Susan Sarandon has had a terrific career since her movie debut in 1969 in “Joe”. She won the Academy Award in 1996 for “Dead Man Walking” with Sean Penn. Her other major movies include “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, “The Other Side of Midnight”, “The Last of the Cowboys”, “Pretty Baby”, “The Hunger”, “Thelma & Louise”, “The Client” and “Little Women”.
IMDB entry:
It was after the 1968 Democratic convention and there was a casting call for a film with several roles for the kind of young people who had disrupted the convention. Two recent graduates of Catholic University in Washington DC, went to the audition in New York forJoe (1970). Chris Sarandon, who had studied to be an actor, was passed over. His wife Susan got a major role.
That role was as Susan Compton, the daughter of ad executive Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick). In the movie Dad Bill kills Susan’s drug dealer boyfriend and next befriends Joe (Peter Boyle)– a bigot who works on an assembly line and who collects guns.
Five years later, Sarandon made the film where fans of cult classics have come to know her as “Janet”, who gets entangled with transvestite “Dr. Frank ‘n’ Furter” in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). More than 15 years after beginning her career Sarandon at last actively campaigned for a great role, Annie in Bull Durham (1988), flying at her own expense from Rome to Los Angeles. “It was such a wonderful script … and did away with a lot of myths and challenged the American definition of success”, she said. “When I got there, I spent some time with Kevin Costner, kissed some ass at the studio and got back on a plane”. Her romance with the Bull Durham (1988) supporting actor, Tim Robbins, had produced two sons by 1992 and put Sarandon in the position of leaving her domestic paradise only to accept roles that really challenged her. The result was four Academy Award nominations in the 1990s and best actress for Dead Man Walking (1995). Her first Academy Award nomination was for Louis Malle‘s Atlantic City (1980).
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Dale O’Connor
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Ron Masak was born in Chicago in 1936. He is best known for his part as ‘Sheriff Mort Mertzger” in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. he was Barbara Eden’s leading man in the movie “Harper Valley P.T.A.” in 1978.
IMDB entry:
Ron Masak (MAY-SACK) was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of a salesman/musician (Floyd L.), and a mother (Mildred), who was a merchandise buyer. Ron attended Chicago City College, and studied theater at both the CCC and the Drama Guild. He made his acting debut with the Drama Guild in Chicago in Stalag 17 in 1954.
During the course of his career, he has starred in 25 feature films and guest starred in some 350 television shows. Perhaps the most beloved character, and the one for which he is most famous, is that of Sheriff Mort Metzger on the hit television series, Murder, She Wrote. Given that he has also been seen and heard in hundred of television and radio commercials (he was named, “King of Commercials” by columnist James Bacon), it is no wonder that he is often introduced as one of America’s most familiar faces.
Trained in the classics, Ron has proved to be equally at home on stage or screen with Shakespeare or slapstick. He has played everything from Stanley in Streetcar Named Desire and Sakini in Teahouse of the August Moon to Will Stockdale in No Time For Sergeants and Antony in Julius Caesar. As more proof of his versatility, in one production of Mr. Roberts, he played Ensign Pulver and in another he portrayed Mr. Roberts himself. In his hometown of Chicago, Ron was resident leading man at The Candlelight Dinner Playhouse from 1962 to 1966, never missing a single performance. As with many performers, it was the Army that provided Ron with a platform from which to display his all-around talents for performing, writing and directing. In 1960-61, Ron toured the world doing vocal impressions in the all-Army show entitled Rolling Along. Once again, he never missed a show.
Never one to be pigeonholed, Ron continued to demonstrate his incredible range of talent in such films as Ice Station Zebra, Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, Tora! Tora! Tora!, Evel Knievel, A Time For Dying, Harper Valley PTA, Cops & Roberts and The Man From Clover Grove. It was during Clover Grove that Ron added credits as a lyric writer, as he wrote and sang the title song. He played his first big screen villain starring in No Code of Conduct. Among his many television roles, he starred as Charley Wilson in his own summer series, Love Thy Neighbor, Count Dracula on The Monkees and was submitted for an Emmy nomination for one of his ten starring roles on Police Story. He’s been seen on Magnum P.I., Webster and Columbo. His movies of the week include The Neighborhood, In the Glitter Palace, Pleasure Cove, Once An Eagle, The Law and Harry McGraw and Robert Altman’s Nightmare in Chicago.
Ron’s variety work includes emceeing hundreds of shows for, among others, Kenny Rogers, Diahann Carroll, Alabama, Billy Crystal, The Steve Garvey Classics, Tony Orlando, The Lennon Sisters, Trini Lopez, Connie Stevens, Billy Davis and Marilyn McCoo, The Michael Landon Classics and The Beau Bridges Classics.
Ron is also considered to be the most famous salesman since Willy Loman, as he starred in the four most successful sales motivational films of all time: Second Effort with Vince Lombardi, Time Management with James Whitmore, How to Control Your Time with Burgess Meredith and Ya Gotta Believe with Tommy Lasorda, which Ron wrote and directed. He is a sought after motivational speaker. He has traveled all over the country as spokesman for a major brewing company and for 15 years was the voice of the Vlasic Pickle stork. Ron played Lou Costello in commercials for Bran News, McDonald’s, and Tropicana Orange Juice.
Frequently seen on the talk and game show circuit, Ron has been a celebrity panelist on such game shows as Password, Tattletales, Crosswits, Liar’s Club, Showoffs and Match Game. He was a regular panelist on To Tell the Truth.
Ron’s private life is also one of varied interests and talents, devoting time and energy working with many charities. For eight years he was the LA host for the Jerry Lewis Telethon and recipient of MDA’s first Humanitarian of the Year Award. He has served as field announcer for the Special Olympics in support of retarded children, and was named Man of the Year by Volunteers Assisting Cancer Stricken Families. In addition, he contributes much time to work with Multiple Sclerosis, Cystic Fibrosis, Breast Cancer Awareness and hosts charity golf tournaments for among others, Childhelp USA, for whom he is a worldwide ambassador.
Relaxation for Ron includes time spent with friends on the golf course, tennis court, baseball diamond, ski slopes or at Dodger Stadium. A fine athlete, Ron was once offered a professional baseball contract with The Chicago White Sox.
Future projects include Ron starring as Mark Twain in the feature film, Mark Twain’s Greatest Adventure, which he will co-produce, and a one-man show he wrote on Twain called, At Home with Mark Twain. He created the role of Sam Belsky in the world premiere of Jay Kholo’s musical My Catskills Summer.
Ron’s favorite role remains that of husband to his lovely wife Kay, and father to their six children as well as grandfather to their nine grandchildren. They reside in Tarzana, California, where Ron has served for 35 years as, of course, its honorary sheriff.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Tami Zaccaro
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
From 1968 until around 1982 Barbra Streisand was a formidable screen presence. She won an Oscar for her first film “Funny Girl” and then starred in such movies as “Hello Dolly” with Walter Matthau, “The Way We Were” with Robert Redford, “What’s Up Doc” with Ryan O’Neal and “A Star Is Born” with Kris Kristofferson.
Extract from TCM overview:
An iconic entertainer with over 70 million albums sold and Grammy, Oscar, Tony, Emmy and Golden Globe awards for acting and directing, Barbra Streisand’s popularity and creative output spanned over four decades. The New York cabaret singer first hit big as a pop singer and Broadway star in the 1960s. By the 1970s, she was the No. 1 female box office draw with a succession of gold albums that symbolized a new potential success for women in the feminism era. On film, Streisand won over audiences as fast-talking, quick-witted dames in “Funny Girl” (1968) and “What’s Up Doc?” (1974), prior to maturing into an acclaimed film producer and director of “The Prince of Tides” (1991) and other stories of personal growth, like “Yentl” (1983). Streisand’s musical output evolved from its theater roots to contemporary songwriters and she charted No. 1 albums in every decade, from The Way We Were in 1973 to Love is the Answer in 2009. Due to a crippling phobia of signing live, she virtually disappeared from stage performing for 25 years, but remained in the public eye with her film career and status as an active philanthropist in liberal political and social causes, Streisand reigned supreme for her artistic legacy and overall cultural impact in the latter twentieth century.
Born Barbara Streisand on April 24, 1942, Streisand was raised in Brooklyn, NY. Her mother, Diana Rosen, was left to raise Streisand and her younger brother Sheldon when father Emanuel Streisand, an educator and scholar, died when his daughter was just three months old. With the exception of a brief and rocky remarriage that brought Streisand a half sister Rosyln, Streisand was raised largely by her single mother who worked for the New York school system. Streisand herself was an honor student at Erasmus Hall High School, where she had a bit of an oddball reputation and harbored ambitions for an acting career. While still a teenager, Streisand won a singing contest at a nightclub and began landing paid singing gigs around Greenwich Village. She found an acting coach, landed an agent and was still a teenager when she secured jobs in Chicago and San Francisco, though a two-week engagement in Canada was cut short when the audience did not understand Streisand’s bohemian personal style and choice of rather obscure older songs. The club’s owner famously advised the young singer that she would never make it in show business. Few shared his sentiment, though, and Streisand quickly gained widespread exposure with television appearances, including “The Tonight Show” (NBC, 1954- ) in 1961. Further nudging her to stardom was her 1962 Broadway debut in the musical comedy “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” which confirmed Streisand’s promise as a song “belter” and earned the newcomer a Tony nomination.
Smelling a pop music goldmine, executives at Columbia Records signed the 20-year-old, who insisted on a clause giving her the right to choose her own material. In quick succession, Columbia released a pair of albums featuring Streisand’s interpretations of theater tunes and cabaret standards, with The Barbra Streisand Album taking home two Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year. In addition to her nearly overnight stardom, Streisand’s off-stage life blossomed with her marriage to actor Elliot Gould (who had yet to even make his screen debut) in 1963. She was nominated for a second Tony Award in 1964 for her portrayal of early Broadway star Fanny Brice in “Funny Girl,” which established her early persona as a sassy, take-no-guff dame. No mere stage gimmick, Streisand’s many late night talk show appearances showcased a confident, fearless young woman unlike any wilting-flower chanteuse that had come before, and her off-the-cuff banter with hosts like Mike Wallace and David Susskind bordered on the sort of confrontational generation gaps one would expect from Bob Dylan. Streisand’s youthful appeal led to her first No. 1Billboard album, People, and a deal with CBS. In 1965, Streisand brought her songbook to American television audiences in an Emmy Award-winning music special, “My Name Is Barbra” (CBS, 1965). The accompanying album earned Streisand another Grammy Award the following year; the same year she gave birth to her only child, Jason Gould.
After a well-received run on the London stage in “Funny Girl,” Streisand took the role to the big screen in a 1968 adaptation directed by Golden Age great, William Wyler. Audiences were charmed by Streisand’s wit and high-energy live performances, leading to an Academy Award for Best Actress for her film debut; an award she accepted wearing infamous see-through “pajamas.” Two more stage musical adaptations followed, with Streisand starring as a Victorian-era matchmaker in the classic “Hello, Dolly!” (1969), an enormous box office hit directed by Gene Kelly, but she fared less well in Vincente Minnelli’s fantastical “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” (1970). Streisand put singing aside and took a stab at straight-up comedy in “The Owl and the Pussycat” (1970), co-starring as mismatched roommates with an aspiring writer (George Segal). Her off-screen pairing with Gould also proved a mismatch and the pair filed for divorce in 1971. The following year, the undisputed queen of the 1970s screwball comedy revival was born in earnest with “What’s Up, Doc?” (1972). The Peter Bogdanovich-helmed classic concerning mistaken luggage identity and jewel thieves paired Streisand for the first time with Ryan O’Neal, and their chemistry contributed to what became a wildly popular and well-regarded comic success. Meanwhile Streisand’s 13th album release, Stoney End, marked a shift in her musical career, with a focus on new material from contemporary songwriters ranging from Randy Newman to Joni Mitchell. The change in direction proved successful, and the album hit No. 10 and sold well over a million copies.
Streisand returned to No. 1 on the charts for the soundtrack to the film “The Way We Were,” her first challenge as a dramatic actress. Sydney Pollack helmed the nostalgic romance with political overtones, pairing Streisand and Robert Redford as star-crossed lovers to great success. The tearjerker brought another Oscar nomination for Streisand. The versatile actress followed with a comic performance in “For Pete’s Sake” (1974), a farcical misadventure about a Brooklyn housewife whose attempt to invest in the stock market goes sour. After reluctantly reprising her beloved Fanny Brice characterization in the sequel “Funny Lady” (1975), Streisand teamed with fellow musician and actor Kris Kristofferson in an updated version of the film, “A Star is Born” (1976). Streisand gave another standout performance as a rising cabaret singer taken under the wing (and into the bed) of a stadium rock star who is rapidly deteriorating from the excesses of fame. In addition to taking home a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, Streisand won an Oscar and a Grammy for Song of the Year for the film’s mega-hit theme song, “Evergreen.” In 1977, Streisand enjoyed a significant musical accomplishment with the album Streisand Superman, returning to No. 1 on the charts in 1979 with the disco duet “No More Tears” (“Enough is Enough)” performed fellow diva, Donna Summer. She re-teamed with Ryan O’Neal in the wildly successful – though critically panned – romantic comedy, “The Main Event” (1979), which also spawned a gold-selling soundtrack, though nothing could compare to the 1980 album Guilty, a collaboration with Barry Gibb of the songwriting brothers The Bee Gees.
Guilty topped Streisand’s career record sales, reaching No. 1 on the charts in over a dozen countries and earning she and Gibb a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group for the title track. Meanwhile, the box office flop “All Night Long” (1981), starring Streisand as an untalented singer-songwriter married to a firefighter, broke her decade-long box office spell. Preferring to take more time between films and exercise more creative control, it was two years before she appeared on screen again in “Yentl” (1983), the story of a Jewish girl who disguises herself as a boy in order to pursue an education. “Yentl” was actually 15 years in the making, and upped Streisand’s status to that of the first woman to produce, direct, write and star in a major Hollywood motion picture. Her labor of love adaptation of the Isaac Bashevis Singer short story was a box office success and Streisand was honored with a Golden Globe for Best Director. In short order, she scored a No. 1 album with The Broadway Album, a collection of well-loved theatrical compositions that sold nearly six million copies and garnered Streisand another Grammy Award for Best Vocal Performance. The formation of the Streisand Foundation in 1986 added a new dimension to the powerful showbiz player’s career and through her tens of millions of dollars in future grants, she voiced strong support for issues related to the environment, women’s rights, voter education, and nuclear disarmament.
Streisand returned to theaters in 1987 as the producer and star of “Nuts,” for which she earned a Golden Globe nomination for starring as a woman who commits a self-defense murder and lands in a courtroom trying to prove her sanity. Two back-to-back album releases followed; the Top 10 Till I Loved You and One Voice, a career retrospective concert which was also released on DVD and raised millions for the Streisand Foundation. She returned to the film director’s chair to helm the 1991 film “The Prince of Tides” (1991), based on Pat Conroy’s best-selling novel. Again attracted by stories of personal growth and overcoming odds, Streisand’s three-hankie tearjerker dealt with overcoming childhood trauma and difficult family relationships, with Streisand as a sympathetic psychiatrist opposite romantic interest, Nick Nolte. Both critical and popular response to Streisand’s sensitive directorial work was notably improved; dismay being largely reserved for Streisand’s glamorized appearance and saintly self-casting. The film received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and Streisand was also nominated for a Best Director Golden Globe. After 27 years away from the concert stage, Streisand began touring in 1994, amassing the top ticket sales of the year and exposing the staggering depths of her fan base. She was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Grammys, and performed some her best-loved material for the camera in “Barbra Streisand: The Concert” (HBO, 1995), which unsurprisingly earned multiple Emmy Awards, reunited her with Barry Gibb, and brought in top ratings for the cable network.
The 53-year-old’s energy level seemingly unaffected from seven months of touring, Streisand went on to produce, direct and star in “The Mirror Has Two Faces” (1996), a remake of a 1958 French film of the same name starring Streisand as a plain woman whose marriage to Jeff Bridges is rocked when she undergoes a personal transformation. While a popular box office draw, the film suffered at the hands of critics who were turned off by Streisand’s self-indulgent, soft-focus portrayal and broad, precious acting. Regardless, she was nominated for Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress and Best Original song for the theme, “I Finally Found Someone.” Public favor still staunchly in her favor, Streisand visited the top spot in the album charts in 1997 with the album, Higher Ground, which launched a top-selling duet with Celine Dion, “Tell Him.” Also during the 1990s, Streisand’s Barwood Productions earned positive notice for a number of television specials examining important social and cultural issues including “Serving In Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story” (NBC, 1995), which exposed harassment of gays serving in the military, and “Rescuers: Stories of Courage,” (Showtime, 1997-98), which profiled courageous people who helped save the lives of Jews during the Holocaust. In a personal development, Streisand met actor and director James Brolin in 1996 through mutual friends and the couple was happily married in 1998. Streisand spent the next several years working behind-the-scenes as the executive producer of the special “Reel Models: The First Women of Film” (AMC, 2000), the PBS series “The Living Century” (PBS, 2000), and the Lifetime original film, “What Makes a Family?” (Lifetime, 2001).
Following a five-city tour in 2000, Streisand returned to screens in 2001 in a filmed concert special, “Barbra Streisand: Timeless” (Fox, 2001), which brought in strong ratings and multiple Emmy wins. In a return to her long lamented career as a top notch comedienne, Streisand set aside her usual auteur role and took a role in the comedy sequel, “Meet the Fockers” (2004), playing the often embarrassing therapist mother of “Meet the Parents” (2000) main character Greg Focker (Ben Stiller). Teamed sublimely with Dustin Hoffman as her husband and sharing scenes with Robert De Niro, Streisand nearly walked away with the blockbuster, proving that her comedic skills were as sharp as ever. Her nostalgic return to comedy may have made Streisand nostalgic for her early music career, as she promptly re-teamed with Barry Gibb to record the gold-selling album, Guilty Pleasures, and hit the road on “Streisand: The Tour,” which took her across North America, Canada and Europe. Naturally an accompanying album was released –Streisand – Live In Concert 2006, which debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard Top 200, and whose sales contributed to Streisand’s status in Forbes magazine as the No. 2 highest earning female musician for the previous year; topped only by Madonna. The over-65 songstress beat that stat in 2009 when Love is the Answer, a collection of best-loved jazz standards, hit No. 1 on the album charts. The following year she reprised her role of Roz Focker in the sequel, “Little Fockers” (2010).
Eileen Brennan obituary in “The Guardian” in 2013.
Eileen Brennan was born in 1932 in Los Angeles. She became very popular in films and TV in the 1970’s afer her performance in “The Last Picture Show” in 1971. In 1973 she was leading lady to Paul Newman in “The Sting” and in 1980 was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in “Private Benjamin” with Goldie Hawn. A car accident hampered her career in the 1980’s and after a gap she resumed her career. More recently she was seen to great effect as the acting coach ‘Zelda’ in the TV series “Will & Grace”. Sadly Eileen Brennan died in July 2013.
Eileen Brennan’s obituary by Ryan Gibney in the Guardian:
Eileen Brennan, who has died aged 80, had been a stage actor since the late 1950s, but it was as a largely comic presence in US cinema of the 1970s and early 1980s that she was most widely admired. As the pitiless Captain Doreen Lewis, putting a dippy new recruit – Goldie Hawn – through her paces in the hit military comedy Private Benjamin (1980), she wore her trademark look: a solid frizz of red hair, a clenched, sneering smile and an expression of withering incredulity. Then there was the gravelly voice: a heard-it-all whine to match that seen-it-all face. It sounded like bourbon on the rocks. Actual rocks, that is.
Captain Lewis epitomised the sort of role Brennan was best at – and which she was still playing as late as 2001, when she made the first in a run of appearances as a scabrous acting teacher on the popular sitcomWill & Grace. “I love meanies,” she said in 1988. “You know why? Because they have no sense of humour. If we can’t laugh at ourselves and the human condition, we’re going to be mean.”
She was born Verla Eileen Regina Brennan and raised in Los Angeles, daughter of Regina Menehan, a former silent film actor, and John Brennan, a doctor. She attended Georgetown University in Washington DC, where she excelled at comedy in the Mask and Bauble dramatic society, and later the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. She was briefly a singing waitress, but theatrical success was not long in coming. She won the title role in the off-Broadway parody Little Mary Sunshine in 1959, for which she was named a Theatre World Promising New Personality. She toured in The Miracle Worker, played Anna in The King and I and co-starred in the original 1964 Broadway production of Hello, Dolly!
Brennan branched out into television with an adaptation of Maxwell Anderson’s play The Star Wagon (1966), in which she appeared with Dustin Hoffman, and as part of the original cast of the zany sketch showRowan and Martin’s Laugh-In (alongside her future Private Benjamin co-star, Hawn). She made her film debut in 1967 in the comedy Divorce American Style and was chosen by the up-and-coming director Peter Bogdanovich to play a kindly but bored waitress in his masterful 1971 drama The Last Picture Show.
Bogdanovich also cast Brennan as a society matron in his Henry James adaptation Daisy Miller (1974) and as a singing maid in the reviled musical At Long Last Love (1975). She played the brassy madam of a brothel in the multiple Oscar-winning con-man comedy The Sting (1973). And she was one of a clutch of female character actors who brought unusual shading to Jerry Schatzberg’s Scarecrow (also 1973), which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival.
Later in the 1970s, she gravitated toward comedy, including two films written by the playwright Neil Simon: the nutty whodunit spoof Murder By Death (1976) and the Bogart homage The Cheap Detective (1978). It was Private Benjamin, though, which gave her a career-defining role, as well as an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. Hawn’s comic fizz as the pampered Judy Benjamin was often delightful, and the film was a precision-tooled vehicle for her charms. But the key to that picture’s success was the rain that Brennan dumped on Hawn’s parade. When Private Benjamin was turned into a television sitcom, Brennan went with it, serving the same function opposite Hawn’s replacement, Lorna Patterson. Brennan’s sourness was the spoonful of medicine that helped the sugar go down. She was rewarded with two Emmy nominations and one award. (She received a further four Emmy nominations, for her work in Taxi, Newhart, Will & Grace and thirtysomething.)
Brennan left the Private Benjamin TV series prematurely in 1982, following an accident in Venice Beach, California, in which she was hit by a car. Her injuries included broken legs and a fragmented jaw; all the bones on the left side of her face were also broken. During her slow recovery, Brennan became addicted to painkillers. She returned to acting in 1984 in the sitcom Off the Rack but the show was cancelled after only six episodes and Brennan was admitted to the Betty Ford Centre for rehabilitation. “I had reached the stage where I was taking anything I could get my hands on,” she told People magazine. Poor health and injury became a recurring problem. While playing another comic tyrant – Miss Hannigan, in Annie – she fell from the stage and broke her leg. She also underwent treatment for breast cancer. Still Brennan continued to act, predominantly in television but with notable returns to theatre (the 1998 New York production of Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan) and to cinema.
She was in the underrated ensemble comedy Clue (1985); she reprised her Last Picture Show role in the film’s 1990 sequel, Texasville; and she starred in the drama White Palace (also 1990) as the fortune-telling sister of Susan Sarandon (with whom she had enjoyed theatrical success in 1980 in the two-woman play A Coupla White Chicks Sitting Around Talking). Later roles included the Francis Ford Coppola-produced horror Jeepers Creepers (2001) and the Sandra Bullock comedy sequel Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous (2005).
Brennan is survived by two sons, Patrick and Sam, from her marriage to David Lampson, which ended in 1974.
• Verla Eileen Regina Brennan, actor, born 3 September 1932; died 28 July 2013
Anne Helm was born in 1938 in Toronto, Canada. She began working as a John Roberts Power model in New York when she was a teenager. In 1960 she made her film debut in “Desire in the Dust”.
Anne Helm & Gary Lockwood
She starred opposite Elvis Presley in “Follow That Dream” and opposite Robert Goulet in “Honeymoon Hotel”. Most of her acting career though was on primetime U.S. television. She is now a respected children’s writer.
IMDB entry:
Born in Toronto, Anne Helm’s entire Canadian “show biz” career consisted of playing “Alice in Wonderland” at camp and acting in a Christmas pantomime at Montreal’s Her Majesty’s Theatre. When she was 14, she and her mother relocated to New York, where Helm studied ballet and began modeling for John Robert Powers.
Anne Helm
The title role in aShirley Temple’s Storybook (1958) TV production of “The Sleeping Beauty” lured her to the West Coast, where she landed roles in a succession of subsequent feature films and TV series (and was briefly Elvis Presley‘s main squeeze–on-screen and off). More recently billing herself as “Annie Helm”, she is also a writer and illustrator of children’s books.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Tom Weaver <TomWeavr@aol.com>
Kenneth Nelson was born in North Carolina in 1930. His most prominent movie role was in “The Boys in the Band” in 1970. He relocated to the UK and was featured in such movies as “Hellraiser” in 1987 and “Nightbreed”. He died in 1993.
Jonathan Cecil & Anna Sharkey’s obituary in “The Independent”:
KENNETH NELSON was a most versatile and accomplished actor, equally at home in drama, musicals and light comedy.
Born in North Carolina, in 1930, Nelson made his first Broadway appearance in Seventeen (1951). Nine years later he created the part of Matt in the long-running musical The Fantasticks. Perhaps his most celebrated performance was as Michael the host in Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band (1968), which he recreated in London in 1969 and for the film version in 1970.
In 1971 Nelson settled permanently in England, appearing notably in Showboat, Alan Strachan’s compilation Cole (1974), David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Annie and for four years in the West End, then on tour, as the megalomaniac director in 42nd Street. He also made many television appearances, his gifts too often squandered as a ‘useful American type’.
As a performer Nelson will be remembered for his dark-eyed, vital, faun-like charm and his sympathetic, open-vowelled, old-world American voice. He could show a tough mordant streak as in the Crowley and Mamet plays: he also had a fine sense of comedy. In regional productions of Come Blow Your Horn and The Seven-Year Itch, he brought the same kind of subtle, light touch to Neil Simon’s and George Axelrod’s work as Richard Briers and Paul Eddington have brought to Alan Ayckbourn’s. In Cole he gave the most haunting rendition of that long and difficult ballad ‘Begin the Beguine’ since Cole Porter’s personal favourite, the sophisticated cabaret singer Hutch.
A dedicated Anglophile with a remarkable period sense, Nelson embraced his adopted country wholeheartedly: creating country gardens, and appreciating animals and interior design. He was exceedingly generous as a host and in his praise of friends: especially missed will be his congratulatory telephone calls after watching television performances, always to the point and delightfully effusive: ‘Darling, the camera loved you . . .’
During his last, dreadfully debilitating illness he never lost this enthusiasm, still sharing gossip and theatre memories with those whom he called his ‘close ones’, almost literally to the end, when he was cared for by his devoted sister Naomi Burns, as he had been throughout the last two months. Despite his painfully wasted appearance, visiting him was not in any way distressing. As popular with the hospital nursing staff as he had been with colleagues, he brought an almost backstage atmosphere to his room. Eyes lighting up his characteristic wide smile, he showed a most unegotistical eagerness for news from outside.
Kenny Nelson came into our lives just over 20 years ago. He was a warm-hearted, cultivated companion and an exceptional actor. He had a style and finesse not often found on today’s stage but he was by no means old-fashioned in approaching the avant-garde.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
This tall, lean, delicate leading and secondary player made her screen debut as Margot, the older sister, in “The Diary of Anne Frank” (1959) and has gone on to play numerous wives and, in maturity, strong female characters. Diane Baker began her career soon after turning 20 in “Diary”. Also in 1959, she was seen in “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and “The Best of Everything”.
Baker was cast by Alfred Hitchcock in “Marnie” (1964), as Lil, the sister-in-law of Sean Connery who would like to be his next wife.
But by the late 60s, film roles became occasional for Baker, and she was often seen in small, albeit key, roles. In “Silence of the Lambs” (1991), she was Senator Ruth Martin seen pleading for the life of her abducted daughter in a noisy, flashy airport hanger. She was mother to Sandra Bullock in “The Net” (1995) and Matthew Broderick in Ben Stiller’s “The Cable Guy” (1996).
TV has often offered steadier employment. Baker has appeared in numerous anthology series since the early 60s and appeared in one of the first movies made for TV, the 1966 ABC Western, “The Dangerous Days of Kiowa Jones”. She made guest appearances in numerous episodics and appeared in additional TV-movies. Baker was Edward G. Robinson’s doubting daughter-in-law in “The Man Who Cried Wolf” (ABC, 1970) and was Katie Nolan, stalwart Irish-American mother, in the remake of “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (NBC, 1974).
In “The Dream Makers” (NBC, 1975), she was the wife of college professor James Franciscus, watching as her husband becomes corrupted by the music industry. Her only regular series was the short-lived “Here We Go Again” (ABC, 1973) which featured two couples, in which each was formerly married to the gender opposite in the other couple. (Larry Hagman played Baker’s current spouse.)
Baker branched out of acting in 1971, producing the Indian-made documentary “Ashiana/The Nest”, which won the Special Jury Award at the 1971 Atlanta Film Festival. In 1976, she formed Artemis Productions and wrote the 1978 ABC Afterschool Special “One of a Kind”, in which she also starred. In 1986, she starred in the CBS Schoolbreak Special “Little Miss Perfect”, in which she played the overbearing mother of a bulimic teen.
The jewel in Baker’s production efforts came in 1985 when she produced the syndicated miniseries “A Woman of Substance”, based on the Barbara Taylor Bradford novel of society romance. Baker personally lured Deborah Kerr out of her Swiss retirement to star in the project.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Stella StevensOriginal Cinema 3-Sheet Poster – Movie Film Posters
Stella Stevens was born in Mississippi in 1938. She has some fine films to her credit including “The Nutty Professor” opposite Jerry Lewis in 1963, “Girls, Girls, Girls,” opposite Elvis Presley, “The Silencer” with Dean Martin and “The Ballad of Cable Hogue”. Perhaps her most famous movie is “The Poseidon Adventure” in 1972. Her son is the actor Andrew Stevens.
TCM Overview:
A popular screen siren of the early 1960s, actress Stella Stevens lent sex appeal to such popular light dramas and comedies as “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” (1963) and “The Nutty Professor” (1964) before becoming a staple of TV and low-budget films for the next three decades. Though a talented actress, especially in gentle comedies, casting agents found it difficult to see past Stevens’ statuesque frame, which was the subject of three Playboy pictorials. Despite solid turns in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” (1970) as Jason Robards’ feisty lover and “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), Stevens never found the proper vehicle for her abilities, and spent most of her time under the radar in episodic TV or genuinely awful films like “Monster in the Closet” (1986). Nevertheless, she continued to log appearances well into her seventh decade, which was a testimony to her professionalism, talent and apparent good humor.
Stella Stevens was born Estelle Caro Eggleston on Oct. 1, 1938, the only child of Thomas Ellett Eggleston and his wife, Dovey Estelle Caro. Sources frequently cited her birthplace as Hot Coffee, MS, but the moniker was simply a nickname for the town of Meridian, which lay near the Mississippi-Florida border. When Stevens was four, she moved with her family to Tennessee; there she met Herman Stephens, an electrician whom she married when she was just 15. A year later, she gave birth to her only child, future actor and producer Andrew Stevens. By 17, she had divorced Stephens, but kept a modified version of his surname for her professional career. While studying medicine at Memphis State College, she became interested in acting and modeling, and was reportedly discovered while appearing in a production of “Bus Stop” at the college. Stevens signed with 20th Century Fox, which provided her film debut with “Say One for Me” (1959), a modest musical starring and produced by Bing Crosby. For her minor turn as a chorus girl, Stevens shared the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer – Female, with fellow up-and-comers Tuesday Weld, Angie Dickinson and Janet Muro.
However, the promising start led to few subsequent opportunities, and Fox dropped her after six months. Stevens turned to the burgeoning gentleman’s magazine Playboy to boost her image, and in 1960, she became the publications Playmate of the Month for January. The layout, which tastefully revealed Stevens’ voluptuous frame, had the desired effect, and that year, she landed the role of Appassionata von Climax in the screen version of “L’il Abner” (1960). A steady stream of television appearances, magazine layouts and features soon followed, but most emphasized Stevens’ physical appeal rather than her talents. Occasionally, she received a solid vehicle for her acting skills, like “Too Late Blues” (1961), director John Cassavetes’ drama about a jazz musician (Bobby Darin) who abandoned his idealistic dreams for a sultry singer (Stevens).
Stevens also had a particular gift for light comedy, as seen in her turns as a former beauty queen who caught Glenn Ford’s eye in “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” (1963) and in particular, Jerry Lewis’ “The Nutty Professor” (1964), where she played the comely college girl who is wooed by the smooth Buddy Love, but saw the good in his alter ego, the hapless Professor Kelp. Despite these highlights, Stevens was found mostly in ornamental roles in features like “Girls! Girls! Girls!” (1962) with Elvis Presley, which she reportedly loathed and was forced to participate in, creating much friction between her and Paramount, and “The Silencers” (1966), one of the Matt Helm spy spoofs with Dean Martin. Stevens would return to Playboy for two subsequent layouts in 1965 and 1968 to help boost her visibility.
Stevens began the 1970s with critically praised turns in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” and “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972). In the former, she played a former prostitute who developed a tender romance with dogged cowboy Jason Robards, while in the latter, she was Ernest Borgnine’s determined ex-streetwalker wife, who survived most of the horrors of the sinking ocean liner, only to perish in the final reel. The pictures helped to solidify the idea that Stevens was more than an attractive figure, and she worked steadily throughout the decade on television and in features, though few were as high profile as her early efforts. By the late 1970s, she had resorted to B-pictures like “The Manitou” (1978), and eventually turned to television, where she co-starred on “Flamingo Road” (NBC, 1980-82) as a kindly madam who aided series lead John Beck. In 1979, she directed a feature length documentary called “The American Heroine,” about women from all walks of life, but the project was never released.
Stevens remained busy as she entered her fifth decade in the 1980s, though quality projects continued to elude actresses – particularly one-time sex symbols – of a certain age. She was a staple of episodic television, but her features had sunk to exploitative trash like “Chained Heat”(1983), a women-in-prison melodrama with Linda Blair, and direct-to-cable softcore efforts like “Body Chemistry III: Point of Seduction” (1994), many of which co-starred her son, Andrew Stevens. In 1989, he joined her for her second directorial effort, a low-budget comedy called “The Ranch,” about a city slicker who turned an inherited ranch into a spa. That same year, she joined the cast of the daytime soap opera “Santa Barbara” (NBC, 1983-1994) as star Robin Mattson’s troublemaking mother, Phyllis Blake. In the 1990s and 2000s, Stevens was a regular on television programs and in the occasional low-budget feature, though the 2004 horror film “Blessed,” produced by her son, was a rare exception. She published her first novel, Razzle Dazzle, in 1999 and launched a line of fragrances for men and women that, like her career itself, emphasized sexiness.
Stella Stevens died in Los Angeles in 2023 aged 84.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Stella Stevens, whose turn as an A-list actress in 1960s Hollywood placed her alongside sex symbols like Brigitte Bardot, Ann-Margret and Raquel Welch, but who came to resent the male-dominated industry that she felt thwarted her ambitions to be more than a pretty face, died on Friday at a hospice facility in Los Angeles. She was 84.
Her son, the producer and actor Andrew Stevens, said the cause was Alzheimer’s disease.
Ms. Stevens was among the last stars to emerge from Hollywood’s studio system, an arrangement that guaranteed her work but, she often said, also limited her creative aspirations. She won a Golden Globe in the “most promising newcomer” category for her role in “Say One for Me” (1959), a musical comedy starring Bing Crosby and Debbie Reynolds, but felt coerced into joining the cast of “Girls! Girls! Girls!” (1962), an empty Elvis Presley vehicle.
Like Ms. Welch, who died on Wednesday, Ms. Stevens was ambivalent, if not outright indignant, about being cast as a Hollywood sex symbol. She described herself as introverted and bookish, and she sought to work with auteurs like John Cassavetes, who cast her as the female lead in “Too Late Blues,” his 1961 drama about a jazz musician (played by Bobby Darin).
“I wanted to be a writer-director,” she told the film scholar Michael G. Ankerich in 1994. “All of a sudden I got sidetracked into being a sexpot. Once I was a ‘pot,’ there was nothing I could do. There was nothing legitimate I could do.”
She worked with many of the top directors and actors of the 1960s. She starred as the love interest of the title character, a timid college professor who undergoes a personality transformation, in “The Nutty Professor” (1963), which Jerry Lewis wrote, directed and starred in. She also had prominent roles in “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” (1963), a romantic comedy directed by Vincente Minnelli, and “The Silencers” (1966), a spy spoof starring Dean Martin.
In between, though, she had to take a series of mediocre roles in mediocre movies, and critics came to view her as a star who was perpetually kept from realizing her full potential.
Two exceptions came in the early 1970s: She acted opposite Jason Robards in “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” (1970), a comic western directed by Sam Peckinpah, and as part of an all-star cast assembled for “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972), joining Ernest Borgnine, Shelley Winters, Gene Hackman and others in an overturned ocean liner.
By then her sex-symbol days were fading, and Ms. Stevens hoped to have the time and reputation to become a director. But female directors were almost unheard-of at the time, and her attempts to get support for what she called “a marvelous black comedy” she wanted to make met repeated dead ends.
“Every man I’ve gone to for four years has smiled at me and then double‐crossed me,” she told The New York Times in 1973. “Every man I’ve talked to in every office in this industry has tried his best to discourage me from directing. They don’t want me to find out it’s so easy because it’s supposed to be terribly hard.”
Stella Stevens was born Estelle Caro Eggleston on Oct. 1, 1938, in Yazoo City, Miss., though she often told interviewers she was from Hot Coffee, a nearby community. Her agent said anything sounded better than “Yazoo.”
Her father, Thomas, worked for a bottling company in Yazoo, and her mother, Estelle (Caro) Eggleston, was a nurse. When Stella was still young, they moved to Memphis, where her father worked in sales for International Harvester.
Stella dropped out of high school at 15 to marry Herman Stephens. They had one child, Andrew, and divorced in 1956. (She later changed her surname to Stevens because, she said, it was easier for people to pronounce.)
She returned to school after the divorce and, after earning a high school diploma, enrolled at Memphis State College, now the University of Memphis, with plans to become an obstetrician.
She also took up theater. A role in a college production of William Inge’s “Bus Stop” brought an invitation to audition in New York, and by 1959 she was in Los Angeles, on a three-year contract with 20th Century Fox.
She finished three movies in six months, including “Say One for Me,” but the studio dropped her soon after. With a young son to feed, she took an offer from Playboy to pose nude for $5,000. After the shoot, she said, Hugh Hefner, the magazine’s publisher, would pay her only half and told her that she had to work as a hostess at the Playboy Mansion to earn the rest.
Before the photos ran, she signed a new contract, with Paramount. She asked Mr. Hefner to cancel the magazine feature, but he refused, and she appeared as Playmate of the Month in the January 1960 issue, a few months before winning her Golden Globe.
“People don’t realize how horrible men can be toward a beautiful woman with no clothes on,” she told Delta magazine in 2010.
Her relationship with Playboy remained complicated. Despite her anger at Mr. Hefner, she posed nude for the magazine two more times. She then sued Mr. Hefner and Playboy in 1974, citing several instances of invasion of her privacy, but the case was thrown out because the statute of limitations had expired.
In 1998, Playboy named Ms. Stevens 27th on its list of the 20th century’s sexiest female stars, just behind Sharon Stone.
In addition to her son, Ms. Stevens is survived by three grandchildren. Her longtime partner, Bob Kulick, died in 2020.
Despite her career’s post-1960s fade, Ms. Stevens remained eager to work. She turned to television and had roles in some 80 episodes over the next four decades. Most of them were guest appearances on shows like “Murder, She Wrote,” “The Love Boat” and “Magnum P.I.,” though she was also a member of the regular cast of several shows, including the soap opera “Santa Barbara.”
When she did return to film, it was often for soft-core erotic thrillers and campy horror movies. In “Chained Heat” (1983), she played a prison warden; in “The Granny” (1995), she played a wronged grandmother who comes back to life to get revenge on her scheming family.
She eventually did get into the director’s chair, for “American Heroine,” a 1979 documentary, and “The Ranch,” a 1989 comedy starring her son. She also wrote a novel, “Razzle Dazzle” (1989), which featured a thinly fictionalized version of herself.
“I don’t feel I’ve been successful yet,” she told The Vancouver Sun in 1998. “I’m still waiting to be discovered. I see myself as a work in progress. I keep trying to work and improve and do things I’m proud of.”
An interesting article on Nancy Kwan can be found here. Nancy Kwan was born in 1939 in Hong Kong to a Chinese father and an English mother. She made her movie debut in 1960 in “The World of Suzie Wong” opposite William Holden.
Her other movies include “Flower Drum Song”, “Honeymoon Hotel”, “Fate Is the Hunter” and “The Wild Affair”.
IMDB entry:
At just 18, Nancy Kwan was studying dance with England’s Royal Ballet School, when she was spotted by producer Ray Stark, who tested her and gave her the starring role of a free-spirited Hong Kong prostitute who captivates artist William Holden in The World of Suzie Wong (1960).
She followed it the next year with the hit musical, Flower Drum Song(1961), and became one of Hollywood’s most visible Asian actresses. Born in China to a Chinese father and British mother, Kwan spent the 1960s commuting between film roles in America and Europe (including the pilot for Hawaii Five-O (1968)), but faded from view in the West, when she returned to her native Hong Kong in 1972 to be with her critically ill father.
Divorced from her second husband, screenwriter David Giler, and with a young son from her first marriage to Austrian hotelier Peter Pock, Kwan intended to stay a year, but wound up staying a decade.
As managing director of her own production company, she produced and directed dozens of commercials for the Southeast Asia market. She also acted in a spate of films made for Southeast Asian audiences, including “Fear” (1977) (aka Night Creature (1978)), which introduced her to filmmaker Norbert Meisel, who became her third husband.
They returned to the US in 1979 so that her teenage son, Bernie Pock, could complete his education. He was a martial-arts master, fluent in Chinese, and became a stunt coordinator and actor before his untimely death.
After returning to the US, Kwan appeared in numerous TV series, the NBC miniseries,Noble House (1988), and the CBS made-for-TV movie, Miracle Landing (1990). She’s politically active as the spokeswoman for the Asian-American Voters Coalition, and touts a beauty product, Oriental Pearl Cream, in TV spots.
Kwan was at the ceremonies in Los Angeles at Hollywood Park, where the Asian community gathered to watch the handover of Hong Kong to the government of China.
