Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 92 of 126

Michael Murphy

Michael Murphy was born in 1938 in Los Angeles. He has given excellent performances in such films as “Nashville” in 1975, “Manhattan”, “An Unmarried Woman” with Jill Clayburgh and “Away from Her” with Julie Christie .

TCM Overview:

A high school teacher turned character actor, Michael Murphy began his collaboration with famed director Robert Altman on an episode of the 1960s TV series “Combat”. He made the first of several appearances in Altman films in “Countdown” (1968). Among his other Altman credits are “M*A*S*H” and “Brewster McCloud” (both 1970), “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” (1971), “Nashville” (1975) and “Kansas City” (1996). In addition, Murphy portrayed a presidential candidate in Altman’s satire of politics “Tanner ’88” (HBO, 1988) and was the chief judge in Altman’s “The Caine Mutiny Court Martial” (CBS, 1988).Murphy specializes in playing angst-ridden urban types, typified by his roles as cheating husbands in Paul Mazursky’s “An Unmarried Woman” (1978) and Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” (1979). His other film roles include a journalist in Peter Weir’s “The Year of Living Dangerously” (1982), an ambassador in Oliver Stone’s “Salvador” (1986), a cop tracking a serial killer in Wes Craven’s “Shocker” (1989) and the mayor of Gotham City in Tim Burton’s “Batman Returns” (1992).

One Sheet; Movie Poster; Film Poster; Cinema Poster;

Kim Hunter was born in 1922 in Detroit. In 1943 she starred in the film noir “The Seventh Victim”. In 1944 she was in England to make “A Canterbury Tale” and also made “A Matter of Life and Death” there in 1946. She won an Oscar for her performance as Stella opposite Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in “A Streetcar Named Desire”. In 1967 she starred in “Planet of the Apes”. She died in 2002 aged 79.

Her obituary by Brian Baxter in “The Guardian”:

For a distinguished and versatile stage actor whose Oscar-winning screen career effectively began with the visionary A Matter Of Life And Death (1945), it might have proved galling to be popularly associated with Planet Of The Apes. But Kim Hunter, who has died aged 79, was far too intelligent to let the success of her masked performance as the sympathetic simian Dr Zira distract from the achievements of a 60-year career, which included long periods out of work because of her association with blacklisted film directors in America’s McCarthyite times.

Hunter made her Broadway debut in 1947, as the put-upon wife Stella in Tennessee Will- iams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. When Elia Kazan transferred his production into a mesmerising movie in 1951, she returned to the screen opposite Marlon Brando, and won an Oscar as best supporting actress.

Born in Detroit, where her mother was a concert pianist, she made her professional debut with a small theatre company in Miami. With a remarkable vocal range and physical grace, she gained experience in stock theatres, on tour and studying at the Actors’ Studio in New York.

At 21, she made an auspicious screen debut as an orphan in the 1943 horror film The Seventh Victim, a supremely elegant Val Lewton production, directed by Mark Robson. In the same year, she took sixth billing in Tender Comrade, the film that, years later, was cited by the house unAmerican activities committee as being communist-inspired. That accusation led to writer Dalton Trumbo and director Edward Dmytryk being blacklisted as two of the Hollywood 10; Hunter was, by implication, victimised and did not work in the cinema for three years because of her alleged leftwing sympathies.

But these, and other less notable early films, led to her role as June in the British classic A Matter Of Life And Death (1945), when Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger needed a “pretty, girl-next-door American” for their ambitious romantic fantasy.

Hunter’s substantial theatrical roles included Rosamund in As You Like It, Helen in Troilus And Cressida, and Karen in Lillian Hellman’s controversial The Childrens’ Hour. She twice played the greatest American poet, Emily Dickinson, first in Come Slowly, Eden and, in the 1970s, as The Belle Of Amherst. This one-woman show had been made famous by Julie Harris, who shared Hunter’s versatility, lilting tones and love of music and poetry.

Hunter’s other key stage performances included the formidable teacher in The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) and Big Mama in Williams’s Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. Her love of the classics had been kindled by an early success as Gwendolyn, in The Importance Of Being Earnest, and continued throughout her career to include a notable Mme Ranevskaya, in The Cherry Orchard, as well as appearances in Ghosts and Shaw’s Man And Superman and Major Barbara.

Her busy schedule, including lengthy tours, did not, however, curtail screen appearances, memorable among which was that of the selfish mother, blamed for her son’s alienation, in John Frankenheimer’s debut The Young Stranger (1957). Inevitably, there was also more routine work, such as Bermuda Affair and Money, Women And Guns (both 1958), although a notable exception was the social worker role in Robert Rossen’s hypnotic Lilith (1964).

Four years later, the first screen visit to Pierre Boule’s ape world proved a great hit. As Dr Zira, sympathetic to the captured astronaut (Charlton Heston), Hunter contributed much of the film’s wit and charm, though, sadly, the various sequels somewhat diluted the regard in which this cleverly sustained work is held.

Before her next outing as Zira, Hunter appeared in that quirky satire on contemporary American life, The Swimmer (1968), which was probably a welcome antidote to her increasing television work in Ellery Queen and Columbo movies, alongside such mini-series as Backstairs At The White House (1979) and FDR, The Last Year (1980).

Television kept her increasingly busy during the 1980s, though her film appearances included a star role opposite mad doctor Rod Steiger in The Kindred (1986). Rather more rewarding was a cameo role in Clint Eastwood’s underrated Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil (1997), a leisurely depiction of southern US corruption and perversity.

The following year provided a more substantial character as Rabbitzn, in A Price Above Rubies, an intriguing feminist assault on orthodox Jewish life in Brooklyn. This initiated a busy period for Hunter, including a documentary about the Ape movies and the lead in an affecting story of old age, Abilene, opposite Ernest Borgnine. Also in 1999, she appeared in Blue Moon and Out Of The Cold. A Smaller Place and Here’s To Life! (both 2000) found her still getting good reviews and, for the latter, a Genie award nomination for best performance in a leading role.

In 1975, she published Loose In The Kitchen, a book that celebrated her life and “great enthusiasm” for cookery. She spent six years on the council of the Actor’s Equity Association, and was active in the Screen Actors Guild and other organisations.

She is survived by her daughter Kathryn, from her first marriage, which ended in 1946, and her son Sean, from her 1951 marriage to Robert Emmett, who died two years ago.

Kim Hunter (Janet Cole), actor, born November 12 1922; died September 11 2002

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

Mary Tyler Moore TCM Overview:

An iconic modern woman who starred in two very different, but very successful sitcoms, actress Mary Tyler Moore also made an enormous contribution to television history as the producer of numerous acclaimed comedies and dramas of the 1970s and 1980s. Audiences first fell in love with Moore as a believable symbol of the smart, young, pants-wearing mom on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (CBS, 1961-66) before she came to signify a new breed of independent, liberated professional woman on the Emmy-winning sitcom, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (CBS, 1970-77). In addition to her longstanding reputation for comedy, Moore delivered a powerful, Oscar-nominated performance in the 1980 feature “Ordinary People,” in addition to starring in over a dozen television movies. As co-founder of MTM Productions, Moore was integral to the success of top rated “Mary Tyler Moore” spin-offs “Rhoda” (CBS, 1974-78) and “Lou Grant” (CBS, 1977-82), as well as “The Bob Newhart Show” (CBS, 1972-78) and the police drama “Hill Street Blues” (NBC, 1981-87). Though her career slowed down in later years, Moore remained active in numerous charities and causes, particularly Type 1 diabetes, which she was diagnosed with early in her career. Because of her contributions to television, Moore remained a timeless icon whose influence with subsequent generations of female performers remained incalculable.

Born on Dec. 29, 1936, in Brooklyn, NY, Moore was raised in nearby Queens until the age of eight when the family moved to Los Angeles, Moore attended strict Catholic schools, but studied ballet with dreams of someday becoming a dancer. Fresh out of Immaculate Heart High School, she landed her first show business job as a singing and dancing elf named Happy Hotpoint, promoting kitchen appliances in television commercials. She married salesman Richard Meeker and hung up her elf costume when she became pregnant with her only child, Richard Jr., who was born only months after Moore’s own mother, Marjorie, gave birth to daughter Elizabeth. Moore resumed her career in 1959 when her legs and voice were featured in the role of a switchboard operator on the mystery series “Richard Diamond, Private Eye” (CBS-NBC, 1957-1960).

Following a dozen guest appearances on shows like “77 Sunset Strip” (ABC, 1958-1964) and “Hawaiian Eye” (ABC, 1959-1963), Moore was cast as the young wife of a television comedy writer (Dick Van Dyke) on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” a semi-autobiographical sitcom created by Carl Reiner. While she was in the midst of divorcing her first husband off-screen, Moore brought a down-to-earth believability and maturity to her onscreen role and was crucial to the success of its often daring subject matter. With her standard wardrobe of Capri pants signaling an end to the era of the dress-and-apron clad June Cleaver, Moore became a symbol of the new era of modern mom, resonating strongly with audiences and earning Emmy Awards for her work in 1964 and 1965. The beloved star also won the heart of television executive Grant Tinker, whom she married in 1962. “The Dick Van Dyke Show” was still popular when producers decided to bow out gracefully after five seasons, at which time Moore returned to the stage opposite Richard Chamberlain in an ill-fated stage musical adaptation of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1966).

Moore stuck close to her first love of song and dance for the next few years, co-starring alongside Julie Andrews, Carol Channing and Beatrice Lillie in the lavish 1920s musical “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (1967), which she followed by playing a nun with a wandering eye for a handsome young doctor (Elvis Presley) in “Change of Habit” (1969). Later that year, she made her first television movie with “Run a Crooked Mile” (1969), which allowed viewers to see the serious dramatic side of her talent. Several years had passed before she was approached by CBS, and offered a deal to develop and star in her own sitcom. Moore and her husband wisely formed a production company, MTM, and inked a deal that would give ultimate creative control of the series to MTM productions.

Her company’s first project, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” chronicled the life of an independent thirty-ish professional female navigating a career, friendships and dating life. The show was the first to feature such an unprecedented “liberated” woman as the lead. Once again, Moore found herself at the forefront of the changing image of women on television with her role as an evening news producer and single woman who alluded to sex and birth control. As producer, Moore was key in assembling an outstanding writing staff and a supporting cast including Edward Asner as her gruff boss, Valerie Harper as her brash New Yorker best friend and Ted Knight as news station WJM’s dimwitted anchor. Moore was nominated for a Lead Actress Emmy every year during the show’s seven-year run, taking home wins in 1973, 1974 and 1976, while the show itself amassed over 29 awards.

In 1972, Moore and MTM productions launched their second series, “The Bob Newhart Show,” which carried MTM’s hallmark quality writing and acting and became another of television’s most respected programs. Meanwhile, Moore produced the first “Mary Tyler Moore” spin-off “Rhoda,” an Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning success based around the character’s best friend returning to New York. Another spinoff series, “Phyllis” (CBS, 1975-177), which was centered on Moore’s unlikable landlord (Cloris Leachman), was cancelled after its second season. Likewise, “The Tony Randall Show” (ABC/CBS, 1976-78), suffered the same fate and was axed after two seasons. Like Dick Van Dyke before her, Moore chose to end “Mary Tyler Moore” while on a high note. By the time the final episode aired in 1977, Moore was a beloved figure and winner of the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Female Television performer. Moore and MTM productions launched the spin-off “Lou Grant” the same year and enjoyed more critical success for the straight-ahead drama whose format allowed Grant (Edward Asner), a staffer of a Los Angeles newspaper, to explore social issues and current events.

As an actress known for comedy, Moore was anxious to explore her dramatic side, which she did with the TV-movie, “First You Cry” (CBS, 1978), earning an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of a reporter battling breast cancer. Meanwhile, Moore’s off-screen life took a tragic turn when she divorced from Tinker, while suffering the pain of losing her sister, Elizabeth, to a drug overdose, and her only son, Richard, to a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She continued to helm MTM ventures, which included the wildly popular “WKRP in Cincinnati” (CBS, 1978-1982), while exploring painful territory onstage in the hit Broadway play “Whose Life Is It, Anyway?” which earned her a Tony Award for playing a quadriplegic sculptor fighting to determine her own destiny. Further proving her range and distancing herself from her television persona was a riveting portrayal of a strained mother coping with the suicide of one son and the resulting suicide attempt of the other (Timothy Hutton) in Robert Redford’s “Ordinary People” (1980). She received an Oscar nomination and Golden Globe win for the heavy-hitting family drama. In 1981, MTM rolled out another successful dramatic series, “Hill Street Blues.”

Whether or not the combination of real-life and onscreen tragedy was to blame, Moore entered a rehabilitation program for alcohol addiction in 1982. She returned to the big screen in “Six Weeks” (1982), which again found her exploring the modern professional matriarch, but in a less successful melodrama. She delivered award-nominated performances in middle-aged television movie dramas “Heartsounds” (ABC, 1984) and “Finnegan Begin Again” (HBO, 1985), then attempted to revisit sitcom glory with “Mary” (CBS, 1985-86), a newspaper-set comedy that failed to score with audiences and was cancelled after 13 episodes. Moore had better success with a long run Broadway comedy, “Sweet Sue,” before offering an astonishing portrait of the first lady opposite Sam Waterston in “Gore Vidal’s Lincoln” (NBC, 1988). Another stab at Moore-centric sitcom, “Annie McGuire” (1988), lasted less than one season, which was followed in 1990 by Moore and ex-husband Tinker selling MTM Productions.

Following a string of TV films including “Stolen Babies” (Lifetime, 1993), where she earned an Emmy for playing a spinster trafficking in illegal adoptions, Moore returned to series television in a supporting role as a hard-driving newspaper editor in the short-lived drama, “New York News” (CBS, 1995). She had a delightfully funny supporting role as an adoptive parent of a grown child (Ben Stiller) searching for his birth parents in “Flirting with Disaster” (1996), then enjoyed a recurring role as Tea Leoni’s mother on Leoni’s sitcom “The Naked Truth” (NBC, 1995-98). In 2000, Moore reunited with Valerie Harper in the TV movie “Mary and Rhoda” (ABC), which depicted both actresses revisiting their classic characters Mary Richards and Rhoda Morgenstern – one a widow, the other a divorceé – as they rekindle their friendship in New York. The Moore-produced movie was a means to test the waters for an anticipated sitcom sequel, but a lack of humor and an overdose of maudlin sentiment failed to excite audiences.

Moore produced and starred in the true crime biopic “Like Mother, Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Kimes” (CBS, 2001), playing a con artist, thief and murder. Her chilling performance earned her a fresh round of critical accolades. She maintained her position as a sturdy television movie mainstay with films including “Miss Lettie and Me” (TNT, 2002), where she played a cantankerous elderly Southern woman, and “Blessings” (CBS, 2003), based on the Anna Quindlan novel about an abandoned baby found on an aged woman’s estate. She reunited with Dick Van Dyke and a large number of her former cast mates in the nostalgic “The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited” (TV Land, 2004), then faced off with Van Dyke in a PBS version of D.L. Coburn’s stage play “The Gin Game,” where the old co-stars showcased their old spark playing two residents of a nursing home whose gin rummy games bring out the best and worst in them.

Still happily working at the age of 70, Moore continued to appear annually in made-for-television movies, finding herself to be an increasingly popular sitcom guest star. In 2006, she enjoyed a hilarious recurring run as a high-strung TV host on “That 70’s Show” (Fox, 1998-2006). Two years later, she revisited the world of the working woman with a multi-episode arc on the fashion-set comedy, “Lipstick Jungle” (NBC, 2008-09 ). While focusing on her charity work, Moore found time to take the occasional acting job. In 2011, she reunited with old friend Betty White to make a guest appearance on the sitcom “Hot in Cleveland” (TV Land, 2010- ). That same year, Moore had surgery to remove a benign tumor from the lining tissue of her skull, a routine procedure from which she recovered quickly.

The above TCM overview can be also accessed online here.

Cloris Leachman TCM Overview:

With a career that spanned a staggering six decades on stage and screen, actress Cloris Leachman was one of primetime’s funniest comediennes and a favorite player in the classic film satires of Mel Brooks. A former beauty pageant winner who began her career on the Broadway stage, Leachman’s first high profile achievement was her Academy Award-winning performance in Peter Bogdanovich’s stark drama “The Last Picture Show” (1971). From there, the over-40 actress’ career kicked into high gear, with award-winning roles as the hilariously self-important Phyllis Lindstrom on the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” (CBS, 1970-77) and the subsequent spin-off, “Phyllis” (CBS, 1975-77). She forever held a place in film comedy history for her tightly wound, strangely accented characters in Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein” (1974) and “History of the World, Part 1” (1981) – a strength she introduced to a new generation of fans in the role of grandma Ida on Fox’s quirky “Malcolm in the Middle” (Fox, 2000-06). The octogenarian became the reality competition’s oldest contestant when she joined the cast of “Dancing with the Stars” (ABC, 2005- ) in 2008, then trotted on to the sitcom “Raising Hope” (Fox, 2010- ), as the semi-lucid grandmother “Maw Maw” Chance. With more than 40 years of film and television work under her belt, Leachman made it clear she was far from ready to retire, and had plenty more laughs to impart to appreciative fans of all ages.

Cloris Leachman was born on April 30, 1926, in Des Moines, IA where her father owned a lumber company. A self-admitted perfectionist as a child, Leachman made great strides towards her goal of acting with countless stage roles with the Des Moines Playhouse and appearances on local radio by the time she was a teenager. Her impressive achievements earned her a scholarship to the drama department at Northwestern University, where her classmates included future stars Charlton Heston, Patricia Neal and Charlotte Rae. While a student, Leachman entered the Miss Chicago beauty pageant and went on to place as a finalist in the 1946 Miss America competition. She bid college goodbye and used her $1,000 prize money to move to New York City, where she was invited by Elia Kazan to join the Actors Studio. Under their auspices, she made her TV debut as a recurring player on the drama series “Actors Studio” (ABC, 1948-49) and went on to appear in numerous live television dramas during the ‘Golden Age of Television’ in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Leachman also worked continuously on Broadway, playing Nellie Forbush in the original production of Rogers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific,” sharing the stage with Katherine Hepburn in “As You Like It,” and earning a Drama Desk nomination for “A Story for a Sunday Evening” in 1951.

While her acting career barreled ahead, Leachman married actor George Englund and together the young family headed to Hollywood. Englund launched a career as a film producer and director and Leachman made her film debut as the desperate woman found by the roadside in the opening sequence of Robert Aldrich’s landmark film noir “Kiss Me Deadly” (1955). Despite her beauty queen past, the actress was not considered a conventional Tinseltown leading lady, and her sharp features, Midwestern accent and incisive acting skills marked her for offbeat character parts. During the late 1950s, Leachman had a regular TV role playing Timmy’s wholesome, Midwestern mom on the series “Lassie” (CBS, 1954-1973) and was seen in countless guest spots on Westerns and live dramas while occasionally returning to Broadway. After nearly a decade of steady work on all the dramas and comedies of the day, including recurring characters on “Dr. Kildare” (NBC, 1961-66) and “77 Sunset Strip” (ABC, 1958-1964), Leachman made a memorable impression as a jittery lady of the evening in the Best Picture Oscar nominee “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969).

She followed up with big screen performances in a pair of scathing middle-America commentaries, “WUSA” (1970) and “The People Next Door” (1970), before a recurring role on the groundbreaking sitcom “Mary Tyler Moore” turned Leachman into a household name. The character-driven show, which starred Mary Tyler Moore as a thirty-something single professional and uniquely independent woman, featured Leachman as Mary’s on-site landlady – a self-absorbed busybody who fancied herself an intellectual and progressive woman. As Phyllis Lindstrom, Leachman unleashed a sparkling, multiple Emmy-nominated comedic talent. The following year, she affirmed her versatility with a heartbreaking turn as a lonely, neglected housewife who begins an affair with a high school senior in Peter Bogdanovich’s near-perfect adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s “The Last Picture Show.” The flinchingly honest portrayal earned the 45-year-old actress an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She went on to offer a string of award-winning performances on the small screen, beginning with “A Brand New Life” (ABC, 1973), where she played a middle-aged woman facing an unwanted pregnancy, and “The Migrants” (CBS, 1974), where she portrayed the matriarch of a family of fruit pickers.

Another Bogdanovich effort, “Daisy Miller” (1974) proved disappointing, but Leachman rebounded and became a member of Mel Brooks’ unofficial stock company with “Young Frankenstein” (1975) and her classic supporting turn as housekeeper Frau Blucher, known for frightening all horses within earshot. She enlivened the early Jonathan Demme mob effort “Crazy Mama” (1975) and finally landed her own TV series, the spin-off “Phyllis” (CBS, 1975-77), which found her now-widowed character moving to San Francisco with her teenage daughter and re-entering the work force. The show was cancelled after two seasons (and one Lead Actress Golden Globe Award) and the same year that “Mary Tyler Moore” left the airwaves. But Leachman remained an in-demand comic player, reteaming with Brooks’ to play skilled S&M dominatrix Nurse Diesel in the Hitchcock spoof “High Anxiety” (1977). She enjoyed character roles in madcap comedies like “The Muppet Movie” (1979) and “Herbie G s Bananas” (1980) and joined Brooks a third time to play an innkeeper in “History of the World, Part 1” (1981).

Following starring roles in several made-for-TV movies, Leachman returned to series television in “The Facts of Life” (NBC, 1979-1988) where she took over the “mentor” role vacated by former classmate Charlotte Rae for the show’s final two seasons. Beginning in 1989, Leachman began a decade of touring in a one-woman play written for her in which she portrayed American primitive painter Grandma Moses. On the big screen, she reprised her “Last Picture Show” role in the disappointing Bogdanovich sequel “Texasville” (1990) and seemed to be having fun stepping into Irene Ryan’s boots to play Granny Clampett in the feature version of “The Beverly Hillbillies” (1993). Not one to consider retirement, the 70-year-old actress spent nearly three years playing Parthy, the captain’s wife, in a touring production of “Show Boat” before returning to series grind as a feisty, lusty oldster in the CBS summer sitcom “Thanks” (1999). The very busy Leachman provided a character voice for the acclaimed animated feature “The Iron Giant” and supported Meryl Streep in “Music of the Heart” (1999).

A whole new generation of sitcom viewers was introduced to Leachman when she was cast as Ellen DeGeneres’ mother on the CBS sitcom “The Ellen Show” (2001-02) and began a recurring guest turn as the chain-smoking, tough-talking grandmother Ida on Fox’s “Malcolm in the Middle.” Her repeat performances throughout the series history earned Leachman annual Emmy nominations and delivered awards in 2002 and 2006, the same year she was also nominated for a supporting role in the HBO original drama movie, “Mrs. Harris” (HBO, 2005). Leachman continued to offer comedic big screen outings, taking on matronly roles in such films as “Alex & Emma” (2003) and “Bad Santa” (2003), where she played the half-dead grandmother of a portly misfit who rises only occasionally to make sandwiches. She received some of the best reviews of her career when she appeared as Tea Leoni’s alcoholic mother in writer-director James L. Brooks’ “Spanglish” (2004).

After a small role as a school nurse with X-ray vision in the family superhero comedy “Sky High” (2005), Leachman appeared in Peter Segal’s weak remake of the classic 1974 Burt Reynolds film “The Longest Yard” (2005) and delivered a hilarious turn in the popular franchise “Scary Movie 4” (2006). In 2008, Leachman began a national tour of her one-woman autobiographical stage show “Cloris!” and appeared as part of the outstanding ensemble cast of the chick flick “The Women” (2008). She supported her latest efforts by joining the fall season of “Dancing with the Stars” (ABC, 2005- ) where at age 82, she became the oldest contestant in the show’s history. She next landed a supporting role on the irreverent hit comedy “Raising Hope” (Fox, 2010- ), playing the Alzheimer’s-afflicted great-grandmother of a 23-year-old new father (Lucas Neff) who is utterly clueless about raising his infant daughter. Leachman was one of several highlights on the show and earned herself an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Valerie Harper TCM Overview:

Perhaps no other actress evoked the edgy, freewheeling spirit of 1970s television than Emmy-winning actress Valerie Harper, whose star-making turn as the brassy, bold Rhoda Morgenstern on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” (CBS, 1970-77) and its spin-off “Rhoda” (CBS, 1974-78) remained one of the most adulated performances in TV history. Harper began her career as a Broadway showgirl, making a name for herself in such high-profile productions as “Destry Rides Again” (1959) and “Wildcat” (1960), but it was on the small screen where she rose to fame. Harper won over audiences as Moore’s wisecracking, headscarf-sporting best friend on the acclaimed series “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” a scene-stealing role she later reprised on her own sitcom “Rhoda.” In 1974, she broke into film, playing Alan Arkin’s wife in the comedy “Freebie and the Bean.” In 1987, TV would become the bane of Harper’s existence when she was fired from her popular sitcom “Valerie” (NBC, 1986-87), sparking an ensuing legal battle that threatened to derail Harper’s career. In 1988, the comedienne emerged victorious, winning the landmark lawsuit. Harper continued acting over the next several decades, entertaining audiences with her brash, irreverent wit. Beloved for playing strong characters, Harper was even more resilient when it came to her personal life. Within a short window of time, she bravely battled both lung and brain cancer, with the latter being diagnosed as fatal in 2013. The news devastated millions, while Harper remained as courageous and inspirational as ever in the face of adversity.

Valerie Harper was born on Aug. 22, 1939 in Suffern, Rockland County, NY, to Iva McConnell, a Canadian-born nurse, and Howard Donald Harper, a lighting salesman whose itinerant career often uprooted the family. By the time she entered high school, Harper had lived in New Jersey, Southern California, Michigan and Oregon. Inspired by the 1948 film “The Red Shoes,” Harper dreamt of becoming a dancer from a very young age. When her family packed up their Jersey City digs and moved back to Oregon, Harper opted to stay behind in New York City where she began to train in ballet. While a student at Manhattan’s Young Professionals School, 16-year-old Harper auditioned and earned a coveted spot as a chorus girl in the Radio City Corps de Ballet. Following graduation, she enrolled at Hunter College and the New School for Social Research, where she dabbled in the liberal arts, taking courses in French and philosophy. But Harper’s main passion was performance and she gradually segued into acting, landing a plum bit part in the 1956 Broadway musical ‘L’il Abner,” choreographed by Michael Kidd. Impressed with her skills, he would go on to cast Harper in a string of hit shows on the Great White Way, including “Destry Rides Again” with Andy Griffith, “Wildcat” with Lucille Ball, and “Subways are for Sleeping” (1961), starring Orson Bean. Moving into screen work, Harper’s first film role was in director Melvin Frank’s 1959 feature adaptation of “L’il Abner.”

In the early 1960s, Harper continued to hone her craft as an actress, studying drama under Viola Spolin, the legendary improvisational instructor whose son, Paul Sills, co-founded Chicago’s The Second City. Impressed by Harper’s raw comedic talent, Sills invited the budding thespian to join the theater company, where she met comic actor Richard Schaal, whom she married in 1964. In 1967, Harper returned to Broadway with roles in Carl Reiner’s “Something Different” and Sills’ production of Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” (1970). That same year, with little television experience, save for a few uncredited extra appearances, Harper was cast as Rhoda Morgenstern, the charismatic, tough-talking Jewish neighbor from the Bronx on the hit sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” a role that would earn Harper three consecutive Emmy Awards (1971-73) for Outstanding Supporting Actress and catapult her to international stardom alongside the rest of the ensemble cast. In 1974, CBS gave their new headscarf-sporting golden girl her own spin-off series, the top-rated “Rhoda,” for which she would win the 1975 Emmy and a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy Series, as well as Harvard’s Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year award. An immediate hit, the spin-off followed Harper’s beloved character as she moves back in with her overbearing, overprotective parents (Nancy Walker and Harold Gould) who live in the Bronx. “Rhoda” not only showcased Harper’s character as more than TV sidekick, it also broke small-screen records. The hour-long wedding special between Rhoda and Joe Gerard (David Groh) was the highest-rated TV episode of the 1970s – a record broken by ABC miniseries “Roots” in 1977 – and featured guest appearances from Harper’s former co-stars, including Moore and Ed Asner.

At the same time her own sitcom was taking off, Harper further charmed on the big screen with her on-point rendering of a Puerto Rican housewife in “Freebie and the Bean,” a memorable action caper co-starring James Caan and Alan Arkin. For her work in the movie, Harper received a Golden Globe nomination for Most Promising Newcomer – Female – which was ironic, considering she had been stealing scenes from Moore for years. Around this same time, she became actively involved with The Hunger Project, a philanthropic organization committed to ending world hunger, an affiliation that would continue throughout Harper’s life. When “Rhoda” went off the air in 1978, Harper divorced Schaal that same year, bring to an end two significant chapters in her life. She continued to act frequently, stacking up a list of credits both in television and film, including a supporting role in Neil Simons’s 1979 comedy “Chapter Two,” for which she received a Golden Globe nomination; “The Last Married Couple in America” (1980), opposite Natalie Wood and George Segal; the TV movie “The Shadow Box” (ABC, 1980), directed by Paul Newman and starring Joanne Woodward and Christopher Plummer; and the hit sex comedy “Blame it on Rio” (1984), with Michael Caine and Demi Moore.

In 1986, Harper returned to the small screen as the star of NBC’s “Valerie,” a family-friendly sitcom on which she plays a housewife whose husband’s career as an airplane pilot often took him out of town, leaving Harper to raise their three sons – the eldest played by then-child star Jason Bateman – on her own. The following year, Harper married second husband Tony Cacciotti, her longtime manager and an executive producer on “Valerie.” Two seasons into its critically well-received run, Harper was abruptly fired for alleged on-set misconduct in August 1987. Harper and Cacciotti had reportedly been feuding with the network and producers over a salary increase and failed to show up to set for three consecutive episodes. Harper was let go from her namesake show and her character was unceremoniously killed off in a car accident – a radical move that shocked fans and the industry. She was promptly replaced by Tony Award-nominated actress Sandy Duncan of “Peter Pan” fame, with the series also being renamed “Valerie’s Family.” Subsequently, Harper sued Lorimar Telepictures and NBC for breach of contract and for its continued use of her name in the show’s title. Lorimar accused Harper of trying to wrestle control of “Valerie” and demanding more money. Producers deemed her difficult to work with, attributing her behavior to festering jealously over Bateman’s burgeoning heartthrob status – rumors Harper consistently debunked.

In the months that followed, Harper and Cacciotti became entangled in one of the most acrimonious courtroom battles in the history of American television production. As the lawsuit raged on, Harper and Cacciotti tried to focus on their family life by adopting a daughter. In 1988, at the end of her namesake sitcom’s successful third season, Harper won her case against Lorimar and was awarded $1.4 million in damages plus a percentage of the show’s profits. Meanwhile, the series was renamed “The Hogan Family” and ran for six more seasons – due mainly to the appeal of the scene-stealing Bateman. Harper spent the next several years bouncing back from the maelstrom of negative press and attempting to revive her once illustrious TV career, efforts that never fully materialized in the way they had in the 1970s. While she starred in several TV movies, including “Drop-Out Mother” (1988) with Carol Kane, and “Stolen – One Husband” (1990), a comedy co-starring Elliot Gould and Brenda Vaccaro, Harper failed to attach herself to a star vehicle with any sort of network staying power. In 1990, she joined the cast of “City” (CBS), a poorly reviewed, short-lived series created by future Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paul Haggis. In 1995, she landed a leading role on CBS’ “The Office” (not to be confused with the NBC sitcom of the same name that ran from 2005-2013), an insipid workplace comedy that was cancelled after just two months.

Fortunately, Harper’s love affair with the stage never died, and she continued to act in off-Broadway and regional theater productions, including a 1995 run in “Death Defying Acts,” a series of three short plays penned by Elaine May, Woody Allen and David Mamet. Throughout the 1990s and into the millennium, Harper made special guest appearances on “Melrose Place” (Fox, 1992-99), “That ’70s Show” (Fox, 1998-2006) and “Sex and the City” (HBO, 1998-2004). In 2000, Harper and Mary Tyler Moore reunited in the ABC TV movie “Mary and Rhoda,” where they reprised their iconic TV characters. In 2007, Harper continued to demonstrate her broad range as an actress, fielding rave reviews for her portrayal of Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the national tour of the one-woman show “Golda’s Balcony” and earned a Tony nomination in 2010 for her riveting turn as flamboyant film star Tallulah Bankhead in the Broadway play “Looped.” The following year, Harper guest starred on the ABC series “Desperate Housewives” (ABC, 2004-2012) as the aunt of Teri Hatcher and filmed the TV movie “Fixing Pete” (Hallmark Channel). The vivacious actress’ health declined after battling lung cancer in 2009 and she underwent surgery to remove a tumor on her top right lobe. Sadly, in March 2013, Harper announced through People magazine that she had been diagnosed with Leptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare and terminal form of brain cancer, and was told by doctors that she had only three months to live.

By Malina Saval

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Jessica Walter. TCM Overview.

Jessica Walter was born in 1941 in Broklyn, New York. She was one of “The Group” in 1966 and went on to star in “Grand Priz” with James Garner and Yves Montand and “Number One” with Charlton Heston. She gave a powerful performance with Clint Eastwood in “Play Misty for Me” in 1971. Most recently she has starred in the cult TV series “Arrested Development”. She was married to Ron Liebman. Sadly Jessica Walter died in 2021 aged 80.

‘Daily Telegraph’ obituary by Ed Power in 2021.

On May 23 2018 the New York Times released an audio recording of a 77-year-old woman sobbing. The tears were those of Jessica Walter, the Hollywood character actress who passed away this week. She was participating in a group interview promoting a new Netflix season of cult comedy Arrested Development. And even before breaking down, the encounter was not going well.

On screen Walter had always cut a self-assured, imperious, almost haughty figure. That was the image she presented in her first major feature, Sidney Lumet’s 1966 adaptation of the proto-Sex in the City Manhattan debutante novel, The Group. And, decades later, it was the persona she riffed on as Lucille Bluth, the crouching tiger, hissing matriarch of Arrested Development’s ghastly Bluth clan.

Yet in real life Walter could not have been further removed from Lucille, the mother from hell with vinegar in her blood. She was friendly, thoughtful – and sensitive. But then who wouldn’t be sensitive if the men seated either side had suddenly turned on you, as happened to Walter in full view of the New York Times.

The blame for this lay with Jeffrey Tambor. In many ways he was the opposite of Walter in that he came across as a hoot playing Lucille’s roguish husband George Bluth Sr. But off camera he could be combative and even obnoxious. Shooting the final season of Arrested Development, he had reduced Walter to tears after she stumbled over a line of dialogue added at the last minute.

And then she was humiliated all over again as the screaming incident – to which Tambor had confessed in a previous interview with the Hollywood Reporter – was brought up by the journalist. The issue wasn’t so much how the situation was handled by Tambor but by his co-stars, most unforgivably Jason Bateman, who played smug Bluth scion Michael.

“Difficult” people are part of the business, said Bateman. Behaving in an “atypical” manner was part of the actorly “process”. “Not to belittle it,” he said, and then proceeded to belittle Tambor’s behaviour towards Walter. In the background, as the tape rolled, Walter cried. “In like almost 60 years of working, I’ve never had anybody yell at me like that on a set,” she said between tears.

Bateman apologised on social media the next day after a promotional trip to Europe was hastily scrapped. His career survived. Arrested Development was, however, permanently tarred and the new season went up in flames like a frozen banana stand set alight.

“You try to sweep things under the rug, and it doesn’t really work. I got very emotional about it because it had really hurt me,” Walter told Elle magazine shortly afterwards.

She didn’t regret how things had played out, she added. Walter was glad the world saw how she, a veteran woman in Hollywood, had been treated – and what it said about how woman had always been treated.

“My daughter called and she said, ‘Oh Mom, you’re trending!’ I said, ‘What does that mean?’ I thought it was a fashion thing! Then she explained what it meant, and I was quite overwhelmed by the outpouring of support, that people understood. Especially women in the business, and the women in all kinds of areas of work, that just suck it up even though it hurts, you know?”

It was the perfect mic drop from Walter, whose entire career was characterised by a determination to steer her own course. That was made equally clear by her other big late-career role of toxic mother Malory Archer in animated spy spoof Archer.

Malory, mother of bungling 007 clone Sterling Archer, was written with a “Jessica Walter type” in mind – but the producers never imagined the real Walter would agree to do it. However, the script got to her and she said “yes” right away.

There were differences between Lucille and Malory – Lucille would never shoot someone – but they were ultimately cut from the same cloth, she said. “They both love their children. Malory loves Sterling. Lucille loved most of her children.”

Little could Walter have imagined she would spend her later years starring in cult comedies. Born in New York, the daughter of a symphony orchestra musician, she got her start in Broadway musicals, including Neil Simon’s Rumours.

Television followed with small parts in shows such as The Fugitive and Flipper. On her first day on the Flipper set, she had watched as the crew discovered one of the dolphins who starred in the series frozen to death in a container. It could almost have been a gag from Arrested Development taken to gristly extremes.

Hollywood beckoned with Lumet’s The Group in 1966. Her character, Libby MacAusland, was classic Walter – outwardly sophisticated with an air of drop-dead cool yet vulnerable on the inside. And then came her break-out opposite Clint Eastwood in Play Misty for Me in 1971.

Eastwood had already cast another actress when Walter arrived for an audition. “He called me in,” said Walter. “No audition. We had a talk, and he offered me a carrot juice.” And with that, the role was hers.

Play Misty for Me was a forerunner of the “bunny boiler” genre later made famous by Fatal Attraction. Walter played a stalker who turns violent against a radio DJ (Eastwood) after he declines to continue their relationship. Introduced to Walter’s TV executive daughter years later, Eastwood would joke that he had thrown her mother “off a cliff” at the end of the film.

She was not a creature of Hollywood. Her discomfort with Tinseltown may, of course, have had something to do with the fact that she had arrived shortly before the murder of Sharon Tate. “Just in time for the Manson killings,” she said. “I was living in Coldwater Canyon. I was a nervous wreck. We got a German Shepherd, we were so scared.”

Walter did not go on to have a glamorous A-lister career. She seemed fine with that. Coming from a theatre background, she was glad simply to be working.

And she was up for anything. At one point in the mid-Seventies, she found herself co-hosting Good Morning America, where she booked her old director Lumet as a guest (he was promoting Dog Day Afternoon).

She continued to work through the decades that followed. There were guest parts on Columbo, Trapper John MD and Mannex. And she had her own TV vehicle in Amy Prentiss, a quickly canned Ironside spin-off in which she played a detective appeared opposite William Shatner. It aired for just three episodes – enough for Walter to win an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series.

But it was Arrested Development that made her an icon. Or at least it would over time. The show was almost too quirky for its own good when it debuted on Fox in 2003. With ratings disastrous, it was canceled after three seasons. Years later, it would receive a second life on Netflix, and its reputation would grow and grow. It is today considered among the most influential comedies of the decade.

The stroke of genius of creator Michael Hurwitz was to make every one of the Bluth family completely unsympathetic in their own unique way. As Lucille, Walter was cruel, funny and narcissistic – and not even in the top three of the least-likeable Bluths. Arrested Development made her famous and, despite the 2018 Tambor controversy, the show’s influence lives on. As will Walter’s reputation as a character actor of rare poise and steeliness, and with a gift for comedy as sharp as a freshly cut diamond.

Katherine DeMille was born in Vancouver in 1911. She was the daughter of director Cecil DeMille. Her first movie was “Madam Satan” in 1930 and her other films included “Viva Villa”, “Ramona”, “Blockade” and “Dark Streets of Cairo”. She was married for many years to actor Anthony Quinn. She died in 1995.

Leigh Taylor-Young was born in 1945 in Washington D.C. She came to fame as part of the cast of the very popular television series “Peyton Place”. Film roles include “The Adverturers” in 1970, “The Horsemen” and “Solyent Greet”.

Gary Brumburgh’s:

Leigh Taylor-Young was born in Washington, DC, to a diplomat father and raised in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, the older sister of future actress Dey Young and writer/director Lance Young. She studied classical ballet and, following high school, attended Northwestern University where she initially majored in economics. She switched gears after developing an interest in theater and apprenticed as the youngest member of the distinguished Eaglesmere Summer Repertory Theatre. Leigh eventually moved to New York with designs on a professional career and studied under acting guru Sanford Meisnerat the Neighborhood Playhouse. Her major break came when she was cast in the already popular prime-time soap Peyton Place (1964). She played the mysterious Rachael Welles, whose character was brought in to provide clues to the disappearance of Allison MacKenzie’s (Mia Farrow, who had shocked ardent viewers by abruptly leaving the series). A mysterious girl herself, Leigh had a fetching figure, slightly offbeat beauty and a tendency to be cast as unsympathetic characters. She developed a bit of bad publicity when she walked off the weekly series after only one season and into the arms of the very popular–and very married–series’ star ‘Ryan O’Neal (I)’. The couple married in 1967 following his divorce from actress Joanna Moore and had one child, Patrick O’Neal, who later became an actor and married actress Rebecca De Mornay.

Leigh started off in films auspiciously as a “flower child” of the psychedelic 1960s. She earned a Golden Globe nomination for “Best Newcomer” when she played opposite Peter Sellers in the eccentric comedy I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968), but then appeared opposite her husband in The Big Bounce (1969), a kinky flop that landed with a big thud. She went on to appear in a cameo in her husband’s British-made movie The Games(1970), then her career sputtered again with a series of misguided features including the star-heavy but critically lambasted epic The Adventurers (1970); the kinky British filmThe Buttercup Chain (1970), which dealt with kissing cousins who don’t quite stop at kissing; the beautifully photographed but rather hollow action-adventure The Horsemen(1971) co-starring Omar Sharif; and the so-so romp The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971), which is best remembered for starting Robert De Niro off and running in films. Leigh’s best known role came alongside Charlton Heston in the controversialSoylent Green (1973), although she was a bit overshadowed by the grisly topic material and the showy performances of co-stars Heston and Edward G. Robinson.

Following her divorce from O’Neal in 1973, Leigh made herself somewhat scarce while raising her young son. In 1978 she married agent/director Guy McElwaine, but that marriage would also end in divorce. In the 1980s she made a comeback of sorts as a mature–but still spicy–and taunting character actress. Although she took a back seat toAlbert Finney in the thriller Looker (1981) and to Glenn Close and Jeff Bridges in the whodunit Jagged Edge (1985), she found her best results back on TV again. She nabbed an Emmy award in 1994 for her vixenish supporting role on the acclaimed series dramaPicket Fences (1992). In addition, she performed in several plays, in the US, England and Scotland, including “The Beckett Plays,” “Knives” and “Sleeping Dogs.” More recently she appeared in her writer/director brother’s film Bliss (1997). These days Leigh plays a regular role on the daytime soap Passions (1999).

Leigh also found a fulfilling life off-camera. She became an ordained minister in the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, and her voice can be heard in the Search of Serenity series of audio meditations from The Course in Miracles trainings. She is also the grandmother of two granddaughters by her son Patrick O’Neal.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Original Cinema 4-Sheet Poster – Movie Film Posters

Jeremy Slate obituary in “The Malibu Times” in 2006.

Jeremy Slate was born in Altantic City, New Jersey in 1926. His first film was “G.I. Blues” with Elvis Presley and Juliet Prowse in 1960. He went on to feature in “Girls, Girls, Girls” again with Presley, “Wives and Lovers” with Martha Hyer, “The Sons of Katie Elder” with John Wayne and Dean Martin and “True Grit” again with Wayne.

Jeremy Slate died in 2006 at the age of 80.

Obituary from “The Malibu Times”

Malibu actor Jeremy Slate died Sunday at USC University Hospital following complications from esophageal cancer surgery. He was 80.

Slate was born on Feb. 17, 1926 in Margate, N.J. He attended a military academy, joined the Navy at 16 and was 18 when he was involved in the invasion of Normandy.

Aboard a destroyer at Omaha Beach, Slate vowed if he survived the attack he would make his life a never-ending series of adventures.

He lived up to that promise as during his lifetime, Slate had a variety of careers and accomplishments.After the war, Slate graduated with honors from St. Lawrence University in Upstate New York.

He was president of the student body, editor of the college literary magazine, football player and backfield coach of the only undefeated freshman team in the school’s history.

A campus radio personality, during his senior year he married the queen of his fraternity’s ball. Chosen for the school’s Honor Society, he was a BMOC. After graduating, Slate became a professional radio sportscaster and disc jockey for CBS and ABC affiliates while beginning a family, which ultimately included three sons and two daughters.

For six years Slate worked for the public relations firm, W.R. Grace, as travel manager for its president, J. Peter Grace. He then joined the Grace Steamship Line and moved with his family to Lima, Peru. While living in South America he joined a professional theater group and became involved with the production of “The Rainmaker” at the Professional English Language Theatre in Lima. He was awarded the Tiahuanacothe, the Peruvian equivalent of the Tony Award, for his portrayal of the character, Starbuck. The next year, Slate was cast in a small but significant role on Broadway in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Look Homeward, Angel.” He did 254 performances.

Slate’s television career began in the 1950s with numerous guest-starring roles in popular shows such as “Gunsmoke,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and “Perry Mason.” He has guest-starred on nearly 100 television shows and appeared in 20 feature films. During the early 1960s, Slate was a teen heartthrob as the star of the TV series “The Aquanauts.”

He also had an eight-year run as Chuck Wilson on the ABC soap opera “One Life to Live.” His final performance was on the NBC comedy “My Name is Earl.” Slate received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Sgt. Maj. Patrick O’Neill, a soft-spoken Canadian judo expert, in the 1968 film “The Devil’s Brigade,” a WW II saga starring William Holden and Cliff Robertson. Slate worked with some of the top people in Hollywood, including Elvis Presley, Frankie Avalon, Van Johnson and John Wayne.

Madeline Kahn is primarily known for her brilliant work in the films of Mel Brooks. She was born in 1942 in Boston. In 1970 she starred on Broawady in “Two by Two” with Danny Kaye. She played in 1972 Ryan O’Neal’s obnoxious girlfriend in “What’s Up Doc”. She excelled in “Blazing Saddles”, “Young Frankenstein” and “High Anxiety”. She sadly died in 1999 at the age of 57.

Tom Vallance’s obituary in “The Independent”:

THE ACTRESS, singer and comedienne Madeline Kahn will be remembered in particular for her hilarious performances in the Mel Brooks films Blazing Saddles (for which she received an Oscar nomination), Young Frankenstein and High Anxiety, but she also won a Tony Award (plus three nominations) for her work on Broadway and received another Oscar nomination for her performance in the Peter Bogdanovich comedy Paper Moon.

Strikingly individual, with a nasal twang and distinctive way of pursing her lips, she was also an operatically-trained singer and started her career in musical comedy and revue. Mel Brooks once said, “She is one of the most talented people that ever lived. I mean, either in stand-up comedy, or acting, or whatever you want, you can’t beat Madeline Kahn.”

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1942, she studied classical music and drama at Hofstra University in New York and started her career as a vocal soloist in concerts and recitals. Setting her sights on Broadway, she made her New York debut in the chorus of a revival of Kiss Me Kate (1965) at City Centre, and later the same year she was one of six cast members in an intimate revue, Just For Openers, at the night-club Upstairs at the Downstairs.

The critic Judith Crist said, “The bright sextet perform with impeccable pace, grace and comedy”, and the show proved a fine showcase for Kahn. In one of the funniest sketches, she portrayed an obliging telephone operator for a company named “Dial-a-deviate”, which would be echoed years later in one of the most entertaining scenes in High Anxiety, in which she hears on the telephone somebody being strangled to death and mistakenly assumes that she is listening to a form of phone sex.

In Leonard Sillman’s New Faces of 1968, a revue which set out to introduce new stars to Broadway, Kahn and Robert Klein (who also went on to stardom) were singled out by critics as the best things in the show, and in 1970 Kahn was given a featured role in the Richard Rodgers-Martin Charnin musical Two By Two, which starred Danny Kaye as Noah. Rodgers wrote a soaring waltz solo, “The Golden Ram”, for Kahn which showcased her lilting operatic range.

Kahn’s first feature film was Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up Doc? (1972), the director’s frantic homage to screwball comedy in which she gave sterling support to Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal as O’Neal’s shrill girlfriend. Bogdanovich then cast her in his charming Depression-era comedy Paper Moon, in which she was Trixie Delight, a floozy who hitches a ride with a pair of confidence tricksters (Ryan O’Neal and his daughter Tatum).

Kahn’s funny and endearing performance was justly rewarded with an Oscar nomination, and on the strength of these roles she was cast as Agnes Gooch, the frump who blossoms and becomes pregnant, in the film version of the Broadway musical Mame, but she quickly clashed with its star Lucille Ball. Ball later complained that Kahn had already been offered Blazing Saddles and thus deliberately got herself fired, but the director Gene Saks told the historian Warren G. Harris,

During the first day of rehearsals, Ball turned on Madeline and started criticising her voice and walk. “Excuse me, Madeline,” she said, “but when are we going to see your interpretation of Gooch, dear.” Madeline grinned icily back at her, “You are seeing her, dear.” Lucy just said “Oh,” then asked if she could talk to me privately.

We went to my office and Lucy started to weep, saying “I swore I wasn’t going to cry.” She was so manipulative, so controlling, that she absolutely wouldn’t have Madeline, who was too young and too pretty. Lucy insisted that we replace her with the stage Gooch, Jane Connell, who by that time was probably 50 and really too old for the part.

Said Kahn herself later, “It was devastating. It didn’t turn out to be a tragedy – it cleared me to be available for Blazing Saddles – but it felt really bad at the time.” Blazing Saddles (1974), Mel Brooks’s hilarious and enormously successful pastiche of western movies, earned Kahn her second Oscar nomination in a row, and her portrayal of a saloon-singer, Lily von Shtupp, established her with audiences. A highlight of the film was Kahn’s devastating parody of Marlene Dietrich performing a risque ballad “I’m Tired” with barely controlled lust.

Kahn’s droll comedic touch, her gift for pastiche and quirky eccentricity were perfect for the Brooks style, and he used her in three more films, his parody of old horror movies, Young Frankenstein (1974), his homage to Hitchcock, High Anxiety (1977), and the later, less successful History of the World Part One (1981). Kahn worked with Bogdanovich again on his off-beat musical At Long Last Love (1975), in which her plaintive choruses of the title song and “I Loved Him (But He Didn’t Love Me)” were among the film’s most beguiling moments, and she had a leading role as a music- hall singer in Gene Wilder’s The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother (1975).

Kahn’s first starring role on Broadway was in the play In The Boom Boom Room (1973), for which she received the first of three Tony nominations as Best Actress. In 1978 she was for the first time offered the leading role in a Broadway musical, an adaptation of the play Twentieth Century (best known for the film version with Carole Lombard and John Barrymore), about the tempestuous relationship between a flamboyant stage director and a temperamental star.

The producers considered asking Danny Kaye to play the director, but Kahn, having worked with him, vetoed the idea, and John Cullum was cast opposite her. With a score by Cy Coleman, Betty Comden and Adolph Green which adopted a comic-opera style to reflect the bravura personalities of its protagonists, On The Twentieth Century showcased Kahn’s vocal and comic talents perfectly, and was to win her a second Tony nomination, but it was a demanding role and there were warning signs when Kahn began missing rehearsals, leaving her understudy Judy Kaye to fill in.

After the show opened she continued to miss performances for reasons which were never made clear. Five weeks into the run, when Kahn had missed nine performances, she was “invited to leave” and Kaye was given the role. Though Kahn had more Broadway roles, it is generally considered that her withdrawal hurt her chances of becoming a Broadway musical star and probably damaged her career. She returned to the screen in The Cheap Detective (1978), Neil Simon’s collection of gags based on such films as The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon – Kahn played the Mary Astor role in a pastiche of the latter movie – and she was one of the guest stars in The Muppet Movie (1979).

In 1983 Kahn had her own television show Oh Madeline, based on the British series Pig in the Middle, in which she was a bored housewife trying to put some zip into her life by sampling every trendy diversion that came along, but the show ran for only one season. Kahn also starred in several unsold pilot shows, and appeared with George C. Scott in the series Mr President (1987-88). In 1989 she starred with Edward Asner in a Broadway revival of Born Yesterday, with mixed reaction – inevitably her performance was compared to that of the role’s creator Judy Holliday.

But three years later Kahn had an unquestionable triumph with her performance of the ditsy matron Gorgeous Teitelbaum in Wendy Wasserstein’s play The Sisters Rosensweig, winning the Tony Award for a truly hilarious performance that will be talked about for years to come. The same year Kahn made a cameo appearance in Woody Allen’s Kafkaesque comedy Shadows and Fog, and more recently she had a role in Nixon (1995) and provided one of the voices for the hit cartoon A Bug’s Life (1998).

Since 1996 Kahn had been playing the role of Pauline, a neighbour, in the television series Cosby, and in August this year started to work on her fourth season with the show, but after taping four episodes she announced that she was taking a leave of absence.

At the beginning of November, she let people know her secret, announcing, “During the past year, I have been undergoing aggressive treatment for ovarian cancer. It is my hope that I might raise awareness of this awful disease and hasten the day that an effective test can be discovered to give women a fighting chance to catch this cancer at its earliest stage.” (Kahn’s close friend, the comedienne Gilda Radner, died of the same disease in 1989.) In October, Kahn had married her long-term beau, lawyer John Hansbury, who told The New York Times, “It took me a long time to persuade her to get married.”

In her last film, Judy Berlin, due to open in February and directed by Eric Mendelsohn, who won the best director’s award for the film at this year’s Sundance Festival, she plays a suburban housewife described by the director as “full of neurotic energy yet warm and loving”. He said, “Madeline Kahn really was one of those people who when you stood around her, she gave off this unbelievable glow.”

Tom Vallance

Madeline Kahn, actress: born Boston, Massachusetts 29 September 1942; married 1999 John Hansbury; died New York 3 December 1999.

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

Blazing Saddles, poster, top l-r: Gene Wilder, Cleavon Little, Mel Brooks, bottom: Madeline Kahn on poster art, 1974. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

John Forsyth was well into his sixties when he acheived his greatest fame in the television series “Dynasty” as oil magnate Blake Carrington. He was born in 1918 in New Jersey. He served with the U.S. military in World War Two. In 1955 Alfred Hitchcock cast him opposite Shirley MacLaine in “The Trouble with Harry”. His other films of note are “Madame X” with Lana Turner and “And Justice for All” with Al Pacino. John Forsythe died in 2010 at the age of 92.

Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Gurdian”:

If the name of the American actor John Forsythe, who has died aged 92, is not immediately recognisable, then that of his character Blake Carrington – the tanned and handsome silver-haired billionaire oil magnate in the long-running television series Dynasty – certainly is. The show, known for its opulent atmosphere, lavish sets and costumes, and preoccupation with the problems of the wealthy, ran alongside Ronald Reagan’s years as US president, 1981-89. It made Forsythe internationally famous and rich. During the second year of the run, Forsythe remarked: “I can’t afford to bulge. Being a 64-year-old sex symbol is a hell of a weight to carry.”

With his earnest demeanour, Forsythe, as the patriarch plagued by a scheming ex-wife (Joan Collins), a bisexual son, and other tribulations ranging from murder and greed to lust and incest, held the series together while attempting to do the same with the Denver family. Unlike Larry Hagman’s JR, his counterpart in Dallas, Forsythe as Blake exuded suavity and upper-class elegance. In fact, it was a persona he had perfected for many years on television.

Forsythe may have had a famous face, but his voice alone became equally well-known in a previous popular TV series, Charlie’s Angels (1976-81), in which he played the unseen Charlie Townsend, who directed his young women’s crimefighting operations over a speaker- phone. Because Forsythe recorded his lines in an audio studio and was never on set, he rarely met any of his co-stars. Some years later, he bumped into Farrah Fawcett-Majors at the tennis courts. “I was coming off the court when she came up to me and said, ‘Charlie! I finally met Charlie!'” Forsythe recalled.

Forsythe was offered the Charlie role in a panicky late-night phone call from producer Aaron Spelling after the original choice, Gig Young, showed up too drunk to read his lines. “I didn’t even take my pyjamas off – I just put on my topcoat and drove over to Fox. When it was finished, Aaron said, ‘That’s perfect.’ And I went home and went back to bed.”

Born John Lincoln Freund in Penns Grove, New Jersey, Forsythe determined to become an actor despite the opposition of his Wall Street businessman father. From Abraham Lincoln high school, Brooklyn, he went to the University of North Carolina. There he excelled in dramatics as well as at baseball, and his first job was as a radio broadcaster with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1943, while serving in the US army air corps, Forsythe made his Broadway debut in Moss Hart’s production of Winged Victory, among many other future stars. That same year, he was brought to Hollywood by Warner Bros, where he was immediately cast in the small role of Sparks in the submarine drama Destination Tokyo, starring Cary Grant.

However, he did not return to the big screen for another nine years, and even then his film appearances were only sporadic. Instead, Forsythe concentrated on television and the stage. In 1947, he took over from Arthur Kennedy as the disillusioned son in Arthur Miller’s first produced play, All My Sons, on Broadway, and then replaced Henry Fonda in the title role of the long-running naval comedy-drama Mister Roberts in 1950, sounding uncannily like his predecessor.

In 1953, he created the role of the well-meaning Captain Fisby in John Patrick’s The Teahouse of the August Moon. The character (played by Glenn Ford in the movie), who attempts to bring American-style democracy to the natives of Okinawa, was portrayed by Forsythe with a splendid mixture of ingenuousness and self-righteousness. In between his two stage hits, Forsythe made dour appearances in a few films, notably Robert Wise’s The Captive City (1952), in which he was a small-town newspaper editor fighting widespread corruption; and John Sturges’s Escape from Fort Bravo (1953), where, as a Confederate prisoner, he is conveniently killed by Indians at the end to allow William Holden to get his girl (Eleanor Parker). In fact, Forsythe, a rather wooden film actor, was a sub-Holden type.

Nonetheless, Alfred Hitchcock must have liked him, because he cast him in two of his films: the black comedy The Trouble With Harry (1955) had three people each believing they had killed a man, one of them being Forsythe as a painter; and Topaz (1969), where he is convincingly dull as a CIA man. In The Happy Ending (1969), Jean Simmons, while watching Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, comments to Forsythe, as her boring commuter husband, “They’re more alive than we are.” There is no truer line in the picture.

Television suited his personality much better, as he proved in the series Bachelor Father (1957-62). As playboy Hollywood attorney Bentley Gregg, responsible for raising his orphaned niece, he gained stardom. This led to The John Forsythe Show (1965-66), in which he played father to his own real daughters, Brooke and Page Forsythe, by his second wife, Julie Warren, whom he had married in 1943; by his first marriage, to Parker McCormick (1938-40), he had a son, Dall. Other sitcoms in which Forsythe starred were Rome With Love (1969-71) and the political satire The Powers That Be (1992-93).

In the cinema, he was seen as establishment figures: in Kitten With a Whip (1964) he was a politician being blackmailed by delinquent Ann-Margret; he was a politician again, married to Lana Turner, in the fifth remake of the melodrama Madame X (1966). In Cold Blood (1967) had him as an investigator of the bloody murders, and in And Justice For All (1979), he played a judge. One of his last big screen portrayals was as the modern-day equivalent of Marley’s Ghost in Scrooged (1988).

After Julie died of cancer in 1994, Forsythe, renowned as a “nice guy” in the industry, went into semi-retirement, devoting much of his time to the United Nations Association, the American National Theatre and Academy, and the American Cancer Society. He is survived by his three children and his third wife, Nicole Carter, whom he married in 2002.

• John Forsythe (John Lincoln Freund), actor, born 29 January 1918; died 1 April 2010

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

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