out of Russia by his mother at 17 – “I belonged to a group of people that was not wanted after the Revolution” – he toured South America as a mime with the acclaimed Firebird Theatre, which specialised in bringing famous paintings to life through mime and dance.

When the company flopped in New York, Kinskey found himself stranded with no money or knowledge of English. He worked as a waiter in Manhattan then managed to get a role in a silent film, The Great Deception (1926), starring Aileen Pringle and Ben Lyon, but when most of his part was cut out he found work in Chicago running a theatre-restaurant with a Russian theme. After the stock market crash caused the restaurant to close, Al Jolson hired Kinskey to appear in the touring version of his show Wonder Bar.

While it was playing in Hollywood, Kinskey was spotted by the director Ernst Lubitsch, who signed him for a brief cameo as a Russian peasant in the exquisite comedy Trouble in Paradise (1932). It was an exaggerated portrayal of an agitated radical who repeatedly exclaims “Phooey” to socialite Kay Francis, who is reassured by her lover Herbert Marshall that “his phooey is less than his bite”, and it set the pattern for many of his later roles caricaturing foreigners, such as his delightfully eccentric composer in On Your Toes (1939).

His own favourite role was in the Bing Crosby musical Rhythm on the Range (1936) in which Kinskey bizarrely took part in introducing the song standard, “I’m An Old Cowhand”. Other films in which he featured include Duck Soup (1933), We Live Again (1934, another serious role as a murder victim), Les Miserables (1935), The Merry Widow (1935), 100 Men and a Girl (1937), The Great Waltz (1938), Flirting with Fate (1938), in which he and comic Joe F. Brown duetted on “Sweet Adeline”), That Night in Rio (1941) and Can’t Help Singing (1944), in which he was one of a pair of bumbling confidence tricksters attempting to swindle Deanna Durbin.

Kinskey was one of the last surviving members of the cast of the enduring classic Casablanca (1942). He claimed that Bogart got him the role of Sacha the bartender after the original actor Leon Mostovoy was fired for lacking the requisite humour. “We used to drink together, Bogart, Ralph Bellamy and myself at Mischa Auer’s house at least three times a week,” said Kinskey:

We were all good drinkers. Ralph Bellamy was a good-looking guy. We thought he was the one who was going to be a star. And I said to myself about Bogart, “He’s short, he speaks with a lisp. And he’s not a good- looking guy so what chance does he have?” When Bogart asked me to be in Casablanca, I knew I was replacing an actor who had been thought too heavy, speechwise, and they wanted something very light.

In a memorable scene Kinskey as Sacha is so moved by Bogart’s arranging a passport for a young couple desperate to leave that he kisses Bogart on both cheeks as he exclaims, “Boss, you did a wonderful thing” to which Bogart responds, “Get away from me!”

Kinskey appeared in over 70 films. He supplemented his income by writing articles and short stories for Russian publications. During the Second World War he worked with the Soviets in choosing Hollywood movies for showing in the USSR. A television show he did in 1948 called The Spotlight Club is allegedly the first situation comedy ever on television.

Kinskey was also a regular on Jackie Cooper’s television series The People’s Choice in the Fifties, and made appearances on the shows of Ann Sothern, Spike Jones and others, but he refused to do commercials. A man of strong principles, he was featured in the pilot of Hogan’s Heroes, a comedy series about the Second World War, but declined to sign for the series, stating, “The premise was to me both false and offensive. Nazis were seldom dumb and never funny.”

Kinskey married his late wife Iphigenia Castiglioni four times. “It started in Mexico City,” said Kinskey, “and then over 20 years of our happy marriage we celebrated every five years by taking a new marriage licence in a different country.” Castiglioni, a Viennese beauty who died in 1963, was also in movies – she played Empress Eugenie in both The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936) and Maytime (1937) and was the Bird Woman in Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).

When movie roles dried up (his last was in Glory, 1956), Kinskey wrote and directed industrial films for major corporations. “To dramatise a machine or product requires a great deal more ingenuity to keep it going than a well-written scene played by able actors,” he stated. The man whom columnist Louella Parsons once called “the maddest Russian on land or sea” also frequently travelled to Palm Springs to visit old friends from Hollywood’s Russian colony.

Tom Vallance

Leonid Kinskey, actor: born St Petersburg, Russia 18 April 1903; married three times, first Iphigenia Castiglioni (died 1963), third Tina York; died Fountain Hills, Arizona 8 September 1998.

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

Molly Bee

Molly Bee’s obituary in “The Los Angeles Times” in 2009.

VALERIE J. NELSON

Entertainment Television Death Family Obituaries

Molly Bee, a country singer popular in the 1950s and 1960s who was a teenage star on television’s “Hometown Jamboree” and “The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show,” has died. She was 69.

FOR THE RECORD: Molly Bee obituary: The obituary of country singer Molly Bee in the Feb. 11 California section said the show “Hometown Jamboree” aired on KTLA-TV Channel 5 from the late 1940s to 1960. “Hometown Jamboree” aired on Channel 13, then KLAC-TV, from 1949 through 1954 and KTLA from 1955 to 1956. The article also said she spent her early years in Beltbuckle, Tenn. The town is Bell Buckle.

Bee, who lived in Carlsbad, Calif., died Saturday of complications related to a stroke at Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, said Michael Allen, her son. At 10, she sang “Lovesick Blues” for country singer Rex Allen and soon debuted on his radio show. Within two years, she was a regular on “Hometown Jamboree,” a Los Angeles-based show run by Cliffie Stone, who helped popularize country music in California. First broadcast on radio, “Jamboree” aired on KTLA-TV Channel 5 from the late 1940s to 1960. The show gave a big break to many young singers, including Tommy Sands, who became a teen idol and dated Bee in the 1950s. “She had a great voice and a wonderful stage personality,” Sands told The Times on Monday. “She was a sweet person, just terrific.” When she was 13, Bee signed with Capitol Records and had her first major recording success with “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” in 1952. The next year, she recorded a duet with Ford, “Don’t Start Courtin’ in a Hot Rod Ford.” In 1954, Bee left the children’s TV program “The Pinky Lee Show” to join Ford’s daytime variety show.

Before their performance of “Dim Lights Thick Smoke,” Ford teased her about the pigtails she once wore and praised her “silver bell voice.” He then coaxed her to yodel, a skill she had honed on the Beltbuckle, Tenn., farm where she spent her early years.

Born Mollie Gene Beachboard on Aug. 18, 1939, in Oklahoma City, she moved to Tucson in the 1940s and to Los Angeles when she was 11. She graduated from Hollywood Professional High School. As her career took off, Bee appeared on a number of TV variety shows and had more hit singles, including “Young Romance,” “Don’t Look Back” and “5 Points of a Star.” In the 1960s, she turned toward acting, appearing in several stage musicals and films but once said she was “too shy” to embrace acting. Her films included “Chartroose Caboose” (1960) and “The Young Swingers” (1963). Bee regularly headlined in the 1960s at major Las Vegas showrooms and briefly toured with Bob Hope’s USO troupe. She struggled with drug addiction and took several years away from performing to rebuild her life, biographical sources said. “I’ve done it all and lived to tell about it,” Bee once said. “Mine has been like six lifetimes rolled into one.”

Married at least five times, she called herself “the Zsa Zsa Gabor of the country music set.” Her marriage to country singer Ira Allen lasted 10 years. Through her children, she found equilibrium, she said in 1975 in Country Song Roundup magazine. Bee reconnected with Stone, made two more albums and often toured with her two daughters in tow. Eventually, she moved to Oceanside with her family in 1986 and regularly performed in the early 1990s at a local restaurant and nightclub she ran called Molly Bee’s. Most recently, she used the name Molly Muncy offstage.

In addition to her son Michael of Napa, Calif., Bee is survived by daughters Lia Genn of Winchester, Calif., and Bobbi Carey of Oceanside; brother Robert Beachboard of Escondido; and four grandchildren.

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

A celebration of Bee’s life will be held at 3 p.m. Monday at El Camino Memorial Chapel, 340 Melrose Ave., Encinitas.

Instead of flowers, the family suggests donating to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital,www.stjude.org.

valerie.nelson@latimes.com

Hilda Plowright

Hilda Plowright was born on November 29, 1890 in Swaffham, Norfolk, England. She was an actress, known for Summer Magic (1963), 36 Hours (1965) and Partners of the Plains(1938). She died on October 9, 1973 in San Diego, California, USA.

Michelle O’Donnell’s obituary in 2005 in “The New York Times”:

John Fiedler, who played character roles in celebrated dramas on Broadway and in Hollywood but gained lasting fame among young audiences as the voice of Piglet in Walt Disney’s Winnie-the-Pooh films, died on Saturday. He was 80.

His death was confirmed by his brother, James.

Mr. Fiedler had appeared in the Broadway production of “A Raisin in the Sun” and had played a juror on film in the drama “Twelve Angry Men” when, in the 1960’s, his voice earned him the role of Piglet, the kind-hearted worrier who is Winnie-the-Pooh’s best friend.

“Walt Disney heard it on a program and said, ‘That’s Piglet,’ ” James Fiedler recalled.

John Fiedler’s natural speaking voice was higher than most men’s, his brother said, but he still had to raise it considerably to achieve the high-pitch of the little pink pig. Mr. Fiedler continued to play this part in later life, most recently this year in “Pooh’s Heffalump Movie”; last year, he did “Winnie-the-Pooh: Springtime with Roo,” and in 2003, “Piglet’s Big Movie.”

John Donald Fiedler was born Feb. 3, 1925 in Platteville, a small town in southwestern Wisconsin, and was the oldest of three children born to Donald and Margaret Fiedler. When he was 5, his father, a salesman, moved the family to Shorewood, a suburb of Milwaukee.

There, John’s love of acting bloomed, his brother said. He staged productions in the family’s garage and cast them with neighborhood children.

He graduated from Shorewood High School in 1943 and enlisted in the United States Navy, serving stateside until World War II’s end. He made his way to New York City the following year, his brother said, and joined the Neighborhood Playhouse.

In 1954, he landed the part of Medvedenko in “The Sea Gull” starring Montgomery Clift and Judith Evelyn Off Broadway at the Phoenix Theater. That was followed by the Broadway productions of “A Raisin in the Sun” with Sidney Poitier and “The Odd Couple” starring Walter Matthau and Art Carney. Many of his characters had meek demeanors that were belied by a tough, even mean streak.

He landed character parts in movies, including “True Grit” with John Wayne and “A Touch of Mink” with Cary Grant. In addition, he played parts on television series, including “Star Trek” and “The Bob Newhart Show,” in which he was Mr. Peterson, the bashful patient who was always henpecked by his wife.

Mr. Fiedler said that his brother approached the part of Piglet with as much enthusiasm as his other roles, as it was simply a chance to act.

In addition to his brother, who lives in Madison, Wis., Mr. Fiedler is survived by a sister, Mary Dean of Milwaukee, and numerous nieces and nephews.

Correction: Monday, June 27:

An obituary yesterday about John Fiedler, an actor who was the voice of Piglet in Disney’s Winnie-the-Pooh films, misstated the title of another movie in which he appeared. It was “That Touch of Mink,” not “A Touch

The above “New York Times” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Nancy Guild

Tom Vallance’s obituary in “The Independent”:

THE IMPACT of Lauren Bacall on the cinema of the Forties was such that several young actresses were styled by rival studios to approximate the Bacall personality. The most successful was Lizabeth Scott at Paramount, but, though 20th Century-Fox’s answer, Nancy Guild, made only a handful of films before retirement and made comparatively little impact, she acquired a number of admirers and is fondly remembered by filmgoers of the time for her insouciant charm. Ironically, it was actually her resemblance to one of Fox’s own top stars, Gene Tierney, that first attracted the attention of the studio head, Darryl F. Zanuck.

Born in Hollywood, Los Angeles, in 1925, Guild was a student at the University of Arizona with no previous acting experience when Zanuck saw her photograph on the cover of Life magazine (part of a layout on campus fashions) and decided to sign her to a contract. After a considerable period of training and publicity, she was given a leading role in Somewhere in the Night (1946), an intriguing thriller directed and co-written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

It was his second film as a director, and Guild later recalled the close collaboration between the director and his editor James Clark. “Joe was smart enough to know that he didn’t know enough about editing. He had Clark on the set every day to pick his [Clark’s] brains, and he really listened.”

Somewhere in the Night was part of the film noir cycle popular at the time, its amnesiac hero journeying through the seedier parts of Los Angeles in his quest to discover his identity and his possible link with a murder. Guild played a night-club singer who aids the hero in his quest and falls in love with him. She said later that Mankiewicz had lunch with her every day throughout the shooting and drew from her every detail of her life story, which he would use when preparing her for difficult scenes. “I never would have stayed in the picture if it hadn’t been for Joe,” she said, “because he really fed me every line.”

Mankiewicz was a notorious ladies’ man who had already had affairs with the Fox girls Linda Darnell and Gene Tierney, but Guild said that although she had a “wild, mad crush on him” their relationship was platonic:

He kissed me once, but there was nothing sexual about our relationship. He treated me like an intelligent woman instead of someone who was predominantly attractive. I think maybe he required attention from a younger woman with whom he could be professorial and pedantic. He asked me out a number of times, but I said “What about your wife?”

Guild was less enthusiastic about her leading man, John Hodiak, whom she found “very cold”, and the lack of chemistry between the two leads worked to the film’s detriment.

Fox centred much of the film’s advertising around their new star: “Meet that Guild girl – she rhymes with wild!” was their slogan. Variety commented: “There’s no quarrel with her performance as a newcomer but it carbon-copies too many other film lookers to stand out individually.”

Guild was next cast in John Brahm’s The Brasher Doubloon (1947), an underrated adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s thriller The High Window. It had the misfortune to be released after two superb Chandler adaptations, Edward Dmytryk’s Farewell My Lovely (1944) with Dick Powell and Claire Trevor, and Howard Hawks’s The Big Sleep (1946) with Bogart and Bacall, and the two leads, Guild and George Montgomery, were considered a bland couple in comparison. Though Montgomery was too boyish as the private detective Philip Marlowe, Guild was effective as the strangely neurotic secretary to a wealthy widow (Florence Bates) who hires Marlowe to find a missing gold coin.

The Brasher Doubloon was a taut, atmospheric thriller with typically low-key noir photography, some fine supporting performances, notably those of Bates and Fritz Kortner, and a gripping plot, but its modest reception tempered the studio’s enthusiasm for their new discovery. After casting her as the girlfriend of an ex-vaudevillian’s son (Dan Dailey) in the nostalgic Give My Regards to Broadway (1948), Fox terminated Guild’s contract.

At United Artists, she played Marie Antoinette in Gregory Ratoff’s Black Magic (1949), dominated by Orson Welles’s grandiloquent performance as the 18th-century villain Cagliostro, and, after three inconsequential roles at Universal, in Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951), Little Egypt (1951) and Francis Covers the Big Town (1953), she retired from the screen.

In the mid-Forties she had been briefly married to the actor Charles Russell, by whom she had a daughter, and in 1950 she married the Broadway producer Ernest Martin (who co-produced Guys and Dolls, Can Can and Cabaret), a union that lasted for 25 years. The couple had a luxurious apartment in New York and a house in the South of France, and, when not travelling or gardening, Guild served on the Board of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre and worked with patients there. She and Martin, who had two daughters, were divorced in 1975, and Guild married John Bryson, a photojournalist, in 1978. They divorced in 1995.

Guild made a brief Hollywood comeback in 1971 when Otto Preminger, whom she had known since her Fox days, asked her to do a cameo as a magazine editor in his witty black comedy Such Good Friends, and shortly afterwards when her marriage to Martin was breaking up she expressed the hope, sadly unrealised, to reactivate her career, telling an interviewer:

I want to go back to work, and it’s really quite remarkable because when I worked before, the only thing I liked about my work was lunch. Now I love the camaraderie of just working. If I could do something other than acting I would. But acting is the only thing I ever made any money at, so I’m trying that first. And you know something? Now that I’m older, I like acting.

Nancy Guild, actress: born Hollywood, California 11 October 1925; married Charles Russell (one daughter; marriage dissolved), 1950 Ernest Martin (two daughters; marriage dissolved 1975), 1978 John Bryson (marriage dissolved 1995); died East Hampton, New York 24 August 1999.

Lauri Peters

“Wikipedia” entry:

Lauri Peters (born Patricia Peterson, July 2, 1943) is an American actress, dancer, singer, drama teacher and author.

Peters created the role of Liesl Von Trapp in the original 1959 Broadway production of The Sound of Music. She received a Tony Award nomination for Best Supporting or Featured Actress in a Musical, which she shared with her sibling castmates. She was married to actor Jon Voight (1962–67), whom she met when he joined the cast as Nazi messenger boy Rolfe, with whom Liesl has a song (“Sixteen Going on Seventeen”) and a mutual attraction. She can be heard on the show’s cast album, which has sold more than three million copies in the U.S.

Her film roles found her romantically involved with teen idol singers Fabian and Cliff Richard, and acting alongside James Stewart andSidney Poitier.

She also appeared as Moll in the Howard Da Silva directed revival of Marc Blitztein‘s The Cradle Will Rock. She appeared on popular television shows of the 1960s and ’70s, including Gunsmoke, but worked primarily in the theater, on Broadway and off, and in touring companies.

With noted acting teacher Sanford Meisner, Peters founded the Meisner Extension at NYU in 1993, where she was Artistic Director and Master Teacher. Teaching the technique away from Manhattan, she has written a book on Meisner.

IMDB entry:

Lovely Madge Evans was the perennial nice girl in films of the 1930’s. By then, she had been in front of the camera for many years, starting with Fairy Soap commercials at the age of two (she sat on a bar of soap holding a bunch of violets with the tag line reading “have you a little fairy in your home?”). ‘Baby Madge’ also lent her name to a children’s hat company. In 1914, aged five, she was picked out by talent scouts to appear in theWilliam Farnum movie The Sign of the Cross (1914), followed by The Seven Sisters(1915) with Marguerite Clark.

By the end of the following year, she had amassed some twenty film credits, appearing with such noted contemporary stars as Pauline Frederick or Alice Brady. All of her early films were made on the East Coast, at studios in Ft.Lee, New Jersey. In 1917 (aged eight), Madge made her Broadway debut in ‘Peter Ibbetson’ with John Barrymore andLionel Barrymore. She resumed her stage career in 1926 as an ingenue with ‘Daisy Mayme’ and the following year appeared with Billie Burke in Noel Coward‘s costume drama ‘The Marquise’ (1927).

Her pleasing looks and personality soon attracted the attention of Hollywood and she was eventually signed by MGM in 1931. During the next decade, she appeared in several A-grade productions, notably as Lionel Barrymore’s daughter in MGM’s Dinner at Eight(1933) and as the dependable Agnes Wickfield in one of the best-ever filmed versions ofDavid Copperfield (1935). She co-starred opposite James Cagney in the gangster movieThe Mayor of Hell (1933), Spencer Tracy in The Show-Off (1934) and listened to Bing Crosby crooning the title song in Pennies from Heaven (1936). Madge received praise for her performance as the star of Beauty for Sale (1933) and The New York Times review of January 13 1934 described her acting in Fugitive Lovers (1934) (opposite Robert Montgomery ) as ‘spontaneous and captivating’. Many of her ‘typical American girl’ roles did not allow her to express aspects of the greater acting range she undoubtedly possessed. Too often she was cast as the ‘nice girl’ – and those rarely make much of a dramatic impact. On the few occasions she was assigned the role of ‘other woman’ , such as the Helen Hayes-starrer What Every Woman Knows (1934), audiences found her character difficult to believe and disassociate from her all-round wholesome image. When her contract with MGM expired in 1937, Madge wound down her film career and, following her 1939 marriage, concentrated on being the wife of celebrated playwright Sidney Kingsley. She last appeared on stage in one of his plays, “The Patriots”, in 1943.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

“New York Times” obituary from 1982:

Madge Evans, a popular actress who frequently portrayed the cleancut, decent American woman in films and on stage during the 30’s, died of cancer Sunday night at her home in Oakland, N.J., where she had lived for many years with her husband, the playwright Sidney Kingsley. She was 71 years old.

Miss Evans appeared in such films as ”The Greeks Had a Word for Them” (1932), ”Dinner at Eight” (1933), ”Stand Up and Cheer” (1934), ”David Copperfield” (1935) and ”Pennies from Heaven” (1936).

On Broadway, she played in ”Daisy Mayme” (1926), ”Our Betters” (1928), ”Philip Goes Forth” (1931), ”Here Come the Clowns” (1938) and ”The Patriots” (1943), which was written by Mr. Kingsley.

The actress was born on the West Side of Manhattan on July 1, 1909, and first appeared professionally in an advertisement, as a child model perched on a huge bar of Fairy Soap.

While modeling, she was spotted as a potential child star. At the age of 5, she appeared in a silent-film version of ”The Sign of the Cross” with William Farnum. By 6, she had acted in 20 films made in studios in Fort Lee, N.J.

At 15, Miss Evans was seen in ”Classmates,” a film with Richard Barthelmess. In 1926, she made her first stage appearance in ”Daisy Mayme” and thereafter her career alternated between films and Broadway. The handsome young actress appeared in films with such stars as Spencer Tracy, Bing Crosby, Warner Baxter, John and Lionel Barrymore, James Cagney, Al Jolson, Robert Young, Lee Tracy, Richard Dix and Robert Montgomery.

While in ”Brief Moment” at the Ogunquit Playhouse in 1939, the 30-year-old actress was married to Mr. Kingsley. Thereafter, Mr. Kingsley said recently, she devoted much of her time to helping him with the research and writing of his plays. He described her as his collaborator in the theater in every sense.

The above “New York Times” obituary can also be accessed online here.

Tom Vallance’s “Independent” obituary:

As the young German conscript who becomes a resigned pacifist in Lewis Milestone’s brilliant anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Lew Ayres created an indelible portrait of disillusioned youth. Ironically, in 1941 he was to become the most publicised conscientious objector of the Second World War, vilified by press and public for his views (reputedly formed by his appearance in the Milestone film). He will also forever be associated with Dr Kildare, the idealistic young surgeon he played in nine films of a popular series. After redeeming himself by serving as a medic and risking his life on the battlefront, he returned to Hollywood and an Oscar nomination for his role in Johnny Belinda, though the promise of his auspicious start as a Hollywood star was never totally fulfilled.

Born Lewis Frederick Ayre in 1908, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he studied medicine at the University of Arizona but was more interested in music, playing banjo in the college orchestra. While playing with a dance band at Cocoanut Grove in Hollywood, he was spotted by the talent scout Paul Bern and after a minor role in The Sophomore (1929) was signed by MGM to play opposite Garbo in her last silent film, The Kiss (1929).

Lewis Milestone, about to direct All Quiet on the Western Front at Universal, had decided to cast Douglas Fairbanks Jnr in the lead, though Bern suggested Ayres for the role. The film’s dialogue director, George Cukor, shot a test of Ayres (along with other hopefuls) and Milestone saw it on the day that United Artists (who had Fairbanks under contract) informed him that they would not loan their star. Ayres later stated, “Milestone told me time and time again that if I had made the tests earlier I probably never would have been chosen.”

As one of a bunch of schoolboys persuaded by their jingoistic master to enlist in the war, only to become disillusioned as they are decimated in futile military action, Ayres perfectly captured the pain and resignation of innocence betrayed. Asked while on leave to lecture to a group of young students about the glories of war, he makes a tentative start then angrily tells them, “When it comes to dying for your country, it is better not to die at all!”, provoking hisses and boos. Equally memorable is the famous ending, where a sniper’s bullet ends the boy’s life as he reaches from his trench for a butterfly.

Signed to a contract by Universal, Ayres was loaned to Warners to play a feared gangster boss in Doorway to Hell (1930), a monumental piece of miscasting. (James Cagney’s presence in the cast, as one of Ayres’s henchmen, only made the boyishly innocent Ayres look more incongruous.) He made over 20 films, mostly routine fare that slowly eroded his reputation, over the next few years, and in 1936 tried directing with Hearts in Bondage, which was not a success. Now starring in B-movies, he told a reporter, “Hollywood, quick to acclaim, soon washed its hands of me – and the snubs you get sliding down aren’t nearly as pleasant as the smiles going up.”

He was given his first good role in years when George Cukor offered him the part of Katharine Hepburn’s brother in Holiday (1938), a beautiful screen adaptation of Philip Barry’s play and one of the finest of Thirties comedy-dramas. Ayres, who confessed to having “coasted” through many of his previous roles, made his role as a young alcoholic socialite wistfully endearing, though the film belonged to its stars Hepburn and Cary Grant.

The same year MGM cast Ayres in the title-role of a B- picture, Young Doctor Kildare, as an intern working under the guidance and watchful eye of elderly Dr Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore). A great hit, the film started a series, and Ayres was working on his 10th when he was drafted to serve in the Second World War and he refused combat duty on religious grounds.

His career seemed over. Louis B. Mayer fired him and re-shot his scenes with Philip Dorn. Exhibitors refused to book films in which he appeared, pickets appeared outside cinemas that tried to show the Kildare films, and Variety called him “a disgrace to the industry”.

After working in a labour camp, Ayres volunteered for non-combatant duties and served on the battlefront as a medic and chaplain’s aide. Though he had decided to retire from movies, he changed his mind while overseas. “I realised how important movies are to the lives of so many people,” he said.

Restored to favour, he starred opposite Olivia De Havilland in Robert Siodmak’s The Dark Mirror (1946), but later confessed dissatisfaction with his work. “As a psychiatrist investigating twin sisters, one of whom is a murderer, I played it too lightly. My character should have struggled and sweated more. I did too much smiling.”

In Vincent Sherman’s The Unfaithful (1947), a splendid melodrama that effectively reworked Maugham’s The Letter to deal with the subject of wartime infidelity, he was a lawyer who defends Ann Sheridan on a charge of murder and also tries to salvage her marriage to a returning soldier, Zachary Scott.

His next film, Johnny Belinda (1948), won him a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his sincere portrayal of a doctor who teaches a deaf and dumb Jane Wyman how to communicate, though Ayres was not happy with Jean Negulesco as director. “He was artistic and very extroverted, but none of us felt he was on target with the characterisations, so the actors became their own directors. Jane, Charles Bickford, Agnes Moorehead and myself respected each other’s opinions, so after Jane and I did a scene we’d look at Charles and Agnes. If they nodded, we would proceed: if they shook their heads, we’d do the scene again.”

With roles once again becoming scarce, he embarked on a world tour in 1954 to compile a documentary, Altars of the East, which he wrote, produced, narrated and financed. A probing of the frontiers of faith, it started a decade’s study of comparative religion (“the most meaningful thing I have ever done”) and production of several documentaries on the world’s religions. In 1957 he was appointed by the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, to serve a three-year term on the US National Committee for Unesco.

Returning to acting as a character player, he was a frequent performer in television plays and movies, plus occasional big-screen roles, among them Advise and Consent (1962), Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) and Damien – Omen II (1978). “I still act occasionally,” he said recently, “but I’m in my eighties and have never had my face lifted, so there aren’t a lot of roles.”

Two early marriages were unsuccessful – to Lola Lane (1931-33) and Ginger Rogers (1933-40) – but in 1964 he married an Englishwoman, Diana Hall, and the day before his 60th birthday she gave birth to their son, Justin.

“If I were young again,” Ayres said, “I don’t think I’d be an actor. I’ve met some wonderful people, and it made many things possible for me, but if I had it all to do over again, my field would be philosophy.”

Lewis Frederick Ayre (Lew Ayres), actor: born Minneapolis, Minnesota 28 December 1908; married 1931 Lola Lane (marriage dissolved 1933), 1933 Ginger Rogers (marriage dissolved 1940), 1964 Diana Hall (one son); died Los Angeles 30 December 1996.

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

TCM overview:

This earnest, boyishly handsome star of the pacifist classic “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1930) was extremely prolific during the 1930s, at first primarily at Universal Studios, and then also at Fox and Paramount. Although a very talented and sensitive actor, Ayres found his early stardom fade during the decade as he was cast in either trivial light comedies which suited his gentle manner or in films which called for tough, streetwise characterizations which didn’t always suit him. He gave an excellent performance, though, as Katharine Hepburn’s drunken brother in George Cukor’s “Holiday” (1938) and enjoyed considerable popularity in a series of Dr. Kildare films at MGM in the late 30s and early 40s. His career faded during WWII after he declared himself a conscientious objector, but he received renewed respect when he served bravely in a non-combat medical capacity.

After the war Ayres was able to resume his career–and his sometimes typecasting as doctors–in such films as “The Dark Mirror” (1946) and “Johnny Belinda” (1948), for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination, though he did little acting in film after the mid-50s. He did, however, do notable work as the vice president in “Advise and Consent” (1962) and as a sympathetic resident of the vampire-ridden TV-miniseries town of “Salem’s Lot” (1979). A student of comparative theology, Ayres later produced the religious documentaries “Altars of the East” (1955) and “Altars of the World” (1976), also serving as director of the latter.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Anthony Zerbe was born in 1936 in Long Beach, California. A popular character actor, he frst came to attention in 1969 in “The Molly McGuires” with Sean Connery and Richard Harris. He has made many movies including “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean” and “The Laughing Policeman”.

TCM overview:

For over four decades, Emmy-winning actor Anthony Zerbe compiled an impressive list of character turns, frequently on the amoral side, in countless features, including “Cool Hand Luke” (1967), “The Omega Man” (1971), “The Dead Zone” (1983), “License to Kill” (1989) and “The Matrix Revolutions” (2003). Classically trained, he imbued a sinuous grace and elegance to nearly every role, no matter how scurrilous or ham-fisted, which elevated him to favored actor status in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. Though a frequent go-to for heels and unsavory types, he could also be a warm and caring paternal figure, as evidenced by his veteran cowpoke on “The Young Riders” (ABC, 1988-1992) and numerous other television programs. Rarely off the screen for more than a few months at a time, Zerbe also maintained a busy theater schedule, which included recitations of classic poetry and the works of e.e. cummings, as well as a traveling master class in acting. His innate believability in any role, no matter how fatuous the feature or TV episode, earned him the affection of two generations of character actor aficionados.

Born Anthony Jared Zerbe in Long Beach, CA on May 20, 1936, he was the son of Arthur Lee Van Zerbe and his wife, Catherine. After graduating from Newport Harbor High School, he attended his parents’ alma mater, Pomona College, before serving in the Air Force from 1958 to 1961. Zerbe decided to become an actor after seeing Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the Broadway production of “Picnic,” and after his discharge from the service, headed east to study with the famed Stella Adler. In 1963, Zerbe made his screen debut during the final season of ABC’s police drama “The Naked City” (1958-1963), and soon found regular work as a guest star on various television series. He made his screen debut as the sycophantic prison trustee named Dog Boy in Stuart Rosenberg’s “Cool Hand Luke” (1967), and followed it by playing a friend of aging cowpoke Charlton Heston in Tom Gries’ revisionist Western “Will Penny” (1967). Zerbe’s ability to play both sides of the moral fence with conviction earmarked him as a character actor with exceptional versatility, though in the ensuing years, his saturnine features and uneasy smile, which frequently curled into a half-snarl, earmarked him as a prime candidate for villains of all stripes.

The 1970s was an exceptionally fecund period for Zerbe’s career, with literally dozens of film and television credits to his name throughout the decade. He landed one of his most memorable turns as the news anchor-turned-leader of an albino cult of apocalypse survivors in the cult science fiction favorite “The Omega Man” (1971), which reunited him with Charlton Heston. He later provided one of the most indelible moments in Franklin Schaffner’s “Papillon” (1973) as Toussaint, the leper bandit chief who aided Steve McQueen in his escape from Devil’s Island, and provided capable support and menace to such established stars as Paul Newman, whom he assaulted in John Huston’s “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean” (1972); Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern in “The Laughing Policeman” (1973); Warren Beatty in Alan J. Pakula’s “The Parallax View” (1974); John Wayne, who pursued Zerbe’s nitroglycerine-toting bandit in “Rooster Cogburn” (1975); and Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe in “Farewell, My Lovely” (1975). A year later, he won an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for “Harry O” (ABC, 1974-76) as Lt. K.C. Trench, foil and occasional ally to laconic private eye David Janssen.

The late 1970s and early 1980s saw Zerbe appear more frequently on television in major TV-movies and miniseries like “Centennial” (NBC, 1978-79) as con man-turned-land baron Mervin Wendell, and “Attica” (ABC, 1980) as defense attorney William Kunstler. The period was also marked by one of Zerbe’s more unusual titles: “KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park” (NBC, 1978), a campy fantasy produced by cartoon kings Hanna-Barbera that pitted the rock band against Zerbe’s deranged amusement park engineer. More miniseries followed, with Zerbe tackling such figures as Pontius Pilate in “A.D.” (NBC, 1985) and Ulysses S. Grant in “North and South, Book II” (ABC, 1986). Memorable features were fewer and far between, with the exception of David Cronenberg’s “The Dead Zone” (1983), with Zerbe as a wealthy patron of deranged Senate candidate Martin Sheen, as well as the James Bond feature “License to Kill” (1989) in which he portrayed a drug lord’s henchman who meets an unpleasant fate in a decompression chamber.

In 1989, Zerbe earned a plum role as the crusty leader of a group of youthful Pony Express riders on the weekly Western series “Young Riders.” Though critically reviled, the series was a particular favorite among teen audiences. From there, he maintained a steady diet of TV appearances and the occasional feature, most notably “Star Trek: Insurrection” (1998) as an imperialistic Starfleet admiral bent on relocating an alien race from their home planet, and as the governor of California in Clint Eastwood’s “True Crime” (1999). In 2003, a production of “Behind the Broken Words,” his long-running stage tribute to classic poetry alongside fellow character actor Roscoe Lee Browne, was captured on film.

That same year, Zerbe enjoyed a recurring role as the philosophical Councilor Hamann in the second and third films in the “Matrix” trilogy, “The Matrix Reloaded” (2003) and “The Matrix Revolutions” (2003). His onscreen output slowed in the years that followed as he refocused his energy on a pair of touring stage productions: “It’s All Done with Mirrors,” which saw him tackle the poetry of e.e. cummings, and “Three Days of Theatre,” an intensive workshop and lecture for master class actors in training. Both received exceptional acclaim during his frequent jaunts across the country to various colleges and theater companies

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Leonid Kinskey

Molly Bee

Hilda Plowright

John Fiedler

Nancy Guild

Lauri Peters

Madge Evans

Lew Ayres

Anthony Zerbe

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