Hollywood Actors Archives - Page 99 of 128

Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

Douglas Fairbanks Jnr. obituary in “The Guardian” in 2000.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was born in 1909 in New York City. He was never eclipsed by his father’s fame and made many fine films including “The Prisioner of Zenda” in 1937 with Madeleine Carroll, “State Secret” with Glynis Johns and “Guanga Din”. He died in 2000 at the age of 90.

Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Independent”:

Douglas Fairbanks Jr, who has died aged 90, carried his father’s name proudly, though he had to overcome paternal neglect and the comparison with one of Hollywood’s legendary stars. Although an attractive and competent actor, he was also runner-up to similar dashing, well-spoken, romantic leads such as Errol Flynn, an exact contemporary, and Ronald Colman. Nevertheless, he managed to carve out a satisfactory career for himself in the movies, and become a prominent personality in other fields.

Despite having all the advantages of a Hollywood kid, his childhood and adolescence were not propitious. Because there could be only one Douglas Fairbanks, his father and mother, Anna Beth Sully, a Rhode Island heiress, referred to their child as “the boy”. His Irish nurse pronounced it “bye’, and from then on he was called Bye by his family and friends.

Douglas Sr, always insecure despite his stardom, later confessed that he had “no more paternal feelings than a tiger in the jungle with his cub.” As Bye grew into a chubby child, and his father was forced on occasions to take his son out, he was obviously uncomfortable at being seen with him. This reserve and restraint rubbed off on the boy. “I never kissed him until he was on his deathbed,” Doug Jr recalled.

Out of guilt, his father gave his son a pony, but one day the boy came home to find that his father had given it to Prince Hirohito of Japan. His mother, on the other hand, tried to give him double helpings of love. He was brought up by her from the age of nine when his parents divorced.

The young Fairbanks sculpted and painted from early youth, exhibiting at 13, and made his screen debut at the same age in Stephen Steps Out, an unsuccessful attempt by Jesse Lasky to exploit the magic of the Fairbanks name.

A few years later, when Doug Jr told his father, now married to Mary Pickford, that he wanted to become an actor and not go to Harvard, he threatened to disown his son, and cut him out of his will.

Without his father’s financial assistance, Fairbanks accepted bit parts and wrote titles for silent films. Gradually, he started to get juvenile leads, notably in Stella Dallas (1925) as Loise Moran’s upper-class beau.

In 1927, he was set to star opposite Greta Garbo in Women Love Diamonds, but when the Swedish star went on strike for more pay, he got Pauline Starke instead. However, the following year he was recompensed by being fourth-billed in Garbo’s film A Woman of Affairs.

In 1929, he married up-and-coming star Joan Crawford. His father called her a cradle snatcher (she was five years older than the groom) and an opportunist who wanted to marry a famous name.

Doug Jr and Joan appeared together as a married couple in Women Love Dia monds, but were divorced four years later after she had deceived him with Clark Gable.

From 1930 to 1935, Fairbanks was in great demand, playing, as he remarked, “big roles in little pictures, and little roles in big pictures.” The big pictures included Howard Hawks’ The Dawn Patrol, in which he was Neil Hamilton’s kid brother sent on a fatal mission, and Little Caesar when he was Edward G Robinson’s driver with ambitions to gangsterhood.

The best of the smaller pictures were the screwball comedy Love is a Racket, the real-time one-location drama Union Depot, and the boxing melodrama The Life of Jimmy Nolan, with excellent varied performances from Fairbanks. In Morning Glory (1933), he played a writer in love with actress Katharine Hepburn, an unrequited emotion he felt for her offscreen.

The following year, he came to England to play the Grand Duke Peter opposite Elisabeth Bergner in Catherine the Great for Alexander Korda. Fairbanks coped well as the Tsar who loses his wits, while Bergner turned on her over-girlish charm, encouraged by the indulgent direction of Paul Czinna, her Hungarian husband.

Goebbels did not ban the film in Germany but got the Nazi press to call it a film “produced by and starring Jews”. (Fairbanks’ paternal grandfather was a Jewish lawyer called Hezekiah Charles Ulman.)

In 1935 Fairbanks was living beyond his means, and immersed in an affair with Gertrude Lawrence with whom he starred as the Bohemian Rudolphe in the film Mimi, and in the West End in Moonlight is Silver. However, he managed to raise enough capital to set up his own English-based company, Criterion Productions.

The Amateur Gentleman (1936) – the first and best of three pictures for Criterion, was set in Regency times. He played an innkeeper’s son who poses as a gentleman pugilist to gain entrance to the court of the Prince Regent.

His father (reconciled with his son) arrived with Lord and Lady Louis Mountbatten at Elstree to watch the shooting. They were suitably impressed by the largest set built for a British film to date, a 13,000sq ft reconstruction of the ballroom at Carlton House for the Prince Regent’s ball. But the picture didn’t do as well at the box-office as was hoped, and Criterion struggled on with two more lame productions.

Fairbanks was carrying on an affair with Marlene Dietrich, who used to smuggle him into her hotel room at Claridge’s, when he met socialite Mary Lee Hartford at a party given by Merle Oberon. His wild oats sown, he married her in 1938, a marriage that lasted for 50 years until her death.

Meanwhile, back in Hollywood, Fairbanks had made a splendid Rupert of Henzau, the soldier-swordsman in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) whose confrontation with the film’s hero, Ronald Colman, provides the film’s exciting climax.

A number of good parts followed, in which he was able to put on his pukka accent and a pith-helmet in British colonial adventures. In fact, his accent bore a striking resemblance to Ronald Colman’s distinctive British tones. “By Golly” was one of his favourite expressions.

In George Stevens’ Gunga Din (1939) Fairbanks was the gentleman soldier at the side of rough Victor McLaglen and cheeky Cary Grant, a devil-may-care trio fighting a murderous sect of religious fanatics in India. (It was filmed in Lone Pine, California.) In the same year that his father died aged 56, Fairbanks made a conscious decision to emulate his celebrated swashbuckling style.

He took the title roles in The Corsican Brothers (1941), with 21-year-olds Mario and Lucien (Fairbanks was a young-looking 32) setting out to avenge their father’s death. The picture was reminiscent of his father’s 1922 Robin Hood, and after the second world war Doug Jr gave an acrobatic performance as Sinbad the Sailor (1947), a reasonable attempt to rival his father’s in The Black Pirate. In The Fighting O’Flynn (1949), he portrayed a kind of Irish musketeer, scaling walls and leaping across roofs with reckless abandon.

During the war, as a lieutenant commander in the US Navy, Fairbanks had participated in several combined Anglo-American operations (recalled in his memoirs, A Hell of a War) and in 1949 he was made an Honorary Knight of the British Empire for “furthering Anglo-American amity.” Other honours he received were the Légion d’Honneur and Knight Grand Officer of King George I of Greece.

After retiring from the screen in the early 1950s Fairbanks, an avid Anglophile, settled in London for many years with his wife and three daughters. He thrived on eminent social and political connections, which included a close relationship with the royal family.

“I am not a socialite,” he once declared, “though I seem to have got the reputation for being one. I have some very good friends who happen to be in so-called Society; but Society as such is a bore and holds no fascination for me.”

However, whoever was invited to No 8 The Boltons in Kensington, from the highest in the land to the lowliest of hacks, was greeted with charm and impeccable courtesy.

During the 1960s, he introduced and sometimes acted in a British TV drama series Douglas Fairbanks Presents, from which he made a lot of money to add to the fortune gained from the manufacture of popcorn, and from the rights to his father’s films.

In 1973 he and his wife sold their London home and settled in Palm Beach, Florida. Soon after, Fairbanks returned to the stage in My Fair Lady in LA and San Francisco, The Secretary Bird in Chicago and Present Laughter in Washington.

In 1976 he appeared at the Phoenix Theatre in London in The Pleasure of his Company in a role that could have been written for him, that of a rich, witty and urbane globetrotter.

In 1990, Fairbanks married again at the age of 81 to Vera Shelton who survives him as do three daughters from his second marriage. Two years later, he was named as the mysterious headless man in a photo used in the Duchess of Argyle divorce case of 1963. He always denied that it was he, though the Duchess was a close friend. By golly, what a life!

Douglas Fairbanks Jr, actor and socialite, born December 9 1909; died May 7 2000

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

Gig Young was born in 1913 in Minnesota. In 1942 he was featured in the Warner Bros film “The Gay Sisters” with Barbara Stanwyck, In many of his films he was the breezy friend of the leading actor e.g. “Young at Heart”, “Teacher’s Pet” and “Ask Any Girl”. In 1969 he won an Oscar for his performance in “They Shoot Horses Don’t They”. Gig Young died in 1978.

IMDB entry:

Affable, immensely likable American actor, usually in second leads. A native of Minnesota, his parents John and Emma Barr raised him in Washington, DC. He developed a passion for the theatre while appearing in high school plays. After some amateur experience, he applied for and received a scholarship to the acclaimed Pasadena Community Playhouse. While acting in “Pancho”, a south-of-the-border play by Lowell Barrington, he and the leading actor in the play, George Reeves, were spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout. Both actors were signed supporting player contracts with the studio. Still acting under his given name, Byron Barr, he played bits and extra roles. He experimented with varying screen names because of another actor with the same name (see Byron Barr). In 1942, in the picture The Gay Sisters (1942), he was given the role of a character with the name Gig Young and thereafter adopted the name as his own. He had been supplementing his income working in a gasoline station, but The Gay Sisters (1942) gave him a career boost. Although service with the Coast Guard interrupted his ascension, he returned from the war and soon established himself as a reliable player of light leading men roles, usually secondarily to bigger stars. A dramatic part in Come Fill the Cup (1951) won him a nomination for the best supporting actor Oscar, a feat he repeated seven years later in a comedic role in Teacher’s Pet (1958). A prolific television career complemented his film work. In 1969, his surprisingly seedy portrayal of a dance-marathon emcee in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) finally won him the Oscar. A succession of marriages, including one to actress Elizabeth Montgomery, failed. In 1978, three weeks after marrying German actress Kim Schmidt, Young apparently shot her to death in their New York City apartment and then turned the gun on himself. The direct cause of the murder-suicide remains unclear. Young was not quite 65, his bride 21.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>

The above IMB entry can also be accessed online here.

Molly Lamont was born in 1910 in South Africa. She began her career in British films and her debut was in 1930 in “The Black Hand Gang”. In 1936 she went to Hollywood and the remainder of her career was in the U.S. Her films include “The Awful Truth” with Cary Grant and “The White Cliffs of Dover” in 1944. She died in 2001.

TCM Overview:

Throughout her entertainment career as an accomplished actress, Molly Lamont graced the silver screen many times. In her early acting career, Lamont appeared in such films as the Katharine Hepburn dramatic adaptation “Mary of Scotland” (1936), “The Jungle Princess” (1936) with Dorothy Lamour and “A Doctor’s Diary” (1937). She also appeared in the comedic adaptation “The Awful Truth” (1937) with Irene Dunne, “The Moon and Sixpence” (1942) and the George Raft musical “Follow the Boys” (1944). Her passion for acting continued to her roles in projects like “Minstrel Man” (1944) with Benny Fields, the Bette Davis drama “Mr. Skeffington” (1945) and “The Suspect” (1945). She also appeared in the Rosemary LaPlanche horror film “Devil Bat’s Daughter” (1946) and “The Dark Corner” (1946). Toward the end of her career, she tackled roles in “Christmas Eve” (1947), the drama “Ivy” (1947) with Joan Fontaine and the Bela Lugosi thriller “Scared to Death” (1947). She also appeared in “South Sea Sinner” (1950). Lamont was most recently credited in “Raising Hope” (Fox, 2010-14). She also worked in television during these years, including a part on “Modern Family” (ABC, 2009-). Lamont passed away in July 2001 at the age of 91.

The above TCM Overview can also be accessed online here.

L.Q. Jones was born in 1927 in Beaumont, Texas. He is well known for his work in the films of Sam Peckinpah. These iclude “Ride the High Country” in 1962, “Major Dundee”, “The Wild Bunch”, “The Ballad of Cable Hogue” and “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid”.

IMDB entry:

Tall, sandy haired, mustachioed actor from Texas born Justus McQueen, who adopted the name of the character he portrayed in his first film, Battle Cry (1955). Jones, with his craggy, gaunt looks, first appeared in minor character roles in plenty of WWII films including The Young Lions (1958), The Naked and the Dead (1958), Hell Is for Heroes(1962) and Battle of the Coral Sea (1959). However, 1962 saw him team up with maverick director Sam Peckinpah for the first of Jones’ five appearances in his films. Ride the High Country (1962) saw Jones play one of the lowlife Hammond brothers. Next he appeared alongside Charlton Heston in Major Dundee (1965), then Peckinpah cast him, along with his real-life friend Strother Martin, as one of the scummy, murderous bounty hunters in The Wild Bunch (1969). Such was the chemistry between Jones and Martin that Peckinpah teamed them again the following year in The Ballad of Cable Hogue(1970), and Jones’ final appearance in a Peckinpah film was in another western, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973). Two years later Jones directed the cult post-apocalyptic film A Boy and His Dog (1975) starring a young Don Johnson. He has continued to work in Hollywood, and as the lines on his craggy face have deepened, he turns up more frequently as crusty old westerners, especially in multiple TV guest spots. He turned in an interesting performance as a seemingly good ol’ boy Nevada cowboy who was actually a powerful behind-the-scenes player in state politics who leaned on Robert De Niro‘s Las Vegas mob gambler in Martin Scorsese‘s violent and powerful Casino (1995).

– IMDb Mini Biography By: firehouse44

The above IMDB entry can also be accessed online here.

New York Times obituary:

By Sam Roberts

July 15, 2022

L.Q. Jones, a hirsute, craggy-faced, swaggering Texan who guilelessly played the antihero in some 60 films and dozens of television series, died on Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills area of Los Angeles. He was 94.

His death was confirmed by his grandson Erté deGarces.

A former stand-up comic, Mr. Jones also tried his hand as a bean, corn and dairy rancher in Nicaragua and once described himself as “but several hours away from three degrees — one in law, one in business, one in journalism” at the University of Texas.

But he was lured to the Warner Bros. studios when a college roommate, Fess Parker, the actor who later played both Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, persuaded him to audition for a minor role in the 1955 film “Battle Cry,” directed by Raoul Walsh and adapted from Leon Uris’s novel.

Mr. Parker sent him a copy of the book and a map with directions to the Warner lot. Mr. Jones was cast in two days.

Billed as Justus E. McQueen (his birth name), he made his first appearance onscreen as the movie’s narrator introduced a group of all-American Marine recruits being shipped by train to boot camp. The camera then panned to a character named L.Q. Jones.

“Then, abruptly, the narrator’s voice drops to the scornful tone of a 10th-grade math teacher doling out detention,” Justin Humphreys wrote in “Names You Never Remember, With Faces You Never Forget” (2006).

“‘There’s one in every group,’ he tells us, as we see L.Q. mischievously giving one of the other soldiers-to-be a hotfoot,” Mr. Humphrey added. “There could have been no more perfect beginning to L.Q. Jones’s career in the movies. The word that best sums up his overriding screen persona is hellion.”

The actor pirated the character’s name for his own subsequent screen credits. From then on, Justus McQueen was L.Q. Jones.

Mr. Jones joined the director Sam Peckinpah’s stable of actors, appearing in “Ride the High Country” (1962), “Major Dundee” (1965) and “The Wild Bunch” (1969), in which he and his fellow character actor Strother Martin play rival bounty hunters and, as the studio described their manic competition for the highest body count, “bring their depraved characters to life with a childish energy.”

Mr. Jones was also frequently seen in the stampede of westerns that arrived on TV in the 1950s and ’60s, including “Cheyenne,” “Gunsmoke,” “Wagon Train” and “Rawhide.” His films included the 1968 westerns “Hang ’em High,” in which he slipped a noose around Clint Eastwood’s neck, and “Stay Away, Joe,” with Elvis Presley. Among his other screen credits were Martin Scorsese’s “Casino” (1995) and Robert Altman’s “A Prairie Home Companion” (2006), his last film.

Mr. Jones directed, produced and helped write “A Boy and His Dog” (1975), a dark post-apocalyptic comedy starring Don Johnson and Jason Robards, based on the book of the same name by Harlan Ellison.

“‘A Boy and His Dog,’ a fantasy about the world after a future holocaust, is, more or less, a beginner’s movie. It has some good ideas and some terrible ones,” Richard Eder wrote in his New York Times review.

“This is the second film directed by L.Q. Jones, better known as an actor,” Mr. Eder continued. “It is not really a success, but I hope he goes on directing.”

He didn’t. “A Boy and His Dog” acquired a cult following, but Mr. Jones returned to what he did best. He preferred the independence of choosing the villainous roles that appealed to him, and that measured his success, to the prospect of directing someone else’s script and wrangling larger-than-life egos.

“Different parts call for different heavies,” Mr. Jones told William R. Horner for his book “Bad at the Bijou” (1982).

“I have a certain presence,” he explained. “I play against that presence a lot of times, and that’s of a heavy that is not crazy or deranged — although we play those, of course — but rather someone who is a heavy because he enjoys being a heavy.”

“It’s really hard to say what they’re looking for when they pick me,” Mr. Jones said. “A lot of times your heavy is not that well presented in the script. Most times he’s too one-sided. So we look for things to bring to being a heavy: a certain softness; a vulnerability that makes him human; a quiet moment when he’s a screamer most of the time; a look; the way he dresses; the way he walks into a room.”

Mr. Jones was born Justus Ellis McQueen Jr. on Aug. 19, 1927, in Beaumont, Texas. His father was a railroad worker; his mother, Jessie Paralee (Stephens) McQueen, died in a car accident when he was a child. He learned to ride a horse when he was 8.

After graduating from high school, he served in the Navy, attended Lamar Junior College and Lon Morris College in Texas, and briefly attended the University of Texas at Austin.

His marriage to Sue Lewis ended in divorce. In addition to his grandson, his survivors include his sons, Randy McQueen and Steve Marshall, and his daughter, Mindy McQueen.

Mr. Jones seemed to measure success less by his bank account (he once described himself as “independently poor”) than by professional gratification. But he had a sense of humor about it.

“I’m around somewhere, probably just counting my money,” the message on his telephone answering machine said. “When I get through, if I’m not too tired, I’ll return your call

Mickey Rooney was born in n1920 in Brooklyn, New York. As a child actor he acted under the name Mickey McGuire. By the late 1930’s he acted as Mickey Rooney and had a contract with MGM where he made many musicals with Judy Garland and also acted the title role in the Andy Hardy series. His other films include “Words and Music” in 1948 and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” in 1961. Mickey Rooney died in April 2014.

TCM Overview:

Mickey Rooney was a little man who enjoyed a big career and a larger-than-life persona. Born into a family of vaudeville performers, he was pushed on stage before he could talk and never let up, appearing in hundreds of movies, TV shows, plays, casinos and gossip columns. He had a hunger for life and work that belied his small stature, marrying eight times, earning and losing millions of dollars on several occasions, and seemingly accepting any invitation to perform, whether it was a dinner theater or the Academy Awards. Outliving most of his Golden Age contemporaries, he carved out a unique place in show business history that spanned generations of fans. And even though his career reached its peak in the 1930s with his onscreen partnership with Judy Garland, he continued to win awards and accolades until his death on April 6, 2014.

Mickey Rooney was born Joseph Yule, Jr. on Sept. 23, 1920 in Brooklyn, NY. His name was plain but his family was colorful. Rooney’s father, Joe Yule, was a Scottish-born vaudeville performer and his mother, Nell, was a chorus girl from Kansas City, MO. Soon after his first birthday Rooney was appearing on stage with his parents and traveling around the country by train. The vagaries of show business did not encourage domestic bliss, leading to Rooney’s parents breaking up in 1924. Nell took custody of her son and, in the grand and often grotesque tradition of frustrated performers, channeled her hopes and dreams into her child. She moved with her son out to California, where she balanced managing a tourist home and overseeing Rooney’s growing career. She was not skilled at either, going broke and moving back and forth between Los Angeles and Kansas City to receive financial help from her family. It was a grim existence until Rooney got his big break playing, ironically, a midget. The movie “Not to Be Trusted” (1926) was not a film classic, but it jump-started Rooney’s career.

Nell used some old fashioned derring-do to land Rooney his next job. Learning that the popular comic strip “Mickey McGuire” was going to be turned into a series of short films, she put her son up for the part. Rooney was still named Joe Yule, Jr. at this point, but Nell offered to legally change his name to Mickey McGuire so that the producers of the films could circumvent paying the writer of the comic strip royalties. This cold-hearted ploy did not work, but Nell still had her son’s name changed to the apparently more marquee-friendly “Mickey Rooney.” Regardless, Rooney got the part and went on to star in dozens of shorts based on the McGuire character, starting with “Mickey’s Circus” (1927). And it truly was a circus, as Rooney worked non-stop for the next 10 years until finally wrapping up the McGuire series with “Mickey’s Derby Day” (1936).

The “Mickey McGuire” movies made Mickey Rooney a star, but his next film series propelled him into the top tier of Hollywood actors. Although he had received good reviews for his work in several features, most notably as Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1935), his appearance as Andy Hardy in “A Family Affair” (1937) changed his life forever. Playing the son of Judge James K. Hardy (Lionel Barrymore), Rooney helped MGM’s little B-movie become a monster hit. He played the same role in 13 more homespun “Andy Hardy” films produced between 1937 and 1946, giving venerable MGM one of its most profitable franchises. The early movies were about the entire Hardy clan, but by the fourth film in the series, “Love Finds Andy Hardy” (1938), Rooney’s exuberant personality had pushed his character to the top of the marquee. His portrayal of the all-American boy became an archetype of old-fashioned, Midwestern wholesomeness.

Ironically Andy Hardy’s squeaky-clean image was quite a contrast to the real-life Rooney. As he became more famous, the actor became more reckless, known around Hollywood for his late night carousing and numerous affairs. The most scandalous liaison came to light years later in Rooney’s autobiography, in which he claimed that in 1938, when he was just 18, he had a relationship with the A-list actress Norma Shearer, then 38, and the widow of MGM’s “Boy Wonder” production chief, Irving Thalberg. Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM and a mentor to Thalberg, used his considerable influence to end the affair and keep it from the press. Whether this was out of loyalty to his late protégé or merely a cynical attempt to keep Rooney’s public image more in line with that of Andy Hardy, was impossible to say, but it definitely allowed the actor to continue starring in MGM’s cash cow franchise without any backlash from his adoring fans.

While Rooney’s offscreen romances often got him into trouble, his onscreen relationship with Judy Garland became one of the most famous partnerships in film history. First appearing together in “Love Finds Andy Hardy,” where the then starlet had a guest appearance, they starred together as equals in the musical “Babes in Arms” (1939), directed by the great Busby Berkeley. The movie was a hit and the couple’s chemistry and bright-eyed enthusiasm was real. They became friends and stayed close until her tragic death in 1969. Together they made numerous popular features together, including several more Andy Hardy movies and Busby Berkeley musicals, among them “Strike up the Band” (1940) and “Babes on Broadway” (1941) – most of which were of the “Comon kids, let’s put on a show!” variety.

But Rooney’s popularity was not contingent upon Garland, who shot to worldwide fame playing Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939). Rather, his appeal came from his infectious energy and innate fearlessness as an actor. Whether sharing the screen with giants like Spencer Tracy and Lionel Barrymore in “Captains Courageous” (1937), and again with Tracy in “Boys Town” (1938) – for which Tracy received an Academy Award – Rooney more than held his own. And, of course, the public adored him. From 1939 through 1941, Rooney was the number one box office actor in the United States, as he would proudly continue to remind the world even years later. As America entered World War II, his Andy Hardy films continued to be wildly popular and Rooney worked steadily. He somehow found the time to marry and divorce the gorgeous starlet Ava Gardner (the future Mrs. Frank Sinatra) between 1942 and 1943 before hitting his professional peak opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the horse racing drama, “National Velvet” (1944). But when Rooney was drafted into the military, everything changed.

During WWII, Rooney went to war to entertain the troops, only serving 21 months. But while he did not suffer any physical harm while abroad, when he came home his career was damaged. Post-war America was less innocent than the one that had embraced Andy Hardy. Moreover, Rooney was now 26 years old and thus, a little too long in the tooth to continue playing teenagers. His professional life started a long, slow slide. While he was never at a loss for work, the quality of the material was inferior to his earlier films. To make matters worse his onscreen partnership with Judy Garland came to a close with the musical “Words and Music” (1948). Rooney gamely soldiered on, while his former co-star’s career eclipsed his. Not only because he loved to work but also because he had to. He fit in a few more failed marriages, including one to actress Martha Vickers, while trying to find good parts to pay his alimony. There were bright spots like the Korean War drama “The Bridges at Toko-Ri” (1954), but more often than not Rooney did whatever slop he was offered, including “The Fireball” (1950) and “The Atomic Kid” (1954). Like many movie stars before him whose stars were starting to fade, he turned to television.

“The Mickey Rooney Show” (NBC, 1954-55) – also known as “Hey, Mulligan” – featured Rooney playing a fast-talking teenager. The fact that Rooney, in his mid-30s, was essentially reprising his Andy Hardy character may have had something to do with the show’s cancellation after 39 episodes. Still, it had to be more satisfying work than starring opposite Francis the Talking Mule in “Francis in the Haunted House” (1956). With live television attracting some of the best young directors and writers, Rooney kept returning to the small screen. He scored an artistic triumph and an Emmy nomination in “The Comedian” (1957), an episode of the famous series “Playhouse 90” (CBS, 1956-1961). The late 1950s were the Golden Age of live TV and it gave Rooney’s career a shot in the arm. He continued to work on TV shows like “Alcoa Theater” (NBC, 1957-1960) while landing the occasional film role. He was a natural fit for the film “Baby Face Nelson” (1957), playing a murderous gangster who looks like a choirboy and he (mercifully) put the Andy Hardy series to rest with the feature “Andy Hardy Comes Home” (1958). Finally, in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961) he found a role he could sink his teeth into. Unfortunately, they were a set of fake buckteeth that set off the biggest controversy of his career. Blake Edwards, who had worked on Rooney’s TV show as a writer, directed “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” an adaptation of Truman Capote’s novel. The director and actor were close friends, and perhaps this influenced Edwards not reigning in Rooney’s broad performance of a stereotypical, bucktoothed Japanese man. Rooney’s overacting marred an otherwise popular and well-reviewed film, but his sub-par work was the least of his problems.

Rooney’s latest marriage – his fifth – was falling apart during this period. He had married the beauty queen and B-movie actress, Barbara Ann Thomason (a.k.a Carolyn Mitchell), in 1958. While Thomason had put her career on hold to raise the kids, Rooney worked non-stop to support his ex-wives, his gambling habit, and a growing family. He tried directing, but the dismal comedy “The Private Lives of Adam and Eve” (1960) should have stayed private. Hack TV work kept the money rolling in, and there was a cinematic bright spot with his supporting turn in the drama “Requiem for a Heavyweight” (1962), but lightweight fluff like “How to Stuff a Wild Bikini” (1965) was more representative of Rooney’s output at the time. Now in his forties, he nevertheless continued his extra-marital affairs; a favor returned by his young wife. When Rooney was in the Philippines filming the war movie “Ambush Bay,” he was literally ambushed by tragic news: Thomason’s jealous lover had murdered her in the Rooney’s Brentwood home. Rooney returned to the states and a cauldron of controversy. The sordid and dysfunctional personal life of the man who had played the all-American boy became fodder for the tabloids and permanently tarnished Rooney’s image. He continued plugging away in mediocre movies like “Skidoo” (1968) in an attempt to keep the demons at bay, but Judy Garland’s death from an accidental overdose of barbiturates in 1969 was an even worse punishment.

Nearing fifty and rocked by personal tragedy and professional disappointment, it would have been easy for Rooney to pack it in. But Rooney’s vaudeville training had instilled in him a powerful ethos that “the show must go on.” He kept working throughout the 1970s, seemingly in any production that would pay him. Wary of more controversy, he passed up the role of the racist Archie Bunker in the TV classic “All in the Family” (CBS, 1971-79); instead turning to family friendly fare like “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” (ABC, 1970), “The Year Without a Santa Claus” (ABC, 1974), and “Journey Back to Oz” (1974). An inveterate gambler and horse racing aficionado, his love of the ponies found artistic triumph in the film classic “The Black Stallion” (1979). Rooney turned in one of his great performances playing Henry Dailey, a once successful horse trainer who gets one last shot at immortality. Rooney received some of the best reviews of his career for a role that was a metaphor for his own creative resurrection.

Rooney followed up his Academy Award-nominated performance in “The Black Stallion” with a starring role opposite dancer Ann Miller in the long running Broadway hit “Sugar Babies” (1970-1982). Earning a Tony nomination for his stage work, he scored again with an Emmy win playing a mentally handicapped man in the TV drama “Bill” (CBS, 1981). It was the high-water mark of Rooney’s career: film, stage, and TV work of the highest quality all within a couple years and late in the game. And while he did not hit such a hot streak again, Rooney had proven to his loyal fans and vocal detractors that he still had the goods. He continued working steadily on TV and in movies such as “Night at the Museum” (2006), as well as the theater. He even traveled the world in a multi-media live stage production called “Let’s Put on a Show!” recounting his long, eventful life in show business to his still sizable fan base.

In 2011, Rooney accused his stepson Chris Aber of committing elder abuse against him, including acts of financial malfeasance; Rooney’s eighth wife and Aber’s mother, Jan Rooney, denied the allegations. Rooney testified about elder abuse before a Senate committee in March 2011 and won a multi-million dollar settlement against Aber. That same year, Rooney made his final feature film appearance with a cameo role in Jason Segel’s hit franchise reboot “The Muppets” (2011). Rooney died of undisclosed natural causes on April 6, 2014.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

John Raitt was born in Santa Anam California in 1917. He was a major Broadway star and a popular singer. He made only one film, but it was a choice one, “The Pajama Game” with Doris Day in 1957. His daughter is the singer Bonnie Raitt. John Raitt died in 2005.

Gary Brumburgh’s entry:

One of the top Broadway baritones of the post WWII period, John Raitt maintained an incredibly resilient career that spanned over 60 years, showing remarkable power, range and stamina for a man who defied the odds by concertizing well into his 80s. He was born in Santa Ana, California in 1917, the son of Archie John Raitt and Stella Eulalie Walton, and graduated from the University of Redlands. Studying legit with Richard Cummings in his early years, one of his first appearances would be in 1940 in the chorus of HMS Pinafore with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Company. The following year he played the roles of Figaro and Count Almaviva in the Pasadena Civic Auditorium production of “The Barber of Seville,” as well as Escamillo in “Carmen.” At this time he earned an MGM contract and was seen without much fanfare in such pictures as Flight Command (1940), Little Nellie Kelly (1940) and Ziegfeld Girl (1941). 1944 proved to be John’s breakthrough year after winning the role of Curly in the Chicago production of the new big hit musical “Oklahoma!” Critics took notice of the man’s robust presence, sturdy pipes and unfailing confidence. The virile man with the sly flash in his eye then made his Broadway debut originating the role of the tormented Billy Bigelow in the now-classic musical “Carousel.” He never had to look back. His powerful rendition of the “Soliloquy” number helped him to clinch the prestigious New York Drama Critics and Donaldson Awards. John continued to impress in the musical forum with lead parts in “Magadalena,” “New Moon,” “Carnival in Flanders” and “Three Wishes for Jamie” (title role). In 1954, he found his second signature role as foreman Sid Sorokin in “The Pajama Game” oppositeJanis Paige. Here, he introduced the classic ballad “Hey There” for which he is probably best known. So ideally suited was he in this role that John was asked to transfer Sid to film, this time opposite Doris Day. Although it was an unqualified success, musical films were on their way out and he did not find any more work in the area of cinema. For the next few decades he continued to tour in roles audiences had grown to love (Curly, Billy, Sid). Other suitable vehicles would include “Shenandoah,” “1776,” “South Pacific,” “Man of La Mancha,” and “Kismet.” By this time he had also grown in stature as a concertist. Back in the 1940s John married pianist Marjorie Haydock. One of their children grew up to become singer/songwriter Bonnie Raitt (born 1949), who inherited the vocal/instrumental talents of her parents but took a different, uncompetitive path as a blues-rock guitarist. Despite their polar musical styles, father and daughter performed frequently together on the live stage. John and wife Marjorie would later divorce and he remarried. Seldom on TV, the live stage would be John’s invaluable legacy to the music world. He died in 2005 of complications from pneumonia at age 88.

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

Autographed

“Guardian” obituary:

Though the singer John Raitt was one of the great leading men of Broadway’s golden age, his reputation rests on surprisingly few hits: Carousel (1945) and The Pajama Game (on stage in 1954, and on film in 1957). Yet Raitt worked nearly continuously from 1940 almost up to his death at the age of 88. In 1995, he recorded the album John Raitt: The Broadway Legend, and sang some duets with daughter Bonnie Raitt as recently as last January. .

The qualities of his talent were thrown into particularly high relief during the father-daughter duets. Bonnie’s voice is consciously untrained, used in a style that generates an overall emotion in any given phrase, but letting the words take care of finer shades of meaning. Her father had a cultivated, operatic voice (with a more sure sense of pitch) that he used with great specificity, bordering on deliberation

A typical Raitt touch was heard in the song If I Loved You, sung by the carnival barker Billy Bigelow in Carousel; Raitt’s emphasis on the word “if” in every statement underlined the character’s ambivalence – a trait that would set off a chain reaction contributing to Billy’s demise. Not a member of the method-acting generation, Raitt was likely to deliver such things from instinct rather than analysis – or, even better, by conferring with the authors.

It is said that Raitt’s vocal prowess – which he demonstrated to songwriters Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein upon replacing Alfred Drake in Oklahoma! – inspired the famous seven-minute dramatic tour-de-force Soliloquy from Carousel. Not so much a song as a musical scene depicting the contemplation of impending fatherhood, Soliloquy was a breakthrough in Broadway theatre for its length, operatic weight of expression and emotional nakedness, virtually unheard of for male characters in this genre.

Though Raitt’s career peaked with Carousel, his performances were remarkably consistent, often despite substandard material, such as the ambitious, idiosyncratic Heitor Villa-Lobos musical Magdalena in 1948 (which Raitt revisited some 40 years later in a concert version in New York), Three Wishes For Jamie (1952) and Carnival In Flanders (1953). The only post-Carousel hit he originated was The Pajama Game.

That, plus a primitive television version of Annie Get Your Gun, with Mary Martin, were Raitt’s only major screen appearances, and it is hard to say why. Though he mastered the more subtle art of screen acting, his wide-spaced eyes played oddly from some camera angles, magnifying a vaguely ethnic look that may have challenged the white hegemony of 1950s Hollywood.

In any case, Raitt was a servant of the theatre. His looks and voice made him a natural candidate for Las Vegas, which he resisted, according to Bonnie, because he disliked the unwholesome atmosphere of such engagements. More likely, he was of a generation when the singer was the messenger of song and characters, and may have simply been at a loss to adapt to the kind of self-aggrandising song styling that was customary in 1960s Las Vegas.

I n time, the Broadway Raitt had come to define turned away from him. The invasion of artificial amplification meant voices like his were no longer really needed. Also, Broadway subject matter was leaving him behind. When, in the mid-1970s, he toured with a minor musical entitled Seesaw, he admitted to being so frustrated with his vocal under-utilisation that he performed a mini-concert of his old standards after every show. Because he kept his fees low enough to be a viable hire for summer theatre seasons, he took on roles that strayed far from his romantic leading-man image, such as Fiddler On The Roof and Zorba The Greek.

Little in his background or early life pointed to such future dedication to show business. Just as easily, Raitt might have become a sports coach, having distinguished himself with track and field skills in Santa Ana, California, where he was born and grew up. His singing began in chorus work at the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, graduating to less light opera such as the Barber Of Seville – an aria from which he sang at his first Rodgers and Hammerstein audition.

Though Raitt had three children by his first wife, Marjorie Haydock (they divorced in 1971) – Bonnie, Steven and David – he had a particularly close rapport with Bonnie. During a free day from a Broadway tour, he would drive to the next city where she had a tour stop. When her 1989 comeback album, Nick Of Time, swept the Grammy awards, he was with her at the ceremony. They sang at each other’s weddings, she at his third marriage, to Rosemary Kraemer, in 1981, and he at her 1991 wedding.

Rosemary and his children survive him.

Estelle Parsons was born in 1927 in Lynn, Massachusetts. She worked for a time on Broadway before entering films. She won an Oscar early in her career for her performance in “Bonnie & Clyde” in 1967. Other films include “I Never Sang for My Father” and “Dick Tracy”. More recently she was featured as Rosanne Barr’s mother in the TV sitcom “Rosanne”.

TCM Overview:

The first female political reporter on network TV during her five-year stint with “The Today Show” (NBC) in the early 1950s, Estelle Parsons made her Broadway debut as a reporter in the Ethel Merman musical “Happy Hunting” (1956) and later won a Theatre World Award in the title role of “Mrs. Dally Takes a Lover” (1962). Although she had acted in the feature “Ladybug, Ladybug” (1963), it was her second film (and first Hollywood movie) role as the shrewish Blanche Barrow in Arthur Penn’s landmark “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967) that established her credentials as a wonderful screen character actress. Hysterical with bullets whizzing by and grief-stricken after the shoot-out that blinded her in one eye and left her husband Buck (Gene Hackman) dead, she unwittingly provided law enforcement with the info that would lead to the demise of Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde (Warren Beatty). Her tour de force performance earned that year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar, and her next outing as Joanne Woodward’s schoolteacher colleague in Paul Newman’s directing debut, “Rachel, Rachel” (1968), garnered another Academy Award nomination in the category.

Parsons acted opposite Jackie Gleason in the uninspired film version of Woody Allen’s play “Don’t Drink the Water” (1969), then portrayed Hackman’s sister and Melvyn Douglas’ daughter in Gilbert Cates’ sensitive adaptation (written by the playwright) of Robert Anderson’s “I Never Sang for My Father” (1970). After supporting Barbra Streisand in “For Pete’s Sake” (1974), Parsons made only small screen appearances during the late 70s and 80s (i.e., in episodes of CBS’ “All in the Family”, as Bess Truman in the 1979 NBC miniseries “Backstairs at the White House” and portraying teacher Clare Block in the 1988 CBS-movie “Open Admissions”) before returning to features as Mrs. Truehart in “Dick Tracy” (1990), which reteamed her with Warren Beatty, who both starred and directed. Since then, she has turned up as Louise in Herbert Ross’ extremely likable “Boys on the Side” (1995), as Queen Margaret in Al Pacino’s inventive documentary about acting Shakespeare “Looking for Richard” (1996) and as Old Lady McCracken in the disappointing remake of “That Darn Cat” (1997).

Parsons never abandoned the stage, carving a niche with quality performances like her Tony-nominated turns as the title characters of Tennessee Williams’ “The Seven Descents of Myrtle” (1968) and Paul Zindel’s “And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little” (1971) as well as the dictatorial schoolteacher of “Miss Margarida’s Way” (1977). She branched into directing with NYC productions of “Voices” (1978) and “Antony and Cleopatra” (1979), and adapted, co-directed and performed the seven monologues that comprised Dario Fo and Franco Rame’s “Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo” (1983). In the mid-80s, producer Joseph Papp selected her to direct a company of young actors in Shakespearean roles in an effort to bring the Bard to NYC schoolchildren. One of her more recent theatrical triumphs was as Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days”, which she performed in a variety of venues. But her recurring role as Bev Harris, the busybody mother of Roseanne and Jackie, on the ABC sitcom “Roseanne” (1989-97) has undoubtedly provided the greatest exposure of her distinguished career.

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.

Mara Lane was born in Vienna, Austria in 1930. She is the older sister of actress Jocelyn Lane. Mara made her film career mostly in England and her debut there was in 1951 in “Hell Is Sold Out”. In 1953 she went to Hollywood to make “Susan Slept Here” with Dick Powell, Debbie Reynolds and Anne Francis. Her last film to date was in 1964. Her page on “Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen” can be accessed here.

Richard Beymer was born in Iowa in 1938. He performed as a child actor in such films as “So Big” with Jane Wyman and “Johnny Tremain”. As a young adult he starred in “The Diary of Anne Frank” with Millie Perkins and Diane Baker in 1959, “The Stripper” with Joanne Woodward and “West Side Story”. In 1990 his career was revived by his participation in the cult television series “Twin Peaks”.

TCM overview:

This former teen actor, who after starring in a string of major films in the 1950s and early 60s (“The Diary of Anne Frank” 1959, “West Side Story” 1961, “Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man” 1962 and “The Stripper” 1963), never really made the transition to interesting adult roles and came under critical attack for his sometimes wooden performances.

Beymer left Hollywood in 1963 to try his hand at directing experimental films and documentaries and lensing TV features. He became involved in the 60s struggles for civil rights and directed and photographed the documentary, “A Regular Bouquet” (1964), which later aired on the PBS series, “Eyes on the Prize”. He didn’t return to acting (with the exception of starring in his own directed and produced independent film, “Innerview” 1973) until the 1980s with the thriller, “Cross Country” (1983). Beymer also made a TV appearance on “Paper Dolls” (ABC, 1984) and in the exploitation horror film, “Silent Night Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out” (1989).

Beymer scored a comeback of sorts in TV’s “Twin Peaks” (ABC, 1990-91), as the wildly villainous entrepreneur, Ben Horne, giving a looser, funkier performance than any in his earlier career. In films, Beymer made brief appearances in the sequel “My Girl 2” and the erotic thriller “Under Investigation” (both 1994).

The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.