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Welcome to Our Generation USA!
Legends of Our Past
are those iconic influences over the years who have since passed on or have retired.
Frank Sinatra
YouTube Video of Frank Sinatra: Life and Career
Pictured below "The Rat Pack" featuring (L-R): Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop
Francis Albert Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer, actor, and producer who was one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide.
Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Italian Americans, Sinatra began his musical career in the swing era with bandleaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey. Sinatra found success as a solo artist after he signed with Columbia Records in 1943, becoming the idol of the "bobby soxers". He released his debut album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, in 1946.
Sinatra's professional career had stalled by the early 1950s, and he turned to Las Vegas, where he became one of its best known residency performers as part of the Rat Pack. His career was reborn in 1953 with the success of From Here to Eternity, with his performance subsequently winning an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Sinatra released several critically lauded albums, including In the Wee Small Hours (1955), Songs for Swingin' Lovers! (1956), Come Fly with Me (1958), Only the Lonely (1958) and Nice 'n' Easy (1960).
Sinatra left Capitol in 1960 to start his own record label, Reprise Records, and released a string of successful albums. In 1965, he recorded the retrospective September of My Years and starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music.
After releasing Sinatra at the Sands, recorded at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Vegas with frequent collaborator Count Basie in early 1966, the following year he recorded one of his most famous collaborations with Tom Jobim, the album Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim. It was followed by 1968's Francis A. & Edward K. with Duke Ellington.
Sinatra retired for the first time in 1971, but came out of retirement two years later and recorded several albums and resumed performing at Caesars Palace, and reached success in 1980 with "New York, New York".
Using his Las Vegas shows as a home base, he toured both within the United States and internationally until shortly before his death in 1998.
Sinatra forged a highly successful career as a film actor. After winning an Academy Award for From Here to Eternity, he starred in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), and received critical acclaim for his performance in The Manchurian Candidate (1962).
He appeared in various musicals such as On the Town (1949), Guys and Dolls (1955), High Society (1956), and Pal Joey (1957), winning another Golden Globe for the latter. Toward the end of his career, he became associated with playing detectives, including the title character in Tony Rome (1967).
Sinatra would later receive the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1971. On television, The Frank Sinatra Show began on ABC in 1950, and he continued to make appearances on television throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Sinatra was also heavily involved with politics from the mid-1940s, and actively campaigned for presidents such as Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
In crime, the FBI investigated Sinatra and his alleged relationship with the Mafia.
While Sinatra never learned how to read music, he had an impressive understanding of it, and he worked very hard from a young age to improve his abilities in all aspects of music. A perfectionist, renowned for his dress sense and performing presence, he always insisted on recording live with his band. His bright blue eyes earned him the popular nickname "Ol' Blue Eyes".
Sinatra led a colorful personal life, and was often involved in turbulent affairs with women, such as with his second wife Ava Gardner. He later married Mia Farrow in 1966 and Barbara Marx in 1976. Sinatra had several violent confrontations, usually with journalists he felt had crossed him, or work bosses with whom he had disagreements.
He was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1997. Sinatra was also the recipient of eleven Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Trustees Award, Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He was collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the twentieth century's 100 most influential people.
After his death, American music critic Robert Christgau called him "the greatest singer of the 20th century", and he continues to be seen as an iconic figure.
Click here for more about Frank Sinatra.
Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, to Italian Americans, Sinatra began his musical career in the swing era with bandleaders Harry James and Tommy Dorsey. Sinatra found success as a solo artist after he signed with Columbia Records in 1943, becoming the idol of the "bobby soxers". He released his debut album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra, in 1946.
Sinatra's professional career had stalled by the early 1950s, and he turned to Las Vegas, where he became one of its best known residency performers as part of the Rat Pack. His career was reborn in 1953 with the success of From Here to Eternity, with his performance subsequently winning an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Sinatra released several critically lauded albums, including In the Wee Small Hours (1955), Songs for Swingin' Lovers! (1956), Come Fly with Me (1958), Only the Lonely (1958) and Nice 'n' Easy (1960).
Sinatra left Capitol in 1960 to start his own record label, Reprise Records, and released a string of successful albums. In 1965, he recorded the retrospective September of My Years and starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music.
After releasing Sinatra at the Sands, recorded at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Vegas with frequent collaborator Count Basie in early 1966, the following year he recorded one of his most famous collaborations with Tom Jobim, the album Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim. It was followed by 1968's Francis A. & Edward K. with Duke Ellington.
Sinatra retired for the first time in 1971, but came out of retirement two years later and recorded several albums and resumed performing at Caesars Palace, and reached success in 1980 with "New York, New York".
Using his Las Vegas shows as a home base, he toured both within the United States and internationally until shortly before his death in 1998.
Sinatra forged a highly successful career as a film actor. After winning an Academy Award for From Here to Eternity, he starred in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), and received critical acclaim for his performance in The Manchurian Candidate (1962).
He appeared in various musicals such as On the Town (1949), Guys and Dolls (1955), High Society (1956), and Pal Joey (1957), winning another Golden Globe for the latter. Toward the end of his career, he became associated with playing detectives, including the title character in Tony Rome (1967).
Sinatra would later receive the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1971. On television, The Frank Sinatra Show began on ABC in 1950, and he continued to make appearances on television throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Sinatra was also heavily involved with politics from the mid-1940s, and actively campaigned for presidents such as Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
In crime, the FBI investigated Sinatra and his alleged relationship with the Mafia.
While Sinatra never learned how to read music, he had an impressive understanding of it, and he worked very hard from a young age to improve his abilities in all aspects of music. A perfectionist, renowned for his dress sense and performing presence, he always insisted on recording live with his band. His bright blue eyes earned him the popular nickname "Ol' Blue Eyes".
Sinatra led a colorful personal life, and was often involved in turbulent affairs with women, such as with his second wife Ava Gardner. He later married Mia Farrow in 1966 and Barbara Marx in 1976. Sinatra had several violent confrontations, usually with journalists he felt had crossed him, or work bosses with whom he had disagreements.
He was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1983, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1985, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1997. Sinatra was also the recipient of eleven Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Trustees Award, Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. He was collectively included in Time magazine's compilation of the twentieth century's 100 most influential people.
After his death, American music critic Robert Christgau called him "the greatest singer of the 20th century", and he continues to be seen as an iconic figure.
Click here for more about Frank Sinatra.
Grace Kelly
YouTube Video of Grace Kelly in "The Country Girl" (1954)*
(* -- she won an Oscar for Best Actress)
Pictured: Grace Kelly with James Stewart in "Rear Window" (1954) Film by Alfred Hitchcock
Grace Patricia Kelly (November 12, 1929 – September 14, 1982) was an American actress who, after marrying Prince Rainier III, became Princess of Monaco.
After embarking on an acting career in 1950, at the age of 20, Kelly appeared in New York City theatrical productions and more than 40 episodes of live drama productions broadcast during the early 1950s Golden Age of Television.
In October 1953, she gained stardom from her performance in the film "Mogambo" (1953). It won her a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination in 1954.
She had leading roles in five films, including “The Country Girl” (1954) (for which her de-glamorized performance earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress). Other films include "High Noon (1952)", "Dial M for Murder" (1954), Rear Window, To "Catch a Thief" (1955), and "High Society" (1956).
After embarking on an acting career in 1950, at the age of 20, Kelly appeared in New York City theatrical productions and more than 40 episodes of live drama productions broadcast during the early 1950s Golden Age of Television.
In October 1953, she gained stardom from her performance in the film "Mogambo" (1953). It won her a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination in 1954.
She had leading roles in five films, including “The Country Girl” (1954) (for which her de-glamorized performance earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress). Other films include "High Noon (1952)", "Dial M for Murder" (1954), Rear Window, To "Catch a Thief" (1955), and "High Society" (1956).
Alfred Hitchcock
YouTube Video from "The Birds": Crows Attack the Students
Pictured: Movie scenes where Hitchcock makes an unannounced cameo appearance.
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director and producer, often nicknamed "The Master of Suspense". He pioneered many elements of the suspense and psychological thriller genres. He had a successful career in British cinema with both silent films and early talkies and became renowned as England's best director. Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939 and became a US citizen in 1955.
Over a career spanning half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a recognizable directorial style.His stylistic trademarks include the use of camera movement that mimics a person's gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism.[9] In addition, he framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative forms of film editing.[9] His work often features fugitives on the run alongside "icy blonde" female characters.
Many of Hitchcock's films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of murder and other violence. Many of the mysteries, however, are used as decoys or "MacGuffins" that serve the films' themes and the psychological examinations of their characters. Hitchcock's films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and sometimes feature strong sexual overtones.
He became a highly visible public figure through interviews, movie trailers, cameo appearances in his own films, and the ten years in which he hosted the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1978, film critic John Russell Taylor described Hitchcock as "the most universally recognizable person in the world", and "a straightforward middle-class Englishman who just happened to be an artistic genius.
Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as the greatest British filmmaker. He came first in a 2007 poll of film critics in Britain's Daily Telegraph, which said: "Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from viewers) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else."
Prior to 1980, there had long been talk of Hitchcock being knighted for his contribution to film, with film critic Roger Ebert writing: "Other British directors like Sir Carol Reed and Sir Charlie Chaplin were knighted years ago, while Hitchcock, universally considered by film students to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, was passed over", before he received his knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Year Honors. In 2002, the magazine MovieMaker named Hitchcock the most influential filmmaker of all time.
Below are films that Hitchcock produced in 1950 and afterward: click on any link to be taken to a page about that specific link's movie:
Over a career spanning half a century, Hitchcock fashioned for himself a recognizable directorial style.His stylistic trademarks include the use of camera movement that mimics a person's gaze, forcing viewers to engage in a form of voyeurism.[9] In addition, he framed shots to maximise anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative forms of film editing.[9] His work often features fugitives on the run alongside "icy blonde" female characters.
Many of Hitchcock's films have twist endings and thrilling plots featuring depictions of murder and other violence. Many of the mysteries, however, are used as decoys or "MacGuffins" that serve the films' themes and the psychological examinations of their characters. Hitchcock's films also borrow many themes from psychoanalysis and sometimes feature strong sexual overtones.
He became a highly visible public figure through interviews, movie trailers, cameo appearances in his own films, and the ten years in which he hosted the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1978, film critic John Russell Taylor described Hitchcock as "the most universally recognizable person in the world", and "a straightforward middle-class Englishman who just happened to be an artistic genius.
Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in a career spanning six decades and is often regarded as the greatest British filmmaker. He came first in a 2007 poll of film critics in Britain's Daily Telegraph, which said: "Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from viewers) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else."
Prior to 1980, there had long been talk of Hitchcock being knighted for his contribution to film, with film critic Roger Ebert writing: "Other British directors like Sir Carol Reed and Sir Charlie Chaplin were knighted years ago, while Hitchcock, universally considered by film students to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, was passed over", before he received his knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in the 1980 New Year Honors. In 2002, the magazine MovieMaker named Hitchcock the most influential filmmaker of all time.
Below are films that Hitchcock produced in 1950 and afterward: click on any link to be taken to a page about that specific link's movie:
- Stage Fright (1950)
- Strangers on a Train (1951)
- I Confess (1953)
- Dial M for Murder (1954)
- Rear Window (1954)
- To Catch a Thief (1955)
- The Trouble with Harry (1955)
- The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
- The Wrong Man (1956)
- Vertigo (1958)
- North by Northwest (1959)
- Psycho (1960)
- The Birds (1963)
- Marnie (1964)
- Torn Curtain (1966)
- Topaz (1969)
- Frenzy (1972)
- Family Plot (1976)
Burt Lancaster
YouTube Video of Burt Lancaster in the Movie "Elmer Gantry"
Pictured: Burt Lancaster starring in the movies LEFT: “Elmer Gantry” (1960) for which he won the Best Actor Academy award; RIGHT: in "Birdman of Alcatraz" (1962)
Burton Stephen "Burt" Lancaster (November 2, 1913 – October 20, 1994) was an American film actor noted for his athletic physique, blue eyes, and distinctive smile (which he called "The Grin").
After initially building his career in "tough guy" roles, Lancaster abandoned his all-American image in the late 1950s in favor of more complex and challenging parts, and came to be regarded as one of the best motion picture actors in history.
Lancaster was nominated four times for Academy Awards and won once for his work in Elmer Gantry in 1960. He also won a Golden Globe for that performance and BAFTA Awards for The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and Atlantic City (1980).
His production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, was the most successful and innovative star-driven independent production company in Hollywood in the 1950s, making movies such as Marty (1955),Trapeze (1956), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), and Separate Tables (1958).
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Lancaster 19th among the greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema.
After initially building his career in "tough guy" roles, Lancaster abandoned his all-American image in the late 1950s in favor of more complex and challenging parts, and came to be regarded as one of the best motion picture actors in history.
Lancaster was nominated four times for Academy Awards and won once for his work in Elmer Gantry in 1960. He also won a Golden Globe for that performance and BAFTA Awards for The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) and Atlantic City (1980).
His production company, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, was the most successful and innovative star-driven independent production company in Hollywood in the 1950s, making movies such as Marty (1955),Trapeze (1956), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), and Separate Tables (1958).
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Lancaster 19th among the greatest male star of classic Hollywood cinema.
Cary Grant
YouTube Video of Cary Grant with Audrey Hepburn from the Shower Scene in "Charade"
Pictured: Cary Grant in LEFT: “Charade” (1963); RIGHT: “North by Northwest” (1959)
Cary Grant (born Archibald Alexander Leach; January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986) was an English actor who became an American citizen in 1942. Known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanor, and "dashing good looks", Grant is considered one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men.
In lick here for m, the American Film Institute named Grant the second greatest male star of Golden Age Hollywood cinema (after Humphrey Bogart).
Grant was known for comedic and dramatic roles; his best-known films include Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959), and Charade (1963).
He was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor (Penny Serenade (1941) and None but the Lonely Heart (1944)) and five times for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. After his retirement from film in 1966, Grant was presented with an Honorary Oscar by Frank Sinatra at the 42nd Academy Awards in 1970.
Click here for more about Cary Grant.
In lick here for m, the American Film Institute named Grant the second greatest male star of Golden Age Hollywood cinema (after Humphrey Bogart).
Grant was known for comedic and dramatic roles; his best-known films include Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959), and Charade (1963).
He was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor (Penny Serenade (1941) and None but the Lonely Heart (1944)) and five times for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. After his retirement from film in 1966, Grant was presented with an Honorary Oscar by Frank Sinatra at the 42nd Academy Awards in 1970.
Click here for more about Cary Grant.
Charlton Heston
YouTube Video from Ben-Hur Movie CLIP - The Chariot Race (1959) HD
Pictured: Charleton Heston LEFT: as Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956); RIGHT: in “The Planet of the Apes” (1968)
Charlton Heston (born John Charles Carter; October 4, 1923 – April 5, 2008) was an American actor and political activist.
As a Hollywood star he appeared in 100 films over the course of 60 years. He played Moses in the epic film, The Ten Commandments (1956), for which he received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. He also starred in Touch of Evil (1958) with Orson Welles; Ben-Hur, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor (1959); El Cid (1961); and Planet of the Apes (1968).
He also starred in the films The Greatest Show on Earth (1952); Secret of the Incas (1954); The Big Country (1958); and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965).
A supporter of Democratic politicians and civil rights in the 1960s, Heston later became a Republican, founding a conservative political action committee and supporting Ronald Reagan. Heston's most famous role in politics came as the five-term president of the National Rifle Association, from 1998 to 2003.
After being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2003, he retired from both acting and the NRA presidency. Heston died on April 5, 2008, aged 84, from pneumonia.
As a Hollywood star he appeared in 100 films over the course of 60 years. He played Moses in the epic film, The Ten Commandments (1956), for which he received his first Golden Globe Award nomination. He also starred in Touch of Evil (1958) with Orson Welles; Ben-Hur, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor (1959); El Cid (1961); and Planet of the Apes (1968).
He also starred in the films The Greatest Show on Earth (1952); Secret of the Incas (1954); The Big Country (1958); and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965).
A supporter of Democratic politicians and civil rights in the 1960s, Heston later became a Republican, founding a conservative political action committee and supporting Ronald Reagan. Heston's most famous role in politics came as the five-term president of the National Rifle Association, from 1998 to 2003.
After being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2003, he retired from both acting and the NRA presidency. Heston died on April 5, 2008, aged 84, from pneumonia.
Cliff Robertson:
YouTube Video of Cliff Robertson in "Charly"
Pictured: Cliff Robertson in LEFT: “Charly” (1968: as “Charly Gordon, an intellectually disabled man with a strong desire to make himself smarter”, for which he won the Best Actor Oscar); RIGHT: as “Uncle Ben” in “Spiderman” (2002)
Clifford Parker "Cliff" Robertson III (September 9, 1923 – September 10, 2011) was an American actor with a film and television career that spanned half a century. Robertson portrayed a young John F. Kennedy in the 1963 film PT 109, and won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the movie Charly (1968)
On television, he portrayed retired astronaut Buzz Aldrin in the 1976 adaptation of Aldrin's autobiographic Return to Earth, played a fictional character based on Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms in the 1977 miniseries Washington: Behind Closed Doors, and portrayed Henry Ford in the 1987 Ford: The Man and the Machine.
His last well-known film appearances were in 2002 through 2007 as Uncle Ben in the Spider-Man film trilogy.
On television, he portrayed retired astronaut Buzz Aldrin in the 1976 adaptation of Aldrin's autobiographic Return to Earth, played a fictional character based on Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms in the 1977 miniseries Washington: Behind Closed Doors, and portrayed Henry Ford in the 1987 Ford: The Man and the Machine.
His last well-known film appearances were in 2002 through 2007 as Uncle Ben in the Spider-Man film trilogy.
Debbie Reynolds (Mother) and Carrie Fisher (Daughter)
YouTube Video from the "Unsinkable Molly Brown Movie"
YouTube Video: Carrie Fisher 1956 - 2016 (Star Wars Princess Leia)
Pictured: (L) Debbie Reynolds in a Dance Scene from “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” Movie (1964); (R): Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise
[Note: the two screen stars are featured together as mother and daughter in order to provide a footnote in history about the unique timing of their deaths: Carrie Fisher died of cardiac arrest on December 27, 2016, at age 60, four days after experiencing a medical emergency during a transatlantic flight from London to Los Angeles. On the next day (December 28, 2016), Reynolds was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center following a medical emergency, which her son Todd Fisher later described as a "severe stroke". She died that afternoon, one day after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher.]
Mary Frances "Debbie" Reynolds (April 1, 1932 – December 28, 2016) was an American actress, singer, businesswoman, film historian, and humanitarian.
She was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer for her portrayal of Helen Kane in the 1950 film Three Little Words, and her breakout role was her first leading role, as Kathy Selden in Singin' in the Rain (1952).
Other successes include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953), Susan Slept Here (1954), Bundle of Joy (1956 Golden Globe nomination), The Catered Affair (1956 National Board of Review Best Supporting Actress Winner), and Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), in which her performance of the song "Tammy" reached number one on the Billboard music charts. In 1959, she released her first pop music album, titled Debbie.
She starred in How the West Was Won (1963), and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), a
biographical film about the famously boisterous Molly Brown. Her performance as Brown earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Her other films include:
Reynolds was also a cabaret performer. In 1979 she founded the Debbie Reynolds Dance Studio in North Hollywood, which still operates today.
In 1969 she starred on television in the eponymous The Debbie Reynolds Show, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.
In 1973 Reynolds starred in a Broadway revival of the musical Irene and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical. She was also nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her performance in A Gift of Love (1999) and an Emmy Award for playing Grace's mother Bobbi on Will & Grace.
At the turn of the millennium, Reynolds reached a new younger generation with her role as Aggie Cromwell in Disney's Halloweentown series. In 1988 she released her autobiography titled, Debbie: My Life. In 2013, she released a second autobiography, Unsinkable: A Memoir.
Reynolds also had several business ventures, including ownership of a dance studio and a Las Vegas hotel and casino, and she was an avid collector of film memorabilia, beginning with items purchased at the landmark 1970 MGM auction. She served as president of The Thalians, an organization dedicated to mental health causes.
Reynolds continued to perform successfully on stage, television, and film into her eighties.
In January 2015, Reynolds received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.
In 2016 she received the Academy Awards Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.[5] In the same year, a documentary about her life was released titled Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds; the film premiered on HBO on January 7, 2017.
On December 28, 2016, Reynolds was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center following a medical emergency, which her son Todd Fisher later described as a "severe stroke". She died that afternoon, one day after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher.
For additional information about Debbie Reynolds, click on any of the following blue hyperlinks:
___________________________________________________________________________
Carrie Frances Fisher (October 21, 1956 – December 27, 2016) was an American actress, writer and humorist. She first became known for playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars film series. Her other film roles included:
Fisher wrote several semi-autobiographical novels, including Postcards from the Edge and the screenplay for the film of the book, as well as an autobiographical one-woman play, and its non-fiction book, Wishful Drinking, based on the play.
She worked on other writers' screenplays as a script doctor. In later years, she earned praise for speaking publicly about her experiences with bipolar disorder and drug addiction.
Fisher was the daughter of the singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds (above). Fisher and her mother appear in Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, a 2016 documentary about their relationship. It premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.
Fisher died of cardiac arrest on December 27, 2016, at age 60, four days after experiencing a medical emergency during a transatlantic flight from London to Los Angeles. Her final film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, is set for release on December 15, 2017
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for further background about Carrie Fisher:
Mary Frances "Debbie" Reynolds (April 1, 1932 – December 28, 2016) was an American actress, singer, businesswoman, film historian, and humanitarian.
She was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer for her portrayal of Helen Kane in the 1950 film Three Little Words, and her breakout role was her first leading role, as Kathy Selden in Singin' in the Rain (1952).
Other successes include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953), Susan Slept Here (1954), Bundle of Joy (1956 Golden Globe nomination), The Catered Affair (1956 National Board of Review Best Supporting Actress Winner), and Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), in which her performance of the song "Tammy" reached number one on the Billboard music charts. In 1959, she released her first pop music album, titled Debbie.
She starred in How the West Was Won (1963), and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), a
biographical film about the famously boisterous Molly Brown. Her performance as Brown earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Her other films include:
- The Singing Nun (1966),
- Divorce American Style (1967),
- What's the Matter with Helen? (1971),
- Charlotte's Web (1973),
- Mother (1996) (Golden Globe nomination),
- and In & Out (1997).
Reynolds was also a cabaret performer. In 1979 she founded the Debbie Reynolds Dance Studio in North Hollywood, which still operates today.
In 1969 she starred on television in the eponymous The Debbie Reynolds Show, for which she received a Golden Globe nomination.
In 1973 Reynolds starred in a Broadway revival of the musical Irene and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Musical. She was also nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her performance in A Gift of Love (1999) and an Emmy Award for playing Grace's mother Bobbi on Will & Grace.
At the turn of the millennium, Reynolds reached a new younger generation with her role as Aggie Cromwell in Disney's Halloweentown series. In 1988 she released her autobiography titled, Debbie: My Life. In 2013, she released a second autobiography, Unsinkable: A Memoir.
Reynolds also had several business ventures, including ownership of a dance studio and a Las Vegas hotel and casino, and she was an avid collector of film memorabilia, beginning with items purchased at the landmark 1970 MGM auction. She served as president of The Thalians, an organization dedicated to mental health causes.
Reynolds continued to perform successfully on stage, television, and film into her eighties.
In January 2015, Reynolds received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.
In 2016 she received the Academy Awards Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.[5] In the same year, a documentary about her life was released titled Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds; the film premiered on HBO on January 7, 2017.
On December 28, 2016, Reynolds was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center following a medical emergency, which her son Todd Fisher later described as a "severe stroke". She died that afternoon, one day after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher.
For additional information about Debbie Reynolds, click on any of the following blue hyperlinks:
___________________________________________________________________________
Carrie Frances Fisher (October 21, 1956 – December 27, 2016) was an American actress, writer and humorist. She first became known for playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars film series. Her other film roles included:
- Shampoo (1975),
- The Blues Brothers (1980),
- Hannah and Her Sisters (1986),
- The 'Burbs (1989),
- and When Harry Met Sally... (1989).
Fisher wrote several semi-autobiographical novels, including Postcards from the Edge and the screenplay for the film of the book, as well as an autobiographical one-woman play, and its non-fiction book, Wishful Drinking, based on the play.
She worked on other writers' screenplays as a script doctor. In later years, she earned praise for speaking publicly about her experiences with bipolar disorder and drug addiction.
Fisher was the daughter of the singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds (above). Fisher and her mother appear in Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, a 2016 documentary about their relationship. It premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.
Fisher died of cardiac arrest on December 27, 2016, at age 60, four days after experiencing a medical emergency during a transatlantic flight from London to Los Angeles. Her final film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, is set for release on December 15, 2017
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for further background about Carrie Fisher:
Dick Clark
YouTube Video: Dick Clark Interviews Pat Benatar* - American Bandstand 1980
*-Pat Benatar
Pictured: Dick Clark Interviews Madonna
Richard Augustus Wagstaff "Dick" Clark Jr. (November 30, 1929 – April 18, 2012) was an American radio and television personality, as well as a cultural icon who remains best known for hosting American Bandstand from 1957 to 1987.
He also hosted the game show Pyramid and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, which transmitted Times Square's New Year's Eve celebrations.
Clark was also well known for his trademark sign-off, "For now, Dick Clark — so long!", accompanied with a military salute.
As host of American Bandstand, Clark introduced rock & roll to many Americans. The show gave many new music artists their first exposure to national audiences, including Ike and Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Talking Heads and Simon & Garfunkel.
Episodes he hosted were among the first where blacks and whites performed on the same stage and among the first where the live studio audience sat without racial segregation. Singer Paul Anka claimed that Bandstand was responsible for creating a "youth culture." Due to his perennial youthful appearance, Clark was often referred to as "America's oldest teenager".
In his capacity as a businessman, Clark served as Chief Executive Officer of Dick Clark Productions, part of which he sold off in his later years. He also founded the American Bandstand Diner, a restaurant chain modeled after the Hard Rock Cafe.
In 1973, he created and produced the annual American Music Awards show, similar to the Grammy Awards.
Clark suffered a stroke in December 2004. With speech ability still impaired, Clark returned to his New Year's Rockin' Eve show a year later on December 31, 2005. Subsequently, he appeared at the 58th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2006, and every New Year's Rockin' Eve show through the 2011–12 show.
Clark died on April 18, 2012 of a heart attack at the age of 82 following a medical procedure.
During his career, Clark received Emmy Awards (1979, 1983, 1985, and 1986), Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Person of the Year (1980), Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award (1994), Peabody Award (1999), He was also an inductee at several Hall of Fame locations: Hollywood Walk of Fame (1976). National Radio Hall of Fame (1990), Broadcasting Magazine Hall of Fame (1992), Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame (1992), Television Hall of Fame (1992), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1993), and Disney Legends (2013).
He also hosted the game show Pyramid and Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, which transmitted Times Square's New Year's Eve celebrations.
Clark was also well known for his trademark sign-off, "For now, Dick Clark — so long!", accompanied with a military salute.
As host of American Bandstand, Clark introduced rock & roll to many Americans. The show gave many new music artists their first exposure to national audiences, including Ike and Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Talking Heads and Simon & Garfunkel.
Episodes he hosted were among the first where blacks and whites performed on the same stage and among the first where the live studio audience sat without racial segregation. Singer Paul Anka claimed that Bandstand was responsible for creating a "youth culture." Due to his perennial youthful appearance, Clark was often referred to as "America's oldest teenager".
In his capacity as a businessman, Clark served as Chief Executive Officer of Dick Clark Productions, part of which he sold off in his later years. He also founded the American Bandstand Diner, a restaurant chain modeled after the Hard Rock Cafe.
In 1973, he created and produced the annual American Music Awards show, similar to the Grammy Awards.
Clark suffered a stroke in December 2004. With speech ability still impaired, Clark returned to his New Year's Rockin' Eve show a year later on December 31, 2005. Subsequently, he appeared at the 58th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2006, and every New Year's Rockin' Eve show through the 2011–12 show.
Clark died on April 18, 2012 of a heart attack at the age of 82 following a medical procedure.
During his career, Clark received Emmy Awards (1979, 1983, 1985, and 1986), Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Person of the Year (1980), Daytime Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award (1994), Peabody Award (1999), He was also an inductee at several Hall of Fame locations: Hollywood Walk of Fame (1976). National Radio Hall of Fame (1990), Broadcasting Magazine Hall of Fame (1992), Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame (1992), Television Hall of Fame (1992), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1993), and Disney Legends (2013).
Angela Lansbury
YouTube Video of Angela Lansbury performing title song in 1983 Revival of the stage play “Mame”
Pictured: Angela Lansbury as LEFT: the star of the TV Series “Murder, She Wrote” (1984-1996); and RIGHT: the manipulative mother cradling her son’s face in the Movie “Manchurian Candidate” (1962): with Laurence Harvey playing her son).
Dame Angela Brigid Lansbury, (born 16 October 1925) is a British-American actress and singer who has appeared in theater, television and film. Her career has spanned seven decades, much of it based in the United States, and her work has attracted international attention.
Lansbury was born to an upper-middle-class family in central London, the daughter of Northern Irish actress Moyna Macgill and English politician Edgar Lansbury. To escape the Blitz, in 1940 she moved to the United States, there studying acting in New York City. Proceeding to Hollywood in 1942, she signed to MGM and obtained her first film roles, in Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), earning her two Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe Award.
She appeared in eleven further MGM films, mostly in minor roles, and after her contract ended in 1952 she began supplementing her cinematic work with theatrical appearances.
Although largely seen as a B-list star during this period, her appearance in the film The Manchurian Candidate (1962) received widespread acclaim and is cited as being one of her finest performances. Moving into musical theatre, Lansbury finally gained stardom for playing the leading role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966), which earned her a range of awards and established her as a gay icon.
Amid difficulties in her personal life, Lansbury moved from California to County Cork, Ireland in 1970, and continued with a variety of theatrical and cinematic appearances throughout that decade. These included leading roles in the stage musicals Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, and The King and I, as well as in the hit Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).
Moving into television in 1984, she achieved worldwide fame as fictional writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the American whodunit series Murder, She Wrote, which ran for twelve seasons until 1996, becoming one of the longest-running and most popular detective drama series in television history.
Through Corymore Productions, a company that she co-owned with her husband Peter Shaw, Lansbury assumed ownership of the series and was its executive producer for the final four seasons. She also moved into voice work, thereby contributing to animated films like Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991). Since then, she has toured in a variety of international productions and continued to make occasional film appearances.
Lansbury has received an Honorary Oscar and has won five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes and an Olivier Award. She has also been nominated for numerous other industry awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on three occasions, and various Primetime Emmy Awards on eighteen occasions. She has been the subject of three biographies.
Lansbury was born to an upper-middle-class family in central London, the daughter of Northern Irish actress Moyna Macgill and English politician Edgar Lansbury. To escape the Blitz, in 1940 she moved to the United States, there studying acting in New York City. Proceeding to Hollywood in 1942, she signed to MGM and obtained her first film roles, in Gaslight (1944) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), earning her two Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe Award.
She appeared in eleven further MGM films, mostly in minor roles, and after her contract ended in 1952 she began supplementing her cinematic work with theatrical appearances.
Although largely seen as a B-list star during this period, her appearance in the film The Manchurian Candidate (1962) received widespread acclaim and is cited as being one of her finest performances. Moving into musical theatre, Lansbury finally gained stardom for playing the leading role in the Broadway musical Mame (1966), which earned her a range of awards and established her as a gay icon.
Amid difficulties in her personal life, Lansbury moved from California to County Cork, Ireland in 1970, and continued with a variety of theatrical and cinematic appearances throughout that decade. These included leading roles in the stage musicals Gypsy, Sweeney Todd, and The King and I, as well as in the hit Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).
Moving into television in 1984, she achieved worldwide fame as fictional writer and sleuth Jessica Fletcher in the American whodunit series Murder, She Wrote, which ran for twelve seasons until 1996, becoming one of the longest-running and most popular detective drama series in television history.
Through Corymore Productions, a company that she co-owned with her husband Peter Shaw, Lansbury assumed ownership of the series and was its executive producer for the final four seasons. She also moved into voice work, thereby contributing to animated films like Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991). Since then, she has toured in a variety of international productions and continued to make occasional film appearances.
Lansbury has received an Honorary Oscar and has won five Tony Awards, six Golden Globes and an Olivier Award. She has also been nominated for numerous other industry awards, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress on three occasions, and various Primetime Emmy Awards on eighteen occasions. She has been the subject of three biographies.
Doris Day
YouTube Video of "Pillow Talk" (1959 Movie) Starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson*
*- Rock Hudson
Pictured: Doris Day in LEFT: “The Doris Day Show” (CBS: 1968-1973); RIGHT: “The Pajama Game” (1957 Movie)
Doris Day (born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff; April 3, 1922 or 1924) is an American actress, singer, and animal rights activist.
Day began her career as a big band singer in 1939, and is well known for her string of romantic comedies with leading man Rock Hudson including 'Pillow Talk' and 'Lover Come Back' in the early 1960s.
Her popularity began to rise after her first hit recording "Sentimental Journey", in 1945. After leaving Les Brown & His Band of Renown to embark on a solo career, Day started her long-lasting partnership with Columbia Records, which remained her only recording label. The contract lasted from 1947 to 1967 and included more than 650 recordings, making Day one of the most popular and acclaimed singers of the 20th century.
In 1948, after being persuaded by songwriters Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne and by Al Levy, her agent at the time, she auditioned for film director Michael Curtiz, which led to her being cast as the female lead in Romance on the High Seas.
Over the course of her career, Day appeared in 39 films. She was ranked the biggest box-office star, the only woman appearing on that list in the era, for four years (1960, 1962, 1963 and 1964), ranking in the top 10 for ten years (1951–52, and 1959–66). She became the top-ranking female box-office star of all time and is currently ranked sixth among the top 10 box office performers (male and female), as of 2012.
Day received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Pillow Talk, won three Henrietta Awards (World Film Favorite), and received the Los Angeles Film Critics Association's Career Achievement Award. In 1989, she received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures. She made her last film in 1968.
She received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Legend Award from the Society of Singers.
In 2011, she released her 29th studio album, My Heart, which debuted at No. 9 on the UK Top 40 charts. As of January 2014, Day is the oldest living artist to score a UK Top 10 with an album featuring new material.
Her strong commitment to animal welfare began in 1971, when she co-founded Actors and Others for Animals. She started her own non-profit organization in the 1970s, the Doris Day Animal Foundation and, later, the Doris Day Animal League (DDAL). Establishing the annual observance Spay Day USA in 1995, the Doris Day Animal League now partners with The Humane Society of the United States and continues to be a leading advocacy organization.
In 2004, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in recognition of her distinguished service to the country. Day is retired from acting and performing, but has continued her work in animal rights and welfare causes.
Day began her career as a big band singer in 1939, and is well known for her string of romantic comedies with leading man Rock Hudson including 'Pillow Talk' and 'Lover Come Back' in the early 1960s.
Her popularity began to rise after her first hit recording "Sentimental Journey", in 1945. After leaving Les Brown & His Band of Renown to embark on a solo career, Day started her long-lasting partnership with Columbia Records, which remained her only recording label. The contract lasted from 1947 to 1967 and included more than 650 recordings, making Day one of the most popular and acclaimed singers of the 20th century.
In 1948, after being persuaded by songwriters Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne and by Al Levy, her agent at the time, she auditioned for film director Michael Curtiz, which led to her being cast as the female lead in Romance on the High Seas.
Over the course of her career, Day appeared in 39 films. She was ranked the biggest box-office star, the only woman appearing on that list in the era, for four years (1960, 1962, 1963 and 1964), ranking in the top 10 for ten years (1951–52, and 1959–66). She became the top-ranking female box-office star of all time and is currently ranked sixth among the top 10 box office performers (male and female), as of 2012.
Day received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Pillow Talk, won three Henrietta Awards (World Film Favorite), and received the Los Angeles Film Critics Association's Career Achievement Award. In 1989, she received the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures. She made her last film in 1968.
She received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a Legend Award from the Society of Singers.
In 2011, she released her 29th studio album, My Heart, which debuted at No. 9 on the UK Top 40 charts. As of January 2014, Day is the oldest living artist to score a UK Top 10 with an album featuring new material.
Her strong commitment to animal welfare began in 1971, when she co-founded Actors and Others for Animals. She started her own non-profit organization in the 1970s, the Doris Day Animal Foundation and, later, the Doris Day Animal League (DDAL). Establishing the annual observance Spay Day USA in 1995, the Doris Day Animal League now partners with The Humane Society of the United States and continues to be a leading advocacy organization.
In 2004, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush in recognition of her distinguished service to the country. Day is retired from acting and performing, but has continued her work in animal rights and welfare causes.
Elizabeth Taylor
YouTube Video from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" - Getting Angry, Baby?
Pictured: LEFT: As a child actress in “National Velvet” (1944); RIGHT in “Butterfield 8” (1960)
Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was a British-American actress, businesswoman and humanitarian.
She began as a child actress in the early 1940s, and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She continued her career successfully into the 1960s, and remained a well-known public figure for the rest of her life. The American Film Institute named her the seventh greatest female screen legend in 1999.
Born in London to American parents, Taylor and her family moved to Los Angeles in 1939, where she was given a film contract by Universal Pictures. Her screen debut was in a minor role in There's One Born Every Minute (1942), but Universal terminated her contract after a year.
Taylor was then signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and had her breakthrough role in National Velvet (1944), becoming one of the studio's most popular teenage stars. She made the transition to adult roles in the early 1950s, when she starred in the comedy Father of the Bride (1950) and received critical acclaim for her performance in the tragic drama A Place in the Sun (1951).
Despite being one of MGM's most bankable stars, Taylor wished to end her career in the early 1950s, as she resented the studio's control and disliked many of the films she was assigned to. She began receiving better roles in the mid-1950s, beginning with the epic drama Giant (1956), and starred in several critically and commercially successful films in the following years.
These included two film adaptations of plays by Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959); Taylor won a Golden Globe for Best Actress for the latter.
Although she disliked her role in BUtterfield 8 (1960), her last film for MGM, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
She was next paid a record-breaking $1 million to play the title role in the historical epic Cleopatra (1963), the most expensive film made up to that point.
During the filming, Taylor began an extramarital affair with co-star Richard Burton, which caused a scandal. Despite public disapproval, she and Burton continued their relationship and were married in 1964.
Dubbed "Liz and Dick" by the media, they starred in eleven films together, including The V.I.P.s (1963), The Sandpiper (1965), The Taming of the Shrew (1967) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).
Taylor received the best reviews of her career for Woolf, winning her second Academy Award and several other awards for her performance.
Taylor's acting career began to decline in the late 1960s, although she continued starring in films until the mid-1970s, after which she focused on supporting the career of her sixth husband, Senator John Warner.
In the 1980s, she acted in her first substantial stage roles and in several television films and series, and became the first celebrity to launch a perfume brand.
Taylor was also one of the first celebrities to take part in HIV/AIDS activism. She co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) in 1985 and The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991.
From the early 1990s until her death, she dedicated her time to philanthropy. She received several accolades for it, including the Presidential Citizens Medal.
Taylor's personal life was subject to constant media attention throughout her life. She was married eight times to seven men, endured serious illnesses, and led a jet set lifestyle, including collecting one of the most expensive private collections of jewelry. After many years of ill health, Taylor died from congestive heart failure at the age of 79 in 2011.
She began as a child actress in the early 1940s, and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She continued her career successfully into the 1960s, and remained a well-known public figure for the rest of her life. The American Film Institute named her the seventh greatest female screen legend in 1999.
Born in London to American parents, Taylor and her family moved to Los Angeles in 1939, where she was given a film contract by Universal Pictures. Her screen debut was in a minor role in There's One Born Every Minute (1942), but Universal terminated her contract after a year.
Taylor was then signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and had her breakthrough role in National Velvet (1944), becoming one of the studio's most popular teenage stars. She made the transition to adult roles in the early 1950s, when she starred in the comedy Father of the Bride (1950) and received critical acclaim for her performance in the tragic drama A Place in the Sun (1951).
Despite being one of MGM's most bankable stars, Taylor wished to end her career in the early 1950s, as she resented the studio's control and disliked many of the films she was assigned to. She began receiving better roles in the mid-1950s, beginning with the epic drama Giant (1956), and starred in several critically and commercially successful films in the following years.
These included two film adaptations of plays by Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959); Taylor won a Golden Globe for Best Actress for the latter.
Although she disliked her role in BUtterfield 8 (1960), her last film for MGM, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
She was next paid a record-breaking $1 million to play the title role in the historical epic Cleopatra (1963), the most expensive film made up to that point.
During the filming, Taylor began an extramarital affair with co-star Richard Burton, which caused a scandal. Despite public disapproval, she and Burton continued their relationship and were married in 1964.
Dubbed "Liz and Dick" by the media, they starred in eleven films together, including The V.I.P.s (1963), The Sandpiper (1965), The Taming of the Shrew (1967) and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).
Taylor received the best reviews of her career for Woolf, winning her second Academy Award and several other awards for her performance.
Taylor's acting career began to decline in the late 1960s, although she continued starring in films until the mid-1970s, after which she focused on supporting the career of her sixth husband, Senator John Warner.
In the 1980s, she acted in her first substantial stage roles and in several television films and series, and became the first celebrity to launch a perfume brand.
Taylor was also one of the first celebrities to take part in HIV/AIDS activism. She co-founded the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) in 1985 and The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation in 1991.
From the early 1990s until her death, she dedicated her time to philanthropy. She received several accolades for it, including the Presidential Citizens Medal.
Taylor's personal life was subject to constant media attention throughout her life. She was married eight times to seven men, endured serious illnesses, and led a jet set lifestyle, including collecting one of the most expensive private collections of jewelry. After many years of ill health, Taylor died from congestive heart failure at the age of 79 in 2011.
Ernest Borgnine
YouTube Video of Ernest Borgnine from the Movie "Marty"
Pictured: Ernest Borgine LEFT: as “Marty” in the 1955 movie of the same name; RIGHT: in a 1963 episode of the ABC TV Series “McHale’s Navy”
Ermes Effron Borgnino, known as Ernest Borgnine (January 24, 1917 – July 8, 2012) was an American film and television actor whose career spanned more than six decades. He was an unconventional lead in many films of the 1950s, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1955 for Marty.
On television, he played Quinton McHale in the 1962–1966 series McHale's Navy and co-starred in the mid-1980s action series Airwolf, in addition to a wide variety of other roles.
Borgnine earned an Emmy Award nomination at age 92 for his work on the series ER. He was also known for being the original voice of Mermaid Man on SpongeBob SquarePants from 1999 to 2012.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Ernest Borgnine received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6324 Hollywood Blvd. In 1996, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
He was honored with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award at the 17th Screen Actors Guild Awards, held January 30, 2011.
On television, he played Quinton McHale in the 1962–1966 series McHale's Navy and co-starred in the mid-1980s action series Airwolf, in addition to a wide variety of other roles.
Borgnine earned an Emmy Award nomination at age 92 for his work on the series ER. He was also known for being the original voice of Mermaid Man on SpongeBob SquarePants from 1999 to 2012.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Ernest Borgnine received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6324 Hollywood Blvd. In 1996, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
He was honored with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award at the 17th Screen Actors Guild Awards, held January 30, 2011.
Gene Hackman
YouTube Video: The French Connection car chase
Pictured: Gene Hackman in LEFT: (Pictured with Warren Beatty) as Buck Barrow in the 1967 Movie "Bonnie and Clyde"; RIGHT: as the villain Lex Luther in the 1978 movie "Superman" (played by Christopher Reeve)
Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman (born January 30, 1930) is an American retired actor and novelist.
In a career spanning five decades, Hackman has been nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two for best actor in The French Connection and best supporting actor in Unforgiven. In addition, Hackman has won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs.
He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde.
His major subsequent films include,
On July 7, 2004, Hackman gave a rare interview to Larry King, in which Hackman announced that he had no future film projects lined up and believed his acting career was over. In 2008, while promoting his third novel, Hackman confirmed that he had retired from acting. When asked during a GQ interview in 2011 if he would ever come out of retirement to do one more film, Hackman said he might consider it "if I could do it in my own house, maybe, without them disturbing anything and just one or two people."
Together with undersea archaeologist Daniel Lenihan, Hackman has written three historical fiction novels: Wake of the Perdido Star (1999), a sea adventure of the 19th century; Justice for None (2004), a Depression-era tale of murder; and Escape from Andersonville (2008) about a prison escape during the Civil War. His first solo effort, a story of love and revenge set in the Old West titled Payback at Morning Peak, was released in 2011. A police thriller, Pursuit, followed in 2013.
In a career spanning five decades, Hackman has been nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two for best actor in The French Connection and best supporting actor in Unforgiven. In addition, Hackman has won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs.
He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde.
His major subsequent films include,
- The French Connection (1971)
- French Connection II (1975)
- The Poseidon Adventure (1972);
- The Conversation (1974);
- Superman (1978);
- Hoosiers (1986);
- Mississippi Burning (1988);
- Unforgiven (1992);
- The Firm (1993);
- Crimson Tide (1995);
- Get Shorty (1995);
- The Birdcage (1996);
- Enemy of the State (1998);
- Behind Enemy Lines (2001);
- and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).
On July 7, 2004, Hackman gave a rare interview to Larry King, in which Hackman announced that he had no future film projects lined up and believed his acting career was over. In 2008, while promoting his third novel, Hackman confirmed that he had retired from acting. When asked during a GQ interview in 2011 if he would ever come out of retirement to do one more film, Hackman said he might consider it "if I could do it in my own house, maybe, without them disturbing anything and just one or two people."
Together with undersea archaeologist Daniel Lenihan, Hackman has written three historical fiction novels: Wake of the Perdido Star (1999), a sea adventure of the 19th century; Justice for None (2004), a Depression-era tale of murder; and Escape from Andersonville (2008) about a prison escape during the Civil War. His first solo effort, a story of love and revenge set in the Old West titled Payback at Morning Peak, was released in 2011. A police thriller, Pursuit, followed in 2013.
James Gandolfini
YouTube Video of James Gandolfini Interview on CBS "60 Minutes"
James Joseph Gandolfini, Jr. (September 18, 1961 – June 19, 2013) was an American actor and producer.
Gandolfini was known for his role as Tony Soprano, an Italian American Mafia boss, in the HBO series The Sopranos. He garnered enormous praise for this performance, winning three Emmy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and one Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series.
His other notable roles included mob henchman Virgil in True Romance (1993), enforcer and stuntman Bear in Get Shorty (1995), impulsive "Wild Thing" Carol in Where the Wild Things Are (2009), and Albert in Enough Said (2013).
After finishing The Sopranos, Gandolfini produced the documentary Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq (2007), in which he interviewed injured Iraq War veterans. His second documentary, Wartorn: 1861–2010 (2010), analyzed the impact of posttraumatic stress disorder on soldiers and families throughout several wars in American history from 1861 to 2010.
Gandolfini was known for his role as Tony Soprano, an Italian American Mafia boss, in the HBO series The Sopranos. He garnered enormous praise for this performance, winning three Emmy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and one Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series.
His other notable roles included mob henchman Virgil in True Romance (1993), enforcer and stuntman Bear in Get Shorty (1995), impulsive "Wild Thing" Carol in Where the Wild Things Are (2009), and Albert in Enough Said (2013).
After finishing The Sopranos, Gandolfini produced the documentary Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq (2007), in which he interviewed injured Iraq War veterans. His second documentary, Wartorn: 1861–2010 (2010), analyzed the impact of posttraumatic stress disorder on soldiers and families throughout several wars in American history from 1861 to 2010.
James Garner
YouTube Video of James Garner as "Maverick"
Pictured: James Garner in LEFT: “Maverick” TV Series; and RIGHT: “The Rockford Files” TV Series
James Garner (born James Scott Bumgarner; April 7, 1928 – July 19, 2014) was an American actor, producer, singer, voice artist, and comedian.
He starred in several television series over more than 5 decades, including such popular roles as Bret Maverick in the 1950s western comedy series Maverick and Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files, and played leading roles in more than 50 theatrical films, including,
Nominated for 15 Emmy Awards during his television career, Garner received the award in 1977 as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (The Rockford Files) and in 1987 as executive producer of Promise.
For his contribution to the film and television industry, Garner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard). In 1990, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
He was also inducted into the Television Hall of Fame that same year.
In February 2005, he received the Screen Actors Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role that year, for The Notebook.
When Morgan Freeman won that prize for his work in Million Dollar Baby, he led the audience in a sing-along of the original Maverick theme song, written by David Buttolph and Paul Francis Webster.
In 2010, the Television Critics Association gave Garner its annual Career Achievement Award.
He starred in several television series over more than 5 decades, including such popular roles as Bret Maverick in the 1950s western comedy series Maverick and Jim Rockford in The Rockford Files, and played leading roles in more than 50 theatrical films, including,
- The Great Escape (1963) with Steve McQueen,
- Paddy Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily (1964),
- Grand Prix (1966),
- Blake Edwards' Victor Victoria (1982),
- Murphy's Romance (1985), for which he received an Academy Award nomination,
- Space Cowboys (2000) with Clint Eastwood,
- and The Notebook (2004).
Nominated for 15 Emmy Awards during his television career, Garner received the award in 1977 as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (The Rockford Files) and in 1987 as executive producer of Promise.
For his contribution to the film and television industry, Garner received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard). In 1990, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
He was also inducted into the Television Hall of Fame that same year.
In February 2005, he received the Screen Actors Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award. He was also nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role that year, for The Notebook.
When Morgan Freeman won that prize for his work in Million Dollar Baby, he led the audience in a sing-along of the original Maverick theme song, written by David Buttolph and Paul Francis Webster.
In 2010, the Television Critics Association gave Garner its annual Career Achievement Award.
George C. Scott
YouTube Video of George C. Scott as "Patton: I Won't Have Cowards in My Army" (1970)
Pictured: George C. Scott in LEFT: “The Hustler” (1961 with Jackie Gleason); and RIGHT: as General Buck Turgidson in “Dr. Strangelove” (1964)
George Campbell Scott (October 18, 1927 – September 22, 1999) was an American stage and film actor, director, and producer. He was best known for his stage work, as well as his portrayal of General George S. Patton in the film Patton, as General Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, and as Ebenezer Scrooge in Clive Donner's 1984 film A Christmas Carol.
He was the first actor to refuse the Academy Award for Best Actor (for Patton in 1970), having warned the academy beforehand that he would refuse it on philosophical grounds.
He was the first actor to refuse the Academy Award for Best Actor (for Patton in 1970), having warned the academy beforehand that he would refuse it on philosophical grounds.
James Stewart
YouTube Video: Rear Window | Caught In The Act
YouTube Video: Top 10 James Stewart Movies
YouTube Video: James Stewart -- 52 Highest Rated Movies
Pictured: James Stewart in LEFT: “Rear Window” (1954); RIGHT: as (in real life) an Air Force Brigadier General serving in World War II. and the Vietnam War
James Maitland Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997), also known as Jimmy Stewart (although he seldom used that name in formal credits), was an American General in the USAF and actor, known for his distinctive drawl and down-to-earth persona. He starred in many films that are considered to be classics, and is known for portraying an American middle-class man struggling with a crisis.
Stewart was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition for The Philadelphia Story (1940) and receiving an Academy Lifetime Achievement award.
Stewart was named the third greatest male screen legend of the Golden Age Hollywood by the American Film Institute.
He was a major Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract star. He also had a noted military career and was a World War II and Vietnam War veteran, who rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the United States Air Force Reserve.
Stewart was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition for The Philadelphia Story (1940) and receiving an Academy Lifetime Achievement award.
Stewart was named the third greatest male screen legend of the Golden Age Hollywood by the American Film Institute.
He was a major Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract star. He also had a noted military career and was a World War II and Vietnam War veteran, who rose to the rank of Brigadier General in the United States Air Force Reserve.
Gregory Peck
YouTube Video in "To Kill a Mockingbird"
Pictured: Gregory Peck in LEFT: “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962) and RIGHT: “Cape Fear” (1962)
Eldred Gregory Peck (April 5, 1916 – June 12, 2003) was an American actor who was one of the most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s.
Peck continued to play major film roles until the late 1970s. His performance as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor.
He had also been nominated for an Oscar for the same category for:
Other notable films he appeared in include
President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among Greatest Male Stars of Classic Hollywood cinema, ranking at No. 12. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1983.
Peck's first film, Days of Glory, was released in 1944. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor five times, four of which came in his first five years of film acting: for The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), The Yearling (1946), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and Twelve O'Clock High (1949).
The Keys of the Kingdom emphasized his stately presence. As the farmer Ezra "Penny" Baxter in The Yearling, his good-humored warmth and affection toward the characters playing his son and wife confounded critics who had been insisting he was a lifeless performer.
Duel in the Sun (1946) showed his range as an actor in his first "against type" role as a cruel, libidinous gunslinger. Gentleman's Agreement established his power in the "social conscience" genre in a film that took on the deep-seated but subtle antisemitism of mid-century corporate America. Twelve O'Clock High was the first of many successful war films in which Peck embodied the brave, effective, yet human fighting man.
Among his other films were
Peck and Hepburn were close friends until her death; Peck even introduced her to her first husband, Mel Ferrer. Peck once again teamed up with director William Wyler in the epic Western The Big Country (1958), which he co-produced.
Peck won the Academy Award with his fifth nomination, playing Atticus Finch, a Depression-era lawyer and widowed father, in a film adaptation of the Harper Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Released in 1962 during the height of the US civil rights movement in the South, this film and his role were Peck's favorites. In 2003, Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch was named the greatest film hero of the past 100 years by the American Film Institute.
In the 1980s, Peck moved to television, where he starred in the mini-series The Blue and the Gray, playing Abraham Lincoln. He also starred with Christopher Plummer, John Gielgud, and Barbara Bouchet in the television film The Scarlet and The Black, about Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, a real-life Catholic priest in the Vatican who smuggled Jews and other refugees away from the Nazis during World War II.
Peck, Mitchum, and Martin Balsam all had roles in the 1991 remake of Cape Fear directed by Martin Scorsese. All three were in the original 1962 version. In the remake, Peck played Max Cady's lawyer.
His last prominent film role also came in 1991, in Other People's Money, directed by Norman Jewison and based on the stage play of that name. Peck played a business owner trying to save his company against a hostile takeover bid by a Wall Street liquidator played by Danny DeVito.
Peck retired from active film-making at that point. Peck spent the last few years of his life touring the world doing speaking engagements in which he would show clips from his movies, reminisce, and take questions from the audience.
He did come out of retirement for a 1998 miniseries version of one of his most famous films, Moby Dick, portraying Father Mapple (played by Orson Welles in the 1956 version), with Patrick Stewart as Captain Ahab, the role Peck played in the earlier film. It would be his final performance, and it won him the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film.
Peck was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning once. He was nominated for The Keys of the Kingdom (1945), The Yearling (1946), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and Twelve O'Clock High (1949). He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1968, he received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Peck also received many Golden Globe awards. He won in 1947 for The Yearling, in 1963 for To Kill a Mockingbird, and in 1999 for the TV miniseries Moby Dick. He was nominated in 1978 for The Boys from Brazil. He received the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1969, and was given the Henrietta Award in 1951 and 1955 for World Film Favorite – Male.
In 1969, US President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. In 1971, the Screen Actors Guild presented Peck with the SAG Life Achievement Award. In 1989, the American Film Institute gave Peck the AFI Life Achievement Award. He received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema in 1996.
In 1986, Peck was honored alongside actress Gene Tierney with the first Donostia Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain for their body of work.
In 1987, Peck was awarded the George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.
In 1993, Peck was awarded with an Honorary Golden Bear at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival.
In 1998, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
In 2000, Peck was made a Doctor of Letters by the National University of Ireland. He was a founding patron of the University College Dublin School of Film, where he persuaded Martin Scorsese to become an honorary patron. Peck was also chairman of the American Cancer Society for a short time.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Gregory Peck has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6100 Hollywood Blvd. In November 2005, the star was stolen, and has since been replaced.
On April 28, 2011, a ceremony was held in Beverly Hills, California, celebrating the first day of issue of a U.S. postage stamp commemorating Peck. The stamp is the 17th commemorative stamp in the Legends of Hollywood series.
On April 5, 2016, the 100th anniversary of Peck's birth, Turner Classic Movies honored the actor by showing several of his films.
Peck continued to play major film roles until the late 1970s. His performance as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird earned him the Academy Award for Best Actor.
He had also been nominated for an Oscar for the same category for:
- The Keys of the Kingdom (1944),
- The Yearling (1946),
- Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and
- Twelve O'Clock High (1949).
Other notable films he appeared in include
- Spellbound (1945),
- The Paradine Case (1947),
- Roman Holiday (1953),
- Moby Dick (1956, and its 1998 miniseries),
- The Guns of Navarone (1961),
- Cape Fear (1962, and its 1991 remake),
- How the West Was Won (1962),
- The Omen (1976) and
- The Boys from Brazil (1978).
President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1969 for his lifetime humanitarian efforts. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Peck among Greatest Male Stars of Classic Hollywood cinema, ranking at No. 12. He was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1983.
Peck's first film, Days of Glory, was released in 1944. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor five times, four of which came in his first five years of film acting: for The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), The Yearling (1946), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and Twelve O'Clock High (1949).
The Keys of the Kingdom emphasized his stately presence. As the farmer Ezra "Penny" Baxter in The Yearling, his good-humored warmth and affection toward the characters playing his son and wife confounded critics who had been insisting he was a lifeless performer.
Duel in the Sun (1946) showed his range as an actor in his first "against type" role as a cruel, libidinous gunslinger. Gentleman's Agreement established his power in the "social conscience" genre in a film that took on the deep-seated but subtle antisemitism of mid-century corporate America. Twelve O'Clock High was the first of many successful war films in which Peck embodied the brave, effective, yet human fighting man.
Among his other films were
- Spellbound (1945),
- The Paradine Case (1947),
- The Gunfighter (1950),
- Moby Dick (1956),
- The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956),
- On the Beach (1959), which brought to life the terrors of global nuclear war,
- The Guns of Navarone (1961), and
- Roman Holiday (1953), with Audrey Hepburn in her Oscar-winning role.
Peck and Hepburn were close friends until her death; Peck even introduced her to her first husband, Mel Ferrer. Peck once again teamed up with director William Wyler in the epic Western The Big Country (1958), which he co-produced.
Peck won the Academy Award with his fifth nomination, playing Atticus Finch, a Depression-era lawyer and widowed father, in a film adaptation of the Harper Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Released in 1962 during the height of the US civil rights movement in the South, this film and his role were Peck's favorites. In 2003, Peck's portrayal of Atticus Finch was named the greatest film hero of the past 100 years by the American Film Institute.
In the 1980s, Peck moved to television, where he starred in the mini-series The Blue and the Gray, playing Abraham Lincoln. He also starred with Christopher Plummer, John Gielgud, and Barbara Bouchet in the television film The Scarlet and The Black, about Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, a real-life Catholic priest in the Vatican who smuggled Jews and other refugees away from the Nazis during World War II.
Peck, Mitchum, and Martin Balsam all had roles in the 1991 remake of Cape Fear directed by Martin Scorsese. All three were in the original 1962 version. In the remake, Peck played Max Cady's lawyer.
His last prominent film role also came in 1991, in Other People's Money, directed by Norman Jewison and based on the stage play of that name. Peck played a business owner trying to save his company against a hostile takeover bid by a Wall Street liquidator played by Danny DeVito.
Peck retired from active film-making at that point. Peck spent the last few years of his life touring the world doing speaking engagements in which he would show clips from his movies, reminisce, and take questions from the audience.
He did come out of retirement for a 1998 miniseries version of one of his most famous films, Moby Dick, portraying Father Mapple (played by Orson Welles in the 1956 version), with Patrick Stewart as Captain Ahab, the role Peck played in the earlier film. It would be his final performance, and it won him the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film.
Peck was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning once. He was nominated for The Keys of the Kingdom (1945), The Yearling (1946), Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and Twelve O'Clock High (1949). He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird. In 1968, he received the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Peck also received many Golden Globe awards. He won in 1947 for The Yearling, in 1963 for To Kill a Mockingbird, and in 1999 for the TV miniseries Moby Dick. He was nominated in 1978 for The Boys from Brazil. He received the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1969, and was given the Henrietta Award in 1951 and 1955 for World Film Favorite – Male.
In 1969, US President Lyndon Johnson honored Peck with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. In 1971, the Screen Actors Guild presented Peck with the SAG Life Achievement Award. In 1989, the American Film Institute gave Peck the AFI Life Achievement Award. He received the Crystal Globe award for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema in 1996.
In 1986, Peck was honored alongside actress Gene Tierney with the first Donostia Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain for their body of work.
In 1987, Peck was awarded the George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film.
In 1993, Peck was awarded with an Honorary Golden Bear at the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival.
In 1998, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.
In 2000, Peck was made a Doctor of Letters by the National University of Ireland. He was a founding patron of the University College Dublin School of Film, where he persuaded Martin Scorsese to become an honorary patron. Peck was also chairman of the American Cancer Society for a short time.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Gregory Peck has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6100 Hollywood Blvd. In November 2005, the star was stolen, and has since been replaced.
On April 28, 2011, a ceremony was held in Beverly Hills, California, celebrating the first day of issue of a U.S. postage stamp commemorating Peck. The stamp is the 17th commemorative stamp in the Legends of Hollywood series.
On April 5, 2016, the 100th anniversary of Peck's birth, Turner Classic Movies honored the actor by showing several of his films.
Orson Welles
YouTube Video of Orson Welles - Interview (1974)
Pictured: Orson Welles in LEFT: “ Touch of Evil” (1958) with Marlene Dietrich; RIGHT: “Chimes at Midnight” (1965)
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American actor, director, writer, and producer who worked in theater, radio, and film.
He is remembered for his innovative work in all three: in theater, most notably Caesar (1937), a Broadway adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar; in radio, the 1938 broadcast "The War of the Worlds", one of the most famous in the history of radio; and in film, Citizen Kane (1941), consistently ranked as one of the all-time greatest films.
Welles directed a number of high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project in his early twenties, including an innovative adaptation of Macbeth with an entirely African American cast, and the political musical The Cradle Will Rock.
In 1937 he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented an acclaimed series of productions on Broadway through 1941.
Welles found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds performed for his radio anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air. It reportedly caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was occurring. Although some contemporary sources claim these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to notoriety.
His first film was Citizen Kane (1941), which he co-wrote, produced, directed, and starred in as Charles Foster Kane. Welles was an outsider to the studio system and directed only 13 full-length films in his career. He struggled for creative control on his projects early on with the major film studios and later in life with a variety of independent financiers, and his films were either heavily edited or remained unreleased.
His distinctive directorial style featured layered and nonlinear narrative forms, innovative uses of lighting such as chiaroscuro, unusual camera angles, sound techniques borrowed from radio, deep focus shots, and long takes. He has been praised as a major creative force and as "the ultimate auteur".
Welles followed up Citizen Kane with critically acclaimed films including The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942 and Touch of Evil in 1958. Although these three are his most acclaimed films, critics have argued other works of his, such as The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Chimes at Midnight (1966), are under-appreciated.
In 2002, Welles was voted the greatest film director of all time in two British Film Institute polls among directors and critics, and a wide survey of critical consensus, best-of lists, and historical retrospectives calls him the most acclaimed director of all time.
Well known for his baritone voice, Welles was a well-regarded actor in radio and film, a celebrated Shakespearean stage actor, and an accomplished magician noted for presenting troop variety shows in the war years.
He is remembered for his innovative work in all three: in theater, most notably Caesar (1937), a Broadway adaptation of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar; in radio, the 1938 broadcast "The War of the Worlds", one of the most famous in the history of radio; and in film, Citizen Kane (1941), consistently ranked as one of the all-time greatest films.
Welles directed a number of high-profile stage productions for the Federal Theatre Project in his early twenties, including an innovative adaptation of Macbeth with an entirely African American cast, and the political musical The Cradle Will Rock.
In 1937 he and John Houseman founded the Mercury Theatre, an independent repertory theatre company that presented an acclaimed series of productions on Broadway through 1941.
Welles found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds performed for his radio anthology series The Mercury Theatre on the Air. It reportedly caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by extraterrestrial beings was occurring. Although some contemporary sources claim these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to notoriety.
His first film was Citizen Kane (1941), which he co-wrote, produced, directed, and starred in as Charles Foster Kane. Welles was an outsider to the studio system and directed only 13 full-length films in his career. He struggled for creative control on his projects early on with the major film studios and later in life with a variety of independent financiers, and his films were either heavily edited or remained unreleased.
His distinctive directorial style featured layered and nonlinear narrative forms, innovative uses of lighting such as chiaroscuro, unusual camera angles, sound techniques borrowed from radio, deep focus shots, and long takes. He has been praised as a major creative force and as "the ultimate auteur".
Welles followed up Citizen Kane with critically acclaimed films including The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942 and Touch of Evil in 1958. Although these three are his most acclaimed films, critics have argued other works of his, such as The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and Chimes at Midnight (1966), are under-appreciated.
In 2002, Welles was voted the greatest film director of all time in two British Film Institute polls among directors and critics, and a wide survey of critical consensus, best-of lists, and historical retrospectives calls him the most acclaimed director of all time.
Well known for his baritone voice, Welles was a well-regarded actor in radio and film, a celebrated Shakespearean stage actor, and an accomplished magician noted for presenting troop variety shows in the war years.
Heath Ledger
YouTube Video of Heath Ledger as the Joker - Incredible Acting
Pictured: Heath Ledger in various movie roles he played
Heathcliff Andrew Ledger (4 April 1979 – 22 January 2008) was an Australian actor and director. After performing roles in Australian television and film during the 1990s, Ledger left for the United States in 1998 to develop his film career.
His work comprised nineteen films, including
He also produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.
For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, Ledger won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and Best International Actor from the Australian Film Institute, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Posthumously he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director for the film I'm Not There, which was inspired by the life and songs of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.
In the film, Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of Dylan's life and persona.
Ledger died on 22 January 2008 from an accidental intoxication from prescription drugs.
A few months before his death, Ledger had finished filming his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight. His death occurred during editing of The Dark Knight and in the midst of filming his last role as Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. His untimely death cast a somber shadow over the subsequent promotion of the $185 million Batman production.
Ledger received numerous posthumous accolades for his critically acclaimed performance in the film, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards (for which he became the first actor to win an award posthumously), the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture, and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.
His work comprised nineteen films, including
- 10 Things I Hate About You (1999),
- The Patriot (2000),
- A Knight's Tale (2001),
- Monster's Ball (2001),
- Ned Kelly (2003),
- The Brothers Grimm (2005),
- Lords of Dogtown (2005),
- Brokeback Mountain (2005),
- Casanova (2005),
- Candy (2006),
- I'm Not There (2007),
- The Dark Knight (2008) and
- The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009).
He also produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.
For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, Ledger won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and Best International Actor from the Australian Film Institute, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Posthumously he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director for the film I'm Not There, which was inspired by the life and songs of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.
In the film, Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of Dylan's life and persona.
Ledger died on 22 January 2008 from an accidental intoxication from prescription drugs.
A few months before his death, Ledger had finished filming his performance as the Joker in The Dark Knight. His death occurred during editing of The Dark Knight and in the midst of filming his last role as Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. His untimely death cast a somber shadow over the subsequent promotion of the $185 million Batman production.
Ledger received numerous posthumous accolades for his critically acclaimed performance in the film, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards (for which he became the first actor to win an award posthumously), the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture, and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Henry Fonda
YouTube Video: Henry Fonda in "On Golden Pond" (1/10) Movie CLIP - My Knight in Shining Armor (1981) HD
Pictured: Henry Fonda appearing in scenes from LEFT: “Mr. Roberts” with James Cagney; RIGHT: “On Golden Pond” with Katherine Hepburn.
Henry Jaynes Fonda (May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982) was a celebrated American film and stage actor with a career spanning more than five decades.
Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins.
He made his Hollywood debut in 1935, and his career gained momentum after his Academy Award-nominated performance as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, a 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about an Oklahoma family who moved west during the Dust Bowl.
Throughout six decades in Hollywood, Fonda cultivated a strong, appealing screen image in such classics as The Ox-Bow Incident, Mister Roberts and 12 Angry Men.
Later, Fonda moved both toward darker epics such as Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and lighter roles in family comedies such as Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 54th Academy Awards for the movie On Golden Pond, his final film role.
Fonda was the patriarch of a family of famous actors, including daughter Jane Fonda, son Peter Fonda, granddaughter Bridget Fonda, and grandson Troy Garity.
His family and close friends called him "Hank". In 1999, he was named the sixth-Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.
Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins.
He made his Hollywood debut in 1935, and his career gained momentum after his Academy Award-nominated performance as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, a 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about an Oklahoma family who moved west during the Dust Bowl.
Throughout six decades in Hollywood, Fonda cultivated a strong, appealing screen image in such classics as The Ox-Bow Incident, Mister Roberts and 12 Angry Men.
Later, Fonda moved both toward darker epics such as Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and lighter roles in family comedies such as Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 54th Academy Awards for the movie On Golden Pond, his final film role.
Fonda was the patriarch of a family of famous actors, including daughter Jane Fonda, son Peter Fonda, granddaughter Bridget Fonda, and grandson Troy Garity.
His family and close friends called him "Hank". In 1999, he was named the sixth-Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.
Humphrey Bogart
YouTube Video: The African Queen (1951) - Humphrey Bogart - Katharine Hepburn - We Made It
Pictured: Humphrey Bogart in LEFT: “Caine Mutiny”; RIGHT: “The African Queen”
Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957) was an American screen actor whose performances in iconic 1940s films noir such as The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, and The Big Sleep earned him status as a cultural icon
Bogart began acting in 1921 after a hitch in the U.S. Navy in World War I and little success in various jobs in finance and the production side of the theater. Gradually he became a regular in Broadway shows in the 1920s and 1930s.
When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film. His first great success was as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), and this led to a period of typecasting as a gangster with films such as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and B-movies like The Return of Doctor X (1939).
Bogart's breakthrough as a leading man came in 1941 with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. The next year, his performance in Casablanca (1943; Oscar nomination) raised him to the peak of his profession and, at the same time, cemented his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side.
Other successes followed, including:
During a film career of almost 30 years, Bogart appeared in more than 75 feature films. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star of Classic American cinema. Over his career, he received three Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, winning one (for The African Queen).
Bogart began acting in 1921 after a hitch in the U.S. Navy in World War I and little success in various jobs in finance and the production side of the theater. Gradually he became a regular in Broadway shows in the 1920s and 1930s.
When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film. His first great success was as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), and this led to a period of typecasting as a gangster with films such as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and B-movies like The Return of Doctor X (1939).
Bogart's breakthrough as a leading man came in 1941 with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. The next year, his performance in Casablanca (1943; Oscar nomination) raised him to the peak of his profession and, at the same time, cemented his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side.
Other successes followed, including:
- To Have and Have Not (1944),
- The Big Sleep (1946),
- Dark Passage (1947),
- and Key Largo (1948), all four with his wife Lauren Bacall;
- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948);
- In a Lonely Place (1950);
- The African Queen (1951; Oscar winner);
- Sabrina (1954);
- and The Caine Mutiny (1954; Oscar nomination).
- His last film was The Harder They Fall (1956).
During a film career of almost 30 years, Bogart appeared in more than 75 feature films. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star of Classic American cinema. Over his career, he received three Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, winning one (for The African Queen).
James Cagney
YouTube Video: James Cagney shows us how to dance down stairs
Pictured: James Cagney as Left: gangster Martin "Moe the Gimp" Snyder in Love Me or Leave Me (1955); Right: Cody Jarrett in White Heat (1949)
James Francis Cagney, Jr. (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986) was an American actor and dancer, both on stage and in film, though he had his greatest impact in film.
Known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing, he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances. He is best remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in movies such as,
Cagney was even typecast or limited by this view earlier in his career.
In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among its list of greatest male stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Orson Welles said of Cagney, "[he was] maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera", and Stanley Kubrick considered him to be one of the best actors of all time.
In his first professional acting performance, Cagney danced costumed as a woman in the chorus line of the 1919 revue Every Sailor. He spent several years in vaudeville as a dancer and comedian, until he got his first major acting part in 1925.
He secured several other roles, receiving good notices, before landing the lead in the 1929 play Penny Arcade. After rave reviews, Warner Bros. signed him for an initial $500-a-week, three-week contract to reprise his role; this was quickly extended to a seven-year contract.
Cagney's seventh film, The Public Enemy, became one of the most influential gangster movies of the period. Notable for a famous scene in which Cagney pushes a grapefruit against Mae Clark's face, the film thrust him into the spotlight.
He became one of Hollywood's biggest stars and one of Warner Bros.' biggest contracts. In 1938, he received his first Academy Award for Best Actor nomination, for Angels with Dirty Faces for his subtle portrayal of the tough guy/man-child Rocky Sullivan.
In 1942, Cagney won the Oscar for his energetic portrayal of George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
He was nominated a third time in 1955 for Love Me or Leave Me. Cagney retired from acting and dancing in 1961 to spend time on his farm with his family. He exited retirement, 20 years later, for a part in the 1981 movie Ragtime, mainly to aid his recovery from a stroke.
Cagney walked out on Warner Bros. several times over the course of his career, each time returning on much improved personal and artistic terms. In 1935, he sued Warners for breach of contract and won. This was one of the first times an actor prevailed over a studio on a contract issue.
He worked for an independent film company for a year while the suit was being settled—and established his own production company, Cagney Productions, in 1942, before returning to Warners four years later.
In reference to Cagney's refusal to be pushed around, Jack L. Warner called him "the Professional Againster". Cagney also made numerous morale-boosting troop tours before and during World War II, and was president of the Screen Actors Guild for two years.
Known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing, he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances. He is best remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in movies such as,
- The Public Enemy (1931),
- Taxi! (1932),
- Angels with Dirty Faces (1938),
- and White Heat (1949)
Cagney was even typecast or limited by this view earlier in his career.
In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth among its list of greatest male stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema. Orson Welles said of Cagney, "[he was] maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera", and Stanley Kubrick considered him to be one of the best actors of all time.
In his first professional acting performance, Cagney danced costumed as a woman in the chorus line of the 1919 revue Every Sailor. He spent several years in vaudeville as a dancer and comedian, until he got his first major acting part in 1925.
He secured several other roles, receiving good notices, before landing the lead in the 1929 play Penny Arcade. After rave reviews, Warner Bros. signed him for an initial $500-a-week, three-week contract to reprise his role; this was quickly extended to a seven-year contract.
Cagney's seventh film, The Public Enemy, became one of the most influential gangster movies of the period. Notable for a famous scene in which Cagney pushes a grapefruit against Mae Clark's face, the film thrust him into the spotlight.
He became one of Hollywood's biggest stars and one of Warner Bros.' biggest contracts. In 1938, he received his first Academy Award for Best Actor nomination, for Angels with Dirty Faces for his subtle portrayal of the tough guy/man-child Rocky Sullivan.
In 1942, Cagney won the Oscar for his energetic portrayal of George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
He was nominated a third time in 1955 for Love Me or Leave Me. Cagney retired from acting and dancing in 1961 to spend time on his farm with his family. He exited retirement, 20 years later, for a part in the 1981 movie Ragtime, mainly to aid his recovery from a stroke.
Cagney walked out on Warner Bros. several times over the course of his career, each time returning on much improved personal and artistic terms. In 1935, he sued Warners for breach of contract and won. This was one of the first times an actor prevailed over a studio on a contract issue.
He worked for an independent film company for a year while the suit was being settled—and established his own production company, Cagney Productions, in 1942, before returning to Warners four years later.
In reference to Cagney's refusal to be pushed around, Jack L. Warner called him "the Professional Againster". Cagney also made numerous morale-boosting troop tours before and during World War II, and was president of the Screen Actors Guild for two years.
John Belushi
YouTube Video of Saturday Night Live: Weekend Update: John Belushi on March Weather - SNL
Pictured below:
TOP ROW (L-R): John Belushi in Animal House; on Saturday Night Live with Jane Curtin
BOTTOM ROW (L-R): John Belushi on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine; in “The Blues Brothers” movie
John Adam Belushi (January 24, 1949 – March 5, 1982) was an American comedian, actor, and singer. Belushi is best known for his "intense energy and raucous attitude" which he displayed as one of the seven original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL).
Throughout his career, Belushi had a close personal and artistic partnership with his fellow SNL star Dan Aykroyd, whom he met while they were both working at Chicago's The Second City comedy club.
Born in Chicago to Albanian American parents, Belushi started his own comedy troupe with Tino Insana and Steve Beshekas, called "The West Compass Trio", which was met with success.
Belushi was offered a chance to perform with The Second City after being discovered by Bernard Sahlins. There, he met Brian Doyle-Murray and Harold Ramis. He also met
Aykroyd, who would later become one of his close associates.
In 1975, Belushi was recommended to SNL creator/showrunner Lorne Michaels by Chevy Chase and Michael O'Donoghue, who accepted Belushi as a new cast member of the show after an audition. He developed a series of characters on the show that reached high success, including his notable performances such as Henry Kissinger and Ludwig van Beethoven.
After his breakout and best-known film role as John "Bluto" Blutarsky, the lead in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), Belushi later took an interest in films such as 1941, The Blues Brothers, and Neighbors. He also pursued interests in music, creating with Aykroyd, Lou Marini, Tom Malone, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, and Paul Shaffer, the Blues Brothers, from which the film received its name.
In his personal life, Belushi struggled with heavy drug use that affected his comedy career, and was dismissed and rehired by Michaels on several occasions due to his behavior. In 1982, Belushi died from combined drug intoxication caused by an injection of a heroin and cocaine mixture, known as a speedball. He was posthumously honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004.
Click here for more about John Belushi.
Throughout his career, Belushi had a close personal and artistic partnership with his fellow SNL star Dan Aykroyd, whom he met while they were both working at Chicago's The Second City comedy club.
Born in Chicago to Albanian American parents, Belushi started his own comedy troupe with Tino Insana and Steve Beshekas, called "The West Compass Trio", which was met with success.
Belushi was offered a chance to perform with The Second City after being discovered by Bernard Sahlins. There, he met Brian Doyle-Murray and Harold Ramis. He also met
Aykroyd, who would later become one of his close associates.
In 1975, Belushi was recommended to SNL creator/showrunner Lorne Michaels by Chevy Chase and Michael O'Donoghue, who accepted Belushi as a new cast member of the show after an audition. He developed a series of characters on the show that reached high success, including his notable performances such as Henry Kissinger and Ludwig van Beethoven.
After his breakout and best-known film role as John "Bluto" Blutarsky, the lead in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), Belushi later took an interest in films such as 1941, The Blues Brothers, and Neighbors. He also pursued interests in music, creating with Aykroyd, Lou Marini, Tom Malone, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, and Paul Shaffer, the Blues Brothers, from which the film received its name.
In his personal life, Belushi struggled with heavy drug use that affected his comedy career, and was dismissed and rehired by Michaels on several occasions due to his behavior. In 1982, Belushi died from combined drug intoxication caused by an injection of a heroin and cocaine mixture, known as a speedball. He was posthumously honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004.
Click here for more about John Belushi.
Jessica Tandy
YouTube Video: Driving Miss Daisy (9/9) Movie CLIP - Doing the Best We Can (1989)
Pictured: Jessica Tandy LEFT: with Morgan Freeman in “Driving Miss Daisy” (1989); and RIGHT: in the Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds” (1963)
Jessica Tandy (born Jessie Alice Tandy; June 7, 1909 – September 11, 1994) was an English-American stage and film actress, who spent most of her 67-year career in the United States. She appeared in over 100 stage productions and had more than 60 roles in film and TV.
Born in London to Jessie Helen Horspool and commercial traveller Harry Tandy, she was only 18 when she made her professional debut on the London stage in 1927.
During the 1930s, she appeared in a large number of plays in London's West End, playing roles such as Ophelia (opposite John Gielgud's legendary Hamlet) and Katherine (opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V).
During this period, she also worked in a couple of British films. Following the end of her marriage to the British actor Jack Hawkins, she moved to New York in 1940, where she met Canadian actor Hume Cronyn. He became her second husband and frequent partner on stage and screen.
She received the Tony Award for best performance by a Leading Actress in A Play for her performance as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948. Tandy shared the prize with Katharine Cornell (who won for the female lead in Antony and Cleopatra) and Judith Anderson (for the latter's portrayal of Medea) in a three-way tie for the award.
Over the following three decades, her career continued sporadically and included a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's horror film, The Birds (1963), and a Tony Award-winning performance in The Gin Game (1977, playing in the two-hander play opposite Hume Cronyn).
Along with Cronyn, she was a member of the original acting company of the Guthrie Theater.
In the mid-1980s she had a career revival. She appeared with Cronyn in the Broadway
production of Foxfire in 1983 and its television adaptation four years later, winning both a Tony Award and an Emmy Award for her portrayal of Annie Nations. During these years, she appeared in films such as Cocoon (1985), also with Cronyn.
She became the oldest actress to receive the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), for which she also won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Fried Green Tomatoes (1991). At the height of her success, she was named as one of People's "50 Most Beautiful People". She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1990, and continued working until shortly before her death.
Born in London to Jessie Helen Horspool and commercial traveller Harry Tandy, she was only 18 when she made her professional debut on the London stage in 1927.
During the 1930s, she appeared in a large number of plays in London's West End, playing roles such as Ophelia (opposite John Gielgud's legendary Hamlet) and Katherine (opposite Laurence Olivier's Henry V).
During this period, she also worked in a couple of British films. Following the end of her marriage to the British actor Jack Hawkins, she moved to New York in 1940, where she met Canadian actor Hume Cronyn. He became her second husband and frequent partner on stage and screen.
She received the Tony Award for best performance by a Leading Actress in A Play for her performance as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948. Tandy shared the prize with Katharine Cornell (who won for the female lead in Antony and Cleopatra) and Judith Anderson (for the latter's portrayal of Medea) in a three-way tie for the award.
Over the following three decades, her career continued sporadically and included a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's horror film, The Birds (1963), and a Tony Award-winning performance in The Gin Game (1977, playing in the two-hander play opposite Hume Cronyn).
Along with Cronyn, she was a member of the original acting company of the Guthrie Theater.
In the mid-1980s she had a career revival. She appeared with Cronyn in the Broadway
production of Foxfire in 1983 and its television adaptation four years later, winning both a Tony Award and an Emmy Award for her portrayal of Annie Nations. During these years, she appeared in films such as Cocoon (1985), also with Cronyn.
She became the oldest actress to receive the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), for which she also won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Fried Green Tomatoes (1991). At the height of her success, she was named as one of People's "50 Most Beautiful People". She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1990, and continued working until shortly before her death.
Steve McQueen
YouTube Video: Steve McQueen from "The Cincinnati Kid" (1965): The Kid (Steve McQueen) sits down to play poker, five card stud, in the big game with Shooter (Karl Malden), Yeller (Cab Calloway) and Lancey Howard (Edward G Robinson).
YouTube Video of Steve McQueen in the Car Chase Scene from Bullitt*
* -- Bullitt (1968)
Pictured: Steve McQueen L-R: with Virginia Gregg in the television series Wanted: Dead or Alive (CBS: 1958-1961); on a motorcycle attempting to break out of a POW camp in the movie “The Great Escape“ (1963); as well as starring in the movie “The Sand Pebbles” (1966)
Terence Steven "Steve" McQueen (March 24, 1930 – November 7, 1980) was an American actor. Called "The King of Cool", his "anti-hero" persona, developed at the height of the counterculture of the 1960s, made him a top box-office draw of the 1960s and 1970s.
McQueen received an Academy Award nomination for his role in The Sand Pebbles. His other popular films include:
McQueen was an avid motorcycle and race car enthusiast. When he had the opportunity to drive in a movie, he performed many of his own stunts, including some of the car chase in Bullitt and the motorcycle chase in The Great Escape.
Although the jump over the fence in The Great Escape was not done by McQueen for insurance purposes, McQueen did have considerable screen time riding his 650cc Triumph TR6 Trophy motorcycle. It was difficult to find riders as skilled as McQueen. At one point, using editing, McQueen is seen in a German uniform chasing himself on another bike.
In 1974, he became the highest-paid movie star in the world, although he did not act in films again for four years. McQueen was combative with directors and producers, but his popularity placed him in high demand and enabled him to command large salaries.
Legacy:
McQueen remains a popular star, and his estate limits the licensing of his image to avoid the commercial saturation experienced by other deceased celebrities. As of 2007, McQueen's estate entered the top 10 of highest-earning deceased celebrities.
McQueen was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers in April 2007, in a ceremony at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
In November 1999, McQueen was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame. He was credited with contributions including financing the film On Any Sunday, supporting a team of off-road riders, and enhancing the public image of motorcycling overall.
A film based on unfinished storyboards and notes developed by McQueen before his death was slated for production by McG's production company Wonderland Sound and Vision. Yucatán is described as an "epic adventure heist" film, scheduled for release in 2013 but still unreleased in February 2016. Team Downey, the production company of Robert Downey, Jr. and his wife Susan Downey, expressed an interest in developing Yucatán for the screen.
The Beech Grove, Indiana, Public Library formally dedicated the Steve McQueen Birthplace Collection on March 16, 2010 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of McQueen's birth on March 24, 1930.
In 2005, TV Guide ranked McQueen # 26 on its "50 Sexiest Stars of All Time" list.
In 2012, McQueen was posthumously honored with the Warren Zevon Tribute Award by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO).
Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans, a 2015 documentary, examines the actor's quest to create and star in the 1971 auto-racing film Le Mans. His son Chad McQueen and former wife Neile Adams are among those interviewed.
McQueen received an Academy Award nomination for his role in The Sand Pebbles. His other popular films include:
- The Cincinnati Kid,
- The Thomas Crown Affair,
- Bullitt,
- The Getaway,
- and Papillon,
- as well as the all-star ensemble films:
McQueen was an avid motorcycle and race car enthusiast. When he had the opportunity to drive in a movie, he performed many of his own stunts, including some of the car chase in Bullitt and the motorcycle chase in The Great Escape.
Although the jump over the fence in The Great Escape was not done by McQueen for insurance purposes, McQueen did have considerable screen time riding his 650cc Triumph TR6 Trophy motorcycle. It was difficult to find riders as skilled as McQueen. At one point, using editing, McQueen is seen in a German uniform chasing himself on another bike.
In 1974, he became the highest-paid movie star in the world, although he did not act in films again for four years. McQueen was combative with directors and producers, but his popularity placed him in high demand and enabled him to command large salaries.
Legacy:
McQueen remains a popular star, and his estate limits the licensing of his image to avoid the commercial saturation experienced by other deceased celebrities. As of 2007, McQueen's estate entered the top 10 of highest-earning deceased celebrities.
McQueen was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers in April 2007, in a ceremony at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
In November 1999, McQueen was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame. He was credited with contributions including financing the film On Any Sunday, supporting a team of off-road riders, and enhancing the public image of motorcycling overall.
A film based on unfinished storyboards and notes developed by McQueen before his death was slated for production by McG's production company Wonderland Sound and Vision. Yucatán is described as an "epic adventure heist" film, scheduled for release in 2013 but still unreleased in February 2016. Team Downey, the production company of Robert Downey, Jr. and his wife Susan Downey, expressed an interest in developing Yucatán for the screen.
The Beech Grove, Indiana, Public Library formally dedicated the Steve McQueen Birthplace Collection on March 16, 2010 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of McQueen's birth on March 24, 1930.
In 2005, TV Guide ranked McQueen # 26 on its "50 Sexiest Stars of All Time" list.
In 2012, McQueen was posthumously honored with the Warren Zevon Tribute Award by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO).
Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans, a 2015 documentary, examines the actor's quest to create and star in the 1971 auto-racing film Le Mans. His son Chad McQueen and former wife Neile Adams are among those interviewed.
John Wayne
YouTube Video: John Wayne in True Grit: Bold Talk for a One-Eyed Fat Man (1969)
Pictured: John Wayne in LEFT: True Grit (1969); RIGHT: The Green Berets (1968)
Marion Mitchell Morrison (born Marion Robert Morrison; May 26, 1907 – June 11, 1979), better known by his stage name John Wayne and the nickname Duke, was an American actor, director, and producer.
An Academy Award-winner for True Grit (1969), Wayne was among the top box office draws for three decades.
Born in Winterset, Iowa, Wayne grew up in Southern California. He found work at local film studios when he lost his football scholarship to the University of Southern California (USC) as a result of a bodysurfing accident.
Initially working for the Fox Film Corporation, he mostly appeared in small bit parts. His first leading role came in Raoul Walsh's lavish widescreen epic The Big Trail (1930), which led to leading roles in numerous B movies throughout the 1930s, many of them in the Western genre.
Wayne's career took off in 1939, with John Ford's Stagecoach making him an instant mainstream star.
Wayne went on to star in 142 pictures. Biographer Ronald Davis says: "John Wayne personified for millions the nation's frontier heritage. Eighty-three of his movies were Westerns, and in them he played cowboys, cavalrymen, and unconquerable loners extracted from the Republic's central creation myth."
Wayne's other well-known Western roles include a cattleman driving his herd north on the Chisholm Trail in Red River (1948), a Civil War veteran whose young niece is abducted by a tribe of Comanches in The Searchers (1956), and a troubled rancher competing with an Eastern lawyer for a woman's hand in marriage in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).
He is also remembered for his roles in The Quiet Man (1952), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Longest Day (1962).
In his final screen performance, he starred as an aging gunfighter battling cancer in The Shootist (1976).
He appeared with many important Hollywood stars of his era, and his last public appearance was at the Academy Awards ceremony on April 9, 1979.
An Academy Award-winner for True Grit (1969), Wayne was among the top box office draws for three decades.
Born in Winterset, Iowa, Wayne grew up in Southern California. He found work at local film studios when he lost his football scholarship to the University of Southern California (USC) as a result of a bodysurfing accident.
Initially working for the Fox Film Corporation, he mostly appeared in small bit parts. His first leading role came in Raoul Walsh's lavish widescreen epic The Big Trail (1930), which led to leading roles in numerous B movies throughout the 1930s, many of them in the Western genre.
Wayne's career took off in 1939, with John Ford's Stagecoach making him an instant mainstream star.
Wayne went on to star in 142 pictures. Biographer Ronald Davis says: "John Wayne personified for millions the nation's frontier heritage. Eighty-three of his movies were Westerns, and in them he played cowboys, cavalrymen, and unconquerable loners extracted from the Republic's central creation myth."
Wayne's other well-known Western roles include a cattleman driving his herd north on the Chisholm Trail in Red River (1948), a Civil War veteran whose young niece is abducted by a tribe of Comanches in The Searchers (1956), and a troubled rancher competing with an Eastern lawyer for a woman's hand in marriage in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).
He is also remembered for his roles in The Quiet Man (1952), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Longest Day (1962).
In his final screen performance, he starred as an aging gunfighter battling cancer in The Shootist (1976).
He appeared with many important Hollywood stars of his era, and his last public appearance was at the Academy Awards ceremony on April 9, 1979.
Michael Jackson, "The King of Pop"!
YouTube Video: Michael Jackson performing his Moonwalk dance
YouTube Video: Michael Jackson performing his "Robot" dance
Pictured: Jackson performing in Vienna, Austria in June 1988
Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American singer, songwriter, record producer, dancer, and actor. Called the King of Pop, his contributions to music, dance and fashion along with his publicized personal life made him a global figure in popular culture for over four decades.
The eighth child of the Jackson family, Michael made his professional debut in 1964 with his elder brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon as a member of the Jackson 5, and began his solo career in 1971.
In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant figure in popular music. His music videos, including those of "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and "Thriller" from his 1982 album Thriller, are credited with breaking racial barriers and transforming the medium into an art form and promotional tool.
The popularity of these videos helped bring the television channel MTV to fame. Jackson's 1987 album Bad spawned the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "Bad", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Man in the Mirror", and "Dirty Diana", becoming the first album to have five number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100.
He continued to innovate with videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream" throughout the 1990s, and forged a reputation as a touring solo artist. Through stage and video performances, Jackson popularized a number of complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk, to which he gave the name. His distinctive sound and style has influenced numerous artists of various music genres.
Thriller is the best-selling album of all time, with estimated sales of 65 million copies worldwide. Jackson's other albums, including Off the Wall (1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991), and HIStory (1995), also rank among the world's best-selling albums.
He is recognized as the Most Successful Entertainer of All Time by Guinness World Records. Jackson is one of the few artists to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, and was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Dance Hall of Fame as the only dancer from pop and rock music.
His other achievements include multiple Guinness World Records, 13 Grammy Awards, the Grammy Legend Award, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, 26 American Music Awards—more than any other artist—including the "Artist of the Century" and "Artist of the 1980s", 13 number-one singles in the United States during his solo career,—more than any other male artist in the Hot 100 era—and estimated sales of over 350 million records worldwide.
Jackson has won hundreds of awards, making him the most awarded recording artist in the history of popular music. He became the first artist in history to have a top ten single in the Billboard Hot 100 in five different decades when "Love Never Felt So Good" reached number nine on May 21, 2014. Jackson traveled the world attending events honoring his humanitarianism, and, in 2000, the Guinness World Records recognized him for supporting 39 charities, more than any other entertainer.
Aspects of Jackson's personal life, including his changing appearance, personal relationships, and behavior, generated controversy. In 1993, he was accused of child sexual abuse, but the civil case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount and no formal charges were brought.
In 2005, he was tried and acquitted of further child sexual abuse allegations and several other charges after the jury found him not guilty on all counts.
While preparing for his comeback concert series, This Is It, Jackson died of acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication on June 25, 2009, after suffering from cardiac arrest.
The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled his death a homicide, and his personal physician, Conrad Murray, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
Jackson's death triggered a global outpouring of grief, and a live broadcast of his public memorial service was viewed around the world. Forbes ranks Jackson as the top-earning dead celebrity, a title held for a sixth consecutive year, with $115 million in earnings.
The eighth child of the Jackson family, Michael made his professional debut in 1964 with his elder brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon as a member of the Jackson 5, and began his solo career in 1971.
In the early 1980s, Jackson became a dominant figure in popular music. His music videos, including those of "Beat It", "Billie Jean", and "Thriller" from his 1982 album Thriller, are credited with breaking racial barriers and transforming the medium into an art form and promotional tool.
The popularity of these videos helped bring the television channel MTV to fame. Jackson's 1987 album Bad spawned the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "Bad", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Man in the Mirror", and "Dirty Diana", becoming the first album to have five number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100.
He continued to innovate with videos such as "Black or White" and "Scream" throughout the 1990s, and forged a reputation as a touring solo artist. Through stage and video performances, Jackson popularized a number of complicated dance techniques, such as the robot and the moonwalk, to which he gave the name. His distinctive sound and style has influenced numerous artists of various music genres.
Thriller is the best-selling album of all time, with estimated sales of 65 million copies worldwide. Jackson's other albums, including Off the Wall (1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991), and HIStory (1995), also rank among the world's best-selling albums.
He is recognized as the Most Successful Entertainer of All Time by Guinness World Records. Jackson is one of the few artists to have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, and was also inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Dance Hall of Fame as the only dancer from pop and rock music.
His other achievements include multiple Guinness World Records, 13 Grammy Awards, the Grammy Legend Award, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, 26 American Music Awards—more than any other artist—including the "Artist of the Century" and "Artist of the 1980s", 13 number-one singles in the United States during his solo career,—more than any other male artist in the Hot 100 era—and estimated sales of over 350 million records worldwide.
Jackson has won hundreds of awards, making him the most awarded recording artist in the history of popular music. He became the first artist in history to have a top ten single in the Billboard Hot 100 in five different decades when "Love Never Felt So Good" reached number nine on May 21, 2014. Jackson traveled the world attending events honoring his humanitarianism, and, in 2000, the Guinness World Records recognized him for supporting 39 charities, more than any other entertainer.
Aspects of Jackson's personal life, including his changing appearance, personal relationships, and behavior, generated controversy. In 1993, he was accused of child sexual abuse, but the civil case was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount and no formal charges were brought.
In 2005, he was tried and acquitted of further child sexual abuse allegations and several other charges after the jury found him not guilty on all counts.
While preparing for his comeback concert series, This Is It, Jackson died of acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication on June 25, 2009, after suffering from cardiac arrest.
The Los Angeles County Coroner ruled his death a homicide, and his personal physician, Conrad Murray, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
Jackson's death triggered a global outpouring of grief, and a live broadcast of his public memorial service was viewed around the world. Forbes ranks Jackson as the top-earning dead celebrity, a title held for a sixth consecutive year, with $115 million in earnings.
Paul Newman
YouTube Video: Paul Newman's Best Movie Performances
YouTube Video: Paul Newman in the Movie "Cool Hand Luke" Trailer
Pictured: Paul Newman in L-R: The Hustler (1961); Cool Hand Luke (1967), and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969: with co-star Robert Redford, who also co-starred in the The Sting: 1973)
Paul Leonard Newman (January 26, 1925 – September 26, 2008) was an American actor, film director, entrepreneur, professional race car driver and team owner, environmentalist, activist and philanthropist.
He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for his performance in the 1986 film The Color of Money, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy Award, and many honorary awards. Newman's other films include The Hustler (1961), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Butch Cassidy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Sting (1973), and The Verdict (1982).
Despite being colorblind, he won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.
Newman was married to actress Joanne Woodward from 1958 until his death. He was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of 31 December 2015, these donations totaled over US$460 million.
He was also a co-founder of Safe Water Network, a nonprofit that develops sustainable drinking water solutions for those in need.
In 1988, Newman founded the SeriousFun Children's Network, a global family of camps and programs for children with serious illness which has served 290,076 children since its inception.
For more about Paul Newman, click here.
He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for his performance in the 1986 film The Color of Money, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy Award, and many honorary awards. Newman's other films include The Hustler (1961), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Butch Cassidy in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Sting (1973), and The Verdict (1982).
Despite being colorblind, he won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing.
Newman was married to actress Joanne Woodward from 1958 until his death. He was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of 31 December 2015, these donations totaled over US$460 million.
He was also a co-founder of Safe Water Network, a nonprofit that develops sustainable drinking water solutions for those in need.
In 1988, Newman founded the SeriousFun Children's Network, a global family of camps and programs for children with serious illness which has served 290,076 children since its inception.
For more about Paul Newman, click here.
Walt Disney
YouTube Video of Walt Disney's Tour of Disneyland
List of Academy Awards for Walt Disney
The Walt Disney Company
Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
List of Movies made by the Walt Disney Company
Pictured: LEFT: Illustration of Mickey Mouse “whispering” to Walt; RIGHT: Disney holding four Oscars.
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American entrepreneur, animator, voice actor and film producer.
A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons.
As a film producer he received 22 Academy Awards from 59 nominations and has won more individual Oscars than anyone else. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and one Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Born in Chicago in 1901, Disney developed an early interest in drawing. He took art classes as boy and got a job as a commercial illustrator at the age of 18. He moved to Hollywood in the early 1920s and set up the Disney Brothers Studio (later The Walt Disney Company) with his brother Roy.
With Ub Iwerks, Walt developed the character Mickey Mouse in 1928, his first highly popular success; he also provided the voice for his creation in the early years. As the studio grew, Disney became more adventurous, introducing synchronized sound, full-color three-strip Technicolor, feature-length cartoons and technical developments in cameras. The results, seen in features such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Fantasia and Pinocchio (both 1940), Dumbo (1941) and Bambi (1942), furthered the development of animated film.
New animated and live-action films followed after World War II, including the critically successful Cinderella (1950) and Mary Poppins (1964), the latter of which received five Academy Awards.
In the 1950s, Disney expanded into the amusement park industry, and in 1955 he opened Disneyland. To fund the project he diversified into television programs, such as Walt Disney's Disneyland and The Mickey Mouse Club; he was also involved in planning the 1959 Moscow Fair and the 1960 Winter Olympics.
In 1965 he began development of another theme park, Disney World (now Walt Disney World), the heart of which was to be a new type of city, the "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow" (EPCOT).
Disney was a heavy smoker throughout his life, and died of lung cancer in December 1966 before the park or city was completed.
Disney was a shy, self-deprecating and insecure man in private but adopted a warm and outgoing public persona. However he had high standards and high expectations of those with whom he worked.
Although there have been accusations that he was racist or anti-Semitic, they have been contradicted by many who knew him. His reputation changed in the years after his death, from a purveyor of homely patriotic values to a representative of American imperialism.
He nevertheless remains an important figure in the history of animation and in the cultural history of the United States, where he is considered a national cultural icon. His film work continues to be shown and adapted; his studio maintains high standards in its production of popular entertainment, and the Disney amusement parks have grown in size and number to attract visitors in several countries.
For more about Walt Disney, click here.
Mary Tyler Moore
YouTube Vido of the best acting scenes of Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People
Pictured: Mary Tyler Moore (L) in the Dick Van Dyke Show; (R) on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine about her movie “Ordinary People” (1980)
Mary Tyler Moore (December 29, 1936 – January 25, 2017) was an American actress, known for her roles in the television sitcoms:
Her notable film work includes 1967's Thoroughly Modern Millie and 1980's Ordinary People, in which she played a role that was very different from the television characters she had portrayed, and for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Moore was active in charity work and various political causes, particularly the issues of animal rights and diabetes. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes early in the run of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
She also suffered from alcoholism, which she wrote about in her first of two memoirs. In May 2011, Moore underwent elective brain surgery to remove a benign meningioma.
She died from cardiopulmonary arrest because of pneumonia at the age of 80 on January 25, 2017.
Click here for more information about Mary Tyler Moore.
- The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977), in which she starred as Mary Richards, a thirtyish single woman who worked as a local news producer in Minneapolis,
- and The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966), in which she played Laura Petrie, a former dancer turned Westchester homemaker, wife and mother.
Her notable film work includes 1967's Thoroughly Modern Millie and 1980's Ordinary People, in which she played a role that was very different from the television characters she had portrayed, and for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.
Moore was active in charity work and various political causes, particularly the issues of animal rights and diabetes. She was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes early in the run of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
She also suffered from alcoholism, which she wrote about in her first of two memoirs. In May 2011, Moore underwent elective brain surgery to remove a benign meningioma.
She died from cardiopulmonary arrest because of pneumonia at the age of 80 on January 25, 2017.
Click here for more information about Mary Tyler Moore.
Jack Lemmon
YouTube Video: The Movies of Jack Lemmon
Pictured: Jack Lemmon LEFT: receiving the Best Actor Oscar for “Save the Tiger” (1973); RIGHT: in “The China Syndrome” (1979)
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was an American actor and musician. Lemmon was an eight time Academy Award nominee, with two wins. He starred in over 60 films, including the following:
Click here for additional information about Jack Lemmon.
- Some Like It Hot,
- The Apartment,
- Mister Roberts (for which he won the 1955 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor),
- Days of Wine and Roses,
- The Great Race,
- Irma la Douce,
- The Odd Couple,
- Save the Tiger (for which he won the 1973 Academy Award for Best Actor),
- The Out-of-Towners,
- The China Syndrome,
- Missing (for which he won Best Actor at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival),
- Glengarry Glen Ross,
- Grumpy Old Men
- and Grumpier Old Men.
Click here for additional information about Jack Lemmon.
Walter Matthau
YouTube Video: Walter Matthau Telling a Funny Story on Johnny Carson (1982)
Pictured: Walter Matthau: LEFT: With Tatum O’Neal in “The Bad News Bears” (1976); RIGHT: With Jack Lemmon in “The Odd Couple” (1968)
Walter Matthau (October 1, 1920 – July 1, 2000) was an American actor and comedian, best known for his role as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple and its sequel 30 years later, The Odd Couple II, and his frequent collaborations with Odd Couple co-star Jack Lemmon, particularly in the '90s with Grumpy Old Men.
He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1966 Billy Wilder film The Fortune Cookie. Besides the Oscar, he was the winner of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony awards.
Click here for more information about Walter Matthau.
He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1966 Billy Wilder film The Fortune Cookie. Besides the Oscar, he was the winner of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony awards.
Click here for more information about Walter Matthau.
Neil Simon
YouTube Video: The Movies of Neil Simon
Marvin Neil Simon (July 4, 1927 – August 26, 2018) was an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He wrote more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly adaptations of his plays. He received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer.
Simon grew up in New York during the Great Depression, with his parents' financial hardships affecting their marriage, and giving him a mostly unhappy and unstable childhood.
He often took refuge in movie theaters where he enjoyed watching the early comedians like Charlie Chaplin. After a few years in the Army Air Force Reserve after graduating from high school, he began writing comedy scripts for radio and some popular early television shows.
Among them were Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows from 1950, where he worked alongside other young writers including Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks and Selma Diamond, and The Phil Silvers Show which ran from 1955.
He began writing his own plays beginning with Come Blow Your Horn (1961), which took him three years to complete and ran for 678 performances on Broadway. It was followed by two more successful plays, Barefoot in the Park (1963) and The Odd Couple (1965), for which he won a Tony Award. It made him a national celebrity and "the hottest new playwright on Broadway."
During the 1960s to 1980s, he wrote both original screenplays and stage plays, with some films actually based on his plays. His style ranged from romantic comedy to farce to more serious dramatic comedy. Overall, he has garnered seventeen Tony nominations and won three. During one season, he had four successful plays running on Broadway at the same time, and in 1983 became the only living playwright to have a New York theater, the Neil Simon Theatre, named in his honor.
After Simon won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1991 for Lost in Yonkers, critics began to take notice of the depths, complexity and issues of universal interest in his stories, which expressed serious concerns of most average people. His comedies centered on subjects such as marital conflict, infidelity, sibling rivalry, adolescence, and fear of aging.
Most of his plays were also partly autobiographical, portraying his troubled childhood and different stages of his life, and he created characters who were typically New Yorkers and often Jewish, like himself. Simon's facility with dialogue gives his stories a rare blend of realism, humor and seriousness which audiences find easy to identify with.
Click here for more about Neil Simon.
Simon grew up in New York during the Great Depression, with his parents' financial hardships affecting their marriage, and giving him a mostly unhappy and unstable childhood.
He often took refuge in movie theaters where he enjoyed watching the early comedians like Charlie Chaplin. After a few years in the Army Air Force Reserve after graduating from high school, he began writing comedy scripts for radio and some popular early television shows.
Among them were Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows from 1950, where he worked alongside other young writers including Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks and Selma Diamond, and The Phil Silvers Show which ran from 1955.
He began writing his own plays beginning with Come Blow Your Horn (1961), which took him three years to complete and ran for 678 performances on Broadway. It was followed by two more successful plays, Barefoot in the Park (1963) and The Odd Couple (1965), for which he won a Tony Award. It made him a national celebrity and "the hottest new playwright on Broadway."
During the 1960s to 1980s, he wrote both original screenplays and stage plays, with some films actually based on his plays. His style ranged from romantic comedy to farce to more serious dramatic comedy. Overall, he has garnered seventeen Tony nominations and won three. During one season, he had four successful plays running on Broadway at the same time, and in 1983 became the only living playwright to have a New York theater, the Neil Simon Theatre, named in his honor.
After Simon won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1991 for Lost in Yonkers, critics began to take notice of the depths, complexity and issues of universal interest in his stories, which expressed serious concerns of most average people. His comedies centered on subjects such as marital conflict, infidelity, sibling rivalry, adolescence, and fear of aging.
Most of his plays were also partly autobiographical, portraying his troubled childhood and different stages of his life, and he created characters who were typically New Yorkers and often Jewish, like himself. Simon's facility with dialogue gives his stories a rare blend of realism, humor and seriousness which audiences find easy to identify with.
Click here for more about Neil Simon.
Gary Cooper
YouTube Video of Gary Cooper in "High Noon"
Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American film actor known for his natural, authentic, and understated acting style and screen performances.
His career spanned thirty-five years, from 1925 to 1960, and included leading roles in eighty-four feature films. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres.
Cooper's ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his appearing natural and authentic on screen. The screen persona he sustained throughout his career represented the ideal American hero.
Cooper began his career as a film extra and stunt rider, but soon landed acting roles. After establishing himself as a Western hero in his early silent films, Cooper became a movie star in 1929 with his first sound picture, The Virginian.
In the early 1930s, he expanded his heroic image to include more cautious characters in adventure films and dramas such as A Farewell to Arms (1932) and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935). During the height of his career, Cooper portrayed a new type of hero—a champion of the common man—in films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943).
In the postwar years, he portrayed more mature characters at odds with the world in films such as The Fountainhead (1949) and High Noon (1952). In his final films, Cooper played non-violent characters searching for redemption in films such as Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Man of the West (1958).
He married New York debutante Veronica Balfe in 1933, and the couple had one daughter. Their marriage was interrupted by a three-year separation precipitated by Cooper's love affair with Patricia Neal.
Cooper received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles in Sergeant York and High Noon. He also received an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements in 1961.
He was one of the top ten film personalities for twenty-three consecutive years, and was one of the top money-making stars for eighteen years. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper eleventh on its list of the twenty five greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Click here for more about Gary Cooper.
His career spanned thirty-five years, from 1925 to 1960, and included leading roles in eighty-four feature films. He was a major movie star from the end of the silent film era through the end of the golden age of Classical Hollywood. His screen persona appealed strongly to both men and women, and his range of performances included roles in most major movie genres.
Cooper's ability to project his own personality onto the characters he played contributed to his appearing natural and authentic on screen. The screen persona he sustained throughout his career represented the ideal American hero.
Cooper began his career as a film extra and stunt rider, but soon landed acting roles. After establishing himself as a Western hero in his early silent films, Cooper became a movie star in 1929 with his first sound picture, The Virginian.
In the early 1930s, he expanded his heroic image to include more cautious characters in adventure films and dramas such as A Farewell to Arms (1932) and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935). During the height of his career, Cooper portrayed a new type of hero—a champion of the common man—in films such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), Sergeant York (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943).
In the postwar years, he portrayed more mature characters at odds with the world in films such as The Fountainhead (1949) and High Noon (1952). In his final films, Cooper played non-violent characters searching for redemption in films such as Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Man of the West (1958).
He married New York debutante Veronica Balfe in 1933, and the couple had one daughter. Their marriage was interrupted by a three-year separation precipitated by Cooper's love affair with Patricia Neal.
Cooper received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his roles in Sergeant York and High Noon. He also received an Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements in 1961.
He was one of the top ten film personalities for twenty-three consecutive years, and was one of the top money-making stars for eighteen years. The American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Cooper eleventh on its list of the twenty five greatest male stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Click here for more about Gary Cooper.
Clark Gable
YouTube Video The Misfits (1961) - Clark Gable - Marilyn Monroe
Pictured: Clark Gable with Marilyn Monroe in "The Misfits" (1961)
William Clark Gable (February 1, 1901 – November 16, 1960) was an American film actor, often referred to as "The King of Hollywood" or just simply as "The King". Gable began his career as a stage actor and appeared as an extra in silent films between 1924 and 1926, and progressed to supporting roles with a few films for MGM in 1931. The next year, he landed his first leading Hollywood role and became a leading man in more than 60 motion pictures over the next three decades.
Gable won an Academy Award for Best Actor for It Happened One Night (1934), and was nominated for leading roles in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and for his arguably best-known role as Rhett Butler in the epic Civil War drama Gone with the Wind (1939).
Gable also found success commercially and critically with films such as Red Dust (1932), Manhattan Melodrama (1934), San Francisco (1936), Saratoga (1937) Boom Town (1940), The Hucksters (1947), Homecoming (1948), and The Misfits (1961), which was his final screen appearance.
Gable appeared opposite some of the most popular actresses of the time: Joan Crawford, who was his favorite actress to work with, was partnered with Gable in eight films, Myrna Loy worked with him seven times, and he was paired with Jean Harlow in six productions.
He also starred with Lana Turner in four features, and with Norma Shearer and Ava Gardner in three each. Gable's final film, The Misfits (1961), united him with Marilyn Monroe (also in her last screen appearance).
Gable is considered one of the most consistent box-office performers in history, appearing on Quigley Publishing's annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll 16 times. He was named the seventh-greatest male star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.
Click here for more about Clark Gable.
Gable won an Academy Award for Best Actor for It Happened One Night (1934), and was nominated for leading roles in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and for his arguably best-known role as Rhett Butler in the epic Civil War drama Gone with the Wind (1939).
Gable also found success commercially and critically with films such as Red Dust (1932), Manhattan Melodrama (1934), San Francisco (1936), Saratoga (1937) Boom Town (1940), The Hucksters (1947), Homecoming (1948), and The Misfits (1961), which was his final screen appearance.
Gable appeared opposite some of the most popular actresses of the time: Joan Crawford, who was his favorite actress to work with, was partnered with Gable in eight films, Myrna Loy worked with him seven times, and he was paired with Jean Harlow in six productions.
He also starred with Lana Turner in four features, and with Norma Shearer and Ava Gardner in three each. Gable's final film, The Misfits (1961), united him with Marilyn Monroe (also in her last screen appearance).
Gable is considered one of the most consistent box-office performers in history, appearing on Quigley Publishing's annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll 16 times. He was named the seventh-greatest male star of classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.
Click here for more about Clark Gable.
Ava Gardner
YouTube Video The Best of Ava Gardner in Mogambo
Ava Lavinia Gardner (December 24, 1922 – January 25, 1990) was an American actress and singer.
She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers (1946). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in Mogambo (1953).
Gardner appeared in several high-profile films from the 1950s to 1970s, including:
Gardner continued to act regularly until 1986, four years before her death in London in 1990 at the age of 67.
She is listed 25th among the American Film Institute's 25 Greatest Female Stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Click here for more about Ava Gardner.
She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers (1946). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in Mogambo (1953).
Gardner appeared in several high-profile films from the 1950s to 1970s, including:
- The Hucksters (1947),
- Show Boat (1951),
- The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952),
- The Barefoot Contessa (1954),
- Bhowani Junction (1956),
- On the Beach (1959),
- 55 Days at Peking (1963),
- Seven Days in May (1964),
- The Night of the Iguana (1964),
- The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972),
- Earthquake (1974),
- and The Cassandra Crossing (1976).
Gardner continued to act regularly until 1986, four years before her death in London in 1990 at the age of 67.
She is listed 25th among the American Film Institute's 25 Greatest Female Stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Click here for more about Ava Gardner.
Bette Davis
YouTube Video from "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane"
Pictured: Bette Davis in (L) Studio Portrait (R) the movie “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane” (1962)
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television, and theater. Regarded as one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood history, she was noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic, sardonic characters and was reputed for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.
After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930. However, her early films for Universal Studios (and as a loanout to other studios) were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances.
In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract. Although she lost the well-publicized legal case against the studio, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful and intense style.
Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative and confrontational. She clashed with studio executives and film directors as well as many of her co-stars. Her forthright manner, idiosyncratic speech and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona, which has often been imitated.
Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue ten Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute.
Her career went through several periods of eclipse, and she admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was once widowed and three times divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than 100 films, television and theater roles to her credit.
In 1999, Davis was placed second behind Katharine Hepburn on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Click here for more about Bette Davis.
After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930. However, her early films for Universal Studios (and as a loanout to other studios) were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances.
In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract. Although she lost the well-publicized legal case against the studio, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful and intense style.
Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative and confrontational. She clashed with studio executives and film directors as well as many of her co-stars. Her forthright manner, idiosyncratic speech and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona, which has often been imitated.
Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue ten Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute.
Her career went through several periods of eclipse, and she admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was once widowed and three times divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than 100 films, television and theater roles to her credit.
In 1999, Davis was placed second behind Katharine Hepburn on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema.
Click here for more about Bette Davis.
Marlon Brando
YouTube Video of Top 10 Marlon Brando Performances (courtesy of WatchMojo.com)
Pictured: Marlon Brando in (L) On the Waterfront (1954), (C) The Godfather (1972), and (R) Apocalypse Now (1979)
Marlon Brando, Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was an American actor, film director and activist. He is credited with bringing realism to film acting. He helped to popularize the Stanislavski system of acting, studying with Stella Adler in the 1940s.
Brando is most famous for his Academy Award-winning performances as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954) and Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972), as well as performances in the following movies:
Brando was also an activist for many causes, notably the Civil Rights Movement and various Native American movements.
He initially gained acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for reprising the role of Stanley Kowalski in the 1951 film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire, a role that he had originated successfully on Broadway.
He received further praise for his performance as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, and his portrayal of the rebel motorcycle gang leader Johnny Strabler in The Wild One proved to be a lasting image in popular culture.
Brando received Academy Award nominations for playing Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata!; Mark Antony in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1953 film adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar; and Air Force Major Lloyd Gruver in Sayonara (1957), an adaption of James Michener's 1954 novel.
Brando was included in a list of Top Ten Money Making Stars three times in the 1950s, coming in at number 10 in 1954, number 6 in 1955, and number 4 in 1958.
The 1960s proved to be a fallow decade for Brando. He directed and starred in the cult western film One-Eyed Jacks, a critical and commercial flop, after which he delivered a series of box-office failures, beginning with the 1962 film adaptation of the novel Mutiny on the Bounty. After 10 years, during which he did not appear in a successful film, he won his second Academy Award for playing Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, a role critics consider among his greatest.
The Godfather was then one of the most commercially successful films of all time. With that and his Oscar-nominated performance in Last Tango in Paris, Brando re-established himself in the ranks of top box-office stars, placing sixth and tenth in the Money Making Stars poll in 1972 and 1973, respectively.
Brando took a four-year hiatus before appearing in The Missouri Breaks (1976). After this, he was content with being a highly paid character actor in cameo roles, such as in Superman (1978) and The Formula (1980), before taking a nine-year break from motion pictures.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Brando was paid a record $3.7 million ($15 million in inflation-adjusted dollars) and 11.75% of the gross profits for 13 days' work on Superman. He finished out the 1970s with his controversial performance as Colonel Kurtz in another Coppola film, Apocalypse Now, a box-office hit for which he was highly paid and which helped finance his career layoff during the 1980s.
Brando was ranked by the American Film Institute as the fourth-greatest movie star among male movie stars whose screen debuts occurred in or before 1950. He was one of only three professional actors, along with Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe, named in 1999 by Time magazine as one of its 100 Most Important People of the Century.[9] He died of respiratory failure on July 1, 2004, at age 80.
Click here for more about Marlon Brando.
Brando is most famous for his Academy Award-winning performances as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954) and Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972), as well as performances in the following movies:
- A Streetcar Named Desire (1951),
- Viva Zapata! (1952),
- Julius Caesar (1953),
- The Wild One (1953),
- Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967),
- Last Tango in Paris (1972),
- and Apocalypse Now (1979).
Brando was also an activist for many causes, notably the Civil Rights Movement and various Native American movements.
He initially gained acclaim and an Academy Award nomination for reprising the role of Stanley Kowalski in the 1951 film adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire, a role that he had originated successfully on Broadway.
He received further praise for his performance as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, and his portrayal of the rebel motorcycle gang leader Johnny Strabler in The Wild One proved to be a lasting image in popular culture.
Brando received Academy Award nominations for playing Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata!; Mark Antony in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's 1953 film adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar; and Air Force Major Lloyd Gruver in Sayonara (1957), an adaption of James Michener's 1954 novel.
Brando was included in a list of Top Ten Money Making Stars three times in the 1950s, coming in at number 10 in 1954, number 6 in 1955, and number 4 in 1958.
The 1960s proved to be a fallow decade for Brando. He directed and starred in the cult western film One-Eyed Jacks, a critical and commercial flop, after which he delivered a series of box-office failures, beginning with the 1962 film adaptation of the novel Mutiny on the Bounty. After 10 years, during which he did not appear in a successful film, he won his second Academy Award for playing Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, a role critics consider among his greatest.
The Godfather was then one of the most commercially successful films of all time. With that and his Oscar-nominated performance in Last Tango in Paris, Brando re-established himself in the ranks of top box-office stars, placing sixth and tenth in the Money Making Stars poll in 1972 and 1973, respectively.
Brando took a four-year hiatus before appearing in The Missouri Breaks (1976). After this, he was content with being a highly paid character actor in cameo roles, such as in Superman (1978) and The Formula (1980), before taking a nine-year break from motion pictures.
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Brando was paid a record $3.7 million ($15 million in inflation-adjusted dollars) and 11.75% of the gross profits for 13 days' work on Superman. He finished out the 1970s with his controversial performance as Colonel Kurtz in another Coppola film, Apocalypse Now, a box-office hit for which he was highly paid and which helped finance his career layoff during the 1980s.
Brando was ranked by the American Film Institute as the fourth-greatest movie star among male movie stars whose screen debuts occurred in or before 1950. He was one of only three professional actors, along with Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe, named in 1999 by Time magazine as one of its 100 Most Important People of the Century.[9] He died of respiratory failure on July 1, 2004, at age 80.
Click here for more about Marlon Brando.
Marilyn Monroe
YouTube Video of Marilyn appearing in the famous subway scene where her dress blows up from the subway grate*
* - from the movie "Seven Year Itch" (1955)
YouTube Video of Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" to President John F. Kennedy
YouTube Video: "Who says blondes are not smart?"
Pictured: Two of the movies that Marilyn Monroe starred in include (L) Some Like it Hot (1959); (R) Bus Stop (1956)
Marilyn Monroe (born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1, 1926 – August 5, 1962) was an American actress and model. Famous for playing comic "dumb blonde" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s, emblematic of the era's attitudes towards sexuality. Although she was a top-billed actress for only a decade, her films grossed $200 million by the time of her unexpected death in 1962. She continues to be considered a major popular culture icon.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage and married at the age of sixteen.
While working in a factory in 1944 as part of the war effort, she was introduced to a photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit and began a successful pin-up modeling career.
The work led to short-lived film contracts with Twentieth Century-Fox (1946–1947) and Columbia Pictures (1948). After a series of minor film roles, she signed a new contract with Fox in 1951. Over the next two years, she became a popular actress with roles in several comedies, including As Young as You Feel and Monkey Business, and in the dramas Clash by Night and Don't Bother to Knock. Monroe faced a scandal when it was revealed that she had posed for nude photos before becoming a star, but rather than damaging her career, the story resulted in increased interest in her films.
By 1953, Monroe was one of the most marketable Hollywood stars, with leading roles in three films: the noir Niagara, which focused on her sex appeal, and the comedies Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, which established her star image as a "dumb blonde".
Although she played a significant role in the creation and management of her public image throughout her career, she was disappointed at being typecast and underpaid by the studio. She was briefly suspended in early 1954 for refusing a film project, but returned to star in one of the biggest box office successes of her career, The Seven Year Itch (1955).
When the studio was still reluctant to change her contract, Monroe founded a film production company in late 1954; she named it Marilyn Monroe Productions (MMP). She dedicated 1955 to building her company and began studying method acting at the Actors Studio.
In late 1955, Fox awarded her a new contract, which gave her more control and a larger salary. After a critically acclaimed performance in Bus Stop (1956) and acting in the first independent production of MMP, The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress for Some Like It Hot (1959). Her last completed film was the drama The Misfits (1961).
Monroe's troubled private life received much attention. She struggled with substance abuse, depression, and anxiety. She had two highly publicized marriages, to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, both of which ended in divorce. On August 5, 1962, she died at age 36 from an overdose of barbiturates at her home in Los Angeles. Although Monroe's death was ruled a probable suicide, several conspiracy theories have been proposed in the decades following her death.
Click here for more about Marilyn Monroe.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage and married at the age of sixteen.
While working in a factory in 1944 as part of the war effort, she was introduced to a photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit and began a successful pin-up modeling career.
The work led to short-lived film contracts with Twentieth Century-Fox (1946–1947) and Columbia Pictures (1948). After a series of minor film roles, she signed a new contract with Fox in 1951. Over the next two years, she became a popular actress with roles in several comedies, including As Young as You Feel and Monkey Business, and in the dramas Clash by Night and Don't Bother to Knock. Monroe faced a scandal when it was revealed that she had posed for nude photos before becoming a star, but rather than damaging her career, the story resulted in increased interest in her films.
By 1953, Monroe was one of the most marketable Hollywood stars, with leading roles in three films: the noir Niagara, which focused on her sex appeal, and the comedies Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, which established her star image as a "dumb blonde".
Although she played a significant role in the creation and management of her public image throughout her career, she was disappointed at being typecast and underpaid by the studio. She was briefly suspended in early 1954 for refusing a film project, but returned to star in one of the biggest box office successes of her career, The Seven Year Itch (1955).
When the studio was still reluctant to change her contract, Monroe founded a film production company in late 1954; she named it Marilyn Monroe Productions (MMP). She dedicated 1955 to building her company and began studying method acting at the Actors Studio.
In late 1955, Fox awarded her a new contract, which gave her more control and a larger salary. After a critically acclaimed performance in Bus Stop (1956) and acting in the first independent production of MMP, The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress for Some Like It Hot (1959). Her last completed film was the drama The Misfits (1961).
Monroe's troubled private life received much attention. She struggled with substance abuse, depression, and anxiety. She had two highly publicized marriages, to retired baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, both of which ended in divorce. On August 5, 1962, she died at age 36 from an overdose of barbiturates at her home in Los Angeles. Although Monroe's death was ruled a probable suicide, several conspiracy theories have been proposed in the decades following her death.
Click here for more about Marilyn Monroe.
Spencer Tracy
YouTube Video: Spencer Tracy in the Movie "Guess who's Coming to Dinner"
Pictured: Spencer Tracy in (L) “Captain Courageous” (1937); (R) “Bad Day at Black Rock” (1955)
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (April 5, 1900 – June 10, 1967) was an American actor, noted for his natural style and versatility. One of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, Tracy was nominated for nine Academy Awards for Best Actor and won two, sharing the record for nominations in that category with Laurence Olivier.
Tracy first discovered his talent for acting while attending Ripon College, and he later received a scholarship for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He spent seven years in the theater, working in a succession of stock companies and intermittently on Broadway.
Tracy's breakthrough came in 1930, when his lead performance in The Last Mile caught the attention of Hollywood. After a successful film debut in Up the River, Tracy was signed to a contract with Fox Film Corporation. His five years with Fox were unremarkable, and he remained largely unknown to audiences after 25 films.
In 1935, Tracy joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, at the time Hollywood's most prestigious studio. His career flourished with a series of hit films, and in 1937 and 1938 he won consecutive Oscars for Captains Courageous and Boys Town. By the 1940s, Tracy was one of the studio's top stars.
In 1942, he appeared with Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year, beginning a popular partnership that produced nine movies over 25 years.
Tracy left MGM in 1955, and continued to work regularly as a freelance star, despite an increasing weariness as he aged.
His personal life was troubled, with a lifelong struggle against alcoholism and guilt over his son's hearing loss. Tracy became estranged from his wife in the 1930s, but never divorced, conducting a long-term relationship with Katharine Hepburn in private. Towards the end of his life, Tracy worked almost exclusively for director Stanley Kramer. It was for Kramer that he made his last film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in 1967, completed just 17 days before Tracy's death.
During his career, Tracy appeared in 75 films and developed a reputation among his peers as one of the screen's greatest actors. In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked Tracy as the 9th greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Click here for more about Spencer Tracy.
Tracy first discovered his talent for acting while attending Ripon College, and he later received a scholarship for the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He spent seven years in the theater, working in a succession of stock companies and intermittently on Broadway.
Tracy's breakthrough came in 1930, when his lead performance in The Last Mile caught the attention of Hollywood. After a successful film debut in Up the River, Tracy was signed to a contract with Fox Film Corporation. His five years with Fox were unremarkable, and he remained largely unknown to audiences after 25 films.
In 1935, Tracy joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, at the time Hollywood's most prestigious studio. His career flourished with a series of hit films, and in 1937 and 1938 he won consecutive Oscars for Captains Courageous and Boys Town. By the 1940s, Tracy was one of the studio's top stars.
In 1942, he appeared with Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year, beginning a popular partnership that produced nine movies over 25 years.
Tracy left MGM in 1955, and continued to work regularly as a freelance star, despite an increasing weariness as he aged.
His personal life was troubled, with a lifelong struggle against alcoholism and guilt over his son's hearing loss. Tracy became estranged from his wife in the 1930s, but never divorced, conducting a long-term relationship with Katharine Hepburn in private. Towards the end of his life, Tracy worked almost exclusively for director Stanley Kramer. It was for Kramer that he made his last film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in 1967, completed just 17 days before Tracy's death.
During his career, Tracy appeared in 75 films and developed a reputation among his peers as one of the screen's greatest actors. In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked Tracy as the 9th greatest male star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Click here for more about Spencer Tracy.
Katherine Hepburn
YouTube Video: Top 10 Katharine Hepburn Performances
Pictured: Katherine Hepburn in (L) “The African Queen”; (R) “The Lion in Winter”
Katharine Houghton Hepburn (May 12, 1907 – June 29, 2003) was an American actress. Known for her fierce independence and spirited personality, Hepburn was a leading lady in Hollywood for more than 60 years.
She appeared in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and she received four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer. In 1999, Hepburn was named by the American Film Institute as the greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Raised in Connecticut by wealthy, progressive parents, Hepburn began to act while studying at Bryn Mawr College. After four years in the theatre, favorable reviews of her work on Broadway brought her to the attention of Hollywood.
Hepburn's early years in the film industry were marked with success, including an Academy Award for her third picture, Morning Glory (1933), but this was followed by a series of commercial failures that led her to be labeled "box office poison" in 1938.
Hepburn masterminded her own comeback, buying out her contract with RKO Radio Pictures and acquiring the film rights to The Philadelphia Story, which she sold on the condition that she be the star.
In the 1940s, she was contracted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where her career focused on an alliance with Spencer Tracy. The screen-partnership spanned 25 years and produced nine movies.
Hepburn challenged herself in the latter half of her life, as she regularly appeared in Shakespearean stage productions and tackled a range of literary roles. She found a niche playing middle-aged spinsters, such as in The African Queen (1951), a persona the public embraced. Three more Oscars came for her work in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond (1981).
In the 1970s, she began appearing in television films, which became the focus of her career in later life. She remained active into old age, making her final screen appearance in 1994 at the age of 87. After a period of inactivity and ill health, Hepburn died in 2003 at the age of 96.
Hepburn famously shunned the Hollywood publicity machine and refused to conform to society's expectations of women. She was outspoken, assertive, athletic, and wore trousers before it was fashionable for women to do so. She married once, as a young woman, but thereafter lived independently.
A 26-year affair with her co-star Spencer Tracy was hidden from the public. With her unconventional lifestyle and the independent characters she brought to the screen, Hepburn epitomized the "modern woman" in the 20th-century United States and is remembered as an important cultural figure.
Click here for more about Katherine Hepburn.
She appeared in a range of genres, from screwball comedy to literary drama, and she received four Academy Awards for Best Actress—a record for any performer. In 1999, Hepburn was named by the American Film Institute as the greatest female star of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
Raised in Connecticut by wealthy, progressive parents, Hepburn began to act while studying at Bryn Mawr College. After four years in the theatre, favorable reviews of her work on Broadway brought her to the attention of Hollywood.
Hepburn's early years in the film industry were marked with success, including an Academy Award for her third picture, Morning Glory (1933), but this was followed by a series of commercial failures that led her to be labeled "box office poison" in 1938.
Hepburn masterminded her own comeback, buying out her contract with RKO Radio Pictures and acquiring the film rights to The Philadelphia Story, which she sold on the condition that she be the star.
In the 1940s, she was contracted to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where her career focused on an alliance with Spencer Tracy. The screen-partnership spanned 25 years and produced nine movies.
Hepburn challenged herself in the latter half of her life, as she regularly appeared in Shakespearean stage productions and tackled a range of literary roles. She found a niche playing middle-aged spinsters, such as in The African Queen (1951), a persona the public embraced. Three more Oscars came for her work in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond (1981).
In the 1970s, she began appearing in television films, which became the focus of her career in later life. She remained active into old age, making her final screen appearance in 1994 at the age of 87. After a period of inactivity and ill health, Hepburn died in 2003 at the age of 96.
Hepburn famously shunned the Hollywood publicity machine and refused to conform to society's expectations of women. She was outspoken, assertive, athletic, and wore trousers before it was fashionable for women to do so. She married once, as a young woman, but thereafter lived independently.
A 26-year affair with her co-star Spencer Tracy was hidden from the public. With her unconventional lifestyle and the independent characters she brought to the screen, Hepburn epitomized the "modern woman" in the 20th-century United States and is remembered as an important cultural figure.
Click here for more about Katherine Hepburn.
Robin Williams as Comedian and Actor
YouTube Video Best of Robin Williams Stand up comedy [Collection]
YouTube Video: Good Will Hunting - The best Robin Williams scene*
* -- Williams won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Good Will Hunting.
Pictured: Robin Williams (Left) as Mork in “Mork and Mindy” (ABC: 1978-1982); (Center) in the 1987 movie “Good, Morning Vietnam”; and (Right) in the title role of the 1993 movie “Mrs. Doubtfire”
Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951 – August 11, 2014) was an American stand-up comedian, actor, director, producer, writer, singer and voice artist.
Starting as a stand-up comedian in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, he is credited with leading San Francisco's comedy renaissance.
After rising to fame as Mork in Mork & Mindy (1978–82), Williams went on to establish a career in both stand-up comedy and feature film acting. He was known for his improvisational skills.
After his first starring film role in Popeye (1980), he starred or co-starred in widely acclaimed films, including:
Add to these the following financial successes:
Williams won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting.
He also received two Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five Grammy Awards throughout his career.
On August 11, 2014, Williams committed suicide by hanging at his home in Paradise Cay, California. His wife attributed his suicide to his struggle with Lewy body dementia.
For more about Robin Williams, click here.
Starting as a stand-up comedian in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, he is credited with leading San Francisco's comedy renaissance.
After rising to fame as Mork in Mork & Mindy (1978–82), Williams went on to establish a career in both stand-up comedy and feature film acting. He was known for his improvisational skills.
After his first starring film role in Popeye (1980), he starred or co-starred in widely acclaimed films, including:
- The World According to Garp (1982),
- Good Morning, Vietnam (1987),
- Dead Poets Society (1989),
- Awakenings (1990),
- The Fisher King (1991),
- Aladdin (1992),
- Good Will Hunting (1997),
- and One Hour Photo (2002),
Add to these the following financial successes:
- Hook (1991),
- Mrs. Doubtfire (1993),
- Jumanji (1995),
- The Birdcage (1996),
- Night at the Museum (2006),
- and World's Greatest Dad (2009).
Williams won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting.
He also received two Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five Grammy Awards throughout his career.
On August 11, 2014, Williams committed suicide by hanging at his home in Paradise Cay, California. His wife attributed his suicide to his struggle with Lewy body dementia.
For more about Robin Williams, click here.
Audrey Hepburn
YouTube Video of the Best of Audrey Hepburn by Biography.com
Pictured: Audrey Hepburn in LEFT: Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961); RIGHT: Roman Holiday (1953)
Audrey Hepburn, born Audrey Kathleen Ruston; 4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a British actress and humanitarian. Recognized as a film and fashion icon, Hepburn was active during Hollywood's Golden Age. She was ranked by the American Film Institute as the third greatest female screen legend in Golden Age Hollywood and was inducted into the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame.
She spent her childhood between Belgium, England, and the Netherlands, including German-occupied Arnhem during the Second World War where she worked as a courier for the Dutch resistance and assisted with fundraising.
In Amsterdam, she studied ballet with Sonia Gaskell before moving to London in 1948 to continue her ballet training with Marie Rambert and perform as a chorus girl in West End musical theatre productions. She spoke several languages, including English, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and German.
Following minor appearances in several films, Hepburn starred in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi after being spotted by French novelist Colette. Hepburn shot to stardom for playing the lead role in Roman Holiday (1953), for which she was the first actress to win an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award for a single performance. The same year, she won a Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her performance in Ondine.
Hepburn went on to star in a number of successful films, such as Sabrina (1954), The Nun's Story (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Charade (1963), My Fair Lady (1964) and Wait Until Dark (1967), for which she received Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations.
Hepburn won a record three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role. In recognition of her film career, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from BAFTA, Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and the Special Tony Award. Hepburn remains one of the few people who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards.
Hepburn appeared in fewer films as her life went on, devoting much of her later life to UNICEF. Although contributing to the organization since 1954, she worked in some of the poorest communities of Africa, South America and Asia between 1988 and 1992. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in December 1992. A month later, Hepburn died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Switzerland at the age of 63.
Click here for more about Audrey Hepburn.
She spent her childhood between Belgium, England, and the Netherlands, including German-occupied Arnhem during the Second World War where she worked as a courier for the Dutch resistance and assisted with fundraising.
In Amsterdam, she studied ballet with Sonia Gaskell before moving to London in 1948 to continue her ballet training with Marie Rambert and perform as a chorus girl in West End musical theatre productions. She spoke several languages, including English, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and German.
Following minor appearances in several films, Hepburn starred in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi after being spotted by French novelist Colette. Hepburn shot to stardom for playing the lead role in Roman Holiday (1953), for which she was the first actress to win an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award for a single performance. The same year, she won a Tony Award for Best Lead Actress in a Play for her performance in Ondine.
Hepburn went on to star in a number of successful films, such as Sabrina (1954), The Nun's Story (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), Charade (1963), My Fair Lady (1964) and Wait Until Dark (1967), for which she received Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations.
Hepburn won a record three BAFTA Awards for Best British Actress in a Leading Role. In recognition of her film career, she was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from BAFTA, Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and the Special Tony Award. Hepburn remains one of the few people who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards.
Hepburn appeared in fewer films as her life went on, devoting much of her later life to UNICEF. Although contributing to the organization since 1954, she worked in some of the poorest communities of Africa, South America and Asia between 1988 and 1992. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of her work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in December 1992. A month later, Hepburn died of appendiceal cancer at her home in Switzerland at the age of 63.
Click here for more about Audrey Hepburn.
Sir Alec Guiness
YouTube Video of THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (1957). Alec Guinness, as Colonel Nicholson of the British Army
Sir Alec Guinness CH CBE (1914 – 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage, he was featured in several of the Ealing Comedies, including The Ladykillers and Kind Hearts and Coronets in which he played eight different characters.
He is also known for his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy, receiving a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Guinness was one of three major British actors, along with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, who successfully made the transition from Shakespearean theatre in their home country to Hollywood blockbusters immediately after the Second World War.
He also won a BAFTA Award, Golden Globe, and a Tony Award, as well as an Academy Award. In 1959, he was knighted by Elizabeth II for services to the arts. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 1980, and the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award in 1989.
Guinness appeared in nine films that featured in the BFI's 100 greatest British films of the 20th century, which included five of Lean's films.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Alec Guinness:
- He is also known for his six collaborations with David Lean:
- Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946),
- Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948),
- Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor),
- Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962),
- General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965),
- and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984).
He is also known for his portrayal of Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy, receiving a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Guinness was one of three major British actors, along with Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud, who successfully made the transition from Shakespearean theatre in their home country to Hollywood blockbusters immediately after the Second World War.
He also won a BAFTA Award, Golden Globe, and a Tony Award, as well as an Academy Award. In 1959, he was knighted by Elizabeth II for services to the arts. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, the Academy Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 1980, and the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award in 1989.
Guinness appeared in nine films that featured in the BFI's 100 greatest British films of the 20th century, which included five of Lean's films.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Alec Guinness:
- Early life
- Early career
- World War II
- Postwar stage career
- Film career
- Television appearances
- Awards and honours
- Personal life
- Death
- Autobiographies and biography
- Filmography
- See also:
- Alec Guinness on IMDb
- Alec Guinness at the Internet Broadway Database
- Alec Guinness at the TCM Movie Database
- Alec Guinness at AllMovie
- Alec Guinness at the BFI's Screenonline
- Performances in Theatre Archive, Bristol
- Works by Alec Guinness at Open Library
- Costume Sketches for unrealized one-man show "The Angry Clown" -- Motley Collection of Theatre & Costume Design
Andy Griffith
YouTube Video of Top 15 scenes from The Andy Griffith Show
YouTube Video of the Movie "No Time for Sergeants" (1958)
Pictured: Andy Griffith in the TV Series (L) The Andy Griffith Show (CBS: 1960-1968); (R) Matlock (NBC: 1986-1992; ABC: 1992-1995)
Andy Samuel Griffith (June 1, 1926 – July 3, 2012) was an American actor, comedian, television producer, Southern gospel singer, and writer.
Griffith was a Tony Award nominee for two roles, and gained prominence in the starring role in director Elia Kazan's film A Face in the Crowd (1957) before he became better known for his television roles, playing the lead roles of Andy Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show (1960–1968) and Ben Matlock in the legal drama Matlock (1986–1995).
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Andy Griffith:
Griffith was a Tony Award nominee for two roles, and gained prominence in the starring role in director Elia Kazan's film A Face in the Crowd (1957) before he became better known for his television roles, playing the lead roles of Andy Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show (1960–1968) and Ben Matlock in the legal drama Matlock (1986–1995).
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Andy Griffith:
- Early life and education
- Career
- Association with Don Knotts and Ron Howard
- Political activities
- Personal life
- Death
- Awards and honors
- Albums
- Filmography
- See also:
- Inventory of the Andy Griffith Papers, 1949–1997, in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Andy Griffith at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
- "Andy Griffith collected news and commentary". The New York Times.
- Andy Griffith at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
- Andy Griffith on IMDb
- Andy Griffith at the TCM Movie Database
- Andy Griffith Discography, at MTV
- Andy Griffith at Find a Grave
Lee Marvin
YouTube Video of Lee Marvin in "Cat Ballou"
Pictured below: Lee Marvin in (L) Cat Ballou (1965); (R) Dirty Dozen (1967)
Lee Marvin (February 19, 1924 – August 29, 1987) was an American film and television actor. Known for his distinctive voice and premature white hair, Marvin initially appeared in supporting roles, mostly villains, soldiers, and other hardboiled characters. A prominent television role was that of Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger in the NBC crime series M Squad (1957–1960).
One of Marvin's most notable film projects was Cat Ballou (1965), a comedy Western in which he played dual roles. For portraying both gunfighter Kid Shelleen and criminal Tim Strawn, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, along with a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, an NBR Award, and the Silver Bear for Best Actor.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Lee Marvin:
One of Marvin's most notable film projects was Cat Ballou (1965), a comedy Western in which he played dual roles. For portraying both gunfighter Kid Shelleen and criminal Tim Strawn, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, along with a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, an NBR Award, and the Silver Bear for Best Actor.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Lee Marvin:
- Early life
- Military service
- Acting career
- Personal life
- Death
- Selected filmography
- Television appearances
- See also:
- The Sons of Lee Marvin, a tongue-in-cheek secret society dedicated to Marvin
- Welcome to Night Vale, which features Lee Marvin as an integral piece of its mythology and supporting cast.
- Lee Marvin on IMDb
- Lee Marvin at the Internet Broadway Database
- Profile of Marvin in Film Comment
- Lee Marvin at Find a Grave
Rod Steiger
YouTube Video: Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier: In the Heat of the Night: TRAIN DEPOT SCENE
Pictured below: Rod Steiger in (L) Waterloo, (C) The Pawnbroker; (R) Al Capone
Rodney Stephen Steiger (April 14, 1925 – July 9, 2002) was an American actor, noted for his portrayal of offbeat, often volatile and crazed characters. Cited as "one of Hollywood's most charismatic and dynamic stars", he is closely associated with the art of method acting, embodying the characters he played, which at times led to clashes with directors and co-stars.
Steiger starred as Marlon Brando's mobster brother Charlie in On the Waterfront (1954), the title character Sol Nazerman in The Pawnbroker (1964), and as police chief Bill Gillespie opposite Sidney Poitier in the film In the Heat of the Night (1967) which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Steiger was born in Westhampton, New York, the son of a vaudevillian. He had a difficult childhood, with an alcoholic mother from whom he ran away at the age of 16. After serving in the South Pacific Theater during World War II, he began his acting career with television roles in 1947, and went on to garner critical acclaim for his portrayal of the main character in the teleplay "Marty" (1953).
Steiger made his stage debut in 1946, in a production of Curse you, Jack Dalton! at the Civic Repertory Theatre of Newark, and subsequently appeared in productions such as An Enemy of the People (1950), Clifford Odets's Night Music (1951), Seagulls Over Sorrento (1952) and Rashomon (1959).
Steiger made his film debut in Fred Zinnemann's Teresa in 1951, and subsequently appeared in films such as The Big Knife (1955), Oklahoma! (1955), Across the Bridge (1957) and Al Capone (1959).
After Steiger's performance in The Pawnbroker in 1964, in which he played an embittered Jewish Holocaust survivor working as a pawnbroker in New York City, he portrayed an opportunistic Russian politician in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965).
In the Heat of the Night (1967) won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Steiger, who was lauded for his performance as a Mississippi police chief who learns to respect an African-American officer (Poitier) as they search for a killer. The following year, he played a serial killer of many guises in No Way to Treat a Lady.
During the 1970s, Steiger increasingly turned to European productions in his search for more demanding roles. He portrayed:
By the 1980s, heart problems and depression took its toll on Steiger's career, and he found it difficult to find employment, agreeing to appear in low-budget B movies. One of his final roles was as judge H. Lee Sarokin in the prison drama The Hurricane (1999), which reunited him with In the Heat of the Night director Norman Jewison.
Steiger was married five times, and had a daughter, opera singer Anna Steiger, and a son, Michael Steiger. He died of pneumonia and kidney failure as a result of complications from surgery for a gall bladder tumor on July 9, 2002, aged 77, in Los Angeles, and was survived by his fifth wife Joan Benedict Steiger.
Click here for more about Rod Steiger.
Steiger starred as Marlon Brando's mobster brother Charlie in On the Waterfront (1954), the title character Sol Nazerman in The Pawnbroker (1964), and as police chief Bill Gillespie opposite Sidney Poitier in the film In the Heat of the Night (1967) which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Steiger was born in Westhampton, New York, the son of a vaudevillian. He had a difficult childhood, with an alcoholic mother from whom he ran away at the age of 16. After serving in the South Pacific Theater during World War II, he began his acting career with television roles in 1947, and went on to garner critical acclaim for his portrayal of the main character in the teleplay "Marty" (1953).
Steiger made his stage debut in 1946, in a production of Curse you, Jack Dalton! at the Civic Repertory Theatre of Newark, and subsequently appeared in productions such as An Enemy of the People (1950), Clifford Odets's Night Music (1951), Seagulls Over Sorrento (1952) and Rashomon (1959).
Steiger made his film debut in Fred Zinnemann's Teresa in 1951, and subsequently appeared in films such as The Big Knife (1955), Oklahoma! (1955), Across the Bridge (1957) and Al Capone (1959).
After Steiger's performance in The Pawnbroker in 1964, in which he played an embittered Jewish Holocaust survivor working as a pawnbroker in New York City, he portrayed an opportunistic Russian politician in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965).
In the Heat of the Night (1967) won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Steiger, who was lauded for his performance as a Mississippi police chief who learns to respect an African-American officer (Poitier) as they search for a killer. The following year, he played a serial killer of many guises in No Way to Treat a Lady.
During the 1970s, Steiger increasingly turned to European productions in his search for more demanding roles. He portrayed:
- Napoleon Bonaparte in Waterloo (1970),
- a Mexican bandit in Sergio Leone's Duck, You Sucker! (1971),
- Benito Mussolini in Last Days of Mussolini (1975),
- and ended the decade playing a disturbed priest in The Amityville Horror (1979).
By the 1980s, heart problems and depression took its toll on Steiger's career, and he found it difficult to find employment, agreeing to appear in low-budget B movies. One of his final roles was as judge H. Lee Sarokin in the prison drama The Hurricane (1999), which reunited him with In the Heat of the Night director Norman Jewison.
Steiger was married five times, and had a daughter, opera singer Anna Steiger, and a son, Michael Steiger. He died of pneumonia and kidney failure as a result of complications from surgery for a gall bladder tumor on July 9, 2002, aged 77, in Los Angeles, and was survived by his fifth wife Joan Benedict Steiger.
Click here for more about Rod Steiger.
Carroll O'Connor
YouTube Video: Sammy Davis Jr. Kisses Archie Bunker
Pictured below: Caroll O'Connor (L) as Archie Bunker in "All in the Family" and (R) as Police Chief Bill Gillespie in "In the Heat of the Night"
John Carroll O'Connor (August 2, 1924 – June 21, 2001) was an American actor, producer, and director whose television career spanned four decades.
A lifelong member of the Actors Studio, O'Connor first attracted attention as Major General Colt in the 1970 film Kelly's Heroes. The following year, he found fame as the bigoted working man Archie Bunker, the main character in the 1970s CBS television sitcoms All in the Family (1971–1979) and Archie Bunker's Place (1979–1983).
O'Connor later starred in the NBC/CBS television crime drama In the Heat of the Night from 1988 to 1995, where he played the role of southern Police Chief William (Bill) Gillespie. At the end of his career in the late 1990s, he played the father of Jamie Buchman (Helen Hunt) on Mad About You.
In 1996, O'Connor was ranked number 38 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Carroll O'Connor:
A lifelong member of the Actors Studio, O'Connor first attracted attention as Major General Colt in the 1970 film Kelly's Heroes. The following year, he found fame as the bigoted working man Archie Bunker, the main character in the 1970s CBS television sitcoms All in the Family (1971–1979) and Archie Bunker's Place (1979–1983).
O'Connor later starred in the NBC/CBS television crime drama In the Heat of the Night from 1988 to 1995, where he played the role of southern Police Chief William (Bill) Gillespie. At the end of his career in the late 1990s, he played the father of Jamie Buchman (Helen Hunt) on Mad About You.
In 1996, O'Connor was ranked number 38 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Carroll O'Connor:
- Early life
- Prolific character actor
- Television roles
- Career honors
- Personal life
- Death
- Partial credits include the following:
- Starring roles
Films (feature and made-for-TV)
Writer
Producer
Director
rew
Composer/Lyricist
Series music
Author
Guest starring
Misc
Archive footage featuring Carroll O'Connor
- Starring roles
Jackie Gleason
YouTube Video of Jackie Gleason as "The Loudmouth" (with Art Carney)
YouTube Video: Jackie Gleason on The Ed Sullivan Show
Pictured below: Jackie Gleason:
TOP ROW (L-R): in The Honeymooners; the Jackie Gleason Show
BOTTOM ROW: as Minnesota Fats in "The Hustler"
John Herbert Gleason (February 26, 1916 – June 24, 1987) was an American comedian, actor, writer, composer and conductor.
Developing a style and characters from growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy, exemplified by his bus driver Ralph Kramden character in the television series The Honeymooners. By filming the episodes with Electronicams, Gleason was later able to release the series in syndication, which increased its popularity over the years with new audiences.
Gleason also developed The Jackie Gleason Show, which maintained high ratings from the mid-1950s through 1970. After originating in New York City, filming moved to Miami, Florida, in 1964 after Gleason took up permanent residence there.
Among his notable film roles were Minnesota Fats in the 1961 Academy Award-winning drama The Hustler (co-starring with Paul Newman), and Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit series from 1977 into the early 1980s (co-starring Burt Reynolds).
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Gleason enjoyed a prominent secondary music career,
producing a series of best-selling "mood music" albums. His first album, Music for Lovers Only, still holds the record for the longest stay on the Billboard Top Ten Charts (153 weeks), and his first 10 albums sold over a million copies each. To date his output spans some 20-plus singles, nearly 60 long-playing record albums, and over 40 CDs.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Jackie Gleason:
Developing a style and characters from growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy, exemplified by his bus driver Ralph Kramden character in the television series The Honeymooners. By filming the episodes with Electronicams, Gleason was later able to release the series in syndication, which increased its popularity over the years with new audiences.
Gleason also developed The Jackie Gleason Show, which maintained high ratings from the mid-1950s through 1970. After originating in New York City, filming moved to Miami, Florida, in 1964 after Gleason took up permanent residence there.
Among his notable film roles were Minnesota Fats in the 1961 Academy Award-winning drama The Hustler (co-starring with Paul Newman), and Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit series from 1977 into the early 1980s (co-starring Burt Reynolds).
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Gleason enjoyed a prominent secondary music career,
producing a series of best-selling "mood music" albums. His first album, Music for Lovers Only, still holds the record for the longest stay on the Billboard Top Ten Charts (153 weeks), and his first 10 albums sold over a million copies each. To date his output spans some 20-plus singles, nearly 60 long-playing record albums, and over 40 CDs.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Jackie Gleason:
- Early life
- Career
- Personal life
- Legacy and honors
- Works
- See also:
- Jackie Gleason on IMDb
- Jackie Gleason at the TCM Movie Database
- Jackie Gleason at the Internet Broadway Database
- Jackie Gleason Discography at Space Age Pop Music
- Honeymooners at The Fifties Web
- Cavalcade of Stars 1950 episode at Internet Archive
- Jackie Gleason at Find a Grave
Burt Reynolds
YouTube Video of Burt Reynolds on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
Pictured: Burt Reynolds in “Deliverance” (1972 Movie with Ned Beatty)
Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. (February 11, 1936 – September 6, 2018) was an American actor, director and producer. He first rose to prominence starring in television series such as Gunsmoke (1962–1965), Hawk (1966), and Dan August (1970–1971).
Reynolds breakout film role was as Lewis Medlock in Deliverance (1972). Reynolds played the leading role in a number of subsequent box office hits, such as:
After a few box office failures, Reynolds returned to television, starring in the sitcom Evening Shade (1990–1994). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Boogie Nights (1997)
Click here for more about Burt Reynolds.
Reynolds breakout film role was as Lewis Medlock in Deliverance (1972). Reynolds played the leading role in a number of subsequent box office hits, such as:
- The Longest Yard (1974),
- Smokey and the Bandit (1977),
- Semi-Tough (1977),
- Hooper (1978),
- Smokey and the Bandit II (1980),
- The Cannonball Run (1981)
- and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982).
After a few box office failures, Reynolds returned to television, starring in the sitcom Evening Shade (1990–1994). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Boogie Nights (1997)
Click here for more about Burt Reynolds.
Howard Hughes
YouTube Video: The Story of Howard Hughes - Documentary Films
Pictured: Howard Hughes financial empire
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American business tycoon, entrepreneur, investor, aviator, aerospace engineer, inventor, filmmaker and philanthropist. During his life, he was known as one of the most financially successful individuals in the world.
As a maverick film tycoon, Hughes gained prominence in Hollywood from the late 1920s, making big-budget and often controversial films like The Racket (1928), Hell's Angels (1930), Scarface (1932), and The Outlaw (1943).
Hughes formed the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932, hiring numerous engineers and designers. He spent the rest of the 1930s setting multiple world air speed records and building the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 Hercules (now better known as the "Spruce Goose").
He also acquired and expanded Trans World Airlines (TWA, subsequently acquired by and merged with American Airlines) and later acquired Air West, renaming it Hughes Airwest. Hughes Airwest was eventually acquired by and merged into Republic Airlines.
Hughes was included in Flying Magazine's list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation, ranking at No. 25.
He is remembered for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle in later life, caused in part by a worsening obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) and chronic pain. His legacy is maintained through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Click here for more about Howard Hughes.
As a maverick film tycoon, Hughes gained prominence in Hollywood from the late 1920s, making big-budget and often controversial films like The Racket (1928), Hell's Angels (1930), Scarface (1932), and The Outlaw (1943).
Hughes formed the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932, hiring numerous engineers and designers. He spent the rest of the 1930s setting multiple world air speed records and building the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 Hercules (now better known as the "Spruce Goose").
He also acquired and expanded Trans World Airlines (TWA, subsequently acquired by and merged with American Airlines) and later acquired Air West, renaming it Hughes Airwest. Hughes Airwest was eventually acquired by and merged into Republic Airlines.
Hughes was included in Flying Magazine's list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation, ranking at No. 25.
He is remembered for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle in later life, caused in part by a worsening obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) and chronic pain. His legacy is maintained through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Click here for more about Howard Hughes.
Johnny Carson including as Host of the Tonight Show (NBC: 1962-1992)
- YouTube Video: Johnny Carson Jumps into Ed McMahon's Arms
- YouTube Video: Jonathan Winters & Robin Williams in Funniest Moments on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show
- YouTube video Johnny Carson -- one of the final Carnac segments
John William "Johnny" Carson (October 23, 1925 – January 23, 2005) was an American television talk show host and comedian, best known for his 30 years as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962–1992).
Carson received six Emmy Awards, the Governor's Award, and a 1985 Peabody Award. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987. Johnny Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1993.
Although his show was already successful by the end of the 1960s, during the 1970s, Carson became an American icon and remained so even after his retirement in 1992. He adopted a casual, conversational approach with extensive interaction with guests, an approach pioneered by Arthur Godfrey and previous Tonight Show hosts Steve Allen and Jack Paar. Former late-night host and friend David Letterman cited Carson's influence.
For further amplification about Johnny Carson, click here.
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under The Tonight Show franchise from October 1, 1962 through May 22, 1992.
It originally aired during late-night. For its first decade, Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show was based at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, with some episodes recorded at NBC-TV's West Coast studios in Burbank, California; on May 1, 1972, the show moved to Burbank as its main venue and remained there exclusively after May 1973 until Carson's retirement.
In 2002, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was ranked No. 12 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time and in 2013, it was ranked No. 22 on their list of 60 Best Series.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for further information about the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson:
Carson received six Emmy Awards, the Governor's Award, and a 1985 Peabody Award. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987. Johnny Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1993.
Although his show was already successful by the end of the 1960s, during the 1970s, Carson became an American icon and remained so even after his retirement in 1992. He adopted a casual, conversational approach with extensive interaction with guests, an approach pioneered by Arthur Godfrey and previous Tonight Show hosts Steve Allen and Jack Paar. Former late-night host and friend David Letterman cited Carson's influence.
For further amplification about Johnny Carson, click here.
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under The Tonight Show franchise from October 1, 1962 through May 22, 1992.
It originally aired during late-night. For its first decade, Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show was based at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, with some episodes recorded at NBC-TV's West Coast studios in Burbank, California; on May 1, 1972, the show moved to Burbank as its main venue and remained there exclusively after May 1973 until Carson's retirement.
In 2002, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was ranked No. 12 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time and in 2013, it was ranked No. 22 on their list of 60 Best Series.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for further information about the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson:
Stan Lee, (1922-2018) Founder of Marvel Comics
YouTube Video: STAN LEE _ Every Stan Lee Cameo Ever (1989 - 2018) Marvel
Pictured below: Remembering Stan Lee, A Leading Mind Behind Marvel And Comic Book Legend
Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber /December 28, 1922 – November 12, 2018) was an American comic book writer, editor, and publisher who was active from the 1940s to the 2010s.
Lee rose through the ranks of a family-run business to become Marvel Comics' primary creative leader for two decades, leading its expansion from a small division of a publishing house to a multimedia corporation that dominated the comics industry.
In collaboration with others at Marvel—particularly co-writer/artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko—Lee co-created numerous popular fictional characters, including the following superheroes:
In doing so, Lee pioneered a more naturalistic approach to writing superhero comics in the 1960s, and in the 1970s he challenged the restrictions of the Comics Code Authority, indirectly leading to changes in its policies.
In the 1980s Lee pursued development of Marvel properties in other media, with mixed results. Following his retirement from Marvel in the 1990s, he remained a public figurehead for the company, and frequently made cameo appearances in films based on Marvel characters, on which he received an honorary "executive producer" credit.
Meanwhile, Lee continued independent creative ventures into his 90s, until his death in 2018.
Lee was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995. He received the NEA's National Medal of Arts in 2008.
Click here for more about Stan Lee.
___________________________________________________________________________
Marvel Comics is the brand name and primary imprint of Marvel Worldwide Inc., formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, a publisher of American comic books and related media. In 2009, The Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel Entertainment, Marvel Worldwide's parent company.
Marvel started in 1939 as Timely Publications, and by the early 1950s, had generally become known as Atlas Comics. The Marvel branding began in 1961, the year that the company launched The Fantastic Four and other superhero titles created by Steve Ditko, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and many others.
Marvel counts among its characters such well-known superheroes as:
Most of Marvel's fictional characters operate in a single reality known as the Marvel Universe, with most locations mirroring real-life places; many major characters are based in New York City.
Click here for more about Marvel Comics.
Lee rose through the ranks of a family-run business to become Marvel Comics' primary creative leader for two decades, leading its expansion from a small division of a publishing house to a multimedia corporation that dominated the comics industry.
In collaboration with others at Marvel—particularly co-writer/artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko—Lee co-created numerous popular fictional characters, including the following superheroes:
- Spider-Man,
- the X-Men,
- Iron Man,
- Thor,
- the Hulk,
- the Fantastic Four,
- Black Panther,
- Daredevil,
- Doctor Strange,
- and Ant-Man.
In doing so, Lee pioneered a more naturalistic approach to writing superhero comics in the 1960s, and in the 1970s he challenged the restrictions of the Comics Code Authority, indirectly leading to changes in its policies.
In the 1980s Lee pursued development of Marvel properties in other media, with mixed results. Following his retirement from Marvel in the 1990s, he remained a public figurehead for the company, and frequently made cameo appearances in films based on Marvel characters, on which he received an honorary "executive producer" credit.
Meanwhile, Lee continued independent creative ventures into his 90s, until his death in 2018.
Lee was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995. He received the NEA's National Medal of Arts in 2008.
Click here for more about Stan Lee.
___________________________________________________________________________
Marvel Comics is the brand name and primary imprint of Marvel Worldwide Inc., formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, a publisher of American comic books and related media. In 2009, The Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel Entertainment, Marvel Worldwide's parent company.
Marvel started in 1939 as Timely Publications, and by the early 1950s, had generally become known as Atlas Comics. The Marvel branding began in 1961, the year that the company launched The Fantastic Four and other superhero titles created by Steve Ditko, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and many others.
Marvel counts among its characters such well-known superheroes as:
- Spider-Man,
- Iron Man,
- Captain America,
- Thor,
- the Hulk,
- Captain Marvel,
- Black Panther,
- Deadpool,
- Doctor Strange,
- Wolverine,
- Daredevil,
- Ghost Rider
- and the Punisher,
- such teams as:
- the Avengers,
- the X-Men,
- the Fantastic Four,
- the Inhumans
- and the Guardians of the Galaxy,
- and antagonists including:
- Thanos,
- Doctor Doom,
- Magneto,
- Red Skull,
- Green Goblin,
- Ultron,
- Doctor Octopus,
- Loki,
- and Venom.
Most of Marvel's fictional characters operate in a single reality known as the Marvel Universe, with most locations mirroring real-life places; many major characters are based in New York City.
Click here for more about Marvel Comics.
Dennis Hopper
YouTube Video of Top 10 Dennis Hopper Performances by WatchMojo
Pictured below: Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now (1979)
YouTube Video of Top 10 Dennis Hopper Performances by WatchMojo
Pictured below: Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now (1979)
Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, director, writer, film editor, photographer and artist. He attended the Actors Studio, made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared alongside James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and Giant (1956).
In the next ten years he made a name in television, and by the end of the 1960s had appeared in several films. Hopper also began a prolific and acclaimed photography career in the 1960s.
Hopper made his directorial film debut with Easy Rider (1969), which he and co-star Peter Fonda wrote with Terry Southern. The film earned Hopper a Cannes Film Festival Award for "Best First Work" and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (shared with Fonda and Southern).
Journalist Ann Hornaday wrote: "With its portrait of counterculture heroes raising their middle fingers to the uptight middle-class hypocrisies, Easy Rider became the cinematic symbol of the 1960s, a celluloid anthem to freedom, macho bravado and anti-establishment rebellion". Film critic Matthew Hays wrote "no other persona better signifies the lost idealism of the 1960s than that of Dennis Hopper".
He worked on various small projects until he found new fame for his role as the American photojournalist in Apocalypse Now (1979). He went on to helm his third directorial work Out of the Blue (1980), for which he was again honored at Cannes, and appeared in Rumble Fish (1983) and The Osterman Weekend (1983).
Hopper saw a career resurgence in 1986 when he was widely acclaimed for his performances in Blue Velvet and Hoosiers, the latter of which saw him nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
His fourth directorial outing came about through Colors (1988), followed by an Emmy-nominated lead performance in Paris Trout (1991). Hopper found greater fame for portraying the villains of the films Super Mario Bros. (1993), Speed (1994) and Waterworld (1995).
Hopper's later work included a leading role in the short-lived television series Crash (2008–2009), inspired by the film of the same name. He appeared in three films released posthumously: Alpha and Omega (2010), The Last Film Festival (2016) and the long-delayed The Other Side of the Wind (2018), which had been filmed in the early 1970s.
Click here for more about Dennis Hopper.
In the next ten years he made a name in television, and by the end of the 1960s had appeared in several films. Hopper also began a prolific and acclaimed photography career in the 1960s.
Hopper made his directorial film debut with Easy Rider (1969), which he and co-star Peter Fonda wrote with Terry Southern. The film earned Hopper a Cannes Film Festival Award for "Best First Work" and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (shared with Fonda and Southern).
Journalist Ann Hornaday wrote: "With its portrait of counterculture heroes raising their middle fingers to the uptight middle-class hypocrisies, Easy Rider became the cinematic symbol of the 1960s, a celluloid anthem to freedom, macho bravado and anti-establishment rebellion". Film critic Matthew Hays wrote "no other persona better signifies the lost idealism of the 1960s than that of Dennis Hopper".
He worked on various small projects until he found new fame for his role as the American photojournalist in Apocalypse Now (1979). He went on to helm his third directorial work Out of the Blue (1980), for which he was again honored at Cannes, and appeared in Rumble Fish (1983) and The Osterman Weekend (1983).
Hopper saw a career resurgence in 1986 when he was widely acclaimed for his performances in Blue Velvet and Hoosiers, the latter of which saw him nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
His fourth directorial outing came about through Colors (1988), followed by an Emmy-nominated lead performance in Paris Trout (1991). Hopper found greater fame for portraying the villains of the films Super Mario Bros. (1993), Speed (1994) and Waterworld (1995).
Hopper's later work included a leading role in the short-lived television series Crash (2008–2009), inspired by the film of the same name. He appeared in three films released posthumously: Alpha and Omega (2010), The Last Film Festival (2016) and the long-delayed The Other Side of the Wind (2018), which had been filmed in the early 1970s.
Click here for more about Dennis Hopper.
Larry Martin Hagman (September 21, 1931 – November 23, 2012) was an American film and television actor, director and producer best known for playing ruthless oil baron J.R. Ewing in the 1980s primetime television soap opera Dallas and befuddled astronaut Major Anthony "Tony" Nelson in the 1960s sitcom I Dream of Jeannie.
Hagman had supporting roles in numerous films, including Fail-Safe, Harry and Tonto, S.O.B., Nixon and Primary Colors.
His television appearances also included guest roles on dozens of shows spanning from the late 1950s until his death and a reprise of his signature role on the 2012 revival of Dallas. He also worked as a television producer and director.
Hagman was the son of actress Mary Martin. He underwent a life-saving liver transplant in 1995. He died on November 23, 2012 from complications of acute myeloid leukemia.
Click here for more about Larry Hagman.
Hagman had supporting roles in numerous films, including Fail-Safe, Harry and Tonto, S.O.B., Nixon and Primary Colors.
His television appearances also included guest roles on dozens of shows spanning from the late 1950s until his death and a reprise of his signature role on the 2012 revival of Dallas. He also worked as a television producer and director.
Hagman was the son of actress Mary Martin. He underwent a life-saving liver transplant in 1995. He died on November 23, 2012 from complications of acute myeloid leukemia.
Click here for more about Larry Hagman.
Gilda Radner
Pictured below: The enduring legacy of Gilda Radner
- YouTube Video: Weekend Update: Olga Korbut (Gilda Radner) - SNL*
- YouTube Video: Weekend Update: Roseanne Rosannadanna on Smoking - SNL*
- YouTube Video: Dancing In The Dark - Gilda Radner - Steve Martin - Fred Astaire - Cyd Charisse
Pictured below: The enduring legacy of Gilda Radner
Gilda Susan Radner (June 28, 1946 – May 20, 1989) was an American comedian and actress who was one of the seven original cast members for the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL).
In her routines, Radner specialized in parodies of television stereotypes, such as advice specialists and news anchors, and in 1977, she won an Emmy Award for her performances on the show. She also portrayed those characters in her highly successful one-woman show on Broadway in 1979.
Radner's SNL work established her as an iconic figure in the history of American comedy. She died from ovarian cancer in 1989. Her autobiography dealt frankly with her life, work, and personal struggles, including those with the illness.
Her widower, Gene Wilder, carried out her personal wish that information about her illness would help other cancer victims, founding and inspiring organizations that emphasize early diagnosis, hereditary factors and support for cancer victims. She was posthumously awarded a Grammy Award in 1990.
Radner was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1992; and she posthumously received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Gilda Radner:
In her routines, Radner specialized in parodies of television stereotypes, such as advice specialists and news anchors, and in 1977, she won an Emmy Award for her performances on the show. She also portrayed those characters in her highly successful one-woman show on Broadway in 1979.
Radner's SNL work established her as an iconic figure in the history of American comedy. She died from ovarian cancer in 1989. Her autobiography dealt frankly with her life, work, and personal struggles, including those with the illness.
Her widower, Gene Wilder, carried out her personal wish that information about her illness would help other cancer victims, founding and inspiring organizations that emphasize early diagnosis, hereditary factors and support for cancer victims. She was posthumously awarded a Grammy Award in 1990.
Radner was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1992; and she posthumously received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Gilda Radner:
Sean Connery
- YouTube Video: Top 10 Sean Connery Performances (WatchMojo)
- YouTube Video: Sean Connery's Top 4 Bond Moments
- YouTube Video: GOLDFINGER | Cheats never prosper…
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (25 August 1930 – 31 October 2020) was a Scottish actor. He gained recognition as the first actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983. Originating the role in Dr. No, Connery played Bond in six of Eon Productions' entries and made his final appearance in the Jack Schwartzman-produced Never Say Never Again.
Connery began acting in smaller theatre and television productions until his breakout role as Bond. Although he did not enjoy the off-screen attention the role gave him, the success brought offers from famed film directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Lumet and John Huston. Those films included:
Connery officially retired from acting in 2006, although he briefly returned for voice over roles in 2012. His achievements in film were recognized with an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (including the BAFTA Fellowship), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award.
In 1987, Connery was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, and he received the US Kennedy Center Honors lifetime achievement award in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honors for services to film drama.
In 2004, Connery was polled in the Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as the "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century" in 1999.
Early Life:
Thomas Sean Connery, named Thomas after his grandfather, was born in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, Scotland, on 25 August 1930. His mother, Euphemia "Effie" McBain McLean, was a cleaning woman. She was born the daughter of Neil McLean and Helen Forbes Ross, and named after her father's mother, Euphemia McBain, wife of John McLean and daughter of William McBain from Ceres in Fife. Connery's father, Joseph Connery, was a factory worker and lorry driver.
His paternal great-grandparents emigrated to Scotland from Wexford, Ireland in the mid-19th century, with his great-grandfather, James Connery, being an Irish Traveller. The remainder of his family was of Scottish descent, and his maternal great-grandparents were native Scottish Gaelic speakers from Fife and Uig on Skye.
His father was a Roman Catholic, and his mother was a Protestant. He had a younger brother, Neil. Connery said he was called Sean, his middle name, long before becoming an actor, explaining that when he was young he had an Irish friend named Séamus and that those who knew them had decided to call Connery by his middle name whenever both were present. He was generally referred to in his youth as "Tommy".
Although he was small in primary school, he grew rapidly around the age of 12, reaching his full adult height of 6 ft 2 in (188 cm) at 18. He was known during his teen years as "Big Tam", and stated that he lost his virginity to an adult woman in an ATS uniform at the age of 14.
Connery's first job was as a milkman in Edinburgh with St. Cuthbert's Co-operative Society. In 2009, Connery recalled a conversation in a taxi: "When I took a taxi during a recent Edinburgh Film Festival, the driver was amazed that I could put a name to every street we passed. "How come?" he asked. "As a boy I used to deliver milk round here," I said. "So what do you do now?" That was rather harder to answer.
In 1946, at the age of 16, Connery joined the Royal Navy, during which time he acquired two tattoos, of which his official website says "unlike many tattoos, his were not frivolous — his tattoos reflect two of his lifelong commitments: his family and Scotland. ... One tattoo is a tribute to his parents and reads 'Mum and Dad', and the other is self-explanatory, 'Scotland Forever'."
Connery trained in Portsmouth at the naval gunnery school and in an anti-aircraft crew. He was later assigned as an Able Seaman on HMS Formidable. Connery was discharged from the navy at the age of 19 on medical grounds because of a duodenal ulcer, a condition that affected most of the males in previous generations of his family.
Afterwards, he returned to the co-op, then worked as, among other things, a lorry driver, a lifeguard at Portobello swimming baths, a laborer, an artist's model for the Edinburgh College of Art, and after a suggestion by former Mr. Scotland, Archie Brennan, a coffin polisher. The modelling earned him 15 shillings an hour. Artist Richard Demarco, at the time a student who painted several early pictures of Connery, described him as "very straight, slightly shy, too, too beautiful for words, a virtual Adonis".
Connery began bodybuilding at the age of 18, and from 1951 trained heavily with Ellington, a former gym instructor in the British Army. While his official website states he was third in the 1950 Mr. Universe contest, most sources place him in the 1953 competition, either third in the Junior class or failing to place in the Tall Man classification.
Connery said he was soon deterred from bodybuilding when he found that Americans frequently beat him in competitions because of sheer muscle size and, unlike Connery, refused to participate in athletic activity which could make them lose muscle mass.
Connery was a keen footballer, having played for Bonnyrigg Rose in his younger days. He was offered a trial with East Fife. While on tour with South Pacific, Connery played in a football match against a local team that Matt Busby, manager of Manchester United, happened to be scouting.
According to reports, Busby was impressed with his physical prowess and offered Connery a contract worth £25 a week (equivalent to £703 in 2019) immediately after the game. Connery said that he was tempted to accept, but he recalls, "I realised that a top-class footballer could be over the hill by the age of 30, and I was already 23. I decided to become an actor and it turned out to be one of my more intelligent moves."
Career:
Further information: Sean Connery filmography
1950s:
Seeking to supplement his income, Connery helped out backstage at the King's Theatre in late 1951. During a bodybuilding competition held in London in 1953, one of the competitors mentioned that auditions were being held for a production of South Pacific, and Connery landed a small part as one of the Seabees chorus boys.
By the time the production reached Edinburgh, he had been given the part of Marine Cpl. Hamilton Steeves and was understudying two of the juvenile leads, and his salary was raised from £12 to £14–10s a week. The production returned the following year, out of popular demand, and Connery was promoted to the featured role of Lieutenant Buzz Adams, which Larry Hagman had portrayed in the West End.
While in Edinburgh, Connery was targeted by the Valdor gang, one of the most violent in the city. He was first approached by them in a billiard hall where he prevented them from stealing his jacket and was later followed by six gang members to a 15-foot-high balcony at the Palais de Danse. There, Connery singlehandedly launched an attack against the gang members, grabbing one by the throat and another by a biceps and cracked their heads together. From then on, he was treated with great respect by the gang and gained a reputation as a "hard man".
Connery first met Michael Caine at a party during the production of South Pacific in 1954, and the two later became close friends. During this production at the Opera House, Manchester over the Christmas period of 1954, Connery developed a serious interest in the theatre through American actor Robert Henderson who lent him copies of the Ibsen works Hedda Gabler, The Wild Duck, and When We Dead Awaken, and later listed works by the likes of Proust, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Bernard Shaw, Joyce, and Shakespeare for him to digest.
Henderson urged him to take elocution lessons and got him parts at the Maida Vale Theatre in London. He had already begun a film career, having been an extra in Herbert Wilcox's 1954 musical Lilacs in the Spring alongside Anna Neagle.
Although Connery had secured several roles as extras, he was struggling to make ends meet, and was forced to accept a part-time job as a babysitter for journalist Peter Noble and his actress wife Marianne, which earned him 10 shillings a night. He met Hollywood actress Shelley Winters one night at Noble's house, who described Connery as "one of the tallest and most charming and masculine Scotsmen" she'd ever seen, and later spent many evenings with the Connery brothers drinking beer.
Around this time, Connery was residing at TV presenter Llew Gardner's house. Henderson landed Connery a role in a £6 a week Q Theatre production of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, during which he met and became friends with fellow-Scot Ian Bannen. This role was followed by Point of Departure and A Witch in Time at Kew, a role as Pentheus opposite Yvonne Mitchell in The Bacchae at the Oxford Playhouse, and a role opposite Jill Bennett in Eugene O'Neill's production of Anna Christie.
During his time at the Oxford Theatre, Connery won a brief part as a boxer in the TV series The Square Ring, before being spotted by Canadian director Alvin Rakoff, who gave him multiple roles in The Condemned, shot on location in Dover in Kent.
In 1956, Connery appeared in the theatrical production of Epitaph, and played a minor role as a hoodlum in the "Ladies of the Manor" episode of the BBC Television police series Dixon of Dock Green. This was followed by small television parts in Sailor of Fortune and The Jack Benny Program (on a special episode filmed in Europe).
In early 1957, Connery hired agent Richard Hatton who got him his first film role, as Spike, a minor gangster with a speech impediment in Montgomery Tully's No Road Back alongside Skip Homeier, Paul Carpenter, Patricia Dainton, and Norman Wooland.
In April 1957, Rakoff — after being disappointed by Jack Palance — decided to give the young actor his first chance in a leading role, and cast Connery as Mountain McLintock in BBC Television's production of Requiem for a Heavyweight, which also starred Warren Mitchell and Jacqueline Hill.
Connery then played a rogue lorry driver, Johnny Yates, in Cy Endfield's Hell Drivers (1957) alongside Stanley Baker, Herbert Lom, Peggy Cummins, and Patrick McGoohan.
Later in 1957, Connery appeared in Terence Young's poorly received MGM action picture Action of the Tiger opposite Van Johnson, Martine Carol, Herbert Lom, and Gustavo Rojo; the film was shot on location in southern Spain.
He also had a minor role in Gerald Thomas's thriller Time Lock (1957) as a welder, appearing alongside Robert Beatty, Lee Patterson, Betty McDowall, and Vincent Winter; this commenced filming on 1 December 1956 at Beaconsfield Studios.
Connery had a major role in the melodrama Another Time, Another Place (1958) as a British reporter named Mark Trevor, caught in a love affair opposite Lana Turner and Barry Sullivan. During filming, Turner's possessive gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, who was visiting from Los Angeles, believed she was having an affair with Connery.
Connery and Turner had attended West End shows and London restaurants together. Stompanato stormed onto the film set and pointed a gun at Connery, only to have Connery disarm him and knock him flat on his back. Stompanato was banned from the set.
Two Scotland Yard detectives advised Stompanato to leave and escorted him to the airport, where he boarded a plane back to the United States. Connery later recounted that he had to lay low for a while after receiving threats from men linked to Stompanato's boss, Mickey Cohen.
In 1959, Connery landed a leading role in director Robert Stevenson's Walt Disney Productions film Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) alongside Albert Sharpe, Janet Munro, and Jimmy O'Dea. The film is a tale about a wily Irishman and his battle of wits with leprechauns.
Upon the film's initial release, A. H. Weiler of The New York Times praised the cast (save Connery whom he described as "merely tall, dark, and handsome") and thought the film an "overpoweringly charming concoction of standard Gaelic tall stories, fantasy and romance". Connery also had prominent television roles in Rudolph Cartier's 1961 productions of Adventure Story and Anna Karenina for BBC Television, the latter of which he co-starred with Claire Bloom.
James Bond: 1962–1971, 1983:
Connery's breakthrough came in the role of British secret agent James Bond. He was reluctant to commit to a film series, but understood that if the films succeeded, his career would greatly benefit.
Between 1962 and 1967, Connery played 007 in: the first five Bond films produced by Eon Productions.
After departing from the role, Connery returned for the seventh film, Diamonds Are Forever, in 1971. Connery made his final appearance as Bond in Never Say Never Again, a 1983 remake of Thunderball that was produced by Jack Schwartzman's Taliafilm.
All seven films were commercially successful. James Bond, as portrayed by Connery, was selected as the third-greatest hero in cinema history by the American Film Institute
Connery's selection for the role of James Bond owed a lot to Dana Broccoli, wife of producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, who is reputed to have been instrumental in persuading her husband that Connery was the right man. James Bond's creator, Ian Fleming, originally doubted Connery's casting, saying, "He's not what I envisioned of James Bond looks," and "I'm looking for Commander Bond and not an overgrown stunt-man," adding that Connery (muscular, 6' 2", and a Scot) was unrefined.
Fleming's girlfriend Blanche Blackwell told him that Connery had the requisite sexual charisma, and Fleming changed his mind after the successful Dr. No première. He was so impressed, he wrote Connery's heritage into the character. In his 1964 novel You Only Live Twice, Fleming wrote that Bond's father was Scottish and from Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands.
Connery's portrayal of Bond owes much to stylistic tutelage from director Terence Young, who helped polish him while using his physical grace and presence for the action. Lois Maxwell, who played Miss Moneypenny, related that "Terence took Sean under his wing. He took him to dinner, showed him how to walk, how to talk, even how to eat." The tutoring was successful; Connery received thousands of fan letters a week after Dr. No's opening, and he became a major sex symbol in film.
Following the release of the film Dr. No in 1962, the line "Bond ... James Bond", became a catch phrase that entered the lexicon of Western popular culture. Film critic Peter Bradshaw writes, "It is the most famous self-introduction from any character in movie history. Three cool monosyllables, surname first, a little curtly, as befits a former naval commander.
And then, as if in afterthought, the first name, followed by the surname again. Connery carried it off with icily disdainful style, in full evening dress with a cigarette hanging from his lips. The introduction was a kind of challenge, or seduction, invariably addressed to an enemy. In the early 60s, Connery's James Bond was about as dangerous and sexy as it got on screen."
During the filming of Thunderball in 1965, Connery's life was in danger in the sequence with the sharks in Emilio Largo's pool. He had been concerned about this threat when he read the script. Connery insisted that Ken Adam build a special Plexiglas partition inside the pool, but this was not a fixed structure, and one of the sharks managed to pass through it. He had to abandon the pool immediately.
Beyond Bond:
Although Bond had made him a star, Connery grew tired of the role and the pressure the franchise put on him, saying "[I am] fed up to here with the whole Bond bit" and "I have always hated that damned James Bond. I'd like to kill him".
Michael Caine said of the situation, "If you were his friend in these early days you didn't raise the subject of Bond. He was, and is, a much better actor than just playing James Bond, but he became synonymous with Bond. He'd be walking down the street and people would say, 'Look, there's James Bond.' That was particularly upsetting to him."
While making the Bond films, Connery also starred in other films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964) and Sidney Lumet's The Hill (1965), which film critic Peter Bradshaw regards as his two great non-Bond pictures from the 1960s. In Marnie, Connery starred opposite Tippi Hedren. Connery had said he wanted to work with Hitchcock, which Eon arranged through their contacts.
Connery also shocked many people at the time by asking to see a script; something Connery did because he was worried about being typecast as a spy and he did not want to do a variation of North by Northwest or Notorious. When told by Hitchcock's agent that Cary Grant did not ask to see even one of Hitchcock's scripts Connery replied, "I'm not Cary Grant."
Hitchcock and Connery got on well during filming. Connery also said he was happy with the film "with certain reservations." In The Hill, Connery wanted to act in something that wasn't Bond related, and used his leverage as a star to star in the film. While the film wasn't a financial success it was a critical one, debuting at the Cannes Film Festival winning Best Screenplay. The first of five films he made with Lumet, Connery considered him to be one of his favourite directors.
Having played Bond six times, Connery's global popularity was such that he shared a Golden Globe Henrietta Award with Charles Bronson for "World Film Favorite – Male" in 1972. He appeared in John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King (1975) opposite Michael Caine. Playing two former British soldiers who set themselves up as Kings in Kafiristan, both actors regarded it as their favorite film.
The same year, Connery appeared in The Wind and the Lion opposite Candice Bergen who played Eden Pedecaris (based on the real-life Perdicaris incident), and in 1976 played Robin Hood in Robin and Marian where he starred opposite Audrey Hepburn who played Maid Marian.
Film critic Roger Ebert, who had praised the double act of Connery and Caine in The Man Who Would Be King, praised Connery's chemistry with Hepburn, writing: "Connery and Hepburn seem to have arrived at a tacit understanding between themselves about their characters. They glow. They really do seem in love."
During the 1970s Connery was part of ensemble casts in films such as Murder on the Orient Express (1974) with Vanessa Redgrave and John Gielgud, and playing a British Army general in Richard Attenborough's war film A Bridge Too Far (1977), co-starring Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Olivier.
In 1974 he starred in John Boorman‘s sci-fi thriller Zardoz. Often called one of the "weirdest and worst movies ever made" it featured Connery in a scarlet mankini—a revealing costume which generated much controversy for its unBond-like appearance. Despite being panned by critics at the time, the film has developed a cult following since its release.
In 1981, Connery appeared in the film Time Bandits as Agamemnon. The casting choice derives from a joke Michael Palin included in the script, which describes the character removing his mask and being "Sean Connery – or someone of equal but cheaper stature".
When shown the script, Connery was happy to play the supporting role. In 1981, Connery portrayed Marshal William T. O'Niel in the science fiction thriller Outland. In 1982, Connery narrated G'olé!, the official film of the 1982 FIFA World Cup. That same year, he was offered the role of Daddy Warbucks in Annie, going as far as taking voice lessons for the John Huston musical before turning down the part.
Connery agreed to reprise Bond as an ageing agent 007 in Never Say Never Again, released in October 1983. The title, contributed by his wife, refers to his earlier statement that he would "never again" return to the role.
Although the film performed well at the box office, it was plagued with production problems: strife between the director and producer, financial problems, the Fleming estate trustees' attempts to halt the film, and Connery's wrist being broken by fight choreographer, Steven Seagal.
As a result of his negative experiences during filming, Connery became unhappy with the major studios and did not make any films for two years. Following the successful European production The Name of the Rose (1986), for which he won a BAFTA Award for Best Actor, Connery's interest in more commercial material was revived.
That same year, a supporting role in Highlander showcased his ability to play older mentors to younger leads, which became a recurring role in many of his later films.
In 1987, Connery starred in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, where he played a hard-nosed Irish-American cop alongside Kevin Costner's Eliot Ness. The film also starred Charles Martin Smith, Patricia Clarkson, Andy Garcia, and Robert De Niro as Al Capone.
The film was a critical and box office success. Many critics praised Connery for his performance including Roger Ebert who wrote "The best performance in the movie is Connery... [he] brings a human element to his character; he seems to have had an existence apart from the legend of the Untouchables, and when he's onscreen we can believe, briefly, that the Prohibition Era was inhabited by people, not caricatures." For his performance Connery received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Connery starred in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), playing Henry Jones, Sr., the title character's father, and received BAFTA and Golden Globe Award nominations. Harrison Ford said Connery's contributions at the writing stage enhanced the film. "It was amazing for me in how far he got into the script and went after exploiting opportunities for character. His suggestions to George [Lucas] at the writing stage really gave the character and the picture a lot more complexity and value than it had in the original screenplay."
His subsequent box-office hits included The Hunt for Red October (1990), The Russia House (1990), The Rock (1996), and Entrapment (1999).
In 1996, Connery voiced the role of Draco the dragon in the film Dragonheart. He also appeared in a brief cameo as King Richard the Lionheart at the end of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). In 1998, Connery received the BAFTA Fellowship, a lifetime achievement award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Connery's later films included several box office and critical disappointments such as First Knight (1995), Just Cause (1995), The Avengers (1998), and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003); however, he received positive reviews for his performance in Finding Forrester (2000). He also received a Crystal Globe for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema.
In a 2003 UK poll conducted by Channel 4 Connery was ranked eighth on their list of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars. The failure of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was especially frustrating for Connery. He sensed during shooting that the production was "going off the rails", and announced that the director, Stephen Norrington should be "locked up for insanity". Connery spent considerable effort in trying to salvage the film through the editing process, ultimately deciding to retire from acting rather than go through such stress ever again.
Connery turned down the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings films, saying he did not understand the script. He was reportedly offered $30 million along with 15 percent of the worldwide box office receipts, which would have earned him $450 million. He also turned down the opportunity to appear as the Architect in The Matrix trilogy.
In 2005, he recorded voiceovers for the From Russia with Love video game with recording producer Terry Manning in the Bahamas, and provided his likeness. Connery said that he was happy that the producers, Electronic Arts, had approached him to voice Bond.
Retirement:
When Connery received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award on 8 June 2006, he confirmed his retirement from acting. Connery's disillusionment with the "idiots now making films in Hollywood" was cited as a reason for his decision to retire.
On 7 June 2007, he denied rumors that he would appear in the fourth Indiana Jones film, saying "retirement is just too much damned fun". In 2010, a bronze bust sculpture of Connery was placed in Tallinn, Estonia, outside The Scottish Club, whose membership includes Estonian Scotophiles and a handful of expatriate Scots.
In 2012, Connery briefly came out of retirement to voice the title character in the Scottish animated film Sir Billi the Vet. Connery served as executive producer for an expanded 80-minute version.
Personal life:
During the production of South Pacific in the mid-1950s, Connery dated a Jewish "dark-haired beauty with a ballerina's figure", Carol Sopel, but was warned off by her family. He then dated Julie Hamilton, daughter of documentary filmmaker and feminist Jill Craigie.
Given Connery's rugged appearance and rough charm, Hamilton initially thought he was an appalling person and was not attracted to him until she saw him in a kilt, declaring him to be the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen in her life. He also shared a mutual attraction with jazz singer Maxine Daniels, whom he met at the Empire Theatre. He made a pass at her, but she told him she was already happily married with a daughter.
Connery was married to actress Diane Cilento from 1962 to 1973, though they separated in 1971. They had a son, actor Jason Connery. While they were separated, Connery dated Jill St. John, Lana Wood, Carole Mallory, and Magda Konopka.
In her 2006 autobiography, Cilento alleged that he had abused her mentally and physically during their relationship. Connery cancelled an appearance at the Scottish Parliament in 2006 because of controversy over his alleged support of abuse of women; he denied claims he told Playboy magazine in 1965, "I don't think there is anything particularly wrong in hitting a woman, though I don't recommend you do it in the same way you hit a man”, and was also reported to have stated to Vanity Fair in 1993. "There are women who take it to the wire. That's what they are looking for, the ultimate confrontation. They want a smack." In 2006 Connery told The Times of London, "I don't believe that any level of abuse of women is ever justified under any circumstances. Full stop".
Connery was married to Moroccan-French painter Micheline Roquebrune (born 1929) from 1975 until his death. The marriage survived a well-documented affair Connery had in the late 1980s with the singer and songwriter Lynsey de Paul.
Connery owned the Domaine de Terre Blanche in the South of France from 1979. He sold it to German billionaire Dietmar Hopp in 1999.
Connery was awarded an honorary rank of Shodan (1st dan) in Kyokushin karate. Connery relocated to the Bahamas in the 1990s; he owned a mansion in Lyford Cay on New Providence.
Connery was knighted by the Queen at an investiture ceremony at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh on 5 July 2000. He had been nominated for a knighthood in 1997 and 1998, but these nominations were reported to have been vetoed by Donald Dewar owing to Connery's political views.
Connery had a villa in Kranidi, Greece. His neighbor was King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, with whom he shared a helicopter platform. Michael Caine (who co-starred with Connery in The Man Who Would Be King in 1975) was among Connery's closest friends.
Connery was a supporter of Scottish football club Rangers F.C. He was a keen golfer. Jack Nicklaus said, "He loved the game of golf – Sean was a pretty darn good golfer! – and we played together several times. In May 1993, Sean and legendary driver Jackie Stewart helped me open our design of the PGA Centenary Course at Gleneagles in Scotland."
Political opinions:
Connery was a member of the Scottish National Party (SNP), a center-left political party campaigning for Scottish independence from the United Kingdom, and supported the party financially and through personal appearances. His funding of the SNP ceased in 2001, when the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed legislation that prohibited overseas funding of political activities in the UK.
Tax status:
In response to accusations that he was a tax exile, Connery released documents in 2003 showing he had paid £3.7 million in UK taxes between 1997 and 1998 and between 2002 and 2003; critics pointed out that had he been continuously residing in the UK for tax purposes, his tax rate would have been far higher.
In the run-up to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, Connery's brother Neil said Connery would not come to Scotland to rally independence supporters, since his tax exile status greatly limited the number of days he could spend in the country.
After Connery sold his Marbella villa in 1999, Spanish authorities launched a tax evasion investigation, alleging that the Spanish treasury had been defrauded of £5.5 million. Connery was subsequently cleared by officials, but his wife and 16 others were charged with attempting to defraud the Spanish treasury.
Death:
Connery died in his sleep on 31 October 2020, aged 90, at his home in the Lyford Cay community of Nassau in the Bahamas. His death was announced by his family and Eon Productions; although they did not disclose the cause of death, his son Jason stated that he had been unwell for some time.
A day later, Connery's wife Micheline Roquebrune said that he had dementia in his final years.
Following the announcement of his death, many co-stars and figures from the entertainment industry paid tribute to Connery, including:
Connery's longtime friend Michael Caine called him a "great star, brilliant actor and a wonderful friend". James Bond producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli released a statement saying Connery had "revolutionized the world with his gritty and witty portrayal of the sexy and charismatic secret agent. He is undoubtedly largely responsible for the success of the film series and we shall be forever grateful to him."
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Sean Connery:
Connery began acting in smaller theatre and television productions until his breakout role as Bond. Although he did not enjoy the off-screen attention the role gave him, the success brought offers from famed film directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Lumet and John Huston. Those films included:
- Marnie (1964),
- The Hill (1965),
- Murder on the Orient Express (1974),
- The Man Who Would Be King (1975),
- A Bridge Too Far (1977),
- Highlander (1986),
- The Name of the Rose (1986),
- The Untouchables (1987),
- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989),
- The Hunt for Red October (1990),
- Dragonheart (1996),
- The Rock (1996),
- and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery officially retired from acting in 2006, although he briefly returned for voice over roles in 2012. His achievements in film were recognized with an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (including the BAFTA Fellowship), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award.
In 1987, Connery was made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, and he received the US Kennedy Center Honors lifetime achievement award in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honors for services to film drama.
In 2004, Connery was polled in the Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as the "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century" in 1999.
Early Life:
Thomas Sean Connery, named Thomas after his grandfather, was born in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, Scotland, on 25 August 1930. His mother, Euphemia "Effie" McBain McLean, was a cleaning woman. She was born the daughter of Neil McLean and Helen Forbes Ross, and named after her father's mother, Euphemia McBain, wife of John McLean and daughter of William McBain from Ceres in Fife. Connery's father, Joseph Connery, was a factory worker and lorry driver.
His paternal great-grandparents emigrated to Scotland from Wexford, Ireland in the mid-19th century, with his great-grandfather, James Connery, being an Irish Traveller. The remainder of his family was of Scottish descent, and his maternal great-grandparents were native Scottish Gaelic speakers from Fife and Uig on Skye.
His father was a Roman Catholic, and his mother was a Protestant. He had a younger brother, Neil. Connery said he was called Sean, his middle name, long before becoming an actor, explaining that when he was young he had an Irish friend named Séamus and that those who knew them had decided to call Connery by his middle name whenever both were present. He was generally referred to in his youth as "Tommy".
Although he was small in primary school, he grew rapidly around the age of 12, reaching his full adult height of 6 ft 2 in (188 cm) at 18. He was known during his teen years as "Big Tam", and stated that he lost his virginity to an adult woman in an ATS uniform at the age of 14.
Connery's first job was as a milkman in Edinburgh with St. Cuthbert's Co-operative Society. In 2009, Connery recalled a conversation in a taxi: "When I took a taxi during a recent Edinburgh Film Festival, the driver was amazed that I could put a name to every street we passed. "How come?" he asked. "As a boy I used to deliver milk round here," I said. "So what do you do now?" That was rather harder to answer.
In 1946, at the age of 16, Connery joined the Royal Navy, during which time he acquired two tattoos, of which his official website says "unlike many tattoos, his were not frivolous — his tattoos reflect two of his lifelong commitments: his family and Scotland. ... One tattoo is a tribute to his parents and reads 'Mum and Dad', and the other is self-explanatory, 'Scotland Forever'."
Connery trained in Portsmouth at the naval gunnery school and in an anti-aircraft crew. He was later assigned as an Able Seaman on HMS Formidable. Connery was discharged from the navy at the age of 19 on medical grounds because of a duodenal ulcer, a condition that affected most of the males in previous generations of his family.
Afterwards, he returned to the co-op, then worked as, among other things, a lorry driver, a lifeguard at Portobello swimming baths, a laborer, an artist's model for the Edinburgh College of Art, and after a suggestion by former Mr. Scotland, Archie Brennan, a coffin polisher. The modelling earned him 15 shillings an hour. Artist Richard Demarco, at the time a student who painted several early pictures of Connery, described him as "very straight, slightly shy, too, too beautiful for words, a virtual Adonis".
Connery began bodybuilding at the age of 18, and from 1951 trained heavily with Ellington, a former gym instructor in the British Army. While his official website states he was third in the 1950 Mr. Universe contest, most sources place him in the 1953 competition, either third in the Junior class or failing to place in the Tall Man classification.
Connery said he was soon deterred from bodybuilding when he found that Americans frequently beat him in competitions because of sheer muscle size and, unlike Connery, refused to participate in athletic activity which could make them lose muscle mass.
Connery was a keen footballer, having played for Bonnyrigg Rose in his younger days. He was offered a trial with East Fife. While on tour with South Pacific, Connery played in a football match against a local team that Matt Busby, manager of Manchester United, happened to be scouting.
According to reports, Busby was impressed with his physical prowess and offered Connery a contract worth £25 a week (equivalent to £703 in 2019) immediately after the game. Connery said that he was tempted to accept, but he recalls, "I realised that a top-class footballer could be over the hill by the age of 30, and I was already 23. I decided to become an actor and it turned out to be one of my more intelligent moves."
Career:
Further information: Sean Connery filmography
1950s:
Seeking to supplement his income, Connery helped out backstage at the King's Theatre in late 1951. During a bodybuilding competition held in London in 1953, one of the competitors mentioned that auditions were being held for a production of South Pacific, and Connery landed a small part as one of the Seabees chorus boys.
By the time the production reached Edinburgh, he had been given the part of Marine Cpl. Hamilton Steeves and was understudying two of the juvenile leads, and his salary was raised from £12 to £14–10s a week. The production returned the following year, out of popular demand, and Connery was promoted to the featured role of Lieutenant Buzz Adams, which Larry Hagman had portrayed in the West End.
While in Edinburgh, Connery was targeted by the Valdor gang, one of the most violent in the city. He was first approached by them in a billiard hall where he prevented them from stealing his jacket and was later followed by six gang members to a 15-foot-high balcony at the Palais de Danse. There, Connery singlehandedly launched an attack against the gang members, grabbing one by the throat and another by a biceps and cracked their heads together. From then on, he was treated with great respect by the gang and gained a reputation as a "hard man".
Connery first met Michael Caine at a party during the production of South Pacific in 1954, and the two later became close friends. During this production at the Opera House, Manchester over the Christmas period of 1954, Connery developed a serious interest in the theatre through American actor Robert Henderson who lent him copies of the Ibsen works Hedda Gabler, The Wild Duck, and When We Dead Awaken, and later listed works by the likes of Proust, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Bernard Shaw, Joyce, and Shakespeare for him to digest.
Henderson urged him to take elocution lessons and got him parts at the Maida Vale Theatre in London. He had already begun a film career, having been an extra in Herbert Wilcox's 1954 musical Lilacs in the Spring alongside Anna Neagle.
Although Connery had secured several roles as extras, he was struggling to make ends meet, and was forced to accept a part-time job as a babysitter for journalist Peter Noble and his actress wife Marianne, which earned him 10 shillings a night. He met Hollywood actress Shelley Winters one night at Noble's house, who described Connery as "one of the tallest and most charming and masculine Scotsmen" she'd ever seen, and later spent many evenings with the Connery brothers drinking beer.
Around this time, Connery was residing at TV presenter Llew Gardner's house. Henderson landed Connery a role in a £6 a week Q Theatre production of Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, during which he met and became friends with fellow-Scot Ian Bannen. This role was followed by Point of Departure and A Witch in Time at Kew, a role as Pentheus opposite Yvonne Mitchell in The Bacchae at the Oxford Playhouse, and a role opposite Jill Bennett in Eugene O'Neill's production of Anna Christie.
During his time at the Oxford Theatre, Connery won a brief part as a boxer in the TV series The Square Ring, before being spotted by Canadian director Alvin Rakoff, who gave him multiple roles in The Condemned, shot on location in Dover in Kent.
In 1956, Connery appeared in the theatrical production of Epitaph, and played a minor role as a hoodlum in the "Ladies of the Manor" episode of the BBC Television police series Dixon of Dock Green. This was followed by small television parts in Sailor of Fortune and The Jack Benny Program (on a special episode filmed in Europe).
In early 1957, Connery hired agent Richard Hatton who got him his first film role, as Spike, a minor gangster with a speech impediment in Montgomery Tully's No Road Back alongside Skip Homeier, Paul Carpenter, Patricia Dainton, and Norman Wooland.
In April 1957, Rakoff — after being disappointed by Jack Palance — decided to give the young actor his first chance in a leading role, and cast Connery as Mountain McLintock in BBC Television's production of Requiem for a Heavyweight, which also starred Warren Mitchell and Jacqueline Hill.
Connery then played a rogue lorry driver, Johnny Yates, in Cy Endfield's Hell Drivers (1957) alongside Stanley Baker, Herbert Lom, Peggy Cummins, and Patrick McGoohan.
Later in 1957, Connery appeared in Terence Young's poorly received MGM action picture Action of the Tiger opposite Van Johnson, Martine Carol, Herbert Lom, and Gustavo Rojo; the film was shot on location in southern Spain.
He also had a minor role in Gerald Thomas's thriller Time Lock (1957) as a welder, appearing alongside Robert Beatty, Lee Patterson, Betty McDowall, and Vincent Winter; this commenced filming on 1 December 1956 at Beaconsfield Studios.
Connery had a major role in the melodrama Another Time, Another Place (1958) as a British reporter named Mark Trevor, caught in a love affair opposite Lana Turner and Barry Sullivan. During filming, Turner's possessive gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stompanato, who was visiting from Los Angeles, believed she was having an affair with Connery.
Connery and Turner had attended West End shows and London restaurants together. Stompanato stormed onto the film set and pointed a gun at Connery, only to have Connery disarm him and knock him flat on his back. Stompanato was banned from the set.
Two Scotland Yard detectives advised Stompanato to leave and escorted him to the airport, where he boarded a plane back to the United States. Connery later recounted that he had to lay low for a while after receiving threats from men linked to Stompanato's boss, Mickey Cohen.
In 1959, Connery landed a leading role in director Robert Stevenson's Walt Disney Productions film Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) alongside Albert Sharpe, Janet Munro, and Jimmy O'Dea. The film is a tale about a wily Irishman and his battle of wits with leprechauns.
Upon the film's initial release, A. H. Weiler of The New York Times praised the cast (save Connery whom he described as "merely tall, dark, and handsome") and thought the film an "overpoweringly charming concoction of standard Gaelic tall stories, fantasy and romance". Connery also had prominent television roles in Rudolph Cartier's 1961 productions of Adventure Story and Anna Karenina for BBC Television, the latter of which he co-starred with Claire Bloom.
James Bond: 1962–1971, 1983:
Connery's breakthrough came in the role of British secret agent James Bond. He was reluctant to commit to a film series, but understood that if the films succeeded, his career would greatly benefit.
Between 1962 and 1967, Connery played 007 in: the first five Bond films produced by Eon Productions.
After departing from the role, Connery returned for the seventh film, Diamonds Are Forever, in 1971. Connery made his final appearance as Bond in Never Say Never Again, a 1983 remake of Thunderball that was produced by Jack Schwartzman's Taliafilm.
All seven films were commercially successful. James Bond, as portrayed by Connery, was selected as the third-greatest hero in cinema history by the American Film Institute
Connery's selection for the role of James Bond owed a lot to Dana Broccoli, wife of producer Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, who is reputed to have been instrumental in persuading her husband that Connery was the right man. James Bond's creator, Ian Fleming, originally doubted Connery's casting, saying, "He's not what I envisioned of James Bond looks," and "I'm looking for Commander Bond and not an overgrown stunt-man," adding that Connery (muscular, 6' 2", and a Scot) was unrefined.
Fleming's girlfriend Blanche Blackwell told him that Connery had the requisite sexual charisma, and Fleming changed his mind after the successful Dr. No première. He was so impressed, he wrote Connery's heritage into the character. In his 1964 novel You Only Live Twice, Fleming wrote that Bond's father was Scottish and from Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands.
Connery's portrayal of Bond owes much to stylistic tutelage from director Terence Young, who helped polish him while using his physical grace and presence for the action. Lois Maxwell, who played Miss Moneypenny, related that "Terence took Sean under his wing. He took him to dinner, showed him how to walk, how to talk, even how to eat." The tutoring was successful; Connery received thousands of fan letters a week after Dr. No's opening, and he became a major sex symbol in film.
Following the release of the film Dr. No in 1962, the line "Bond ... James Bond", became a catch phrase that entered the lexicon of Western popular culture. Film critic Peter Bradshaw writes, "It is the most famous self-introduction from any character in movie history. Three cool monosyllables, surname first, a little curtly, as befits a former naval commander.
And then, as if in afterthought, the first name, followed by the surname again. Connery carried it off with icily disdainful style, in full evening dress with a cigarette hanging from his lips. The introduction was a kind of challenge, or seduction, invariably addressed to an enemy. In the early 60s, Connery's James Bond was about as dangerous and sexy as it got on screen."
During the filming of Thunderball in 1965, Connery's life was in danger in the sequence with the sharks in Emilio Largo's pool. He had been concerned about this threat when he read the script. Connery insisted that Ken Adam build a special Plexiglas partition inside the pool, but this was not a fixed structure, and one of the sharks managed to pass through it. He had to abandon the pool immediately.
Beyond Bond:
Although Bond had made him a star, Connery grew tired of the role and the pressure the franchise put on him, saying "[I am] fed up to here with the whole Bond bit" and "I have always hated that damned James Bond. I'd like to kill him".
Michael Caine said of the situation, "If you were his friend in these early days you didn't raise the subject of Bond. He was, and is, a much better actor than just playing James Bond, but he became synonymous with Bond. He'd be walking down the street and people would say, 'Look, there's James Bond.' That was particularly upsetting to him."
While making the Bond films, Connery also starred in other films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964) and Sidney Lumet's The Hill (1965), which film critic Peter Bradshaw regards as his two great non-Bond pictures from the 1960s. In Marnie, Connery starred opposite Tippi Hedren. Connery had said he wanted to work with Hitchcock, which Eon arranged through their contacts.
Connery also shocked many people at the time by asking to see a script; something Connery did because he was worried about being typecast as a spy and he did not want to do a variation of North by Northwest or Notorious. When told by Hitchcock's agent that Cary Grant did not ask to see even one of Hitchcock's scripts Connery replied, "I'm not Cary Grant."
Hitchcock and Connery got on well during filming. Connery also said he was happy with the film "with certain reservations." In The Hill, Connery wanted to act in something that wasn't Bond related, and used his leverage as a star to star in the film. While the film wasn't a financial success it was a critical one, debuting at the Cannes Film Festival winning Best Screenplay. The first of five films he made with Lumet, Connery considered him to be one of his favourite directors.
Having played Bond six times, Connery's global popularity was such that he shared a Golden Globe Henrietta Award with Charles Bronson for "World Film Favorite – Male" in 1972. He appeared in John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King (1975) opposite Michael Caine. Playing two former British soldiers who set themselves up as Kings in Kafiristan, both actors regarded it as their favorite film.
The same year, Connery appeared in The Wind and the Lion opposite Candice Bergen who played Eden Pedecaris (based on the real-life Perdicaris incident), and in 1976 played Robin Hood in Robin and Marian where he starred opposite Audrey Hepburn who played Maid Marian.
Film critic Roger Ebert, who had praised the double act of Connery and Caine in The Man Who Would Be King, praised Connery's chemistry with Hepburn, writing: "Connery and Hepburn seem to have arrived at a tacit understanding between themselves about their characters. They glow. They really do seem in love."
During the 1970s Connery was part of ensemble casts in films such as Murder on the Orient Express (1974) with Vanessa Redgrave and John Gielgud, and playing a British Army general in Richard Attenborough's war film A Bridge Too Far (1977), co-starring Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Olivier.
In 1974 he starred in John Boorman‘s sci-fi thriller Zardoz. Often called one of the "weirdest and worst movies ever made" it featured Connery in a scarlet mankini—a revealing costume which generated much controversy for its unBond-like appearance. Despite being panned by critics at the time, the film has developed a cult following since its release.
In 1981, Connery appeared in the film Time Bandits as Agamemnon. The casting choice derives from a joke Michael Palin included in the script, which describes the character removing his mask and being "Sean Connery – or someone of equal but cheaper stature".
When shown the script, Connery was happy to play the supporting role. In 1981, Connery portrayed Marshal William T. O'Niel in the science fiction thriller Outland. In 1982, Connery narrated G'olé!, the official film of the 1982 FIFA World Cup. That same year, he was offered the role of Daddy Warbucks in Annie, going as far as taking voice lessons for the John Huston musical before turning down the part.
Connery agreed to reprise Bond as an ageing agent 007 in Never Say Never Again, released in October 1983. The title, contributed by his wife, refers to his earlier statement that he would "never again" return to the role.
Although the film performed well at the box office, it was plagued with production problems: strife between the director and producer, financial problems, the Fleming estate trustees' attempts to halt the film, and Connery's wrist being broken by fight choreographer, Steven Seagal.
As a result of his negative experiences during filming, Connery became unhappy with the major studios and did not make any films for two years. Following the successful European production The Name of the Rose (1986), for which he won a BAFTA Award for Best Actor, Connery's interest in more commercial material was revived.
That same year, a supporting role in Highlander showcased his ability to play older mentors to younger leads, which became a recurring role in many of his later films.
In 1987, Connery starred in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, where he played a hard-nosed Irish-American cop alongside Kevin Costner's Eliot Ness. The film also starred Charles Martin Smith, Patricia Clarkson, Andy Garcia, and Robert De Niro as Al Capone.
The film was a critical and box office success. Many critics praised Connery for his performance including Roger Ebert who wrote "The best performance in the movie is Connery... [he] brings a human element to his character; he seems to have had an existence apart from the legend of the Untouchables, and when he's onscreen we can believe, briefly, that the Prohibition Era was inhabited by people, not caricatures." For his performance Connery received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Connery starred in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), playing Henry Jones, Sr., the title character's father, and received BAFTA and Golden Globe Award nominations. Harrison Ford said Connery's contributions at the writing stage enhanced the film. "It was amazing for me in how far he got into the script and went after exploiting opportunities for character. His suggestions to George [Lucas] at the writing stage really gave the character and the picture a lot more complexity and value than it had in the original screenplay."
His subsequent box-office hits included The Hunt for Red October (1990), The Russia House (1990), The Rock (1996), and Entrapment (1999).
In 1996, Connery voiced the role of Draco the dragon in the film Dragonheart. He also appeared in a brief cameo as King Richard the Lionheart at the end of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). In 1998, Connery received the BAFTA Fellowship, a lifetime achievement award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Connery's later films included several box office and critical disappointments such as First Knight (1995), Just Cause (1995), The Avengers (1998), and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003); however, he received positive reviews for his performance in Finding Forrester (2000). He also received a Crystal Globe for outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema.
In a 2003 UK poll conducted by Channel 4 Connery was ranked eighth on their list of the 100 Greatest Movie Stars. The failure of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was especially frustrating for Connery. He sensed during shooting that the production was "going off the rails", and announced that the director, Stephen Norrington should be "locked up for insanity". Connery spent considerable effort in trying to salvage the film through the editing process, ultimately deciding to retire from acting rather than go through such stress ever again.
Connery turned down the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings films, saying he did not understand the script. He was reportedly offered $30 million along with 15 percent of the worldwide box office receipts, which would have earned him $450 million. He also turned down the opportunity to appear as the Architect in The Matrix trilogy.
In 2005, he recorded voiceovers for the From Russia with Love video game with recording producer Terry Manning in the Bahamas, and provided his likeness. Connery said that he was happy that the producers, Electronic Arts, had approached him to voice Bond.
Retirement:
When Connery received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award on 8 June 2006, he confirmed his retirement from acting. Connery's disillusionment with the "idiots now making films in Hollywood" was cited as a reason for his decision to retire.
On 7 June 2007, he denied rumors that he would appear in the fourth Indiana Jones film, saying "retirement is just too much damned fun". In 2010, a bronze bust sculpture of Connery was placed in Tallinn, Estonia, outside The Scottish Club, whose membership includes Estonian Scotophiles and a handful of expatriate Scots.
In 2012, Connery briefly came out of retirement to voice the title character in the Scottish animated film Sir Billi the Vet. Connery served as executive producer for an expanded 80-minute version.
Personal life:
During the production of South Pacific in the mid-1950s, Connery dated a Jewish "dark-haired beauty with a ballerina's figure", Carol Sopel, but was warned off by her family. He then dated Julie Hamilton, daughter of documentary filmmaker and feminist Jill Craigie.
Given Connery's rugged appearance and rough charm, Hamilton initially thought he was an appalling person and was not attracted to him until she saw him in a kilt, declaring him to be the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen in her life. He also shared a mutual attraction with jazz singer Maxine Daniels, whom he met at the Empire Theatre. He made a pass at her, but she told him she was already happily married with a daughter.
Connery was married to actress Diane Cilento from 1962 to 1973, though they separated in 1971. They had a son, actor Jason Connery. While they were separated, Connery dated Jill St. John, Lana Wood, Carole Mallory, and Magda Konopka.
In her 2006 autobiography, Cilento alleged that he had abused her mentally and physically during their relationship. Connery cancelled an appearance at the Scottish Parliament in 2006 because of controversy over his alleged support of abuse of women; he denied claims he told Playboy magazine in 1965, "I don't think there is anything particularly wrong in hitting a woman, though I don't recommend you do it in the same way you hit a man”, and was also reported to have stated to Vanity Fair in 1993. "There are women who take it to the wire. That's what they are looking for, the ultimate confrontation. They want a smack." In 2006 Connery told The Times of London, "I don't believe that any level of abuse of women is ever justified under any circumstances. Full stop".
Connery was married to Moroccan-French painter Micheline Roquebrune (born 1929) from 1975 until his death. The marriage survived a well-documented affair Connery had in the late 1980s with the singer and songwriter Lynsey de Paul.
Connery owned the Domaine de Terre Blanche in the South of France from 1979. He sold it to German billionaire Dietmar Hopp in 1999.
Connery was awarded an honorary rank of Shodan (1st dan) in Kyokushin karate. Connery relocated to the Bahamas in the 1990s; he owned a mansion in Lyford Cay on New Providence.
Connery was knighted by the Queen at an investiture ceremony at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh on 5 July 2000. He had been nominated for a knighthood in 1997 and 1998, but these nominations were reported to have been vetoed by Donald Dewar owing to Connery's political views.
Connery had a villa in Kranidi, Greece. His neighbor was King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, with whom he shared a helicopter platform. Michael Caine (who co-starred with Connery in The Man Who Would Be King in 1975) was among Connery's closest friends.
Connery was a supporter of Scottish football club Rangers F.C. He was a keen golfer. Jack Nicklaus said, "He loved the game of golf – Sean was a pretty darn good golfer! – and we played together several times. In May 1993, Sean and legendary driver Jackie Stewart helped me open our design of the PGA Centenary Course at Gleneagles in Scotland."
Political opinions:
Connery was a member of the Scottish National Party (SNP), a center-left political party campaigning for Scottish independence from the United Kingdom, and supported the party financially and through personal appearances. His funding of the SNP ceased in 2001, when the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed legislation that prohibited overseas funding of political activities in the UK.
Tax status:
In response to accusations that he was a tax exile, Connery released documents in 2003 showing he had paid £3.7 million in UK taxes between 1997 and 1998 and between 2002 and 2003; critics pointed out that had he been continuously residing in the UK for tax purposes, his tax rate would have been far higher.
In the run-up to the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, Connery's brother Neil said Connery would not come to Scotland to rally independence supporters, since his tax exile status greatly limited the number of days he could spend in the country.
After Connery sold his Marbella villa in 1999, Spanish authorities launched a tax evasion investigation, alleging that the Spanish treasury had been defrauded of £5.5 million. Connery was subsequently cleared by officials, but his wife and 16 others were charged with attempting to defraud the Spanish treasury.
Death:
Connery died in his sleep on 31 October 2020, aged 90, at his home in the Lyford Cay community of Nassau in the Bahamas. His death was announced by his family and Eon Productions; although they did not disclose the cause of death, his son Jason stated that he had been unwell for some time.
A day later, Connery's wife Micheline Roquebrune said that he had dementia in his final years.
Following the announcement of his death, many co-stars and figures from the entertainment industry paid tribute to Connery, including:
- Sam Neill,
- Nicolas Cage,
- Robert De Niro,
- Tippi Hedren,
- Alec Baldwin,
- Hugh Jackman,
- George Lucas,
- Shirley Bassey,
- Kevin Costner,
- Catherine Zeta-Jones,
- Barbra Streisand,
- John Cleese,
- Harrison Ford,
- former Bond stars:
- and current 007 Daniel Craig.
Connery's longtime friend Michael Caine called him a "great star, brilliant actor and a wonderful friend". James Bond producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli released a statement saying Connery had "revolutionized the world with his gritty and witty portrayal of the sexy and charismatic secret agent. He is undoubtedly largely responsible for the success of the film series and we shall be forever grateful to him."
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Sean Connery:
- Awards
- See also:
- Official website
- Sean Connery on IMDb
- Sean Connery at the British Film Institute
- Sean Connery at the BFI's Screenonline
- Sean Connery at the Internet Broadway Database
- Sean Connery at the TCM Movie Database
- Sean Connery at Rotten Tomatoes
- Portraits of Sean Connery at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Anne Bancroft
LEFT: Dustin Hoffman & Anne Bancroft autographed "The Graduate" (1967) Movie Soundtrack LP (music by Simon & Garfunkel);
RIGHT: Photo of Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen Keller in the "The Miracle Worker" (1962) Movie.
- YouTube Video from The Graduate (1967) - "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Aren't you?"
- YouTube Video: MEL BROOKS AND ANNE BANCROFT PERFORM SWEET GEORGIA BROWN
- YouTube Video: Anne Bancroft - Top 30 Highest Rated Movies
LEFT: Dustin Hoffman & Anne Bancroft autographed "The Graduate" (1967) Movie Soundtrack LP (music by Simon & Garfunkel);
RIGHT: Photo of Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen Keller in the "The Miracle Worker" (1962) Movie.
Anna Maria Louisa Italiano (September 17, 1931 – June 6, 2005), known professionally as Anne Bancroft, was an American actress associated with the method acting school, having studied under Lee Strasberg. Respected for her acting prowess and versatility, Bancroft was acknowledged for her work in film, theatre and television. She won one Academy Award, three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globes, two Tony Awards and two Emmy Awards, and several other awards and nominations.
After her film debut in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and a string of supporting film roles during the 1950s, she won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her lead role in The Miracle Worker (1962) as the teacher of teenage Helen Keller, reprising her role in the Broadway stage play. She won both an Oscar for her work in the film, and a Tony for the same role in the play.
On Broadway in 1965, she played a medieval nun obsessed with a priest (Jason Robards) in John Whiting's play The Devils, based on the Aldous Huxley novel The Devils of Loudun. She was perhaps best known as the seductress, Mrs. Robinson, in The Graduate (1967), a role that she later stated had come to overshadow her other work.
Bancroft received several other Oscar nominations and continued in lead roles until the late 1980s. She played a ballet dancer in The Turning Point (1977), and in Agnes of God she played the mother superior of a convent who clashes with a psychiatrist played by Jane Fonda over dealings with a troubled young novice nun played by Meg Tilly. In 1987, she starred with Anthony Hopkins in 84 Charing Cross Road. She appeared in several movies directed or produced by her second husband, comedian Mel Brooks, including the award-winning drama The Elephant Man (1980) as well as comedies To Be or Not to Be (1983) and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995).
In the 1990s she returned to supporting roles in films, but continued to play lead roles in television films. She received Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, for The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003), as well as an Emmy nomination for 2001's Haven.
Bancroft died of uterine cancer in 2005 at the age of 73. She is survived by her mother, sisters, husband Mel Brooks, and son Max Brooks.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Anne Bancroft:
After her film debut in Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and a string of supporting film roles during the 1950s, she won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her lead role in The Miracle Worker (1962) as the teacher of teenage Helen Keller, reprising her role in the Broadway stage play. She won both an Oscar for her work in the film, and a Tony for the same role in the play.
On Broadway in 1965, she played a medieval nun obsessed with a priest (Jason Robards) in John Whiting's play The Devils, based on the Aldous Huxley novel The Devils of Loudun. She was perhaps best known as the seductress, Mrs. Robinson, in The Graduate (1967), a role that she later stated had come to overshadow her other work.
Bancroft received several other Oscar nominations and continued in lead roles until the late 1980s. She played a ballet dancer in The Turning Point (1977), and in Agnes of God she played the mother superior of a convent who clashes with a psychiatrist played by Jane Fonda over dealings with a troubled young novice nun played by Meg Tilly. In 1987, she starred with Anthony Hopkins in 84 Charing Cross Road. She appeared in several movies directed or produced by her second husband, comedian Mel Brooks, including the award-winning drama The Elephant Man (1980) as well as comedies To Be or Not to Be (1983) and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995).
In the 1990s she returned to supporting roles in films, but continued to play lead roles in television films. She received Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations, for The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003), as well as an Emmy nomination for 2001's Haven.
Bancroft died of uterine cancer in 2005 at the age of 73. She is survived by her mother, sisters, husband Mel Brooks, and son Max Brooks.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Anne Bancroft:
Betty White
- YouTube Video: Betty White & Johnny Carson in Funny Skit as Adam and Eve on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show, 1979
- YouTube Video: Top 20 Betty White Moments
- YouTube Video: Remembering the life and legacy of actress Betty White l GMA
Betty Marion White Ludden (January 17, 1922 – December 31, 2021) was an American actress and comedian. A pioneer of early television, with a career spanning over seven decades, White was noted for her vast work in the entertainment industry and being one of the first women to work both in front of and behind the camera.
She was the first woman to produce a sitcom (Life with Elizabeth) in the United States, which contributed to her being named honorary Mayor of Hollywood in 1955. White is often referred to as the "First Lady of Television", a title used for a 2018 documentary detailing her life and career.
After making the transition to television from radio, White became a staple panelist of American game shows, dubbed "the first lady of game shows", and including:
White became the first woman to receive the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host for the show Just Men! in 1983.
She was also known for her appearances on The Bold and the Beautiful, Boston Legal, and The Carol Burnett Show.
Her biggest roles include Sue Ann Nivens on the CBS sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1973–1977), Rose Nylund on the NBC sitcom The Golden Girls (1985–1992), and Elka Ostrovsky on the TV Land sitcom Hot in Cleveland (2010–2015).
She gained renewed popularity after her appearance in the 2009 romantic comedy film The Proposal (2009), and was subsequently the subject of a successful Facebook-based campaign to host Saturday Night Live in 2010, garnering her a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
White worked longer in television than anyone else in that medium, earning her a Guinness World Record in 2018. White received eight Emmy Awards in various categories, three American Comedy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Grammy Award. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and was a 1995 Television Hall of Fame inductee.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Betty White:
She was the first woman to produce a sitcom (Life with Elizabeth) in the United States, which contributed to her being named honorary Mayor of Hollywood in 1955. White is often referred to as the "First Lady of Television", a title used for a 2018 documentary detailing her life and career.
After making the transition to television from radio, White became a staple panelist of American game shows, dubbed "the first lady of game shows", and including:
White became the first woman to receive the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host for the show Just Men! in 1983.
She was also known for her appearances on The Bold and the Beautiful, Boston Legal, and The Carol Burnett Show.
Her biggest roles include Sue Ann Nivens on the CBS sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1973–1977), Rose Nylund on the NBC sitcom The Golden Girls (1985–1992), and Elka Ostrovsky on the TV Land sitcom Hot in Cleveland (2010–2015).
She gained renewed popularity after her appearance in the 2009 romantic comedy film The Proposal (2009), and was subsequently the subject of a successful Facebook-based campaign to host Saturday Night Live in 2010, garnering her a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
White worked longer in television than anyone else in that medium, earning her a Guinness World Record in 2018. White received eight Emmy Awards in various categories, three American Comedy Awards, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Grammy Award. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and was a 1995 Television Hall of Fame inductee.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Betty White:
- Early life
- Career
- 1939–1953: Radio work, early television and Bandy Productions
- 1952–1959: The Betty White Show and Date with the Angels
- 1960s: First Lady of Gameshows, Password and Advise & Consent
- 1970s: The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Betty White Show
- 1980s: Mama's Family and The Golden Girls
- 1990–2009: Guest roles and return to the big screen in The Proposal
- 2010–2021: Career resurgence, Saturday Night Live and Hot in Cleveland
- Achievements and honors
- Personal life
- Causes and advocacy
- Death
- Filmography
- Literature
- See also:
Sidney Poitier
(L) “Lilies of the Field (1963)”,
(C) “To Sir with Love (1967)”;
(R) “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)”
- YouTube Video of Sidney Poitier in "In the Heat of the Night"
- YouTube Video of the Best Acting Scenes by Sidney Poitier
- YouTube Video: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner - Sidney Poitier
(L) “Lilies of the Field (1963)”,
(C) “To Sir with Love (1967)”;
(R) “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)”
Sidney L. Poitier KBE (February 20, 1927 – January 6, 2022) was a Bahamian-American actor, film director and ambassador.
In 1964, he was the first black person and first Bahamian to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. He received two Academy Award nominations, ten Golden Globes nominations, two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations, six BAFTA nominations, eight Laurel nominations, one Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG) nomination, one Grammy Award, and another Grammy nomination.
In 1964, Poitier became the first Bahamian and first black actor to win an Academy Award for Best Actor, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field.
The significance of these achievements was bolstered in 1967, when he starred in three successful films, all of which dealt with issues involving race and race relations: To Sir, with Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, making him the top box-office star of that year.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Poitier among the Greatest Male Stars of classic Hollywood cinema, ranking 22nd on the list of 25.
Poitier has directed a number of films, including:
In 2002, thirty-eight years after receiving the Best Actor Award, Poitier was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Academy Honorary Award, in recognition of his "remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being".
Poitier was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1974. From 1997 to 2007, he served as the Bahamian Ambassador to Japan. On August 12, 2009, Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama. In 2016, he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship for outstanding lifetime achievement in film.
On January 6, 2022, Poitier died at his home in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 94.
Upon his death many released statements honoring Poitier including President Joe Biden who wrote in part " With unflinching grandeur and poise — his singular warmth, depth, and stature on-screen — Sidney helped open the hearts of millions and changed the way America saw itself".
Former President Barack Obama paid tribute to Poitier calling him "a singular talent who epitomized dignity and grace". Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton also released statements.
Many in the entertainment industry paid tribute to Poitier as well including Martin Scorsese who wrote, "For years, the spotlight was on Sidney Poitier..he had a vocal precision and physical power and grace that at moments seemed almost supernatural."
Denzel Washington wrote, "It was a privilege to call Sidney Poitier my friend. He was a gentle man and opened doors for all of us that had been closed for years".
Also paying tribute were:
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Sidney Poitier:
In 1964, he was the first black person and first Bahamian to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. He received two Academy Award nominations, ten Golden Globes nominations, two Primetime Emmy Awards nominations, six BAFTA nominations, eight Laurel nominations, one Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG) nomination, one Grammy Award, and another Grammy nomination.
In 1964, Poitier became the first Bahamian and first black actor to win an Academy Award for Best Actor, and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field.
The significance of these achievements was bolstered in 1967, when he starred in three successful films, all of which dealt with issues involving race and race relations: To Sir, with Love; In the Heat of the Night; and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, making him the top box-office star of that year.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Poitier among the Greatest Male Stars of classic Hollywood cinema, ranking 22nd on the list of 25.
Poitier has directed a number of films, including:
- A Piece of the Action,
- Uptown Saturday Night,
- Let's Do It Again, with Bill Cosby;
- Stir Crazy, starring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder;
- and Ghost Dad, also with Cosby.
In 2002, thirty-eight years after receiving the Best Actor Award, Poitier was chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive an Academy Honorary Award, in recognition of his "remarkable accomplishments as an artist and as a human being".
Poitier was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1974. From 1997 to 2007, he served as the Bahamian Ambassador to Japan. On August 12, 2009, Poitier was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, by President Barack Obama. In 2016, he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship for outstanding lifetime achievement in film.
On January 6, 2022, Poitier died at his home in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 94.
Upon his death many released statements honoring Poitier including President Joe Biden who wrote in part " With unflinching grandeur and poise — his singular warmth, depth, and stature on-screen — Sidney helped open the hearts of millions and changed the way America saw itself".
Former President Barack Obama paid tribute to Poitier calling him "a singular talent who epitomized dignity and grace". Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton also released statements.
Many in the entertainment industry paid tribute to Poitier as well including Martin Scorsese who wrote, "For years, the spotlight was on Sidney Poitier..he had a vocal precision and physical power and grace that at moments seemed almost supernatural."
Denzel Washington wrote, "It was a privilege to call Sidney Poitier my friend. He was a gentle man and opened doors for all of us that had been closed for years".
Also paying tribute were:
- Harry Belafonte,
- Viola Davis,
- Whoopi Goldberg,
- Lupita Nyong'o,
- Ava DuVernay,
- Oprah Winfrey,
- Octavia Spencer
- and Giancarlo Esposito
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Sidney Poitier:
- Early life
- Hollywood
- Business
- Diplomatic service
- Personal life
- Honors and awards
- Filmography
- Works about Poitier
- See also:
- David Hampton, an impostor who posed as Poitier's son "David" in 1983, which inspired a play and a film, Six Degrees of Separation
- John Stewart (comics), a superhero whose design was based on Poitier.
- Official publisher web page
- Poitier breaks new ground with Oscar win (BBC, April 13, 1964)
- Overview of Sidney Poitier's life
- Sidney Poitier on IMDb
- Artist of the Month: Sidney Poitier at Hyena Productions
William Hurt, Actor of Stage and Screen (and more!)
- YouTube Video: William Hurt in the Ice Scene for the Movie "Body Heat"
- YouTube Video of Top 10 William Hurt Movies
- YouTube Video .The Big Chill (1983) - We're All Alone Out There Scene
William McChord Hurt (March 20, 1950 – March 13, 2022) was an American actor. He studied at the Juilliard School and began acting on stage in the 1970s. Hurt's film debut was in Ken Russell's science-fiction feature Altered States, released in 1980, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year. In 1981 he played a leading role in the neo-noir Body Heat, with Kathleen Turner.
Hurt garnered three consecutive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), Children of a Lesser God (1986), and Broadcast News (1987), winning for the first of these.
Hurt remained an active stage actor throughout the 1980s, appearing in off-Broadway productions including Henry V, Fifth of July, Richard II and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Hurt received his first Tony Award nomination in 1985 for the Broadway production of Hurlyburly.
After playing character roles in the following decade, Hurt earned his fourth Academy Award nomination for his supporting performance in David Cronenberg's crime thriller A History of Violence (2005). His later career films roles include turns in:
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about William Hurt:
Hurt garnered three consecutive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), Children of a Lesser God (1986), and Broadcast News (1987), winning for the first of these.
Hurt remained an active stage actor throughout the 1980s, appearing in off-Broadway productions including Henry V, Fifth of July, Richard II and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Hurt received his first Tony Award nomination in 1985 for the Broadway production of Hurlyburly.
After playing character roles in the following decade, Hurt earned his fourth Academy Award nomination for his supporting performance in David Cronenberg's crime thriller A History of Violence (2005). His later career films roles include turns in:
- A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001),
- The Village (2004),
- Syriana (2005),
- The Good Shepherd (2006),
- Mr. Brooks (2007),
- Into the Wild (2007),
- Robin Hood (2010),
- and five films set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in which he portrayed Thaddeus Ross.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about William Hurt:
Matthew Perry (1969-2023): Was Best Known as "Chandler Bing" on the Sitcom "Friends":
- YouTube Video of Chandler's Unforgettable Moments! | Friends
- YouTube Video of Friends: Chandler and Monica Have Sex For the First Time (Season 4 Clip) | TBS
- YouTube Video: Top 10 Funniest Chandler Moments on Friends (MsMojo)
Matthew Langford Perry (August 19, 1969 – October 28, 2023) was an American and Canadian actor.
Best known for his role as Chandler Bing on the NBC television sitcom Friends (1994–2004), Perry also:
Perry was co-creator, co-writer, executive producer, and star of the ABC sitcom Mr. Sunshine, which ran from February to April 2011. In August 2012, he starred as sportscaster Ryan King on the NBC sitcom Go On.
Perry co-developed and starred in a revival of the CBS sitcom The Odd Couple portraying Oscar Madison from 2015 to 2017.
He had recurring roles in the legal dramas The Good Wife (2012–2013), and The Good Fight (2017).
Perry portrayed Ted Kennedy in The Kennedys: After Camelot (2017) and appeared as himself in his final television role, Friends: The Reunion (2021).
He voiced Benny in the video game Fallout: New Vegas (2010).
Perry suffered from severe addictions to drugs and alcohol. Through his recovery, he became an advocate for rehabilitation and a spokesperson for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.
In 2013, Perry received the Champion of Recovery Award from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. In 2022, he released his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Matthew Perry:
Best known for his role as Chandler Bing on the NBC television sitcom Friends (1994–2004), Perry also:
- appeared on Ally McBeal (2002)
- and received Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his performances in:
- The West Wing (2003)
- and The Ron Clark Story (2006).
- He played a leading role in the NBC series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (2006–2007).
- Perry also became known for his leading film roles in
- Fools Rush In (1997),
- Almost Heroes (1998),
- Three to Tango (1999),
- The Whole Nine Yards (2000),
- Serving Sara (2002),
- The Whole Ten Yards (2004),
- and 17 Again (2009).
Perry was co-creator, co-writer, executive producer, and star of the ABC sitcom Mr. Sunshine, which ran from February to April 2011. In August 2012, he starred as sportscaster Ryan King on the NBC sitcom Go On.
Perry co-developed and starred in a revival of the CBS sitcom The Odd Couple portraying Oscar Madison from 2015 to 2017.
He had recurring roles in the legal dramas The Good Wife (2012–2013), and The Good Fight (2017).
Perry portrayed Ted Kennedy in The Kennedys: After Camelot (2017) and appeared as himself in his final television role, Friends: The Reunion (2021).
He voiced Benny in the video game Fallout: New Vegas (2010).
Perry suffered from severe addictions to drugs and alcohol. Through his recovery, he became an advocate for rehabilitation and a spokesperson for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.
In 2013, Perry received the Champion of Recovery Award from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. In 2022, he released his memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.
Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Matthew Perry:
- Early life and education
- Career
- Personal life
- Death
- Acting credits
- Awards and nominations
- Publications
- See Also:
- Matthew Perry at IMDb
- Matthew Perry at Rotten Tomatoes
- Matthew Perry discography at Discogs
- Interviewed on "Q with Tom Power", CBC, November 22, 2022, audio
Norman Lear was an American screenwriter and producer who produced, wrote, created, or developed over 100 shows
- YouTube Video: All In The Family | Mike Meets Archie For The First Time | The Norman Lear Effect
- YouTube Video: 'All in the Family' could not air today
- YouTube Video: Norman Lear passes away at age 101
Norman Milton Lear (July 27, 1922 – December 5, 2023) was an American screenwriter and producer who produced, wrote, created, or developed over 100 shows.
Lear created and produced numerous popular 1970s sitcoms, including:
His shows introduced political and social themes to the sitcom format.
Lear received many awards, including:
He was a member of the Television Academy Hall of Fame.
Lear was known for his political activism and funding of liberal and progressive causes and politicians. In 1980, he founded the advocacy organization People for the American Way to counter the influence of the Christian right in politics, and in the early 2000s, he mounted a tour with a copy of the Declaration of Independence.
Early life and education:
Norman Milton Lear was born on July 27, 1922, in New Haven, Connecticut, to Jeanette (née Seicol) and Hyman "Herman" Lear, a traveling salesman. He had a younger sister, Claire Lear Brown (1925–2015).
Lear grew up in a Jewish household in Connecticut and had a bar mitzvah ceremony. Both parents were of Russian-Jewish descent.
When Lear was nine years old and living with his family in Chelsea, Massachusetts, his father went to prison for selling fake bonds. Lear thought of his father as a "rascal" and said that the character of Archie Bunker (whom Lear depicted as white Protestant on the show) was in part inspired by his father, and the character of Edith Bunker was in part inspired by his mother.
However, Lear has said the moment which inspired his lifetime of advocacy was another event which he experienced at the age of nine, when he first heard antisemitic Catholic radio priest Father Charles Coughlin while tinkering with his crystal radio set.
After hearing more of Coughlin's radio sermons, Lear said he found Coughlin would promote antisemitism by targeting people whom Jews considered to be "great heroes", such as US President Franklin Roosevelt.
Lear attended Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn, New York, graduated from Weaver High School in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1940 and attended Emerson College in Boston, but dropped out in 1942 to join the United States Army Air Forces.
Military career:
Lear enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in September 1942. He served in the Mediterranean theater as a radio operator and gunner on Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers with the 772nd Bomb Squadron, 463rd Bomb Group of the Fifteenth Air Force; in a 2014 interview, he talked about bombing Germany. He flew 52 combat missions and received the Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters. Lear was discharged from the Army Air Forces in 1945. His World War II crew members are featured in the book Crew Umbriago by Daniel P. Carroll.
Career:
1950–1959:
After World War II Lear had a career in public relations. The career choice was inspired by his Uncle Jack: "My dad had a brother, Jack, who flipped me a quarter every time he saw me. He was a press agent so I wanted to be a press agent. That's the only role model I had. So all I wanted was to grow up to be a guy who could flip a quarter to a nephew." Lear decided to move to California to restart his career in publicity, driving with his toddler daughter across the country.
His first night in Los Angeles, Lear stumbled upon a production of George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara at the 90-seat theater-in-the-round Circle Theater off Sunset Boulevard. One of the actors in the play was Sydney Chaplin, the son of actors Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey. Charlie Chaplin, Alan Mowbray, and Dame Gladys Cooper sat in front of Lear, and after the show was over, Charlie Chaplin performed.
Lear had a first cousin in Los Angeles, Elaine, who was married to an aspiring comedy writer named Ed Simmons. Simmons and Lear teamed up to sell home furnishings door-to-door for a company called The Gans Brothers and later sold family photos door-to-door.
Throughout the 1950s, Lear and Simmons turned out comedy sketches for television appearances of Martin and Lewis, Rowan and Martin, and others.
They frequently wrote for Martin and Lewis when they appeared on the Colgate Comedy Hour, and a 1953 article from Billboard magazine stated that Lear and Simmons were guaranteed a record-breaking $52,000 (equivalent to $570,000 in 2022) each to write for five additional Martin and Lewis appearances on the Colgate Comedy Hour that year.
In a 2015 interview with Variety, Lear said that Jerry Lewis had hired him and Simmons as writers for Martin and Lewis three weeks before the comedy duo made their first appearance on the Colgate Comedy Hour in 1950.
Lear also acknowledged in 1986 that he and Simmons were the main writers for The Martin and Lewis Show for three years.
In 1954, Lear was enlisted as a writer and asked to salvage the new CBS sitcom starring Celeste Holm, Honestly, Celeste!, but the program was canceled after eight episodes.
During this time Lear became the producer of NBC's short-lived (26 episodes) sitcom The Martha Raye Show, after Nat Hiken left as the series director. Lear also wrote some of the opening monologs for The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show which aired from 1956 to 1961. In 1959, Lear created his first television series, a half-hour western for Revue Studios called The Deputy, starring Henry Fonda.
1967–1977:
Starting out as a comedy writer, then a film director (he wrote and produced the 1967 film Divorce American Style and directed the 1971 film Cold Turkey, both starring Dick Van Dyke), Lear tried to sell a concept for a sitcom about a blue-collar American family to ABC.
They rejected the show after two pilots were taped: "Justice for All" in 1968 and "Those Were the Days" in 1969.
After a third pilot was taped, CBS picked up the show, known as All in the Family. It premiered January 12, 1971, to disappointing ratings, but it took home several Emmy Awards that year, including Outstanding Comedy Series. The show did very well in summer reruns, and it flourished in the 1971–72 season, becoming the top-rated show on TV for the next five years.
After falling from the No. 1 spot, All in the Family still remained in the top ten, well after it became Archie Bunker's Place. The show was based loosely on the British sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, about an irascible working-class Tory and his socialist son-in-law.
Lear's second big TV sitcom, Sanford and Son, was also based on a British sitcom, Steptoe and Son, about a west London junk dealer and his son. Lear changed the setting to the Watts section of Los Angeles and the characters to African-Americans, and the NBC show Sanford and Son was an instant hit.
Numerous hit shows followed thereafter, including:
Most of these Lear sitcoms share three features:
Maude is generally considered to be based on Lear's wife Frances, which she confirmed, with Charlie Hauck serving as main producer and writer.
Lear's longtime producing partner was Bud Yorkin, who also produced:
Yorkin split with Lear in 1975. He started a production company with writers and producers Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein; however only two of their shows lasted longer than a year: What's Happening!! and Carter Country.
The Lear/Yorkin company was known as Tandem Productions and was founded in 1958. Lear and talent agent Jerry Perenchio founded T.A.T. Communications ("T.A.T." stood for the Yiddish phrase tuchus affen tisch, "putting one's ass on the line") in 1974, which co-existed with Tandem Productions and was often referred to in periodicals as Tandem/T.A.T.
The Lear organization was one of the most successful independent TV producers of the 1970s. TAT produced the influential and award-winning 1981 film The Wave about Ron Jones' social experiment.
Lear also developed the cult favorite TV series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (MH MH) which was turned down by the networks as "too controversial" and placed it into first run syndication with 128 stations in January 1976. A year later, he added another program into first-run syndication along with MH MH, All That Glitters.
He planned in 1977 to offer three hours of prime-time Saturday programming directly having stations place his production company in the position of an occasional network.
In 1977, African American screenwriter Eric Monte filed a lawsuit accusing ABC and CBS producers Norman Lear, Bud Yorkin, and others of stealing his ideas for Good Times, The Jeffersons, and What's Happening!! Monte received a $1-million settlement and a small percentage of the residuals from Good Times and one percent ownership of the show. Monte, due to his lack of business knowledge and experience as well as legal representation, would not receive royalties for other shows which he created.
However, Lear and other Hollywood producers, outraged over the lawsuit, blacklisted Monte and labeled him too difficult to work with.
1980–1999:
In 1980, Lear founded the organization People for the American Way for the purpose of counteracting the Christian right group Moral Majority which had been founded in 1979.
In the fall of 1981, Lear began a 14-month run as the host of a revival of the classic game show Quiz Kids for the CBS Cable Network.
In January 1982, Lear and Jerry Perenchio bought Avco Embassy Pictures from Avco Financial Corporation. In January 1982, after merging with company with T.A.T. Communications, the Avco was dropped, and the combined entity was renamed as Embassy Communications, Inc.
Embassy Pictures was led by Alan Horn and Martin Schaeffer, later co-founders of Castle Rock Entertainment with Rob Reiner.
In March 1982, Lear produced an ABC television special titled I Love Liberty, as a counterbalance to groups like the Moral Majority. Among the many guests who appeared on the special was conservative icon and the 1964 U.S. presidential election's Republican nominee Barry Goldwater.
On June 18, 1985, Lear and Perenchio sold Embassy Communications to Columbia Pictures (then owned by The Coca-Cola Company), which acquired Embassy's film and television division (including Embassy's in-house television productions and the television rights to the Embassy theatrical library) for $485 million of shares of The Coca-Cola Company.
The brand Tandem Productions was abandoned in 1986 with the cancellation of Diff'rent Strokes, and Embassy ceased to exist as a single entity in late 1986, having been split into different components owned by different entities. Coca-Cola sold the film division to Dino De Laurentiis and the home video arm to Nelson Holdings (led by Barry Spikings).
The TV properties continued under the Columbia Pictures Television banner.
Lear's Act III Communications was founded in 1986 and in the following year, Thomas B. McGrath was named president and chief operating officer of ACT III Communications Inc after previously serving as senior vice president.
On February 2, 1989, Norman Lear's Act III Communications formed a joint venture with Columbia Pictures Television called Act III Television to produce television series instead of strictly managing them.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Act III Communications purchased several business journals, including Channels magazine that had been founded by Les Brown, former New York Times TV correspondent. Channels closed in 1990, by which time Act III and Brown published and edited Television Business International (TBI).
In 1997, Lear and Jim George produced the Kids' WB series Channel Umptee-3. The cartoon was notable for being the first television show to meet the Federal Communications Commission's then-new educational programming requirements.
2000–2023:
In 2003, Lear appeared on South Park during the "I'm a Little Bit Country" episode, providing the voice of Benjamin Franklin. He also served as a consultant on the episodes "I'm a Little Bit Country" and "Cancelled". He attended a South Park writers' retreat, with some of his ideas making it onto South Park, and was the officiant at co-creator Trey Parker's wedding.
In 2014, Lear published Even This I Get to Experience, a memoir.
Lear is spotlighted in the 2016 documentary Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You. In 2017, he served as executive producer for One Day at a Time, the reboot of his 1975–1984 show of the same name that premiered on Netflix starring Justina Machado and Rita Moreno as a Cuban-American family.
He hosted a podcast, All of the Above with Norman Lear, since May 1, 2017.
On July 29, 2019, it was announced that Lear had teamed with Lin-Manuel Miranda to make an American Masters documentary about Moreno's life, tentatively titled Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.
In 2020, it was announced that Lear and Act III Productions would executive produce a revival of Who's The Boss? At the time of his death in 2023, he was overseeing multiple shows in development, including a planned reboot of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
Awards and honors:
Lear has been honored for his influence on American television and culture. Before All in the Family, television sitcoms in the 1950s and 1960s generally portrayed white American family life as comfortable and avoided raising issues such as racial discrimination and patriarchy.
Beginning in 1971, All in the Family openly discussed current social and political topics and became the country's most popular show for five straight years. Lear's subsequent shows widened television's representation of racial and gender diversity, such as Good Times, the first television show centered on an African-American nuclear family.
Television screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky said that Lear "put the American people [on screen] ... he took the audience and put them on the set".
In 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded Lear the National Medal of Arts, noting: "Norman Lear has held up a mirror to American society and changed the way we look at it." That year, he and Bud Yorkin received the Women in Film Lucy Award in recognition of excellence and innovation in creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television.
The Producers Guild of America awarded Lear its Achievement Award in Television in 2006; by the next year, the honor was named the Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television.
In 2017, he was awarded the fourth annual Woody Guthrie Prize presented by the Woody Guthrie Center, recognizing an artist whose work represents the spirit of Woody Guthrie "as a positive force for social change". He became the oldest recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors later that year at the age of 95.
Lear's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6615 Hollywood Boulevard. He received other numerous honorary accolades, including:
Political and cultural activities:
Lear was an outspoken supporter of First Amendment and liberal causes. The only time that he did not support the Democratic candidate for president was in 1980 when he supported John Anderson over Jimmy Carter because he considered the Carter administration to be "a complete disaster".
Lear was one of the wealthy Jewish Angelenos known as the Malibu Mafia. In the 1970s and 1980s, the group discussed progressive and liberal political issues, and worked together to fund them. They helped to fund the legal defense of Daniel Ellsberg who had released the Pentagon Papers, and they backed the struggling progressive magazine The Nation to keep it afloat.
In 1975, they formed the Energy Action Committee to oppose Big Oil's powerful lobby in Washington.
People for the American Way:
In 1981, Lear founded People for the American Way (PFAW), a progressive advocacy organization formed in reaction to the politics of the Christian right. PFAW ran several advertising campaigns opposing the interjection of religion in politics. PFAW and other like-minded groups succeeded in their efforts to block Reagan's 1987 nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court.
Lear, a longtime critic of the Religious Right, was an advocate for the advancement of secularism.
Prominent right-wing Christians including Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Jimmy Swaggart have accused Lear of being an atheist and holding an anti-Christian bias.
In the January 21, 1987, issue of The Christian Century, Lear associate Martin E. Marty (a Lutheran professor of church history at the University of Chicago Divinity School between 1963 and 1998) rejected those allegations, stating the television producer honored religious moral values and complimenting Lear's understanding of Christianity.
Marty noted that while Lear and his family had never practiced Orthodox Judaism,[94] the television producer was a follower of Judaism.
In a 2009 interview with US News journalist Dan Gilgoff, Lear rejected claims by right-wing Christian nationalists that he was an atheist and prejudiced against Christianity. Lear held religious beliefs and integrated some evangelical Christian language into his Born Again American campaign. He believed that religion should be kept separate from politics and policymaking.
In a 2014 interview with The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles journalist Rob Eshman, Lear described himself as a "total Jew" but said he was never a practicing one.
In 1989, Lear founded the Business Enterprise Trust, an educational program that used annual awards, business school case studies, and videos to spotlight exemplary social innovations in American business until it ended in 1998.
He announced in 1992 that he was reducing his political activism.
In 2000, he provided an endowment for a multidisciplinary research and public policy center, the Norman Lear Center, that explored the convergence of entertainment, commerce, and society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Lear served on the National Advisory Board of the Young Storytellers Foundation. He wrote articles for The Huffington Post. He was a trustee of The Paley Center for Media.
Declaration of Independence:
In 2001, Lear and his wife, Lyn, purchased a Dunlap broadside—one of the first published copies of the United States Declaration of Independence—for $8.1 million. John Dunlap printed about 200 copies of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
Twenty-five copies survive today and only four of those are in private hands.
Not a document collector, Lear said in a press release and on the Today show that his intent was to tour the document around the United States so that the country could experience its "birth certificate" firsthand.
Through the end of 2004, the document traveled throughout the United States on the Declaration of Independence Road Trip, which Lear organized, visiting several presidential libraries, dozens of museums, as well as the 2002 Olympics, Super Bowl XXXVI, and the Live 8 concert in Philadelphia. Lear and Rob Reiner produced a filmed, dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence—the last project filmed by famed cinematographer Conrad Hall—on July 4, 2001, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
The film is introduced by the folloowing, who appear as readers:
It was directed by Arvin Brown and scored by John Williams.
In 2004, Lear established Declare Yourself which is a national nonpartisan, nonprofit campaign created to empower and encourage eligible 18- to 29-year-olds in America to register and vote. It has registered almost 4 million young people.
Lear was one of 98 "prominent members of Los Angeles' Jewish community" who signed an open letter supporting the proposed nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers led by the United States. The letter called for the passage of the bill and warned that the ending of the agreement by Congress would be a "tragic mistake".
Personal life:
Lear was married three times.
From his three marriages, he had six children. He was a godparent to actress and singer Katey Sagal.
On July 27, 2022, he became a centenarian.
On December 5, 2023, Lear died at his home in Los Angeles from cardiac arrest, as a complication of heart failure. He was 101.
Click on any of the following for more about Norman Lear:
Lear created and produced numerous popular 1970s sitcoms, including:
- All in the Family (1971–1979),
- Maude (1972–1978),
- Sanford and Son (1972–1977),
- One Day at a Time (1975–1984),
- The Jeffersons (1975–1985),
- and Good Times (1974–1979).
His shows introduced political and social themes to the sitcom format.
Lear received many awards, including:
- six Primetime Emmy Awards,
- two Peabody Awards,
- the National Medal of Arts in 1999,
- the Kennedy Center Honors in 2017,
- and the Golden Globe Carol Burnett Award in 2021.
He was a member of the Television Academy Hall of Fame.
Lear was known for his political activism and funding of liberal and progressive causes and politicians. In 1980, he founded the advocacy organization People for the American Way to counter the influence of the Christian right in politics, and in the early 2000s, he mounted a tour with a copy of the Declaration of Independence.
Early life and education:
Norman Milton Lear was born on July 27, 1922, in New Haven, Connecticut, to Jeanette (née Seicol) and Hyman "Herman" Lear, a traveling salesman. He had a younger sister, Claire Lear Brown (1925–2015).
Lear grew up in a Jewish household in Connecticut and had a bar mitzvah ceremony. Both parents were of Russian-Jewish descent.
When Lear was nine years old and living with his family in Chelsea, Massachusetts, his father went to prison for selling fake bonds. Lear thought of his father as a "rascal" and said that the character of Archie Bunker (whom Lear depicted as white Protestant on the show) was in part inspired by his father, and the character of Edith Bunker was in part inspired by his mother.
However, Lear has said the moment which inspired his lifetime of advocacy was another event which he experienced at the age of nine, when he first heard antisemitic Catholic radio priest Father Charles Coughlin while tinkering with his crystal radio set.
After hearing more of Coughlin's radio sermons, Lear said he found Coughlin would promote antisemitism by targeting people whom Jews considered to be "great heroes", such as US President Franklin Roosevelt.
Lear attended Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn, New York, graduated from Weaver High School in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1940 and attended Emerson College in Boston, but dropped out in 1942 to join the United States Army Air Forces.
Military career:
Lear enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in September 1942. He served in the Mediterranean theater as a radio operator and gunner on Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombers with the 772nd Bomb Squadron, 463rd Bomb Group of the Fifteenth Air Force; in a 2014 interview, he talked about bombing Germany. He flew 52 combat missions and received the Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters. Lear was discharged from the Army Air Forces in 1945. His World War II crew members are featured in the book Crew Umbriago by Daniel P. Carroll.
Career:
1950–1959:
After World War II Lear had a career in public relations. The career choice was inspired by his Uncle Jack: "My dad had a brother, Jack, who flipped me a quarter every time he saw me. He was a press agent so I wanted to be a press agent. That's the only role model I had. So all I wanted was to grow up to be a guy who could flip a quarter to a nephew." Lear decided to move to California to restart his career in publicity, driving with his toddler daughter across the country.
His first night in Los Angeles, Lear stumbled upon a production of George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara at the 90-seat theater-in-the-round Circle Theater off Sunset Boulevard. One of the actors in the play was Sydney Chaplin, the son of actors Charlie Chaplin and Lita Grey. Charlie Chaplin, Alan Mowbray, and Dame Gladys Cooper sat in front of Lear, and after the show was over, Charlie Chaplin performed.
Lear had a first cousin in Los Angeles, Elaine, who was married to an aspiring comedy writer named Ed Simmons. Simmons and Lear teamed up to sell home furnishings door-to-door for a company called The Gans Brothers and later sold family photos door-to-door.
Throughout the 1950s, Lear and Simmons turned out comedy sketches for television appearances of Martin and Lewis, Rowan and Martin, and others.
They frequently wrote for Martin and Lewis when they appeared on the Colgate Comedy Hour, and a 1953 article from Billboard magazine stated that Lear and Simmons were guaranteed a record-breaking $52,000 (equivalent to $570,000 in 2022) each to write for five additional Martin and Lewis appearances on the Colgate Comedy Hour that year.
In a 2015 interview with Variety, Lear said that Jerry Lewis had hired him and Simmons as writers for Martin and Lewis three weeks before the comedy duo made their first appearance on the Colgate Comedy Hour in 1950.
Lear also acknowledged in 1986 that he and Simmons were the main writers for The Martin and Lewis Show for three years.
In 1954, Lear was enlisted as a writer and asked to salvage the new CBS sitcom starring Celeste Holm, Honestly, Celeste!, but the program was canceled after eight episodes.
During this time Lear became the producer of NBC's short-lived (26 episodes) sitcom The Martha Raye Show, after Nat Hiken left as the series director. Lear also wrote some of the opening monologs for The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show which aired from 1956 to 1961. In 1959, Lear created his first television series, a half-hour western for Revue Studios called The Deputy, starring Henry Fonda.
1967–1977:
Starting out as a comedy writer, then a film director (he wrote and produced the 1967 film Divorce American Style and directed the 1971 film Cold Turkey, both starring Dick Van Dyke), Lear tried to sell a concept for a sitcom about a blue-collar American family to ABC.
They rejected the show after two pilots were taped: "Justice for All" in 1968 and "Those Were the Days" in 1969.
After a third pilot was taped, CBS picked up the show, known as All in the Family. It premiered January 12, 1971, to disappointing ratings, but it took home several Emmy Awards that year, including Outstanding Comedy Series. The show did very well in summer reruns, and it flourished in the 1971–72 season, becoming the top-rated show on TV for the next five years.
After falling from the No. 1 spot, All in the Family still remained in the top ten, well after it became Archie Bunker's Place. The show was based loosely on the British sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, about an irascible working-class Tory and his socialist son-in-law.
Lear's second big TV sitcom, Sanford and Son, was also based on a British sitcom, Steptoe and Son, about a west London junk dealer and his son. Lear changed the setting to the Watts section of Los Angeles and the characters to African-Americans, and the NBC show Sanford and Son was an instant hit.
Numerous hit shows followed thereafter, including:
- Maude and The Jeffersons (both spin-offs of All in the Family),
- One Day at a Time,
- and Good Times (which is a spinoff of Maude).
Most of these Lear sitcoms share three features:
- they were shot on videotape in place of film,
- used a live studio audience,
- and dealt with current social and political issues.
Maude is generally considered to be based on Lear's wife Frances, which she confirmed, with Charlie Hauck serving as main producer and writer.
Lear's longtime producing partner was Bud Yorkin, who also produced:
- All in the Family,
- Sanford and Son,
- What's Happening!!,
- Maude, and The Jeffersons.
Yorkin split with Lear in 1975. He started a production company with writers and producers Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein; however only two of their shows lasted longer than a year: What's Happening!! and Carter Country.
The Lear/Yorkin company was known as Tandem Productions and was founded in 1958. Lear and talent agent Jerry Perenchio founded T.A.T. Communications ("T.A.T." stood for the Yiddish phrase tuchus affen tisch, "putting one's ass on the line") in 1974, which co-existed with Tandem Productions and was often referred to in periodicals as Tandem/T.A.T.
The Lear organization was one of the most successful independent TV producers of the 1970s. TAT produced the influential and award-winning 1981 film The Wave about Ron Jones' social experiment.
Lear also developed the cult favorite TV series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (MH MH) which was turned down by the networks as "too controversial" and placed it into first run syndication with 128 stations in January 1976. A year later, he added another program into first-run syndication along with MH MH, All That Glitters.
He planned in 1977 to offer three hours of prime-time Saturday programming directly having stations place his production company in the position of an occasional network.
In 1977, African American screenwriter Eric Monte filed a lawsuit accusing ABC and CBS producers Norman Lear, Bud Yorkin, and others of stealing his ideas for Good Times, The Jeffersons, and What's Happening!! Monte received a $1-million settlement and a small percentage of the residuals from Good Times and one percent ownership of the show. Monte, due to his lack of business knowledge and experience as well as legal representation, would not receive royalties for other shows which he created.
However, Lear and other Hollywood producers, outraged over the lawsuit, blacklisted Monte and labeled him too difficult to work with.
1980–1999:
In 1980, Lear founded the organization People for the American Way for the purpose of counteracting the Christian right group Moral Majority which had been founded in 1979.
In the fall of 1981, Lear began a 14-month run as the host of a revival of the classic game show Quiz Kids for the CBS Cable Network.
In January 1982, Lear and Jerry Perenchio bought Avco Embassy Pictures from Avco Financial Corporation. In January 1982, after merging with company with T.A.T. Communications, the Avco was dropped, and the combined entity was renamed as Embassy Communications, Inc.
Embassy Pictures was led by Alan Horn and Martin Schaeffer, later co-founders of Castle Rock Entertainment with Rob Reiner.
In March 1982, Lear produced an ABC television special titled I Love Liberty, as a counterbalance to groups like the Moral Majority. Among the many guests who appeared on the special was conservative icon and the 1964 U.S. presidential election's Republican nominee Barry Goldwater.
On June 18, 1985, Lear and Perenchio sold Embassy Communications to Columbia Pictures (then owned by The Coca-Cola Company), which acquired Embassy's film and television division (including Embassy's in-house television productions and the television rights to the Embassy theatrical library) for $485 million of shares of The Coca-Cola Company.
The brand Tandem Productions was abandoned in 1986 with the cancellation of Diff'rent Strokes, and Embassy ceased to exist as a single entity in late 1986, having been split into different components owned by different entities. Coca-Cola sold the film division to Dino De Laurentiis and the home video arm to Nelson Holdings (led by Barry Spikings).
The TV properties continued under the Columbia Pictures Television banner.
Lear's Act III Communications was founded in 1986 and in the following year, Thomas B. McGrath was named president and chief operating officer of ACT III Communications Inc after previously serving as senior vice president.
On February 2, 1989, Norman Lear's Act III Communications formed a joint venture with Columbia Pictures Television called Act III Television to produce television series instead of strictly managing them.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Act III Communications purchased several business journals, including Channels magazine that had been founded by Les Brown, former New York Times TV correspondent. Channels closed in 1990, by which time Act III and Brown published and edited Television Business International (TBI).
In 1997, Lear and Jim George produced the Kids' WB series Channel Umptee-3. The cartoon was notable for being the first television show to meet the Federal Communications Commission's then-new educational programming requirements.
2000–2023:
In 2003, Lear appeared on South Park during the "I'm a Little Bit Country" episode, providing the voice of Benjamin Franklin. He also served as a consultant on the episodes "I'm a Little Bit Country" and "Cancelled". He attended a South Park writers' retreat, with some of his ideas making it onto South Park, and was the officiant at co-creator Trey Parker's wedding.
In 2014, Lear published Even This I Get to Experience, a memoir.
Lear is spotlighted in the 2016 documentary Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You. In 2017, he served as executive producer for One Day at a Time, the reboot of his 1975–1984 show of the same name that premiered on Netflix starring Justina Machado and Rita Moreno as a Cuban-American family.
He hosted a podcast, All of the Above with Norman Lear, since May 1, 2017.
On July 29, 2019, it was announced that Lear had teamed with Lin-Manuel Miranda to make an American Masters documentary about Moreno's life, tentatively titled Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It.
In 2020, it was announced that Lear and Act III Productions would executive produce a revival of Who's The Boss? At the time of his death in 2023, he was overseeing multiple shows in development, including a planned reboot of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
Awards and honors:
Lear has been honored for his influence on American television and culture. Before All in the Family, television sitcoms in the 1950s and 1960s generally portrayed white American family life as comfortable and avoided raising issues such as racial discrimination and patriarchy.
Beginning in 1971, All in the Family openly discussed current social and political topics and became the country's most popular show for five straight years. Lear's subsequent shows widened television's representation of racial and gender diversity, such as Good Times, the first television show centered on an African-American nuclear family.
Television screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky said that Lear "put the American people [on screen] ... he took the audience and put them on the set".
In 1999, President Bill Clinton awarded Lear the National Medal of Arts, noting: "Norman Lear has held up a mirror to American society and changed the way we look at it." That year, he and Bud Yorkin received the Women in Film Lucy Award in recognition of excellence and innovation in creative works that have enhanced the perception of women through the medium of television.
The Producers Guild of America awarded Lear its Achievement Award in Television in 2006; by the next year, the honor was named the Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television.
In 2017, he was awarded the fourth annual Woody Guthrie Prize presented by the Woody Guthrie Center, recognizing an artist whose work represents the spirit of Woody Guthrie "as a positive force for social change". He became the oldest recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors later that year at the age of 95.
Lear's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 6615 Hollywood Boulevard. He received other numerous honorary accolades, including:
- 1977: Peabody Awards: Lifetime achievement
- 1977: American Humanist Association: Humanist Arts Award
- 1980: Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award
- 1984: Television Academy: Hall of Fame
- 2007: Britannia Awards Excellence in Television
- 2017: National Hispanic Media Coalition Media Icon
- 2017: Peabody Awards: Lifetime achievement
Political and cultural activities:
Lear was an outspoken supporter of First Amendment and liberal causes. The only time that he did not support the Democratic candidate for president was in 1980 when he supported John Anderson over Jimmy Carter because he considered the Carter administration to be "a complete disaster".
Lear was one of the wealthy Jewish Angelenos known as the Malibu Mafia. In the 1970s and 1980s, the group discussed progressive and liberal political issues, and worked together to fund them. They helped to fund the legal defense of Daniel Ellsberg who had released the Pentagon Papers, and they backed the struggling progressive magazine The Nation to keep it afloat.
In 1975, they formed the Energy Action Committee to oppose Big Oil's powerful lobby in Washington.
People for the American Way:
In 1981, Lear founded People for the American Way (PFAW), a progressive advocacy organization formed in reaction to the politics of the Christian right. PFAW ran several advertising campaigns opposing the interjection of religion in politics. PFAW and other like-minded groups succeeded in their efforts to block Reagan's 1987 nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court.
Lear, a longtime critic of the Religious Right, was an advocate for the advancement of secularism.
Prominent right-wing Christians including Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Jimmy Swaggart have accused Lear of being an atheist and holding an anti-Christian bias.
In the January 21, 1987, issue of The Christian Century, Lear associate Martin E. Marty (a Lutheran professor of church history at the University of Chicago Divinity School between 1963 and 1998) rejected those allegations, stating the television producer honored religious moral values and complimenting Lear's understanding of Christianity.
Marty noted that while Lear and his family had never practiced Orthodox Judaism,[94] the television producer was a follower of Judaism.
In a 2009 interview with US News journalist Dan Gilgoff, Lear rejected claims by right-wing Christian nationalists that he was an atheist and prejudiced against Christianity. Lear held religious beliefs and integrated some evangelical Christian language into his Born Again American campaign. He believed that religion should be kept separate from politics and policymaking.
In a 2014 interview with The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles journalist Rob Eshman, Lear described himself as a "total Jew" but said he was never a practicing one.
In 1989, Lear founded the Business Enterprise Trust, an educational program that used annual awards, business school case studies, and videos to spotlight exemplary social innovations in American business until it ended in 1998.
He announced in 1992 that he was reducing his political activism.
In 2000, he provided an endowment for a multidisciplinary research and public policy center, the Norman Lear Center, that explored the convergence of entertainment, commerce, and society at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
Lear served on the National Advisory Board of the Young Storytellers Foundation. He wrote articles for The Huffington Post. He was a trustee of The Paley Center for Media.
Declaration of Independence:
In 2001, Lear and his wife, Lyn, purchased a Dunlap broadside—one of the first published copies of the United States Declaration of Independence—for $8.1 million. John Dunlap printed about 200 copies of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
Twenty-five copies survive today and only four of those are in private hands.
Not a document collector, Lear said in a press release and on the Today show that his intent was to tour the document around the United States so that the country could experience its "birth certificate" firsthand.
Through the end of 2004, the document traveled throughout the United States on the Declaration of Independence Road Trip, which Lear organized, visiting several presidential libraries, dozens of museums, as well as the 2002 Olympics, Super Bowl XXXVI, and the Live 8 concert in Philadelphia. Lear and Rob Reiner produced a filmed, dramatic reading of the Declaration of Independence—the last project filmed by famed cinematographer Conrad Hall—on July 4, 2001, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.
The film is introduced by the folloowing, who appear as readers:
- Morgan Freeman and Kathy Bates,
- Benicio del Toro,
- Michael Douglas,
- Mel Gibson,
- Whoopi Goldberg,
- Graham Greene,
- Ming-Na Wen,
- Edward Norton,
- Winona Ryder,
- Kevin Spacey,
- and Renée Zellweger
It was directed by Arvin Brown and scored by John Williams.
In 2004, Lear established Declare Yourself which is a national nonpartisan, nonprofit campaign created to empower and encourage eligible 18- to 29-year-olds in America to register and vote. It has registered almost 4 million young people.
Lear was one of 98 "prominent members of Los Angeles' Jewish community" who signed an open letter supporting the proposed nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers led by the United States. The letter called for the passage of the bill and warned that the ending of the agreement by Congress would be a "tragic mistake".
Personal life:
Lear was married three times.
- His first marriage was to Charlotte Rosen in 1943. They divorced in 1956.
- He was married to Frances Loeb, publisher of Lear's magazine, from 1956 to 1985. They separated in 1983, with Loeb eventually receiving $112 million from Lear in their divorce settlement.
- In 1987, he married producer Lyn Davis, who survived him.
From his three marriages, he had six children. He was a godparent to actress and singer Katey Sagal.
On July 27, 2022, he became a centenarian.
On December 5, 2023, Lear died at his home in Los Angeles from cardiac arrest, as a complication of heart failure. He was 101.
Click on any of the following for more about Norman Lear:
- TV productions
- See also:
- Official website
- Norman Lear at IMDb
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- Norman Lear discography at Discogs