Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 99 of 120

Inger Stevens

Inger Stevens obituary in “The New York Times” in 1970.

Inger Stevens the blonde actress who played the beguiling housekeeper on “The Farmer’s Daughter” television series for three years, was found dead in her home today.

The cause of the 35‐year‐old actress’s death was listed as “acute barbiturate intoxica tion.”

The coroner’s office said fur ther tests were under way to determine how the pills came to be taken and whether the death would be ruled a suicide.

Miss Stevens died on the way to a hospital after she was found semi‐conscious in her home.

‘A Hard Luck Girl’

Miss Stevens was one of the few actresses who was able to win fame in television and then move on to stardom in the movies. Despite her successes, she was, in her own words, “very much a hard luck girl.”

On New Year’s Day, 1959, she swallowed 25 sleeping pills and a quantity of ammonia in an attempt to take her own life. On another occasion she nar rowly missed being killed in a fiery plane crash.

In an interview some years ago, Miss Stevens said that in addition to these near‐catastro phies, she often felt depressed over “many other sorrows, in cluding the fact I came from a broken home, my marriage was a disaster, and I am con stantly feeling lonely.”

The actress was born Oct. 48, 1934 in Stockholm. When she was 13, her father, Per Stensland, brought her to this country to live with him, fol lowing the breakup of his mar riage. At the time Mr. Stensland was studying on a Fulbright scholarship at Harvard, but he later remarried and moved to Manhattan, Kan.

Unhappy there, she ran away to Kansas City at 16, and worked as a waitress and then as a $60‐a‐week dancer in a burlesque show. Her father found her, however, and made her return home. After gradua tion from high school, she came to New York, where she met Anthony Soglio, an agent who put her under contract and changed her last name to Stevens.

They were married in 1955, but separated after four months, and in 1958 they were divorced. Miss Stevens did not remarry.

Vera Ralston was born in 1919 in Czechoslovakia. She was very famous as an ice skater before making films. She emigated to the U.S. in the early 1940’s. She married Herbert J. Yates the owner of Republic Studios and made over 25 films including “Fair Wind to Java”, “Storm Over Lisbon” and “Dakota”. Vera Ralston died in 2003.

Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian”:

There were few Hollywood actors of the studio era who suffered from as many snide remarks as the Czech-born ice-skater-turned-star Vera Hruba Ralston, who has died aged 81. This was not only because her acting was rather wooden, and her accent thick, but because she was married to Herbert J Yates, the head of Republic Pictures, the man who foisted her on an unwilling public.

Her performance improved slightly from picture to picture, whether in thrillers, romances, westerns or costume dramas, but she was never a box-office attraction. Yates’s fixation was such that he forced exhibitors to run her films by threatening to withhold more popular Republic products from them; it was one of the reasons for the studio’s demise.

She first caught Yates’s attention in 1939 when she toured the US with a show called Ice Vanities. As Vera Hruba, she had won a silver medal at the 1937 Berlin Olympics; she had gone to America with her mother after the Nazis invaded Prague.

In 1941, Yates cast Vera – and the entire company of Ice-Capades – in a film of the same name, an inconsequential musical which revolved around skating numbers. This was followed by Ice-Capades Revue a year later. Then, in 1943, Yates signed Hruba to a long-term contract, adding Ralston to her name. Four years later, at 67, he left his wife and children for the 27-year-old, before marrying her in 1952. He had hoped that Ralston would rival Henie, at 20th Century Fox, billing her as a star who “skated out of Czechoslovakia into the hearts of America”. But after Lake Placid Serenade (1944), she was rarely seen on ice.

Her first real acting role was opposite Erich Von Stroheim and Richard Arlen in The Lady And The Monster (1944), all three of them appearing in Storm Over Lisbon the same year. Still in the B-movie category was Dakota (1945), in which Ralston waited patiently at home while husband John Wayne settled railroad disputes. She co-starred with Wayne again in The Fighting Kentuckian (1949).

Mainly, Ralston was confined to more than a dozen films made by Republic’s journeyman director Joseph Kane. According to Kane, “Vera could have made it rough on everyone, but she never took advantage of that situation. Although she never became a good actress, she was cooperative, hardworking and eager to please.”

Despite this, it was reported that Wayne threatened to leave the studio if forced to work with Ralston again, and Sterling Hayden was offered a bonus to appear opposite her in Timberjack (1955).

Kane directed Ralston in perhaps her best film, Fair Wind To Java (1953), a good adventure yarn with Fred MacMurray as a cynical captain, who falls for native girl Ralston while in search of south seas treasure. The fact that she had a Czech accent was not explained.

In 1956, two Republic stockholders filed a lawsuit against Yates for using company assets to promote his wife as a star, and giving her brother producer status at a salary far beyond his worth. Two years later, Yates had to relinquish his post, and Ralston retired. When he died in 1966, Yates left his wife half of his estate, valued at more than $10m. In 1973, she married businessman Charles DeAlva, 11 years her junior, who survives her.

· Vera Hruba Ralston, ice skater and actor, born June 12 1921; died February 9 2003

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

Charles Farrell was born in 1901 in Walpole, Massachusetts. He is best knpwn to-day for a series of films he made with Janet Gaynor. He was long married to actress Virginia Valli. After retiring from films in the 1950’s be became involved in community projects in Palm Springs. He died in 1990.

New York Times obituary in 1990:

Charles Farrell, the gentle-mannered actor whose career spanned four decades, ranging from silent films to talkies to the 1950’s television series ”My Little Margie,” died on Sunday at his home in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 88 years old.

Mr. Farrell was so durable as a performer that Bob Hope is said to have referred to him once as a ”19th-century Fox star.”

An athletic six-footer, he gained fame as the romantic lead in ”Seventh Heaven” (1927). The Times critic Mordaunt Hall said that he was ”splendid” in that role, playing opposite Janet Gaynor.

”Sometimes he may seem to be a little too swaggering, but what of it?” Mr. Hall observed. ”The actions suit the young man’s agreeable bombast. You find that you like him.”

The Seventh Heaven in the silent film was the walk-up Parisian garret where Mr. Farrell, playing an impecunious laborer, made his home.

Mr. Farrell and Miss Gaynor then co-starred in a series of other film romances. For seven years they were movieland’s leading on-screen romantic couple. Then his movie career waned.

His film work included serious as well as romantic roles in such films as ”Wings of Youth” (1925), ”Sandy” (1926), ”The Rough Riders” (1927), ”Aggie Appleby” (1933), ”Fighting Youth” (1935) and ”The Deadly Game” (1942). He retired from films in the 1940’s.

In television he turned to comedy, starring as a widowed father in more than 100 installments of ”My Little Margie,” which was widely popular.

Began as Extra

Charles Farrell was born Aug. 9, 1901 in Onset Bay, Mass., and attended Boston University. He played some stage roles and broke into films as an extra in ”The Cheat” (1923). He then had various supporting parts before ”Seventh Heaven,” which opened in New York at the old Sam H. Harris Theater and remained his best-known movie.

Recalling his movie work in a 1954 interview Mr. Farrell, still handsome and wavy-haired, said: ”They wouldn’t accept my voice. They said I didn’t have diction. When the talkies came in, a lot of stage people came to Hollywood from New York and I knew that I didn’t talk like them, but my voice was me and that’s all there was to it.”

”One fellow kept needling me about improving my diction until I finally sat on him – but good,” he added. ”My life was made miserable. There were other complicating factors, and I decided to move on.”

Resort Hotel Manager

He served in the Navy in World War II and prospered in a new career as a manager and host of the Racquet Club, a private resort hotel in Palm Springs, where he lived with his wife, the former silent film star Virginia Valli, whom he married in 1932; she died in 1968.

Mr. Farrell served as mayor of Palm Springs for several years in the 1940’s and 50’s. He sold the Racquet Club in 1959.

His television career, mainly in the 1950’s, included the starring role in the ”The Charlie Farrell Show” in addition to ”My Little Margie,” in which he played the father of a prankish unmarried daughter, portrayed by Gale Storm.

”I took the part because I’m a ham,” Mr. Farrell said in the 1954 interview. ”The work is not exactly the same as making pictures, but it’s pretty close

A poster for Alfred Santell’s 1932 drama film ‘Tess Of The Storm Country’, starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

Bonita Granville

Bonita Granville was born in 1923 in Chicago. She achieved international fame with her extraordinary performance as the spiteful child in “These Three” in 1937. She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance. She played Nancy Drew in a series of films about the girl detective. She also starred in some of the Andy Hardy films. Her last film was “The Guilty” in 1947. She died in 1988 at the age of 65.

IMDB entry:

ANDY HARDY’S BLONDE TROUBLE, from left: Bonita Granville, Mickey Rooney, Lee Wilde and Lyn Wilde, 1944

Daughter of Bernard ‘Bunny’ Granville, Bonita Granville was born into an acting family. It’s not surprising that she herself became a child actor, first on the stage and, at the age of 9, debuting in movies in Westward Passage (1932). She was regularly cast as a naughty little girl, as in These Three (1936) where she played Mary, an obnoxious girl spreading lies about her teachers. Her performance left an impression on the audience, and she was nominated for a best supporting actress award. In 1938-39 came the movies she is now best remembered for — playing the bright and feisty detective/reporter Nancy Drew in the Nancy Drew series. She also appeared with Mickey Rooney in a few Andy Hardy movies. She never really had a movie breakthrough, and after marrying oil millionaire & later producer Jack Wrather, she retired from acting in the middle of the 1950s, although she went on to produce the Lassie (1954) TV series.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Mattias Thuresson

After her marriage to oil millionaire Jack Wrather in 1947, she appeared in only three more movies. She became an executive in the Wrather Corp., and first associate producer, then executive producer of the Lassie (1954)TV series. After Wrather’s death in 1984, she took over as chairman of the board. She was also involved in many civic, and cultural groups, and she was chair of American Film Institute, trustee of John F. Kennedy Center, as well as other well known organizations and charities. She died of cancer in Santa Monica in 1988. She & Wrather had four children.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: kenn honeyman

Her IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Patrick Wayne was born in 1939 in Los Angeles and is the son of John Wayne. He played small partsin his father’s films and can be seen in the racing scene in “The Quiet Man” in 1951. He was also in “The Searchers”, “Donovan’s Reef” and “The Commancheros”. In the 1970’s he made “Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger” and “The People that Time Gorgot” both in 1977.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Possessing his father’s durable good looks, vigor and charm, this tall, strapping, exceedingly handsome second son of John Wayne had huge boots to fill in trying to escape his legendary father’s shadow and corral Hollywood fame on his own terms. But attempt he did and, looking back, he may not have achieved the outright stardom of his father but certainly did quite admirably, making over 40 films in his career — nine of them with his dad.

One of four children born to Duke’s first wife, Patrick John Wayne carried his father’s name, so it seems natural that a similar destiny would be in the making. Patrick made his debut film bit at age 11 in his father classic western Rio Grande (1950) and proceeded to apprentice in The Quiet Man (1952), The Sun Shines Bright (1953), The Long Gray Line (1955), Mister Roberts (1955), and The Searchers (1956), some with and some without his father’s name above the title credits. All the above-mentioned films, however, were helmed by family friend and iconic director John Ford. Following high school, Patrick attended Loyola University and graduated in 1961 (older brother Michael Wayne graduated five years earlier). During this time, he went out on his own to star in his own film, the second-string oater The Young Land (1959). Realizing he was not quite ready to carry his own film, he returned to the family fold and gained more on-camera confidence throughout the 1960s supporting his father in The Alamo (1960), Donovan’s Reef (1963), McLintock! (1963), and The Green Berets (1968). A few exceptions included a role in Ford’s sprawling epic Cheyenne Autumn (1964), his turn as James Stewart‘s son in the frontier adventure Shenandoah (1965) and in An Eye for an Eye (1966) in which he and Robert Lansing played bounty hunters. He also co-starred in the short-lived comedy western series The Rounders (1966).

Following work on his dad’s Big Jake (1971), Patrick broke away again and sought success on his own. Interestingly, he earned more recognition away from the dusty boots and saddle scene and into the sci-fi genre. His career peaked in the late 1970s as the titular hero braving Ray Harryhausen monsters and saving Tyrone Power‘s daughter Taryn in the popular matinée fantasy Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), then battled more special effects creatures in the Edgar Rice Burroughs film adaptation of The People That Time Forgot (1977).

Patrick was a smoother, more gentlemanly version of the Wayne package with a completely captivating smile and accessible personality. He co-starred as a romantic love interest to Shirley Jones in another brief TV series Shirley (1979), and occasionally forsook acting chores to emcee game shows and syndicated variety series. Although the scope of his talent was seldom tested over the years, he was a thoroughly enjoyable presence on all the popular TV shows of the 1970s and ’80s, including Fantasy Island(1977), Murder, She Wrote (1984), Charlie’s Angels (1976), and The Love Boat (1977). And he certainly wasn’t hard on the eyes.

Following the death of older brother Michael in 2003, Patrick became Chairman of the John Wayne Cancer Institute. Divorced in 1978 from Peggy Hunt, he is married (since 1999) to Misha Anderson.

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

To view article on Patrick Wayne, please click here.

Earl Holliman was born in 1928 in Louisiana. His first film was “Scared Stiff” in 1953 starring Jerry Lewis and Dean Marin. He was featured in some major films of the 1950’s including “Broken Lance”, “Giant”, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral”, “Forbidden Planet” and “Hot Spell”. He starred with Andrew Prine in “The Wide Country” and with Angie Dickinson in “Police Woman”.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

Louisiana-born actor Earl Holliman, after a stint in the Navy, studied at UCLA and the Pasadena Playhouse before earning his break in the Martin/Lewis comedy Scared Stiff(1953). He gained clout after portraying a variety of young, manly characters in rugged westerns and war drama, ranging from dim and/or good-natured to overly impulsive and/or threatening. He won a Golden Globe for his support performance as a girl-crazy brother in The Rainmaker (1956), holding his own against stars Burt Lancaster andKatharine Hepburn. He distinguished himself in a number of “A” grade films around the same time, including Broken Lance (1954) with Spencer Tracy, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral(1957), again with Lancaster, Giant (1956) with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, Visit to a Small Planet (1960), again with Jerry Lewis, Summer and Smoke (1961) withGeraldine Page and The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) with John Wayne.

When the film offers started drying up in the 60s, he found TV a more welcoming medium, scoring in a number of westerns. His virile stance was perfect for a series of crime yarns. It all culminated with a four-year stint as the macho partner to sexy Angie Dickinson in Police Woman (1974), a role that helped make him a household name. Holliman operated the Fiesta Dinner Theatre for many years in San Antonio, Texas.

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

Ella Raines obituary in “The New York Times” in 1988.

Ella Raines was born in Washington D.C. in 1920. Her first film was “Corvette-K225” in 1943. She went on to make “Cry Havoc”, “Hail the Conquering Hero”, “Phantom Lady”, “The Suspect”, “The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry” amongst others. Ella Raines died in 1988 at the age of 67.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Bill Hafker, pakhuntz @ runestone.n

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

Her “New York Times” obituary from 1988:

Ella Raines, an actress who starred in film dramas, comedies and westerns during the 1940’s, died of throat cancer May 30 in Los Angeles. She was 67 years old.

Ms. Raines’s film career took off in 1943. That year she starred opposite Randolph Scott in the wartime thriller ”Corvette K-255” and became the only actress under contract to a new $1 million production company founded by Howard Hawks and Charles Boyer. Her best-known starring role was in the suspense film ”Phantom Lady” in 1944. More often she appeared opposite some of the leading actors of the day, including John Wayne in ”Tall in the Saddle” (1944), Charles Laughton in ”Suspect” (1945) and William Powell in the Charles MacArthur-George S. Kaufman satire ”The Senator Was Indiscreet” (1947). Worked With Preston Sturges

She also worked with the director Preston Sturges in ”Hail the Conquering Hero” (1944). She starred in a television show, ”Janet Dean, R.N.” in 1953-54. More recently, she appeared in an episode of television’s ”Matt Houston,” although she had largely been in retirement.

A two-year marriage to her high-school sweetheart, Kenneth Trout, a lieutenant in the Army Air Force, ended in divorce in 1945. In 1947 she married an Air Force major, Robin Olds. A hero in World War II and Vietnam, he later became a brigadier general and commander of the United States Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. They had two daughters.

After her marriage, Ms. Raines appeared in films less frequently. In 1967, when her husband was serving in Vietnam, she characterized herself in a newspaper article as ”an Army wife” and paid tribute to ”service wives . . . for maintaining a home that is as normal as possible for the children while keeping their worries to themselves.”

She and her husband were divorced in 1975. She is survived by her daughters, Christina Newman and Susan Olds, and a granddaughter.

Robert Ryan . TCM Overview.

A poster for Nicholas Ray’s 1951 war film ‘Flying Leathernecks’, starring John Wayne (left), Robert Ryan and Janis Carter. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

Robert Ryan was born in 1909 in Chicago. In 1944 he joined RKO Studios as a contract player. Among his films are “Act of Violence”, “Beware My Lovely”, “The Set-Up”, the superb “Bad Day at Black Rock” with Spencer Tracy, Anne Francis and John Ericson and “Odds Against Tomorrow”. In the 60’s he participated in such big budget productions as “The Longest Day”, “Battle of the Bulge”, “The Dirty Dozen”, “The Professionals” and “The Wild Bunch”. He died in 1973 at the age of 63.

TCM Overview:

Imposing, ruggedly handsome lead who made his film debut in “Golden Gloves” (1940) and signed with RKO two years later. Ryan hit his stride in the late 1940s playing a string of psychopathic or hard-boiled types, notably the anti-Semitic murderer in “Crossfire” (1947) and the over-the-hill pug in the classic boxing drama, “The Set-Up” (1949)

. He went on to appear in a host of films through the mid-70s, often giving fine performances in decidedly mediocre vehicles. Ryan was memorable as William Holden’s buddy-turned-nemesis in Sam Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch” (1969).

IMDB entry:

Chicago-born, distinguished U.S. actor and longtime civil rights campaigner, Robert Ryan served in the United States Marines as a drill sergeant (winning a boxing championship) and went on to become a key figure in post WWII American film noir and western productions.

Ryan grabbed critical attention for his dynamic performances as an anti-Semitic bully in the superb Crossfire (1947), as an over-the-hill boxer who refuses to take a fall in The Set-Up (1949) and as a hostile & jaded cop in On Dangerous Ground (1951). Ryan’s athletic physique, intense gaze and sharply delivered, authoritarian tones made him an ideal actor for the oily world of the film noir genre, and he contributed solid performances to many noir features, usually as a vile villain. Ryan played a worthy opponent for bounty hunter James Stewart in the Anthony Mann directed western The Naked Spur (1953), he locked horns with an intrepid investigator Spencer Tracy in the suspenseful Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) and starred alongside Harry Belafonte in the grimy, gangster flick Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Plus, the inventive Ryan excelled as the ruthless “John Claggart” in Billy Budd (1962), and two different WWII US generals – first in the star-filled The Longest Day (1962) and then in Battle of the Bulge (1965).

For the next eight years prior to his untimely death in 1973, Ryan landed some tremendous roles in a mixture of productions each aided by his high-caliber acting skills leaving strong impressions on movie audiences.

He was one of the hard men hired to pursue kidnapped Claudia Cardinale in the hard boiled action of The Professionals (1966), a by-the-book army colonel clashing with highly unorthodox army major Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen (1967), and an embittered bounty hunter (again) forced to hunt down old friend William Holden in the violent Sam Peckinpah western classic The Wild Bunch(1969).

Ryan’s final on-screen performance was in the terrific production of The Iceman Cometh (1973) based on the Eugene O’Neill play and also starring Lee Marvin and Fredric March.

Legend has it that Sam Peckinpah clashed very heatedly with Ryan during the making ofThe Wild Bunch (1969); however Peckinpah eventually backed down when a crew member reminded Sam of Robert Ryan’s proficiency with his fists!

Primarily a man of pacifist beliefs, Ryan often found it a challenge playing sadistic and racist characters that very much were at odds with his own personal ideals. Additionally, Ryan actively campaigned for improved civil rights, restricting the growth of nuclear weapons, and he strongly opposed McCarthyism and its abuse of innocent people. A gifted, intelligent and powerful actor, Robert Ryan passed away on July 11th, 1973 of lung cancer.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: firehouse44@hotmail.com

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

John Bromfield. Wikipedia.

John Bromfield was born in 1922 in South Bend, Indiana. At college he excelled in football and was a boxing champion. In 1948 he was featured as a detective in “Sorry Wrong Number” with Burt lancaster,. Barbara Stanwyck and Ann Richards. His other films include “Revenge of the Creature”. John Bromfield died in 2005 at the age of 83.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

The name may be hard-pressed to anyone but the most devoted film buffs, but dark-haired actor John Bromfield was a “B”-level leading man during the late 1950s. Possessed with a fine build and square-faced handsomeness, he was somewhat of a blend between Steve Cochran and Rory Calhoun, both 1950s hunks

. During his heyday, John headlined a handful of mediocre sci-fi programmers, melodramas and westerns and was often seen in skimpy outfits (especially a swim suit) that showed off his fine physique. Born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1922 and christened Farron Bromfield, his strong athleticism and good looks were not lost on the picture business. By age 26 he was in Hollywood and a contractee of Paramount. His first feature film came in the form of a small role in the Barbara Stanwyck/Burt Lancaster film noir tingler Sorry, Wrong Number (1948) for Paramount. Following the minor documentary/adventure Harpoon(1948) at Paramount, he made his third film, Rope of Sand (1949).

There he met his first wife, the delectable French actress Corinne Calvet, who was a co-star on the film and just starting to create an international stir. The couple married shortly after completing the film in 1948. The pairing proved beneficial for Bromfield and his career but the marriage itself lasted only five years. A featured performer in the early 1950s, he earned leading man status by 1955, but it was a very brief tenure.

The pictures themselves were hardly the talk of the town, including The Big Bluff (1955), Frontier Gambler (1956),Three Bad Sisters (1956), Quincannon, Frontier Scout (1956), Manfish (1956) and Hot Cars (1956), and most of them fell by the wasteside. One of his films, however, managed to earn sci-fi “cult” status — Revenge of the Creature (1955). At around this time he fell for dancer Larri Thomas while on the set of Curucu, Beast of the Amazon(1956) and married her shortly after filming.

Following his last movie (and 20th feature) in Crime Against Joe (1956) with sultry singer Julie London, he switched mediums and corralled the title role (and mild stardom) in the syndicated TV western series Sheriff of Cochise (1956), which was later retitled “U.S. Marshal” during its third season. In 1959, his second marriage ended after only 3 years and his western series soon bit the dust as well.

Unfulfilled with his life as an actor, John abruptly retired in 1960, finding renewed interest as a commercial fisherman. A hunting enthusiast most his life, he was an emcee at Chicago’s annual Sportsman’s Show in the 1980s. Not much else was heard until his recent passing from kidney failure on September 18, 2005, at the age of 83. He is survived by his third wife.

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

Collection of Classic Hollywood Actors

Inger Stevens

Inger Stevens obituary in “The New York Times” in 1970.

Vera Ralston

Charles Farrell

New York Times obituary in 1990:

Bonita Granville

Bonita Granville

Patrick Wayne

Earl Holliman

Ella Raines

Ella Raines obituary in “The New York Times” in 1988.

Robert Ryan

Robert Ryan . TCM Overview.

John Bromfield

John Bromfield. Wikipedia.

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