A former matinee idol in Holland and Germany, he fled to America before WWII and portrayed anti-Nazi patriots and continental romancers in Hollywood. Forced to retire after suffering an injury while on stage in Holland 1955, he lived out the rest of his life in relative seclusion. Dogged by ill health (phlebitis) in post-war years, he suffered the first of a series of heart attacks in 1945.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: burrell_dale
New York Times obituary in 1975:
LOS ANGELES, May 9 (AP) —Philip Dorn, handsome, deep‐voiced leading man in films from 1939 to 1953, died today at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital. He was 75 years old.
Mr. Dorn, who was born in the Netherlands, died of a heart attack, but he had been incapacitated for nearly 10 years after a head injury on stage in Europe. He began acting at the age of 14 and came to this country in 1939.
He appeared in such films as “Ski Patrol,” “Paris After Dark,” “Love You,” “Sealed Cargo,” “Tarzan’s Secret Treasure,” “Calling Dr. Gillespie” and “Random Harvest.”
Surviving are his widow, Marianne; and a daughter, Femia Laurey of Encino.
Opposite Irene Dunne
Mr. Dorn was a well‐known stage actor in the Netherlands, appearing in “Camille,” “Ghosts.” “Journey’s End” and other plays.
One of his most successful films was “I Remember Mama,” in which he played Papa to Irene Dunne’s Mama. Others included “The Fighting Kentuckian,” in support of John Wayne; “Gaunt Woman,” about submarine warfare; “Spy Hunt” and “Blonde Fever.”
In his career in the Netherlands, Mr. Dorn toured the Dutch colonies for four years and once traveled 16,000 miles with a company of Dutch players to perform in repertory for amusement‐starved plantation owners in Java. He was a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in The Hague.
Christine Lahti was born in 1950 in Michigan. Early in her career, she won two major roles, “And Justice For All” opposite Al Pacino in 1979 and “Whose Life Is It Anyway” opposite Richard Dreyfuss in 1981. She was nominated for an Oscar for “Swing Shift” with Goldie Hawn and gave a terrific performance in “Running On Empty”.
TCM overview:
Beginning in the late 1970s, acclaimed film, television and stage actress Christine Lahti carved out a niche for herself in an emerging field for Hollywood actresses – roles as professional, independent career women. Uninterested in wasting her dedication to acting on thinly-written supporting roles as girlfriends and wives, Lahti was in the right place at the right time and gave strong showings in character-driven films like “Whose Life is it Anyway?” (1981), “Swing Shift” (1984) and “Running on Empty” (1988), for which she earned an Academy Award nomination. In between film roles as smart, compassionate doctors, lawyers, and educators, Lahti was a constant television presence with her Golden Globe-winning run on the medical drama “Chicago Hope” (CBS, 1994-2000) and award-winning telepics like the homeless family chronicle “No Place Like Home” (CBS, 1989). Throughout her career, Lahti regularly revisited her roots as a theater actress, notably in several plays by Wendy Wasserstein, and also branched out to direct episodic TV and films, making her one of the most respected women in Hollywood and one with a palpable commitment to quality storytelling.
Born April 4, 1949, Lahti was raised in Birmingham, MI where she was the daughter of a surgeon father and a nurse-turned-painter mother. At the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Lahti was active in theater and performed with a mime troupe that toured internationally, including an appearance in a mime version of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” on the London stage. After graduating with a degree in speech and drama, Lahti intended to earn a Masters from Florida State University, but after only a year, she moved to New York where she studied drama at the renowned HB Studio and The Neighborhood Studio. Waitress work and street mime performing finally gave way to a steady career in television commercials and a breakthrough stage role in David Mamet’s “The Woods” in 1978, for which she earned a Theater World Award. The same year, she made her TV debut as a co-star of the ABC movie-pilot “Dr. Scorpion,” which led to a stint as a series regular on the short-lived “The Harvey Korman Show” (ABC, 1978), where she played the comedian’s daughter.
Lahti’s impressive work alongside drama legend Lee Strasberg in the TV movie “The Last Tenant” (ABC, 1978) caught the eye of producer-director, Norman Jewison. He subsequently cast her as a lawyer and ethics committee member who becomes involved with an ethically questionable lawyer (Al Pacino) in the acclaimed “… And Justice for All” (1979). After a return to the off-Broadway stage to play opposite Kevin Kline in “Loose Ends,” Lahti further established her strength for playing professional, independent women with her role as the doctor of an accident victim (Richard Dreyfus) fighting for his right to die in John Badham’s film adaptation of the Broadway hit “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” (1981). Lahti finally made it to Broadway herself in “Division Street,” Steve Tesich’s comedy about grown-up 1960s hippies in the 1980s and had a small supporting role in the punk rock cult film “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains” (1981).
After taking a key role in the TV miniseries based on Norman Mailer’s biography of career criminal Gary Gilmore, “The Executioner’s Song” (NBC, 1982), Lahti experienced a major film breakthrough in “Swing Shift” (1984), co-starring opposite Goldie Hawn as her aspiring singer best friend and co-worker at a WWII munitions plant. Injecting the character with a much-needed dose of acerbic wit, Lahti earned great reviews and was recognized with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. She portrayed another single career woman; this one befriended by a married woman (Mary Tyler Moore) who learns they share a man in common, in the soapy tearjerker “Just Between Friends” (1986). Her role as a repressed woman who blossoms when she falls in love with an East German operative in the controversial ABC miniseries “Amerika” (1987) earned her an Emmy nomination, and she followed up the pair of dramas by playing a free-spirited aunt who inspires her nieces in the lighthearted comedy, “Housekeeping” (1987).
In one of Lahti’s most memorable big screen performances, she earned a Golden Globe nomination for Sidney Lumet’s intense “Running on Empty” (1988). The film starred Lahti and Judd Hirsch as former 1960s political activists on the run from the FBI with a family in tow, including a teen son played by River Ph nix. Lahti returned to Broadway in Wendy Wasserstein’s “The Heidi Chronicles” and concurrently appeared on movie screens in 1989’s “Gross Anatomy,” where she was seen as the stern medical professor of class rebel, Matthew Modine. She gave a Golden Globe Award-winning performance as the matriarch of a family forced to live on the streets in “No Place Like Home” (CBS, 1989), and a CableACE Award as a conservative educator who finds unlikely romance with a Hispanic janitor in “Crazy from the Heart” (TNT, 1991), directed by her husband Thomas Schlamme. After an unchallenging role as William Hurt’s unhappy wife in “The Doctor” (1991), Lahti was back on stage in the off-Broadway play “Three Hotels.”
Following a hiatus, during which the actress gave birth to twins, Lahti returned to work with a string of TV movies and moved behind the camera to nail her directorial debut with “Lieberman in Love” (1995), co-starring as a prostitute opposite Danny Aiello. The film earned an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film. In 1995, Lahti joined the second season of the CBS medical drama “Chicago Hope” (1994-2000), playing the complicated, ambitious cardiothoracic surgeon and feminist, Dr. Kathryn Austin. The show also gave Lahti the opportunity to direct, and she helmed a number of episodes throughout her on-screen run, while earning four consecutive Emmy nominations as Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series and a victory in 1998. She famously won a Golden Globe for her role in 1998, and was forced to rush out of the ladies’ room and scurry red-faced onto the stage to collect her trophy. During her off-seasons from “Chicago Hope,” Lahti continued to take on new projects, starring in the Goldie Hawn-helmed TV movie about small town secrets, “Hope” (TNT, 1997) and writer-director Stephen Tolkin’s biopic about a religious woman who kills a camp counselor who has molested her son in “Judgment Day: The Ellie Nesler Story” (USA, 1999).
Lahti left “Hope” in 1999 and reunited with Wendy Wasserstein, taking the lead in the playwright’s tale of a prominent senator’s daughter and Surgeon General nominee who comes under a media attack for minor transgressions in “An American Daughter” (Lifetime, 2000). The following year, she stepped behind the camera to direct her first feature film “My First Mister” (2001), a well-reviewed tale of a 17-year-old misfit (Leelee Sobieski) and her relationship with a neurotic middle aged man (Albert Brooks). After strong turns headlining telepics including “The Pilot’s Wife,” (CBS, 2002) and “Out of the Ashes” (Showtime, 2003), where she played a doctor and Jewish holocaust survivor, Lahti returned to series television in The WB drama, “Jack & Bobby” (2004- ). For the show’s short two-season run, Lahti starred as the fiery, strong-willed, pot-smoking college professor mother of two teen sons, one of whom eventually becomes the U.S. President. Despite strong reviews, particularly centering on Lahti’s multidimensional portrayal, the show failed to find a fan base and was cancelled in 2005.
She rebounded with a recurring role on NBC’s Hollywood dramedy “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” (NBC, 2006-07), as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist writing a Vanity Fair piece on the show-within-the-show. Lahti went on to make strong showings in a pair of little-seen indies, beginning with the academia-set comedy “Smart People” (2008), and “Yonkers J ” (2009), a character drama about a professional gambler’s (Chazz Palminteri) estranged relationship with his mentally disabled son. Later in the year, Lahti enjoyed a supporting role in the high profile thriller “Obsessed” starring Beyonce Knowles.
The above TCM overview can also be viewed online here.
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was born in Illinois in 1958. She made her major film debut in 1982 in “Scarface” with Al Pacino. She also starred in “The Colour of Money” with Tom Cruise and Paul Newman, “The Abyss”and “Class Action” with Gene Hackman. She gave a brilliant performance opposite David Straithairn in “Limbo” in 1999. She is married to the noted Irish film director Pat O’Connor.
TCM overview:
A gifted actress and singer, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was blessed with a striking beauty and undeniable screen presence that brought her recognition alongside some of filmdom’s biggest stars. After making her impressive, blood-soaked feature film debut in Brian De Palma’s controversial gangster epic “Scarface” (1983), she performed on the stages of New York for a time before returning to the screen opposite multi-generational screen idols Paul Newman and Tom Cruise in Martin Scorsese’s “The Color of Money” (1986). However, consequent efforts such as “Slam Dance” (1987) and “The January Man” (1989) failed to capitalize on that early success. Although visionary director James Cameron’s ambitious undersea epic “The Abyss” (1989) placed the actress back in the spotlight, the exhausting and dangerous experience on the set of the adventure may have also soured her taste for blockbuster filmmaking. Early 1990s work included starring turns in respectable films like “Class Action” (1991) and “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” (1991), followed by participation in the easily forgotten “White Sands” (1992) and “Consenting Adults” (1992). While her output decreased in the years that followed, the actress resurfaced occasionally in high-profile projects like “The Perfect Storm” (2000). Even though her films were not all met with rave reviews, Mastrantonio’s innate talent allowed her to retain a highly respected reputation as one if Hollywood’s more dependable actresses.
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio was born on Nov. 17, 1958 in Lombard, IL to Italian immigrant parents. Her mother, Mary, suffered terribly with rheumatoid arthritis for most of her adult life, and her father, Frank Mastrantonio, ran a bronze foundry. The fifth of six daughters, Mary Elizabeth was raised in the town of Oak Park, where she originally cultivated a desire to become a professional opera singer. An early acting role came in a production of “Oklahoma!” while attending Oak Park-River High School, and later in several stage performances at the University of Illinois, where the talented soprano studied music and voice. During a summer between years at college, Mastrantonio worked as a singer and performer at Nashville’s Opryland, before ultimately dropping out of school and making the move to Chicago. There, she landed a small part in the touring production of “Amadeus” before transitioning to New York City and serving as an understudy for the part of Maria in the Broadway revival of “West Side Story.” Eventually Mastrantonio began to move away from musicals, focusing instead on more dramatic works, including a Broadway mounting of “Amadeus,” starring Frank Langella as Salieri.
After seeing her brief appearance in director Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy” (1982) left on the cutting room floor, Mastrantonio made her feature film debut in Brian De Palma’s bloody remake of “Scarface” (1983). Cast as Gina, the beautiful, yet doomed sister of drug kingpin Tony Montana (Al Pacino), the young actress shone in a film largely derided by critics of the time for its extreme brutal violence and graphic language. In what would become a frequent occurrence throughout her career, Mastrantonio would appear in films that drew overall criticism, while her particular performance was singled out appreciatively. De Palma and screenwriter Oliver Stone had the last laugh, however, when in the years that followed, “Scarface” went on to achieve cult status. The burgeoning actress returned to Broadway for a production of the musical “The Human Comedy” in 1984, as well as two consecutive seasons with venerated producer Joseph Papp for mountings of “Henry V” and “Measure for Measure” at the New York Shakespeare Festival. At the same time, she made her television debut opposite George C. Scott in the historical biopic “Mussolini: The Untold Story” (NBC, 1985).
Perhaps regretting having to cut her out of his previous film, Scorsese cast Mastrantonio opposite Paul Newman and Tom Cruise in the pool shark movie “The Color of Money” (1986), a sequel to Newman’s “The Hustler” (1961). As Carmen, Cruise’s “tough cookie” girlfriend-slash-manager in the film, she more than held her own against her famous co-stars. In addition to critical raves for her turn in the film, the role also earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Focusing more on projects that interested her rather than chasing a blockbuster movie, Mastrantonio next co-starred with Tom Hulce in the quirky, punk-infused neo-noir “Slam Dance” (1987), as the wife of an unfaithful husband (Hulce) framed for the murder of his lover (Virginia Madsen). Next came “The January Man” (1989), a comedy-thriller starring Kevin Kline as a brilliant, but disgraced ex-cop trying to catch a serial killer. Mastrantonio played Kline’s love-interest in a film that not only bombed at theaters, but was described by film critic Roger Ebert as “one of the worst movies of all time.”
In spite of the box office failure of “The January Man,” it did result in one happy coincidence for Mastrantonio – her introduction to the film’s director, Pat O’Connor, whom she would marry one year later. Considerably better received than the year’s previous film, director James Cameron’s epic deep sea adventure “The Abyss” (1989) placed the actress in a big-budget, crowd-pleasing blockbuster for the first time in her career. Visually stunning, the film not only pushed the boundaries of filmmaking technology, but pushed its cast, including Ed Harris and Michael Biehn, beyond their limits of endurance. Long hours, boredom, and dangerous working conditions – much of “The Abyss” was filmed underwater inside a seven million gallon water tank – over several months of shooting resulted in a severe emotional breakdown for Mastrantonio. Tough guy Harris even claimed to have broken into uncontrollable sobs one night after a grueling day of filming for alleged “taskmaster” Cameron. Both actors publicly expressed their displeasure with the shoot, with Harris stating he would never work for Cameron again. Needing to recharge her emotional and artistic batteries, Mastrantonio returned to the New York Shakespeare festival with a lauded performance as Viola in “Twelfth Night” alongside her “January Man” co-star, Kevin Kline.
Mastrantonio returned to the screen under the direction of recent husband O’Connor for the Irish period drama “Fools of Fortunes” (1990), and took part in a television adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” (PBS, 1991) in the role of Yelena. She kept busy with two mainstream feature films that same year. First came director Michael Apted’s courtroom thriller “Class Action” (1991), in which she played a corporate attorney opposing her estranged lawyer father (Gene Hackman) in a high-stakes automotive defect case. Next came a star-studded reinvention of the classic adventure tale “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” (1991), featuring Kevin Costner as the titular folk hero and Mastrantonio as his Maid Marian. Although the latter movie met with decidedly mixed reviews, it went on to become one of Mastrantonio’s more successful films at the box office. Less notable were her follow up projects in the coming year. The stylistic noir mystery “White Sands” (1992), starring Willem Dafoe and Mickey Rourke left audiences scratching their heads, while the suburban sexual thriller “Consenting Adults” (1992) simply left moviegoers underwhelmed, despite a strong cast that once again paired Mastrantonio with Kline, in addition to rising star Kevin Spacey.
Settling in London with O’Connor, Mastrantonio slowed her output while she took time to enjoy her newest role as a mother, before returning to film with the treacly fantasy-romance “Three Wishes” (1995), opposite Patrick Swayze. Also that year was the little-seen period drama “Two Bits” (1995), which reunited her with her “Scarface” co-star, Pacino. After another multi-year break, she took on leading roles in the John Sayles Alaskan drama “Limbo” (1999) and appeared with Colin Firth for the British period piece “My Life So Far” (1999). Next, Mastrantonio took part in her first big-budget hit film in nearly a decade with the based-on-fact adventure “The Perfect Storm” (2000), starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg as crew members on a doomed fishing vessel off the coast of Massachusetts. Working sporadically for much of the next decade, she focused her efforts primarily on television in such projects as “The Brooke Ellison Story” (A&E, 2004), a biopic directed by Christopher Reeve about a girl’s struggle to succeed, despite her disability as a quadriplegic. Other work included recurring roles on two popular police procedurals: “Without a Trace” (CBS, 2002-09) during the 2005-06 season, and several episodes of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” (NBC, 2001- ) in 2010.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Patrick O’Neal was born in 1927 in Florida. He had an extensive television career. His few movies include “The Black Shield of Falworth” in 1954, “From the Terrace” with Paul Newman and Ina Balin in 1960 and “The Cardinal” with Tom Tryon in 1963. He died in New York City in 1996.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Dark, dashing and coldly handsome with intense, penetrating eyes, Patrick O’Neal was known for walking that fine line between elegant heroics and elegant villainy during his five-decade career. Born in 1927 in Ocala, Florida, and of Irish descent, he served toward the end of WWII with the United States Army Air Corp and, in his late teens, was assigned to direct training shorts for the Signal Corps. A graduate of the University of Florida at Gainesville, he subsequently moved to New York and continued his dramatic studies at the Actor’s Studio and Neighborhood Playhouse.
O’Neal made an initial impact in the early 1950s when he replaced Tony Randall in the hit Broadway comedy “Oh, Men! Oh, Women!”. Following a strong role in “The Far Country” (1961), he gave a superlative portrayal of the defrocked Reverend Shannon opposite Bette Davis and Margaret Leighton in Tennessee Williams‘ “The Night of the Iguana” later that year. Unfortunately for him, Richard Burton collared the role in its 1963 transition to film, The Night of the Iguana (1964). The attention nevertheless earned O’Neal both lead and support roles on camera, but most of those performances would be routine and, for the most part, overlooked. A capable player used regularly in 1960s films and 1970s television, he was usually cast as either a rugged trooper in the action adventures King Rat (1965) and Assignment to Kill (1968); a careerist sycophant in the naval spectacle In Harm’s Way (1965); or as a flashy murderer in such gruesome yarns asChamber of Horrors (1966), probably his best known film. In later years, it was almost strictly television movies and guest spots. His wife and brother owned several restaurants with him. He died in 1994 from respiratory failure while battling tuberculosis.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
New York Times obituary in 1994.
Patrick O’Neal, an actor who appeared on stage, on television and in more than a dozen films, died on Friday at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan. He was 66 and lived in Greenwich Village.
The immediate cause was respiratory failure, and he had tuberculosis and cancer, said his wife, Cynthia.
At his death, Mr. O’Neal was a co-owner, with his wife and his brother, Michael, of O’Neal’s, a restaurant at 49 West 64th Street in Manhattan, which was named the Ginger Man until 1993. He and his brother were also co-owners of the Landmark Tavern on 11th Avenue at 46th Street.
In 1963 Mr. O’Neal played the lead role, Sebastian Balfe Dangerfield, in “The Ginger Man,” a play by J. P. Donleavy based on his novel of the same title, at the Orpheum Theater Off Broadway.
One critic praised his acting in that production as likely to entrance theatergoers who had met Dangerfield in the novel and found him “enchanting and amusing for all his waywardness, his cruelty and his insincerity.”
Mr. O’Neal went on to use the name when he co-founded the Ginger Man in 1964. It prospered, drawing patrons from the Lincoln Center area and farther afield. It was the first of a half-dozen restaurants, mostly in Manhattan, that he came to co-own over the years. They included another place in the Lincoln Center area, O’Neal’s Baloon at 63d Street and Columbus Avenue. Defrocked in a Williams Play
Mr. O’Neal’s other stage roles included the defrocked cleric in Tennessee Williams’s “Night of the Iguana,” a role he first played in a short form of the drama in Spoleto, Italy, in 1959 and went on to play in other productions on Broadway and elsewhere.
Among his films were “In Harm’s Way” (1965), “A Fine Madness” (1966), “The Kremlin Letter” (1970), “King Rat” (1965), “The Way We Were” (1973) and “The Stepford Wives” (1975). He also acted in many television shows and series, from the 1950’s through the 1980’s.
Mr. O’Neal was born and grew up in Ocala, Fla. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida and went on to study acting in New York, with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse, and with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.
In addition to his wife of 38 years, the former Cynthia Baxter, and his brother, of Manhattan, he is survived by two sons, Maximilian, of Manhattan and Fitzjohn, of Redondo Beach, Calif
Constance Cummings was an American actress whose fame stems from her career in Britain. She was born in 1910 in Seattle, Washington State in the U.S. She went to Hollywood in 1931 and made twenty films there until 1934. That year she moved to the U.K. after her marriage to the British playwright Benn Levy. Among her film credits are “Blythe Spirit” in 1945, “The Battle of the Sexes” in 1959 and “In the Cool of the Day” in 1963. She had an extensive stage career in the West End. She died in 2005 at the age of 95.
Eric Shorter’s obituary in “The Guardian”:
Constance Cummings, who has died aged 95, was a Broadway chorus girl who met the English playwright Benn Wolfe Levy in Hollywood before the second world war and became one of the most accomplished film and stage actors on either side of the Atlantic.
Whether in tragedy, farce, comedy or melodrama, Cummings, the daughter of a Seattle lawyer and a concert soprano, seldom failed to surprise. From being what a London critic, in 1934, called “a film star who can act”, she learned, under her husband’s direction, how to play (as James Agate put it) “anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter”. It was in one of Levy’s plays, Young Madame Conti (1936), that Agate decided she “immediately takes rank, even on the strength of one performance, as an contestably fine emotional actress”. In Goodbe Mr Chips, he thought her “the most beautiful thing of the evening”, reminding him “of the fragrance and pathos, sensitiveness and radiance of the great actresses of our youth”.
How did this upstart American blonde with the peaches-and-cream complexion, beautifully waved hair and feminine curves become an actor of such exceptional power? It is true that her finest achievements – The Shrike, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Long Day’s Journey into Night, and Wings – were all American plays, and that many of her West End successes were in her husband’s plays, or in plays he directed.
All the same, here was a talent, best known on the screen, which turned to the theatre with sustained success and in the highest reaches of that art. Not everything she did bowled everyone over, while her looks did sometimes get in the way. As Robert Donat’s Juliet (1939), for example, with the Old Vic company in wartime exile at Buxton and at Streatham Hill, she admitted: “I didn’t know how to read the verses. That was a sloppy thing. I should have had more sense.”
In the West End, however, it was the sparkling personality, wit and virtually invisible technique that made her art so attractive, especially in her husband’s sophisticated pieces – such as Clutterbuck (1946), Return to Tyassi (1950), The Rape of the Belt (1957) and Public and Confidential (1966), in which her line in mordant comedy as an MP’s secretary-mistress was needle-sharp.
But the depths of her emotional potential, tantalisingly glimpsed as the anxious wife of Michael Redgrave’s alcoholic actor in Clifford Odets’s Winter Journey (1952), remained veiled until Joseph Kramm’s The Shrike. Here, opposite Sam Wanamaker, Cummings disclosed an arresting side to her talent – “a spiked knuckle duster in a velvet glove,” as Kenneth Hurren put it.
Meanwhile, at the Oxford Playhouse Frank Hauser could offer a taste of the true classics in Lysistrata (1957), in which she proved alluringly militant. In 1962, she played a double bill of Sartre’s Huis Clos and Max Beerbohm’s A Social Success, followed by Aldous Huxley’s The Genius and the Goddess.
The Huxley play (which promptly moved into the West End) was right up her street: an adorable, ravishing, witty and self-possessed hostess. On the other hand, Sartre’s ugly lesbian, Inez, was not. At first, Cummings was “horrified”. Until, that was, rehearsals, when she began to enjoy it. “I found little seeds of her dreadfulness in myself, things I could build on. It was a marvellous liberation. I’d never opened myself before and taken such a plunge.”
Most playgoers had to wait, though, for her Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1964) to realise this branch of the talent. It cannot have been easy to follow Uta Hagen’s famous ferocity, but I shall never forget it because I never supposed it possible. What Cummings did amid all the sound and fury was to hint at an element of feminine refinement.
Here, then, was a neo-tragedienne. But as Gertrude to Nicol Williamson’s controversial Hamlet (1969), her art did not thrive, nor did it in 1971 when she joined Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre in Coriolanus, playing Volumnia to Anthony Hopkins in the title role.
The same year yielded Cummings’ finest hour, as Mary Tyrone, frail matriarch to an Irish-American family ruled by Laurence Olivier’s actor-father in Michael Blakemore’s revival of Long Day’s Journey into Night. Here Cummings found an authority, pathos and emotional integrity which had the house holding its breath before and after her every entrance. The transformation from a gentle maternal presence to fully-fledged morphine addict was a triumph of artistic delicacy.
There were no comparable triumphs to come, though her Madame Ranevsky, to Michael Hordern’s Gaev in a revival at the National of The Cherry Orchard (1973) was well received, and as a mentally ill woman trying to recover from a stroke in Arthur Kopit’s Wings, at the Cottesloe in 1978, she was judged superb, though some thought the tug at the emotions too obvious. The performance won a Tony award on Broadway.
If, by chance, there was nothing doing in London, Cummings would go to the regions, where most of the best acting parts were usually to be found – in Tennessee Williams (The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Any More) at Glasgow, Bernard Shaw (Mrs Warren’s Profession) at Bristol, Edward Albee (All Over) at Brighton, Somerset Maugham (The Circle) at Guildford or Friedrich Durrenmatt (The Visit) at Coventry. Her last West End performance was in Uncle Vanya in 1999.
Her husband, whom she married in 1933, died in 1973. After his death, she kept up their 600-acre dairy farm in the village of Cote, Oxfordshire. Levy had been a Labour MP in the postwar Atlee government, and Cummings supported causes such as Amnesty and Liberty, and did much work for the Actors’ Charitable Trust. She received in 1974 the CBE.
She is survived by her children Jonathan and Jemina.
Ronald Bergan writes: In 1930, the 20-year-old Cummings was brought to Hollywood by Sam Goldwyn to co-star with Ronald Colman in The Devil to Pay, but was replaced at the last minute by 17-year-old Loretta Young. However, her disappointment was allayed when Columbia Pictures snapped her up, gave her a contract and cast her as prison warden Walter Huston’s naive daughter in Howard Hawks’s The Criminal Code the following year.
Columbia was so impressed by this debut that they starred Cummings in 10 films in two years, even though most were modest productions. The exception was Frank Capra’s New Deal fantasy, American Madness (1932), in which, with much charm and passion, she played a bank employee supporting her boss’s determination to lend money on the collateral of his clients’ good characters.
After leaving Columbia, Cummings went freelance, enabling her to appear in one of her most delightful films, the Harold Lloyd comedy, Movie Crazy (1932). In Night after Night (also 1932), as a classy lady with whom George Raft is in love, she managed to shine even after the entry of Mae West, in her screen debut. Her final Hollywood film before leaving for England was the comedy-whodunit Remember Last Night? (1935), with Robert Young.
In England, Americans Robert Montgomery and Cummings were unaccountably cast in Busman’s Honeymoon (1940), as Lord Peter Wimsey and his mystery writer wife, Harriet Vane. She did get to play a brave American ally in The Foreman Went to France (1942), and was convincing as the upper middle-class wife of Rex Harrison in David Lean’s Blithe Spirit (1945). The problem was that Cummings was far more attractive than Kay Hammond in the role of Harrison’s first wife.
Among Cummings’s few films in the 1950s was The Intimate Stranger (1956), directed by blacklisted Joseph Losey (under the pseudonym Joseph Walton). In it, she played a film star causing problems for director Richard Basehart. Her last really good film role was in Charles Crichton’s The Battle of the Sexes (1959), as Mrs Barrow, the American efficiency expert sent to modernise an Edinburgh textile firm. Seeing his way of life threatened, the mild accountant (Peter Sellers) tries to murder her. Cummings was so unsympathetic that audiences willed him on. Unfortunately, the cinema’s loss was theatre’s gain, and she was seen only rarely in films after that.
· Constance Cummings Levy, actor, born May 15 1910; died November 23 2005
The above Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Ben Cooper was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1933. He ismainly remembered for the Westerns he made in the 1950’s including “Johnny Guitar” with Joan Crawford and “The Outcasts”. He also featured in “The Rose Tattoo” in 1955 with Burt Lancaster, Anna Magnani and Marisa Pavan. He died aged 86 in 2020.
binary commentThe Outcast (1954)
Directed by William Witney
Shown: Ben Cooper
Anna Lee was born in Kent in 1913. She began her career in 1930’s British movies such as “King Solamon’s Mines” with Paul Robson in 1937 and “Non-Stop New York”. In the late 1930’s she and her husband the film director Robert Stevenson went to Hollywood and she made many movies with John Ford, including “How Green Was My Valley” in 1941, “Ford Apache” in 1948, “The Horse Soldiers” in 1959 and 2Seven Women” in 1965. Her other movies include “Bedlam”, “The Ghost and Mrs Muir”, “The Sound of Music” and “Our Man Flint”. She starred in the long running TV soap “General Hospital” from 1978 until 2004. She died at the age of 91 in 2004.
Richard Chatten’s obituary on Anna Lee in “The Independent”:
Spirited, extremely pretty and a natural blonde, but far too refined and school-marmish for standard Hollywood stardom (the playwright Bertolt Brecht, with characteristic gallantry, dismissed her as “a smooth, characterless doll”), it would be rash to make any great claims on Anna Lee’s behalf as an actress, but it was always a pleasure to see her and she could be very effective when well cast.
Ads by Googleth (Anna Lee), actress: born Ightham, Kent 2 January 1913; MBE 1982; married 1936 Robert Stevenson (died 1986; one daughter; marriage dissolved), 1945 George Stafford (two sons, one daughter; marriage dissolved), 1970 Robert Nathan (died 1985); died Los Angeles 14 May 2004.
Spirited, extremely pretty and a natural blonde, but far too refined and school-marmish for standard Hollywood stardom (the playwright Bertolt Brecht, with characteristic gallantry, dismissed her as “a smooth, characterless doll”), it would be rash to make any great claims on Anna Lee’s behalf as an actress, but it was always a pleasure to see her and she could be very effective when well cast.
In Hollywood (after inventing an Irish grandfather to win his approval) she became one of the few female members of fellow Catholic John Ford’s regular repertory company of actors, appearing in eight of his films between How Green Was My Valley (1941) and7 Women (1966). The parts that he gave her seldom amounted to very much, however, and it perversely fell to two of Hollywood’s most macho, off-beat talents to provide her with two of her best middle-aged roles.
In Sam Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono (1959), she played Mac, the drunken, cigar-smoking Bohemian artist and earth-mother to the heroine (in whom her interest may be more than purely maternal), and in Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), she was the breezy neighbour of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, who by her example allayed fears that women of her age inevitably disintegrated into Gorgons like those living next door. After shooting their first scene together, Davis barked, “It’s good to be working with a pro.”
Born Joan Boniface Winnifrith in Ightham, Kent, in 1913, daughter of the village rector, and god-daughter of Sybil Thorndike, her stage name was a composite of Anna Karenina and Robert E. Lee. She made her début on the London stage in 1932 and, a few minor film appearances later, was promoted to Jack Hulbert’s leading lady – an intrepid young aviatrix – in The Camels are Coming (1934).
Her vigorous, try-anything personality also saw service as assistant to mad scientist Boris Karloff in The Man Who Changed His Mind(1936), Allan Quartermain’s daughter in King Solomon’s Mines(1937) and a human cannonball in Young Man’s Fancy (1939), during the filming of which she was actually shot out of the cannon.
All three were directed by her then-husband Robert Stevenson, who directed most of her films at this time, and whom she accompanied to Hollywood in 1939. She was also the second lead, Jessie Matthews’ platinum blonde rival, in First a Girl (1935), a part, alas, that was to prove more characteristic of what was to come her way after transferring to Tinseltown, although she started at the top, co- starring opposite Ronald Colman in My Life With Caroline (1941).
It was a dreary film, however, and after a few undistinguished female leads in quality productions like Commandos Strike at Dawn(1942) and Hangmen Also Die (1943), she was rapidly relegated to supporting roles in “A” features such as Flesh and Fantasy (1943),Summer Storm (1944), The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947) and Fort Apache (1948), and leads in “B”s. Ironically, it was one of the latter that gave her her best part (and, after How Green Was My Valley, her own personal favourite) – that of Nell Rowen in Val Lewton’sBedlam (1946), a frivolous young actress whose wilfulness provokes her sugar daddy into having her placed in the care of a leering asylum director played by Boris Karloff.
She returned briefly to the stage in 1950 in a summer stock tour ofMiranda and began increasingly to appear on television, including a three-year stint during the early Fifties as a panellist on It’s News to Me.
At this point, however, her career was abruptly interrupted by the Hollywood blacklist. Although in her own words a “Winston Churchill Conservative”, who saw nothing wrong with the blacklisting of actual Communists, she was confused with another actress and her name appeared in the notorious anti-Communist newsletter Red Channels. She was unable to get acting work for several years and was forced to make her living writing TV scripts under an assumed name.
In 1956 she finally wrote in desperation to Ford, who immediately got on the phone to Washington and cleared the situation up. “If it hadn’t been for Ford, I probably wouldn’t have been working now,” she told the film historian Joseph McBride in 1987, but even so, she still had to add a rider to every contract she subsequently signed declaring that she was not now, and had never been, a Communist.
It was Ford who made her rehabitilition complete by giving Lee her first film role since 1952, as Mrs Jack Hawkins in Gideon’s Day(1958, her only post-war British film), and later film roles included a stagecoach passenger held up by Lee Marvin in Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Balance (1962) and a nun with a twinkle in her eye inThe Sound of Music (1965).
Her last substantial film role was in In Like Flint (1967) in which, to quote Variety‘s reviewer, “Anna Lee, ever a charming and gracious screen personality, is part of a triumvirate bent on seizing world power.” (The trouser suit she wore throughout the film concealed the fact that she was black and blue from head to foot and had a broken wrist and 13 stitches in her thigh from a car accident four days before shooting had started).
Throughout the Eighties and Nineties she regularly featured, still as pretty as ever, in the soap opera General Hospital, only retiring from the show last year. A year after she had joined in 1978, taking the part of Lila Quatermaine, she was paralysed from the waist downwards in a car accident, and acted the role in a wheelchair.
She had a narrow escape just before Christmas 1994 when she was hauled to safety as her cottage off Sunset Strip caved in behind her during a fire which also destroyed most of her memorabilia and the only draft of her autobiography.
Richard Chatten
The “Independent” obituary can also be accessed on-line here.
He was born in Dracut, Massachusetts, the son of Milton Rothwell Corey (October 24, 1879 – October 23, 1951) and Julia Etta McKenney (April 11, 1882 – June 16, 1947). His father was a Congregationalistclergyman. Wendell was educated in Springfield.
Corey began his acting career on the stage, doing a number of productions in summer stock. While appearing with a Works Progress Administrationtheatre company in the late 1930s, he met his future wife, Alice Wiley. Corey and Wiley had one son and three daughters, Jonathan, Jennifer, Bonnie Alice, and Robin.
His Broadway debut was in Comes the Revelation (1942). After appearing in a number of supporting roles, he scored his first hit as a cynical newspaperman in Elmer Rice‘s comedy Dream Girl (1945). While appearing in the play, Corey was seen by producerHal Wallis, who persuaded him to sign a contract with Paramount and pursue a motion picture career in Hollywood.
He starred with Casey Walters in the television series Harbor Command (1957–1958), co-starred on The Nanette Fabray Show (1961), and had the lead role in the medical dramaThe Eleventh Hour (1962–1963). With Fabray, Corey played a widower who married Fabray’s character. Bobby Diamond also starred in the short-lived series. In The Eleventh Hour, Corey appeared as Dr. Theodore Bassett, co-starring with Jack Ging in the role of psychologist Paul Graham. In the second season of The Eleventh Hour, however, Corey was replaced by Ralph Bellamy, who assumed the role of psychiatrist Richard Starke.
Film star and actor Wendell Corey, the American stage film and television actor, has died in Hollywood at the age of 54. He was an actor who only entered the theatre by chance, and who did not make his film debut until well into middle age.
Corey was born at Dracut, Massachusetts, on March 20, 1914. He was the son of the Rev. Milton R. Corey and was educated at the Central High School in Springfield, Massachusetts. As a young man he considered a variety of professions, including the law, journalism and professional tennis, but finally he began to earn his living selling washing machines. However in 1934 he was given a part in an amateur production of Street Scene in Springfield, and encouraged by this he made his first professional appearance at the Mountain Park casino. Holyoake, Massachusetts, a year later when he played in The Night of January 16th.
His acting career was thereafter reasonably but not outstandingly successful for several years, and when he was auditioned for a part in Robert Sherwood’s The Rugged Path, with Spencer Tracy, but was not chosen, he seriously considered giving up the stage. But he was then given the lead in Dream Girl, in 1945, and was so successful in it that he attracted the attention of Hal Wallis, who took him to Hollywood. Here he made his screen debut in a Hal Wallis-Paramount production. Desert Fury, in 1947 with John Hodiak, Lizabeth Scott, and Burt Lancaster, who was also then at the beginning of his film career. In this same year, which marked the turning point in his career, he appeared with some success on the London stage at the Piccadilly theatre as Bill Page in The Voice of the Turtle by John Van Druten.
The rest of his acting career was devoted largely to the cinema, and later to television, although he did return to the theatre occasionally and notably to New York in 1956 to play in The Night of the Auk. Among the best known films in which he appeared were The Rainmaker and Hitchcock‘s Rear Window.
Corey was one of the first of a long line of Hollywood actors to enter politics. He became a member of Santa Monica, California, city council in 1965 and retained the post until his death. A hero of the Second World War, he was awarded the Legion of Honor by Czechoslovakia.
Michael Parks was born in California in 1940. He made his acting debut in 1958 in Alfred Hitchcock’s television show. His film career tookoff in 1965 with “Wild Seed” opposite Celia Kaye. He also made “Bus Riley’s Back in Town” with Ann-Margret. In 1966 he went to the U.K. to make “The Idol” opposite Jennifer Jones. In 1969 he had his own series about a biker entitled “Then Came Bronson”. His career has has a comeback in recent years working with newer directors such as Quentin Tarentino.
Michael Parks
IMDB entry:
Michael Parks was born on April 24, 1940 in Corona, California, USA as Harry Samuel Parks. He is an actor, known for Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and Django Unchained (2012). He is married to Oriana. He was previously married to Carolyn Kay Carson, Jan Moriarty and Louise M. Johnson.The theme song “Long Lonesome Highway” from Parks’ TV series Then Came Bronson(1969), sung by Parks himself, was penned by James Hendricks, a Greenwich Village folksinger who was married to ‘Mama Cass Elliot’ of The Mamas and the Papas, not byJimi Hendrix.
The song became a Top 40 hit in 1970.Prior to becoming an actor. his jobs included picking fruit, digging ditches, driving trucks and fighting forest fires.Turned down an offer to play minor league baseball for the Pittsburgh Pirates because he was making more money upholstering caskets.
Attempted to qualify for the 1972 Olympics as a miler, running a time of 4:06.Recorded a half-dozen country/blues/jazz albums in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
He played Earl McGraw, the police officer with bad puns, in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) and then played Esteban Vinaio, the 80-year-old, smooth Mexican pimp who once was Bill’s mentor in Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004).
This makes him only one of two actors to appear in both Kill Bill films playing different characters. The other person to play separate roles in both films is Chia-Hui Liu.The official “Kill Bill” websites claim that he is “frequently cited by longtime fan Quentin Tarantino as the world’s greatest living actor.”.
The pilot of the series Then Came Bronson (1969) reflects and drew heavily on the background of Parks’ own life story.Was one of five children of an itinerant laborer.
Like the rest of his family, Parks drifted from job to job in his early teens, briefly marrying at age 16.Plays the lead, an aging, misguided NSA listener in indie thriller In ascolto (2006).Filming a new movie Julian Po (1997) with Christian Slater and Robin Tunney.
