Richard Lynch was born in Brooklyn, New York to Irish parents. He served in the U.S. Marine Corp. A brilliant character actor he featured in “Scarecrow” with Al Pacino and “The Seven-Ups”. He died in 2012.
“Independent” obituary by John Riley:
The son of an alcoholic, Richard Lynch began using drugs himself. Then in 1967 he had an accident in Central Park, setting himself on fire in the middle of an LSD trip. After massive reconstructive surgery he eventually rebuilt enough confidence to return to acting. His height and distinctive scarred appearance made him ideal casting for villains in sci-fi, fantasy and horror films, and he became a favourite character actor among cult film fans.
Lynch was one of seven children from a Brooklyn-Irish Catholic family; his younger brother Barry also became an actor. Through his parents Lynch held Irish citizenship and frequently visited the country. After a spell in the US Marine Corps, he studied theatre at Herbert Berghof’s HB Studio and the Actors’ Studio
Lynch appeared in dozens of on- and off-Broadway plays. In 1965 he played Louis XIII opposite Anne Bancroft and Jason Robards in Michael Cacoyannis’s production of John Whiting’s The Devils. Eleven years later Tony Richardson directed Lynch and Vanessa Redgrave in Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, and in 1977 he appeared opposite Al Pacino in The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel.
The year after his accident, Lynch appeared with Timothy Leary in the documentary LSD – Trip to Where? The scarring, along with his six-foot frame, brought roles as cops, heavies and the like. His film debut came in Scarecrow (1973) in which he played a thuggish prisoner. Two years later he was a cop in the Xaviera Hollander biopic The Happy Hooker.
The following year saw him in a more substantial role. In Larry Cohen’s fantastically subversive God Told Me To, random murders are carried out by New Yorkers who use the title of the film to explain their crimes. Each of these events is presaged by an appearance from a strange Christ-like figure played by Lynch.
His TV appearances included episodes of Serpico (1976), Police Woman and The Streets of San Francisco (both 1977) and The Bionic Woman (1978). He also played three different roles in Starsky and Hutch (1975, 1978 and 1979). In 1978 he appeared in Battlestar Galactica and two years later returned for the lower budget Galactica 80. Battlestar Galactica: the Second Coming (1999) is a rarely-seen trailer the makers hoped would interest a studio in a reboot of the franchise.
In between, Lynch had secured a couple of starring roles. In the film Delta Fox (1979) he played an ex-con who gets tied up in a labyrinthine kidnapping plot. He turned his scarring to good effect, deflecting questions about it to add to the mystery of his character’s back story. The widely praised TV movie Vampire was intended as the pilot for a series.
In 1981 he finally got a series, The Phoenix, the story of an archaeological expedition to Peru that discovers an alien. Unfortunately the first series was also the last, and Lynch returned to B-movies and television, in 1985 playing the first of several Russians, as a Soviet terrorist in Chuck Norris’s commie-basher Invasion USA.
Menahem Golan and his cousin Yoram Globus had long been producers and directors of everything from trash to arthouse. Lynch’s work with them included a Soviet general in Armstrong (1998), while Lima: Breaking the Silence (1999), the true-life story of a Peruvian kidnapping, gave him the chance to play an Irish role, as an ambassador.
After that came the micro-budget basketball crime drama Death Game (2001). If Golan hoped the following year’s modern-day adaptation of Crime and Punishment would be a prestige product – its impressive cast included John Hurt and Vanessa Redgrave – it was scuttled by his directorial ineptitude. Final Combat (2003) was a martial arts drama.
Lynch’s height and a Rutger Hauerish mane of silver-white hair brought a certain authority, allowing him to play the US President in the Mexican wrestling drama Mil Mascaras and the Aztec Mummy (2007). That year also saw him in a somewhat mainstream hit – to the satisfaction of cult film fans – with Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween in which he played the small role of the headmaster of Michael Myers’ school. Zombie recalled, “I’ll never forget the way he scared the crap out of the kid actors. As soon as I said ‘Action!’, he dove right into his role of Principal Chambers at top volume.”
After that, Zombie didn’t even audition him for the forthcoming The Lords of Salem in which Lynch takes charge of a 17th-century witch trial. His son Christopher by his first wife, the actress Béatrix, appeared with him in the time-travel drama Trancers II (1991) but died of pneumonia in 2005. Lynch was discovered dead in his home.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Peter Falk is of course well known for his performance as Lt Columbo in the long running detective series “Colombo” which ran from 19761 until 1978 and then again from 1989 until 2003. He has though many other great acting credits to his name including an Oscar nominated performance as a gangster in “Murder Inc” in 1960. His other movies include “Pocket Full of Miracles”. “The Great Race” and “Murder By Death” with Maggie Smith, Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Eileen Brennan. He died in 2011 at the age of 83.
Brian Baxter’s “Guardian” obituary:
Show-business history records that the American actor Peter Falk, who has died aged 83, made his stage debut the year before he left high school, presciently cast as a detective. Despite the 17-year-old’s fleeting success, he had no thoughts of pursuing acting as a career – if only because tough kids from the Bronx considered it an unsuitable job for a man. Just 24 years later, Falk made his first television appearance as the scruffy detective, Columbo, not only becoming the highest paid actor on television – commanding $500,000 an episode during the 1970s – but also the most famous.
Inevitably the lieutenant dedicated to unravelling the villainy of the wealthy and glamorous dominated his career, although – unlike some actors – he escaped the straitjacket, or in his case shabby raincoat, of typecasting. In addition to stage work, he made numerous film and television appearances, notably for John Cassavetes in Husbands (1970) and A Woman Under the Influence (1974). There were also war films such as Anzio (1968), comedies including The Great Race (1965) and dramas ranging from Jean Genet’s The Balcony (1963) to David Mamet‘s Lakeboat (2000).
Falk was the only child of Michael and Madeleine Falk, east European Jews who had emigrated to America, settling first on New York’s East side, then moving to the Bronx, where Peter was born – two years before the stock-market crash heralded the depression. At the age of three, a tumour was diagnosed behind his right eye and, in an emergency operation, both the tumour and the eye were removed. The resultant disability made for a precarious school life, compensated for by his defiant humour, sporting prowess and subversive behaviour.
Unable to serve in the navy because of his eyesight, he enlisted in the merchant marines, working as a cook. After graduating in political science from the New School of Social Research, New York City, he gained a master’s degree in public administration from Syracuse University, in upstate New York. He travelled in Europe before taking his first regular job, as an efficiency expert in Hartford for the Connecticut budget bureau. By his late 20s, he knew that he had to escape financial administration.
Despite earlier misgivings, he had enjoyed acting in college productions, and, while working, enrolled with the actor-teacher Eva Le Gallienne, who in 1955 urged him to quit his job and return to New York City. With intriguing looks and a strong personality, but little training, he took her advice.
A disastrous debut in an off-Broadway production of Molière’s Don Juan was followed a few months later by a happier experience as the bartender in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh (1956), with Jason Robards. Over the next two years he acted in many plays including St Joan and The Lady’s Not for Burning, paying the rent by appearing in TV series such as Have Gun Will Travel, Wagon Train and The Untouchables.
His big-screen debut came in Nicholas Ray’s ecological adventure Wind Across the Everglades (1958), but with his city accent and nervy, method-oriented style he soon specialised in playing hoodlums in films including Pretty Boy Floyd (1959) and Murder Inc (1960), the latter attracting great attention for his powerful performance as a vicious killer. It earned him an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor, and he became the first person to be nominated for an Emmy within the same year, after playing a heroin addict in the television drama The Law and Mr Jones.
In 1961, Frank Capra remade his classic Lady for a Day as A Pocketful of Miracles. Now in colour and drenched in syrup, the movie gained Falk a second Oscar nomination. The following year, he received an Emmy for his performance as a truck driver in The Price of Tomatoes. Although he had come to acting late, within a few years he established himself as a significant presence.
He felt confident enough to marry his girlfriend from college days, Alyce Mayo, and took steady work in films, playing a psychiatrist in Pressure Point (1962) and the police chief in The Balcony (1963). He was on the periphery of Sinatra’s rat pack in Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964) and for TV co-starred in Brigadoon (1966). He joined his friend Jack Lemmon when the actor decided to produce Murray Schisgal’s play Luv for the screen. Sadly, the transfer resulted in a dismal movie farce. This and a couple of other duds led to a lull in Falk’s career, until he heard that Bing Crosby had turned down the part of a detective in a scheduled television show. At the age of 40, Falk landed the part, making his debut as Columbo in the pilot episode, Prescription Murder. When a series was proposed he declined, preferring to work with Cassavetes on Husbands and to return to the stage in Neil Simon’s The Prisoner of Second Avenue.
By this time he and Alyce had adopted two daughters, Jacqueline and Catherine, so the security of a television series took on new appeal. Falk signed with NBC, initially for six episodes. He even provided the clothing for the Los Angeles homicide investigator from his own wardrobe, including the infamous raincoat. Later he observed that the dogged, working-class detective sprang from his own personality: “He’s obsessive, relentless, meticulous about his work and definitely not a good dresser.”
Falk became deeply involved with the production, whose format was distinctive in that the murder was shown at the outset, making the mystery for the viewer not a matter of identity, but of explanation. He contributed ideas and directed two episodes, Blueprint for Murder and Etude in Black. Between 1971 and 1978 he starred in 40 episodes, becoming a multimillionaire in the process.
In what time was left, he joined Cassavetes and his wife Gena Rowlands in financing A Woman Under the Influence as an independent movie. Falk’s supportive role as a manual worker coping with the problems of his emotionally scarred wife, played by Rowlands, revealed his talent as a character actor. There were few such substantial roles for a while, and he was another detective – indebted to Humphrey Bogart – in the star-studded flop Murder By Death (1976). He played opposite Cassavetes in the thriller Mikey and Nicky (also 1976) and then took a cameo role in his friend’s superb Opening Night (1977).
Falk had reached an important crossroads in his life and career. The Columbo series was coming to an end, and in 1976 he and Alyce agreed to an amicable divorce. He found himself enjoying golf and his greatest pleasure – drawing and sketching – as much as his career. Although increasingly reclusive, in 1977 he married the actor Shera Danese and embarked on further films, including the lively caper The Brink’s Job (1978), based on a robbery in Boston in 1950, and the commercial hit The In-Laws (1979), co-starring Alan Arkin. A sequel, Big Trouble (1985), directed by Cassavetes, failed to repeat that success, the director proving himself unsuited to banal comedy material.
Falk’s movie career became increasingly busy and varied. He was the storyteller-grandfather in the whimsical The Princess Bride, and took the lead in an enjoyable remake of a Claude Lelouch film retitled Happy New Year (both 1987). He returned to the stage in David Mamet’s challenging Glengarry Glen Ross (1986) and Moss Hart’s Light Up the Sky (1987).
However, he was deeply affected by the premature death of Cassavetes in 1989, and a need to immerse himself in work coincided with an offer to resume playing his most memorable creation. Falk was offered huge financial inducements, plus creative control of the new series as executive producer. He began the new run with Columbo Goes to the Guillotine (1989), and more than 20 feature-length TV movies followed until Murder With Too Many Notes (2000).
His movie career ran in tandem, often in character roles or, memorably, playing himself – in Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire (1987) and Robert Altman’s The Player (1992) – plus documentaries about Frank Capra and Cassavetes. Occasionally Falk took on more demanding roles, playing a grandfather over three decades in the sentimental Roommates (1995), and appeared in many television movies, including A Storm in Summer (2000), directed by the veteran Robert Wise.
More interestingly, he joined a starry cast as the Pierman in Mamet’s Lakeboat. Then in 2001 came Made, a crime movie, and a character role in the comedy Corky Romano, followed by another television movie, A Town Without Christmas. The next year saw him in the Walter Hill boxing drama Undisputed, and as Waldo in Three Days of Rain, based on several Anton Chekhov stories.
He expressed no regrets concerning his career or his dedication to Columbo, though reflected somewhat ruefully, “no one was put on this earth to be so well known by two billion strangers”. That modest disclaimer of his success and fame did not deter him from playing the shabby detective just one more time in the 2003 episode, Columbo Likes the Nightlife. The same year he stayed with television as the star of a feel-good movie, Wilder Days, cast as the grandfather. This was quickly followed by his role as the angel Max in Finding John Christmas and a year later, for the same team, he was in Christmas Angel. He mined that cosy vein further in Checking Out (2005), and a year later published his memoir Just One More Thing, with a title taken from his famous line in Columbo.
His health and his career declined in the following years, after his appearance as one of four grumpy men in a weak comedy, Three Days to Vegas (2007). He was finally seen in small roles in Next (also 2007) and the independent movie American Cowslip (2009). In 2008 he was injured in a car crash and the same year was hospitalised for a hip operation.
Falk was subsequently diagnosed as suffering from dementia as the consequence of Alzheimer’s disease, and Shera took over his affairs; she and his daughters survive him. Not long before he fell ill, he denied that his raincoat had been donated to a museum, saying that it was still part of his wardrobe.
• Peter Michael Falk, actor, born 16 September 1927; died 23 June 2011
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Doris Lloyd, was born in Walton Liverpool in 1896. She began her acting career on Broadway in 1925 and began making movies in 1929. She became a well known character actress. Her movies include “Tarzan, The Ape man” in 1932, “Back Street”, “The Letter”, “Shining Victory”, “Midnight Lace” and later “Rosie” and “The Sound of Music”. She died in California in 1968.
IMDB entry:
Doris Lloyd was born on July 3, 1896 in Liverpool, England as Hessy Doris Lloyd. She was an actress, known for The Sound of Music (1965), Alice in Wonderland (1951) and The Time Machine (1960). She died on May 21, 1968 in Santa Barbara, California, USA. British stage actress who came to Hollywood in 1925 and stayed playing domestic and/or dowager support roles in costumers. Was a very popular radio & television actress, appearing in over 150 movies. Versatile character actress, who first appeared on stage with the Liverpool Repertory Theatre Company in 1914. Intended to merely visit her sister in the United States, but ended up settling down in California. Her lengthy movie career began in 1925 and included countless small parts as (British) charwomen, landladies and, occasionally, society matrons. Notable as a spy in ‘Disraeli’ (1929) and Nancy Sykes in the Monogram version of ‘Oliver Twist’ (1933). On Broadway in ‘An Inspector Calls’ (1947-1948,as Sybil Birling).
Jean Simmons has always been taken for granted, As a child player in Britain she was expected to be one of the best child players and she was: she was expected to become a big international name and she did. In Hollywood for over 20 years she was given good roles because she was reliable and she played them, or most them, beautifully. But she was never a cult figure, one of those who adorn magazine covers, or someone the fan magazines write about all the time. It was not or is not that she simply did or does her job – she is much better than that, she is not a competent actress, she is a very good one – by Hollywood standards a great one, if you take the Hollywood standard to be those ladies who have won Oscars. She was not even nominated for Best Actress Oscar till 1969. She not even nominated for “Elmer Gantry” (and that year Elizabeth Taylor won). Maybe it does not help to have been so good so young” – David Shipman – “The Great Movie Stars – 2 The International Years” (1972)
Jean Simmons was a major star actress in British movies of the late 1940’s with important roles in such films as “Great Expectations” in 1946, “Hungry Hill”, “Black Narcissus” and The Clouded Yellow”. She went to Hollywood in 1950 and was a major international star for over ten years starring in “The Robe” opposite Richard Burton in 1953, “Young Bess” with Spencer Tracy”, “Guys and Dolls” with Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra and in 1960, “Elmer Gantry” opposite Burt Lancaster. She continued acting in film, television and on the stage up to her death at the age of 80 in 2010.
David Thompson’s “Guardian” obituary:
Jean Simmons, who has died aged 80, had a bounteous moment, early in her career, when she seemed the likely casting for every exotic or magical female role. It passed, as she got out of her teens, but then for the best part of 15 years, in Britain and America, she was a valued actress whose generally proper, if not patrician, manner had an intriguing way of conflicting with her large, saucy eyes and a mouth that began to turn up at the corners as she imagined mischief – or more than her movies had in their scripts. Even in the age of Vivien Leigh andElizabeth Taylor, she was an authentic beauty. And there were always hints that the lady might be very sexy. But nothing worked out smoothly, and it is somehow typical of Simmons that her most astonishing work – in Angel Face (1952) – is not very well known.
At first, she was a schoolgirl given her dream. Born in north London, she grew up in the suburb of Cricklewood, and was swept from dancing classes to the studio to be Margaret Lockwood’s younger sister in Give Us the Moon (1944). Several other films followed, with modest roles: Mr Emmanuel; Kiss the Bride Goodbye; Meet Sexton Blake; a singer in The Way to the Stars; and a slave girl for Leigh in Caesar and Cleopatra.
But then David Lean cast her as Estella in Great Expectations (1946); Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger chose her to be the temple dancer with a jewel in her nose for Black Narcissus (1947); and Laurence Olivier borrowed her away from her J Arthur Rank contract so that she could be a blonde Ophelia in his Hamlet (1948). It was noted at the time that an anxious Leigh, Olivier’s wife, chose to be on set whenever Simmons was working – just in case.
Hamlet won the Oscar for best picture, and Simmons was nominated for best supporting actress; in fact, she lost to Claire Trevor in Key Largo. However, she was by then an expert at the Oscars, for she attended the previous year and four times was on stage to accept awards on behalf of Great Expectations and Black Narcissus. Cecil B DeMille, in the audience, was so impressed that he offered her the female lead in his upcoming Samson and Delilah (the Hedy Lamarr role). She had to decline – for Hamlet’s sake – but no young actress was being talked about more.
For a while she remained in Britain. She was also in the Daphne du Maurier tale of an Irish feud, Hungry Hill (1947); and she was suitably preyed upon by Derrick DeMarney in Uncle Silas, adapted from the Sheridan Le Fanu novel. Then, in 1949, with Donald Houston, she was one of two young people shipwrecked on a desert island in The Blue Lagoon. Showing a good deal of flesh for its day (Brooke Shields took her role in the 1980 remake), this was reckoned as a rather daring film – and it was almost certainly viewed, and re-viewed, by Howard Hughes. Then, in the same year, she played the adopted daughter of Stewart Granger in Adam and Evelyne. In fact, the handsome Granger was 16 years her senior, and married once, having divorced Elspeth March in 1948. But the couple fell deeply in love, married and would soon set out together for Hollywood as a kind of middleweight Olivier and Leigh.
25th August 1956: British-American actress Jean Simmons (1929 – 2010) is featured for the cover of Picture Post magazine. Original Publication: Picture Post Cover – Vol 72 No 8 – pub. 1956. (Photo by IPC Magazines/Picture Post/Getty Images)
But that was not before three 1950 films – So Long at the Fair, a period thriller in which she was romantically paired with Dirk Bogarde; Cage of Gold; and The Clouded Yellow, in which she established a fascinating mood with Trevor Howard. And so, aged only 21, she went to Hollywood. But whereas Granger was under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (and would play Allan Quartermain, the Prisoner of Zenda and Scaramouche), she was the oblivious dream child of Hughes at RKO, which had bought her contract from Rank. The strange tycoon was obsessed with her personally, and he laid siege to her romantically and professionally so that she did not work for over a year. Only one thing emerged from the stand-off, Angel Face, in which she is a spoiled child and lethal temptress who seduces nearly everyone she meets (most notably Robert Mitchum). The brilliant picture was directed by Otto Preminger and photographed by the great veteran Harry Stradling. Thus it contains – and she sustains – some of the most luminous close-ups ever given to a femme fatale. How far she understood the picture is unclear. One can only say that it is a rare tribute to unrequited love.
Hughes yielded in the courts in 1952, and Simmons was able to begin a run of costume films, some of them important productions (such as The Robe), but many of them giving her too little to do: in Androcles and the Lion; as Elizabeth I in Young Bess (with Granger, Deborah Kerr and Charles Laughton); very good, though too pretty, as the young Ruth Gordon in George Cukor’s The Actress – she worked especially well with Spencer Tracy. But then the films grew more routine: Affair With a Stranger (with Victor Mature); with Richard Burton and CinemaScope in The Robe – there may have been a fling with Burton; She Couldn’t Say No – she should have; the dreary The Egyptian; A Bullet Is Waiting, in which she was expected to take Rory Calhoun as co-star; Désirée – ruined by the languid mockery of co-star Marlon Brando; and Footsteps in the Fog (with Granger).
She took a risk, singing If I Were a Bell and The Eyes of a Woman in Love, to be Sister Sarah in the movie of Guys and Dolls (1955). The producer, Sam Goldwyn, had wanted Grace Kelly for the part. But director Joseph L Mankiewicz was more than happy with Simmons: “An enormously underrated girl. In terms of talent, Jean Simmons is so many heads and shoulders above most of her contemporaries, one wonders why she didn’t become the great star she could have been.” No one argued, though many observers noted that Mankiewicz was also deeply in love with his actress. Still, it is worth speculating, and noting that nothing sounds wrong or unpromising about this schedule – Jean Simmons in Roman Holiday, in Vertigo, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?
• Jean Merilyn Simmons, actor, born 31 January 1929; died 22 January 2010
The above “Guardian” obituary can also be accessed online here.
When one considers that she was barely past 25 in 1955, it is all the stranger that her films slipped so far in quality: Hilda Crane; as secretary to gangster Paul Douglas in This Could Be the Night; with Paul Newman in Until They Sail; with Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston in the big western, The Big Country; This Earth is Mine. One notable exception to this trend was Home Before Dark (1958), where Simmons was outstanding as a woman who has had a nervous breakdown.
By then, her marriage to Granger had come apart. But in 1960, she married again, the writer-director Richard Brooks, and he immediately raised her horizons by casting her as the evangelist opposite Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry. Lancaster and Shirley Jones won Oscars in that film, but Simmons was not even nominated. Thereafter, she sportingly played the female lead in Spartacus, and had some overlong, giggle-making love scenes with its star, Kirk Douglas – “Put me down, Spartacus, I’m having a baby!”
That would prove to be her last big picture, for the slide was now evident: The Grass is Greener (1960, a rather middle-aged comedy); All the Way Home, adapted from James Agee’s novel, in which she was very good, but which went unnoticed; Life at the Top (done back in Britain); Mister Budd- wing; Divorce American Style and Rough Night in Jericho. Then Brooks did all he could to revive her fortunes in The Happy Ending (1969), about a miserable wife whose dreams of marriage, based on the movie Father of the Bride, have turned to disillusion. She got an Oscar nomination for it (she lost to Maggie Smith in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie), but rather more out of respect than conviction. In truth, she always seemed too strong-willed and amused for weepy material. Indeed, she might have done Jean Brodie.
More or less, in the early 1970s, she seemed to retire. The marriage to Brooks came to an end in 1977, and there were stories that she was drinking too much. In the early 1980s she checked herself in to the Betty Ford clinic and spoke publicly about her addiction.
Then she started to work in television, and sometimes it was only the end credits that told one that that had been Jean Simmons. She was in The Thorn Birds (1983); she did a TV version of Great Expectations where she was Miss Havisham (1989); was an admiral called in for an investigation in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1991); and was in How to Make an American Quilt (1995). She went into semi-retirement and was often too shy to accept invitations to film festivals. But around 75, she changed: she did a wonderful voice performance in Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), and she was deeply touching as a dying poet in Shadows in the Sun (2009). She attended the Telluride Film Festival, Colorado, in 2008 and she was interviewed at a Lean centenary celebration in Los Angeles where she was still as pretty, seductive and mischievous as she had been as Estella in Great Expectations.
The recollection of those early years brings out the paradox of her career, for if she had made only one film – Angel Face – she might now be spoken of with the awe given to Louise Brooks. She is survived by her daughters Tracy, from her marriage to Granger, and Kate, from her marriage to Brooks.
Frederick Combs Frederick CombsFrederick CombsFrederick CombsFrederick Combs
Frederick Combs was born in 1935 in Virginia. His first television credit was in an episode of “The Defenders” in 1965. He acted in a major role in the play “The Boys in the Band” as ‘Donald’ and repeated his role in the film version in 1970. He did not though have a prolific screen career and died in 1992 at the age of 56.
David HedisonDavid HedisonBrett Halsey & David Hedison
David Hedison was born in 1928 in RhodeIsland. He is best known for the hit TV series “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” during the 1960’s. He also starred in 1959 in the cult “The Fly” with Patricia Owens.
IMDB entry:
David Hedison was born Albert David Hedison, Jr. in Providence, Rhode Island, where his father owned a jewelry enameling business. He decided he wanted to be an actor after seeing Blood and Sand (1941). He started out in the theater as “Al Hedison”, receiving a Theatre World Award for most promising newcomer after appearing in the play, “A Month in the Country”. He soon signed on with Twentieth Century-Fox and starred in several movies before going on to TV’s Five Fingers (1959) and a name change to David Hedison. He then appeared in the popular series, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964). Hedison appeared in many made-for-TV films and TV series, including two James Bond films. He also was a regular on the soap opera, Another World (1964), from 1991-1995. More recently, he starred in theatrical productions with Juliet Mills and Lois Nettleton. Hedison appeared on the TV soap, The Young and the Restless (1973), in 2004. His most recent TV appearance was on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories (2009) in 2012.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: L.M. Adams
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Deborah Raffin was a popular actress in movies of the 1970’s and 80’s. She was born in 1953 in Los Angeles and is the daughter of actress Trudy Marshall. She made her movie debut in “40 Carets” in 1973 opposite Liv Ullmann and Gene Kelly. She then starred in “The Dove”, “Once Is Not Enough” and “The Sentinal” amongst others. In later years she established a very successful audio books business. She died in 2012.
Tom Vallance’s “Independent” obituary:
On screen, the tall, pretty actress with long fair hair and a wholesome quality will be remembered for her first starring role, in The Dove (1974), in which she portrayed the girl who proved an inspiration for yachtsman Robin Lee Graham as he sailed solo around the world, a trip that took five years.
In Charles Jarrott’s film, based on Graham’s autobiography, Joseph Bottoms played the sailor, who found support from Raffin as she followed him to Fiji, Australia, South Africa, Panama and the Galapagos Islands. Exquisitely photographed on exotic locations by Sven Nykvist, the film was also given a publicity boost by the participation of actor Gregory Peck as its producer. Raffin was later to name her publishing company Dove Books on Tape.
Born in 1953 in Los Angeles, she was the daughter of Trudy Marshall a model-turned-20th Century-Fox starlet who had small roles in such films as Springtime in the Rockies (1942), Heaven Can Wait (1943) and The Dolly Sisters (1945), and Phillip Jordan Raffin, a restaurateur. She studied drama at the age of 15 with Milton Katselas and in London with Kate Fleming at the National Theatre, but then followed in her mother’s footsteps by making her professional debut as a fashion model.
She made her first screen appearance in the comedy Forty Carats (1973), as the daughter of a divorcée (Liv Ullmann). While her mother is falling in love with a man much younger than herself (Edward Albert), Raffin is attracted to an older one (Billy Green Bush). Though critics praised Raffin’s radiant beauty, the movie’s focus was on its star, Ullmann, whose misjudged comedy timing was blamed for the film’s mild impact.
After The Dove, Raffin played a father-fixated rich girl surrounded by corruption in an opulent production of Jacqueline Susann’s steamy best-seller about the jet-set, Once Is Not Enough (1975). Kirk Douglas played her father, a former film producer who marries a bi-sexual millionairess (Alexis Smith) to maintain his daughter’s lifestyle. Raffin next starred in a television movie, Nightmare in Badham County (1976), which was released theatrically in mainland China, becoming such a hit there that Raffin became the first Western actress to make a promotional tour of the country, after which she became an unofficial ambassador helping China make deals with Hollywood.
Though Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To (1976) was a superior horror movie dealing with a religious cult and an anti-Christ, another horror film, but Michael Winner’s The Sentinel (1977), was cliché-ridden and tedious.
Two minor television films, Ski Lift to Death and How to Pick Up Girls! (both 1978) did not improve her stature, and she lost out on the role of Sandy in the film version of Grease when producer Allan Carr, who had decided to give her the part, went to a party at Helen Reddy’s at which a fellow guest was Olivia Newton-John, who captivated him and landed the part.
In 1980 Raffin starred in Touched by Love, the true story of a nurse, Lena Canada (Raffin) who persuaded a withdrawn cerebral palsy victim to write to her idol, Elvis Presley; it began a correspondence between the girl and the singer that lasted until her death. Raffin also won acclaim for her portrayal of the troubled actress Brooke Hayward in the television movie Haywire (1980), after which her acting career was mainly confined to television movies and mini-series, including the Hammer House of Horror episode “Last Video and Testament” (1984) and a Twilight Zone story, “Something in the Walls” (1989).
She starred as a business woman opposite Pierce Brosnan in the mini-series Noble House (1988) and her occasional feature films included Death Wish 3 (1985), in which she was a public defender tracking down the murderous vigilante (Charles Bronson), but after discovering his identity she falls in love with him.
In 1974 she married Michael Viner, a music producer, and in the mid-1980s the couple launched Dove Books on Tape as a hobby, working out of their garage. They soon had a bestseller with Stephen Hawkings’ A Brief History of Time, followed by Sidney Sheldon’s The Naked Face.
Raffin was responsible for persuading celebrities to provide voices for the tapes – among her recruits were Roger Moore, Ruby Dee, Burt Reynolds and Jason Robards Jr. She also compiled a book of celebrities’ Christmas anecdotes, Sharing Christmas (1990), for which she travelled to Calcutta to get a story from Mother Teresa, with other contributors including Margaret Thatcher and Kermit the Frog. The book’s profits went towards helping the homeless. The enterprise became a multi-million dollar business, though Viner was sometimes criticised for his more sensational projects (including two books by participants in the OJ Simpson case) and the couple sold the company in 1997. The pair, who had one daughter, were divorced in 2005, and Viner died in 2009. Raffin was diagnosed with leukaemia a year ago.
Deborah Raffin, actress and entrepreneur: born Los Angeles, California 13 March 1953; married 1974 Michael Viner (one daughter, divorced 2005); died Los Angeles, California 21 November 2012.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Linda Hunt won an Oscar for her astonishing performance as the male ‘Billy Kwan’ in 1982’s “The Year of Living Dangerously”. She was born in 1945 in Morristown, New Jersey. Her other movies include “The Bostonians” “Dune” and “Silverado”.
TCM overview:
Despite her diminutive 4-foot, 9-inch frame, actress Linda Hunt emerged as a prominent, Oscar-winning performer in only her second film, playing doomed Chinese-Australian photojournalist Billy Kwan in Peter Weir’s “The Year of Living Dangerously” (1982), which marked the first time in Academy Award history that an actor won for playing a character of the opposite sex. Her triumphant win led to a Tony-nominated performance in Arthur Kopit’s “End of the World” (1983) and a supporting role as a saloon keep in the revisionist Western, “Silverado” (1985), though opportunities later became few and far between. While she logged numerous film and television roles over the years, including a long-running recurring role as a judge on “The Practice” (ABC, 1996-2004), Hunt developed a second career as a busy voiceover artist. She lent her surprising baritone as a narrator on environmental specials, while voicing characters in both video games – most notably on the “God of War” series – and various animated projects like Disney’s “Pocahontas” (1995). By the time she was seen with regularity on such hit procedurals as “Without a Trace” (CBS, 2002-09) and “NCIS: Los Angeles” (2009- ), Hunt was a familiar presence in several different mediums; a testament to both her talent and her ability to overcome the odds.
Born on April 2, 1945, in Morristown, NJ, Hunt moved to Westport, CT with her family while still an infant. Burdened with a host of health problems since birth, Hunt was misdiagnosed with cretinism at six months of age. While in her teens, she was correctly diagnosed with hypo-pituitary dwarfism, a condition in which the pituitary gland fails to release enough growth hormone. Ironically, or perhaps consequently, Hunt grew up an unusual overachiever, undaunted by her condition. She took her first stab at acting at age 12 while performing in a production of “Flibbertigibbet” at Westport’s famed Silver Nutmeg Theater. Hunt moved to New York in the mid-1960s, where she found consistent work in summer stock theater. Concerned that her unusual physical type would limit her future as an actress, Hunt initially focused on becoming a stage director. But the lure of acting proved too powerful to resist, so in 1969, Hunt returned to Westport to study acting under dramatic coach, Robert Lewis.
In the early 1970s, Hunt began a longtime association with the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven. Her one-woman show based on the life of Joan of Arc won the actress rave reviews and even flickers of interest from Broadway. A year later, Hunt went to New York City and made her off-Broadway debut as the Player Queen in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s production of “Hamlet” in Central Park. This led to Hunt’s first major role as the Irish maid Nora in a 1973 production of Eugene O’Neill’s play, “Ah, Wilderness!” Originally directed by Arvin Brown for the Long Wharf Theatre, the play eventually moved to the Circle-in-the-Square Theatre along the Great White Way in New York, where it was taped for airing as a PBS special, “Theater In America” (1976). Hunt’s screen career began in the late 1970s, when she made her television debut in a “Hallmark Hall of Fame” presentation of Arthur Miller’s “Fame” (CBS, 1979). Adapted for the screen by the playwright himself, it was noteworthy that Miller specifically created Hunt’s role of Mona with the actress in mind.
The following year, Hunt made her official big screen debut in Robert Altman’s bloated and ultimately failed musical, “Popeye” (1980). Cast in a small supporting role as the feisty Mrs. Oxheart, Hunt’s appearance was a fortunately forgettable cameo lost in an even more forgettable film that dogged stars Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall for years to come. Her next film, however, permanently changed her career. Tapped to co-star in the controversial drama “The Year of Living Dangerously,” Hunt joined burgeoning young actors Mel Gibson and Sigourney Weaver in director Peter Weir’s complex drama. Based on a novel of the same name by Christopher Koch, the film told the complicated tale of an Australian journalist caught at the center of a foreign country’s political overthrow. Based on the real-life events of the attempted 1965 coup of Jakarta by Indonesia’s Communist party, “Dangerously” earned Hunt an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Eurasian photographer, Billy Kwan. The first actor to ever win an Oscar for playing a role of the opposite gender, Hunt’s record stood untouched until 1999, when Hilary Swank won an Oscar for “Boys Don’t Cry.”
Despite her formidable talent, however, Hunt hit the proverbial glass ceiling. Though she remained consistently employed on stage – even winning two Obies and a Tony nomination in the 1980s and 1990s – the pedigree of her film work had slipped. Still, Hunt’s presence in movies managed to endure throughout this period. Among her higher profile roles were supporting turns in such critical favorites as “Silverado” (1985), in which she played Stella, a genial saloon proprietor, and the blockbuster comedy, “Kindergarten Cop” (1990), portraying a school principle disapproving of a rough-and-tumble cop (Arnold Schwarzenegger) going undercover as a kindergarten teacher to capture a wanted fugitive. In 1993, Hunt briefly returned to television, starring in the ill-fated space opera, “Space Rangers” (CBS, 1993), which was cancelled after just six episodes. After a brief dormancy in the mid-to late 1990s, during which time she only appeared in the horror dud, “The Relic” (1997), Hunt’s career underwent something of a renaissance when she turned to television. In 1997, Hunt created the role of Judge Zoey Hiller on David E. Kelly’s long-running legal dramedy, “The Practice.” A favorite recurring character for the show’s fans, Hunt reprised the role more than two dozen times before the show finally adjourned its run.
In 2003, Hunt joined the cast of the HBO drama “Carnivale” (HBO, 2003-05) for a 10-episode run as the mysterious voice of Management. In 2005, actress Hunt added an unlikely new credit to her resume: video game icon. As the resonant, authoritative voice of the Narrator for the award-winning “God of War” video game series, Hunt gained a whole new generation of fans unfamiliar with her acting work. Hunt reprised the voiceover role for the game’s sequel, “God of War 2.” Following a long vacation away from features, Hunt finally returned to the big screen with the blended family comedy “Yours, Mine, and Ours” (2005), starring Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo. While her role was hardly much of a challenge for the actress, the movie did at least allow Hunt a rare opportunity to flex her comedic muscles. Her next project continued in the same vein, as Dr. Mittag-Leffler in director Marc Forster’s twisted comedy, “Stranger than Fiction” (2006) starring Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson. After building a second career voicing narration for numerous PBS specials, including “Secrets of the Ocean Realm” (1997), “Woodrow Wilson” (2002) and “Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State” (2004), Hunt joined the cast of the successful spin-off series, “NCIS: Los Angeles” (CBS, 2009- ), playing OSP Operations Manager Henrietta Lange.
The above TCM overview can be accessed also online here.
Jeremy Northam was born in 1961 in Cambridge. He made his U.S. movie debut opposite
Sandra Bullock in “The Net”. His other films include “Carrington” and “Gosford Park” where he played ‘Ivor Novello’.
TCM overview:
Tall and slender with dark good looks and a rich, plummy voice, Jeremy Northam was already established as a stage and television performer in his native Britain when he landed his breakthrough screen role as the suavely seductive villain stalking Sandra Bullock in the cyber thriller “The Net” (1995). The son of a professor and a potter, he spent his formative years in Bristol and Cambridge. After completing his college education, Northam enrolled at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School but left before completing the three-year program when he began landing TV roles like the soldier in the WWI drama “Journey’s End” (1988). The following year, the limelight shone on him briefly when he understudied and then replaced Daniel Day-Lewis in the National Theatre production of “Hamlet”. Additional stage roles followed, including an award-winning turn in “The Voysey Inheritance” and a supporting role in “The Gift of the Gorgon” (1992), starring married couple Judi Dench and Michael Williams as well as additional work at the Royal Shakespeare Festival. As his stage presence increased, Northam lent his presence to other small screen roles before landing his first major feature role, as Hindley Earnshaw in the uneven remake of “Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights” (1992). That film met with a derisive critical reaction in England and was relegated to TV in America (it aired on TNT in 1994).
After his strong performance in “The Net”, Northam seemed on the verge of being typecast as cads when he portrayed Beacus Penrose who beds and abandons the titular artist played by Emma Thompson in the biopic “Carrington” (1995). Switching gears, however, he excelled in the real-life role of a man with dual personalities, the reclusive composer Peter Warlock and his bete noir, the dyspeptic music critic Philip Heseltine in “Voices/Voices From a Locked Room” (also 1995). Further demonstrating his range, Northam cut a dashing romantic figure as Mr. Knightly to Gwyneth Paltrow’s “Emma” (1996) before stumbling a bit in both “Mimic” (1997), as a scientist, and Sidney Lumet’s remake of “Gloria” (1999), as a gangster. While his onscreen roles offered little challenges to the actor, he found success as a buttoned-up real estate agent who falls in with some free spirits in the British telefilm “The Tribe” (1998) and in his return to the London stage playing a gay obstetrician in “Certain Young Men” (1999). In fact, 1999 would prove to be a key year for the actor, with high profile, critically-praised performances in three films. The Sundance favorite “Happy, Texas” cast him opposite Steve Zahn as a pair of escaped convicts who seek refuge in the titular town where they are mistaken for a gay couple. In David Mamet’s remake of “The Winslow Boy”, Northam anchored the film as the wily barrister defending the boy accused of theft who also harbored unexpressed romantic yearnings for the Winslow daughter (Rebecca Pidgeon). Rounding out the trio of movies was Oliver Parker’s period adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband”, with the actor as a married politician who is haunted by a youthful indiscretion. Continuing to corner the market in period films, Northam joined the cast of the Merchant Ivory production “The Golden Bowl” (2000), playing an Italian prince. He followed up with a fine turn as actor-composer Ivor Novello in the Robert Altman-directed period mystery “Gosford Park” (2001) and as an 19th-century poet in Neil LaBute’s adapation of A S Byatt’s novel “Possession” (2002). After a much discussed stint playing Dean Martin opposite Sean Hayes as Jerry Lewis in the CBS biopic “Martin & Lewis” (2002) in which Northam ably captured the singer-actor’s suave charisma if not his naughty-boy appeal, Notham appeared in the Mel Gibson-produced adaptation of “The Singing Detective” (2003) and played a French army officer hounding Michael Caine in “The Statement” (2003). He next played Walter Hagen in the biopic “Bobby Jones, Stroke of Genius” (2004), which told the story of the iconic golf champion (Jim Caviezel) who quit the sport on top at age 28.
The above TCM overview can be accessed online here.
