Hollywood Actors
Kaz Garas was born in Lithuania in 1940. He came to the U.S. when he was nine years of age. He made his debut in the TV series “Seaway” in 1966. He came to the U.K. to make the popular series “Strange Report” in 1969. His films include “The Last Safari” with Stewart Granger in 1967. Fropm the 1970’s onwards most of his work has been on American television.
Filmic evidence has often been produced in war trials, but Li Xianglan, who has died aged 94, had the distinction, in 1945, of being prosecuted for treason in China for the fictional roles she had played. Having depicted on screen Chinese women falling for members of the Japanese occupation forces, she read in the newspapers that she was to be publicly executed at Shanghai’s horse track. Then, as if in the plot of a baroque opera – a genre that would have suited her vocally – her family register was smuggled in, within the head of a doll.
The document proved that Li had been born Yamaguchi Yoshiko, the daughter of Japanese parents in Manchuria, a colony of Japan before the second world war. Yamaguchi became one of millions to be repatriated to the main Japanese islands. But her singing talent, fame, and ability with languages was to propel her through careers in journalism and politics.
When their daughter was born, Yamaguchi’s parents had befriended two influential Chinese men; the girl became their goddaughter and so also acquired the Chinese name Li Xianglan. Her musical talent was developed by lessons with professional singers, often Russian. From the age of 13 and using another Chinese name bestowed upon her, Pan Shuhua, she attended high school in Beijing. Here she added to her proficiency in Mandarin – unusual enough among Japanese settlers – by acquiring all the mannerisms of Chinese girls.
In 1934, recruited by a radio station to sing Chinese tunes, she used her adopted name of Li Xianglan, which she retained as her career developed. By the age of 18, she had been recruited by Manchuria Film Productions, or Man’ei, the rapidly expanding film studio in Harbin, Manchuria. The initial idea had been for her to sing, but Man’ei rapidly realised that it could develop her acting and personality to further its transnational aims.
The problem for the commercially minded propagandists at Man’ei was that its early films had little success in China, with films such as China Nights(1940) faring much better in Japan. The three Chinese characters of her stage name rendered into Japanese as Ri Koran, the performer always appeared in a Chinese qipao dress, and her recordings launched a craze for “continental” songs and films. Back in China, the film, where it was not boycotted entirely, caused particular offence by showing the star taking a violent slap from her Japanese admirer as a proof of affection, resulting in marriage in short order.
It was films such as this that were produced as evidence for the prosecution in Shanghai. In reality, virtually no one had seen them, even after the considerable Chinese success of her later film Eternity (1942), from which came her hit song Stop Smoking, about opium.
Up to the end of the war, Shanghai periodicals doted on the persona of Li Xianglan. Li’s Japanese origin was never entirely obscured, even though the star continued to represent China’s young women. Taking daily English and Russian lessons in Shanghai, Li was better equipped than most to deal with the defeat of her native Japan, but being put on trial for her roles seems to have come as a genuine shock.
Back in Tokyo, her fame still lay in her persona as Ri Koran. The script of Desertion at Dawn (1950), initially an adaptation by Akira Kurosawa, went through six major rewrites under occupation censorship. Strongly condemning militarism, it depicted the love of a Japanese soldier for a Chinese “comfort woman”. Its success at the box office prompted further nostalgic musical memories of the empire that were less nuanced as the moral crusade of the occupation had dissolved. But Yamaguchi went on to star in a Kurosawa film, Scandal (1950), which dealt with the media-hounding of an actress.
Yamaguchi travelled to the US that year, taking the first name Shirley. She starred in two Hollywood films, and befriended figures such as Charlie Chaplin, working on the musical soundtrack of Limelight (1952). Her marriage to the American sculptor Noguchi Isamu in 1952 lasted only a few years, and she was later denied entry to the US because of her association with names such as Chaplin.
Her final acting appearances came in some Hong Kong films, apparently lost in a fire. By this time, she had married a Japanese diplomat, Otaka Hiroshi; formally, she kept her married name Otaka Yoshiko after his death in 2001.
To later generations in the 1960s and 70s she was known as a television journalist on Asian subjects, often focusing on Palestine and women’s issues. She pursued these concerns as a representative of the upper house of the Japanese legislative body, the Diet, for 18 years.
A musical of her career ran in Tokyo for more than 20 years. Her voice may yet be her most enduring legacy. Recordings from Russia, seemingly acquired and treasured by postwar Red Army soldiers, can be heard on YouTube, and testify to a voice that hits every note in the middle, without a hint of vibrato.
• Yoshiko Yamaguchi (Li Xianglan), actor, journalist and politician, born 12 February 1920; died 7 September 2014
Anjanette Comer was born in Dawson, Texas in 1939. She hadsome major roles in Hollywood movies of the 1960’s. Her credits include “The Loved One” in 1965, “The Apaloosa” opposite Marlon Brando and “Guns for San Sebastian” opposite Anthony Quinn.
TCM overview:
A pretty, dark-haired actress who often played roles of women not in control of the fraught environment around them, Anjanette Comer broke into feature films in the 1960s, added TV-movies to her repertoire in the 70s, took a sojourn from the cameras in the 80s and returned in supporting parts in the 90s.
Comer’s first feature was the comedy “Quick Before It Melts” (1965), in which she played a woman brought to an Antarctica research station. That same year, she was the ditzy beauty Robert Morse lusts after in Tony Richardson’s “The Loved One”. She had another good shot as Marlon Brando’s cohort in “The Appaloosa” (1966), but her follow-up in “Banning” (1967), was a barren sturm und drang that did nothing to promote her career. Comer was burdened by a ridiculous script in “Guns for San Sebastian” (1968), in which she supported the zealous Anthony Quinn. In 1970, she played the semi-pro hooker who lures former athlete James Caan from his family in the dull “Run, Rabbit”. Feature roles came less regularly in the 70s. Comer was wife to Public Enemy Number One “Lepke” (1975), played by Tony Curtis and was in the disastrous “Fire Sale” (1977). She appeared in the direct-to-video fantasy “Netherworld” (1992) and returned to the big screen as Peter Gallagher’s mother in Steven Soderbergh’s noirish “The Underneath” (1995).
While Comer had some TV experience in the 60s, and guest starred on the 1969 pilot for the ABC series “The Young Lawyers”, her work on the small screen began in earnest with a burst of TV-movies in the 70s. Her first was “Firechasers” (1970), and in 1971, she played one of the women on a resort island stalked by an escapee from a mental institution in “Five Desperate Women” (ABC). She was also in jeopardy in “The Deadly Hunt” (CBS, 1971), in which Comer was in the grips of two paid assassins and stuck in the center of a forest fire at the same time. She was the wife of Joseph Campanella stuck above a fire in a skyscraper in “Terror on the 40th Floor” (NBC, 1974) and the abducted wife of Vincent Edwards in “Death Stalk” (NBC, 1975). Comer was a woman in jeopardy long before than genre became a mainstay of TV longforms. After “The Long Summer of George Adams” (NBC, 1982), Comer was little seen on either TV or in the movies, and then reappeared on the two-part season opener of “Jake and the Fat Man” (CBS, 1991). She has since resumed her work in TV longforms in supporting roles. She played Beulah, in the miniseries “Larry McMurtry’s Streets of Laredo” (CBS, 1995) and was featured in “Deadly Family Secrets” (NBC, 1995).
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Race Gentry was born in 1934 in Los Angeles. He made his film debut in the Western, “The Lawless Breed” in 1953. Other credits include “Rails Into Laramie”, “Black Horse Canyon” and “There’s Always To-Morrow”.
John Lone
John Lone
John LoneJohn Lone was born in 1952 in Hong Kong. He trained at the Peking Opera. He continued his studies in the performing arts in California
TCM overview:
A strikingly handsome, lithe and somewhat androgynous Hong Kong-born actor of film and stage, John Lone became established on stage initially via several collaborations with playwright David Henry Hwang. On film, he is probably best recalled for his portrayal of Emperor Pu Yi in Bernardo Bertolucci’s lavish, Oscar-winning epic “The Last Emperor” (1987). Orphaned as a young boy, Lone began rigorously training as an actor at the Chin Ciu Academy of the Peking Opera in Hong Kong at age 10. He resided at the school for eight years, undergoing all day training in acting, singing, dance, mime, poetry, weaponry, acrobatics, and martial arts.
At age 18, Lone moved to America and settled in Los Angeles where he quickly snared small roles on film and TV, as well as joined the East-West Players. After earning attention for his performance in David Henry Hwang’s “F.O.B.” in L.A., he headed to NYC to recreate the role Off-Broadway in 1981, netting an OBIE Award. The playwright then wrote “Dance and the Railroad” specifically for Lone who starred in, directed, choreographed and scored the production at the Public Theatre.
The movies soon beckoned and Lone made an impact with an impressive nonverbal performance as a defrosted caveman in “Iceman” (1984), following up with “Year of the Dragon” (1985), playing a ruthless Chinese Mafia boss. Here, without mounds of obscuring makeup, he displayed his glamorous movie-star looks to the American public for the first time.
Lone has not had a prolific feature career, apparently by choice. He shifts back-and-forth from stage to screen, directing to acting. He has a successful pop singing career in Asia as well as and his own lines of cosmetics and apparel. The actor has made quirky film choices opting for roles in foreign and small independent films (e.g., Alan Rudolph’s “The Moderns” 1988) rather than standard commercial Hollywood fare. Lone continued in this vein with David Cronenberg’s film version of Hwang’s “M. Butterfly” (1993), where he played the Asian object of desire of a French diplomat (Jeremy Irons). Subsequent high profile feature roles have cast the handsome player as nefarious types. In 1994’s “The Shadow”, Lone was the descendent of Genghis Khan battling Alec Baldwin’s Lamont Cranston, while “The Hunted” (1995) saw him portray a cold-blooded assassin. After a long absence, Lone graced US audiences with his charismatic presence playing yet another suave ganglord in “Rush Hour 2” (2001).
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Cathy O’Donnell was born in 1923 in Alabama. Although she did not make many movies, she has an unusually high number of great calibre of film among her credts – “The Best Years of Our Lives” in 1946, “They Live By Night” and “Side Street”, both opposite Farley Granger, “Detective Story” , “The Man From Laramie” with James Stewart and “Ben-Hur” in 1959. She died at the age of 46 in 1970.
IMDB entry:
She was in Alabama until age 12, Ann Steely attended high school and college in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, then worked as a stenographer to finance a trip to Hollywood, where fortune favored her with a contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer under Samuel Goldwyn. Recognizing her talent and appeal through a thick Southern accent, Goldwyn arranged rigorous voice & theatrical training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and elsewhere, gave her an Irish-sounding stage name & cast her in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). This film’s success boded well for Cathy’s career, and soon she was starred in the now-classic They Live by Night (1948). However, her rise in films was checked when, on Sunday, April 11th, 1948, at age 23, she married 48-year-old Robert Wyler, older brother of famous M-G-M director, William Wyler, with whom Goldwyn was feuding. The irate Goldwyn abruptly canceled her contract; thereafter she had no lasting association with any studio or producer. Her most memorable roles of the 1950s were in classic film-noir such as Detective Story (1951), which typifies her sincere, believable performances as a sweet girl-next-door whose radiant inner beauty shone through an exterior not quite fitting the Hollywood glamor mold. Her last film and most famous, wasBen-Hur (1959), and then she worked in TV until 1961. Belying Goldwyn’s opinion, her marriage to Wyler proved happy though childless. Her death on their 22nd wedding anniversary, on Saturday, April 11th, 1970 followed a long struggle with cancer.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Sharon Hugheny was a beautiful young actress who starred in a few movies in the early 1960’s. At 17 she starred with Troy Donahue in “Parrish” and went on to star in “The Young Lovers” with Peter Fonda and “The Caretakers” in 1963 with Joan Crawford. She died in 1996 at the age of 52.
IMDB entry:
Sharon Elizabeth Hugueny was a leap-year baby, born February 29, 1944, in Los Angeles, California. She was an intelligent, introspective, and sensitive child that preferred serious reading, writing, and music to the “more frivolous” interests of her peers. Sharon’s parents – a World War II Navy veteran and his wife – were loving-but notoriously strict with their three children (Sharon, a younger brother, born in 1950, and a sister born, in 1957). Any boy interested in dating teen-aged Sharon was reportedly required to pass two interviews plus a car inspection before being allowed to take her out. However, when famous talent-scout, Warner Bros.’ Solly Biano, spotted Sharon in a theatrical production of “Blue Denim” when she was fifteen, her parents did allow her to meet producer/director Delmer Daves and to accept the contract offered to her by Mr. Jack Warner. Sharon signed that seven-year contract on her 16th birthday. Under Warner’s personal guidance, she quickly began a performing guest-star on appearances in all of Warners’ television programs, such as “Lawman” (1958), and “Maverick”(1957), where she received her first on-screen-kiss from star Roger Moore (and off-screen kisses from Peter Brown of Lawman, and Wilderness Family’s Robert Logan}.
While filming Parrish in 1961, actor (later, Producer-and-President of Paramount, Mr. Robert Evans) visited her set and was immediately bedazzled by breathtaking Sharon, whose dark beauty earned frequent comparisons by Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons to Elizabeth Taylor. Evans’ feeling for Sharon was reciprocated; and so, seventeen-year-old Sharon began dating the thirty-one-year-old Evans, much to the dismay of her parents, friends, and studio. Within weeks the two became engaged and then, on May 28, 1961, married. Unfortunately, their union was doomed from the start. Sharon was, by all accounts, extremely mature for her age; yet Evans seemed to regard her as a child, not as a wife. Their relationship deteriorated. At one time, Mr. Evans abandoned California for his clothing business, Evan Picone, located in New York, which effectively broke her motion picture- and -television contract with Warner’s. This uprooting had taken Sharon thousands of miles from her family, work, and friends; furthermore, Warner Brothers placed her on suspension. (Evans later said that “taking Sharon to New York was like forcing a Persian cat into the Amazon.”) In Mexico, less than six months after they married, he arranged for a quick, no alimony, divorce, which confused his naive wife.
Sharon’s career, unfortunately, never recovered. She would become one of many fine actresses of the 1960s that possessed great beauty and tremendous talent but were not provided with good-quality material to showcase their assets. From 1965 to the mid 1970s, Sharon virtually disappeared from public view, other than for a number of television guest-starring spots, such as “Mannix.”
There followed a marriage to photographer Raymond Ross in 1968 to his death in 1974), a divorced, and a child. By 1976 she was under new management and married to Gordon Cornell Layne, founder of Mid America Pictures.
Sharon was en route to ABC to sign two contracts when a new tragedy intervened: Sharon was struck by careering police car doing 90 mph in pursuit of a fleeing drug addict. Not only did this end Sharon’s career, it very nearly ended her life. Still seeking recovery, she and Mr. Layne left Santa Monica for Lake Arrowhead, in 1987. After nineteen years under Gordon’s personal around-the-clock care, on July 3,1996, Sharon Elizabeth Hugueny Layne died at home, from misdiagnosed cancer. The “Sharon Elizabeth Hugueny Performance Arts Scholarship” has been projected to honor her memory.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jennifer E. Williams <JenVLO123@aol.com> and Gordon Cornell Layne (her loving husband)
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Joanna Shimkus is a retired Canadian actress. She is the wife of Bahamian-American actor and diplomat Sir Sidney Poitier, and mother of actress Sydney Tamiia Poitier.
Shimkus was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to a Lithuanian-Jewish fatherand a mother of Irish descent.
Her father worked for the Royal Canadian Navy.[5] She attended a convent schoo and was brought up in Montreal, Quebec.
She went to Paris at age nineteen, where she worked as a fashion model and soon attracted the attention of movie people on the lookout for new talent.
She made her debut in 1964, in Jean Aurel‘s film De l’amour. She was then noticed by film director Robert Enrico, who selected her to appear in three of his films; Les aventuriers (1967), opposite Alain Delon and Lino Ventura, Tante Zita (1968) and Ho! (1968).
She also appeared in Joseph Losey‘s film Boom! (1968), opposite Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and The Lost Man (1969), opposite Sidney Poitier. Her film career continued until the early 1970s, including roles in L’Invitée (1969), The Virgin and the Gypsy(1970), The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971) and A Time for Loving (1972).
She married Sir Sidney Poitier in 1976, and they have two daughters: Anika and Sydney Tamiia, who is also an actress. Shimkus has three grandchildren; two from Anika and one from Sydney Tamiia.
“Jeff Chandler looked as though he had been dreamed up by one of those artists who specialize in male physique studies or a little further up the artistic scale. He might have been plucked bodily from some modern mural on a biblical subject. For that he had the requisite Jewishness (of which he was very proud) – and he was not quite real. Above all, he was impossibly handsome. He would never have been lost in a crowd with that big square, sculpted 20th century face and his prematurely gray wavy hair. If the movies had not found him the advertising agencies would have done – whenever you saw a still of him you looked at his wrist-watch or his pipe before realising that he was not promoting something. In the coloured stills and on posters, his studios showed his hair as blue, heightening the unreality. His real name was Ira Grossel, his film-name was exactly right.” – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The International years”. (1972).
Jeff Chandler was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1918. He had a major movie career with Universal Studios in the 1950’s. His movies include “Broken Arrow”, “The Lady Takes A Flier”, “Flame of Araby”, “Return to Peyton Place” and “The Plunderer’s”. He died after undergoing surgery in 1961.
TCM overview:|
Tough, virile lead with prematurely steel grey, wavy hair and a muscular physique who starred in action films of the late 1940s and 50s, often as American Indians (three times as Cochise), gangsters, cavalrymen and “natives”. Not a docile star, Chandler rebelled against Universal’s mediocre action projects and was suspended several times. Chandler’s career was cut short by his premature death–due to blood poisoning after routine spinal surgery for a slipped disc–at age 42.
IMDB entry:
Jeff was born in Brooklyn and attended Erasmus High School. After high school, he took a drama course and worked in stock companies for two years. His next role would be that of an officer in World War II. After he was discharged from the service, he became busy acting in radio drama’s and comedies until he was signed by Universal. It would be in the fifties that Jeff would become a star making westerns and action pictures. He would be nominated for an Academy Award for his role as Cochise in Broken Arrow (1950). He would follow this by playing the role of Cochise in two sequels: The Battle at Apache Pass (1952) and Taza, Son of Cochise (1954). While his premature gray hair and tanned features served him well in his westerns and action pictures, the studio would put him into soaps and costume movies. In his films, his leading ladies would include Maureen O’Hara, Rhonda Fleming, Jane Russell, Joan Crawford, and June Allyson. Shortly after his last film Merrill’s Marauders (1962), Jeff died, at 42, from blood poisoning after an operation for a slipped disc.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Fontana <tony.fontana@spacebbs.com>
The above IMDB entry can be accessed online here.
The above TCM overview can be accessed online here.
TCM
Anyone who knows me are aware that I am a bit of a movie buff. Over the past few years I have been collecting signed photographs of my favourite actors. Since I like movies so much there are many actors whose work I like.
