Joan Bennett was born in 1910 in New Jersey, the daughter of actor Richard Bennett and younger sister of actress Constance Bennett. During the 1930’s she had a prolific career in movies as a pretty blonde ingenune in such movies as “Little Women” with Katharine Hepburn in 1933. In the early 1940’s, she changed her hair colour to dark and had a totally new career as a femme fatale in film noir such as “Scarlet Street” and “Woman in the Window”. In 1950 she eased into matron roles a bit too early and starred as the mother of Elizabeth Taylor in “Father of the Bride”. In the 1970’s, she scored a major success on television in the series “Dark Shadows”. She died in 1990.
TCM Overview:
Personable, extremely pretty and prolific star of a wide range of films in the 1930s and 40s. Bennett began her film career as a demure blonde ingenue (e.g. in George Cukor’s “Little Women” 1933, William K. Howard’s breathtaking “The Trial of Vivienne Ware” 1932). Raoul Walsh’s delightful “Me and My Gal” (1932), though, did give her an offbeat chance to indulge in sharp wisecracking. Early on her acting abilities seemed a bit modest, but Bennett’s warm speaking voice and quietly piquant charm gave her considerable appeal as a screen personality.
Gregory LaCava’s pioneering study of mental health problems, “Private Worlds” (1935), gave Bennett an unusually good acting opportunity, and the sensitivity and vulnerability she brought to the role showed the increasing resonance she was bringing to her screen work. If she never did possess the acting bravura of Hollywood’s most intense dramatic divas, Joan Bennett was nonetheless intriguing, likable and highly watchable, her sometimes aloof, serene presence highly effective at suggesting muffled passion. In 1938 she followed the trend of going brunette and parting one’s hair in the middle (inspired by Hedy Lamarr’s strong first Hollywood impression), and the look stuck. “Trade Winds” (1938) was an enjoyable Tay Garnett romp, and “The Housekeeper’s Daughter” (1939) gave Bennett a good Hal Roach comedy, but she soon developed into a sultry, brunette fixture who proved outstanding in several 1940s films noirs. Sometimes sympathetic, sometimes a femme fatale, Bennett acted in a quartet of Fritz Lang thrillers, “Manhunt” (1941), “Woman in the Window” (1944), “Scarlet Street” (1945) and “Secret Beyond the Door” (1948), which represent some of her best work in film.
Bennett also appeared in a wide variety of other films during this time, ranging from the semi-musical period drama, “Nob Hill” (1945) to the interesting Hemingway adaptation “The Macomber Affair” (1947), which traded in on her more seductive noir roles. As middle age approached, Bennett shifted to the role of witty and nurturing mother in Vincente Minnelli’s comedies “Father of the Bride” (1950) and “Father’s Little Dividend” (1951). She was also especially fine as a mother whose family is jeopardized in Max Ophuls’s unusual noir, “The Reckless Moment” (1949).
Her career was short-circuited in 1951 after her husband, producer Walter Wanger, shot her agent, Jennings Lang, accusing the latter of being a “homewrecker”. She was offered few film roles after that (Douglas Sirk’s “There’s Always Tomorrow” 1956, in which she supported Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray), though she returned to the stage in several national tours. Later in life Bennett could be seen in a leading role on TV on the highly enjoyable cult Gothic soap opera, “Dark Shadows” (1966-71) and her last film appearance was in Dario Argento’s cult horror film, “Suspiria” (1976).
Daughter of famed stage (and occasionally screen) actor Richard Bennett, sister of fellow film star Constance Bennett, and also sister of actress Barbara Bennett; she was married to Wanger (her second husband) from 1940 to 1965.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
Dennis Morgan was born in 1908 in Wisconsin. He was a stalwart of films of the 1940’s especially Warner Bros Productions. His film debut was in “Suez” with Annabella and Tyrone Power in 1936. Among his other movies are “The Great Ziegfeld””Kitty Foyle”, “In This Our Life”, “My Wild Irish Rose” and “This Woman Is Dangerous”. He died in 1994.
David Shipman’s obituary on Dennis Morgan in the “Independent”:
DENNIS MORGAN is as inextricably linked to Warner Bros as James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart. He reigned at the studio for just over a decade, the 1940s. He was comfortable, good-looking, well-mannered: the antithesis of the gritty Bogart, and it is a telling comment on the Hollywood of that era that he replaced him in two movies that he turned down, Bad Men of Missouri (1941) and God is My Co-Pilot (1945).
And what of Morgan in Casablanca? It has long been a bad joke but true, that the unprepossessing Ronald Reagan was the original choice for Rick; and the very first press release listed his co-stars as Ann Sheridan and Dennis Morgan, both of whom would have brought to the roles – presumably those played by Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henried – an individuality which is the prerequisite of true stars. It was apparent before Hollywood and he himself realised it, since he spent a couple of years at MGM as Stanley Morner (his real name) and another at Paramount as Richard Stanley. But catch him singing ‘A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody’ on the fantastic wedding-cake set of The Great Ziegfeld (1936) or as the First Mate in King of Alcatraz (1938) or any of the other dozen films he made: he had star potential.
Warners recognised this, rechristened him Dennis Morgan and put him on the assembly-line with Wayne Morris, Arthur Kennedy, Jeffrey Lynn, Eddie Albert and Ronald Reagan – likeable young lugs squiring the heroine till Bogart, Cagney or Flynn came crashing down to sweep her up.
It was the perceptive Sam Wood – always careful in his casting – who saw something more in Morgan, taking him to RKO to be the shallow Philadelphia playboy who marries and deserts Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle (1940). Warners then took a second look and cast him as Olivia de Havilland’s fiance in In This Our Life (1942) – snitched away by her sister, Bette Davis, and driven by her to drink and then suicide. He was up against another of the studio’s bitches in The Hard Way (1942), Ida Lupino – ‘the John Dillinger of the one- night stands’ as he put it.
The film was notable in as much as he and Jack Carson played a vaudeville team, and over the years Warners were to pair them in another half-dozen movies, Morgan as the easy-going singer who always got the girl and Carson as the loud-mouthed but cowardly braggard-comic who was given the air. No one thought they were Hope and Crosby, least of all themselves. They actually played themselves with identical screen personas in It’s a Great Feeling (1949), trying to persuade Warners that Doris Day – not playing herself – had screen potential; and she, starting her movie career, was to achieve a stardom greater than all of their other musical leading ladies put together.
Morgan twinned with the equally pleasing Jane Wyman in Cheyenne (1947) and The Lady Takes a Sailor (1949). He was also a match for such formidable co-stars as Sheridan in Shine On, Harvest Moon (1944) and One More Tomorrow (1946), Barbara Stanwyck in Christmas in Connecticut (1946) and Ginger Rogers in Perfect Strangers (1950). He wasn’t swamped by Joan Crawford in This Woman is Dangerous (1952), as a nice doctor who rescues her from a gangster, saving her form a life of crime.
That was his penultimate film for Warners; after a western, Cattle Town (1952), they let him go, adrift in a Hollywood where more dynamic stars were in demand – Marlon Brando, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster. Morgan made only a few more movies and then, in 1959, appeared in a television series, 21 Beacon Street. Thereafter he raised cattle on a ranch near Fresno, California.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Mark Damon was born in 1933 in Chicago. He has had a long and profilic career appearing in Roger Corman movies, Spagettiti Westerns and daytime American soaps. His film debut was in 1956 in “Inside Detroit”. Other films include “Between Heaven and Hell”, “Young and Dangerous”, “The Party Crashers” and “Johnny Yuma”.
Dean Paul Martin was born in 1951 in Santa Monica, California. He was the son of actor & singer Dean Martin. He starred opposite Ali MacGraw in the 1979 movie about tennis, “Players”. In 1985 he starred in the TV series “Misfits of Science”. In 1987 he was killed in an airplane crash. He left a son by his marriage to Olivia Hussey.
IMDB entry:
The son of Rat Pack member Dean Martin, Dean Paul Martin initially showed interest in a singing career, and was also a talented tennis player, which served him well in his role opposite Ali McGraw in 1979’s The Players. An avid pilot and a captain in the California Air National Guard, Martin was killed when his F-4 Phantom jet fighter crashed into the San Bernadino Mountains in a snowstorm during a routine flight on March 21, 1987.
Brad Davis was a charismatic actor who is best remembered for his role as Billy Hayes in Alan Parker’s “Midnight Express” in 1978.
He was born in 1949 in Florida. His other movies include “A Small Circle of Friends”, “Chariots of Brad Davis was a charismatic actor who is best remembered for his role as Billy Hayes in Alan Parker’s “Midnight Express” in 1978. He was born in 1949 in Florida. .
IMDB entry:
Brad Davis
Born in Florida in 1949, Brad Davis moved to Georgia after graduating from high school to pursue an acting career. From there, he moved to New York City, twice, to find work.
By the early 1970s Davis was acting in off-Broadway plays while studying acting at the Academy of Dramatic Arts. His stage work led to his movie debut and to television shows such as the hit Sybil (1976) and the mini-series Roots (1977).
Brad Davis
His biggest success was in 1978 with the lead role in Midnight Express (1978) where he played Billy Hayes, a young American imprisoned in Turkey for drug smuggling. It won him a Golden Globe award.
Another memorable movie role in 1982 was playing the title character of Querelle (1982), a ruggedly lethal sailor who seduces and sets both men and women’s hearts aflutter.
Brad Davis
Davis contracted AIDS in 1979 apparently from his one-time cocaine addiction, but in response to the anti-AIDS hysteria in Hollywood, Davis kept his illness a secret for a number of years and continued to act.
His later years had him finally revealing that he had AIDS and he became an AIDS activist in bashing the Hollywood industry and US government for ignoring and shunning victims suffering from the hideous disease.
Davis died in 1991 at age 41. His widow, Susan Bluestein, continues his activist work in the fight against AIDS.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Matthew Patay
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Joseph Bottoms is the middle brother of the talented acting family including Timothy and Sam. Joseph was born in 1954 in Santa Barbara. He came to prominence with his major role in “The Dove” in 1974. Other roles include Rudi Weiss in the magnificent television series “Holocaust” in 1978. He manages the Bottoms Arts Galleries in Santa Barbara.
Made his Broadway debut in 1981’s “The 5th of July”.
Began his career performing in community theater productions.
Won the 1975 Golden Globe Award for “New Star Of The Year – Actor” for his work in the film The Dove (1974), which was based on the real life experiences of Robin Lee Graham, a young man who spent five years sailing around the world as a single-handed sailor, starting when he was 16-years old.
The second son of sculptor James “Bud” Bottoms.
Decided to be an actor when 13 after having a premonition that he would dance on stage with Elizabeth Taylor which he later did in the 1978 TV film Return Engagement.
Santa Barbara, California. Lives with his two daughte
Stacy Keach was born in 1941 in Savannah, Georgia. His parents were both actors and drama directors. He has had an extensive theatre career as well as playing Philip Marlow on television. His films include the wonderful “The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter” in 1968, “The New Centurians”, “Fat City” and “The Ninth Configuration”. He played the leader of a far right wing group in “American History X”.
IMDB entry:
Stacy Keach has played to grand success a constellation of the classic and contemporary stage’s greatest roles, and he is considered a pre-eminent American interpreter of Shakespeare. His SRO run as “King Lear” at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. received the best reviews any national leader has earned in that town for decades. Peter Marks of the Washington yPost called Mr. Keach’s Lear “magnificent”. He recently accepted his third prestigious Helen Hayes Award for Leading Actor in 2010 for his stellar performance. His next stage appearance premiering January 13, 2011 at the Lincoln Center in New York is “Other Desert Cities” by Jon Robin Baitz and teaming him with Stockard Channing, Linda Lavin and Elizabeth Marvel.
Stacy Keach
His latest television series, Lights Out (2011), on the FX network is a major new mid-season dramatic show, taking him back to the world of boxing which has been a rich setting for him before, notably in Huston’s Fat City (1972) which ignited Keach’s career as a film star.
Versatility embodies the essence of Stacy Keach’s career in film and television as well as on stage. The range of his roles is remarkable. His recent performance in Oliver Stone’s “W” prompted fellow actor Alec Baldwin to blog an impromptu review matching Huston’s amazement at Keach’s power. Perhaps best known around the world for his portrayal of the hard-boiled detective, Mike Hammer, Stacy. Keach is also well-known among younger generations for his portrayal of the irascible, hilarious Dad, Ken Titus, in the Fox sitcom, Titus, and more recently as Warden Henry Pope in the hit series, Prison Break. Following his triumphant recent title role performance in King Lear for the prestigious Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Keach joined the starring cast of John Sayles’ recent film, Honeydripper. In the most recent of his non-stop activities, he has completed filming Deathmatch for the Spike Channel, and The Boxer for Zeitsprung Productions in Berlin, Germany.
German audiences will also see him as one of the co-stars in the multi-million dollar production of Hindenburg (2011), scheduled to air in January, 2011 with worldwide release thereafter. Mr. Keach co-stars in the new FX series entitled Lights Out (2011) about a boxing family, where he plays the Dad-trainer of two boxing sons played by Holt McCallany and Pablo Schreiber. The series is also scheduled to air in January, 2011. Keach returns to the New York stage at the start of the 2011 in Jon Robin Baitz’s new play, “Other Desert Cities,” at the Lincoln Center.
Capping his heralded accomplishment on the live stage of putting his own stamp on some of the theatre world’s most revered and challenging roles over the past year when he headed the national touring company cast of “Frost/Nixon,” portraying Richard M. Nixon, bringing still another riveting characterization to the great legit stages of Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, the nation’s capitol and other major cities. He won his second Best Actor Helen Hayes Award for his outstanding performance. His second triumphant portrayal of King Lear in the past three years, this time for the Shakespeare Theatre Company in the nation’s capital earned reviews heard around the world, with resulting offers for him to repeat that giant accomplishment in New York, Los Angeles and even Beijing.
Stacy Keach
An accomplished pianist and composer, Mr. Keach composed the music for the film,Imbued (2009), directed by Rob Nilssen, a celebrated film festival favorite, in which Keach also starred. He has also completed composing the music for the Mike Hammer audio radio series, “Encore For Murder”, written by Max Collins, directed by Carl Amari, and produced by Blackstone Audio.
Mr. Keach began his film career in the late 1960’s with _The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter_, followed by _The New Centurions_ with George C. Scott; Doc Holiday with Faye Dunawayin the film ‘Doc’ (1971); an over-the-hill boxer,Billy Tully in Fat City (1972); directed byJohn Huston, and The Long Riders (1980), which he co-produced and co-wrote with his brother, James Keach, directed by Walter Hill. On the lighter side, his characterization of Sgt. Stedenko in Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke (1978), and the sequel, Nice Dreams(1981), gave a whole new generation a taste of Mr. Keach’s comedic flair, which he also demonstrated in Robert Altman’s Brewster McCloud (1970), playing the oldest living lecherous Wright Brother; and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972) where he played a crazed albino out to kill Paul Newman.
Historical roles have always attracted him. In movies he has played roles ranging from Martin Luther to Frank James. On television he has been Napoleon, Wilbur Wright, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Barabbas, Sam Houston, and Ernest Hemingway, for which he won a Golden Globe as Best Actor in a mini-series and was nominated for an Emmy in the same category. He played an eccentric painter, Mistral, in the Judith Krantz classic,Mistral’s Daughter (1984), a northern spy in the civil war special, The Blue and the Gray(1982), more recently as the pirate Benjamin Hornigold in the Hallmark epic Blackbeard(2006).
As a director, his production of Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy (1973) for PBS was, according to Mr. Miller in his autobiography, Timebends, “the most expressive production of that play he had seen.” He won a Cine Golden Eagle Award for his work on the dramatic documentary, The Repeater, in which he starred and also wrote and directed.
But it is perhaps the live theatre where Mr. Keach shines brightest. He began his professional career with the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1964, doubling as Marcellus and the Player King in a production of Hamlet directed by Joseph Papp and which featured Julie Harris as Ophelia. He rose to prominence in 1967 in the Off-Broadway political satire, MacBird, where the title role was a cross between Lyndon Johnson and Macbeth and for which he received the first of his three Obie awards. He played the title roles in Henry 5, Hamlet (which he played 3 times), Richard 3, Macbeth, and most recently as King Lear in Robert Falls’ modern adaptation at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre, which Charles Isherwood of the NY Times called “terrific” and “a blistering modern-dress production that brings alive the morally disordered universe of the play with a ferocity unmatched by any other production I’ve seen.” Mr. Keach’s stage portrayals of Peer Gynt, Falstaff and Cyrano de Bergerac, and Hamlet caused the New York Times to dub him “the finest American classical actor since John Barrymore.”
Mr. Keach’s Broadway credits include his Broadway debut, Indians, where he played Buffalo Bill and was nominated for a Tony award as Best Actor. He starred in Ira Levin’s Deathtrap, the Pulitzer Prize winning Kentucky Cycle (for which he won his first Helen Hayes award as Best Actor), the Rupert Holmes one-man thriller, Solitary Confinement, where Mr. Keach played no less than six roles, all unbeknownst to the audience until the end of the play. In the musical theatre, he starred in the national tour of Barnum, played the King in Camelot for Pittsburgh’s Civic Light Opera, and the King in The King and I, which he also toured in Japan. He starred in the Jon Robin Baitz play, Ten Unknowns, at the Mark Taper Forum in 2003. The LA Times said: “And then there’s Keach. What a performance! How many actors can manage such thunder and such sweet pain. He’s been away from the LA stage too long. Welcome back.”
In 2004, he starred as Scrooge in Boston’s Trinity Rep musical production of A Christmas Carol; earlier in 2004, he starred as Phil Ochsner in Arthur Miller’s last play Finishing The Picture, directed by Robert Falls at the Goodman Theatre.
As a narrator his voice has been heard in countless documentaries; as the host for the Twilight Zone radio series; numerous books on tape, including the Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. In the year 2000, he recorded a CD of all of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. He recently recorded the voice of St. Paul for a new audio version of The New Testament:, The Word of Promise and Job for the Old Testament edition. He is the narrator on CNBC’s new hit show, American Greed (2007), and recently narrated the award-winning documentary, The Pixar Story (2007). He has also reprised his role as Mike Hammer in the Blackstone audio series, the most recent being “Encore for Murder”. A charter-member of LA Theatre Works, Mr. Keach recently played the title role in Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo, recorded both for radio and CD. He was seen on CBS’s hit show Two and a Half Men (2003) as the gay Dad of Charlie’s fiance.
Stacy Keach also believes strongly in ‘giving back’ and has been the Honorary Chair for the Cleft Palate Foundation for the past twenty-five years. He is also the national spokesman for the World Craniofacial organization. He has served on the Artist’s Committee for the Kennedy Center Honors for two decades, is on the board of directors for Genesis at the Crossroads, a Chicago-based organization dedicated to bringing peoples of combatant cultures together through the shared artistic expressions of the visual and culinary arts, music, dance, and theater. He also serves on the artistic board for Washington DC’s Shakespeare Theatre National Council, where he was also honored in 2000 with their prestigious Millennium Award for his contribution to classical theatre. Some years ago Hollywood honored him with a Celebrity Outreach Award for his work with charitable organizations.
He has been the recipient of Lifetime Achievement Awards from Pacific Pioneer’s Broadcasters, the San Diego Film Festival, the Pacific Palisades Film Festival, and The 2007 Oldenburg Film Festival in Germany. Later this year, he will be awarded the 2010 Lifetime Award from the St. Louis Film Festival. In 2008, he received the Mary Pickford Award for versatility in acting.
Mr. Keach was a Fulbright scholar to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, attended the University of California at Berkeley and the Yale Drama School. He has always been a star of the American stage, especially in Shakespearen roles such as Hamlet, Henry 5, Coriolanus, Falstaff, Macbeth, Richard 3, and most recently, King Lear.
Of his many accomplishments, Mr. Keach claims that his greatest accomplishment is his family. He has been married to his beautiful wife Malgosia for twenty-five years, and they have two wonderful children, Shannon Keach (1988), and daughter Karolina Keach (1990).
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Guttman Associates
THe above entries IMDB can also be accessed online here.
Ron Harper was born in 1936 in Turtle Creek near Pittsburgh. After serving in the U.S. navym he commenced an acting career. His first major role was as part of the cast of the dectective series “87th Precinct” with Robert Lansing in 1961. He went on to star opposite Connie Stevens in the series “Wendy and Me and as the son of Jean Arthur in “The Jean Arthur Show” in 1966.
IMDB entry:
Born in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania–a small town just east of Pittsburgh–Ron Harper became valedictorian of his senior class and won an academic scholarship to Princeton University, where he supplemented his academic studies by appearing in a number of plays and musical comedies. He earned a fellowship to study law at Harvard but the “acting bug” lured him instead to New York, where he studied with ‘Lee Strasberg’. Next came a stint in the US Navy (mostly spent in Panama), followed by a return to New York. After several disappointments he earned a job as Paul Newman‘s understudy in “Sweet Bird of Youth”. Hollywood soon beckoned and Harper appeared in a succession of TV series: 87th Precinct (1961), The Jean Arthur Show (1966), Wendy and Me (1964),Garrison’s Gorillas (1967) and Planet of the Apes (1974).
Following “Apes” he had roles in several soap-operas and guest-starred on various TV shows. He now lives in California.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: dinky-4 of Minneapolis
The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.
Sam Wanamaker was born in 1919 in Chicago. His films include “My Girl Tisa” in 1948 and came to Britain in 1952 and made such movies as “Mr Denning Drives North”, “The Criminal”, “Man in the Middle”. He is well known for his restoration of the Globe Theatre in London. He died in 1993. His daughter is the actress Zoe Wamamaker.
“Independent” obituary by Nick Smurthwaite:
Samuel Wanamaker, actor, director and producer: born Chicago 14 June 1919; CBE 1993; married 1940 Charlotte Holland (three daughters); died London 18 December 1993
IF Sam Wanamaker wasn’t as famous or acclaimed an actor as he might have been, he only had himself to blame. Or rather, his obsession. For over 20 years he poured the lion’s share of his considerable energy into recreating Shakespeare’s wooden ‘O’, the Globe Theatre, on London’s south bank.
Born in Chicago in 1919, Wanamaker had a dogged entrepreneurial zeal that was often mistaken for American excess in the London theatrical establishment, especially since he was always aware of the commercial imperatives attendant upon his dream to rebuild the Globe. The need to make it a going concern was seen by many as thinly veiled Disneyism.
What his detractors often forgot was that Wanamaker was a genuine Shakespearean enthusiast, man and boy. Appropriately, his debut in Shakespeare was in a plywood and paper replica of the Globe at the Chicago World Fair in 1934, when he appeared as a teenager in condensed versions of the Bard’s greatest hits.
Wanamaker was 23 when he first played Broadway in Cafe Crown in 1942. The following year he was called up and spent the next three years doing his US military duty. Returning to the theatre in 1946, he took on a succession of headstrong juvenile leads in long-forgotten plays. What he hankered after was classical theatre of the kind that flourished in England. To this end he created the Festival Repertory Theatre in New York in 1950.
Two years later, by now blacklisted by Senator McCarthy’s
Commie- bashers, he came to London to join Laurence Olivier’s company at the St James’s Theatre, playing alongside Michael Redgrave in Winter Journey, which he also directed. One of the first things he did on arriving in London was to seek out the site of Shakespeare’s Globe. Instead of the elaborate memorial he’d always imagined, Wanamaker found a dirty plaque fixed to the wall of a Courage brewery bottling plant in a particularly drab Southwark back street.
From 1953 to 1960 he produced and acted in plays in London and the provinces, creating the New Shakespeare Theatre in Liverpool, where his productions included A View From the Bridge, The Rose Tattoo, The Rainmaker and Bus Stop. Another American play, The Big Knife by Clifford Odets, was a personal success for Wanamaker as actor-director at the Duke of York’s in 1954. Perhaps his outstanding performance of this period, certainly the one for which he is best remenbered, was Iago to Paul Robeson’s Othello in Tony Richardson’s 1959 production at Stratford.
He first tackled opera in 1962, Tippett’s King Priam, twice revived at Covent Garden. Wanamaker later admitted he relied on others better acquainted with operatic production to tell him what to do, including the composer himself, ‘who kept laughing, patting me on the back and telling me not to worry’.
Later that year his radical reinvention of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino caused a sensation at Covent Garden, and led to many other operatic offers, including, much later, the opening production at Sydney Opera House, Prokofiev’s War and Peace. In 1977 he returned to Covent Garden to produce the premiere of Tippett’s The Ice Break.
Wanamaker’s track record shows a commendable lack of cultural elitism. He would happily go from producing Verdi to playing a cameo in a Goldie Hawn film (Private Benjamin, 1980), or directing an episode of Hawaii Five-0 (1978). He thrived on diversity and contrast, the more challenging the better. Though there were some memorable screen roles in Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1964), The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1966), the 1978 television mini-series Holocaust and, most recently, Guilty by Suspicion (1991) with Robert De Niro, Wanamaker never took film seriously enough to claim the first- division status that was his due.
From the late 1960s his colleagues in almost every job he undertook were regaled, like it or not, with the latest chapter in the Globe saga, which sometimes seemed as if it would never reach its climax. From the moment he first presented the Architectural Association with a model of the Globe he had had made at Shepperton Studios in 1969, Wanamaker was a man with a mission – to create an international focus for the study and celebration of Shakespeare.
He found a staunch ally in Theo Crosby, who became chief architect of the scheme, sharing Wanamaker’s determination to make it both commercially viable (since government subsidy always seemed unlikely) and true to the Spartan style of its 16th-century blueprint – hard wooden benches, no heating, no amplification, and no roof to cover the hole in the middle.
Over two decades of fund-raising and bureaucratic battles, Wanamaker’s missionary zeal was stretched to the limit, mostly by the left-wingers of Southwark Council, who tried to sabotage what they saw as indulgent elitism by claiming the Globe site back for council housing. The matter was finally settled in court, where Wanamaker’s contention that the Globe project would bring employment to many and regeneration to a notably depressed area of London finally won the day.
By the late 1980s the Globe had beaten off its chief adversaries, and become virtually unassailable thanks to the patronage of the Duke of Edinburgh, Ronald Reagan, Michael Caine, Dustin Hoffman and a host of other victims of Wanamaker’s persuasive powers. No longer was he perceived as the cranky Yank building castles in the air; despite an unfavourable economic climate and constantly escalating costs, the Globe really would be rebuilt and Wanamaker’s dream vindicated.
In more recent years, the quest for funds took him, appropriately, all over the globe, shored up by his commitment to posterity and the firm belief that there was, just around the next corner, that elusive crock of gold. The first bays of the Globe Theatre were unveiled this year. It is scheduled to open for business in April 1995.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
