James Shigeta was born in Hawaii in 1933. He served in the U.S Marine Corps during the Korean War. His breatkthrough role came in 1959 in Samuel Fuller’s cult classic “The Crimson Kimono” with Glenn Corbett and Victoria Shaw. His other films include “Bridge to the Sun” with Carroll Baker, “Flower Drum Song” with Miyoshi Umeki and Nancy Kwan and “China Cry” with France Nuyen in 1990. He died in August 2014.
His obituary in “The Independent”:
he Japanese-American actor and singer James Shigeta starred in two major films of 1961, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Flower Drum Song, in which he sang the hit ballad, “You Are Beautiful”, and the drama Bridge to the Sun, in which he played a Japanese diplomat married to an American (Carroll Baker).
The latter was the US’s official entry in the Venice Film Festival, and Shigeta was hailed as the first Oriental romantic leading man since Sessue Hayakawa in the silent era. His big-screen stardom, though, was not sustained, but he continued to have an active career on TV and stage, and became a notable character actor. His memorable roles include supplying the voice for General Li in Disney’s animated feature, Mulan (1998), and a telling few minutes in Die Hard (1988), in which he played the executive who refuses to give a bank security code to a vicious terrorist (Alan Rickman). “You’re just going to have to kill me,” he says, prompting Rickman to shoot him in the head.
Known as a “Sansei”, a third-generation American of Japanese ancestry, Shigeta was born in Honolulu in 1929, one of six children of a plumber. He attended New York University to major in creative writing, but switched to his first love, music, winning a popular talent show before enlisting as a Marine in the Korean War, rising to the rank of Staff Sergeant.
After the war he headed the cast of a musical revue in Japan, achieving immense popularity. His record of “Love Letters in the Sand” (a hit for Pat Boone in the US and UK) sold more than 2m copies, at the time the best-selling record in Japanese history. He had to find a tutor to teach him the Japanese language, and headlined both television and stage musicals. Returning to the US to star in television spectaculars with Dinah Shore and Shirley MacLaine, he headlined a revue, Holiday in Japan, in Las Vegas produced by MacLaine’s husband Steve Parker.
He made his US screen debut in Samuel Fuller’s The Crimson Kimono (1959) as one of two cops who fall for a key witness. He then played featured roles in Walk Like a Dragon (1960), as a Chinese man in the turn-of-the-century West who resents the treatment of his race, and Cry for Happy (1961), a farce dealing with culture clash as Navy men invade a Japanese brothel.
He sang on screen for the first time when given the romantic lead in Flower Drum Song as Wang Ta, who is in love with showgirl Nancy Kwan, unaware that he is loved by two others, a shy Chinese immigrant (Myoshi Umeki) and an older woman (Reiko Sato). A dramatic dream ballet depicting the confused passions, choreographed by Hermes Pan, featured Shigeta in close-ups while a masked double handled the more ambitious dance movements.
In 1962 Shigeta signed to a record label co-founded by Fred Astaire, Choreo, and made an album, We Speak The Same Language, featuring mainly show tunes, such as Rodgers and Hart’s “This Funny World” and Strouse and Adams’ “I’ve Just Seen Her”. It revealed an appealing baritone, but his acceptance the same year of a guest spot in TV’s Naked City indicated that screen roles were not being offered.
It was five years before his next film, supporting Elvis Presley in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966), subsequent films including Lost Horizon (1973), The Yakuza (1975), and Midway (1976) as Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. In 1969 he returned to the stage as star of a highly successful touring version of The King and I.
He appeared in over 100 television series and films, including Dr Kildare, The Outer Limits, Perry Mason, Hawaii Five-O, Kung Fu, Streets of San Francisco, The Rockford Files, The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote. His last television role was in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Throughout his career, he refused to be questioned about his private life.
James Shigeta, actor and singer: born Honolulu 17 June 1929; died Los Angeles 28 July 2014.
The above “Independent” obituary can also be accessed online here.
Robert F. Lyons was born in 1939 in Albany, New York. He made his debut on television on an episode of “I Dream of Jeannie” in 1966. He was soon making feature films and his movies of note include “Pendleum” with Jean Seberg and George Peppard in 1969,”Getting Straight” with Elliot Gould and Candice Bergen and “The Todd Kilings” with Gloria Grahame.
TCM Overview:
Boyish lead of counter-culture films who made transition to more “solid guy” character roles in the 1970s and 80s. Best remembered for his hilarious turn in “Getting Straight” (1970), as Elliot Gould’s stoner buddy whose lame attempts at dodging the draft ultimately cause him to enlist in the Marines. After playing a charming Manson type who drives an unstable younger boy to multiple murder in “The Todd Killings” (1971), and a Harvard pot dealer opposite Barbara Hershey in “Dealing: Or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues” (1972), Lyons could be found in more standard action fare.
John Rubinstein was born in 1946 in Los Angeles. His father was the famous Polish born concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein. His films include “Red Dragon”, “Someone to Watch Over Me” and “The Boys from Brazil”.
IMDB entry;
John Rubinstein is an actor, director, composer, singer, and teacher. He was born in Los Angeles, California in 1946, the same year his father, the renowned Polish-born concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein, became an American citizen. He is the youngest of four children. His sister Eva danced and acted on Broadway, creating the role of Margo in the original production of “The Diary of Anne Frank”; she later became an internationally known photographer. His brother Paul recently retired from his career as a stockbroker in New York; his sister Alina is a psychiatrist in Manhattan. John attended St. Bernard’s School and Collegiate School in New York City, and then returned to Los Angeles in 1964 to study theater at UCLA. During his college years he began his professional career as an actor, appearing in 1965 with Howard Keel in Lerner and Loewe’s “Camelot” in San Carlos and Anaheim; playing a role in the Civil War film “Journey to Shiloh”; and starting his long list of television appearances in shows such as “The Virginian”, “Dragnet”, and “Room 222”. It was also at UCLA that he began composing and orchestrating music: incidental music for theatrical plays, and a musical, “The Short and Turbulent Reign of Roger Ginzburg”, with book and lyrics by David Colloff, that won the 1967 BMI Varsity Musical Award as Best Musical.
Rubinstein made his Broadway acting debut in 1972, and received a Theater World Award, for creating the title role in the musical “Pippin”, directed by Bob Fosse. In 1980 he won the Tony, Drama Desk, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, and Drama-Logue Awards for his portrayal of James Leeds in Mark Medoff’s “Children Of A Lesser God”, directed by Gordon Davidson. Other Broadway appearances were in Neil Simon’s “Fools”, and David Rabe’s “Hurlyburly”, both directed by Mike Nichols; Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial”, which earned him another Drama Desk nomination; David Henry Hwang’s “M. Butterfly”; “Getting Away With Murder”, by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by Jack O’Brien, and the musical “Ragtime”, directed by Frank Galati. In 1987 he made his off-Broadway debut at the Roundabout Theater as Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, with Stephen Lang and John Wood, and subsequently performed in “Urban Blight” and “Cabaret Verboten”. In 2005 he received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Lead Actor in a Play, as well as nominations for both the Outer Critics’ and Drama League Awards, for his portrayal of George Simon in Elmer Rice’s “Counsellor-at-Law”, directed by Dan Wackerman at the Pecadillo Theatre.
His appearances in regional theaters include the musicals “Camelot” (at various times as Tom of Warwick, Mordred, and King Arthur) and “South Pacific”; the role of Billy in David Rabe’s “Streamers”, Ariel in “The Tempest”, Marchbanks in Shaw’s “Candida”, both Sergius and Bluntschli (alternating nights with Richard Thomas) in Shaw’s “Arms And The Man”, several roles in Arnold Weinstein’s “Metamorphoses”, directed by Paul Sills at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, “Sight Unseen” at L.A.’s Odyssey Theatre, “The Torch-Bearers” and “Our Town” at the Williamstown Theater Festival, Arthur Miller’s “Broken Glass” at Monterey Peninsula College, and Warren Smith in “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” (in a 160-city National Tour). In 1985 He starred in “Merrily We Roll Along” at the La Jolla Playhouse, in a version newly re-written by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by James Lapine. He was the original Andrew Ladd III in A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, opened the play in New York off-Broadway, and later performed it on Broadway, in San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. He created the role of Molina in “Kiss Of The Spider Woman”, the musical by Terrence McNally, John Kander, and Fred Ebb, directed by Harold Prince, and the role of Kenneth Hoyle in Jon Robin Baitz’s “Three Hotels”. In 1997, he played Tateh in the American premiere run of the musical “Ragtime”, by Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty, and Lynn Ahrens, directed by Frank Galati, at the Shubert Theater in Los Angeles, receiving both an L. A. Drama Critics Circle nomination and a Drama-Logue Award as Best Actor in a Musical, and continued in the show both in Vancouver and on Broadway. He appeared opposite Donald Sutherland in Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s “Enigmatic Variations” at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, and at the Savoy Theatre in London’s West End; played the Wizard of Oz in the hit musical “Wicked”, by Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz, directed by Joe Mantello, at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles for 18 months; and starred with John Schuck and Ken Page in the world premiere of a musical version of “Grumpy Old Men” in Winnipeg at the Manitoba Theatre Centre.
His 24 feature films include Atlas Shrugged Part II; Hello, I Must Be Going, which opened the 2012 Sundance Festival; 21 Grams; Red Dragon; Mercy; Another Stakeout; Someone To Watch Over Me; Daniel; The Boys From Brazil; Rome and Jewel; Choose Connor; Sublime; Jekyll; Kid Cop; Getting Straight; Zachariah; The Trouble with Girls; Journey To Shiloh; and The Car. He has acted in over 200 television films and series episodes, including Arthur Miller’s “The American Clock” (CableAce Award Nomination), “Mrs. Harris”, “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town”, “Norma And Marilyn”, “The Sleepwalker”, “Working Miracles”, “In My Daughter’s Name”, “Perry Mason”, “Voices Within: The Lives Of Truddi Chase”, “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles”, “Skokie”, “Movieola”, “Roots: The Next Generations”, and “A Howling In The Woods”. He received an Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of Jeff Maitland III in the ABC series “Family”, a role he played for five years; and he starred for two years with Jack Warden in the CBS series “Crazy Like A Fox”. He has played recurring parts on “The Fosters”, “Perception”, “The Mentalist”, “Desperate Housewives”, “Parenthood”, “No Ordinary Family”, “Greek”, “The Wizards of Waverly Place”, “Dirty Sexy Money”, “Day Break”, “Angel”, “The Guardian”, “The Practice”, “Star Trek: Enterprise”, “Girlfriends”, “Robocop: the Series”, “The Young and the Restless”, and “Barbershop.”
Mr. Rubinstein has composed, orchestrated, and conducted the musical scores for five feature films, including Jeremiah Johnson (directed by Sidney Pollack) and The Candidate, (directed by Michael Ritchie), both starring Robert Redford; Paddy (with Milo O’Shea); The Killer Inside Me (with Stacy Keach); and Kid Blue (with Dennis Hopper); and for over 50 television films, among them the Peabody Award-winning “Amber Waves”, “The Dollmaker” (starring Jane Fonda), “A Walton Wedding”, “The Ordeal Of Patty Hearst”, “Choices Of The Heart”, and “Emily, Emily”, as well as the weekly themes for “Family” and “China Beach”.
He spent six years as host for the radio program “Carnegie Hall Tonight”, broadcast on l80 stations in the United States and Canada, and two years as the keyboard player for the jazz-rock group Funzone. He has recorded over 100 audio books, including 25 of the best-selling Alex Delaware novels by Jonathan Kellerman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Independence Day” by Richard Ford, Tom Clancy’s “Debt Of Honor” and “Op Center”, and E. L. Doctorow’s “City of God”, “World’s Fair”, and “All The Time In The World”.
In 1987, Rubinstein made his directorial debut at the Williamstown Theater Festival, staging Aphra Behn’s “The Rover”, with Christopher Reeve and Kate Burton; the following season he directed the first American-cast production of Christopher Hampton’s “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”, with Dwight Schultz and Dianne Wiest. Off-Broadway, he directed the New York premieres of “Phantasie”, by Sybille Pearson, and “Nightingale”, by Elizabeth Diggs; and the world premiere of A. R. Gurney’s “The Old Boy”, with Stephen Collins. At the Cape Playhouse in Massachusetts, he staged “Wait Until Dark”, with Hayley Mills and William Atherton. For NYU, he directed productions of “The Three Sisters” and “Macbeth”; for UCLA, “Company”; and for USC, “Brigadoon”, “Into The Woods”, “On The Town”, “City of Angels”, and “The Most Happy Fella”. In Los Angeles, at Interact Theatre Company, of which he has been a member since 1992, he co-directed and starred in the revival of Elmer Rice’s Counsellor-At-Law, winning Drama-Logue Awards and L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards in both categories, as well as Ovation Awards for Ensemble Acting and Sound Design; the production itself won 22 awards; he also directed and acted in Sondheim and Lapine’s “Into The Woods” and “A Little Night Music”, and Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man”, and also directed Sheridan’s “The Rivals” and Frank Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls”. For television, he directed the CBS Schoolbreak Special “A Matter Of Conscience”, which won the Emmy Award for Best Children’s Special in 1990, an episode of the CBS series “Nash Bridges”, the ABC AfterSchool Special miniseries “Summer Stories”, and three episodes of the TV series “High Tide”.
In 2011, Rubinstein provided commentary for the online web-casting of the XIVth International Tchaikovsky Competition, a classical music competition held in Moscow. He teaches courses in musical theater audition and acting for the camera, and directs the annual spring musical, at the University of Southern California.
His most rewarding experience has been participating in the lives of his five children: Jessica, Michael, Peter, Jacob, and Max.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: John Rubinstein
The above IMDB entry;
John Rubinstein is an actor, director, composer, singer, and teacher. He was born in Los Angeles, California in 1946, the same year his father, the renowned Polish-born concert pianist Arthur Rubinstein, became an American citizen. He is the youngest of four children. His sister Eva danced and acted on Broadway, creating the role of Margo in the original production of “The Diary of Anne Frank”; she later became an internationally known photographer. His brother Paul recently retired from his career as a stockbroker in New York; his sister Alina is a psychiatrist in Manhattan. John attended St. Bernard’s School and Collegiate School in New York City, and then returned to Los Angeles in 1964 to study theater at UCLA. During his college years he began his professional career as an actor, appearing in 1965 with Howard Keel in Lerner and Loewe’s “Camelot” in San Carlos and Anaheim; playing a role in the Civil War film “Journey to Shiloh”; and starting his long list of television appearances in shows such as “The Virginian”, “Dragnet”, and “Room 222”. It was also at UCLA that he began composing and orchestrating music: incidental music for theatrical plays, and a musical, “The Short and Turbulent Reign of Roger Ginzburg”, with book and lyrics by David Colloff, that won the 1967 BMI Varsity Musical Award as Best Musical.
Rubinstein made his Broadway acting debut in 1972, and received a Theater World Award, for creating the title role in the musical “Pippin”, directed by Bob Fosse. In 1980 he won the Tony, Drama Desk, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, and Drama-Logue Awards for his portrayal of James Leeds in Mark Medoff’s “Children Of A Lesser God”, directed by Gordon Davidson. Other Broadway appearances were in Neil Simon’s “Fools”, and David Rabe’s “Hurlyburly”, both directed by Mike Nichols; Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial”, which earned him another Drama Desk nomination; David Henry Hwang’s “M. Butterfly”; “Getting Away With Murder”, by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by Jack O’Brien, and the musical “Ragtime”, directed by Frank Galati. In 1987 he made his off-Broadway debut at the Roundabout Theater as Guildenstern in Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, with Stephen Lang and John Wood, and subsequently performed in “Urban Blight” and “Cabaret Verboten”. In 2005 he received the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Lead Actor in a Play, as well as nominations for both the Outer Critics’ and Drama League Awards, for his portrayal of George Simon in Elmer Rice’s “Counsellor-at-Law”, directed by Dan Wackerman at the Pecadillo Theatre.
His appearances in regional theaters include the musicals “Camelot” (at various times as Tom of Warwick, Mordred, and King Arthur) and “South Pacific”; the role of Billy in David Rabe’s “Streamers”, Ariel in “The Tempest”, Marchbanks in Shaw’s “Candida”, both Sergius and Bluntschli (alternating nights with Richard Thomas) in Shaw’s “Arms And The Man”, several roles in Arnold Weinstein’s “Metamorphoses”, directed by Paul Sills at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, “Sight Unseen” at L.A.’s Odyssey Theatre, “The Torch-Bearers” and “Our Town” at the Williamstown Theater Festival, Arthur Miller’s “Broken Glass” at Monterey Peninsula College, and Warren Smith in “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” (in a 160-city National Tour). In 1985 He starred in “Merrily We Roll Along” at the La Jolla Playhouse, in a version newly re-written by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by James Lapine. He was the original Andrew Ladd III in A.R. Gurney’s “Love Letters” at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, opened the play in New York off-Broadway, and later performed it on Broadway, in San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. He created the role of Molina in “Kiss Of The Spider Woman”, the musical by Terrence McNally, John Kander, and Fred Ebb, directed by Harold Prince, and the role of Kenneth Hoyle in Jon Robin Baitz’s “Three Hotels”. In 1997, he played Tateh in the American premiere run of the musical “Ragtime”, by Terrence McNally, Stephen Flaherty, and Lynn Ahrens, directed by Frank Galati, at the Shubert Theater in Los Angeles, receiving both an L. A. Drama Critics Circle nomination and a Drama-Logue Award as Best Actor in a Musical, and continued in the show both in Vancouver and on Broadway. He appeared opposite Donald Sutherland in Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s “Enigmatic Variations” at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, and at the Savoy Theatre in London’s West End; played the Wizard of Oz in the hit musical “Wicked”, by Winnie Holzman and Stephen Schwartz, directed by Joe Mantello, at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles for 18 months; and starred with John Schuck and Ken Page in the world premiere of a musical version of “Grumpy Old Men” in Winnipeg at the Manitoba Theatre Centre.
His 24 feature films include Atlas Shrugged Part II; Hello, I Must Be Going, which opened the 2012 Sundance Festival; 21 Grams; Red Dragon; Mercy; Another Stakeout; Someone To Watch Over Me; Daniel; The Boys From Brazil; Rome and Jewel; Choose Connor; Sublime; Jekyll; Kid Cop; Getting Straight; Zachariah; The Trouble with Girls; Journey To Shiloh; and The Car. He has acted in over 200 television films and series episodes, including Arthur Miller’s “The American Clock” (CableAce Award Nomination), “Mrs. Harris”, “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town”, “Norma And Marilyn”, “The Sleepwalker”, “Working Miracles”, “In My Daughter’s Name”, “Perry Mason”, “Voices Within: The Lives Of Truddi Chase”, “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles”, “Skokie”, “Movieola”, “Roots: The Next Generations”, and “A Howling In The Woods”. He received an Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of Jeff Maitland III in the ABC series “Family”, a role he played for five years; and he starred for two years with Jack Warden in the CBS series “Crazy Like A Fox”. He has played recurring parts on “The Fosters”, “Perception”, “The Mentalist”, “Desperate Housewives”, “Parenthood”, “No Ordinary Family”, “Greek”, “The Wizards of Waverly Place”, “Dirty Sexy Money”, “Day Break”, “Angel”, “The Guardian”, “The Practice”, “Star Trek: Enterprise”, “Girlfriends”, “Robocop: the Series”, “The Young and the Restless”, and “Barbershop.”
Mr. Rubinstein has composed, orchestrated, and conducted the musical scores for five feature films, including Jeremiah Johnson (directed by Sidney Pollack) and The Candidate, (directed by Michael Ritchie), both starring Robert Redford; Paddy (with Milo O’Shea); The Killer Inside Me (with Stacy Keach); and Kid Blue (with Dennis Hopper); and for over 50 television films, among them the Peabody Award-winning “Amber Waves”, “The Dollmaker” (starring Jane Fonda), “A Walton Wedding”, “The Ordeal Of Patty Hearst”, “Choices Of The Heart”, and “Emily, Emily”, as well as the weekly themes for “Family” and “China Beach”.
He spent six years as host for the radio program “Carnegie Hall Tonight”, broadcast on l80 stations in the United States and Canada, and two years as the keyboard player for the jazz-rock group Funzone. He has recorded over 100 audio books, including 25 of the best-selling Alex Delaware novels by Jonathan Kellerman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Independence Day” by Richard Ford, Tom Clancy’s “Debt Of Honor” and “Op Center”, and E. L. Doctorow’s “City of God”, “World’s Fair”, and “All The Time In The World”.
In 1987, Rubinstein made his directorial debut at the Williamstown Theater Festival, staging Aphra Behn’s “The Rover”, with Christopher Reeve and Kate Burton; the following season he directed the first American-cast production of Christopher Hampton’s “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”, with Dwight Schultz and Dianne Wiest. Off-Broadway, he directed the New York premieres of “Phantasie”, by Sybille Pearson, and “Nightingale”, by Elizabeth Diggs; and the world premiere of A. R. Gurney’s “The Old Boy”, with Stephen Collins. At the Cape Playhouse in Massachusetts, he staged “Wait Until Dark”, with Hayley Mills and William Atherton. For NYU, he directed productions of “The Three Sisters” and “Macbeth”; for UCLA, “Company”; and for USC, “Brigadoon”, “Into The Woods”, “On The Town”, “City of Angels”, and “The Most Happy Fella”. In Los Angeles, at Interact Theatre Company, of which he has been a member since 1992, he co-directed and starred in the revival of Elmer Rice’s Counsellor-At-Law, winning Drama-Logue Awards and L.A. Drama Critics Circle Awards in both categories, as well as Ovation Awards for Ensemble Acting and Sound Design; the production itself won 22 awards; he also directed and acted in Sondheim and Lapine’s “Into The Woods” and “A Little Night Music”, and Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man”, and also directed Sheridan’s “The Rivals” and Frank Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls”. For television, he directed the CBS Schoolbreak Special “A Matter Of Conscience”, which won the Emmy Award for Best Children’s Special in 1990, an episode of the CBS series “Nash Bridges”, the ABC AfterSchool Special miniseries “Summer Stories”, and three episodes of the TV series “High Tide”.
In 2011, Rubinstein provided commentary for the online web-casting of the XIVth International Tchaikovsky Competition, a classical music competition held in Moscow. He teaches courses in musical theater audition and acting for the camera, and directs the annual spring musical, at the University of Southern California.
His most rewarding experience has been participating in the lives of his five children: Jessica, Michael, Peter, Jacob, and Max.
Jeannie Carson was born in 1928 in Pudsey, Yorkshire. She had some leading roles in British films before she became popular in America on television in the series “Hey Jeannie” in 1956. Her UK movies include “As Long As They’re Happy” and “An Alligator Named Daisy”. She is married to the actor Biff McGuire and livces in California.
In her early British films, she performed under the name Jean Carson, but later changed her given name to “Jeannie” to avoid confusion with the similarly named American actress Jean Carson.[2] Carson became an over-night star in Love From Judy, a musical by Hugh Martin and Jack Gray, and produced by Emile Littler, that played at the Saville Theatre in London from 1952 to 1953.
In 1956, Carson starred in her own series Hey, Jeannie!, which aired on CBS. The series lasted one season before being canceled in 1957.
In 1960, Carson married her second husband, actor Biff McGuire,[2] while both were starring in the Broadway revival of Finian’s Rainbow. The couple toured together in 1961 in Camelot, with McGuire as King Arthur and Carson asGuenevere. Later, they performed at the Seattle Repertory for fifteen years, often together. McGuire and Carson live in Los Angeles.
June Havoc was born in Vancouver in 1910. She was the sister of Gypsy Rose Lee. Her films include “Four Jacks and a Jill” in 1942, “Gentleman’s Agreement” in 1947 and “Can’t Stop the Music” in 1980 which starred Village People. She died at the age of 97 in Connecticut.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Musical theater devotees will undoubtedly know that the song “Let Me Entertain You” was from the classic musical “Gypsy”, the born-in-a-trunk story of resilient kid troopers Gypsy Rose Lee and June Havoc who were mercilessly pushed into vaudeville careers by an unbearably headstrong mother. While the lesser-talented Gypsy, of course, became the legendary ecdysiast who turned stripping into an art form, sister June survived her “Baby June” vaudeville child days of old and the tougher road of Depression-era dance marathons to become a reputable actress of stage, screen and TV, among other things. While June may have immortalized in “Gypsy,” based on her older sister’s memoirs, it was a bittersweet notoriety as she felt it was a very unjust, hurtful and highly inaccurate portrait of her. It also caused a deep rift between the sisters that lasted for well over a decade.
The Canadian-born actress (she was born in Vancouver, not Seattle) entered the world in 1912 (some sources insist 1913 or 1916, but Havoc confirmed her true birth date in 2006), the younger daughter of audacious “stage mother” Rose Thompson Hovick and her husband, John Olaf Hovick, a cub reporter for a Seattle newspaper. Baby June was primed for stardom by Rose by age 2 and was soon dancing with the great ballerina Anna Pavlova and appearing in Hal Roach film shorts (1918-1924) with Harold Lloyd. A flexible, high-kicking vaudeville sensation at 5, she was featured front-and-center in an act completely built around her (“Dainty June and Her Newsboys”). Earning around $1,500 a week at her peak, the delightful child star had audiences eating out of the palm of her little hand while sharing the stage with the likes of “Red-Hot Mama” Sophie Tucker and “Baby Snooks” Fanny Brice. The unrelenting pressures and suffocating dominance of her mother, however, led to a capricious elopement at age 13 with a young boy from the act (Bobby Reed, who inspired the dancing character of Tulsa in “Gypsy”). They married in North Platte, Nebraska with each lying about their age. By the time the Depression hit, however, vaudeville, the nation’s economy and her marriage had all collapsed.
Now a mother of a young daughter, April (born out of wedlock in 1930, April Kent acted briefly in the 1950s and died of a heart attack in 1998), June made ends meet by modeling, posing and toiling in dance marathons. The blonde, blue-eyed stunner also found work in stock musicals and on the Borscht Belt circuit. She made her Broadway debut in the musical “Forbidden Melody in 1936”. Years passed before she earned her big break as Gladys in Rodgers and Hart’s classic musical “Pal Joey” opposite Van Johnsonand Gene Kelly in 1940. As a result of their scene-stealing work, the trio earned movie contracts – the two men heading off to the MGM studio and June to RKO.
Unlike her male counterparts, June found herself inextricably caught up in “B” level material. Her film debut in the war-era Four Jacks and a Jill (1942) was followed by the equally ho-hum Powder Town (1942) and Sing Your Worries Away (1942), neither requiring much in the line of acting. Her personality was big for the screen due to her broad vaudeville background, but she nevertheless could show some true grit and talent on occasion, particularly with her support role in My Sister Eileen (1942).
For the next few years she experienced both highs and lows. Her Broadway shows were either hits, such as the musical “Mexican Hayride” (1944) (for which she won the Donaldson Award), and the dramatic “The Ryan Girl” (1945), or complete misses, which included a musical version of the Sadie Thompson saga Rain. June’s film acting continued to be a stumbling block, scoring best when asked to play brassy, cynical dames. While she fared well as the femme fatale in Intrigue (1947), the racist secretary in Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), and the gun moll The Story of Molly X (1949), more often than not, she was handed second-rate fodder to flounder in such as The Iron Curtain (1948), Once a Thief (1950) and Follow the Sun (1951). She appeared on TV in the early 50s, and she received her own short-lived vehicles as a lawyer in Willy (1954) and as host of her own show The June Havoc Show (1964).
After completing her last film Three for Jamie Dawn (1956), June refocused on stage and TV – particularly the former. She earned some of her best reviews both here and abroad in later years: Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Mistress Sullen in “The Beaux’ Stratagem,” Sabina in “The Skin of Our Teeth,” Millicent in “Dinner at Eight,” Jenny in “The Threepenny Opera,” Mrs. Swabb in “Habeas Corpus,” and Mrs. Lovett in “Sweeney Todd”. In 1982 she pulled out all the stops on Broadway and gave a real Rose’s Turn as a Miss Hannigan replacement in “Annie”.
June expanded her talents to include both playwriting and directing. In addition to “I Said the Fly,” she wrote “Marathon ’33” (based on her Depression-era struggles) and received a 1964 Tony nomination for directing the play. June became the artistic director of the New Orleans Repertory Theatre in 1970, and later went on tour with her own one-woman show “An Evening with June Havoc”. On stage and broaching age 80, the never-say-die actress appeared 8in a production of “Love Letters” and “An Old Lady’s Guide to Survival”.
June’s mid-career biography “Early Havoc” was published in 1959. Married three times (her last husband, producer/director/writer William Spier died in 1973), June was long estranged from her sister, none too happy with Gypsy’s portrayal of her in the best-selling memoir, “Gypsy” and equally dismayed of her Baby June character in the smash musical hit. The girls, noted for their trademark elongated faces and shapely gams, were estranged as children as well, but eventually patched things up for a time as adults. The sisters didn’t truly grow close until Gypsy told June that she was dying of lung cancer in 1970. June elaborated more about her relationship with her sister in her second autobiography, “More Havoc” in 1980.
Ms. Havoc died peacefully on March 28, 2010, at her home in Stamford, Connecticut of natural causes. She was 97 years young.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Johnnie Ray was born in 1927 in Oregon. He was very popular vocalist in the early 1950’s with a string of hits on both sides of the Atlantic. He had a starring role in the movie “There’s No Business Like Show Business” with starred Ethel Merman, Marilyn Monroe and Mitzi Gaynor in 1954. He died in 1990 at the age of 63.
IMDB entry: One of the greatest of the transition singers between the crooners and the rockers, Johnnie Ray was the only son of Elmer and Hazel Ray. After partially losing his hearing in a youthful accident, he began singing locally in a wild, flamboyant style, unlike any other white singer up to that time, that eventually made him an international sensation. His early songs, such as, the two sided multi million seller, “Cry”/ “The Little White Cloud ThatCried”, were major hits. In 1954,he co starred alongside Marilyn Monroe, Donald O’Conner, Dan Dailey, Mitzi Gaynor and Ethel Merman in the big screen musical “There’s No Business Like Show Business”(1954). Following up on his previous recording success,in 1952,he had a #4 US Pop hit with, the 1930 standard, “Walkin’ My Baby Back Home”. In 1954, he covered The Drifters’ R n B hit “Such A Night”, peaking at #18 US Pop. In 1956, he had an early Rockabilly hit with “Just Walkin’ In The Rain”, a million seller that rose to #2 US Pop. His brushes with the law and openness, at that time,regarding his homosexuality, may have contributed to a decline in popularity in The US. He had a comeback in The US, in the 1970s, with TV appearances on “The Andy Williams Show” and “The Tonght Show With Johnny Carson” He remained popular in the UK and Australia until his death.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: <anthony-adam@tamu.edu>/efffee@aol.com
Tribute from “Irish Times” by Jessica Traynor in 2019.
Barry Fitzgerald was a man with a talent for creating conundrums for the good people at the Academy. Not only did he cause an upset by being nominated in both the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories for the role of Fr Fitzgibbon in Going My Way in 1944 (he won in the latter category), he also managed to decapitate his Oscar statuette with a golf club not long afterwards.
Fitzgerald’s win was the last time the same person would be nominated for two Oscars for these two categories – the Academy would change the rules the following year. After wartime metal shortages ceased and Oscar statuettes reverted from their temporary gold-sprayed plaster construction to their usual gold-plated bronze, it wouldn’t be so easy to decapitate them while practicing your swing. The reasons for the accident are probably best summed up by Fitzgerald’s own attitude to golf: “A golf course is nothing but a pool room moved outdoors”.
Fitzgerald was born William Joseph Shields in 1888 in Portobello. His family were Church of Ireland, and his father Adolphus was a compositor, a trade union organiser, and was instrumental in setting up the first Fabian Societybranch in Ireland. His wife Fanny (née Ungerland) was originally from Hamburg, and came to Ireland in search of a less restrictive society. The couple had seven children and education and culture were valued in the household. Shields attended Skerry’s College and joined the civil service in 1911.
Shields’s brother Arthur, younger than him by eight years, began taking acting classes in the Abbey in 1913, graduating to larger roles by 1914 when the Abbey’s first company were touring abroad. Bored with his civil service job but not yet ready to let go of the steady income – “It was an easy job, full of leisure” – Fitzgerald decided to try his hand at acting too. Small of stature and with excellent comic timing in contrast to Arthur’s taller physique, the brothers had different styles and were rarely in direct competition. Nevertheless, William decided to change his name to Barry Fitzgerald, which as in part to shield his moonlighting as an actor from his bosses at the Department of Industry and Commerce. He would maintain his day job alongside acting roles until 1929.
The highlight of Fitzgerald’s early acting career was his definitive Captain Jack Boyle, played opposite Sara Allgood’s Juno and FJ McCormick’s Joxer Daly in the 1924 debut of Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock. Interestingly, Arthur Shields played his son, Johnny Boyle, a suspension of disbelief that must have owed much to Fitzgerald’s skilled physical performance as the ageing, blowhard “captain”. Fitzgerald was a friend of O’Casey’s, and took up the role of Fluther Good in the premiere of The Plough and the Stars in 1926. It was a great success, but not without controversy. An Irish Times report of February 15th, 1926 records an incident where several young men (termed “gunboys” by the paper) turned up at Fitzgerald’s mother’s house, hoping to prevent him from performing: “They assured the old lady that no harm would come to her son, but they had their orders to keep him in a safe place until it was too late for him to appear on the Abbey stage”. Fitzgerald wasn’t living there at the time, and his mother and sisters refused to reveal his whereabouts. The play went ahead. But perhaps this incident is another clue as to the potential need for pseudonyms in the politically charged post-civil war atmosphere.
Fitzgerald’s friendship with O’Casey led him to England to take the role written for him in The Silver Tassie, rejected by the Abbey in 1929. He then starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s film version of Juno and the Paycock, shot in London in 1930. The 1930s took Fitzgerald to the United States on Abbey Theatre tours in 1932 and 1934, performing in O’Casey plays alongside Synge staples like Playboy of the Western World and The Shadow of the Glen, Abbey Director and playwright Lennox Robinson’s The Far-off Hills.
In 1936, he and Arthur starred in John Ford’s version of The Plough and the Stars. This launched Fitzgerald’s Hollywood career and roles followed in films such as Bringing Up Baby (1938), How Green Was My Valley (1941), and And Then There Were None (1945), alongside his Oscar-winning turn in 1944’s Going My Way. A long-term creative partnership between Fitzgerald and Ford often found Fitzgerald cast as the comic foil to larger-than-life stars such as John Wayne. He would play alongside Arthur in Hollywood too, in Ford’s beloved The Quiet Man. As a character actor, he was unsurpassed in his era, and while Arthur’s career waned in later life, Fitzgerald would continue to be sought after.
Fitzgerald was rather reticent in his personal life, and Arthur Shields described his brother as “a very shy little man […] uncomfortable in crowds, and really dreaded meeting new people, but he was not a recluse and did enjoy certain company, especially when the ‘old chat’ was good”. Fitzgerald was a bachelor all his life, sharing an apartment in Hollywood with his stand-in Angus D Taillon. Tailon died in 1953 and Fitzgerald returned to Dublin in 1959, where he died in 1961. On is death, his friend Sean O’Casey said: “I loved the man. That is the only appreciation I can give. He was one of the greatest comedians who ever went on stage”.
Isabel Bigley was born in 1926 in the Bronx, New York. She originated the part of the Salvation Army member Sarah Brown in the 1951 production of the Broadway hit “Guys and Dolls”. She retired to rear her family in 1958 and lived for a time in London with her husband and six children. She died aged 80 in 2006.
Michael Freedland’s obituary in “The Guardian”:
The American singer and actor Isabel Bigley, who has died aged 78, will be remembered by British and US theatregoers for singing People Will Say We’re in Love in Oklahoma! and If I Were a Bell in Guys And Dolls.
Bigley was born in New York, the daughter of a salesman, and was educated at Walton high school in the Bronx before going to the Juilliard School of Music in 1944. Her Broadway debut was in the chorus of Oklahoma! in 1946. She followed the show to Drury Lane, where a brief period in the chorus led to the small part of Armina in 1947. She was so good that by the time the show closed in 1949, she was playing the female lead, Laurey, serenaded in The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.
News of her success got her a recommendation to Feuer and his partner, Ernie Martin, for Guys and Dolls. Bigley went on to be a sensation in the show, winning a Tony award in 1951. This was followed by a Theatre World award for the most promising newcomer. When she sang Sarah’s other hit, If I Were a Bell, critics remarked that that was how her voice sounded – like a bell. That same year, Bigley took part in the first television spectacular in colour. The show, Premiere, starred some of the most important American entertainment figures of the day.
When the Broadway production of Guys and Dolls ended in 1953, Rodgers and Hammerstein cast Bigley in the lead role of Jeannie in Me and Juliet, a show that ran for 358 performances. From then on, she concentrated on television, hosting the US version of the TV cabaret show Café Continental and appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show. She was a regular, too, on the Paul Whiteman, Eddie Fisher and Abbott and Costello shows, and was on the team of the American What’s My Line? She yearned to go back to the stage, but somehow the right part never cropped up at the right time.
In July 1953, Bigley married Lawrence Barnett, an important theatrical agency boss. Together, they endowed scholarships at Ohio State University and funded a biennial public policy symposium. Lawrence survives his wife, as do her four sons and two daughters.
· Isabel Bigley Barnett, actor and singer, born February 23 1928; died September 30 2006
The above article can be accessed online at the Guardian” here.
Paula Prentiss is a tall lanky comedy actor who graced American films of the 1960’s. She was born in 1938 in San Antonio, Texas. In 1960 she made her movie debut with her often film partner Jim Hutton in “Where the Boys Are”. She went on to star in “The Honeymoon Machine”, “The Horizontal Lieutenant” and “The World of Henry Orient” with Peter Sellers and Angela Lansbury. She and her husband Richard Benjamin had their own television series “He & She” from 1967 for a season.
TCM Overview:
A vivacious brunette comic player, Paula Prentiss began in lightweight, coquettish roles in the 1960s and shifted to more meaty dramatic fare in the 70s before curtailing her career in favor of raising a family. The daughter of an Italian immigrant and his wife, Prentiss graduated from the famed acting program at Northwestern University. Spotted by talent scouts, she was put under contract at MGM, where she was frequently partnered onscreen with Jim Hutton, beginning with her debut feature “Where the Boys Are” (1960). Having conquered the teen audience, Prentiss offered what many feel is her best performance as Rock Hudson’s overbearing girlfriend in Howard Hawks’ “Man’s Favorite Sport?” (1964) She continued to win the attention of adult moviegoers as Peter Sellers’ married conquest in “The World of Henry Orient” (1964) and as a stripper chasing Peter O’Toole in “What’s New Pussycat” (1965). She retired from features for five years, during which she co-starred with her husband Richard Benjamin in the CBS sitcom “He and She” (1967-68) as a scatterbrained social worker married to a cartoonist.
Prentiss resumed her film career as Elliot Gould’s wife in the dismal “Move” (1970). She fared better as the sexy Nurse Duckett in “Catch-22” (also 1970), directed by Mike Nichols. In “The Parallax View” (1974), Prentiss shone in the brief role of a TV reporter who feared for her life after witnessing a political assassination. The following year, her natural, down-to-earth style was most apparent when she uttered her introductory line concerning her family’s last name being “Marco. That’s upward mobility for Markowitz” in “The Stepford Wives” (1975).
Prentiss curtailed her schedule for much of the late 70s into the early 90s to concentrate on child-rearing, although she accepted the occasional juicy role. In “The Black Marble” (1980), she was a cop romantically involved with her partner, played Jack Lemmon’s wife in Billy Wilder’s last feature “Buddy, Buddy” (1981) and acted opposite Benjamin in the horror spoof “Saturday the 14th” (1981). Her small screen credits include the TV-movies “Packin’ It In” (CBS, 1983) and “M.A.D.D.: Mothers Against Drunk Driving” (NBC, 1983). With her children grown and in college, she began to resume her career in earnest with guest appearances on “Murder, She Wrote” and “Burke’s Law”, an uncredited bit as a nasty nurse in the Benjamin-directed “Mrs. Winterbourne” (1996) and an L.A. stage role as a dying woman in “Angel’s Share” in 1997.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
