Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 52 of 126

Joanne Woodward

Joanne Woodward. TCM

Joanne Woodward was an American actor who began his career as a ‘pretty boy’ but quickly developed into a good solid actor with a legacy of fine performances. He was born in 1926 in Hollywood. He had his first major role in “Knock on Any Door” with Humphrey Bogart in 1949. The same year he played Broderick Crawford’s wayward son in “All the King’s Men”. His other notable films include “The Hoodlum Saint”, “The Ten Commandments” and “Exodus”. Married four times, three of his wives were famous actresses., Ursula Andress, Linda Evans and Bo Derek. John Derek died in 1998.

Ernest Borgnine was one of the very best of character actors with an extraordinary long career. He was born in Connecticut of Italian parents. After military service in World War Two be began an acting career on the stage. He first became noticed on film in 1953 in “From Here to Eternity” where he beat up Frank Sinatra in a street brawl. He went on to make “Bad Day at Black Rock” with Spencer Tracy, Lee Marvin and Anne France and then won an Oscar for the lead role in “Marty”. Among his many movie credits are “The Vikings”, “The Flight of the Phoenix”, “The Dirty Dozen”, “Convey” and “The Wild Bunch”. He died in 2012 at the age of 95 and was acting on film until he was was 93.

Ronald Bergan’s “Guardian” obituary:
With his coarsely podgy features, bug eyes, gap-toothed grin and stocky build, Ernest Borgnine, who has died aged 95 of renal failure, seemed destined to remain one of nature’s supporting actors in a string of sadistic and menacing parts. Instead he won an Oscar for a role which was the antithesis of all his previous characters.

In 1955, the producer Harold Hecht wanted to transfer Paddy Chayefsky’s teleplay Marty to the big screen, with Rod Steiger in the title role, which he had created. But Steiger was filming Oklahoma! so was unavailable. Borgnine was offered the role after a female guest at a Hollywood reception quite disinterestedly remarked to Hecht that, ugly as he was, Borgnine possessed an oddly tender quality which made her yearn to mother him. “That,” Hecht said later, “is when I decided to give him the part.”

Marty, a 34-year-old butcher from the Bronx, meets a plain schoolteacher at a Saturday night dance. They are drawn together by their fears of rejection and loneliness. One of the first films to bring new naturalism, new talent and new life to Hollywood from TV, Marty was known in the trade as a “sleeper”, a film that, without any obvious box-office appeal, becomes a hit. It won four Oscars – best director (Delbert Mann), best film, best screenplay and best actor for Borgnine.

Borgnine also won awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review, and was voted man of the year by the butchers of America. This decidedly unalluring actor had enjoyed the good fortune to encounter a role made to measure for his particular talents and physique. Though no finer part ever came his way, he was at least grateful to no longer be automatically cast as a heavy. In fact, it was as a comic character, in the popular TV series McHale’s Navy (1962-66), that he was to make his most enduring impression on the American public.

He was born Ermes Effron Borgnino in Hamden, Connecticut, to Italian parents. His father worked on the railways and his mother was said to be the daughter of a count. Borgnine lived in Milan between the ages of two and seven, later attending high school in New Haven before joining the navy in 1935. Rising through the ranks, he left the service as a chief gunner’s mate. He then enrolled in the Randall School of Drama in Hartford, Connecticut, after which he joined the Barter theatre in Virginia.

In 1952, Borgnine made his first and last Broadway appearance, in the comic fantasy Mrs McThing, starring Helen Hayes. His film debut had come the year before in China Corsair, an adventure starring Jon Hall, in which Borgnine played a double-crossing Chinese villain. He continued in the same vein as a racketeer’s henchman in The Mob (1951), and he was a nasty piece of work called Bull Slager, opposing the hero Randolph Scott, in The Stranger Wore a Gun (1953), the first of more than a dozen westerns in which he appeared.

As far as truly nasty characters went, Borgnine was particularly memorable in From Here to Eternity (1953) as Sergeant “Fatso” Judson, the beer-bellied bully of the dreaded stockade who makes Frank Sinatra’s life a misery. He was equally hissable in Johnny Guitar (1954), Vera Cruz (1954) and Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). After being cast against type in Marty, he was given far more varied roles. In The Square Jungle (1955), he was the gentle trainer of a boxer (Tony Curtis). In Jubal (1956), a western version of Othello, he was powerful and touching as a cattle-ranch owner who is convinced by the villainous Steiger that his wife has been unfaithful with the hired hand Glenn Ford. In The Catered Affair (also known as Wedding Breakfast, 1956), which, like Marty, was derived from a Chayefsky teleplay, he was Bette Davis’s hot-headed Bronx cab-driver husband. He played the songwriter Lew Brown in The Best Things in Life Are Free (1956), his only film musical, though thankfully he got to sing just a few notes.

In the following years, Borgnine was seldom off the screen: downcast in Three Brave Men (1957), as a navy clerk fired because of alleged communist leanings; bellowing in The Vikings (1958), as a barbaric chief; and happy-go-lucky in Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1959), as an Australian sugarcane cutter called Roo, without attempting the accent.

Borgnine spent much of the 1960s playing the bumbling Lieutenant Commander Quinton McHale in the popular TV series McHale’s Navy, and was also kept busy marrying and divorcing. He had married Rhoda Kemins in 1949 and, after their divorce, he wed the actor Katy Jurado on New Year’s Eve 1959. Shortly after their divorce, he wed Ethel Merman in 1964 but the marriage lasted little more than a month. In Merman’s autobiography, she mischievously followed the statement “And then I married Ernest Borgnine …” with a blank page. His fourth wife was Donna Rencourt: their marriage lasted for seven years from 1965. During this period, he became an active freemason; he was later honoured with the 33rd degree of the masonic order and its grand cross. Borgnine proclaimed, “I’m proud of the fact that I belong to an organisation that made me a better American, Christian, husband and neighbour.”

Two of Borgnine’s most notable screen roles in the 60s were in complete contrast to this masonic ideal – he was a tough general in Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen (1967) and one of the wildest of Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969). In the 1970s, he drifted from genre to genre, including one of the first “disaster movies” of the period, The Poseidon Adventure (1972). But he was always best at what he did first – playing the heavy. Aldrich’s Emperor of the North (1973) featured him as a sadistic train conductor during the Depression who threatens to kill any hobo boarding his train, and in Peckinpah’s Convoy (1978) he played the cop pursuing truck driver Kris Kristofferson. In 1973 he married Tova Traesnaes, who headed her own cosmetics company.

In the 1980s, Borgnine had another TV hit with the series Airwolf and worked with a younger generation of film directors including John Carpenter (Escape from New York, 1981), Wes Craven (Deadly Blessing, 1981) and Paul Morrissey (Spike of Bensonhurst, 1988). However, he appeared most often in conventional action pictures, a few of them with a distasteful vigilante theme, and in three crass TV movie sequels to The Dirty Dozen.

Throughout the 1990s and into the new century, Borgnine expended most of his energy on the golf course while continuing to appear mostly in supporting roles, though he did take the lead in the Sean Penn-directed segment of the omnibus film 11’09”01 – September 11 (2002) and in The Man Who Shook the Hand of Vicente Fernandez, to be released later this year. In the latter, he played an elderly man, bitter at never becoming famous. Borgnine himself was an example of an actor who made a handsome living from an ugly mug.

He is survived by Tova and his children, Christofer, Nancee and Sharon.

• Ernest Borgnine (Ermes Effron Borgnino), actor, born 24 January 1917; died 8 July 2012

• This article was amended on 11 July 2012. The original assigned the wrong role in The Dirty Dozen to Borgnine: the general he played was tough rather than “brutal… more corrupt than the gang of cons he looked down on”. This has been corrected.

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

Rhodes Reason was born in 1930 in Glendale, California. He made his movie debut in 1955 in “Lady Godiva” which starred Maureen O’Hara. His other movies include “Crime Against Joe” and “Voodoo Island”.

IMDB entry:

Rhodes Reason was born in Glendale, California on April 19, 1930. He is the younger brother of Rex Reason. Rhodes made his professional debut at the age of 18 in the play Romeo and Juliet under the direction of Charles Laughton. His career has spanned nearly 40 years and he has appeared in over 230 roles in television, movies and stage. He starred in the series White Hunter (1957) in England, and was cast as Sheriff Will Mayberry in the TV series Bus Stop (1961). His numerous guest appearances have included Death Valley Days (1952), Here’s Lucy (1968), Maverick (1957), 77 Sunset Strip(1958), The Time Tunnel (1966), Perry Mason (1957), Star Trek (1966), and many more. In the early 1980s he starred in the Broadway musical “Annie”, playing Daddy Warbucks for nearly three years. He is an active member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: jeri.hamilton@pam.org

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Don Taylor was born in 1920 in Freeport. He starred opposite Elizabeth Taylor in “Father of the Bride” and “Father’s Little Dividend”. He went on to become a respected director of such movies as “Damien : Omen Two” and “Escape From the Planet of the Apes”. He was married to British actress Hazel Court. He died in 1998.

Tom Vallance’s “Independent” obituary:

HANDSOME AND affable, the actor, director and writer Don Taylor, who played the fiance of Elizabeth Taylor in the classic comedy Father of the Bride, spent over a decade portraying clean-cut, all-American young men. In 1950 women students at the major Californian universities voted him “the man we’d like best to enrol with”.

He later moved into directing, where his work was considered efficient rather than exciting. He directed over 400 television episodes and dramas, and 15 films, including two successful sequels, Escape from the Planet of the Apes (the third in that series) and Damien – Omen II. As a writer, his scripts included the television movie My Wicked Wicked Ways – The Legend of Errol Flynn (1985), which he also directed.

Born in 1920, in Pittsburgh, and raised in Freeport, Philadelphia, he studied law at Pennsylvania State University, along with speech and drama. A part in a college stage production determined his future. “There was never any question about it,” he said. “Once I put my foot on a stage, I knew I was going to be an actor.”

After graduation, he hitch-hiked to Hollywood, where he was given a screen- test by Warners but rejected because he was liable to be drafted for war service. MGM took him on, and immediately cast him in a tiny role as a soldier returning on leave in Clarence Brown’s touching version of William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy (1943). Small parts followed in Girl Crazy, Swing Shift Maisie, Thousands Cheer and Salute to the Marines, all in 1943, before he enlisted in the army.

While in the service he was chosen by Moss Hart to play a major role in the army air-force production of Hart’s play Winged Victory, which absorbingly followed a group of six youthful air-force recruits through their training, including interludes with their wives, sweethearts and mothers. It opened on Broadway in November 1943 and brought Taylor excellent reviews for his performance in the role of the gregarious “Pinkie” and, billed as “Corporal Don Taylor”, he recreated the role in the film version, directed by George Cukor in 1944.

“Winged Victory was a memorable evening in the theatre,” said Variety, “and the picture is no less worthy.” Proceeds from both the play and the film went to army charities and, like Michael Curtiz’s This is the Army, the film is alas rarely shown today.

Taylor’s first post-war film was Song of the Thin Man (1947), after which he played one of Deanna Durbin’s suitors in For the Love of Mary (1948). He was a young homicide detective working with an older one (Barry Fitzgerald) in The Naked City (1948), made entirely on location in New York City and Taylor’s favourite of his films. “It was one of the first of its kind,” he stated. “It was improvisational in many ways; now it’s very ordinary to go and shoot anywhere, but Naked City did it long before anybody else. The director Jules Dassin shot a lot of it using hidden cameras.”

He was a young war recruit again, but this time taking part in brutal combat, in Battleground (1949), then had his best remembered role, as Elizabeth Taylor’s fiance and ultimately bridegroom, in Vincente Minnelli’s timeless, beautifully judged comedy, Father of the Bride (1950). “That film just goes on and on,” said Don Taylor recently, “and so does Liz!”

The following year he was in the sequel, Father’s Little Dividend, and he also appeared in Flying Leathernecks (1951), The Blue Veil (1951, as a former charge of lifetime nanny Jane Wyman), and King Vidor’s Japanese War Bride (1952), in which he played a GI who finds it difficult to deal with the problems that arise when he returns to the US with an Oriental wife.

He was the missing prisoner-of-war around whom the plot pivots in Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 (1953) and, by now a heavy drinker, he formed a close friendship with the film’s star William Holden. “Bill and I used to drink like it was going out of style,” said Taylor later. He was able to put his experience to good use when cast in I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955), playing an aviation cadet who goes on the town with singer Lillian Roth (Susan Hayward) and wakes up in a hotel room to find that he is married to her. Not loving each other, the couple go from one party to another over the ensuing months until they divorce.

Taylor’s drinking was due in part to his career’s unsatisfactory pro- gress and it reached its nadir in 1957:

I had just done Hammer’s drecky Men of Sherwood Forest, and was getting a divorce so I called my agent and said, “Listen, I’ve had it. I want to get out of the country – do you have anything?” He said, “Yeah, we’ve got a picture that’s going in Brazil”, and I said, “That’s for me!” I didn’t even read the script, and when I got to Brazil and read it, I was ready to cut my throat.

The film, shot as Women of Green Hell but released as Love Slaves of the Amazon, featured Taylor as an explorer captured by a tribe of green- skinned warrior women. “It was later on TV all the time, and people would call me up at four in the morning laughing so hard they could barely get the words out.”

At this point the actor decided to switch careers. “I had been in about two dozen films and starred or co-starred in most of them, but no longer felt creative forces as an actor.” With the help of Dick Powell, who had formed a television production company, Taylor was given the chance to direct an episode of Four Star Playhouse, which led to further television work including an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. (“I was friendly with Hitchcock, because after Naked City I had auditioned for him for a part in Rope, which I didn’t get.”)

The 30-minute episode, The Crocodile Case (1958), starred Denholm Elliott and Hazel Court (known at the time as “the scream queen of British horror”). Taylor and Court fell in love, were married in 1964 (it was Taylor’s third, his first having been to actress Phyllis Avery, who was in Winged Victory) and were still together when he died.

Taylor became a prolific television director, making occasional returns to acting. In 1961 he appeared in a three-week run of Felicien Marceau’s The Egg in Los Angeles, telling the LA Times: “Once every 30 years a part like this comes along. You read it and say to yourself, `This is the reason I got into acting in the first place.’ “

In 1961 Taylor directed his first feature, Everything’s Ducky, starring Mickey Rooney:

I was directing a TV series with Rod Taylor called Hong Kong when Mickey, who

I’d directed several times on television, called me and asked me to direct a film he was producing. I was hesitant, but Hazel urged me to do it. The trouble was Mickey and his co-star Buddy Hackett wouldn’t stop clowning, and as Mickey was the producer I couldn’t stop him. Stars sometimes have too much power. I was directing an episode of Have Gun, Will Travel with Richard Boone and suggested that he do such and such and he said “Nope, I’ll just walk over there and sit down.” He’s directing, and I’m just directing traffic.

Taylor’s last major screen role was in the European western The Savage Guns (1962), after which he was solely a director (though he gave himself a bit role in his musical Tom Sawyer). He replaced the British director Mike Hodges (who was having artistic disagreements with the producer) on Damien – Omen II, though Taylor confessed later that he thought the film tried too hard to be more gory than the first. “Getting Bill Holden for the film was a plus value – we were old friends – but I had overcome my alcohol problem while he was still drinking heavily.”

Taylor also directed Five Man Army (1969), Tom Sawyer (1973, which indicated he had little flair for the musical genre), The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday (1976), The Island of Dr Moreau (1978, starring Burt Lancaster and based on the H.G. Wells fantasy), and The Final Countdown (1980) which had an intriguing premise – an aircraft carrier enters a time-warp and finds itself in the Pacific on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack – but, as Taylor admitted, a weak ending. “The ending had nothing to do with the whole picture – suddenly they were back in their own era just sailing blithely along. It was produced by its star Kirk Douglas – a superb actor but as a producer a pain in the ass.”

Don Taylor directed many television movies, including Heat of Anger (1972) with his friend Susan Hayward. He considered himself something of a pioneer in breaking through the barrier between acting and directing: “It upsets me when I see someone like Kevin Costner getting $25m to make a film. Apart from a few exceptions – Chaplin, Welles, Olivier – actors were not trusted to direct films in my era. Dick Powell, Ida Lupino, Paul Henried and myself were forerunners of actors becoming directors. I helped break that barrier down, and it is a directors’ medium.”

Donald Ritchie Taylor, actor, director and writer: born Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 20 December 1920; three times married (two daughters); died Los Angeles 28 December 1998.

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

Charles Korvin was born in 1907 in what is now Slovakia. He came to Hollywood in 1944 and made “Enter Arsene Lupin”. Other movies include “This Love Of Ours” with Merle Oberon and “Ship of Fools” in 1965 with Vivien Leigh and Simone Signoret. He died in 1998 in New York.

IMDB entry:

He was born in Piestany, Hungary, and came to the United States in 1940 after ten years studying at the Sorbonne where he worked in still and motion picture photography. After studying acting at the Barter Theater (Abingdon, VA), he made his 1943 debut on Broadway in “Dark Eyes” under the name Geza Korvin. It was then than movie producer Charles K. Feldman signed him to a contract with Universal. There, with the new name Charles Korvin, he played the title role, a French thief, in “Enter Arsene Lupin” (1944). His next three movies paired him romatically with Merle Oberon. After a contract dispute with Universal, and though blacklisted by HUAC in 1951, he played a number villain, thief and philanderer roles for different studios, including the part of the evil Russian agent Rokov in Lex Barker’s “Tarzan’s Savage Fury” (1952). He also appeared in many TV episodes, notably as The Eagle in the “Zorro” series (1957) and as the Latin dance instructor Carlos in “The Honeymooners”. He returned to Hollywood in Stanley Kramer’s “Ship of Fools” (1965). He had homes in Manhattan and Klosters, Switzerland, and died, aged 90, at the Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, survived by his wife, Natasha; a daughter, Katherine Pers of Budapest; a son, Edward Danziger Dorvin of Santa Monica, CA; and three grandchildren.

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

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Harry Belafonte was one of the giants of the American music industry in the 1950’s. He was born in 1927 in Harlem, New York. His songs included “Banana Boat Song” and “Hole in a Bucket”. He ventured into movies with “Carmen Jones” with Dorothy Dandridge and “Island In the Sun”.

TCM overview:

Multi-talented actor and musician Harry Belafonte was the first black performer to win an Emmy Award and the first recording artist to sell over a million copies of an album, though he was doubtlessly most proud of his longstanding work as an activist in international fights against racism, violence and world hunger. Belafonte got his start in New York theater, but his sideline as a nightclub singer propelled his mainstream breakout when his 1954 album Calypsopopularized the music of his Jamaican heritage and hit number one on the charts. A respected authority on international folk music and a world-touring performer, Belafonte also enjoyed a career as an actor and producer, where he was involved in important early African-American productions including “Carmen Jones” (1954), in which he starred alongside Dorothy Dandridge, and Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark play “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black,” which he produced. Whatever the nature of the work, Belafonte’s style remained solid – the casual friendliness and warm, jaunty humor were sincere; the fierceness and intensity often surprising.

Harold Belafonte was born in Harlem on March 1, 1927, to a seaman and his Jamaican wife, who worked as a domestic. During his peripatetic childhood, the family was so poor that Belafonte was sent to live in Jamaica, where he bounced around between relatives’ homes for five years. He returned as a misfit, a stranger with an unusual accent whose dyslexia made school nearly impossible. He dropped out, spent a year in the Navy during World War II, and returned to Harlem where he held a job as a janitor. One night he attended a performance at the American Negro Theater (ANT), and bitten by the acting bug, he enrolled in classes at Actors Studio and Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research. He financed his new passion by singing pop songs at local nightclubs. Belafonte’s career advanced quickly in Harlem’s thriving creative atmosphere, and he landed a leading role in the ANT’s staging of Sean O’Casey’s “Juno and the Paycock” while his gigs at the Royal Roost Nightclub and the Village Vanguard jazz club won him considerable attention. He also hit the small screen as a regular on the short-lived all-black TV revue, “Sugar Hill Times” (CBS, 1949-1950).

In 1952, Belafonte was signed to a recording deal with RCA Records and released his first single, the popular Caribbean classic, “Matilda.” The year 1953 was a watershed one for Belafonte, beginning with his Tony Award-winning supporting role in the musical revue “John Murray Anderson’s Almanac.” He made his film debut in a leading role as a school principal in the minor but likable “Bright Road” opposite Dorothy Dandridge. He and Dandridge re-teamed in “Carmen Jones” (1954), Otto Preminger’s striking all-black revamp of the classical opera “Carmen.” Belafonte’s warm, rich voice, soft with the slightest touch of grit, was not deemed appropriate for the operatic songs in this musical melodrama, so his singing – like most of the cast members – was dubbed. However his own voice received a widespread showcase with the release of the million-selling album, Calypso (1955). Belafonte made his contribution to the post-War craze for exotic cultures with his melodious, danceable and witty (indeed, often satirical) sing-alongs from his beloved Caribbean, including “Jamaica Farewell” and “Banana Boat Song,” which opened with the singer’s famous field call, “Day-o!”

Belafonte’s on-again, off-again acting career kept him busiest in the 1950s, though he faced charges of being “too assimilationist” – much like another black star (and friend) whose rise to stardom paralleled his, Sidney Poitier. Such a claim actually placed far too much weight on Belafonte’s relatively light skin and on his considerable popularity. The film “Island in the Sun” (1957), though fairly tame, was somewhat innovative in suggesting an interracial romance between him and Joan Fontaine. He also gave an excellent performance in the intelligent film noir “Odds Against Tomorrow” (1959), as part of a trio of mismatched burglars whose grand scheme g s awry. Perhaps more importantly, he also executive-produced the film. “The World, the Flesh and the Devil” (1959) was explicitly anti-racist and coincided with Belafonte’s growing involvement in the Civil Rights movement. He was a close friend of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and used his successful position to help organize and finance efforts to end segregation in the South, where, as his own form of protest, he refused to tour.

In 1959, Belafonte won an Emmy (the first for an African-American performer) for his solo TV special, “Tonight with Belafonte” and gave the first of his now-legendary concerts at Carnegie Hall. His two-night engagement proved so popular that he was invited back to give an encore in 1960. In a performance acclaimed for Belafonte’s graciousness in sharing the stage, he introduced such African and African-American talents as Miriam Makeba, Odetta and the Chad Mitchell trio to U.S. listeners. Belafonte received a Grammy Award for the 1960 album Jump Dat Hammer and released the hit albums Jump Up Calypso (1963) and Midnight Special (1962), an album of American folk songs and spirituals featuring then-unknown Bob Dylan on harmonica, but put much of his career on hold to pursue higher callings throughout the remainder of the decade. In 1963, he worked alongside Dr. King to participate in voter registration drives, the interstate Freedom Rides that challenged unconstitutional segregation laws, and helped organize the notorious March on Washington where King gave his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.

Belafonte earned a Grammy in 1965 for the album An Evening with Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba (1965) and teamed up with other female vocalists in television specials, including “Petula” (CBS, 1968) with Petula Clark and “Harry and Lena” (1970), with Lena Horne. He returned to the New York stage to produce Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark work “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” In 1970, he played a contrite angel in Jan Kadar’s affecting and unusual “The Angel Levine” (1970) and narrated a documentary about his slain friend, “King: A Filmed Record Montgomery to Memphis” (1970). He and Poitier co-starred in the Western “Buck and the Preacher” (1972), and Belafonte was directed by Poitier in “Uptown Saturday Night” (1974), in a take-off of Marlon Brando’s “Godfather” characterization. Belafonte released a number of live albums and co-starred in “Grambling’s White Tiger” (1981), a TV movie about a white player on the largely black university’s famed football team, but activism continued to take center stage in his life’s work. Throughout the 1980s, his politically outspoken reputation remained solid when he opposed the U.S. embargo on Cuba, attacked the U.S. invasion of Grenada, and praised Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union’s peace initiatives. He became especially vigorous in the fight against apartheid and was instrumental in organizing the vastly successful 1985 supergroup recording, “We Are the World,” which raised money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

Named a UNICEF goodwill ambassador in 1987, Belafonte returned to Broadway that same year as producer of “Asinamali!” a play about apartheid. He was honored with a Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989, and in 1990, hosted a three-part PBS music documentary “Routes and Rhythm with Harry Belafonte.” He was given the National Medal of Freedom in 1994, and went on to work on behalf of children’s causes in Senegal, Rwanda and Kenya, as well as traveled to South Africa on behalf of a HIV/AIDS awareness campaign. After successfully beating prostate cancer in 1996, he added research and education about that disease to his full roster of advocacy pursuits. In the entertainment realm, Belafonte made a much-anticipated return to the big screen in “White Man’s Burden” (1995), an intriguing if not wholly successful attempt to reconceptualize America’s ongoing race problems, with Belafonte as a racist wealthy man in a society where blacks have the money and the power. He followed up with a turn as a gangster in Robert Altman’s period drama “Kansas City” (1996).

In 2001, Belafonte was featured in a documentary about Fidel Castro and earned some press for his outspoken opposition to the George W. Bush administration and the handling of the September 11th attacks. He earned some backlash the following year for characterizing African-American administration officials Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as slaves who turned their backs on their people for the privilege to serve a master in “the house.” After having upheld a steady performing schedule of 70 to 80 shows a year, Belafonte announced his retirement from live performing in 2003. In 2006, he and Danny Glover ruffled a few more political feathers when the pair traveled to Venezuela to show support for controversial president Hugo Chavez. Later in the year, Belafonte had a cameo appearance in “Bobby,” Emilio Estevez’ chronicle of the 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy – a close friend of Belafonte’s during his civil rights fights of the 1960s.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Robert Young had a great career in both film and television. He was born in 1907 in Chicago. In the 1930’s and 40’s he made such movies as “Secret Agent” for Alfed Hitchcock, “H.M. Pulham Esdq” and “The Enchanted Cotage”. Teh in the 1950’s he had a major success on television in “Father Knows Best” and then in the 1970’s had another very popular TV series “Marcus Welby M.D.”. He died in 1998 at the age of 91,.

TCM overview:

An affable, forthright lead with prototypical “average guy” good looks, Robert Young entered films in 1931 and for 25 years embodied the easygoing but eminently sensible US male. Headlining many programmers and medium-sized “A” productions, he made films in every genre, and was often cast as an agreeable consort to more dominant star actresses. Like the star whose career and image most parallels his, Fred MacMurray, Young moved smoothly in middle age to TV, producing and starring in the landmark family sitcom, “Father Knows Best” (CBS and NBC, 1954-1960). It was only one step from paternal ideal to the avuncular, and Young later enjoyed another popular series with the similarly soothing medical drama, “Marcus Welby, M.D.” (ABC, 1969-1976). Not as big in films as MacMurray, Young was never as edgy or whimsical as James Stewart, or as earnest and striving as Henry Fonda. His TV success was greater than that of any other Golden Era Hollywood Everyman, though, because, regardless of his real talent as an actor, he was relaxed and unthreatening.

Born in Chicago but raised in California, Young began acting at the Pasadena Playhouse and made his film debut in Fox’s “The Black Camel” (1931). That same year, he was signed by MGM, where his first major role came as Helen Hayes’ son in the mother-love weeper, “The Sin of Madelon Claudet” (1931). Young soon played similarly boyish roles in support of Norma Shearer in “Strange Interlude” (1932) and Marie Dressler in “Tugboat Annie” (1933). He also began playing leads in programmers and “B” pictures, which, over the course of his 14-year stint at Metro included “Lazy River” (1934), “Calm Yourself” (1935), “Miracles for Sale” (1939) and “Joe Smith, American” (1942). Young also vied for the hand of such estimable female stars as Joan Crawford (in several films including Dorothy Arzner’s striking “The Bride Wore Red,” 1937), Margaret Sullavan (the moving “Three Comrades,” 1938) and Jeanette MacDonald (“Cairo,” 1942).

A reliable property who brought likability and an offhand intelligence to his lightweight playboy roles, he was also frequently loaned out to other studios. Young tried to win the favor of Ann Harding (“The Right to Romance,” 1933) and Barbara Stanwyck (“The Bride Walks Out,” 1936) at RKO and Claudette Colbert at Paramount (“The Bride Comes Home,” 1936). A sure rule of thumb determined whether or not Young would prevail: if a bigger male co-star was also in the running, Young was the inevitable good-hearted loser; if not, he was generally deemed a decent catch.

Like MacMurray, Young enjoyed some of his best roles when his “nice guy” demeanor slipped from the casual to the careless, or proved a mere front for villainy. He enjoyed just such a change-of-pace role as a spy in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Secret Agent” (1936), was compelling as a Nazi in “The Mortal Storm” (1940), and enjoyed a hit as a ne’er-do-well in “Those Endearing Young Charms” (1945). Best of all was his opportunist in the striking noir “They Won’t Believe Me” (1947), toying around with Jane Greer, Susan Hayward and Rita Johnson before the richly ironic plot caught up with him. On more sympathetic fronts, his glib, recklessly drunken partygoer parried deliciously with Constance Cummings in James Whale’s cult classic “Remember Last Night?” (1935) and Young was very touching in both “H.M. Pulham, Esq.” (1941), as a stuffy Bostonian, and “The Enchanted Cottage” (1945), as an embittered war veteran.

Although Young acted on multiple occasions with such gifted actresses as Dorothy McGuire, Ruth Hussey and Maureen O’Sullivan, he never became part of a romantic team until TV beckoned. In the late 40s and early 50s, he still appeared in popular films, but his pipe-smoking detective was less riveting than Robert Ryan’s anti-Semitic psycho in “Crossfire” (1947) and he also played second fiddle to Clifton Webb’s prissy babysitter in “Sitting Pretty” (1948). The latter film, with Young as an ordinary breadwinner, pointed toward his popular success on radio with “Father Knows Best” beginning in 1949. By 1954, Young gave up on features altogether when he successfully transplanted insurance manager Jim Anderson and his all-American family to the small screen. An unabashed ode to a patriarchal nuclear family that not only never was but also never could be, “Father Knows Best” won Young two Emmys and compensated for its idealized and conservative coziness with doses of warmth, wit and the chemistry Young evoked with ideal co-star Jane Wyatt and their clean-scrubbed kids.

After Young ended the show’s run, he tried another series with the reflective small-town saga, “Window on Main Street” (CBS, 1961-62), but it didn’t last. The 60s were a lean period for the actor, but when he rebounded as Marcus Welby, the handsomely white-haired Young won a third Emmy with another winning formula, complete with younger sidekick, wisecracking support staff and nostalgic guest stars. Dr. Welby was as reassuring to the 70s as Jim Anderson had been 20 years earlier and Young continued into the 80s with several “Father Knows Best” and “Marcus Welby” TV-movie reunions, another series attempt (“Little Women,” NBC, 1979), and the occasional departure role (as mercy killer Roswell Gilbert in “Mercy or Murder?” NBC, 1987). Young also dominated the small screen in a wide range of TV commercials; having sold his genuine talent and likably ordinary persona for 50 years, the move was inevitable.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Barbara Feldon is best known as the delicious Agent 99 in the hit television series “Get Smart” which ran from 1965 until 1970. She also starred in the movies “Fitzwilly” in 1967 and “Smile” in 1975. Now retired from film acting she currently resides in New York.

TCM overview:

With her innate talent and drive, it was not too difficult to decode actress Barbara Feldon’s formula for success. The former fashion model shot to fame as the statuesque Agent 99 on the classic spy sitcom “Get Smart” (NBC, 1965-69; CBS, 1969-1970), which paired her with Don Adams as the blundering, shrill-voiced Maxwell Smart. Playing the highly competent secret agent whose looks often came in very handy during covert operations punctuated Feldon’s career, but it also limited her choice in roles following the show’s demise. Feldon continued to act, taking on supporting roles on various drama series and sitcoms, as well as earning recognition as a brilliant voiceover artist. Yet, it was Feldon’s role as the slick and sexy Agent 99 that was forever etched in most viewers’ memories, making her one of television’s most unforgettable characters.

Barbara Hall was born on March 12, 1933 in Pittsburgh, PA, where she enjoyed an average middle-class upbringing. By the time she was in first grade, the already ambitious Feldon decided she was going to be an actress. Her passion for the craft continued to flourish, and in 1955, she graduated from Carnegie Mellon University’s (then Carnegie Institute of Technology) drama department and moved to New York City shortly after. In between acting gigs, Feldon worked as a dancer in a Ziegfeld Follies revival. She also became a contestant on the quiz show “The $64,000 Question” (CBS, 1955-58), where she won the title prize for correctly answering all the questions in her particular area of expertise, Shakespeare. In the mid-1960s, the seductive, deep-voiced actress purred and growled her way to recognition after she appeared in a television commercial, sprawled on a tiger skin rug, staring deep into the camera and touting the praises of Top Brass cologne.

In 1964, Feldon landed a guest-starring role on the drama series “East Side/West Side” (CBS, 1963-64) and quickly caught Hollywood’s attention. After a few more guest spots on television, Feldon finally won the role that would provide her with pop culture immortality – the lead role of the striking and intelligent Agent 99 on the wacky spy sitcom “Get Smart” (NBC, 1965-69; CBS, 1969-1970). Starring opposite Don Adams as the bumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart, Feldon’s Agent 99, though much younger, was decidedly more competent than her older counterpart who, in spite of his clumsiness, still managed to fend off their enemies and fight the forces of K.A.O.S. Feldon’s character was frequently seen leaning, sitting, or slouching in the show’s ongoing effort to conceal that she was slightly taller than her male co-star. After “Get Smart” wrapped production after a successful run, Feldon found it hard to shake off her Agent 99 character for years to come.

Undaunted, she continued to make TV appearances, guest starring on a number of drama series as well as taking on supporting roles in numerous made-for-TV movies, most notably the 1975 satire “Smile” (CBS) where she portrayed a prudish yet obsessive beauty contest organizer. She was a regular player on the short-lived “The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine” (ABC, 1972) and, with Jackie Cooper, co-hosted “Dean Martin’s Comedy World” (NBC, 1974). Feldon also found constant work as a voiceover artist for commercials such as Nice Cough Drops and Campbell Soup, and was a regular panelist on classic game shows such as “The Hollywood Squares” (syndicated, 1965-1982) and “The $20,000 Pyramid” (syndicated, 1973-1992). In 1993, she made a rare TV appearance on the NBC comedy series “Mad About You” (1992-99), where she played a former star of a ’60s spy series called “Spy Girl.” Feldon reprised Agent 99 alongside Adams as Smart in the ABC reunion TV movie “Get Smart, Again!” (1989), in several episodes of the short-lived series revival “Get Smart” (Fox, 1995), and in the documentary special “Inside TV Land: Get Smart” (TV Land, 2001). She also indulged a lifelong passion for writing by penning the 2003 book Living Alone and Loving It, which chronicled the path she took to become content and comfortable while living single.

By Candy Cuenco

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

The magnificent Petula Clark has had an amazing career. She began her show business life as a girl singer on radio during World War Two. In the late 1940’s she was featured in British films such as “I Know Where I’m Going” with Wendy Hiller and ‘The Huggett’ series. In the 1950’s she had a very successful recording career with such hits as “In the Shoemaker’s Shop”. In the early 1960’s she moved to France and became a hue international singing star with “Downtown”. In 1967 she went to Hollywood to make “Finian’s Rainbow” with Fred Astaire followed in the U.K.by “Goodbye Mr Chips” with Peter O’Toole. In the 1970’s she had a very successful concert career and then in the late 1980’s starred on Broadway in “Bloodbrothers”. Just last year 2011 she recorded “Downtown” again with The Sawdoctors”. Long may she continue.

TCM overview:

Singer-actress Petula Clark’s soaring, often soulful vocals helped to grant her one of the longest-running and most successful music careers in the history of British pop music, with over 15 Top 40 singles in the United States alone and scores more in her native England and throughout the world. Though Clark’s signature song was the plaintive No. 1 single “Downtown” (1965), she had been a fixture on British radio and film since the early 1940s, before enjoying a modest career as a teen singer in the 1950s. A move to France in 1960 established her as a more versatile talent before she broke worldwide with “Downtown” in the midst of the British Invasion. A string of hit singles, including “I Know a Place” and “Don’t Sleep in the Subway” soon followed, as did her successful return to feature films with “Finian’s Rainbow” (1968) and “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” (1969). In the 1970s, Clark shifted her attention to television and theater, where she drew rave reviews for performances in “The Sound of Music” and the 1983 Broadway run of “Blood Brothers.” But her pop career continued to enchant and entertain new generations of listeners, as evidenced by new versions of “Downtown” in 1988 and 2011 that enjoyed placement in the U.K. Top 10. Clark’s ebullient personality and winning way with an upbeat song preserved her status as one of England’s most beloved pop performers.

Born Petula Sally Olwen Clark on Nov. 15, 1932 in the town of Epsom, Surrey, England, she was the daughter of hospital nurses Leslie Norman Clark and Doris Phillips. Though singing provided her with a pathway to fame, Clark desperately wanted to become an actress after seeing Flora Robson on stage in 1938. She made her public singing debut the following year at a department store in Kingston upon Thames, before bursting onto the scene with an impromptu rendition of the pop traditional “Mighty Lak’ a Rose” at a BBC radio show at a theater in 1942. An air raid was announced shortly before broadcast, prompting the program’s producers to request a song from the audience to calm the nerves of those in attendance. Nine-year-old Clark, who was at the show with her father, stepped up to sing for the assembled crowd, which gave an enthusiastic response. She was soon boosting public morale during wartime with her own radio program, “Pet’s Parlour,” while also singing for British troops alongside fellow child stars Julie Andrews and Anthony Newley.

By the midpoint of the decade, Clark had made her feature film debut as a lovable orphan girl in “Medal for the General” (1944), which led to juvenile roles in a number of minor British films, as well as one bona fide classic, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s drama “I Know Where I’m Going!” (1945). Two years later, she met musician Joe “Mr. Piano” Anderson, who would become a guiding force in her life and career. He was instrumental in introducing her to producer Alan A. Freeman, who would oversee many of her earliest hits. With Clark’s father, Freeman also created Polygon Records, which served as her personal label while also granting Leslie Clark greater control over his daughter’s career and finances. By 1954, Clark was scoring substantial hits on the U.K. pop singles chart, including “The Little Shoemaker,” which also granted her a No. 1 single in Australia, as well as “Suddenly There’s a Valley” and “With All My Heart.” In 1955, Polygon was sold to Pye Records, which would become her label for the next two decades. She continued to chart with innocuous pop hits for the next two years, but by the end of the decade, Clark had tired of her status as a teen pop star. She also felt hemmed in by intense public speculation about her relationship with Henderson, which had become a romantic partnership. However, Clark’s desire to take greater control of her career, combined with Henderson’s reluctance to be regarded as “Mr. Petula Clark,” led to the end of their personal relationship, though they continued to work together for several years.

In 1957, Clark traveled to France, where she met publicist Claude Woolf, who proposed that she record in French with the Vogue Records label. The move quickly established her as a star throughout Europe on the strength of more sophisticated pop songs like “Ya Ya Twist” and “Chariot,” which she sung in French and later Italian and German. As her profile began to rise on the Continent, so too did her profile in the U.K., where she scored her first No. 1 hit with the 1961 single “Sailor,” the same year she married Woolf in ceremonies in England and France. She soon added composing for film scores to her growing list of credits with the 1964 crime film “A Couteaux Tirés” (“Daggers Drawn”), but her greatest success would come that year when she teamed with composer-arranger Tony Hatch to record new material. He played her a fragment of an incomplete song that captured her attention, which, with the addition of Hatch’s lyrics, became “Downtown.” The song became an international smash, thanks in part to the rise of the British Invasion, which had overtaken the music industry throughout the world. Most importantly, it provided her with entry into the American pop market, where it reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in January of 1965 before capturing the Grammy for Best Rock and Roll Song that same year.

“Downtown” also became the first of 15 Top 40 hits for Clark in the U.S., including a second No. 1 with “My Love” (1965) and the Top 5 tunes “I Know a Place” (1965), which brought her a second Grammy, as well as “This is My Song” (1967) and “Don’t Sleep in the Subway” (1967). She also hosted her own short-lived variety series, “This is Petula Clark” (BBC, 1966) before landing a TV special called “Petula” (NBC) in America in 1968 that inadvertently landed her in the history books. While singing a duet with African-American performer Harry Belafonte, she took his arm in a move that upset its corporate sponsor, the Chrysler Corporation, which feared that the gesture would upset Southern viewers. Clark and Woolf, who served as executive producer for the show, not only refused to substitute a different take but also destroyed all of the alternate takes, forcing the network to accept the original footage. The special aired without controversy and to high ratings and critical acclaim. Clark also resumed her film career that year with Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of the stage musical “Finian’s Rainbow” (1968), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination, while her next film, a musical version of “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” (1969), reaped two Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe for her co-star, Peter O’Toole.

Clark’s pop career in the United States began to wane in the 1970s, though singles like “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” (1972) from the hit musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “The Wedding Song (There Is Love)” (1972) continued to find placement on the U.K. pop chart as well as the American adult contemporary chart. She subsequently found greater exposure through television and radio ads for major corporations like Coca-Cola, Chrysler and Plymouth, as well as a second BBC series, “The Sound of Petula” (1972-74). Clark also found great acclaim as a theater actress, winning the praise of Maria von Trapp herself in a 1981 production of “The Sound of Music” in London’s West End. The show, which set the record for the largest advance ticket sales in British theater history, ran for over a year, and led to more high-profile stage roles, including a 1983 turn in the title role in George Bernard Shaw’s “Candida.” The end of the 1980s was also marked by Clark’s return to the U.K. singles charts for the first time since 1972 with a 1988 dance remix of “Downtown” with Dutch producer Eddy Ouwens.

In the 1990s, Clark made her Broadway debut in “Blood Brothers” (1994), and then toured the world in a one-woman show she wrote about her life and career. Between starring roles in both the West End and American touring productions of “Sunset Boulevard,” Clark was also appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1998. She also continued to record in the decades that followed, including 2007’s Sunshine and Solitude, which featured all new songs written by Rod McKuen, while also giving concerts around the globe. Her association with “Downtown” continued in 2011 when the Saw Doctors released a version of the song with Clark that reached No. 2 on the Irish singles chart. In 2013, the 80-year-old singer enjoyed her biggest album chart placement in decades with Lost in You , which featured a new single, “Cut Copy Me,” which enjoyed a lengthy run on the Belgian singles chart, as well as a cover of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” The album earned positive reviews and debuted at No. 24 on the U.K. albums chart in March of that year.

By Paul Gaita

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Joanne Woodward

Joanne Woodward. TCM

Ernest Borgnine

Rhodes Reason

Don Taylor

Charles Korvin

Harry Belafonte

Robert Young

Barbara Feldon

Petula Clark

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